The Negro in Illinois: The WPA Papers

1. First, the French

1. First, the French There are three drafts of this chapter. Two early versions are located in the Illinois Writers’ Project papers housed at the Harsh Research Collection. The earliest version was written by Robert Lucas. A third draft, the one used here, was written by Arna Bontemps and found in the Bontemps papers at Syracuse University with minor editorial changes in Bontemps’s handwriting, which have been incorporated by the editor. Background for this and the subsequent chapters on early Illinois history came from two notable essays. One is “A Sociological History of the Negro in Chicago,” a 137-page unpublished thesis by L. D. Reddick, produced as one of the WPA studies supervised under Horace Cayton and Lloyd Warner. The other is an essay written by Fenton Johnson and dated January 1, 1941, which begins with the early French in Illinois, mentions its first black settler Du Sable, discusses slavery before and after emancipation, and ends with Johnson’s reflecting on the modern presence of the Ku Klux Klan, which he predicted would “melt as the snow flakes before the scorching sun.” In the spring of 1719 Phillip Francois Renault, a banker of Paris, set out on the adventure of his life. Versed in mining, he assembled complete tools, equipment, ships and men to develop mining interests for the company of St. Phillipe, a subsidiary of the Western Company. Of course, mineral treasures had not yet been found in Upper Louisiana, the area in which this group had rights, but one gathers that Renault had seen visions of a vast wealth buried in the American wilderness. Forty-five days later, his ships entered the palm-fringed harbor of Cap Haitien, and Renault undoubtedly had occasion to compliment himself on getting “away from it all.” But business was business, and the erstwhile banker was not in Haiti to sniff the fragrance of the tropics. He had stopped to purchase slaves. This he did forthwith, 500 of them to supplement the 250 miners and workers he had brought out from Paris. From the Haitian capital Renault sailed to New Orleans and continued up the river. Arriving in the vicinity of St. Philippe (Illinois), he and his party found a few forts erected by the French following the explorations of La Salle and Marquette. Prairie du Rocher, Cahokia, and Kaskasia were the most prominent of these settlements. Dolinar_Text.indd 1 3/14/13 9:59 AM 2 Chapter One Renault’s men prospected in the region of St. Philippe until 1744, but little came of their efforts. Then, perhaps discouraged, perhaps hungering for the glitter of his native Paris, Renault suddenly decided to pull out. He disposed of his slaves to the inhabitants of the district and returned home. Renault’s unsuccessful mining venture succeeded in establishing slavery in Illinois. The small farmers who purchased his slaves used them for domestic and farm labor. These Negroes “were treated everywhere with much leniency and kindness . . . and their children were taught the catechism.” By 1778 half of Kaskasia’s population of one thousand were Negro slaves. They were not at that time subject to the rigid enforcement of the Black Code as were the slaves in the southern districts of Louisiana. Hence in this country, where women were scarce, there was considerable intermarriage, the unions being sanctioned and solemnized by the Roman Catholic clergy of the community. The scanty documentary records of colonial Illinois include the report of a crude census conducted in 1732. Negroes at that time numbered 69 men, 33 women, and 64 children, as compared with 159 white men, 39 women, and an uncertain number of children. In 1750 a certain Monsieur Vivier, missionary to the Illinois Indians, described the region around Kaskasia in the following passage: We have here whites, negroes, and Indians, to say nothing of the cross breeds. . . . There are five French villages and three villages of the natives within a space of twenty one leagues. . . . In the five French villages there are perhaps 1,100 whites, 300 blacks and some sixty red slaves or savages. The three Illinois towns do not contain more than 800 souls (native) all told. There is a certain vagueness in these categories, for the French did not usually hold mulattoes in strict bondage, and they were often numbered with the white population. On the other hand, no distinction was made between Indian-white mixed bloods and Negro-white mulattoes. Another census was taken in 1752. This one revealed the presence of...