16 



THE FOREST PRESERVES 



This "Mission of Guardian Angel", founded there because 

 of the popularity of a portage between that point on the North 

 Branch and the southward flowing waters of the Desplaines, 

 and the Durantye fort, 1686, near the river mouth, constituted 

 the French effort toward settlement of Cook County. 



In 1699 opposition to the Jesuits resulted in abandonment 

 of Father Pinet's mission and for almost a century the tribes of 

 red men held full sway throughout the country, and, in fact, 

 throughout the entire Northwest. Indian hostility forced prac- 

 tical abandonment of the "Checaugau portages" by white men. 



It was during that period that the Pottowatomies, having 

 demonstrated their right to the territory by many bloody wars 

 fought on the shores of the Desplaines, Chicago and Calumet 

 rivers, developed the "Indian Cook County" evidenced in the 

 chain of villages and forts connecting trails. 



EXPLORING THE SALT CREEK REGION. 



It was of these Indians our county's first inhabitants 

 that Judge Caton, close student of redman traits, wrote, "They 

 despised the cultivation of the soil as too mean even for their 

 women and children, and deemed the captures of the chase the 

 only fit food for a valorous people." 



Yet it was the Pottowatomies that gave us those "good 

 Indians", Alexander Robinson and Billy Caldwell (Sauganash) 

 whose names have been written indelibly into Cook County's 

 history and of whom you will hear more later. And Grover, 

 writing of the Pottowatomies of the Woods, credited them with 

 "becoming in time a different people; they were susceptible to 

 the influence of civilization and religion ; and took kindly to 

 agriculture to supplement the fruits of the chase." 



