USA > Illinois > St Clair County > History of St. Clair County, Illinois. With illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 5
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Robert, Cavalier de La Salle, whose illustrious name is more intimately connected with the exploration of the Mississippi than that of any other, was the next to descend the river, in the early part of the year 1682. At its mouth he erected a column, and decorating it with the arms of France, placed upon it the follow- ing inscription :
LOUIS LE GRAND, ROI DE FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE, REGNE; LE NEUVIEME AVRIL, 1682.
Thus France, by right of discovery, lay claim to the Missis- sippi Valley, the fairest portion of the globe, an empire in extent, stretching 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 villages of Kaskaskia and Cahokia, but the statement rests on no substantial foundation.
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 bears their 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 Im- maculate Conception." The town was called Kaskaskia, a name afterwards transferred to another locality.
La Salle, while making preparations to descend the Missis- sippi, 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 discernible. This was the first military occupation of Illinois. There is no evidence, how- ever, that settlement was begun there at that early date.
On La Salle's return from this exploration of the Mississippi, 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 a landscape of rarest beauty. From three sides it is inaccessible. This stronghold received the name of the Fort of St. Louis. Twenty thousand allied Indians gathered around it on the fertile plains. The fort seems to have been abandoned 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 toward effecting anything like a permanent settlement 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 produce 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 Kaskaskia is merely the northern one transplanted. The Mission of the Immaculate Conception is the same.
FOUNDING OF KASKASKIA.
On the death of Marquette, he was succeeded by Allouez, and he by Father Gravier, who respectively had charge of the Mis- sion on the Illinois River. Gravier is said to have been the first to reduce the principles of the Illinois language to rules. It was also he who succeeded in transferring Marquette's Mission from the banks of the Illinois south to the spot where stands the modern town of Kaskaskia, and where it was destined to endure. The exact date is not known, but the removal was accomplished some time prior to the year 1690, though probably not earlier than 1685.
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 in- sufficient 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 conver- sion 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 vio- lent fever, and "left his bones on the wilderness range of the buffaloes." Pinet shortly after followed his comrade.
Father Gabriel Morrest had previously arrived at Kaskaskia. 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
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HISTORY OF ST. CLAIR COUNTY, ILLINOIS.
and Canadians, and had thus founded the 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 canti- cles ; mass was then said in presence of all the Christians in the place, the French and the converts-the women on one side aud the men on the other. From prayer and instruction the mission- aries proceed 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 chiant the hymns of the church. On 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 alter- nate choirs, and sing psalms until late at night. These psalms were often homilies with words set to familiar tunes. Saturday 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 accord- ing to the rites of the Catholic Church. The occupation of the country was a cantonment of Europeans among the native pro- prietors 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 Freuch population in the early history of Kaskaskia, there is some uncertainty. There is, how- ever, 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, Francois Charles- ville, Antoine Bienvenu, Louis Bruyat, Alexis Doza, Joseph Paget, Prix Pagi, Michael Antoyen, Langlois De Lisle, La Derroutte and Noval.
AS PART OF LOUISIANA.
The settlements of Illinois had been a separate dependency of Canada. - In 1711, together with the settlements on the Lower Mississippi, which had been founded by D'Iberville and Bien- ville, 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 population 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.
The commerce of Louisiana was next transferred to the Mississippi Company, instituted under the auspices of the notori- ous John Law. The wild excitement and visionary schemes which agitated France during Law's connection with the Com- pany 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 fabulous riches of the Mississippi Valley. Attempts to colonize the country were conducted with careless prodigality. Three ships landed eight hundred emi- grants 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 encamped.
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 Creck, 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 con- siderable 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 Kaskaskia. A Spanish expedition had, indeed, been fitted out at Santa Fe, but their
* Bancroft.
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HISTORY OF ST. CLAIR COUNTY, ILLINOIS.
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 1720, Boisbriant was despatched to Illinois. He began the building of Fort Chartres, long the strongest fortress on the Western Continent, 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 ware- houses here. In 1721, on the division of Louisiana into seven districts, it became the headquarters of Boisbriant, the first local Governor of Illinois. Fort Chartres was the seat of the govern- ment 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 Mississippi," 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 Eng- lish 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 hundred and ninety feet. It is built of stone, and plastered over, and is only de- signed for defence against the Indians. The walls are two feet two inches thick, and are pierced with loopholes at regular dis- tances, 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 commandant's house is thirty-two yards long and ten broad, and contains a kitchen, a dining room, a bed-chamber, one small room, five closets for servants, aud a cellar. The commissary's house is built on the same line as this, and its proportion and the distri- bution 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 sol- diers' and officers' guard-room, a chapel, a bed-chamber, a closet for the chaplain, and an artillery store-room. The lines of bar-
racks 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."
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 neiglibor- ing 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 ter- ritory west of the Mississippi had been ceded to Spain, even be- fore 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 Bottom 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 purposes elsewhere. Trees of stately growth cover the foundations. 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 FRENCHI RULE.
During the few years immediately succeeding the completion of Fort Chartres, prosperity prevailed in the settlements between the Kaskaskia and the Mississippi rivers. Prairie du Rocher, founded about the year 1722, received considerable accessions to its population. Among the earliest French settlers to make their homes here were Etienne Langlois, Jean Baptiste Blais, Jean Baptiste Barbeau, Antoine Louvier, and the La Compte and other families, whose descendants are still found in that locality. New settlements sprang up, and the older ones in- creased 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 in- habitants a commons. The Bottom land, extending upward along the Mississippi, 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 gov- ernment 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 proclama -.
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HISTORY OF ST. CLAIR COUNTY, ILLINOIS.
tion 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 exclu- sively devoted to agriculture than in any other of the French settlements in the West.
M. D'Artaguette, in 1732, became commandant of Fort Char- tres, and Governor of Upper Louisiana. Between New Orleans and Kaskaskia the country was yet a wilderness. Communica- tion by way of the Mississippi was interrupted by the Chicka- saws, allies of the English and enemies of France, whose cedar barks shooting boldly out into the current 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 his life. An officer arrived at Fort Chartres from M. Prer- rier, Governor-General at New Orleans, in the year 1736, sum- moning M. D'Artaguette, with his French soldiers, and all the Indians whom he could induce to join him, to unite in an expe- dition 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 consented, against his better judgment, to an immediate attack. One fort was carried-an- other-and then in making the assault 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 Chicka- saw country. La Buissoniere joined Bienville, then Governor- General of Louisiana, with a force of two hundred Frenehinen and three hundred Indians. The whole force under Bienville was twelve hundred French and five hundred Indians and negroes. His men suffered greatly from malarial fevers and famine, and returned the following spring without conquering the Chickasaws, with whom afterward, 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 exported thence to France. French emigrants poured rapidly into the settlements. Cana- dians 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 Macarty 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 Mont- calm on the plains of Abraham, and the capture of 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 conflict on the border
between the French and English settlements. 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 carly French inhabitants were well adapted by their pe- culiar traits of character for intercourse with their savage neigh- bors 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 ex- isted between the two races. They stood on a footing of equal- ity. 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 pos- sible. Frequent intermarriages of the French with the Indians strongly cemented this union. For nearly a hundred years the French colonists enjoyed continual peace, while the English set- tlements 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 surroundings, and the natural address with which Frenchmen ingratiated themselves in the favor of the savages, that this happy condition of affairs existed. But something must be aseribed to the differ- ence of character between the French and English 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 jeal- ousy 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 coll- tent. Ambition failed to incite them to conquer the wilderness, and push their settlements to unknown regions, and avarice was wanting to lead them to grasp after great possessions. The de- velopment of the " territorial paradise," as La Salle had called the region through which he passed on his first voyage down the Mississippi, was to be accomplished by another race.
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