The French had come among them, and taught them the value and corrupting influence of money. Boats had ascended and descended the Great River, and communication, through this channel, had been established with Canada. They were grasping, by degrees, the lands, building forts and peopling the country. They had introduced the black man, and the wiser of the Natchez saw in the future the doom of their race. They saw the feuds fomented between the numerous tribes along the coast of the Mississippi by the French, and the destruction of these by bloody wars. They saw, too, to offend the French was sure to bring destruction upon the offending party. Their neighbors were made, through French influence, to fall upon and destroy them. The Chickasaws and Choctaws--great nations, having multitudes of warriors--were under the dominion of these pale-faced intruders, and they feared they might be turned upon them in an unsuspecting hour. There was among the Natchez a mighty chief and warrior. He was of great stature and fame, being seven feet high and powerfully proportioned. He had a large beard, and was called the chief of the Beard, because he was the only man of all the tribe who had this facial ornament or incumbrance. He was a mighty warrior and was wise in counsel. He believed he saw great evil to the Natchez in the increase of the French and the extension of French power. He knew, and told his people, this was the foreboding of the extinction of the holy fire. He went forth with the chief of the Walnut Hills, named Alahoplechia, and the chief of the White Clay, Oyelape, among their neighbors of other tribes, the Chicasaws and Choctaws, preaching a crusade against the French; urging them to unite with the Natchez, the Homochittas, and the Alabamas, and to attack and destroy the last man of the French settlements at Mobile, Boloxy, Ship Island, and New Orleans, as they were mischievous intruders from across the Salt Lake, whence they were yearly bringing their people to rob them of their homes and appropriate them.