ROBERT CAVELIER, SIEUR DE LA SALLE encountered four villages of the Illinois nation during his first journey to Illinois in 1679–80. Only the summer village of the migratory Kaskaskia has ever been correctly identified. It lies on the upper Illinois River, less than a mile and a half east of the landmark known as Starved Rock. As “the Zimmerman site,” it has hosted archaeological excavations in 1941, 1970, and 1991.1 However, two small winter villages and the Grand Village of the Illinois, which all families of the Illinois tribe called their home, have never been found. The documents left by La Salle and his contemporaries make the locations of these places surprisingly clear. Together, the historical records offer a new picture of the populous Illinois peoples, their migratory habits, and their relationship to the Europeans in their midst.In the early winter of 1679, La Salle and a small cadre of soldiers and naval craftsmen paddled canoes south from Fort Miami, their Lake Michigan base at the mouth of the St. Joseph River in southern Michigan. They traveled the St. Joseph to the portage near modern-day South Bend, Indiana, where they carried their birch bark canoes to the Kankakee River. This stream carried them to the Illinois River, forty-two miles east of Starved Rock. La Salle's Letters Patent from King Louis XIV commissioned him to “explore the Western part of New France,” where it was hoped that “a road may be found to penetrate to Mexico.”2 Secretly, the king and his chief minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, directed La Salle to explore the navigability of the Mississippi River to its mouth and create a settlement there to support a naval base. The existence of the river, its location, and the clandestine base and settlement were all national secrets protected by the state.3La Salle had already built a supply line from his Fort Frontenac at the eastern end of Lake Ontario. This included Fort Conti at the Niagara River and Le Griffon, a forty-ton barque to ferry tools and materials and craftsmen to Fort Miami en route to Illinois. Somewhere on the Illinois River, the ship's carpenters were to build a second ship to travel down to the Gulf of Mexico. The men would establish the king's seaport there. After the establishment of the port, La Salle would use his ship to explore the Gulf of Mexico to determine the exact location of the mouth of the Mississippi and then sail to France for supplies and reinforcements.In all of the historical accounts, the travelers used the league to estimate long distances. George A. Baker documented that the seventeenth-century French Canadian league equals 3.05 statute miles, and a comparison of La Salle's own estimated distances to actual distances in miles shows that he was using this same equivalence.4 The location of sites along the Illinois River can be identified using the mile markers on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Illinois Waterway Navigation Charts. These markers extend from the mouth of the Illinois River on the Mississippi (mile marker, or MM, 0) up to the mouth of the Chicago River at Lake Michigan.5Since La Salle's time, the Illinois River has been leveed and dammed, and every day, millions of gallons of water are diverted down it through the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. In addition, entire prairies and forests have been converted to farmland. Because of these changes, many of the environmental features that La Salle described would be difficult or even impossible to locate. However, one map collection, The Federal Township Plats of Illinois (1804–1891), depicts the entire state before it was extensively modified. These survey maps can be used to help identify specific sites using the environmental landmarks mentioned in the accounts.6La Salle first encountered the Kaskaskia summer village at MM 233. The very first reference to it is found in Recit des Voyages et des Decouvertes du Pere Jacques Marquette, written by Claude Dablon, superior of the Jesuits in Quebec, describing the 1673 Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette exploration of the Mississippi River: “We found on it [the Illinois River] a village of the Illinois called Kaskaskia, consisting of 74 cabins. They received us very well, and obliged me to promise that I would return to instruct them.”7 On Marquette's map, this village is clearly marked on the north side of the upper portion of the Illinois River (see figure 1).“It was the first of January, and the village was empty as usual,” La Salle wrote of this location, “all the Indians having gone away to the places where they generally pass the winter hunting; but they leave there, in hiding places which they make in the ground, all the Indian corn which they intend to use for sowing in the spring and for food during the summer when meat usually fails them by turning bad. . . . Finally I decided to take about thirty minots [bushels of corn], and to go down the river as far as the ice would permit.”8 During this period, many members of the Illinois nation had a migratory lifestyle. They spent six months in northern summer villages where they planted crops, and in the fall, they moved south to spend the winters in a milder climate.9 The Kaskaskia village was a summer village. After harvesting and storing their corn, its occupants migrated to the middle Illinois River where it did not freeze and established winter villages where they remained until spring.On March 1, 1680, La Salle returned to the Kaskaskia village. The explorer described the journey as particularly cold. When he arrived at the Kaskaskia village, the ice in front of the village was being broken up by large blocks of ice that were flowing down from upper portions of the river.10 This prevented the village from being reoccupied until late March or early April.After taking corn from the caches at the Kaskaskia village in January 1680, La Salle continued down the Illinois River. “We went on for four days toward the south-southwest along this river,” La Salle wrote, “and on the 5th [should be 4th] day of January we arrived at a place which the Indians call Pimiteoui in their language. [O]n this day at about nine o'clock in the morning, we found a number of pirogues on both sides of the river, and saw a quantity of smoke issuing from eighty huts full of Indians.”11 This second village was located in the Illinois's wintering grounds called Pimiteoui, which La Salle stated was thirty leagues [ninety miles] from the Zimmerman site.12 The accounts of Père Zenobe Membre, the Recollet priest who accompanied La Salle, and La Salle's lieutenant, Henri de Tonti, verified the location of this village.13 The village was located in the area of MM 143 (MM 233—90 miles).This location corresponds to the place where La Salle also located the mouth of the Moingoana River.14 On his 1684 map, which was made under the close supervision of La Salle, Jean-Baptiste Louis Franquelin depicted the Moingoana as being the first river north of Lake Pimiteoui flowing into the Illinois River from the west (see figure 2). The Moingoana has been identified as present-day Copperas Creek (MM 138).15 Since one of the families that made up the Illinois tribe was called Moingoana, and because La Salle located the village and river at the same location, it is reasonable to conclude that La Salle named the stream after the Moingoana whom he found camped at its mouth.16Pimiteoui was a massive wetland region in the middle Illinois River Valley.17 It extended from Copperas Creek down to the area of Meredosia (between MM 138 and MM 71; see figure 3).18 A lake within the region, also called Pimiteoui, extended from MM 117 to MM 89.19 Lake Pimiteoui consisted of three pools of water connected by short sections of river.The Moingoana village was a small wintering village, seven leagues north of Lake Pimiteoui. It consisted of only eighty huts which comprised “two little villages,” one on either side of the river.20After the shock of seeing armed Europeans on their banks and establishing cordial relations, the “head men” of the village met with La Salle, who offered to pay for the corn he had taken from the village upriver and explained his plan to build a ship and descend the Mississippi. He later wrote, “They accepted my proposals at once, promised to satisfy me in all matters.” However, because the leaders of the tribe had dispersed among the wintering villages in the Pimiteoui region, they deferred “the business details until spring when all the old men, most of whom were now absent, would be gathered together.”21Though he had persuaded the Illinois to cooperate with him, La Salle faced tremendous opposition from other tribes, who had been the object of Jesuit intrigues to prevent civil and military incursion into the mission monopoly of the upper Great Lakes. The principal instigator of these intrigues was Father Claude Allouez, who had established the St. Francis Xavier Mission in Green Bay. As soon as he learned of La Salle's royal commission, Allouez led hundreds of Miamis and members of other Indigenous tribes to settle across La Salle's path toward Illinois country. Then he sent a Miami delegation to the Senecas to create a military alliance against the Illinois.22At Christmas, Allouez, who was living at the relocated Miami village on the St. Joseph River, heard from its residents that La Salle was traveling to the Illinois. Allouez sent a Miami leader named Monso and five or six companions to convince the Illinois not to cooperate with La Salle and instead to discourage him from descending the Mississippi River. They arrived the day after La Salle.Because the leaders of the tribe were dispersed in their winter villages, Monso and his companions left the next morning, “all loaded up with pots, hatchets and knives, presents with which to confirm what they were to tell the Illinois.”23 They traveled fifty miles downriver to the larger Koeracoenetanon village, at the southern end of Lake Pimiteoui, at present-day Beardstown. Here, the leaders of the Illinois were summoned from throughout Pimiteoui to meet with him.La Salle remained at the Moingoana village for several days before continuing down to the Koeracoenetanon village. Because he wrote that it took three days for many of the frightened Moingoanas to return from hiding, La Salle remained at their village at least until January 7, one day after Monso left.24The Koeracoenetanon winter village was located about sixteen leagues south of the Moingoana winter village. La Salle arrived at this village shortly after Monso, and he befriended the village leader, Omoahoha.25 It took five days to assemble the head men, so it was not until January 11 that Monso could put Allouez's plan into effect.26 Explaining what Monso told the Illinois, La Salle wrote He got together the old men and secretly warned them that I came with the intention of going further on, joining their enemies who live on the great river Colbert [Mississippi], supplying them with arms, and all of us joining with the Iroquois so as to enclose them between two armies and entirely exterminate them; that I was a friend of the Iroquois, that I had a fort in the midst of their country, that it was I who supplied them with arms and powder, and in fact that there was no means of avoiding their destruction except by preventing my journey and compelling me to do nothing; that that would be an easy matter because most of my men were to leave me very soon; and that as I was an impostor, they must not believe anything I said to them.27In order to avoid contradiction by La Salle, Monso held the meeting at night, in secret. Satisfied that they had accomplished their mission, Monso and his companions sneaked away that night and returned to their village.The morning after Monso's clandestine meeting, Omoahoha informed La Salle about the gathering and told him what Monso said to the “old men.” To avoid casting suspicion on Omoahoha as the source of his information, La Salle waited for an opportunity to address Monso's deceit. He got his chance when Nicanape, the brother of Chassagoach, one of the most influential Kaskaskia leaders, invited him and his men to a feast later that day.At the gathering on the afternoon of January 12, Nicanape did exactly what Monso urged him to do. He told the Frenchmen that if they tried to descend the Mississippi River they would die. An endless number of tribes on its banks would try to kill them. They would encounter monsters and waterfalls with swift rapids that would throw them into an abyss.28 La Salle realized that Nicanape's words frightened several of his men who understood the language, but he could not interrupt the speech.La Salle replied to Nicanape's fabrications by saying that he and his men were unafraid and looked forward to the challenges ahead. Then he said that the perils described by Nicanape might have been inspired by some “evil mind” full of mistrust but, because his intentions were “thoroughly upright” and he had hidden nothing from Nicanape, they were invented to keep the Frenchmen close out of friendship.29 La Salle then sat down and continued his meal.However, La Salle was not finished with Nicanape. After everyone had finished eating, La Salle stood again, saying that he was not surprised that, out of jealousy, their neighbors, the Miamis, would tell lies about him. But he was curious that they could so readily accept the lies and conceal their origin. He boldly added, “I was not sleeping, my brother Nicanape, when Monso drew for you that false picture of the French, whom he described to you by night and in secret as spies of the Iroquois. The pot and other presents which he gave you to make you believe these falsehoods are still in this hut, where you have hidden them in the earth. Why did he take to flight as soon as he had committed this wicked act? If he is not a liar, let him speak in the daylight, as I do.”30La Salle had been at the great Seneca village of Sonnontouan, near present-day Rochester, New York, the previous summer, when a similar Miami delegation, also sent by Allouez, had arrived there to broker a war alliance with the Iroquois against the Illinois. La Salle now challenged the lies that Monso had told about him, questioning how Monso could have known anything about his Fort Frontenac or his interactions with the Iroquois, since Monso had never been there. He added that during the confusion upon his arrival, he and his men could have easily accomplished what they were accused of plotting and even at that very moment, his men could kill many of the old men, but instead, he bound himself to their friendship.31Moved by La Salle's words, the Illinois considered going after Monso to bring him back, but a heavy snowfall prevented tracking. However, six of La Salle's men still nursed the fear that Nicanape had created in their minds, and they deserted that night as everyone else slept. Those men made their way to Monso's village, where they joined Allouez.32 At that point, La Salle decided to locate a site nearby where he could build a small fortification in order to separate his men from the Illinois and safely build his ship.33Franquelin's map of 1684 locates Fort Crèvecoeur at the southeastern end of Lake Pimiteoui (see figure 4). La Salle later wrote that when he left Crevecoeur in March of 1680, he paddled an ice-free Illinois up to the lake in about an hour.34 Reading this, La Salle's Paris agent Claude Bernou correctly concluded that the southern end of Lake Pimiteoui was one league from the fort.35 With the southern end of Lake Pimiteoui at MM 89, the fort was three miles to the south, at MM 86, on the bay south of present-day Beardstown, Illinois (see figure 5).Membre located Omoahoha's village in relation to Crèvecoeur by stating that they “repaired to a little eminence, a site quite near the Illinois camp [Omoahoha's village], where the Sieur de La Salle immediately set to work to build a fort.36 He later added, “As by the end of February I already knew a part of their language, because I spent the whole of the day in the Indian camp, which was but half a league off [from the fort], our father superior [Gabriel de la Ribourde] appointed me to follow when they were about to return to their village. A chief named Oumahouha had adopted me as his son in the Indian fashion and Monsieur de La Salle had made him presents to take care of me.”37 Because La Salle befriended Omoahoha where Monso met with the Illinois leaders, and Membre said that Omoahoha's village was only half a league from Crèvecoeur, Monso evidently held his covert meeting at the same village, about 1.5 miles upstream at present-day Beardstown (about MM 87.5). Membre's comment that he was going to follow the Koeracoenetanons on their return to their village, along with his later statement that he spent the summer following the Illinois to their camps, indicates that Omoahoha's village was a winter village.38Several large mounds, which were located at Beardstown, indicated that it had been the site of habitation for hundreds of years before the French arrived. Dr. J. F. Snyder, MD, who published more than thirty scientific articles dealing with archaeology in Cass County, described the largest as a burial mound that “stood immediately upon the bank of the Illinois River.”39 He said it was thirty feet high and 150 feet in diameter at its base. However, Snyder saw the mound after the citizens of Beardstown began excavating it, using soil from the mound to fill in the city's streets. An early local account states that the mound was eighty feet tall and five hundred feet in diameter (see figure 6).40 During the destruction of this mound in the mid-nineteenth century, it was found to contain the remains of several Europeans.41The fourth Illinois village that La Salle visited was the large, year-round Grand Village of the Illinois.42 The historic period of this village in the Pimiteoui region actually began when Marquette established his Mission of the Immaculate Conception there in spring 1675. Allouez journeyed to this village in 1677 to continue Marquette's work. It was the village to which Henri de Tonti moved after his men deserted Fort Crèvecoeur in March 1680, and it was the village that was decimated by an Iroquois army that September.43 However, because it was mistakenly believed that this village was located at the Zimmerman site, the existence and location of this village has escaped the notice of historians for more than 150 years. Accounts of Marquette, Allouez and La Salle clear up this confusion and correctly place this village on the Sangamon River.By the fall of 1674, Marquette received permission to return to the Illinois River Valley to establish his Mission of the Immaculate Conception. He began his journey on October 25, from the Jesuit mission of Saint-François-Xavier on the Fox River near Green Bay, with two donnés, Jacques Largillier and Pierre Porteret.44 Marquette was still quite ill, suffering from bloody diarrhea, which he called the bloody flux. He contracted this disorder while on his journey down the Mississippi with Jolliet in 1673. Because of his late start, he was forced to spend a difficult winter camped in a small hut on the Chicago River, near the Chicago portage. Continuing his journey in the first week of April 1675, he passed the vacant summer village of the Kaskaskias, on the upper Illinois River, and paddled down to the larger Grand Village of the Illinois.Three documents contain details of Marquette's 1675 journey back to Illinois: the Unfinished Journal of Jacques Marquette, the Account of the Second Voyage and the death of Father Jacques Marquette, and a letter written to Father Jean De Fontenay by Father Pierre Cholenec. Two of these documents contain the first description of the Grand Village of the Illinois. These documents contain important details that, when considered along with the accounts of Allouez, La Salle, Membre and Tonti, provide a complete description of the village and identify its location.The Account of the Second Voyage and the death of Father Jacques Marquette has been attributed to Dablon. Since Marquette stopped writing in his journal after April 6, and because he died on May 18 en route from the Grand Village to Missilimakinak, much of the information must have come from Largillier and Porteret. These men cared for the ailing priest throughout the journey and buried him on the shore of Lake Michigan. Continuing to Quebec, they gave Dablon Marquette's map and unfinished journal, which he used to write the account.Cholenec, a priest at the Jesuit mission at Prairie de la Madeleine, interviewed Largillier and Porteret twice. In his letter to Fontenay, Cholenec wrote, “I saw these same two domestics, donnés, here when they were going down to Quebec from Ottawa [country] as well as when they came back. I had them tell me themselves, at their leisure, every detail regarding the man and his death, certain that I could do nothing which would be more gratifying to you.”45 Both Cholenec's and Dablon's accounts are equally reliable, taken directly from the men who were with Marquette.Marquette wrote of his illness and the winter at the eastern end of the Chicago Portage (MM 320).46 On the evening of March 29, Marquette's group was driven from their winter camp by the rising Chicago River, and they moved to higher ground, where they spent an uneasy night. The next day, Marquette wrote, he traveled three leagues farther without seeing the portage. He said that this camp, on the Des Plaines River near its confluence with Portage Creek (MM 314), was where he had begun the portage eighteen months before (see figure 7.) The Des Plaines had risen twelve feet, and he was detained by ice flows on March 31. His April 1 entry stated, “While a strong south wind delays us, we hope to go tomorrow to the place where the French are, at a distance of 15 leagues from here.” Traveling that distance would have put Marquette on the Illinois River near MM 269 (MM 314—45 miles) on April 2. The next, and last, journal entry, dated April 6, states that after passing two small lakes, Marquette was delayed again by strong winds.47Cholenec's account adds, “Breaking camp on March 19, after ten days on the road, sixty leagues to the south they found the Grand Village of the Illinois where the Father was received as an angel from Heaven.”48Combining the Cholenec account with the Marquette journal: Marquette was driven out of his winter camp (MM 320) by rising water on March 29.On March 30, he paddled three leagues, without seeing the portage, and camped where he had begun the portage eighteen months earlier. This was on the Des Plaines River near its confluence with Portage Creek (MM 314).On March 31, Marquette was detained by ice flows.April 1, Marquette did not move because of strong wind and cold temperatures. He wrote that he hoped to go fifteen leagues the next day to the camp of the Frenchmen, near MM 269.April 5, Marquette passed two small lakes and camped.April 6, strong wind and cold prevented Marquette from moving.Thursday, April 11, after covering a distance of sixty leagues over ten days, Marquette arrived at the Grand Village of the Illinois.April 14, Easter Sunday, Marquette said mass for the last timeThere is one discrepancy between the Cholenec account and the other two. Cholenec stated that Marquette broke his winter camp on March 19, while the Marquette and Dablon accounts both stated that camp was broken on March 29. This discrepancy is minor and can be explained by the fact that Dablon had Marquette's written account, which provided the proper date. The rest of Cholenec's timeline agrees with the other accounts.For the portion of Marquette's journey from Chicago to the Grand Village, the Dablon account lacks most of the details that the other two accounts include. It simply states that Marquette camped on the Chicago River, broke camp on March 29, and spent eleven days “on the way.”49 The difference in the number of days traveled between the Dablon account and the Cholenec account can be attributed to Cholenec leaving out the detail of Marquette paddling three leagues from his winter camp to the camp on the Des Plaines River.Although Marquette had been quite ill for some time, his condition had improved, giving him the expectation of traveling forty-five miles on April 2 to the camp of two Frenchmen near MM 269. From there, it was only another thirty-six miles to the Zimmerman site (MM 233). This distance could have been covered in one day, but Cholenec stated that Marquette traveled for ten days from his camp on the Des Plaines (MM 314), covering a distance of sixty leagues to reach the Grand Village. Cholenec placed the Grand Village near MM 134 (MM 314—180 miles), in the Pimiteoui Region, one hundred miles past the Zimmerman site.Marquette's journal corroborates the sixty-league distance provided in the Cholenec account. Marquette's last journal entry reads: “Strong winds and the cold prevent us from proceeding. The two lakes over which we passed are full of bustards, geese, ducks, cranes, and other game unknown to us. The rapids are quite dangerous in some places.”50 The two lakes that Marquette passed on April 5, after four days of paddling downstream from the Chicago Portage Region, were the two lakes that comprise Peoria Lake.The water diversion from Lake Michigan into the Illinois River via the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, together with the construction of the dam south of Peoria Lake, increased the lake's low-stage water level by six feet. Now, Peoria Lake's average low water depth is equal to the previous flood stage level.51 As a result, today's Peoria Lake, with its two pools of water, looks very much like Marquette's flooded Peoria Lake (see figure 8).52Marquette's last entry indicated that he had five more days to go beyond Peoria Lake before reaching the Grand Village. He would have traveled about thirty-eight miles (12.5 leagues) each day for four days, to cover the 150 miles from his camp on the Des Plaines River (MM 314) to the southern end of Peoria Lake (MM 162). This is more than reasonable in the flooded Des Plaines and Illinois Rivers and is consistent with his statement that he intended to travel fifteen leagues on April 2.“On at last arriving at the village, he was received as an angel from Heaven,” Dablon wrote, and “he resolved to address all in public, in a general assembly which he called together in the open Air, the Cabins being too small to contain all the people. . . . The audience was composed of 500 chiefs and elders, seated in a circle around the father, and of all the Young men, who remained standing. They numbered more than 1,500 men, without counting the women and children, who are always numerous, the village being Composed of five or six hundred fires.”53 Cholenec wrote, “[After] ten days on the road, sixty leagues to the south they found the Grand Village of the Illinois where the Father was received as an angel from Heaven. He summoned a great council at which he offered presents according to the custom of the Indians. Because it was a large village of five or six hundred fires and everyone wanted to see and hear him, he held the meeting in an open field” (emphasis added).54 Both accounts describe a large village consisting of up to six hundred fires, and there was a large prairie close to the village where Marquette said mass just after he arrived.Marquette was strong enough to say mass again three days later, on Easter Sunday, but all of his exertions had taken their toll. Knowing that death was near, Marquette and his two donnés began their journey back up the Illinois. The Dablon account added that the Illinois escorted Marquette for thirty leagues on his return journey.55Largillier and Porteret told Cholenec that Marquette's mission was sixty leagues from the Chicago Portage region at the Grand Village of the Illinois, the first time that term was ever used. It consisted of five to six hundred fires in March and early April and it was located within the wintering region of Pimiteoui. On the other hand, the small, summer Kaskaskia village that Marquette visited on the upper Illinois in 1673 consisted of only seventy-four cabins. With Largillier and Porteret's placement of the Grand Village near MM 134, the Kaskaskia village (MM 233) would have been located thirty-three leagues upriver, roughly one hundred miles to the north. The Cholenec account states that when Marquette left the Grand Village, the Illinois escorted him thirty leagues up the Illinois River and over a portage.56 These Illinois were the Kaskaskia who were returning from Pimiteoui to their summer village at the Zimmerman site, and the portage was in the area of the summer village. The portage could have been at the shallows at Starved Rock or at the rapids, sixteen miles upriver at present-day Marseilles, Illinois.Like all of the other accounts of the activities of the Jesuits in their missions, the 1677 account of Allouez's visit to the Grand Village of the Illinois, titled Narrative of a 3rd Voyage to the Illinois, made by Father Claude Allois, was written by Dablon. It summarizes Allouez's annual report to Dablon. Concerning his arrival at the Grand Village, the account states, “[It] was not until the 27th of April that I was able to arrive at Kachkachkia, the Grand Village of the Illinois. I entered, at once, the cabin in which Father Marquette had lodged . . . I found this village largely increased since a year ago. Formerly, it was composed of but one nation, that of Kachkachkia; at the present time, there are 8 tribes in it, the first having summoned the others, who inhabited the neighborhood of the river mississipi. One cannot well satisfy himself as to the number of people who compose that village, they are housed in 351 cabins, which are easily counted, as most of them are situated upon the bank of the river.. . . On one side of