ward ceremonies of our church, but no more.

*** They

do not kill people but in particular quarrels, or when they are brutish, or drunk, or in revenge, or infatuated with a dream, or some extravagant vision. They are incapable of taking away any person's life out of hatred to his religion."

Through the persevering efforts of missionaries, aided by the enterprising spirit of a few adventurous traders, pacific relations and a small traffic were established between the Miamis and the French colonists of Canada, before the close of the seventeenth century. In the year 1684, M. de la Barre, the governor-general of Canada, laid before the English colonial authorities, at Albany, a remonstrance, in which he stated that the Iroquois, or Five Nations, between whom and the English a league of friendship then existed, were interfering with the rights and property of French traders among remote western Indian tribes.

When the Five Nations were informed of this charge, they made a defense against it by saying that their enemies were supplied with arms and ammunition by French traders. M. de la Barre, soon afterward, held a council with certain chiefs of the Five Nations, on which occasion he told them that they, the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, and Mohawks, had abused and robbed French traders who were passing to the west. Grangula, a celebrated Onondaga chief, in replying to this charge, said:-"We plundered none of the French but those who carried guns, powder, and balls, to the Twightwees [Miamis] and Chicktaghicks, because those arms might have cost us our lives. We have done less [evil] than either the English or French, who have usurped the lands of so many Indian nations."

The active hostilities which broke out, in 1689, between the Five Nations* and the colonists of Canada, and the almost constant wars in which France was engaged until the treaty of Ryswick, in 1697, combined to check the grasping policy of Louis XIV, and to retard the planting of French colonies in the valley of the Mississippi. Between the years 1680 and

*The Five Nations were the Mohawks, Oneidas, Cayugas, Onondagas, and Senecas. In 1677, the total number of warriors in this confederacy was 2150. About the year 1711, the Tuscarora tribe of Indians retired from Carolina, and joined the Iroquois, or Five Nations, which, after that event, became known as the Six Nations.

1700, several missionaries, successively, made efforts to instruct and civilize the Illinois Indians. A church, composed of a few Frenchmen, and, probably, a very small number of Indians, was founded on the banks of the river Illinois, at, or near, a post which was founded by La Salle, and called Fort St. Louis. The war which was carried on, about this time, between the Five Nations and the French and their Indian allies, was the principal cause of the dispersion of the settlers at Fort St. Louis, or Great Rock. A party of Indians went down the Illinois. river, and settled on the eastern bank of the river Mississippi, on a prairie which lies about twenty-three miles below the mouth of the Missouri. A missionary, a few traders, and some roving adventurers, followed them to their new settlement, which was called Cahokia. The traders, generally, formed matrimonial alliances with the Indians, and lived in amity with them. The beautiful prairies on the borders of the small river Kaskaskia, (which enters the Mississippi at a point about one hundred miles above the mouth of the river Ohio,) attracted the attention of the French adventurers in the Illinois country; and, about the close of the 17th century, a small number of them settled on the banks of that river, and became the founders of the village of Kaskaskia.

Soon after the discovery of the mouth of the Mississippi, by La Salle, in 1682, the government of France began to encourage the policy of establishing a line of trading posts and missionary stations in the country lying west of the Allegheny mountains, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico; and this policy was maintained by France, with only partial success, throughout a period of about seventy-five years. During all this period, the labors of a small number of missionaries were continued, amid many obstacles, without producing any general and permanent improvement in the condition of the Indian

tribes of the west. The missionaries were always followed, and sometimes preceded, by a class of traders who gave intoxicating liquors to the Indians, in exchange for furs and peltries.

The river St. Joseph of lake Michigan was called "the river Miamis" in 1679, in which year La Salle built a small fort on its bank, near the shore of the lake. The principal station of the mission for the instruction of the Miamis, was established on the borders of this river; and, after the founding of this mission, the river was called the St. Joseph of lake Michigan.

The missionary Hennepin gives the following account of the building of the first French post within the territory of the Miamis:-"Just at the mouth of the river Miamis there was an eminence with a kind of a platform naturally fortified. It was pretty high, and steep, of a triangular form-defended on two sides by the river, and on the other by a deep ditch, which the fall of the waters had made. We fell the trees that were on the top of the hill; and having cleared the same from bushes for about two musket shot, we began to build a redoubt of eighty feet long and forty feet broad, with great square pieces of timber, laid one upon another; and prepared a great number of stakes, of about twenty-five feet long, to drive into the ground, to make our fort the more inaccessible on the river side. We employed the whole month of November [1679] about that work, which was very hard, though we had no other food but the bears' flesh our savage [Indian] killed. These beasts are very common in that place, because of the great quantity of grapes they find there; but their flesh being too fat and luscious, our men began to be weary of it, and desired leave to go a hunting to kill some wild goats. M. La Salle denied them that liberty,, which caused some murmurs among them; and it was but unwillingly that they continued their work. This, together with the approach of the winter,. and the apprehension that M. La Salle had that his vessel [the Griffin] was lost, made him very melancholy, though he concealed it as much as he could. We had made a cabin wherein we performed divine service every Sunday; and father Gabriel and I, who preached alternately, took care to take such texts as were suitable to our present circumstances, and fit to inspire us with courage, concord, and brotherly love. *** The fort was at last perfected, and called Fort Miamis."

In the year 1711, the missionary Chardon, who, it is said, "was full of zeal, and had a rare talent for acquiring languages," had his station on the St. Joseph of lake Michigan, at a point about sixty miles above the mouth of that river. In 1721, about half a century after the year in which Allouez and Dablon traversed the country lying on the southern shores of lake Michigan, Charlevoix, a distinguished missionary from France, visited a small fort, or trading post, on the river St. Joseph, where there was a missionary station. In a letter, dated "River St. Joseph, August 16, 1721," Charlevoix says:— "It was eight days yesterday since I arrived at this post, where we have a mission, and where there is a commandant with a small garrison. The commandant's house, which is but a very sorry one, is called the fort, from its being surrounded with an indifferent palisado, which is pretty near the case in all the rest. We have here two villages of Indians, one of the Miamis, and the other of the Pottawattamies; both of them mostly christians; but, as they have been, for a long time, without any pastors, the missionary who has been lately sent to them will have no small difficulty in bringing them back to the exercise of their religion. The river St. Joseph comes from the southeast, and discharges itself into lake Michigan, the eastern shore of which is a hundred leagues in length, and which you are obliged to sail along before you come to the entry of this river. You afterward sail up twenty leagues in it before you reach the fort; which navigation requires great precaution. Several Indians of the two nations [Miamis and Pottawattamies] settled upon this river, are just returned from the English colonies, whither they have been to sell their furs, and whence they have brought back, in return, a great quantity of spiritous liquors. The distribution of it is made in the usual manner; that is to say, a certain number of persons have, daily, delivered to each of them a quantity sufficient to get drunk with; so that the whole has been drunk up in eight days. They began to drink in the villages as soon as the sun was down; and every night the fields echoed with the most hideous howling."

More than one hundred years passed away after Charlevoix wrote this letter; yet, spiritous liquors and riotous drunkenness, maintaining their power among the passing generations

of the aboriginal race of North America, were still opposing and baffling the labors of christian missionaries among the Miamis and Pottawattamies on the banks of the St. Joseph.

The missionary Sebastian Rasles, in a letter which is dated "12th October, 1723," says:-"It is a blessing to the Illinois that they are so far distant from Quebec; because it renders it impossible to transport to them the 'fire water' as it is carried to others. This drink, among the Indians, is the greatest obstacle to christianity. We know that they never purchase it but to plunge into the most furious intoxication; and the riots and sad deaths of which we were each day the witnesses, ought to outweigh the gain which can be made by the trade in a liquor so fatal."

The Indians who carried on a trade with the Hudson Bay Company, generally bartered their furs and peltries for brandy, tobacco, blankets, beads, etc. In an examination which took place before a committee of the British House of Commons, in 1749, it was stated, by a person who had been engaged in the service of the Hudson Bay Company, that "the trade of the Company might be enlarged if they would give to every Indian leader a gallon of brandy." The same witness said that he had "heard Indians speak in the French language, and pray in the French language-but never heard them pray in English." The missionary Vivier, in a letter, dated "Illinois, 17th of November, 1750," says:-"We have three stations in this part of the world; one of Indians, one of French, and a third composed partly of Indians and partly of French. The first contains more than six hundred Illinois, all baptized, with the exception of five or six; but the 'fire water' which is sold to them by the French, and especially by the soldiers, in spite of the reiterated prohibitions on the part of the king, and that which is sometimes distributed to them under pretext of maintaining them in our interest, has ruined that mission."

In the year 1765, the Miami nation, or confederacy, was composed of four tribes, whose total number of warriors was estimated at one thousand and fifty men. Of this number there were two hundred and fifty Twightwees, or Miamis proper; three hundred Weas, or Ouiatenons; three hundred Piankeshaws; and two hundred Shockeys. At this time the principal villages of the Twightwees were situated about the