not much had been done for the permanent improvement of the country about it. The truth was, the same prodigality and folly which prevailed in France during the government of John Law, over credit and commerce, found their way to his western possessions; and though the colony then planted survived, and the city then founded became in time what had been hoped, it was long before the influence of the gambling mania of 1718, '19 and '20 passed away. Indeed the returns from Louisiana never repaid the cost and trouble of protecting it, and, in 1732, the company asked leave to surrender their privileges to the crown, a favor which was granted them.

But though the Company of the West did little for the enduring welfare of the Mississippi valley, it did something; the cultivation of tobacco, indigo, rice and silk was introduced, the lead mines of Missouri were opened, though at vast expense and in hope of finding silver; and, in Illinois, the culture of wheat began to assume some degree of stability and of importance. In the neighborhood of the river Kaskaskia, Charlevoix found three villages, and about Fort Chartres, the head-quarters of the company in that region, the French were rapidly settling.

All the time, however, during which the great monopoly lasted, was in Louisiana a time of contest and trouble. The English, who from an early period had opened commercial relations with the Chickasaws, through them constantly interfered with the trade of the Mississippi. Along the coast from Pensacola to the Rio del Norte, Spain disputed the claims of her northern neighbor: and at length the war of the Natchez struck terror into the hearts of both white and red men. Amid that nation, D'Iberville had marked out Fort Rosalie, in 1700, and fourteen years later its erection had been commenced. The French, placed in the midst of the natives, and deeming them worthy only of contempt, increased their demands and injuries until they required even the abandonment of the chief town of the Natchez, that the intruders might use its site for a plantation. The inimical Chickasaws heard the murmurs of their wronged brethren, and breathed into their ears counsels of vengeance; the sufferers determined on the extermination of their tyrants. On the 28th of November, 1729, every Frenchman in that colony died by the hands of the natives, with the exception of two mechanics. The women and children also were spared. It was a fearful revenge, and fearfully did the avengers suffer for their murders. Two months passed by, and the French

and Choctaws in one day took sixty of their scalps; in three months they were driven from their country, and scattered among the neighboring tribes; and within two years the remnants of the nation, chiefs and people, were sent to St. Domingo and sold into slavery. So perished this ancient and peculiar race, in the same year in which the Company of the West yielded its grants into the the royal hands.

When Louisiana came again into the charge of the government of France, it was determined, as a first step, to strike terror into the Chickasaws, who, devoted to the English, constantly interfered with the trade on the Mississippi. For this purpose the forces of New France, from New Orleans to Detroit, were ordered to meet in the country of the inimical Indians, upon the 10th of May, 1736, to strike a blow which should be final. D'Artaguette, governor of Illinois, with the young and gallant Vincennes, leading a small body of French, and more than a thousand northern Indians, on the day appointed, was at the spot; but Bienville, who had returned as the king's lieutenant to that southern land which he had aided to explore, was not where the commanders from above expected to meet him. During ten days they waited, and still saw nothing, heard nothing of the forces from the south. Fearful of exhausting the scant patience of his red allies, at length D'Artaguette ordered the onset; a first and a second of the Chickasaw stations were carried successfully, but in attacking a third, the French leader fell; when the Illinois saw their commander wounded, they turned and fled, leaving him and Vincennes, who would not desert him, in the hands of the Chickasaws. Five days afterward, Bienville and his followers, among whom were great numbers of Choctaws, bribed to bear arms against their kinsmen, came up the stream of the Tombecbee; but the savages were on their guard, English traders had aided them to fortify their position, and the French in vain attacked their log fort. On the 20th of May, D'Artaguette had fallen; on the 27th, Bienville had failed in his assault; on the 31st, throwing his cannon into the river, he and his white companions turned their prows to the south again. Then came the hour of barbarian triumph, and the successful Chickasaws danced around the flames in which were crackling the sinews of D'Artaguette, Vincennes, and the Jesuit Senat, who stayed and died of his own free-will, because duty bade him.

Three years more passed away, and again a French army of nearly four thousand white, red and black men, was gathered upon the banks of the Mississippi, to chastise the Chickasaws.

From the summer of 1739 to the spring of 1740, this body of men sickened and wasted at Fort Assumption, upon the site of Memphis. In March of the last named year, without a blow struck, peace was concluded, and the province of Louisiana once more sunk into inactivity.

There remains little that is interesting in the history of Lower Louisiana. An idea of its condition, in 1750, may be inferred from a letter of the Jesuit Vivier, written on November 7th of that year.

He says:

"For fifteen leagues above the mouth of the Mississippi, one sees no dwellings, the ground being too low to be habitable. Thence to New Orleans the lands are partially occupied. New Orleans contains, black, white and red, not more, I think, than twelve hundred persons. To this point come all kinds of lumber, brick, salt-beef, tallow, tar, skins and bear's grease; and above all, pork and flour from the Illinois. These things create some commerce; forty vessels and more have come hither this year. Above New Orleans, plantations are again met with; the most considerable is a colony of Germans, some ten leagues up the river. At Point Coupee, thirty-five leagues above the German settlement, is a fort. Along here, within five or six leagues, are not less than sixty 'habitations.' Fifty leagues farther up is the Natchez post, where we have a garrison who are kept prisoners by their fear of the Chickasaws and other savages. Here and at Point Coupee, they raise excellent tobacco. Another hundred leagues brings us to the Arkansas, where we have also a fort and garrison, for the benefit of river traders. There were some inhabitants about here formerly, but in 1748 the Chickasaws attacked the post, slew many, took thirteen prisoners, and drove the rest into the fort. From the Arkansas to the Illinois, near five hundred leagues, * there is not a settlement. There should, however, be a good fort on the Ouabache (Ohio,) the only path by which the English can reach the Mississippi. In the Illinois are numberless mines, but no one to work them as they deserve. Some individuals dig lead near the surface, and supply the Indians and Canada. Two Spaniards, now here, who claim to be adepts, say that our mines are like those of Mexico, and that if we would dig deeper, we should find silver under the lead; at any rate the lead is excellent.

*Distances are overrated in all the old French journals. The distance, in fact, was about 500 English miles, instead of French leagues.

There are also in this country, copper mines, beyond doubt, as from time to time large pieces are found in the streams."*

Upper Louisiana, or the Illinois, was probably occupied by the French without interruption, from the time of the first visit of La Salle, in 1679.† Of necessity, their missions and settlements were formed along the routes of travel between Canada and the mouth of the Mississippi. The only mode of communication used, was by canoes; and of consequence only the navigable rivers, tributary to the Mississippi and to the St. Lawrence, interlocking each other, were explored.

From the hostility of the Iroquois, the earliest missionaries and traders were cut off from the Lakes Ontario and Erie; and their route to Superior and Green Bay was, from Montreal, up the Ottowa river to Lake Nipissing, and down the French river to Lake Huron.

The route followed by Marquette, was from Mackinaw to Green Bay; thence up the Fox river of Wisconsin, to Winnebago Lake; thence up the Wapacca to a portage in Portage County, Wisconsin, to the Wisconsin river and to the Mississippi.

The route followed by La Salle, was from Niagara up Lakes Erie, St. Clair and Huron, to Mackinaw; thence down Lake Michigan to the mouth of the river St. Joseph's, up that river to a portage of three miles, in St. Joseph's county, Indiana, to the Kankakee river; thence down to the Illinois, and to the Mississippi.

Another route was established about 1716, from the head of Lake Erie up the Maumee to the site of Fort Wayne; thence by a portage to the Wabash; thence, by way of that river, to the Ohio and Mississippi. At a later period another route was opened. It passed from Lake Erie at Presquille, over a portage of fifteen miles to the head of French creek, at Waterford, Pa.; thence down that stream to the Allegheny, and to the Ohio.

Along these lines the French posts were confined, and, as there were no agricultural communities, except the Illinois settlement, in the West during the whole period of the French occupation, the posts were either trading stations or forts, built for the protection of the traders, or to secure the French ascendency over the Indians.

*Lettres Edifiantes, (Paris, 1781,) vii. 79 to 106.

There is no certainty, however, of any settlement previous to 1712.

At the most northern point of the Southern peninsula of Michigan, and nine miles south-west of the Island of that name, La Salle founded Fort Mackinaw, in 1679.

At the mouth of the St. Joseph's river he built Fort Miami, in 1679; which was burned, however, by some deserters from Tonti, two years afterward.

In 1680, he built Fort Crevecoeur on the Illinois river, near the site of Peoria.

In the same year Tonti built Fort St. Louis, or the Rock Fort, in La Salle county, Illinois; but its exact location is unknown.

These posts served as points of settlement for the traders and voyagers, who followed immediately in the track of La Salle, and for the Jesuit missionaries that accompanied or followed him. The climate and soil of Lower Illinois were inviting, and accordingly the first settlements were made in that region. The exact date is uncertain.

It is conjectured, that before the close of the seventeenth century, traders passed down south from the St. Joseph's to Eel river and Wabash; and a report* of La Salle to Frontenac, made perhaps in 1682, mentions the route by the Maumee and Wabash, as the most direct to the Mississippi. That route was indeed established in 1716; but of the date of settlements on the Lower Wabash, there is no certain information. The uncertainty that is connected with the settlement of Vincennes † is a case in point. Volney, by conjecture, fixes the settlement of Vincennes about 1735;‡ Bishop Brute, of Indiana, speaks of a missionary station there in 1700, and adds, "The friendly tribes and traders called to Canada or protection, and then M. de Vincennes came with a detachment, I think, of Carignan, and was killed in 1736."|| Mr. Bancroft says a military establishment was formed there in 1716, and in 1742, a settlement of herdsmen took place. § Judge Law regards the post. as dating back to 1710 or 1711, supposing it to be the same with the Ohio settlement, and quotes also an Act of Sale, existing at Kaskaskia, which, in January, 1735, speaks of M. de Vinsenne, as "Commandant au Poste de Ouabache." ¶ Again, in a petition

* Hennepin's New Discovery, London, 1698, p. 312.

+Che-pe-ka-keh (Brush Wood,) was the Indian name of Vincennes, and was the seat of the Peean-kee-shaws Indians.

Volney's View, p. 336.

Butler's Kenbecky, Introduction, XIX, note.

Bancroft's History of the United States, III, 346.

Law's Address, p. 21.