Empire by Collaboration. Robert Michael Morrissey

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      As New France supported La Salle’s colony and the Jesuit outposts, this created an unusual colonial situation. For the officials, the imperatives of Indian diplomacy meant tolerating and even supporting a nascent colony that had placed itself apart, outside of the normal rules of French government. Because the administration in New France was dependent on the agency of La Salle and the Jesuits for the alliance, administrators could not easily dictate how the colony ought to operate. Things happened here that would not have been allowed in other parts of the empire.

      One example is the fur trade. In 1681, Colbert reformed the fur trade, instituting a license system that limited the number of traders allowed into the West. But Illinois remained outside of the new rules, and La Salle and Tonty had authority to issue their own trade permits.¹³⁰ La Forest, who became Tonty’s partner in the mid-1680s, explained the logic: the Illinois colony was on its own, financially. If the king wanted the Illinois alliance, he would have to permit Illinois colonists to trade for their own profit.¹³¹ As a result, the king did grant exclusive trade rights to the proprietors in 1686 “in order to give them the means of meeting the expense of maintaining the fort.”¹³² Indeed, by 1686, the officials in New France had to recognize that the Illinois Country was the exclusive trade property of La Salle’s partners. Denonville complained that Tonty and La Forest excluded licensed New France traders from the Illinois trade.¹³³ But nothing was done to stop this, even after Tonty and La Forest confiscated the goods of licensed Canadian traders in the Illinois.¹³⁴ No other part of the Great Lakes interior operated like this, with its own rules. Even as Colbert had tried to systematize the fur trade, Illinois was outside the system.

      Another example is land. La Barre was frustrated that La Salle issued grants to habitants. For instance, in his 1683 grant to a voyageur called Jacques Bourdon, La Salle gave seigneurial rights, as though the colony was its own entity free of restrictions from New France.¹³⁵ This practice continued through the 1680s, and administrators often wondered whether this was even licit. As La Barre complained, the colony was attracting habitants and “debauch[ing] all the lazy men of [New France].”¹³⁶ To the New France authorities, the whole settlement flew in the face of efforts to keep farmers in the St. Lawrence Valley. Governor Denonville wrote in 1687, “M. de la Salle has made grants at Fort St. Louis to several Frenchmen who have been living there for several years without caring to return. This has occasioned a host of disorders and abominations.” Elaborating this view, Denonville complained: “These people to whom M. de la Salle has made grants are all youths who have done nothing toward cultivating the land…. These people set themselves up as independent and masters on their grants.”¹³⁷ In other areas of the West, illegal settlers were recalled and arrested. In Illinois, New France did not shut them down but rather allowed these “independent” colonists to be their own “masters.”

      Another problem with the Illinois colony from an imperial standpoint was the question of authority itself. New France officials realized that La Salle considered his new colony to be autonomous. “I have been advised,” wrote Governor Denonville, “that Monsieur de la Salle claimed that the commandant of his fort in the Illinois was not under my orders.”¹³⁸ The government of New France became increasingly upset about the state of the Illinois colony in the late 1680s. In 1688, for example, the governor persuaded the king to revoke the charters in Illinois. The fact that this legal action had no effect on the actual goings on at Fort St. Louis reflects the very weak control that New France possessed over the outpost. Still, it is notable: “In regard to the concessions made by Sieur de La Salle in the area of Fort Saint-Louis, since these cause disorders similar to those which have been noted, His Majesty permits that they be revoked.”¹³⁹ Probably owing to the continued necessity of the Illinois alliance in the war against the Iroquois, the concessions were all renewed in 1690 when the king transferred the official charter of the colony from La Salle, who had died in 1684, to Tonty and La Forest. Not only did the king reconfirm the old concessions, but he granted to Tonty and La Forest the right to make new ones and charged them to “maintain and grow” the outpost.¹⁴⁰

      If all this suggests that Illinois was in a special position in the empire, perhaps the most dramatic demonstration of its distinctiveness occurred in 1693. It was in that year that Michel Accault, the former engagé and fur trader, signed a contract and paid six thousand livres’ worth of beaver in exchange for a surprising new status—landlord of Illinois. Along with just one other man, Accault now officially controlled the small outpost in the Illinois Country.¹⁴¹ This was the same Michel Accault whom Hennepin once called “a Base Fellow,” “famous in this Illinois country for all his debaucheries.” In the 1680s, he had deserted, disputed, and rebelled. Now he was the landlord, half owner of an official concession.

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