USA > Indiana > Indiana, a redemption from slavery > Part 7
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His preparation was timely. On the following morn- ing, at 9 o'clock, Piernas was summoned to view his dead body and seal his effects in accordance with the formalities of the civil law. So he set his house in order and was gathered to his fathers, at the ripe age of seven- ty-three years.1 He was buried in the little churchyard at St. Louis, in conformity with his dying request, and there, like Pontiac, he sleeps beneath the bustle and din of the great city. Peace to thy ashes, faithful soldier of France, and may thy honest life be an example to all who shall follow thee as rulers of Indiana !
1 Mag. of West. Hist., vol. ii. pp. 60-65.
CHAPTER III.
THE OLDEST INHABITANT.
THE first white residents of Indiana were coureurs de bois, under which title were included all those whites whose place of residence was not some French village or post. ) The signification of this term varied widely at different periods ; ranging from a criminal sense, in the earlier days, to the simple import of fur-traders, into which it finally settled. The original coureur de bois was the child of monopoly and intolerance, and, like all who are so indiscreet as to offend the powers that be, he has been painted in darker colors than he deserved. In 1685 Denonville wrote: "The youth of Canada are so badly trained that from the moment they are able to shoulder a gun, their fathers dare not say a word to them. As they are not trained to labor, and are poor, they have no other means of gaining a livelihood than to range the forest [courir le bois], where they are guilty of an infinitude of disorders. .. This savage life has great attractions for these young men, who imi- tate all the movements of the Indians. . . The noblesse of Canada is of the most rascally description, and to increase their body is to multiply the number of loafers." 1
At the same time Bishop St. Valliere, of Quebec, wrote : " That the Canadian Youth are for the most part wholly demoralized ; that there are married men who, 1 N. Y. Col. Docs., vol. ix. pp. 276, 277.
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in addition to their own wives, keep Squaws whom they publicly deceive ; and that the most frightful crimes are perpetrated by the Young men and the French who resort to the woods." 1
In these statements, some force is the product of the exaggeration of piety, and this with Denonville as well as with the bishop ; for Denonville was pious even under the Romanism of Canada, which at that time was as severe and exacting as Puritanism ever was. At Mont- real and Quebec, attending a ball, wearing lace, and playing cards, were offenses that received denunciation from the pulpit, while dramatic performances and mas- querading were held by the clergy to be crimes that ought to be prevented by the civil authorities. The young gallants from France found these restraints very irksome ; so much so that La Hontan preferred hunt- ing with the Indians to society life in the settlements, and Lamothe Cadillac declared that no one could live in the provincial cities except " simpletons and slaves of the ecclesiastical domination." 2 To the reduced mem- bers of the nobility, who were quite numerous in Canada, and even to the commonalty, these bonds were as irritat- ing as they were to those more newly arrived, so that all through the social system of the country the youth of spirit and enterprise found the most pleasant life in the freedom of the forests. To maintain this life they became of necessity fur-traders, for there was no other means of support.
Before the year 1670 there appears to have been no restraint of law on their habit of trade or the adoption of the savage life, but in that year Talon, the Intendant,
1 N. Y. Col. Docs., vol. ix. p. 279.
2 Old Régime in Canada, pp. 348, 349.
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THE OLDEST INHABITANT.
who was thoroughly in harmony with the economic theo- ries of Louis XIV., and was also of a religious turn of mind, commenced taking measures to crush these liber- tines. On November 10, 1670, he reported : "The edict enacted relative to marriages has been'enregistered, and, proclaiming the intention of the King, I caused orders to be issued that the volunteers (whom, on my return, I found in very great numbers, living, in reality, like banditti) should be excluded from the [Indian] trade and hunting ; they are excluded by the law also from the honors of the Church, and from the Communities if they do not marry fifteen days after the arrival of the ships from France. I shall consider some other expe- dient to stop these vagabonds ; they ruin, partially, the Christianity of the Indians and the commerce of the French who labor in the settlements to extend the Colony. It were well did his Majesty order me, by lettre de ca- chet, to fix them in some place where they would partici- pate in the labors of the community." 1
Driven by these edicts from lawful trade, the coureurs de bois showed their independence by defiant proposals to turn the fur-trade to the English settlements. For the common security, they organized leagues among themselves, under the leadership of Du Lhut and others, and gave "notices of rendezvous, threatening to build forts and to repair towards Manatte (New York) and Orange (Albany), boasting that they will be received and have every protection there."2 Their boasts were not without foundation, for the English exerted them- selves to induce them to come,8 and there was always thereafter more or less of this illicit trade. The require-
1 N. Y. Col. Docs., vol. ix. p. 65.
2 Ibid., vol. ix. p. 91.
3 Ibid., vol. iv. pp. 715, 749.
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ment to marry they held in derision. Says Denonville : "They despise the peasantry, and consider it beneath them to espouse their daughters, though they are them- selves peasants like them. In addition to this, they will condescend no more to cultivate the soil, nor listen any longer to anything except returning to the woods for the purpose of continuing the same avocations. This gives rise to innumerable excesses that many of them are guilty of with the squaws, which cause a great deal of mischief in consequence of the displeasure of the Indians at the seduction of their wives and daughters, and of the injury thereby inflicted on religion, when the In- dians behold the French practicing nothing of what the Missionaries represent as the law of the Gospel." 1 In truth, it would have been more appropriate to have made some law to restrain marriage than to make a requirement of it, for these bushlopers made matrimony an avocation. Many of them took new wives from among the Indian maidens every eight days, according to the Indian custom ; and La Salle's enemies averred that some of his Illinois colonists took "a new squaw every day in the week." 2
Wild, reckless, and licentious as the coureurs de bois were, they were no worse than their contemporaries, or many who followed them. They sold brandy to the Indians, but so did the licensed traders, the English, and the soldiers ; and so have people of many nationali- ties and classes since then. They debauched Indian women, but so did every one else, except the clergy and a few officers of the sterner stripe; and this evil is very far from being unknown at the present day. They
1 N. Y. Col. Docs., vol. ix. pp. 442, 443.
2 Discovery of the Great West, p. 291.
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THE OLDEST INHABITANT.
carried on unlawful trade, but there was scarcely an officer or merchant in Canada, from Frontenac and La Salle down, who escaped the same charge; and it is sometimes whispered that this offense has been com- mitted in the nineteenth century. There was one mis- demeanor, of which they were guilty in the early days, that was peculiar to them : they discarded clothing entirely, and not only roamed the forests and went among the Indians in this airy mode, but also appeared in the settlements without addition to their raiment.} They were veritable lilies of France, with no aspirations to rival the artificial magnificence of Solomon. In this matter they merely adopted the Indian custom, but both the Indians and their white allies adopted the semblance of clothing before many years had passed.
The laws against the coureurs de bois were of no avail. In 1672 Frontenac reported that their numbers increased daily, "despite of all the ordinances that have been made, and which I have, since coming here, renewed with more severity than before." Their numbers con- tinued to increase, and the impossibility of managing them became so manifest that Frontenac recommended a general amnesty, and the employment of the coureurs in the regular trade.) The amnesty was granted,2 and thereafter matters progressed more favorably until the arrival of Denonville. Although Denonville did not ap- prove of the bushlopers, he found that he could not throw away their assistance. By his permission Du Lhut forti- fied and held Detroit, and his "vagabonds," to the num- ber of one hundred and eighty, aided in the campaign against the Senecas in 1687. For their loyal conduct
1 N. Y. Col. Docs., vol. ix. p. 277; Old Régime in Canada, p. 312.
2 N. Y. Col. Docs., vol. ix. p. 145.
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Denonville reported that they "would richly deserve some reward."1 As the intrigues of the English with the Indians became more formidable, the value of the coureurs de bois became more apparent. They were the links that bound the Indians to France, and except they remained loyal the beaver-trade must go to England. They found a champion in Lamothe Cadillac, who re- ported, in 1694, that, "Those who would insinuate to the Court that it is only licentiousness that creates those coureurs de bois, whom people represent as vagabonds, are for the most part of the time influenced by other motives than those of conscience and religion." 2 (In 1701 the king pardoned all coureurs de bois then under arrest, and gave them permission to join the colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, but for the future he restricted their trade to buffalo skins only. ) A few of those who accepted this permission went with Juchereau, and re- mained at his establishment at the mouth of the Ohio during its brief continuance.
From this time there was no complaint of these rovers from the Canadian authorities ; and though there was an occasional growl from Louisiana on account of their in- subordination, there was also frequent commendation of their usefulness. As the fur-trade became controlled by monopolists, with whom independent traders could not contend, the coureurs de bois dropped into the channels of lawful trade, and their title became practically synony- mous with the word voyageur. These were the coureurs de bois of Indiana in the eighteenth century, and in this phase they were the most romantic and poetic characters ever known in American frontier life. Their every
1 N. Y. Col. Docs., vol. ix. p. 351.
2 Ibid., vol. ix. p. 586.
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THE OLDEST INHABITANT.
movement attracts the rosiest coloring of imagination. We see them gliding along the streams in their long canoes, shapely and serviceable as any water-craft that man has ever designed, and yet buoyant and fragile as the wind-whirled autumn leaf. We catch afar off the thrilling cadence of their choruses, floating over prairie and marsh, echoing from forest and hill, startling the buffalo from his haunt in the reeds, telling the drowsy denizens of the posts of the approach of revelry, and whispering to the Indian village of gaudy fabrics, of trinkets, and of fire-water. We feel the genial warmth of the camp-fire that breaks the chill of the night-wind, and dissipates the fog which rises from stream, bayou, and marsh, as the men gather about it and whiff the narcotic incense from their stumpy pipes ; or later on, when they bring forth the inevitable greasy pillows, roll in their grimy blankets, and speed away to dreamland. Another night they have reached the little post, and we are overwhelmed by the confusion of chattering, laugh- ing, singing, and bargaining; we almost taste the fiery brandy that is rapidly preparing them for the wild whirl of the dance and the delirium of the debauch beyond.
What a rollicking life was this! And yet it takes but little experience in wild life to satisfy one that there is far more romance in imagining all this in an easy-chair than there is in living it. ) True, the melody of
"Je suis jeune et belle, Je veux m'engage Un amant fidèle,"
and their similar ballads (for they all had more of wine and women than the English words that are usually set to the airs), were charming to one " who idly heard the magical strain ;" but it was true also that paddles must
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INDIANA.
keep time with the song, in ceaseless stroke, from dawn to dark. True, the repose of camp was pleasant, at least as compared with the fatigues of the day; but the sup- per that preceded it offered no attraction to an epicure. A quart of hulled corn 1 and a pint of bear's grease con- stituted a day's rations, though at a later period, when settlements were more numerous, the voyageurs some- times revelled in bean or pea soup, flavored with a piece of boiled pork, and reinforced by sea-biscuit.2 Here is the account of their fare given by a traveller, in 1776: " A bushel of hulled corn with two pounds of fat is reck- oned to be a month's subsistence. No other allowance is made, of any kind, not even salt; and bread is never thought of. The difficulty which would belong to an attempt to reconcile any other men than Canadians to this fare seems to secure to them and their employés the monopoly of the fur trade." 3 For every real or imag- inary joy they knew, there was an offset of hardship and privation, so that the contentment and jollity for which they were noted should be ascribed to the French tem- perament, not to the happiness of their lot.
The coureur de bois, as a resident of Indiana, estab- lished no French village ; he lived with the Indians and in the Indian mode. The priest was evidently only a bird of passage until after the establishment of military posts. The first inhabitants who made the landmarks of a permanent civilization were the soldiers. Just who these soldiers were is not known, but the conjecture
1 This corn was prepared something like what is called "home- made hominy." The skin or hull of the grain was removed by soaking it in lye, after which it was washed, mashed, and dried.
2 Wis. Hist. Coll., vol. ii. p. 110.
3 Henry's Travels, p. 52.
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THE OLDEST INHABITANT.
heretofore mentioned, that they were of the Regiment Carignan-Salières, is a mistaken one. All of that regi- ment that remained permanently in America had been disbanded, and the soldiers were married and colonized before they were even fur-traders in Indiana. The regiment was reorganized from the remnant that re- turned to France, but it remained beyond the Atlantic thereafter.1 That the soldiers were "King's troops" appears from the record concerning M. Vincennes which has heretofore been quoted, as also from the certificate of Louis St. Ange, preserved in the Canadian archives, that he "commanded Post Vincesnes in the name of His Most Christian Majesty with a garrison of regular troops from the year 1736 to the year 1764."2 The soldiers ordinarily were from the worst classes of France. According to the priests, their piety was about on a par with that of the coureurs.3 La Harpe, after thirty years experience in the Louisiana colony, said : "The soldiers which the company has sent over have been deserters and persons collected promiscuously from the streets of Paris." 4) In this respect they differed from the troops sent to Canada at an earlier day, and possibly for this reason the early Canadian custom of establishing seign- iories, in which the disbanded soldiers became dependants and the officers seigniors, did not prevail in the West. La Salle introduced the system in his Illinois colony, but it was short-lived. Indeed, the feudal system left very slight traces of any kind in the West, the most impor- tant ones being the provisions, in ancient patents of land,
1 Old Régime in Canada, pp. 218, 182 note.
2 Ante, chap. 2.
Old Regime in Canada, p. 319.
4 Memoir in La. Hist. Coll., p. 117 note.
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INDIANA.
for a recognition of the royal prerogatives by assisting in planting a maypole every year.1
1
Although there were three posts in Indiana during the greater part of the French occupation in the eighteenth century, Vincennes was the only one that could be con- sidered a town. In 1769 there were sixty-six heads of families at this settlement, with fifty women and one hundred and fifty children ; while at Fort Ouiatanon, near Lafayette, there were only twelve heads of families, and at Fort Miamis, now Fort Wayne, there were but nine.2. At Vincennes a majority of the settlers were supported by agriculture; at the other two posts the only employment was trading in furs. In 1778 the annual fur trade of Vincennes was estimated at £5,000, while that of Fort Quiatanon, at the same period, was esti- mated at £8,000.3
As to its agriculture, Vincennes had somewhat the nature of a commune. This resulted partly from a gen- eral saving of labor and expense that could be effected by a community of interest in some things, and partly from the necessity of grouping the houses about the fort to prevent exposure to attack from hostiles. Like all other French settlements in the West, Vincennes had its large commons for the pasturage of stock, and, in a cer- tain sense, also its common fields, in which each indi- vidual's tract was marked but not separated from the others by fencing. At Kaskaskia the inhabitants were at the first accustomed to cultivate land in their com- mons, as well as in their individual concessions, keeping watchers stationed to drive the cattle away from the
1 Mich. Pion. Coll., vol. i. p. 352.
2 Census in Haldimand Coll., Can. Archives.
3 Hutchins's Top. Desc., pp. 28-30.
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THE OLDEST INHABITANT.
grain, but as their cattle increased it became impossible to protect the crops, notwithstanding all their precau- tions. In February, 1727, on the arrival of Desliettes, they presented to him and M. Chaffin, the judge of the district, a memorial setting forth all their trials and tribulations, among others this of their fields and their cattle. They recite therein that they have agreed to put a fence around the fields, and have already cut more than eighteen thousand pickets for the purpose, their mode of fencing being to set the pickets upright in the ground close enough together to prevent the passage of animals. This fence was soon afterwards completed and the fields were safe.1 In this great field, each villager tended and reaped the crop on his own allotment; but after the harvesting, which was all done at one time, the field was thrown open to the cattle of all the settlers.2 No person was allowed to pasture his cattle within the field, even on his own land, except he had them " dili- gently watched." The commons belonged to the village ; no individual had separate property in it. It is so held by the town of Kaskaskia to this day, and the rent paid by those who now cultivate it furnishes a large revenue to the municipality.3
At Vincennes the titles were similar, but the manage- ment of the property was different. In an official report, in 1790, Winthrop Sargent, Secretary of the Territory Northwest of the Ohio River, said : " A petition has also been presented by the inhabitants of Vincennes,
1 Breese's Early Illinois, pp. 173-176, 286-293.
2 Brown's Early Illinois : Ferg. Hist. Ser. No. 14, p. 83; Breese's Early Illinois, pp. 294-296.
8 Breese's Early Illinois, pp. 294-296; Kaskaskia and its Parish Records : Ferg. Hist. Ser. No. 12, p. 22.
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INDIANA.
praying a confirmation of their commons, compreliend- ing 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 are 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 entitles them to a good prescriptive right."1 It was very natural and proper that they should imagine that they had a prescriptive right to this land, and Congress thought so too, for it gave the commons to them. Until 1790 the command- ants at the post exercised a supervising control over the commons and the fields, as well as over other interests of the people. In his last proclamation, of May 18, 1764, St. Ange said to his deputies : " Messieurs Deroite de Richardville and de Caindre cannot watch too care- fully that the inhabitants keep up their fences, it being to the interest of, the public that the animals should not pass from the commons to the grain." Authority over these lands was also exercised by Major Hamtramck, as we shall see hereafter. This authority was a part of the right of eminent domain under the French system, and was based on the necessity of securing supplies for the use of the government. Lieutenant Fraser reported as to this : "The Commandants of the French Troops in the Illinois were always impowered to prohibit the Ex- portation of any provisions from the Illinois till the King's Magazines shou'd be first supplyd. This how-
1 Am. State Papers: Public Lands, vol. i. p. 10.
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THE OLDEST INHABITANT.
ever the Comdta often permitted in consequence of pe- cuniary considerations from those who exported them." 1 Some of this reflection on the thrift of the commandants may properly be attributed to Fraser's bad humor, for he was evidently sore over his rough usage at the Illi- nois.
With the actual inception of the government of the Northwest Territory in Indiana and Illinois, in 1790, the control of the lands devolved on the owners; and as American settlers came thronging in, with other customs, and with cattle that were not always fenced in, a change became necessary. In 1799 it was provided by law that the owners of any common field might assemble, elect officers, and decide on such regulations as they deemed proper for the management of their property, including the right to levy assessments for necessary expenses. All questions were to be decided by the vote of the majority in interest. The immediate supervision of the field was to be by three persons selected as a " field com- mittee." Any proprietor who so desired might fence in his allotment and hold it in severalty at any time. The common field was required to be enclosed by a "good and sufficient fence " on or before the first day of May of each year, and no stock of any kind was to be admit- ted to it between the first day of May and the fifteenth of November of each year, unless the assembly of own- ers should determine otherwise.2 This law remained in force until 1807, when a special law was made for the common fields of Vincennes, whose owners appear to have still neglected the fencing. By this law the fields were required to be fenced, on or before the last day of
1 Report, May 4, 1766, Can. Archives.
2 Laws of N.W. Ter., p. 280, Act approved Dec. 19, 1799.
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INDIANA.
March, 1808, with a rail fence five feet high surmounted by stakes and riders. The control and apportionment of the work were put in the hands of a syndic, who was to be elected by the people owning the lands.1 Through subsequent legislation, both the commons and the com- mon fields were converted into holdings in severalty.
In imitation of the French inhabitants, a number of Piankeshaw Indians adopted an agricultural life at Vin- cennes prior to 1764, as appears from this same report of Mr. Sargent. He says: "In addition, sir, to the ancient possessions of the people of Vincennes, under French and British concessions here, is about one hun- dred and fifty acres of land, constituting a part of the village, and extending a mile up the Wabash River, in front of their improved claims, which was granted by M. St. Ange to some of the Piankeshaw Indians, allotted into small divisions for their wigwams, and by them oc- cupied and improved until the year 1786, when the last of them moved off, selling individually, as they took themselves away, their several parts and proportions. The inhabitants now hold this land, parcelled out amongst them in small lots, some of which are highly improved, and have been built upon before and since 1783." This Piankeshaw tract extended north from what is now Busseron Street; the commons and fields lay south and southwest of the village. It seems odd that any grant of land should have been made to these Indians, who were the original owners of the country, at so early a period of its history, but a satisfactory ex- planation of it is found in the fact that at a very early date the Indians had made a large cession of land to the colony.
1 Laws of 1807, p. 502.
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THE OLDEST INHABITANT.
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