As late as 1717 DesIsles, the official French cartographer in Paris, was not drawing in anything South of what is now the Indiana/Michigan/Ohio state line as a French claim.
That area was still claimed by Spain and no matter what they tell you about Spanish cessions and French claims and discoveries, the Spanish had not only claimed everything South to the Gulf and north to the Great Lakes, numerous explorers and traders had penetrated AND settled in many places throughout what is now the Mid-South and the Lower MIdWest.
Old times were not forgotten, though, and when George Rogers Clark showed up in the Illinois country the Spanish milita at Cahokia joined the Revolutionary militia under Clark and moved North all the way to the St Joseph River and claimed Fort St. Joseph for Spain ~ under their own Spanish flag.
I"ve been looking for small towns all through the area between the MIssissippi and the East Coast that are laid out in accordance with the Spanish Law of the Indies.
No, there are not a lot of them, but there are several dozen ~ one is even obviously named La Villa Real ~ which denotes it as a Spanish headquarters town of some sort.
GOOGLE EARTH makes this possible.
The "OLD FORT" here is probably on a piece of land that was first sold under the authority of the American government to someone with an arguably Spanish surname.
It's a stone fort, or stone home, with ports for an an Arquibus ~
It may even have housed an arquebus à croc, a heavier gauge wagon mounted firearm ~ predecessor to more modern artillery in later centuries.
These things were used in the 15th, 16th and 17th century, and out on the Spanish frontier probably even longer.
Take a look at Newcomerstown ~ Main Street ~ see that early village laid out different than anthing else ~ ? That's what you want to look for. On a river navigable with a canoe or piroque, onto another river that could handle a larger boat, and on down to the Ohio
When you go downstream on the Ohio back in the 1500s or 1600s, you get off on the Miami and go North to a portage area of a few miles that takes you over to the East Fork of the White River somewhere, or to the Muscatatuck bottoms. You go downstream to the Wabash, and then come back out onto the Ohio West of Evansville. That way you bypass the exceedingly warlike Shawnee who'd had an iron grip on the Falls on the Ohio for generations.
This little facility was probably a safe house for the local Spanish goldminers and millers who ran a still that made alcoholic beverages to trade to the Indians for products such as smoked ham and smoked venison.
There are probably the remains of mill stone segments around there, and probably some sort of gold sluice. I suspect they found some gold. With the safe house some of the Spaniards probably ended up as serious traders and suppliers in the region and when American surveys were made, they bought their titles to their own land immediately. They will be in the deed books somewhere (if they still exist).
I"ve found that pattern repeated in many other areas. Typical of most American immigrants, when the new guys came in they didn't leave.
The one group I haven't covered is the Iroquois. They were very busy in the 1500/1600 period clearing much of the Ohio Valley of troublesome tribes who would not pay tribute. They sent permanent tax collectors into the region and could move troops from Central New York on regular warrior paths in a short period, so you either paid or they ran you off (or killed you).
They never succeeded in driving off the Shawnee ~ and until the French came in with a major force some time in the early 1700s to set up a saw mill to cut rough furniture pieces to ship to France for Louis' furniture factory the Shawnee forced everybody else going up and down the river to that Northern detour I described.
Once the Shawnee figured out that all the French furniture makers wanted were trees and a place for their mill they let them stay ~ but there was not a lot of contact. NOTE: Louis built Versailles. Nobles were required to rent apartments there. They were further required to buy furniture from Louis to furnish those apartments. That furniture was finished off in Paris from rough cut pieces made in America from Kentucky and Indiana hardwoods.
I didn’t know any of that. Are you going to publish a list of the towns laid out in accordance with the Spanish Law of the Indies?
From the article:
Then, there's the George Croghan scenario.
He was an Irish fur trader working for England who moved into the Native American territories to trade furs with the Delaware tribe.
He was not born until 1718, which would mean that if built by Croghan, the fort isn't as old as presumed.
Croghan was, I think, a character mentioned in Alan Eckert's 'The Frontiersmen'. Eckert gives plenty of ink to the Iriquois in that, and even more to the Shawnee. But it's really Tecumseh and Simon Kenton's story.
If you haven't read the book (and can withstand the fact that it's a 'historical novel', if not actual fact), it's an amazing story.