The propositions made by a convention of representatives elected by the citizens of Indiana to prepare petitions to Congress, near the close of 1802, illustrate the needs of the time. It was desired that the Indian title to land lying in Southern Illinois and Southwestern Indiana might be extinguished and the land sold in smaller tracts and at a lower price;[164] that a preëmption act might be passed; that a grant of seminary and school lands might be made; that land for taverns, twenty miles or less apart, might be granted along certain specified routes; that donation-lands might be chosen in separate tracts, instead of in three specified areas, in order to avoid “absolutely useless” prairies, and also lands claimed by ancient grants; and that the qualification of a freehold of fifty acres of land, prescribed for the electors of representatives to the territorial legislature, might be changed to manhood suffrage, because the freehold qualification was said to tend “to throw too great a weight in the scale of wealth.” The petition was considered in committees, but it led to no legislation.[165]
None of the above complaints was better founded than that concerning the restriction of the suffrage, and it is well to note subsequent proceedings in regard to it. No qualification less suitable to the time and place could well have been devised, and this is especially true of the Illinois portion of the territory, because there unsettled French claims were to delay the sales of public lands until 1814, and thus early settlers could neither buy land nor vote unless they owned it, unless indeed they purchased land claims from the needy and unbusiness-like French. An interesting petition of 1807 from the settlement on Richland Creek,[166] for the right of preëmption, throws light upon conditions then obtaining. The petitioner inclosed a map of the settlement, with the following explanation: “Those persons whose names are enclosed in said plot, within surveyed lines, have confirmed and located rights, amounting to 3,775 acres; ... the residue of the said settlers, occupying about 6,000 acres of land, have, without any right, settled upon the public land.” The map shows that there were eleven owners and twenty-two squatters.[167] As the law then stood, the twenty-two squatters, occupying more than three-fifths of the land, could not vote. The eleven land-owners must have secured their land either under the acts of 1788 or that of 1791, or by the purchase of French claims, a trade vigorously carried on. In 1808,[168] Congress so far extended the suffrage in Indiana as to make the ownership of a town lot worth one hundred dollars an alternative qualification to the possession of a [pg 079] freehold of fifty acres. This was in advance of the law in some of the Eastern states.
After 1802, the land question can not be traced without reference to the Indian question in Illinois. That question became important as soon as American occupation was assured, and it remained important for fifty years after the Revolution. The desire of the American settlers for land was directly counter to the desire of the Indians to preserve their hunting-grounds. Before the close of the eighteenth century, the list of bloody deeds in Illinois had grown long.[169] The United States Government appreciated the gravity of the situation and early made efforts to purchase the land from the Indians. That part of the treaty of Greenville, of 1795, which affected Illinois, extinguished the Indian title to a tract six miles square, at the mouth of Chicago River; one six miles square, at Peoria; one twelve miles square, near the mouth of the Illinois River; the post of Fort Massac, and the land in the possession of the whites.[170] The treaty of Fort Wayne, in 1803, ceded four square miles or less, at the salt springs on Saline Creek, and some land west and southwest from Vincennes. This treaty, with another made in the following August, ceded three tracts of land, each one mile square, between Vincennes and Kaskaskia, to be sites for taverns.[171] The treaty of Vincennes, of August, 1803, ceded land in Illinois bounded by the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Illinois, and the western watershed of the Wabash, except three hundred and fifty [pg 080] acres near Kaskaskia, and twelve hundred and eighty acres to be located. This last treaty was made with the depleted Kaskaskia tribe.[172] As the claims of various tribes overlapped, an Indian treaty rarely signifies that all controversy in regard to the land ceded is at an end. Frequently one or more treaties must yet be made with other tribes, and frequently a tribe refuses to abide by its agreement.
Previous to 1804, no land was sold in the Northwest Territory west of the mouth of the Kentucky River. An act of March 26 of that year provided for the opening of a land-office at Detroit to sell lands north of Ohio; one at Vincennes to sell lands in its vicinity ceded by the treaty of Fort Wayne; and one at Kaskaskia to sell so much of the land ceded by the treaty of Vincennes (August, 1803) as was not claimed by any other tribe than those represented in the cession. The register and the receiver of public moneys of these respective districts were to be commissioners to settle private land claims. Evidences of claims should be filed before January 1, 1805, and after the adjustment of claims the public lands should be sold at auction to the highest bidder. Two dollars per acre was to be the minimum price; no land should be sold in less than quarter-sections, except fractional portions caused by irregularities in topography or survey, and lands unsold after the auction might be sold at private sale. Although this act provided for the sale of public lands in Illinois after private claims should have been satisfied, and directed that such claims should be filed not later than January 1, 1805, Congress repeatedly extended the time for the filing of claims, and ten years after the passage of this act there were still unsatisfied claims.[173] Not until [pg 081] 1814 did sales of public land begin in Illinois. The delay retarded immigration of that class which would have made the most desirable citizens.
By the treaty of St. Louis, November 3, 1804, the Sauk and Foxes ceded that part of Illinois west of the Illinois and Fox rivers. Black Hawk, the principal chief of the Sauk, did not sign the treaty.[174] By the treaty of Vincennes, 1805, the Piankashaws ceded a tract lying between the lower Wabash and its western watershed.[175] No more Indian titles to land in Illinois were extinguished, and no public land was sold in Illinois until after that part of the country became a separate territory.
Early in 1806, there came to Congress from Illinois a petition which betrayed the anxiety of the French settlers, and of the Americans who had bought French claims, lest the peculiar shape of their holdings should be disturbed by the orderly system of government surveys. The petitioners asked that a line might be run from a point north of Cahokia to an unspecified river south of Kaskaskia, in such a manner as to include all settlements between the two points, and that the land so included be exempt from the mode of survey and terms of sale of other public lands of the United States. The petition was apparently not reported upon, but a detailed map of the region referred to shows that the holdings were left in their bewildering complexity.[176]
By the time Indiana Territory was divided some progress had been made in extinguishing Indian titles, and some [pg 082] also in investigating land claims of the French and their assignees; but the American immigrant had still the hard choice of buying a French claim with uncertain title or squatting on government land with the risk of losing whatever improvement he might make, and often the added risk of being killed by the suspicious, hostile, untrustworthy Indians. This was one class of hindrances to settlement. Another hindrance, next to be noticed, was the unstable governmental conditions following the anarchy already recited.
II. Government Succeeding the Period of Anarchy, 1790 to 1809.
When St. Clair County was formed, in 1790, it was made to include all the settlements of the Northwest Territory to the westward of Vincennes. On account of its geographical extent it was divided into three judicial districts, but it could not be made into three separate counties, because there were not enough men capable of holding office to furnish the necessary officials. The American settlers were few and a large proportion of them were unskilled in matters of government, while the French were totally unfit to govern. In 1795, St. Clair, when referring to conditions in 1790, wrote that since then the population of Illinois had decreased considerably.[177] Combining this decrease with the fact that there were in the settlements in what is now Missouri 1491 inhabitants in 1785, 2093 in 1788, and 6028, including 883 slaves, in 1799,[178] the conclusion [pg 083] is inevitable that emigration across the Mississippi was the immediate cause of the decrease in Illinois.