USA > Indiana > Knox County > Vincennes > History of Old Vincennes and Knox County, Indiana, Volume I > Part 8
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While there was little or no adjudication carried on in those days be- tween the peaceful and contented people, the ancient Roman law, which had undergone modification in the different countries of Europe, was the
* Milburn, Pioneers, Preachers and People of the Mississippi Valley.
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code that obtained there, as well as throughout the length and breadth of the country, only that every principle upon which it was founded seemed susceptible of greater elasticity to the average jurist who held sway in these parts, often to the detriment of litigants on both sides of the case. How- ever, by common consent, or otherwise; probably more for self-protection than for expediency; there were substituted laws providing for allodial titles to lands, which received the sanction of both the French and Eng- lish governments. While individual grants were made, land was assigned to communities as a whole for farming and raising stock. Each family was permitted to stake off for itself the portion desired for live stock and agricultural purposes, and never found it necessary to guard against in- truders or interlopers. By an edict issued by "the powers that be"-the official dignitaries of the village, whose ermine was worn by the common consent of the governed-the sowing and planting of seeds, the cultiva- tion and harvesting of the crops had to be performed on certain prescribed days. A rail fence separated the stock pastures from the fields, to pre- vent the cattle from feeding on the grain, and, judging from the quantity of land claimed by the settlers, whose titles were subsequently disputed by designing military officers as well as civilians, agriculture, in which the Piankeshaw Indians also engaged, must have been carried on to a far greater extent than some earlier writers imagined. By the unanimous con- sent of the "field commissioners"-the same official household which pro- mulgated regulations for seed time and harvest-who were supposed at all times to voice the universal sentiments of the permanent populace, new settlers were permitted to join the colony and share in the rewards and reverses of the common field. After many years of occupancy, foreign land speculators and, be it said to their shame, men of royal blood wearing judicial ermine, sought to dispossess these incredulous people of their pos- sessions, which led the latter as late as 1789, to appeal to Winthrop Sar- gent, secretary of the territory northwest of the Ohio river, for protection. In his official report, 1790, in reference to this appeal, Mr. Sargent said : "A petition has also been presented by the inhabitants of Vincennes, pray- ing a confirmation of their commons, comprehending about two thousand four hundred acres of good, and three thousand acres of sunken lands. They have been, it appears, thirty years under a fence, which is intended to confine their cattle within its boundaries, and keep them out of their wheat fields; for, contrary to the usage of farmers generally, the cattle are enclosed and the cultivated lands left at large, except those parts which immediately approach the commons. But this fence, and quiet possession under the French and British governments, they seem to think entitle them to a good prescriptive right." Congress had previously recognized that the habitants of the Old Post did have a "prescriptive right" to the land, for it donated it to them for commons purposes, subject to the control of the commandant of the post. The fence, evidently, was the bane of existence of all the commandants at the post for many years prior to 1791, a period at
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which control of the lands in question passed into other hands. In 1763, St. Auge, in full charge of Poste au Oubache as commandant, in the last official document he issued as such, addressed two of his trusty lieutenants as fol- lows: "Messieurs Deroite de Richardville and de Caindre can not watch too carefully that the inhabitants keep up their fences, it being to the in- terest of the public that the animals should not pass from the commons to the grain."
Aside from these trivial' annoyances, so amicable, season in and out, were the relations between the people of the village, so sacred were their social intercourse, their commercial dealings, that the barrister, for a long time, at least, like Hamlet, found his occupation gone. Statutory rights were unknown things, common law, courts and judges, pleas and pleadings, fees and findings, were names f which the commune had little or no knowledge, for there were no civil courts established nor civil authority exercised in any of the settlements of the northwest territory until two years after its formal organization, in 1788. Being no courts, there were no judicial adjustments of any character under way up to 1790 or 1791, when the stern arm of the law, with a sort of a palsied movement, was extended to the western settlements. While noted for adapting themselves to conditions as they arise, looking with philosophical vision upon every emergency that confronts them, the French by no means took kindly to the new procedure, placing little faith in the so-called fairness and equity to be derived from a trial by jury, especially when such affairs were to be subject to American or English censorship. Heretofore, whatever little differences arose among the habitants, the priest was appealed to as a court of competent jurisdiction, whose rulings generally resulted satis- factorily to all parties to the suit. If not, then the case was taken before the commandant of the fort as a court of last resort, from whose merciful decisions there was no appeal.
The religious training of these simple people, and all the spiritual food with which they were provided, was furnished by the Jesuit fathers, highly educated, classical scholars, who experienced much difficulty in imparting book learning to the major portion of their parishoners, and some with- out the fold, who seemed content with gaining less than a smattering of the knowledge contained in books-many declining to take even elemen- tary steps in reading and writing, feeling, intuitively, that "where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." The tutors were in every way capable of imparting instruction liad the pupils been willing to take it. A very learned priest at this period was dean of a theological college here and at Kaskas- kia, and superior of all the missions in the Illinois and Wabash countries, who received for his services, as did all the other Jesuits engaged in mis- sionary work, only the paltry sums derived from marriage, baptismal or burial fees, or the voluntary contributions of parishioners. The name of this priest was Father Marest, who, with Father Mermet, the founder of St. Francis Xavier's cathedral, divided his time between Kaskaskia and
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Vincennes in religious and educational work, which he inaugurated at both places very early in the eighteenth century. It was these holy men who nurtured the religion that had barely been planted in the northwest terri- tory at the time of their arrival. Pious, humble, devoted, penniless, they imitated in their everyday walks the earthly life of the meek and lowly Nazarene, inspiring their scattered flocks with a purity of thought and a sincerity of purpose which disappeared with the temporary withdrawal of their priestly presence, only to find their erstwhile pious supplicants on the holy Sabbath, at the conclusion of services, indulging in pastimes that would grate harshly even on the delicate sensibilities of a frigidarium follower of Calvin.
Father Mermet was an indefatigable, influential and conscientious worker among the natives, and the power he exerted over the Indians was something wonderful. He was performing priestly duties at Vincennes as early as 1710, and no doubt the motive which impelled him to come at such an early date was an uncontrollable impulse to look after the spiritual wel- fare of the savages. At any rate, we find him engaged in that "labor of love" almost simultaneously with the founding of the settlement, bending his energies for the conversion of a band of Indians who were then both nu- merous and hostile, but whose numbers and racial antecedants long since faded rapidly away. They were known as the Mascoutins, and were un- doubtedly of the Miami confederation, as they spoke the language of the latter. They were very superstitious and dwelt in a village not far re- moved from the fort. Like all other tribes they had their medicine man, but unlike most others, they seemed to pin greater faith in him, being absolutely immovable in their attachment for him, and placing implicit confidence in his wisdom. . They were, therefore, ill disposed to listen to the new doctrines as expounded by the learned Jesuit. Having concluded in his own mind that the better way of counteracting their unbelief in the Christian religion, was to point out to them the error of their way in a joint debate, in a public discussion, to be had with their most learned medicine man, in the presence and hearing of all that oracle's followers, he was suc- cessful in securing their assent to the plan. The success with which the efforts of the reverend Father were crowned are best told in his own words. "The way I took," says he. "was to confound, in the presence of the whole tribe, one of these charlatans, whose Manitou, or Great Spirit, which he worshipped, was a buffalo. After leading him on insensibly to the avowal, that it was not the buffalo that he worshipped, but the Manitou, or spirit of the buffalo, which was under the earth, and which animated all buffaloes, which heals the sick, and has all power; I asked him if other beasts, the bear for instance, which some of his nations worshipped, was not equally inhabited by a Manitou, which was under the earth? 'Without doubt,' said the medicine man. 'If this is so,' said the missionary, 'men ought to have a Manitou who inhabits them?' 'Nothing more certain,' said the medicine man. 'Ought that not convince you, then,' said the
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Father, pushing his argument, 'that you are not very reasonable? For, if a man upon the earth is master of all animals; if he kills them; if he eats them; does it not follow that the Manitou which inhabits him, must neces- sarily have a mastery over all other Manitous? Why, then, do you not invoke him, instead of the Manitou of the bear and buffalo, when you are sick ?' This reasoning," says the Father, "disconcerted the charlatan. And" -probably with a sigh of regret at the listless manner in which his logical argument had been received, the good priest concludes-"this was all the effect it produced." It was not a great while after this memorable meet- ing of the missionary and medicine man that a severe malady broke out in the village, and the Indians, says Father Mermet, gathered around the fort for the purpose of making a great sacrifice to their Manitou. They slew thirty or forty dogs, hoisted them on poles, and, forming a procession danced and sang around the fort, their countenances depicting the anguish and pain of their minds and bodies. Finding that their own efforts were unavailing to stop the pestilence, they appealed again to the missionary to stay the wrath of the fell destroyer whose fetid breath was withering and lessening their ranks daily. But neither the "manitou" of the French or Indian was powerful enough to check the ravages of the plague; and, despite the untiring efforts of the self-sacrificing priest, who daily and hourly exposed himself to the unconquerable disease in ministering to the afflicted, more than one-half of the village perished. The Mascoutins seemed more susceptible to disease than any of their kindred, and were the first people as a nation among the Indian tribes to become extinct.
The average native, though, perhaps, a very poor exemplar of the faith in the eyes of some people, absorbed, as well as retained, religion more readily than he did education. To read and write were, to his mind, rare accomplishments. As for arithmetic, it was a meaningless thing, as in- comprehensible as Greek. Having advanced far enough to distinguish words from phrases, to push the quill sufficiently to sign his name to instruments, or sketch characters on paper, and to spell un- pronounceable words that appeared in the catechism, or the lives of saints, or in the pages of church history, he felt his store of knowledge complete, and rested his fate in the hands of the priest and the command- ant. To him the days, with their sun and shade, came and went like the visions of a dream, filling his mind with peace and his heart with contentment.
It must not, however, be inferred by the reader that Vincennes, at the time we are considering, was a hot-bed of ignorance. On the contrary, it was considered far advanced, intellectually, for an outlying post in a new country dominated by savages. We have simply shown the illiteracy of a class that rode, as it were, upon the crest of the first wave that touched these untrodden shores-the semi-savages, the descendants of the coureur de bois, whose sires had acquired the tastes and habits of the aborigines and intermingled their blood with them. From the date of its first
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settlement the Old Post has been the home of educated, religious, refined and intellectual people, and was at the period of which we write. It was the first place in the northwest territory to promote ecclesias- tical and secular education by founding theological seminaries, parochial schools, and by establishing the first public school west of the Allegheny mountains. Soon after the inauguration of the first president of the United States, Monsieur Rivet-a noted friar brought here from France, through the instrumentality of the Catholic church-"taught the young idea how to shoot" in an improvised school-room in the basement of St. Francis Xa- vier's library, around which cling so many sweet and sad memories of by- gone days. A man of deep thought and profound learning, thoroughly French in his dress and mannerisms, he seemed wedded to his profession, performing his arduous duties with a pleasantry and precision refreshing to behold. For his services this talented and distinguished instructor re- ceived the annual stipend of two hundred dollars, and George Washing- ton, "Father of His Country," was his paymaster. Upon the roll of Mon- sieur Rivet's pupils were the names of quite a number of Indians, indi- cating that the more progressive inhabitants of the town believed in a universal spread of education, by extending it even unto the children of the forest.
There were no symptoms of racial suicide manifested by the first set- tlers. Births and marriages were very frequent, and as soon as a son or daughter left the parental roof to enter upon a state of connubial felicity, a new cabin home sprang up in the shadow of the old homestead of either the bride or groom upon the original patriarchal grant, embracing small territory, but frequently containing domiciles of sufficient numbers to shel- ter five generations. To look in upon these homes of happiness and con- tentment, builded in the shades of wilderness wilds, and solitudes, where death and danger stalked, hand in hand, one is thrilled and fascinated by the love and virtue and bravery they portray. At what cost of mental anguish and physical suffering the ancestors of those who occupied them made possible their very existence, no one will ever know. In the lives of the coureur de bois, and their immediate descendants, are to be found more wonderful and thrilling stories of adventure, hardship, darkness, despair, romance, love, hate, sunshine and pleasure, than have ever been conjured in the fertile brains of the most versatile students in the advanced schools of fiction. The father's daring was a heritage he bequeathed to his son, who sought all the wild pleasures and fascinating dangers of the limitless forests and endless streams. In the pathless wilderness the sire found a highway that led to fields of pleasure and profit. To his acute ear the cries of the wild were as the dulcet notes of a familiar air, that lured him into the recesses of dense woods as the songs of the sirens drew the mariners out on the boundless seas. In the expeditions he made for sub- sistence, for pleasure, for gain, the rushing torrent, the untrodden forest, the irksome portage, with all their perils, hardships and dangers, appeared
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to his optimistic vision as things of beauty, before which thoughts of fear, hunger, toil and deprivation vanished, like the mist of morning before the rays of the ascending sun. The skillful and laborious occupation of the hunt, the dealings with the treacherous and fickle redskins, whether for traffic or sequestered rights, became to him both a pleasure and a pastime- the face of the deadly Sioux, the less bloodthirsty miens of the Algon- quins, Ottawas, Chippewas or Piankeshaws having no more terror for him than the countenances of his white brethren. Congenial as were his village environments-the cabin home, brightened by the cheerful presence of a loving wife and children, the narrow streets, with their motley crowds of gossipers, without a care, amiable, hospitable, happy, generous; the games, the chase, the dance, the unlimited number of social functions in which everybody participated-the young man could not get away from his long- ing for woodland and stream, and whenever this spirit asserted itself its mandates were imperative; he could no longer stay himself with the ties of home and friends, but had to go where the cry of the wild called him. Oftimes it led him, in his frail canoe, far up into the lake regions at the head of the Father of Waters, or to the rugged steeps and desolate plains towards the source of the unpoetic Missouri, through the land where the savage Sioux was always an inhospitable host, or even to the peaks and barren wastes of the Rocky mountains. By day his trusty gun was his sole and constant companion, and at night his only bed-fellow, with whom he courted sleep in forest shades, having no roof to cover him save the star-studded dome of heaven. But all the time busy with rifle and brain- killing game and driving bargains with the Indians-he would invariably return with a canoe laden with furs, only to reverse his course, and be gone in a jiffy to steer his barque towards the great southern metropolis, New Orleans, or to penetrate, with his fragile water craft, the creeks, the bayous and brooks-small arteries of the coast-that led the way to far- off inland towns or ports of the southland, at which points his commodi- ties, secured in wildernesses and upon streams hundreds of miles away, were exchanged for money, goods, and articles of merchandise that suited his fancy, with which he would depart, light-hearted and gay, for his fron- tier home on the Wabash, to prepare, refit and start (if the wild spirit within him was still at work) upon another expedition far towards the northland. Perhaps his penchant for bartering and trading (a characteris- tic of the son of the coureur de bois) would carry him, without a stop, into the Indian country, to trade the goods and wares he had obtained in the south; or, perchance, (the moving spirit having become dormant) he would become domesticated for the nonce, bury* under the cabin floor the French and Spanish coins that were the fruits of his hunting and trading expeditions, and make an effort to resume the laborious task of cultivating the soil. Apparently, it made little difference to him whether the final re-
* Milburn, Pioneers, Preachers and People of the Mississippi Valley.
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sults of his expeditions-the business ends thereof-made his purse more, or less, plethoric, the adventures they afforded him were always a satis-' factory recompense for the time and energy they involved. If they failed to be productive from a monetary standpoint, they, nevertheless, furnished a rich fund of harrowing tales and blood-curdling episodes, that were highly prized, besides affording excellent opportunities for the young man (especially if he were possessed of a semblance of descriptive powers) to dilate upon his own strange and varied experiences on turbulent waters, or in the recesses of dark and desolate woods and swamps, or to recount the stories of the nameless wanderers that he met on rivers and lakes, mountains and plains, or in the busy marts of southern towns, wherein he had gathered louis d'ors and doubloons. Frequently ten, twelve, twenty, and sometimes twenty-four months were consumed in making these voyages, the concluding end of which was always emphasized with a celebration, which generally partook of the character of a ball, as dancing was not only a favorite diversion of the natives but it was an accomplishment in which they all showed wonderful pro- ficiency. As soon as official announcement had been made of the return of the wanderers, the inhabitants, young and old, began to get their evening toilets ready for the dance, which was always a foregone conclusion. The ball room scenes of those days were certainly pictures of rarity and uniqueness, impossible to portray with pen. Youth-Creole girls with poses of the gracefullest statues, having the beautiful faces and fine eyes that enslave, dressed in homespun-and old age vied with each other in efforts of light-heartedness and gaiety; grandfather and grandmother, grandsons and granddaughters, fairest of maidens and rough and ready fellows in appearance, but decorous in deportment, negro slaves and Indian free- man, were all participants in the joyous event, which was notable for the presence of a propriety not excelled in the circles of social swelldom among the creme de la creme. At such functions, in accordance with time-honored custom, there was selected by the assemblage a "chief-hostess," a matron of eminent respectability, who assumed complete charge of all details per- taining to the affair ; who made it a point to see that "everybody" danced with "somebody" else; that there were no wall flowers in evidence, and no lack of partners; that even the little children be permitted to participate in the labyrinthian mazes of the innocent and alluring diversion. At a prescribed hour the dance was concluded by official authority and the ball room-which was not infrequently graced by the presence of the good priest -became like a banquet hall deserted ; the violin was hushed, and the merry throng withdrew, to go home and content themselves with reflections upon the many pleasing incidents the occasion furnished, until another daring voyageur's exploitations called for a repetition of the celebration.
To all of these affairs, and upon all occasions of pomp and ceremony, whether of a public or private character, every stranger within the village gates was provided with carte blanche and urged to attend. This generous
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display of hospitality and courtesy, for which Vincennes is noted to this day, has been extant since the beginning of the first settlement, and many aris- tocratic Europeans, from time to time, have been noticeable figures at her primitive balls and parties. At a much later day from the one with which we are now dealing, Thomas Dundas, fifth carl of Selkirk, was an occa- sional visitor at the Old Post, and one of the many notable personages who had come directly in touch with its social life and been a participant in its social gaieties. He was a native of Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland, a gradu- ate of the University of Edinburgh, and in 1779 succeeded to the title and property of his father. His life was devoted largely to the promotion of emigration to British America. As early as 1802 he put forth considerable effort to influence the British Government to provide for the transportation of discontented and impoverished Scottish peasants to the new world. In 1811 he secured from the Hudson Bay Company a large tract of fertile land in the valleys of the Assiniboin and Red river of the North, where, late in the same year, his first band of colonists was established. Many difficulties were encountered, arising chiefly from the opposition of the northwest traders to the enterprise, and in 1816-17 the settlement was broken up. It was soon restored, however, under Selkirk's personal su- pervision, and the conflict was transferred to the courts, where the energetic promoter at length secured judgment in favor of his avowed rights. In 1816 Selkirk published "A Sketch of the British Fur Trade," and in the next year "The Red River Settlements." He died in 1820. Of his last visit here, which was in the latter part of 1817, Frederic A. Ogg, A. M., in a reprint of "Fordham's Personal Narrative," says: "Rough and democratic as these backswoodsmen are, they show great respect to talent, to superior knowledge to age, and to wealth. There is no danger to a European who possesses these advantages, of being jostled or of not being of consequence among his neighbors. Lord Selkirk and suite were at Vincennes the other day at a dinner and ball, and received the most marked attentions. But worth and talent, without rank, will command respect. Indeed, no rank is known here, but military rank, and that is obtained by tavern-keepers and farmers. English aristocrats could not live here."
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