Ann Durkin Keating

So you could portage.

There wasn't a river initially, but you could portage between those two waterways.

And Indigenous people for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years have been using this, the paths between those two waterways.

So it's been a very valuable space in that way.

It's also, I mean, Chicago is also interesting because it's on the intersection of the eastern woodlands.

So Afghanian people really come out of the woodlands of the east and they have a culture and customs that come out of the east.

We're on the dividing line here at Chicago between that eastern woodland and the prairie.

So the prairie starts just, again, we've got patches of prairie and woodlawn here in northeast Illinois.

To your point, it really defines this, the idea that there are waves of different groups of indigenous people that are going to claim and live and utilize the natural resources in this region over time.

Some of them coming out of the west, the Sioux and the Ho-Chunk,

coming from the south with Cahokia, and then the Donkey and Pepe, the Illinois Confederacy and the Miami.

Again, all at various points in time have claimed this region.

Yeah, the French are a vital piece of this colonial story of Europeans arriving in this region.

So the French are up in Canada, so in Quebec, and also in the Caribbean and New Orleans, eventually New Orleans, but in the Caribbean and up in Canada.

And this territory between...

And that includes them, what they called the Illinois country, after the Illinois Confederacy, is between those two.

That space between them is a territory that the French are interested in claiming as colonial holding.

They're interested in creating trading partners.

They're interested in, again, in exploring.

They're looking for the Pacific Ocean.