the bonds of peace. Penn and his followers for many years lived in unbroken peace with their brethren of the forest, but that established by these pioneers of Illinois was never interrupted and for more than a hundred years the country enjoyed the benign influence of peace; and when at length it terminated, it was not the conciliatory Frenchman, but the blunt and sturdy Anglo-Saxon who supplanted him that was made the victim of savage vengeance.

The calm and quiet tenor of their lives, remote from the bustle and harrassing cares of civilization, imparted a serenity to their lives rarely witnessed in communities where the acquisition of wealth and honor are suffered to exclude the better feelings of human nature. Lands of unequaled fertility, and the still more prolific waters and the chase supplied almost unsolicited the wants of life and largely contributed to the light hearted gaiety of the people. With ample leisure and free from corroding cares, they engaged in their various amusements with more than ordinary pleasure. Prominent among their diversions was the light fantastic dance of the young. At this gay and innocent diversion could be seen the village priest and the aged patriarch and his companion, whose eyes beamed with delight at beholding the harmless mirth of their children. When parties assembled for this purpose it was customary to choose the older and more discreet persons to secure proper decorum during the entertainment and see that all had an opportunity to participate in its pleasure. Frequently, on these occasions, fathers and mothers whose youthful enthu siasm time had mellowed down to sober enjoyments again became young and participated in the mazy evolutions of the dance. Even the slave, imbibing the spirit of the gay assemblage, was delighted because his master was happy, and the latter in turn was pleased at the enjoyment of the slave. Whenever the old, who were authority in such cases, decided that the entertainment had been protracted sufficiently long, it was brought to a close; and thus the excesses which so frequently attend parties of this kind at the present day were avoided.

At the close of each year it was an unvarying and time-honored custom among them for the young men to disguise themselves in old clothes, visit the several houses of the village, and engage in friendly dances with the inmates. This was understood as an invitation for the members of the family to meet in a general ball, to dance the old year out and the new year in. Large crowds assembling on these occasions, and taking with them refreshments,

Says Hall in his Sketches of the West: "We have heard of an occasion on which this reciprocal kindness was very strongly shown. Many years ago a murder having been committed in some broil, three Indian young men were given up by the Kaskaskias to the civil authorities of the newly established American government. The population of Kaskaskia was still entirely French, who felt much sympathy for their Indian friends, and saw these hard proceedings of the law with great dissatisfaction. The ladies, particularly, took a warm interest in the fate of the young aborigines, and determined if they must die, they should at least be converted to christianity in the meanwhile, and be baptized in the true church. Accordingly, after due preparation, arrangements were made for a public baptism of the neophites in the old cathedral of the village. Each of the youths was adopted by a lady who gave him a name and was to stand godmother in the ceremony, and the lady patronesses with their respective friends were busily engaged for some time in preparing decorations for the festivities. There was quite a sensation in the village. Never were three young men brought into notoriety more suddenly or more decidedly. The ladies talked of nothing else and all the needles in the village were employed in the preparation of finery for the occasion. Previous to the evening of hanging, the aboriginals gave the jailer the slip and escaped, aided most probably by the ladies, who had planned the whole affair with a view to this end. The law is not vindictive in new communities. The danger soon blew over; the young men again appeared in public and evinced their gratitude to their benefactors.]

with good cheer and merry dance beguiled the flying hours till the clock on the mantle chimed the advent of the new born year. Another custom was, on the 6th of January, to choose by lot 4 kings, each of whom selected for himself a queen, after which the parties thus selected proceeded to make arrangements for an entertainment styled, in the parlance of the times, a king-ball. Toward the close of the first dance, the old queens selected new kings whom they kissed as the formality of introduction into office. In a similar manner, the newly selected kings chose new queens, and the lively and mirthful dance continued during the carnival, or the week preceding Lent. The numerous festivals of the Catholic church strongly tended to awaken and develope the social and friendly intercourse of the people.

All were Catholics and revered the pope as the vice-gerent of God, and respected their priests as spiritual guides and friendly counselors in the secular affairs of life. Mostly without schools or learning, the priest was the oracle in science and religion, and their enunciations on these subjects were received with an unquestioning faith as true. Ignorant of creeds and logical disputations, their religion consisted, in the main, of gratitude to God and love for mankind-qualities by far more frequently found in the unpretending walks of life than in the glare of wealth and power.

As the result of these virtues, children were loving and obedient, husbands and wives kind and affectionate. The latter had the undivided control of domestic matters; and as a further tribute to her moral worth, she was the chief umpire in cases of social equity and propriety. None more than she, whose intuition could penetrate at a glance the most subtle casuistry, was better qualified to detect and enforce it in a gentle and impartial manner. The people attended church in the morning, after which they collected and spent the remainder of the day in social intercourse and innocent pastimes. To the more sedate Protestant, such amusements on the Sabbath, seem unreasonable; but the French inhabitants of the country, in these early times, regarded them as a part of their religion, and conducted them with the utmost propriety. If questioned as to their gaiety on the Sabbath, they replied, that man was made for happiness, and the more he enjoyed the innocent pleas ures of life the more acceptable he rendered himself to his creator. They contended that those who, on the Sabbath, repressed the expression of joyous feelings under the guise of sanctity, were the persons ready to cheat their neighbors during the remainder of the week. Such, were the religious sentiments of a people prone to hospitality, urbanity of manners, and innocent recreation; who presented their daily orisons to the throne of grace with as much confidence of receiving a blessing, as that enjoyed by his most devout Puritan brother.

The costume of the Illinois French, like their manners and cus toms, was simple and peculiar. Too poor, and too remote to obtain finer fabrics, the men, during the summer, wore pantaloons made of coarse blue cloth, which, during winter, was supplanted by buckskin. Over their shirts and long vests, a flannel cloak was worn, to the collar of which a hood was attached, which, in cold weather, was drawn over the head, but in warm weather it fell back on the shoulders after the manner of a cape. Among voyagers and hunters, the head was more frequently covered with a

blue handkerchief folded in the form of a turban.

In the same

manner, but tastefully trimmed with ribbons, was formed the fancy head dress which the women wore at balls and other festive occasions. The dress of the matron, though plain and of the antique short-waist, was frequently varied in its minor details to suit the diversities of taste. Both sexes wore moccasins which, on public occasions, were variously decorated with shells, beads, and ribbons, giving them a tasty and picturesque appearance.

No mechanical vocation as a means of earning a livelihood, was known. The principal occupation was agriculture, which, owing to the extreme fertility of the soil, produced the most munificent harvests. Young men of enterprise, anxious to see the world and to distinguish themselves, became voyagers, hunters, and agents of fur companies, and in discharging their duties, visited the remote sources of the Missouri, Mississippi, and their tributaries. After months of absence, spent in this adventurous employment among the most distant savage nations of the wilderness, they would return to their native villages, laden with furs and peltries. These articles for a long time constituted the only medium of exchange, and the means whereby they procured guns, ammunition, and other important requisites of their primitive life. The re-union with their friends was signalized by the dance, the most important requisite of hospitality, gaiety and happiness. The whole village would assemble on these occasions to see the renowed voyagers, and hear them recount the strange sights and the adventures which they had encountered. No regular court was held in the country for more than a hundred years, or till its occupation by the English, evidencing that a virtuous and honest community can live in peace and harmony without the serious infraction of law. The governor, aided by the friendly advice of the commandants and priests of the villages, either prevented the existence of controversies, or settled them when they arose, without a resort to litigation. Although these civil functionaries were clothed with absolute power, such was the paternal manner in which it was exercised, it is said, that the "rod of domination fell on them so lightly as to hardly be felt." When, in 1765, the country passed into the possession of the English, many of them, rather than submit to a change in the institutions to which they were accustomed and attached, preferred to leave their fields and homes, and seek a new abode on the west side of the Mississippi, still supposed to be under the dominion of France. Upon the reception of assurances, however, from Great Britain, that they should be protected in their property and religion, many of them remained. Those who had removed to the west side of the river enjoyed but a brief interval of peace. Intelligence was received that France had ceded all western and southern Louisiana to Spain, and although Spanish authority was not extended over the territory for a period of five years, it was a period of uncertainty and anxiety. The Spanish government, like that of France, was mild and parental. Every indulgence was extended to her new subjects, and for thirty years they continued to enjoy their ancient customs and religion. The next inroads upon their antiquated habits was the advance of the Americans to the Mississippi, in the region of Illinois. The unwelcome news was received that all Louisiana was ceded to the United States and a new system of jurisprudence was to be extended over them. Previous to

this cession they had to a great extent become reconciled and attached to Spanish rule, but when the new regime was extended over them, totally at a loss to comprehend the workings of republicanism, they asked to be relieved of the intolerable burden of self-government.

Thus, in the heart of the continent, more than a thousand miles from either ocean, in a region styled by LaSalle a territorial paradise, flourished these interesting communities, in the enjoyment of peace, contentment and happiness. It was, however, of a passive character, wanting in that intensity of enjoyment which flows from fully developed powers and an energetic and progressive mode of life. The faculties of both mind and body languish without labor, and that may be considered the normal condition of the race which brings into healthy play all the diversified springs of action and thought which make up the wonderful machinery of · man. Without effort and useful industry he is the creature of languid enjoyments, and a stranger to the highly wrought sensibility and the exquisite delights resulting from cultured mental and physical powers. Furthermore, without enterprise, the vast material forces which slumber in the crust of the earth, and its mantle of exhuberant soil, cannot be made available. While there was peace and contentment on the banks of the Illinois, the Wabash, and the Upper Mississippi, it was reserved for a different race to develop the vast coal fields and exhaustless soil of this favored region, and cause their life sustaining products to pulsate through the great commercial arteries of the continent. While this simple, virtuous and happy people, dwelt in the granary of North America almost unconscious of its vast resources, there was clinging to the inhospitable shores of the Atlantic an intelligent and sinewy race, which was destined to sweep over and occupy their fruitful lands as the floods of the great river overwhelms and imparts fertility to its banks. Only a few remnants of them have escaped the inflowing tide of American population, who still retain to a great extent the ancient habits and customs of their fathers. With their decline came the downfall of their tawny allies of the forest, and a new direction was given to American history. France, could she have remained supreme, with her far reaching and adventurous genius, aided by Jesuit enterprise, would perhaps have partially civilized the savages and thus have arrested their destruction. Populations would have sprung up in the basins of the Great Lakes, and in the Valley of the Mississippi, under the impress of a feudal monarchy, and controlled by a hierarchy of priests hostile to freedom of thought. The progress of civil and religious liberty would have been temporarily but not permanently suspended. The present free institutions of America would have been delayed till the shifting phases of national life furnished new opportunities for experiment and improvement.

[Many curious anecdotes might be still picked up in relation to these early settlers, especially in Illinois and Missouri, where the Spanish, French, English and Americans, have had sway in rapid succession. At one time the French had possession of one side of the Mississippi river and the Spaniards the other; and a story is told of a Spaniard living on one shore, who, having a creditor residing on the other, seized a child, the daughter of the latter, and having borne her across the river which formed the national boundary, held her a hostage for the payment of the debt. The civil authorities declined interfering, and the military did not think the matter of sufficient importance to create a national war, and the Frenchman had to redeem the daughter by discharging his creditor's demand. The lady who was thus abducted was still living a few years ago near Cahokia, the mother of a uumerous progeny of American French.]

In the year 1750 La Buissonier, governor of Illinois, was succeeded by Chevalier Macarty. The peace which had given such unexampled prosperity to Louisiana, was soon to be broken by the clangor and discord of war. Already, in the controversy between France and England in regard to their respective possessions, could be heard the first throes of the revolution which gave a new master and new institutions not only to Illinois, but to the whole continent. France claimed the whole valley of the Mississippi, which her missionaries and pioneers had explored and partially settled, and England the right to extend her possessions on the Atlantic indefinitely west ward. The jealousies and animosities of the parent countries soon crossed the Atlantic, and colonial intrigues were the result. Traders from South Carolina and Georgia again commenced introducing large quantities of goods among the Chickasaws and other tribes of southern Louisiana, and again endeavored to alienate them from their treaty stipulations with the French. As the result, depredations were renewed by the Chicasaws, and a third expedition was sent to their forest fastnesses on the Tombigbee, to reduce them to submission, but like its predecessors, it was substantially a failure. Farther northward similar disturbances commenced. British merchants sent their agents to the Miamis and other western tribes, whose traffic had been previously monopolized by the French. A more grievous offense was the formation of a company to whom the king of England granted a large tract of land on the Ohio, and conferred on it the privilege of trading with the western Indians.

The operations of the Ohio company soon drew the French and English colonial authorities into a controversy, and the mother countries were ready to back any effort that either might make for the maintenence and extension of their respective possessions. As the traders, who were encouraged by the Ohio company, were mostly from Pennsylvania and New York, the governor of Canada informed the executives of these colonies that their traders had been trafficing with Indians dwelling on French territory, and unless they immediately desisted from this illicit commerce, he would cause them to be seized and punished. Notwithstanding this menace, the Ohio company employed an agent to survey their lands southwesterly to the Falls of the Ohio, and northwesterly some distance up the Miami and Scioto. Virginia, also seconding the efforts of the company, obtained from the Indians the privilege to form settlements on the southeast side of the Ohio, 18 miles below the junction of the Alleghany and Monongahela.

England and France now saw that their territorial contest could only be settled by a resort to arms, and each urged its colonial authorities to institute preparations for defending their respective boundaries. In the coming contest the result could not be doubtful, for the colonists of the former power numbered 1,051,000, while those of the latter were only 52,000. Beside this great disparity of numbers, France had transmitted to her possessions institutions which shackled their progress. The English colonists brought with them advanced ideas of government from their native land, and left behind them the monarch and the nobility. The French emigrant came with only the feudal ideas of the past, and cared little for the innovations of modern freedom. The former claiming the right of religious liberty, withdrew from the established church