FRENCH SETTLEMENTS. "It was the establishment of military posts throughout this vast valley that eventually brought on a life struggle between the English and the French," says a historian. At first the only spot of civilization in boundless wilderness was Tonty's little fort on the Illinois. Protected by it, the Indians went hunting and brought in buffalo skins and meat; their women planted and reaped maize; children were born; days came and went; autumn haze made the distances pearly; winter snow lay on the wigwams; men ran on snowshoes; and papooses shouted on the frozen river. Still no news came from La Salle. [Illustration: MAP OF THE FRENCH SETTLEMENTS.] Tonty had made a journey to the mouth of the Mississippi to meet him, after he landed with his colony, searching thirty leagues in each direction along the coast. La Salle was at that time groping through a maze of lagoons in Texas. Tonty, with his men, waded swamps to their necks, enduring more suffering than he had ever endured in his life before. This was in February of the year 1686. Finding it impossible to reach La Salle, who must be wandering somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico, Tonty wrote a letter to him, intrusting it to the hands of an Indian chief, with directions that it be delivered when the explorer appeared. He also left a couple of men who were willing to wait in the Arkansas villages to meet La Salle. Two years passed before those men brought positive proof of the undespairing Norman's fate. The remnant of the party that started with La Salle from Fort St. Louis of Texas spent one winter at Fort St. Louis of the Illinois, bringing word that they had left their leader in good health on the coast. The Abbe Cavelier even collected furs in his brother's name, and went on to France, carrying his secret with him. La Salle had been assassinated on the Trinity River, soon after setting out on his last determined search for the Mississippi. The eighteenth day of March, 1687, some of his brutal voyageurs hid themselves in bushes and shot him. So slowly did events move then, and so powerless was man, an atom in the wilderness, that the great-hearted Italian, weeping aloud in rage and grief, realized that La Salle's bones had been bleaching a year and a half before the news of his death reached his lieutenant. It was not known that La Salle received burial. The wretches who assassinated him threw him into some brush. It was a satisfaction to Tonty that they all perished miserably afterwards; those who survived quarrels among themselves being killed by the Indians. The undespairing Norman died instantly, without feeling or admitting defeat. And he was not defeated. Though his colony--including Father Membre, who had been so long with him--perished by the hands of the Indians in Texas, in spite of Tonty's second journey to relieve them, his plan of settlements from the great lakes to the mouth of the Mississippi became a reality.