That siege is still the largest military action in which white men were engaged on Illinois soil. Lt. St. Ange had arrived before de Villiers with a column from Fort Chartres, and shortly both were joined by Lt. Nicholas des Noyelles, sieur de Fleurimont, with a force from the Wea Indian post and Fort Miami, where Fort Wayne now stands in Indiana. Lt. des Noyelles probably marched the first soldiers over Woodford County soil. On August 14, 1735 he began a trek from Montreal to where Des Moines, Iowa, is now built, one of the longest of military marches of those days. He wrote3 of coming through his two old posts and passing the old battleground (which the Indians called Etnataek) and marching to the very early French post at Peoria; he must have followed the old Wabash-Peoria Indian trail which crossed our Kansas Township. Oddly, his long march accomplished almost nothing, and has passed into obscurity.
After 1721 our lands became the border ground between the two great rival colonies of France. French letters said the Arrowsmith siege was "fought well within the Louisiana Colony," meaning the ground was under the jurisdiction of the Vincennes and Fort Chartres posts. The Wea Indian Fort, where La Fayette, Indiana, now stands, was assigned to the Canadian colony, as were the earlier Starved Rock and Peoria posts.
Thirty-two months after the treaty of Paris was ratified, the French pulled down their colors at Fort Chartres on October 10, 1765, and the British ran up theirs.
The Long Knives under George Rogers Clark ended the British occupancy in July, 1778 by capturing Kaskaskia, and followed that up with a terrible overland march during the February thaw of 1779, capturing Vincennes and General Hamilton with it. Patrick Henry, Governor of the Colony of Virginia, had thus performed a vital service in the Revolution in sending a determined young officer to claim the vast midwest for Virginia. It ended for good the claims of the British, the French and the Spaniards to any lands east of the mighty Mississippi. It also ended the claims of certain land companies who had "purchased" almost all of Illinois from the Indians for a few hundred dollars worth of goods, and who had been quite persistent in trying to make their titles good.
One expedition marched over Woodford County soil in the Revolution. While Clark was making his march on Kaskaskia, Paulette Meillet, credited with founding Peoria, took some 300 Indians and Frenchmen from his little village and crossed the river to march eastward and successfully attack Fort St. Joseph in lower Michigan, avenging Brady's defeat. It was on this arduous march over the prairie that Meillet cruelly tomahawked a fellow Frenchman named Amlin, only because Amlin had fallen ill, and the commander would not be handicapped with a soldier who could not march.
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