USA > Illinois > Peoria County > Peoria > Peoria city and county, Illinois; a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Vol. I > Part 4
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What Workman wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope."
"Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee,-are all with thee!"
In the foregoing pages we have given something like a "flying machine" view of the forces that united in the making of Peoria and have controlled its destiny It remains to see how, when, and for what purpose, those various influence; explored and finally colonized and developed our city and county.
We have seen how our beautiful valley of the Illinois and the whole valley of the Mississippi were inhabited successively by two great races which have moved away forever or perished from the earth. Meanwhile the forces of history were preparing for the coming of the third, the white race. We have seen that in Europe this race was then divided into four great parties, each of which was represented in America, and we have seen how they differed among themselves in principles and ideas of government. We have omitted discussion of the Quakers and other small sects, which did not much believe in any form of government. How these great parties contended on the farther side of the Atlantic and on this side, and have continued to contend to the present day, and how their principles have affected us and still affect us and how we Americans have endeavored with more or less success to eliminate the bad and retain the good of each, are among the interesting questions now before us.
Early in the seventeenth century the French had commenced to establish trading posts and missionary stations on our northern lakes. There was one of these at La Pointe near the southwestern corner of Lake Superior, surrounded by the Apostle Islands, almost due north from the western part of Peoria County. It was from there in 1653,-twenty years before Marquette and Joliet started on their voyage of discovery, when the Grand Monarch has been ten years on the throne of France, ten years after the formation of the first con- federacy between the New England colonies for the purpose of resisting the encroachment of the French and Indians, and about the time Cromwell was dissolving the Long Parliament-that a missionary, Father Jean Dequerre, a Jesuit, early in 1653, started for the Illinois and, it is said, established a flourish-
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ing mission-the first mission in the Mississippi valley-probably at the place where Peoria is now situated. "He visited various Indian nations on the borders of the Mississippi, and was slain in the midst of his apostolical labors in 1661.
"In 1657, Father Jean Charles Drocoux, Jesuit, went to the Illinois, and re- turned to Quebec the same year."
"In 1663, Father Claude Jean Allouez was appointed Vicar General of the north and west, including Illinois. He preached to the P'ottawottomies and Miamis about Green Bay ; in 1665, he returned to Quebec, and went to the Illi- nois in 1668, and visited the missions on the Mississippi."
"In 1670, Father Hugues Pinet, Jesuit, went to the Illinois, and established a mission among the Tamarois, or Cahokias, at or near the present site of the village of Cahokia, on the borders of the Mississippi. He remained there until the year 1686, and was at that mission when Marquette and Joliet went down the Mississippi. In the same year M. Bergier, priest of the Seminary of Quebec, succeeded him in the mission to the Tamaroas or Cahokias: and Father Pinet returned to the mission of St. Louis ( Peoria), where he remained until he died, the 16th of July, 1704, at the age of seventy-nine."
"In 1670, M. Augustine Meulan de Circe, priest of the Seminary of Quebec, went to Illinois. He left the mission there in 1675 and returned to France." "Thus it will be seen that for twenty years, to wit, from 1653 to 1673, anterior to the discovery of Marquette and Joliet, there was a succession of missions in the Illinois." "There are no other memorials of these missions now extant, as known to us, except those preserved in the Seminary of Quebec, from a copy of which the above notices are taken. The only object is to show, that for years before Marquette and Joliet visited the country, the 'Illinois' and 'Mis- sissippi' had been discovered, and missions actually established on their borders. That these good fathers made notes on their travels, and rendered accounts of the various Indian tribes which they visited along the Father of Waters, to their superiors, there can be no doubt. What have become of these memorials of early western adventure and discovery now? It is impossible to say. That they would throw much light on the early history of the west, there can be no doubt."
The Grand Monarque who always had in his service the most alert, ac- complished, able and devoted officers, in 1873 had Count de Frontenac as governor of Canada, MI. Talon. as Intendent, or Supervisor of the Civil Government, and Claud F. Dablon, as the Father Superior of the Jesuit Missions. These able men knew the importance of the discoveries made by the missionaries and traders, for they had been told about the Mississippi and believed that it emptied either into the Gulf of California or into the Gulf of Mexico: and they now determined to have that matter thoroughly and officially explored. For this purpose they selected Sieur Jollyet, who was a most able and thoroughly com- petent young man, born in this country and endowed with every quality that could be desired in such an enterprise, having experience and a knowledge of the languages of the Ottawa Country, where he had spent several years ; hav- ing moreover the tact and prudence necessary for an expedition so dangerous and difficult, and a courage that feared nothing.
For several years, Father James Marquette, a Jesuit missionary, has longed to have the great river and the prairies of Illinois explored and the Gospel car- ried to the Indians; and when an opportunity was offered of accompanying Joliet, he at once accepted it with delight and enthusiasm, putting their expedi- tion under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Immaculate, and promising her that if she did him the grace to discover the great river, he would give it the name of "Conception." In 1669 while stationed at Che-goi-me-gon he selected a young Illinois as a companion by whose instructions he became familiar with the dialect of that tribe.
Joliet and Marquette with two canoes and five service men started on their trip the 17th of May, 1673, from the Mission of St. Ignez opposite Mackinack.
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They coasted along the northern shore of Lake Michigan and entered the waters of Green Bay ; from its head they passed the portage into the river Wisconsin and down that into the Mississippi, the great river, then without a name, and named it Conception River. This discovery was made on the 17th of June, 1673, just thirty days after they started. Without many interesting incidents they followed down the Mississippi until they arrived at three little villages of the Peorias, members of the Illinois Confederacy, on the western shore of the Mississippi almost directly west of Peoria. Marquette's description of this visit has been already quoted. From there they went on south to the vicinity of the Arkansas River where they found a different and more warlike people. They were already convinced that the great river emptied into the Gulf of Mexico, and they were told that it would be very dangerous for them to go any farther, not only because the Indians there were unfriendly and warlike, but because they might meet Spanish explorers. For these reasons they wisely concluded to return and report their valuable discoveries rather than to go on further and by their own deaths cause the loss of all they had gained. They therefore started up the Mississippi River but on reaching the mouth of the Illinois they determined to take it as a shorter route to the lakes. Near Alton they dis- covered the pictures of the Piasa Bird and other pictographs already described.
It was on the 17th of July, just thirty days after their discovery of the Mississippi, that they began their return voyage. Marquette expresses his admiration of what he saw in the Illinois valley in the following language :
"We had seen nothing like this river for the fertility of the land, its prairies, woods, wild cattle, stag, deer, wild-cats, bustards, swans, ducks, parrots and even beaver ; its many little lakes and rivers. That on which we sailed is broad, deep, and gentle for sixty-five leagues. During the spring and part of the summer, the only portage is half a league."
Marquette was a very devoted missionary and never lost an opportunity to publish the Gospel to the Indians whom he met. He stopped three days at the village of Peoria, preaching his faith in all their cabins. As he was embarking, the Indians brought to him at the water's edge a dying child which he baptized a little before it expired ; deeming this, as he says, "an admirable providence" for the salvation of that innocent soul and one by which all the fatigue of his voyage was well repaid.
We regret exceedingly that Marquette did not more fully describe his visit to our Peoria village. He says nothing of the previous visits of Father Jean Dequerre, or by any of the other priests that are said to have been here before him. Perhaps he may not have known about these visits or he may have had his own reason for not mentioning them. I believe he does not mention the fact that the Indians here were the same tribe that he met in Iowa but this was undoubtedly the case. At any rate, he seems to have been well received and to have spent a busy three days with them and to have baptized a child. Perhaps, though he does not refer to it, the Indians already knew something of Christianity from former missionaries.
This expedition of Joliet and Marquette "was a wonderful journey," says Stephen L. Spear, "without serious accident or misadventure from start to finish. No deaths, no sickness, no desertions, no dissensions among them- selves, no conflicts with the natives, no fatal scarcity of corn, no waste of time, no change of plan, none of the usual misfortunes accompanying such expeditions in those days-a canoe voyage of more than 2,500 miles in bark canoes over an uncharted route without map or gnide-without shelter from scorching sun or pelting rain or driving wind-anchoring near mid-stream at night, not daring to go forward for fear of rock and rapids; not daring to camp on shore for fear of surprise by hostile natives ; refraining from shooting the game with which the country abounded for fear of attracting the attention of unwelcome neighbors- their little stock of corn and dried meat the only commissary on which they could draw for supplies ; yet 20 miles a day upstream and down, through foul weather
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and fair, including all stops and portages, returning to their point of departure without a mishap worthy of record."
Marquette has generally been considered the historian of that exploring expedition. Joliet lost his instruments and his memoranda and nearly lost his life at La Chine Rapids, yet he nevertheless prepared a map from memory, which was sent to France by Frontenac. The report of Marquette was intended as Joliet's official report of his voyage.
CHAPTER V
TAKING POSSESSION BY LA SALLE
The last chapter gave an account of the discovery of the Illinois country. This will describe how it was claimed and held for the French King and the Roman Catholic Church.
Eight years before Joliet and Marquette made their historic exploration, Jean Talon, Counselor and Intendant to Louis XIV, wrote to John Colbert, the King's Prime Minister, as follows :
"Canada is of such a vast extent that I know not of its limits on the north, they are so great a distance from us, and on the south there is nothing to prevent his Majesty's name and arms being carried as far as Florida, New Sweden, New Netherlands, New England ; and that through the first of these countries access can be had even to Mexico. All this country is diversely watered by the Saint Lawrence and the beautiful rivers that flow into it latterly, that com- municate with divers Indian nations rich in furs, especially the more northern of them. The southern nations can also be reached by way of Lake Ontario, if the portages (beyond) with which we are not yet acquainted, are not very difficult, though this may be overcome. If these southern nations do not abound in peltries as those of the north, they may have more precious commodities. And if we do not know of these last, it is because our enemies, the Iroquois, intervene between us and the countries that produce them."
Talon does not seem to consider the possibility of reaching the southern country by the way of the Illinois and Mississippi, or even by the way of the Wabash and Ohio, which afterwards were avenues of trade and travel. Per- haps he was not sufficiently sure about them. His plan seems to have been to follow up some river and make a connection by a portage with the head waters of the Ohio. Talon's scheme would probably have been better than the western ones if he could have succeeded and held it, because it would have confined the Atlantic colonies east of the mountains more easily; but it would have been more difficult to hold because the portage would have been longer and the Iroquois and the colonies were dangerously near.
Talon also wrote Colbert in 1671, two years before Marquette's expedition, as follows :
"I am no Courtier, and assert, not through a mere desire to please the King, nor without just reason that this portion of the French Monarch will become something grand." "What I discover around me causes me to foresee this, and those colonies of various nations so long settled on the seaboard already tremble with affright in view of what his Majesty has accomplished here in the interior within seven years. Measures adopted to confine them within narrow limits by taking possession, which I have caused to be effected, do not allow them to spread, without subjecting themselves at the same time to be treated as usurpers and to have war waged against them, and this truth is what, by all their acts, they seem to greatly fear. They already know that your name is spread abroad among the savages throughout all those countries and that he alone is there regarded by them, (the savages) as the arbitrator of peace and war. All detach themselves insensibly from other Europeans and excepting the Iroquois, of
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whom I am not as yet assured, we may safely promise ourselves to make the others take up arms whenever we please."
The King's able minister and his intendant saw the great importance of tak- ing possession of the valleys of the Mississippi, Illinois, and Ohio, and of hemming in and confining the Atlantic seaboard colonies to the eastern side of the Alle- ghany Mountains, for they belonged to rival nations in Europe and were founded on theories of government-as regards both church and state and social life --- very different from those of France, besides being aggressive competitors for the Indian trade.
La Salle was an extraordinary man. "It is easy to reckon up his defects but it is not easy to hide from sight the Roman virtues that redeemed them. Beset by a throng of enemies, he stands like a King of Israel, head and shoulders above them all. He was a tower of adamant against whose front hardships and dangers, the rage of men, of the elements, the southern sun, the northern blast, fatigue, famine and disease, delay, disappointment and hope deferred, emptied their quivers in vain."
Four years before Joliet's discovery La Salle had fitted out an expedition to explore the Ohio from its source to the sea, and had actually started on the expedition ; but owing to disagreements with the ecclesiastical part of his associates, he was diverted from his purpose and returned home without even reaching the Ohio. Then for some years he led the life of a "Runner of the Woods," but he was more than a runner. He was of good birth and education and of correct habits, a promoter of great enterprises whose management he imposed on himself, a man of great ambition and tenacity, shirking no hard- ships, apparently incapable of discouragement and unconscious of defeat to the last.
Joliet, after his return from his exploring expedition with Marquette, met La Salle at Fort Frontenac. Here the two celebrated explorers conferred together as to the geography of the country and its future possibilities. La Salle, enterprising and ambitious as he was, saw in its development a great opportunity and seized it with delight, energy and enthusiasm. He applied to the King for a charter, which was granted, May 12, 1678. This authorized him to build a new and much stronger fort at Fort Frontenac, (now Kingston, Canada ) granted him a large tract of land in the vicinity and authorized him to take possession of the country, of which they hoped to make a glorious New France, and to fortify it and hold it for the great King and the Roman Catholic Church.
His party was soon gathered. Chevalier IIenri de Tonti, an Italian by birth, son of the merchant who invented the Tontine system of accumulating money, a professional soldier with much experience in European wars, a brave and able man, who afterwards proved himself to be a most faithful and loyal friend of La Salle, was introduced to him by Prince de Conti; and they, together with Louis Hennepin, a Franciscan Friar. Father Gabriel de La Ribourde, and Zeno- bius or Zenoble Membre, all members of the Franciscan order of the Roman Catholic Church, furnished the ability, intelligence and character for the new expedition. The priests of this order were sometimes called "Gray Friars," and they were also known in Belgium, Holland and France as "Recollects," while the Indians called them "Bare Feet" or "Gray Gowns." La Salle seems to have preferred this order to that of the Jesuits, although both orders were prominent and devoted to the missionary work everywhere; and the writings of these two orders constitute nearly the entire written history of this valley until it was ceded by France to England in 1763, or even as late as July 4th, 1778, when George Rogers Clark under a commission from Patrick Henry, the Governor, took possession of this country for Virginia.
La Salle and Tonti organized their expedition and built at Fort Frontenac, a ship called the Griffon, with which they expect to keep up the communication with the settlements on the western lakes and carry on their commerce. La Salle, Tonti, Hennepin, and the two Recollects, with thirty-two persons in all
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sailed from Fort Frontenac the 7th of August, 1679, after the "Te Deum" and amid the firing of cannon, bringing a good supply of arms, merchandise, and seven small cannon.
La Salle's plan was to seize and fortify the Mississippi and Illinois rivers and establish trading posts and missionary stations which should be put under the charge of the Friars.
Reaching Mackinac with his party in September, 1679, he passed on to Green Bay and remained there until their vessel, the Griffon, was loaded with furs. This was sent back with a pilot and five good sailors for Montreal to dispose of the cargo and return as soon as possible with the additional sup- plies needed for the furtherance of the expedition. Among other things it was to bring iron and material to build and equip a vessel on the Illinois river to be used in navigating that river and the Mississippi. La Salle and fourteen men then proceeded with four canoes, considerable merchandise and a quantity of utensils and tools to the southern bend of Lake Michigan and built a fort at the mouth of St. Joseph's river, where he was joined by Tonti with twenty addi- tional men.
On the third of December. La Salle with thirty men and eight canoes ascended the Miami river to a point near South Bend to make a portage to the Kankakee and thus reach the Illinois. When they reached the village of the Kaskaskias at Starved Rock, they found it deserted. The Indians, however, as was their custom on leaving their villages in the fall for a hunting season in the south, had stored some corn for their use on their return. La Salle was compelled to take about twenty bushel of this for he was out of provisions.
With these fresh supplies he passed on down the Illinois to Peoria Lake. Here they saw a number of wooden canoes on both sides of the river and about eight cabins full of Indians, who did not see them until they had doubled a point behind which the Illinois were encamped within half a gun shot. La Salle and his men were in eight canoes abreast with all their arms in their hands. At first the Indians were alarmed and ran away. He managed to call them back and after a day spent in dancing and feasting, Hennepin notified them that they had come not to trade but to preach. For this purpose, they assembled the chiefs of the villages, which were on both sides of the river. La Salle explained that the French desired to be their allies and that they would bring over addi- tional Frenchmen, who would protect them from the attacks of their enemies and would furnish them all the goods they needed, and that they intended to build a great wooden canoe and sail down to the sea bringing them all kinds of merchandise by that shorter and more easy route. The Indians agreed and gave a description of the Mississippi river.
At Peoria La Salle met a large number of the Kaskaskias returning to their village. La Salle explained to them that he had taken some of their corn as a matter of necessity and he settled with them for it to their satisfaction. La Salle now decided to remain at Peoria until the opening of the river in the spring.
The next day after they landed, a Miami chief named Monso arrived with a lot of kettles, axes, knives, etc .. in order by these presents to make the Illinois believe that the Frenchmen intended to join their enemies who lived beyond the Colbert ( Mississippi) river. One of the Illinois chiefs, named Omaouha, notified La Salle that the Miamies were working against them. La Salle believed that Monso had been sent by other Frenchmen who were jealous of his success for he was surprised to find that Monso knew all about his affairs in detail.
Nicanape, a brother of the most important of the Illinois chiefs, made a speech at the feast trying to persuade the Frenchmen to abandon their idea of going on down the river, telling them that the river was unnavigable, full of falls and sandbars and infested with dangerous enemies. After the meal La Salle explained to Nicanape that when Monso was plotting with him the night before in secret, La Salle had not been asleep and his manifest knowledge of the motive of Nicanape silenced him. In the meantime Monso started back. The Indians sent
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runners after Monso to bring him back for cross-examination but as his tracks were hidden by a recent fall of snow they were unable to overtake him. Never- theless La Salle's men were somewhat disheartened and six of them deserted. They were at that time probably on the western side of the river near Birket's Hollow.
La Salle, having gotten consent of the Indians, now commenced to build a fort, a stockade of logs. This was soon finished and named Fort Creve Coeur. Concerning the location of this fort there has been a great deal of controversy and argument. It seems certain, however, that the main fort was built at the southern extremity of the lake on the eastern side of the Illinois river ; some think it was located above the lower end of the lake near the upper free bridge, and some that it was located three miles below, near Wesley City. Each of these locations has been marked by a stone and both are on high points of the bluff.
It is now confidently asserted by Daniel R. Sheen, Esquire, of this city, that Fort Creve Coeur was situated just across the river from Peoria on the line of Fayette street, and on a little mound only a few feet above high water mark. Notwithstanding the fact that both of the other locations for Creve Coeur have been endorsed by enthusiastic societies and marked by monuments, I am rather inclined to think that Fort Creve Coeur was located in the latter place, not only because it seems to meet the descriptions given by the builders better, but because it is the most reasonable place for such a fort built for the purpose for which this was constructed. At that place and from there on down, the river is always open in the spring several weeks earlier than it is above. There is also at that place a bend in the shore and a slough making a kind of port or harbor. The ground is high enough to avoid the danger of overflow in high water and it is low enough for boats to be brought up close to the fort or even within the pali- sades. It is manifest that this would be desirable as the fort was not built for a temporary purpose only, but as a protection to the commerce they hoped to establish on the Illinois river ; and for this latter purpose it would be necessary that it should be close to the harbor and to the boats that were to be protected.
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