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UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Date:___________________ I, _________________________________________________________, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: in: It is entitled: This work and its defense approved by: Chair: _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ THE WATERY WORLD: THE COUNTRY OF THE ILLINOIS, 1699 – 1778 A dissertation submitted to the Division of Research and Advanced Studies of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTORATE OF PHILOSOPHY (Ph.D.) in the Department of History of the College of Arts and Sciences 2005 By Morgan J. McFarland B.A., University of Alaska, 1977 MFA, University of Alaska, 1981 M.A., University of Cincinnati, 2001 Committee Chair: Dr. Geoffrey Plank Abstract The Watery World, an environmental study, challenges traditional histories of Illinois that present the natural environment in 1778 as untouched, virgin land. Occupied by the French since 1699, Illinois lands had been depleted of furbearing animals, deforested, and rigorously hunted. An exodus of French and Illinois Indians after 1763 encouraged a partial recovery of the environment; yet there were permanent losses, such as oak-hickory savannas and bison. Changes in the tri-partite habitat of French Illinois – floodplain, talus and bluffs, and upland till plain – also contributed to an escalation of inter-tribal conflicts. Northern Fox, Sauk, Potawatomi, and Sioux, as well as eastern bands of Miami and the Missouri Osage, competed for the resources of the Illinois prairies. The radical depopulation of Illinois tribes over the eighteenth century has been studied in the context of European contact, yet change to the natural environment has not been emphasized. This study argues that environmental degradation played a role in the decline of the Illinois subtribes and was also a factor in European occupation. The experience of the British particularly, who arrived to claim Illinois after the Treaty of Paris in 1763, was impacted by soil exhaustion, flooding and resultant fevers, the exodus of peoples, and deforestation. The massive influx of American settlers after 1778, when George Rogers Clark captured British Illinois, rapidly led to new environmental controls and surveys. The watery world of the Illinois Country saw an even more significant period of ditching, drainage, and aggressive agriculture. Illinois Indian lands were alienated; fencing laws replaced old French communal codes; and enormous grants of land were made along the rivers. The effect on the ecology of the Illinois Country was profound. This study examines the role of water in the settlements and livelihoods of Illinois Indians, French, British, and at the very end, Americans. It invokes the rich riverine, aquatic environment of the mid Mississippi River basin in the eighteenth century and documents its changes as important historical determinants. Acknowledgments The research for this dissertation was made smoother and much less onerous because of the committed help of the following people: Valerie Berry of the Lewis Library, Vincennes University; James Cornelius and John Hoffman of the Illinois Historical Survey, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne; Tom Foti, State Ecologist and Chief of Research, Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission; Dr. Tracy Leavelle, Creighton University; John White, Ecologist and Nature Conservationist, Ecological Services, Urbana-Champagne; Dr. William I. Woods, Contract Archaeology, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville; and the Interlibrary Loan staff at the following libraries: Indiana University, Bloomington; Monroe County Public Library, Bloomington; and Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas. I am also grateful to archivists at the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Missouri; the Filson Society, Louisville, Kentucky; the Lily Library, Indiana University, Bloomington; the Glenn R. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, Bloomington; and the Newberry Library, Chicago. In a separate category altogether is the contribution of Mr. Monty R. Baker, retired bibliographic librarian, University of Illinois. Mr. Baker worked tirelessly for over a year on his own time and often, at his own expense, to track down and procure hard to find source materials. His efforts allowed the completion of this study in probably half the time it would have taken otherwise. Mr. Baker contacted booksellers, librarians, and dealers in places as diverse as Edinburgh, Scotland, New Orleans, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Maine, and Quebec. He obtained editions and rare prints of journals, logs, and records. In addition, Mr. Baker read and reviewed many sections of this dissertation and suggested additional supporting materials (and often, found them). He has been a collaborator in many senses of the word. I also thank Dr. David Stradling for important help in strengthening the ecological arguments; Dr. Willard Sunderland and Dr. John Mack Faragher for reading and useful commentary on a draft; Daryl Shadrick for many, many hours of listening, encouragement, and technical support; J. Kinsey Parkhe for being a willing audience for my speculations and stories; my husband, Tom Morgan, for scientific contributions to insect, buffalo, and plant ecology, as well as significant emotional strength; and my daughters Lila Walsh, Shelley, Kristina, and Adelle McFarland for living with much change and accepting it cheerfully. Most of all I sincerely thank Dr. Geoffrey Plank, director of my research, for the hours he spent reading and commenting on drafts. His enthusiasm for my ideas and his careful, timely and detailed suggestions have helped me time and again to think my way through a complicated story. 1 Table of Contents Introduction................................................................................................................................2 Chapter One: The Watery World: Illinois Country Ecology................................................25 Chapter Two: Patterns of Settlement, Cahokia, 1699 – 1733.................................................48 Chapter Three: Patterns of Settlement, Chartres, 1720 – 1752...............................................91 Chapter Four: The Trade Matrix at Fort Chartres.................................................................123 Chapter Five: French and Indian Counterpoint: 1751 - 1752..............................................159 Chapter Six: The British in the Illinois Before 1770 ............................................................177 Chapter Seven: Across the River: The Missouri Lands, 1765 – 1775..................................217 Chapter Eight: Land of Rumor: British, French, and Indian Illinois, 1765 – 1778.............247 Epilogue .................................................................................................................................286 Bibliography ..........................................................................................................................296 2 Introduction The Watery World is an environmental history of a small, fertile niche along a great river. The French colonial settlements of southern Illinois lay right at an imaginary hinge point: here the Mississippi bows slightly to the west below the Big Rivers confluence of the Illinois and Missouri. Flooded and replenished for thousands of years, the black, fecund earth along a sixty mile stretch of floodplain became a theater for the historic meetings of many peoples. Each group who migrated and farmed there – middle and late Mississippian Indians, historic Illinois Indians, the French, the British, and finally, the Americans – changed and were changed themselves by proximal relations of riverine earth and water. This study is anchored right in the fertile mud of that insular ecosystem. Between 1699 and 1778, a peculiar, localized history evolved. The Europeans who arrived there were representatives of continental and international events and policies; their very coming – their deposition on the eastern shores of the Mississippi through ventures in exploration and trade – brought the “outside” into the Illinois. Yet inside the Illinois Country already lay a mobile, interactive world of diverse indigenous peoples. They were responding to distant events and catalysts within a wideflung kinship and alliance system of their own. In truth, there never was, or only once was, very long ago in distant geologic time, a primeval, virgin Illinois. The power of European narratives, of European languages, the passionate evocation of the beauty of the Illinois, has created an enduring fable: pristine wilderness. In the “untouched” Illinois nestled an extraordinary, virile flora and fauna, a panoramic abundance often catalogued by first time observers from floating river craft. 3 Yet even this view has become further textured over the centuries. As the fable goes, the Indian tribes who lived in the Illinois Country did not perceive its potential and cared little about its yield until the French arrived in 1699 to instruct them.1 The French alone among Europeans understood the country and inhabitants along the great river. They brought Old World peasant folkways and developed (primarily) illiterate, jovial relations with Indians that included much intermarriage, human contact, communication, and trade. Yet the French maintained a pronounced geographic isolation. Scant population growth and erratic influx