The massacre of their young braves caused the Kickapoos to send couriers to the "Ayowetz" and the Sioux to request them not to give shelter to the Foxes in their territory. Thus it was that the Foxes or Renards, forsaken by their allies, found the hatchet lifted against them by all the tribes of the Upper Mississippi Valley, and everywhere they were hounded like animals by the French. In the year 1730 they were in full retreat before the French and their Indian allies, were brought to bay far south upon the banks of the Illinois, and not only overwhelmingly defeated, but well-nigh exterminated. Scarcely had the French reëstablished their forts at Green Bay and among the Sioux, however, when an event occurred in 1733 which had two important consequences for the Iowa country: the Sac Indians, already filled with sympathy for the fast-vanishing tribe of their Fox neighbors, accidentally shot and killed de Villiers near Green Bay, and dreading their inability "to expiate the death of so prominent a French official, they now united their fate with that of the Foxes". The allied tribes sought refuge across the Mississippi in the Iowa land.34

In their annual report, dated October 7, 1734, Beauharnois and Hocquart, Governor-General and Intendant of Canada, informed the king of France that according to the latest news the allied Sacs and Foxes, failing to receive a welcome from "the Sioux and the Ayoouais",35 had "Established themselves in a fort on the Rivière OuapsipIndians and for which he expected to be reimbursed by the French government to the extent of 2862 livres, see the Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. XVII, pp. 83-86.

34 Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. XVII, pp. xiv, xv, 58, 59, 129, 182, 189.

35 It is interesting to note some of the early forms of the name perpetuated by the State of Iowa. All attempts to reduce to writing the Indian pronunciation of the word clearly indicate phonetic spelling, surviving in French as Ayoes, Aiaoua, Ayavois, Ayoois, Aiaouez, Ayous, Ayowetz, Ayowets,

inckam, two or three days' journey below the Ouisconsin", and that the Sacs had fortified themselves and had "compelled the Renards to build a fort for themselves so as to be separate from them, but nevertheless in their neighborhood."

Having started from Montreal in the autumn of 1734, Captain Nicolas Joseph de Noyelles in January, 1735, set out from the Indiana country in command of a war-party of eighty Frenchmen, one hundred and thirty Iroquois, forty Kickapoos, and one hundred Hurons and "Pouteoüatamis". On the journey across Illinois nearly all the last-named Indians deserted because "they wanted to go and eat up six cabins of Sakis"; and the captain detached a reconnoitering party which later captured five Sacs. These prisoners reported that the Foxes "were no longer at la Pomme de Cigne and that they had withdrawn to the Rivière sans fourche."36 They were told that if they did not lead the expedition straight to the Renards, they would be tied to the stake and burned. Noyelles' story of the campaign has been preserved and need not be repeated here. In the dead of winter, poorly clad and half-starved, Ayoüais, Ayouwais, Ayoués, and Ayoouois; in Spanish as Ayooua, Hayuas, and Aioas; and in the English equivalent as Ayauway, Ioway, and Iowa.

That the Ioways had no sympathy for the outcast Foxes can be seen in the Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. XVII, pp. 53, 60, 63, 206, 219. Indeed, the French reported that "the Ayowais to whom They looked for help have taken a scalp from them."

36 Margry's Découvertes, Vol. VI, p. 570, contains the French document translated in the Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. XVII, pp. 206, 215. For a sketch of the career of Captain de Noyelles see p. 112. On pp. 223 and 224 the late Dr. Thwaites included the following footnote:

"La Pomme de Cigne, or 'swan-apple', is the French form of the Indian name for the Wapsipinicon River, so called from a species of roots that grow plentifully on its banks. The 'river without a fork' (Rivière sans fourche) is the Des Moines, as is evident from the succeeding document. This river called the Moingona, from an Indian tribe of that name found near it by the explorers of the 17th century, is prominent on early maps, where it is laid down with a straight course, without affluents, and frequently identified with Lahontan's 'Rivière Longue'.''

the little army found its way across the rivers and bleak prairies of the Iowa country in pursuit of the Sac and Fox refugees and fought an indecisive battle with the loss of two Frenchmen.37

Such was Captain de Noyelles' unsuccessful expedition by way of the Wapsipinicon River to "the River Mongona 60 Leagues from the spot where that River falls into the Mississipi", against two hundred and fifty Sakis and Renards. So far as the records indicate, therefore, it was probably in the vicinity of the present city of Des Moines that the only battle ever fought between Indians and whites in the Iowa country took place. The captain's superior, Hocquart, declared that he could not better describe the fatigues and hardships of the long journey on foot than to say that he was "surprised that Frenchmen should have been able to undergo them"; while the expedition demonstrated to the Indians "that the French are as capable as they of undertaking Marches and of seeking The enemy at the extremities of the Colony.''38

But the allied tribes were not destroyed: indeed, they became more insolent than ever, killed stray French voyageurs, and compelled the abandonment in 1737 of Fort Beauharnois among the Sioux. The Governor-General in 1737 sent Pierre Paul, Sieur Marin, "to detach them from the Sioux and restrain them from injuring the Illinois", and otherwise watch the recalcitrants and keep them in check. There is a well-authenticated tradition that Marin built and maintained a fort from 1738 to 1740 below the mouth of the Wisconsin River, at the head of Magill's Slough, on the Iowa bank of the Mississippi: early French

37 De Noyelles's report in the Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. XVII, pp. 224-229, is reprinted in THE IOWA JOURNAL OF HISTORY AND POLITICS, Vol. XII, pp. 245–261.

38 Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. XVII, pp. 219, 231, 232.

settlers knew and spoke of it as Marin's Fort.39 This tradition unfortunately lacks official confirmation; but that Marin must have been in the Iowa country is clear from the fact that the Sioux called upon him in November, 1737, "at the River of the Swan on the Mississippi". Also, two Fox chiefs came to him to say they were sorry for the recent murder of a French soldier, and that although they were expected to re-kindle their fires at Green Bay, they were doing no wrong by tarrying in the Iowa land, "as we have only come here to provide our families who would meet with hardships elsewhere." Both the Sacs and the Foxes hated to return to their old habitat because, as they told Marin, "there are no longer any Crops, fishing or hunting to be had there, because it is a soil that can no longer produce anything, Being Stained with French blood and with

In May, 1739, fearing a French army, "the Thunder which hangs above our heads ready to Crush us", the allies begged for their lives, but even so some years were to pass before Sieur Marin prevailed upon them to leave the Iowa and Rock River country, influenced also by the prospect of blows from French war-clubs. Thus were the Fox wars closed "by leniency and diplomacy on the part of French officials. "'41

During the next few years, while England and France were marshalling forces to stage in the New World one scene of their gigantic death-struggle, the West and especially the upper country lay well-nigh neglected. But Fort

39 Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. IX, p. 286; and Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1907, pp. 178, 179, and the map. In footnote 85 in the Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. XVIII, p. 221, the statement is made that Marin was stationed above the mouth of the Rock River in Illinois from 1738 to 1741.

40 Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. XVII, pp. 316-320, 324, 339.

41 Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1907, pp. 180, 185, 186; and Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. XVIII, p. 4.

Beauharnois in the Sioux country was once more re-occupied under Sieur Marin. Early in the year 1750 the commandant of Fort Chartres near the mouth of the Missouri River wrote:

Last summer we Had three Frenchmen killed on the Mississipy by the Cyoux, and This autumn another with His Slave on the Rivière des mouens by the petits osages. I have asked the latter for the murderer. I know not what they will decide. We are having Much trouble in our Territories. I know not what the result will be but I hope to avert everything.

The Little Osages had killed a Frenchman by the name of Giguière who was hunting along the upper part of the River Des Moines they atoned for the crime by sending the murderer's scalp to the French officer. About the same time the "Ayoüas" also dipped their hands in French blood,42 as they did again later. To appease French wrath for these murders ten Ioways bore the culprits to Montreal in 1757 and there with several hundreds of tribesmen, Montcalm tells us, they witnessed the grand ceremony of pardoning the offenders.43

Fort Beauharnois was finally abandoned in 1756 so that the troops might participate in the war against England. Indeed, the whole French régime in the upper Mississippi Valley collapsed in 1760 when Beaujeu evacuated the French post at Mackinac in the north. This officer while retiring southward down the Mississippi with four other officers, two cadets, forty-eight soldiers, and seventy-eight militiamen, was stopped by ice and compelled to winter at a village of Sacs and Foxes near the mouth of the Rock River in Illinois. Under such circumstances French troops and

42 Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. XVIII, pp. 33, 59, 60, 62, 86.

43 THE IOWA JOURNAL OF HISTORY AND POLITICS, Vol. XI, pp. 326, 327. The Ioway Indians seem to have hunted all over the Iowa country these nomads of the prairies are at different times found living in southern Minnesota, and in eastern, western, and southern Iowa.

VOL. XII-23