As the French crown tried to administer its vast North American territory and continue to extract furs, it needed to maintain relationships with the Native people living on the lands it claimed as part of New France. Once a peace agreement had been settled with the Iroquois nations in 1700, the French needed to find ways to work with the tribes of the Illinois country: the Illinois and their allies, the Miami, and the Illinois’ antagonists, the Chickashaws. One way to do this was to continue to scatter forts along the waterways linking the parts of this territory in order to maintain contact and tend to the relationship. As more and more traffic and goods were sent down the Mississippi River to Louisiana—the southern part of New France—a new fort, Fort de Chartres, was established on the east side of the river 18 miles north of the French/Native village of Kaskaskia. Built in 1720, this fort was a structure with palisades made of upright logs and featuring corner bastions. The fort was reconstructed several times after 1720. The last reconstruction was built of stone in 1753, and included a stone powder magazine.
Farther north, a short-lived fort called Fort Le Pouz was established in 1729 by the commandant of Fort St. Joseph (located at present-day Niles, Michigan) east of the Des Plaines River and north of the Kankakee River, an area of marshes rich in fur-bearing animals. The fort would close in 1730, however. Along the Ohio River in the southernmost part of today’s Illinois, the French built another fort in 1757. Fort de l’Ascension was rebuilt in 1759 and named Fort Massac but was abandoned after the French defeat in the Seven Years’ War, known by some as the French and Indian War. Finally, Fort Kaskaskia was constructed around 1759 to protect the town of Kaskaskia along the Mississippi River, a sign of the economic importance of the town.
Several of these forts were built during a period of time that was marked by a series of violent clashes with the Meskwaki (called by the French the Renards or Foxes) and their allies: this set of bloody conflicts is today generally called the Fox Wars. The French had placed themselves in the middle of a region with existing intertribal tensions. When, in 1710, the French invited multiple Native tribes to take up residence near their new fort at Detroit, it meant that nations who considered each other rivals or enemies were in close proximity, and violence broke out between various competing groups: the Meskwaki and their allies like the Mascouten vied for control with the Meskwakis’ rivals such as the Potawatomi and Odawa. The French sided with the Potawatomi and other rivals of the Meskwaki.
The intertribal violence persisted and spread, eventually involving nearly all of the Native nations of the upper Midwest, including the Peorias and other Illinois people, along with the French. Because of this, French traders found it very difficult to access crucial water routes such as the Chicago-Des Plaines portage. The forts built by the French government in Illinois were established in part to try to manage this situation as they negotiated complex relationships with their Native trade partners. The wars created a situation of instability in the Illinois country and farther north. This ultimately decimated the Meskwaki, and they sought refuge among the Sauk people at Green Bay in today’s Wisconsin and by 1745 moved to the lower Wisconsin River, as the conflicts eased.
Fur Trade, Food, and Farming
French forts were usually located close to Native villages. Sometimes the French chose the sites because there were villages already there, making it easier to benefit from the close proximity of Native trade partners. Sometimes Native villages sprang up near forts for the same reason: the presence of French trade partners at the forts. Although some French forts were too small or temporary to attract many French settlers, known as habitants, several Illinois Country sites did see villages with substantial habitant populations develop in proximity to forts.
One such village developed near Fort de Chartres by around 1720, and by about 1722, another French settlement, named Prairie du Rocher, was established nearby. The rocky bluffs that gave this latter village its name were situated such that the population was able to take advantage of the rich agricultural land near the river, land sometimes called the American Bottoms, for farming. The village of Kaskaskia downstream from Fort de Chartres was another such village populated by French traders, habitants, and Native people. They, like those in the village of Chartres and Prairie du Rocher, used the rich bottomland to plant wheat, tobacco, hemp, and flax, in addition to the maize and squash traditionally cultivated by Native people. These communities, and other French villages near the Mississippi such as Ste. Genevieve in Missouri, began to export these new commodities to the rest of New France, in particular to Louisiana, marking an economic turn from dependence on the fur trade.
Evidence of these communities remains today, as do some of the communities themselves. At Fort de Chartres Historic Site some parts of the 18th-century stone fort’s walls have been rebuilt, and visitors can see some reconstructed buildings and the remodeled fort’s gate (which was built in the 1920s), and can tour a kitchen garden that has been planted with vegetables and herbs that would have been tended by women of the village.
Today’s town of Cahokia is home to the French colonial Cahokia Courthouse, built in 1740. Also present is Holy Family Church, rebuilt in 1799 in the French style of post-on-sill construction, as was the Courthouse. Nearby, the town of Prairie du Rocher continues to celebrate its French origins today.
Another community that continued to thrive through the French period and afterward was Kaskaskia, situated in the rich Mississippi River bottomland at the mouth of the Kaskaskia River. Numerous colonial records, including those kept by the notary (an official record-keeper) in Kaskaskia, document life in the village and the surrounding area including Fort de Chartres and Cahokia. A 1723 census records the total population of these three parishes as 334, excluding soldiers garrisoned at the fort, with a population of around 2000 twenty years later.
French-period villages like Kaskaskia were laid out much as they would have been in France, with houses often constructed in the traditional post-on-sill or post-in-ground building style. In this style, upright posts are inserted either into a wooden sill or directly in the ground, and the spaces between the posts are filled with a mud-and-straw or mud-and-stone mixture. Each house had a kitchen garden or potager where the habitants grew vegetables, herbs, and fruits. Fields surrounding the villages of the pays des Illinois produced the crops exported to other parts of La Nouvelle France, though habitants continued to be active in the fur trade as well. The agricultural fields were laid out as they were in much of French North America, in a system called long lots or ribbon farms. In this layout, the lots are long and narrow, with the narrow side typically facing a river.
In all these Illinois villages, the population included habitants of French or French-Canadian origin as well as Native people, with a relatively high rate of intermarriage between the two groups. Because kin relationships were important to integrating into trade networks, intermarriage between Frenchmen and Native women was advantageous to families on both sides of the relationship. Also residing in the villages were enslaved people, both Native and of African origin, as well as some free Black people. From the notary’s records, we know that people practiced trades such as blacksmith, cooper, and carpenter. Some could read and write, but many were illiterate.
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