THE OHIO VALLEY-GREAT LAKES ETHNOHISTORY
ARCHIVES: THE MIAMI COLLECTION
It is noted that the following work from the Miami Archives should be read and
considered within the historical context in which it was composed and printed.
The opinions expressed and the language used do not reflect the opinions or
standards of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, but are, rather,
indicative of thought in that historical moment during which the document was
published.
The Foxes' Fort - 1730
(Due to length divided here into four
parts)
Faye, Stanley in:Journal of the Illinois
State Historical Society, vol. 28,
nos. 2-4, pp. 123-163.
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The Governor and the Intendant replied that the Illinois country ought to become again a part of the northern colony. Not yet in October of 1731 did they feel free to avow aggression against the India company in 1729 or even in 1730. With an eye toward the future they said only that within the past few months the Governor had admitted the "Illinois," by petition, to full alliance with Canada and to the fur trade of Fort St. Joseph.66
They would have done better if they had told the truth. To steal the trade of the upper Illinois River from the India Company in 1729 or 1730 would have been a minor offense. The ministry annotated their letter with an indignant comment. The Governor, it seemed to Versailles, had annexed the Illinois country in 1731, not from the India Company but from His Majesty the King.67
His Majesty's memoir of 1732 reserved judgment on the question of Illinois and withheld further reprimand. It may be that Governor de Beauharnois learned rather from a friend at court that the deceit he had practiced in previous years had had an unfortunate outcome. Under some such stimulus and as in the case of his circular he tried in the autumn of 1732 to cure his discomfort. At last he told the truth, or still not quite the truth, according to how his words might be understood. At least he confessed that he had annexed the Peoria tribe and their hunting grounds in the time of the India Company.68
By the date when this latest report reach France the question and the Canadian trickery had become of no importance. The King in council had decided that Louisiana should not be dismembered for the sake of Intendant Hocquart's fur trade. Since the Governor of Canada had in- (page 156) sisted that he was better fitted than the Governor of Louisiana for military control of the upper Illinois, the King put such responsibility upon him, and at Canada's expense.69
Three years of effort brought little advantage to Quebec, but the deception worked by Lieutenant de Villiers succeeded well. A brevet as captain came to him.70 To him already had come appointment to re-establish the post and the fur trade of the Bay in Wisconsin, abandoned because of Fox enmity. But if the King in council felt convinced that Lieutenant de Villiers had helped bring the Foxes almost to total defeat, the allies of Fort St. Joseph knew otherwise.
Dozens of Fox warriors had escaped capture in the action of September 9. The captives whom Lieutenant de Villiers had not persuaded his allies to destroy had been released. The Fox nation, smaller but no less enemies of the French, had gone back to the north, some of them to the Fox River of Wisconsin. To Wisconsin and to friendship with them had returned the Sauk.
That faithless tribe whom the commandant of St. Joseph had led to the Vermilion in 1730 and certain warriors against whom he had led them threatened together the peace of the new post at the Bay. In a needless engagement of 1733 both Louis and Franois de Villiers were wounded; both Captain de Villiers and one of his younger sons were killed.71
The former acting Governor of Illinois, enjoying his first months of leisure in his home near Fort Chartres, may have nodded a grey head when he learned what the Foxes and Sauk had done. None knew better than he that a post commander had need of more prudence than Lieutenant de Villiers had brought in 1730 to the Foxes' fort.
Lieutenant St. Ange had been no friend of the Canadian commandant. Yet Captain St. Ange did not revive a fathers' quarrel against a young man whose body bore the scar of a wound given to him by the Foxes. Now it was Ensign Franois Coulon de Villiers who came to serve his King in the country of the Illinois.
In the year 1739, as it appears, only a few months before his death in the late spring of 1740, old Robert Grosson de St. Ange made a marriage for his daughter Elizabeth. The husband he gave her was that son of his late rival.72
DEMONSTRATION
A. Le Rocher (the Rock) was Starved Rock: Delisle map of 1718 in Paullin, Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States (Washington, 1932), plate 24.
B. The Ouiatanon (Wea) post was on the Wabash river west of La Fayette, Ind.: Indiana Historical Publications, 2:319.
this point is 146 English statute miles, or 60 French post leagues, east southeast of the Rock.
C. Grand Prairie is the almost treeless plain co-extensive with the state of Illinois north of the Ozark ridge and south of the northern ground moraine of Wisconsin glaciation. Prairie as used among Canadians meant necessarily meadowland bigger than a pr. As early as 1730 the French word prairie appears not yet to have gained the meaning of campagne. In La Salle's estimation adjectives applied to campagne were needed for distinguishing Grand Prairie from what in Illinois are small prairies: Margry, Decouvertes et Etablissements (Paris, 1876-86; 6 v.), 1:463, 2:122.
1. The skirmish of Aug. 2, 1730, was fought in a plain (not a prairie) between le Rocher and the Ouiatanon: Wisconsin Historical Collections, 17:100.
This was within ten hours' journey of the Foxes' fort: W.H.C., 17:114.
2. The battlefield of Sept. 9 was distant from the Foxes' fort by one day's march (une journe de chemin), about twenty-five English miles: Chaussegros de Lery, map, Blocus du Fort, Nov. 15, 1730, in Karpinski Collection; W.H.C., 17:113, 117.
3. The battle of Sept. 9 was fought in a plain (not a prairie) "east southeast of le Rocher in the Illinois Country:" W.H.C., 17:129.
4. The Foxes' fort was "dans la nouvelle France:" Blocus du Fort.
5. The battle of Sept. 9 was fought "sur les terres de la Louisianne par les Illinois et les nations des frontires du Canada:" Governor Perier in Steward, Lost Maramech and Earliest Chicago, 368.
D. That is to say, the region in question was on the boundary of "Canada" and Louisiana. On the Illinois river the boundary was the Rock: Margry, 2:383. On the Wabash the Ouiatanon, or at least the Ouiatanon (Wea) tribe living there, was in dispute between Canada and Louisiana. It is clear that Foxes' fort was on, or not more than about twenty-five miles distant from, a line extending east southeast from le Rocher to the Ouiatanon, and that the battlefield of Sept. 9 (the "plain") was Grand Prairie.
6. The Foxes' fort was "scitu entre les Rivieres des Islinois, et celle d'ouabache a 50 Lieues a L'Est-sud-Est du Rocher, dans la nouvelle France:" Blocus du Fort; punctuation as in the MS.
E. If the Foxes' fort was 50 leagues east southeast of le Rocher, it was ten leagues from the Ouiatanon. In any case the two battlefields were nearby.
7. The battle of Sept. 9 was fought in a locality about sixty leagues distant form a point named as "the extremity or foot ('l'extremit ou fond') of Lake Michigan:" W.H.C., 17:129.
F. The Ouiatanon was 33 leagues distant in a direct (page 159) line from the true foot of Lake Michigan (three miles east of Gary, Ind.) and 43 leagues from Fort St. Joseph (Niles, Mich.). No point on the aforesaid east southeast line is distant nearly so much as 60 leagues from the true foot of Lake Michigan.
G. The only point on that line so much as 60 leagues from Fort St. Joseph is the Rock. This distance is exact.
8. The Foxes' fort was on "a little river:" Blocus du Fort; W.H.C., 17:111, 115.
9. Lieutenant St. Ange, coming from Fort Chartres, made his last two days of march through "des pais couverts:" W.H.C., 17:110-11, Steward, 373.
H. The expression petite rivire was applied by Frenchmen in Illinois to streams that today would be called little rivers or big creeks, but not to little creeks (brooks).
Within twenty-five miles in any direction from any point west northwest of the Ouiatanon and east southeast of the Rock the only petites rivires are the mid-fork of the Vermilion of Vermilion County and its small tributaries, and the Vermilion River of La Salle County.
The drainage basin of the former Vermilion River was covered with forest, not be prairie woodland: Illinois Natural History Survey, Bulletin, v. 16, article 1, map 1; Illinois State Geological Survey, Bulletin, v. 15, p. 69.
Immediately toward the southwest of that river, on any line-of-march from Fort Chartres, is a part of Grand Prairie (Champaign County) where the plains and also the eskars are and were unforested.
The Vermilion River of La Salle County ran through a vaste campagne (big-and-treeless prairieland) and was "borde tout au long d'un lisire de bois peu large:" La Salle in Margry, 2:122.
A fifty-mile march from the foot of Peoria Lake to the Rock would have been across well-drained land and therefore across prairie-land neither forested nor empty, but wooded: "des pais couverts:" La Salle in Margry, 2L176, 177, 247, 248; Illinois State Geological Survey, Bulletin, v. 15, p. 69.
10. I was "au Rocher" that the Foxes "fortified" themselves: Steward, 373.
11. Lieutenant de Villiers, setting out from Fort St. Joseph to take part in the siege of the Foxes' fort, was on his way "to the Rock:" W.H.C., 17:113.
J. One point on the Vermilion river of La Salle County, and points ten hours and one day distant therefrom, conform to Nos. 1 to 5 and 8 to 11, above.
They conform to 6 if 6, meaningless as it stands, is interpreted to read "between the River(s) of the Islinois and a point on the Ouabache 50 (60) leagues east southeast of the Rock." It is demonstrated that the passage quoted in 6 is part of a scheme based on equivocation.
They conform to 7 more nearly than any other points do. They conform perfectly (and no other points conform at all) if "foot of Lake Michigan" is interpreted as meaning the St. Joseph river. This meaning had been given to the phrase in narratives of earlier years and in one narrative of only nine years past: Margry, 2:81-82, 5:34; Charlevoix, Journal, Aug. 16, 1721.
K. No other point conforms to any one of the foregoing numbers without being in conflict with at least one other number.
12. Messengers were sent from the Foxes' fort at the same time to the Ouiatanon and Fort St. Joseph. The resultant expeditions from these two points arrived at the fort on the same day: W.?H.C., 17:114, 115.
L. Each point is 60 leagues distant from the Rock.
13. The Foxes' fort was on a little river near the river de Macopin: Blocus du Fort; Plan du Fort.
M. The point mentioned above and below on the Vermilion river is five miles distant (south) from the Illinois river at the Rock. The mouth of the Vermilion (confluence with the Illinois) is five miles west of the Rock.
In the month of August the great leaves of the macopin, or arrowleaf, choke the riverside lagoons, millponds, sluggish creeks, drainage ditches, and prairie bogs of Illinois. The name might be given with justice to almost any stream. Frenchmen in Illinois applied it in the 1720's to Crooked Creek. It is not known ever to have been applied locally by the French to the Illinois River, though its abundant growth there is recorded by La Salle (Margry, 2:173). But (page 161) a popular European cartographer had used it as a secondary name for the Kankakee-Illinois in at least the 1718 edition (though not in some earlier editions) of his printed map of "New France." The use of an equivocal name conforms to the equivocal purpose of these present sources: Blocus du Fort and Plan du Fort.
14. The little river flowed east past the Foxes' fort, according to De Lery's map Blocus du Fort, the origin of which was in data supplied by Ensign de Villiers and the Fort St. Joseph interpreter: Blocus du Fort; W.H.C., 17:120.
15. The little river flowed west past the Foxes' fort, according to Lieutenant de Villiers' report compared with Blocus du Fort: W.H.C., 17:115.
N. This latter must be taken as correct. An error in a map copying a sketch could be attributed to the draughtsman, but a reporting officer could be held responsible for a direct assertion.
It is notable that, accompanying the mass of ambiguity in the documents referred to in the previous pages, not one absolutely false assertion can be demonstrated. The only two arguable exceptions are 14, above, and 7, above (17 below).
O. Comparing Blocus du Fort, thus amended, with the U. S. Geological Survey map, only two points appear possible for identification as the site of the Foxes' fort. Examination in the field rules out Deer Park, a suburb of Oglesby, Ill. The other point is on the north (right) bank of the Vermilion, one mile east of the hamlet of Lowell, five miles south of the Rock, near the Vermilionville crossroads on the Lowell-Ottawa road.
P. Examination in the field and comparison with De Lery's Blocus du Fort and Plan du Fort and with the U. S. Geological Survey map show De Lery's topographical data to conform with almost the exactness of a surveyor's observation to the features of this site.
The salient angle of the circumvallation at the east represents a projection of the hillside beyond the eastern ravine.
De Lery's isolated height at the west represents another projection of the hillside at the west. This projection is not (page 162) in fact isolated; but De Lery had no means of showing this one height of land except by contours suggesting a mound.
The otherwise inexplicable curve of the palisade on the river-front represents a projecting lip of the stratum of shale that forms the river-bank.
At the point shown by De Lery as the southwestern angle of the fort is a heap of earth differing from other slight irregularities of the terrain in being isolated from the slopes and in being unstratified. Superimposed leafmold testifies to a considerable age. Just west of the mound, where De Lery shows a ditch extending northward, the only gully on this rocky hillside extends in almost the direction shown.
The river-bank is high and steep, as described in the note accompanying the Plan du Fort, though less high than the indicated fifteen feet (sixteen feet, English).
Immediately on the river-bank are little gullies, apparently artificial in origin, in even greater number than shown by De Lery.
The rocky nature of the ground explains the use of fascined embankments instead of a single line of palisade.
The irregularity of the slope, resulting from unequal erosion of shale, coal measures, and limestone, conforms to St. Ange's description of the Foxes' tepees as "fort petites et pratiques dans la terre comme les tamires des renards dont ils portent le nom:" Steward, 374; W.H.C., 17:111.
16. The Foxes' fort was in a little clump of woods: W.H.C., 17:111.
Q. That is to say, the clump of woods was between two open spaces of extent not revealed, which are the esplanades of Plan du Fort, whereas the Vermilion was bordered by a continuous "lisire de bois."
This difficulty might be expected in examining any site, for river-banks in Illinois are likely to be continuously wooded. This site east of Lowell proves upon inspection to be free from this difficulty.
The site lies between two ravines, which in themselves would provide esplanades as shown in Plan du Fort. Working hurriedly either in building or repairing a fort at this point, the builders would have felled the soft-wood trees of the ravines rather than the oaks of the hillside. Thus the (page 163) esplanades would be left bare at each side of a clump of oak trees.
17. The battlefield of Sept. 9, and therefore the Foxes' fort, were "between the river Wabache and the river of the Illinois, about 60 leagues to the south of the extremity or foot of Lake Michigan, to the east southeast of le Rocher in the Illinois Country:" W.H.C., 17:129, translation confirmed with reference to the French transcript.
R. No such point exists; the data are mutually contradictory. But if the expression to the south (in original, au sud) is understood as representing a previously original Canadian au dessous, the difficulty is resolved and the neighborhood of the Rock (and no other possible point) is indicated.
S. Although the foregoing sources agree that all military events in the campaign of 1730 took place between the Illinois and Wabash Rivers, the sources have been interpreted to locate the Foxes' fort on Big Rock Creek near the Fox River of Illinois and the village of Plano: John F. Steward, Lost Maramech and Earliest Chicago (Chicago, 1903).
T. Historians of McLean County, Ill., have
indicated for the battlefield of Sept. 9 and for the Foxes' fort certain sites
near Arrowsmith in that county: Illinois State Historical Society, Transactions
for 1908, pp. 184-91. This location is based on misinterpretation of an
assertion made twenty-two years later by an acting-governor of Quebec (not, as
has been represented, the commandant of Detroit) that the battle was fought in
the "place" known at that latter time as the "Prairie of the
Mascoutens." By that time the French word prairie had assumed its
modern English meaning. The Prairie of the Mascoutens was the northeastern part
of Grand Prairie, including thousands of square miles.
______________________________________
66 Wisconsin Historical Collections, XVII, 145-46, 169-70.
67 Wisconsin Historical Collections, XVII, 146 and note.
68 Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, XXXIV, 99-100 (Detroit Public Library, Burton Historical Collection, Cadillac Papers, XI, 1987, ". . . il y a deux ans.")
69 Wisconsin Historical Collections, XVII, 157.
70 Bulletin des Recherches Historiques, XII, 171-72.
71 Wisconsin Historical Collections, XVII, 188-91, 200-04.
72 Alvord, 172, note; Illinois State Historical Society, Transactions for 1909, p. 141.
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