Kaskaskia Experimental Forest

The Kaskaskia were one of the indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands. They were one of about a dozen cognate tribes that made up the Illiniwek Confederation, also called the Illinois Confederation. Their longstanding homeland was in the Great Lakes region. Their first contact with Europeans reportedly occurred near present-day Green Bay, Wisconsin, in 1667 at a Jesuit mission station.

Post-contact history

European explorers

In 1673, Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette and French-Canadian explorer Louis Jolliet became the first Europeans known to have descended the Mississippi River. The record of their trip is the earliest, best record of contact between Europeans and the Illinois Indians. Marquette and Jolliet, with five other men, left the mission of St. Ignace at Michilimackinac in two bark canoes on May 17. To reach the Mississippi River, they travelled across Lake Michigan into Green Bay, up the Fox River and down the Wisconsin River. Descending the Mississippi, in June, they met the Peoria and Moingwena bands of Illinois at the Haas/Hagerman Site near the mouth of the Des Moines River in Clark County, northeastern Missouri. They met another Illinois band, the Michigamea, when they reached present-day Arkansas.

They began their return trip from the Michigamea village about July 17, following the Illinois River eastward to Lake Michigan rather than taking the more northern route along the Wisconsin River. Near modern Utica in LaSalle County, Illinois, across from Starved Rock, they met the Kaskaskia at the Grand Village of the Illinois (now a State Historic Site, also known as the Zimmerman site). The land controlled by the allied Illinois groups extended north from modern Arkansas, through Eastern Missouri and most of Illinois, and west into Iowa, where Des Moines was named after the Moingwena.

New France missions

In 1703, the French established a permanent mission, settlement and fort (Fort Kaskaskia State Historic Site) at Kaskaskia, Illinois, a part of their New France colonization of North America., which was part of the French Illinois Country, later made part of French Louisiana (New France).

French settlers moved in to farm and to exploit the lead mines on the Missouri side of the river. Kaskaskia became the capital of Upper Louisiana, and a larger Fort de Chartres was built in 1718, nearby North close to Prairie du Rocher. In the same year, the French imported African slaves from Saint-Domingue (Santo Domingo) to work in the lead mines. From its beginning, Kaskaskia was a French/Native American settlement, consisting of a few French men and numerous Kaskaskia and other Illinois Indians.

In 1707, the population of the community was estimated at 2,200, the majority of them Illinois Indians who lived somewhat apart. A visitor, writing of Kaskaskia about 1715, said that the village consisted of 400 Illinois men, "very good people," two Jesuit missionaries, and "about twenty French ''voyageurs'' who have settled there and married Indian women." Of 21 children whose birth and baptism was recorded in Kaskaskia before 1714, 18 mothers were Indian and 20 fathers were French. The offspring of these mixed marriages could become either French or Indian. Because Indian communities were larger and more complete, they tended to be reared with their mothers and their people and culture. One devout Roman Catholic full-blooded Indian woman disowned her half-breed son for living "among the savage nations." The settlement of Kaskaskia thus had a large population of mixed French and Indigenous ancestry, many of whom worked for fur companies based out of St. Louis, Missouri (a city created later, in 1764, by French traders and settlers who came from New Orleans

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