French Influence on the Mid-West

The French influence on the Middle West was "scarcely perceptible" despite their having been in the Mid-West from "the third quarter of the seventeenth century, when La Salle appeared on the Ohio and Marquette on the Mississippi, till a hundred years later, when the English took possession of the country to the east of the latter river." Their towns in "Upper Louisiana--Detroit, Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Vincennes, St. Genevieve, St. Louis, and a few others--[were] effectually isolated from the mother country, [...]. Nor was the French element which endured through the American pioneer period to contribute much of importance to cultural achievement. From the time of the earliest settlements, there had taken place in many quarters a process of assimilation to savage life. Unlike the English and their descendants, the French mingled easily with the Indians, usually maintaining friendship and social intercourse. The contrast between the backwoodsman of French descent and the pioneer of English stock affords an insight into two racial phenomena: the Frenchman, always more quick to adapt himself to his environment, succumbed to the charm of savage life; the Englishman, uncompromising and stolid, ended by conquering the wilderness. Intermarriage between French and Indians was common. And, as this process of amalgamation proceeded, the men of French descent became closely identified with the savages, not only in sympathies, but in their pursuits. [...] While the American settlers prospered, the French were generally dull and indolent, and, consequently, poverty-stricken and ill-conditioned. Discouragement, apathy, and wretchedness prevailed in the towns of the latter. [...] The economic failure of their towns was supposed by some to be partly attributable to their misfortunes under American rule; but their poverty at an earlier date, as well as during the period of American control, is shown by the nicknames which were given to several of them by the inhabitants themselves [...] St. Louis, for example was called Paincourt [short of bread]; and the neighboring village of Carondelet was known as Vide Poche [empty pocket]" (The Literature of the Middle Western Frontier, Vol. 1, Ralph Leslie Rusk, 6-8).

However, I would take exception to the point about lack of French influence. There may not have been any marked influence of French culture on the American in the 18th c., with the exception of the architecture of the houses in towns such as Vincennes, but the language of the Ojibwe, Ojibwemowin, took the French word for 'hello' and incorporated it into their language as boozhoo. Furthermore, French was usually the foreign language studied in many American high schools in the 20th c.