Fort St Louis at Starved Rock

Lured by tales of a great river to the west, Louis Jolliet, Father Marquette, and five men launched two canoes from St. Ignace in May 1673. Their goal was to find the legendary Mississippi River. Their discoveries greatly increased the knowledge of North American geography and the Indian nations living in the upper Mississippi Valley.

On their return trip, the explorers paddled up the Illinois River, passing by Starved Rock. Located on the south side of the Illinois River, near Utica, Illinois, Starved Rock today is a State Park. Here, glacial melt and stream erosion has sliced through tree-covered, sandstone bluffs creating 18 deep, narrow canyons.

Eventually, the French claimed the entire Mississippi Valley and the Great Lakes. To hold their claim, the French built a fort at the Straits of Mackinac. Here, Lake Huron and Lake Michigan join and the entrance to Lake Superior is but a short distance away.

As a southern defense, the French built Fort St. Louis atop Starved Rock in the winter of 1682-83. This site was chosen because of its strategic position high above the last rapids on the Illinois River.

In February, 1684, the newly built fort was attacked by 500 Iroquois warriors. Sharing command of the fort were explorer Henri Tonty and a French army officer, Chevalier Baugy, twenty-two French soldiers, traders, trappers and craftsmen. In addition, twenty-four Shawnee, Miami and Loup warriors and their families were protected by the forts’ stout walls.

Perched 170 feet above the river, Fort St Louis could not be taken by assault. The Iroquois tried, several times, but were driven off. The invaders had no choice but to besiege the place.

The French were short of food and gunpowder. . . but so were the Iroquois who had traveled a great distance by foot. They could not carry much and quickly hunted off the local game. For eight days the Iroquois hung on, sniping, probing the forts’ defenses, growing more desperate. Finally, the Iroquois realized they had no choice but to withdraw.

The French abandoned Fort St Louis by the early 1700s and retreated to Peoria, Illinois where they established Fort Pimitoui. By 1720 all remains of the fort at Starved Rock had disappeared.

The diorama, pictured here, was researched and built by the History/Social Science Department and students of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, Illinois. This reconstruction is based on descriptions of the fort by LaSalle, Henri Joutel, property deeds and a variety of business and French army documents. These sources, though contradictory at times, describe the fort of 1684 as made of upright logs and earthworks of about 600 feet in circumference which protected housing for between eleven and fifty men, contained seven bastions, a storehouse, forge, officers’ quarters, a chapel and at least three traders’ cabins.