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Show HENRI DE TO NTJ . - The' CeJabrian peasants who" sail this month from Leghorn. Italy, on tneir way' lto settle in western west-ern Arkansas, have, by right of discovery, a secondary secon-dary claim upon the soil. The firt white, man t.. erect any kind of a shelter within the present l.m-its l.m-its of Arkansas after De Soto's march across it-was it-was their own countryman, Henri. de Tontt, on o? the Italian who -worked out and gave hi name tu the Tontine system of insurance. .. . Henry de Tonti was known to the Algbnouu of Laehino and the Oneidas along the. southern shore of Lake Ontario as "the man ot the Iron Hook." Tonti was a non-commissioned officer in the French army and in a hot. engagement on th Sicilian frontier lost his right arm from the elbow. He replaced the dissevered member with a wooden arm and an' iron hook. When La Salle, the explorer, ex-plorer, one of the grandest men that ver trod th-American th-American continent, returned in 37 to Franc-from Franc-from Quehec he met Tonti and induced the young, adventurer and soldier of fortune to go with him to Canada, then known as La Nonvelle France. When La Salle in 1673 entered upon his second sec-ond expedition for the exploration of the Missis sippi. Tonti. acting under instructions from I... Salle, superintended the building of the Griffon. ! the first sailing vessel that ever furrowed the great lakes.' . He also served the first mass offered up in ! western New York. La Salle on his unfortunate 1 expedition, was accompanied by the Franciscan priest. Father Hennepin, who discovered Niagara . Falls .and gave its name to St. Anthony's Fall. Minnesota. This romantic and adventurous priet sailed from France on the same ship that carried La Sflle and Bishop Laval, first bishop of Qucbe.- i and founder of Laval university. When La Sallc. vessel not the Griffon bearing supplies for the j expedition entered thp Niagara river she sailed on and anchored near tho bank on which the town of Lewiston is now built. The following morning the priest, accompanied by a Seneca guide and two of the ship's men, started on snowshoes to explore tho falls. They returned on the evening of December 10. - The. next morning, December 11. 1B73, Father Hennepin in the presence of the men of the ex - pedition. nailed a crucifix to a tree, improvised an : altar, placed the sacrificial stone thereon, and robed in Chasuble, stole and . alb, offered to the adorable. God the clean oblation, anticipating by many years the vision of the poet: "A crucifix fashioned High on the trunk of a tree. Looked with its agonized face cn the multitude kneeling beneath it: This was their rural chapel." . " This was the first ma?? ever said on the banks of the - Niagara river. : Henri Tonti : served the mass,' his companions knelt in adoration, while the openings of the temporary chapel were darkened with the faces of the swarthy Senecas. who. conj fused and amazed, watched with wonderment 'the ' ' white robed priest. : : Tonti died at Bienville's 'settlement near Mobile. Mo-bile. Some day, following the trail of the French aud Spanish pioneers, his life will he written and will include thirty years of heroic effort and hardship hard-ship on bohalf of French exploration in Louisiana and the middle west The Illinois town of Tonti in Marion county, and Tonitown near the northern line of Washington county, Arkansas, where an Italian settlement was, some years ago, established, are named in his honor and arc monuments tohis memory. |