[Illustration: Cross marks site where Marquette and Jolliet entered
Illinois in 1673]
In Pere Marquette State Park there are 18 sites indicating occupation by
prehistoric Americans and a village once located where the lodge now
stands. It is believed that men, nomadic hunters and fishers, appeared
in the Illinois valley possibly about the beginning of the Christian
Era. Later stone age peoples by 900 A. D. made large leaf-shaped
arrowheads and coarse, heavy pottery. By 1300 A. D. trade had developed
and at Cahokia resulted in village-states. These peoples made small,
finely-chipped arrowheads, pottery with handles and a variety of wares
and cultivated corn, squash and beans.
When the French came to this region, the Illinois, Potawatomie and
Kickapoo Indians were little removed from their ancestors whose
cemeteries, burial mounds, house and village sites dotted the Illinois
Valley as at the park.
Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette were sent by the French
government over the Wisconsin portage, in the spring of 1673, to explore
the Mississippi River for a passage to the Pacific Ocean. They coursed
as far as the Arkansas River where they turned back and in September
entered the Illinois River. The Marquette Monument, a large stone cross,
alongside Route 100, commemorates this event as the recorded entrance of
white men into Illinois.
Robert Cavilier, sieur de La Salle appeared shortly to govern and
develop the region. His unbounded energy earned him the name "Prince of
Explorers."
He built Fort Creve Coeur near Peoria, now a state park, and in the
spring of 1680 sent Father Louis Hennepin down the Illinois River to
explore the upper Mississippi. Hennepin and his party spent five days at
or across from the present lodge, waiting for the ice to go out of the
Mississippi. On March 12, the expedition turned up the mighty Father of
Waters. The Iroquois Indians invaded the Illinois valley that spring and
mutinous soldiers destroyed Fort Creve Coeur as La Salle hiked to
Montreal.