250 Years Ago ... Wars of the 1700's

*Part of my continuing blog series leading up to the 250^th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis in February 2014.
 
In 1762 one of the biggest wars the world had ever seen was coming to an end and France had lost.  But the French residents of North America might be forgiven for thinking that wouldn't matter to them.  They were used to war and used to the idea that things never changed much because of war.

There was almost constant war during the 1700's.  And, yes, battles were fought in the New World.  But until 1762 none of the European wars deeply affected the French colonies in North America.

In 1702 Queen Anne's War (or the War of the Spanish Succession, as it was known in Europe) was fought.  In that war, the English in Carolina fought the Spanish in Florida.  Meanwhile, in the north, the New Englanders fought the French in Acadia and tried to take Quebec, with disastrous results.  That war ended in 1712 with the Treaty of Utrecht.  France was forced to give England a piece of land far north in Hudsons' Bay that it had not returned in the previous war.  France did lose Acadia (Nova Scotia) and Newfoundland, which was a blow.  They relocated their people to Cape Breton Island and built the fortress of Louisbourg to guard the entrance to the St. Lawrence river.

The next war, which began in 1739, was a war between Britain and Spain with a picturesque name: The War of Jenkins Ear.  Basically, Spain had a policy of stopping and seizing ships suspected of carrying contraband.  Robert Jenkins was a British ship's master who claimed that the Spanish had stolen his cargo and cut off his ear.  Jenkins kept the ear, pickled, in a jar.  In 1738 British imperialists, who were hawks, used Jenkins for propaganda, parading him (and his ear) before Parliament and eventually forcing the Prime Minister to confront Spain and demand that she stop seizing foreign vessels.  Spain refused.  Britain declared war.   As part of the war, Britain granted American governors the power to give "letters of marque" to sea captains that desired to attach Spanish ports.

The War of Jenkins Ear led directly, without any pause, into the War for the Austrian Succession (known in North America as King George's War)  which began in 1744.  Britain entered the war on the Austrian side but continued its war with Spain.  France and Spain allied to defend against what they saw as British aggression.  There were a lot of land battles in Europe that I won't go into.

There was a land battle too between British Georgia and Spanish Florida that came to naught when the Georgians realized they might be forced to lay seige to St. Augustine.  Not liking the idea of a seige in a swamp, they retreated.  Later, Spain sent a force from Cuba against Georgia but it never actually attacked.   In 1743 the Georgians again tried to attack St. Augustine and again gained nothing.

In the meantime, the French used their base at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island to attack New England shipping.  Some plucky New Englanders took the opportunity of the war to attack Louisbourg and, after a 46 day seige, Louisbourg surrendered to them. There were great celebrations in Boston and other New England towns.

But, alas, when the war ended and the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed, Britain returned Louisbourg to France and France returned Madras, in India, to Britain.  France also withdrew from the Austrian Netherlands.  The status quo was re-established and no one was happy.  The American colonists, especially, were furious at having to give up Louisbourg.

But to people living in the Mississippi River Valley, like my ancestor Jean Baptiste Becquet, European wars would have seemed a long way off.  They didn't affect day to day life except perhaps when ships were sunk and supplies didn't get through.  And even when your country lost, there was no real affect on  day to day life.



After the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed in 1748, most people assumed that it was just a matter of time before war broke out again. The new Governor-General of New France, the Comte de la Galissoniere, surveyed the situation in North America.  In September of 1748 he wrote one of his many dispatches back to France, explaining the importance of the Illinois Country, a place which many French bureaucrats saw as an unnecessary expense.  W.J. Eccles, one of the foremost Canadian historians, describes it in The Canadian Frontier:  1634-1760:

He declared categorically that the Illinois country was of very little economic value to France, that for a long time posts and settlements there would merely be a source of expense to the crown and that the French settlers in the region would certainly not become very prosperous. Yet, he declared, the crown must maintain them, regardless of expense, to protect the investment already made, but, more significantly, because they served as a barrier to English expansion, enabling the French to dominate the Indian nations of the lower Mississippi and retain their trade and allegiance.  (emphasis mine)

 Galissoniere believed that, although France could not hope for large profit from North America, Canada and Louisiana could ultimately be self sufficient and their real value would come from growing a large French population.  He believed that the Britain so valued their North American colonies that a large French presence in North American would force Britain to "divert a sizable part of their navy and army" to protect those colonies, thus reducing the forces available to fight in other theaters of war.  But if Britain seized the Illinois country then the "trade with the interior would be destroyed, Louisiana would be quickly lost, and the Spanish colonies, even Mexico, would then be in grave danger."

But, already, land speculators in Virginia, Pennsylvania and other colonies (many of whom were the leading men of the colonies) were already preparing to form the Ohio Company to exploit the land west of the mountains and war hawks in Britain were very interested in destroying French overseas trade.  The British were aided by the local Indians who enjoyed having British traders and posts so close to them. The land speculators had no plans at all to preserve the hunting grounds of the Indians but they offered the Indians high quality merchandise at prices cheaper than the French could offer.

Galissoniere, knowing a bad situation when he saw it, decided to send a French expedition to the Ohio country to map it and to make clear that France claimed it as her own.  But the leader of the expedition, Celeron, found the situation even worse than Galissoniere feared.  It was relatively easy to drive the few British traders from the area, but the local Indian population were not impressed by the show of force and not inclined to give up their trading privileges with the British.  They put up a resistance.

Galissonier's successor, Jonquiere, took a different approach.  He tried to woo the local Indian population with presents and promises.  But he too was unsuccessful; the Indians wanted to be able to trade with the British.  Finally, his successor, Duquesne, went all in and sent troops to build a fort near the forks of the Ohio.

The Seven Years War (or the French and Indian War as the British colonists called it) began in America in 1754 when an American force, led by George Washington, was sent to tell the French to vacate their new fort.  The French politely refused.  Two years later the world was at war on a global scale. Winston Churchill said it was the true first world war. Battles were fought in Europe, North America, Central America, India and Africa. Many European countries were involved but, from the perspective of North America, it was a war fought between Great Britain, on the one hand, and France and Spain on the other hand.
At first, the war went well for the French in North America.  They defeated far larger British forces and were holding their own in the war.  But by 1759 the British had defeated the French navy and from that point on things went downhill as supplies and reinforcements could not get through.  More importantly, trade goods could not get through and that affected relationships with the Indian allies of the French.

As Fred Anderson points out in his Crucible of War:  The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, the relationship between the French and its Indian allies was the key to retaining it's North American colonies:

France maintained its empire in America for more than a century despite the steady increase of British power and population because the governors of Canada had generally sponsored cordial relations with the Indian peoples of the interior.  Trade was the sinew of these intercultural relationships, which in time of war became the military alliances that made the frontiers of the British colonies uninhabitable and rendered a successful invasion of the Canadian heartland impossible.

 
As trade goods became difficult for the French in Canada to obtain, the alliance became frayed.  The Indian allies didn't receive "pay" as such, but they expected "presents" in appreciation of their efforts.  The French could not deliver "presents" because its ships were not getting through.

However, the biggest problem for the French may have been the French commander sent over to lead the Canadian troops - the Marquis de Montcalm.   Rather than let the Canadian troops and their Indian allies fight in the manner that they had always fought, Montcalm sought to impose a European "order" on the local troops.

... Montcalm  had aggravated the situation, and accelerated the failure of the alliances, by seeking to command the Indians as auxiliaries, rather than to negotiate for their cooperation as allies. Eventually the combined effects of poor supply  and Montcalm's Europeanized command alienated even the converted Indians and the habitants, so that in 1760 the chevalier de Levis and his regulars stood alone, abandoned by the peoples that they had crossed the Atlantic to defend.

As Anderson points out, the British moved in the opposite direction.  At the beginning of the war, using European tactics,  the British were losing.  George Washington watched General Braddock and his troops go down to defeat by the French and Indians outside Fort Duquesne.  But once the British started to allow the colonists to fight in their own style, the tide turned.

By 1759 Quebec had been taken by the British.  Then on September 8, 1760, with Montreal surrounded, the governor of New France surrendered.  New France was occupied, awaiting news of what would happen to them when peace was negotiated.  If past history was any model, things would go back to the status quo.

In 1762 the British still had not taken Louisiana but the people of the Illinois Country had spent two years wondering  when they too would be attacked by the British.  What they could not know was that ongoing peace negotiations in Europe would bring an end to the war and would change their lives forever. 

250 Years Ago ... The Lay of the Land

*Part of my continuing blog series leading up to the 250^th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis in February 2014.

In October 1762, my ancestor Jean Baptiste Becquet lived in the village where he was born: Nouvelle Chartres.  Despite its name, Nouvelle Chartres was not located in France; it existed in what is now Southern Illinois.  Nouvelle Chartres was the little village that lay outside the walls of Fort de Chartres which was located along the Mississippi River about 50 miles south of what would become St. Louis and about 85 miles north of the confluence with the Ohio River.

It is probably helpful to understand the geographical relationship of the French villages along the Mississippi.  The following map will help.  You can orient yourself to St. Louis in the north and Kaskaskia in the south. Just above St. Louis, on the western side, would be the Missouri river.  Further below Kaskaskia, on the eastern side, would be the Ohio River.  Of course in 1762 St. Louis did not exist.  But Cahokia, across the river did exist as did all the villages reflected further south on the map.

Both Cahokia and Kaskaskia began as Indian villages in which Catholic missions were established.  The Mission of the Holy Family was founded in Cahokia in 1699 by the Recollect Fathers to serve the Tamaroa and Cahokia tribes.  The Mission of the Immaculate Conception in Kaskaskia was even older, being founded by that great exploring Jesuit priest Father Marquette in 1675 near Starved Rock on the Illinois River.  In about the year 1700, the Kaskaskia tribe decided to move away from Starved Rock and find a better location in the south.  The Mission of the Immaculate Conception travelled with them. 

First they crossed the Mississippi and settled near a small river in what is now south St. Louis which the French called River des Peres.  But the Kaskaskia were unhappy with the location and soon were on the move down the Mississippi again, finally settling in 1704 near the confluence with what became known as the Kaskaskia River.  In 1714 the Mission built a stone church and by 1718 there was a village with French settlers, mostly fur traders and their Indian wives. 

 

During this time both Cahokia and Kaskaskia came under the jurisdiction of New France, governed out of Quebec.  But in 1717 the Illinois Country, as it was called, was transferred to the new colony of Louisiana, to be governed out of the new town of New Orleans.  The following year the governor of Louisiana sent the Sieur de Boisbriant north to Kaskaskia to establish an administrative center.  When Boisbriant arrived in 1718, he brought sixty-eight soldiers, hired workers and convicts (who were required to work off their debt to society), greatly increasing the European portion of the population.

Listening to the complaints by the Jesuit missionaries that the French traders were corrupting the Indian converts, Boisbriant divided the community into three parts.  The French stayed in Kaskaskia, the Kaskaskia Indians moved to their own village six miles up the Kaskaskia River and the Metchigamia Indians moved sixteen miles up the Mississippi.  Then Boisbriant set about choosing a site where he could set up operations. 

The site Boisbriant chose for the new fort was about 16 miles upstream from Kaskaskia, just below the new village of the Metchigamia, right on the edge of the Mississippi.  The first fort was small, only a wooden palisade shaped in a square with two bastions.  Upon completion in 1720, the center of government for the Illinois Country moved to the fort and a small village grew around it that was sometimes referred to as Nouvelle Chartres. 

Meanwhile, in 1719 a Frenchman named Phillipe Renault arrived from France having obtained the rights to conduct mining operations in the area.  He used part of his land grant to create a small village, just north of the Metchigamia village, where his workers might live.  He named it St. Phillipe after his own patron saint. The mining operations were not successful but the village remained after Renault left. 

There were two other villages that are not on that map.  In 1722, Boisbriant's nephew was given land between Fort de Chartres and Kaskaskia and he founded the small village of Prairie du Rocher which means “Prairie by the Rock”.  It was located about four miles south of Fort de Chartres.  If Nouvelle Chartres existed to support the Fort and Kaskaskia existed to support the fur trade, Prairie du Rocher was primarily intended as an agricultural community.

The town of Ste. Genevieve is also not on the map.  It lies on the west side of the Mississippi just above Kaskaskia. It is the oldest permanent European settlement in Missouri.  There is some dispute as to the date it was founded, oral tradition setting the date about 1735 but later historians believing it was not founded until closer to 1750.  In any event it was in existence in 1762.   Ste. Genevieve was founded mostly as an agricultural community, the land on the western bank being very fertile.

Of all the settlements in existence in 1762, only three survive today.  Cahokia remains and is essentially a part of the St. Louis metro area, with a population in excess of 16,000 in 2010.  It contains the Church of the Holy Family (formerly the Mission) which is an original French building.
 

Ste. Genevieve also remains, having a population in excess of 4,000 people in 2010.  It is a picturesque little town that still retains its French roots and has the best collection of French colonial houses in the country.  Prairie du Rocher also still exists as a tiny little village with a population of 604 in 2010.  Just up the road from Prairie du Rocher is the restored Fort de Chartres (only the Magazine is original) which is now operated as a state park.   

Nouvelle Chartres disappeared when its raison d’etre disappeared –the French surrendered the fort to the British who abandoned it in the 1770s during the War for American Independence and the Americans had no interest in using it.  All trace of it was eventually destroyed by the flooding Mississippi.

  

Kaskaskia had the most dramatic ending.  The town was destroyed in 1881 when the Mississippi River changed course.  The River, which once ran to the west of the town, completely shifted and now runs to the east and Kaskaskia, although still a part of Illinois, is now only reachable from Missouri. It is essentially an island.  There is still a Church of the Immaculate Conception on the land, but not much else. The Church is a brick building dating from the mid 1800’s that was moved brick by brick when the town was moved.   There is no town anymore but the church remains.

The enclave of French villages along the Mississippi were far from other French settlements but it is surprising how many travelers passed through them.  The French traders traveled widely and news traveled with them. And of course news traveled with military convoys traveling to and from the Fort.

 By 1762 it seemed that all the news was bad news. But that is another story. 

250 Years Ago ...

In February, 2014 St. Louis will celebrate the 250^th anniversary of its founding by Frenchmen Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau.  With them were a group of men who came to be known as the “Thirty Worthies”.  

  

My ancestor, Jean Baptiste Becquet, was one of the Thirty Worthies and, together with his wife, children and in-laws, made the new community called St. Louis his home.  Rather than simply marking the occasion with one blog post in 2014, I’ve decided to spend some time over the next year blogging about the political situation that led to the founding of St. Louis and how Becquet came to become one of the Thirty Worthies.  

Don’t worry, this won’t be the only thing I blog about.

But before we meet Jean Baptiste Becquet and his family, let’s take a peek at the location of St. Louis before the French decided to settle it.  What would a traveler on the Mississippi River 250 years ago in 1762 have seen as their boat passed what is now the site of the Gateway Arch?  And who would this hypothetical traveler have been?

Certainly the traveler most probably would have been a Native American.  But the traveler could also have been a Frenchman traveling between Montreal, the capital of the French colony of New France, and New Orleans, the capital of the French colony of Louisiana.  Given the great distance between these cities it is surprising how often this trip was made in the eighteenth century.  But the lure of profit makes travelers of many people even when that travel is long and laborious.

If this hypothetical traveler began his journey in Montreal, he and his crew of boatment might have traveled by boat to the Great Lakes, through the Straits of Mackinac between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, stopping at Michilimackinac, one of the most important French trading posts.  They would have continued down Lake Michigan to La Baye, a French settlement that would one day become Green Bay, Wisconsin.  From there they would journey across what became Wisconsin, portaging all of their goods between local rivers, until they reached the Mississippi River near the settlement of Prairie du Chien.  From there it was a straight, but long, shot down the Mississippi to New Orleans.

 

As they traveled down the Mississippi they would pass the confluence of the Illinois River and the Mississippi on the eastern side of the river and then, shortly below that, the confluence of the Missouri River and the Mississippi on the west.  There they would notice how the river changed to a muddy brown color.  Just below the Missouri River they would probably portage around the Chain of Rocks, a rocky outcrop into the river that creates a series of dangerous rapids.   Then they would continue down the river past the site, on the western bank, that would one day become St. Louis.

Frederick Hodes described the location in his Beyond the Frontier:  A History of St. Louis to 1821 which I highly recommend.  There are many places to locate the history of the City of St. Louis but he has gathered all them into one location and most of the story I relate here is found in his book.  He tells us:

At the first place south of the confluence [with the Missouri River], a hill rose gradually from the riverbank, neither an inconvenient high bluff nor a dangerous low floodplain.  The nineteenth century traveler John Bradbury pointed out;  “Such situations are rare, as the Mississippi is almost universally bounded by high perpendicular rocks or loose alluvial soil, the latter of which is in continued danger of being washed away by annual floods …”. 

In 1762, there was no permanent settlement at this advantageous location but at an earlier period there had certainly been settlers.  The main geographical feature our hypothetical traveler would have noticed would have been the series of mounds along both sides of the Mississippi.    Between 100 BC and 900 AD one of the most advanced civilizations in North America made its home along the Mississippi where present day St. Louis is located and across the river at what is called Cahokia.   We know almost nothing about them, not even what they called themselves.  We call them the Mound Builders or the Mississippian Culture. I've written about the mounds here and here.

 Again, I’ll let Dr. Hodes describe it:

The number of mounds involved is astounding.  At the beginning of the twentieth century (after many of the mounds had been destroyed), Louis Houck located 28,000 mounds in eastern Missouri alone. This did not include the vast area of Illinois where they were obviously present.   The Mound Civilization style of design for the Mississippian culture spread over a vast area.  This apparent large population was in stark contrast to the small population of native inhabitants in the area when the Europeans arrived.  The population density for the Mound Civilization in this area may well have matched that of the great Indian civilizations south of the Rio Grande.

By the time Europeans arrived in the Mississippi valley, the Mound Builders had disappeared and the local native peoples had no oral tradition that told what happened to them.  But the mounds remained, including the great Cahokia Mound on the east bank of the Mississippi which still remains, as do about 45 other mounds in the general vicinity.  There were also many mounds on the west bank of the river including what was called the “Big Mound” which stood at what is now the intersection of North Broadway and Biddle Streets. The French would call it La Grange de Terre (“the Barn of Earth”). 

The Missouri Department of Transportation’s website gives a good description:

The St. Louis Mound Group was first described in detail by Henry Marie Brackenridge in 1814. He wrote that there was a group of nine mounds north of the village of St. Louis, located “on the second bank just above the town”. Brackenridge described the Big Mound as being located six hundred yards north of the other mounds. Big Mound was estimated to be one hundred and fifty feet long and thirty feet wide, and the flattened top was about 15-18 ft wide. The group of mounds formed a rough square border around a central plaza, with a semi-circular area on the west side formed by three smaller mounds. Brackenridge (1814:189) continued by stating “the enclosed [plaza] is about three hundred yards in length and two hundred in breadth”. The largest of the mounds in this group was known locally as the “Falling Garden” and was nearly 50 ft high, rising in three stages up the second terrace. In June 1819, Dr. Thomas Say and Titian Ramsey Peale surveyed the mound group and identified 27 “tumuli” (including Big Mound), although two of the features were probably not Indian mounds (Peale 1862; Marshall 1992; O’Brien and Wood 1998:286). Using a compass and tape, Say and Peale measured Big Mound at 319 feet long and 158 feet wide with a height of 34 feet. It was located roughly 1,460 feet north of the other mounds. The mound group was all but destroyed by the expansion of St. Louis in the mid-19th century, and no evidence of the mounds is currently visible. (emphasis mine)

These mounds would be the basis for the nickname St. Louis had as the “Mound City”.   Today only one mound remains in St. Louis and it was recently purchased by the Osage Nation which intends to build an interpretive center next to it to educate visitors about the Native American heritage of this area.

But although the Mississippian culture had disappeared, the land was not empty.  In 1762 Native American tribes hunted and lived throughout the region on both sides of the river. 

 

Although the members of what we call the Illini Confederation hunted on both sides of the river, their villages were mostly located on the eastern side of the river.  The members of this confederation spoke variations of an Algonquian language and were known to Europeans as the Peoria,  Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Tamaroa and Michegamea tribes, with the Kaskaskia and Peoria being the largest.

 

Again, Dr. Hodes:

The Illini were semi-nomadic.  In the spring they came together from scattered small winter villages, gathering at the summer village sites and planting their crops.  They went on the buffalo hunt from June to mid-July.  Next they returned to harvest their crops and set aside food for winter.  In the early fall they left the summer villages and returned to the smaller winter villages.  They continued to hunt for food but in smaller groups and for shorter periods of time.

On the western bank of the Mississippi the native Americans could be divided into two general groups which both spoke versions of Siouan languages.  One group had broken off from the Winnebago in Wisconsin and moved south and west.  They were known as the Missouri, Iowa and Oto.  They mostly hunted north of the Missouri river up into Iowa and west into what is now Kansas.  The Missouri tribe had a village along the Missouri river. 

The other group originated in the Ohio valley and had moved west.  They were known as the Osage, Kansa, Quapaw and Omaha-Ponca. They hunted south into Arkansas, in Missouri south of the Missouri River, along the Kansas River and up  into Northeastern Nebraska.

The largest and ultimately the most powerful tribe was the Osage who had originally settled the headwaters of the Osage River in Missouri and controlled the southwest third of what is now the State of Missouri plus a large part of northern Arkansas and even parts of Oklahoma and Kansas. Eventually the Osage split into two tribes:  the Grand Osage which stayed at the Osage River and the lesser Osage (or the Little Osage) who moved up toward the Missouri river and settled near the Missouri tribe.

Again, Dr. Hodes:

The Osage were semi-nomadic, and for long periods each year a large part of the tribe would leave the more permanent lodges and go hunting.  On the move small tipi structures composed the temporary villages.  The first hunt was for bear in early spring.  The Osage then returned in time to plant crops.  Next, it was off for the buffalo and deer hunt.  After that the tribe returned to harvest the crops.  Then came the fall hunt for buffalo and deer.  Also on these hunts, the tribe would gather nuts and wild fruit.  The elderly men, most of the women, and the young children remained at the lodges, looking after the crops while the rest of the tribe was on the move hunting.

Europeans traveled among the tribes on the western bank but in 1762 had not yet attempted a permanent settlement near the Missouri confluence.  For a brief period in the late 1600’s, French Jesuit missionaries had tried to settle, with the Kaskaskia Indians, on the west bank of the Mississippi near  a small river now located in south St. Louis and known as River des Peres.   But the Kaskaskia were unhappy with the location and moved back to the eastern bank of the river and further south near what is now called the Kaskaskia River.  Their French missionaries left with them.

In the 1720’s the French learned that a Spanish expedition had ventured north into present day Nebraska .  Although the expedition had been destroyed by the Pawnee, the French saw this expedition as the thin edge of the wedge and they were determined to maintain control over the region.  Etienne Veniard de Bourgmont, who had explored the Missouri River valley and lived among the tribes, was given command of an expedition up the Missouri River to establish a trading post.  He left New Orleans in winter of 1723 and made his way to the small French village of Cahokia, which stood south of the Great Mound of the Cahokias. With assistance from the Missouri tribe he made his way up the Missouri River to their village.   

Bourgmont established himself and his men nearby at what came to be called Fort Orleans and began to reach out to the Osage who were located to the south. Bourgmont also traveled into what is now Kansas, trading with the local tribes, including the Apache, and tried to cement their relationship with the French.  With him was a young French officer named Louis de St. Ange de Bellerive who would later be given the command of the French post at Vincennes on the Wabash river.  Bellerive would end his career in the newly founded St. Louis.

But Fort Orleans was not profitable for the French and by 1727 it was ordered abandoned.  Although historians know that it was located on the north bank of the Missouri River about ten miles northwest of Marshall, Missouri, the exact location has never been found.

The next French attempt to make a permanent presence along the Missouri  River was to establish Fort de Cavagnal in 1744 near what is today Fort Leavenworth.  Although french posts were often called "forts" they were first, and primarily, trading posts.  The military commanded because they were given the authority to resolve disputes, not because they were afraid of attack.  The first commander was Francois Coulon de Villiers.   It was the death in 1754 of his brother, Joseph Coulon de Villiers, while in the custody of George Washington that would begin the Seven Years War between France and England.   In 1762 that war was just ending and France was on the losing side. 

As our hypothetical traveler of 1762  floated past what would become St. Louis, Fort de Cavagnal still existed and he might have passed travelers headed up the Missouri River en route to it.  But within a few years it would be abandoned.   In 1804, Lewis and Clark passed its ruins and William Clark noted in his journal:

"the French formerly had a fort at this place, to protect the trade of this nation, the Situation appears to be a verry elligable one for a Town, the valley rich & extensive, with a Small Brook Meanding through it and one part of the bank affording yet a good landing for boats . . ."

Our traveler by now was probably tired and might have put in to spend the night on the east bank of the river at the small village of Cahokia (located a few miles south of the Great Mound of the Cahokias and four miles south of the future location of St. Louis).  

Cahokia was founded by the French in 1699 by Fr. St. Cosme and two other “Recollects” or members of the “Society of Foreign Missions of the Seminary of Quebec” as a mission to serve the nearby Tamaroa and Cahokia tribes.   It is said that on their way south to live among the tribes they crossed the Mississippi and camped in what would become the City of St. Louis before traveling south to explore as far as Arkansas.  Finally they returned in March 1699 and established the Mission of the Holy Family in the villages of the Tamaroa and Cahokia.  Eventually the settlement became known simply as Cahokia.   Although other Frenchmen arrived to live in the village, many taking wives from the local tribes, there were never many permanent Europeans living in Cahokia.  However, it received many French traders as visitors, being a natural stopping point on the journey from La Baye to points south or for travelers intending to travel up the Missouri River. And there was even an overland road that could take travelers south from Cahokia to the French villages in Southern Illinois.

 

The next morning our hypothetical traveler would be on his way.  Perhaps he might think that the western bank could provide a good location for a settlement.  But crossing the river couldn’t have been easy and why make life difficult?  After all, the French controlled both sides of the river.  The small settlement of Cahokia was a perfect stopping place for the few French who travelled up the Missouri.  There was no need to establish a settlement on the western side.

Within a few months that would change.  And life for the French in North America, including Jean Baptiste Becquet and his family, would never be the same.