to meet La Barre on 20 July 1683 in Montreal, and on 14 August 1883 a delegation of 43 Iroquois chiefs met La Barre in Montreal. La Barre could not get the Iroquois to agree to make peace with the Illinois, but they did agree to leave the Ottawas and Hurons in peace and to return the next spring to ratify the treaty. He reported that they demanded that René-Robert de La Salle be forced to leave Fort Saint-Louis, a post on the Illinois River. The delegates left on good terms, but La Barre thought they were insincere. The Iroquois forces were growing in strength while the rival Miami and Illinois Indians were weakening. Fur trader Francis Parkman (1823–1893) wrote in The Discovery of the Great West (1874), In 1682 La Barre founded the Compagnie du Nord trading company to compete with the Hudson Bay traders. La Barre gave Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut a 3-year commission early in 1683 to take an expedition of 15 canoes to the western Great Lakes and the upper Mississippi. He was to restore the northwest tribes to obedience to the French, and prevent them from taking their furs to the English traders in Hudson Bay. De Meulles charged in a report of 10 October 1684 that La Barre had merchandise for his personal trading ventures carried by military supply convoys. Although he claimed he meant to fight the Iroquois, La Barre tried to organize trade with them to his own profit. In May 1683 the Iroquois started to attack the Indians who were allied with the French. La Barre tried unsuccessfully to get Thomas Dongan, 2nd Earl of Limerick, governor of New York, to stop supporting the Iroquois and selling them goods at lower prices than the French. In the spring of 1683 La Barre sent two officers to the Great Lakes and Illinois regions to report on the practices of the coureurs de bois who were engaged in unlicensed fur trading, and to invite the Indians to bring their furs to La Barre in Montreal. La Salle's Fort Frontenac (today Kingston, Ontario) was attracting furs away from the Montreal traders. La Barre entered a partnership against La Salle with the merchants Jacques Le Ber and Charles Aubert de La Chesnaye. The Intendant de Meulles accused La Barre in his letters to Seignelay of selling large numbers of licenses to fur traders and