The Man with the Iron Hand

A narrative history recounts the arrival and activity of French explorers and missionaries in the Mississippi Valley from the perspective of Native inhabitants, centering on Henry de Tonty, who remained among river peoples for decades. Drawing on Jesuit relations, letters, and explorers' accounts, it reconstructs encounters, diplomatic councils, warfare with Iroquois, village life, captive narratives, fur trade, fort building, buffalo hunts, and voyages along the Mississippi and to the Gulf, interweaving ethnographic detail and episodic scenes to present readable, source-based true tales of contact, conflict, and cultural exchange across the Great Valley.