De Villiers returned to the Sauk village at Green Bay and demanded that the Sauk release the remnant of Fox survivors. The Sauk declined to release warriors with whom they had strong blood ties, and in an attempt to force an entrance, one of de Villiers’ sons was killed. The French quickly retaliated and in the exchange of fire de Villiers himself was killed by a twelve year old boy, who later became renowned as the Sauk Chief Blackbird. In the battle that followed, the Sieur Duplessis, the Sieur de Repentigny, and six other Frenchmen quickly met the same fate. The Sauk and Fox, too, lost heavily and fled to the vicinity of the present-day city of Menasha. The bloody battle that ensued there, it is said, accounts for the name Butte des Morts, or Hill of the Dead. As a result of this battle, the remainder of the Fox and the Sauk amalgamated and for all practical purposes became one tribe. They fled into Iowa where they erected a new fort, and gradually their ranks were swelled by Fox released from captivity by tribes now secretly in sympathy with the Sauk and Fox. One more expedition was sent against them, led by the Sieur de Noyelles, but although he followed the Sauk and Fox to the vicinity of the Des Moines River, they were so well entrenched that it was impossible to dislodge them and the expedition returned home without success. Eventually the Fox Wars were brought to an end through a policy of conciliation inaugurated in 1740 by Paul Marin, the new commandant at La Baye. Force had, in the long run, proven a failure in the campaign to completely subjugate the Fox. [Illustration: SAUK AND FOX CHIEF (FROM GEO. CATLIN).] Throughout the first half of the Eighteenth Century the French, as we have seen, had been occupied with more or less constant warfare with the Fox. This warfare was the dominant note in the history of Wisconsin for this period, and in general, the role of other Wisconsin tribes during this era was that of serving as allies either of the French or of the Fox. The failure of Noyelles’ expedition against the Fox had helped to lower French prestige among the western tribes, and in 1736 the Sioux, angered by French friendship for the Chippewa and Cree, murdered a French officer, a priest, and a party of nineteen _voyageurs_. From this time on the Sioux could no longer be numbered among the allies of the French. By 1739, the Sioux-Chippewa War flamed into action and the Sioux were driven westward from the areas in Wisconsin now held by the Chippewa.