"The white man and the red man struck hands and entertained each other during three days. Then, to the admiration of the savages, La Salle set up a cross with the arms of France on it, and took possession of the whole country for the king—the cool fashion of the time—while the priest piously consecrated the robbery with a hymn."

The land
before
Lincoln

Film maker and historian Gary Foreman doesn't have anything against Abe Lincoln. It's just that there were so many other fascinating personalities who lived in Illinois before the 16th president whose names, mentioned in history books, stir only vague memories of dates, explorations and skirmishes now forgotten.

"The state has been myopically focused on Lincoln, and I admire him as much as anyone," said Foreman, 47, who served as consultant, actor and stuntman on the movie The Last of the Mohicans. But there are many, many, many other personalities who contributed greatly not only to this state's history, but also on a national scale. And, Foreman said, nobody seems to know. "There's just no material out there for people. This state is relatively blind when it comes to its heritage."

Foreman hopes to change that with a documentary, CD-ROM, and educational guides he is producing. "It's a major reference material. It gives people a very dramatic presentation. It gives people a whole new perspective of a state that they thought was just boring, and didn't have any really interesting figures other than Lincoln. In a sense, we've almost Lincolned ourselves to death. We've overused his name and his legacy, not knowing who else we can bank on. Well, when you get to know these explorers and soldiers and pioneers, you'll be amazed," he said.

ILLINOIS COUNTRY LIVING 9

"We're talking about some major military engagements and exploration and some real intriguing activity that nobody in the state seems to know anything about," he lamented.

Among the personalities Illinoisans know little about are Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet, who in 1673 led an expedition down the Mississippi River from Canada. On their way back, native Americans led them to a secret portage now called Chicago. (How many Illinoisans know that Chicago's first non-native settler, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, was a French-speaking black man?)

And there was Robert Cavelier Sieur La Salle. In 1682, after discussing his explorations with Joliet, La Salle set out to see if the Mississippi was the long-sought passage to China and India. He was accompanied by Henry de Tonty, an officer in the French army who lost his right hand during a battle in Italy and wore an iron hook, which the Indians feared and respected as "big medicine."

La Salle and Tonty were accompanied by Franciscan Fathers Ribourdi, Membre and Hennepin. At Peoria they build Fort Crevecoeur, which later would be destroyed. After claiming the territory for Louis XIV as described above in 1682, and after reaching the mouth of the Mississippi, LaSalle returned to France to organize an expedition. After landing in Matagorda Bay, Texas, and after his ship was wrecked, LaSalle's men assassinated him as he attempted to reach Tonty. Meanwhile, Tonty built Fort St. Louis and rebuilt Fort Crevecoeur and defeated the Iroquois with a confederation of tribes.

"He was the one who held and maintained the control of France on Illinois through some of the most horrendous of conditions. Illinois was considered New France and this was a key spot because of the river systems. This was the highway into the interior of the continent, and also the fastest highway en route from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico."

"Its a huge, huge story that nobody has told"

It's Tonty who Foreman admires the most, in part, perhaps, because there are parallels between the two men's struggle. Foreman, with more than 30 hours of film in the can, sought not a passage to the Orient, but a few hundred thousand dollars to complete his documentary, and to educate all Illinoisans about the land and history we forgot.

"He (Tonty) just seems to be a man who out of the middle of nowhere can sum up tremendous support, admiration, creativity, and persistent efforts to hang on to an assignment with dogged determination. He was admired by both his men and the Indians and dealt with the political corruptions of the time as best as he could where most people would give up," said Foreman.

"We've got tremendous volumes of material, but we need to keep moving on to finish up. It's a huge, huge story that nobody has told," he said.

Foreman's other works include Rejections on San Antonio, a special NBC affiliate series for the Texas Sesquicentennial; Independence! for PBS; Houston: The Legend of Texas for CBS; and several television commercials for the U.S. Army. He also has worked as a scholar for the A&E Biography series as well as producer and historical advisor for A&E's History Channel presentation of The American Revolution. In addition to Illinois: The Land before Lincoln, he's working on a series for the History Channel called Frontier.

Jean Baptiste du Sable, portrayed here, was a successful trader in Peoria before establishing a trading post in what is now Chicago.

The Land Before Lincoln, when completed, is to include an hour-long video narrated by Bill Kurtis, a Chicago producer, documenting the prehistoric and early development of Illinois, primarily from 1673 through 1833. Foreman expects the film to be used by PBS, A&E and the Discovery Channel, but it also will be made available to teachers and anyone else who wants it for about $20. He also will produce a multimedia CD-ROM and educational guides, all designed to fill a void.

"When we first got into it we didn't realize how vast this assignment was going to be because we didn't realize how many people were crying for this type of material. We've had calls from school officials, teachers, communities throughout the state asking for this material."

The documentary blends authentic dramatic re-enactments with scenic and wildlife footage, and the story will be narrated through original eye-witness accounts. In fact, the entire project is not just a lesson in history, but also in geography and ecology as well. Given that early settlers transformed the land by replacing the state's prairie with corn fields, Foreman has worked hard to find the few locations in the state where native plants grow. He consulted with botanist and ecologist Gerould Wilhelm, who was instrumental in founding the Conservation Research Institute. Supporting land planning and restoration studies and education programs like Foreman's, the institute trains professionals and the public to be responsible stewards of the land.

"Professionals like Gerry Wilhelm know where these little postage stamps exist—and where things are coming back, where people are really making an effort to really recreate and redevelop the real Illinois again," said Foreman. "The thing is, the whole idea is to use these as examples so we can reclaim our own areas back to being

10 ILLINOIS COUNTRY LIVING JULY 1997

United states regular soldiers from the War of 1812 era recreate life as it may have been during the days of Fort Dearborn, now downtown Chicago.

native Illinois again."

One such place is Iroquois County preserve, just southeast of Kankakee, where native prairie stretches for miles and has never been tilled. "It's original Illinois prairie. It's one of the few parcels of prairie still left in the state. It's so wonderful. When we filmed on this site, everybody felt like we were back in another world. Because you can tell this is not typical of the controlled landscapes we deal with today. This is real Illinois. It was spongy. The texture, the color, everything about it was so different," Foreman said.

Like Tonti, Foreman has waged a battle not only to obtain funding, but also to open the eyes of politicians, policy makers, corporations, farmers and anyone who will listen to the importance of preserving the state's natural heritage.

"Being a farmer is the most courageous assignment today. And I don't think our country, because we take it for granted, realizes the disservice we are giving to ourselves and our agricultural neighbors because we are quickly gobbling up some of the richest heartland in the world through development," he said.

"When you watch the video clip it will become very obvious that through the hundreds of years of documented history, you will hear the voices of the French, the British, Americans and others all saying the same thing about Illinois—how beautiful it is. How rich it is. And then you travel today between Chicago and Springfield and say 'What were these people looking at? What were they thinking of ?'" While motorists today see mostly corn and soybean fields, grain elevators and railroad tracks, pioneers saw "a surreal landscape of texture and color and blowing, huge waves across the horizon. And then, in clumps here and there, were thousands of buffalo, elk, bear, timber wolves." He said it is estimated that at least 1,500 species of wild flowers and grasses native to the Midwest, "some of the most luxurious specimens that you could ever imagine," are virtually unknown to the region's residents.

"There's a lot of concern because our ignorance has gotten us into a lot of trouble. We no longer know what our true heritage is," said Foreman. "We cut our legs off when it comes to potential tourism development. We obviously are hurting ourselves from an educational standpoint and a conservation stand-point. We don't know our natural DNA, who we are, what's supposed to really grow here.

A typical wigwam of the woodland Indian culture. Native people east of the Mississippi didn't live in the teepees of the Plains cultures.

"We are not renewing ourselves culturally, using the past to take advantage of our treasures, and we are not renewing ourselves horticulturally. We're not building up the soils. We're not absorbing the water. We're poisoning ourselves because we don't realize the rich heritage of the land that's ours. We're not taking advantage of it to deal with these environmental problems."

Take Cahokia Mounds for example. Located on a flood plain six miles east of the Mississippi River near what is now Collinsville, Cahokia Mounds is a United Nations World Heritage Site ranking with the city of Rome, the Pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China and the Taj Mahal in India in cultural, educational and natural significance. Located on a 2,200-acre site, Cahokia was the largest prehistoric Indian city north of Mexico. Archaeologists believe the native culture there developed an extensive agriculture and trade system off of the rich soil and abundant plant and animal life, peaking in population at about 20,000 residents around 1300 A.D.

12 ILLINOIS COUNTRY LIVING JULY 1997

A few hundred years earlier, the Indians there, called Mississippians, built a wooden wall 12 to 15 feet high. Whether it served as protection or to separate social classes, it was so important, they rebuilt it three times, each time using an estimated 15,000 logs, depleting their wood supply. By 1500 A.D., Cahokia was abandoned. Archaeologists believe it was due to several factors, high among them depleted resources.

"They denuded the forest and they started having problems with erosion and flooding. It is believed that their crops and the vegetation that supported their existence started to fail because the root systems that held the water (now removed) was creating flooding and other problems," said Foreman.

"So there's a lesson here for everyone in what happened to Illinois in this whole process. Whether you're in tourism, whether you're a teacher, whether you're a corporate leader, or whether you're a developer, everyone should know this story of how we took some of the most powerful and nutritious land that exists on the North American continent and carved it up into what we have today. Into a land that really doesn't renew itself. We basically have wiped out its memory for reproducing itself."

The Land Before Lincoln will just begin to fill a void in educational materials. "They give us an awareness and alternatives of what we can do. It shows us where we're making the mistakes and it shows us what we can do about it. It's really basic geography and environmental studies 101," said Foreman, who plans several spin-off projects.

"Kids find it extremely engaging, mostly because nobody ever told them these stories. Unfortunately history is taught as names, dates and places. That is not history. That's statistics. History is the story of survival. Politically, militarily, culturally, socially, emotionally, physically, it's the story of survival."

For more information about The Land Before Lincoln, which Foreman hopes to complete by the end of the year, call (630) 665-0808.