"How many of our good Indians have thrown themselves into this expedition! The Chickasaw nation may howl when they see this array! They will be taught to leave the boats from New Orleans alone!" "But suppose Sieur De Bienville and his army do not meet the Commandant D'Artaguette when he reaches the Chickasaw country?" "During his two years at Fort Chartres has Sieur D'Artaguette made mistakes? The expedition will succeed." "The saints keep that beautiful boy!--for to look at him, though he is so hardy, Monsieur Pierre D'Artaguette is as handsome as a woman. I have heard the southern tribes sacrifice their own children to the sun. This is a fair company of Christians to venture against such devils." The Chickasaws, occupying a tract of country now stretching across northern Mississippi and western Tennessee, were friendly to the English and willing to encroach on the French. They interrupted river traffic and practiced every cruelty on their prisoners. D'Artaguette knew as well as the early explorers that in dealing with savages it is a fatal policy to overlook or excuse their ill-behavior. They themselves believed in exact revenge, and despised a foe who did not strike back, their insolence becoming boundless if not curbed. So he had planned with Le Moyne de Bienville a concerted attack on these allies of the English. Bienville, bringing troops up river from New Orleans, was to meet him in the Chickasaw country on a day and spot carefully specified. [Illustration: Autograph of Bienville.] The brilliant pageant of canoes went on down the river, seeming to grow smaller, until it dwindled to nothingness in the distance. But in the course of weeks only a few men came back, sent by the Chickasaws, to tell about the fate of their leaders. The troops from New Orleans did not keep the appointment, arriving too late and then retreating. D'Artaguette, urged by his Indians, made the attack with such force as he had, and his brave array was destroyed. He and the Chevalier Vincennes, with Laland, Father Senat, and many others, a circle of noble human torches, perished at the stake. People lamented aloud in Kaskaskia and Cahokia streets, and the white flag of France slipped down to half-mast on Fort Chartres. This victory made the Chickasaw Indians so bold that scarcely a French convoy on the river escaped them. There is a story that a young girl reached the gate of Fort Chartres, starving and in rags, from wandering through swamps and woods. She was the last of a family arrived from France, and sought her sister, an officer's wife, in the fort. The Chickasaws had killed every other relative; she, escaping alone, was ready to die of exposure when she saw the flag through the trees.