were encouraging, though the priests surely did not fully understand the Illinois’s engagement with Christianity. For instance, Allouez and Marquette considered the Illinois to be almost monotheistic, which was not true.148 Allouez perceived that the Illinois recognized one spirit—the “maker of all things”—above all others.149 This was optimistic—and false. The Jesuits interpreted the Illinois custom of feasting as similar to communion.150 And in general, the early Jesuits thought that the Illinois were nearly Christian, writing that missionizing here was a matter of exploiting close parallels between Christianity and indigenous spirituality. As Marquette wrote, “we keep a little of their usage, and take from it all that is bad.”151 However, rather than true similarities between Christian and Illinois worldviews, what the Jesuits were actually perceiving was the Illinois’s willingness to experiment. Their engagement with Christianity really reflected their openness, their flexibility, and their interest in gaining an advantage. Almost certainly they were hoping to capitalize on the newcomers’ power—spiritual or, if that proved useless, at least material. The Illinois were opportunistic.
Arriving in Illinois, the Jesuits often believed that they were the most important thing happening in the Illinois’s world. But in fact the Illinois had reformed almost everything about their lives over the previous several generations, making the French newcomers just one of a whole series of changes. The Illinois had moved to the borderlands, colonizing and taking advantage of new possibilities to build power based on bison hunting and slavery. Adapting themselves to the new ecological opportunities, they also adapted culturally, assimilating many aspects of the Siouan peoples whom they replaced and incorporated in these borderlands. When Marquette arrived among them, he ignored the real symbols of Illinois power and history that they presented him—the calumet ceremony, the bison skins and meat, Siouan iconography, and the slave. Focusing on the Illinois’s positive reception of Christianity, he did not understand that this was part of an ongoing set of adaptations that had defined their recent ambitious history.
In any event, the Jesuits sent their optimistic reports about Illinois back to Quebec and on to Paris. They tried to drum up support for this promising new mission project in the distant Illinois Country. Reading these reports, however, imperial officials back in Quebec were mostly indifferent to the idea of colonial activity in the remote borderlands. Even with news of the Illinois’s initial embrace of Christianity and the glowing descriptions of the rich Illinois Valley landscape, nobody in the administration of New France much cared about this place in 1673. To the contrary, officials mostly opposed expanding the empire to include these distant and different lands and peoples.
But in 1680 the Iroquois Wars took a sudden turn. And when they did, the Illinois were at the center of it. Suddenly, in spite of their initial indifference, officials could not ignore the Illinois—the people and the region demanded French attention. Soon, following Marquette, more explorers, with diverse imperial goals, ventured to Illinois to join the powerful Native people who had recently conquered the region. Opportunism would continue to shape the Illinois’s response to empire.
Chapter 2
The Imaginary Kingdom
In 1680, an army of the Iroquois invaded the Illinois with a force of five to six hundred warriors, renewing the Beaver Wars. Chasing the Illinois from their villages in the Illinois Valley, they desecrated graves, burned buildings, and ruined fields. Catching up with their victims, they committed, according to one French account, “mutilation, by slaying, and by a thousand tortures besides.”1 After this destruction, the Iroquois aggressors left the Illinois Valley full of markers of their violence, including “the half denuded skulls of Illinois dead” and pictographic memorials commemorating the Iroquois victory.2
To the French in Quebec and throughout the pays d’en haut, who were only barely familiar with the region, this looked like devastation. Recounting the Iroquois attacks on the Illinois, La Salle wrote that there were seven hundred casualties and four hundred slaves taken.3 New France intendant Jacques Duchesneau put the number even higher.4 To the French, this episode was a major blow, if not a crushing one, for the Illinois people whom the French considered weak and “indifferently warlike.”5 According to French sources, the Illinois were “well nigh exterminated.”6 They had to “abandon their country” and “seek refuge in distant parts.”7
In viewing the Illinois as devastated victims, the French exaggerated and misunderstood this episode of Indian warfare and underestimated Illinois power. Nevertheless, the Iroquois attack of 1680–81 marked a turning point in French diplomacy with regard to western peoples like the Illinois. Convinced that the Iroquois were poised to dominate the Great Lakes, the French faced an important choice. One alternative was to allow the Iroquois to continue their aggression against the Illinois and other Algonquians, which would put at risk the fur trade and balance of power that New France relied on. The other alternative was to support the western allies, unify them, and help them defeat the Iroquois. In fact, this was no real choice at all. Over the course of the next several years, French officials committed to becoming the mediators of the alliance, the “glue” of the Algonquian world.8 They resolved to support the most important targets of Iroquois attacks, the Illinois.
This change produced enormous effects for the Illinois. Nowhere near as devastated by the attack in 1680 as the French thought, the Illinois continued on an opportunistic trajectory they had begun well before contact. With French support, they expanded their power to the Southwest, increasing their activity as slavers in the Siouan borderlands. Coalescing in larger groups, they united at the so-called Grand Village of the Kaskaskia, modern-day Starved Rock, which soon became the largest population center north of Mexico. Here they created a center of exploitation, basing their tremendous power on bison, slaves, and now the French alliance. Far from devastated by the attack in 1680, the Illinois moved into an even more ambitious phase of their history.
But if these changes in French diplomacy had important effects for the Illinois, they also had important effects for the French themselves. For in resolving to help build the Algonquian alliance and support the Illinois, Quebec officials were committing themselves to a whole new policy regarding the distant West. Prior to the 1680s, the only people who went to the remote country of the Illinois Valley were schemers with quixotic and even defiant plans. These included Jesuits, explorers like Robert La Salle, and, most important, fur traders. Officials in Quebec openly opposed western expansion of the empire. Now, in the mid-1680s, the imperatives of Indian diplomacy forced officials to change their views. Importantly, officials had to look to the schemers on the ground in Illinois as the agents of their new Indian policy. For their part, visionaries like La Salle had to look to the government as essential partners in their projects.
This was the beginning of a unique, halting, and uncertain colonial experiment on New France’s periphery. To support the Indian allies, New France officials relied on an “infrastructure” of disloyal explorers, priests, and fur traders whose activities they previously discouraged.9 Fur traders pursued their self-interest, but they gained imperial support and military assistance. Priests and fur traders disagreed about priorities, but they came together and cooperated to solidify their fledgling presence among the Illinois. The necessities of Indian affairs forced the French—with all their competing priorities and different interests—to find a common ground. It was the beginning of empire by collaboration.
Meanwhile, of course, the real winners were the Illinois. This period marked the height of their power. Far from devastated, they launched an aggressive phase, uniting at the Grand Village of the Kaskaskia. Here, exploiting bison and the slave trade, they made one of the most important bids for power in all of seventeenth-century America. Together, Indians, French schemers, and Quebec officials collaborated to realize disparate goals.
