Chapter I. The County of Illinois.

An Act for establishing the County of Illinois, and for the more effectual protection and defence thereof, passed both houses of the Virginia legislature on December 9, 1778.[1] The new county was to include the inhabitants [pg 010] of Virginia, north of the Ohio River, but its location was not more definitely prescribed.[2]

The words “for the more effectual protection and defence thereof” in the title of the Act were thoroughly appropriate. The Indians were in almost undisputed possession of the land in Illinois, save the inconsiderable holdings of the French. Some grants and sales of large tracts of land had been made. In 1769, John Wilkins, British commandant in Illinois, granted to the trading-firm of Baynton, Wharton and Morgan, a great tract of land lying between the Kaskaskia and the Mississippi rivers. The claim to the land descended to John Edgar, who shared it with John Murray St. Clair, son of Gov. Arthur St. Clair. The claim was filed for 13,986 acres, but was found on survey to contain 23,000 acres, and was confirmed by Gov. St. Clair. At a later examination of titles, this claim was rejected because the grant was made in the first instance counter to the king's proclamation of 1763, and because the confirmation by Gov. St. Clair was made after his authority ceased and was not signed by the Secretary of the Northwest Territory.[3] In 1773, William Murray and others, subsequently known as the Illinois Land Company, bought two large tracts of land in Illinois from the Illinois Indians. In 1775, a great tract lying on both sides of the Wabash was similarly purchased by what later became the Wabash Land Company. The purchase of the Illinois Company was made in the presence, but without the sanction, of the British officers, and Gen. Thomas Gage had the Indians re-convened and the validity of the purchase expressly denied. These large grants were illegal, and the Indians [pg 011] were not in consequence disposessed of them.[4] Thus far, the Indians of the region had been undisturbed by white occupation. British landholders were few and the French clearings were too small to affect the hunting-grounds. French and British alike were interested in the fur trade. A French town was more suited to be the center of an Indian community than to become a point on its periphery, for here the Indians came for religious instruction, provisions, fire-arms, and fire-water. The Illinois Indian of 1778 had been degraded rather than elevated by his contact with the whites. The observation made by an acute French woman of large experience, although made at another time and place, was applicable here. She said that it was much easier for a Frenchman to learn to live like an Indian than for an Indian to learn to live like a Frenchman.[5]

In point of numbers and of occupied territory, the French population was trifling in comparison with the Indian. In 1766-67, the white inhabitants of the region were estimated at about two thousand.[6] Some five years later,[7] Kaskaskia was reported as having about five hundred white and between four and five hundred black inhabitants; Prairie du Rocher, one hundred whites and eighty negroes; Fort Chartres, a very few inhabitants; St. Philips, two or three families; and Cahokia, three hundred whites and eighty negroes. At the same time, there was a village of the Kaskaskia tribe with about two hundred and ten persons, including sixty warriors, three miles north of Kaskaskia, and a village of one hundred and seventy warriors of the Peoria and Mitchigamia Indians, one mile northwest of Fort Chartres. It is said of these Indians: “They were formerly brave and warlike, but are degenerated into a drunken and debauched tribe, and so indolent, as scarcely to procure a sufficiency of Skins and Furrs to barter for clothing,” and a pastoral letter of August 7, 1767, from the Bishop of Quebec to the inhabitants of Kaskaskia shows the character of the French. The French are told that if they will not acknowledge the authority of the vicar-general—Father Meurin, pastor of Cahokia—cease to marry without the intervention of the priest, and cease to absent themselves from church services, they will be abandoned by the bishop as unworthy of his care.[8] Two years earlier, [pg 013] George Croghan had visited Vincennes, of which he wrote: “I found a village of about eighty or ninety French families settled on the east side of this river [Wabash], being one of the finest situations that can be found.... The French inhabitants, hereabouts, are an idle, lazy people, a parcel of renegadoes from Canada, and are much worse than the Indians.”[9] Although slave-holders, a large proportion of the French were almost abjectly poor. Illiteracy was very common as is shown by the large proportion who signed legal documents by their marks.[10] The people had been accustomed to a paternal rule and had not become acquainted with English methods during the few years of British rule. Such deeds as were given during the French period were usually written upon scraps of paper, described the location of the land deeded either inaccurately or not at all, and were frequently lost.[11] Land holdings were in long narrow strips along the rivers.[12]

The country was physically in a state of almost primeval simplicity. The chief highways were the winding rivers, although roads, likewise winding, connected the various settlements. These roads were impassable in times of much rain. All settlements were near the water, living on a prairie being regarded as impossible and living far from a river as at least impracticable.[13] The difficulties of [pg 014] George Rogers Clark in finding his way, overland, from the Ohio River to Kaskaskia and Vincennes on his awful winter march, are such as must manifestly have confronted anyone who wished to go over the same routes at the same season of the year.