USA > Illinois > Illinois, the story of the prairie state > Part 2
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to the south, and Tonty, forced to leave, returned to Mackinac.
So when La Salle arrived he found the fort ab- solutely deserted. The savage Iroquois, the mo- ment the French had gone, devastated the village, burned the lodges, and left the ground strewn with corpses of women and children. La Salle searched to see if any Frenchmen were there, turning over body after body, relieved to find no trace of them.6
Hoping to find them prisoners, he followed the Indians down the Illinois River to the Mississippi, searching for loyal Tonty. There his men proposed going on down the great river, but he must find his friends first; so they went north again, and after fourteen months' separation La Salle met his lieu- tenant.
"Any one else except him," wrote one of the priests, "would have abandoned the enterprise, but he, with a firmness and constancy which never had its equal, was more resolved than ever to push for- ward his work."?
The two friends had hardly greeted each other be- fore they were planning another expedition; and in 1682 La Salle and Tonty finally explored the Mis- sissippi clear to the sea. Many were their adven- tures on the way, many the strange tribes they met. Holding up the calumet, the Italian approached one
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group, who joined their hands in token of friend- ship.
"But I, who had but one hand, could only tell my men do the same in response."
At the mouth of the Mississippi, with imposing ceremony, they erected a column and a cross, with the arms of France, and took possession of the country, calling it Louisiana. This valley was an empire far larger than France had in Europe, and extended her American boundary from Niagara to the gulf. La Salle saw at once its great resources and dreamed of its future. He conceived the idea of a New France, controlling the St. Lawrence, the chain of lakes and the Mississippi Valley. He planned a chain of military stations, which should be centers for trade and colonizing, and should hem the English in along the Atlantic coast. He himself built six of these posts, and his far-seeing plan be- came the policy of the French kings, till there were sixty forts whose possession determined the history of America.8
One of these posts, said La Salle, must be in the Illinois country, to prevent Iroquois raids. On their way north from the Gulf of Mexico, Tonty was left to finish fortifying the great rock on the Illi- nois River, which nature had begun. Impregnable on three sides, the fourth could be approached only
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by a narrow winding path. Here the French made additional palisades, felling trees and dragging them up the steep path with incredible labor. Almost like an eagle's nest, the fort was built on the summit and named St. Louis du Rocher.9
In the valley far below gathered the Indians, nearly fourteen thousand of them. La Salle's plan was to protect them, teach them agriculture and Christianity, and sell them French goods in ex- change for their furs. As governor of the country, Tonty held this vast group together, kept his garri- son busy and contented, and exerted unbounded in- fluence over the Indians.
Priests, traders, even the Illinois tribes, when the Iroquois appeared, found the fort a place of refuge in the wilderness. But after twenty years a jealous governor in Canada took away Tonty's position, the great rock became a trading-post, and later was burned by the Indians. The record of the "Jesuit Relations" says that Tonty died of yellow fever, at Biloxi, in 1704.10 But the Indian legend is that in the summer of 1718 Tonty's canoe once more ar- rived at Fort St. Louis, on a sad errand, and here died the brave Italian of the iron hand and loyal heart.11
And there is another tradition of this great rock, telling the story of a group of Illinois Indians who took refuge here, hoping to escape the general
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slaughter that followed Pontiac's death. The sav- age enemy they easily kept at bay, but hunger and thirst defeated them. With true Indian fortitude they lay down to die, and for years afterward their bones whitened the summit of the rock. And in memory of this tragedy the site of Tonty's fort is called, not St. Louis, but Starved Rock.
You remember the sad ending of La Salle's ad- ventures? How he sailed from France to form a settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi, that Illi- nois might have a direct connection with the West Indies and Europe; how one ship went down in a storm, and one was captured by the Spanish; how by accident they went too far west and landed in Texas; and how the dauntless leader, starting over- land to get help in Illinois or Canada, was murdered by one of his jealous men?
La Salle was a busy, restless spirit, a man of in- domitable energy, untiring in his efforts to promote the interests of France. He was not a trader nor a priest, but an empire builder, seeing beyond his time the future of a continent. He was, writes Tonty, "one of the greatest men of the age, of wonderful ability, and capable of accomplishing any enterprise."12
Would you like to read more of these two friends ? Parkman's Discovery of the Great West
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tells their story, much of it translated from old French reports, and written in a most fascinating style. And you will find, in the first volume of the Illinois Historical Collections, Hennepin's narrative in English, and a memoir of Tonty, quaintly told and full of details.
You'd rather have a real story? Then read the Man with the Iron Hand, by Parish, and Cather- wood's Story of Tonty, where La Salle and his little niece, Father Hennepin and Tonty are the charac- ters at Fort Frontenac and Starved Rock.
V
UNDER THE FRENCH FLAG
U NLIKE most European colonies, which began with forts and palisades, the French frontier settlements were first a group of Indian lodges, then missionary stations with chapels, then trading-posts with store houses, and finally isolated villages. Vag- abond wanderers, voyageurs, as the skilled river boatmen were called, and the forest outlaws, cou- reurs de bois, mingling with soldiers, priests and traders, formed a picturesque population. Little by little farmers came, and permanent settlements grew up.
Hunting and fishing supplied a living, the soil was very fertile, the climate mild and healthful. Best of all, the French were always on friendly terms with the Indians. In comparison with the English colonies, the early settlements in Illinois had few difficulties. There were no taxes to be paid, no government to be supported, the priests were the leaders of the people.
But France was having constant war in Europe and could not send supplies or men to this distant
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province. So in 1712 the king granted to one of his counselors, Antoine Crozat, the commerce of Louisiana, which included Illinois. He was to search for mines, paying to the crown a fifth of the gold and silver and pearls he found, and a tenth of any other minerals.1 For the French, like Eng- lishmen and Spaniards, believed the country to be fabulously rich.
For four years Crozat's men dug and bored and prospected, finding only the lead mines in Missouri, opposite Kaskaskia. Clearly gold and silver were · not here, and the grant was soon surrendered to the king.
Louisiana was then given to the Company of the West, part of John Law's marvelous credit scheme to rebuild the finances of France.2 At the mouth of the Mississippi they founded the city of New Orleans. To protect the Illinois settlements they built Fort Chartres, a few miles above Kaskaskia.
Where the government's notes had been worth only twenty-two per cent., Law's shares were soon selling for thirteen hundred, for all France went crazy over his bank. The great fortunes made were quickly lost, for the scheme was a bubble that burst. The company was wrecked, Louisiana reverted to the crown, and the king made a new government for this province, separate from Canada, with Illi- nois one of its districts. For the first time men
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could secure titles to the lands they had held only at the sufferance of the Indians.3
From Law's company the Illinois settlements re- ceived a new impulse. New Orleans now offered a market for all their surplus products. Going in convoys for safety, the boats carried flour, buffalo meat and venison, lead from the mines, furs and hides, and brought back in exchange rice, sugar, and cloth from Europe.
From 1740 to 1750 was the most prosperous dec- ade, with perhaps a thousand people living in the five French villages. Each settlement had a com- mon where all the cattle and horses were pastured, and each family kept up its part of the fencing. The houses were one story high, made of large tim- bers, the cracks filled up with mortar, and white- washed inside and out. They were an honest, de- vout people, and their story has few exciting events. So far from Europe, so isolated from other settle- ments in America, there is little to tell save as Euro- pean history touches Illinois.
Do you remember how James II, driven from his English throne in 1688, fled to France, and Louis XIV took up arms in his defense, and began a se- ries of wars between the two countries? They are named for the English rulers, William, Anne, and George. You have studied in United States history the campaigns in Canada and along the Atlantic
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coast. Both nations recognized that distant posses- sions would be easy points of attack. The French realized then, if not before, the importance of their missions in the west, builded better than the priests knew, holding a long frontier for France, keeping the Indians as their allies.
"God alone could have saved Canada this year," wrote one governor-general. "But for the missions at the west, Illinois would have been abandoned, the fort of Mackinaw would have been lost, and a gen- eral rising among the natives, have completed the ruin of New France."4 And one of his successors, years later, wrote to Paris: "The little colony of Illinois ought not to be left to perish. The king must sacrifice for its support. The principal ad- vantage of the country is its extreme productiveness, and its connection with Canada and Louisiana must be maintained."5
But war or peace in Europe did not touch Illinois until the fourth contest began. For by 1750 Illinois was no longer isolated. Ever east had gone the line of French forts-Niagara, Crown Point and Ticon- deroga, Vincennes, Massac on the Ohio, Duquesne, until they reached the eastern part of the Ohio Val- ley just as the English were crossing the Alleghanies from the Atlantic slope. The French gave warn- ing that their territory was being taken. The Ohio Company sent George Washington to warn the
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French off English ground; and with his building and surrender of Fort Necessity the war was on.
In preparation for this conflict the French rebuilt Fort Chartres, in Illinois, spending nearly a million dollars on a great stone fortification which they proudly called "the Gibraltar of the west."6 Indeed, an English engineer described it as "the most com- modious and best built fort in North America." But it saw no fighting; the battles were all in Can- ada, south of the lakes, and at the most eastern of the frontier posts.
Remember, however, that Illinois was French and not English, and that soldiers from Fort Chartres were fighting, not with Braddock and Wolfe and Washington, but under French generals. French troops from Illinois watched "Monsieur de Wach- enston" capitulate at Fort Necessity, and march back to Virginia on the fourth of July. They helped in the clever ambush that resulted in Braddock's de- feat. They captured a fort in Pennsylvania. They sent men and provisions to Duquesne. Many of them were taken prisoners at Fort Niagara. They were under Montcalm at Quebec, when both gener- als lost their lives in the battle that decided the fu- ture of a continent.7
And when peace was declared, in 1763, Canada and Louisiana east of the Mississippi were surren- dered to the English. For ninety years the French
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UNDER THE FRENCH FLAG
had labored in Illinois, with never a lack of volun- teers, when there fell some trader, explorer, or sol- dier of the cross. Yet they left no permanent im- press on the country.
"Our life is passed," said a priest, describing his duties, "in rambling through thick woods, in climb- ing over hills, in paddling the canoe across lakes and rivers, to catch a poor savage who flies from us, and whom we can neither tame by teachings nor caresses."8 And years later another sorrowfully summed up his labors: "I can not say that my little efforts produced fruit. With regard to these nations, perhaps some one by a secret effort of grace has profited; this God only knows."9
All their years of sacrifice and toil came to naught, for the Indians never accepted Christianity. The Jesuits did, it is true, accumulate some prop- erty, for when they were expelled from France and French possessions, the commandant at Fort Char- tres seized their mills for corn and planks, their stone church and chapel, a large stone house, a brew- ery, a farm of two hundred acres, and great herds of cattle and horses.
Like their missionaries, the French settlers ac- complished little of value. To-day the fact of their occupancy of Illinois is scarcely more than a dream. For they were not successful colonizers and home builders, forming self-governing communities. Be-
a 1- h
· y f y
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neath the waters of the Mississippi their villages disappeared, or through the gradual desertion of their people. They were a wedge in the wilderness, a foundation for the Americans. But all that France did in Illinois is past history; there is no present.
Old Kaskaskia, by Catherwood, is an interesting story of this French settlement. And you will want to read the melancholy tale of the heroic D'Arta- guette, commandant at Fort Chartres in the seven- teen thirties (this you will find in the Historical Library volume for 1905).
VI
THE BRIEF RULE OF ENGLAND
I
N succeeding to power in 1763 England soon discovered that she had not succeeded to the French influence over the Indians. The French had something which adapted them peculiarly to the hab- its and feelings of the red men, something which the English did not have and never learned.
"When the French came hither, they came and kissed us," said an old chief; "they called us chil- dren, and we found them fathers; we lived like chil- dren in the same lodge."
Not so the English. When they obtained the country dissatisfaction showed immediately among the western tribes. "The conduct of the French never gave rise to suspicion," commented Pontiac, "the conduct of the English never gave rest to it." So he planned to drive the "dogs in red clothes" into the sea, by uniting the tribes along the whole frontier, more than a thousand miles, into a con- federacy.1
You remember how the Indians determined to
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"shut up the way," by attacking all the British posts on the same day; and how, by a ball game and other tricks, they did win eleven forts, taking the English wholly by surprise? Their plan seemed near suc- cess when word came to Detroit that peace was made between French and English, and the red men would be given no more ammunition.
"Our great father," said the French commandant at Fort Chartres, "can do no more for his red chil- dren; he is beyond the sea and can not hear their voices; you must make peace with the English."2
Gradually Pontiac's eighteen tribes deserted, he abandoned Detroit and went to Illinois, where he was murdered by a vagabond Indian, bribed with a barrel of whisky. But for two years he. was vir- tually the ruler in the western country, and England made several vain attempts to take possession of Illinois. Her officers were waylaid, taken prisoner, or killed; the Indians continued to "shut up the way."
Not until October, 1765, did a company of kilted Highlanders arrive at Fort Chartres. The twenty- one French soldiers formally surrendered the "Gi- braltar of the west." The white flag of France, with the three lilies, came down, and in its place was the red cross of St. George.
Illinois was now an English colony, part of the
THE BRIEF RULE OF ENGLAND 35
province of Quebec, governed by George III. Un- der orders from General Gage, commander-in-chief of all the British forces in America, the same Gen- eral Gage who was afterward in Boston, a royal proclamation was read at Kaskaskia, promising re- ligious freedom to the French, who were Roman Catholics.3 Even with this assurance the inhabi- tants so dreaded English rule that fully a third of them left their homes, crossing to the Spanish at St. Louis or going down the river to New Orleans. So the newcomers did no more than keep the popu- lation even.
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A small English garrison was stationed at Fort Chartres. When the Mississippi, suddenly rising one spring, washed away one side of the stone fort, the troops were moved to Kaskaskia, where they surrounded the old Jesuit building with a stockade and called it Fort Gage.4
The thirteen years of British rule in Illinois are singularly eventless, especially when you remember the remarkable happenings of these years along the coast. For during this time Parliament was tax- ing the colonies without giving them representation.' The great debt following the French wars was in- curred, said the English, for your defense, and you must help pay.
Not in that way, said the colonies. The tax on
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tea, the Boston party, the shots fired at Lexington, the battle of Bunker Hill, brought on the Revolu- tionary War. But, just as during the French wars, Illinois was far away from the actual fighting.
VII
THE AMERICAN CONQUEST
W HILE the thirteen colonies were fighting the armies of George III the first settlements were being made on the frontier. From Virginia and North Carolina the newcomers advanced into Kentucky to take possession of the land.
Immediately there was trouble with the Indians. Stirred up by the English traders and by Hamilton, the governor at Detroit, known as "the hair-buying general," because he paid in advance for scalps, the red men began their attacks. And the Americans banded together to defend their homes.
One of the leaders was a young Virginian, who, like Washington, was a backwoods surveyor. Placed at the head of Kentucky's militia, George Rogers Clark was planning how best the settlements could be defended. The Indian raids he traced directly back to the English, who were furnishing guns and ammunition to the savages, from Kaskaskia, Vin- cennes and Detroit. Taking these posts from the British, he determined, was the one possible way of ending these barbarous attacks.
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That Clark was right in thinking the English were the cause of the whole trouble we know now, posi- tively, from many letters found in the British rec- ords in Canada. This is a sample :
"It is the King's command," the colonial secretary at London wrote to the governor-general at Quebec, "that you direct Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton of Detroit to assemble as many of the Indians of his district as he conveniently can, and placing a proper person at their head to employ them in making a diversion and exciting alarm on the fron- tiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania."1
And Hamilton, while marching from Detroit to Vincennes, writes back to Quebec :
"It will be practicable to establish a post and build a fort but for this, aids of men and mer- chandise will be necessary to support what may be undertaken and to keep up the good disposition of the Indians. Those of this nation have promised to raise all their warriors next spring, and to spread themselves in all directions on the frontier."2
In his long surveying trips Clark had become well acquainted with the various settlements west of the Alleghanies. He was the first to appreciate the ad- vantages of extending the colonies' western bound- ary to the Mississippi. Like La Salle, he planned for the future.
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In the summer of 1777 he sent two spies to the forts on the Wabash and the Illinois; and they re- ported to him that the militia were well organized, but the English kept a loose guard, and though the French had been told that the Kentuckians were more cruel than the Indians, many of them were plainly in sympathy with the colonies.
Back to Virginia hastened Clark, to lay his plan before the governor, Patrick Henry. The Ameri- cans had just won the battle of Saratoga, and Bur- goyne's surrender made the suggestion for a vigor- ous campaign in the west especially opportune. The scheme, bold and well thought out, was enthusias- tically received, when Clark put it before the gov- ernor and his advisers. They saw its vast possibil- ities, as well as its enormous difficulties.
"What will you do," asked Thomas Jefferson, "in case you are defeated ?"
"Cross the Mississippi," came the prompt reply, "and seek the protection of the Spaniards !''3
And with the foresight which later marked his purchase of Louisiana, Jefferson said to Clark that his campaign "would, if successful, have an impor- tant bearing ultimately in establishing the north- western boundary."4
The plan was regarded as extremely hazardous ; its one chance of success, absolute secrecy; so the legislature was asked to send an expedition for the
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defense of Kentucky. And true that was-Clark's primary object was to end the Indian raids !
Virginia, using her every energy to help Wash- ington, gave what aid she could-twelve hundred pounds in paper money, far below par; authority to raise seven companies, of fifty men each, wherever Clark could find them ; and a promise to each soldier of three hundred acres of land in the conquered ter- ritory.5
But the secrecy made it difficult to find the seven companies. And it was not until May that Clark's boats, with less than two hundred men, started west from Fort Pitt. The usual route to Kaskaskia was, of course, all the way by water, down the Ohio and up the Mississippi. But there must be no advance news of their coming. Learning that French and Indian scouts were watching the river, Clark deter- mined to march overland.
Two things occurred to make them more certain of success. A letter came from the east with the good news that France had joined with the colonies in their war against England, and was sending her fleet and an army. This would make a favorable im- pression on the French inhabitants, thought Clark, and also on the Indians.
Then they met some hunters who had lately been at Kaskaskia. All that the spies had reported, a
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THE AMERICAN CONQUEST
year before, they confirmed, adding, writes the leader in his journal :
"that if they received timely notice of us, they would collect and give us a warm reception, as they were taught to harbor a most horrid idea of the bar- barity of Rebels, especially the Virginians; but that if we could surprise the place, which they were in hopes we might, they made no doubt of our being able to do as we pleased."
"No part of their information pleased me more," Clark goes on, "than that of the inhabitants view- ing us as more savage than their neighbors, the In- dians. I was determined to improve upon this, if I was fortunate enough to get them into my pos- session ; as I conceived the greater the shock I could give them at first, the more sensibly would they feel my lenity, and become more valuable friends."6
With these hunters as guides the Virginians struck across country, a distance of a hundred and twenty miles from Fort Massac, where the Amer- ican flag was first unfurled in Illinois, to "the an- cient French village of Kaskaskia." It was not an easy journey at best, for it was a wild region, with streams to be forded and many swamps. With great caution they pushed through the forest and over "those level plains that is frequent through- out this extensive country, much afraid
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1
of being discovered in these meadows, as we might be seen in many places for several miles."7 Secrecy was so important that Clark was afraid to send out hunting parties in search of game, lest they be dis- covered.
Such an army as they were! They had left be- hind all unnecessary baggage, and traveled as light as Indians. They had no uniforms other than the fringed hunting shirt, homespun trousers, and moc- casins which made the usual dress of the backwoods- man. Their clothes were torn and soiled from the rough usage given them. Their beards were three weeks long. The officers could not be distinguished from their men!
On the afternoon of the fourth of July they reached the Kaskaskia River, three miles from the town. Hiding in the woods till dusk, they took pos- session of a farmhouse and learned from the family that the day before the soldiers were all under arms, but had concluded there was no cause for alarm and were off their guard.
Like Stark at the battle of Bennington, Clark made a speech to his men, brief, but conveying the precise idea he intended :
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