one may see, along the banks of the Mississippi, the same low-browed cottages, with their broad eaves and picturesque verandas, which, a century ago, were clustered around the mission-house at Kaskaskia; and, entering, one finds the inmate the same kindly, honest, lively, story-telling, and pipe-smoking being that his ancestor was before him. Yet, with all his genial traits, the rough world deals hardly with him. He lives a mere drone in the busy hive of an American population. The living tide encroaches on his rest, as the muddy torrent of the great river chafes away the farm and homestead of his fathers. Yet he contrives to be happy, though looking back regretfully to the better days of old.

At the date of this history, the population of the colony, exclusive of negroes, who, in that simple community, were treated rather as humble friends than as slaves, did not exceed two thousand souls, distributed in several small settlements. There were about eighty houses at Kaskaskia, forty or fifty at Cahokia, a few at Vincennes and Fort Chartres, and a few more scattered in small clusters upon the various streams. The agricultural portion of the colonists were, as we have described them, marked with many weaknesses, and many amiable virtues; but their morals were not improved by a large admixture of fur-traders,—reckless, hairbrained adventurers, who, happily for the peace of their relatives, were absent on their wandering vocation during the greater part of the year.

Swarms of vagabond Indians infested the settle ments, and, to people of any other character, they would have proved an intolerable annoyance. But the easy-tempered Creoles made friends and comrades

of them, ate, drank, smoked, and often married with them. They were a debauched and drunken rabble, the remnants of that branch of the Algonquin stock known among the French as the Illinois, a people once numerous and powerful, but now miserably enfeebled, and corrupted by foreign wars, domestic dissensions, and their own licentious manners. They comprised the broken fragments of five tribes -the Kaskaskias, Cahokias, Peorias, Mitchigamias, and Tamaronas. Some of their villages were in the close vicinity of the Creole settlements. On a hot summer morning, they might be seen lounging about the trading-house, basking in the sun, begging for a dram of whiskey, or chaffering with the hardfeatured trader for beads, tobacco, gunpowder, and red paint.

About the Wabash and its branches, to the eastward of the Illinois, dwelt tribes of similar lineage, but more warlike in character, and less corrupt in manners. These were the Miamis, in their three divisions, their near kindred, the Piankishaws, and a portion of the Kickapoos. There was another settlement of the Miamis upon the River Maumee, still farther to the east; and it was here that Bradstreet's ambassador, Captain Morris, had met so rough a welcome. The strength of these combined tribes was very considerable; and, one and all, they looked with wrath and abhorrence on the threatened advent of the English.

CHAPTER XXIX.

PONTIAC RALLIES THE WESTERN TRIBES.

WHEN, by the treaty of Paris, 1763, France ceded to England her territories east of the Mississippi, the Illinois was of course included in the cession. Scarcely were the articles signed, when France, as if eager to rob herself, at one stroke, of all her western domain, threw away upon Spain the vast and indefinite regions beyond the Mississippi, destined at a later day to return to her hands, and finally to swell the growing empire of the United States. This transfer to Spain was for some time kept secret; but orders were immediately sent to the officers commanding at the French posts within the territory ceded to England, to evacuate the country whenever British troops should appear to occupy it. These orders reached the Illinois towards the close of 1763. Some time, however, was destined to elapse before the English arrived to demand its surrender; for the Indian war was then at its height, and the country was protected from access by a broad barrier of savage tribes, in the hottest ferment of hostility.

The colonists, hating the English with a more than national hatred, deeply imbittered by years of disastrous war, received the news of the treaty with disgust and execration. Many of them left the

2

country, loath to dwell under the shadow of the Brit ish flag. Of these, some crossed the Mississippi to the little hamlet of St. Genevieve, on the western bank; others followed the commandant, Neyon de Villiers, to New Orleans; while others, taking with them all their possessions, even to the frames and clapboarding of their houses, passed the river a little above Cahokia, and established themselves at a beautiful spot on the opposite shore, where a settlement was just then on the point of commencement. Here a line of richly-wooded bluffs rose with easy ascent from the margin of the water, while from their summits extended a wide plateau of fertile prairie, bordered by a framework of forest. In the shadow of the trees, which fringed the edge of the declivity, stood a newly-built storehouse, with a few slight cabins and works of defence, belonging to a company of fur-traders. At their head was Pierre Laclede, who had left New Orleans with his followers in August, 1763, and, after toiling for three months against the impetuous stream of the Mississippi, had reached the Illinois in November, and selected the spot alluded to as the site of his first establishment. To this he gave the name of St. Louis.' Side by side with Laclede, in his adventurous enterprise, was a young man, slight in person, but endowed with a vigor and elasticity of frame which could resist heat or cold, fatigue, hunger, or the wasting hand of time. Not all the magic of a dream, nor the enchantments of an Arabian tale, could outmatch the waking realities destined to rise upon the vision of Pierre ChouWhere, in his youth, he had climbed the

teau.

1 Nicollet, Historical Sketch of St. Louis. See Report on the Hy

drographical Basin of the Upper Mississippi River, 75.

woody bluff, and looked abroad on prairies dotted with bison, he saw, with the dim eye of his old age, the land darkened for many a furlong with the clustered roofs of the western metropolis. For the silence of the wilderness, he heard the clang and turmoil of human labor, the din of congregated thousands; and where the great river rolled down through the forest, in lonely grandeur, he saw the waters lashed into foam beneath the prows of panting steamboats, flocking to the broad levee.'

In the summer of 1764, the military commandant, Neyon, had abandoned the country in disgust, and gone down to New Orleans, followed by many of the inhabitants, a circumstance already mentioned. St. Ange de Bellerive remained behind to succeed him. St. Ange was a veteran Canadian officer, the same who, more than forty years before, had escorted Father Charlevoix through the country, and who is spoken of with high commendation by the Jesuit traveller and historian. He took command of about forty men, the remnant of the garrison of Fort Chartres,

1 Laclede, the founder of St. Louis, died before he had brought his grand fur-trading enterprise to a conclusion; but his young assistant lived to realize schemes still more bold and comprehensive; and to every trader, trapper, and voyageur, from the frontier of the United States to the Rocky Mountains, and from the British Possessions to the borders of New Mexico, the name of Pierre Chouteau is familiar as his own. I visited this venerable man in the spring of 1846, at his country-seat, in a rural spot surrounded by woods, within a few miles of St. Louis. The building, in the picturesque architecture peculiar to the French dwellings of the Mississippi Valley, with its broad eaves and light verandas, and the surround

ing negro houses, filled with gay and contented inmates, were in singular harmony with the character of the patriarchal owner, who prided himself on his fidelity to the old French usages. Though in extreme old age, he still retained the vivacity of his nation. His memory, especially of the events of his youth, was clear and vivid; and he delighted to look back to the farthest extremity of the long vista of his life, and recall the acts and incidents of his earliest years. Of Pontiac, whom he had often seen, he had a clear recollection; and I am indebted to this interesting interview for several par ticulars regarding the chief and his coadjutors.