French colonial fort in present-day St. Ignace, Michigan, USA (1683?1701)
Fort de Buade
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![](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bd/2009-0618-StIgnace-MuseumMission.jpg/250px-2009-0618-StIgnace-MuseumMission.jpg) Museum of Ojibwa Culture
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Type
| Fort
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Controlled by
| New France
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Built
| 1683
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In use
| 1683-1701
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Battles/wars
| Iroquois Wars - War with the English
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Fort de Buade
was a
French
fort
in the present
U.S. state
of
Michigan
's
Upper Peninsula
across the
Straits of Mackinac
from the northern tip of lower Michigan's "mitten". It was garrisoned between 1683 and 1701. The city of
St. Ignace
developed at the site, which also had the historic
St. Ignace Mission
founded by
Jesuits
. The fort was named after New France's governor at the time,
Louis de Buade de Frontenac
.
Mission
[
edit
]
The
French-Canadian
settlement at St. Ignace began with the Mission of Saint Ignace, founded by Father
Jacques Marquette
, S.J. in 1671. By 1680 it had become a considerable community consisting of the mission, a French village of a dozen cabins, a
Wyandot (Huron)
Indian village surrounded by a wooden palisade and an adjacent
Odawa (Ottawa)
village, also behind a palisade. In 1681, the Huron and
Illiniwek
at St. Ignace killed the
Seneca
chief Annanhac, who had been leading his forces against the western peoples. The Seneca were part of the Iroquois Confederacy based in present-day New York state.
Sharp practice
by the fur traders also caused tensions. In 1683, Governor
Joseph-Antoine de La Barre
ordered
Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut
and
Olivier Morel de La Durantaye
to establish a strategic presence on the north shore of the
Straits of Mackinac
, connecting
Lake Michigan
and
Lake Huron
of the Great Lakes. They fortified the Jesuit mission and La Durantaye settled in as overall commander of the French forts in the northwest:
Fort Saint Louis des Illinois
(
Utica, Illinois
);
Fort Kaministigoya
(
Thunder Bay, Ontario
); and
Fort la Tourette
(
Lake Nipigon, Ontario
). He was also responsible for the region around Green Bay in present-day Wisconsin.
In the spring of 1684, La Durantaye led a relief expedition from Saint Ignace to Fort Saint Louis des Illinois, which had been besieged by the Seneca as part of the
Beaver Wars
as they sought to gain more hunting ground to control the lucrative fur trade. That summer, and again in 1687, La Durantaye led
coureurs de bois
and Indians from the Straits against the Seneca homeland in upstate New York. During these years, English traders from New York entered the Great Lakes and traded at
Michilimackinac
. This, and the outbreak of war between England and France in 1689, led to the construction of Fort de Buade in 1690 by the new commandant
Louis de La Porte de Louvigne
.
Forts
[
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]
Fort de Buade at St. Ignace
[
edit
]
During the 1690s, the fort became a staging area for French and Indian attacks against the Seneca, who were then allied to the English. It remained an important fur trading center and a distribution point for arms and munitions for the war against the Iroquois. In 1694 Governor
Louis de Buade de Frontenac
sent an aggressive young protege,
Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac
, to run the post. Cadillac made a small fortune as the post commander, possibly by collecting
bribes
. In 1697, the Huron chief
Kondiaronk
from Michilimackinac led an attack on the Seneca at Lake Erie. He gained a crushing victory and dashed the Seneca hopes for victory against the French. Four years later, Kondiaronk took a leading role in forging the Great Peace of Montreal, which would conclude the war.
Relations between the fort and the adjacent
Jesuit
mission were not good during Cadillac's tenure. La Durantaye had ruled Michilimackinac with a firm hand. He controlled the trade in brandy, policed the fur trade, and kept the traders in line. An honest man, he would spend the last years of his life in relative poverty. Cadillac did not hold to these standards. He brought in for sale much of the alcohol at the post. The missionaries, led by
Etienne de Carheil
, accused Cadillac of encouraging the sale and trading of
brandy
to the
Native Americans
. Cadillac may have seen this move as a necessary tactic to check the English traders. In any case, he used it as a tactic in his own financial plans.
Despite Cadillac's liquor trade, Anglo-French commercial competition continued. Cadillac was replaced as commandant by
Alphonse Tonti
, brother of the explorer
Henri de Tonti
. In 1701, Cadillac asked permission from Paris to found a new post on the
Detroit River
, to interdict the flow of British trade goods into the Lake Huron area. In that sense, the Fort de Buade garrison was related to development of the future city of
Detroit
.
The final fate of Fort de Buade is unclear. After the withdrawal of the garrison,
coureurs de bois
continued to frequent Michilimackinac. Governor
Philippe de Rigaud Vaudreuil
used these traders to smuggle goods to the northern nations during the
War of the Spanish Succession
, despite the objections of
Jerome Phelypeaux
, comte de Pontchartrain. Among his agents was the
voyageur
Daniel Amiot de Villeneuve. Unless the fort was destroyed when the garrison was evacuated, Vaudreuil's men likely used it to store goods intended for the Indians, until the new fort was completed on the south side of the Straits (1715). After this date few French remained at
East Moran Bay
. The fort was either destroyed or fell into disrepair and eventually disappeared.
The 1690-1701 Fort de Buade was probably built as a wooden
stockade
. It is believed to have been located on a site within the current municipality of St. Ignace, possibly on a hill above East Moran Bay locally called "Fort Hill." The fort could also have been located on the bay's waterfront. As of October 2022
[update]
the fort's remains had not yet been found.
Successor fort near Mackinaw City
[
edit
]
Between 1701 and 1715 there was no official French-Canadian presence at the Straits of Mackinac. Unlicensed fur trading by
coureurs des bois
no doubt continued during this period. In 1715 a French detachment under
Constant le Marchand de Lignery
re-established a presence at the Straits of Mackinac to prepare for war against the Fox nation in Wisconsin (
Fox Wars
). The new post, called
Fort Michilimackinac
, was built on the south shore of the Straits. Present-day
Mackinaw City
, Michigan developed near it. Most of the Huron migrated south to Detroit with Cadillac in 1701. The Ottawa moved from East Moran Bay to the new fort, and the St. Ignace area was largely abandoned until the nineteenth century.
References
[
edit
]
- Timothy J. Kent,
Rendezvous at the Straits: Fur Trade and Military Activities at Fort de Buade and Fort Michilimackinac, 1669-1781
- Claiborne A. Skinner,
The Upper Country: French Enterprise in the Colonial Great Lakes
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008)
- William J. Eccles,
Frontenac: The Courtier Governor
(Toronto: Mclelland & Stewart, 1957)
- Gilles Havard,
The Great Peace of 1701
(Montreal: MacGill-Queen's University Press, 2001)
External links
[
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]
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45°52′02″N
84°43′23″W
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45.86722°N 84.72306°W
/
45.86722; -84.72306