c'?-' ,,xxV-,. % -^^ x'^' oo^ ^ a\ V. a\ ■^- ''^A v-^' ^^" -^^ '^A v^ -^^^v x^' :#\v ^^ S^' -^^ V- V A^^ -n^. ^'■s^' : .^^^, A -y. kO' ^>c. * .. , aV 'n 'I , „ ^ vVt- ^i ,A -7- ^'.^^ . ^ ^ '" * ''o, ,0^ c « ^ '■' « ^% ' %/ - ' ^-^^-^'^ '^./ %,^^' : ^\ ^ ^,, •■ -■•■ - - A^ SUinotsi Centennial PnbltcattonS '' Published by Authority OF THE ILLINOIS CENTENNIAL COMMISSION THE CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF ILLINOIS CLARENCE WALWORTH ALVORD Editor-in-Chief Volume I ILLINOIS CENTENNIAL COMMISSION Otto Leopold Schmidt, Chairman Jessie Palmer Weber, Secretary Edward Bowe Evarts Boutell Greene John Joseph Brown George Pasfield, Jr. John W. Bunn William Nelson Pelouze William Butterworth Andrew Jackson Poorman, Jr. Leonard Allan Colp Thomas F. Scully Royal Wesley Ennis Frederic Siedenburg Edmund Janes James COMMITTEE ON CENTENNIAL PUBLICATIONS Evarts Boutell Greene, Chairman Royal Wesley Ennis Otto Leopold Schmidt Edmund Janes James Frederic Siedenburg ycicip^c-f^ 'Tltct'O^ctt^c^^ptt:^ [From an oil portrait by an unl Rivers and Lakes Commission, Report on Water Resources of Illinois, X914, p. 6. THE LAND IN THE MAKING 5 placidly, with only two rapids, one at Rock Island, where the river falls twenty feet in twelve miles, and the other at Keokuk, Iowa, where in a distance of eleven miles the river falls about twenty-two feet. Altogether, 44,050 square miles of the state's surface are drained by this noble stream and its branches, chief of which are the Rock, the Illinois, the Kaskaskia, and the Big Muddy. At the southern end of the state the river valley of the Mississippi, which averages one mile in width, is broadened by fertile flats between the river and the bluffs, the gift of the turbid Missouri. The union of these streams has been the cause of many devastating floods, A French traveler, Volney, in America in 1796, wrote: "This great, this magnificent Mississippi . . . . is a very bad neighbor. Strong in a body of yellowish muddy water, two or three thousand yards in breadth, which it annu- ally rolls over Its banks to a height of five to twenty feet, it urges this mass over a loose earth of sand and clay; forms islands and destroys them; floats along trees, which it after- wards overturns; varies its course through the obstructions it creates for Itself; and at length reaches you at distances, where you would have supposed yourself perfectly secure."^^ The Rock river, the most northern of the Illinois branches of the Mississippi, belongs only in part to Illinois, for only half of its drainage area lies within the state. Rising In south- eastern Wisconsin and fed by an interesting tributary system of pretty streams and spring-fed lakes, it takes its course through the beautiful undulating country of northeastern Illinois until it joins the Mississippi a short distance below the city of Rock Island. The Illinois river, as.the name Indicates, Is a central feature of the state; upon the banks of this river of romance have been enacted many of the most stirring scenes In the historical drama of the country. Formed by the union of the Des Plaines and Kankakee rivers, It is swelled by the Fox, the Vermilion, the Mackinaw, the Spoon, the Sangamon, and other streams, until it attains a volume that makes it of all the westward-flowing tributaries of the Mississippi second in Importance only to the Ohio. From its head to Starved Rock the Illinois falls rapidly, 1^ Volney, Fie'w of the Climate and Soil of the United States of America, 380. 6 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY more than a foot a mile, and the current has cut a valley about a mile and a half in width; but from Starved Rock to its mouth, four miles above St. Louis, it descends only a little over an inch a mile, and the valley is correspondingly wider, spread- ing from two to five miles in width in most places and, above the mouth of the Sangamon, expanding to fifteen miles. In its original state the river was subject to great variation. Like all depositing rivers, it formed natural levees and bars over which flowed at times only from sixteen to twenty inches of water, and along its course lay innumerable stagnant ponds, lakes, and stretches of marshland; then in flood season forty times the volume of water rolled between its banks. A great change in the character of the river has been brought about by the work of men. By the constant discharge of the water of Lake Michigan through the Chicago ship and drainage canal the levees and bars have been cleared away, and by methods of reclamation most of the former waste lands of the river valley have been won from destructive nature for human use.^^ Before these improvements were made, some protection against the floods was afforded by a series of gravel terraces found along the middle course of the river, which settlers early utilized as sites for towns. The scenery of the upper Illinois river is varied and most beautiful. The slopes at first are low and gentle, growing gradually steeper until at Marseilles the valley walls are almost two hundred feet high. Here and there the voyager sees huge masses of sandstone rising fortress-like along the banks; those who know the Illinois river will always remember Lovers' Leap, Buffalo Rock, and, most famous of all. Starved Rock. Scenic effects along the lower and middle river are not so striking, yet they are described by a writer of an early gazetteer as "beauti- ful beyond description. There is a constant succession of prairies, stretching in many places, from the river farther than eye can reach, and elegant groves of woodland."^^ ^- Rivers and Lakes Commission, Report on Water Resources of Illinois, 1914, p. 33 ; Barrows, Geography of the Middle Illinois Valley, 2, 6, 105 ; Sauer, Geography of the Upper Illinois Valley, i-j ff. ; Leverett, The Illinois Glacial Lobe, 499 fF. 1^ Brown, " Western Gazetteer or Emigrants' Directory," in Illinois State Historical Society, Transactions, 1908, p. 303. THE LAND IN THE MAKING 7 South of the Illinois the Mississippi has no important tribu- tary from the east for over a hundred miles, when it receives the Kaskaskia. The name " Okaw," by which the stream is called locally, is a corruption of the French "Aux Kaskaskias," an interesting echo of the days when the lower valley of this river was the heart of French Illinois. It wanders in a serpen- tine course of four hundred miles over the prairies from Cham- paign county to its mouth near the town of Chester; its narrow drainage basin ordinarily supplies it with only a small volume of water; but frequently this rises very considerably — some- times as much as twenty feet — flooding large areas of the valley and causing numerous changes in the channel of the river. A stream of this character flowing to meet the mighty Mis- sissippi, likewise subject to high floods and to sudden shiftings of channel, was predestined to interesting changes; and from earliest times the towns and forts on the flat land separating the two streams were frequently affected by the ravages of floods. A most dramatic event, involving a transformation in the character of acres of land, took place in 1881. By that year the two rivers in their meanderings had approached within a few hundred feet of each other at a point some six miles above their confluence, and a particularly violent flood caused the Mississippi to break across the narrow neck of land between and cut for itself a new channel out of the bed of the narrower stream, enlarging it at the expense of the low-lying shore where stood the ancient town of Kaskaskia, which in the course of years has become buried beneath the flood that once conveyed its trade to New Orleans. ^^ Similar in character to the Kaskaskia is the Big Muddy, which flows through southwestern Illinois to join the Mississigpi forty miles above Cairo. Though it is ordinarily only a small stream, backwater from the Mississippi frequently extends sixty miles up the river; at other times floods swell it above the ordinary level to a height of thirty feet.^^ The Ohio river, which bounds the state on the south, receives ^*Burnham, "The Destruction of Kaskaskia by the Mississippi River," in Illinois State Historical Society, Transactions, 1914, p. 95. 15 Rivers and Lakes Cominission, Report on IVater Resources of Illinois, 1914, p. 156. 8 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY no tributaries of importance directly from the lowlands of Illi- nois; but the Wabash, which joins the Ohio from the north and which for more than two hundred miles of its lower course forms the eastern boundary of the state, carries to the larger stream the waters of the Vermilion, the Embarrass, and the Little Wabash rivers, draining a large portion of eastern Illinois. The Wabash valley, now thickly settled and highly cultivated, charmed its earliest beholders by its "vast natural meadows" and "fine woods. "^^ The beauty and fertility of these wooded river banks of Illinois and of the immense stretches of sunny prairie were a continual source of delight to the early explorers and settlers. A glance at the map reproduced on the opposite page will show that southern Illinois was chiefly woodland ; below a line passing through Champaign, Peoria, and Rock Island, mixed woodland and prairies prevailed; north and east of this line the prairies spread out in an almost unbroken stretch, except in the heavily forested northwestern corner.^'' The gorgeous scenery of the uncultivated prairies has dis- appeared beneath the sod turned over by the deep-cutting plow. No longer is the eye delighted with the brilliant coloring of former days. Fortunately, admiring visitors have preserved on the written page vivid pictures of the primeval landscape, and the imagination is by their help able to reconstruct the beauties that are no more. "The touching, delicate loveliness of the lesser prairies, so resplendent in brilliancy of hue and beauty of outline," writes a traveler, " I have often dwelt upon with delight. The graceful undulation of slope and swell; the exquisite richness and freshness of the verdure flashing in native magnificence; the gorgeous dies of the matchless and many colored flowers dallying with the winds ; the beautiful woodland points and promontories shooting forth into the mimic sea; the far-retreating shadowy coves, going back in long vistas into the green wood; the curved outline of the dim, distant horizon, caught at intervals through the openings of the forest; and the whole gloriously lighted up by the early radiance of morning, 18 Collot, "A Journey in North America," in Illinois State Historical Society, Transactions, 1908, p. 271. I'This map with some important changes is also reproduced in Barrows, Geography of the Middle Illinois Valley, 69. DISTRIBUTION OF WOODS, PRAIRIES, SWAMPS, AND BLUFFS IN ILLINOIS [Reproduced from Gerhard, Illinois As It Is] THE LAND IN THE MAKING 9 . . . . all these constituted a scene In which beauty un- rivaled was the sole ingredient."^® Most of the open prairie was covered with high beard grass, usually interspersed with tall-growing flowers, such as prairie dock, cup plant, and compass plant, a number of gaudy sunflowers, several species of oxeye, and large purple patches of ironweed, often mixed with various thoroughworts, asters, and ragweed. Indian plantain, leafcup, horseweed, and hyssop were abundant, while dragonhead, prairie clover, blazing star, milkweed, orange lilies, and wild roses added to the gorgeous coloring. Among the lower grasses flourished large areas of black-eyed Susans, purple coneflowers, and bright bur mari- golds. Many of the prairie flowers grew In compact masses of vivid color, giving the appearance of a glorified patchwork quilt flung over the land. In the spring strawberries, bearing abun- dant scarlet fruit, were scattered far and wide ; wild phlox added gay splashes of blue and pink. The blue phlox, the Greek valerian, and the bluebell were usually found in the more moist areas. Wild garlic was abundant. The blue Iris made a rich spot of color, and the unicorn plant and the beardtongue occa- sionally grew in great patches. For acres at a stretch the sum- mer fields glowed with vivid goldenrod.^^ During the years of 1836 to 1848, a German scientist spent days in classifying the flora around Belleville; he has thus described his Impressions of the prairies : -° "Among the trees the crab-apple was perhaps the most common, alternating with usually smaller thickets of wild plum. Along the draws or hollows the latter predominated; along the Infrequent creeks, belts of other lowland growth prevailed. Occasionally the black prairie was broken by low hills with a stiff yellow clay soil, generally wooded with black jack .... or where the soil was lighter, with red, black, and white oak." Here and there on the black prairie appeared groups of persimmon trees, forty feet or more in height, bearing a large sweet fruit; the tree differed markedly from the " old field " persimmon of later 18 Flagg, The Tar West, in Thwaites, Early IVestern Travels, 26:340. 20 Hilgard manuscript in Illinois Historical Survey, University of Illinois. 10 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY times. " In the thick growth bordering the streams, oaks were the most common trees, notably the shingle oak; there were also various haws, maples, American red bud, wild plum, prick- ley ash, honey locust, the Ohio buckeye, the Kentucky coffee tree, and clumps of pawpaw."-^ Surrounding these trees were thick shrubs, cornel, hop tree, spicebush, buttonbush, and hy- drangea, while over them climbed luxuriant growths of wild bean, moonseed, passion flower, and grapevine. " Nothing so much surprises the European on his first en- trance to the western country," writes an author, " as the grandeur and beauty of many of the trees, and more particu- larly if he happens to arrive in the spring; not fewer than ten species produce a profusion of beautiful blossoms and the underwood consists mostly of some of our finest flowering shrubs." And he mentions, among others, the lovely blossoms of the magnolia, the tulip tree, the horse-chestnut, the azalea, and the dogwood.^- The writer's enthusiasm was justified, for the varieties of trees warranted a greater extravagance of ex- pression. There have been listed on a piece of woodland of fifty acres, forty-six species of indigenous "hard wood," with twelve additional species within a half mile. In addition to these there were seventeen others that appeared in the immedi- ate vicinity, making in all seventy-five species that might have been found in an area of less than a square mile.^^ In the woods and on the prairies the great variety of wild animals continually tempted the early settlers from the hum- drum life of the farmer to the more romantic vocation of hunts- man. The herds of buffaloes which in the earlier period roamed over the prairies had disappeared entirely in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Deer, elk, bears, wolves, foxes, opos- sums, raccoons, squirrels, and rabbits, however, were plentiful for many years. Wild turkeys abounded in the hilly districts, and prairie chickens and quails were very plentiful. About the 21 Hilgard manuscript in Illinois Historical Survey, University of Illinois. 22 Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of North America, in Thwaites, Early Western Travels, 5:279. Collot lists over twenty-five varieties of trees as common in the Illinois country in 1796. Collot, "A Journey in North America," in Illinois State Historical Society, Transactions, 1908, p. 295. 23 Ridgway, " Notes on the Native Trees of the Lower Wabash and White River Valleys in Illinois and Indiana," in United States National Museum, Proceedings, 1882, p. 49 ff. ; Ridgway, "Additional Notes," ibid., 1894, p. 409 ff. o 1 •1 r 1 5 c tt w ■ ■ •o ■ ■ >: ■ ■ •« ■ O ,1 V- 1 e ■ 1 a. i fi 1 1 b E A 1 ■■ ■ « ■ ■ ■ ^ . «5 1^ < u »=^ fe 'I O a w s U a 2 :§ < Q ^ Z ■** D ■+-. CQ < ^ ^ m •o 12; o o ^ H s o < < T3 THE LAND IN THE MAKING ii headwaters of the IlUnois and the small lakes were prodigious numbers of geese, ducks, cranes, herons, swans, cormorants, and wood ibis.-^ An early visitor wrote of the flocks of wild pigeons obscuring the sun. The fisherman, as well as the hunter, found here abun- dant sport and profit. One hundred and fifty species of fish have been taken within the borders of the state, some of them, such as the black bass, pickerel, muskellunge, lake trout, and whitefish, being the delight of the sportsman. Of late years the European carp, introduced in 1879, has become by far the most abundant food fish in the state. ^^ The cultivation of the prairies has always presented its difliculties, but the crops have grown from earliest days in spite of destructive enemies. The pioneer's labor was constantly endangered by the chinch bug, Hessian fly, white grub, grass- hopper, army worm, cutworm, plum curculio, oyster-shell scale, codling moth, and the periodical cicada, or seventeen-year locust. His livestock was viciously attacked by several kinds of horse-flies, black flies, or buffalo gnats, and cattle flies, while his own peace of mind and his health were endangered by mos- quitoes, three varieties being carriers of the malaria germ.^^ How dangerous the mosquitoes were is shown by the preva- lence of malaria in the pioneer days. " Fever and ague " were the scourge of the pioneer, and quinine was his daily diet. The prevalence of malaria caused all the prairie states to acquire a reputation for unhealthfulness. The disease was ascribed to the "poisonous miasmas" which issued from the prairie sod in the late summer and fall. The poor health of the pioneers was due also to the neglect of sanitation and drainage in their homes. Since these have been improved, the state is as health- ful as any in the temperate zone. An enthusiastic pioneer, after a short experience of Illinois -^ Brown, "The Western Gazetteer or Emigrants' Directory," in Illinois State Historical Society, Transactions, 1908, p. 307. Consult Kennicutt, " Cata- logue of Animals Observed in Cook County, Illinois," in Illinois State Agri- cultural Society, Transactions, volume i, where are listed over forty mammals, two hundred birds, etc. Of the seventeen snakes observed, only four were poisonous: the copperhead, which appeared in very limited numbers, and three species of rattlesnakes. -^ Letter from Stephen A. Forbes, Professor of Entomology, University of Illinois. 28 Ibid. 12 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY climate, wrote: "If this Is the usual season of the Illinois, which can scarcely be doubted, as it answers the character given by those longest resident, then is Illinois one of the finest coun- tries under heaven for human beings to dwell in; one of the most delightful given to man for his residence."^'^ Possibly a longer sojourn may have dampened his enthusiasm somewhat, for Illinois, like other parts of the United States, offers a suffi- cient variety of conditions to furnish everybody with a griev- ance. In America as a whole greater extremes of heat and cold prevail than In western Europe, and in this respect Illinois is typical of the whole country. It lies in the latitude of Spain and southern Italy; its mean temperature is very similar to that of central Germany, but its winters are comparable to those of Denmark and its summer heat Is like that of northern Italy. Its long stretch north and south creates a still greater diversity. A temperature of twenty degrees below zero Fahrenheit is not uncommon in winter on the northern border, yet cotton can be raised in the southern counties. The average temperature of Illinois Is fifty-two degrees, and from this the yearly average varies slightly. The growing season Is generally one hundred and eighty-six days, the average latest date of killing frost in the spring being April 15 and the earliest in the fall, Oc- tober 18.^^ By means of records taken at 142 stations for the years 1 881-19 10, the mean annual rainfall of Illinois has been deter- mined as 37.4 inches. The yearly totals have ranged from 17.31 Inches atLanark, Carroll county. In 1901, to 71.27 inches at Golconda in 1882. Illinois has known excessively heavy rainfall in a single storm; for Instance, at La Harpe, Hancock county, on June 10, 1905, there fell 10.25 inches of rain. About one-half of the rainfall evaporates immediately, from about one-fourth to one-third runs off in the streams, and the 27 Flower, "Letters from the Illinois, 1820-1821," in Thwaites, Early fVest' trn Travels, 10: 140. 28 Fuller, "The Climate of Illinois: Its Permanence," in Illinois State Historical Society, Transactions, 1912, p. 54. There are many departures from the average: in 1857 the last killing frost was on May 11, and in 1878, on March 25; the first killing frost of 1882 was on November 12, that of 1903 was on September 29. Occasionally Illinois has startlingly cold winters. The " deep snow" of 1830-1831 has become traditional. In November, 1911, a change of wind blowing fifty miles an hour caused the temperature to fall twenty degrees almost instantly and fifty-eight degrees in eight hours. THE LAND IN THE MAKING 13 remainder sinks into the soil and rock below.-'* Occasion- ally Illinois suffers from serious droughts; for the two months of October and November in 1904 two central Illinois stations each recorded only two-tenths of an inch of rainfall. Hailstorms and tornadoes are only occasional visitors. On the other hand, violent thunderstorms sweep frequently across the prairies, as they have done from time Immemorial. " During my wanderings in Illinois," wrote an early visitor, "I have more than once referred to the frequency and violence of the thundergusts by which it Is visited. I had traveled not many miles the morning after leaving Salem when I was assailed by one of the most terrific storms I remember to have yet en- countered. All the morning the atmosphere had been most oppressive, the sultriness completely prostrating, and the livid exhalations quivered along the parched-up soil of the prairies, as if over the mouth of an enormous furnace. A gauzy mist of silvery whiteness at length diffused Itself over the landscape; an inky cloud came heaving up in the northern horizon, and soon the thunder-peal began to bellow and reverberate along the darkened prairie, and the great raindrops came tumbling to the ground. Fortunately, a shelter was at hand; but hardly had the traveler availed himself of Its liberal hospitality, when the heavens were again lighted up by the sunbeams; the sable cloud rolled off to the east, and all was beautiful and calm, as if the angel of desolation in his hurried flight had but for a moment stooped the shade of his dusky wing, and had then swept onward to accomplish elsewhere his terrible bidding. "^*^ The first visitors to the prairies of Illinois, whether red or white men, saw only the conspicuous phenomena that have been described. Below the surface the Europeans dug a little in search of minerals, but not yet had they learned to read the history of the physical revolutions that even to them lay open in the layers of varicolored earth on the steep banks of the rivers, or in the outcroppings of rocks in various parts of the -^ Rivers and Lakes Commission, Report on Water Resources of Illinois, 1914, see map in pocket; Fuller, "The Climate of Illinois: Its Permanence," in Illinois State Historical Society, Transactions, 1912, p. 56 ff. ; Trowbridge and Shaw, " Geology and Geography of the Galena and Elizabeth Quadrangles," in Illinois State Geological Survey, Bulletin, number 26, p. iii. 3*^ Flagg, The Far West, in Thwaites, Early IVestern Travels, 26:363. 14 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY territory. The capacity to read these aright has cost years of labor performed by generations of scientists, and only in the last few generations has rapid progress been made in decipher- ing the hieroglyphics chiseled by Nature on her monuments. Even now this history is limited to a relatively short period of time and to only a portion of the earth. Guesses alone can be made concerning that long period before the continents were formed ; and concerning what lies deep-buried below the earth's surface, man must still confess almost total ignorance. Still the story that has been deciphered is a long one and reaches back into the past millions of years before the time when man first made his appearance. It tells of revolutionary transformations wrought by infinite forces; sometimes, of the sudden and violent outbreak of volcanoes and the inexorable shaking of earthquakes, sometimes of quieter but no less effect- ive activities: the wearing away of rocks, particle by particle, their transportation by wind and water, and their metamor- phosis by chemical and like imperceptible agents. The great valley lying between the Appalachian and the Rocky mountains was formed in the dawn of geologic time, from which epoch scant vestiges in the forms of rocks are ex- posed to view within its borders. It is inferred that great masses of igneous rocks, quartzites and slates, such as outcrop In Canada, have their counterparts farther to the south and sustain layers of rock found underlying the surface. It was a time of a stupendous play of forces, when the earth's founda- tions were being prepared in the shops of Vulcan. In this earliest period, of which there are no records within the terri- tory of the state, the landscape was probably broken by parallel ranges of high volcanic mountains. These, in the course of ages stretching through a period equal to several geologic periods, must have been worn down by streams and other nat- ural forces to a gently undulating plain, such as has been charac- teristic of the region from that distant era till the present. Thereafter the geologic book Is more easily read. "And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were cov- ered." As It Is described In Genesis, so It was in Illinois and the surrounding land. Over the midland valley the sea came THE LAND IN THE MAKING 15 and receded, then came again and again, according as the conti- nent was lifted or depressed; the sea bottom received from incoming streams sediment which it sorted by its waves into layers of gravel, sand, clay, and broken shells. Time passed, measured by eons, during which these particles were fashioned into rocks by cementation and pressure. The sand was changed into sandstone, the clay into shale, and the shells into limestone; these constitute the known foundations of the state.^^ Sometimes the ocean separated the east from the west, forming two continents, sometimes it intruded into the great valley from the north, sometimes the waves of the Gulf of Mexico washed the shore at the present site of Cairo. Geolo- gists have divided the time covered into epochs and periods, each indefinitely long and incomprehensible to the human intel- lect. Yet by studying rock surfaces in outcroppings and in wells they have been able to determine how layer by layer of the limestone, shale, and sandstone has been laid down, and they have given to each its name and have established the date of its formation in the stratified series extending from deep down below the surface thousands of feet to the youngest rock that lies on top. During this period of the formation of the known rock layers of Illinois was created the state's wealth in minerals, the most important of which deserves mention, if for no other reason than to bring forcibly to the mind the long reaches of time hurriedly passed in review.^- During one or more of the geologic periods, Illinois changed repeatedly from a coastal swamp to a shallow sea, depending on the upwarping and sink- ing of the plane. The flora of this swamp land was luxuriant, its forms unlike those of today; there flourished huge fern trees fifty feet high, softwood evergreens tall and slender, and among these were smaller rank-growing plants. The dominant color of these forests was green unbroken by bright flowers. Such forests grew to maturity, died, and were changed by chemical and other forces into peat and then into coal. It is estimated that the territory of the state during this coal making period 31 Illinois State Geological Survey, Geologic Map of Illinois, 1917 ; Sauer, Geography of the Upper Illinois Valley, passim. 32 For an account of the mineral wealth of the state, see Centennial History of Illinois, 4:411 ff. i6 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY passed through this sequence of processes turning forests into coal at least six different times. After the coal beds had been formed the territory of the state experienced one of those continually recurring internal disturbances, that on this occasion raised the whole surface and warped the edges, the southern portion in particular being radically changed; here the rocks were cracked and pushed or pressed upward, forming the Ozark dome that stretches through southern Missouri. Since then the surface of the state has never been inundated by the sea, but for an indefinitely long period the rock layers were subjected to the persistent forces of erosion. The winds, the frost, and the rain crumbled their surfaces, cutting down the warped edges and carving the Ozark hills into their present shape ; the rivers wore their way through the stony beds; and out of the debris of erosion was formed a new soil wherein trees and plants took root. The resulting territory, warped by pressure from beneath and eroded by wind and water, resembled the bowl of a shallow spoon or, rather, of a series of spoons placed one on the other, each representing a stratified layer of rock that during some previous eon had been deposited In the form of particles and transformed Into stone. Since the erosion was greater at the edges, the lower layers extended beyond those above. Over all there lay strewn a soil of decayed stone, similar In kind to that of present-day New England. On the whole, the landscape was not so very strange, though the surface was more broken by hills than It is today; the Mississippi rolled placidly, prob- ably more placidly than It does now, along its course; and Its branches, such as the Illinois, occupied approximately the same positions In the water system of the great valley that they do at the present time. The northern part of the state was, how- ever, almost unrecognizable. There were no Great Lakes. The climate throughout the early geologic periods was generally mild, even warmer than it is today, for palms grew here, and evidences of an early coral reef have been found near Chicago. The trees, shrubs, and plants presented an unfamiliar scene, wherein unrecognizable species predominated. The earliest forms have long since become extinct, but as the modern era approached, the flora assumed a more present-day aspect. THE LAND IN THE MAKING 17 Animal life on the earth has passed through many changes. From the earliest appearance of life up to the present time the record of the evolving forms is extensive, running the whole gamut of variation from minute particles of protoplasm, ob- servable only under the microscope, to the huge saurians that at one time roamed over the prairies of the state. Possibly life was even more abundant on the earth during these early eons than it is today. Strange and uncouth it certainly was. Imagi- nation alone can picture an Illinois inhabited by huge reptiles eighty feet long, by gigantic kangaroo-like saurians, by dragons flying on twenty-foot wings, and by innumerable crocodiles. Later the ancestors of the mammals, or more modern animals, made their appearance — strange horses with three and four toes (the hoof was still to be developed on the hard, tough prairies), rhinoceroses, elephants, camels, and saber-toothed tigers. The surface of the Illinois country was destined to undergo one more radical change before it should be the scene of human activities. All forms of life were for a long period of time to be driven from its surface. From causes not satisfactorily explained there took place a change of temperature. The mild, almost tropical, climate of the previous ages gave way to one of an extreme cold. From Labrador as a center, there slowly trav- eled, moving a few feet a day, great ice sheets, so thick that mountains delayed but did not stop their progress. Four or five of these massive visitants in succession reached the terri- tory of the state; one that covered its entire area except the extreme south and northwest has been named in Its honor, "Illinoian." In their passage the glaciers deposited over almost all the surface a layer of drift, or bowlder clay, from five to five hundred feet thick, composed of soil, gravel, and bowlders. In places where the edge of the glaciers remained practically stationary, due to an equilibrium between movement and melt- ing, they formed those low rolling hills, or moraines, so con- spicuous in the northern part of the state, upon seeing which an early visitor to the region exclaimed: "What mighty voice has rolled this heaped-up surface into tumult, and then, amid the storm and tempest bid the curling billows stand, and fix i8 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY themselves there ?"^^ By the advent of the glaciers, valleys that had been conspicuous landmarks during the older geologic time were blotted out, smaller rivers were forced to change their beds and courses, and even the Father of Waters was obliged in places to yield to the power of these northern in- vaders. The topography of the northern part of Illinois underwent the most important changes. As the glaciers receded there slowly emerged the bodies of water that in time developed into the Great Lakes. First there appeared the parent of Lake Michigan, called by geologists Lake Chicago. It was a large sheet pouring its waters through an outlet into the Illinois river. Only in the postglacial period was this outlet closed; the level of the lake was lowered by drainage on the east and the shores of the present lake were built up by the slow process of the deposition of sand.^^ These visitants from the north left to the state a priceless gift, a most fertile soil. In most places the glacial drift has been covered by a layer of loess, varying from two feet to one hundred, blown by the wind or carried by water since the reces- sion of the glaciers; and over this, in turn, decaying vegetable matter has laid a surface covering of black earth. Beneath these and over the preglacial rocks lies the deposit of the glaciers, the bowlder clay, a repository of plant food unsur- passed in the world. In the southern part of the state the Illinoian glacier alone has been responsible for this subsoil, but in the northern counties there may be distinguished layer upon layer of drift deposited by a succession of ice fields.^° Difficult it is to satisfy the curiosity about the duration of this long past when rock was piled on rock and over these a rich covering of fertile earth was laid. Some of the early geologic periods must have seen more ages pass than those which have elapsed since the recession of the ice sheets. There are guesses about the age of the earth, which, however, deal in incomprehensible figures; but guesses that convey a recog- ssplagg, The Far fVest, in Thwaites, Early Western Travels, 26:342. 3* Levcrett, The Illinois Glacial Lobe, 418 fF. 35 Hopkins and Pettit, "The Fertility in Illinois Soils," in University of Illinois, Bulletins of the Agricultural Experiment Station, 8:187 ff., where will also be found a soil map. THE LAND IN THE MAKING 19 nizable idea have been made about the date when the last glacier disappeared from this region. These may be repeated in the expectation of conveying a conception of that vast stretch of time when the prairies of Illinois were in the making. The minimum and maximum estimates of the time of this event are ten thousand and sixty thousand years. Using these as a basis, the climax of the Illinoian glacier, which covered most of the state, occurred somewhere between seventy thousand and five hundred and forty thousand years ago.^° The conditions caused by the glaciers were unfavorable to organic life, the sum total of which was probably reduced; and it is possible that never has there been as complete an adjust- ment of life to physical environment as existed previous to the glacier period. Still fauna and flora continued to exist on the earth and, between the visits of the successive glaciers, invaded the uncovered lands; and after the final recession of these hostile visitants they became abundant again. At some time the state may have been covered with a spruce and pine forest, the natural accompaniment of glaciers; but during the interglacial periods the flora of the temperate zone made its appearance quickly, and after the final disappearance of the ice fields the state was covered with the trees, shrubs, and plants that are common today. Yet this reconquest was gradual, requiring centuries for its completion, for the movement of some species, such as the nut bearing trees, must have been exceedingly slow.^^ During the glacial period and afterwards the animals of modern times became predominant. Within the boundaries of Illinois were buffaloes, bears, deer, wolves, and other familiar species; but among them were mastodons, an occasional mam- moth from farther west, and saber-toothed tigers. Most important of all, men now made their appearance in America. No unimpeachable evidence of human life during the period of the glaciers has been discovered in America, but s" Chamberlain and Salisbury, Geology, 3:420. 37 Such trees require years to reach the fruit bearing age and then have need of the active cooperation of some animal like the squirrel to carry their seeds away from their immediate vicinity. It has been calculated that the rate of movement of such trees would be about a mile in a thousand years. Cham- berlain and Salisbury, Geology, 3:534. 20 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY men were then living on the eastern continent. Soon after the return of a more temperate climate in the western hemisphere there was a veritable invasion of these new upright animals who came by land, the two hemispheres at some time being united at the north, on both sides of America. Undoubtedly the rich soil left by the glaciers soon attracted the tribes of men, and for the first time people settled upon the Illinois country. The period of this occurrence escapes the research of geologist and historian; the first date in Illinois history cannot be given. When in a patronizing mood, geologists assert that the story of man forms only the last chapter of the history of the earth. Accepting this assertion as true, humble historians must admit that the period of men's action known as historical is confined within the limits of the last paragraph of that chapter, and historians of America must content themselves with writing the last sentence in the paragraph. In all humility, the follow- ing volumes are offered as a contribution to the interpretation of that sentence. II. THE ILLINOIS INDIANS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS FIRST the land and then the men on the land, such is the normal sequence; but what historian of the white race can describe the first men of the Illinois country? What magic talis- man does he hold that will reveal to him the processes of the red man's mind? They are almost as inscrutable today, after the labors of multitudinous students, as they were to the first mis- sionaries who sought to lead this child of nature up the century- old rounds of the ladder that ascended to the knowledge of the white man's God. For painting a picture of the Indian, the historian finds himself bereft of his best pigments. There are, of course, many descriptions drawn by the invaders of the land of this enigma, some unskilled, some unfriendly, and some sympa- thetic, but practically none by Indians uninfluenced by contact with the white man, and none coming down from those days when the red men roamed over prairies still unseen by Euro- peans. To write a history of the Indians before the coming of the white men is impossible from lack of records. The only sources of information are, first of all, the Indian traditions, diflUcult to interpret and frequently so interwoven with additions of European manufacture as to be almost worthless; and secondly the mounds, graves, and the numberless implements of war and utensils of the household, all of which make possible a recon- struction of static conditions existing among the Indians of former days but grant only flimsy support to the interpreter of historical movement; of personalities and of acts the vestiges are so slight that even a historian with the uncanny powers of the Indian of romance finds difficulty in tracking them. The story must therefore be told with the use of many question marks and with many confessions of ignorance. The former romantic, well-sounding, and beautifully definite theories con- 22 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY cerning the origin and development of the Indians have been cast into the discard by scientific investigators, and in their place have been substituted interesting hypotheses, which still, after years of research, remain hypotheses. Men have inhabited the territory of the state for thousands of years, but their coming is shrouded in obscurity. In the last chapter it was said that there was no incontestable trace of man in America at the time of the great ice fields, and that soon after the recession of the glaciers men appeared on the continent. Theory after theory has been propounded concern- ing their origin ; the Indians have been identified with the " lost tribes of Israel; " it has been claimed that they were of Asiatic origin, Chinese or Japanese driven here by adverse winds; or they are written down as Greeks, Phoenicians, Irish, Poly- nesians, or Australasians. Arguments may be adduced for almost any theory. Out of the conflict of opinion there appears some agreement: at one time northeastern Asia and northwest- ern America formed a single culture area; also the American aborigines in general bear a closer resemblance to the Mon- goloid than to other types of man — beyond these assertions lies conjecture. A myth long flourished and even now faintly persists that the Indians whom the white explorers found in America were not the first race to dwell in the land; that before them a mar- velous people of a very different character, of greater genius and intelligence, and of still more mysterious origin, held sway in a splendid empire stretching from the Alleghenies to the great plains, from the lakes to the gulf. Their civilization, it was claimed, was unique and of a high order; but finally, from somewhere, the Indians came sweeping over the land and anni- hilated this original race, leaving as the only evidence of its existence numberless mounds raised in honor of its dead or for the worship of its gods.^ This romantic myth of the "mound builders," woven out of an ignorance of the culture of the North American Indians, has vanished before a more careful reading of the early ex- plorers and a more scientific exploration of the mounds them- selves. No proof of a prior race has been found; no articles ^ Squier and Davis, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, 306. INDIANS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS 23 have been dug up beyond the skill of tribes known in historic times. Mounds in the process of construction were seen by European explorers, and from them have been unearthed products of European manufacture. The variety of ancient monuments dotting the surface of the Illinois country and its environs speaks the faltering lines of a drama, centuries old, of a succession of peoples on these prairies. Here they built their villages, erected their shrines, and buried their dead; here they fought off invaders, until they were finally forced to yield the fertile land to other peoples, j who in turn suffered the same fate. This drama of the living, striving, and dying of long-forgotten tribes would be romantic and heroic, could its details be read in the piles of dirt that have marked its acts and scenes; but only the barest and most shadowy outlines of the passing of these peoples, an adum- bration of reality, can be now rescued from the vestiges of their stay and their flight. Yet these monuments yield some infor- mation, for they tell of events belonging to a dim past, of the continental migration of great groups of tribes, in which all the Indians north of Mexico were involved. The story of these migrations, in spite of a lack of chronology and in spite of indistinctness of outline, carries the knowledge of events in America back to a time preceding the voyage of Columbus.^ Most baffling of all are the Indian mounds in the central part of the state.^ Their wide variety, the uncertainty of their chronology, the lack of distinguishing characteristics, make it particularly difficult to decipher by what tribe or succession of tribes they may have been built. The best clue is offered by some "altar" mounds of the type that is found in the state of Ohio and by the similarity between the pipes and other articles 2 See Carr, " The Mounds of the Mississippi Valley, Historically Considered," in Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, Annual Report, 1891, p. 503 ff. ; Thomas, "Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology," in Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of Ethnology, Twelfth Annual Report, 1890, 1891, p. 112 ff. 3 It must be borne in mind that in practically no region of the state is there one and only one type of mound. On the contrary, mounds representing quite different cultures are often found in the same locality; this, of course, argues a succession of tribes, but may also in many cases mean a modification of a particular tribe's customs through imitation of another tribe. The only practicable method of classification, therefore, is to mark out roughly the boundaries of areas in which a particular type of mound occurs more frequently than any other one type. 24 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY unearthed in some of the Illinois mounds and those char- acteristic of the Ohio culture. A theory has been offered that these works date from pre-Columbian times and were erected by the Cherokee, an Iroquoian tribe.* This hypothesis, how- ever, still fails to account for numerous burial mounds in the region which cannot be identified with Ohio types. These mounds exhibit the greatest variety of methods of disposing of the dead, from simple burials in a shallow depression to elaborate communal burials in which a large number of skele- tons, usually stripped of the flesh, were buried together and a large mound heaped over them. While this variety would seem to indicate that the burials were the work of a succession of tribes, none of the methods are distinctive enough to be ascribed to any particular tribe. Even if they could be, the difficulty of determining the age of the remains would make it practically impossible to establish a chronology for the migrations of these prehistoric peoples across the central part of the state. In the lower valley of the Illinois river and along the alluvial flats of the Mississippi river — the American Bottom — the Indian monuments grant greater satisfaction to the curiosity of the investigator. Here a distinctive type pre- dominates — the pyramidal mound, built up from either a square or a circular base, and truncated. The mounds vary in size from insignificant knolls to the Cahokia mound, a "mountain made by man," rising to a height of a hundred feet and covering an area of about seventeen acres, the greatest ancient earthwork in the United States. Although neither the Cahokia mound nor the group of sixty-eight good-sized pyramid mounds in its vicinity have been excavated by trained scientists, it may be inferred that they were used as sites for dwellings and temples, the Cahokia mound possibly serving as a shrine of more than local importance for a relatively dense population.' Who made these great works? Whose hands raised these mountains of earth, often carrying the dirt by baskets from * Thomas, The Cherokees in pre-Columbian Times, especially p. 88 ff. ; also Thomas, " Burial Mounds of the Northern Sections of the United States," in Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of Ethnology, Fifth Annual Report, 1883- 1884, p. 24 ff. ^ Snyder, " Certain Indian Mounds Technically Considered," in Illinois State Historical Society, Journal, 2:71 ff. ; Bushnell, "Cahokia and Surrounding Mound Group," in Peabody Museum, Publications, 1904, volume 3, number i. INDIANS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS 25 the distant bluffs? Probably it will never be known; no one will ever be able to identify with any of the Indians known to the white men the tribe or group of tribes who labored here. Yet the white men saw in the southern Mississippi valley just such mounds as these being used as temples and dwelling places by Muskhogean peoples who had developed a surprisingly com- plex organization and had reached an advanced state of civili- zation,*' The customs of the Natchez in particular may reflect dimly those of the men who in very early days hunted on the prairies of the Illinois country and left in the mounds monu- ments of their passaged The articles found in these mounds offer further evidence of the relation between their builders and the southern tribes. The hoes and other farming implements skillfully chipped out of flint or other hard stone and fashioned to fit wooden handles could have been the product only of a people to whom agri- culture was of long-standing importance. Still more strik- ing is the similarity between the pottery which has been un- earthed from these mounds and that described by early trav- elers among the Natchez. According to Le Page du Pratz, an early French traveler in the Mississippi valley, "The Natchez Indians make pots of extraordinary size, cruses with a medium sized opening, jars, bottles with long necks holding two pints, and pots or cruses for holding bear's oil."^ He says further that these vessels were colored by painting with ocher, which became red after firing. Among the vessels discovered in the mounds of southern Illinois, southeastern Missouri, and Ar- kansas are specimens of all the types mentioned by Du Pratz, and many of the pieces have not only the characteristic red coloring, but even designs worked out in red, white, and yellow « The Indians may be conveniently classified according to geographical lo- cation, physical characteristics, general culture, or language. The linguistic criterion is generally the most satisfactory as being the most readily attained; it applies to fundamental differences in syntax and vocabulary, not merely to dialectic variations. Broadly speaking, this classification is generally borne out by division on the lines of the other criteria; there are, of course, numerous exceptions. For the distribution of Indian stocks in North America see the map at the back of Handbook of American Indians, volume i. The principal tribes of the Muskhogean group were: Creeks, Seminole, Muskogee, of the eastern gulf states, the Chickasav? and Alibamu of Alabama and northern Mississippi, and the Choctaw and the Natchez along the Mississippi. ■^ Charlevoix, Journal d'un Voyage, 172, describes the customs of the Natchez. 8 Le Page du Pratz, Histoire de la Louisiane, i : 124. 26 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY figures.® The specimens belong to a high order of craftsman- ship; the clay has been tempered with pounded shell, producing pottery far more thin and fragile than the ordinary sand- tempered kind in use among the tribes of the upper Mississippi valley. In shapes and sizes these pots exhibit great variety; and many, fashioned as effigies of animals, reveal striking origi- nality and play of imagination in the primitive artists. These animal effigy types are almost certainly of southern origin, for they are found in greatest abundance in a district which seems to radiate from Pecan Point, Arkansas. Many bits of evidence pointing in the same direction make it appear highly probable that the southern Muskhogean stock, originating somewhere on the upper reaches of the Red and the Arkansas rivers, migrated gradually southeastward; in the long period of years that must have been involved, it would have been easy for some of the tribes, possibly exterminated in time, to diverge to a course north of these river valleys and to establish themselves finally in the fertile lands of Missouri and southern Illinois. Their stay must have extended over many generations; their numbers must have been large, judging from the mounds they left. Eventually these builders of mounds were forced to retreat before more barbarous tribes. What became of them is unknown; perhaps they were annihilated or absorbed by their conquerors; perhaps they saved themselves by fleeing southward, there to survive to historic times as the Natchez or kindred tribes. Other mounds within the state give evidence of the occu- pation by a third Indian stock, the Siouan, which comprised many tribes famous in history. Students have located its place of origin with some degree of certainty in the eastern part of the present United States, possibly in the Carolinas and Virginia. ^*^ Thence the main part of the family moved west- ^A cache containing many pieces of pottery was discovered near the base of the great Cahokia mound, and there are fragments on the surface at many of the sites in this district. Cf. Rau, " Indian Pottery," in Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, Annual Report, 1866, p. 346. ^° The theory of the eastern origin and westward migration of the Siouan stock was first advanced by J. O. Dorsey, a very careful student on the subject. His conclusions have come to be quite generally accepted by subsequent in- vestigators. Dorsey, " Migration of Siouan Tribes," and McGee, " The Siouan Indians," in Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of Ethnology, Fifteenth Annual Report, 1893-1894, p. 191. INDIANS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS 27 ward, one group — the Dakota, Winnebago, and cognate tribes — following a northerly course along the Great Lakes; another group — the Dhegiha — moving down the Ohio. This latter division, some time after reaching the Mississippi, divided into two parts; one going south to the mouth of the Arkansas became designated Quapaw, or "downstream peo- ple;" the other moving northward and up the Missouri river became known as the Omaha, or "upstream people." Subse- quently the Omaha group was differentiated into four tribes, the Omaha proper, Osage, Kansa, and Ponca. This migration must have occurred some time prior to 1 54 1, as it preceded Hernando de Soto's discovery of the Mississippi ; but the tradition of it was still lively in the memory of the Illinois Indians two hundred years later, for a Jesuit father In 1700 noted that the Ohio river was "called by the Illinois and by the Oumlamis [Miami] the River of the Akansea, because the Akansea [another name for Quapaw] formerly dwelt on It."^^ Although their ethnic relation to the northern Siouan tribes is unmistakable, many features of the culture of the Quapaw are distinctly characteristic of the southern tribes already de- scribed and offer significant indication that somewhere, at some time, they came In contact with the Muskhogean civilization; they also suggest that the Quapaw may well be responsible for some of the monuments of southern Illinois. ^^ The northern Sioux had two chief groups, the Dakota — often called the Sioux proper — and the Chlwere group, made up of four tribes closely allied linguistically, the Iowa, Mis- souri, Oto, and Winnebago. Tradition says that at one time these four dwelt together as one In the region of the lakes, whence they migrated south and west In pursuit of game.^' 11 Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 65:107. ^2 The Quapaw are known to have fortified their towns with earthworks and to have built mounds for various purposes; one type of mound peculiar to them has been found on the Ohio just east of the mouth of the Wabash, and scattered through the southern part of Illinois are many graves and burial mounds similar to those used by the tribe in historic times. ^•^ See Handbook of American Indians, 1:612 ff., 911; 2:164 flf., 958 ff. An interesting piece of evidence corroborating the traditions of these tribes is the Chippewa tradition that their tribe found the Sioux in possession of the land somewhere east of Detroit, and after waging many wars finally succeeded in driving them west of the Mississippi. 28 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY In the territory that is now Wisconsin the Winnebago halted and extended their hunting grounds into the Illinois country; but the other three tribes continued southward and westward across the Mississippi. Over the territory occupied by these Siouan tribes are found monuments probably raised by their labor. Centering in Wis- consin and extending into Jo Daviess, Stephenson, Winnebago, and Carroll counties in Illinois, is an area abounding in " effigy " mounds, so called because they are built to give a profile repre- sentation of some bird, beast, fish, or man. Though the de- lineation is often so very poor that an amateur observer can make nothing whatever of the image, trained students have identified a number of realistic as well as conventionalized outlines, and the theory has come to be generally accepted that these mounds were raised by various clans in representation of their respective totems to commemorate some signal event or to mark the burial ground of the group, as they are very fre- quently found associated with a number of ordinary burial mounds. ^^ Such faint evidence as exists concerning the state of culture of the builders seems to indicate no such highly developed civilization as that of the southern peoples. Opinions of ethnologists are united in ascribing these mounds to Indians of Siouan stock, presumably the Winnebago and closely allied tribes. ^^ The passing of the Siouan tribes from an eastern to a western habitat must have formed one of the most important events in the prehistoric period of Mississippi valley history. The movement must have unsettled the equilibrium among the tribes, many of which were permanently driven from their homes and their places taken by members of alien stocks. Pos- sibly the wide extension of the Algonqulan tribes discovered by the first white men to visit the valley may have been made pos- sible by the movement, or possibly the migration of the Slouans 1* It may be stated here that some burial mounds found interspersed with effigy mounds are almost certainly the work of tribes later than the builders of the effigies; they are of a less distinctive type and might have been built by other tribes. Some of them must have been erected after the coming of the French, for articles of European manufacture have appeared in a number of tumuli. See Peet, Prehistoric America, volume 2, passim, 15 Radin, " Some Aspects of Winnebago Archeology," in American Anthro- pologist, 13: 517 flF. INDIANS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS 29 may have been occasioned by the invasion of these powerful northern neighbors. The Algonquian, one of the largest and most important of Indian families, probably originated in the north Atlantic region, but its tribes were distributed over so extensive a territory that it is almost impossible to designate a common home. Algonquians were in Canada, from Hudson bay and Newfoundland on the east to modern Alberta on the west, in that part of the United States that stretches from the seacoast of Maine and North Carolina across the three upper Great Lakes and extends southward through the modern states of western Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to Kentucky and central Tennessee. Had it not been for the Iroquoian tribes holding dominion over Lakes Erie and Ontario and in the Mohawk valley — in earlier days along both shores of the St. Lawrence — Algonquian su- premacy would have been complete from upper Canada and Kentucky to the Atlantic. With so large a territory and such a wide variety of tribes involved and with evidence so scanty it is difficult to trace any accurate sequence of migrations in prehistoric times. The solution of this complex problem is not required by this narrative; sufficient will be a survey of the par- ticular tribes which were of significance in the Illinois terri- tory. It must be borne in mind that the Algonquians at no time populated the Mississippi valley so densely as they did the Atlantic seaboard, so that considerable freedom of movement was possible for the tribes; and it fnust also be remembered that, for many years after Jolliet's voyage in 1673, knowledge of the great valley was limited almost entirely to the course of the Mississippi and the two water highways leading to it from Lake Michigan — the Fox-Wisconsin route and the Illinois river route, with its alternative portages from the Chicago or the St. Joseph. Hence the early explorers have left few clues concerning the tribes located at a distance from their route of travel; the tribes may or may not have lived in prehistoric times in the regions where the eighteenth, century colonists found them. All the tribes of the region sustained life by both farming and hunting; for neither occupation was it necessary for them 30 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY to seek out watercourses, nor were they attracted to the rivers as means of communication. In fact, many of the tribes which lived along watercourses preferred to travel overland.^® Any survey by travelers merely along the river routes could not well be other than fragmentary. In the case of the Shawnee, the southernmost of the Algon- quians in the middle valley, the paucity of early detailed infor- mation is especially unfortunate. Their chief seat was in modern Kentucky and Tennessee, their villages being situated along the valley of the Cumberland river, always referred to in the writings of contemporaries as the " River of the Chaou- anons." Their language is closely akin to the Sauk dialect, and throughout the early historic period they are known to have had friendly intercourse with the Illinois and other neighboring tribes.^^ Evidences seem to point to a sojourn of the Shawnee in southern Illinois, ^^ where have been found the typical stone graves of their workmanship, such as have been discovered in all their habitats, in southern Kentucky, middle Tennessee, and northern Georgia. The graves are coffin-like structures with sides, top, wall, and bottom formed of slabs of limestone or other flat rocks joined together without cement; they vary in size from specimens seven or eight feet long and a yard or so wide, large enough to Inclose the full-sized corpse of an adult, to inclosures so small that It Is apparent that the flesh must have been removed before burial, according to a custom practiced by numerous Indian tribes. Associated with the skeletons in these peculiar stone coffins are many fragments of pottery 1® Dartaguiette's journal in Mereness, Travels in the American Colonies. ^^A very thorough and scientific study of the Shawnee was made by Pro- fessor Cyrus Thomas of the Bureau of American Ethnology; his principal con- clusions are embodied in a scholarly treatise, "The Story of a Mound; or, the Shawnees in pre-Columbian Times," in American Anthropologist, volume 4. This article is the chief source for the present discussion. See also Jones, An- tiquities of the Southern Indians, 118 flF. The first proof of the linguistic relations of the Shawnee was given by Truman Michelson in " Preliminary Report on the Linguistic Classification of Algonquian Tribes," in Bureau of American Ethnol- ogy, Tiventy-eighth Annual Report, 256 ff. IS The Shawnee were in the Illinois in the middle of the eighteenth century, a period later than the one here described. See below, p. 187. Most of the Indian tribal names are in form plural. It is, therefore, incorrect to add to them the plural ending. Thus it is proper to say the " Shawnee are," or the " Kaskaskia are." INDIANS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS 31 similar to that of the Cahokia region and, in addition, a wholly new and distinctive type of finely worked shell and copper ornaments. ^^ It may without great hazard be inferred that the Shawnee formed the vanguard of the Algonquian advance into the Mis- sissippi valley from some point north of the Great Lakes. In moving southward they came in contact with more civilized tribes, possibly the builders of the Cahokia mound. These the Shawnee drove out or assimilated, but by this contact with a superior culture the customs of the Shawnee themselves were modified. They adopted the custom of building mounds,-*^ learned to make pottery similar to that of the Cahokia people, and took on the characteristic customs of sedentary agricultural life. In the course of time the tide of migration carried some of them to the valley of the Cumberland and some into northern Georgia, but not even after the coming of the whites and the subsequent revolution in all Indian development was the link broken between the Shawnee and the kindred Illinois, Foxes, Sauk, and other tribes of the central Algonquian group who followed them into the great valley.-^ Of these tribes the Illinois, or, to give them their proper name, the Iliniwek, were easily first in importance and probably also in point of time.-^ Although when the first whites came they had already passed the zenith of their power, they were still far more numerous than any other nation in the territory of the present state; and there is ample indication that they had long dwelt in the land which still bears their name and near the great lake which for years was referred to as the " Lake of the Illinois." Livelihood came easily to them on the fertile ^^ Finds have been reported from Alexander, Gallatin, Jackson, Madison, Monroe, Randolph, Union, White, St. Clair, and Macoupin counties, and even as far north as Hancock and Brown counties. 2° The Etowah mound in northern Georgia, second in size in the United States to the Cahokia mound and very similar in type, is ascribed by Professor Thomas to the Shawnee, as are also most of the mounds occurring in middle Tennesee and southern Kentucky. Thomas, "The Story of a Mound; or, the Shawnees in pre-Columbian Times," in American Anthropologist, volume 4. 21 The Shawnee and Kickapoo called the Foxes and Sauk their younger brothers. Forsyth, "Account of the Manners and Customs of the Sauk and Fox Nations," in Blair, Indian Tribes, 2:183. 22 The Handbook of American Indians gives the following derivation of the name: " Iliniivek, from ilini 'man,' iiv 'is,' ek plural termination, changed by the French to ois." 32 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY prairies abounding in game, and they were apparently well advanced toward a state of civilization similar to that of their predecessors of southern stock. The early observers were invariably impressed with the superior refinement of their faces and manners in comparison with those of the tribes of the northern lakes region whose strenuous struggle for existence rendered them more crudely savage. It seems most probable that the Illinois formed a single tribe when they entered into the possession of the valleys and prairies of the state. As they increased in numbers and scattered over the land, however, they divided into bands, and a number of these subdivisions came to acquire the status of distinct tribes, particularly the Kaskaskia, the Peoria, the Cahokia, the Tama- roa, the Moingwena, and the Michigamea. Other bands failed to achieve, or at least to maintain into historic times, their separate identity and have their place in history only as rarely mentioned names; the Kouerakouilenoux, the Raparouas, the Maronas, the Albivi or Amouokoa, the Chepoussa, the Chinko or Coiracoenatanon, the Espeminkia, theTapouara, and several other problematical groups appear once or twice in the records and then sink into oblivion. ^^ The bands of the Illinois continued to act together against their common enemies, but their bond of union, throughout historic times, remained kinship rather than a deliberate and formal political alliance comparable to the league of the Iro- quois. When understood as a family alliance, the term " Illinois confederacy" is in a general sense an accurate enough desig- nation. In the heyday of their prosperity, the Illinois probably ranged over almost the entire area of the present state as well as into southern Wisconsin and Iowa. Farthest south were the Michigamea, who may have lived for some time in the region of the American Bottom — where they doubtless came in con- tact with the Shawnee or other southern agricultural peoples — and then pushed on over into what Is now the territory of south- -^A well-known example of this subdivision occurred in the case of the Kas- kaskia, one of the largest groups of the Illinois; for a long time one of their villages went b}' the name of its chief, Rouensa, and the band was accordingly sometimes referred to as the Rouensac Indians. IVisconsirt Historical Collections, 16:315. INDIANS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS 33 eastern Missouri and northern Arkansas, in the region of Big Lake, where Marquette found them in 1673. They maintained their separate existence long enough to develop so many vari- ations in language and customs that a number of writers have questioned their kinship with the Illinois — for instance, Mar- quette did not recognize them as belonging to the same nation. To'v\^rd the close of the seventeenth century the Michigamea were driven out of the valley of the Arkansas by neighboring tribes; whereupon they crossed the Mississippi and joined the Kaskaskia, amalgamating with them so easily that there can be little doubt of their close kinship.-^ The Tamaroa and Cahokia had probably long been inhabit- ing their seat in the American Bottom where the whites became familiar with them. They were not very numerous in historic times, and had apparently lost much of their virility, either through depletion by war or as a result of their advance in civilization. The main body of the Illinois in historic times centered in the valley of the river of their name, and it is highly probable that this had been their seat for a considerable period prior to the seventeenth century. The nearest kin of the Illinois were the Miami, the two being so similar in language and customs that the first impres- sion of the French was that they formed one tribe. The tribes had probably been long separated, however, when first known to the Europeans. Tradition relates that the Illinois and the Miami were associated in their migration from the west, and it may be assumed that the latter took possession of the valley of the Wabash at a very early date. They were split into bands, known in later years as Piankashaw, Eel River, Wea, and others, some of which in time acquired the attributes of -* It is possible that there is in their name a hint that at an early day they were in the region around Lake Michigan. The term Michigamea is derived from the Algonquian words michi, "great" or "much," and guma "water," and with variations was early used as an alternative for the " Lake of the Illinois." It is therefore possible that the group took its name from an early residence in the Lake Michigan region. On the other hand the same term was used to designate Big Lake in Arkansas, near which the tribe was living when first found by Jolliet, and may therefore have been taken over merely in that locality. There is even a possibility that the name came from the tribe's association with the Mississippi, which was sometimes referred to by the Indians as the "great water." Handbook of American Indians, 1:597, 856. 34 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY separate tribes.-^ Like their kinsmen, the Miami were con- tinually at war with the tribes lying south of the Ohio river, the Cherokee and Chickasaw. This hostility had lasted long and in the beginning of the nineteenth century the Miami de- clared that they " had no account of any period when there was peace with them."-'^ Had Captain John Smith, after the founding of Jamestown, or Samuel de Champlain, after establishing Quebec, led a party of men to the plains of the Illinois, he would have found, then, the upper Mississippi valley controlled by four populous and powerful peoples. Along the Illinois river and the Mississippi lay the Illinois villages with a population larger than it was at any later period in their history ; one of the early rumors of these Indians that found its way to the French settlements in Canada in 1 657-1 659 credited them with sixty villages and a popula- tion of some twenty thousand souls, possibly an exaggeration but indicative of their reputation at the time.^'^ South of the Illinois villages, possibly not yet all moved across the Ohio, were the Shawnee, and to the east were the large bands of the Miami, ready enough to strike a blow at their kinsmen. The rich prairie land was a possession for which Its occupants had to fight, and from all accounts the Illinois were at this early date capable of defending their own. Their most dangerous foes were the Siouan tribes of the west and north, fierce and vigor- ous, and far outnumbering the Illinois. Their enmity necessi- tated constant watchfulness and made heavy inroads on the number of Illinois warriors. The story of one of the wars with a Siouan folk lies on the border line between the historic and the prehistoric; no con- temporary record of it was made, but its echo came to the ears of one of the earliest white men among the Indians. In the flood of Algonqulan invasion that poured over the Great Lakes region, the Winnebago, of the Chlwere group of Sioux, had by their prowess in war managed to maintain themselves intact "^Handbook of American Indians, 2:240; Charlevoix, Journal d'un Voyage, 145 ; Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 55:201 ff. ; Beclcwith, Illinois and Indiana Indians, 107. It is impossible to locate the Miami definitely before the coming of the French, when these western tribes had been temporarily displaced by the Iroquois wars. See below, p. 37. The British called the Miami " Twightwees." -^ Harrison, Discourse on the Aborigines of the Ohio Valley, 27. 2T Thwaites. Jesuit Relations, 44:247; 45:235. Of \IEX\.CO INDIAN TRIBES ABOUT 1700 INDIANS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS 35 in the region between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi river, a Siouan island in a sea of aliens, achieving thereby no little prestige. But about the middle of the seventeenth century a long struggle with the Ottawa, who were pressing hard upon them from the east, was followed immediately by a malignant plague; and the double calamity reduced the once redoubtable tribe to about fifteen hundred warriors. The Illinois, so the story goes, were so touched by the misfortunes of their northern neighbors that they sent five hundred men, laden with gifts, as an expression of friendship. Misfortune, however, had not softened the hearts of the Winnebago; they received their guests courteously and arranged a grand celebration, only as a ruse preparatory to a horrible holocaust. " While the Illinois were engaged in dancing the Puans [Winnebago] cut their bowstrings, and immediately flung themselves upon the Illinois, massacred them, not sparing one man, and made a general feast of their flesh." Expecting retaliation from the kindred of their victims, the Winnebago took refuge on an island, where they thought they would be safe from the Illinois, since the latter did not use canoes. The Illinois, however, after mourning a full year so as to move the "Great Spirit" by their grief, collected a large army in the dead of winter and crossed on the ice to the island. It was deserted, as the Winnebago had departed the day before on their annual hunt, but the Illinois shortly overtook them, surrounded them, and put most of them to death. About one hundred and fifty were kept as slaves for a time and eventu- ally were allowed to return to their own country as the nucleus of a new tribe. ^^ But the Illinois had had to pay dearly for their victory; they long felt the losses they sustained in the war. A few years after this disastrous episode, a still more terrible scourge threatened all the tribes of the valley and lakes region. Far to the east, in the mountain fastnesses of New York, five great Iroquoian tribes, the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca, had in the course of their wars 2* For an account of the war between the Illinois and the Winnebago see La Potherie, History of the Savage Peoples, in Blair, Indian Tribes, 1:293 S., and Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 55: 183. The date of the war is approximately given by Father Allouez, ibid., 54:237. 36 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY with the Hurons and Algonquians of the St. Lawrence region discovered the strength that lies in union, and had — probably about 1570 — banded themselves into a well-organized con- federacy that has ever been one of the seven wonders of the Indian world. The advantages of their organization and their early adoption of the white men's weapons, bought from the Dutch of Albany, soon lifted the Five Nations to a position of unequaled power among the aborigines and made their name one to conjure with far and wide. Their energy was first directed against the consanguineous tribes of Hurons, Andastes, and Neutrals around the southern lakes, and these they defeated and destroyed or else forced to seek refuge on the shores of Lake Superior.^^ The pressure of the Five Nations westward upset the equi- librium that had been established among the tribes after the invasion of the Algonquians by driving from their villages several nations that were to be long connected with the history of the Illinois country. Among these was a group of four tribes, nomadic in character, noted for their warlike disposition and for their long-continued resistance to the white domination. For generations they were to stain red the land of the Illinois with the blood of their enemies. This group had no common name except the indefinite one of Nation of Fire; it was com- posed of four consanguineous Algonquian tribes, Foxes, Sauk, Mascoutens, and Kickapoo, living between Lakes Huron and Michigan, although some of them may have come earlier from farther east.^*^ Their principal enemies were the Iroquoian Neutrals, who in alliance with the Ottawa struck these tribes some severe blows. Their final expulsion from the eastern peninsula of the present state of Michigan was probably due to the wars waged by the Iroquois confederacy. Some time after the middle of the seventeenth century they were forced across to Mackinac and made their way to safety in the territory lying between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi, a territory at the time sparsely populated on account of -'' Perrot, Memoir, in Blair, Indian Tribes, 1 : 146. 30 For an interesting mustering of proof that the Foxes were Iroquoian and not Algonquian, see Winchell, "Were the Outagami of Iroquois Origin?" in Mississippi Valley Historical Association, Proceedings, 1910-1911, p. 181 fl[. The Potawatomi were sometimes called " Nation of Fire." INDIANS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS 37 the terrible punishment inflicted on the Winnebago by the Ilhnois.^^ Closely associated with these tribes and experiencing the same fate was another tribe whose activities form a part of the history of the state of Illinois, particularly of that of the shore of Lake Michigan; this was the tribe of the Potawatomi, who probably crossed to Green Bay before the Foxes and their associates. Their ethnic affinity was with the Ottawa and the Chippewa, and the traditions of the three tribes tell of a time when they formed one nation. They had been long separated when first known to the Europeans.^- The Iroquois wars proved a disturbing factor among the tribes south of the lakes. It was probably by them that the Miami were driven west and northward into the region of modern Wisconsin at the time when it was being entered from the north by the tribes just described. The Illinois tribes attempted to stem the westward-spreading tide of Iroquois conquest. In 1655 ^ band of the Five Nations, as the Iroquois confederacy was called, fell suddenly on one of the small villages of the Illinois and killed the women and children. The Illinois, high-spirited and valorous, immediately assembled their forces, surprised the enemy, and utterly de- feated them, very few escaping. "This was the first acquaint- ance of the Illinoets with the Iroquois; it proved baneful to them [Iroquois], but they have well avenged themselves for jj. "33 'phus began a war lasting till 1667 between the two nations. The strain of meeting the repeated blows, first of the Sioux and then of the relentless Iroquois, was too great; weak- ened, the once proud and dominant Illinois were obliged to abandon their ancient seat and to seek safety on the west side of the Mississippi. At the time, then, when the French came in close contact with the western tribes, these latter were in a state of unprece- ^'^Handbook of American Indians, 2:471 ff., article on "Sauk." ^~ Ibid., 289 ff. Linguistically, the Potawatomi as well as the Illinois be- longed to the Ojibwa group of central Algonquians. Michelson, "Preliminary Report on the Linguistic Classification of Algonquian Tribes," in Bureau of American Ethnology, Tiventy-eightli Annual Report, 261; Michelson, "The Linguistic Classification of Potawatomi," in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, i : 450. 33 Perrot, Memoir, in Blair, Indian Tribes, 1:154 ^^'^ note, 157. 38 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY dented congestion and confusion. The pictures drawn by the earliest explorers of the Green Bay region, therefore, give but an inadequate idea of the normal distribution and mode of life of the Indians of the west. The -half-seen and shadowy events of prehistoric Illinois that have been chronicled may carry the story back to a few generations before the sailing of Christopher Columbus, but they formed only the closing scenes of the generations-old drama that had been enacted on these prairies. Unsatisfactory is the account; the enigmatic monuments, however, forbid the historian to indulge in more specific and more wide-reaching speculation, and he must turn with what satisfaction he can find to the easier task of reconstructing out of more accessible and better-known sources the civilization of the men and women who have here made their homes. The American Indians form one of the major races of man, distinct in many particulars from their neighbors on the east and west, but at the same time revealing many similarities. The physical characteristics are brown skin, lustrous black hair, hazel to dark brown eyes, and a cranial capacity somewhat smaller than that of the white men. Other features, such as stature, shape of the head, and mental and physiological proc- esses, vary among tribes and individuals as they do among those of other races. ^^ To the whites who first came in contact with them, the Indians appeared to be an enigma, and explorers and mission- aries expended reams of paper in trying to explain these singular people; but a difference in mental experience made mutual understanding difficult. The Indians' race experience had evolved in them a consciousness that responded to external stimuli in a way strange to the white men. For them there existed no orderly world responding to the will and law of the omnipotent and benignant God of the sixteenth and seventeenth century Europeans; for them there had been no long training by church and state in the doctrines of submission and obedience. The phenomena around them appeared to be the expressions of numberless wills as irresponsible and apparently as free as their own. To the Europeans and the Indians there was no '* Handbook of American Indians, 1:53 ff. INDIANS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS 39 common meeting ground for a mutual understanding of such terms as law, treaty, honor, and religion; race experience had raised a barrier of confusion. The tribes in the Illinois country, using this term to desig- nate a more extensive territory than that indicated by the early writers, belonged to the Algonquian stock, with the exception of the Winnebago, whose hunting grounds in later years ex- tended south of the Wisconsin boundary. A description, there- fore, of the principal group of tribes, the one that has given its name to the state, will answer in a general way for all; yet it must be remembered that the bands living farthest south had, either from contact with their predecessors or as a result of natural environment, acquired more agricultural characteristics than had the inhabitants toward the north where the climate was less kindly. The difference was, however, merely one of degree and not of kind; and although every tribe had some customs peculiar to itself, they usually bore a fundamental likeness to the customs of their neighbors.^^ A writer who knew the Illinois well has written the following description : " There never were people better made than they; they are neither large nor small — generally there are some of them whom you can circle with your two hands. They have tapering legs which carry their bodies well, with a very haughty step, and as graceful as the best dancer. The visage is fairer than white milk so far as savages of this country can have such. The teeth are the best arranged and the whitest in the world. They are vivacious, but withal indolent."^*^ The country and the climate disposed them to indo- lence, for it was not difficult to secure a living; the wealth of wild fruits, berries, and edible roots went far to sustain life even without effort, and game was abundant. Nevertheless, the real staff of life, the year-round food of the Illinois Indians, was maize; and maize was by no means a gratuitous gift of nature, nor were beans, squashes, and other vegetables; hence the cultivation of the soil loomed large in their economy — far larger than has popularly been supposed. Even with 3' So similar were all the tribes that some early writers classed them all as Illinois. 2® De Cannes, " Memoir Concernant le Pays Illinois," in Ayer's collection, Newberry Library. On this memoir see below, p. 135, note 37. 40 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY the fertile treeless prairies ready at hand, the work of breaking and preparing the ground with implements rudely wrought from stone was highly laborious, and a cornfield once brought under cultivation was not lightly abandoned. Village sites, therefore, took on a degree of permanency which has not always been recognized.^" In the summer, after the crops were planted, and again In the winter after they had been gathered and stored in pits in the village, the whole group would move to some spot in a wilder part of the country, often a hundred or more miles away, and set up a hunting camp; here they would spend from six to twelve weeks hunting all kinds of animals which could be made to furnish meat for the kettle, furs for clothing, orna- ments for personal decoration, or which. In short, could serve any purpose whatever. The spoils of the hunt would for the most part be prepared for human use on the spot, the meat being cut into thin strips and slowly dried on a wooden rack four or five feet above an open fire; the pelts of the buffalo, deer, bear, and the smaller fur bearing animals were dressed with the hair on if they were to be used as robes, or with the hair removed if they were to be made into any of the dozens of articles the Indian knew how to fashion out of dressed sklns.^® The animals' bones were often utilized In the making of weapons or domestic utensils; the horns and teeth of the elk and deer and various parts of the smaller animals and of birds went to adorn the warriors or to serve some ceremonial pur- pose; there was scarcely a portion of any animal for which the Indian could not find some use — although If his need for a particular article was not Immediate, he felt no necessity of conserving against possible future wants. If at any time there was a scarcity of meat, the deficiency could be supplied by fish from the rivers or lakes, but as game was usually plentiful the Indians of the Illinois country never developed such prowess as fishermen as was achieved by the northern tribes of the lakes region. " They take little trouble 3^An excellent illustration of this is seen in the failure of the whites at the time of the Black Hawk War to comprehend what it meant to the Sauk and Foxes to give up their ancient domain in the Rock river valley. See Centennial History of Illinois, 2: 157. 38 For methods of skin dressing see Handbook of American Indians, 2:591. INDIANS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS 41 to make nets suitable for catching fish in the rivers," writes a missionary. " However, when they take a fancy to have some, they enter a canoe with their bows and arrows; they stand up that they may better discover the fish, and as soon as they see one they pierce it with an arrow."^'' Their weapon for all purposes was the bow and arrow. The bows were simple affairs, and the arrows consisted of long shafts to which were attached the triangular stone heads that are still to be found on the site of many an old Indian village or battlefield. The bow was most important in the world of the Indian; upon his skill in using it depended his livelihood and his reputation as a hunter, and his accuracy was a matter of life or death in war. For the chase as well as for war he supple- mented it with clubs and knives; the clubs were of wood, "shaped like a cutlass," with a ball at the end, or of a deer's horn trimmed of all save one or two tines; the knives were of chipped flint, much like the arrowheads but larger. Daggers also were sometimes made from some long bone such as the shank of a deer. The manufacture as well as the use of these weapons was the peculiar province of the men; the warriors were expected to provide their families with meat and furs and to protect them from all attack; and since hunting was both arduous and dan- gerous and war a constantly threatening emergency, life was no sinecure. To the women, with the assistance of the old men and children, fell the tasks of preparing food and clothing, tilling the fields, attending to the construction as well as the care of the dwellings, and carrying all the baggage when on the march to and from the seasonal hunting camps. The line between the work of the two sexes was sharply drawn, but it can hardly be said to have been unfair, being based very directly on the necessities of their mode of life. Their migratory life led the Illinois to evolve two kinds of houses. In the permanent towns they built substantial oblong cabins large enough to house from six to twelve families each; the framework was formed by two parallel rows of saplings bent together and lashed at the top, so as to form a series of arches or loops, and covered with one or more layers of mats 39 Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 67:171. 42 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY made of closely woven rushes, making a dwelling water-tight and warm. There was a door at each end and a strip was left open in the center of the roof for the escape of the smoke from the row of from three to five fires which extended down the center of the lodge. Each of these fires was used by two families; hence a cabin might house as many as fifty or sixty souls. The earth floor was covered with mats, and in some houses there seems to have been a rude platform built out from either wall to serve as a lounging place or as bunks. For the hunting trips the women prepared a supply of mats which could be easily rolled up and carried in the baggage; when the camp was established, a few poles or stakes were set up to serve as a framework and in a very short time a fairly adequate shelter could be made. All the lands which were cultivated as well as those on which the tribe hunted were considered the property not of individ- uals but of the tribe. The crops belonged to the women who grew them, and the spoils of the hunter were turned over to the women of the family as soon as he brought them into camp. All the household equipment, too, was regarded as the property of the women; the men owned merely their own weapons and their clothing. In their unspoiled state the Indians seem to have had a large measure of generosity in their make-up; gifts were exchanged among them on all manner of occasions, and the possessive instinct was never as strong as it later became under the influence of the white man's greed. Tribal possession of land was a natural enough concomitant of the simple political and social organization of the Illinois Indians, The land had come down by descent from their ancestors, whose bones were preserved in its bosom, and they felt themselves obligated to hand it on to their children and their children's children for countless generations to come. To alienate the tribal title was an inconceivable idea. This absence of a well-developed concept of private ownership of land was long a stumblingblock for a mutual understanding between the Indians and the whites. To allow the whites to use the land was one thing; to cede to them the permanent pos- session of the land was quite different and to the Indians an act outside of their experience. 'r INDIAN BUFFALO HUNT [Reproduced from Le Page du Pratz, Historic de la Louisiane^ INDIANS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS 43 The tribe, the unit of Indian organization, was merely a large family made up of a number of clans or gentes, consisting of blood kindred tracing descent from a common ancestor — usually claimed to be some specific animal, such as a wolf, bear, or fox, which was regarded as the special guardian, or totem, of the gens. Members of any group were not permitted to marry within their own clan; and there was no changing of gens at marriage by either the man or the woman. As among other primitive people, the chief governing forces of the Illinois were social opinion and folk custom, and power- ful forces they were. The freedom of these prairie children was more a metaphor than a reality; from childhood up they were hedged around by unbreakable custom ; habit guided their footsteps, fear of consequences limited their wills. The Illinois, particularly noted for the attention they gave to their tribal customs, lived in unusual peace and accord with one another, social opinion vigorously enforcing uniformity, so that punish- ment for transgressions was rarely necessary. The machinery of government evolved for the community was slight, informal, and democratic to a degree almost incom- prehensible to the early European observers. Matters per- taining to the family were settled by a family council; affairs pertaining to the clan were settled by a council made up of the heads of the various families within the group; and the prob- lems of the tribe as a whole were threshed out in a council attended by the heads or chiefs of the clans. In each group certain men stood out as leaders, usually because of their own preeminence in valor and sagacity, although sometimes because they were descended from notable parents. These civil chiefs presided at the councils of the various clans and exerted considerable influence in determining the policies of the group, but their power was in no sense absolute nor even assured within a specified field.'*'' Distinct in function from the civil chiefs, whose counsels were powerful in adjusting disputes and determining the policies *" It is to be regretted that the early explorers have left extremely scant data concerning the exact organization of the Illinois tribes — probably because it seemed to them so simple as not to warrant mention. The democracy of the Indian tribe was practically out of the range of description by Europeans whose only political concept was that of an absolute monarchy. 44 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY of the tribe and clans In peace, were the war chiefs, who rose to prominence purely and simply through capacity for military leadership. The waging of war among the Illinois, as among most American Indians, was largely a matter of Individual choice, over which the tribe as a whole had little control; hence the difficulty of making a permanent treaty with any particular group of Indians. To avenge a real or fancied grievance Inflicted by a member of another tribe, or merely for the sake of winning glory, a warrior would announce his Intention of going on the warpath and would Invite any who cared to join him. The opportunity was always present, for practically con- tinuous war existed between the Illinois and their southern neighbors, the Chickasaw and the Cherokee, and their neigh- bors on the north, the Sioux. If an expedition failed, the leader's reputation suffered ; if it was successful, he gained pres- tige and could more readily rally followers the next time he decided to brandish the tomahawk. Only In this way could a war chief gain his position ; although as a man of unusual ability he might in many instances have an important voice In civil councils of the tribe, such Influence was not necessarily associ- ated with military leadership. Large campaigns were always an exception In Indian war- fare, and except for a few instances such as the Winnebago war, the fighting of the Illinois consisted chiefly of desultory raids, a primary aim of which was the taking of captives to be kept in the tribe or sold as slaves to other groups. "Ordi- narily," says an early Jesuit observer, "their parties consist only of twenty, thirty or forty men; sometimes these parties are of only six or seven persons, and these are most to be feared. As their entire skill lies in surprising their enemy, the small number facilitates the pains that they take to conceal themselves. In order that they may more securely strike the blow which they are planning Their method Is to follow on the trail of their enemy, and to kill some one of them while he is asleep, — or, rather, to lie In ambush In the vicinity of the villages, and to split the head of the first one who comes forth, — and, taking off his scalp, to display It as a trophy among their countrymen For several days this scalp is hung from the top of his cabin, and then all the people of INDIANS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS 45 the village come to congratulate him upon his valor, and bring presents to show him the interest that they take in his victory. Sometimes they are satisfied with making the enemy prisoners; but they immediately tie their hands and compel them to run on before at full speed, fearing that they may be pursued, as sometimes happens, by the companions of those whom they are taking away. The fate of these prisoners is very sad ; for often they are burned by a slow fire, and at other times they are put into the kettle, in order to make a feast for all the fighting men."-*i The cannibalism suggested was probably very rare; the Illinois seem most frequently to have kept their prisoners alive, for they were notorious slave traders. Sometimes the captors chose to regard the captives as substitutes for relatives they had lost and accordingly adopted them, whereupon they became active members of the tribe with full rights and duties. In spite of a reputation for humane treatment of captives, the Illinois, like other Indians, found pleasure in torturing their prisoners, a custom commonly found among all people in the low stages of development. The slow fire, the pulling of finger nails, and the cutting with knives were spectacles, prolonged for days, in which men, women, and children participated. Cruelty to enemies and stoical patience under suffering were basic prin- ciples in the education of Indian children. The individualism of the Indians which manifested itself so clearly in their form of government and their method of conducting war was also deep-seated in their family life. Chil- dren were, almost from infancy, treated as responsible indi- viduals and members of the tribe and grew up with a lack of parental control unusual among whites; corporal punishment was practically unknown. The boys strove to imitate the ex- ploits of their fathers; the girls as a matter of course learned to help their mothers; and they were taught all the traditions and ceremonies of their tribe; but their training was always accomplished more by general public opinion than by direct personal control by the parents. This lack of direction was by no means due to the indifference of the parents, for Indians as a race are known to be particularly fond of their children: it *i Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 66:273. ^6 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY was rather their definite purpose to develop their offspring into self-reliant characters. There was also involved, probably, the idea of the importance of the child as a member of the tribe and clan, which gave him from birth a status which could not be roughly overridden by mere parental authority. The importance of the place of the children in the com- munity is indicated by the dignified ceremonies imposed by the tribe and clan in the marriage custom. When a young man had proved his prowess as a hunter, he indicated to his parents the girl whom he desired for a wife. The boy was usually about eighteen or twenty and the girl three or four years younger. Up till this time the two had probably not exchanged a word. The parents of the children, with well-developed and unbreak- able custom, then conducted the whole negotiation until finally the girl was solemnly led by her relatives and placed on a rug in the new home.^- As the women are said to have outnumbered the men four to one, it is not surprising to find that polygamy was common among the Illinois ; the only limit set upon the number of wives a man might have was his ability to provide food and clothing for them. A custom very usual among the Algonquians was for a man to espouse the younger sisters of his first wife, a practice no doubt followed to some extent by the tribes of the Illinois. The men were very jealous of their wives and commonly pun- ished them for any infidelity by cutting off the nose; divorce ap- parently could take place whenever either of the couple desired, but public opinion was rather against such procedure. The chief element in holding any pair together, since the element of affection was in most instances negligible, was the offspring; as the strength and wealth of a clan was measured chiefly by the number of its members, children were an important factor; moreover, since Indian women were not especially prolific and infant mortality was high, a woman with children was not likely to be put away by her husband nor to go unavenged by her relatives if in any way wronged. The lack of religious significance in marriage is interesting. As a matter of fact, the Illinois were not nearly so much inclined ^^An excellent account of the marriage ceremony is contained in De Cannes, "Memoir Concernant le Pays Illinois," in Ayer's collection, Newberry Library. INDIANS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS 47 toward religious ceremonies as were the more northern Algon- quians, being, as one writer puts it, "too well off to be really pious;" but piety can be ascribed them only in its classical sense as care in the performance of religious ceremonies, for they never connected their beliefs in supernatural powers with moral conduct. To none of their many deities did the Indians attribute moral good or evil. In the development of religious ideas they were in a stage lower than that of the Homeric Greeks; not yet had any of the supernatural powers which they saw in the phenomena around them been divorced from its natural object and endowed with the personality of a god. People whose ancestors centuries ago emerged from the circle of primitive intelligence and entered into the inheritance of European civilization find difficulty in understanding the spiritual world of the Indians. For the American aborigines the idea of an orderly world did not exist; like young children, they did not expect to find natural causes for phenomena. In their world anything might happen, everything was possible; men visited the sun and moon, passed through numberless transformations, beasts spoke, and the roll of the thunder across the skies was, in the minds of the Illinois, the flapping of the great wings of the " thunderbird." The Indians lived in a myth-made world. The world known to the Illinois was circumscribed; they knew only the territory watered by the Mississippi and its principal tributaries, and the Great Lakes region; beyond these limits their knowledge was stretched only a little distance by hearsay. Over this world of theirs they saw the sun, the moon, and the stars; they felt the wind, the rain, and the snow, and heard the thunder. Their explanation of nature reproduced this limitation of knowledge. The earth was humanized; it was a person with emotions and passions; it bestowed life on all who fed on it. Objects of the world also were similarly humanized; some had the freedom of motion — such were the bears and deer ; but others like the reeds of the swamp, the oaks, and the persimmon trees, had been attached firmly to the earth by some mighty wizard. In like manner the rivers and creeks were men-beings who at times were bound by the spell of the winter magician and ceased their continuous running. All in- 48 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY animate objects — stones, streams, trees, hills, the wind, and the sun — possessed a magic power that might be used to aid or harm man and must therefore be propitiated. Indian tribes called this magic power by different* names, but by the Algon- quians it was named "manitou" or "manito."^^ The Indians lived in a world of terror, surrounded as they imagined themselves by these manitous, and their lives were struggles to appease the manitou beings and to bribe or compel them to give aid and not to harm. The Indian's trap would not catch animals and his bow would not shoot true unless he had the good will of their manitous; hence to both offerings had to be made, and in the same way the wind, water, and all forces of nature had to be propitiated. In every project of his life the Indian believed himself watched and warned by special protectors, who communicated with him by means of dreams and omens the disregard of which was sure to be attended with the most disastrous consequences. To this belief can be at- tributed much of the seemingly illogical conduct of individuals and the fickleness and wavering purposes of tribes. A dream, the cry of a bird, the unexpected appearance of some animal, would seem to the Indian a direct revelation and order from a supernatural power. In the midst of this world filled with animate objects pos- sessing magic power man was helpless without the support and aid of some personal manitou. Hence the principal spiritual experience of the Indian occurred when he won the control of some power as a personal guide. At the age of puberty, the boy withdrew to an isolated place and purified himself by vomiting, bathing, and fasting; he then worked himself into a trancelike state by dancing and often by using drugs, until some manitou appeared and promised to be his guardian. The missionaries attributed their success in converting the Illinois to Christianity to the fact that these prairie Indians believed in a greater manitou, identified by the missionaries as the "Great Spirit." Father Allouez in 1665 wrote: "I have learned .... that the Iliniouek, the Outagami [Foxes], and other savages toward the south, hold that there is a great *3 This magic power is difficult to define. A carefully worded definition will be found in the Handbook of American Indians, 2:147, under " Orenda." INDIANS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS 49 and excellent genius, master of all the rest, who made Heaven and Earth; and who dwells, they say, in the East toward the country of the French. "^^ In such language the christian spiritualized the crude creation myth of the central Algon- quians ; this " great and excellent genius " of Allouez was simply their culture hero, the fabulous great rabbit who had some association with the sun; he it was who created by magic power the earth, covered it with game, and taught his people various crafts. He accomplished his purposes by his magical powers, his trickery, and his powers of deception. The explanation of the great rabbit, the Gitchi Manitou, is to be sought in the Indians' childlike fondness of explaining the origin of objects by a myth rather than in a spiritual significance."*^ By far the most important of their religious ceremonies was the calumet dance, performed " sometimes to strengthen peace, or to unite themselves for some great war; at other times for public rejoicing," or to do honor to a visiting nation or person- age of note.^*' As the name implies, the dance featured the calumet, or ceremonial tobacco pipe, " fashioned from a red stone, polished like marble, and bored in such a manner that one end serves as a receptacle for the tobacco, while the other fits into the stem .... a stick two feet long, as thick as an ordinary cane, and bored through the middle. "^^ " Less honor," says Marquette, "is paid to the Crowns and scepters of Kings than the Savages bestow upon this. It seems to be the God of peace and of war, the Arbiter of life and of death. It has but to be carried upon one's person and displayed to enable one to walk safely through the midst of Enemies, — who, in the hottest of the Fight, lay down Their arms when it is shown There is a Calumet for peace, and one for war, which are distinguished solely by the Color of the feathers with which they are adorned; Red is the sign of war. They ^* Kellogg, Early Narratives of the Nort/iivest, 113. *^ This account of the Indians' religion is drawn from the following articles in Handbook of American Indians: "Algonquin Family," 1:38 ff. ; "Religion," 2:365 fl. ; "Mythology," 1:964 ff. ; "Popular Fallacies," 2:282 ff., and other articles; Menzies, History of Religion, chapter 2; Boas, T/ie Mind of Primitive Man, passim; Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 55:213 ff. ; Jones, "The Algonkin Manitou," in Journal of American Folk Lore, i8: 183 ff. ■*^ Marquette gives a detailed description of the calumet dance as performed in his honor. Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 59: 125-137. *^Ibid., 131. so THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY also use it to put an end to Their disputes, to strengthen Their alliances, and to speak to Strangers They have a great regard for it, because they look upon it as the calumet of the Sun; and, in fact, they offer it to the latter to smoke when they wish to obtain a calm, or rain, or fine weather."^^ The religion of the Illinois was highly individualistic, even the important calumet dance being initiated by any person who cared to begin it rather than by some authorized priest. There was no recognized head of religion nor any formal priesthood; the only approximation is found in the medicine men, who assumed their character and practiced thereafter simply on their own initiative, without organization among themselves and without any special authorization from the tribe. They assumed to have closer connection with the spirit world and the manitous than their fellows, and so undertook to foretell the future, bring luck, cast evil spells, and especially to cure illness. Their method of treatment was usually to play upon the imagination of the patient by pretending to suck forth from his body a bear's tooth or small stone which could be exhibited as the cause of his ailment, or else to handle him so roughly that he would forget his original pain ; they always accompanied their ministrations with invocations to their manitous — gro- tesque dances, chants, frightful contortions, and various jug- gleries. Another favorite remedy was to order the sick person to give a dance in honor of the sun, who might thus be moved to restore his worshipper to health. " If the sick man happen to die, he [the medicine man] immediately has all ready a trick for laying this death to another cause But, on the contrary, if the sick man recover his health, then it is that the charlatan is esteemed; that he himself is looked upon as a Manitou; and that, after having been well paid for his trouble, they also bring to him all that is best in the Village, in order to regale him."^® The Illinois, like other Algonquians, probably believed in an after world, but the Jesuits who were in the best position to observe their beliefs were obviously so much interested in propagating their own creed that they have preserved slight <® Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 59: 131. *9 Ibid., 66: 233-235. INDIANS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS 51 information upon this point. Neither have they left much pre- cise information as to the methods of burial practiced by the Indians, although they do indicate that a variety of methods were used. Sometimes the Illinois wrapped the corpses in skins and placed them on scaffolds in the open air or in the branches of trees to hasten decay and to facilitate the cleaning of the bones, which were later buried; sometimes the bodies were buried at once. It is highly probable that they raised mounds over at least their more important men; and in the southern part of the state they often employed the method of burial in stone graves, there being on record several such burials even after the establishment of the modern white settlement.^*^ The tribes in Illinois in the French period were not nearly so advanced in art as were their predecessors, the southern tribes; they made pottery, to be sure, but it was of a crude sort. The majority of their bowls were made of wood, which accounts for the comparatively small number which have sur- vived. The finest vessels they had were made by cutting away the side and columella of a large conch, but such bowls or cups could of course be obtained in this inland region only by trading, and hence were scarce and very valuable. They used fresh- water shells for the making of smaller cups, spoons, and scrapers; they also made similar articles from wood and horn. If they had acquired the art of basket weaving, their early visitors failed to mention the fact; there is no doubt, however, that the women had developed considerable skill in the making of mats by sewing together flat rushes with a twine made from bark or vegetable fiber roughly twisted. They had also learned to make a yarn from the fine under-wool of the buffalo and young bear, which they spun by rolling with the palm of the hand on the thigh ; this they plaited or wove into sashes, garters, bags, pouches, and similar articles. The dress of the women was voted modest even by the Jesuit fathers;"'^ the men, however, went entirely nude, save for a breechcloth, making up for their lack of garments by painting or otherwise decorating the body with "many panels, 50 Thomas, "The Story of a Mound; or, the Shawnees in pre-Columbian Times," in American Anthropologist, 4: 155 ff. ^^ Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 67:135. 52 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY with all sorts of figures, which they mark upon the body in ineffaceable manner It is only when they make visits . . . . that they wrap themselves in a cloak of dressed skin with the hair left on, that they may keep warm. They adorn the head with feathers of many colors, of which they make garlands and crowns which they arrange very becomingly; above all things, they are careful to paint the face with different colors, but especially with vermilion. They wear collars and ear rings made of little stones which they cut like precious stones; some are blue, some red and some white as alabaster; to these must be added a flat piece of porcelain [i. e., shell gorget] which finishes the collar."^- In another place is given the additional information that the men had a peculiar headdress formed by clipping the greater part of the hair and leaving over each ear two long locks, which were arranged " in such order as to avoid inconvenience from them."^^ Hard as their life seems, viewed by modern eyes, the Illinois fared better than many of their race and were by no means wholly without leisure and means of recreation. Between the strenuous demands of hunting and fighting the men relaxed completely and spent their time in a great variety of games of skill, such as ball, or guessing games, or games of chance played with instruments comparable to dice. Even with their more continuous labor, the women found opportunity to gossip among themselves and to play games. Like most Indians, the Illinois were inveterate gamblers, and men and women alike would often stake everything they owned on a throw of dice. Many of their games, however, had a religious significance, and were played only in connection with some formal ceremony. Socially they were talkative, good-natured, and fond of a joke, although their extreme dignity of bearing on public occa- sions often gave observers the impression that they were morose and silent by nature. The ease and persistency with which the French came to intermarry with them certainly suggests that both in disposition and In mode of life there was no very wide gulf between the two races, at least as they encountered each other in the seventeenth-century Illinois. The French may 5- Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 67:163-175. ^^Ibid., 55:207-219. INDIANS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS 53 have been accustomed at home to more refinements and greater cleanliness, but in the wilderness they soon found it impossible to maintain standards much higher than those of the Indians; and in spite of a supposedly more enlightened religion, they were no more amiable, no more honest, no more generous and hospitable, no more loyal to their friends, than were the be- nighted children of the wilds. If in the course of contact with shrewd traders who befuddled them with a strange fiery liquor and reduced them from economic self-sufficiency to abject dependence, the Indians came to show themselves suspicious, treacherous, greedy, and oftentimes ill-natured and unreason- able, it is not a logical deduction to conclude that the dusky aborigines were an essentially inferior race who deserved nothing better than to be exterminated and driven from the land of their forebears. Yet such was to be the fate of the Illinois; in the struggle for the prairies the better-prepared white men were to conquer. In the state named after them and perpetuating their memory in dozens of names, not one of their race, still less of their tribe, survives; even out of the remnant of the Peoria, who live now in Oklahoma, there is probably not one single full-blooded Illinois Indian left alive.** 5* Report of Truman Michelson and Ralph Linton on field work done among the Peoria Indians for the Illinois Centennial Commission, dated Sep- tember 26, 1916, in the Illinois Historical Survey. The survivors of the Peoria have intermarried and exchanged customs and folk tales with other tribes, especially with the Sauk, Foxes, and Kickapoo, until they can now furnish but little information as to their ancestors in Illinois. l^ III. THE AGE OF DISCOVERY A DESCRIPTION of prehistoric Indian society leaves on the mind an impression of more or less stationary conditions in woodland and on prairie, however careful the reader may be to recollect that violent action and almost constant warfare characterized the life of primitive men. Peace in the forest never reigned, dread lurked in its depths; but, since no chron- icler recorded the acts then committed, there are missing the direct touch with personalities and the intimate knowledge of occurrences that make vivid historical visualization. Upon the scene came the white man; his acts of daring and of wrong made articulate the human drama of the wilderness. Recorded history had begun. The first Europeans to visit the inland valley were the Spaniards. Hernando de Soto and Vasquez de Coronado, possibly the boldest of the explorers of interior America, trav- ersed the land watered by the lower Mississippi and disclosed to the world the extent of the continent. The Spanish explorers, however, never reached the prairies of the Illinois, and their ex- ploits require here only passing notice. Although the knowledge they gained was set forth on contemporary maps, the memory of these earliest explorations soon became dimmed, for there had been seen no glint of gold and silver to inspire the southern- ers to further efforts. The Mississippi valley remained prac- tically unknown until its rediscovery by men of other nations. Not for over a hundred years did England and France seriously challenge the Spaniards' claim to the new continent. In the opening years of the seventeenth century both countries planted their first permanent colonies on the Atlantic seacoast, England in Massachusetts and Virginia, and France in Acadia and Canada. Shut off from the interior by the Appalachian mountains and the Iroquois confederacy, the English were obliged to be contented with a slow advance of their settlements into the west; on the other hand, despite their small num- 54 THE AGE OF DISCOVERY 55 bers, the French, controlling excellent water routes to the Great Lakes and thence to the Mississippi, were able quickly to pene- trate to the heart of the great valley. In this relatively rapid occupation of the Mississippi valley several motives inspired the French. First and foremost was the desire for wealth, ever the chief driving force in the win- ning of the west. The great business of the wilderness was the fur trade with its enormous profits — one hundred, four hundred, sometimes a thousand per cent for a successful expe- dition. The upper country, as the lakes region and beyond was called, abounded in beavers, minks, lynxes, muskrats, foxes, and other fur bearing animals ; and the trader was lured by the hope of profits from one river valley to another, until he was plying his traffic in the depths of the continent. Naturally many motives other than this predominating economic one were active in the breasts of the men of France. Notably, there was the hope of glory — glory both for France and for the individual. The years of most active exploration were those when Louis XIV was occupying the throne of France and making it glorious by the success of his wars, the influence of his diplomacy, and the splendor of his court. As few others, the Grand Monarque understood how to identify in the popular mind his own glory and that of his people. Men acted, even when far distant, as though the eyes of their king were upon them; they saw his gracious look and heard his praise in their visions of a triumphant return to France. Even more powerful than the individual's dream of glory was the view of la patrie victorious over rivals. England, Holland, and Spain were all struggling for predominance in North America; great, then, was the pride of the sons who triumph- antly bore the lilies of France into the heart of the New World. Missionary zeal gave still another impetus to exploration. In the seventeenth century not only the state but individuals accepted unquestioningly the duty of converting the heathen, and exploration was esteemed worth while partially because it opened a way for bearing the light of Christianity into the dark places of the New World. Although not the only French mis- sionaries in North America, the Jesuits played the leading role in this new crusade; and never has the cause of Christianity S6 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY been served with greater devotion and fearlessness than by the disciples of Ignatius Loyola in the great interior valley. Fol- lowing close upon the canoes of the fur traders, they endured without complaint, nay rather with rejoicing, the hardships of life among the Indians and were ever ready to suffer cruel torture and even death rather than to give up the work, to which they had devoted themselves.^ The first westward movement of the French was due largely to the personal influence of Samuel de Champlain, the governor of New France, who was keenly interested in the exploration of the country intrusted to his care. He himself led an expe- dition in 1615 as far west as Lake Huron; and to aid further discovery, he placed young Frenchmen in various Indian villages to learn the languages of the natives. Among his proteges was Jean Nicolet, who had come to Quebec in 161 8 and who imme- diately began his studies of Indian life among the Algonkin, later spending several years among the Nipissing, After he was appointed agent and interpreter, he was sent west in 1634 ostensibly to make peace between the Hurons and the Winne- bago, but with the further purposes of extending the fur trade and of seeking a route to China. Accompanied only by Indians, he traveled by canoe the usual route via Lake Nipissing, French river, and Lake Huron. He was the first white man known to have passed through the strait of Mackinac and to have voy- aged to Green Bay, where he accomplished his mission. On his return he is reported to have said that "if he had sailed three days' journey farther upon a great river which issues from this lake (Michigan), he would have found the sea." What- ever the passage means, upon it alone rests the knowledge of the extreme west of Nicolet's discoveries.^ ^A by-product of great value to the historian has come from the work of the Jesuits. They were compelled by their order to make reports of their activities to their immediate superior in Quebec, and he in turn drew from these to make his report to the superior in Paris. These were published and are known as the Jesuit Relations. A most excellent edition of them has been published in seventy-three volumes by the late Reuben Gold Thwaites. See introduction in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, i. 2 The passages upon which rests the knowledge of Nicolet's discoveries are found in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 18:233, 237; 23:275 ff. For discussion see Suite, Melanges d'Histoire et de Litterature, 426 ff. ; Butterfield, Discovery of the Northwest by Jean Nicolet; see also Wisconsin Historical Collections, 8:188 ff. ; 9:1 ff. ; Kellogg, Early Narratives of the Northivest, introduction to Nicolet's Toyages. THE AGE OF DISCOVERY 57 For many years after the western exploration of Nicolet the French made no progress In their knowledge of the region. Before other men could follow In his footsteps there Intervened a war of many years with the Iroquois confederacy. Hostilities continued almost Incessantly until 1667, entailing during the entire period the most severe trials upon the French colonists of the St. Lawrence valley. All their outposts In the west were abandoned, and at times the existence of Montreal Itself was endangered. During this long period of almost continuous warfare there took, place that Important shifting of the Indian tribes in the lakes region, which has been described in the previous chapter, so that, when the Frenchmen again made their way to Green Bay, they discovered conditions in the region very different from those reported by Jean Nicolet. Where he had found the powerful tribe of the Winnebago, they met many tribes, with which French history was to be closely entwined, crowded into the narrow space between Lake Michigan and the Missis- sippi river; In one report twenty thousand Indians were said to have been gathered in one village.^ Such a congestion press- ing hard upon the food supply could not endure ; a readjustment was Inevitable, and no sooner was the fear of the Iroquois lifted than the tribes began an exodus southward. The Illinois, most of whom had fled before the scourge of the west to the far bank of the Mississippi river, returned to their former homes In the valley of the river which bears their name. The Miami and Mascoutens followed the western shore of the lake and gradu- ally extended themselves over the territory stretching south and eastward. By 1681 one band of Miami had already reached the St. Joseph river, while others were still in the vicinity of modern Milwaukee. About the same time the Foxes moved down to the Fox river (Wisconsin) valley.'* Even during the period of the Iroquois war the French were able to reopen for a moment the fur trade in the west. Some time between 1 654 and 1 663, two of the boldest and most successful fur traders, Medard Chouart, sleur des Grosellllers, ^Wisconsin Historical Collections, 16:94. * Ibid., 16:99 ff. ; Tonti's memoir in Kellogg, Early Narratives of the North- ijuest, 294 ff. ; Hennepin, AVa;' Discovery (ed. Thwaites), 1:123, 130, 143. 58 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY and his brother-in-law, Pierre d'Esprit, sieur de Radisson, made two journeys to the west and possibly reached the Mississippi river. They skirted the southern shore of Lake Superior and visited the country of the Sioux.^ From this time on the number of bush rangers, or coureurs de bois, making their way into the west rapidly increased; and after peace with the Iroquois was finally established in 1667, they departed from Montreal in ever-increasing numbers and penetrated into the remotest west in quest of furs. These pioneers of western trade, frequently unlettered, have left no formal reports nor literary accounts of their wan- derings, yet in almost every instance they preceded or accom- panied those whose names history has immortalized as the true discoverers. Coureurs de bois preceded the Jesuit missionaries to Lake Superior; they were found by the first missionary at Green Bay; and Father Marquette, the founder of the Illinois mission, found French traders on the upper Illinois in 1674. They learned to love the free life of the wilderness; the lure of the wild enthralled them ; and, above all, the hope of speedy profits led them on. Eventually, outlawed by the king's edict prohibiting their trade, disappointed In their hope of wealth, and accustomed to the new life, they settled in the Indian villages and began unconsciously and almost imperceptibly the French dominion of the northwest. The missionaries were not far behind even the most ven- turesome traders and soon reestablished their missions among the tribes of the Great Lakes. In 1669 Father Claude Jean Allouez was on Green Bay; Sulplcian missionaries from Mon- treal founded a mission on Lake Ontario, and two of their order explored Lake Erie and traversed the Detroit strait.^ The period had arrived when the French government was to devote to its over-sea dominions some thought and care. In the early years. New France had been watched over with solici- tude by Cardinal Richelieu, but he later became absorbed in the international complications of the Thirty Years' War, and New France was almost forgotten. His successor, Cardinal ^ Kellogg, Early Narratives of the Northit;est, 29 ff. 8 Margry, Decouvertes et Etablissements, 1:112 ff . ; also in Kellogg, Early Narratives of the Northvue'st, 167 if. THE AGE OF DISCOVERY 59 Mazarin, had found little time during his troublesome struggles . with the Fronde and the complexities of the international situ- ation to promote colonial interests. It remained for the period of the personal administration of Louis XIV to Inaugu- rate the colonial policy that was to make France a power to be reckoned with In America. The king was not a man of great genius, but he was ambitious to make his reign the glory of France, and to accomplish this he looked toward new fields of endeavor for his people. He had Imagination to visualize a great empire in America and the persistency to push at every favorable moment the interests of the French colonies; but, unfortunately for the far-away experiment, his attention became fixed too frequently on European politics. War after war was to ruin promising beginnings. The minister who possessed the foresight to propose the Imperial policy and the confidence to promote it in spite of constant petty court intrigues was Jean Baptiste Colbert, in many ways the greatest of French ministers. During the first ten or twelve years of his power, he initiated reforms in law, in finance, and In manufacture, commerce, and agriculture which wrought revolution In the life of France. Had the country been vouchsafed peaceful development, it would have been raised to the height of prosperity. As It was, commercial and industrial centers became active, and the whole country felt for a few years the quickening pulse of new life, finding expression in art and literature that has made the "age of Louis XIV" known for all time. Colbert was not simply an efficient administrator and a man of business; he was also a man of Imagination. Fired by the accounts of the early explorers in America, he declared Ma- gellan's idea of circumnavigating the globe "the boldest and most extraordinary that had ever entered the mind of a man."^ The idea of a colonial empire, therefore, easily found lodgment in his mind and germinated into action. The colonial policy which Colbert announced in 1664 as a part of his extensive reform of the national industry, trade, and commerce inevitably was founded on paternalism and monopoly, the two leading ideas controlling the French com- T Lavisse, Histoire de France, 7 (i) : 233. The whole chapter should be read. 6o THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY merclal undertakings during the seventeenth and well down Into the eighteenth century. The minute oversight of the colonial affairs left nothing to the Initiative of the settlers. Their goings and comings, their marriages and births, their occupa- tions and their religious exercises, were regulated by a beneficent monarch with a belief in his omniscience. The other foundation of the colonial policy, monopoly, was no less all-embracing. The most successful trading country of Europe at the time was Holland, and Its success seemed to rest upon great trading companies with monopolistic rights; it was no wonder that France should utilize a similar method. Col- bert In later years became skeptical of the wisdom of monopoly, but not so his successors; France till the end of Its experiment on the continent of America never completely freed its colonies from a system that crushed the initiative of Individuals by a too close supervision and stunted their energy by robbing them of the hope of financial rewards. On the other hand, this centralization of power imparted to French America a strength out of all proportion to the number and wealth of the colonists. Colbert's first experiment In colonization was built around the West India Company, to which was granted wide power in all the over-sea dominions. War and financial factors brought failure to the company, which never exercised much real au- thority in New France, though many vexatious enactments In its interest were passed. It has significance in this narrative chiefly because the renewed activity in the northern colony was contemporaneous with the founding of the company and the inauguration of many commercial reforms in France.® Though for a few years a gallant effort was made to support the West India Company, by degrees the futility of monopoly became evident, and by 1672 the company had for all practical purposes ceased to exist. Canada then became a royal prov- ince; the change was completed by 1674, but brought few alter- ations in the actual machinery of colonial control. It was during these years, 1 664 to 1 674, that the true begin- nings of the exploration and occupation of the west occurred. 8 Mims, Colbert's West India Policy, 68 ff., 176, 181; Clement, Histoire de Colbert, 170 ff. ; Lavisse, Histoire de France, 7 (i):254; Shortt and Doughty, Canada and Its Provinces, 2 : 464 ff. THE AGE OF DISCOVERY 6i For the first time a complete civil government of New France was inaugurated. The beginning of discovery is indissolubly connected with the name of one of the new officials, who proved himself one of Canada's greatest civil officers, the intendant, Jean Talon. He received his appointment a year after the creation of the West India Company, and his advice was of weight in the final decision to dissolve the company and to encourage the trade of individuals. Talon shared Colbert's vision of a French empire in America, and soon after his arrival he planned expeditions to discover the territory which might become a greater France.® In accordance with Talon's plans, though he was in France, there was sent out in 1669 ^^ expedition to Lake Superior, led by Louis Jolliet. He returned by way of Lake Erie, thus becom- ing the discoverer of that lake. In the next year, at Talon's orders, Robert Cavelier, sieur de la Salle, undertook to explore the regions south of the lakes, but he accomplished little or nothing.^° A third expedition of romantic interest proceeded in the same year under Simon Francois Daumont, sieur de St. Lusson, to the lakes region. He had been selected by the French government to hold a great meeting with the Indian tribes and to perform a significant act. Sault Ste. Marie was the romantic and historic spot chosen for the scene; it unites the territory stretching from Lake Superior to the mysterious region of Lake Winnipeg with the territory around Lake Michigan and the Mississippi valley, and connects both with the waters flowing into the St. Lawrence. At this significant meeting place representatives of fourteen Indian tribes assembled on June 14, 1671, to witness a solemn ceremony, half religious, half civil, which could scarcely have conveyed to the children of the wilderness an intelligible im- pression. After an address by Father Claude Allouez eulo- gizing the greatness of the Grand Monarque, the country and all adjacent regions were declared to be in the possession of ^ Neijj York Colonial Documents, 9:63, 70, 89. 10 Lorin, Le Comte de Frontenac, 15. La Salle had during the previous year made on his own account an exploratory expedition with two Sulpicians, Gallinee and Dollier, but owing to ill health, he was obliged to return without accom- plishing anything. For a discussion of La Salle's supposed discovery of the Ohio on this expedition see below, p. 78. 62 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY King Louis XIV. Let all nations forbear from trespassing thereon ! The ceremony marked the auspicious opening of a great era of discovery. The immediate incentive to explore arose from the Indians' accounts of a great western river which they called the "Great Water," or " Missipi," as it was first tran- scribed by Father AUouez. It was the determination of Jean Talon to explore this river and at the same time to find a route to the western sea — that rainbow dream which was ever before the eyes of official and explorer. He chose as leader for this important mission an experienced explorer and able leader of men, Louis Jolliet.^^ He was born in Quebec in 1645, ^^^ ^^" tended the Jesuit school in his native village, where he was well educated in the higher branches, becoming particularly profi- cient in the art of surveying and map making. He was not engrossed, however, by practical studies; he became a musician and in later years played the organ in the cathedral of Quebec. He took minor orders while still in school, but finally decided to forego the priestly calling and to follow that of fur trader and explorer. The friendly relations with the Jesuits, thus early formed, were maintained throughout his life; he was always regarded by the members of that order as their especial repre- sentative in the field of discovery. Twice he had visited Sault Ste. Marie before 1672 and, although only twenty-seven years old, had won a deserved confidence in his qualifications for leadership and his knowledge of the Indians. A contemporary wrote of him : " He has Courage to dread nothing where every- thing is to be Feared. "^^ Accompanying Jolliet as chaplain of the expedition was one of the most zealous Idealists in the annals of Illinois, Father Jacques Marquette of the Order of Jesus. He was born in Laon in 1637, entered the Jesuit order In 1654, and was sent to Canada in 1666. Three years later he replaced Allouez at the mission on the Chequamegon bay, and in 1671 he built the mission of St. Ignace at Mackinac, where he contentedly per- formed his priestly duties in " a rude and unshapely chapel, Its 11 He spelled his name thus instead of "Joliet" as perpetuated in the Illi- nois city named after him. ^-The best account of Jolliet is to be found in Gagnon, Louis Jolliet. See encomium of him in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 59:89. THE AGE OF DISCOVERY 63 sides of logs and its roof of bark." The only attendants were the miserable savages and a few fur traders. ^^ The external chronicle of his life, however, gives no hint of the development of the soul of the man. The sacrifice of all earthly pleasures and honors in the service of his fellow men was his sole guide. A rich opportunity came when he was ordered to the far western mission of New France. In a very true way his innermost life is summed up in Dablon's introduction to Marquette's own narrative of the exploratory expedition under Jolliet: "The Father had long premeditated this undertaking, influenced by a most ardent desire to extend the kingdom of Jesus Christ, and to make Him known and adored by all the peoples of that country."^-* It was not the intendant. Talon, however, who was to have the honor of sending the explorers to the Mississippi, but the Comte de Frontenac, who came to Canada as governor in 1672. He continued the policy which Talon had inaugurated, making no change in the personnel of the proposed expedition. Jolliet and Marquette spent the winter of 1 672-1 673 at Mackinac, where their simple preparations were quickly made. For provisions they took only Indian corn and smoked meat. They made inquiries from the Indians concerning their route and even traced out a map of the region. ^^ On May 17, 1673, with five men, they embarked in two canoes for the long voyage into the unknown.^*' As far as the Mascoutens' village on the Fox river near the Fox-Wisconsin portage the explorers voy- aged without fear, for the route had already been made known by former adventurers. The Indians on the banks of the Fox river tried to persuade them to forego their undertaking by 13 Thwaites, " The Story of Mackinac," in JVisconsin Historical Collections, 14:6. 1* Kellogg, Early Narratives of the Nori/iivest, 227. 1^ For an effort to identify this map see Kellogg, "Marquette's Authentic Map Possibly Identified," in Wisconsin Historical Society, Proceedings, 1906. Miss Kellogg informs me that she is now not so certain of this identification, but personally I am satisfied with her conclusion. it^ For the history of this expedition consult the accounts drawn from Jolliet: in Dablon's report of August i, 1674, in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 58:93 ff., and in Margry, Decouvertes et Etablissements, 1 : 262 ff. ; in an anonymous account, ibid., 259^ ff. Jolliet's own account is reproduced on his map in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 59:86; Frontenac's report of November 11, 1674, in Margry, Decouvertes et Etablissements, 1:257; Marquette's journal in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 59: 86 ff. 64 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY picturing unavoidable dangers — Indians without mercy to strangers, a dangerous river filled with horrible monsters which devoured both men and canoes, a demon still more terrible, and finally heat that would scorch them to death. Undeterred, they proceeded on their way, crossed the portage between the upper Fox and Wisconsin rivers guided by two Miami Indians and, on June 17, entered the Mississippi " with a joy I cannot express," writes Father Marquette. They passed down the river almost without incident, meeting none of the hardships prophesied by the Indians. Human inhabit- ants were first sighted at some Illinois villages on the west side of the river in the present state of Iowa. About June 20 the explorers were skirting the river banks of the land that the future was to know as Illinois. Father Marquette was inter- ested in the Indians who have given their name to the state and devoted several pages of his narrative to an account of their manners and customs and even quoted the words and music of one of their songs. ^'^ The canoes passed the mouth of the Missouri, the famous Piasa rock, and the mouth of the river Ohio; they continued southward to about the latitude of the Arkansas river. Certain now that the Mississippi flowed into the Gulf of Mexico and not into the Gulf of California, and fearing both the southern Indians and the Spaniards, they determined to return. On July 17 the homeward journey was begun. Probably in accordance with a previous plan, they returned by the Illinois river. Here they first realized the extent and fertility of the prairies. The leader, Jolliet, and his companions, like many later observers, were at first deceived in regard to the character of the soil by the lack of trees and shrubs; investigation soon convinced the young leader of its fertility and fitness for crops, and he pronounced the river valley "the most beautiful and most suitable for settlement." He later told his friends that " a settler would not there spend ten years in cutting down and burning the trees; on the very day of his arrival, he could put his plow into the ground." "Thus he would easily find in the country his food and clothing."^^ ^^ The chant and music are printed in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 59:311. 18 Ibid., 58 : 107. THE AGE OF DISCOVERY 65 The voyagers passed into the Des Plaines river and over the portage to the Chicago; close by was a village of seventy- four cabins of the Kaskaskia Indians, who secured a promise trom Father Marquette to return and instruct them.^^ The journey to Green Bay by way of Lake Michigan passed with- out incident. Here Jolliet left his companion, who was en- feebled by sickness, and journeyed to Montreal. When almost in sight of the village, his canoe capsized and all his papers were lost. Thus of his carefully kept journal the his- torian is deprived; for information he is limited to Jolliet's memories and the journal of the accompanying priest. The great river he had discovered Jolliet christened first "Buade," in honor of the family name of the Comte de Fron- tenac; later he called it "Colbert," for the great French pre- mier. His companion. Father Marquette, named it in com- memoration of the Immaculate Conception, but none of the names have been able to compete with that by which the children of the forest had so long called it, " Mississippi, the Great Water." ^^ Jolliet was delighted with the ease of the navigation from the Mississippi valley to the lakes region and saw in it the hope of realizing his dream of a prosperous colony. Having traveled previously through the southern lakes to the St. Lawrence, he now thought that he had discovered an easy means of travel and transportation from Canada to the valley of the Illinois and thence to Florida. A bark, he said, could be sailed from Lake Erie through the lakes to the lower end of Lake Michigan, where a canal through "but half a league of prairie" would admit the vessel to the water system of the great valley. This plan of a communication between the two great water systems by way of the Chicago river has been a vision seen by many statesmen from Jolliet's day down to the present time; but to Jolliet belongs the honor of first proposing it, and to him also must be ascribed the glory of first visualizing the future greatness of the country of the Illinois. In the drama 1^ Probably the village was near the present site of Utica rather than at the portage, as Father Marquette states. Parkman, La Salle, 65; Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 59:314, note 42. -0 On his first map Jolliet called the river " Buade," but on his second, " Colbert." eS THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY of Illinois civilization, now almost two centuries and a half old, Louis JoUiet's name stands first in the list of dramatis per- sonae, for he appeared first on the stage and as herald an- nounced to the world the coming birth. IV. THE GREAT GOVERNOR AND HIS OPPONENTS FATHER MARQUETTE kept his promise to return to the Indians.^ His poor health detained him at Green Bay over a year, but, feeling stronger in the fall of 1674, he started with only two companions on the return voyage. He was soon joined by a band of Illinois Indians, who conducted him on the way. The party was frequently delayed by bitter cold and contrary winds, so that it did not reach the Chicago river until December 4. Here the father, too weak to undergo the fatigues of further travel, decided to spend the winter. Al- ready the coiireurs de bois were making use of the Des Plaines portage, and they gave Father Marquette all the assistance in their power. He writes of his sojourn at Chicago as follows: "The blessed Virgin Immaculate has taken such care of us during our wintering that we have not lacked provisions, and have still remaining a large sack of corn, with some meat and fat. We also lived very pleasantly, for my illness did not pre- vent me from saying holy mass every day." - At the break-up of winter he again took up the voyage and was received at the village of the Kaskaskia " as an angel from Heaven." A description of this first mission in the country of the Illinois declares that Marquette preached in the open air in a large prairie where were gathered to hear him five hundred chiefs and elders, who were seated in a circle around the priest, and one thousand five hundred men besides women and children. This service occurred on Good Friday; on Easter, Marquette performed a second service and named the mission the " Im- maculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin." So frail was he now that he could no longer delay his return journey. This time he made his way by land around the south- ern end of Lake Michigan. Gradually his strength ebbed, and 1 For Marquette's return to the Illinois, see his journal in Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 59: 165 ff., and a second account on page 185. ^Ibid., 181, 67 68 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY his companions were obliged to carry him. Through it all Marquette maintained the gentle and joyous spirit character- istic of him. On May i8, 1675, he died in the midst of the wilderness where he had served. His companions had carried him on his northern journey to the mouth of the Marquette river in the present state of Michigan. His biographer writes of him : " He always entreated God that he might end his life in these laborious missions, and that, like his dear St. Xavier, he might die in the midst of the woods, bereft of everything."^ His desire had been fulfilled. The romantic story of Father Marquette's last missionary journey and death is one of peace, hope, and love, undisturbed by the strife of political factions and unsullied by the sordid touch of business. Yet the act of this zealous altruist was in a sense the prelude of a long struggle between the protagonists of rival interests, the opening act of political antagonisms that were to shake the foundations of the French colony and to be fought out acrimoniously at the court of the king. The exploration of the territory south of the Great Lakes extended the field for rivalry among the contending factions. Toward this rich territory fur traders and missionaries turned their eyes; the right of exploiting its people and its peltries, the monopoly of trade and missions, was the stake. The Jesuits had represented the matters of the spirit in Jolliet's canoe, had quickly established the first mission, and might, therefore, hope to win a favorable decision. Nevertheless, influential rivals were soon to dispute their sole enjoyment of preaching and martyrdom in this far country. The issue over the right of exploiting the material wealth was at the moment, however, more vital. Who should be the leader in the development of the land of the Illinois? The politics of New France seethed with the excitement of the contest. Intrigue, forgery, bribery, and vituperation, all were employed by the various seekers of fortune. The outbreak of party strife was contemporary with the arrival in New France of the man who most completely grasped the significance of the west. By the magnitude of his plans and 3 Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 59:205. Later a band of Indians conveyed his bones to Mackinac, where they were finally interred. ^ GOVERNOR AND HIS OPPONENTS 69 by the boldness of his execution the new governor, Louis de Buade, comte de Frontenac, was to impress his personality on the whole continent for years to come. The grandeur of his vision and the forcefulness of his character arouse the histo- rian's imagination and secure for the doughty governor appre- ciative sympathy in his struggle with natural forces and human opposition. With the population of New France, which num- bered only 6,705 in 1674, he prepared to occupy the Mississippi valley and to hold it against the rapidly increasing British popu- lation along the Atlantic seaboard. He selected the Illinois country to represent his imperial aspirations; on its prairies he would establish the new frontier; the possession of it by his agents was to be the first move in the attainment of his object. Mingled with this imperial aspiration for France was the hope of financial gains for himself and his friends; the fur trade of this new territory offered a rich opportunity for the promoter. Every move by the governor encountered strenuous opposi- tion from a cleverly led and well-organized party. Early in the history of the French colony, the Jesuits had been granted spe- cial privileges in conducting the missions among the Indians, and they had proved themselves both adept in adjusting them- selves to the new conditions and zealous In the prosecution of their duties. When Frontenac arrived in the colony, the only posts in the lakes region were those erected by these fathers for the purpose of carrying on their missionary labors. These posts naturally became centers for the congregation of the fur trad- ers, particularly of those who were friends of the missionaries. From this association there grew up a partnership and this in turn became a party composed of the Jesuits and the leading merchants of New France. Their object was the maintenance of the monopoly of the fur trade in the territory around the Great Lakes. There can be no doubt that the religious order drew a profit from the partnership, since the Jesuits have always proved themselves thrifty and shrewd in the handling of their property. Both merchants and priests cherished the desire to transfer their operations to the region south of the lakes, the Jesuits to convert the heathen, the merchants to enjoy the profits of the trade. It was doubtless with the encouragement of the Jesuits 70 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY that Jolliet petitioned for the privilege of founding a colony of twenty inhabitants in the Illinois country. By natural endow- ments of heart and head and by his commercial and political associations he was well qualified for such an undertaking. His success would have meant the transference of the trading condi- tions existing in the north to the southern territory. Governor Frontenac, having his own plans, opposed the scheme; and, since the court believed that " it was necessary to multiply the inhabitants of Canada before thinking of other lands," the peti- tion was refused.^ The association of the Jesuits with the fur traders, whether in the region of the Great Lakes or in that of the Illinois, was dictated by the policy of opportunism, not foreign to the thought of these educated men of the world; but it was far from satis- fying the wishes of their more zealous leaders, who had already formulated their plans for the establishment in the heart of North America of a great christian state, wherein the aborig- ines should dwell in Arcadian simplicity under the tutelage of the Jesuits and without the contaminating influences of the traders. Marquette's mission of the Immaculate Conception among the Kaskaskia had laid the foundation. The experiment of such a state had already been started in distant Paraguay; why not a second Paraguay in the upper Mississippi valley? The idea of the Jesuits was deeply imbedded in humani- tarian feelings. Already they had seen the harmful effects upon the Indians of the contact with that most licentious class of white men, the coureurs de bois. These should be prohibited from entering the Indian state, but for purposes of trade the Indians would transport their furs to the white settlements. This dream of the Jesuits was never very near to realization, but the princi- ples in which it originated formed for years the platform of their fight with the civil officials of New France, and in particu- lar with the Comte de Frontenac; they worked persistently for an order from the court prohibiting fur traders from going to the west and at times were successful; they protested even more strenuously against the sale of liquor to the Indians. * Jolliet received later the cession of the large and strategically situated island of Anticosti, where he found sufficient outlet for his powers. He became one of the foremost citizens of New France. Margry, Decowvertes et Etablissements, i: 324 ff. ; Lorin, Le Comte de Frontenac, 201. GOVERNOR AND HIS OPPONENTS 71 How far justified the Jesuits were in their opposition to the brandy trade with the Indians may be learned from the following description by a writer in 1705: "Experience as old as the Colony teaches us that they (the Indians) drink it only to intoxicate themselves, without having ever been able to understand by what fatal charm the surprising effect can be produced. The village or the cabin in which the savages drink brandy is an image of hell: fire [i. e., burning brands of coals flung by the drunkards] flies in all directions; blows with hatchets and knives make the blood flow on all sides; and all the place resounds with frightful yells and cries. They bite off each other's noses, and tear away their ears; wherever their teeth are fixed, they carry away the morsel [of flesh]. The father and the mother throw their babes upon the hot coals or into the boiling kettles. They commit a thousand abominations — the mother with her sons, the father with his daughters, the brothers with their sisters. They roll about on the cinders and coals, and in blood." ^ The governor's party was willing enough to acknowledge the demoralizing effects of brandy on the Indians but neverthe- less was able to formulate an argument difficult for the Jesuits and their adherents to answer effectively. If the Indians did not drink French brandy they would carry their furs to Albany and purchase English rum — equally demoralizing in this world; further, mixed with the English intoxicant, the children of the forest would imbibe Protestant heresy and endanger their souls for eternity. The dilemma was always a disturbing element in every serious effort to enforce a royal prohibition of the brandy trade. The principal difliculty arose, of course, from the self- interest of the traders, a motive too strong to be stopped by the distant voice of king or the thundering of church. Brandy made the cheating of the Indians easy and brought enormous profits. There were cases of the purchase of three thousand dollars' worth of peltries with a cask of brandy worth about forty dollars.^ 5 This is from an anonymous memoir quoted in a long note in Blair, Indian Tribes, 1:208, from which, and p. 228, note 164, this account of the coureurs de bois is drawn. ^ Ibid., 208, note 148; Shortt and Doughty, Canada and its Provinces, 2:467. 72 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY The government's solicitous supervision of the Indians and its equally anxious oversight of the morals of the French colo- nists imposed the necessity of regulating the activities of the coureurs de hois, whose numbers were increasing out of all right proportion to the number of settlers. Even Frontenac, with his belief in expansion, was disturbed by this feature of colonial life. He reported that the royal regulations were altogether ineffective. In 1673 the people were forbidden on pain of their lives to go into the woods for twenty-four hours without permission, and three years later the issue by the governor of permits to trade was prohibited. The only effect was to make a very large number of Frenchmen outlaws in the west, where they were supported by their friends and were able to divert the fur trade to the British at Albany.'^ Absolute prohibition having failed as a cure, the king in 168 1 tried the experiment of allowing the governor to issue a limited number of royal permits, twenty-five.^ These conges were distributed to noble families and to colonists whom the government wished to recompense. They constituted a form of property and were either used by the original possessors or sold to others.^ In the end this and all other attempts to regulate the traffic of the coureurs de bois failed, because In the primeval forest trade could have been limited only by a powerful and all- pervading government or by a strongly organized company, neither of which existed in French America. Fleets of canoes departed from Montreal either in early spring or in the middle of September, each canoe manned by a crew of three voyageurs, as the canoe men were called. Provisions were scanty, for these men of the west counted on their skill with the gun; but game frequently failed them In the dead of winter, and death by cold and starvation always threatened. The journey they ' Frontenac to Colbert, November 2, 1672, in Neiv York Colonial Documents, 9:90; king to Frontenac, April 15, 1676, ibid., 126; Duchesneau to minister, November 10, 1679, ibid., 131; Duchesneau to minister, November 13, 1680, ibid., 140 ff. These two last accused Frontenac of conniving with the coureurs de bois. See also Shortt and Doughty, Canada and Its Provinces, 2:473. 8 Frontenac to king, November 2, 1681, in Neiv York Colonial Documents, 9:145. The conges were issued first in the spring of 1682. 'Blair, Indian Tribes, 1:228, note 164; Lahontan, Neiu Voyages to North America (ed. Thwaites), 1:101. GOVERNOR AND HIS OPPONENTS 73 made was hard and toilsome. Innumerable portages, often miles in length, intervened in the thousand of leagues they trav- eled; around these they carried their canoes, provisions, and merchandise. In the rapids they jumped into the frigid water to push their canoes against the current, often cutting their bare feet on the sharp rocks. Arrived at the Great Lakes, the fleet of canoes separated into smaller parties to follow by the river courses the Indians to their winter hunting grounds, where the actual exchange of merchandise for furs took place; then back to Mackinac, always the rendezvous for the far western fleet, where furs were sorted and preparations made for the long return trip to Montreal. Here at last came months of leisure, often spent in gambling, drunkenness, and general debauchery. Through it all, both in work and in play, the voyageurs and coiireurs de bois maintained a joyous, persever- ing, and in general uncomplaining nature that has made them the ideal leaders of the white advance across the continent. ^*^ One degenerating influence upon the Indians of this contact, which the Jesuits did not stress greatly, was of very real impor- tance. Before the coming of the whites the Indians formed self-supporting communities and supplied by their own hands all their needs. They made their own weapons, their own utensils, their own clothing; but within a few years after their first contact with the Europeans they had sunk to the state of economic dependents. Hunting, which once had been pursued for food and the needs of covering alone, became a trade, upon the success of which the very life of the Indian communities depended. Guns, shot, and powder, pots and pans, blankets, and in later years, even their currency, wampum, could be sup- plied only by their taskmasters who operated deep in the wilder- ness beyond the judicious control of a beneficent government. The plans of the Comte de Frontenac to expand both the trade and the settlements were diametrically opposed to those of the Jesuits. Frontenac was not irreligious, rather the reverse; but neither he nor any of his lieutenants, such as La Salle, was inspired by any missionary zeal. Although the governor em- ployed the Recollects as chaplains, he gave them no encourage- 10 Cadillac gives a very vivid picture of these coureurs de bois in Margry, Decouvertes et Etablissements, 5:83 fit. 74 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY ment to work among the Indians. The expansion of trade and the development of the empire dictated his policy toward the Indians and the west To exploit the aborigines to gain wealth and to assimilate them into the white population for purposes of government were the keynotes of his actions. The tribes were pawns in his commercial and imperial game; and in this he was at one with the fur traders, to whom red men were but trappers of game. Another obstruction to the carrying out of Frontenac's policy was the opposition of the minister, Colbert. The latter's admiration for the deeds of the early discoverers did not blind him to the evident needs of a weak colony; and these needs were depicted for him in eloquent words by the Jesuit party at court, for at Versailles as well as in Quebec the two parties struggled over the future of the colony; and the arguments of the Jesuit missionaries were no less strongly supported in the closet of the king and in the office of his minister than were the loud demands of Frontenac. Party influences weighted the scales first on this side and then on that, bringing a vacillation in royal instructions which was detrimental to the colony. Colbert himself saw the folly of expanding so thin a colony as New France over so vast a territory. He was alarmed at Frontenac's report of the activities of the coureurs de bois in the west, and he constantly urged the governor to encourage the development of agriculture.^^ On April 15, 1676, he wrote to Frontenac: "In regard to new discoveries, you ought not to turn your attention thereunto without urgent necessity and very great advantage, and you ought to hold it as a maxim that it is much better to occupy less territory and to people it thor- oughly, than to spread oneself out more, and to have feeble colonies which can be destroyed by any sort of accident." ^^ Two years before, however, in writing on the same subject, he had made two exceptions to the general rule of not pro- moting western explorations. The first concerned territory which might be of service to the commerce and trade of the French and might be discovered by and taken possession of by ^^ He also disapproved of the request of the Jesuits for the privilege of founding distant missions. Neiv York Colonial Documents, 9:90, 114; Margry, Dicouvertes et Etablissements, i : 249. ^^New York Colonial Documents, 9: 126. GOVERNOR AND HIS OPPONENTS 75 some other nation; the second concerned territory with a port more open than any in Canada. ^^ In spite of the prohibition, therefore, there was offered by the two exceptions ample op- portunity for Frontenac's policy of expansion. Could it not be readily conceived as warranted by both exceptions? 13 Margry, Decouvertes et Etablissements, 1:256. V. THE FIRST STRUGGLE FOR EMPIRE MOMENTOUS events in their origins do not always startle by their magnitude. The discovery of the Mis- sissippi valley and the beginning of its occupation by white men, in comparison with present day events involving millions of men and billions of dollars, appear petty in the extreme; but, through the triumph of the white population over the hostile forces of the wilderness in the wealthiest valley of the world, trivial events have become potentially great. The contests be- tween rival European nations for dominion over the valley, though decided by a handful of men, were stupendous, for the dominance within the interior of North America was at stake and upon the outcome depended the relative power in world conferences of the people of English, French, and Spanish speech. The future predominance among these peoples was practically settled in the hundred years following the important exploration of Louis Jolliet. It was a period fraught with the fate of nations.^ In the opinion of many men of Canada, the occupation of the newly discovered region must, in the interest of France, be soon accomplished; yet factional strife threatened to defeat every effort to bring this about. The plans of the Jesuits and Jolliet had been blocked by Governor Frontenac, because he thought that the privileges of the religious order in the region of the Great Lakes had already endowed it with too great power over the destinies of the west. The one hope to counteract its influence lay in the colonization and exploitation of the Illinois country by other interests. This was the period when all traders were prohibited from going into the wilderness. The prohibi- tion was favorable to a fur trading monopoly, provided the governor could persuade the crown of the necessity of occupying the territory, because it fell under one of the specified excep- ^ For a more extensive treatment of the subject of this chapter, the reader is referred to Lorin, Le Comte de Frontenac, and Parkman, La Salle. 76 FIRST STRUGGLE FOR EMPIRE 77 tions to the general policy of restriction. The plan was to secure the privilege of a monopoly and the organization of a company. The agent selected to put it into execution was a man of genius and vision, the first promoter of big business in the west, Robert Cavelier, sieur de la Salle. - La Salle was baptized at Rouen on November 22, 1643. Born into a family belonging to the lesser nobility, he received the best education of the period, that of the Jesuits. It may have been during this early association that there originated the enmity which he exhibited toward the order from the mo- ment of his arrival in Canada.^ In 1666 the young Frenchman followed his brother, the Abbe Jean Cavelier, of the Sulpician order, to Montreal, where he received an estate, later called Lachlne. For the life of a farmer La Salle was ill adapted; the Impetus to explore constantly tempted him into the near-by wilderness, whence the natives frequently came to visit him. His imagination was particularly aroused by the tales of the Iroquois; he first heard from them of the "Beautiful River," or the Ohio, which took its rise In their country and led into the unknown. Might it not prove to be the long-sought route to China? The moment was propitious for such exploration, since the intendant, Jean Talon, was fostering elaborate discoveries to the north and west. Yet the first expedition undertaken by the young explorer in 1669 seems not to have had official backing. He associated himself with two Sulpiclans, the Abbes Gallinee and Dollier de Casson, who were going to the region south of the lakes for the purpose of establishing missions. The result of their explorations does not necessarily belong to this nar- rative, since they did not reach the Illinois country. La Salle, 2 Not Rene-Robert as so often given. Gravier, Cavelier de la Salle, ii. The origin of the name "La Salle" is unknown; it was not that of his father, his uncle, or his brother. Ibid., ii. 3 For source material on La Salle's biography, see Margry, Decouvertes et Etablissemenis, volumes 1-3 (Margry's work is the standard collection of sources) ; Cox, Journeys of La Salle, 2 volumes (translations of the more impor- tant documents) ; Kellogg, Early Narratives of the Northivest (Tonti's memoir) ; Thomassy, De La Salle et Ses Relations Inedites (bearing on the discovery of the Mississippi); "Relation de Joutel," in Margry, Decouvertes et Etablissements. Excellent secondary works are the following: Lorin, Le Comte de Frontenac; Parkman, La Salle ; Gravier, Cavelier de la Salle, and Nouvelle Etude ; Shea, The Bursting of Pierre Margry's La Salle Bubble. 78 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY in fact, went no farther than the land of the Seneca. The next year he was sent to the same region by the intendant, but no record of the results has been preserved.^ These first expeditions were Important in the history of Illinois, however, on account of their utilization by La Salle's friends and because of the Illustration they give of the animosity between the two parties dividing the government of Quebec and that of Paris. La Salle's party was much chagrined at the suc- cess of Jolllet and his friends, the Jesuits, who in turn naturally took all possible advantage of the discovery of the Mississippi river to further their purposes at court. To counteract this success. La Salle's friends magnified his exploits, going so far as to use the ready pen of the Abbe Bernou of Paris to manufac- ture an account of early explorations of La Salle, based on his later exploits, supposedly proving that he had actually canoed down the Ohio and later down the Illinois in 1669 and 1670; and they even interpolated in a petition, purporting to come from La Salle, a clause claiming that he had made the discovery of theOhio.^ The significant thing concerning these early years of La Salle is that he lived among the Iroquois long enough to learn their language and traditions thoroughly and to become sea- soned to the fatigues of forest life. He soon proved himself of service to Governor Frontenac, who realized that the Iro- quois nations held the key to the country of the fur trade lying south of the lakes; and he and his able lieutenant were soon planning to exploit this region. In 1673 the governor made an expedition to the northern bank of Lake Ontario, where he met the chieftains of the Iroquois on the site of the modern city of Kingston. Frontenac, like La Salle, had a personality and bearing fitted to Impress the Indians, and In this meeting the governor won the respect of these savages who had been so long hostile to the French. Now the palisades of a new fort — called Frontenac, after * Lorin, Le Comte de Frontenac, 14 flF. ''The petition is to be found in Margry, Decouvertes et Etablissements, 1:330, and the " Histoire de M. La Salle," ibid., 376 ff. On this subject Frank E. Melvin has made a very careful study which is still in manuscript in the Illi- nois Historical Survey, but soon to be published. It leaves no doubt concerning the assertions in the text. Hanna, The IVilderness Trail, i : 143, also arrives at the same conclusion. FIRST STRUGGLE FOR EMPIRE 79 the governor — were raised, on the governor's own initiative and without the authority of the court, to become the center of the proposed western enterprises and to overawe the Iro- quois confederacy, which acted as an intermediary between the western Indians and the British traders at Albany. The French government raised objections; and finally, in 1674, La Salle was sent to France as the governor's representative to explain the situation to an ignorant ministry and to petition for the position of commander of the new fort. In introducing La Salle to Minister Colbert, Frontenac wrote enthusiastically of his lieu- tenant: "I cannot but recommend to you, Monseigneur, the Sieur de la Salle, who is about to go to France, and who is a man of intelligence and ability, the most competent of anyone I know here to accomplish every enterprise and discovery which may be intrusted to him, as he has the most perfect knowledge of the state of the country, as you will see, if you are disposed to give him a few moments' audience."*^ Thus introduced, La Salle was well received at court in spite of the opposition of the Jesuit party, not so powerful at the moment as it later became under the fostering care of Madame de Maintenon. He petitioned for a patent of nobility and for the seigniory of Fort Frontenac, promising to build the fort of stone and to develop a village around it at a considerable cost. Both petitions were granted. The expense which the adventure incurred was approved by his family and friends as a good investment promising rich returns from the fur trade; hence La Salle had no trouble in obtaining the necessary finan- cial backing. Undoubtedly his chief, Governor Frontenac, entered into partnership with him. The hope of the investors was not oversanguine, for the new fort might be made the center of the whole fur trade of the west, particularly if La Salle could maintain his friendly relations with the Iroquois. That the hopes of the investors were never fulfilled must be attributed to the character of La Salle, explorer, adventurer, and dreamer of big dreams, but not a man of business. " I have neither the habit nor the inclination to keep books, nor have I anybody with me who knows how," he wrote a friend."^ * Margry, Decouvertes et Etablissements, 1:277. ■^ Quoted in Parkman, La Salle, 331. 8o THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY Riches lay around him, but his were not the hands to garner them. Even more signal was his failure as a leader of men. A few, like Tonti^ and La Forest, clung to him with an ideal devotion; but by the majority of his followers La Salle was regarded as tyrannical and arrogant; and at critical moments the service due him as leader was refused. Desertions were frequent, and more than one attempt at assassination was made. His equals as well as his inferiors La Salle failed to inspire with confidence and affection. His was one of those natures, continually at strife with associates, which never learns the strategic force of conciliation. Thus he disdained to win over the merchants of Canada to his new undertaking, though it was evident that his privileges of conducting the fur trade would have attracted many. La Salle himself ascribed his diffi- culty in propitiating people to a timidity which he could not overcome. His fear of meeting people caused him to seek the solitude of the wilderness rather than preferment in the civil- ized quarters of the world. " I well believe that there is self- love in this; and that, knowing how little I am accustomed to a more polite life, the fear of making mistakes makes me more reserved than I like to be. So I rarely expose myself to con- versation with those in whose company I am afraid of making blunders, and can hardly help making them." ^ La Salle returned to New France in 1675, bringing with him his faithful lieutenant, Frangois Daupin de la Forest, and the Recollect friar, Louis Hennepin, not yet made famous by a stupendous lie. Two years the leaders spent in preparation for the extension of the fur trade; then again La Salle was obliged to journey to France to seek further privileges and financial assistance. His request for the privilege of pushing his explorations south of the lakes, of building forts, and of monopolizing the fur trade, backed by powerful men and some bribery, was granted; but he was carefully forbidden to trade with the Ottawa Indians or with tribes which carried their 8 He spelled his name thus and not " Tonty," as is generally given. The error has been due to misreading the usual flourish with the final letter as form- ing a " y." A consultation of any Italian encyclopedia will convince the reader. Tonti accompanied La Salle from France in 1678. • Quoted in Parkman, La Salle, 339. FIRST STRUGGLE FOR EMPIRE 8i furs to Montreal. ^° This meant that he was cut off from trading on the Great Lakes. Funds necessary for the ven- ture were finally obtained, though at ruinous interest, and on the credit of his estate a company was formed in 1679 at Montreal. ^^ The preparations for the invasion of the west were pressed throughout the winter. By August, 1679, all was ready, and the first ship of commerce on Lake Erie, the Griffon, began its voyage through the Great Lakes. An excellent trade was carried on during the voyage in spite of the prohibition of the king, and the vessel was well laden with furs when it reached Green Bay. Here La Salle, ever unfortunate, learned that his numerous creditors had seized his property at Frontenac and Quebec, and accordingly he sent the Griffon back with her cargo with orders to return and meet him at the mouth of the St. Joseph river. In some way not known exactly the ship sank some time after leaving port, causing a loss of 40,000 llvres to its owner. ^- Meanwhile La Salle, with only fourteen men, three of whom were Recollect friars, in four canoes, coasted along the western shore of Lake Michigan, enduring many hardships as the weather grew colder. Rumors of possible attacks from the Iroquois were brought him by the Indians. The arousing of these Indians he attributed, probably without cause, to the intrigues of his enemies, the Jesuits. Finally, on November i, he entered the mouth of the river St. Joseph, only to find that his lieutenant, Henri de Tonti, whom he had ordered to lead a company from Mackinac, had not yet arrived. La Salle's men were near mutiny; but he drove them, while waiting for reenforcements, to the task of building a fort at the mouth of the river; and before the end of the month Tonti arrived. The party, now numbering thirty-three, embarked in eight canoes on December i and ascended the river in search of a 1° Lorin, Le Comte de Frontenac, 204; Margry, Decouvertes et Etablissements, i:3?3, 337- ^"^ Ibid., 425, 427 ff. ; 2:25 ff. ^^ Ibid., 1:451. For the whole discussion of La Salle's operations consult Parkman, La Salle, and Garneau, Histoire du Canada, i : 301 ff. The Hvre was equivalent to the modern franc. Its value varied greatly, bpt may be roughly reckoned at twenty cents. 82 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY portage to the Kankakee. ^^ When reached, this river was hardly differentiated from the marshland, but soon the scene changed, and the explorers were floating between banks lined with trees which obscured the view of the broad prairies beyond. Even in midwinter, Illinois seemed to La Salle, as it had to Jolliet, a land of great promise; and he became eloquent in his description of the country. ^^ The little flotilla on January 5 entered the expansion of the river called then Pimitoui or Peoria lake. Here they found a village of the Illinois Peoria, who showed signs of hostility. La Salle was convinced that the Jesuit Allouez, who had just left the region, had poisoned their minds, telling them that he, La Salle, was intending to deliver them over to the Iroquois. The explorer understood Indian nature; and realizing that boldness was the best course, he landed his men ready for battle. His policy won over the Indians. Even when a Mas- couten chief came secretly to warn the Illinois of La Salle's purposes, he was unable to rouse them to action. ^^ On the south side of the river a mile from the end of the "lake" he erected Fort Crevecoeur. Here at the second French fort in the great west, preparations were begun for the voyage down the Mississippi. To make a preliminary survey of the great river which was the object of his explorations, he sent Michel Accault and an- other voyageur, accompanied by the Recollect friar. Father Hennepin, to explore Its upper reaches.^'' There Is no need to follow in detail this exploratory trip; it was successful. The explorers were taken captive by the Sioux and conducted by them Into their country. In their wanderings they visited the falls of St. Anthony, near which stand today the cities of St. '3 This river as well as the Illinois was called at this time " Theakiki." Other names given it were " Seignelay," " River of the Mascoupens," and "Divine." Parkman, La Salle, 167, note 1. i* Margry, Decouvertes et Etahlissements, 1:582. ^^ Ibid., 467; 2:33, 37. La Salle wrote that the Jesuits made "the Iroquois among whom they live, believe that my enterprise has no other end than to furnish the Illinois with arms and hatchets, and the Illinois believe that I am establishing myself in their country in order to deliver them to their enemies." ^^ Whether Hennepin or Accault was the leader appears to be in doubt. La Salle says he sent Accault and Picard. Margry, Decouvertes et Etahlissements, 2:245; but see Shea's note in Le Clercq, First Establishment of the Faith (ed. Shea), 2: 124. FIRST STRUGGLE FOR EMPIRE 83 Paul and Minneapolis. From their enforced attendance on the Indians the three men were rescued by the greatest of all cou- reiirs de bois, Daniel Greysolon Dulhut. Hennepin, after his release, made his way to Paris where in 1683 ^^ published an account of his journeyings, which became immediately popular and made the name of La Salle first known to the reading public. ^^ Shortly after Hennepin left the fort, La Salle himself with four companions departed on a journey to Fort Frontenac to bring supplies and to straighten out his finances.^® La Salle was on the point of returning to the Illinois country, when two messengers from Tonti reached him on July 22 with the dis- heartening news that, while Tonti with a small party was absent inspecting Starved Rock as a possible location for the permanent post, all the men remaining at Fort Crevecoeur had deserted, after plundering and destroying the fort; they had looted also the fort on the St. Joseph and that at Niagara. La Salle must now begin anew. First of all, the necessary assistance had to be carried to Tonti, upon whose presence in the Illinois seemed to depend the hope of the whole enterprise. Quickly collecting his equipment. La Salle started westward again on August i, 1680. With him went his lieutenant. La Forest, and twenty-five men, including artisans of all kinds. He journeyed by way of the Great Lakes and on November 4 reached the mouth of the St. Joseph. He pushed on over the portage with only six Frenchmen and an Indian. While he was still on the lakes a rumor had reached him of an attack of the Iroquois upon the Illinois people. Full of dread, his small party approached the Indian village, near the site of modern Utica. The village was burned, the cornfields were laid waste, and the corpses of men, rifled from the graveyard and now half eaten by the wild beasts and buzzards, lay strewn on the ground — the handiwork of the Iroquois. La Salle's one thought was of Tonti. Leaving three men behind to warn the rest of his party that was to follow, he ^^ Description de la Louisiane nowvellement decouverie au Sud-Oiiesi de la Nouvelle France (Paris, 1683). ^^ Parkman says it was " the most arduous journey ever made by a French- man in America." La Salle, 193, 198. The superlative is possibly too strong when one remembers the journeyings of the Verendrie and many other explorers. 84 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY canoed rapidly down the Illinois river, observing the signs of the flight of the Illinois before their implacable foes. No trace could he find of his lieutenant, though he pursued his course until he reached the goal of his ambition, the Mississippi river. He then turned back, ascended the Des Plaines a short distance, and found a slight evidence of the passage of white men. With hopes revived, he and his men struck out on foot, despite the cold midwinter, toward the fort on the St. Joseph. There they found the rest of their party under La Forest awaiting them.^^ What of Tonti? During La Salle's absence on his journey to Fort Frontenac, Tonti had experienced one horror after another. After his men destroyed Fort Crevecoeur and de- serted, he with five companions, two of whom were the Recol- lect friars, Zenobe Membre and Gabriel de la Ribourde, made his residence in the large Illinois village between Starved Rock and the Vermilion river, his purpose being to avert the suspicion of the natives, who were not yet convinced of the friendly purposes of La Salle. In the fall there suddenly burst upon the village the danger of utter annihilation; a force of five hundred Iroquois with one hundred Miami came marching against the Illinois. The cause of this war seems to have been wholly economic, in spite of La Salle's belief that it was due to the intrigues of his enemies, the Jesuits. ^^ The motive back of the wars of the Iroquois is not diflficult to discover. Like all the aborigines, this proud confederacy had become eco- nomically dependent upon the white men — in their case the Albany traders — for the necessities of life and found them- selves obliged to make the fur trade their principal business. The territory which they occupied was never rich in fur bearing animals, and the supply had soon become exhausted. The profits of middlemen were their motive for war. They must force the western Indians to trade through them; or, failing in this, they must conquer and exploit the territory themselves.-^ ^* Cox, Journeys of La Salle, 1:126 fF. ; Margry, Decouvertes et Etablisse- ments, 1 : 518 ff., 2: 137. 20 See particularly his letter of August 22, 1682, ibid., 2:216 ff. 21 Their policy of annihilating their enemies points to the second alterna- tive as their purpose. For the early histor}' of the Iroquois relation to western trade I am greatly indebted to Mclhvain's introduction to Wraxall, An Abridge- ment of the Indian Affairs. His treatment of the subject is by all odds the ablest history of early Indian affairs that has been written. FIRST STRUGGLE FOR EMPIRE 85 Meanwhile they assumed something of the attitude of game wardens of the beaver and became particularly incensed at the Illinois for killing the female animals, thus hastening the extinc- tion of the species.-'-^ The Importance of the trade to their economic life made the Iroquois very sensitive to the danger of French success in establishing trade relations with the Indians of the west. Without peltries they could buy no white man's merchandise. The divorce of the western Indians from the invading French traders was as important to the safety of the Iroquois trade as was the friendship of the British. Frontenac's plans for, and La Salle's exploits in, the region south of the Great Lakes threatened the very existence of the Five Nations. The des- perate attacks on the Hurons and Ottawa, mentioned in the last chapter, and this sudden onslaught upon the Illinois are all to be explained on this economic ground. The appearance of a large war party of Iroquois on the Illinois river had a far greater significance than a local economic war between the French and the aborigines. The era when the British entered consciously upon the policy of developing their western fur trade began at the moment when the French first trod the prairies of the Illinois. Then it was that London became an active center of speculation in furs. The Hudson's Bay Company, whose power still stretches over the Canadian northwest, had just been founded, and Its first ships were trading on the bay that gave the company Its name. Influenced by the same group of men who were engaged in this northern company. Englishmen of Virginia were at the same time making their way painfully across the Appalachian divide and estab- lishing trade relations with the Indians south of the Ohio.-" A few years before, the colony of New York had been taken by the British from the Dutch; and the same London specu- lators were organizing the western industry of that colony. In the competition with the French for the Indian trade, the British enjoyed one great advantage and suffered one disadvan- tage. The British goods could be sold at Albany more cheaply -- This same charge was brought against the Illinois by the Foxes. 23 Alvord and Bidgood, The First Explorations of the Trans-Allegheny Region by the Virginians, contains an account of this early enterprise and of the union of the British interests in the three regions mentioned. 86 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY than the French could market their merchandise in Montreal.-^ In particular rum was cheaper than brandy and just as effective ; the English liquor made one drunk for a muskrat skin, the French, for a beaver. The disadvantage of the British was a badly organized system of trade. All the colonies were in competition, there were no imperial regulations, and no colony undertook systematically, as the French government attempted to do, to protect the Indian rights from unscrupulous traders. The news of the operations of the French on the Mississippi river aroused the greatest uneasiness among the Albany traders, an uneasiness felt even in political circles in London. The British themselves were not yet prepared to enter into a direct struggle with the French for the great interior valley, but they could and did strike at their rivals through their allies, the Iroquois. The attack of 1680 marks the opening campaign of almost a hundred years of warfare for dominion over the west. The Illinois, thrown into the greatest confusion and fear by this unexpected attack, threatened to wreak their vengeance on Tonti and his companions. The boldness of Tonti in attempting mediation between the Indian war parties — he went alone among the Iroquois — assuaged their suspicions. The Illinois soon withdrew across and down the river and were followed by the Iroquois until most of the former were forced to take refuge across the Mississippi. The Tamaroa alone, thinking themselves safe, did not cross. They were suddenly attacked by the enemy; the men fled, and the women and chil- dren were massacred with the usual horrors of an Iroquois victory. The remains of this fight La Salle later discovered on his journey down the Illinois river.^® Tonti, captured by the Iroquois, had been compelled to leave the region. With his companions he made his way amidst the greatest hardships — Father Ribourde was actually killed by the Kickapoo — to Green Bay. The adversity which La Salle had experienced at the hands of the Iroquois gave him constant anxiety. The danger sug- gested the cure, and La Salle developed out of this experience 2* Sec comparison of price lists in A^*?^ York Colonial Documents, 9:408. 25 Tonti's account in Kellogg, Early Narratives of the Northvsest, 291 ff. ; Margry, Decouvertes et Etablissements, 1:510 ff. FIRST STRUGGLE FOR EMPIRE 87 an Indian policy which was to be followed by the French au- thorities in the west for many years. The Iroquois confederacy could be resisted only by a strong confederacy of western Indians. From the tribes of the Abnaki and Mohegan, wan- derers from the east, the Illinois, the Miami, and the Shawnee, La Salle was able before spring to form a real confederacy of western tribes prepared to meet in war the Five Nations.-*^ Full of new courage, the explorer again journeyed to Fort Frontenac. Tonti joined him at Mackinac. Although the bills for constructing Fort Frontenac were still unpaid and the build- ing was heavily mortgaged, he raised, with the aid of the Comte de Frontenac and by the sale of part of his monopoly, sufficient resources to make another attempt to reach the mouth of the Mississippi and to open up the connection between that semi- tropical port and wintry Canada. Back to Fort Miami he made his way, through the usual hardships, and there the preparations for the supreme effort were completed. The Indian allies he chose to accompany him were the Abnaki and Mohegan from New England. He se- lected eighteen of these, who insisted on being accompanied by ten squaws and some children. The Frenchmen of the party numbered twenty-three. In the dead of winter they made the start in canoes to Chicago and continued their journey on foot to the open water on the Illinois river. Here they again took to their canoes; and on February 2, 1682, they darted out into the stream of the Mississippi. The trip down was made without difficulty or danger, Indians along the banks proving friendly. Finally the voyagers reached the long-sought mouth of the river, the most accessible port of entry into the heart of the west. Here with appro- priate ceremonies they raised a column on which was inscribed in French: "Louis the Great, King of France and Navarre, reigns ; April 9, 1 682." La Salle then solemnly took possession of Louisiana, the name given by him to the region watered by the Mississippi and its branches — a huge territory, stretching from the Alleghenies to the Rockies, and from the Rio Grande to the source of the Missouri — and a second time proclaimed -6 See La Salle's account in Margry, Decouvertes et Etabltssements, 1:525 ff. ; Cox, Journeys of La Salle, i : 129. 88 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY it a part of France. The empire had thus been staked out by Jolliet and La Salle; France had now to protect its claim from all comers. ^^ On his return journey La Salle was taken ill and was obliged to rest awhile at Fort Prudhomme, which he built at the Chickasaw bluffs, while Tonti continued on his way to Mack- inac, whence the announcement of the successful outcome of the expedition could be sent to La Salle's eagerly waiting creditors and friends in Canada and France. La Salle seemed on the point of success. His colony at the Illinois could be established; the Indians were ready to unite with him; and a port open the year round was secured on the gulf, which he intended to fortify and colonize. He might soon hope to free himself entirely from the entanglements of Canada and make himself the governor of a vaster and more fertile realm than that of the north. The first step in this magnificent plan was the fortification of the Illinois, a move not to be delayed, for rumors of another Iroquois invasion were persistent. The place chosen by La Salle for his second fort has long been known as Starved Rock from a tradition that here a party of Illinois Indians defended themselves from their enemies until they starved. The rock rises out of the Illinois river to the height of one hundred and twenty-five feet. Its steep sides offer only one access and that a difficult one from the back. Its summit embraces about an acre of land and affords a fortification ready-made by nature. Here, in the month of December, La Salle and Tonti began raising the new fort — Fort St. Louis — the center of the seigniory. This was the first French fort of a permanent char- acter in the upper country, and here were signed the first patents to land ever made in Illinois. A later critic of his activities reports: " M. de la Salle has made grants at Fort St. Louis to several Frenchmen who have been living there for several years without caring to return. This has occasioned a host of disorders and abominations. These people to whom M. de la Salle has made grants are all youths who have done nothing toward cultivating the land. They keep marrying, after the 27 Cox, Journeys of La Salle, i:i6o ff. ; Margry, Decouvertes et EtabUsse- ments, 2: 186 ff. FIRST STRUGGLE FOR EMPIRE 89 manner of the savages of the country, Indian squaws whom they buy from the parents with merchandise. These people set themselves up as independent and masters on their grants." -^ Occupation and settlement then were beginning to take place. Around Fort St. Louis gathered the Indian allies. Their lodges of bark and rushes were scattered over the surrounding plains; here were Illinois, Wea, Piankashaw, Shawnee, Abnaki, and Miami to the number of 3,880 warriors, according to the map of Jean Baptiste Franquelin, whose data were obtained from La Salle himself. This would mean an Indian population in the neighborhood of twenty thousand. La Salle's success was due in the first instance to the universal fear inspired among the western Indians by the Iroquois attacks, but great credit must also be given him for the use he made of the situation. He often failed in his dealings with his equals and inferiors among his own countrymen, but with the Indians his arrogance and his love of solitude and silence made him a hero whose advice they eagerly accepted. Few white men have equaled his success in the leadership of the aborigines of the American wilderness. The outcome of his undertaking depended upon his being able to supply the Indians with merchandise, and this he must secure from Canada until he had established his entrepot at the mouth of the Mississippi. To facilitate the transportation of his goods he sent two of his men to build a small post at the Chicago portage.-'-' La Salle was now prepared to monopolize the fur trade of the west. His organization was perfected; the business outlook appeared most favorable. Unfortunately for La Salle, Canada was filled with his enemies, who could be restrained only by the Comte de Fron- tenac; and at this critical moment in his affairs the Illinois entrepreneur lost the strong support of this forceful governor, whom the opposition party had succeeded in having recalled to France. To his successor, Antoine le Febvre de la Barre, La Salle and his monopoly appeared particularly objection- 's Margry, Decowvertes et Etablissements, 3 : 563. -^ After Marquette's hut, this was the first building on the present site of Chicago; La Salle, writing June 4, 1683, called it " une maison de pieces." Mar- gry, Decowvertes et Etablissements, 2:317. 90 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY able.^^ La Salle, nevertheless, was not discouraged. La Barre might be won over. In a letter of April 2, 1 683, he described to the governor the difficulties that had beset the Illinois enter- prise. He asserted that his losses amounted to forty thousand ecus but that he was optimistic concerning the future, for he was certain of being able to pay his creditors that year.^^ He proudly described the results of his diplomacy in collecting the Indian tribes around his fort and informed the governor that he was on the point of going four hundred leagues to the south and west to induce more Indians to join him. He protested against the accusations that he was trading in furs with Indians of the Great Lakes and requested protection for his traders whom he was sending to Quebec to purchase supplies.^^ La Salle's hopes of securing support or even justice from the new governor were baseless. The latter had surrounded himself with the merchants who were La Salle's rivals, anxious to become heirs to the Illinois establishment ; and he was already belittling to the home government the discoveries of the ex- plorer; he expressed the fear that La Salle's efforts were exposing the western tribes to annihilation at the hands of the Iroquois; and he described La Salle as claiming falsely to have made discoveries, as arrogantly setting himself up as king, pillaging his countrymen, and putting them up for ransom. These misrepresentations were effectual in turning the French government, at least temporarily, against La Salle.^^ The governor had cause to fear the Iroquois, and he was correct in connecting their hostility with La Salle's operations, although his diagnosis of the condition was altogether wrong. The Iroquois were not satisfied with the results of their cam- 30 Margry, Decouvertes et Etablissements, 2:309 ff . ; Lorin, Le Comte de Frontenac, 268 ff. 3^ The ecu was worth five livres, or about a dollar. 32 " The payment," he wrote, " which I shall make to them after so many misfortunes will demonstrate that I have not undertaken an enterprise beyond my powers since .... I have come to the end of it without any assistance not to say in spite of the opposition of all those of the country." Margry, Decouvertes et Etablissements, 2:313. ^^ Ibid., 336; Parkman, La Salle, 323. The king wrote La Barre on August 5, 1683: " I am convinced, like you, that the discovery of the Sieur de la Salle is very useless, and that such enterprises ought to be prevented in future, as they tend only to debauch the inhabitants by the hope of gain, and to diminish the revenue from beaver-skins." Quoted ibid., 324. FIRST STRUGGLE FOR EMPIRE 91 paign in 1680 against the Illinois; they still feared the loss of the fur trade through the establishment of the French in the far west and their alliance with the Algonquian tribes of the region. In their purpose to crush these tribes they were sup- ported by the English and Dutch traders of Albany and by the new governor of New York, Colonel Thomas Dongan. When Frontenac left the colony a general war with the Iroquois seemed threatening, the prevention of which needed a strong hand. The measures taken by Governor de la Barre were weak. A deputation of forty-three Iroquois was persuaded to come to Montreal, where a grand council was held. The Iroquois, when asked why they made war on the Illinois, answered boldly that the Illinois must die; and they complained loudly of La Salle's operations. La Barre promised to punish him, and there is considerable evidence that the discoverer was offered as a propitiatory sacrifice to the enemy. Meanwhile La Salle was threatened with ruin by the lack of supplies. Convinced of the hostility of the governor, he started east in 1683 to obtain an agreement with the colonial officials, or in case of failure, to seek justice at the court of the king. En route he met the Chevalier de Baugy, who had been sent by the governor to assume command of the Illinois and to summon La Salle to appear at Quebec. There was nothing to do but to order Tonti to receive the new commander peace- fully. The surrender of Fort St. Louis by Tonti marks the culmination of the triumph of La Salle's enemies. All the posts established for the conduct of his business were now in the hands of rivals. La Salle's only hope lay in the French govern- ment. La Barre and his associates fell heir not only to La Salle's property but also to his enmities. A flotilla of canoes sent west with licenses from the governor was attacked and robbed by a war party of the Iroquois, who made no fine distinctions among fur traders; and the two officers of Fort St. Louis, Baugy and Tonti, were besieged by the same band. The siege lasted from March 21 to 27, 1684; but the fort proved too strong, and the Iroquois retired. Upon the approach of danger Baugy had sent a courier to Mackinac to seek aid; and after the 92 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY danger was over a party of sixty men as a reenforcement arrived, bringing with them an order to TontI to report in Quebec.^^ Discouraged but not defeated, La Salle returned to France, where he was surprised to learn that he was a noted man. His friends had been making every effort to bring the news of his activities to the notice of the court. In this they were unques- tionably assisted by the appearance in 1683 of Father Louis Hennepin's volume, Description de la Louisiane nouvellement decouverte an Sud-Oiiest de la Nouvelle France. La Salle's fame brought him the honor of a personal interview with Louis XIV, who was particularly impressed with his ideas of the future development of the transmarine empire. Colbert, the explorer's former patron, was dead; but his son, Jean Baptiste Colbert, marquis de Selgnelay, supported the plans of La Salle. The foreign relations were also favorable for the promotion of his purposes ; France was at war with Spain, and the ministry was easily persuaded that the proposed establishment of a fort at the mouth of the Mississippi would make possible the in- vasion of this rival's sole occupation of the gulf territory, would promote trade in the region, and would facilitate the conquest of the Mexican province of New Blscay.^^ The account of La Salle's efforts to found a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, ending in 1687 in his death at the hands of one of his own men. Is a story full of romance. The reader will find the tale of the last days of the explorer told at length by the most delightful of all American historians, Francis Parkman.^*' Magnificent in his failures. La Salle by his heroism has always made an appeal both to contemporaries and to pos- terity; nor should his efforts to win the Mississippi valley for France be estimated as futile, for he had aroused political cir- cles In France to Interest themselves In the expansion of their American empire. It was not to his efforts, however, that France owed her temporary possession of the Inland valley of North America; men of different character, with a greater 3* Margry, Decouvertes et Etablissements, 2:338 ff. ; Tonti's memoir in Kellogg, Early Narratives of the Northi^est, 305 ; Cox, Journeys of La Salle, 1:31. 3^ The memorial of La Salle is in Margry, Decouvertes et Etablissements, 2:359 ff. The plan ignored the existence of the whole of modern Texas. 3" Parkman, La Salle, 343 ff. FIRST STRUGGLE FOR EMPIRE 93 capacity and opportunity for accomplishment, were to do what La Salle attempted in vain. One result of the popularity of La Salle in France was that the government sent orders to Governor de la Barre to rein- state him in all his possessions. The order was obeyed, and Tonti took immediate possession of Fort St. Louis. He found that much of La Salle's work in uniting the tribes had been dissipated under the administration of the Sieur de Baugy. Tonti had a personality more amiable than that of La Salle and was equally competent in managing the Indians. The first danger confronting him was the renewal of hostilities between the Illinois and the Miami. These tribes he assuaged by pres- ents and persuasion. This danger averted, he had little trouble in reviving the Indian confederacy. From his first appearance in the colony of New France, Governor de la Barre had boasted of the punishment that he would inflict upon the Iroquois. He confided his intention to the governor of New York, Thomas Dongan, writing that he found it necessary to lead a punitive expedition against the Five Nations. This early information gave to the British gov- ernor an advantage which he was quick to utilize, despite the instructions of his king to maintain peaceful relations with New France. He strengthened his bond with the Iroquois by inform- ing them of the French intentions, promising them his military assistance; and he persuaded them to place themselves under his protection and to consent to the erection of the arms of the Duke of York in their villages — a sign of sovereignty little understood by the savages, but in the course of time to become a symbol of Britain's right to a vast territory. Many forces impelled La Barre to hasten his preparations for war. He boastfully wrote the king: " My purpose is to exterminate the Senecas; for otherwise your Majesty need take no further account of this country, since there is no hope of peace with them, except when they are driven to it by force." ^" Brave words these, but not followed up by deeds, which alone passed as currency in the wilderness. The governor's expe- dition was a fiasco; the troops, few in number, fell ill; no battle followed; and the treaty made was a disgrace to France, for ^' July 9, 1684. Quoted in Parkman, Frontenac. 104. 94 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY the braggart governor abandoned his allies, the Illinois tribes, to such fate as the Iroquois might prepare for them. When the news of this treaty was received in France, La Barre was summoned home and Jacques Rene de Brisay, marquis de Denonville, was sent as his successor. The new governor was a much abler and more forceful man than his predecessor and immediately began measures to re- build French prestige in the west. In all his efforts he was stubbornly opposed by Governor Dongan so long as the latter received a semblance of support from his home government. The western fur trade was too rich a prize to be relinquished without a struggle, thought Dongan, who in 1685 sent eleven canoes under the command of Johannes Rooseboom to trade in the lakes region. The expedition was a great success, both financially and politically ; the Indians asked the traders to come yearly. Imagine the indignation of the French at this invasion of rights already considered inalienable. An officer was sent off posthaste to arrest the British. He arrived too late. In the fall of 1686 a second and larger expedition, consisting of fifty-eight white men divided into two parties, was organized by the Albany merchants under authority of the governor. This time the French were more lucky: the first convoy under Rooseboom was captured by Olivier Morel de la Durantaye in 1687 without difficulty, and the second under Major Patrick Macgregory met a similar fate shortly afterwards; all were later released in accordance with orders of the French king.^^ In 1687 Denonville was ready to strike his blow at the Iroquois. The last phase of the first struggle for the domi- nation of the west was to be inaugurated on a fitting scale. The destruction of the power of the Five Nations would mean the immediate peaceful possession of the Mississippi valley by the French. The army which the governor led to Fort Fron- tenac mustered two thousand men . On reaching Lake Ontario he learned that his western lieutenants had gathered a large contingent of cotireurs de bois and Indians — among whom were Tonti and the Illinois — and were coming to his aid. Tonti had marched with sixteen Frenchmen and two hundred 38 Denonville to minister, May 8, 1686, in Neiu York Colonial Documents, 9: 287, see also 297; ibid., 3:436, 9:309, 318, 320, 332, 348, 363. FIRST STRUGGLE FOR EMPIRE 95 Indians to Detroit to join Dulhut, La Forest, and La Duran- taye with their contingents, none too eager to make this distant expedition against their common enemy. The first success of the campaign was won by this western band, when it took cap- tive the two convoys of British traders sent out from Albany.^" The whole army advanced into the region of the Seneca, where a battle was fought and won by the French. Several villages were burned and the crops destroyed; but the consensus of opinion among contemporaries and later historians is that, except for the impression made upon the Indians by the display of power, little advantage was won. The transient character of Denonville's success was proved during the following years by the harassing of Canada by small bands of Iroquois, who made the outlying posts uninhabitable. A massacre which occurred at Lachine was the most frightful in Canadian history. Montreal was thrown into a state of terror, while the country around was ravaged by the savages at will. The final confession of failure Denonville made when he ordered Fort Frontenac, that symbol of the French western empire, to be destroyed and abandoned. French America seemed defeated by the Iroquois,'*^ Desperate situations demand desperate measures. One man alone had proved equal to the task of building an empire in America. The Comte de Frontenac was in his seventieth year, yet he accepted the trust placed upon him and returned to New France in 1689. The situation had become worse rather than better. The Revolution of 1688 had occurred in England; William of Orange, the greatest enemy of France, was now king; and the War of the Grand Alliance had broken out. Sur- rounded by enemies, Louis XIV could give Frontenac little help. The new governor must rely on the resources of the province. ^^ soParkman, Frontenac, 151 flf. *o The account by Denonville is pitiable: " I cannot give you a truer idea of the war we have to wage with the Iroquois than by comparing them to a great number of wolves or other ferocious beasts, issuing out of a vast forest to ravage the neighboring settlements. The people gather to hunt them down; but nobody can find their lair, for they are always in motion. An abler man than I would be greatly at a loss to manage the affairs of this country." Quoted ibid., 176. *^ Lorin, Le Comte de Frontenac, 359 ff. 96 THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY The situation was certainly critical. Many of the tribes around the Great Lakes, disgusted with the abandonment of the west by the French governors, had determined to change their alliance and had made a treaty with the Iroquois. Thus, by the British in the east, Indians in the west, and the Iroquois confederacy as an intermediary, a triple alliance was being formed which threatened the downfall of all that the Jesuits, the merchants, Frontenac, and La Salle had built up.^^ There is no space in this volume to tell the story of Fron- tenac's success in winning back the prestige of the French arms. He followed the bold course of attacking the enemy; the burn- ing of Schenectady by one of three war parties which he sent out made a powerful impression on the minds of the Indians; and in 1690 Montreal was electrified by the appearance of a flotilla of no canoes of Great Lakes Indians .with furs for trading. The danger of a desertion by the allies in the rear of the French colony had been avoided. The policy followed by Frontenac was naturally opposed by his enemies, led by the bishop of Quebec and the Jesuits. These religious zealots still believed that the best policy toward the west was to withdraw all troops and to prohibit all traders from going among the Indians. They represented to the court that the western posts were places of debauchery where the innocent natives were demoralized, an accusation which was not far from the truth; but certainly such a policy would cost the French an empire in the beginning of its career. Louis XIV, discouraged by failure, was persuaded by the opponents of Frontenac, and ordered the governor to abandon Fort Fron- tenac, which had been restored, to recall all Frenchmen from the west, and to make peace with the Iroquois even if it were necessary to exclude from its terms the western allies." For- tunately for the French, Frontenac did not follow these instruc- tions in every detail, though he was forced to recall the traders. The war against the Iroquois was continued with more or less success, and the morale of these redoubtable warriors was weak- ened. As early as 1694 they opened negotiations. In spite of *^ Wisconsin Historical Collections, 16:130 ff . ; Parkman, Frontenac, 207. *3 Louis XIV to Frontenac and Champigny, May 26, 1696, Apr