1781: The Spanish flag on Lake Michigan or the forgotten conquest of Fort St. Joseph

In early January 1781, instigated by two Indian chiefs allied with the Milwaukee nation, Heturno and Naquiguen , a motley expedition of French officers, Canadians and settler militia , joined by other Indians from the riverside tribes of the Illinois, left the city of St. Louis and headed north up the frozen Mississippi that descended in large icicles from the Great Lakes.

It is commanded by the captain of the Second Company of Militias of San Luis de Ilinueses, Eugene Pourée , nicknamed Beausoleil, with the objective of reaching the insignificant English fort of San José on the river of the same name that flows a little further north into Lake Michigan. Strange as it may seem, and despite the fact that they are native Indians commanded by French officers and together with settlers and Canadians, it is a purely Spanish mission that will be important for the international politics of the Kingdom of Spain of Charles III .

Some 200 men who climb into the elongated canoes made of birch, oak or poplar logs that have been used by the native Indians of those areas such as the Potowatomi, the Ottawa or the Iroquois for centuries before the arrival of the Europeans and that in that freezing month of January are rowed by rowers such as Amable Guion , only about sixteen years old; Felipe Ribera , eighteen; Antonio San Francisco and the Frenchman Luis Chile , both twenty-five; José Marichar and Pedro Pepen , both twenty-six; Jean-Baptiste Trudo , thirty-five, and Nicolas Chorret , forty-six, José Belhumor or José Luigó ”, as Manuel Trillo writes in The Forgotten Spanish Conquest: The Expedition That Could Have Changed the History of the United States (Review), which goes on sale next week.

An incredible non-fiction story that nevertheless immediately takes us back to those adventure novels like the famous The Last of the Mohicans , by Fenimoore Cooper , whose action takes place three decades before the assault on the San José, during the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), and which is the origin of the control of Louisiana by the Spanish crown at the time of the expedition to Fort San José on Lake Michigan. Scenes like those in Michael Mann 's 1992 film with its Indian chiefs, Canadian trappers, American settlers and European officers, only with canoes on icy rivers and under the flag of the Spanish crown.

The historical dimension of the attack on Fort San José, however, is more than a border adventure on the borders of Spanish Louisiana and British America, as Manuel Trillo recounts. It has territorial implications for the Crown of Charles III , stretching from the island of Menorca to Gibraltar, passing through Campeche on the Yucatán Peninsula; just one more piece in a global game between the great powers of the time, with territorial disputes and battles raging across the globe.

What significance does it have, then, that Francisco Cruzat, who was Spanish and governor of Upper Louisiana in St. Louis, organized this expedition? What significance did it have, and why have the exploits in places as far north as the present-day United States as St. Louis and Lake Michigan been forgotten in Spain?

Throughout the book, Manuel Trillo effectively asks why the history of the Spanish in North America has had so little impact. In reality, it is not so much a fact that it was unknown or received no academic attention, but rather that it has paled in comparison to the history of the possessions of what is now South and Central America or the Philippine Islands themselves, due to the undeniable importance they had for the Spanish Empire of the 16th and 18th centuries, and even more so, up to the present day. Their presence in North America, on the other hand, left an infinitely smaller cultural imprint , which must be highlighted because it is not so obvious.

It is evident, for example, in New Orleans itself, which was the capital of that immense Louisiana and whose legacy is in any case more French than Spanish, because as Trillo himself explains, “it was a huge territory governed by Spaniards and inhabited by a European population of French origin in its vast majority, who preserved not only their language, but also their culture and customs,” as he writes in The Forgotten Spanish Conquest .

Interest in the Spanish presence in North America during the formation of what is now the United States was significantly boosted by the popular revival of the figure of Bernardo de Gálvez , a truly Spanish personality throughout the period of the American colonists' War of Independence against England, in which Spain, along with France, was an ally of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin . This was largely due to the research of Manuel Olmedo , who in 2009 discovered a letter in the Archives of the Indies sent to Bernardo de Gálvez by the Irish-born patriot Oliver Pollock , an agent for the United States Congress in New Orleans, in which he requested that he send him a portrait of himself to promote for display in the Capitol.

The importance of Bernardo de Gálvez, governor of Spanish Louisiana between 1777 and 1785, who had fought alongside George Washington, was evident in the honor bestowed upon him by the founders of the United States. This honor was not redeemed until 2014, when the painting was found and hung in the Capitol, where it now remains. From then on , interest in the Spanish presence and rule in what is now the United States grew , having been confined mainly to academic circles.

The immense figure of Bernardo 'I alone' Gálvez, as the Spaniard was nicknamed at the time for his feat in Pensacola Bay, obtaining a crucial victory against the English in favor of the settlers , is circumscribed in what is Spanish Louisiana, an enormous territory in the heart of the current United States - which includes Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas and parts of other states - and which the Spanish crown obtained as compensation for the Seven Years' War, in the Treaty of Paris (1763), in which, on the other hand, the ports of Havana and Manila were recovered from Great Britain and Florida was lost, which was later recovered in 1783.

This Spanish Louisiana is where an adventure such as the effectively forgotten assault on Fort San José originates, but also other immediately preceding and connected episodes, which Manuel Trillo includes, such as the heroic defense of the city of San Luis against the attack of the English, commanded by another Spaniard, Fernando de Leyba, just one year before that expedition to the lakes.

Ceded in 1763 by France, it should not, however, obscure the true presence of Spain in North America, which dates back several centuries before, as is logical, since before and shortly after that time, Spain owned Spanish Florida – which is larger than the current peninsula and state since it also included Alabama and other parts – and of course the immense Viceroyalty of New Spain, both since the 16th century, due to the expeditions of Ponce de León or Hernando de Soto among others.

That is to say, when this episode takes place, the Kingdom of Spain possesses most of the current territory of the United States , although in practice it is rather on the map, since these are inhospitable regions, especially in the case of Alta California, where there are missions founded by the Spanish and religious but where there is no true administration and no economic interest, unlike the vast and incredible machinery that the same viceroyalty of New Spain represented further south, in present-day Mexico , or that of Peru, to name a few.

Thus, the Conquest of the West , the true colonization, took place in the 19th century by the young American nation as they themselves have recounted in their particular founding epic that includes the Western genre. What did this immense dominion in North America mean for Spain then?

This is the best part of Manuel Trilllo's book, which does not hesitate to go into detail about the particularities of these expeditions and their contingencies with their well-defined actors and their difficulties at the pace of adventure , as well as to broaden the focus to understand the broader context of the Spanish presence in Louisiana and its collaboration with the American patriots in their War of Independence:

“Although financial and material support for the rebels was extremely important, the Spanish court had little interest in their independence. Furthermore, it was concerned about subversive movements in its own possessions in the Americas, such as that of Túpac Amaru. But it welcomed anything that weakened its great adversary and contributed to its true goals, such as recovering Gibraltar and Menorca , expelling the English from Campeche and Central America, or seizing Jamaica and the Bahamas,” reads The Forgotten Spanish Conquest.

After going up the Mississippi during the month of January, Eugene Pourré's men, Heturno and Naquiguen, took the tributary Ilinueses –Ilinois–, and continued north to the swampy lands of another tributary, the Teakiki, encountering more and more snow and ice , and then left the canoes and crossed a land passage to the Saint Joseph River, the same one that the French explorer René Lasalle found in the 16th century, because that area of ​​the great lakes was explored by them and was part of New France.

From there, after another short trip up the San José River, Eugene Pourré himself writes: “After having suffered everything imaginable from cold, risk and hunger, during the space of twenty days, our detachment finally arrived two leagues from San José, where it camped at nightfall.” There was no major battle because it was a fort that was somewhat insignificant at that time, held by a contingent of barely 150 men and where there had been no redcoats for years. The Potowami , a tribe in the area, had also been warned not to influence the assault because they would be respected and there would be no reprisals.

According to Pourré and recorded by Manuel Trillo in a truly remarkable document : “Today, February 12, 1781, We, Don Eugène Pourré, captain of one of the militia companies of the Ilinueses and commander of a detachment destined for San José by order of Mr. Don Francisco Cruzat, graduate lieutenant colonel of Infantry, commander in chief and lieutenant governor of the western part and district of the Ilinueses, make known to posterity, and to all those who see these letters, that by virtue of the war declared between the very high, very august and very powerful Monarch, and my sovereign Charles III, invincible King of Spain (may God save him) and George III, King of Great Britain, I have entered under arms this same day, month and year at seven o'clock in the morning, in spite of our enemies, that I have taken prisoners of war , with a detachment of one hundred and twenty men in the post of San José of the English dependency located on the right bank of the river of this same name, which discharges into Lake Michigan.”

The document is in French, but in the name of Charles III, and although the capture of Fort San José was downplayed as a simple border reprisal by some American historians, Trillo presents documents for a critical discussion that raises the importance for Spanish diplomacy of punctually crossing the Mississippi and waving the flag on its west bank, the furthest point where the Kingdom of Spain planted its standard for future border negotiations. At the dawn of the late 18th century, barely thirty years before everything began to fall apart, Spain was a great empire where a remote adventure had been financed and ordered by a Spanish governor for the achievement of the kingdom's territorial interests.