Mark Walczynski - The History of Starved Rock

Throughout its long history, Starved Rock has been known by many names. Lost to time, today we can only know some of these, and only those that come to us from the relatively recent past since the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Names such as Le Rocher (the Rock) and Rockfort have been used to describe Starved Rocks formidability. During the last one hundred fifty years, titles such as the Gibraltar of the West boasted of the site as a place of strategic defense, ironically during times of general peace and prosperity that earlier occupants of the Starved Rock area never enjoyed. Despite the colorful characterizations that these names conjure up, very little is known about the history of the famous rock.

While archaeologists, historians, and students of the French period in the upper Illinois Valley are familiar with the names of Marquette, Jolliet, La Salle, Tonti, and Charlevoix, it has been my experience that few know much about the wonderful eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and early twentieth-century history of Starved Rock. When surveying people with some knowledge of it, the most common narrative recounted is one of an Indian tribe taking refuge atop Starved Rock while the tribes Indian enemies took up the watch below. Unable to hunt for food, the people atop the rock starved, thus providing the name for that place. In fact, this is simply a legenda tale of carnage, bloodshed, and revenge that became enhanced and altered in each retelling, at a time when communications over long distances were unreliable. The legend has become part of the fabric of the place called Starved Rock and still provides an interesting footnote. More interesting and exciting is the real history of the site. It is one that resides in the deep recesses of both public and private historical collections, in archival libraries of Canada and France, and in the archaeological record. Unlike the word-of-mouth legend, the factual history of this place has not been easily or eagerly passed down through generations. The history of Starved Rock relies not on tales of bloodshed and revenge but on the unique strategic and international significance of Starved Rock, from the first days of the French in the Illinois Country.

The forces of nature exemplified by warming, cooling, and flooding carved and scraped Starved Rock into what it is today. Glaciers that had once spread across the North American continent had acted like huge, mile-high snowplows pushing debris, rocks, and other material from the north and into Illinois. We can see evidence of the glaciers thrust southward in glacial debrisformed C-shaped hills called moraines, where today on their summits, wind turbines harness another force of nature. About 18,000 years ago, the land that was to become Starved Rock lay beneath the massive weight of the glaciers. Back and forth these mountains of ice had moved, flowing south when the Earths temperatures cooled, and conversely melting and withdrawing when temperatures warmed. Eventually, the climate warmed and the glaciers began to melt, trapping water behind the moraines. When these glacially made dams could no longer hold the ever-increasing volume of water behind them, they gave way. Water poured over the landscape and eventually carved out the Illinois Valley. The powerful torrents, however, could not raze the sandstone at all places in the valley. Instead, massive flows of meltwater cut channels around the sandstone, forming islands that include what is now Buffalo Rock and Starved Rock. When the ice disappeared and the waters subsided, plants and animals again populated the valley and eventually people began moving into the Starved Rock area. Since that time, land that today comprises Starved Rock State Park and the adjacent countryside was nearly continuously occupied by Native Americans until the early nineteenth century. Items manufactured and used by the Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian cultures have been found throughout the Starved Rock area. Although the Rock itself was not an occupied Native American site per se , like a semi-permanent village, it was a place where, for millennia, Native Americans camped, sojourned, and in a few instances had their earthly remains interred. With the advent of agriculture, small-scale villages were established nearby and grew over time. West and north of Starved Rock, along the ancient river channels that once crisscrossed the Illinois Valley, aboriginal people hunted, fished, and farmed. Most researchers believe that these adaptive and industrious people, living in a culture in which iron and steel had yet to be introducedfrom approximately 10,000 years ago until about the mid-1600s,made the best technology out of what nature provided, continually adapting and improving methods and tools they employed to kill fish and game, cook and store food, construct dwellings, and manufacture watercraft. Oblivious to the movement of Europeans from the Old World to the New, the Indians in the Starved Rock area established a village named Kaskaskia, after the Illinois subtribe that lived there, just upstream from the Rock. European trade goods that made the chores of killing, cleaning, and cooking easier, reached the Kaskaskia a decade or so before French missionaries and traders made their debut at Starved Rock. To facilitate trade with the Illinois and other tribes who lived in the Starved Rock area, men working under the direction of Ren-Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, built Fort St. Louis on the summit of the Rock during the winter of 16821683. In 1691, the Kaskaskia Indians and the other Illinois subtribes that lived near the fort moved away when the areas natural resources could no longer sustain their growing population. With both religious and financial interests bound to the Indians, the French followed. Two decades later, the Peoria Indiansanother Illinois subtribeand a few Frenchmen would return to the upper Illinois Valley to live in relative obscurity. By the early nineteenth century, American frontier settlers would arrive and change the entire dynamic of the Starved Rock area. Their attitudes concerning the use of lands and waterways, and their exploitation of natural resources, embodied values that would have seemed utterly foreign to the Indians who proceeded them.

Starved Rock became Illinois second state park in 1911 and first opened to the public under state management in 1912. The purchase of Starved Rock was in itself a remarkable bit of foresightedness by the State of Illinois, one which may have saved the site from ultimate destruction. As a state park, Starved Rock has been visited by millions of people, many of whom have come to see the bald eagles, view the beautiful Illinois Valley, or simply to relax. The Starved Rock Hotel, built in 1891, was an important place for visitors to stay and get a good meal. Over Labor Day weekend, in 1923, Starved Rock State Park hosted over 50,000 visitors, many of whom drove to the site in simple automobiles10,000 of themover narrow country roads.