ILLINOIS HISTORICAL SURVEY 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://archive.org/details/whyillinoiswasfrOOkenn 
 
977.301 
 K383W 
 
 WHY 
 ILLINOIS 
 WA S 
 FRENCH 
 
ILLINOIS HISTORICAL SURVEY 
 
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WHY ILLINOIS WAS FRENCH 
 
 by 
 Jocelyn Kennedy 
 
 published by 
 
 The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America 
 
 in the State of Illinois 
 
 1962 
 
WHY ILLINOIS WAS FRENCH 
 
 From the discovery of the St. Lawrence River in 1535 to the con- 
 clusion of the Seven Years War in 1763, Canada was called New 
 France. Together with the French territory of Louisiana, it covered 
 a huge area from the Gulf of the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico 
 and included Illinois.* 
 
 The history of New France is the history of the fur trade. Beaver 
 played the same role in Canada that gold played in the exploitation 
 of Peru by Spain. It was the lure that seemed to justify danger, 
 loneliness, and savagery. Although the Crown of France recognized 
 the necessity of agricultural settlements if permanent colonization 
 were to be effected, the temptation of an easy profit in Indian trade 
 continued to hinder the growth of the settlements throughout the 
 French Regime. The French villages of Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Prairie 
 du Rocher, St. Philippe and Ste. Anne de Fort de Chartres, situated 
 on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River in southern Illinois, 
 were important because they commanded the waterway from Quebec 
 to New Orleans and also because they grew wheat for all the settle- 
 ments on the Gulf of Mexico. 
 
 Besides fur trading and farming, there was another factor in 
 French exploration and the development of the western settlements 
 of New France. It was the wave of missionary zeal which swept 
 France in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. The fervor of 
 the Recollects and later, to an even greater extent, of the Jesuits, 
 did much to mold New France and the Indian tribes whose Chris- 
 tianization was their chief concern. 
 
 The history of New France began when sailors from Normandy, 
 Brittany and the Basque country developed a small trade in furs 
 as a supplementary activity to fishing for cod off Nova Scotia in 
 the Sixteenth Century. Francis the 1st equipped several expeditions 
 to the New World in search of a short route to China. For him, 
 Jacques Cartier discovered the St. Lawrence. But Henry of Navarre, 
 the Protestant Prince, who fought for ten years from 1588 to 1598 
 against the powerful Catholic family of Guise and the Spanish 
 League, was the first to found a colony in New France. Henry's 
 Protestant forces defeated the combined Catholic armies of Europe 
 but paradoxically he was obliged to embrace the Roman Catholic 
 religion in order to accept the Crown of France as Henry IVth. 
 However, he issued the Edict of Nantes in 1599 which insured free- 
 dom of worship to Protestants in France for almost a hundred years. 
 
 Henry of Navarre organized a group of his old comrades at arms 
 for the triple purpose of colonization in New France, exploration for 
 a short route to China, and exploitation of the fur trade. To these 
 noblemen, two Protestants and two Catholics, he added an out- 
 standing man, Samuel de Champlain. Champlain had already made 
 
 ♦See map page 10 
 
a voyage to the Antilles, Mexico and Panama and had come home 
 advocating the Panama Canal — a project which did not materialize 
 for three hundred years. 
 
 The first voyage of this company took place in 1603. Champlain 
 and the great navigator, Pontgrave, returned to France with furs 
 to pay for the expedition and the new company seemed to be in 
 business. But then arose a faction which was to plague New France 
 throughout the French Regime — the hatters. Hats, which grew 
 larger and larger as the century progressed, were made of beaver 
 fur and the hatters wanted to stabilize the price of the skins. They 
 looked about for means to break the company's monopoly and in- 
 cited members of a Parliament* from Normandy to form a cabal 
 against the president of the company, the Sieur de Monts, a 
 Protestant. 
 
 "They denounced, with pious fervor, the horrid sin of entrusting 
 Indian souls to a heretic. Navarre, himself, stilled the storm with 
 the promise to export priests for the salvation of the savages.** 
 
 The following year, 1604, they sailed again with one hundred and 
 thirty colonists and spent a miserable winter in Acadia, suffering 
 from scurvy. In 1605 they moved to a better location called Port 
 Royal by Champlain, who instituted a game that kept the colony 
 in good health and spirits throughout the winter. It was called 
 "The Order of the Good Time," and is described in great detail 
 by one of the company, Marc Lescarbot, in his book, "Nova 
 Francia," published in Paris in 1609. In turn, each of the fifteen 
 men at the Commandant's table became chief steward for a day. 
 For several days before his turn came up, he went hunting and 
 fishing and held conferences with the cook. A keen competitive 
 spirit produced culinary masterpieces from the raw materials of the 
 forest. On his appointed day, the chief steward lead a procession 
 to the table; a wand of office in his hand and the collar of the order 
 — a gorgeous ornament worth four crowns — around his neck. Even 
 breakfast was a feast. Unimportant as this detail is, it shows the 
 contrast in viewpoint between the first French colonizers and the 
 Pilgrims who settled further south in New England fifteen years 
 later. 
 
 In 1608 Champlain founded the city of Quebec. Henry of Navarre 
 was assassinated in 1610 and his wife, Marie de Medici, became 
 regent for her son, Louis Xlllth. The next important development 
 was the accession to power of Cardinal Richelieu in 1627. The 
 British and the French were becoming strong competitors in the 
 New World not only in the fur trade but also as colonizers. Cardinal 
 Richelieu felt that the self interest of the fur monopoly would 
 jeopardize the existence of New France, and persuaded Louis XIHth 
 
 *In France before the Revolution, parliaments were not legislative bodies but 
 certain high courts of justice. 
 
 **Beavers, Kings and Cabins, by Constance Lindsay Skinner p. 52 
 
 6 
 
to rescind it. He formed in its place the Company of the Hundred 
 Associates in which he, himself, became a stockholder. 
 
 The new company was organized for colonization as well as 
 trading. It had vast powers, exercising all the functions of govern- 
 ment, even the right to bestow titles of nobility. By destroying the 
 feudal system in France, Cardinal Richelieu sowed the seed which 
 blossomed into the absolute power of Louis the XlVth. He did 
 this by making the feudal barons live at court. As absentee land- 
 lords their power was transferred to the King. But feudalism must 
 have had its appeal for the Cardinal. He felt that in the new world 
 such a system would not endanger the Crown. The difficulty was that 
 he could not get the French nobility to stay in Canada. And so he 
 ennobled the officers of the Carignan Regiment which had gone 
 to Quebec to defend the colonists. These officers were not only given 
 titles. They also received seigniories or manorial estates. These, 
 however, were so handicapped by unrealistic regulations designed to 
 safeguard the interests of the peasants employed to farm them, that 
 they could not be managed at a profit to the owner. Thus the newly 
 created aristocracy was obliged to hunt and fish for survival. The 
 Canadian 'gentilhomme' mimicked the fashions of Versailles while 
 fighting battles with the Indians or trampling in the mud of Kas- 
 kaskia. He imported beautiful silks and brocades to make his clothes 
 while he put up with furniture more rustic than that of the peasants 
 of France. 
 
 But the principal duty of the Company of the Hundred Associates 
 to the Crown was the transportation of no less than two hundred 
 settlers yearly to Canada. And following in the footsteps of the 
 hatters of Paris, it was decreed that such settlers must be Roman 
 Catholic. This law, combined with the temporal power of the 
 Church which developed from the arrival of Bishop Laval in 1659, 
 had a profound effect on the molding of New France. 
 
 Time proved that the Company of the Hundred Associates was 
 not as successful in colonial administration as were the rival English, 
 Dutch and Portuguese companies; and as a system of government it 
 was at variance with the policy of centralized power as practiced by 
 Louis XlVth. So in 1663, the Company of the Hundred Associates 
 was dissolved and New France became a Crown Colony. The King's 
 minister, Colbert, organized the Company of the West Indies in 
 1684, giving it many of the political and commercial rights of the 
 former company, but the entire administration was left to the King. 
 
 It is hard to realize what this meant unless you take the trouble 
 to read the correspondence from the royal residences of Versailles 
 and Marly to the Governors and Intendants of Canada and 
 Louisiana. An important source book, "The Calendar of Manu- 
 scripts in the Paris Archives relating to the History of the Mississippi 
 Valley to 1803," edited by N. M. Miller Surrey, lists by date all the 
 documents relative to the French Illinois Country filed on micro- 
 film in the Library of Congress. These documents are directives 
 
which go into the most minute detail concerning matters in the 
 forest wilderness. Louis the XlVth and Louis the XVth did not 
 hesitate to give the most explicit orders to commandants, who were 
 not only thousands of miles away but from three to six months 
 away in point of time. However well-informed the King might be, 
 by the time his dispatches reached Fort de Chartres, all the surround- 
 ing Indians might have changed allegiance; and in respect to the 
 neighboring competitors— the English and the Spanish— the political 
 climate in Europe might have entirely altered. Yet the King would 
 brook no disobeying of his orders. 
 
 The correspondence between the government of France and her 
 representatives in New France relative to the Illinois Country in 
 Canadian and American archives, is easily available in the Illinois 
 State Historical Library Collections. It has been published in its 
 original form and supplemented with an English translation. These 
 volumes are, The French Foundations, 1680-1693, Anglo-French 
 Boundary Disputes 1749-1763 and Illinois on the Eve of the Seven 
 Years War, 1747-1755. Unfortunately the period from 1693 to 1747 
 is not covered by this series. This was the period of French success 
 and expansion in the middle west. It was the period when Louisiana 
 was settled and French expeditions of exploration were being made 
 west of the Mississippi and when Louis XlVth's dream of empire 
 in the new world was still alive. 
 
 This dream had sprung from La Salle's journeys to the Illinois 
 and Mississippi Rivers, where he built Fort Crevecoeur in 1680 and 
 Fort St. Louis in 1682, and his subsequent journey to the mouth of 
 the Mississippi where he lost his life. The King gave La Salle the 
 trading and colonization rights to the Illinois country and the 
 earliest days of Illinois settlement come to life in reading the 
 memoirs, contracts and letters of La Salle and his remarkable part- 
 ner, Tonti. A contract, still extant, called a 'concession in fief,' 
 granted by La Salle to one of his men, Pierre Prudhomme, in 1683 
 at Fort St. Louis, specified everything the said Prudhomme and his 
 successors could do and could not do with this property including 
 "the rights of dovecote and winepress, of fortification and of low 
 justice." The rights of dovecote and winepress, in particular, con- 
 jure up a picture of good living which the French settlers envisioned 
 as the future of the rich and fertile Mississippi Valley.* 
 
 La Salle named Louisiana after his King and the great river after 
 the King's Minister. He always referred to the Mississippi in his 
 dispatches as Le Fleuve Colbert. After his death, Louis the XlVth 
 realized that he who held the river held the heart of America; and 
 in October 1698 he equipped four ships and placed them under the 
 command of the Canadian born Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d'Iberville. 
 This commander had acquitted himself well in a battle against the 
 English on Hudson's Bay in 1694, an excellent eye witness account 
 of which is given by Father Marest in the Jesuit Relations (Vol. 
 
 *The French Foundations p. 28 
 
LXVI) . As the commander of the French ship Pelican, he had 
 sunk a British Man-ol-War and had captured a second in a sea 
 battle the previous year, 1697. Iberville's brothers, Sauvole and 
 Bienville and his cousin, Boisbriand, sailed with him from Brest 
 in search of the mouth of the Mississippi where they were instructed 
 to build a fort to insure France's claim to the Mississippi Valley. 
 After finding the mouth of the river, they built a fort on the Gulf 
 of Mexico (Fort Maurepas) . The next year they built two more: 
 one on the Mississippi about fifty-four miles from the mouth, and 
 the other where the city of Mobile now stands. (Fort St. Louis de la 
 Louisiane.) 
 
 A Canadian, Charles Juchereau de St. Denis, conceived a plan to 
 set up tanneries on the Mississippi. With letters patent signed by 
 Louis XlVth in 1701, he journeyed by the inland water route to 
 the mouth of the Ohio. He established two tanneries, one at 
 Michillimackinac and the other probably near Cairo, Illinois. At 
 Iberville's behest, he planted the Fleur-de-Lis which was later the 
 basis of France's claim to the Ohio. Thirteen years later, the then 
 Governor of Louisiana, La Mothe-Cadillac, sent Louis Juchereau 
 de St. Denis to the southwest to barter with the Indians and to make 
 contact with the Spanish who were moving northward from Mexico. 
 
 These preliminary efforts toward establishment in Louisiana were 
 carried out to secure the central area of the North American con- 
 tinent. Louis the XlVth's dream of empire included control of the 
 three great rivers — the St. Lawrence, the Ohio and the Mississippi; 
 the three great gulfs — Hudson's Bay, the Gulf of the St. Lawrence 
 and the Gulf of Mexico, and the live Great Lakes. 
 
 Meanwhile the Illinois settlements were growing apace. The 
 village of Kaskaskia was founded in 1703 by the Jesuit, Father 
 Marest, who had come as a missionary to the Kaskaskia Indians. 
 By 1715 France had set up a government there. The Kaskaskia Court 
 Records which were re-discovered by Clarence Alvord in the Chester 
 Court House in 1906, demonstrate that from the date of the first 
 Fort de Chartres built by Boisbriand in 1723 "the civil officials of an 
 orderly French government performed their duties with a regularity 
 and precision that reminds us of the system and care of their con- 
 temporaries in a royal jurisdiction in France. Their minutes and 
 records were carefully kept and when law demanded it, deposited in 
 the archives of the fort which stood for so many years as the most 
 western sentinel of the King's domain."* 
 
 At this period, from 1703 to 1730, Kaskaskia was a paradise com- 
 pared to the poverty and unhealthiness of swampy lower Louisiana. 
 
 Bienville reported to France: 
 
 "The males of the colony begin through habit to be reconciled 
 to corn as an article of nourishment but the women, who are mostly 
 
 ♦The Old Kaskaskia Records by Clarence Alvord p. 36 
 
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 e French in America, From Quebec to New Orleans, 1929. 
 
Parisians, have for this kind of food a dogged aversion which has 
 not yet been subdued."* 
 
 In fact the women threatened to leave the colony of Mobile al- 
 though they had not thought out any means of doing so and their 
 declaration to that effect was called the 'Petticoat Rebellion.' 
 
 Pontchartrain, the Minister of State in France, decided to turn 
 the colony over to a banker, Antoine Crozat, who formed a company 
 to aid it. This company was obligated to send twenty-five men and 
 girls and two ships a year to Louisiana and it was permitted to send 
 one ship a year to Africa for slaves. 
 
 Louis XlVth died in 1715 leaving France in financial difficulties. 
 His successor was his great grandson, Louis XVth, who was only 
 five years old. A dilettante, the Due d'Orleans, became regent. And 
 now a most extraordinary man whom Louis the XlVth had dis- 
 couraged, came into prominence at the French Court. He was a 
 Scottish financial genius called John Law. After failing to interest 
 several European countries in his schemes, he obtained letters patent 
 in 1716 to establish a national bank (banque generale) which cir- 
 culated paper money. So successful was this undertaking that he 
 won the Regent's complete confidence and was permitted to proceed 
 with a Mississippi scheme. In August, 1717 he founded the Com- 
 pagnie d'Occident which absorbed the earlier Crozat company and 
 the Compagnie de Canada. Executive powers over the area drained 
 by the Mississippi, the Ohio and the Missouri were granted. By 
 1719 a further consolidation took place when the Compagnie 
 d'Occident absorbed the Compagnie Orientales et de la Chine and 
 the Compagnie des Indes, retaining the name of the latter. All this 
 sudden growth did not take place without opposition and mis- 
 givings on the part of conservative Frenchmen. But speculation in 
 Mississippi shares reached an unparalleled height. People of all 
 classes participated and Louisiana was advertised as the land of 
 milk and honey. When in 1720, the government bank of France 
 and the Compagnie des Indes amalgamated, the investors panicked 
 and the whole house of cards collapsed, leaving France in a state 
 of financial ruin. Law's books were in order but his banking 
 theories were unsound. 
 
 But the Compagnie des Indes survived for a few years and 
 attempted to populate Upper and Lower Louisiana. All classes of 
 people, some far from desirable, were transported from France. It 
 was difficult to get farmers to emigrate. Few of the new arrivals 
 were interested in leaving New Orleans to take up agriculture at 
 Kaskaskia. The 'habitants,' the traders, and the commandants of 
 the Illinois country were chiefly Canadians whose farming and fur 
 trading prospered. They danced and sang together to the music of a 
 fiddle after Mass on Sunday under the eye of the priest. Only occa- 
 sional raids by the Fox Indians disturbed their pastoral life. 
 
 *Gayarre p. 93 
 
 12 
 
From 1720 to 1740 competition between the French and the 
 Spanish for the southwest began. Besides Juchereau de St. Denis' 
 journeys in the direction of Mexico, two other French expeditions 
 were undertaken. One led by de Bourgmont in 1724 nearly reached 
 Colorado and another led by the Mallet brothers in 1739 followed 
 a trail through Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado to Santa Fe.* 
 
 It isn't possible here to examine all the causes of the Seven Years 
 War and France's defeat which banished her from North America. 
 From 1740 onward the British Fur Trader became a serious com- 
 petitor. The French Trader had to sell his beaver at a government 
 agency in Montreal at a fixed price. He was obliged to receive part 
 of his payment in inferior goods for barter with the Indians. Once 
 more we find the intrigues of the hatters behind these restrictions. 
 The British Trader, on the other hand, suffered from no such regu- 
 lations. Once he had smuggled or paid duty on his furs he was 
 free to go where his market led him — usually to Albany. There 
 he could haggle about price or undersell to drive out a competitor. 
 In France skilled craftsmen created the most beautiful fabrics of 
 the period but they could not compete with the British in producing 
 hundred bolt lots of relatively inexpensive woolen goods such as 
 that used for Indian blankets.** 
 
 To add to this difficulty the French Government, in a mood of 
 ill timed parsimony, was prepared to spend no more on western 
 outposts than the pay of the officers and soldiers attached to the 
 garrisons. Imagine the dismay of a governor of New France, the 
 able Comte de la Galissoniere, when he received a letter from the 
 King's Minister, the Comte de Maurepas, in April 1748 which put 
 forward the suggestion that the post of the Illinois (Fort de Chartres) 
 be returned to the immediate jurisdiction of Canada. It had been 
 placed under Louisiana in 1717 to augment the revenues of the 
 Compagnie des Indes. But now the King had decided to return it 
 to Canada to save money. The Minister gives many cogent reasons 
 but the crux of the matter is in this paragraph: 
 
 "In effect, the post of the Illinois can only by a forced interpreta- 
 tion be considered as one of the settlements of Louisiana . . It occa- 
 sions considerable expense to the King for the maintenance of the 
 two companies which are in garrison . . The product of the Fur Trade 
 of the Indians goes for the most part to Canada . . From reuniting 
 this post with Canada, Louisiana first of all would gain the two 
 companies of troops . . And the King would save the expenses which 
 the garrison occasions. It would suffice to send from Canada a de- 
 tachment of some soldiers with an officer to command them.*** 
 
 •See Colorado Magazine, The State of Colorado Historical Society July 1937 
 and September 1939 for articles by Henry Folmer on these expeditions. 
 
 •♦For the British French competition in the Fur Trade see Illinois on the Eve 
 of the Seven Years War. Illinois Historical Library Collections P. XVI 
 
 •♦♦Illinois on the Eve of the Seven Years War pp. 61-66 
 
 13 
 
As usual the French treasury was being drained by the Monarch's 
 building program. As this letter was written, the Chevalier de 
 Bertet, Commandant at Fort de Chartres, was reporting to Galis- 
 soniere that he was receiving constant warnings from his Indian 
 friends, particularly the Miami chieftain, Le Pied Froid, of the dis- 
 affection of the Indian tribes formerly friendly to the French. No 
 matter how clever the diplomacy of the commandants, who had won 
 the respect of the Indians as warriors and gentlemen, English pres- 
 ents, and, to a lesser extent, English eloquence, eventually won the 
 day. A conspiracy among the tribes close to Fort de Chartres to 
 destroy the French settlements was discovered by Bertet and he 
 brought the villages together into a fortified place for safety. In 
 his memoir to the King of September 6, 1748, Governor Vaudreuil of 
 Louisiana reported without hesitation that this Indian conspiracy 
 was ascribed only to the weakness of the French garrison.* 
 
 The French pioneer in the American wilderness was something 
 of a paradox. The 'habitant' who tilled the soil about the Illinois 
 settlements, lived in a little world of his own, as far as possible a 
 duplicate of the village life of France or Canada from which he 
 came. His life was regulated. He sowed his grain on a day designated 
 by the village government and he reaped it on another such day. He 
 lived a life of constant squabbling and legal processes which one 
 would expect in an old world community entrenched in tradition. 
 But the coureur de bois and the voyageur or canoeman who roamed 
 the woods and streams, living with the Indians and often marrying 
 into the tribes, was an extraordinary man. Illiterate, like most men 
 of peasant origin in the Eighteenth Century, he could even shock 
 the Indians with his wildness. And yet inheritance was so strong in 
 him and his respect for authority so great that he preferred to take 
 his quarrels to court at Kaskaskia or to the Commandant at Fort de 
 Chartres to fighting it out in the woods as the American pioneer 
 did. Here lies a fundamental difference between French and British 
 settlers. The French had no desire to have a hand in the formulation 
 of the laws by which their lives were regulated as did the British 
 settlers. 
 
 The people of the Eighteenth Century were not particularly 
 humorous according to our notions but the French woodsman took 
 pleasure in exercising a satiric sort of wit. Nearly everybody in New 
 France had a variety of names. The nobility, of course, had sur- 
 names to which were attached the place names of their family 
 estates in France or Canada. The woodsman had a surname too, 
 no doubt, which nobody was familiar with. Instead of 'de' and a 
 place name after his surname, he had 'dit' (called) and a soubriquet 
 added to his Christian name. The soubriquet was all that usually 
 stuck to him. These were such names as 'La Tulippe' and 'Le Violet.' 
 They were used in the legal contracts made with the licensed Fur 
 Traders of Montreal. La Tulippe and Le Violet were real men who 
 appear on the census rolls of Kaskaskia. When you think how these 
 * Illinois on the Eve of The Seven Years War p. 74 
 
 14 
 
men must have looked, such names are really absurd. They rarely 
 shaved and probably never washed. The villagers had soubriquets 
 too. Leonard Billeron, the royal notary at Kaskaskia, was called Le 
 Fatigue. It doesn't take much imagination to see how he came by 
 that nickname but it is harder to understand why the most belliger- 
 ent chieftain of the Miamis was referred to by Kings and council- 
 men alike as 'La Demoiselle.' 
 
 The Canadian 'gentilhomme' was also a paradox.* He was the 
 victim of Cardinal Richelieu's ill-advised feudal system for New 
 France. When the Intendant Talon came to Quebec in 1667, there 
 were four noble families in the colony. But frequent requests by 
 governors and Intendants in behalf of the more prosperous families 
 of Quebec and Montreal created a titled society and soon all 
 Canada was infatuated with noblesse. In France noblemen con- 
 sidered trade beneath them. Likewise in Canada the gentilhomme 
 considered it beneath his dignity. But he had to live so he sent his 
 children into the forest secretly to barter for furs with the Indians. 
 Opportunities to gain a livelihood were so few that the western 
 posts were sought after in spite of the loneliness and hardship of the 
 life, especially for the wives of the commanders. Sometimes fur 
 trading could be carried on by the commanders of the posts though 
 often the license to trade had already been assigned to someone else, 
 known as a farmer, though we would call him an agent. Not all 
 the Governors, Intendants and Commandants were born in Canada. 
 A great number were younger sons of prominent families in France. 
 
 Among the French commandants there were rough customers like 
 Barthelmy de Macarty who put his own interests above those of the 
 colony, but there were many remarkable men who had their hearts 
 set on a glorious future for the French in the New World. They 
 must have suffered as they saw greed, incompetence and restrictions 
 stifle that dream. Besides such well known men as Champlain, La 
 Salle, Tonti, Iberville and Bienville, we might mention the ex- 
 plorers, du Tisne, Louis Juchereau de St. Denis and La Verendrye. 
 The latter was the first white man to reach the foothills of the 
 Rockies in the Northwest. There were capable and honest com- 
 manders at Fort de Chartres such as Boisbriand, Bertet, and Pierre 
 d'Artaquiette, who was taken prisoner by the Chickasaws in 1736 
 and burnt at the stake. We are indebted to many officers who 
 chronicled their times. Diron d'Artaquiette, Inspector General of 
 the Compagnie des Indes, made a tour of inspection in 1722 and 
 1723. His report to the company is full of precise information about 
 the Illinois country at that time.** Bossu, one of Macarty's officers 
 at Fort de Chartres, has left us many interesting details of conditions 
 in southern Illinois just before the Seven Years War and d'Abbadie, 
 
 *For the Canadian Noblesse see The Old Regime in Canada by Francis Parkman. 
 
 **Mereness, Newton D. Travels in the American Colonies, N. Y. 1916 
 
 15 
 
the Governor of Louisiana at the end of the French Regime, gives us 
 a clear picture of his times.* 
 
 After the British won Canada, there were no posts for the 
 Canadian noblesse and most of them returned to France. The 
 traders of the Illinois country stayed on; moved to the west bank of 
 the Mississippi and founded the city of St. Louis. They were slightly 
 less aristocratic than the noblesse but they were educated men and 
 deserve to be called gentry. Examples of this group were Jean Batiste 
 Barbau of Prairie du Rocher, the members of the Bauvais and 
 Charlesville families of Kaskaskia — the Viviats, the Lachances and 
 the Janis. Some of these families went across the river to Ste. Gene- 
 vieve, Missouri. At Cahokia were the Sauciers, Francois Trottier 
 and Antoine Girardin. Next to the Commandant, the most im- 
 portant man in French Illinois was Gabriel Cerre. These were the 
 men and others like them to whom the British Commissioner to the 
 Indians, Sir William Johnson, referred when he wrote that the 
 French Traders were gentlemen in character, manners and dress 
 and "men of abilities, influence and address."** 
 
 The French Mid-Eighteenth Century Illinois house on exhibit at 
 the Chicago Historical Society represents the home of such a trader. 
 Much smaller and less elegant than those built by the same traders 
 in St. Louis thirty to forty years later, it had the construction of a 
 Normandy farm house. It had cedar posts planted upright 
 and filled with a mixture of clay and stone, and the pitch of a 
 French-Canadian roof, somewhat altered in line by the addition of 
 a 'gallerie' or porch. The 'gallerie' was a feature borrowed from the 
 tropical plantation houses of French San Domingo (Haiti) at which 
 ships from Canada and France stopped on their way to New Orleans. 
 There are few houses left of this charming and unique architecture. 
 The Bolduc house at St. Genevieve, Missouri, is an example. The 
 Menard house near Chester, Illinois, is of later date but its roof 
 line and gallery are typical of French Illinois. The furniture, 
 designed from Louis XHIth styles still popular in Mid-Eighteenth 
 Century Quebec, was often made on the spot and was inferior to 
 the textiles, china, silver and pewter imported from France. 
 
 Hugh McClennan has pointed out that "Canada possessed one 
 asset the Americans lacked: the St. Lawrence River . . While the 
 Americans remained penned between the mountains and the sea, it 
 was the high honor of the French Canadians that their boldest 
 spirits sallied out from the St. Lawrence to explore and map nearly 
 all of the continental interior which Americans and English speak- 
 ing Canadians now occupy."*** 
 
 *Bossu, Nouveaux voyages aux Indes Occidentals, trans. London 1771 Villiers 
 du Terrage, Les dernieres Annees de la Louisiane Francaise; (for d'Abbadie- 
 Aubry) 
 
 **New York Col. Doc. VII p. 965 
 
 ***The American Heritage, October 1961 
 
 16 
 
This was accomplished by adopting the birch bark canoe of the 
 Indians which was light enough to portage. The Illinois traders 
 journeyed through the Great Lakes to the Chicago portage; thence 
 via the Des Plaines and Illinois Rivers to the Mississippi and the 
 Gulf of Mexico. 
 
 The French have gone from Illinois leaving almost no trace. Of 
 the five villages in the southern part of the State, only Prairie du 
 Rocher keeps a faint character. Kaskaskia was swallowed up by 
 the Mississippi when it changed course in the late Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury. Cahokia has been equally swallowed up by the growth of 
 East St. Louis. When Fort de Chartres was abandonned, its village 
 of Ste. Anne disappeared also. St. Philippe, a mining village was 
 the first to vanish. For a time, people travelling through the west, 
 especially near the Canadian border, employed Canadian guides 
 and boatmen. They, too, have gone. All that remains are the 
 letters and documents that attest to the events that took place during 
 one hundred years of Illinois history and a few songs sung by the 
 voyageurs and the villagers. 
 
 The French Canadians loved to sing and they sang as they paddled 
 on the Illinois streams, perhaps as much in protest against the 
 intense silence of the forests as anything else. Mrs. Kinzie wrote after 
 a trip in Wisconsin in 1828:* 
 
 "The Canadian boatmen always sing while rowing or paddling 
 and nothing encourages them so much as to hear their bourgeois 
 (or boss as we would call him) take the lead in music. If the pas- 
 sengers, more especially those of the fair sex, join in the refrain, the 
 compliment is all the greater. Their songs are of a light cheerful 
 character, generally embodying some little satire or witticism cal- 
 culated to produce a spirited — sometimes an uproarious chorus. 
 
 "The Canadian melodies are sometimes very beautiful, and a more 
 exhilarating mode of travel can hardly be imagined than a voyage 
 over these waters, amid all the wild magnificence of nature, with the 
 measured strokes of the oar keeping time to the strains of 'Le rosier 
 blanc,' 'En roulant ma Boule' or 'Leve ton pied, ma jolie Bergere.' ' 
 
 *\Vau-bun by Juliette M. Kinzie, republished bv the Colonial Dames of Wisconsin 
 in 1930 
 
 17 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The foregoing summary of two hundred and thirty years of French colonial 
 history in North America is unavoidably superficial. For the reader who cares 
 to pursue the subject a short bibliography of documentary sources, contemporary 
 travel accounts and general histories is appended. Most of the books are out of 
 print but can be consulted at the Newberry Library, Chicago. 
 
 Alvord, Clarence W., and C. E. Carter (eds.) : The Cahokia Records, original 
 documents, Springfield, Illinois. 
 
 Alvord, Clarence W.: The County of Illinois, Springfield, Illinois 1909. A history 
 of the period following the Seven Years War from original documents in the 
 Illinois State Library Collections. 
 
 Alvord, Clarence W. and C. E. Carter (eds.) : The Critical Period, original docu- 
 ments, Springfield, Illinois. 
 
 Alvord, Clarence W., and C. E. Carter (eds.) : The Kaskaskia Records, original 
 documents, Springfield, Illinois. 
 
 Alvord, Clarence W., and C. E. Carter (eds.) : The New Regime, Springfield, 
 Illinois. 
 
 Belting, Natalie M.: Kaskaskia under the French Regime (abstract of thesis for 
 the University of Illinois) . Urbana, Illinois, 1940. 
 
 Bossu, Jean Bernard: Nouveaux voyages aux Indes Occidentales. Paris, 1768 
 (English trans. 1771) . 
 
 Cox, Isaac J.: The early exploration of Louisiana (journeys of LaSalle and his 
 companions, accounts of Tonty, M. Cavelier and Joutel) . University of Cin- 
 cinnati Press, 1906. 
 
 Folmer, Henry: Franco-Spanish Rivalry in North America. California, 1953. 
 
 Gayarre, C. E.: Louisiana, its colonial history and romance. New York, 1851. 
 
 Heinrich, P.: La Louisiane sous la compagnie des Indes, 1717-1731. Paris, 1908. 
 
 Hennepin, Louis: A description of Louisiana. (Trans, by J. G. Shea.) New York, 
 1880. 
 
 Kellogg, Louise Phelps, (trans, and ed.) : Earlv narratives of the Northwest 
 1634-1699. New York, 1917. 
 
 LePage du Pratz; Histoire de la Louisiane. 3 vol. Paris, 1758. (Trans. London, 
 1774.) 
 
 LePage du Pratz: Voyages aux Indes Occidentales. (Trans. New Orleans, 1947.) 
 
 Lescarbot, Marc: Nova Francia, Paris, 1609 (trans. London, George Rutledge & 
 Sons, 1928) . 
 
 Mereness, Newton D.: Travels in the American Colonies. (Includes journal of 
 Diron d'Artaquiette) pub. under the auspices of the Nat. Soc. of the Colonial 
 Dames of America, New York, 1916. 
 
 Parkman, Francis: Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XlVth, 
 Boston, 1885. 
 
 Parkman, Francis: LaSalle and the Discovery of the Great West, Boston, 1886. 
 
 18 
 
Parkman. Francis: The Old Regime in Canada, Boston, 1874. 
 
 Pease, T. C. (ed.) : Anglo-French boundary disputes in the West, 1749-1763. 
 Springfield, Illinois, 1936 (original documents from the Illinois State Histori- 
 cal Collections) . 
 
 Pease, T. C. and R. C. Werner (eds.) : The French foundations, 1680-1693. 
 Springfield, Illinois, 1934. 
 
 Pease, T. C. and Ernestine Jenison (eds.) : Illinois on the Eve of the Seven 
 Years War, 1747-1755. Springfield, Illinois, 1940. 
 
 Penicaut, Andre: Fleur de lys and Calumet: being the Penicaut narrative of 
 French adventure in Louisiana (trans, and ed. by R. G. McWilliams) . 
 Louisiana State University, 1953. 
 
 Phillips, Paul C: The Fur Trade, Norman, Oklahoma, 1961 2 vol. 
 
 Quaife, Milo M.: Lake Michigan. The American Lake Series, New York, 1944. 
 
 Quaife, Milo M. (ed.) : The Western Country in the 17th Century: the Memoirs 
 of La Motte-Cadillac and Pierre Liette. The Lakeside Press, Chicago, 1947. 
 
 Richard, Edouard: Canadian Documents in Paris, report of the Public Archives, 
 Ottawa. 1899. 
 
 Schlarman, J. H.: From Quebec to New Orleans, Belleville, Illinois, 1929. 
 
 Shea, John Gilmary: Early voyages up and down the Mississippi, Albany, 1861. 
 
 Shortt, Adam and A. G. Doughtv (eds.) : Canada and its Provinces by one 
 hundred associates. Toronto, 1917, vol. 1 and 2; New France. 
 
 Surrev, N. M. Miller (ed.) : Calendar of manuscripts in the Paris Archives re- 
 lating to the history of the Mississippi valley to 1803. 
 
 Tanguav, Cyprian: Dictionaire Gencalogique des families Canadiennes, Mon- 
 treal ,1896. 
 
 Thwaites, R. G. (trans, and ed.) : The Jesuit relations and allied documents; 
 travels and explorations of the Jesuit missionaries in New France, 1610-1791. 
 73 vols. Cleveland, 1896-1901. 
 
 Villiers du Terrage, M. de: La Decouverte du Missouri et l'histoire du Fort 
 d'Orleans. Paris. 1925, 
 
 Villiers du Terrage, M. de: Les dernieres annees de la Louisiane francaise; le 
 Chevalier de Kerlerec, d'Abbadie-Aubry, Laussat. Paris, 1903. 
 
 Volney, C. F. C. Comte de: View of the climate and soil of the United States. 
 (Includes descriptions of the French colony at Fort Vincennes on the Wabash 
 and the French colonies on the Mississippi based on a trip made in 1796.) 
 
 19