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For home pageThe mouth of the Fox river at Ottawa-the Indians called it Pesticoui -was passed, then Buffalo Rock, that mighty mass of yellow sand stone, west of Ottawa on the north side of the Illinois river. Then Starved Rock was reached, its oak and pines clad in the snow of winter. Marquette and J oliet had passed the same great rock for the first time, when it was cloaked in its early fall colors and the second time, when it wore the soft livery of early spring. Now LaSalle saw it stripped of all greenery or brilliant Color, as winter clutched the land with icy hands. Marquette and Joliet on each of their trips had found the great Indian villages of Kaskaskia or LaVantum, as the French called it, teaming with hundreds of Indians, naked children and slinking cur dogs some of which wound up in the stew pot as the explorers found. They politely declined it, and with equal politeness on the part of their hosts were then offered some of the "Fat of the Land," that came from the deer and the buffalo, then roaming Illinois and, literally, were as well clad with fat in their way as the porkers of the white man in the same valley in the twentieth century.
LaSalle and his party, cold and hungry Frenchman, found the rows of bark huts housing 4,000 to 5,000 Indians, usually 6 families to a hut, deserted. No blue wood smoke came from the dark and ill smelling cabins, there was no chatter of men or women in the village streets, no shouts of children at play, no cur dogs roamed through the idle streets. The Indians were off on a winter hunting trip.
Desperate for food LaSalle and his men raided the corn pits of the Indians and for payment left a supply of gifts without which no explorer went among the Indians. The women loved the white man's finery of beads and baubles as well as the warriors relished the axes and tobacco and other goods which they could not produce themselves.
The silent village of the Kaskaskia, when LaSalle first saw it, was a grim forecast of the scene of horror, that he was to look on in the same sprawling camp, less than a year in the future after the Iroquois had been on there savage raid.
Were it not recorded history the labors of LaSalle in the Illinois and Mississippi valleys over a period of several years would seem incredible for their long journey, some by foot, some by canoe, some through the heat of the summer and others in the dead of a North American winter.
New Years day 1680 Father Hennepin offered a mass and extended greeting to the concourse of Frenchmen in the lonely wilderness and LaSalle then resumed his journey down the Illinois to what is now Peoria.
Somewhere along Peoria Lake, called by the Indians "Pimeteoui" or a "Place of Many Fat Beasts." LaSalle found a village of 80 lodges of the Illinois.
LaSalle and the sachems smoked the pipe of peace and exchanged gifts. LaSalle made known his plans to build a "big canoe" to go down the Mississippi.
Trouble arrived with a Mascoutin chief, who hinted that LaSalle was a spy for the dreaded Iroquois. LaSalle wormed himself back into the good graces of the Illini, but half a dozen of his men on whom he depended for aid in building his ship took to the tall timber. With his usual charac-teristic energy he started to build Fort Crevecour or "Broken Heart" with its storehouses and huts for his workmen. Again the axes rang in the wilderness as he started work on his proposed "Big Canoe" to float down the Illinois and Mississippi.
In six weeks the keel was laid, but no ship could sail without cordage or sails and they were in distant Canada. LaSalle set out for Canada to get them. Father Hennepin, Michael Ako and Anthony Augel were di-rected to go up the Mississippi on a trip which Hennepin made famous in his account of the journey to the Falls of St. Anthony.
March 1st found LaSalle enroute to Canada through a land where winter was breaking up and snow, sleet and rain were common. March 10th they were back in the Indian village south of Utica to rest for a few days.
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Last Updated: February 16th, 1999
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