Almost immediately a village of Indians and traders sprang up around the place and the enterprising Jesuits built a church, St. Anne de Chartres, where many a service was recited for motley congregations of red and white. For thirty-six years this first Fort Chartres flourished and during this time was the setting for dramatic and pregnant happenings. Here, in 1720, came Phillippe Francois de Renault, bringing with him five hundred San Domingo negroes into the wilderness, thus introducing negro slavery into Illinois. In 1721 the post was visited by the famous Father Xavier de Charlevoix, in whose train was a young Canadian officer, Louis St. Ange de Belle Rive, who was destined afterward to be the commandant of the fort. Under the administration of the Sieur de Liette, 1725-1730, a captain in the Royal army, the French forces were engaged in armed pacification of the Fox Indians. Belle Rive succeeded de Liette and under his sway the post became the scene of social gayety. In 1736 there left Fort Chartres a disastrous expedition against the Chickasaw Indians on the far distant Arkansas River. The result of this expedition was a defeat in which D’Artaguette, the leader, de Vincennes, for whom the little town of Vincennes, Indiana, is named, Father Senat, a Jesuit, and about fifteen other Frenchmen were taken prisoners and held for ransom. The ransom not arriving, the prisoners were roasted at a slow fire by their savage captors. A second expedition against the Chickasaws in 1739 was somewhat more successful. By 1751 the fort was much out of repair and in this year there came to command it a French major of engineers (Irish by descent) Chevalier Macarty, who was accompanied by nearly a full regiment of grenadiers. In 1753 the second Fort Chartres, a solid structure of stone and one of the strongest fortifications ever erected on the American continent, was commenced by Macarty and his men. In 1756 it was finished. The site chosen was about a mile above the old fort and about half a mile back from the Mississippi River and would seem to have been a strange selection for such a structure, as it was low and marshy. Of the first Fort Chartres not a sign remains to-day, and its exact site is a matter of disagreement. Of the second Fort Chartres the old powder magazine is to be seen. The fort itself has succumbed to the encroachments of the river, which cut away its bank even so far back as to undermine the walls of the fort itself and, in 1772, to cause the desertion of the structure by its garrison. The quarry from which the limestone of which the walls were constructed was obtained was located in the great bluffs four miles east of the point. The finer stone with which the arches and ornamental parts were faced came from beyond the Mississippi.