Illinois Country

Pays des Illinois
District of New France
1675–1769 1801–1803
Flag[a] The lesser coat of arms of France as used by the Government
St Louis–after 1764)
History
• Foundation of the first mission at the Grand Village of the Illinois	1675
• Transfer from French Canada to French Louisiana	1717
• Split west to Spain (District of Illinois)	1763
• Split east to Great Britain (Province of Quebec)	1763
• East ceded to the United States	1783
• Spanish retrocession of west	1801
• West transferred to the United States	1803
Preceded by Succeeded by Indigenous Americans Louisiana (New Spain) Province of Quebec (1763–1791) Illinois County Louisiana Purchase
Today part of	United States Illinois Indiana Iowa Missouri Ohio

The Illinois Country (

As a consequence of the French defeat in the French and Indian War in 1764, the Illinois Country east of the Mississippi River was ceded to the British and became part of the British Province of Quebec; the land west of the river was ceded to the Spanish (Luisiana).

During the American Revolutionary War, Virginian George Rogers Clark led the Illinois campaign against the British. Illinois Country east of the Mississippi River along with what was then much of Ohio Country became part of Illinois County, Virginia, claimed by right of conquest. The county was abolished in 1782. In 1784, Virginia ceded its claims. Part of the area was incorporated in the Northwest Territory. The name lived on as Illinois Territory between 1809 and 1818, and as the State of Illinois after its admission to the union in 1818. The residual part of Illinois Country west of the Mississippi was acquired by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.

Location and boundaries

The boundaries of the Illinois Country were defined in a variety of ways, but the region now known as the

This boundary between Canada and the Illinois Country remained in effect until the Treaty of Paris in 1763, after which France surrendered its remaining territory east of the Mississippi to Great Britain. (Although British forces had occupied the "Canadian" posts in the Illinois and Wabash countries in 1761, they did not occupy Vincennes or the Mississippi River settlements at Cahokia and Kaskaskia until 1764, after the ratification of the peace treaty.^[8]) As part of a general report on conditions in the newly conquered lands, Gen. Thomas Gage, then commandant at Montreal, explained in 1762 that, although the boundary between Louisiana and Canada was not exact, it was understood that the upper Mississippi above the mouth of the Illinois was in Canadian trading territory.^[9]

Distinctions became somewhat clearer after the

The first French explorations of the Illinois Country were in the first half of the 17th century, led by explorers and missionaries based in Canada. Étienne Brûlé explored the upper Illinois country in 1615 but did not document his experiences. Joseph de La Roche Daillon reached an oil spring at the northeasternmost fringe of the Mississippi River basin during his 1627 missionary journey.

In 1669–70, Father

From the 1710s to the 1730s, the Fox Wars between the French, French allied tribes and the Meskwaki (Fox) Native American tribe occurred in what is now northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin, and Michigan, in particular, over the fur trade. During the conflict, in what is now McLean County, Illinois, French and allied forces won a consequential battle against the Meskwaki in 1730.^[13][14]

Fort St. Louis du Rocher

French explorers led by

During the earliest of the French and Indian Wars, the French used the fort as a refuge against attacks by Iroquois, who were allied with the British. The Iroquois forced the settlers, then commanded by Henri de Tonti, to abandon the fort in 1691. De Tonti reorganized the settlers at Fort Pimitoui in modern-day Peoria.

French troops commanded by

On January 1, 1718, a trade monopoly was granted to

The original fort was located on the east bank of the Mississippi River, downriver (south) from Cahokia and upriver of Kaskaskia. The nearby settlement of Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, was founded by French-Canadian colonists in 1722, a few miles inland from the fort.

The fort was to be the seat of government for the Illinois Country and help to control the aggressive

After severe flooding in 1772, the British saw little value in maintaining the fort and abandoned it. They moved the military garrison to the fort at Kaskaskia and renamed it Fort Gage. Chartres' ruined but intact magazine is considered the oldest surviving European structure in Illinois and was reconstructed in the 20th century, with much of the rest of the Fort.

Agricultural settlement and slavery

According to historian, Carl J. Ekberg, the French settlement pattern in Illinois Country was generally unique in 17th- and 18th-century French North America. These were unlike other such French settlements, which primarily had been organized in separated homesteads along a river with long rectangular plots stretching back from the river (ribbon plots). The Illinois Country French, although they marked long-ribbon plots, did not reside on them. Instead, settlers resided together in farming villages, more like the farming villages of northern France, and practiced communal agriculture.^[17]

After the port of New Orleans, along the Mississippi River to the south, was founded in 1718, more African slaves were imported to the Illinois Country for use as agricultural and mining laborers. By the mid-eighteenth century, slaves accounted for as much as a third of the population.^[18]

Other settlements

• In 1675,
  Utica, Illinois, which was destroyed by Iroquois in 1680.^[10][11]

• Fort Pimiteoui, and later Old Fort Peoria, was established in 1691.^[19]
  French interests dominated at Peoria for well over a hundred years, from the time the first French explorers came up the Illinois River in 1673 until the first United States settlers began to move into the area around 1815. A small French presence persisted for a time on the east bank of the river, but was gone by about 1846. Today, only faint echoes of French Peoria survive in the street plan of downtown Peoria, and in the name of an occasional street, school, or hotel meeting room: Joliet, Marquette, LaSalle.
• The
  Chicago portage
  between 1696 and 1700.

• Peoria
  .
• Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception
  , built in 1843 and moved brick by brick to the new location on Kaskaskia Island about 1893.
• In 1720,
  African
  slaves in the region. Some of the French farmers also used slaves for labor, but most families held only a few, if any. The village quickly produced an agricultural surplus, with its goods sold to lower Louisiana, as well as to settlements less successful than those in the Illinois Country, such as Arkansas Post.
• As early as 1733, a trading post was established by Jean Baptiste de Girardot at Cape Girardeau and the town later formed in 1793.
• The original
  French Colonial
  architecture in the US.
• The French established Fort Orleans in 1723 along the Missouri River near Brunswick, Missouri.
• Fort Sackville after their capture of it in the French and Indian War (also known as the Seven Years' War.) George Rogers Clark renamed it Fort Patrick Henry, for the Governor of Virginia, when he took it in the American Revolution
  . Although part of the original expansive Illinois Country, as part of the Northwest Territory, it became the seat of a separate county.
• The French built Fort de L'Ascension (later, de Massiac) on the Ohio River in 1757 near present-day Metropolis, Illinois.
• St. Louis was founded in 1764 by French fur traders. In 1765, it was made the capital of Upper Louisiana; and after 1767, control of the region west of the Mississippi was given to the Spanish ("District of Illinois"^[6]). In 1780, St. Louis was attacked by British forces, mostly Native Americans, during the American Revolutionary War.^[20]

British province of Quebec

Following the British occupation of the east bank of the Mississippi in 1765, some

For their assistance to General Clark in the war, settled Canadien and Indian residents of Illinois Country were given full citizenship. Under the Northwest Ordinance and many subsequent treaties and acts of Congress, the Canadien and Indian residents of Vincennes and Kaskaskia were granted specific exemptions, as they had declared themselves citizens of Virginia. The term Illinois Country was sometimes used in legislation to refer to these settlements.

Much of the Illinois Country region became an

• French Colonial Historic District
• List of commandants of the Illinois Country
• Missouri French, a dialect of French spoken in the Midwestern Mississippi River Valley
• Ohio Country
• Slavery in New France

Notes