WHEN the Company of the Indies gave up their charter, on the 10th of April, 1732, the government of France resumed the administration of affairs in the province of Louisiana. The governor-general, and the intendant of the province, jointly, were authorized to grant lands to settlers; and all grants of lands which were made to white persons by Indians, or others, without the sanction of these officers, were void. M. D'Artuguiette was appointed "commandant-general for the king, for the district of Illinois," and a small military force was stationed at Fort Chartres. A code of laws, entitled the common law of Paris, was nominally, but never effectively, extended over the district of Illinois. Many parts of that code were not adapted to the unsettled state of the colony; and even those general laws which were suitable to the condition and pursuits of the people, were not enforced with strictness, nor with uniformity. The commandants of the different posts, severally, exercised an arbitrary authority over the French population within their respective jurisdictions; but the government that was administered by this class of officers, was neither oppressive nor complex.

The Company of the Indies had engaged, in the prosecution of its designs, the services of several men of education, talents, and enterprise. After the failure of the projects of the company, some of this class of adventurers returned to France; others settled in Canada; and a very small number remained in the district of Illinois. The more numerous class of colonists who had been attracted to this district, were poor and illiterate persons. Few of them were qualified to engage, successfully, either in agricultural, mechanical, or commercial pursuits; "and when the dreams of sudden wealth, with which they had been deluded, faded from before them, they were not disposed to engage in the ordinary employments of enlightened industry. The few who were engaged in mercantile pursuits, turned their

attention almost exclusively to the traffic with the Indians, while a large number became hunters and boatmen."*

The missionary Du Poisson, who, in 1727, wrote an account of the French settlements in the Mississippi valley, said:"They call a grant a certain extent of territory granted by the India Company to one person alone, or to many who have formed together a partnership to clear the lands, and make them valuable. These were the persons who, in the days of the great Mississippi bubble, were called the counts and the marquisses of Mississippi. Thus the grantees are the aristocracy of this country. The greater part have never left France, but have equipped ships filled with directors, stewards, storekeepers, clerks, workmen of different trades, provisions, and goods of all kinds. Their business was to penetrate into the woods, to build their cabins there, to make choice of lands, and to burn the canes and trees. These beginnings seemed too hard to people not accustomed to such kind of labor. The directors and their subalterns, for the most part, amused themselves in places where there were some French already settled; there they consumed their provisions; and the work was scarcely commenced before the grant was entirely ruined. The workman, badly paid, or badly fed, refused to labor, or else seized on his own pay, and the stores were plundered. Was not all this perfectly French? But this was in part the obstacle which has prevented the country from being settled, as it should have been, after the prodigious expense which has been lavished upon it. They call a plantation a small portion of land granted by the company. A man, with his wife, or his associate, clears a small section, builds him a house with four forked sticks, which he covers with bark, plants some corn and rice for his food; another year he raises more provisions, and begins a - plantation of tobacco; and if finally he attains to the possession of three or four negroes, behold the extent to which he can reach. This is what they call a plantation and a planter. But how many are as wretched as when they commenced? They call a settlement a section in which there are many plantations not far distant from each other, forming a kind of village. Beside these grantees and planters, there are also

* Hall.

in this country, people who have no other business than that of vagabondizing."*

The Chickasaws had, for a long time, obstinately opposed the advancement of the French settlements on the borders of the river Mississippi, between New Orleans and the mouth of the river Ohio; and the steady hostility of this tribe of Indians, was one of the principal obstacles which prevented a regular and safe communication between Canada and the southern French settlements in Louisiana. The civil and military authorities of these provinces, therefore, determined to concentrate a strong force in the country of the Chickasaws, in order to subdue the power of that hostile tribe. In the year 1736, about two hundred French recruits and four hundred Indians, moved from the place of rendezvous in the Illinois. district, and, under the command of M. D'Artuguiette, passed down the river Mississippi, to form a junction with another military force which had been recruited, under Bienville, at the south. Francis Morgan de Vincennes, an officer of the king's troops, who was about that time, according to some authorities, the commandant of a small post on the river Wabash, was among those who went with D'Artuguiette, on his expedition against the Chickasaws. The French and Indian forces which had been recruited at the south, under Bienville, did not reach the appointed place of rendezvous, at the time which had been fixed, to form a junction with the Illinois forces; and D'Artuguiette and Vincennes, without waiting for the arrival of the expected reinforcements, commenced active hostilities by attacking and destroying some small villages which were inhabited by a few of the hostile Indians. The Chickasaw warriors soon assembled in considerable numbers, and defeated their assailants. About forty Frenchmen, and eight of their Indian allies, were killed in the conflict; and several of the invading party were captured, and afterward burnt at the stake. Among those who perished in this expedition, was M. de Vincennes, who "ceased not until his last breath to exhort the men to behave worthy of their religion and their country."+

The expedition which marched from the south, under Bien

*Kip's Early Jesuit Missions, p. 233.

+ Charlevoix.

ville, was forced to retreat; and the French, soon afterward, were constrained to conclude a treaty of peace with the Chickasaws. During a period of about twelve years, succeeding the conclusion of this treaty, no event of great importance occurred to affect the peace or the general condition of the French settlements in the west. The war which broke out between England and France, in 1744, and lasted until the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, involved in its struggles the French and the English colonies situated near the Atlantic coast; but the tranquillity of the isolated French population in the Illinois country, was not materially disturbed by the events of this remote warfare.

The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle did not settle the controversy that then existed between England and France, in relation to the boundaries of their respective possessions in North America. While England claimed the right of extending her dominions indefinitely westward of her possessions on the Atlantic coast, France claimed the whole valley of the Mississippi; and, from 1748 to 1760, opposed all the attempts which were made by the English to establish settlements on the western side of the Allegheny mountains.

As early as 1716, governor Spotswood, of the colony of Virginia, proposed a plan for forming a company to settle the lands on the borders of the river Ohio; but the plan was not carried into effect, mainly because the English ministry, at that time, were indolent and timid, and "afraid of giving umbrage to the French."*

From the time of the failure of this plan until the year 1748, the English made no direct attempts to extend their trade or their settlements as far westward as the river Ohio; although, in the year 1729, Mr. Joshua Gee published an ingenious discourse on trade, in which he earnestly urged the British government to adopt the policy of planting colonies westward as far as the Mississippi, and on the rivers falling into it. The French, however, continued to maintain their missionary stations, and their trading posts, in the west. By this means they hoped, not only to fortify the power of France in this region, but to exclude the English from any communication or traffic

*Smollet, ii, 125.

+Anderson's History of Commerce.

with the Indian tribes then inhabiting the country lying westward of the Allegheny mountains. The commercial spirit of the French did not, however, keep pace with their ambition. They could not supply all the wants of the western Indians; some of whom, therefore, had recourse to the English settlements. The intercourse which was thus opened, induced some British merchants and traders to attempt to establish a regular traffic with the Indians who dwelt on the borders of the Ohio and its tributaries; and, as early as the year 1740, it seems that some traders went, from the colony of Virginia, "among the Indians on the Ohio and tributary streams, to deal for peltries."* In the year 1748, for the first time, a treaty of alliance and friendship was concluded at Lancaster, in the province of Pennsylvania, between the English authorities and certain Indian deputies, who represented twelve villages of the Twightwees, or Miamis, situated "on or about the river Wabash." The following is a literal copy of the first treaty that was made between the English authorities and Indians who inhabited the country lying on the borders of the river Wabash:

"Whereas at an Indian treaty held at Lancaster, in the County of Lancaster in the Province of Pennsilvania on Wednesday the twentieth Day of July instant Before the Honorable Benjamin Shoemaker Joseph Turner and William Logan Esquires by Virtue of a Commission under the Great Seal of the said Province dated at Philadelphia the sixteenth Day of the said month Three Indian Chiefs Deputies from the Twightwees a Nation of Indians scituate on or about the river Ouabache a Branch of the River Mississippi viz. Aquenackqua Assepansa Natoeequeha appeared in Behalf of themselves and their Nation and prayed that the Twightwees might be admitted into the Friendship and Alliance of the King of Great Brittain and his Subjects, professing on their parts to become true and faithful Friends and Allies to the English and so for ever to Continue, and Scayroyiady Cadarianirha Chiefs of the Oneida Nation, Suchrachery of the Seneka Nation, Cani-inecodon Cunlyuchqua Echnissia of the Mohocks *** Dawachcamicky Dominy Buck Ossoghqua of the Shawanese and Nenat

*Gordon's History of Pennsylvania.

These Deputies represented twelve towns.

+ Miamis.