The early French explorers established a post at Buffalo Rock which, it is believed, was the first attempt at settlement by Europeans, in the valley of the Mississippi. This presumption is supported by the following facts. De Soto, after his two years wandering among the everglades of Florida and the swamps and mountains of what is now Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, arrived on the bank of the "Great river" in 1541, "but founded no settlement, left no traces, and produced no effects, unless to excite the hostility of the red against the white man." One hundred and thirty-two years later--1673--Marquette passed up the Fox of Wisconsin, across the portage, and down the Wisconsin to the Mississippi, and returned by way of the Illinois. But he, too, according to Joliet, who was his companion, "founded no settlement, and left no traces." These two expeditions contained the only Europeans that ever set foot in the Great Valley until La Salle, five years later, passed down the Illinois. His route was up the St. Joseph in Michigan, across the portage by the Kankakee, and down that stream to the Illinois, upon the banks of which he made his first halt and built Rock Fort, where he established a Mission and settlement, but which was afterwards abandoned, the inhabitants taking themselves to Fort Crevecour. That Buffalo Rock was the site of Rock Fort is probable from the name, as well as from its superior advantages for such an establishment over any other place in the valley, from the confluence of the Kankakee to Peoria. This supposition is sustained by Perkins, Sparks and Bancroft. A year or two ago, a brass kettle was found in this locality, imbedded in a strata of coal which runs through this singular eminence. It was reported to have been overlaid by a regular seriated, unbroken coal formation; but as this statement is opposed to received geological theories, it is reasonable to suppose that it was deposited by design or accident, in an excavation made by these settlers. On the 4th of July, 1778, two years after the declaration of Independence, Col. Clark, between whom and Boone the honor of founding Kentucky is divided, with a small band of frontier soldiers, surprised Kaskaskia, then garrisoned by the British, and shortly afterwards made himself master of Cohokia, without bloodshed. He first brought to the inhabitants intelligence of the alliance between the Americans and their former liege, the King of the French, which was received with rapturous enthusiasm, so galling and unwelcome had been the British yoke. Les long Conteaux, as the Kentuckians were called, and les Bostonias, as the Yankees were called were thenceforth welcome.