Chapter 6 –
A dinner with Claude Jolliet
As you can tell from Elise’ reaction, Kaskaskia is not a honeymoon haven. It is a working class city whose primary purpose is to load Illinois grain for shipment to the rest of the world. So no, I hadn’t “swept her off her feet.” And there were lots of other reasons why she might not be able to come. Things in her world were not going well. The fool who had killed the Arkansas lacrosse player was sitting in jail, charged with manslaughter. He had a good lawyer who had already found six other examples of lacrosse players being killed on the field. Granted, the last had been twenty years ago, but it’s not like it never happens (one more reason to prefer cricket). The killer had issued a tearful apology, and the team owners had said all the right things to the media, but a man was still dead, and the fans… well the fans were indicted in the court of public opinion. Every radio and TV pundit south of Missouri (and a few in Missouri) was making a living off a righteous indignation that boosted their ratings on a daily basis. They massaged their outrage on their talk shows, always finding some new wrinkle to keep the outrage white hot.
The response of the league had been to cancel all exhibition matches. This was no real sacrifice since most of the southern teams had already stated they would not play. Bowing to the obvious, the league cancelled all summer matches but left open the possibility of playing in the fall when the regular season began. Wishful thinking? Who knew?
Meanwhile, back on the reserve base in Arkansas, not much more had happened, but clearly the situation was not being resolved. There was no public announcement of strategy, but rumors all over town were that other training exercises had been postponed and no reservists would be going to camp this summer – there was too much risk of other commanders deciding they would take their bases off in some other direction. Other talk was of senior military men being evaluated and quite a few being forced into early retirement. But all this was rumor. What was the military really doing? I certainly didn’t know. I guessed Elise did know, but she could not tell me, and I would not ask. The only thing that was certain at the moment was that no shooting had started. I think that was the nightmare for all the folks in Green Bay – that some unit from the LNA or the reserve base would pull out weapons and open fire. So far, they hadn’t, but how long might that last?
Given all that, could Elise get leave? No one else had seen a day of vacation in over a year. For that matter, none of the senior people had seen a free weekend. Elise had risen so fast up the org chart she would be one of the last people they would let just wander off for a few days. Too many people depended upon her to make decisions. So the odds of her going with me to Kaskaskia were pretty minimal, but she promised to ask.
In the meantime, I did all the research on Kaskaskia I could from Green Bay. Why Kaskaskia? Because of the Illinois. This was the tribe that adored Father Marquette. When the French first came down the Mississippi in 1673, it was a group of Illinois that they met in Iowa – the first tribe they had encountered since leaving Green Bay. Leaving the other five traders to stay with the canoes, Marquette and Jolliet had followed some footsteps they had seen along the river bank, and walked to a village. Anything might have happened to two men alone on the prairie, but they were treated well, and thus began a long relationship between the French and the Illinois. On the way back north on the Mississippi (having essentially been chased out of Arkansas), they found another band of Illinois waiting for them at a large river, a river (the Illinois) that would provide a short cut to Lake Michigan.
Marquette and Jolliet traveled up the Illinois River with their Illinois guides, staying with them for several days at a large village near Peoria. Continuing up the river, they came to the portage at present day Chicago and paddled the length of Lake Michigan, adding knowledge of the lake to all they had already learned. The following year Marquette tried to return to the Illinois, but he had gotten ill while in Green Bay, and while he was able to make it down to the Illinois in time to perform Easter services, his health had deteriorated and he died soon after.
While much was made at the time of the Mississippi River discovery, from a practical stand point, it may be the discovery of the Illinois tribe that was more immediately important to the French. With the Iroquois to the east and the Sioux to the west, the French needed friends. It looked like the Illinois might be the perfect allies for them. They were strong, well organized, and placed perfectly to help with a French expansion through the Mississippi Valley. One source I found estimated there were ten thousand Illinois at the time of Jolliet’s first arrival. That was far more than all the French in North America. If they could stay friends, it would make a huge difference to the French.
What did the friendship give the Illinois? Yes, one of the immediate outcomes was an outbreak of European diseases that killed off much of the tribe over the next decades. And the Iroquois were even more predatory, killing off some of the confederated tribes along the eastern edge of Illinois lands. So being a French ally was costly. But there were shared communities established over the years where French traders lived among the Illinois, married, had children, and built lives.
One such community was Kaskaskia. Situated right on the Mississippi River, it was on some high ground that protected it from flooding, yet its location on the river also gave it easy access to other communities. It was from Kaskaskia that Claude Jolliet first took his grain boats south to feed New Orleans. It could be argued it was Kaskaskia that kept the Louisiana colony alive, not that folks down there were always grateful.
So why did I want to go to Kaskaskia? This is where north had first met south. The relationship had not always been perfect, not even in the early days, but there had been a relationship. Would a reminder of the early days help calm some people? Well, that seemed a stretch, but I am not an orator or a soldier, I am an historian. If I had anything to contribute to the current situation, it was history. So that is what I would do.
As I did my research, it was clear Elise was finding time to do some of her own. With a Ph.D. in demography, she had the talent and the resources to study the population of southern Illinois to a depth far beyond mine. Two days after I had brought up Kaskaskia, she managed to get home slightly after eight – a short day for her – and she filled me in as we worked on dinner.
“Do you have any idea how much food passes through Kaskaskia?” Talk about your classic rhetorical question, I had no idea, but it was clear she did. “They have measurements in metric tons for a variety of grains, but it turns out the numbers are so large they are really incomprehensible to people.”
“Really?”
“Well, that’s a bit of an overstatement. It turns out the guys who report the numbers could never get their superiors to grasp the quantities, so they came up with a new term they put in a private dictionary called ‘administrator-speak,’ also known on particularly bad days as ‘numbers for dummies.’ The term they invented was ‘France-feeding days.’ It means the quantity of a particular grain that would feed the entire population of France for a day. Somehow that worked better. Now their superiors could understand the quantities they were showing them.”
“Let me guess, they called it FFD so it sounded technical.”
“Not bad. You might have a future in bureaucracy.”
“And how many FFDs does Kaskaskia produce?
“Literally hundreds. The world has never seen a valley like the Mississippi. You name the grain, and the farms there can produce more there than anywhere else on the planet. The abundance is astonishing. And all those FFDs get put on barges and taken down the river. New Orleans lives off those barges, but so does much of the rest of the world.”
“Any chance the Minister will let you go down to Kaskaskia and look the place over?”
“I asked, and I think he is interested. Although he seemed a little nervous about me traveling with you.”
“Oh?”
“Well, you have to admi
t you don’t travel well. You get beat up in New Orleans, and then you go to Dakota and walk into a gun fight.”
“Yes, who knew visiting libraries could be so dangerous. But I’m worth the risk, right?” We had been working side by side in the kitchen, and as I asked, I moved closer to her. I managed to get one arm around her and pull her closer while she pretended to decide how much risk I might be worth. Apparently I am worth some risk, for our conversation turned from Kaskaskia to other matters. It was somewhat later that we got back to finishing dinner.
The next morning I started actually planning for the trip. Elise had not promised to go yet, but I loved the fact that she was at least trying. When was the last time we had been together on anything approaching a vacation? It was far too long.
So I started checking out hotels in Kaskaskia. If we were going, I wanted this to be memorable. But it only took me fifteen minutes to see the only memories we were likely to have might involve traffic noises all night and views of grain elevators in the moonlight. It appeared the last couple looking to Kaskaskia for a romantic weekend might have done so when people arrived by stage coach. The only people who went there now, went there to work.
So I put lodging on the back burner and moved on. What more could I learn while I waited for Elise to get away? It occurred to me I had read lots of background, but I had not talked with my best source – Claude Jolliet. I made a call to his appointments secretary and ended up with a long conversation about the sorry state of lacrosse, and eventually I also ended up with an appointment for later in the afternoon. I had barely put the phone down when the secretary called again. Now the appointment was for dinner, and I was to bring Elise. That necessitated a call to Elise who immediately agreed, even though it meant coming home from a work an hour or two earlier than normal - at least “normal” these days. My day was getting better.
I puttered around the office for a while, and then headed home to get cleaned up and changed before dinner. Elise arrived pretty soon after I did, even earlier than I had expected. She was all smiles and said she had a surprise for me. I was all smiles when she changed into an orange silk formal gown with long full skirts and a top cut low and lovely. My day just kept getting better.
I think I mentioned before the way they were handling security outside ex-President Jolliet’s house. The “road construction” was still underway, and presumably would stay under construction until tensions relaxed and people stopped trying to shoot him. I had to stop while a huge road grader was moved out of the way, but the guys standing at the work site never approached my car. I assume they had spotters telling them we were okay.
Up at the house Jolliet met us at the front door. Elise got a long hug and kiss from “Uncle Claude”, and I got a hug as well.
“Elise, you work from dawn to dusk, and still you stay beautiful.” There’s a reason why this guy won his elections in a landslide.
“You are too kind.”
“I think I am very honest. What do you say, Shawn, am I telling the truth?”
“I agree completely. But I must tell you she does not stop work at dusk.”
“Yes,” he frowned and his voice changed as he continued. “These are challenging times for our country, and the burden on our leaders is great. I am pleased you have the time to visit me.”
“We are grateful for the invitation,” Elise replied. As we talked, several security people drew closer, standing outside to shield us from any snipers across the road. They said nothing, but their purpose was clear. We were outside and exposed, and it would be best if we moved indoors. We moved deeper into the house as we talked.
“There will just be three of us for dinner this evening, so I was thinking we might eat in our grape arbor, but looking at your gown, Elise, it appears our formal dining room would be a better match.”
“No, please, I love the idea of eating outdoors. The winter was so long, I feel like breathing in all the fresh air I can.” Watching her breathe in that low cut gown, I have to admit I was all in favor of her breathing fresh air too.
“Then let’s try the arbor, but if it seems at all cool to you, we can move inside.” Jolliet led the way through the house and back out through two huge French doors. The arbor was sited so it sat atop the ridge that dominated the eastern side of Lake Winnebago. The view was to the west, over the lake to the Fox River that ran away to the horizon. I was always struck by the historic nature of the view. From this spot, Jolliet could look at the path his ancestor took on his way to the Mississippi and world fame. Elise sat between us, all three of us sitting on the eastern side of the table so we could enjoy the view of the lake and the approaching sunset.
“I understand a trip to Kaskaskia is in store.” Jolliet began once we were settled. A steward poured wine and laid out a tray of cheese.
“Yes, I was able to get permission to go with Shawn for a five day trip.” She turned to me. “That is my surprise. I had hoped for a weekend, but Etienne said I could have five days. I was worried that other people in the office might be jealous, but he told me he would be giving much of the staff a few days off. ‘Tired people make bad decisions’ was his explanation. I think maybe he is just as tired as we are, and we all need some time away.”
“Marvelous. I will start making hotel arrangements, but I have to warn you, accommodations might be somewhat basic.”
“I think I can help there,” Jolliet responded. “I made call a while ago after I learned where you would be going. There is a home on the river the family has used for many years. Call this number when you get to town, and they will guide you in.” He pulled a piece of paper from his coat pocket and passed it to Elise who passed it to me.
“Thank you. Since you know where we are going, I assume you also know why. It may be a small thing, but I want to look for bonds that might hold the country together – bonds that first linked the two colonies.”
“That is kind of you Shawn, and history is not a small thing. It helps us understand who we are.”
“I would think that is especially true if your name is Jolliet and your family has made much of the history.” I raised a glass at that point, and Elise and Jolliet joined me. “To go a bit further down that road, I once had a conversation with a librarian in New Orleans who said the two colonies were not naturally connected. Yes, there was the Mississippi River, but Quebec did much more trading with France, as did New Orleans than either city did with each other. Distances were too large and carrying capacity of river boats too small. He said the only thing holding the two colonies together was the Jolliet family.”
“He was too kind. But you are going to the real link – Kaskaskia. Once it was built, trade followed, and links grew. Did you know it was almost the capital of Canada?”
“It would be a poor substitute for Green Bay,” Elise responded.
“Not all the family agreed. Once he had seen the Illinois River and made connections with the Illinois bands, Louis wanted to start a major settlement in Chicago. Ultimately that would have made a good capital, since it had access to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. It was a logical choice, but one blocked by a not-so-logical king. As Kaskaskia grew, Claude thought it should be the capital, since it was about in the middle of the country. Clearly neither Quebec nor New Orleans could be chosen, so why not a city in the middle? But by then Green Bay had become very large, the Fox had been deepened to increase shipping, and it is nearly in the middle, so it was chosen.”
“I am glad. Where else would we have this view?” Elise pointed west. The sun was getting close enough to the horizon to already be changing the color of the waters in front of us. Gold streaks reached to us from the horizon.
“Yes, it is special.” I added. We had little to say for the next few minutes while we appreciated the view and watched the sun slowly decline. Stewards brought the first of several courses. French food is always good, but it seemed especially good sitting in that arbor.
r /> For the next hour or so we enjoyed the food and the view and exchanged pleasantries. I think both Elise and Jolliet appreciated having a conversation about nothing. Too many intense days and intense conversations had been a challenge to both of them no doubt. The chance to talk about this year’s grapes and this year’s garden was a relief.
I enjoyed the conversation as well, but after an hour I decided I would take the plunge and ask the questions I had planned. There were things I needed to know before we got to Kaskaskia.
“Your namesake, Claude Jolliet started the food supply trade, correct? He took a boat load of corn and squash to New Orleans. As I recall, they shot him. Do you mind talking a bit about him? What kind of man was he?”
“Elise, feel free to break in with other stories you might have heard, because there are many about Claude.” We were now at the cognac part of the meal. The plates had been cleared, the bottle was out, the snifters were warmed by the sun and the cognac glowed through the ball-shaped glasses. It was time to settle back for a long story, and I could see Jolliet was ready to do the telling.
“First, there have been lots of Claudes. Once when I was young, I spent a rainy day trying to count all the Claude Jolliets in the family. I came up with thirty four, but I was just a child. An adult with better research skills might have found a hundred. We seem to be a fixture over the centuries. The Claude who interests you so was Louis Jolliet’s grandson. His parents had grown up in Green Bay, and they had seen the town mature. By the time they were adults, the town even had streets – two of them. As adults they liked Green Bay, but it was a different place than where they had spent their childhood. Bears didn’t walk into town any more. The forest kept moving away from town as trees were taken. It was more open, and less interesting.
“So none of them was surprised that all their sons moved away from Green Bay. Between the four brothers they had nine sons, and all nine scattered. Two ended up back in France to fight in one war or another. One became a priest back in Quebec, living in some of the same places Louis had when he was considering the priesthood. The other six just went out. North, south, west, the direction didn’t matter. What they wanted was new. Whatever was on the other side of the next hill. And then the hill after that. They wanted to go out into the wilderness, and they did.
“All of them led fascinating lives, although not all of them were long lives. Claude left Green Bay when he was fifteen. He had a couple friends and a few things to trade, and he decided to take granddad’s route down the Mississippi. He made it all the way to New Orleans, but what he saw there was pretty disappointing. The Huguenots had not arrived yet and the governor appointed to run the colony was a drunk and a fool. Claude could see that things were not going well for the colony, but that was not his concern. He was just fifteen, he was looking to see what he could see, and he had seen New Orleans. Enough. He and his friends pointed their canoe back in the opposite direction and started paddling back north.
“It was the Illinois lands that got his attention. He liked the buffalo herds, and all the other game, and the corn fields, and the local tribes. So he stayed. His three friends liked hunting and fishing and the region had the best of both. So they stayed. They were gone three years. Mostly they stayed in Illinois camps near Kaskaskia and Peoria. They got better at the language, they made friends, and gradually they started finding wives. At age eighteen Claude finally came back to Green Bay for a visit, accompanied by a wife and son. There was a celebration, a baptism, a Catholic marriage, and then they were gone again – back to Kaskaskia.
“Claude was popular. The local Illinois band liked him, the traders who passed through the village liked him, and some of the boys he knew from a childhood in Green Bay liked him, so soon people started coming to Kaskaskia to visit and then just stayed. The village grew. Traders set out their wares in an open square, hunters brought in geese and ducks and deer and buffalo, there was always fish drying on racks along the river, and the bark houses that the Illinois built just kept getting larger and better constructed. They created a community.
“At what point did farming become significant?” I asked.
“The Illinois bands grew corn, beans, and squash for as long as anyone can remember. When added to the protein they were getting from all the game their hunters brought in, their health was pretty good. They had some stews that combined both vegetables and game, but I think we won’t see them in our local restaurants.”
“Oh?”
“The most popular stew was sagamite. It was a mixture of corn and fat from whatever game had been taken recently. The caloric count would have been through the roof, which was fine when people walked miles every day, or chased buffalo across the prairie. These days our doctors might object.”
“It would not surprise me if my dad has tried it,” Elise responded. “When he goes to hunting camp each fall the rule they have is they eat what they shoot. And he’s a pretty good cook. I went up with him several times before I went to college, and we ate well, although he tends to wild rice rather than corn.”
“That’s the Menominee blood in your family.”
“Could I get us back to farming?” I was worried I would hear an endless conversation about cooking and ethnicity if I wasn’t careful. “At some point the area around Kaskaskia goes from growing enough corn and beans to feed themselves, to growing enough for export. Is that Claude’s doing?”
“No, that’s his wife Yvette. Farming was generally considered woman’s work, and she was involved at an early age. But while the prairie has top soil that goes down three or four feet, it is covered with prairie grasses that have roots almost that deep. Digging in with sticks to plant corn kernels is unbelievably hard. She did it for years, but then one day one of Claude’s old muskets disappeared. She took it to a man who did some smithing on the side, had the barrel reshaped, made room for handles, and essentially created the first stick that would cut through the grasses quickly. She also did one more thing. Rather than cut the same number of holes she had with a stick, she used the same number of days for planting and ended up with three times the number of corn plants.”
“So she tripled her productivity.” Not sure why I said that other than to prove I could do math and knew what “productivity” meant.
“Yes, and being every bit as popular as Claude, when the ladies of the village saw her results, suddenly more old muskets made a trip to the smithy. Within a year the village had lots of extra corn.”
“So now Claude has something to trade – his wife’s corn.”
“Yes, but he also needs a way to move it. The canoes of the time were pretty large – five or six meters – but by the time you put people in them, the cargo space is pretty restricted, too restricted for a cargo like corn where you need large quantities to have anything worth paddling all the way down the river. But people were building boats. Here in the Great Lakes Sturgeon Bay and Marinette build the big lake boats that can handle the storms. The Mississippi needed different boats. They needed to have shallow drafts to go over shallow parts of the river and over all the debris that keeps washing into the river. It took a generation to get those river boats right, but Claude bought one of the first boats and that is what he took to New Orleans with his corn.”
“As I recall, he was successful the first time, but got shot the second time.”
“The first time he was a hero. They were short on food, the local farms had yet to produce anything, the boat from Havre was months late… Basically, he saved their lives. He was also paid very well. Two years later, the local farmers had just produced a saleable crop, and had planned on earning some money. Just then Claude came to town with better food at lower prices.”
“So he goes from savior to competitor.”
“Exactly. The local farmers objected to the outsider taking their sales, a fight broke out, and there was some shooting. Claude got hit. Fortunately it was not too serious, but h
e made no sales in New Orleans that year. They poled up to Baton Rouge and sold the corn and beans there.”
“Then there was a tariff on corn?”
“The local farmers got the Louisiana governor to put a tax on imported grain. That helped the farms fight the competition, but it raised prices for everyone else. Pretty soon there was pressure to drop the tariff so food prices would go down. It took about four years to settle out. That’s how long it took the local entrepreneurs to determine what they could sell to Claude that would equal the price of the corn, and for the local farmers to produce other crops that would be good alternatives to corn – like rice. Each region had advantages for one kind of product or another; it just took them a while to determine what those products might be.”
“That gives me an idea.” Suddenly Elise was sitting up straighter. The casual talk-after-cognac moment was over for her. “Tariffs. If Louisiana were a separate country, we and they would impose tariffs on trade, right?”
“The tariffs would need to fall within WTO rules, but yes, there would probably be tariffs.” Jolliet replied. “But I think I see where you are going. Take it the next step.”
“I am not sure we have looked at the economic ramifications of secession, and I’ll bet they haven’t either. You would think some businesses down there would now be at a major competitive disadvantage if they wanted to keep selling to former customers up north. All their transaction costs would go up from the tariffs. For Green Bay consumers, furniture from Louisiana would now be more expensive than the same furniture from Missouri.”
“I wonder if some of the business people funding the LNA have thought about that,” Jolliet responded. He was also sitting up much straighter. Story time was over.
“Maybe it is time we did an education campaign,” Elise continued. “We would need to do some research on which companies and which industries, but we could initiate tariffs on select “foreign” good unilaterally and quickly. The costs would be clear to all.”
“Essentially you would be creating a ‘secession tax’.” Jolliet was smiling a very large smile. He liked the idea.
“It will take some careful research and subtle messaging, but if we can do this quickly, we might be able to change a few minds before it is too late.”
“Do it. It might cut the money supply to some hot heads down there.” At that point they were both up and heading toward the house. It looked like they would implement their plan instantly. I followed along, walking fast just to keep up. Back in the house, they were both saying their good-byes as they walked down the main hallway. There were brief hugs and kisses and then Jolliet headed for his office and we were out to the car. Elise’s idea would be executed yet that night. As it turned out, that speedy response also saved our lives.