Fort Kaskaskia

Fort Kaskaskia SHS
U.S. Historic district Contributing property
Eroded ramparts of Fort Kaskaska
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Location	County Roads 3 and 6, west of Chester, Illinois
Coordinates	37°58′8″N 89°54′38″W / 37.96889°N 89.91056°W / 37.96889; -89.91056Coordinates: 37°58′8″N 89°54′38″W / 37.96889°N 89.91056°W / 37.96889; -89.91056
Built	1754 (1754)
Part of	French Colonial Historic District (#74000772)
Added to NRHP	April 3, 1974

Fort Kaskaskia State Historic Site is a 200-acre (0.8 km²) park near Chester, Illinois, on a blufftop overlooking the Mississippi River. It commemorates the vanished frontier town of Old Kaskaskia and the support it gave to George Rogers Clark in the American Revolution.

The village of Kaskaskia, Illinois was founded at the mouth of the Kaskaskia River as a missionary post by the Jesuits in 1703. Soon afterwards, settlers from the Quebec and Louisiana regions began to trickle towards the rich, alluvial farmland of the central Mississippi Valley. They built a village and agricultural settlement around the location of the Jesuit mission, a half-circle of bottomland cradled by the Kaskaskia River and by an oxbow of the Mississippi.

French-speaking pioneers were noted throughout North America for their comparative fairness towards Native Americans. However, as the Kaskaskia settlement grew throughout the 18th century, the local Indians, members of the Illini Confederacy, may have realized that there might not be enough space for everybody. The French settlers raised Fort Kaskaskia around 1759; the fort stood atop the bluff that looked down upon the frontier village. "Fort Kaskaskia" is not technically a "fort", but an earthen redoubt. Frontier settlers throughout Woodland North America often built such redoubts as defensive moves during times of threat from Native Americans.

In 1763 the French ceded the Illinois country, including Kaskaskia and the redoubt, to Great Britain. The British did not use the redoubt and left Kaskaskia almost defenseless. Kaskaskia continued to exist as a French-speaking village on the Mississippi River frontier.

In early 1778, George Rogers Clark, eager to defend what was western Virginia and the Kentucky country from attacks by Native Americans allied to the British, led a tiny force down the Ohio River. Clark hoped to achieve a strategic coup by linking his expeditionary column with the French-speaking settlements of the Mississippi Valley.