Page 3 - Fur Trade program Curriculum

The St. Joseph and Kankakee Portage

Shortly after Easter Sunday, 1675, the sick and dishearten priest, Father Jacques
Marquette, left the Indian village of Kaskaskia to return to his beloved St. Ignace by a
new route, which many scholars believe to have been via the Kankakee River. In that
case it is very probably that he and his two faithful attendants made use of the portage
between the Kankakee and St. Joseph Rivers—a carrying place of between four and
five miles. The portage landing on the St. Joseph River is two and three-quarters miles
northwest of the courthouse, as South Bend, St. Joseph County, Indiana (modern day
Riverview Cemetery, 2700 Portage Avenue). The portage then extends in a
southwesterly course to three small ponds that were the nearest sources of the
Kankakee. The basins of these ponds are still clearly defined.

Early in December 1679, LaSalle with Father Hennepin, Tonty and others, journeyed
over this portage on their way to the Illinois country. It seems very probable that the
explorer Allouez used it also, but some scholars deny this.

The earliest mention of this historic route is found in the writings of Father Louis
Hennepin, Henry de Tonty and Rene Robert Cavelier Sieur de LaSalle, who first made
use of it as stated above in December 1679. We are led to believe, however, that Louis
Joliet, companion of Marquette and co-discoverer of the Mississippi, knew of this
portage as early as 1673.

In the early days the region in the vicinity of the portage, the valleys of the St.
Joseph and the Kankakee, abounded in a great variety of fur-bearing animals. It was
well known among the Indian tribes on account of its excellence as a hunting ground.
Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac writing of the lower Peninsula of Michigan in 1701, says:
“There are so many vast prairies dotted with woods, thickets and vines where the
waters of the streams keep the shores always green and the reaper has left unmown
the luxuriant grasses which fatten buffaloes of enormous size.” The plain along the
eastern bank of the St. Joseph River south of Niles, Michigan, was a noted buffalo
resort known to the French as “Parc aux vaches,” and to the Indians as “the cow-
pasture” or “cow pens.” Further up the river the field west and south of the portage
landing was called at the time of the visit of Charlevoix in 1721, “La Prairie de Tete la
Boeuf” (Buffalo Head Prairie). Along with the buffalo were found the bear, the elk, the
deer, the beaver, otter, marten, raccoon, mink, muskrat, possum, lynx and the fox.

LaSalle’s First Landing at the Portage

LaSalle and half of his men circled around the southern shore of Lake Michigan, until
they reached the mouth of the St. Joseph River. Here Tonty (one of LaSalle’s guides)
was to have rejoined him, with twenty men, making his way from Michillimackinac
(Michigan), along the eastern shore of the lake; but Tonty was nowhere to be seen
when LaSalle and his men got to the mouth of the St. Joseph. It was the first of
November. Winter was at hand and the streams would soon be frozen. The men
clamored to go forward, urging that they should starve if they could not reach the village
of Illinois (Indian tribe) before the tribe scattered for the winter hunt. LaSalle would not