The town of Vincennes is scattered over a plain, lying some feet lower than the banks of the Wabash: a situation seemingly unfavourable to health; and, in fact, agues and bilious fevers are frequent here during the autumn.
The road from Sholt's Tavern to this place, thirty-six miles distant, lies partly across "barrens," that is, land of middling quality, thinly set with timber, or covered with long grass and shrubby underwood; generally level and dry, and gaudy with marigolds, sunflowers, martagon lilies, and many other beautiful flowers. On the whole, the country is tame, poorly watered, and not desirable as a place of settlement; but, from its varied character, it is pleasant to travel over. Vincennes exhibits a motley assemblage of inhabitants as well as visitors. The inhabitants are Americans, French Canadians, and Negroes. The visitors are chiefly Americans from various states; and Indians from various nations: Shawnees, Delawares, and Miamies, who live about a hundred miles northward, and who come here to trade for skins. The Indians were encamped, in considerable numbers, round the town, and were continually riding into the place, to the stores and the whiskey-shops. Their horses and accoutrements were generally mean, and their persons disagreeable. Their faces were painted in various ways, which gave an appearance of ferocity to their countenances.
One of them, a Shawnee, had his eyes, or rather his eyelids and the surrounding parts, daubed with vermilion. He thus looked hideous enough at a distance; but, on a nearer view, he had good features, and was a fine, stout, and fierce-looking man. Some of the Indians were well dressed. One young man, in particular, of the Miami nation, wore a clear, light blue cotton vest, with sleeves; and had his head ornamented with black feathers.
They all wear pantaloons, or rather long moccasins of buck-skin, covering the foot and leg, and reaching half way up the thigh, which is bare: a covering of cloth, a foot square, passes between the thighs, and hangs behind like an apron. Their complexion was various: some were dark, and others were not so swarthy as even Mr. Birkbeck; but he saw none of the copper-colour, which he had imagined to be their distinguishing characteristic. These Indians are addicted to drinking spirits, and are often intoxicated. They use much action in their discourse, and laugh immoderately. Their hair is straight and black, and their eyes are dark. Many of the women are decently dressed and good-looking.
Mr. Birkbeck remarks that, in Great Britain, the people are so circumscribed in their movements, that, with them, miles seem equal to tens of miles in America. He says that, in America, travellers will start on an expedition of three thousand miles, by boats, on horseback, or on foot, with as little deliberation or anxiety, as an Englishman would set out on a journey of three hundred.
At Vincennes, the foundation had just been laid of a large establishment of mills to be worked by steam. Water-mills of great power were building on the Wabash, near Harmony; and undertakings of similar kind will, no doubt, be called for and executed, along the banks of this river, and of its various tributary streams.
On entering Vincennes there is nothing which tends to make a favourable impression on a stranger; but it improves on acquaintance, for it contains agreeable people: and there is a spirit of cleanliness, and even of neatness, in the houses and manner of living. There is also a strain of politeness in the inhabitants, which marks the origin of this settlement to be French.
At Princeton, a place scarcely three years old, Mr. Birkbeck and his family went to a log-tavern, where neatness was as well observed as at many taverns in the cities of England. The people of this town belong to America in dress and manners; but they would not disgrace old England in the general decorum of their deportment.
Mr. Birkbeck lamented here, as in other parts of America, the small account that is had of time. Subsistence is easily secured, and liberal pursuits are yet too rare to operate as a general stimulus to exertion: the consequence is, that life is whiled away in a painful state of yawning lassitude.
Twenty or thirty miles west of this place, in the Illinois territory, is a large country where settlements were beginning; and where, Mr. Birkbeck says, there was an abundant choice of unentered lands, of a description, which, if the statements of travellers and surveyors, even after great abatements, can be relied on, he imagined would satisfy his wishes.