Concluding Thoughts

This concluding chapter demonstrates that under state management, Starved Rock State Park grew in popularity. The park provided specialists from the US Army Corps of Engineers with a training area to master the military art of pontoon bridge assembly in preparation for the Allied invasion of Germany in World War II. Equally important, the park was where locals came to work and to relax in the 1950s and 1960s, and it is where today over two million people come to hike, camp, picnic, fish, hunt, and enjoy nature every year. However, the very geologic composition of Starved Rock and its environs has created a new challenge for the twenty-first century. Sand companies now mine silica sand near the park. The challenge is one of balance between protection of the park's fragile natural resources versus the competing interests of local governments and residents desiring new employment opportunities. In addition, the Starved Rock Dam, completed in 1933, raised the level of the Illinois River above the dam about ten feet. Nevertheless, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources employees at Starved Rock State Park are dedicated to preserving and maintaining the park and to serving park visitors.

1692–1712: The Rock Is Abandoned

This chapter assesses how, for the decade following the French withdrawal from Starved Rock, Lake Peoria would become the primary focus for French traders and missionaries. Most of the Illinois subtribes, including the Kaskaskia and Peoria, also became well established at Lake Peoria. With the Indians and the French gone, the land in the Starved Rock area began to heal. Human activity at Starved Rock between 1691 and 1712 appears to have been very limited, as are any surviving records that could provide knowledge of the site's occupation. Occasionally, a party of canoe men or Indians passed the once-famous Rock, and some of them surely told of what they had once observed there. One of the more interesting accounts occurred in November of 1698, when four canoes en route to the Mississippi from Michilimackinac passed Starved Rock. At that time, three missionaries of the Société des Missions Étrangères (Society of the Foreign Missions)—Fathers Jean-François Buisson de St. Cosme, Antoine Davion, and François Jolliet de Montigny—made their way down the Illinois River, guided by none other than Henri Tonti. St. Cosme's perceptions recorded in his journal are interesting as they provide insight into his concerns regarding the deteriorating relations between the French and the Mesquakie.

1680–1682: Everything Is Difficult

This chapter examines the arrival of French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, at Kaskaskia. Of the Roman Catholic religious orders that labored in New France during the time of La Salle, the Jesuits were the most influential. With the Jesuits now situated as sole representative to King and Cross at Kaskaskia, and by extension the Illinois Country, Claude-Jean Allouez and his Jesuit associates were prepared to do whatever was necessary to keep secular influences away from the lands and the people whose souls the order worked so diligently to save. This included turning the Illinois Indians against La Salle. Without the support of the Illinois, there was little chance that La Salle's enterprise could succeed, because the explorer's royal patent permitted him to trade only in bison hides, and the Illinois were bison hunters. In addition, it appears that Allouez was prepared to turn Native American against Native American. The chapter then considers why the Iroquois attacked the Illinois at Kaskaskia, and what the implications were for La Salle and French policy in the West.