Chief among those who developed this grand commercial strategy for dominion over the heart of America was Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, who as Commandant of Fort Frontenac at the western outlet of Lake Ontario had built up a thriving trade with the northwestern savages. Much to the annoyance of the Iroquois he furnished these Algonquin tribes with guns, powder and lead, as well as less deadly goods, in return for their furs. La Salle’s profits from this commerce were huge. But he was an eager young man. The prospect of an enormous trade for buffalo hides, deerskins, beaver, bear, otter and raccoon in the Mississippi valley beckoned him to conquest. In 1678, on his promise to King Louis that he would Christianize the natives, establish a line of forts from the lakes to the mouth of the Mississippi and open a direct route to France through the Gulf of Mexico, he was granted a monopolistic trade patent to all the lands drained by the mighty river. It was to be four years however before La Salle reached the mouth of the Mississippi, even on an initial exploratory expedition, for he was to make one false start after another. If the Iroquois had been unhappy before, they were more so when La Salle, entering into his new domain, palisaded a trading post called Fort Crevecouer--the present site of Peoria, Illinois. They almost annihilated the Illinois with whom the Frenchmen were trading there, this being one of the tribes over which the Five Nations maintained their tyrannous lordship. Henri de Tonti, La Salle’s lieutenant in command of the fort at the time these human tigers descended on their vassals, was given the choice of being burned along with some Illinois captives or departing forthwith. He chose to depart. Curiously enough, however, not without a superb stock of furs for his inconvenience, all provided for him with typical savage capriciousness. There were other opponents with whom La Salle had to contend during this period of trial. Jesuit priests, who drove a profitable trade for beaver among the savages while saving souls, objected not only to the monopoly granted La Salle but to the Franciscan priests who accompanied him and who competed in both commercial and spiritual fields. And there were still others who made mischief. _Coureurs des bois_, those renegade Frenchmen trading in the wilderness without license and illegally selling their furs to the English at Albany, were not averse to conspiring against the new monopoly that threatened their independence. There were hundreds of these savage-like white men, some originally of the French petty nobility, living among the Indians. Many of them had squaw wives, no consciences and little compunction about stirring up a war against their own countrymen if it fattened their pocketbooks.