The fur trade, flourishing with the Indians as middlemen, centered on
the strategic Illinois waterway. The Indians controlled the region from
the Fox War of the 1730's through the French and Indian War of the
1760's, the French having possession in name only.
When the British took hold in 1763, illegal fur trading began from the
newly founded St. Louis, Calhoun Point being the place of crossing.
Otter, beaver, wolf, deer and martin are the peltry mentioned as
abounding from the mouth of the Illinois north.
By the Treaty of Greenville, Ohio, in August, 1795, the Indians ceded a
twelve square mile tract at the mouth of the Illinois River, including
free passage of the waterway.
In 1811 trouble with Indians saw the building of a blockhouse near the
mouth of the Illinois River and another at the present Meppen, across
the river from Goat Cliff.
Major Stephan H. Long in September, 1816, went by keelboat from St.
Louis to Peoria with two soldiers and an interpreter, Francis Le Clair,
the founder of Davenport, Iowa. This survey party returned overland
south and west, reaching the Illinois River via the low ridge east of
Quitt Point and Deerlick Hollow.
The autumn of 1818 found Gurdon S. Hubbard as a clerk on a bateau as an
agent of Astor's American Fur Company. Hubbard, only 18, tells of the
party passing Pere Marquette State Park singing Canadian boat songs and
spending the night of November 5 at the mouth of the Illinois, bound for
St. Louis. This party returned in the first week of December as Illinois
was accepted into the Union. Hubbard became a legendary figure in
Illinois, living a full and adventurous life in the Illinois fur trade.