Several factors motivated the French in the development of their North American colony, New France. First, the French crown—and private investors—wished to profit economically from this colony. It soon became clear that the most important way that they could exploit the resources of the continent was through the fur trade. Second, they hoped to locate usable mineral resources like lead, silver, or copper. Third, the Catholic Church and missionaries from both the Jesuit and Recollect communities were eager to convert Native Americans to Christianity. And finally, the French wanted to find a route to the Pacific Ocean to facilitate trade with China and the rest of Asia, which was already a valuable market for European trade.
The Mississippi River brought the first French visitors to the region of present-day Missouri. On June 17, 1673, Father Jacques Marquette and fur trader Louis Jolliet, along with five other men, entered the Mississippi River at the mouth of the Fox River near the site of present-day Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. They had received the approval of the French colonial authorities to travel in what was little-known territory to the French. The authorities wanted to know more about what lay west and south of French forts and missions that had been established in the upper Great Lakes region, which the French called “le pays d’en haut” or the Upper Country. They particularly wished to know if this large river, about which they had heard from Native people, might be a route toward the Pacific Ocean, thus creating a new and faster trade route to China.
After reaching the Mississippi traveling on the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, Marquette and Joliet’s party traveled south on the Mississippi, past what are today Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, and Arkansas. The first Native people that the party encountered as the canoes made their way down the Mississippi were in present-day Missouri, on the west side of the Mississippi not far from the mouth of the Des Moines River. They were Peoria, a subgroup of the Illinois nation. Along with other Illinois people, this group of Peoria had moved west of the Mississippi in the wake of the conflicts called the Beaver Wars (which had arisen as a result of competition for control of trading rights with the European colonists). The Illinois people whom Marquette and Jolliet met invited them to visit their village. Like other Native people in Missouri, they were prepared to create direct trade relationships with the French visitors that would be advantageous for them, cutting out intermediaries between themselves and the French.
Marquette and Jolliet traveled farther south on the Mississippi River to just above the mouth of the Arkansas River. There, they visited with another Indigenous nation, the Quapaws, who also spent time in what is today Missouri. Although the Quapaws welcomed Marquette and Jolliet and also were ready to create direct trade relationships, they warned them not to continue south as they would encounter unfriendly people downstream. Might this have been a way to keep Marquette and Jolliet from forming trade relationships with other Native groups? In any case, by this point Marquette and Jolliet could verify that this river was heading south, and not to the west as had been hoped, so they turned back upstream and returned to Canada, taking a different route back to Lake Michigan that followed the Illinois River northeast.
A few years later, another Frenchman would lead a group down the Mississippi River in search of its outlet to the sea. As René-Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle explored this territory, he proposed to establish forts that would facilitate the profitable trade in furs. In 1679, La Salle had managed to gain permission from France’s king, Louis XIV, to explore a vast area of North America to the south and west of the Great Lakes, between the Spanish possessions of Mexico and Florida. La Salle and his party of some 40 people traveled through present-day Indiana and Illinois to the Mississippi River, starting from the mouth of the St. Joseph River in December 1681.
It is on this voyage down the Mississippi that he and his party reached the mouth of the great river, passing by what is today Missouri. On April 9, 1682, as he and his party stood on an elevated spot not far from the Gulf of Mexico, La Salle declared, in the name of King Louis XIV, that he was taking possession of “this country of Louisiana,” including the entire Mississippi drainage from the mouth of the Ohio River south, with all of the territory’s “nations, cities, streams, and rivers.” Of course, this did not take into account the territorial rights of any of the many Native peoples living in this vast area nor their point of view as to who possessed what. But the stage was set for the division of the colony of New France into two administrative districts—Canada and Louisiana.
The division between the two districts (more of a frontier region, in fact, rather than a distinct line) was situated roughly in what are today central Indiana and central Illinois. What is today Missouri would become part of Louisiana, which was itself administratively divided into two sections—Upper Louisiana and Lower Louisiana—with the dividing line at about the mouth of the Arkansas River. The Mississippi River was at the heart of a region including both what is today eastern Missouri and the area across the river to the east, called by the French “le pays des Illinois”–the country of the Illinois people.
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