Fort Crevecoeur was founded near the present site of Creve Coeur

Creve Coeur, Illinois

Creve Coeur is a village in Groveland Township, Tazewell County, Illinois, United States. As of the 2000 census, the village population was 5,448...

, a suburb of Peoria

Peoria, Illinois

Peoria is the largest city on the Illinois River and the county seat of Peoria County, Illinois, in the United States. It is named after the Peoria tribe. As of the 2010 census, the city was the seventh-most populated in Illinois, with a population of 115,007, and is the third-most populated...

, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

, in January 1680.

Founding

On January 5, 1680, French explorers, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle

René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle

René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, or Robert de LaSalle was a French explorer. He explored the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, the Mississippi River, and the Gulf of Mexico...

 and Henri de Tonti

Henri de Tonti

Henri de Tonti was an Italian-born soldier, explorer, and fur trader in the service of France.-Early life:Henri de Tonti, a Sicilian, was mostly likely born near Gaeta, Italy in either 1649 or 1650. He was the son of Lorenzo de Tonti, a financier and former governor of Gaeta...

, established Fort Crèvecoeur, in which Mass was celebrated and the Gospel preached by the Récollets

Recollets

The Récollets were a French branch of the Roman Catholic order, the Franciscans , which developed out of a reform movement that began in the 15th century in Spain and established itself in France in Tulle in 1585, at Nevers in 1592, at Limoges in 1596 and in Paris in 1603...

, Gabriel Ribourde, Zenobius Membre

Zenobius Membre

Zenobius Membre was a French Franciscan missionary in North America.-Life:He was a member of the Franciscan province of St. Antony. He arrived in Canada in 1675, and in 1679 he accompanied Robert de La Salle to the country of the Illinois, of which he wrote a description...

 and Louis Hennepin

Louis Hennepin

Father Louis Hennepin, O.F.M. baptized Antoine, was a Catholic priest and missionary of the Franciscan Recollect order and an explorer of the interior of North America....

. They finished the fort in early March, naming it "Fort Broken Heart" because of the tribulations, including desertions, that they suffered during its construction.

Destruction of Fort Crevecoeur

On April 15, 1680, Henri de Tonti had left Fort Crevecoeur with Father Ribourde and two other men, to begin fortifying the settlement at Starved Rock. The next day, the remaining 7 men pillaged Fort Crevecoeur of all provisions and ammunition, destroyed the fort and most of them fled back to Canada.

Joining Tonti at Starved Rock, 2 men who had been at the fort told him of the fort's destruction. Tonti sent messengers to La Salle in Canada to report the events. Tonti then returned to Fort Crevecoeur to collect any tools not destroyed and moved them to the Kaskaskia

Kaskaskia

The Kaskaskia were one of about a dozen cognate tribes that made up the Illiniwek Confederation or Illinois Confederation. Their longstanding homeland was in the Great Lakes region...

 Village at Starved Rock.

On September 10, 1680, nearly six hundred (600) Iroquois

Iroquois

The Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America...

 warriors, armed with guns, approached the Kaskaskia village. Meeting them in advance, Henri de Tonti

Henri de Tonti

Henri de Tonti was an Italian-born soldier, explorer, and fur trader in the service of France.-Early life:Henri de Tonti, a Sicilian, was mostly likely born near Gaeta, Italy in either 1649 or 1650. He was the son of Lorenzo de Tonti, a financier and former governor of Gaeta...

 was accused of treachery, by both the Iroquois and the Illinois Confederation. Tonti tried to mediate their disagreements and delay the Iroquois invasion until the women, children and old people could escape from the village. Tonti was wounded by an Iroquois man, who stabbed him with a knife. The Kaskaskia village was burned and the Iroquois built a fort on that site at Starved Rock. Tonti with his allies fled the area, heading for Green Bay

Green Bay, Wisconsin

Green Bay is a city in and the county seat of Brown County in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, located at the head of Green Bay, a sub-basin of Lake Michigan, at the mouth of the Fox River. It has an elevation of above sea level and is located north of Milwaukee. As of the 2010 United States Census,...

.

See also

• History of Peoria, Illinois
  History of Peoria, Illinois
  The history of Peoria, Illinois begins when lands that eventually would become Peoria were first settled in 1680, when French explorers René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, and Henri de Tonti constructed Fort Crevecoeur. This fort would later burn to the ground, and in 1813 Fort Clark was built...
  
  
• List of French forts in North America

External links

• Fort Crevecoeur Park