Early Environmental Conditions

Water quality, flow, and wildlife of the Illinois River, as well as characteristics of the areas adjacent to the river can only be inferred from the writings of travelers since the documentation of water quality and wildlife is not then an established scientific practice.

The following are samples of the observations of early travelers from which we can almost visualize the clear waters of the Illinois River and its abundant wildlife that existed before the settlers begin to arrive:

Father Jacques Marquette writes in 1673:

We have seen nothing like this river that we enter, as regards its fertility of soil, its prairies and woods; its cattle (buffalo), elk, deer, wildcats, bustards, swans, ducks parroquets, and even beaver. In the spring and during part of the summer there is only one portage of half a league (at the Chicago River) ... There are mane small lakes and rivers. That on which we navigate is wide, deep and still for 65 leagues (about 180 miles) (Cruikshank 1998); and,

From time to time, we came upon monstrous fish, one of which struck our canoe with such violence that I thought it was a great tree, about to break the canoe in pieces. (Franke 1995).

Louis Jolliet writes to Father Claudius, his superior:

The River which we have named the St. Louis (Illinois) and which rises near the lower end of the Lake of Illinois (Michigan) seemed to me to be the most beautiful and the most suitable place for settlement...This river is wide and deep, filled with catfish and sturgeons. Game is there in abundance-oxen, cows, stags, does, turkeys-in much greater numbers than elsewhere... (Cruikshank 1998).

In 1680, Rene Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle, while traveling the Illinois River, provides a description that suggests the occurrence of sedimentation, a form of non-point source pollution:

The prairies over which communication is maintained are flooded by the great volume of water flowing down from the neighboring hills whenever it rains. It is very difficult to maintain a canal that does not immediately fill up with sand and gravel... (Cruikshank 1998).