Le Grand Village Sauvage, Missouri
| Le Grand Village Sauvage, Missouri | |
|---|---|
| Abandoned village | |
 Location of Perry County, Missouri |
|
| Country | United States |
| State | Missouri |
| County | Perry |
| Township | Union |
Le Grand Village Sauvage (French translation: the big savage village), also called Chalacasa, was a Native American village located near Old Appleton in Perry County, Missouri.
The village was inhabited by Shawnee and Delaware Indian immigrants from Ohio and Indiana.
The Shawnee usually called their villages Chillicothe or Chilliticaux, meaning 'a place of residence.' They named their largest town along Apple Creek Chalacasa, after their old town on the Scioto River in Ohio. The French referred to Chalacasa as Le Grand Village Sauvage (the big savage village) while the Americans referred to Chalacasa as The Big Village or The Big Shawnee Village.
In the 18th century, American settlement had forced many Native American tribes westward. The Spanish authorities in Upper Louisiana, also known as the Illinois Country, looked to these tribes as possible immigrants for settlement between Ste. Genevieve and Cape Girardeau.
The Spanish authorities encouraged Shawnee and Delaware immigration, and had hoped their settlement would act as a buffer against the unremitting raids and thefts by the Osage, another tribe to the south, as well as forming a bulwark against the possibility of American invasion. The Shawnee and Delaware, having been driven from their homelands in the Ohio Valley in Pennsylvania, settled in present-day Ohio and Indiana. Then in the 1780s they found themselves in a situation for having supported the British in the American War of Independence, and began looking to move elsewhere as early as 1784. In the 1780s, Don Louis Lorimier, a French-Canadian Métis, who had fought on the side of the British against the Americans during the American Revolution, had also found his situation precarious and decided to settle in Upper Louisiana. Lorimier had operated an Indian trading post in Ohio, and his close association with the Shawnee, enabled him to encourage a number of them to settle in Upper Louisiana. In 1787, Lorimier introduced a plan to bring the disposed Shawnee and Delaware to the Spanish territory.
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