Flagg's The Far West, 1836-1837, part 2; and De Smet's Letters and Sketches, 1841-1842
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Flagg's The Far West, 1836-1837, part 2; and De Smet's Letters and Sketches, 1841-1842
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Flagg's The Far West, 1836-1837, part 2; and De Smet's Letters and Sketches, 1841-1842
Edmund Flagg
Pierre-Jean Smet
Edmund Flagg
Flagg's The Far West, 1836-1837, part 2; and De Smet's Letters and Sketches, 1841-1842
THE FAR WEST
[PART II]
XXXIII[1 - Volume xxvii of our series begins with chapter xxxiii of the original New York edition (1838) of Flagg's The Far West. The author is here describing the part of his journey made in the late summer or early autumn of 1836. – Ed.]
"Stranger, if thou hast learn'd a truth which needs
Experience more than reason, that the world
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast known
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares
To tire thee of it; enter this wild wood,
And view the haunts of Nature."
Bryant.
The moon had gone down; the last star had burned out in the firmament; and that deep darkness which precedes the dawn was brooding over the earth as the traveller turned away from the little inn at the village of Pinkneyville. Fortunately he had, the previous evening, while surveying the face of the region from the door of the hostelrie, gained some general idea of the route to Kaskaskia; and now, dropping the reins upon his horse's neck, he began floundering along through a blackness of darkness perfectly Cimmerian. It was, indeed, a gloomy night. The early mists were rising, damp and chill, from the soil saturated with the showers of the preceding day; and the darkness had become of a density almost palpable to the sense. Crossing a narrow arm of the prairie in the direction presumed to be correct, my horse carried me into a dense wood, and, if possible, the darkness increased. I had penetrated some miles into the heart of the forest, and was advancing slowly upon my way, when my attention was suddenly arrested by a low, whispering, rustling sound in the depths of the wood at my right; this gradually increasing, was almost immediately succeeded by a crashing, thundering, rushing report, till every echo far and wide in that dark old wood was wakened, and the whole forest for miles around resounded with the roar. My horse, terrified at the noise, leaped and plunged like a mad creature. An enormous forest-tree had fallen within a dozen rods of the spot on which I stood. As I left the noble ruin and resumed my lonely way, my mind brooded over the event, and I thought I could perceive in the occurrence a powerful feature of the sublime. The fall of an aged tree in the noiseless lapse of time is ever an event not unworthy of notice; but, at a moment like this, it was surely so in an eminent degree. Ages since – long ere the first white man had pressed the soil of this Western world, and while the untamed denizens of the wilderness roamed in the freedom of primitive creation – ages since had seen the germe of that mighty tree lifting up its young, green leaf from the sod, beneath the genial warmth of the sunlight and the summer wind. An age passed away. The tender stem had reared itself into a gigantic pillar, and proudly tossed its green head amid the upper skies: that young leaf, expanded and developed, had spread itself abroad, until, at length, the beasts of the earth had sought out its shade, and the tree stood up the monarch of the forest. Another age is gone, and the hoary moss of time is flaunting to the winds from its venerable branches. Long ago the thunderbolt had consecrated its lofty top with the baptismal of fire, and, sere and rifted, the storm-cloud now sings through its naked limbs. Like an aged man, its head is bleached with years, while the strength and verdure of ripened maturity yet girdle its trunk. But the worm is at the root: rottenness at the heart is doing its work. Its day and its hour are appointed, and their bounds it may not pass. That hour, that moment is come! and in the deep, pulseless stillness of the night-time, when slumber falleth upon man and Nature pauses in her working, the offspring of centuries is laid low, and bows himself along the earth. Yet another age is gone; but the traveller comes not to muse over the relics of the once-glorious ruin. Long ago has each been mouldering away, and their dust has mingled with the common mother of us all. Ah! there is a moral in the falling of an aged tree!
I was dwelling with rather melancholy reflections upon this casual occurrence, when a quick panting close at my side attracted my attention; a large, gaunt-looking prairie-wolf had just turned on his heel and was trotting off into the shade. The gray dawn had now begun to flicker along the sky, and, crossing a beautiful prairie and grove, I found myself at the pleasant farmhouse of a settler of some twenty or thirty years' standing; and dismounting, after a ride of eighteen miles, I partook, with little reluctance or ceremony, of an early breakfast. Thus much for the night adventures of a traveller in the woods and wilds of Illinois! My host, the old gentleman to whom I have referred, very sagely mistook his guest for a physician, owing to a peculiarly convenient structure of those indispensables ycleped saddle-bags; and was just about consulting his fancied man of medicines respecting the ailings of his "woman," who was reclining on a bed, when, to his admiration, he was undeceived.
Passing through an inconsiderable village on the north side of the Little Vermillion called Georgetown, my route lay through an extended range of hills and barrens.[2 - The Vermilion River (which Flagg incorrectly wrote Little Vermilion) rises, with several branches, in the western and southern portions of La Salle County, and flows north and west, entering Illinois River at Rock Island, in Livingston County.] Among the former were some most intolerably tedious, especially to a horseman beneath a broiling sun, who had passed a sleepless night: but the sweep of scenery from their summits was beautiful and extensive. At length the traveller stood upon the "heights of Chester," and the broad Mississippi was rolling on its turbid floods a hundred yards beneath. The view is here a noble one, not unlike that from the Alton or Grafton bluffs at the other extremity of the "American Bottom," though less extensive. Directly at the feet of the spectator, scattered along a low, narrow interval, lies the village of Chester. Upon the opposite bank the forest rolls away to the horizon in unbroken magnificence, excepting that here and there along the bottom the hand of cultivation is betrayed by the dark luxuriance of waving maize-fields. A beautiful island, with lofty trees and green smiling meadows, stretches itself along in the middle of the stream before the town, adding not a little to the picturesqueness of the scene, and, in all probability, destined to add something more to the future importance of the place. To the right, at a short distance, come in the soft-flowing waters of the Kaskaskia through deeply-wooded banks; and nearly in the same direction winds away the mirror-surface of the Mississippi for twenty miles, to accomplish a direct passage of but four, an occurrence by no means unusual in its course. As I stood gazing upon the scene, a steamer appeared sweeping around the bend, and, puffing lazily along with the current past the town, soon disappeared in the distance. From the heights an exceedingly precipitous pathway leads down to the village. Chester is one of the new places of Illinois, and, of course, can boast but little to interest the stranger apart from the highly scenic beauty of its situation.[3 - Chester is on the Mississippi River, in Randolph County, just below the mouth of Kaskaskia River. In the summer of 1829, Samuel Smith built the first house there, and two years later he, together with Mather, Lamb and Company, platted the town site. It was named by Jane Smith from her native town, Chester, England, and was made the seat of justice for Randolph in 1848. – Ed.Steelesville (formerly Georgetown) is about fifteen miles east of Kaskaskia, on the road between Pinkneyville and Chester; the site was settled on by George Steele in 1810. A block-house fort erected there in 1812 protected the settlers against attacks from the Kickapoo Indians. In 1825 a tread-mill was built, and two years later a store and post-office were erected. The latter was named Steele's Mills. The settlement was originally called Georgetown and later changed by an act of state legislature to Steelesville, being surveyed in 1832. – Ed.] It has been mostly erected within the few years past; and, for its extent, is a flourishing business place. Its landing is excellent, location healthy, adjacent region fertile, and, for aught I know to the contrary, may, in course of years, rival even the far-famed Alton. Its landing, I was informed, is the only one for many miles upon the river, above or below, suitable for a place of extensive commerce.
From Chester, in a direction not far from north, a narrow pathway winds along beneath the bluffs, among the tall cane-brakes of the bottom. Leaving the Mississippi at the mouth of the Kaskaskia, it runs along the low banks of the latter stream, and begins to assume an aspect truly delightful. Upon either side rise the shafts of enormous sycamores to the altitude of an hundred feet, and then, flinging abroad and interlacing their long branches, form a living arch of exquisite beauty, stretching away in unbroken luxuriance for miles. Beneath springs from the rich loam a dense undergrowth of canes; a profusion of wild vines and bushes clustering with fruit serving effectually to exclude the sunbeams, except a few checkered spots here and there playing upon the foliage, while at intervals through the dark verdure is caught the flashing sheen of the moving waters. Upon the right, at the distance of only a few yards, go up the bluffs to the sheer height of some hundred feet, densely clothed with woods. The path, though exceedingly narrow and serpentine, is for the most part a hard-trodden, smooth, and excellent one when dry. The coolness and fragrance of these deep, old, shadowy woodlands has always for me a resistless charm. There is so much of quiet seclusion from the feverish turmoil of ordinary life within their peaceful avenues, that, to one not wedded to the world, they are ever inexpressibly grateful.
"The calm shade
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze,
That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm
To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here
Of all that pain'd thee in the haunts of men,
And made thee loathe thy life."
In the wild, fierce glaring of a summer noontide, when amid "the haunts of men" all is parched up, and dusty, and scathed, how refreshingly cool are the still depths of the forest! The clear crystal streamlet gushes forth with perennial laughter from the rock, seeming to exult in its happy existence; the bright enamelled mosses of a century creep along the gnarled old roots, and life in all its fairy forms trips forth to greet the eremite heart and charm it from the world. But there was one feature of the scene through which I was passing that struck me as peculiarly imposing, and to which I have not yet referred. I allude to the enormous, almost preternatural magnitude of the wild-grape vine, and its tortuosity. I have more than once, in the course of my wanderings, remarked the peculiarities of these vast parasites; but such is the unrivalled fertility, and the depth of soil of the Kaskaskia bottom, that vegetation of every kind there attains a size and proportion elsewhere almost unknown. Six or seven of these vast vegetable serpents are usually beheld leaping forth with a broad whirl from the mould at the root of a tree, and then, writhing, and twining, and twisting among themselves into all imaginable forms, at length away they start, all at once and together, in different directions for the summit, around which they immediately clasp their bodies, one over the other, and swing depending in festoons on every side. Some of these vines, when old and dried up by the elements, are amazingly strong; more so, perhaps, than a hempen hawser of the same diameter.
Having but a short ride before me the evening I left Chester, I alighted from my horse, and leisurely strolled along through this beautiful bower I have been attempting to describe. What a charming spot, thought I, for a Romeo and Juliet! – pardon my roving fancy, sober reader – but really, with all my own sobriety, I could not but imagine this a delightful scene for a "Meet me by moonlight alone," or any other improper thing of the kind, whether or not a trip to Gretna Green subsequently ensued. And if, in coming years, when the little city of Chester shall have become all that it now seems to promise, and the venerable Kaskaskia, having cast her slough, having rejuvenated her withered energies, and recalled the days of her pristine traditionary glory; if then, I say, the young men and maidens make not this the consecrated spot of the long summer-evening ramble and the trysting-place of the heart, reader, believe us not; in the dignified parlance of the corps editorial, believe us not.
Some portions of the Kaskaskia bottom have formerly, at different times, been cleared and cultivated; but nothing now remains but the ruins of tenements to acquaint one with the circumstance. The spot must have been exceedingly unhealthy in its wild state. There is, however, one beautiful and extensive farm under high cultivation nearly opposite Kaskaskia, which no traveller can fail to observe and admire. It is the residence of Colonel M – , a French gentleman of wealth, who has done everything a cultivated taste could dictate to render it a delightful spot.[4 - Flagg is probably referring to Colonel Pierre Menard. See our volume xxvi, p. 165, note 116. – Ed.] A fine, airy farmhouse stands beneath the bluffs, built after the French style, with heavy roof, broad balconies, and with a rare luxury in this region – green Venetian blinds. The outhouses, most of them substantially constructed of stone, are surpassed in beauty and extent only by the residence itself. Fields yellow with golden harvest, orchards loaded with fruit, and groves, and parks, and pastures sprinkled with grazing cattle, spread out themselves on every side. In the back-ground rise the wooded bluffs, gracefully rounded to their summits, while in front roams the gentle Kaskaskia, beyond which, peacefully reposing in the sunlight, lay the place of my destination.
Kaskaskia, Ill.
XXXIV
"Protected by the divinity they adored, supported by the earth which they cultivated, and at peace with themselves, they enjoyed the sweets of life without dreading or desiring dissolution." – Numa Pompilius.
"A pleasing land of drowsy head it was,
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye."
Castle of Indolence.
In a country like our own, where everything is fresh and recent, and where nothing has yet been swept by the mellowing touch of departed time, any object which can lay but the most indifferent claim to antiquity fails not to be hailed with delighted attention. "You have," say they of the other hemisphere, "no ivy-mantled towers; no moss-grown, castellated ruins; no donjon-keeps rearing in dark sublimity their massive walls and age-bleached battlements; nothing to span the mighty chasm of bygone years, and to lead down the fancy into the shadowy realms of the past; and, therefore, your country is steril in moral interest." Now, though this corollary is undoubtedly false, I yet believe the proposition in the main to be true: especially is this the case with regard to that region which lies west of the Alleghany range. Little as there may be in the elder sections of our Atlantic states to demand veneration for the past, no sooner does the traveller find himself gliding along the silvery wave of the "beautiful river," than at the same moment he finds himself forsaking all that the fairy creations of genius have ever consecrated, or the roll of the historian chronicled for coming time. All is NEW. The very soil on which he treads, fertile beyond comparison, and festering beneath the undisturbed vegetation of centuries; the rolling forests, bright, luxuriant, gorgeous as on the dawn of creation; the endless streams pouring onward in their fresh magnificence to the ocean, all seem new. The inhabitants are emigrants late from other lands, and every operation of human skill on which the eye may rest betrays a recent origin. There is but a single exception to these remarks – those mysterious monuments of a race whom we know not of!
In consideration, therefore, of the circumstance that antiquities in this blessed land of ours are, indeed, very few and far between, I deem it the serious duty of every traveller, be he virtuoso or be he not, whenever once so happy as to lay his grasp upon an antique "in any form, in any shape," just to hold fast to the best of his ability! Such, reader, be it known, was my own praiseworthy determination when drawing nigh to the eastern shore of the stream opposite the ancient French village Kaskaskia. The sun was going down, and as I approached the sandy edge of the sea-green water, a gay bevy of young folks were whirling the long, narrow, skiff-like ferry-boat like a bird across the stream, by means of a hawser to which it was attached, and which extended from shore to shore. In my own turn I stepped into the boat, and in a few moments the old French negro had forced it half across the river, at this spot about three or four hundred yards in width. For one who has ever visited Kaskaskia in the last beautiful days of summer, a pen like my own need hardly be employed to delineate the loveliness of the scene which now opened upon the view. For miles the gleamy surface of the gentle Kaskaskia might be seen retreating from the eye, till lost at length in its windings through the forests of its banks, resting their deep shadows on the stream in all the calm magnificence of inanimate nature. The shore I was leaving swelled gracefully up from the water's edge, clothed in forests until it reached the bluffs, which towered abrupt and loftily; while here and there along the landscape the low roof of a log cabin could be caught peeping forth from the dark shrubbery. The bank of the stream I was approaching presented an aspect entirely the reverse; less lovely, but more picturesque. A low sandy beach stretched itself more than a mile along the river, destitute of trees, and rounding itself gently away into a broad green plain. Upon this plain – a portion of the American Bottom – at the distance of a few hundred yards from the water, is situated all that now remains of "old Kaskaskia." From the centre rises a tall Gothic spire, hoary with time, surmounted by an iron cross; and around this nucleus are clustered irregularly, at various intervals, the heavy-roofed, time-stained cottages of the French inhabitants. These houses are usually like those of the West India planters – but a single story in height – and the surface which they occupy is, of course, in the larger class, proportionably increased. They are constructed, some of rough limestone, some of timber, framed in every variety of position – horizontal, perpendicular, oblique, or all united – thus retaining their shape till they rot to the ground, with the interstices stuffed with the fragments of stone, and the external surface stuccoed with mortar; others – a few only – are framed, boarded, etc., in modern style. Nearly all have galleries in front, some of them spacious, running around the whole building, and all have garden-plats enclosed by stone walls or stoccades. Some of these curious-looking structures are old, having bided the storm-winds of more than a century. It is this circumstance which throws over the place that antiquated, venerable aspect to which I have alluded, and which equally applies to all the other villages of this peculiar people I have yet spoken of. The city of Philadelphia and this neglected village of Kaskaskia are, as regards age, the same to a year;[5 - Philadelphia was founded in 1682. There has been much discussion about the exact date of the founding of Kaskaskia. E. G. Mason was of the opinion that this uncertainty had arisen in the confounding of Kaskaskia with an earlier Indian settlement of the same name on the Illinois River. It seems probable that Kaskaskia on the Mississippi was started in 1699. Consult E. G. Mason, "Kaskaskia and its Parish Records," in Magazine of American History (New York, 1881), vi, pp. 161-182, and Chapters from Illinois History (Chicago, 1901); also C. W. Alvord, The Old Kaskaskia Records (Chicago Historical Society, 1906). See also A. Michaux's Travels, in our volume iii, p. 69, note 132. – Ed.] but while every object which, in the one, meets the eye, looks fresh as if but yesterday touched by the last chiselling of the architect, in the latter the thoughts are carried back at least to Noah's ark! Two centuries have rolled by since the "city of the Pilgrims" ceased to be a "cornfield;" but where will you now look for a solitary relic of that olden time? "State-street," the scene where American blood was first poured out by British soldiery; "Old Cornhill;" the site of the "Liberty-tree;" and the wharf from which the tea was poured into the dock, are indeed pointed out to you as spots memorable in the history of the "Leaguer of Boston;" and yonder frowns the proud height of Bunker's Hill; there lay the British battle-ships, and there was "burning Charlestown: " but, with almost the solitary exception of the "Old South" Church, with the cannon-ball imbedded in its tower, where shall we look for an object around which our associations may cluster? This is not the case with these old villages. A century has looked down upon the same objects, in the same situations and under the same relations, with a change scarcely appreciable. Yon aged church-tower has thrown its venerable shadow alike over the Indian corn-dance, the rude cotillon of the French villager, the Spanish fandango, the Virginia reel, and the Yankee frolic. Thus, then, when I speak of these places with reference to antiquity, I refer not so much to the actual lapse of years as to the present aspect and age of the individual objects. In this view there are few spots in our country which may lay more undisputed claim to antiquity than these early French settlements in the Western Valley.
There is one feature of these little villages to which I have not at this time alluded, but which is equally amusing and characteristic, and which never fails to arrest the stranger's observation. I refer to the narrowness of those avenues intended for streets. It is no very strange thing that in aged Paris structure should be piled upon structure on either side even to the clouds, while hardly a footpath exists between; but that in this vast Western world a custom, in all respects the same, should have prevailed, surpasseth understanding. This must have resulted not surely from lack of elbow-room, but from the marvellous sociality of the race, or from that attachment to the customs of their own fatherland which the Frenchman ever betrays. In agriculture and the mechanic arts they are now about as well skilled, notwithstanding the improvements which they must perceive have been going on around them, as on the day their fathers first planted foot on this broad land. The same implements of husbandry and the arts which a century since were seen in France, are now seen here; the very vehicle they drive is the vineyard-car, which is presented us in representations of rustic life in the older provinces of the same land. The same characteristics of feeling and action are here displayed as there, and the Gallic tongue is sacredly transmitted from father to son. But here the parallel ceases. We can trace but little resemblance between the staid, simple-hearted French villager of the Mississippi Valley, and the gay, frivolous, dissolute cotemporary of the fifteenth Louis; still less to the countryman of a Marat or a Robespierre, rocked upon the bloody billow of the "Reign of Terror;" and less than either to the high-minded, polished Frenchman of the nineteenth century. The same fact has been remarked of the Spanish population of Florida and Mexico; their resemblance to their ancestors, who have been slumbering for more than three centuries in their graves, is far more striking than to their present brethren of "Old Castile." The cause of this is not difficult to detect. The customs, the manners, the very idioms of nations never remain for any considerable period of time invariably the same: other men, other times, other circumstances, when assisted by civil or religious revolutions, produce surprising changes in the parent land, while the scanty colony, separated by mountains and seas, not more from the roar and commotion than from the influenced sphere of these events, slumbers quietly on from century to century, handing down from father to son those peculiarities, unaltered, which migrated with them. Climate, soil, location, though far from exclusive, are by no means inconsiderable agents in affecting character in all its relations of intellect, temperament, and physical feature. And thus has it chanced that we now look upon a race of men separated but a few centuries from the parent stock, yet exhibiting characteristics in which there are few traits common to both.
It was through one of those long, narrow, lane-like streets to which I have alluded, and, withal, a most unconscionably filthy one, that I rode from the landing of the ferry to the inn. The low-roofed, broad-galleried cottages on either side seemed well stocked with a race of dark-eyed, dark-haired, swarthy-looking people, all, from the least unto the tallest, luxuriating in the mellow atmosphere of evening; all, as if by the same right, staring most unceremoniously at the stranger; and all apparently summing up, but in the uncouthest style imaginable, their divers surmises respecting his country, lineage, occupation, etc., etc. The forms and features of these French villagers are perfectly unique, at least in our country, and one can hardly fail distinguishing them at first sight, even among a crowd, once having seen them. Their peculiarities are far more striking than those of our German or Irish population. A few well-dressed, genteel gentlemen were lounging about the piazza of the inn as I drew nigh, and a polite landlord, courteously pressing forward, held the stirrup of the traveller and requested him to alight. Something of a contrast, this, to the attention a stranger usually is blessed with from not more than nine tenths of the worthy publicans of Illinois. Alas! for the aristocracy of the nineteenth century! But n'importe. With the easy air of gentility and taste which seemed to pervade the inn at Kaskaskia in all its departments, few could have failed to be pleased. For myself, I was also surprised. Everything about the establishment was in the French style, and here was spread the handsomest table d'hôte it has been my fortune to witness in Illinois.
The moon was pouring gloriously down in misty mellowness upon the low-roofed tenements of this antiquated village, when, leaving my chamber, I stepped from the inn for a leisure stroll through its streets and lanes. Passing the gray old church,[6 - The church of the Immaculate Conception, the first permanent structure of its kind west of the Alleghany Mountains, was built in 1720. It was torn down in 1838 and a large brick church built. For a more detailed description of the former, see post, pp. 62 (#Page_62)-64 (#FNanchor_38_38). – Ed.] bathed in the dim, melting moonlight of a summer night, such as for more than a century had smiled upon its consecrated walls as one year had chased away another, the next considerable structure which arrested my attention was a huge, ungainly edifice of brick, like Joseph's coat, of many colours, forsooth, and, withal, sadly ruinous as regards the item of windows. This latter circumstance, aside from every other, agreeable to all observed precedent, would have notified me of the fact that this was neither more nor less than a western courthouse. Continuing my careless ramble among the cottages, I passed several whose piazzas were thronged with young people; and at intervals from the midst rang out, on the mild evening air, the gay fresh laugh, and the sweet, soft tones of woman. A stately structure of stone, buried in foliage, next stood beside me, and from its open doors and windows issued the tumultuous melody of the piano. A few steps, and the innocent merriment of two young girls hanging upon a gentleman's arms struck my ear. They passed me. Both were young; and one, a gazelle-eyed brunette, in the pale moonlight, was beautiful. The blithe creatures were full of frolic and fun, and the light Gallic tongue seemed strangely musical from those bright lips. But enough – enough of my evening's ramble – nay, more than enough: I am waxing sentimental. It was at a late hour, after encountering divers untold adventures, that I found myself once more at my hotel. The gallery was thronged with French gentlemen, and it was some hours before the laugh and chatter had died away, and the old village was buried in slumber.
Kaskaskia, Ill.
XXXV
"Glanced many a light caïque along the foam,
Danced on the shore the daughters of the land."
Byron.
"How changed the scene since merry Jean Baptiste
Paddled his pirouge on La Belle Rivière,
And from its banks some lone Loyola priest
Echoed the night song of the voyageur."
It is now more than a century and a half since the sturdy Canadian voyageurs, treading in the footsteps of the adventurous Sieur la Salle, forsaking the bleak shores and wintry skies of the St. Lawrence, first planted themselves upon the beautiful hunting-grounds of the peaceful Illini. Long before the Pilgrim Fathers of New-England, or the distressed exiles of Jamestown, scattered along the steril shores of the Atlantic, had formed even a conception of the beautiful valley beyond the mountains – while this vast North American continent was yet but a wilderness, and the nations of Christendom, ignorant of its character or of its extent, knew not by whom of right it should be appropriated – a few French Jesuit priests had ascended in their bark canoes a distance of three thousand miles from the mouth of the "endless river," and had explored its tributaries to their fountains. It is with admiration almost bordering on astonishment that we view the bold adventures of these daring men.[7 - Hall. – Flagg.] The cause of their fearless undertaking was, we are told, to investigate the truth of an idea which at that era was prevalent among the Canadian French, that a western passage through the American continent existed to the Pacific Ocean. The Indian hunters had spoken of a vast stream far away to the west, which on their long excursions they had seen, but of whose source, course, or termination they could tell nothing. This river was supposed to disgorge itself into the Pacific Seas; and, to prosecute the inquiry, Father Marquette, a recollet monk, and Sieur Joliet, an Indian trader of Quebec, by authority of M. Talon, Intendant of New France, a man of singular enterprise, entered upon the expedition. Thridding the great chain of the Northern Lakes in their slender skiffs, and pursuing the Ouisconsin River, on the 17th of June, 1673, the first Europeans descended the "Father of Waters."[8 - Jacques Marquette was a Jesuit missionary, not a Recollect. Consult R. G. Thwaites, Father Marquette (New York, 1902). On Jolliet see Francis Parkman, La Salle (Boston, 1869); and the latest authority, Ernest Gagnon, Louis Jolliet (Quebec, 1902). – Ed.] By the natives whom they met they were kindly received, and entertained with a deference due only to superior beings. Among these Indians, the Illini, then residing on both sides of the Mississippi, were chief, and their nation was made up of seven distinct tribes: the Miamies, Michigamies, Mascotins, Kaskaskias, Kahokias, Peorias, and Taumarwaus, a peaceful, benevolent, unwarlike race.[9 - For a short note on the Illinois Indians, consult our volume xxvi, p. 123, note 86. – Ed.] A village was found at the mouth of the Illinois. Descending the Mississippi, the French voyageurs were dissuaded from their design of exploring the Missouri by a tradition of the natives that near its mouth dwelt a Manito, whose residence no human being could pass with life: nor did the Indians fail to tell the legend of the Piasa cliff above. Turning up the Illinois, therefore, they glided with amazement through the green woodlands and over the silvery wave of that beautiful stream. It is, perhaps, at this distant day, and in the present era of "speculators and economists," hardly possible to conceive the delighted emotions which must then have swelled the bosoms of those simple-hearted men. Sieur Joliet, on his return to Canada, published an account of his adventures, in which narrative language seems almost too meager for description of the golden land he had seen.[10 - Flagg errs in saying that Jolliet published an account of his adventures. His journal was lost in the St. Lawrence River on the return journey. Father Marquette, however, wrote a journal of his travels. See Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, lix, which also contains Jolliet's map of North America (1674). – Ed.] Father Marquette remained a missionary among the peaceful Indians. To the river partially explored was given the name of the celebrated Colbert, Minister of Marine, by Count de Frontenac; and to the trader Joliet, as a reward, was granted the island of Anticosti in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.[11 - The Island of Anticosti, in the estuary of St. Lawrence River, contains about 3,900 square miles, and is not only of importance as a centre of hunting and fishing interests, but is rich in undeveloped mineral resources. The population of a few hundred souls is chiefly concerned in fishing. The island is now the property of M. Henri Menier, a Parisian chocolate manufacturer, who personally rules his seigniory with benevolent despotism. – Ed.]
Years passed away, and no enterprising spirit rose up to prosecute the discoveries already made. The missionary Marquette died among the Indians two years after, and Joliet took possession of his island. At length appears M. Robert, Cavalier de la Salle, a native of Rouen in Normandy, celebrated as the birthplace of Fontenelle and the two Corneilles, and for the martyrdom of the heroic Maid of Orleans more than two centuries before. La Salle was a man of bold talents and dauntless enterprise. Ambitious of fame and wealth, he emigrated to Canada; listened to the wonderful tales of the endless river; conceived the idea of a Northwest Passage to the East Indies; communicated his views to the commandant of Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario, and was advised to lay his plan before the Court of St. Cloud. On his arrival at Paris, under the patronage of the Prince de Conti, La Salle received letters of nobility and extensive grants of land in America. Associating with himself the Chevalier de Tonti, an Italian officer, who had the peculiarity of a copper hand as substitute to one lost in the wars of Sicily, and Father Lewis Hennepin, a Franciscan friar, as historian and missionary, together with about thirty others, the enterprise was immediately entered upon, under special sanction of Louis XIV., king of France. After a variety of fortune, prosperous and adverse, they reached the Illinois, and having descended that beautiful river some distance, discovered an Indian village consisting of five hundred cabins completely deserted. Here, having found a large quantity of corn concealed in the earth under each of the wigwams, the party remained six days. Descending ninety miles, they came to Peoria Lake, where they found two encampments of the natives. At first hostility was manifested, but soon they were on most amicable terms with the voyageurs, and a feasting, and dancing, and rejoicing was kept up for three days. Not long after this the boat containing supplies was lost upon "Le Baie des Puants," or Green Bay; and La Salle was forced to erect a fort, which received the appropriate name of "Creve Cœur" – broken heart. The site of this fortification is supposed to have been a spot now called "Spring Bay," not far from Peoria, on the Illinois. This is a singular place. It is a broad sand basin, some hundred feet in diameter, opening upon the river, the waters of which, in the higher stages, fill it to the brim, but when low they retire, and a number of large springs gush copiously forth from three sides of the ridge, and form a stream. "Blue Creek" empties itself just below, crossed by a bridge of earth, while yet farther down is seen a large mound, which has been opened, and found to contain human remains twenty feet from the summit.[12 - Concerning La Salle's discoveries, see Ogden's Letters from the West, in our volume xix, pp. 44-53, and accompanying notes. – Ed.]
At the time of the erection of Fort Creve Cœur the Illini were at war with the warlike Iroquois Indians; and the former, anticipating assistance from their friends the French, and receiving none, resolved to destroy La Salle. His boldness and eloquence alone saved him and restored amity. No sooner was this disturbance quelled than a mutiny arose among his own men. On Christmas-day his dinner was poisoned, and powerful medicine alone saved his life.
Preparations were now made to explore the Mississippi. Father Hennepin, with four Frenchmen, two Indians, and M. Dacan, commander, ascended the river to the falls, and named them, in honour of their patron saint, St. Anthony. They were here taken prisoners by a party of Sioux, carried one hundred and sixty miles into the interior to their villages, and detained several months, when they regained their liberty. Father Hennepin returned to Canada, and subsequently to France, where he published his travels in splendid style, dedicating the book to the celebrated Colbert. These early writings, though deeply imbued with a spirit of superstition and exaggeration, are yet valuable as the only records of the time.[13 - Concerning Hennepin's expedition from Crêvecœur to the Falls of St. Anthony, Flagg is in error. Hennepin was accompanied by two Frenchmen, Michel Accault and Antoine Auguel, and probably went merely as their spiritual companion. His publications were: Description de la Louisiane (Paris, 1683); Nouvelle Découverte d'un tres grand Pays Situé dans l'Amérique (Utrecht, 1697); Nouveau Voyage d'un Pais plus grand que l'Europe (Utrecht, 1698). The first was dedicated to Louis XIV, the last two to William III, king of England. For bibliography of Hennepin, see Victor Hugo Paltsits, "Bibliographical Data," in Thwaites, Hennepin's New Discovery (Chicago, 1903), pp. xlv-lxiv. – Ed.] The chief of these historians were Hennepin, Tonti, and Charlevoix.[14 - M. Tonti, among other writers, speaking of the country, according to Mr. Peck's translation, says:"The soil is, generally speaking, so fertile, that it produces naturally, without culture, those fruits that nature and art together have much ado to bring forth in Europe. They have two crops every year without any great fatigue. The vines bring extraordinary grapes, without the care of the husbandman, and the fruit-trees need no gardeners to look after them. The air is everywhere temperate. The country is watered with navigable rivers, and delicious brooks and rivulets. It is stocked with all sorts of beasts, as bulls, orignacs, wolves, lions, wild asses, stags, goats, sheep, foxes, hares, beavers, otters, dogs, and all sorts of fowl, which afford a plentiful game for the inhabitants."In another place, this writer gives an amusing account of hunting "wild bulls," which "go always by droves of three or four hundred each." This description answers well for the buffalo, but it is not so easy to determine what animals they mistook for "wild asses, goats, and sheep."Passing down the Mississippi, Tonti mentions the same animals, and describes the forest-trees with tolerable accuracy, had he not added, "one sees there whole plains covered with pomegranate-trees, orange-trees, and lemon-trees; and, in one word, with all kinds of fruit-trees." Goats are frequently mentioned by different writers. Hennepin, while narrating the account of an embassy from Fort Frontenac to the Iroquois nation, and the reception the party met with, says: "The younger savages washed our feet, and rubbed them with grease of deer, wild goats, and oil of bears." When upset in their boat and cast on the western shore of Lake Michigan, an Indian of their company "killed several stags and wild goats."Wild goats are named so frequently, and in so many connexions, as hardly to admit of an intentional misrepresentation. – Flagg.Comment by Ed. For sketches of Charlevoix and Tonty, see Nuttall's Journal, in our volume xiii, pp. 116 and 117, notes 81 and 85 respectively.] Difficulties arising with the Indians, La Salle resolved to erect another fort, which, after infinite difficulty, was completed. The site is described as "a rock, very high, the top of which was even and of convenient space, so that it commanded the river and country round about." This description applies to no place on the Illinois so well as to the "Starved Rock." The fort was called "St. Louis."
La Salle visited Canada, and a crowd of adventurers returned with him. Descending the Illinois and Mississippi, the company stopped for some time at the mouth of the Missouri, then the Osage River, and found a village of the Taumarwaus, which was deserted, the natives being on a hunting expedition. In three days they were at the Oubachi or Ohio. At the Chicasaw Bluffs a fort called Prudhomme was erected, and formal possession of the country first taken, and, in honour of the reigning monarch, named Louisiana. Several other forts were erected, and one of them, the ruins of which yet remain, is supposed to have stood between St. Louis and Carondelet. Descending the river on the 7th of April, 1683, La Salle reached the Gulf of Mexico, where a Te Deum was sung; a cross, with the arms of France, was suspended from the summit of a lofty tree; and the river, which had occupied three months in its exploration of about one thousand miles, was named "St. Louis." On his return, the associates of La Salle founded the villages of Kaskaskia and Cahokia on the American Bottom, while he hastened on to Canada and thence to France, to obtain a colony for the country at the mouth of the Mississippi. Losing his route on returning with this expedition, he commenced a journey over land to Illinois; but, while on his way, was treacherously assassinated by two of his followers.[15 - For a recent work on La Salle, consult P. Chesnel, Histoire de Cavelier de La Salle (Paris, 1901). With the exception of Crêvecœur, Prudhomme, and St. Louis, we have no definite proof that La Salle established any other forts in the Mississippi Valley. He erected a monument at the mouth of the Mississippi on April 9, 1682, on taking possession of the country in the name of Louis XIV. Kaskaskia and Cahokia were not founded by the associates of La Salle on the latter's return. For historical sketches of these towns, see A. Michaux's Travels, in our volume iii, p. 69, note 132, and p. 70, note 135, respectively. La Salle was assassinated March 19, 1687, on a branch of the Trinity River, in the present state of Texas. – Ed.] It is a remarkable fact in the history of retributive justice, that these men soon after dealt death to each other; and two priests of the mutineers became penitent, and confessed all the circumstances of the crime. The burial spot of the noble La Salle is unknown to this day. Marquette, "the apostle of the wilderness," died under circumstances of touching interest on the lonely shores of Lake Michigan while upon his mission. Charlevoix, the historian, throws an interest of melancholy romance over the fate of this venerable man. According to this writer, Father Joseph Marquette was a native of Laon, in Picardy, and of distinguished family. About two years after his discovery of the Mississippi, while engaged in his missionary labours among the savages, he was journeying from Chicago to Michillimackinac, and on the 8th of May, 1675, entered the mouth of a small river emptying into Lake Michigan upon its eastern side, which now bears his name. Here he landed, erected an altar, and said mass. After this ceremony he retired a short distance, and requested the two voyageurs who conducted his canoe to leave him alone for half an hour, while in private he returned thanks. The period having expired, they went to seek him, and found him dead in the attitude of devotion:[16 - Father Marquette died May 18, 1675, on the present site of Ludington, Michigan. – Ed.] the circumstance then recurred to them, that, on entering the river, he had dropped an intimation that he should there end his days. The distance was too great to Michillimackinac to convey there his remains, and the voyageurs accordingly buried them near the bank of the stream, which they called by his name. From that time the river, as if from reverence for the missionary's relics, has continued to retire, and his grave is yet pointed out to the traveller. Thus did the venerable Marquette, at an advanced age, alone with his God, yield up his blameless life to its giver, while engaged in his holy errand of peace to the savage, and amid the magnificent solitudes of the land of his discovery.
Subsequent to these explorations, colonies from Lower Canada rapidly settled the recent villages of Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Peoria.[17 - For the settlement of Peoria, see our volume xxvi, p. 133, note 93. – Ed.] But their designs seem not to have been those of the speculators of our own day. Their sole anticipation was to amass opulence by mining in a country then supposed incalculably rich in the precious metals, from its resemblance to the silver region of South America; and we find exclusive grants of extensive tracts bearing this date to Cruzat, Renault, and other individuals.[18 - Owing to the exhaustion of France following the War of the Spanish Succession, Louis XIV, determined to develop the resources of the vast Louisiana territory, granted (September 14, 1712) to Antoine Crozat, a wealthy merchant, the exclusive right of trade in Louisiana for a term of fifteen years. Among other privileges, Crozat was permitted to send one ship a year to Africa for a cargo of negroes; to possess and operate all mines of precious metals in the territory, on the condition that a fourth of the metal be turned over to the king; and to possess in perpetuity all buildings and manufactories erected by him in the colony. On the other hand, Crozat was obliged to import two shiploads of colonists each year, and after nine years to assume all the expenses of the government. In the meantime the king was to furnish fifty thousand livres annually. Crozat did all in his power to develop the resources of the country; but owing to discord among the subordinate officials, in despair he surrendered the charter to the prince regent (August 13, 1717). See Charles Gayarré, History of Louisiana (New Orleans, 1903). After Crozat's surrender, Louisiana territory was turned over to the Mississippi (or Western) Company, directed by John Law; see post, p. 49, note 28 (#cn_27). Philip François Renault was made the principal agent for a French company, whose purpose was the development of the mines of the territory. In 1719 he sailed from France with more than two hundred mechanics, stopped at the West Indies, and secured a cargo of five hundred negro slaves, and in due course arrived at Fort Chartres in the Illinois (1721). Large grants of land for mining purposes were made to Renault – an extensive tract west of the Mississippi River; another, fifteen leagues square, near the site of Peoria; and still another above Fort Chartres, one league along the river and two leagues deep. He founded St. Philippe, near the fort, and built what was probably the first smelting furnace in the Mississippi Valley. In 1743 he returned to France, where he died. – Ed.] In pursuit of this golden chimera, many expeditions were fitted out at vast expense. In 1699 M. de Seur, an enterprising traveller, with ninety men, descended the Mississippi to a spot six hundred miles above the Illinois, and erected a fort upon the present site of Fort Armstrong for the purpose of exploring a mine of terre verte, said to have been discovered in that beautiful region.[19 - Pierre Charles le Sueur went to Canada when a young man, and engaged in the fur-trade. In 1693, while commandant at Chequamegon, he erected two forts – one on Madelaine Island, in Chequamegon Bay (Lake Superior), and another on an island in the Mississippi, near Red Wing, Minnesota. Later he discovered lead mines along the upper Mississippi. In 1699 he returned from a visit to France, and under Iberville's directions searched for copper mines in the Sioux country, where Le Sueur had earlier found green earth. Le Sueur reached the mouth of Missouri River (July 13, 1700) with nineteen men, according to Bénard de la Harpe's manuscript, compiled from Le Sueur's Journal – with twenty-nine men, as related by Pénicaut, a member of the expedition. The company was later increased to perhaps thirty or forty, but not ninety, as Flagg says. Le Sueur ascended the Mississippi, and its tributary the Minnesota, and erected a fort in August, 1700, one league above the point where the Blue Earth River (St. Peter's River, until 1852) empties into the Minnesota. This fort he named l'Huillier, in honor of his patron in France. Flagg has confused this site with that of Fort Armstrong at Rock Island, Illinois. In May, 1701, Le Sueur left the fort in care of d'Eraque, who remained in charge until 1703, when he abandoned the place. For extracts from original documents relating to Le Sueur's activities, consult: "Le Sueur's Mines on the Mississippi," "Le Sueur's Voyage up the Mississippi," and "Le Sueur's Fort on the Mississippi," in Wisconsin Historical Collections, xvi, pp. 173, 174, 177-200. – Ed.] It need hardly be said that all these adventurers were disappointed: but the buoyant hilarity of the race did not forsake them, and as boatmen, hunters, couriers du bois, Indian traders, and small farmers,[20 - "Petits paysans." – Flagg.] they gained a comfortable subsistence, and merrily did they enjoy it. Most of their lives were passed upon the broad prairies, and in penetrating every section of this vast valley in their birch pirogues wherever a stream presented to them its bosom; and yet with the violin, the grape-juice, and a short pipe, they seemed the blithest mortals on the face of the earth. It was by men such as these that the village of Kaskaskia, in old French chronicles styled "Notre dame de Cascasquias," originating in the name and residence of an Indian tribe, first was settled; and in a few years it had become an extensive depôt for the trade in furs. It was probably by the same Indian tribe which originally possessed the site of Kaskaskia that a party of the unfortunate expedition of Ferdinand de Soto, by whom Florida was partially conquered, was almost destroyed about the year 1539. Indeed, there was a tradition still extant upon the arrival of the French, of their having exterminated the first white faces they had ever seen. For three years did the chivalrous De Soto, with his nine hundred steel-clad warriors, scour the land in search of the reality of his golden dreams: at length he died; he was an object of hatred and terror to the Indians; and to conceal his death, or to preserve from violation his remains, his followers enclosed them in a coffin constructed from the section of a hollow tree, and sunk them beneath the floods of the eternal river. His followers, reduced to only two hundred and fifty, returned to Spain. And so the burial-places of the first explorers of the Mississippi are unknown.[21 - The battle of Mauilla, to which Flagg is referring, was fought in October, 1540, between De Soto's men and the Mobilian Indians, near the present site of Mobile. Our author is mistaken in supposing that these Indians were the Kaskaskia. De Soto reached the Mississippi in May, 1541, and died May 21, 1542. He started on the expedition with less than seven hundred men, instead of one thousand. According to Herrera, his body was laid in a hollow live-oak log, and lowered into the Mississippi; but it seems more probable that the corpse was wrapped in mantles made heavy by a ballast of sand, and thus lowered into the water. See John G. Shea, "Ancient Florida," in Justin Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America (Boston and New York, 1886), ii, pp. 231-283; also E. G. Bourne (ed.) Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto (New York, 1904). – Ed.]
The extent of the territory of Kaskaskia was originally very great, stretching from the Kaskaskia River to the Mississippi, a breadth of about two miles, and comprising the area from the confluence of the streams, seven miles below, to the present site of the place. The tract below the town is incalculably fertile, abounding in the plum, the persimmon, the cherry, the delicate pecan, the hickory, and the hazel-nut; and for the most part was comprised in one vast "common field," over which herds of wild horses, introduced by the emigrants, long roamed in undisturbed possession. This common, consisting of seven thousand acres, was granted "to Kaskaskia and inhabitants for ever" by Vaudreuil, governor of the Province of Louisiana, as early as 1743.[22 - Annexed is a copy of the grant of the celebrated commons attached to the village of Kaskaskia. It is the earliest title the citizens hold to seven thousand acres of the most fertile land in the West – perhaps in the world."Pierre de Rigault de Vaudreuil, Governor and Edme Gatien Salmon Commissary orderer of the Province of Louisiana, seen the petition to us presented on the sixteenth day of June of this present year by the Inhabitants of the Parish of the Immaculate Conception of Kaskaskia dependence of the Illinois, tending to be confirmed in the possession of a common which they have had a long time for the pasturage of their cattle in the Point called La point de bois, which runs to the entrance of the River Kaskaskia. We, by virtue of the power to us granted by his Majesty have confirmed and do confirm to the said Inhabitants the possession of the said common on the following conditions —"First, That the concessions heretofore granted either by the India Company either by our predecessors or by us in the prairie of Kaskaskia on the side of the point which runs to the entrance of the river, shall terminate at the land granted to a man named Cavalier, and in consequence, that all concessions that may have been made on the said point from the land of the said Cavalier forward, on the side of the entrance of the said river shall be null and void and of no effect. In consequence of which, the said Point, as it is above designated, shall remain in common without altering its nature, nevertheless, reserving to us the power whenever the case may require it, of granting the said commons to the inhabitants established and who may establish, and this, on the representations which may be made to us by the commandants and sub-delegates in the said places."Secondly, on the road vulgarly called the Square Line between the large and small line shall be rendered practicable and maintained for the passage of the Carts and Cattle going into the Common, and this by lack of the proprietors as well of the great as of the small line whose lands border on the roads of the Square line. And as to the places which ought to run along the side of the village from the said road of the Square line unto the river, as also the one on the side of the point running to the Mississippi and to the Kaskaskia river, they shall be made and maintained at the expense of the community, to the end that the cultivated lands be not injured by the cattle."Thirdly, To facilitate to the inhabitants the means of making their autumnal harvest, and prevent its being damaged by the cattle, we forbid all persons to leave their cattle range upon cultivated lands – they are, notwithstanding, permitted to graze upon their own proper lands on having them diligently watched."Fourthly, Willing that the wood which is on the land granted belong to the proprietors of the said lands, we forbid all persons to cut down any elsewhere than on their own lands, and as to the wood which may be found in the commons to cut down for their own use, either for building or for fire wood, and this shall be the present regulation."Read, published and affixed to the end that no person may be ignorant thereof. Given at New-Orleans the fourteenth day of August, 1743.VAUDREUIL."Salmon." – Flagg.>] In this arrangement we observe a striking feature in the policy both of the French and Spanish governments, in their early settlements on the Mississippi. The items of door-yards, gardens, stable-yards, etc., and of settling colonies in the compact form of towns and villages, as a protection from the savages and to promote social intercourse, were all matters of special requisition and enactment; while to each settlement was granted two tracts of land for "common fields" and "commons." This distinction was not, however, invariably observed. The former consisted of several hundred acres, conveniently divided among the individual families, and the whole enclosed by the labour of all the villagers in common. If the enclosure opposite any plat was suffered to become ruinous, the right to the common was forfeited by the offending individual. The seasons, also, for ploughing, sowing, reaping, etc., were by public ordinance simultaneous: yet with these restrictions, each individual, so long as he complied with the necessary regulations, possessed his lot in franc allieu– fee simple, subject to sale and transfer. The "common" was a far more extended tract, embracing in some instances several thousand acres without enclosure, and reserved for the purpose of wood and pasturage. Here there was no grant of severalty, and no individual portion could be appropriated without the special and unanimous consent of the whole village. To the indigent who came to settle among them, and to young married pairs, donations from this tract were often made by the villagers, and, if conveniently situated, might subsequently become a portion of the "common field."[23 - "Under the old management all the inhabitants had equal access to the commons for pasturage and fuel. By an act of the legislature passed in 1854, the citizens were authorized to elect five trustees every two years, who should exercise the charge of the commons, lease portions thereof, and apply the proceeds to church and school purposes only. The common fields were also originally owned jointly by the villagers, though each resident was assigned an individual portion. The United States commissioners, in 1809, determined the rights of each citizen, and the lots have since been held in fee simple." See Combined History of Randolph, Monroe, and Perry Counties, Illinois (Philadelphia, 1883), p. 308. – Ed.] That such an arrangement, under all the circumstances of the period when instituted, and with such a people as the early French settlers, was the best that could have been made, no one can doubt. But how such a regulation would suit a race of enterprising Yankees, fidgeting eternally for improvements, or a squad of long-sided Kentuckians, grumbling about elbow-room, is problematical.
The proceedings of our national government towards these ancient villages have been characterized by generosity, whatever may be said of the conduct of individuals. In 1788, an extensive tract lying along the Mississippi was by act of Congress granted to the French inhabitants east of that river; and to those of Kaskaskia was secured for a common field twenty thousand acres. It is under direction of the trustees of the town by provision of the state legislature.[24 - For the memorial of George Morgan, upon these lands along the Mississippi River, the report of the committee to which the above had been referred, and the resolutions of Congress thereon (August 28, 29, 1788), see Laws of the United States, etc. (Bioren edition, Philadelphia, 1815), i, pp. 580-585. – Ed.]
Unlike the policy of all other Europeans who have planted themselves upon the Western continent, that of the French emigrants towards the aborigines, with the single exception of the extermination of the Natchez in the South, has invariably been conciliatory, peaceable, and friendly.[25 - For an account of the extermination of the Natchez, see F. A. Michaux's Travels, in our volume iii, p. 254, note 53. – Ed.] This has been the effect rather of debasing themselves than of elevating the natives. Surrounded by everything which could fascinate the eye or delight the fancy, we find these inoffensive foreigners, therefore, unlike the English settlers along the Atlantic and in the elder Western states, at peace with all their savage neighbours; unambitious, contented, and happy, increasing and flourishing; and in a few years, they tell us, Kaskaskia, "the terrestrial paradise," numbered a population of eight thousand souls![26 - Doubtless an exaggeration. – Flagg.Comment by Ed. "From 1810 to 1820 the town (Kaskaskia) probably contained more people than at any other period of its history. A census taken at that time showed a population of seven thousand." See History of Randolph, Monroe, and Perry Counties, p. 307.] Blessed with a soil of boundless fertility, and prolific in all Nature's luxurious stores to a degree of which less-favoured climes can form no conception: subsisting solely by culture of the little homesteads around their own thresholds, by hunting the wild denizens of their noble forests, or angling upon the calm bosom of their beautiful stream: simple-hearted and peaceful, almost without the terms of law, gently ruled by the restraints of a religion they venerated and a priesthood they loved: without commerce, the arts, or the elegances of life; a thousand miles from a community of civilized men; from year to year they went on, and from generation to generation they flourished, until, in that of our own age and our own day, they are found still treading in the steps in which their fathers trod! So long as the peaceful French villager retained the beautiful land of his adoption in undisputed possession, all was flourishing and prosperous. A little more than half a century from its origin, Kaskaskia was capital of Illinois; and on the visit of Charlevoix in 1721, a monastery and Jesuit college was in successful operation, the ruins of the edifice remaining extant even at the present day.[27 - A monastery and accompanying college, liberally endowed from Europe, was founded at Kaskaskia by Jesuit missionaries in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. – Ed.] This institution was successful in converting a number of the aborigines to its peculiar tenets, and at one period is said to have "embraced twenty-five hundred catechumens!!" A most preposterous assertion, most assuredly.
It was in the early part of this century that the scheme of that celebrated projector, John Law, of Edinburgh, on the strength of which he elevated himself to the dignity of Comptroller-general of the Finance of France, was first set on foot with reference to the Valley of the Mississippi. The design, so far as it is now known, was to establish a bank, an East India, and a Mississippi Company, from the anticipated enormous revenue of which was to be liquidated the national debt of France.[28 - "The idea," says Adam Smith, "of the possibility of multiplying paper money to almost any extent, was the real foundation of what is called the Mississippi scheme, the most extravagant project, both of banking and stock-jobbing, that perhaps the world ever saw." – Flagg.Comment by Ed. John Law died at Venice, March 21, 1729. Concerning his financial methods, see Émile Levasseur, Recherches historique sur le system de Law (Paris, 1854). Ample and accurate is Andrew M. Davis's A Historical Study of Law's System (Boston, 1887), reprinted from Quarterly Journal of Economics (Boston, 1887), i, pp. 289-318, 420-452.] The territory of Louisiana had already acquired a reputation abroad for the boundlessness of the wealth and fertility of its soil; and, to foster the delusion of Law's scheme, descriptions of this beautiful region, tinted with all the rainbow hues of romance, were scattered throughout Europe, until the distant wilderness of les Illinois became the paradise of the slumberer's vision. "The Illinois" was the fairyland of fancy realized. A few years, the vast fabric of fictitious credit crumbled, almost annihilating the finance of France, and burying thousands of families in its ruins. Law was exiled and retired to Venice, where in poverty he soon died. It is a coincidence not a little remarkable, that the same year, 1720, witnessed the same desperate game enacted by the South Sea directors in England. But the attention of France was now directed towards her remote colony in North America; and notwithstanding the failure of Law's scheme, old Kaskaskia continued to flourish beyond all compare. Other villages sprang into existence around; a lucrative fur-trade was carried on by the Canadian voyageurs, and agriculture became the peculiar province of the French villager. The extent and luxuriance of the agriculture at this period may be gathered from the fact, that in the single year 1746, eight hundred thousand weight of flour was sent to New Orleans from these settlements.[29 - Breckenridge. – Flagg.] At this period there was not a solitary village west of the Mississippi, though the lead-mines then known and worked were resorted to by traders.[30 - For an account of the early lead-mines, see Flagg's Far West, in our volume xxvi, p. 95, note 60. – Ed.] Twenty years after the failure of Law's scheme, the French government formed the design, almost as chimerical, of securing her immense possessions in the Mississippi Valley by a continuous line of military posts, connecting them with Canada; and vast were the sums of money expended in the undertaking.
A century, and the whole region was ceded to England, thence to our own government in 1783, and now old Kaskaskia is but the wreck of its former prosperity. It makes one almost sad to wander about among these ruinous, deserted habitations, venerable with departed years, and reflect that once they were thronged with population, the seat of hospitality, and the home of kindly feeling. The quiet villagers have been not a little annoyed by the steady and rapid influx of immigration on every side of them, dissimilar in customs, language, religion, and temperament, while the bustling enterprise has fretted and displeased them. Long accustomed, also, to the arbitrary but parental authority of their military commandants and priesthood, they deemed the introduction of the common law among them exceedingly burdensome, and the duties of a citizen of a republic, of which we are so proud, intolerable drudgery. Many, therefore, of the wealthy and respectable, on cession of their territory to our government, removed to Louisiana, where civil law yet bears sway; others crossed the river and established Ste. Genevieve and St. Louis;[31 - For an historical sketch of Ste. Genevieve, see Cuming's Tour, in our volume iv, p. 266, note 174. – Ed.] while the foreigners returning to the lands from which they had emigrated, few but natives of the country remained behind. The ordinance of 1787,[32 - The French civil law still prevails in Louisiana.For a good monograph on the Ordinance of 1787, and the text of the same, see Jay Amos Barrett, Evolution of the Ordinance of 1787, with an Account of the earlie Plans for the Government of the Northwest Territory (New York, 1891). – Ed.] prohibiting involuntary servitude in the region then called the Northwestern Territory, induced many who were desirous of preserving their blacks to remove to the new villages west of the Mississippi, then under Spanish rule. From these and a variety of similar causes, this peaceful, kind-hearted people have within the last thirty years been more than once disturbed in the dwellings of their fathers.
Kaskaskia, Ill.
Edmund Flagg
Pierre-Jean Smet
Edmund Flagg
Flagg's The Far West, 1836-1837, part 2; and De Smet's Letters and Sketches, 1841-1842
THE FAR WEST
[PART II]
XXXIII[1 - Volume xxvii of our series begins with chapter xxxiii of the original New York edition (1838) of Flagg's The Far West. The author is here describing the part of his journey made in the late summer or early autumn of 1836. – Ed.]
"Stranger, if thou hast learn'd a truth which needs
Experience more than reason, that the world
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast known
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares
To tire thee of it; enter this wild wood,
And view the haunts of Nature."
Bryant.
The moon had gone down; the last star had burned out in the firmament; and that deep darkness which precedes the dawn was brooding over the earth as the traveller turned away from the little inn at the village of Pinkneyville. Fortunately he had, the previous evening, while surveying the face of the region from the door of the hostelrie, gained some general idea of the route to Kaskaskia; and now, dropping the reins upon his horse's neck, he began floundering along through a blackness of darkness perfectly Cimmerian. It was, indeed, a gloomy night. The early mists were rising, damp and chill, from the soil saturated with the showers of the preceding day; and the darkness had become of a density almost palpable to the sense. Crossing a narrow arm of the prairie in the direction presumed to be correct, my horse carried me into a dense wood, and, if possible, the darkness increased. I had penetrated some miles into the heart of the forest, and was advancing slowly upon my way, when my attention was suddenly arrested by a low, whispering, rustling sound in the depths of the wood at my right; this gradually increasing, was almost immediately succeeded by a crashing, thundering, rushing report, till every echo far and wide in that dark old wood was wakened, and the whole forest for miles around resounded with the roar. My horse, terrified at the noise, leaped and plunged like a mad creature. An enormous forest-tree had fallen within a dozen rods of the spot on which I stood. As I left the noble ruin and resumed my lonely way, my mind brooded over the event, and I thought I could perceive in the occurrence a powerful feature of the sublime. The fall of an aged tree in the noiseless lapse of time is ever an event not unworthy of notice; but, at a moment like this, it was surely so in an eminent degree. Ages since – long ere the first white man had pressed the soil of this Western world, and while the untamed denizens of the wilderness roamed in the freedom of primitive creation – ages since had seen the germe of that mighty tree lifting up its young, green leaf from the sod, beneath the genial warmth of the sunlight and the summer wind. An age passed away. The tender stem had reared itself into a gigantic pillar, and proudly tossed its green head amid the upper skies: that young leaf, expanded and developed, had spread itself abroad, until, at length, the beasts of the earth had sought out its shade, and the tree stood up the monarch of the forest. Another age is gone, and the hoary moss of time is flaunting to the winds from its venerable branches. Long ago the thunderbolt had consecrated its lofty top with the baptismal of fire, and, sere and rifted, the storm-cloud now sings through its naked limbs. Like an aged man, its head is bleached with years, while the strength and verdure of ripened maturity yet girdle its trunk. But the worm is at the root: rottenness at the heart is doing its work. Its day and its hour are appointed, and their bounds it may not pass. That hour, that moment is come! and in the deep, pulseless stillness of the night-time, when slumber falleth upon man and Nature pauses in her working, the offspring of centuries is laid low, and bows himself along the earth. Yet another age is gone; but the traveller comes not to muse over the relics of the once-glorious ruin. Long ago has each been mouldering away, and their dust has mingled with the common mother of us all. Ah! there is a moral in the falling of an aged tree!
I was dwelling with rather melancholy reflections upon this casual occurrence, when a quick panting close at my side attracted my attention; a large, gaunt-looking prairie-wolf had just turned on his heel and was trotting off into the shade. The gray dawn had now begun to flicker along the sky, and, crossing a beautiful prairie and grove, I found myself at the pleasant farmhouse of a settler of some twenty or thirty years' standing; and dismounting, after a ride of eighteen miles, I partook, with little reluctance or ceremony, of an early breakfast. Thus much for the night adventures of a traveller in the woods and wilds of Illinois! My host, the old gentleman to whom I have referred, very sagely mistook his guest for a physician, owing to a peculiarly convenient structure of those indispensables ycleped saddle-bags; and was just about consulting his fancied man of medicines respecting the ailings of his "woman," who was reclining on a bed, when, to his admiration, he was undeceived.
Passing through an inconsiderable village on the north side of the Little Vermillion called Georgetown, my route lay through an extended range of hills and barrens.[2 - The Vermilion River (which Flagg incorrectly wrote Little Vermilion) rises, with several branches, in the western and southern portions of La Salle County, and flows north and west, entering Illinois River at Rock Island, in Livingston County.] Among the former were some most intolerably tedious, especially to a horseman beneath a broiling sun, who had passed a sleepless night: but the sweep of scenery from their summits was beautiful and extensive. At length the traveller stood upon the "heights of Chester," and the broad Mississippi was rolling on its turbid floods a hundred yards beneath. The view is here a noble one, not unlike that from the Alton or Grafton bluffs at the other extremity of the "American Bottom," though less extensive. Directly at the feet of the spectator, scattered along a low, narrow interval, lies the village of Chester. Upon the opposite bank the forest rolls away to the horizon in unbroken magnificence, excepting that here and there along the bottom the hand of cultivation is betrayed by the dark luxuriance of waving maize-fields. A beautiful island, with lofty trees and green smiling meadows, stretches itself along in the middle of the stream before the town, adding not a little to the picturesqueness of the scene, and, in all probability, destined to add something more to the future importance of the place. To the right, at a short distance, come in the soft-flowing waters of the Kaskaskia through deeply-wooded banks; and nearly in the same direction winds away the mirror-surface of the Mississippi for twenty miles, to accomplish a direct passage of but four, an occurrence by no means unusual in its course. As I stood gazing upon the scene, a steamer appeared sweeping around the bend, and, puffing lazily along with the current past the town, soon disappeared in the distance. From the heights an exceedingly precipitous pathway leads down to the village. Chester is one of the new places of Illinois, and, of course, can boast but little to interest the stranger apart from the highly scenic beauty of its situation.[3 - Chester is on the Mississippi River, in Randolph County, just below the mouth of Kaskaskia River. In the summer of 1829, Samuel Smith built the first house there, and two years later he, together with Mather, Lamb and Company, platted the town site. It was named by Jane Smith from her native town, Chester, England, and was made the seat of justice for Randolph in 1848. – Ed.Steelesville (formerly Georgetown) is about fifteen miles east of Kaskaskia, on the road between Pinkneyville and Chester; the site was settled on by George Steele in 1810. A block-house fort erected there in 1812 protected the settlers against attacks from the Kickapoo Indians. In 1825 a tread-mill was built, and two years later a store and post-office were erected. The latter was named Steele's Mills. The settlement was originally called Georgetown and later changed by an act of state legislature to Steelesville, being surveyed in 1832. – Ed.] It has been mostly erected within the few years past; and, for its extent, is a flourishing business place. Its landing is excellent, location healthy, adjacent region fertile, and, for aught I know to the contrary, may, in course of years, rival even the far-famed Alton. Its landing, I was informed, is the only one for many miles upon the river, above or below, suitable for a place of extensive commerce.
From Chester, in a direction not far from north, a narrow pathway winds along beneath the bluffs, among the tall cane-brakes of the bottom. Leaving the Mississippi at the mouth of the Kaskaskia, it runs along the low banks of the latter stream, and begins to assume an aspect truly delightful. Upon either side rise the shafts of enormous sycamores to the altitude of an hundred feet, and then, flinging abroad and interlacing their long branches, form a living arch of exquisite beauty, stretching away in unbroken luxuriance for miles. Beneath springs from the rich loam a dense undergrowth of canes; a profusion of wild vines and bushes clustering with fruit serving effectually to exclude the sunbeams, except a few checkered spots here and there playing upon the foliage, while at intervals through the dark verdure is caught the flashing sheen of the moving waters. Upon the right, at the distance of only a few yards, go up the bluffs to the sheer height of some hundred feet, densely clothed with woods. The path, though exceedingly narrow and serpentine, is for the most part a hard-trodden, smooth, and excellent one when dry. The coolness and fragrance of these deep, old, shadowy woodlands has always for me a resistless charm. There is so much of quiet seclusion from the feverish turmoil of ordinary life within their peaceful avenues, that, to one not wedded to the world, they are ever inexpressibly grateful.
"The calm shade
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze,
That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm
To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here
Of all that pain'd thee in the haunts of men,
And made thee loathe thy life."
In the wild, fierce glaring of a summer noontide, when amid "the haunts of men" all is parched up, and dusty, and scathed, how refreshingly cool are the still depths of the forest! The clear crystal streamlet gushes forth with perennial laughter from the rock, seeming to exult in its happy existence; the bright enamelled mosses of a century creep along the gnarled old roots, and life in all its fairy forms trips forth to greet the eremite heart and charm it from the world. But there was one feature of the scene through which I was passing that struck me as peculiarly imposing, and to which I have not yet referred. I allude to the enormous, almost preternatural magnitude of the wild-grape vine, and its tortuosity. I have more than once, in the course of my wanderings, remarked the peculiarities of these vast parasites; but such is the unrivalled fertility, and the depth of soil of the Kaskaskia bottom, that vegetation of every kind there attains a size and proportion elsewhere almost unknown. Six or seven of these vast vegetable serpents are usually beheld leaping forth with a broad whirl from the mould at the root of a tree, and then, writhing, and twining, and twisting among themselves into all imaginable forms, at length away they start, all at once and together, in different directions for the summit, around which they immediately clasp their bodies, one over the other, and swing depending in festoons on every side. Some of these vines, when old and dried up by the elements, are amazingly strong; more so, perhaps, than a hempen hawser of the same diameter.
Having but a short ride before me the evening I left Chester, I alighted from my horse, and leisurely strolled along through this beautiful bower I have been attempting to describe. What a charming spot, thought I, for a Romeo and Juliet! – pardon my roving fancy, sober reader – but really, with all my own sobriety, I could not but imagine this a delightful scene for a "Meet me by moonlight alone," or any other improper thing of the kind, whether or not a trip to Gretna Green subsequently ensued. And if, in coming years, when the little city of Chester shall have become all that it now seems to promise, and the venerable Kaskaskia, having cast her slough, having rejuvenated her withered energies, and recalled the days of her pristine traditionary glory; if then, I say, the young men and maidens make not this the consecrated spot of the long summer-evening ramble and the trysting-place of the heart, reader, believe us not; in the dignified parlance of the corps editorial, believe us not.
Some portions of the Kaskaskia bottom have formerly, at different times, been cleared and cultivated; but nothing now remains but the ruins of tenements to acquaint one with the circumstance. The spot must have been exceedingly unhealthy in its wild state. There is, however, one beautiful and extensive farm under high cultivation nearly opposite Kaskaskia, which no traveller can fail to observe and admire. It is the residence of Colonel M – , a French gentleman of wealth, who has done everything a cultivated taste could dictate to render it a delightful spot.[4 - Flagg is probably referring to Colonel Pierre Menard. See our volume xxvi, p. 165, note 116. – Ed.] A fine, airy farmhouse stands beneath the bluffs, built after the French style, with heavy roof, broad balconies, and with a rare luxury in this region – green Venetian blinds. The outhouses, most of them substantially constructed of stone, are surpassed in beauty and extent only by the residence itself. Fields yellow with golden harvest, orchards loaded with fruit, and groves, and parks, and pastures sprinkled with grazing cattle, spread out themselves on every side. In the back-ground rise the wooded bluffs, gracefully rounded to their summits, while in front roams the gentle Kaskaskia, beyond which, peacefully reposing in the sunlight, lay the place of my destination.
Kaskaskia, Ill.
XXXIV
"Protected by the divinity they adored, supported by the earth which they cultivated, and at peace with themselves, they enjoyed the sweets of life without dreading or desiring dissolution." – Numa Pompilius.
"A pleasing land of drowsy head it was,
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye."
Castle of Indolence.
In a country like our own, where everything is fresh and recent, and where nothing has yet been swept by the mellowing touch of departed time, any object which can lay but the most indifferent claim to antiquity fails not to be hailed with delighted attention. "You have," say they of the other hemisphere, "no ivy-mantled towers; no moss-grown, castellated ruins; no donjon-keeps rearing in dark sublimity their massive walls and age-bleached battlements; nothing to span the mighty chasm of bygone years, and to lead down the fancy into the shadowy realms of the past; and, therefore, your country is steril in moral interest." Now, though this corollary is undoubtedly false, I yet believe the proposition in the main to be true: especially is this the case with regard to that region which lies west of the Alleghany range. Little as there may be in the elder sections of our Atlantic states to demand veneration for the past, no sooner does the traveller find himself gliding along the silvery wave of the "beautiful river," than at the same moment he finds himself forsaking all that the fairy creations of genius have ever consecrated, or the roll of the historian chronicled for coming time. All is NEW. The very soil on which he treads, fertile beyond comparison, and festering beneath the undisturbed vegetation of centuries; the rolling forests, bright, luxuriant, gorgeous as on the dawn of creation; the endless streams pouring onward in their fresh magnificence to the ocean, all seem new. The inhabitants are emigrants late from other lands, and every operation of human skill on which the eye may rest betrays a recent origin. There is but a single exception to these remarks – those mysterious monuments of a race whom we know not of!
In consideration, therefore, of the circumstance that antiquities in this blessed land of ours are, indeed, very few and far between, I deem it the serious duty of every traveller, be he virtuoso or be he not, whenever once so happy as to lay his grasp upon an antique "in any form, in any shape," just to hold fast to the best of his ability! Such, reader, be it known, was my own praiseworthy determination when drawing nigh to the eastern shore of the stream opposite the ancient French village Kaskaskia. The sun was going down, and as I approached the sandy edge of the sea-green water, a gay bevy of young folks were whirling the long, narrow, skiff-like ferry-boat like a bird across the stream, by means of a hawser to which it was attached, and which extended from shore to shore. In my own turn I stepped into the boat, and in a few moments the old French negro had forced it half across the river, at this spot about three or four hundred yards in width. For one who has ever visited Kaskaskia in the last beautiful days of summer, a pen like my own need hardly be employed to delineate the loveliness of the scene which now opened upon the view. For miles the gleamy surface of the gentle Kaskaskia might be seen retreating from the eye, till lost at length in its windings through the forests of its banks, resting their deep shadows on the stream in all the calm magnificence of inanimate nature. The shore I was leaving swelled gracefully up from the water's edge, clothed in forests until it reached the bluffs, which towered abrupt and loftily; while here and there along the landscape the low roof of a log cabin could be caught peeping forth from the dark shrubbery. The bank of the stream I was approaching presented an aspect entirely the reverse; less lovely, but more picturesque. A low sandy beach stretched itself more than a mile along the river, destitute of trees, and rounding itself gently away into a broad green plain. Upon this plain – a portion of the American Bottom – at the distance of a few hundred yards from the water, is situated all that now remains of "old Kaskaskia." From the centre rises a tall Gothic spire, hoary with time, surmounted by an iron cross; and around this nucleus are clustered irregularly, at various intervals, the heavy-roofed, time-stained cottages of the French inhabitants. These houses are usually like those of the West India planters – but a single story in height – and the surface which they occupy is, of course, in the larger class, proportionably increased. They are constructed, some of rough limestone, some of timber, framed in every variety of position – horizontal, perpendicular, oblique, or all united – thus retaining their shape till they rot to the ground, with the interstices stuffed with the fragments of stone, and the external surface stuccoed with mortar; others – a few only – are framed, boarded, etc., in modern style. Nearly all have galleries in front, some of them spacious, running around the whole building, and all have garden-plats enclosed by stone walls or stoccades. Some of these curious-looking structures are old, having bided the storm-winds of more than a century. It is this circumstance which throws over the place that antiquated, venerable aspect to which I have alluded, and which equally applies to all the other villages of this peculiar people I have yet spoken of. The city of Philadelphia and this neglected village of Kaskaskia are, as regards age, the same to a year;[5 - Philadelphia was founded in 1682. There has been much discussion about the exact date of the founding of Kaskaskia. E. G. Mason was of the opinion that this uncertainty had arisen in the confounding of Kaskaskia with an earlier Indian settlement of the same name on the Illinois River. It seems probable that Kaskaskia on the Mississippi was started in 1699. Consult E. G. Mason, "Kaskaskia and its Parish Records," in Magazine of American History (New York, 1881), vi, pp. 161-182, and Chapters from Illinois History (Chicago, 1901); also C. W. Alvord, The Old Kaskaskia Records (Chicago Historical Society, 1906). See also A. Michaux's Travels, in our volume iii, p. 69, note 132. – Ed.] but while every object which, in the one, meets the eye, looks fresh as if but yesterday touched by the last chiselling of the architect, in the latter the thoughts are carried back at least to Noah's ark! Two centuries have rolled by since the "city of the Pilgrims" ceased to be a "cornfield;" but where will you now look for a solitary relic of that olden time? "State-street," the scene where American blood was first poured out by British soldiery; "Old Cornhill;" the site of the "Liberty-tree;" and the wharf from which the tea was poured into the dock, are indeed pointed out to you as spots memorable in the history of the "Leaguer of Boston;" and yonder frowns the proud height of Bunker's Hill; there lay the British battle-ships, and there was "burning Charlestown: " but, with almost the solitary exception of the "Old South" Church, with the cannon-ball imbedded in its tower, where shall we look for an object around which our associations may cluster? This is not the case with these old villages. A century has looked down upon the same objects, in the same situations and under the same relations, with a change scarcely appreciable. Yon aged church-tower has thrown its venerable shadow alike over the Indian corn-dance, the rude cotillon of the French villager, the Spanish fandango, the Virginia reel, and the Yankee frolic. Thus, then, when I speak of these places with reference to antiquity, I refer not so much to the actual lapse of years as to the present aspect and age of the individual objects. In this view there are few spots in our country which may lay more undisputed claim to antiquity than these early French settlements in the Western Valley.
There is one feature of these little villages to which I have not at this time alluded, but which is equally amusing and characteristic, and which never fails to arrest the stranger's observation. I refer to the narrowness of those avenues intended for streets. It is no very strange thing that in aged Paris structure should be piled upon structure on either side even to the clouds, while hardly a footpath exists between; but that in this vast Western world a custom, in all respects the same, should have prevailed, surpasseth understanding. This must have resulted not surely from lack of elbow-room, but from the marvellous sociality of the race, or from that attachment to the customs of their own fatherland which the Frenchman ever betrays. In agriculture and the mechanic arts they are now about as well skilled, notwithstanding the improvements which they must perceive have been going on around them, as on the day their fathers first planted foot on this broad land. The same implements of husbandry and the arts which a century since were seen in France, are now seen here; the very vehicle they drive is the vineyard-car, which is presented us in representations of rustic life in the older provinces of the same land. The same characteristics of feeling and action are here displayed as there, and the Gallic tongue is sacredly transmitted from father to son. But here the parallel ceases. We can trace but little resemblance between the staid, simple-hearted French villager of the Mississippi Valley, and the gay, frivolous, dissolute cotemporary of the fifteenth Louis; still less to the countryman of a Marat or a Robespierre, rocked upon the bloody billow of the "Reign of Terror;" and less than either to the high-minded, polished Frenchman of the nineteenth century. The same fact has been remarked of the Spanish population of Florida and Mexico; their resemblance to their ancestors, who have been slumbering for more than three centuries in their graves, is far more striking than to their present brethren of "Old Castile." The cause of this is not difficult to detect. The customs, the manners, the very idioms of nations never remain for any considerable period of time invariably the same: other men, other times, other circumstances, when assisted by civil or religious revolutions, produce surprising changes in the parent land, while the scanty colony, separated by mountains and seas, not more from the roar and commotion than from the influenced sphere of these events, slumbers quietly on from century to century, handing down from father to son those peculiarities, unaltered, which migrated with them. Climate, soil, location, though far from exclusive, are by no means inconsiderable agents in affecting character in all its relations of intellect, temperament, and physical feature. And thus has it chanced that we now look upon a race of men separated but a few centuries from the parent stock, yet exhibiting characteristics in which there are few traits common to both.
It was through one of those long, narrow, lane-like streets to which I have alluded, and, withal, a most unconscionably filthy one, that I rode from the landing of the ferry to the inn. The low-roofed, broad-galleried cottages on either side seemed well stocked with a race of dark-eyed, dark-haired, swarthy-looking people, all, from the least unto the tallest, luxuriating in the mellow atmosphere of evening; all, as if by the same right, staring most unceremoniously at the stranger; and all apparently summing up, but in the uncouthest style imaginable, their divers surmises respecting his country, lineage, occupation, etc., etc. The forms and features of these French villagers are perfectly unique, at least in our country, and one can hardly fail distinguishing them at first sight, even among a crowd, once having seen them. Their peculiarities are far more striking than those of our German or Irish population. A few well-dressed, genteel gentlemen were lounging about the piazza of the inn as I drew nigh, and a polite landlord, courteously pressing forward, held the stirrup of the traveller and requested him to alight. Something of a contrast, this, to the attention a stranger usually is blessed with from not more than nine tenths of the worthy publicans of Illinois. Alas! for the aristocracy of the nineteenth century! But n'importe. With the easy air of gentility and taste which seemed to pervade the inn at Kaskaskia in all its departments, few could have failed to be pleased. For myself, I was also surprised. Everything about the establishment was in the French style, and here was spread the handsomest table d'hôte it has been my fortune to witness in Illinois.
The moon was pouring gloriously down in misty mellowness upon the low-roofed tenements of this antiquated village, when, leaving my chamber, I stepped from the inn for a leisure stroll through its streets and lanes. Passing the gray old church,[6 - The church of the Immaculate Conception, the first permanent structure of its kind west of the Alleghany Mountains, was built in 1720. It was torn down in 1838 and a large brick church built. For a more detailed description of the former, see post, pp. 62 (#Page_62)-64 (#FNanchor_38_38). – Ed.] bathed in the dim, melting moonlight of a summer night, such as for more than a century had smiled upon its consecrated walls as one year had chased away another, the next considerable structure which arrested my attention was a huge, ungainly edifice of brick, like Joseph's coat, of many colours, forsooth, and, withal, sadly ruinous as regards the item of windows. This latter circumstance, aside from every other, agreeable to all observed precedent, would have notified me of the fact that this was neither more nor less than a western courthouse. Continuing my careless ramble among the cottages, I passed several whose piazzas were thronged with young people; and at intervals from the midst rang out, on the mild evening air, the gay fresh laugh, and the sweet, soft tones of woman. A stately structure of stone, buried in foliage, next stood beside me, and from its open doors and windows issued the tumultuous melody of the piano. A few steps, and the innocent merriment of two young girls hanging upon a gentleman's arms struck my ear. They passed me. Both were young; and one, a gazelle-eyed brunette, in the pale moonlight, was beautiful. The blithe creatures were full of frolic and fun, and the light Gallic tongue seemed strangely musical from those bright lips. But enough – enough of my evening's ramble – nay, more than enough: I am waxing sentimental. It was at a late hour, after encountering divers untold adventures, that I found myself once more at my hotel. The gallery was thronged with French gentlemen, and it was some hours before the laugh and chatter had died away, and the old village was buried in slumber.
Kaskaskia, Ill.
XXXV
"Glanced many a light caïque along the foam,
Danced on the shore the daughters of the land."
Byron.
"How changed the scene since merry Jean Baptiste
Paddled his pirouge on La Belle Rivière,
And from its banks some lone Loyola priest
Echoed the night song of the voyageur."
It is now more than a century and a half since the sturdy Canadian voyageurs, treading in the footsteps of the adventurous Sieur la Salle, forsaking the bleak shores and wintry skies of the St. Lawrence, first planted themselves upon the beautiful hunting-grounds of the peaceful Illini. Long before the Pilgrim Fathers of New-England, or the distressed exiles of Jamestown, scattered along the steril shores of the Atlantic, had formed even a conception of the beautiful valley beyond the mountains – while this vast North American continent was yet but a wilderness, and the nations of Christendom, ignorant of its character or of its extent, knew not by whom of right it should be appropriated – a few French Jesuit priests had ascended in their bark canoes a distance of three thousand miles from the mouth of the "endless river," and had explored its tributaries to their fountains. It is with admiration almost bordering on astonishment that we view the bold adventures of these daring men.[7 - Hall. – Flagg.] The cause of their fearless undertaking was, we are told, to investigate the truth of an idea which at that era was prevalent among the Canadian French, that a western passage through the American continent existed to the Pacific Ocean. The Indian hunters had spoken of a vast stream far away to the west, which on their long excursions they had seen, but of whose source, course, or termination they could tell nothing. This river was supposed to disgorge itself into the Pacific Seas; and, to prosecute the inquiry, Father Marquette, a recollet monk, and Sieur Joliet, an Indian trader of Quebec, by authority of M. Talon, Intendant of New France, a man of singular enterprise, entered upon the expedition. Thridding the great chain of the Northern Lakes in their slender skiffs, and pursuing the Ouisconsin River, on the 17th of June, 1673, the first Europeans descended the "Father of Waters."[8 - Jacques Marquette was a Jesuit missionary, not a Recollect. Consult R. G. Thwaites, Father Marquette (New York, 1902). On Jolliet see Francis Parkman, La Salle (Boston, 1869); and the latest authority, Ernest Gagnon, Louis Jolliet (Quebec, 1902). – Ed.] By the natives whom they met they were kindly received, and entertained with a deference due only to superior beings. Among these Indians, the Illini, then residing on both sides of the Mississippi, were chief, and their nation was made up of seven distinct tribes: the Miamies, Michigamies, Mascotins, Kaskaskias, Kahokias, Peorias, and Taumarwaus, a peaceful, benevolent, unwarlike race.[9 - For a short note on the Illinois Indians, consult our volume xxvi, p. 123, note 86. – Ed.] A village was found at the mouth of the Illinois. Descending the Mississippi, the French voyageurs were dissuaded from their design of exploring the Missouri by a tradition of the natives that near its mouth dwelt a Manito, whose residence no human being could pass with life: nor did the Indians fail to tell the legend of the Piasa cliff above. Turning up the Illinois, therefore, they glided with amazement through the green woodlands and over the silvery wave of that beautiful stream. It is, perhaps, at this distant day, and in the present era of "speculators and economists," hardly possible to conceive the delighted emotions which must then have swelled the bosoms of those simple-hearted men. Sieur Joliet, on his return to Canada, published an account of his adventures, in which narrative language seems almost too meager for description of the golden land he had seen.[10 - Flagg errs in saying that Jolliet published an account of his adventures. His journal was lost in the St. Lawrence River on the return journey. Father Marquette, however, wrote a journal of his travels. See Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, lix, which also contains Jolliet's map of North America (1674). – Ed.] Father Marquette remained a missionary among the peaceful Indians. To the river partially explored was given the name of the celebrated Colbert, Minister of Marine, by Count de Frontenac; and to the trader Joliet, as a reward, was granted the island of Anticosti in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.[11 - The Island of Anticosti, in the estuary of St. Lawrence River, contains about 3,900 square miles, and is not only of importance as a centre of hunting and fishing interests, but is rich in undeveloped mineral resources. The population of a few hundred souls is chiefly concerned in fishing. The island is now the property of M. Henri Menier, a Parisian chocolate manufacturer, who personally rules his seigniory with benevolent despotism. – Ed.]
Years passed away, and no enterprising spirit rose up to prosecute the discoveries already made. The missionary Marquette died among the Indians two years after, and Joliet took possession of his island. At length appears M. Robert, Cavalier de la Salle, a native of Rouen in Normandy, celebrated as the birthplace of Fontenelle and the two Corneilles, and for the martyrdom of the heroic Maid of Orleans more than two centuries before. La Salle was a man of bold talents and dauntless enterprise. Ambitious of fame and wealth, he emigrated to Canada; listened to the wonderful tales of the endless river; conceived the idea of a Northwest Passage to the East Indies; communicated his views to the commandant of Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario, and was advised to lay his plan before the Court of St. Cloud. On his arrival at Paris, under the patronage of the Prince de Conti, La Salle received letters of nobility and extensive grants of land in America. Associating with himself the Chevalier de Tonti, an Italian officer, who had the peculiarity of a copper hand as substitute to one lost in the wars of Sicily, and Father Lewis Hennepin, a Franciscan friar, as historian and missionary, together with about thirty others, the enterprise was immediately entered upon, under special sanction of Louis XIV., king of France. After a variety of fortune, prosperous and adverse, they reached the Illinois, and having descended that beautiful river some distance, discovered an Indian village consisting of five hundred cabins completely deserted. Here, having found a large quantity of corn concealed in the earth under each of the wigwams, the party remained six days. Descending ninety miles, they came to Peoria Lake, where they found two encampments of the natives. At first hostility was manifested, but soon they were on most amicable terms with the voyageurs, and a feasting, and dancing, and rejoicing was kept up for three days. Not long after this the boat containing supplies was lost upon "Le Baie des Puants," or Green Bay; and La Salle was forced to erect a fort, which received the appropriate name of "Creve Cœur" – broken heart. The site of this fortification is supposed to have been a spot now called "Spring Bay," not far from Peoria, on the Illinois. This is a singular place. It is a broad sand basin, some hundred feet in diameter, opening upon the river, the waters of which, in the higher stages, fill it to the brim, but when low they retire, and a number of large springs gush copiously forth from three sides of the ridge, and form a stream. "Blue Creek" empties itself just below, crossed by a bridge of earth, while yet farther down is seen a large mound, which has been opened, and found to contain human remains twenty feet from the summit.[12 - Concerning La Salle's discoveries, see Ogden's Letters from the West, in our volume xix, pp. 44-53, and accompanying notes. – Ed.]
At the time of the erection of Fort Creve Cœur the Illini were at war with the warlike Iroquois Indians; and the former, anticipating assistance from their friends the French, and receiving none, resolved to destroy La Salle. His boldness and eloquence alone saved him and restored amity. No sooner was this disturbance quelled than a mutiny arose among his own men. On Christmas-day his dinner was poisoned, and powerful medicine alone saved his life.
Preparations were now made to explore the Mississippi. Father Hennepin, with four Frenchmen, two Indians, and M. Dacan, commander, ascended the river to the falls, and named them, in honour of their patron saint, St. Anthony. They were here taken prisoners by a party of Sioux, carried one hundred and sixty miles into the interior to their villages, and detained several months, when they regained their liberty. Father Hennepin returned to Canada, and subsequently to France, where he published his travels in splendid style, dedicating the book to the celebrated Colbert. These early writings, though deeply imbued with a spirit of superstition and exaggeration, are yet valuable as the only records of the time.[13 - Concerning Hennepin's expedition from Crêvecœur to the Falls of St. Anthony, Flagg is in error. Hennepin was accompanied by two Frenchmen, Michel Accault and Antoine Auguel, and probably went merely as their spiritual companion. His publications were: Description de la Louisiane (Paris, 1683); Nouvelle Découverte d'un tres grand Pays Situé dans l'Amérique (Utrecht, 1697); Nouveau Voyage d'un Pais plus grand que l'Europe (Utrecht, 1698). The first was dedicated to Louis XIV, the last two to William III, king of England. For bibliography of Hennepin, see Victor Hugo Paltsits, "Bibliographical Data," in Thwaites, Hennepin's New Discovery (Chicago, 1903), pp. xlv-lxiv. – Ed.] The chief of these historians were Hennepin, Tonti, and Charlevoix.[14 - M. Tonti, among other writers, speaking of the country, according to Mr. Peck's translation, says:"The soil is, generally speaking, so fertile, that it produces naturally, without culture, those fruits that nature and art together have much ado to bring forth in Europe. They have two crops every year without any great fatigue. The vines bring extraordinary grapes, without the care of the husbandman, and the fruit-trees need no gardeners to look after them. The air is everywhere temperate. The country is watered with navigable rivers, and delicious brooks and rivulets. It is stocked with all sorts of beasts, as bulls, orignacs, wolves, lions, wild asses, stags, goats, sheep, foxes, hares, beavers, otters, dogs, and all sorts of fowl, which afford a plentiful game for the inhabitants."In another place, this writer gives an amusing account of hunting "wild bulls," which "go always by droves of three or four hundred each." This description answers well for the buffalo, but it is not so easy to determine what animals they mistook for "wild asses, goats, and sheep."Passing down the Mississippi, Tonti mentions the same animals, and describes the forest-trees with tolerable accuracy, had he not added, "one sees there whole plains covered with pomegranate-trees, orange-trees, and lemon-trees; and, in one word, with all kinds of fruit-trees." Goats are frequently mentioned by different writers. Hennepin, while narrating the account of an embassy from Fort Frontenac to the Iroquois nation, and the reception the party met with, says: "The younger savages washed our feet, and rubbed them with grease of deer, wild goats, and oil of bears." When upset in their boat and cast on the western shore of Lake Michigan, an Indian of their company "killed several stags and wild goats."Wild goats are named so frequently, and in so many connexions, as hardly to admit of an intentional misrepresentation. – Flagg.Comment by Ed. For sketches of Charlevoix and Tonty, see Nuttall's Journal, in our volume xiii, pp. 116 and 117, notes 81 and 85 respectively.] Difficulties arising with the Indians, La Salle resolved to erect another fort, which, after infinite difficulty, was completed. The site is described as "a rock, very high, the top of which was even and of convenient space, so that it commanded the river and country round about." This description applies to no place on the Illinois so well as to the "Starved Rock." The fort was called "St. Louis."
La Salle visited Canada, and a crowd of adventurers returned with him. Descending the Illinois and Mississippi, the company stopped for some time at the mouth of the Missouri, then the Osage River, and found a village of the Taumarwaus, which was deserted, the natives being on a hunting expedition. In three days they were at the Oubachi or Ohio. At the Chicasaw Bluffs a fort called Prudhomme was erected, and formal possession of the country first taken, and, in honour of the reigning monarch, named Louisiana. Several other forts were erected, and one of them, the ruins of which yet remain, is supposed to have stood between St. Louis and Carondelet. Descending the river on the 7th of April, 1683, La Salle reached the Gulf of Mexico, where a Te Deum was sung; a cross, with the arms of France, was suspended from the summit of a lofty tree; and the river, which had occupied three months in its exploration of about one thousand miles, was named "St. Louis." On his return, the associates of La Salle founded the villages of Kaskaskia and Cahokia on the American Bottom, while he hastened on to Canada and thence to France, to obtain a colony for the country at the mouth of the Mississippi. Losing his route on returning with this expedition, he commenced a journey over land to Illinois; but, while on his way, was treacherously assassinated by two of his followers.[15 - For a recent work on La Salle, consult P. Chesnel, Histoire de Cavelier de La Salle (Paris, 1901). With the exception of Crêvecœur, Prudhomme, and St. Louis, we have no definite proof that La Salle established any other forts in the Mississippi Valley. He erected a monument at the mouth of the Mississippi on April 9, 1682, on taking possession of the country in the name of Louis XIV. Kaskaskia and Cahokia were not founded by the associates of La Salle on the latter's return. For historical sketches of these towns, see A. Michaux's Travels, in our volume iii, p. 69, note 132, and p. 70, note 135, respectively. La Salle was assassinated March 19, 1687, on a branch of the Trinity River, in the present state of Texas. – Ed.] It is a remarkable fact in the history of retributive justice, that these men soon after dealt death to each other; and two priests of the mutineers became penitent, and confessed all the circumstances of the crime. The burial spot of the noble La Salle is unknown to this day. Marquette, "the apostle of the wilderness," died under circumstances of touching interest on the lonely shores of Lake Michigan while upon his mission. Charlevoix, the historian, throws an interest of melancholy romance over the fate of this venerable man. According to this writer, Father Joseph Marquette was a native of Laon, in Picardy, and of distinguished family. About two years after his discovery of the Mississippi, while engaged in his missionary labours among the savages, he was journeying from Chicago to Michillimackinac, and on the 8th of May, 1675, entered the mouth of a small river emptying into Lake Michigan upon its eastern side, which now bears his name. Here he landed, erected an altar, and said mass. After this ceremony he retired a short distance, and requested the two voyageurs who conducted his canoe to leave him alone for half an hour, while in private he returned thanks. The period having expired, they went to seek him, and found him dead in the attitude of devotion:[16 - Father Marquette died May 18, 1675, on the present site of Ludington, Michigan. – Ed.] the circumstance then recurred to them, that, on entering the river, he had dropped an intimation that he should there end his days. The distance was too great to Michillimackinac to convey there his remains, and the voyageurs accordingly buried them near the bank of the stream, which they called by his name. From that time the river, as if from reverence for the missionary's relics, has continued to retire, and his grave is yet pointed out to the traveller. Thus did the venerable Marquette, at an advanced age, alone with his God, yield up his blameless life to its giver, while engaged in his holy errand of peace to the savage, and amid the magnificent solitudes of the land of his discovery.
Subsequent to these explorations, colonies from Lower Canada rapidly settled the recent villages of Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Peoria.[17 - For the settlement of Peoria, see our volume xxvi, p. 133, note 93. – Ed.] But their designs seem not to have been those of the speculators of our own day. Their sole anticipation was to amass opulence by mining in a country then supposed incalculably rich in the precious metals, from its resemblance to the silver region of South America; and we find exclusive grants of extensive tracts bearing this date to Cruzat, Renault, and other individuals.[18 - Owing to the exhaustion of France following the War of the Spanish Succession, Louis XIV, determined to develop the resources of the vast Louisiana territory, granted (September 14, 1712) to Antoine Crozat, a wealthy merchant, the exclusive right of trade in Louisiana for a term of fifteen years. Among other privileges, Crozat was permitted to send one ship a year to Africa for a cargo of negroes; to possess and operate all mines of precious metals in the territory, on the condition that a fourth of the metal be turned over to the king; and to possess in perpetuity all buildings and manufactories erected by him in the colony. On the other hand, Crozat was obliged to import two shiploads of colonists each year, and after nine years to assume all the expenses of the government. In the meantime the king was to furnish fifty thousand livres annually. Crozat did all in his power to develop the resources of the country; but owing to discord among the subordinate officials, in despair he surrendered the charter to the prince regent (August 13, 1717). See Charles Gayarré, History of Louisiana (New Orleans, 1903). After Crozat's surrender, Louisiana territory was turned over to the Mississippi (or Western) Company, directed by John Law; see post, p. 49, note 28 (#cn_27). Philip François Renault was made the principal agent for a French company, whose purpose was the development of the mines of the territory. In 1719 he sailed from France with more than two hundred mechanics, stopped at the West Indies, and secured a cargo of five hundred negro slaves, and in due course arrived at Fort Chartres in the Illinois (1721). Large grants of land for mining purposes were made to Renault – an extensive tract west of the Mississippi River; another, fifteen leagues square, near the site of Peoria; and still another above Fort Chartres, one league along the river and two leagues deep. He founded St. Philippe, near the fort, and built what was probably the first smelting furnace in the Mississippi Valley. In 1743 he returned to France, where he died. – Ed.] In pursuit of this golden chimera, many expeditions were fitted out at vast expense. In 1699 M. de Seur, an enterprising traveller, with ninety men, descended the Mississippi to a spot six hundred miles above the Illinois, and erected a fort upon the present site of Fort Armstrong for the purpose of exploring a mine of terre verte, said to have been discovered in that beautiful region.[19 - Pierre Charles le Sueur went to Canada when a young man, and engaged in the fur-trade. In 1693, while commandant at Chequamegon, he erected two forts – one on Madelaine Island, in Chequamegon Bay (Lake Superior), and another on an island in the Mississippi, near Red Wing, Minnesota. Later he discovered lead mines along the upper Mississippi. In 1699 he returned from a visit to France, and under Iberville's directions searched for copper mines in the Sioux country, where Le Sueur had earlier found green earth. Le Sueur reached the mouth of Missouri River (July 13, 1700) with nineteen men, according to Bénard de la Harpe's manuscript, compiled from Le Sueur's Journal – with twenty-nine men, as related by Pénicaut, a member of the expedition. The company was later increased to perhaps thirty or forty, but not ninety, as Flagg says. Le Sueur ascended the Mississippi, and its tributary the Minnesota, and erected a fort in August, 1700, one league above the point where the Blue Earth River (St. Peter's River, until 1852) empties into the Minnesota. This fort he named l'Huillier, in honor of his patron in France. Flagg has confused this site with that of Fort Armstrong at Rock Island, Illinois. In May, 1701, Le Sueur left the fort in care of d'Eraque, who remained in charge until 1703, when he abandoned the place. For extracts from original documents relating to Le Sueur's activities, consult: "Le Sueur's Mines on the Mississippi," "Le Sueur's Voyage up the Mississippi," and "Le Sueur's Fort on the Mississippi," in Wisconsin Historical Collections, xvi, pp. 173, 174, 177-200. – Ed.] It need hardly be said that all these adventurers were disappointed: but the buoyant hilarity of the race did not forsake them, and as boatmen, hunters, couriers du bois, Indian traders, and small farmers,[20 - "Petits paysans." – Flagg.] they gained a comfortable subsistence, and merrily did they enjoy it. Most of their lives were passed upon the broad prairies, and in penetrating every section of this vast valley in their birch pirogues wherever a stream presented to them its bosom; and yet with the violin, the grape-juice, and a short pipe, they seemed the blithest mortals on the face of the earth. It was by men such as these that the village of Kaskaskia, in old French chronicles styled "Notre dame de Cascasquias," originating in the name and residence of an Indian tribe, first was settled; and in a few years it had become an extensive depôt for the trade in furs. It was probably by the same Indian tribe which originally possessed the site of Kaskaskia that a party of the unfortunate expedition of Ferdinand de Soto, by whom Florida was partially conquered, was almost destroyed about the year 1539. Indeed, there was a tradition still extant upon the arrival of the French, of their having exterminated the first white faces they had ever seen. For three years did the chivalrous De Soto, with his nine hundred steel-clad warriors, scour the land in search of the reality of his golden dreams: at length he died; he was an object of hatred and terror to the Indians; and to conceal his death, or to preserve from violation his remains, his followers enclosed them in a coffin constructed from the section of a hollow tree, and sunk them beneath the floods of the eternal river. His followers, reduced to only two hundred and fifty, returned to Spain. And so the burial-places of the first explorers of the Mississippi are unknown.[21 - The battle of Mauilla, to which Flagg is referring, was fought in October, 1540, between De Soto's men and the Mobilian Indians, near the present site of Mobile. Our author is mistaken in supposing that these Indians were the Kaskaskia. De Soto reached the Mississippi in May, 1541, and died May 21, 1542. He started on the expedition with less than seven hundred men, instead of one thousand. According to Herrera, his body was laid in a hollow live-oak log, and lowered into the Mississippi; but it seems more probable that the corpse was wrapped in mantles made heavy by a ballast of sand, and thus lowered into the water. See John G. Shea, "Ancient Florida," in Justin Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America (Boston and New York, 1886), ii, pp. 231-283; also E. G. Bourne (ed.) Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto (New York, 1904). – Ed.]
The extent of the territory of Kaskaskia was originally very great, stretching from the Kaskaskia River to the Mississippi, a breadth of about two miles, and comprising the area from the confluence of the streams, seven miles below, to the present site of the place. The tract below the town is incalculably fertile, abounding in the plum, the persimmon, the cherry, the delicate pecan, the hickory, and the hazel-nut; and for the most part was comprised in one vast "common field," over which herds of wild horses, introduced by the emigrants, long roamed in undisturbed possession. This common, consisting of seven thousand acres, was granted "to Kaskaskia and inhabitants for ever" by Vaudreuil, governor of the Province of Louisiana, as early as 1743.[22 - Annexed is a copy of the grant of the celebrated commons attached to the village of Kaskaskia. It is the earliest title the citizens hold to seven thousand acres of the most fertile land in the West – perhaps in the world."Pierre de Rigault de Vaudreuil, Governor and Edme Gatien Salmon Commissary orderer of the Province of Louisiana, seen the petition to us presented on the sixteenth day of June of this present year by the Inhabitants of the Parish of the Immaculate Conception of Kaskaskia dependence of the Illinois, tending to be confirmed in the possession of a common which they have had a long time for the pasturage of their cattle in the Point called La point de bois, which runs to the entrance of the River Kaskaskia. We, by virtue of the power to us granted by his Majesty have confirmed and do confirm to the said Inhabitants the possession of the said common on the following conditions —"First, That the concessions heretofore granted either by the India Company either by our predecessors or by us in the prairie of Kaskaskia on the side of the point which runs to the entrance of the river, shall terminate at the land granted to a man named Cavalier, and in consequence, that all concessions that may have been made on the said point from the land of the said Cavalier forward, on the side of the entrance of the said river shall be null and void and of no effect. In consequence of which, the said Point, as it is above designated, shall remain in common without altering its nature, nevertheless, reserving to us the power whenever the case may require it, of granting the said commons to the inhabitants established and who may establish, and this, on the representations which may be made to us by the commandants and sub-delegates in the said places."Secondly, on the road vulgarly called the Square Line between the large and small line shall be rendered practicable and maintained for the passage of the Carts and Cattle going into the Common, and this by lack of the proprietors as well of the great as of the small line whose lands border on the roads of the Square line. And as to the places which ought to run along the side of the village from the said road of the Square line unto the river, as also the one on the side of the point running to the Mississippi and to the Kaskaskia river, they shall be made and maintained at the expense of the community, to the end that the cultivated lands be not injured by the cattle."Thirdly, To facilitate to the inhabitants the means of making their autumnal harvest, and prevent its being damaged by the cattle, we forbid all persons to leave their cattle range upon cultivated lands – they are, notwithstanding, permitted to graze upon their own proper lands on having them diligently watched."Fourthly, Willing that the wood which is on the land granted belong to the proprietors of the said lands, we forbid all persons to cut down any elsewhere than on their own lands, and as to the wood which may be found in the commons to cut down for their own use, either for building or for fire wood, and this shall be the present regulation."Read, published and affixed to the end that no person may be ignorant thereof. Given at New-Orleans the fourteenth day of August, 1743.VAUDREUIL."Salmon." – Flagg.>] In this arrangement we observe a striking feature in the policy both of the French and Spanish governments, in their early settlements on the Mississippi. The items of door-yards, gardens, stable-yards, etc., and of settling colonies in the compact form of towns and villages, as a protection from the savages and to promote social intercourse, were all matters of special requisition and enactment; while to each settlement was granted two tracts of land for "common fields" and "commons." This distinction was not, however, invariably observed. The former consisted of several hundred acres, conveniently divided among the individual families, and the whole enclosed by the labour of all the villagers in common. If the enclosure opposite any plat was suffered to become ruinous, the right to the common was forfeited by the offending individual. The seasons, also, for ploughing, sowing, reaping, etc., were by public ordinance simultaneous: yet with these restrictions, each individual, so long as he complied with the necessary regulations, possessed his lot in franc allieu– fee simple, subject to sale and transfer. The "common" was a far more extended tract, embracing in some instances several thousand acres without enclosure, and reserved for the purpose of wood and pasturage. Here there was no grant of severalty, and no individual portion could be appropriated without the special and unanimous consent of the whole village. To the indigent who came to settle among them, and to young married pairs, donations from this tract were often made by the villagers, and, if conveniently situated, might subsequently become a portion of the "common field."[23 - "Under the old management all the inhabitants had equal access to the commons for pasturage and fuel. By an act of the legislature passed in 1854, the citizens were authorized to elect five trustees every two years, who should exercise the charge of the commons, lease portions thereof, and apply the proceeds to church and school purposes only. The common fields were also originally owned jointly by the villagers, though each resident was assigned an individual portion. The United States commissioners, in 1809, determined the rights of each citizen, and the lots have since been held in fee simple." See Combined History of Randolph, Monroe, and Perry Counties, Illinois (Philadelphia, 1883), p. 308. – Ed.] That such an arrangement, under all the circumstances of the period when instituted, and with such a people as the early French settlers, was the best that could have been made, no one can doubt. But how such a regulation would suit a race of enterprising Yankees, fidgeting eternally for improvements, or a squad of long-sided Kentuckians, grumbling about elbow-room, is problematical.
The proceedings of our national government towards these ancient villages have been characterized by generosity, whatever may be said of the conduct of individuals. In 1788, an extensive tract lying along the Mississippi was by act of Congress granted to the French inhabitants east of that river; and to those of Kaskaskia was secured for a common field twenty thousand acres. It is under direction of the trustees of the town by provision of the state legislature.[24 - For the memorial of George Morgan, upon these lands along the Mississippi River, the report of the committee to which the above had been referred, and the resolutions of Congress thereon (August 28, 29, 1788), see Laws of the United States, etc. (Bioren edition, Philadelphia, 1815), i, pp. 580-585. – Ed.]
Unlike the policy of all other Europeans who have planted themselves upon the Western continent, that of the French emigrants towards the aborigines, with the single exception of the extermination of the Natchez in the South, has invariably been conciliatory, peaceable, and friendly.[25 - For an account of the extermination of the Natchez, see F. A. Michaux's Travels, in our volume iii, p. 254, note 53. – Ed.] This has been the effect rather of debasing themselves than of elevating the natives. Surrounded by everything which could fascinate the eye or delight the fancy, we find these inoffensive foreigners, therefore, unlike the English settlers along the Atlantic and in the elder Western states, at peace with all their savage neighbours; unambitious, contented, and happy, increasing and flourishing; and in a few years, they tell us, Kaskaskia, "the terrestrial paradise," numbered a population of eight thousand souls![26 - Doubtless an exaggeration. – Flagg.Comment by Ed. "From 1810 to 1820 the town (Kaskaskia) probably contained more people than at any other period of its history. A census taken at that time showed a population of seven thousand." See History of Randolph, Monroe, and Perry Counties, p. 307.] Blessed with a soil of boundless fertility, and prolific in all Nature's luxurious stores to a degree of which less-favoured climes can form no conception: subsisting solely by culture of the little homesteads around their own thresholds, by hunting the wild denizens of their noble forests, or angling upon the calm bosom of their beautiful stream: simple-hearted and peaceful, almost without the terms of law, gently ruled by the restraints of a religion they venerated and a priesthood they loved: without commerce, the arts, or the elegances of life; a thousand miles from a community of civilized men; from year to year they went on, and from generation to generation they flourished, until, in that of our own age and our own day, they are found still treading in the steps in which their fathers trod! So long as the peaceful French villager retained the beautiful land of his adoption in undisputed possession, all was flourishing and prosperous. A little more than half a century from its origin, Kaskaskia was capital of Illinois; and on the visit of Charlevoix in 1721, a monastery and Jesuit college was in successful operation, the ruins of the edifice remaining extant even at the present day.[27 - A monastery and accompanying college, liberally endowed from Europe, was founded at Kaskaskia by Jesuit missionaries in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. – Ed.] This institution was successful in converting a number of the aborigines to its peculiar tenets, and at one period is said to have "embraced twenty-five hundred catechumens!!" A most preposterous assertion, most assuredly.
It was in the early part of this century that the scheme of that celebrated projector, John Law, of Edinburgh, on the strength of which he elevated himself to the dignity of Comptroller-general of the Finance of France, was first set on foot with reference to the Valley of the Mississippi. The design, so far as it is now known, was to establish a bank, an East India, and a Mississippi Company, from the anticipated enormous revenue of which was to be liquidated the national debt of France.[28 - "The idea," says Adam Smith, "of the possibility of multiplying paper money to almost any extent, was the real foundation of what is called the Mississippi scheme, the most extravagant project, both of banking and stock-jobbing, that perhaps the world ever saw." – Flagg.Comment by Ed. John Law died at Venice, March 21, 1729. Concerning his financial methods, see Émile Levasseur, Recherches historique sur le system de Law (Paris, 1854). Ample and accurate is Andrew M. Davis's A Historical Study of Law's System (Boston, 1887), reprinted from Quarterly Journal of Economics (Boston, 1887), i, pp. 289-318, 420-452.] The territory of Louisiana had already acquired a reputation abroad for the boundlessness of the wealth and fertility of its soil; and, to foster the delusion of Law's scheme, descriptions of this beautiful region, tinted with all the rainbow hues of romance, were scattered throughout Europe, until the distant wilderness of les Illinois became the paradise of the slumberer's vision. "The Illinois" was the fairyland of fancy realized. A few years, the vast fabric of fictitious credit crumbled, almost annihilating the finance of France, and burying thousands of families in its ruins. Law was exiled and retired to Venice, where in poverty he soon died. It is a coincidence not a little remarkable, that the same year, 1720, witnessed the same desperate game enacted by the South Sea directors in England. But the attention of France was now directed towards her remote colony in North America; and notwithstanding the failure of Law's scheme, old Kaskaskia continued to flourish beyond all compare. Other villages sprang into existence around; a lucrative fur-trade was carried on by the Canadian voyageurs, and agriculture became the peculiar province of the French villager. The extent and luxuriance of the agriculture at this period may be gathered from the fact, that in the single year 1746, eight hundred thousand weight of flour was sent to New Orleans from these settlements.[29 - Breckenridge. – Flagg.] At this period there was not a solitary village west of the Mississippi, though the lead-mines then known and worked were resorted to by traders.[30 - For an account of the early lead-mines, see Flagg's Far West, in our volume xxvi, p. 95, note 60. – Ed.] Twenty years after the failure of Law's scheme, the French government formed the design, almost as chimerical, of securing her immense possessions in the Mississippi Valley by a continuous line of military posts, connecting them with Canada; and vast were the sums of money expended in the undertaking.
A century, and the whole region was ceded to England, thence to our own government in 1783, and now old Kaskaskia is but the wreck of its former prosperity. It makes one almost sad to wander about among these ruinous, deserted habitations, venerable with departed years, and reflect that once they were thronged with population, the seat of hospitality, and the home of kindly feeling. The quiet villagers have been not a little annoyed by the steady and rapid influx of immigration on every side of them, dissimilar in customs, language, religion, and temperament, while the bustling enterprise has fretted and displeased them. Long accustomed, also, to the arbitrary but parental authority of their military commandants and priesthood, they deemed the introduction of the common law among them exceedingly burdensome, and the duties of a citizen of a republic, of which we are so proud, intolerable drudgery. Many, therefore, of the wealthy and respectable, on cession of their territory to our government, removed to Louisiana, where civil law yet bears sway; others crossed the river and established Ste. Genevieve and St. Louis;[31 - For an historical sketch of Ste. Genevieve, see Cuming's Tour, in our volume iv, p. 266, note 174. – Ed.] while the foreigners returning to the lands from which they had emigrated, few but natives of the country remained behind. The ordinance of 1787,[32 - The French civil law still prevails in Louisiana.For a good monograph on the Ordinance of 1787, and the text of the same, see Jay Amos Barrett, Evolution of the Ordinance of 1787, with an Account of the earlie Plans for the Government of the Northwest Territory (New York, 1891). – Ed.] prohibiting involuntary servitude in the region then called the Northwestern Territory, induced many who were desirous of preserving their blacks to remove to the new villages west of the Mississippi, then under Spanish rule. From these and a variety of similar causes, this peaceful, kind-hearted people have within the last thirty years been more than once disturbed in the dwellings of their fathers.
Kaskaskia, Ill.