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La Salle, December 1679 — and a century governed from a fort and two missions on the lower river
December 1679: The first European passage of this valley in the record is La Salle's, and it is dated to the month. His party left Fort Miami at the river's mouth, at present St. Joseph, Michigan, on 3 December 1679 — thirty-three persons in eight canoes, Tonty and Hennepin among them, with three Récollet friars — and paddled up the river of the Miamis toward the portage to the Kankakee. They missed the portage, went too far up, and came back down to it; on 5 December, in Hennepin's relation, Fr. Gabriel de la Ribourde's crosses marked the landing. La Salle's own relation measures the carrying place: the head of his "Seignelay" — the Kankakee — lay "only a league and a half" from the river of the Miamis; the Kankakee's Native name was heard as Theakiki, Hennepin's "The-a-ki-ki." The marker tradition of the valley dates the passage 1678; the expedition relations date it December 1679; the division is printed whole, as the Mishawaka leg prints it, and the relations govern. The passage's ground is the bend and the portage, southwest of this section's frame — but the river La Salle ascended runs along this ground's southern rim, and the country he entered at the portage was the country this section covers: the Miami's valley, with its towns on the river and its upcountry under this upland. La Salle returned in May 1681 to make his alliance with the valley's Miami gathered at their St. Joseph town — the treaty Howard places at the great village by Mount Pleasant, at the portage's river end.
The carrying place, measured: The portage is the valley's hinge and its measures stand in the record at four strengths, all printed in the South Bend leg where the ground lies: La Salle's league and a half; the Sabrevois memoir of 1718, three leagues from the Miami village; Beckwith (1881), about two miles of marshy ground; Baker (1899), a measured trail of four to five miles, the landing two and three-quarter miles northwest of the county courthouse — present Riverview Cemetery, 2700 Portage Avenue — running southwest to three ponds at the Kankakee's source. Jolliet likely knew of the portage by 1673; Marquette's crossing in the spring of 1675 is "very probable" on Baker's authorities, not documented, and is printed at that strength. The portage headwaters matter to this section beyond the French century: a century and a half later the same headwaters became a boundary call inside the treaty that took this ground, as the taking entry below shows.
Governed from elsewhere — the mission and the fort: For the whole French century, and the British and early American years after it, this ground was governed, traded with and missioned from posts upriver of it, on the lower river below present Niles. The Mission de Saint-Joseph stood among the Miami below present Niles: Fr. Claude-Jean Allouez accompanied the Miami return in the 1680s; the mission was in existence by 1686, and its land was granted to the Jesuits on 1 October 1686 by Denonville and Champigny, confirmed by Louis XIV in 1689 — while the History Museum at South Bend and the Berrien and Cass profile tradition date a French mission on the river to about 1680. All three datings stand in the record and are carried together. Allouez died in 1689 — on 27 April by the University of Notre Dame's account, on 27 August by the Fort Wayne church history; the conflict is printed, not settled — and lies buried near Niles, where a 1918 granite cross marks his assumed grave. His successors — Aveneau, Gravier, Chardon — carried the mission until, on Notre Dame's account, it was abandoned in 1759. Fort St. Joseph was built beside the mission in 1691, and its occupation table is the century in one line: French 1691–1760, British 1761–1763, British-American 1764–1781. The British succession came in 1761 with Ensign Francis Schlosser's detachment; on 25 May 1763, in Pontiac's rising, the fort was taken — the garrison fourteen men in one account, fifteen in another, the marker tradition holding all were killed where the South Bend leg's record has most killed and Schlosser ransomed at Detroit. It was never re-garrisoned as a fort. In December 1780 a raid from Cahokia under Hamelin and Brady stripped it — De Peyster's letter of 8 January 1781 counts sixteen men, the traders taken and at least fifty bales of goods; Cavinder numbers the raiders at about thirty with three escaped — and the pursuit ended in the raiders' defeat at Petit Fort on 5 December 1780, the Battle of the Dunes, the only Revolutionary battle in northwestern Indiana. On 12 February 1781 Pouré's Spanish expedition from St. Louis took the post — sixty volunteers with Native allies, up the Illinois and the Kankakee and across the frozen river; its sole defenders the trader Duquier and his employees; Spanish colors over the fort for about a day; back at St. Louis by 6 March with the captured flag. Niles is the City of Four Flags for this ground's fort. The post's end is dated 1781 in the occupation table against a tradition carrying its final abandonment to after Jay's Treaty in 1795; both stand. The site itself was lost until its rediscovery in 1998 — Nassaney's, on Peyser's identification — and is now the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project, on the National Register.
The last mission: The French century's successor on the same river was American and Baptist: Carey Mission. Isaac McCoy arrived in December 1822 with a party of thirty-two, on Governor Cass's invitation and a federal teacher's post under the 1821 treaty of Chicago, and established the mission about a mile west of present Niles, naming it for William Carey. Its school opened on 27 January 1823 with thirty Indian pupils; six mission houses stood by the next year. McCoy removed in 1829 to the Thomas station, leaving Robert Simerwell; the school was discontinued and the mission closed in 1830, with the Indian Removal Act; McCoy himself led several Potawatomi west to Kansas in 1831. Only a DAR marker stands on the ground today. The mission matters to this section by its second life: six years after McCoy left, the treaty that took this ground was concluded, in its own words, "at the Missionary Establishments upon the St. Joseph, of Lake Michigan" — at Carey Mission. The taking entry takes it up.
Sources: The expedition relations of La Salle and Hennepin and the valley marker tradition, as dug in the Mishawaka history — the December 1679 passage, the missed portage, the Ribourde crosses, the league-and-a-half, the 1678 marker division; Howard (1907), Chapter V, §1 — the 1681 treaty at the great Miami village; Baker (1899) and Beckwith (1881), as carried in the South Bend leg — the portage measures and the Marquette probability; the History Museum (South Bend), the University of Notre Dame's mission account, and the Fort Wayne church history, as carried in the South Bend and Mishawaka legs — the mission datings, the 1686 grant, the Allouez death-date conflict, the succession and the 1759 abandonment; the Fort St. Joseph occupation record and marker tradition, De Peyster's letter of 8 January 1781 and Cavinder, as carried in the South Bend leg — the fort's century, Pontiac's capture with its garrison conflict, the 1780 raid and Petit Fort, Pouré's expedition, the 1781/1795 end division, the 1998 rediscovery; the Carey Mission record — McCoy's arrival, the school's opening, the 1830 closure — as carried in the Mishawaka history.