Settlement by the French
From 20th Century History of Springfield and Clark County, Ohio by Hon. William A. Rockel
Chicago: Biographical Publishing Co., 1908
In the growth of civilization it has been observed, without the ability to give any very good reason therefor, that it has always had a tendency to push to the westward. The French having settled in Quebec and around Lake Champlain, following this rule or law, if such it may be termed, were soon pushing on further in the unknown west.
Sault St. Marie, still a point in our time as a place to behold a wonderful passage for ship tonnage from our northern lakes, was established in 1765 by Marquette. This is the oldest village in the northwest, fourteen years older than Philadelphia, and established 120 years before a settlement was made at Marietta, Ohio.
This was an age in which the chevalier sought to show his fealty to his king and honor to his people by the countries he might discover and "by the right of discovery," attach them to the crown of his royal master. No danger was so great or task too hard to stifle or retard this then existing passion.
In 1666 La Salle came to Canada, and going across from Lake Erie went down the Kankakee and along the river of the Mississippi to St. Louis, which he reached in 1674, and later came up the Ohio at least as far as Louisville. It is important not to forget that the Mississippi Valley was laid open to the knowledge of the world by a voyager who plowed from the Atlantic to the Gulf. On April 9. 1682, La Salle and his little party stood on the Mississippi not far from its mouth, beside a column bearing the arms of France, and with appropriate ceremony took formal possession for his royal master Louis X, of the country of Louisiana, "from the mouth of the Ohio River along the Mississippi and the rivers that flowed into it from its source beyond the country of the Sioux to its mouth at the sea." This territory was particularly known as Illinois, of which Old Kaskaskia was the capital. In 1721 it was the seat of a college and a monastery. This town at its best was claimed to have had from two to three thousand inhabitants.
The French are not good colonizers, and for this reason this country did not proceed as rapidly in civilization as the English colonies along the Atlantic coast. The industries of this western settlement were furs, peltries and agriculture.
In 1705, 20,000 hides were said to have been shipped from the Wabash. In 1746 the Wabash country shipped 600 barrels of flour to New Orleans. These events occurred almost 100 years before Ohio was admitted into the Union as a state.