1701 - the Maumee-Wabash river route to the lower Ohio was discovered by French explorers.

1702 - Mostly French fur traders established the first permanent settlement at Vincennes.

1704 - Jean Baptiste Bissot, Sieur de Vincennes, established a trading post at Kekionga (principal village of the Miami), present day Fort Wayne, Indiana.

1705 - A first French fort (Ouabache) was built on the site of the Vincennes trading post (1705).

1715 - The trading post at Kekionga became a fort. 1717 - French post Ouiatenon was established by François-Marie Picoté de Belestre, near the present city of Lafayette, to protect the western frontier.

1720-1760 - The settlement at Ouiatenon prospered and grew. French voyageurs annually descended the Wabash to trade their goods for furs trapped by the Native people. Some remained there to establish homes.

1721 - Fort Philippe, later called Fort Miami, was built on the St. Mary's River, near the area in Fort Wayne at the confluence of the St. Mary's, St. Joseph's and Maumee rivers.

1721 - Pierre Charlevois describes the Miami Indian game which is the ancestor of the modern game of LaCrosse.

1722 - French Fort Ouiatenon was established on the site of the first French post near Lafayette.

1724 - A second French fort was built on the site of the Vincennes trading post (1705), but this one named after St. Francis Xavier.

1732 - François-Marie Bissot, Sieur de Vincennes founded a permanent settlement and built a fort on the Wabash River (Fort Vincennes).

1736 - The French Ouabache trading post established before the turn of the century is named for a French officer, Sieur de Vincennes, who was stationed at the fort.

1746 - A description of the French settlement which became Vincennes (near the Wabash River) notes that five slaves were among the community's forty-five settlers.

1747 - British influenced Huron chief, King Nicolas, attacking the French Fort Miami.

1750 - The French established a stockaded fort located at the mouth of the Wabash River on the Ohio River.

1753 - Establishment of "Petite Fort", A French fur trade post located near the mouth of Fort Creek (near Beverly Shores).

1754-1763 - The French and Indian War.

1772 - British General Thomas Gage (the same who was instrumental in drafting the Intolerable Acts of

1774, and ordered the troops to Lexington and Concord in April 1775) ordered the French in the Wabash Valley to leave their settlements, & demanded the title deeds to their lands.

1774 - (June 2nd) British Parliament passed the Quebec Act, permitting the Canadians to retain French laws and customs, and allowing the Catholic Church to maintain all its rights. "The French settlements at the West, in our present Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin, were by the act included in the province of Quebec."

1774 - French fur trader, Michel Brouillet was born in Vincennes.

1779 - George Rogers Clark, with about 130 volunteers, half of them French militia from Kaskaskia, fought the British in "The Battle of Vincennes".

1785 - Toussaint Dubois settled near Vincennes.

1797 - Michel Brouillet established a trading post near Terre Haute.

1801 - Michel Brouillet received a license to trade with the Miami nation.

1802 - Swiss immigrant, john James Dufour, petitioned Congress for the lands along the Ohio River between Hunt's Creek and Indian Creek in what would later become Indiana to found the New Switzerland" vineyard.

1804 - Michel Brouillet he received a license to trade with the Kickapoo Indians.

1806 - Michel Brouillet, built a home in what is now Vincennes.

1816 - Joseph Bailly, a French Canadian fur trapper, and his family became one of the first known settlers of the "Indiana Dunes."

1820 - The first white settler to settle in present-day St. Joseph County was Pierre Navarre, who moved to St. Joseph Country from Monroe, Michigan.

1822 - Honoré Gratien Joseph Bailly de Messein established a trading post near present-day Porter, Indiana.

1834 - Right Reverend Simon Bruté was appointed the first Bishop of the Diocese of Vincennes, Indiana.

1839 - The Very Rev. August Bessonies, V. G. (born in France in 1815), came to America to serve the Catholics in the United States in the Diocese of Vincennes, Indiana.

1843 - Sisters of the Holy Cross arrived from Le Mans, France to found St. Mary's College