Combined history of Edwards, Lawrence and Wabash counties, Illinois. With illustrations and biographical sketches of some of their prominent men and pioneers, Part 6

Author:
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. L. McDonough & co.
Number of Pages: 490

USA > Illinois > Edwards County > Combined history of Edwards, Lawrence and Wabash counties, Illinois. With illustrations and biographical sketches of some of their prominent men and pioneers > Part 6
USA > Illinois > Wabash County > Combined history of Edwards, Lawrence and Wabash counties, Illinois. With illustrations and biographical sketches of some of their prominent men and pioneers > Part 6
USA > Illinois > Lawrence County > Combined history of Edwards, Lawrence and Wabash counties, Illinois. With illustrations and biographical sketches of some of their prominent men and pioneers > Part 6

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LOUIS LE GRAND, ROI DE FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE REGNE ; LE NEUVIEME AVRIL, 1682.

Thus France, by right of discovery, lay claim to the Mississippi Valley, the fairest portion of the globe, an 26

empire in extent, stretehing from the Gulf to the Lakes, and from the farthest sources of the Ohio to where the head waters of the Missouri are lost in the wild solitudes of the Rocky Mountains. La Salle bestowed upon the territory the name of Louisiana, in honor of the King of France, Louis XIV.

The assertion has been made that on La Salle's return up the river, in the summer of 1682, a portion of the party were left behind, who founded the village of Kaskaskia and Cahokia, but the statement rests on no substantial foun- dation.

THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS IN ILLINOIS.

The gentle and pious Marquette, devoted to his purpose of carrying the gospel to the Indians, had established a mission among the Illinois, in 1675, at their principal town on the river which still bear stheir name. This was at the present town of Utica, in La Salle County. In the presence of the whole tribe, by whom, it is recorded, he was received as a celestial visitor, he displayed the sacred pictures of the Virgin Mary, raised an altar, and said mass. On Easter Sunday, after celebrating the mystery of the Eucharist, he took possession of the land in the name of the Saviour of the world, and founded the "Mission of the Immaculate Conception." The town was called Kaskaskia, a name afterwards transferred to another locality. The founding of this mission was the last act of Marquette's life. He died in Michigan, on his way back to Green Bay, May 18, 1675.

La Salle; while making preparations to descend the Mississippi, built a fort, on the Illinois River, below the Lake of Peoria, in February, 1680, and in commemoration of his misfortunes, bestowed upon it the name of Crevecœur, " broken-hearted." Traces of its embankments are yet dis- cernible. This was the first military occupation of Illinois. There is no evidence, however, that settlement was begun there at that early date.

On La Salle's return from this exploration of the Missis- sippi, in 1682, he fortified " Starved Rock," whose military advantages had previously attracted his attention. From its summit, which rises 125 feet above the waters of the river, the valley of the Illinois speeds out before the eye in landscape of rarest beauty. From three sides it is inacces- sible. This stronghold received the name of the Fort of St. Louis. Twenty thousand allied Indians gathered round it on the fertile plains. The fort seems to have been aban- doned soon after the year 1700.

Marquette's mission (1675), Crevecœur (1680), and the Fort of St. Louis (1682), embrace, so far, all the attempts made towards effecting anything like a permanent settle- ment in the Illinois country. Of the second few traces remain. A line of fortifications may be faintly traced, and that is all. The seed of civilization planted by the Jesuit, Marquette, among the Illinois Indians, was destined to pro- duce more enduring fruit. It was the germ of Kaskaskia, during the succeeding years of the French occupation-the metropolis of the Mississippi Valley. The southern Kas- kaskia is merely the northern one transplanted. The Mission of the Immaculate Conception is the same.

HISTORY OF EDWARDS, LAWRENCE AND WABASH COUNTIES, ILLINOIS.

FOUNDING OF KASKASKIA.

On the death of Marquette, he was succeeded by Allouez, and he by Father Gravier, who respectively had charge of the Mission on the Illinois River Gravier is said to have been the first to reduce the principles of the Illinois lan- guage to rules. It was also he who succeeded in trans- ferring Marquette's Mission from the banks of the Illinois south to the spot where stands the modern town of Kas- kaskia, and where it was destined to endure. The exact date is not known, but the removal was accomplished some time prior to the year 1685, though probably not earlier than 1682.

Father Gravier was subsequently recalled to Mackinaw, and his place was supplied by Bineteau and Pinet. Pinet proved an eloquent and successful minister, and his chapel was often insufficient to hold the crowds of savages who gathered to hear his words. Bineteau met with a fate similar to that which befell many another devoted priest in his heroic labors for the conversion of the savages. He accompanied the Kaskaskias on one of their annual hunts to the upper Mississippi, that his pastoral relations might not suffer intermission. His frame was poorly fitted to stand the exposure. Parched by day on the burning prairie, chilled by heavy dews at night, now panting with thirst and again aching with cold, he at length fell a victim to a violent fever, and " left his bones on the wilder- ness range of the buffaloes." Pinet shortly after followed his comrade.

Father Gabriel Morrest had previously arrived at Kas- kaskia. He was a Jesuit. He had carried the emblem of his faith to the frozen regions of Hudson's Bay, and had been taken prisoner by the English, and upon his liberation returned to America, and joined the Kaskaskia Mission. After the deaths of Bineteau and Pinet, he had sole charge until joined by Father Mermet shortly after the opening of the eighteenth century.

The devotion and piety of Mermet fully equalled those of his companion. He had assisted in collecting a village of Indians and Canadians, and had thus founded tlie first French port on the Ohio, or, as the lower part of the river was then called, the Wabash. At the Kaskaskia Mission his gentle virtues and fervid eloquence seem not to have been without their influence. "At early dawn his pupils came to church dressed neatly and modestly, each in a large deer- skin, or in a robe stitched together from several skins. After receiving lessons they chanted canticles; mass was then said in presence of. all the Christians in the place, the French and the converts-the women on one side and the men on the other. From prayer and instruction the mis- sionaries proceeded to visit the sick and administer medicine, and their skill as physicians did more than all the rest to win confidence. In the afternoon the catechism was taught in the presence of the young and the old, when every one, without distinction of rank or age, answered the questions of the missionary. At evening all would assemble at the chapel for instruction, for prayer. and to chant the hymns of the church. Ou Sundays and festivals, even after vespers a homily was pronounced ; at the close of the day parties

would meet in houses to recite the chaplet in alternate choirs, and sing psalms until late at night. These psalms were often homilies with words set to familiar tunes. Satur- day and Sunday were days appointed for confession and communion, and every convert confessed once in a fortnight. The success of the mission was such that marriages of French immigrants were sometimes solemnized with the daughters of the Illinois according to the rites of the Catholic Church. The occupation of the country was a cantonment of Europeans among the native proprietors of the forests and the prairies .* A court of law was unknown for nearly a century, and up to the time of Boisbriant there was no local government. The priests possessed the entire confidence of the community, and their authority happily settled, without the tardy delays and vexations of the courts, the minor difficulties which threatened the peace of the settlement. Of the families which formed part of the French population in the early history of Kaskaskia, there is some uncertainty. There is, however, authority for believing that the following were among the principal settlers: Bazyl La Chapelle, Michael Derouse, (called St. Pierre), Jean Baptiste St. Gemme Beauvais, Baptiste Mon- treal, Boucher de Montbrun, Charles Danie, François Charlesville, Antoine Bienvenu, Louis Bruyat, Alexis Doza, Joseph Paget, Prix Pagi, Michael Antoyen, Langlois De Lisle, La Derrou te and Noval.

AS PART OF LOUISIANA.

The settlements of Illinois had been a separate depend- ency of Canada. In 1711, together with the settlements on the Lower Mississippi, which had been founded by D'Iber- ville and Bienville, they became united in a single province under the name of Louisiana, with the capital at Mobile.

The exclusive control of the commerce of this region, whose boundless resources, it was believed, were to enrich France, was granted to Anthony Crozat, a merchant of great wealth. "We permit him," says the king in his letters patent, "to search, open, and dig all mines, veins, minerals, precious stones and pearls, and to transport the proceeds thereof into any part of France for fifteen years." La Motte Cadillac, who had now become royal Governor of Louisiana, was his partner. Hopes of obtaining great quantities of gold and silver animated the proprietors, as well as agitated France. Two pieces of silver ore, left at Kaskaskia by a traveler from Mexico, were exhibited to Cadillac as the produce of a mine in Illinois. Elated by this prospect of wealth, the Governor hurried up the river to find his anticipations fade away in disappointment. /Iron ore and the purest lead were discovered in large quantities in Missouri, but of gold, and silver, and precious stones not a trace was found. After Crozat had expended 425,000 livres, and realized only 300,000, he, in 1717, petitioned the king for the revocation of his charter. The white popula- tion had slowly increased ; and at the time of his departure it was estimated that the families comprising the Illinois settlements, now including those on the Wabash, numbered three hundred and twenty souls.

Bancroft.

HISTORY OF EDWARDS, LAWRENCE AND WABASH COUNTIES, ILLINOIS.

The commerce of Louisiana was next transferred to the Mississippi Company, instituted under the auspices of the notorious John Law. The wild excitement and visionary schemes which agitated France during Law's connection with the Company of the West, and while at the head of the Bank of France, form the most curious chapter in the annals of commercial speculations. These delusive dreams of wealth were based mainly upon the reports of the fabu- lous riches of the Mississippi Valley. Attempts to colonize the country were conducted with careless prodigality. Three ships landed eight hundred emigrants in August, 1718, near Mobile, whence they were to make their way overland to the Mississippi. Bienville, on the banks of that river, had already selected the spot for the Capital of the new Empire, which, after the Regent of France, was named New Orleans. From among the emigrants, eighty convicts from the prisons of France were sent to clear away the coppices which thickly studded the site. Three years after in 1721, the place was yet a wilderness, overgrown with canebrakes, among which two hundred persons had en- camped.

Phillip Renault was created Director-General of the mines of the new country, and an expedition was organized to work them. Renault left France, in 1719, with two hundred mechanics and laborers. Touching at San Domingo he bought five hundred negro slaves for working the mines. On reaching the Mississippi, he sailed to Illinois, the region in which gold and silver were supposed to abound. A few . miles from Kaskaskia, in what is now the south-west corner of Monroe County, was the seat of his colony. The village which he founded received the name of St. Phillip's. From this point various expeditions were sent out in search of the precious metals. Drewry's Creek, in Jackson County, was explored ; St. Mary's, in Randolph; Silver Creek, in Monroe; and various parts of St. Clair County, and other districts of Illinois. On Silver Creek, tradition has it that considerable quantities of silver were discovered and sent to France, and from this the stream has its name. By the retrocession of the territory to the crown, Renault was left to prosecute the business of mining without means. His operations proved a disastrous failure.

FORT CHARTRES.

Meanwhile war had sprung up between France and Spain and to protect the Illinois settlements from incursions of Spanish cavalry across the Great Desert, it was thought advisable to establish a fort in the neighborhood of Kas- kaskia. A Spanish expedition had, indeed, been fitted out at Santa Fe, but their guides, leading it by mistake to the Missouri Indians, instead of the Osages, enemies instead of friends, the whole party was massacred, with the exception of a priest who escaped to relate the fate of his unfortunate comrades. Previous to this La Salle, on the occasion of his visit to Paris, had shown the necessity of building a chain of forts from Canada to the Gulf, in order to secure the territory to the crown of France. In 1718, Boisbriant was despatched to Illinois. He began the building. of Fort Chartres, long the strongest fortress on the Western Conti-

nent, and of wide celebrity in the subsequent history of Illinois.

Fort Chartres stood on the east bank of the Mississippi, seventeen miles north-west of Kaskaskia, and between three and four miles from the location of the present village of Prairie du Rocher. The Company of the West finally built their warehouses here. In 1721, on the division of Louisi- ana into seven districts, it became the headquarters of Bois- briant, the first local Governor of Illinois. Fort Chartres was the seat of the Government of Illinois, not only while the French retained possession of the country, but after it passed under English control. When the fort was built, it stood about one mile distant from the river. In the year 1724 an inundation of the Mississippi washed away a portion of bank in front of the fort.

Captain Philip Pitman visited Illinois in 1766. He was an engineer in the British army, and was sent to Illinois to make a survey of the forts, and report the condition of the country, which had recently passed under British control. He published in London, in 1770. a work entitled, "The present State of the European Settlements on the Missis- sippi," in which he gives an accurate description of Fort Chartres :

" Fort Chartres, when it belonged to France, was the seat of the government of the Illinois. The headquarters of the English commanding officer is now here, who, in fact, is the arbitrary governor of the country. The fort is an irregular quadrangle. The sides of the exterior polygon are four hun- dred and ninety feet. It is built of stone, and plastered over, and is only designed for defence against the Indians. The walls are two feet two inches thick, and are pierced with loopholes at regular distances, and with two port holes for cannon in the facies, and two in the flanks of each bastion. The ditch has never been finished. The entrance to the fort is through a very handsome rustic gate. Within the walls is a banquette raised three feet, for the men to stand on when they fire through the loopholes. The buildings within the fort are, a commandant's and a commissary's house, the magazine of stores, corps de garde, and two barracks., ,These. occupy the square. . Within the gorges of the bastion are a powder-magazine, a bake-house, and a prison, in the floor of which are four dungeons, and in the upper, two rooms and an out-house belonging to the commandant. The command- ant's house is thirty-two yards long and ten broad, and con- tains a kitchen, a dining-room, a bed-chamber, one small room, five closets for servants, and a cellar. The commis- sary's house is built on the same line as this, and its propor- tion and the distribution of its apartments are the same. Opposite these are the store-house, and the guard-house, each thirty yards long and eight broad. The former consists of two large store rooms, (under which is a large vaulted cellar), a large room, a bed-chamber, and a closet for the storekeeper. The latter of a soldiers' and officers' guard-room, a chapel, a bed-chamber, a closet for the chaplain, and an artillery store-room. The lines of barracks have never been finished. They at present consist of two rooms each for officers, and three for soldiers. They are each twenty-five feet square, and have betwixt a small passage."

29.

HISTORY OF EDWARDS, LAWRENCE AND WABASH COUNTIES, ILLINOIS.

Such was Fort Chartres, believed at the time to be the most convenient and best built stronghold in North America ! Just before the French surrender, forty families lived in the neighboring village, in which stood a parish church, under the care of. a Franciscan friar, and dedicated to St. Anne. At the time of the surrender to the English, all, with the exception of three or four families, abandoned their homes, and removed to the west bank of the Mississippi, preferring the government of La Belle France to the hated English rule, ignorant that by secret treaty the territory west of the Mississippi had been ceded to Spain, even before the transfer of the region eastward was made to the English.

But the glory of the old fortress soon departed! In 1756 nearly half a mile intervened between Fort Chartres and the bank of the Mississippi. A sand bar, however, was forming opposite, to which the river was fordable. Ten years later the current had cut the bank away to within eighty yards of the fort. The sand-bar had become an island, covered with a thick growth of cottonwoods. The channel between it and the eastern bank was forty feet in depth. In the great freshet six years after, in 1772, in which the American Bot- tom was inundated, the west walls and two of the bastions were swept away in the flood. It was abandoned by the British garrison, which took up its quarters in Fort Gage, on the bluff opposite Kaskaskia, which then became the seat of government. From this date its demolition proceeded rapidly. In 1820 the south-east angle was still remaining. Only vestiges of the old Fortress can now be traced. Much of the stone was carried away, and used for building pur- poses elsewhere. Trees of stately growth cover the founda- tions. The river has retreated to its original channel, and is now a mile distant from the ruins. A growth of timber covers the intervening land, where less than a century ago swept the mighty current of the Father of Waters.

UNDER FRENCH RULE.

During the few years immediately succeeding the comple- tion of Fort Chartres, prosperity prevailed in the settlements between the Kaskaskia and the Mississippi rivers. Prairie du Rocher, founded about the year 1722, received consider- able accessions to its population. Among the earliest French settlers to make their homes here were Etienne Langlois, Jean Baptiste Blais, Jean Baptiste Barbeaux, Antoine Louvier, and the La Compte and other families, whose de- scendants are still found in that locality. New settlements sprang up, and the older ones increased in population. At Kaskaskia, the Jesuits established a monastery, and founded a college. In 1725 the village became an incorporated town, and the king, Louis XV., granted the inhabitants a com- mons. The Bottom land, extending upward along the Mis- sissippi, unsurpassed for the richness of its soil, was in the process of being rapidly settled by the larger number of new arrivals in the colony. Fort Chartres, the seat of govern- ment and the headquarters of the commandment of Upper Louisiana, attracted a wealthy, and for Illinois, a fashionable population.

After having been fourteen years under the government

of the Western Company, in April, 1732, the king issued a proclamation by which Louisiana was declared free to all his subjects, and all restrictions on commerce were removed. At this time many flourishing settlements had sprung up in Illinois, centering about Kaskaskia, and the inhabitants were said to be more exclusively devoted to agriculture than in any other of the French settlements in the West.

M. D'Artaguette, in · 1732, became commandant of Fort Chartres, and Governor of Upper Louisiana. Between New Orleans and Kaskaskia the country was yet a wilderness. Communication by way of the Mississippi was interrupted by the Chickasaws, allies of the English and enemies of France, whose cedar barks shooting boldly out into the cur- rent of the Mississippi, cut off the connection between the two colonies. It was in an attempt to subdue these that M. D'Artaguette, the commandant, lost h's life. An officer arrived at Fort Chartres from M. Prerrier, Governor-General at New Orleans, in the year 1736, summoning M. D'Arta- guette, with his French soldiers, and all the Indians whom he could induce to join him, to unite in an expedition against the enemy. With an army of fifty Frenchmen, and more than one thousand Indians accompanied by Father Senat and the gallant Vincennes, commandant of the post on the Wabash, where now stands the city bearing his name, D'Artaguette stole cautiously in the Chickasaw country. His Indian allies were impatient, and the commander con- sented, against his better judgment, to an immediate attack. One fort was carried-another-and then in making the as- sault on the third, the young and intrepid D'Artaguette fell at the head of his forces, pierced with wounds. The Indian allies made this reverse the signal for their flight. The Jesuit Senat might have fled, Vincennes might have saved his life, but both preferred to share the fate of their leader. The captives afterward met death at the stake under the slow torments of fire.

La Buissoniere succeeded as commandant at Fort Chartres. In 1739 a second expedition was undertaken against the Chickasaw country. La Buissoniere joined Bienville, then Governor-General of Louisiana, with a force of two hundred Frenchmen and three hundred Indians. The whole force under Bienville was twelve hundred French and five hun- dred Indians and negroes. His men suffered greatly from malarial fevers and famine, and returned the following spring without conquering the Chickasaws, with whom after- ward, however, amicable relations were established.

The period from 1740 to 1750 was one of great prosperity for the colonies. Cotton was introduced and cultivated. Regular cargoes of pork, flour, bacon, tallow, hides and leather, were floated down the Mississippi, and ex ported thence to France. French emigrants poured rapidly into the settlements. Canadians exchanged the cold rigors of their climate for the sunny atmosphere and rich soil of the new country. Peace and plenty blessed the settlements.

La Buissoniere was followed, in 1750, by Chevalier Ma- carty as Governor of Upper Louisiana, and Commandant of Fort Chartres. Peace was soon to be broken. The French and English war, which terminated in 1759 with the defeat of Montcalm on the plains of Abraham, and the capture of

HISTORY OF EDWARDS, LAWRENCE AND WABASH COUNTIES, ILLINOIS.

Quebec, began with a struggle for the territory on the Upper Ohio. Fort Chartres was the depot of supplies and the place of rendezvous for the united forces of Louisiana, and several expeditions were fitted out and dispatched to the scene of con- flict on the border between the French and English settle- ments. But France was vanquished in the struggle, and its result deprived her of her princely possessions east of the Mississippi.

CHARACTER OF THE EARLY FRENCH SETTLERS.

The early French inhabitants were well adapted by their peculiar traits of character for intercourse with their savage neighbors of the forest, with whom they lived on terms of peace and friendship. For this reason, the French colonists almost entirely escaped the Indian hostilities by which the English settlements were repressed and weakened. The freest communication existed between the two races. They stood on a footing of equality. The Indian was cordially received in the French village, and the Frenchman found a safe resting-place in the lodge of the savage. In scenes of social pleasure, in expeditions to remote rivers and distant forests, in the ceremonies and exercises of the church, the red men were treated as brothers, and the accident of race and color was made as little a mark of distinction as possi- ble. Frequent intermarriages of the French with the In- dians strongly cemented this union. For nearly a hundred years the French colonists enjoyed continual peace, while the English settlements on the Atlantic coast were in a state of almost constant danger from savage depredations.

It was doubtless greatly owing to the peculiar facility with which the French temperament adapted itself to surround- ings, and the natural address with which Frenchmen ingra- tiated themselves in the favor of the savages, that this happy condition of affairs existed. But something must be ascribed to the differences of character between the French and Eng- lish in regard to their aggressiveness. The English colonists excited the jealousy and fear of the Indians by their rapid occupation of the country. New settlements were constantly being projected, and the white population pushed farther and farther into the wilderness. When the Indians saw their favorite haunts broken up, and their hunting grounds invaded, a natural feeling of distrust and jealousy led them to warfare against the English. With the French it was different. There was but little disposition to found new settlements, or occupy the wilderness. They were essentially a social people, and the solitary life of a pioneer in the forest was repugnant to their disposition. They lived in compact villages. Their houses were in close proximity. With abundant room for spacious streets, they yet made them so narrow that the merry villagers could converse with ease across the street, each from his own cottage. Hunting was a favorite pursuit, and the chief means of support. With this mode of life the French were content. Ambition failed to incite them to conquer the wilderness, and push their set- tlements to unknown regions, and avarice was wanting to lead them to grasp after great possessions. The development of the "territorial paradise," as La Salle had called the re- gion through which he passed on his first voyage down the Mississippi, was to be accomplished by another race.

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Combined history of Edwards, Lawrence and Wabash counties, Illinois. With illustrations and biographical sketches of some of their prominent men and pioneers, Part 6

Author: Publication date: 1883 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. L. McDonough & co. Number of Pages: 490

Author:
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. L. McDonough & co.
Number of Pages: 490