USA > Illinois > Illinois, historical and statistical, comprising the essential facts of its planting and growth as a province, county, territory, and state, Vol. I > Part 8
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The inherent injustice of the decree, the bitter animosity which prompted it, and the ruthless method in which it was executed can not be reconciled with any known principles of common fairness and honesty, to say nothing of the precepts of Christian charity. Had the orders been literally and com- pletely carried out, both whites and Indians would have been left without any place for the public worship of God; the un- offending people would have been deprived alike of priests and altars. In a word, the profanation would have been as monstrous as it was unjustifiable. Happily, however, the par- ties deriving titles through gales made under the decree abso- lutely refused to demolish the chapels.
The arduous services of the greater portion of these early French missionaries in a new country, under circumstances of the greatest hardship, deprived as they were of the com- forts of civilization, journeying by night and day through trackless swamps and forests, camping on the ground and sheltered only by trees, and depending mostly on wild fruits and game for subsistence, certainly entitle them to a high place on the roll of those who have sought to benefit man- kind. Their zeal knew no bounds, their energy was as tireless as the ebb and flow of the tide; their devotion to the interests of their respective orders knew neither limits nor modera-
* Shea's "Catholic Church in Colonial Days," 587, 589.
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tion, and they attested sincerity of their faith by the willing sacrifice of their lives, either at the hand of violence or through the no less certain agency of exposure and depriva- tion. While neither primarily explorers nor colonists, they preserved, by their pen, the discoveries and achievements of others. They made known the existence of the salt-springs in New York, the copper-mines of Lake Superior, and con- tributed to the spread of geographical knowledge the world over. It was through their efforts that the first wheat was sown in Illinois and the first sugar-cane introduced into Lou- isiana .*
Not the least valuable of their labors was the reduction of the language and even dialects of Indian tribes to grammatical rules, the preservation of the traditional history of the aborig- ines and their national customs, and the instruction of these rude savages in the rudiments of music. Of such records, fifty-one volumes by the Jesuits alone were published in Paris.
The estimate of the measure of success which attended the religious labors of these missionaries must necessarily vary according to the various conceptions of their aims and the different stand-points from which they are viewed. It can hardly be questioned that at each mission some adults endeav- ored to lead lives in accordance with the teachings of Chris- tianity, as explained to them by their spiritual guides. The latter believed strongly in the saving efficacy of infant baptism, and considered it an "admirable providence," as expressed by . Father Marquette, if they were permitted to administer the sacrament to a dying child "for the salvation of its innocent soul." But so far as the conversion or evangelization of the nomadic tribes is concerned, or the successful inculcation of those Christian precepts which exercise restraining influences upon the cruelties of predatory warfare, their work was a lamentable failure, as is shown by the testimony of the fathers themselves. Father Gabriel Marest, whose faithful services as a missionary of fifteen years among the Illinois Indians qual- ify him to speak intelligently on the subject, records his experience in these words: "Our life is passed in roaming through thick forests, in clambering over the mountains, in
* Shea.
.
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paddling the canoe across lakes and rivers, to catch a single poor savage who flies from us, and whom we can tame neither by teachings nor caresses." In another place he says, "nothing is more difficult than the conversion of these Indians. It is a miracle of the Lord's mercy." The same authority, in speak- ing of the mission of St. Joseph among the Miamis, in 1712, says, "religion among them does not take deep root, as should be desired, and there are but few souls who from time to time give themselves truly to God."
Father Membré says :* "With regard to conversions, I can not rely on any. There is in these savages such an alienation from the faith, so brutal and narrow a mind, such corrupt and anti-Christian morals, that great time would be needed to hope for any fruit. We baptised some dying children, and two or three dying persons who manifested proper dispositions."
Father Louis Vivier, a Jesuit, in 1750, thus sums up the results of fifty years of missionary effort among the Illinois: "That all the Indian families had been baptized there but five or six, but that the fire-water had ruined the mission, causing the greater portion to abandon religion." He further says, "the greatest good they [the missionaries] can do them is the administration of baptism to children who are at the point of death." And the testimony of Father P. F. Watrin, him- self a Jesuit missionary, in 1765, is still more conclusive. In a report to the "Cardinal Prefect of the Propaganda," he re- marks: "Since the year 1680, religion had begun to be dis- seminated among the Illinois. The Peorias alone have been perseveringly obstinate in rejecting it. Next to them the Cahokias were the most difficult to be won over, and they at length abandoned the faith, as did the Mitchigamies. The Kaskaskias for the most part have persevered in the Christian religion, despite the causes of seduction that perverted the other villages."+
While it is doubtless true that better results apparently were obtained in other localities, it is also true that the converts among the Illinois Indians that were the most highly com- mended, as did those in the most successful missions, soon fell
* "Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi," by J. G. Shea, 153.
+ "Magazine of Western History," I., 269.
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away from the faith, and that their descendants were not in the slightest degree distinguished for morality above other sav- ages who had never yielded to the gospel call.
The failure of the French missionaries to Christianize the aborigines may be chiefly assigned to two operative causes. The first of these relates to the missionaries themselves. Their methods were fundamentally erroneous. Believing that relig- ion was "the chief end of man," and especially that its benefits could be conferred and enjoyed only through the ministra- tions of their own church, by which they aimed to control the state as well as the individual, and attain a power which would be supreme civilly as well as spiritually, they sought to withdraw the savage tribes from the contaminations or inter- ference of the civil authorities, preferring to share with them the hardships of their lot rather than to open their eyes to the dangerous means of its amelioration. The state sought to gain controlling influence by localizing and civilizing the In- dians, by teaching them agriculture and the arts of peace; the priests, by isolating them from all other influences outside of themselves. Man is first an animal, then a social being, then a subject of civil government. In all of these stages of progress, intelligence and growth are necessarily implied. To make a mere savage who l.nows no home and recognizes no authority, a religious being, is an impossibility. He may become, to a certain extent, a machine to be worked upon by despotic power, but is rarely able to comprehend Chris- tianity.
But a second cause of failure was found in the Indians them- selves. The difficulty of the task of their christianization, humanly speaking, was insurmountable. An Indian, says Father Le Clercq, would be baptized ten times a day for a pint of brandy or a pound of tobacco. The soil in which the missionary dropped his seed was fallow and sterile. To have expected it to take deep root would have been to look for the impossible. The Indians could grasp the idea of the Chris- tian religion neither intellectually nor spiritually. The natu- ral, if not inevitable, result followed. Without enlightenment, roaming at will from place to place, although in some instances it was claimed that the ameliorating influences of religion
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were manifested, the wild native was neither humanized, chris- tianized, nor civilized, through the efforts of the French mis- sionarics.
But even had all other conditions been favorable, yet an- other cause might be mentioned for this failure. The lust for pelf brought to the Indian villages hosts of traders; men of dissolute life, who knew no god but gain, no morality but avarice, and who found in the deadly "fire-water" the best medium of exchange. In vain did the priests seek to instruct ignorant savages, whose brains were muddled and whose con- sciences were blunted with drink, and whose native moral in- stincts had been perverted through familiarity and intercourse with such depraved debauchees.
Nor were the Protestant ministers of New England, although adopting different methods, any more successful in their efforts to Christianize the Indians. Neither was their assumption of ecclesiastical superiority any less pronounced than that of the followers of Loyola or St. Francis. And while the suppression of the Jesuits was the harbinger of the civil and religious freedom in Europe which preceded and foreshadowed the great French revolution, it was not until the people, fight- ing for freedom of thought, of speech, and of the press, through their colleges and schools, threw off the yoke of clerical domination, that New England became the cradle and the abiding-place of American liberty.
It is true, however, that the erection of the cross and the presence of the priest at an Indian village formed a nucleus for the comparatively permanent abiding-place of traders and voyageurs. While they generally departed with the tribe on the annual hunt in the fall, and returned in the spring, it sometimes happened that the priest, on account of ill-health or for some other reason, would remain at the village with a few squaws and old men and children. The uncouth chapel, reminding the itinerant white trader of a better state of society in the far-off home of his boyhood, drew his wandering steps most frequently to the place where the priest was found. Facilities for trade also improved there, and gradually his sojournings came to be of longer duration, until not infrequently he took a willing dusky maiden to wife. The building of a house and
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the cultivation of a small piece of ground naturally followed; and thus was given to these primitive settlements the elements of growth and stability.
Cahokia and Kaskaskia were very favorable locations for settlements of this kind. Situated near the great Father of Waters, whose overflows were not at that time so frequent or well known as they afterward became, and not far from the mouth of the Missouri, they were directly on the great high- ways of the trader and hunter. The climate was mild, the soil extremely productive, and the vast forests around full of game, of nut and fruit-bearing trees, and of vines.
While LaSalle became the owner by purchase of the entire Illinois country, no permanent settlement grew out of its occu- pancy either by himself or his immediate followers. Fort Crévecœur, erected by him, was never occupied after its aban- donment a short time thereafter, and even its site is not now known. His colony established in the vicinity of Fort St. Louis and Buffalo Rock, under such favorable auspices, con- tinued but a few years after his death, and after the military had been withdrawn it languished and entirely disappeared. And although the settlements at Cahokia and Kaskaskia proved to be permanent, but for the establishment of the civil and military authority at Fort Chartres it is more than proba- ble that they too would have been abandoned in time for presumably more desirable locations. Protection of the law, backed up by forts and men with guns in their hands, is essen- tial to the safety no less than to the permanence of organized society .*
* Authorities : "Catholic Missions," by Shea and Kip; "Early French Voyages," by St. Cosmé, Gravier, and others; Charlevoix's "New France"; Warburton's "Canada"; Winsor's "America"; French's " Louisiana"; " Encyclopedia Britan- nica"; " Magazine of American History" and "Magazine of Western History," and articles in the latter, and manuscripts, by Oscar W. Collet, secretary of the Missouri Historical Society; Manuscripts and Records in the Chicago Historical Society; "Jesuit Relations"; Shea's "Catholic Church in Colonial Days."
CHAPTER V.
A District of Louisiana-Crozat's Grant-The East-Indies Company-Civil Government-Indian Forays-State of Society, 1718 - 1756.
TN the preceding chapters, the Illinois country, as it came to be called, has been considered from the direction of Canada. The point of view will now be changed to that of Louisiana, of which province it became a part. The tragic death of LaSalle and the consequent failure of his great scheme to connect his colony on the Illinois with a proposed post about sixty leagues above the mouth of the Missis- sippi, was a blow from which that settlement was never able to recover. Fort St. Louis ceased to exist as a French post in 1702. It continued to be occupied by a few irresponsible traders and merchants, until it was partially destroyed, as hereinbefore stated, soon after which the colony dispersed.
The war in Europe, in which Great Britain and France were engaged, during the nine years following 1688, had so ex- hausted each in respect of both men and means as very seri- ously to impede the growth and prosperity of their colonies in North America. But no sooner had the peace of Ryswick afforded Louis XIV leisure and opportunity to turn his atten- tion toward his possessions in New France, than that monarch began to consider how best to utilize the important discoveries of LaSalle, which had opened up to French colonization and control a territory no less magnificent in extent than it was grand in possibilities.
In 1698, Pierre LeMoyne, Sieur d'Iberville,“ an eminent Canadian officer of the French navy, was appointed com- mander of and successfully conducted an expedition to the Bay of Biloxi, where he founded a settlement and constructed a fort. His brother, LeMoyne de Bienville, as the "king's lieutenant," was placed in charge of this colony. Upon the
* Charles LeMoyne was the father of six sons, born at Montreal, of whom Iber- ville was the third, and Bienville, his successor as governor of Louisiana, the sixth, and second son with that title.
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CROZAT'S GRANT.
renewal of hostilities between Great Britain and France, however, in 1701, this post shared the fate of other colonial settlements, which, through neglect and want for some years, were forced to drag out a precarious existence. In 1708, to add to their other calamities the yellow fever broke out among the inhabitants at Biloxi, and spared in its fatal ravages only fourteen officers, seventy-six soldiers, and thirteen sailors .* In this year, the growing dissatisfaction over the administration of the affairs of this colony induced the French court to estab- lish a new form of government for Louisiana. The province was detached from Canada, and Nicholas de Muy appointed its first governor, who, however, died on his passage to Biloxi.
But, in 1712, the condition of the settlers had greatly im- proved, and glowing accounts of the opportunities for trade and mining in the new, had reached the parent, country. It was represented to be the richest part of the world; "pearls could be fished there in abundance, and the streams rolled on sands of gold."
Believing that the resources of the new territory could be rendered more productive to the royal exchequer through private enterprise than under the direction of officers of the crown, the king, on September 14, 1712, issued royal letters- patent to Antoine Crozat, Marquis de Chatel, in which were granted a monopoly of the commerce of the country, over which, through him, the "laws and customs of Paris" were to be administered. This patent was a lengthy and formidable document, granting, among other things, the right to "search for, open, and dig all sorts of mines, veins, and minerals. throughout said country, and also to search for precious stones and pearls, reserving a fifth part of the gold and silver for the king."
A question has been raised whether or not the Illinois coun- try was included in this grant. The language describing the territory over which it was to be exercised, general and some- what indefinite, was as follows: "Solely to carry on a trade in all the lands possessed by us, and bounded by New Mexico and by the lands of the English of Carolina, all the estab- lishments, ports, havens, rivers, and principally the port and
* French's "Louisiana."
-
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haven of the Isle Dauphine, heretofore called Massacre; the river of St. Louis, heretofore called Mississippi, from the edge of the sea as far as the Illinois; together with the river St. Philip, heretofore called the Missouris, and of St. Jerome, here- tofore called Ouabache, with all the countries, territories, lakes within land, and the rivers which fall directly or indirectly into that part of the river of St. Louis."
Another, equally indefinite, reference to the same territory in the document is as follows: "And further, that all the lands which we possess from the Illinois [or, rather, on this side of the Illinois country]* be united, so far as occasion requires, to the general government of New France."+ It does not appear, indeed, that Crozat attempted to exercise any particular con- trol over the Illinois country, although Gov. Cadilac sent traders there in 1713.# In the subsequent grant to the West- ern Company, the territory conveyed was "the lands, coasts, ports, havens, and islands which form our province of Louisi- ana, as well and with the same extent, as we had granted to Mr. Crozat." Under which later grant and under the decree hereinafter mentioned, jurisdiction and control was exercised by the company for the first time in all the Illinois country. Antoine Laumet de la Mothe Cadilac was appointed governor, and given a share in the grantee's profits.
Mons. Crozat was a counsellor and secretary of the king's household, and this grant was intended to confer a special boon on his majesty's favorite, to which Louis remarks he was the more readily inclined because of the zeal manifested and the singular knowledge acquired by the secretary in former enterprises which had resulted in procuring to "our kingdom great quantities of gold and silver." It is clearly apparent that the object primarily in view in granting these privileges was to augment his majesty's revenues, by the royalties to be derived from mining gold and silver. Other commercial results were regarded as subsidiary considerations. While in its terms the grant was limited on the south by New Mexico, it is more than probable that the mines of old Mexico were also kept in view. However this may have been, Crozat
* "Boundaries of Ontario," by David Mills.
+ Dillon's "Historical Notes," 35.
* French's "Louisiana, " VI, 114.
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signally failed to realize the magnificent expectations of his imperial patron, in the direction of either money or commerce. In 1717, after the death of Louis XIV, he surrendered his grant to the crown.
In the meantime, shrewd operators had not been slow to discover not only the vast resources and natural advantages of the country, but also its contingent value as a centre of commerce. Soon after the retirement of Crozat, therefore, in August of the same year, an organization was formed, called the "Company of the West," to which were conveyed powers even more extraordinary than those conferred on Crozat. At the head of this company was the celebrated John Law. To him and his associates were granted the control of the trade and commerce within the limits of the territory named. Gov- ernmental powers, also, were conferred upon them. They were given a monopoly of the tobacco and slave trades, and the exclusive right to refine gold and silver. Subsequently, the sole privilege of trading with the East Indies, China, and the "South Sea" was also conceded, and the name of the com- pany changed to that of the East Indies.
It is worthy of remark in this connection that in all the royal grants of these early days, especial reference is made to the supposed presence of gold and silver, as well as precious stones. The question arises, how did the idea that gold and silver were to be found in the Mississippi Valley obtain so deep a lodgment in the early European brain ? It seems most probable that the belief originated either from the sensational stories told by Spanish adventurers in Mexico and South America, or from statements made to the early , discoverers by the Indians. The argument from analogy was easily made. From what source the Indians learned of the presence of the coveted metals, it is difficult to say; probably from tradition, possibly from actual discovery. It is, nevertheless, an interesting subject for conjecture whether the early French explorers, restlessly seeking for the precious yellow dust, might not have found it on the shores of the Pacific centuries ago, had they been successful in reaching what was undoubtedly their objective point.
On September 27, 1717, the country of the Illinois, which
7
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ILLINOIS-HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL.
had up to that time been a dependency of Canada, by a decree of the royal council, was united to and incorporated with the government of Louisiana .*
Under the enterprising efforts of Law's company, the colo- nies of Louisiana and the Illinois country rapidly increased, as many as eight hundred immigrants arriving in one year. In 1717, succeeding Cadilac, the new-appointed Gov. l' Epinay arrived. Following him the Sieur Jean Baptiste LeMoyne de Bienville, who had in previous years served in the capacity of commandant, and as lieutenant-governor under Cadilac, was appointed governor of Louisiana, and, in 1718, selected the site of New Orleans for the founding of a metropolis. Pierre Duqué de Boisbriant was named by the directors of the company as the first commandant of Illinois, and, under their instructions, proceeded to Kaskaskia with a small force to erect a fort. Why he selected as the site of this fortification, an isolated spot on the Mississippi Bottom, liable to overflow, and many miles distant from either of the villages then existing, it is difficult to comprehend. It is probable, however, that it was in the interest of the new settlements then projected in that vicinity. A poorer location, as the event proved, could not have been chosen. But the fort was constructed, and named Fort Chartres after the Duc de Chartres, son of the regent of France, and it was made the seat of government for the Illinois country while the French held it. Large ware- houses for the reception of goods and also factories were erected, and around the fort there soon sprang up a thriving village called New Chartres, which soon became the centre of "fashion," as well as of power.
In 1720, the Spaniards at Santa Fé, alarmed at the encroach- ments upon their territory by the French, under Bernard de la Harpe, who had erected forts along the Red River and at other points, organized an expedition against the Missouri Indians, allies of the French. While the primary object of the movement was the extermination of the Missouris and the conquest of their country, the objective point was undoubtedly the Illinois. The invading force has been variously estimated at from seventy to fifteen hundred. The design was to form
* Margry, V, 589.
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an alliance with the Osages, neighbors and deadly enemies of the tribe to be attacked. Losing their way, the Spaniards arrived at a Missouri village, supposing it to belong to their proposed allies, and made known to the chief their plans for destroying his nation. The cunning warrior, leaving them undeceived, promised ready cooperation. Falling upon their unsuspecting guests in the night, the savages massacred the entire party, with the exception of the chaplain, who after- ward escaped. The affair was reported to Boisbriant by the Missouris, and has been considered as of importance as tend- ing to show the designs of the Spaniards against the French in those early days .*
In 1721, Philip F. Renault brought with him to the country five hundred slaves and two hundred artisans, mechanics, and laborers, and having, on June 14, 1723, received a large grant of land, he shortly afterward founded the village of St. Philip, a few miles north of the fort. He held the office of director- general of the mines of Louisiana. In 1733, Prairie du Rocher, four miles east of Fort Chartres under the bluff, was laid out on land which the commandant had caused to be conveyed to himself, and which was by him in turn granted to his nephew, St. Therese Langlois, who conveyed it in lots to settlers, re- serving his seignorial rights. Subsequently, a grant of land was made to the village for commons, from which it yet derives a revenue.
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