Book Reviews                                                  

Charles J. Balesi. The Time of the French in the Heart of North America, 1673-1818. Chicago: Alliance Francaise Chicago, 1992. Pp. 346 with illustrations, bibliography and index. $17 (paper).

John A. Walthall, ed. French Colonial Archaeology: The Illlinois Country and the Western Great Lakes. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991. Pp. 290 with illustrations, tables, biographical notes and bibliography. $39.95 (cloth).

The French were the first whites to explore and settle what is now Illinois. They spent more than a century along our rivers, building missions to convert the Indians, forts to protect their fur trade and, finally, villages to exploit the region's mineral and agricultural resources. Ultimately, the missions and forts were abandoned, along with the dream of an empire. And much of the rich 18th-century culture of the voyageurs and habitans was washed from the landscape as first British soldiers, then waves of American settlers, flowed into the Illinois Country.

In fact, the shared theme of these two recent books is loss — the breakup of France's colonial enterprise and the continuing erosion of our state's cultural heritage.

Historian Charles Balesi believes the transformation of the West was certain after the Louisiana Purchase. In 1803 Napoleon centered his attention on Europe and ceded the vast Louisiana colony to the United States, including the strategic river port New Orleans. A barrier to American navigation of the Mississippi had been removed. The American pioneers, Balesi writes, "filled with an enthusiastic spirit of development, had neither the interest nor patience for any excessive baggage from the past. When the forests were cut down, the prairie turned over, and the Indians driven away, the communities the French had created from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi were doomed. Small in numbers and widely dispersed across a vast land, only on maps were the names to survive, a mute testimony of forgotten struggles."

The Time of the French details the politics and economics of French colonization in North America — both the shifts in policy in France and the competing interests of the two polar ends of the empire, one above the Great Lakes, the other at the mouth of the Mississippi. All of these forces played themselves out in the Illinois Country.

Balesi peoples this story with some memorable characters. Father Jacques Marquette is here, of course, and Louis Jolliet, who gave us the first recorded description of central Illinois. So is Robert Rene Cavelier de La Salle, with his manic energy and his inexorable drive to stay ahead of his creditors long enough to claim all of the Mississippi for France. A number of less familiar figures are included as well. One is Pierre De Liette, who left a valuable account of the Illinois tribes.

In the end, the French who lived in the Illinois Country were abandoned by policies made elsewhere and overwhelmed by English-speaking settlers . . .

But Balesi's most interesting contribution is an assessment of the French character and the ways in which that character helped foreclose the country's North American venture. While the French made enthusiastic explorers and relentless missionaries, they were reluctant colonists and indifferent farmers. In the end, the French who lived in the Illinois Country were abandoned by policies made elsewhere and overwhelmed, then outmaneuvered, by English-speaking settlers who were more adept at navigating the legal intricacies of land claims in a new nation.

If Balesi ends his study on a poignant note, French Colonial Archaeology opens with a sense of urgency. This collection outlines the material evidence of French occupation in the Illinois Country, evidence which continues to be erased.

Contributors update some 50 years of archaeological investigations, beginning with the earliest excavations — the Cahokia Courthouse on the American bottom along the Mississippi and Fort Massac on the Ohio River at the southern tip of the state. Yet, as much as anything, this collection is a testament to how little of the physical record has been recovered. It challenges archaeologists to dig deeper into the social economy of the colonists, to uncover the day-to-day lives of French farmers and tradesmen. Yet, if archaeologists have been slow to unearth fragments of French life on the frontier, they argue that, while the state is rich in archaeological potential, they've had little support for their labor-intensive scholarship.

Ironically, some of the earliest historic-era archaeology in the country was done in Illinois. But the public's interest has never extended much beyond what can be seen above ground, and these government-backed "digs" were limited to striking examples of French structures. Many such structures have been preserved and are now part of the state's French Colonial Historic District, which stretches south from Cahokia and includes examples of forts, houses and churches. Since the Depression era, however, government dollars for such activity have dried up and recent investigations generally have centered on those sites which are already in the public domain.

The authors argue that little archaeological work has been done on less visible remains of villages, and virtually none on old French industries. Such sites, they believe, can give us a better sense of colonial adaptation to the fron-

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tier. Yet, they note, it is these very settlements, often located in high population areas, which are most endangered by modern development. Still, editor John Walthall, chief archaeologist of the state's transportation department, has gathered essays from scholars with a range of interests in the period. Military sites are well represented, including LaSalle's Fort St. Louis along the Illinois River at what is now called Starved Rock.

Contributors review research at a fur trading post on the Wabash River, as well as restoration of the vertical log Church of the Holy Family at Cahokia and a number of domestic sites . . .

Contributors review research at a fur trading post on the Wabash River, as well as restoration of the vertical log Church of the Holy Family at Cahokia and a number of domestic sites, including the Martin/Boismenue House in Prairie du Pont. Scholars believe this house, the oldest known residence in Illinois, may show a transition from French to English or American construction style. French Colonial Archaeology is likely to appeal primarily to archaeologists and researchers in related fields. Yet, there is enough drama in the search for the story of Illinois' earliest European settlers to hold the interest of lay readers as well. The tale of the reconstruction of Cahokia Courthouse is worth the price of the book. It was accomplished, in part, by researchers who calculated the probable dimensions of the structure from an old photo.

The authors of these two books have given us a human-scale rendering of the lives of the French explorers, soldiers, missionaries, traders and settlers who left their imprint, however faint, on our state's landscape and culture. 

Peggy Boyer Long is an independent journalist who specializes in Illinois politics and social history.

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