In two parts, this year’s edition of The Country and the City will feature an overview of Kaskaskia’s history beginning with its founding by Kaskaskia Indians and French Jesuits near the confluence of the Kaskaskia and Mississippi rivers in 1703, through its integration into the newly independent United States in 1778, and designation as Illinois’s territorial capital and first state capital. We’ll also look at present-day Kaskaskia—a small island in the Mississippi accessible only by way of Missouri. Kaskaskia persists as one of Illinois’s smallest, yet most historic, municipalities, thanks to its residents’ dedication.

This history involves many groups of people – Indigenous and Black people, both enslaved and free, French and British people, Anglo-Americans from the South and the North, and subsequent immigrants – and many dramatic social, governmental, and economic changes that reflect the landscape of the state and country throughout time. The series will discuss the experiences of the Kaskaskia Tribe who remain integral to the community’s social fabric as well as contemporary African American life and the preservation and promotion of French American heritage in Randolph County.

By considering what “a more perfect Union” may have meant at various times to various people – from those who lived in the place where the Liberty Bell of the West rang, to those in the present keeping the town’s legacy alive – we hope to stimulate thought and discussion about our own aspirations for a more perfect Union.