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lower portions of Lake Pimiteoui.
de Tonti and his French traders,
as well as the Jesuit mission-
ary Father Jacque Gravier, also
moved and constructed a new
fort, mission and trading outpost
at Lake Pimiteoui.
This event, 322 years ago,
is generally recognized as the
founding of Peoria.
As the Native American vil-
lages developed along the shores
of Lake Pimiteoui, six of the eight
Illinois tribes, including about
800
warriors, eventually occu-
pied approximately 260 cabins
extending about 500 yards along
the river. The Native Americans
had named the primary village
Ke-Kauk-Kem-Ke, which meant a
strait or narrows connecting two
bodies of water.
From this new outpost de
Tonti directed the fur trade in
the Illinois Territory for the next
10
years. He possessed the arts
of patience and conciliation and
even the Jesuit priests lived at
peace with him. He attracted
many of the wandering French
coureurs de bois and voyageurs
to his operation as a result of his
reputation for fairness.
Operating under restrictions
placed on the fur trade by the
King of France and the merchant
traders in Quebec City, de Tonti
struggled to develop an efficient
and profitable trading operation.
It is estimated that he traveled
85,000
miles on foot and by
canoe, negotiating with Native
American tribes for expanded
sources of furs, supervising his
French employees and negotiat-
ing contracts with the French
merchant suppliers. Documents
still exist of de Tonti’s contracts
with voyageurs as evidence of his
efforts to build a trading empire
in the Illinois Territory.
Although de Tonti’s fur trading
operation based at Lake Pime-
toui appeared successful, the
cost of trade goods, insurance
and shipping were too high for
the business to be consistently
profitable. In 1698, in response
to an oversupply of beaver pelts,
the King of France issued orders
forbidding all trade at Quebec
City’s western posts, with the
exception that two canoe-loads
of goods could be shipped to de
Tonti’s fortified trading post at
Lake Pimiteoui. Enforcing the
King’s moratorium on beaver
trade made many French traders
angry with de Tonti and he began
to look southward to the colony
of Louisiana for opportunities. In
1698,
he transferred his remain-
ing shares in the Lake Pimiteoui
trading operations to his brother.
Four years later, in 1702, a
continued lack of profits had
brought failure to the Illinois
trading operation. de Tonti left
the outpost he had started 11
years earlier. He traveled south to
New Orleans and was chosen by
officials of French Louisiana as an
ambassador to the Choctaw and
Chickasaw Indian tribes. de Tonti
continued in this position until
August 1704 when he contracted
yellow fever and died at Old
Mobile.
According to local lore, the
remains of this international man
of mystery, Henri de Tonti, the
founder of Peoria, “were laid to
everlasting rest in an unknown
grave near the Mobile River
and not far from the monument
erected in 1902 to commemorate
the site of Old Mobile.”
Personal Profile
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MORE INFORMATION AND PHOTOS
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