Kaskaskia

This Dorion is a friend of my older brother, George.

He was with George during the war at Kaskaskia, Fort Saint James and, uh, Detroit, I think.

Back in St. Louis, Chouteau spoke of him.

He's supposed to be one of the most experienced men on the river.

[laughs] Captain Lewis, uh, do you know General George?

Yes, of course.

I was with him at Kaskaskia.

When we were losing our men, he compelled the British to surrender the fort.

Many Frenchmen formed temporary or permanent unions with Indian women, and in the next generation, a considerable number of half-breeds were born of these unions.

Important French posts in the area were Presque Isle, Mackinac, Detroit, Post Miami, Vincennes, New Orleans, Kaskaskia, and St. Louis.

The environs of the Indian village of Kekionga, located in the present lakeside section of Fort Wayne, were selected by the French for the location of Post Miami because of combined strategic, economic, and geographic significance.

The village was located at the confluence of the St. Joseph and St. Mary's Rivers.

The only military action, however, which occurred here during the Revolutionary War is known as La Balme's Massacre.

Augustus La Balme, one of the volunteer French officers who had accompanied the Marquis de Lafayette to America, was commissioned a colonel in General Washington's army.

In October, he appeared at Kaskaskia, and then under American domination since its capture by George Rogers Clark.

He gathered a considerable force of Frenchmen and Indians and advanced northward, his objective being the expulsion of the British from Detroit.

This was really great.

So I'm a history nerd and there's something Kaskaskia is was the first state capital of Illinois and it's in southern Illinois.

And It's on an island now.

So it was on the bottom of Illinois, on the Mississippi River, and the Mississippi River changed its flow at some point in the 1880s, and it was cut off from the rest of the state.

Always a classic.

Most bizarre thing that you've ever photographed?

Okay, I'm going to go back to the Kaskaskia dragon, the fire-breathing dragon, because you have to time it so that you only get 12 seconds of the fire flames.

And I was trying to fly my drone to take photos of it while putting the coin in and then running over and making sure that I was getting the flames from the fire-breathing dragon.

In the first sphere of action, the chief events were the withdrawal of the British from Philadelphia, the Battle of Monmouth, and the enclosure of the British in New York, by deploying American forces from Morristown, New Jersey, up to West Point.

In the west, George Rogers Clark, by his famous march into the Illinois country, secured Kaskaskia and Vincennes, and laid a firm grip on the country between the Ohio and the Great Lakes.

In the south, The second period opened with successes for the British.

They captured Savannah, conquered Georgia, and restored the royal governor.

Many Frenchmen formed temporary or permanent unions with Indian women, and in the next generation, a considerable number of half-breeds were born of these unions.

Important French posts in the area were Presque Isle, Mackinac, Detroit, Post Miami, Vincennes, New Orleans, Kaskaskia, and St. Louis.

The environs of the Indian village of Kekionga, located in the present lakeside section of Fort Wayne, were selected by the French for the location of Post Miami because of combined strategic, economic, and geographic significance.

The village was located at the confluence of the St. Joseph and St. Mary's Rivers.

The only military action, however, which occurred here during the Revolutionary War is known as Lebaume's Massacre.

Augustus Lebaume, one of the volunteer French officers who had accompanied the Marquis de Lafayette to America, was commissioned a colonel in General Washington's army.

In October, he appeared at Kaskaskia, and then under American domination since its capture by George Rogers Clark.

He gathered a considerable force of Frenchmen and Indians and advanced northward, his objective being the expulsion of the British from Detroit.

The earliest manuscripts in the Draper collection are some documents concerning McDowell's fight in the valley of Virginia, 1742, just mentioned.

There is also George Rogers Clark's original manuscript narrative of his famous expedition to Kaskaskia and Vincennes in 1778, a volume of some 225 pages.

The earliest original manuscript diary in the collection is one kept by Captain William Preston, who commanded a company under Lewis during the Sandy Creek expedition in West Virginia in 1756.

There are several diaries on the Point Pleasant campaign in West Virginia in 1774.

It was they who gave the East no rest until their vision was seen by the leaders on the seaboard who directed the course of national policy.

It was one of their number, a seasoned Indian fighter, George Rogers Clark, who, with aid from Virginia, seized Kaskaskia and Vincennes and secured the whole Northwest to the Union while the fate of Washington's army was still hanging in the balance.

Western Problems at the End of the Revolution The Treaty of Peace signed with Great Britain in 1783 brought the definite cession of the coveted territory west to the Mississippi River, but it left unsolved many problems.

In the first place, tribes of resentful Indians in the Ohio region, even though British support was withdrawn at last, had to be reckoned with.