Kolmer Site
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Kolmer Site
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Overview of the site from the west
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| Location | Levee Rd., west of Fort Chartres State Park |
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| Nearest city | Prairie du Rocher, Illinois |
| Coordinates | 38°5′30″N 90°10′51″W / 38.09167°N 90.18083°WCoordinates: 38°5′30″N 90°10′51″W / 38.09167°N 90.18083°W |
| Area | 89 acres (36 ha) |
| Built | 1720 |
| Part of | French Colonial Historic District (#74000772) |
| NRHP Reference # | 74000773 |
| Added to NRHP | May 1, 1974 |
The Kolmer Site is an archaeological site in the far southwest of the U.S. state of Illinois. Located near Kaskaskia and Prairie du Rocher in western Randolph County, it lies at the site of an early historic Indian village from the French period. Because it occupies a critical chronological and cultural position, it has been given national recognition as a historic site.
Under Jacques Marquette, Louis Jolliet and René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers were discovered and explored for the first time, and claimed as part of New France. The earliest explorers were soon followed by Catholic Christian missionaries led by Jacques Gravier, who soon won converts among the Illini, and some of these praying Indians founded riverside villages at Cahokia, Kaskaskia, and Peoria. These villages were small by modern standards, although they remained comparable in size to European settlements in the area; according to letters by one missionary written in 1750, three Illini villages in the American Bottom together numbered fewer than eight hundred inhabitants, while the five French villages in the same region comprised eleven hundred Frenchmen and three hundred blacks.
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Wikipedia