$20 in civil cases; in criminal, they possessed only examinin power; juries before them were not countenanced. Appeal lay t the common pleas courts.* Thus was launched the first county of Illinois upon its career of usefulness, with all its political ma chinery duly organized under the laws of the United States. Down to this period, a mixture of the old French, English and Virginia laws had maintained a sort of obsolete existence and operation.

It may not be uninteresting to relate that the bar of Illinois, in 1790, was illuminated by but a single member, who was, however, a host himself. This was John Rice Jones, a Welchman, born 1750. He was an accomplished linguist, possessed of a classical education, and a thorough knowledge of the law. He was the earliest practitioner of law in Illinois and would have been conspicuous at any bar. His practice extended from Kaskaskia to Vincennes and Clarksville, (Louisville, Ky.) Contrary to habits of frontier life, he was never idle. As a speaker, his capacity for invective under excitement was extraordinary. Removing to Vincennes, he became a member of the territorial legislature, and in 1807 rendered important services in revising the statute laws for the territory of Indiana. In 1786, news found currency in the western country that congress, whose meetings were in great part secret, had by treaty agreed with Spain to a temporary relinquishment of the right to the free navigation of the Mississippi. The western people, who received these reports greatly magnified, were bitterly incensed thereat. At Vincennes a body of men was enlisted without authority, known as the Wabash regiment, to be subsisted by impressment or otherwise, of whom George Rogers Clark took command, and by his orders the Spanish traders there and in the Illinois, were plundered and despoiled of their goods and merchandise in retaliation of similar alleged offences by the Spaniards at Natchez. In these outrages John Rice Jones took a leading part. He became the commissary general of the marauders, to the support of whom Illinois merchants contributed. Such goods as were unsuited to the use of the garrison were sold by Jones. These acts tended to embroil us with Spain. Jones later removed to Missouri, became a member of the constitutional convention, and was a candidate for U. S. Senator in opposition to Mr. Benton. He held the office of judge of the Supreme Court of Missouri until his death, in 1824.

The second lawyer of Illinois, prior to 1800, was Isaac Darnielle. To a strong native intellect, classical education and a tolerable knowledge of the law, he added an engaging manner, free benevolent disposition, and a rather large, portly and attractive person. He was an agreeable speaker, conspicious at the bar, and popular with the people. He was said to have been educated for the ministry and had occupied the pulpit. But his great forte lay

*Brown, History of Ills. p. 273, (with a confused idea as to boundary), to show the inconvenient size of St. Clair County, relates the following: Suit having been brought before a Justice of Cahokia to recover the value of a cow, and judgment having been rendered for $16, the case was appealed. The adverse party and witnesses resided at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, distance 400 miles. The Sheriff, who was also an Indian trader, having received a summons for the party and subpoenas for the witnesses, fitted out a boat with a suitable stock of goods for the Indian trade and proceeded thilher with his papers Having served the summons and subpoenaed the witnesses, which included the greater part of the inhabitants of Prairie du Chien, he made his return charging mileage and service for each, as he had a right to, his costs and the cost of the suit altogether, it is stated, exceeding $900. Whether the costs were ever paid or not, chroniclers have failed to transmit.

+See Reynold's Pioneer Hist. of 1lls.

in the court of Venus, where he practiced with consummate art and with more studious assuidity than his books received. He never married and yet apparently was never without a wife. This course of life brought its inevitable consequences. While youth and vigor lasted all was well, but with advancing age, he was compelled to abandon his profession, and finally died in western Kentucky, at the age of 60, a poor and neglected school-teacher.* As to the practice of those times, ex-governor Reynolds relates seeing the records of a proceeding in court at Prairie du Rocher, against a negro for the "murder" of a hog. The case was malicious mischief, for wantonly destroying a useful animal, which it was sought to bring before the court; but in the absence of a prosecuting attorney, officers disallowed at that time, the grand jury, groping about in the law books, met with a precedent of an indictment for murder and applied it to the case in hand. Perhaps justice was meted out as fully under this indictment as if drawn with the nicest precision as to the nature of the offence, and prosecuted by the ablest attorney in the country.

In the deed of cession from Virginia, it was stipulated that the French and Canadian inhabitants, and other settlers, who had professed allegiance to Virginia, should have their titles confirmed to them. By a law of congress of 1788, the governor of the territory was authorized to confirm the possessions and titles of the French to their lands and those people in their rights, who, on or before the year 1783, had professed themselves citizens of the United States, or any of them. But nothing had been done in this direction up to the arrival of Governor St. Clair at Kaskaskia. It was to this that Washington had called the governor's attention, in his letter of October 6, 1789. In March, 1790, to carry these instructions into effeet, the governor issued his proclamation to the inhabitants, directing them to exhibit their titles and claims to the lands which they held, in order to be confirmed in their possessions. Numbers of these instruments were exhibited, and for those found to be authentic, orders of survey were issued, the expense whereof was to be paid by the owners. payment was anything but satisfactory to the people, as will be seen by the subjoined quotation from the governor's report to the secretary of state, in 1790; and from it may further be gleaned the deplorable condition of the French, at the time of the gover nor's visit in this oft-painted Eden of the Far West as if overflowing with abundance:

Such

"Orders of survey were issued for all the claims at Kaskaskia, that appeared to be founded agreeably to the resolutions of congress; and surveys were made of the greater part of them. A part of these surveys, however, have only been returned, because the people objected to paying the surveyor, and it is too true that they are ill able to pay. The Illinois country, as well as that upon the Wabash, has been involved in great distress ever since it fell under the American dominion. With great cheerfulness, the people furnished the troops under Colonel Clark, and the Illinois regiment, with everything they could spare, and often with much more than they could spare with any convenience to themselves. Most of these certificates for these supplies are still in their hands, *Reynold's Pioneer Hist.

unliquidated and unpaid; and in many instances, where application has been made for payment to the State of Virginia, under whose authority the certificates were granted, it has been refused. The Illinois regiment being disbanded, a set of men, pretending the authority of Virginia, embodied themselves, and a scene of general depredation ensued. To this, succeeded three successive and extraordinary inundations from the Mississippi, which either swept away their crops, or prevented their being planted. The loss of the greater part of their trade with the Indians, which was a great resource, came upon them at this juncture, as well as the hostile incursions of some of the tribes which had ever been in friendship with them; and to these was added the loss of their whole last crop of corn by an untimely frost. Extreme misery could not fail to be the consequence of such accumulated misfortunes."

The impoverished condition of the French settlements is further portrayed, and doubtless truly, in a memorial addressed to Governor St. Clair, while in Illinois, which bears the date "June 9, 1790," and is signed by "P. Gibault, Priest," and 87 others. Gibault was the same ecclesiastic who, in 1788, conducted the successful embassy of Colonel Clark to Vincennes, severing the allegiance of that post from the British:

"The memorial humbly showeth, that by an act of congress of June 20, 1788, it was declared that the lands heretofore possessed by the said inhabitants, should be surveyed at their expense; and that this clause appears to them neither necessary nor adapted to quiet the minds of the people. It does not appear necessary, because from the establishment of the colony to this day, they have enjoyed their property and possessions without disputes or law suits on the subject of their limits; that the surveys of them were made at the time the concessions were obtained from their ancient kings, lords and commandants; and that each of them knew what belonged to him without attempting an encroachment on his neighbor, or fearing that his neighbor would encroach on him. It does not appear adapted to pacify them; because, instead of assuring to them the peaceable possessions of their ancient inheritances, as they have enjoyed it till now, that clause obliges them to bear expenses which, in their present situation, they are absolutely incapable of paying, and for the failure of which they must be deprived of their lands.

"Your Excellency is an eye-witness of the poverty to which the inhabitants are reduced, and of the total want of provisions to subsist

on.

Not knowing where to find a morsel of bread to nourish their families, by what means can they support the expenses of a survey which has not been sought for on their parts, and for which, it is conceived by them, there is no necessity? Loaded with misery, and groaning under the weight of misfortunes, accumulated since the Virginia troops entered the country, the unhappy inhabitants throw themselves under the protection of Your Excellency, and take the liberty to solicit you to lay their deplorable situation before congress; and as it may be interesting for the United States to know exactly the extent and limits of their ancient possesssion, in order to ascertain the lands which are yet at the disposal of congress, it appears to them, in their humble opinion, that the expenses of the survey ought more properly to be borne for whom alone it is useful, than by them who do not feel the necessity of it. Beside, this is no object for the United States; but it is great, too great, for a few unhappy beings, who, Your Excellency sees yourself, are scarcely able to support their pitiful existence. "

The French settlements steadily declined and melted away in population from the time the country passed under Anglo-Saxon rule, 1765, until their exodus, many years later, became almost complete. After their first hegira, commencing with the English occupation,

down to 1800, the immigration of the latter race scarcely counterbalanced the emigration of the former. Indeed, there was a time during the Indian troubles, that the balance fell much behind; but after the treaty of Greenville, in 1795, immigration was greatly increased. In 1800, the population was little, if any, greater than in 1765. In capacity for conquest or colonization, for energy of character, thrift, ingenious and labor-saving inventions, the Anglo-Saxon race surpasses all others. It was this race which established the British constitution; which permanently colonized the shores of America and gave to it municipal liberty, the gem of republicanism, and which furnished our unrivaled federative system, which may yet be the means of politically enfranchising the world. To have his secluded abode and remote quietude stirred up by such a race, with whom he felt himself incapable to enter the race of life, the Frenchman of these wilds lost his contentment, and he abandoned his ancient villages in Illinois, to the new life, instinct with the progress opening all around them, after an occupation of over a century.

INDIAN HOSTILITIES-1783 TO 1795.

After the tide of European immigration had forced back the red men of America from the Atlantic slopes, they found their best hunting grounds in the magnificient forests and grassy plains beyond the Alleghanies, north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi. When, after the war of the Revolution, this empire region, wrested from the grasp of the British crown, was thrown open to settlement and the pioneers of the pale faces began to pour over the mountains and into the valley with a steadily augmenting stream, the red men determined not to give back farther. They resolved to wage a war of extermination for the retention of this vast and rich domain. Here had gathered the most warlike tribes of the Algonquin nations, who have given to known Indian history the ablest chieftains and greatest warriors, Pontiac, Little Turtle, Tecumseh, and his brother the one-eyed Prophet, Black Hawk, and Keokuk.

During the war of the Revolution all the most belligerent tribes residing within this region, and the fisheries along the great lakes of the north, had adhered to the side of Great Britain. But by the treaty of peace, 1783, the territory was transferred to the U. S. without any stipulations by England in favor of her savage allies. The British, during their twenty years rule, had not extin guished the Indian title to any part of the country. The French, during their long occupation, had made no considerable purchases of lands from the western Indians; and by the treaty of Paris, 1763, the English succeeded only to the small grants of the French about the various forts, Detroit, Kaskaskia, Vincennes, etc. True, in 1701, at Fort Stanwix, the Iroquois had ceded to Great Britain their shadowy claim over a part of the northwestern territory, acquired by their wars with the Hurons and Illinois, and in 1768 the six nations had conceded to her their rights to the lands south of the Ohio, but the conquered tribes residing upon them and making them their hunting grounds, abandoned them but temporarily, and returned and did not respect the transfers. An Indian conquest, unless followed by permanent occupation, was seldom more than a

mere raid, and could not be said to draw title after it. Therefore, by the treaty of peace of 1783, the U. S. received nothing from England beyond the old small French grants, and the title of the six nations by conquest, such as it was, to the western territory. Indeed, the general government in the IVth article of the ordinance of 1787, seems to acknowledge that it had yet to secure the title to the lands from the Indians.

The general government, on account of the adherence of the Indians to the side of the British during the war, if not deducing actual title, was inclined to regard the lands of the hostile tribes as conquered and forfeited. But while it attempted to obtain treaties of cession from the several nations, it also immediately threw open the country to settlers, made sales to citizens, and in the exercise of supreme dominion, assigned reservations to some of the natives, dictating terms and prescribing boundaries. This at once produced a deep feeling of discontent among the Indians, and led directly to the formation of an extensive confederation among a great number of the northern tribes.

In October, 1784, the government Indian commissioners made a second treaty at Fort Stanwix with a portion only of the Iroquois, which, on account of its not being made at a general congress of all the northern tribes, was refused to be acknowledged by their leading chiefs, Brant, Red Jacket, and others. The following year, at Fort McIntosh, the government again treated with a portion of the tribes-the Wyandot, Delaware, Chippewa, and Ottawa nations-only partly represented; and in January, 1786, at the mouth of the Great Miami (Fort Kinney,) with the Shawanese, the Wabash tribes refusing to attend..

We have seen that among the instructions issued to Gov. St. Clair, he was to carefully examine into the real temper of the Indians, and to use his best efforts to extinguish their titles to lands, westward as far as the Mississippi, and north to the lakes. In the fall of 1788, he invited the northern tribes to confirm the late treaties of Fort Stanwix and Fort McIntosh, ceding lands; but the Indians, in general council assembled, refused to do so and informed the Governor "that no bargain or sale of any part of these Indian lands would be considered as valid or binding." The Governor, nevertheless, persisted in collecting a few chiefs of two or three nations, at Fort Harmar, (mouth of the Muskingum), and from them obtained acts of confirmation to the treaties of Forts Stanwix and McIntosh, ceding an immense country, in which they were interested only as a branch of the confederacy, and unauthorized to make any grant or cession whatever.* The nations, who thus participated in the acts of confirmation, were the Wyandots, Delawares, Ottawas, Chippewas, Potawattomies, and Sacs; but the Confederation of the north claimed that it was done without authority, with the young men of the nation, alleged to have been intimidated and over-reached. But aside from the fact that the government had treated with separate tribes, the grants obtained from the Iroquois and their kindred, the Wyandots, and the Delawares and Shawanese, were open to scarcely any objections. Those most vehement in denouncing the validity of the concessions were

*Proceedings of Indian Council 1793-See American State papers, V. 357-7.

+ Idem.

#Stone, ii. 281.