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Reflections: Illinois’ colonial history began a century before the Revolutionary War · Kendall County News - Shaw Local

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  Speaker 1: Reflections Illinois colonial history began a century before the Revolutionary War.
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  Written by Roger Mattel for Shaw Local News Network. This
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  article is being read by an automated voice brought to
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  you by Everlett. While we'll be celebrating Kendall County's eighteen
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  fifth birthday this year and the nation's two hundred and
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  fiftieth birthday, we ought to also keep in mind that
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  by seventeen seventy six, Illinois had already been settled for
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  a century, and our own Fox River Valley had been
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  considered an economic jewel by European powers for that long
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  as well. Why if one word had to be used
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  to explain why French explorers made their way to Illinois
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  in the seventeenth century, where they established military posts and
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  thriving towns, and why the commercial arms of other European powers,
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  including the Spanish and British, coveted it would have to
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  be fashion. Hats. In particular, men's fashion in the sixteenth
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  and seventeenth centuries, extending right up through the nineteenth century,
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  dictated that the well dressed male were varying styles of
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  broad brimmed hats. The hats popular during that period were
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  all made of felt, and hatters had discovered the very
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  best felt was made from beaver fur. Because beavers spend
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  much of their lives in the water, their fur is
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  thick and layered. During the cold winter months, it gets
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  even thicker. In addition, although smooth to the touch, it
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  actually contains microscopic barbs that cause it to tightly interlock
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  like modern velcro. In the manufacture of felt. This was
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  a great advantage because it created a tough, durable material that,
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  once it was created, tended to stay tightly meshed together
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  even when wet. By the latter years of the sixteenth century, though,
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  the European beaver population had been largely exterminated in the
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  dry to manufacture enough hats to satisfy men's fashion, which
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  is why Europeans were so overjoyed to discover that the
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  new world they were just beginning to fully explore was
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  so thickly populated with fur bearing animals. Bear wolf, buffalo, muskrats,
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  and minks and other weasels were all trapped for their
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  valuable fur, But it was North America's huge beaver population
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  that caused European hat makers and the fur traders who
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  fed their market to truly salivate. Early on, French, Dutch,
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  and English colonists dealt directly with the continents Native American
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  people furs, utilizing their existing trading networks, primarily the ones
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  developed by the Ottawa people. As soon as the tribes
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  discovered that Europeans would trade such valuable items as brass pots,
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  brightly colored glass beads, and wonderfully thick woolen blanket cloth
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  for the pelts of fur bearing animals, they began to
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  vie with each other to produce as many furs as possible.
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  By the sixteen seventies, eastern Canada and much of British
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  North America along the Atlantic Coats east of the Appalachians
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  were denuded to valuable fur bearing animals. As a result,
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  traders began looking farther and farther west towards other Native
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  American tribes the industry's wants and needs. The Iroquois Confederacy
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  based in New York's Hudson and Mohawk River valleys quickly
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  discerned that those who controlled the flow of firs from
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  the western lands, rich in pelts to the colonial fur
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  traders were in line to become rich themselves by acting
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  as middlemen in the trade. As a result, they launched
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  years of destructive warfare on tribes near and far. Among
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  their exploits were ferocious attacks on the western Great Lakes,
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  including the Illinois country made from the Iroquois New York base.
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  Some entire tribes, such as the unfortunate Neutrals, were completely
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  wiped out. Others, such as the Hurons, were nearly exterminated.
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  The Illinois Confederacy, that controlled our own Fox River Valley
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  as one of their prime hunting regions, was driven west
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  of the Mississippi River for a couple of years by
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  the ferocity of the Iroquois attacks. The French were no
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  fans of the Iroquois, and visa versa. Samuel de Champlain
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  had earned the Confederacy's undying enmity when he took the
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  side of Algonquian people against the Iroquois and the fifteen hundreds.
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  After that, the Iroquois attacked French settlements every chance they got.
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  At one point, the French were in danger of being
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  completely driven from Canada, but in sixteen seventy three, the
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  Governor of New France dispatched an exploration expedition from the
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  French post at Michigan Aquinak at the strait between Lakes
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  Huron and Michigan to determine the geography and commercial prospects
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  of the interior of North America. Expedition leader Huluis Joliette
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  was joined by Linguist and Jesuit father Jacques Marquette and
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  a small group of French canoe men. The party explored
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  Lake Michigan's western shore and the Wisconsin and Mississippi River
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  south to the Arkansas River before turning back north. On
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  their way back to Lake Michigan, they paddled up the
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  Illinois River, which they were told was notable among local
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  native people for its numbers of fur bearing animals. A
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  few years later, Robert Cavalier, Sir de la Salle, obtained
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  the fur trade monopoly for the Illinois country, and the
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  settlement of what would one day become the heart of
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  the Midwest began. The first permanent French settlement was Fort
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  Saint Louis, a top starved rock. Within a decade, French
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  villages were established at Kaskaskia and Cahokia, plus Peoria and
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  a number of other smaller locations. Fortified fur trade posts
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  were built at important portages, including Chicago, Green Bay, Attatinan
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  now Lafayette End and Saint Joseph Much Schools, churches, stores,
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  and farms were all built in Illinois by French colonials,
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  and the area began supplying grain to New Orleans, but
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  the primary business of the French was always the fur trade.
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  Wars were fought among European powers over the trade, culminating
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  in the Seven Years War called the French and Indian
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  War in North America, following which England took over sole
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  possession of North America in seventeen sixty three. By the
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  late eighteen twenties, when settlers started to arrive here in
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  the Fox Valley, most fur bearing animals had long been
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  cleaned out by the Native America tribes whose culture had
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  been submerged in the fur trade. In the early eighteen thirties,
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  the fur trade in northern Illinois ended with a whimper
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  instead of a bang, moving west to the Rocky Mountains,
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  and hundreds of years of economic warfare quietly ended. But
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  it remains one of history's colossal practical jokes that Illinois's
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  earliest colonizers and other Europeans were drawn here, settled here,
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  and fought and died here because of haberdashery fashions in Europe.
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