I'm an average Native American person deep within Louisiana in the mid 18th century, lets say before the 7 years war. Do I even know I'm in 'French' territory?

by Khwarezm

Its easy to look at maps like this and wonder about the reality of the situation on the ground as opposed to the claims of the colonizers. In that regard, I would assume that areas close to French forts and places of major settlement or military activity would have made the presence of the French and other colonial powers more obvious, but supposing I was, say, in the middle of what is now Illinois, and that I was not a person who had reason to take much interest in the broad political situation of the region at the time. Would even I know that I was living on nominally French territory and even the subject of the King of France?

Solignox

It largely depends on where in Louisiana you are, and also on your understanding of territory. The French didn't settle the Americas nearly as much as the Spanish and English did. This was especially true in Illinois which was part of upper Louisiana, which was colonised later and so was even more sparsely populated than lower Louisiana. The Louisiana territory was far more akin to a Portuguese-styled system with forts used as base along the main rivers like the Mississipi to serve as relais for traders going either north to Québec and Montréal or south to New Orleans, small garrisons garded those forts but they were far too small to effectively project strength so the French relied heavily on a system of alliances with the native tribes as during the entire history of the colony the europeans were outnumbered by the natives, except in New Orleans and it's surronding area.

Now that doesn't mean that the French had no power at all there, after decades of trading and doing diplomacy with the natives in the region they sat atop a complex and powerful web of alliances and tribes going against their interest would often suffered greatly, for example the Fox people and the Chickasaw against which the French and their allies fought several wars.

Now on being subject of the king of France the question is trickier to answer. Officialy all of the Natives within Louisiana were subjects of the king of France who wanted to integrate and christianize them. Although the immensity of the territory and the distance from the metropole made implementing this policy into reality highly difficult. A good example of this complex situation is the matter of Native slavery in Louisiana, officialy it was forbidden but it did exist simply because the royal governement couldn't enforce the ban, but at the same time Native slaves were almost exclusively captured by other Natives during tribal warfare and then sold to the French.

Adding to the difficulty of the question is the matter of how Natives understood their "fealty" to the king of France, how did it register in their understanding of law, governance, power etc. This is extremely hard to tell, and most likely varied greatly depending on the place and time. Some tribes, the ones located closer to large french settlement or who had interacted with them for longer may have a better grasp of what that meant and we know that Natives and colonists often mixed, creating the mixed culture called Métis (although this is more of an umbrella term). Other tribes might have a far weaker understanding of it and maybe saw the king of France as the ruler of a distant yet powerful tribe, I remember reading about a canadian tribe calling Louis XIV "The Highest Mountain in the World".

If you want to learn more about French Louisiana and specifically Illinois I recommand to you the work of Carl Ekberg, or if more specifically on the Natives and their relation to the colonists Kathleen du Vall wrote a paper on it called "Interconnectdness and diversity in French Louisiana".