Kankakee

The Kankakee River formed part of a water route linking the Great Lakes with the Illinois country. A short portage near present South Bend connected it to the Saint Joseph River. In 1679 La Salle and his companions travelled along these waterways, carrying their expedition from one drainage basin to the other.

They descended a winding Kankakee through a broad landscape of marshes, swamps and dunes, rich in fish, waterfowl and mammals. The river’s value lay both in this abundance and in its place within a chain of navigable waters. La Salle’s expedition sought trade and French expansion toward the Mississippi, but its passage also depended on a landscape whose routes and resources had long sustained Indigenous communities.