THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND
La Salle took possession in the name of the King of France.
Let us picture in imagination the history of the Great Valley ofthe Mississippi as a splendid drama enacted upon a giant stage whichreaches from the Alleghanies to the Rockies and from the Great Lakesto the Gulf of Mexico and through which the Father of Waters sweepsmajestically. Let us people this stage with real men andwomen—picturesque red men and no less interesting white men, Indians,Spaniards, Frenchmen, Englishmen, explorers, warriors, priests,voyageurs, coureurs de bois; fur traders, and settlers. Let the scenesbe set about the lakes, along the rivers, among the hills, on theplains, and in the forests. Then, viewing this pageant of the past,let us write the true tales of the Great Valley as we writeromance—with life, action, and color—that the history of our GreatValley may live.
The purpose of this book is to present in readable narrativeform, yet with strict accuracy, some of the events which attended thecoming of the French explorers into the Mississippi Valley, and todeal with these events as much as possible from the standpoint of theIndians whose country the white men entered. In other words, an efforthas been made to place the reader in the position and environment ofthe native inhabitants in order that he may witness the coming of thewhites through the eyes and minds of the Indians instead of viewingfrom the outside the exploration, by men of his own kind, of anunknown land peopled by a strange and vaguely understoodrace.
For the sake of preserving the standpoint of the Great Valley, thestory of explorations is centered about Henry de Tonty—the “Man withthe Iron Hand”—who, unlike his leader La Salle, remained in thevalley of the Mississippi and in close relations with its inhabitantsfor a quarter of a century.
This book is not in any sense fiction. It has been written directlyfrom the original sources and from the best information available uponthe life of the Indian at the time of the arrival of the whites. Thesources consist mainly of the letters and relations of Fa