Empire by Collaboration. Robert Michael Morrissey
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plan, which is to attract habitants” to what amounted to an outlaw plantation, full of men like Accault. The governor worried that he would soon “debauch all the lazy and idle men of this country [New France]” by recruiting them to his illicit settlement. As La Barre told it, La Salle aimed to make his own independent colony or, in the words of the frustrated governor, “to try to make an imaginary kingdom.”64
Of course, given La Salle’s struggles to control his men, La Barre’s description was apt. Although he had grand imperial visions, La Salle could not realize them. Nor could the Jesuits, whose hopes of keeping the Illinois separate from the French were now dashed by the arrival of La Salle. Meanwhile, the government in New France opposed colonial activity in the region altogether. It was hard to see what kind of empire would possibly come of these competing agendas, chaotic beginnings, and quixotic visions. None of them was likely to be realized. In the early 1680s, Illinois was an imaginary kingdom, indeed. But this was when Indian affairs suddenly and radically changed the situation.
When the Iroquois attacked the Illinois in 1680, it appeared to the French like the Illinois were too weak to defend themselves. As the Iroquois descended the Illinois Valley, Illinois men pathetically ran away and did not even defend the women and children of their villages. Poignantly, most of the several hundred victims of the attacks were women.65 Moreover, French audiences familiar with descriptions of the Illinois in the Jesuit Relations and other colonial correspondence might have remembered a previous episode in which the Illinois men similarly abandoned women and children to Iroquois violence.66 Shocked by this apparent cowardice, the French concluded that the Illinois were just devastated. La Salle, who gave the most graphic account of the attack and its aftermath, said they were “incapable of resistance.”67
As the Iroquois attacks on the Illinois were followed by more attacks on other Algonquians, the French realized that they had few options. Over the course of the Beaver Wars, the French had supported several Algonquian groups in an effort to prevent the Iroquois from dominating the Great Lakes. The future of the fur trade and the very existence of New France seemed to hinge on making sure Algonquians remained motivated to resist the Iroquois and, most important, never to ally with them.68 When English traders began moving into the Illinois Country in the 1680s, attempting to coax the Illinois into an alliance against French-allied tribes in the Great Lakes, pressure on the French increased.69 The attack on the Illinois in 1680 was a dramatic beginning to a change in policy. As the French now saw it, failure to support the Illinois would be perceived by the latter as “abandonment,” raising the possibility that the tribe would align against Quebec.70 Meanwhile, French explorations in the Illinois region in the 1670s and 1680s had made it clear that the Illinois were a key population in the West. They were, one priest wrote, “the Iroquois of this Country here who will make war with all the other nations.”71 Summing up the new attitude toward the Illinois alliance, the king himself wrote in 1686, “There is nothing more important than sustaining the Illinois and the other allied nations against … those that the Iroquois send in war. It would be better to engage them than to let [the Iroquois] destroy these nations when all of them can be sustained by commerce.”72 Despite reservations, and despite how remote the territory was from Quebec, the French policy became to “hold the hand of the Illinois.”73
The decisions to support the Illinois and to extend commercial routes into their territory represented major changes for a government still reluctant to send traders into the interior, let alone into such a distant zone. The French government now began to send gifts and ammunition regularly into the interior. For the most part the new policy was a program to supply the Illinois with trade goods, arms, and military assistance. In 1686, the government of New France supplied 400 rifles to the Illinois living around Fort St. Louis des Illinois. Another load of supplies that year included 150 firelocks and 300 muskets. In exchange for supplies, according to the proprietors of Fort St. Louis, the Illinois chiefs “promised to do their duty to fight the Iroquois.”74
In addition to providing ammunition, the French also supported the Illinois through military organization. In 1683, La Barre raised troops and planned a joint French-Algonquian attack on the Iroquois. When it failed at the last minute, the Illinois felt betrayed. In the wake of this debacle, the king recalled governor La Barre.75 His replacement, Jacques-René de Brisay Denonville, quickly summoned all the Algonquians to support the Illinois in a major counterattack against the Iroquois in 1687, which was successful.
But gifts and military supplies, while important, were not enough to secure the Illinois to the alliance, especially in a period when French support seemed to waver. As Duchesneau put it, the French must mediate the rivalries among the Algonquians and “keep these people united” under the leadership of Onontio, the French governor.76 And yet if the French hoped to have the Illinois and all their Algonquian neighbors follow the commands of Onontio, they had to learn “to take cognizance of all their differences, however trifling these may be.”77 This was not a simple matter. The Illinois, like most Algonquians, dealt with outsiders only after they had been turned from strangers into relatives. Algonquian diplomacy relied on personal relationships and face-to-face negotiations. Thus the alliance could not be achieved remotely from Quebec by a figurehead like Onontio. Instead it had to be achieved by actual people who had established personal relations with the Illinois.
Fortunately for the officials, there were people who had done just that. Since the 1660s, the Illinois had welcomed French newcomers into their world, especially at Kaskaskia. Examples abound. An Illinois chief named Oumahouha adopted the Recollect priest Zenobé Membré in 1680, welcoming him and telling him that “he loved him like a son.”78 A French trader named Villeneuve was assimilated into an Illinois lineage, his identity so thoroughly transformed that he wore the distinctive tattoos of an Illinois warrior all over his torso.79 French fur traders married into Illinois families. Priests were treated to calumet ceremonies. These were the kinds of relationships that turned French strangers into Illinois kinsmen.
These relationships could be instrumental for mediating the alliance. Consider the example of La Salle himself, who used personal connections and status in Kaskaskia to mediate an alliance between the Illinois and Miami in the early 1680s.80 As a fur trader observed, longstanding enmity had poisoned the relationship between the Miami and the Illinois, who “hate each other reciprocally.”81 In the early 1680s, this mutual antagonism threatened the whole French strategy, as the Miami and Iroquois colluded to attack the Illinois.82 Since this would have started a major war for which the French were clearly not prepared, the diplomacy became complicated.83 The French needed to make the Miami stand down.
It was La Salle who achieved this, and he did so through on-the-ground relationships that were clearly impossible for French administrators to establish back in Quebec. Together, the Illinois, Miami, and La Salle worked out an arrangement whereby La Salle became a trusted kinsman, helping to seal the alliance. To do this, La Salle adopted the identity of Ouabicolcata, a deceased Miami chief. He became Ouabicolcata, reincarnated. Delivering a speech to the Miami, he promised them that his identity had transformed: “Think him not dead; I have his mind and soul in my own body; I am going to revive his name and be another Ouabicolcata; I shall take the same care of his family that he took in his lifetime…. My name is Ouabicolcata; he is not dead; he lives still, and his family shall want for nothing, since his soul is entered into the body of a Frenchman, who can provide his kinsmen abundantly with all things needful.”84 With this speech, La Salle appealed to the Natives in language that, as he said himself, was “perfectly adapted to their sensibilities.” He promised to become, like Ouabicolcata had been, a provider, bringing goods and “all things needful.” In so doing, La Salle was welcomed among the opportunistic Miami. Through him, a kinsman, they allied themselves to the Illinois.85
This kind of mediation was impossible for the French to achieve just by sending weapons and goods. It was agents like La Salle and the Jesuits who could provide the important “infrastructure” of the alliance.86 The nascent colony at Fort St. Louis and the mission of the