Tragic Curse Of Kaskaskia – The First Capital Of Illinois

Ellen Lloyd – AncientPages.com – You can still find the city of Kaskaskia on maps, but legends tell people ceased to live there when a very angry man cursed the place.  Kaskaskia, the first capital of Illinois, USA, once had a population of about 10,000 people. Still, the city could not recover after a catastrophe, and those who survived had to move elsewhere.

There are different versions of the Kaskaskia curse, and who cursed the city is unclear. According to one legend, a priest cursed the inhabitants of Kaskaskia and asked God to destroy the ground where people built their homes. Another legend tells the sad story of a young Native American man who fell in love with the daughter of a French settler. Her father didn’t want to approve the union of the couple and killed the Indian who swore to seek revenge after his death, cursing the city of Kaskaskia.

The Curse Of The Priest In Kaskaskia

“The story of this remarkable priest and the curse has come down from father to son through a long line of old French settlers and inhabitants of the place, several of whom now reside in Chester.

The legend or tradition runs like this: During the height of gayety and fashion holding sway, when Kaskaskia was a city of perhaps 10,000 people, the Bishop, hearing of the people's laxity in religious concerns, sent a conscientious and courageous priest there with instructions to inaugurate a new regime in the spiritual and moral condition of the dwellers in the Lord's vineyard.

USGS topographic map of Kaskaskia, Illinois, and surrounding area. Credit: Public Domain

When the holy man reached his field of labor he was painfully surprised to discover that his services were badly needed and that vigorous measures were necessary, and he forthwith called a halt. He told his flock of their sins and laid the truth before them with such boldness and denunciation that his hearers, at first alarmed, murmured and next rebelled.

It was the priest laid on the lash of truth. It scored them so roundly that it soon became unbearable to the gay devotees of one pure shrine for the Sabbath and six other altars of varied hue the rest of the week. They at length took the reverend gentleman by force to the shores of the Mississippi River and put him in an open shell of a boat, without oars or food, compass or guide, turned him adrift upon the murking waters. At the same time, the crowd was inflamed with excitement and drink, and they shouted in derision.

It is said that as the boat drifted away from the bank, the holy father stood up, bareheaded, and with arms lifted toward the heavens, poured forth through pallid lips the most terrible curses his insulted and injured manhood could command.

He cursed the people in all degrees of life; he anathematized the fields and crops; he asked God to destroy and utterly obliterate the very ground upon which the people had built their homes and wished that the river might flow across their gardens and carry them in grains of sand to the ocean.

As long as his voice was audible and long after his black-robed figure had disappeared in the darkness of the night, his audience, now awed and hushed by his horrible words, heard in silence his parting malediction.

He never was seen or heard of again.

The mob, feeling like murderers, told their children and grandchildren the strange story in the firm belief that the curse would be fulfilled.

Some still believe the priest cursed Kaskaskia. Credit: Public Domain 

Whether or not this incident had any or could have any influence upon the history of Kaskaskia no one can tell, but everyone knows that the capital of the State was removed to Vandalia; that commercial interests sought other markets; high water drove away from the nuns and their school, and the inhabitants gradually drifted about to part.” ¹

Did A Murdered Native American Young Man Curse Kaskaskia?

Another sad story tells of a skilled, young Native American man who, in 1735, was employed by a rich fur trader named Bernard.

Bernard was not a very pleasant man, and he didn’t have an opinion of Native Americans. Still, he tolerated his employee until problems arose when the young man and his daughter Marie fell in love. That his beloved daughter would marry a red man was unacceptable, and Bernard fired the Indian. He also made sure the young man was blacklisted around the town. No one in Kaskaskia gave the Indian work, and he was eventually forced to leave. Before his departure, he promised Marie, whom he loved, that he would return to her.

Marie waited, and one year later, the young Indian returned as he had promised. His return made Bernard furious, but this was just the beginning of a tragedy.

Marie and the Indian “got together and headed north, out of Kaskaskia and away from Bernard. This really set Bernard off, and he got together a posse and charged off after them, eventually running the pair to the ground near Cahokia. Unhinged by this point, Bernard ordered his trapper cronies to tie the Indian to a log and set him adrift to drown in the Mississippi. Over Marie’s protests they did, and before the Indian died, he swore a curse. Before the year was out, he said, Bernard would be dead, and he and Marie would be together forever.

Kaskaskia and all of its land would be ruined, its churches and houses destroyed, and its dead turned out of their graves. Fast forward a year. Marie died, and Bernard challenged a business partner to a duel. One pistol shot later, he was dead, too.

Over the next hundred years, as the river’s channels shifted, Kaskaskia suffered so many floods that it became cut off from the mainland. People began to abandon the town, and it slowly died. It wasn’t until 1973 that the church and altar were flooded and destroyed; long before that, the cemetery had been washed away and all the bodies lost to the river.” ²

Curse or no curse, whatever the truth may be behind these legends, it seems that Kaskaskia was never meant to be.

Updated on June 24, 2024

Written by Ellen Lloyd – AncientPages.com

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