When the Wisconsin Glacial Drift retreated northward some 10,000 years ago, it left in its wake thousands of square miles of the most fertile soil in the world. The flat or gently rolling prairie land, laced with an intricate network of life-giving rivers, lakes, and streams, and located in a zone where the climate was temperate, created ideal living conditions for thousands of variaties of flora and fauna, which eventually attracted the first human inhabitants--the Hopewell Indians, a society of Mound Builders whose culture evolved to a highly civilized agricultural state before its disappearance. By the time the French, British, and Spanish began to explore the great northwest in the seventeenth century, the Mound Builders were gone, displaced by a society of hunters; but they left behind lasting monuments to their dead to intrigue later generations, but few other mementos of their otherwise lost civilization. Little is known about these first inhabitants of America's midland, and few attempts have bn made to research and record their culture. What records are available consist of the scattered findings of archeologists, considerable conjecture, and a few tales such as the legend of the Piasa, recorded by early explorers.

The coming of the Europeans to Illinois marked the beginning of enormous change in both the face and the culture of the land. Marquette and Joliet brought faith and Christianity to the Indians of Illinois; LaSalle started the trend toward colonization; the French introduced the fur trade; the British brought war and dissension; but the Americans had the final word. They removed the Indians, sent the British home, assimilated the French, and claimed Illinois for the colonies.

Colonization occurred basically in three areas of Illinois. Although the first white man's settlements in the Illinois territory were Fort Crèvecoeur and Fort St. Louis, built on the Illinois River by Henri de Tonti and LaSalle around 1680, the forts were eventually abandoned; and later, permanent settlements began to grow along the Mississippi River near its confluence with the Missouri, along the Ohio and Wabash Rivers in the southeastern section of the territory, and near the southern tip of Lake Michigan. By 1810, Kaskaskia, in southwestern Illinois, had over 1,000 inhabitants and was considered the political and cultural center of the entire territory; Shawneetown in the southeast was a thriving commercial and shipping center, while Fort Dearborn (Chicago) was a poorly manned military garrison surrounded by the homes of a few farmers and fur traders.

The major events in Illinois' early history were the explorations of Marquette, Joliet, and LaSalle; the conquest of Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes by George Rogers Clark in 1778 and 1779; and the Fort Dearborn massacre during the War of 1812. Novelists have almost ignored Marquette and Joliet, but have found a likely hero in the colorful, adventurous LaSalle. Stories of the George Rogers Clark expedition and the Fort Dearborn massacre have been told until the facts are more than familiar. These tales, with an occasional novel depicting such events as the death of Pontiac at Kaskaskia, a tall tale of Mike Fink and river pirates at Cave-In-Rock, and narratives concerning the flooding of Kaskaskia and Shawneetown in an early day, constitute the extent of Illinois' fictional literature prior to 1818.

Pictures From Top:

Cahokia Mounds

Pierre Menard Home - Chester

Starved Rock