Note 116 — Chapter VII
Reading edition
See ante, note 85; also Cuming’s Tour, volume iv of our series, note 195. The date of this visit of Tonty is not exactly known, but it was in the spring of 1686. He left Illinois to seek La Salle in February, and left Texas for the return journey on Easter Monday. He was again in Illinois on June 24.
Other settlers at Pine Bluff besides Bonne were John Derresseaux and one Prewett. The preponderance in this neighborhood of settlers of French blood is indicated not only by the names of persons, but also by the fact that New Gascony is the name of one of the oldest towns.
It is said that the first white man in Jefferson County was Leon Le Roy, one of Tonty’s men, who deserted from the Post in 1690. He was held in captivity for fourteen years by the Osage, and when he escaped was captured and adopted by the Quapaw, whom he taught the use of firearms. When the Quapaw treaty of 1818 was made, one chief gave the commissioners, as an emblem of friendship, a gun said to be the one which Le Roy had a century earlier taught the Quapaw to use. This weapon is preserved in the Smithsonian Institution, at Washington.—Ed.