powerful in the colony. For one thing, according to La Salle himself, he was expert in dealing with the local Illinois-speaking Indians. He was “tolerably versed in their languages and manners.” Moreover, he “knew all their customs and was esteemed by several of these nations [in Illinois Country].” In the often difficult task of winning the trust and affection of Indian groups, Accault “succeeded completely.” And his character was impressive. Summing up Accault’s qualities, La Salle wrote that the trader was “prudent, brave and cool.”142
That a man like this took control of Illinois Country in 1693 tells us something important about Illinois’s earliest history and its relationship to the French empire. Many early visions for colonial activity in Illinois had failed. New France had failed to keep its empire restricted to the St. Lawrence. Jesuits had failed to keep Illinois an isolated, primitive church. La Salle, now dead, had not created his alternative empire—it remained just an “imaginary kingdom.” And yet Accault had succeeded. He became an important figure amid a powerful Indian population center, a place now reluctantly included in the French colonial empire. Accault’s authority represented compromise and collaboration—among Indians, Frenchmen, and imperialists. To realize their goals, officials would have to collaborate with a man like Accault.
In the 1680s, Indian affairs created a unique situation in Illinois. After the Iroquois attacks, the French became the “glue” that held together a fragmented social world of Algonquians in the pays d’en haut.143 In Illinois, however, the exigencies of Indian policy also had another effect, which was to hold together diverse French people with competing visions of the French empire. While in most of the pays d’en haut it was French glue bonding Indian fragments, here in Illinois there was Indian glue uniting people with diverse schemes for empire. The imperatives of the Beaver Wars forced collaboration among Jesuits, fur traders, schemers, Indians, and officials.
But this collaboration seemed to be only as durable as the need for alliance against the Iroquois. Like so many relationships and experiments on the early American frontier, these accommodations were surely temporary and expedient. But meanwhile, on the ground, affairs at the Grand Village were entering a new phase. In the Grand Village, Jesuits, fur traders, and Indians were coming to understand each other, to forge relationships that went beyond the short-term imperatives of the fur trade or the Iroquois Wars. In 1694, an event was about to take place that would change the history of Illinois forever. Moving far beyond the hasty accommodations of the early years, this would be the beginning of a much more serious collaboration and the foundation of an idiosyncratic colonial community.
Chapter 3
Collaboration and Community
At the dawn of the 1690s, the French empire included an unintentional colonial outpost in the Illinois Country. Containing Jesuits, fur traders, Indians, and the defiant inheritors of La Salle’s early Louisiana concession, it was a far cry from what anybody—whether in the government of New France or on the ground in Illinois—might have hoped it to be. Only the strategic imperative of Indian affairs, the all-important alliance against the Iroquois, kept imperial officials and the people in and around Fort Saint Louis collaborating. But while the resulting collaboration followed nobody’s ideal design, there were measured successes. The Jesuits baptized hundreds of Indians during brief sojourns at their small mission. La Salle’s concession contained a bustling fur trade center. Fur traders like Michel Accault profited. And the government had “infrastructure” to secure its important alliance with the Illinois.
Of course, the real success story of this period belonged to the Illinois themselves. In part owing to French support, the opportunistic Illinois at the Grand Village had reached the climax of their power, built on slaves, bison, and French merchandise. Having reached its maximum strength at twenty thousand persons in the early 1680s, the Grand Village complex still contained an enormous population, so many people that they were forced to relocate to Lake Peoria for more fuel in the early 1690s. From here, the new village known as Pimitéoui, or “fat lake,” the Illinois continued to dominate the Illinois Valley corridor, funneling slaves from Siouan- and Caddoanspeaking communities in the West to Great Lakes Algonquians in need of captives to replace their war dead.1 Exploiting their unique opportunities in the borderlands, the Illinois were some of the most powerful people in North America. But pressures inside the village, pulling at the very fabric of Illinois society, were about to change everything.
Inside the village, tensions went along with the great power of the Illinois. Since their arrival in the prairie borderlands, Illinois-speakers had built power by assimilating outsiders. Much of this assimilation rested on violence and slave trading. In the melting pot of Kaskaskia, this produced resentment among certain individuals who did not feel fully integrated into the dominant culture. The most important tension at the Grand Village and Pimitéoui was clearly related to gender. The Illinois had survived and expanded by creating a mode of reproduction based on slavery and polygamy. But in this context, many women resented their treatment. In a violent culture, they were victimized at home, abandoned in battles, and oppressed as slaves. Under the surface, Illinois society simmered with conflict between the sexes.
In the 1690s, disempowered women among the Illinois found one place they could turn. Jesuits had been in Illinois since the 1670s trying to establish an Illinois church. Frustrated by the presence of fur traders, they probably considered abandoning the mission and mostly neglected the Immaculate Conception project after Marquette’s death in 1674. But in 1689, a new group of priests, led by Jacques Gravier, reestablished the mission. This second generation of Jesuit priests in Illinois soon had a thriving presence. Unlike most others in the transitory Illinois frontier, they committed themselves to staying in Illinois for a long time and began to build intimate relationships with their hosts. One index of their intimate relations was their expertise in communication. As one observer in this period said, “the reverend Jesuit fathers speak the Illinois language perfectly.”2
They spoke it most perfectly with Illinois women, who found in Christianity lessons that were useful for them. Working together with Gravier and other Jesuits in the 1690s, Illinois women created spiritual principles that helped them combat unfavorable polygamous marriages and the oppressions they experienced in the slavery-dominated social world of Great Kaskaskia. Their society had been shaped by slavery, and Christianity gave them a perfect way to resist.
It is not surprising that this produced conflict and threatened the accommodations that had allowed people to get along in the Illinois to begin with. Gravier criticized Illinois men and French fur traders and helped his female students refuse their abuses. No longer convinced like Marquette that most of the Illinois were “near Christians,” Gravier confronted Illinois shamans and disrupted their ceremonies. Illinois men, for their part, rejected the priests and Christianity, subjecting their daughters to punishments when they attended mass. Meanwhile, disturbed by the tension that Gravier created, fur traders and the officials in La Salle’s tiny fort in Kaskaskia refused to support the Jesuits and even openly opposed them. It was an uneasy situation, dividing the outpost and destroying early intercultural harmonies.
But then, on the verge of a crisis in the community, several of the competing interests in Illinois found a sudden and surprising way to get along: marriage. In 1694, the Jesuit priest Gravier solemnized a wedding between the fur trader Michel Accault and Marie Rouensa, daughter of the chief of the Kaskaskia. This marriage, which represented a complex compromise among many different interests, was the beginning of a new era in the colony, when pragmatic compromise brought people together. Importantly, unlike the early transitory collaborations in Illinois, this marriage was not just a temporary or expedient accommodation. Accault, Marie, Gravier, and the Rouensas came together without any of the “creative misunderstandings” that characterized early frontier relations. To the contrary, thanks to their sophisticated intercultural communication, these
