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| Fort de Buade | |
|---|---|
 Museum of Ojibwa Culture | |
| Site information | |
| Type | Fort |
| Controlled by | New France |
 | |
| Site history | |
| Built | 1683 |
| In use | 1683-1701 |
| Battles/wars | Iroquois Wars - War with the English |
| Fort de Buade Informational Designation | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Location | 396 North State Street St. Ignace, Michigan |
| Coordinates | 45°52′07″N84°43′45″W / 45.868691°N 84.729137°W /45.868691; -84.729137 |
| Designated | September 25, 1956 |
  Location within the state of Michigan | |
Fort de Buade was aFrenchfort in the presentU.S. state ofMichigan'sUpper Peninsula across theStraits of Mackinac from the northern tip of lower Michigan's "mitten". It was garrisoned between 1683 and 1701. The city ofSt. Ignace developed at the site, which also had the historicSt. Ignace Mission founded byJesuits. The fort was named after New France's governor at the time,Louis de Buade de Frontenac.
TheFrench-Canadian settlement at St. Ignace began with the Mission of Saint Ignace, founded by FatherJacques Marquette, S.J. in 1671. By 1680 it had become a considerable community consisting of the mission, a French village of a dozen cabins, aWyandot (Huron) Indian village surrounded by a wooden palisade and an adjacentOdawa (Ottawa) village, also behind a palisade. In 1681, the Huron andIlliniwek at St. Ignace killed theSeneca 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, GovernorJoseph-Antoine de La Barre orderedDaniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut andOlivier Morel de La Durantaye to establish a strategic presence on the north shore of theStraits of Mackinac, connectingLake Michigan andLake 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); andFort 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 theBeaver Wars as they sought to gain more hunting ground to control the lucrative fur trade. That summer, and again in 1687, La Durantaye ledcoureurs 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 atMichilimackinac. 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 commandantLouis de La Porte de Louvigné.
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 GovernorLouis de Buade de Frontenac sent an aggressive young protégé,Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, to run the post. Cadillac made a small fortune as the post commander, possibly by collectingbribes. In 1697, the Huron chiefKondiaronk 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 adjacentJesuit 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 byEtienne de Carheil, accused Cadillac of encouraging the sale and trading ofbrandy to theNative 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 byAlphonse Tonti, brother of the explorerHenri de Tonti. In 1701, Cadillac asked permission from Paris to found a new post on theDetroit 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 ofDetroit.
The final fate of Fort de Buade is unclear. After the withdrawal of the garrison,coureurs de bois continued to frequent Michilimackinac. GovernorPhilippe de Rigaud Vaudreuil used these traders to smuggle goods to the northern nations during theWar of the Spanish Succession, despite the objections ofJérôme Phélypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain. Among his agents was thevoyageur 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 atEast 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 woodenstockade. 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.
Between 1701 and 1715 there was no official French-Canadian presence at the Straits of Mackinac. Unlicensed fur trading bycoureurs des bois no doubt continued during this period. In 1715 a French detachment underConstant 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, calledFort Michilimackinac, was built on the south shore of the Straits. Present-dayMackinaw 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.
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45°52′02″N84°43′23″W / 45.86722°N 84.72306°W /45.86722; -84.72306
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