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- In addition to the Newell Fort exhibit, the Starved Rock Visitors Center features exhibits on Fort St. Louis and the Grand Village of the Kaskaskia. Read more...
- Conjoined mounds are rare if not unique among Middle Woodland mounds in the Illinois River Valley. These mounds are among more than a dozen burial mounds found in and nearby Havana. To the best of our knowledge, these mounds have not been excavated. The Twin mounds were a landmark to French voyageurs, mostly French-Canadian boatmen transporting furs by canoe. In Read more...
- Artifacts found in the park confirm the presence of Native Americans by about 12,000 years ago and document their use of the area since. More than 100 Native American sites have been documented in the park. In the winter of 1682, men led by LaSalle and Henri de Tonty built Fort St. Louis on the crest of Le Rocher, the Read more...
- Antoine Hennepin, a member of the Franciscan order, accompanied René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle into the Illinois Country and was present at the construction of Fort Crèvecoeur. According to Hennepin, the Indians called Lake Peoria “Pimiteoui,” which meant “fat lake” or a place where there is an abundance of food. Read more...
- Marquette was born in Laon, France in 1637 and educated by the Society of Jesus. Assigned to New France in 1666, he learned six different Native American dialects. It was while he was stationed in the western Great Lakes that he learned about a trading route along a major river in the midcontinent. His superiors approved his request to explore Read more...
- Historical Marker Illinois State Historical Society The city of Peoria was named for the Peoria tribe of the Iliniwek Indian Confederacy who once lived here. It was in 1673 that Jacques Marquette and the explorer Louis Jolliet traveled through the widened portion of the Illinois River know as Lake Peoria, on which the city is situated. Robert Cavalier, Sieur De Read more...
- In 1688, Pierre Liette accompanied members of the Illinois on a bison hunt. His first-person narrative recounts in vivid detail the landscape, the roles of men, women, and children hunting bison, and how terrified Liette was when he first encountered a bison. The LaSalle Street mural depicts bison in full stride and Native American archers taking aim. It was design Read more...
- In 1867, Colonel Daniel Hitt surveyed an irregularly shaped earthwork at the head of French Canyon, near Starved Rock. He called it the “Old Fort.” John Newell and his son John Jr. returned to the “Old Fort” seventy years later to unearth its secrets. They spent several years excavating, eventually accumulating a substantial collection of 18th century artifacts. In 1999, Read more...
- Louis XIV, the King of France, granted LaSalle a five-year patent to explore the western part of New France. LaSalle chose to base his enterprise along the Illinois River because it was the most direct route from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. After meeting with the Illinois at their winter village in present-day Read more...
- Many of the tribes living around the Great Lakes were threatened by the Iroquois, who sought to dominate the fur trade. Some of the Miami living near Green Bay in the mid-17th century, moved in 1683 to the Illinois River valley to join LaSalle’s confederacy, which they believed afforded protection from the Iroquois. The confederacy included the Illinois, Miami, Wea, Read more...
