Fort de Buade

Fort de Buade
Fort de Buade Museum
Type	Fort
Site information
Controlled by	New France
Site history
Built	1683
In use	1683-1701
Battles/wars	Iroquois Wars - War with the English

Fort de Buade was a French fort in the present U.S. state of Michigan's Upper Peninsula across the Straits of Mackinac from the northern tip of lower Michigan's "mitten". It was garrisoned between 1683 and 1701. The city of St. Ignace developed at the site, which also had the historic St. Ignace Mission founded by Jesuits. The fort was named after New France's governor at the time, Louis de Buade de Frontenac.

The French-Canadian settlement at St. Ignace began with the Mission of Saint Ignace, founded by Father Jacques Marquette, S.J. in 1671. By 1680 it had become a considerable community consisting of the mission, a French village of a dozen cabins, a Wyandot (Huron) Indian village surrounded by a wooden palisade and an adjacent Odawa (Ottawa) village, also behind a palisade. In 1681, the Huron and Illiniwek at St. Ignace killed the Seneca chief Annanhac, who had been leading his forces against the western peoples. The Seneca were part of the Iroquois Confederacy based in present-day New York state.

Sharp practice by the fur traders also caused tensions. In 1683, Governor Joseph-Antoine de La Barre ordered Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut and Olivier Morel de La Durantaye to establish a strategic presence on the north shore of the Straits of Mackinac, connecting Lake Michigan and Lake Huron of the Great Lakes. They fortified the Jesuit mission and La Durantaye settled in as overall commander of the French forts in the northwest: Fort Saint Louis des Illinois (Utica, Illinois); Fort Kaministigoya (Thunder Bay, Ontario); and Fort la Tourette (Lake Nipigon, Ontario). He was also responsible for the region around Green Bay in present-day Wisconsin.