By Staff
NILES – Support the Fort, Inc announces that local historian, Barbara Wood Cook of Niles, will present a talk about the Pottawatomie and French in the area around Fort Saint Joseph in what is now Niles.
The presentation will be Tuesday, Aug. 28, at the Niles Senior Center, 1109 Bell Road, Niles at 7 p.m. This is open to the public and all are welcome.
A synopsis of the presentation follows:
It was not alcohol, European-style warfare or advanced weapons that destroyed the Indians of North America; it was mostly European diseases like chicken pox, measles, jaundice, diphtheria, influenza, mumps and small pox – the most deadly killer of all.
New France wanted to strengthen its ties with the Potawatomi and Miami Indians along the Saint Joseph River as well as provide some protection for the natives against the Iroquois threat to the colony's western posts.
The garrison at Fort Saint Joseph was never large, but was able to keep up peaceful relations with the Native American. A number of licensed traders kept their stores within the fort's palisades for safety in case of an attack.
Many young European men went west in the 1600 and 1700s to trade with the Indians and they adopted native habits and customs. Unlike Europeans, Indians did not use race as the basis for exclusion from their societies, the children of those unions were welcomed into tribal life. The children were called Metis.
Fort Saint Joseph was a staging area for the French during King George's War 1740-1748 and the continuing Indian incursions on the upper country posts until 1750.
George Washington killed a young French Marine raised at Fort St. Joseph and thus started the first world war.