(logo whooshing) (upbeat music) - Welcome to "At Issue", I'm H Wayne Wilson.

Thank you so much, as always, for joining us for the discussion.

This particular time, we're going to be talking about the French history of Illinois.

Yes, the French history of Illinois.

If I say names like Marquette, Jolliet, Tonti, La Salle, you'd probably say, "Yeah, I've heard those names before," but do you know the significance of those individuals?

Do you know what really happened some 300 and 350 years ago when the French were here in Illinois?

We're going to talk about that with two individuals who have been studying this for some time.

Charles Balesi is here.

Charles is a historian, and believe me, he is a historian on French history.

Thank you for joining us on "At Issue".

- Thank you, it's my pleasure.

- And Todd Schwebel is here.

Todd is also, he's been studying French history for quite some time.

Thank you for joining us on the program.

- Thank you for having me, H. - I'd like to talk about the overview of French, I mean, we mentioned Marquette, Jolliet, and everybody knows 1673.

And then the knowledge base kind of ends and we don't get past that.

Yeah, they came up the Illinois River in 1673, and there's no knowledge after that.

Can you give us a broad overview of that period of time?

- Well, first of all, we have to understand why they came, the circumstances, as everything is linked.

The French monarchy was not really interested in colonial development, and certainly, not much in North America.

But it happened that after somebody went to see the King Louis XIV, talked about North America, and the French small settlement along the Saint Lawrence River, and the problems they had with the Iroquois Indians, and the fact that they had phenomenal trees, which interested the French monarchy for the Royal Navy.

So it's a kind of linked to the economy, to a certain way.

And the fact that Jesuits, who were important at the time, were interested in pushing the religion.

All together, when you come down to few people along the Saint Lawrence River, from Quebec, Montreal, Trois-Rivieres, and essentially, in Mackinac Island, a priest, who was told to go along with a name, a man called Louis Jolliet, who was ready to see what he could do as far as trading on his own expenses, because the French monarchy was not going to put any money out.

So those two guys, essentially, a priest and an entrepreneur, in American sense of the term, found a few people, five actually, five of them, two canoes, and they went west with a hope to find something, and they did find people.

- [Todd] And they found rivers.

- And they went out.

- They followed the water.

- [Charles] They followed the water.

- For me, the dynamic is very simple.

You start in Tadoussac in 1602 in Quebec, as Charles mentioned, on the Saguenay, which is the largest source of fresh water in North America, 10 times the volume of the Mississippi, and down the water they came, jumping ahead, Mackinac, the Esther, foundation of the family fortune was laid in Mackinac.

Came down the lake portage at Chicago, came down the Illinois River, met the Ohio and the Mississippi.

These were the internets and the super highways of the 18th century.

And so, as you say, it was entrepreneurship.

They were looking to trade and ended up in New Orleans, ultimately, at the base of the Mississippi River.

- Eventually, this was not to a given.

It was never a given.

- We know the French Canadians, Quebec.

We know that.

And there was French down in New Orleans.

- Oh, later on.

- [Todd] Later on.

- A little bit later on.

- Much later on.

- [Todd] Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

- A little bit later on.

When Marquette and Jolliet set out, they didn't know exactly where they were going.

- No, but they heard about this great river by the name of Mississippi, and they are naturally, like all people at the time on the Eastern Coast, they were dreaming about- - China!

- This waterway to go to the Orient where the business was, you know, business, China, still like today.

- [Todd] Yes, yes, yes.

- So the whole idea was to find a grande passage, a way to go waterways all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

And the South Mississippi River would be it.

Of course, it did not.

And that's the way the whole thing developed.

- And they didn't actually go down to New Orleans.

They went down to where- - No, no, they did not even exist then.

- The confluence of the Arkansas and the Mississippi.

- Right, because they heard about the Spaniards were down there, and the Spaniards were their problem at the time for the French.

So they decided to return back north.

- [Todd] Right.

- And on the return back north, they come up the Illinois River.

- [Charles] Yes.

- And that's where Peorians will know the story of- - Yes, they did because going first, they went to the Wisconsin, to the Wisconsin.

- [Todd] Right.

- They did not use the Illinois River on the way in.

They'd used it on the way back.

- [H Wayne] On the way back.

- Right, because they discovered Illinois River.

They didn't know about it, they had by that time.

They were friendly Native American.

Essentially, the Illinois Confederation helped them along.

- So they stopped at an unknown location somewhere around Lake Pimiteoui, and they built a fort, Fort Creve Coeur.

- [Charles] Oh, no, no, no, no.

- [H Wayne] No?

- No, no, no, no.

Fort Creve Coeur come way after that.

- [H Wayne] 1680.

- Yes, well, that will be, you're talking about Marquette.

- [H Wayne] Oh no, well, I'm- - [Todd] We're jumping up to- - You're jumping there.

- I'm jumping, I'm jumping.

- No, no, that's no good.

- Oh, it's no good.

Okay, it's no good.

(Charles laughing) - We only have a small amount of time, so some jumping is going to be essential.

- I'm trying to get a century of this to the end.

- But you went from Marquette to La Salle.

It's 10 years in between.

- Yes.

But the French decide to look hard at this beautiful place called Peoria because the Indians were here.

It was a center for, I'm assuming, Charles, help me out, a thousand years before the French arrived, the Indians were here because of its felicitous location, the beautiful Peoria Lake.

And I think they said, "Aha, this is a good-looking place."

- Well, maybe, maybe they said that, but anyway, to make things clear, Marquette and Jolliet was a period of discovery.

Eventually, 12 years later, you have a guy called Robert Cavelier de La Salle, because it was good to sound noble in those days, and his assistant, Italian-born Enrico Tonti became Henri Tonti, and they came through the Michigan, and they came down the Illinois River, and they came across the confederation of, you know, the Peoria Native American.

And they recognized it was that they knew, the Native American knew about the French people because of the Jesuits.

And right away, was a cooperation immediately.

- And just for the record, Fort Creve Coeur only lasted less than a year.

- Yeah, maybe, it lasts not much.

Because the whole idea was to launch a boat big enough to go on the Mississippi River.

It did not happen that way, but it was an important step in a French progression toward the west.

No doubt about.

And you know, we don't know where the fort is, but it's in this area.

- No.

No, and for those of us who know the current Fort Creve Coeur, we know it's sadly in disrepair.

But as Charles is saying and there's been recent scholarship that is pointing to alternate locations, and I think that's something of great interest for this community.

- Yeah.

It is difficult to find because you have a lot of erosion.

However, the area, you know, without going too crazy about determining the area, still, the whole Peoria, the banks of what we call the Peoria Lakes are with, definitely, a Native and a French presence.

- But for me, one thing that's been important about Fort Creve Coeur, whether we know with 100% certainty its original location or not, has been in this community it's been a physical place where schoolchildren can go and begin to have some knowledge.

- [Charles] Some idea, yes, sure.

- About the French heritage and history of Peoria, which is really rich and profound.

And H Wayne, thank you again for the opportunity to educate a broader audience about this.

- It's one of the reasons for doing the program is it's unfortunate that the fort is in disrepair.

It's closed right now.

- [Todd] Yeah.

- Now, there are some efforts to try to reopen it but it's an educational tool.

- Right.

- But you were mentioning, you know, we don't know exactly where the fort was because, you know, they write down well on the bluff or...

But we do know one thing.

We know the giant oak tree, the bur oak.

- We do, that yes.

- And that's been referenced.

- And so, I feel very grateful.

I woke up this morning in the shadow of the giant bur oak on the bluff, on the West Bluff on High Street.

And the giant oak is documented on the first known French map of Illinois.

And it's the spot where the Indians, the Native Americans, and the French powwowed here on the bluff above Peoria.

And so, yes, and I encourage everyone to pay a visit, if you haven't done so already, to the giant oak.

It's one of America's great trees.

And it is your opportunity to actually stand in the shadow of history and come and see it.

- The trees are extremely important in a Native American approach to life, you know.

It's very possessed.

One tree similar, you know, on the South Bend, you know, on the portage between South Bend and Kankakee River.

And this is very important part.

So we are extremely fortunate to have this oak in Peoria.

- [Todd] We are.

- And I do wanna talk about, Todd mentioned, you know, the river, that was a form of transportation back then, the form of transportation.

But today, sometimes the river is a divisive, of a divisive nature.

And when we talk about the French history of Illinois, it was called the Illinois Country back then, when we talk about that history, we're talking about French history that affects all of this area.

And we should remember that we're here together.

- Absolutely, and this is something I've been trying to fight for many, many years since when I start writing my book.

It's interesting that we find the same phenomenon in the Mississippi River between one side and the other, like the river becomes the building wall.

And unfortunately, you know, I've been around Peoria a long time.

I was part of the Tricentennial Committee.

I knew Gloria LaHood very well.

And at the time, unfortunately, it was some rival feelings between East Peoria picking particularly and Peoria.

Kind of strange to me because I always said the French and the Native American, for them, was no east and west, was the whole banks.

And the river was a way to communicate, not to wait to ignore each other.

- [Todd] That's right.

- And we found the same thing.

It is a kind of a modern phenomena, which I quite don't understand why it happened.

- I'm heartened though.

I see evidence of the region.

And H Wayne, I take your point and take it very seriously on the subject of the water alone.

We all share this water.

And I think there's increasing interest, deservedly so in the water itself.

But culturally, Ste.

Genevieve on the Missouri side.

- Mississippi.

- [Todd] On the Mississippi, Ste.

Genevieve.

- Yeah.

- And Kaskaskia.

- [Charles] Prairie du Rocher.

- Prairie du Rocher in the St. Louis region.

There's a wonderful, wonderful region there on both sides of the river.

And I will say that I'm a member of the Society of Colonial Wars in State of Illinois and our Missouri chapter.

We can jointly help shepherd Fort de Chartres because we view it as it's not, even though Fort de Chartres is in Illinois, the Missourians take great pride because it's in their neighborhood as well.

And it's one of the great colonial sites in the United States, and it happens to be located here in Illinois.

Fort de Chartres just celebrated its 300th anniversary in 2022.

Unfortunately, it was during the pandemic and so some of the celebrations weren't able to happen.

But the annual Rendezvous in June is something that I encourage all of the viewers to take advantage of because it's an opportunity to see multiculturalism and the diversity that Illinois has represented since day one in living color.

The Rendezvous brings together reenactors from various periods and various nationalities including the Native Americans at Fort de Chartres.

And it's just a visual feast and wonderful things for kids and grandparents alike.

- Charles mentioned this book, so "The Time of the French in the Heart of North America" is the book by Charles Balesi.

I've read it.

It is detailed, let me just say that.

There's a lot of information in that book.

I wanna talk about some of the specific things because we're talking about, you know, the French were here in 1673, Fort Creve Coeur in 1680, what can we say exists?

And in doing my research, it appears that in the City of Peoria, there's only one street that has a French origin.

And that is Tonti Circle for Henri de Tonti.

It's about a block long.

That is the only street I can find that has any French origination.

But there are some places, there's a cemetery over in Groveland Township in Tazewell County.

- That's right.

- [H Wayne] That still exists today.

- Yes.

- With a deep French history.

- Yes, and there are people in the studio today, including Charles and myself, who were present at the reconsecration of the cemetery, which I'm proud to say my mother and grandmother were deeply involved with, with the help of others including Charles in raising the money to restore the Fagotte Cemetery in East Peoria, the old French cemetery as it was called.

And Charles helped me out.

But I recall we had an honor guard come to reconsecrate.

- The sheriff.

You know, at that time, I was instrumental in getting the French government to give some subsidies for the Fagotte Cemetery.

And was a consular, Deputy Consular Bosuche, who's now retired.

- Yes, Jean-Paul.

And the sheriff gave him a honor guard all the way and was very important thing.

This is a type of, again, it's not on the same side of the lake, so to speak, but it is part, and we want to take advantage to insist that Peoria is a unity itself.

There's no east and west in historical sense and cultural sense.

Maybe this developed because now you have different municipality.

But if we can be of help, as a historical society, as an organization, is to put this together, that's extremely important.

We are together for the commemoration of the past, for the practical economical advantage, we can get from the past from this commemoration.

- Yes, and so the Fagotte Cemetery is not there by accident because it's located where the original farms that sustain Peoria, the closest farms to the Peoria Center were located there opposite the West Bluff.

And the hops were growing there in the early 19th century.

The Alsatians immigrants who came, who made beer, continued their French- - And isn't there a veteran of the Napoleonic War?

- Yes, it was, his name escaped me, but I have it in my file, I still have the file from that time.

He survived a retreat from Russia, and he came in 1818, joined his father and he died, I think, in 1870, or was it '50?

- '70 something.

Yeah.

- Something like this.

And you know, he died.

So because of that, there's a law in France where cemeteries, where veterans of the French military are buried must be kept.

So this is why using that strategy, I mean, if you want to use.

- And economically and culturally, the French government has always been very supportive of French heritage in North America.

- [Charles] Yeah.

- And I think it's an opportunity, particularly here in Peoria, and if you're not going to be the one to say it, H Wayne, I will.

I think it's time for a commission to be formed to address the French heritage here.

You're absolutely correct.

There should be more street, and place names, and physical acknowledgement of the French heritage.

And it's not just 17th and 18th century.

As I was starting to say, it's the 19th century, the Alsatians who came, all the way through the 19th century.

Peoria has been a European mecca for immigration.

And so there's much to celebrate from many different, many different eras.

- Todd has laid the challenge out to community leaders, French heritage.

Let's turn to the breadbasket.

We remember that the French were friends with Native Americans with the exception of possibly the Iroquois.

- Iroquois were allied to the British and Iroquois was the enemy of Hurons.

When the French arrived to Quebec, they joined force with the Hurons.

Unfortunately, the enemy of the Hurons were Iroquois, the Confederation of Iroquois, who were tough, tough guys.

So they actually espoused the fight of Native American.

They took one side, this is why, you know, it's happened, but it's why, by and large, we can say.

- But by and large- - Yeah.

- There was a good relationship.

- Yes, that's why you had the French Indian Wars, you know, French and Indians against everybody else.

- [Todd] Capture territory.

- Now, 1755 to '63 or so?

- Yeah, exactly.

- [Todd] Yeah.

- And we know about trading furs, et cetera.

- Yeah.

- But one thing we don't talk about is it was, that was a breadbasket.

- That's right.

- [H Wayne] They could ship grain back to the homeland.

- That's absolutely right.

And of course, for all of us here in Central Illinois, we understand agriculture.

And that's also true in Chicago.

This is America's breadbasket and it started that way as well.

And I think it's economically and culturally absolutely essential to shed light on this heritage.

The French settled not only because of trade but because of the necessity of having grain to support New Orleans.

And we are proud to say that grain from the American Bottom along the Mississippi River was sent back as flour to the king's own table was considered the best grain in the world at that time.

And of course, right here again, in the Tri-County area, we understand the value of agriculture and farming.

And for me, it's just exciting to contemplate that this is a distinction that's been going on for centuries.

- I mentioned earlier, there's only one street in Peoria, that I'm aware of, that has French origin, Tonti Circle.

But in Chicago, a year or so ago, they just made a big change.

We all are familiar with Lake Shore Drive.

Beautiful drive along the Lake Michigan shore but it now is the DuSable Lake Shore Drive.

Is this at the start of what could be much more in terms of reflecting on our French heritage in Illinois?

- I'm not sure.

I think, you know, all honesty and I will be honest about it, that they heralded Jean Baptiste Point du Sable more from a racial point of view.

Now, within a French culture, racial component is not that important, never was important.

So I think Jean Baptiste Point du Sable was somebody born from a French father and probably, an Afro American woman in Saint-Domingue.

Well, how he considered himself?

I personally think he was considering himself as a French person.

In fact, he married a Potawatomi woman.

Now, I'm, you know, I'm very happy that the City of Chicago select him, for whatever reason it is, (speaks French)- - [Todd] Yeah.

- Be as it may in French, as long as Jean Baptiste Point du Sable is a French name, they have to pronounce a French way, Point du Sable, so it's a win-win situation, okay?

That's you know, that's a- - I'm gonna agree with Charles on every point he's making, large and small, and I travel on Lake Shore Drive, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable Lakeshore Drive, that is its new formal name, and it is wonderful to hear a French name being used with aplomb in Chicago.

I am sorry however, that it is not being used on a larger scale to really get at the topics that you are allowing us to get at today, H Wayne, because there's so much more to the French heritage and history in Illinois that all of us are interested in.

And it's du Sable is a great opportunity.

If only we would be discussing him in a fuller context as Charles is alluding to, and his being French and being here because of the French history in Illinois.

- And with that, we will continue the conversation.

Normally, I say to our viewers (upbeat music) we'll continue the conversation, you in your living room, we here in the studio.

But we have an opportunity to do this next week because these two gentlemen will be back joining us again, Charles Balesi and Todd Schwebel, and also joined by Lisa Khan, and we'll be talking to them on the next "At Issue".

Please join us then.

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