Fort St. Joseph at Niles: the fort that governed the valley

Built 1691 beside the Jesuit mission; French to 1761, British to 1781; taken for Spain for a day, 12 February 1781; the site found again in 1998

The post: On the south side of present Niles, Michigan, where the lower St. Joseph River passes the crossing of the Sauk Trail and the Grand River Trail, near the portage that joins the Great Lakes watershed to the Mississippi's, the French in 1691 built Fort St. Joseph beside the Jesuit mission that already stood there — a small garrison and trading post raised on land granted to the Jesuits, and for ninety years the seat from which this whole valley, the rapids village included, was garrisoned, traded with, and governed from elsewhere. The archaeological occupation table of the fort's modern excavators divides its life cleanly: French, 1691–1760; British, 1761–1763; British-American, 1764–1781.

The British succession: With France's defeat the fort passed to the British in 1761, maintained for the fur trade. On 25 May 1763, in Pontiac's Rebellion, Potawatomi warriors captured it; its small garrison — fourteen soldiers of the 60th Regiment of Foot in one account, a fifteen-man garrison in another — was taken, and the marker tradition holds that all of them were killed. The British never garrisoned the post again, though French traders remained and the trade went on; through the American Revolution the British used the fort as the depot from which their Miami, Potawatomi, and other Native allies were supplied against the rebellious colonies.

The raid of 1780: In December 1780 a party from Cahokia, in the Illinois country, led by Jean-Baptiste Hamelin and Lieutenant Thomas Brady, raided the fort while the Native hunters were away on their first hunt. The British commander's own report — Major Arent S. De Peyster's letter of 8 January 1781 — numbers the party at sixteen men, says they took the traders prisoner and carried off all the goods, at least fifty bales, by the route of Chicago; a later Indiana account numbers them about thirty Americans and Creoles and has only three escape. The pursuit is not in dispute: Lieutenant Dagreaux Du Quindre assembled the Native forces, overtook the raiders at the Petit Fort, a day's journey beyond the Rivière du Chemin, and defeated them there on 5 December 1780 — the Battle of the Dunes, the only Revolutionary battle fought in northwest Indiana.

The Spanish episode, 1781: The raid's defeat set the fort's strangest day in motion. Two Milwaukee chiefs, El Heturnò and Naquiguen, reached Spanish-held St. Louis on 26 December 1780 with word of the failed raid and a request for help to strike again. The commandant, Don Francisco Cruzat, dispatched Captain Don Eugenio Pouré with sixty volunteers and Native allies, up the Illinois and the Kankakee to present Dunns Bridge and then overland northeast. The Potawatomi were promised half the bounty if they would stand neutral. On 12 February 1781 Pouré raced his force across the frozen river and took Fort St. Joseph by surprise before its defenders — who consisted solely of a Canadien trader named Duquier and several of his employees — could go to arms. The Spanish colors were raised, the fort and the St. Joseph River claimed for Spain, and held for about a day; the party was back at St. Louis by 6 March, delivering the captured British flag to Cruzat. It is the third flag of the four — French, British, Spanish, American — from which Niles takes its name as the City of Four Flags.

The end, and the finding again: The City of Niles' own history carries the fort as occupied for ninety years, from 1691 to 1781, and the occupation table ends the same year. Other accounts carry the post as finally abandoned by the British only after the Northwest Indian War and Jay's Treaty in 1795, falling thereafter into ruin and forest; both endings stand as their sources give them. What is certain is the long loss and the late recovery: the fort's site was not rediscovered until 1998, when Dr. Michael Nassaney of Western Michigan University, working with Dr. Joseph Peyser's identification of the ground and in partnership with the City of Niles, located it by survey and excavation. The Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project has dug there since — a foundation wall and corner posts of an original building were revealed in December 2010 — and the site stands on the National Register of Historic Places; the project's findings are gathered in Fort St. Joseph Revealed (2019), edited by Nassaney.

Sources:

1. City of Niles, Michigan, "A History of Fort St. Joseph" (nilesmi.org) — the site's trails and portage, the fort built 1691 beside the mission and occupied 1691–1781, the 1998 relocation by Nassaney and Peyser.
2. Michael S. Nassaney and the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project (Western Michigan University) — the occupation table (French 1691–1760; British 1761–1763; British-American 1764–1781); the excavation course and the 2010 foundation wall.
3. Major Arent S. De Peyster to Brigadier General H. Watson Powell, 8 January 1781, as reproduced in the Petit Fort record — the sixteen-man Cahokia party, the traders taken, the fifty bales, Du Quindre's pursuit and the 5 December 1780 defeat at the Petit Fort.
4. Fred D. Cavinder, More Amazing Tales from Indiana — the raid numbered at about thirty, three escaped and seven taken prisoner, the furs recovered at the Petite Fort; printed against De Peyster's letter, not harmonized.
5. Accounts of the Spanish expedition of 1781 as carried in the fort's standard histories — the Milwaukee chiefs at St. Louis 26 December 1780, Cruzat's dispatch of Pouré with sixty volunteers, the route by the Kankakee and Dunns Bridge, the neutrality bargain with the Potawatomi, the 12 February 1781 surprise across the ice, the sole defenders Duquier and his employees, the return by 6 March with the captured flag.
6. The History Museum, South Bend, and Michigan marker accounts — the British takeover of 1761, the 25 May 1763 capture and the garrison's size as each gives it, the British non-return, and the tradition that carries the post's final abandonment to 1795.