THE OHIO VALLEY-GREAT LAKES ETHNOHISTORY
ARCHIVES: THE MIAMI COLLECTION
It is noted that the following work from the Miami Archives should be read and
considered within the historical context in which it was composed and printed.
The opinions expressed and the language used do not reflect the opinions or
standards of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, but are, rather,
indicative of thought in that historical moment during which the document was
published.
Memoir on Louisiana
(1726)
Bienville, Jean Baptiste le Moyne, Sieur de
in: Missippi Provincial Archives,
Vol. III, pp. 499-539.
. . . We have no fort at all on the Wabash, one of the most important rivers on this continent. We have always had it in mind to have one built on it. I myself had sent a plan for it to the Company. The want in which I found myself as well as the fear of not being able to maintain my enterprise for lack of the necessary merchandise prevented me from carrying it out. It is to be wished that we had turned in that direction all the expenditures that we have made for the Missouri [country]. A large number of families from Canada would already have settled there and we should not so often have so many alarms from the English (p. 399) who have had great design on that river and who cannot establish themselves on it without, so to speak, putting the colony within two finger-breadths of destruction. It is true that Mr. de Vaudreuil, the Governor General of Canada keeps a small garrison on the upper part of this (page 514) river, but far from being able to offer opposition it is not even near enough to learn of the approach of the English who can come to the Wabash by one of the three rivers that flow into it below the French post. A full company would be necessary there which would check the parties of the Indians from Canada and would make it possible for the voyageurs to carry on their hunting on this same river with more safety and tranquillity.
The post of the Illinois is very old and there has never been any fort there except the one that Mr. de Boisbriant built in 1721. This fort is situated on the banks of the Mississippi six leagues above the Kaskaskias where there is the largest number of French settlers. One half-leagues above this fort is the Indian village and a league farther on is the establishment of Sieur Renault.1 The war with the Foxes2 makes it necessary to have at this post a garrison that ought to be of at least one full company in order to animate the Indians, assist the settlers and furnish a small detachment for the mines in case we wish to have work done there. What I have said about this post (p. 399 v.) when speaking of the clerk that it is necessary to establish there and what I shall say of it also when I shall speak of the present forces of the colony will show the Company that this post ought not to be abandoned at all; on the contrary it is to its interest to maintain it, but it is very important to place there a commandant who is a man of [good] judgment, wisdom and prudence.
I do not think it is advisable to put more than twelve soldiers at the little stockade fort3 that Mr. de Bourgmont4 has built on the Missouri. For the present that is enough to maintain our alliance with the Indians of those regions, to learn what is happening there and to facilitate for the voyageurs the trade in peltries among those nations. Any other establishment appears to me to be visionary for the present, and I think that I am able to form a sound judgment of it although an account has not been rendered to be as it ought to have been of all that has happened there this last year.
. . . At the Illinois there are one hundred and fifty in- (page 524) habitants who have only ninety negro workmen among them . . .
. . . I can say nothing about the Illinois except on the (p. 367) reports of others. The matters with which I have been charged according to the different circumstances in which I found myself have prevented me from going there, but here is what I have learned about them from reliable persons.
The nation of the Illinois was formerly very numerous (page 533) and could put ten thousand men under arms, including all the villages of which it was composed at the time that the Jesuit fathers of Canada came there to establish their mission, that is to say in 1681, two years before the exploration of Mr. de La Salle. After many different changes the continual war that this nation has always had has so greatly enfeebled in that only eight hundred warriors now remain in three villages, namely: four hundred at the Cahokias where there are two missionary priests; about two hundred at the Michigameas near Fort Chartres, who have a missionary, and two hundred at the village of the Kaskaskias where there is another missionary.
The Illinois may be regarded as the finest, the best built and the most robust Indians of this province. They have long been regarded as cowardly5 because they [were] quiet in their own country [and] left the (p. 367 v.) other nations in peace, and in fact in the first years of the war the Foxes struck them heavy blows but now that they are accustomed to war they are actively getting their revenge and ask only to be supported to some extent in order to rid themselves of an enemy from whom the French likewise have everything to fear in this region. The Illinois especially excel in hunting in which they are as skillful with the gun as with the arrow. The voyageurs of Canada formerly obtained from them a large number of beaver [and] raccoon6 skins and skins of deer, bears and of buffaloes, but for six or seven years the French have been obliging them to devote themselves to producing oil,7 tallow and meat for which they trade with them. The country of the Illinois, which is very vast, is unquestionably the finest that there is on the banks of the Mississippi. It is prairies as far as the eye can reach, separated from each other by beautiful strips of forests and bordered by a chain of hills very suitable for vineyards and for raising flocks of sheep. Wheat and all the grains (p. 368) that we have in France grow well there. Tobacco, flax [and] hemp are success- (page 534) ful there also. One sees there also a large number of aromatic plants, medicinal herbs and roots with which they compound very good remedies for wounds and several kinds of diseases. Ginseng is very common there. The country abounds in salt mines and, it is said, is full of mines of copper and of lead [and] even of silver, but as there are not enough people to work them and to make trustworthy tests of them I do not think that we can yet count on anything except on the lead mines which are really very abundant there.
The Miamis are separated into three villages. The first, which retains the name of Miamis at the great village of the Crane, is established on the river of the same name which has its source in the same latitude as the Wabash and which empties into the lakes of Canada. The second, which is called the village of the Weas8 and in which there are more than four hundred men, is two hundred leagues up the Wabash on the left as one goes upstream, and several leagues lower down (p. 368 v.) is the new village of Mercata or Piankashaw where there are at least one hundred and fifty men. The voyageurs of Canada come there to trade and obtain many peltries from them of which the English are very jealous. They do not fail, however, to attract a good part of them to themselves by means of the Iroquois. The latter usually go to spend the winter on the Ohio River with the Miamis with whom they trade for many peltries in exchange for English goods which they do not lack at all.
The Missouri, which one finds on the left side of the Mississippi eight leagues above the Cahokias, is a perfectly beautiful river. It is divided into several branches which water a vast extent of magnificent country as rich, it is said, in mines as it is abounding in all kinds of animals. There are a large number of rather populous nations, which are very warlike, established on its banks. A large number of beaverskins and other peltries could be obtained from that region.
On the upper part of the Mississippi nearly three hundred (p. 369) leagues
above the Illinois are the Sioux of whom one part leads a nomadic life; the
other occupies a certain district from which they depart only very rarely (page 535) and [it is] divided
into several villages. The former are called the Eastern Sioux and the latter
the Western Sioux and the latter have seventeen very populous villages. This
nation is very warlike. It has allied itself with the Foxes. This is one of the
nations which furnished the largest number of peltries in Canada, which the
French of the Illinois would obtain more easily if they had peace with the
Foxes.
___________________________
1 For Renault see Vol. II, p. 349, note 3.
2 For the Fox Indians see Vol. II, p. 276, note.
3 Fort Orleans.
4 For a sketch of Bourgmont see Vol. II, p. 413, note 1.
5 Again, as on (p. 368) of this document, lchez.
8 The French name is Ouiatanons, more commonly spelled Ouyatenons.
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