Illinois Made a County.

The Virginian Government took immediate steps to provide for the civil administration of the country Clark had conquered.  In the fall of 1778 the entire region northwest of the Ohio was constituted the county of Illinois, with John Todd as county-lieutenant or commandant.

Todd was a firm friend and follower of Clark’s, and had gone with him on his campaign against Vincennes.  It therefore happened that he received his commission while at the latter town, early in the spring of ’79.  In May he went to Kaskaskia, to organize the county; and Clark, who remained military commandant of the Virginia State troops that were quartered in the district, was glad to turn over the civil government to the charge of his old friend.

Together with his commission, Todd received a long and excellent letter of instructions from Governor Patrick Henry.  He was empowered to choose a deputy-commandant, and officers for the militia; but the judges and officers of the court were to be elected by the people themselves.  He was given large discretionary power, Henry impressing upon him with especial earnestness the necessity to “cultivate and conciliate the French and Indians.” With this end in view, he was bidden to pay special heed to the customs of the créoles, to avoid shocking their prejudices, and to continually consult with their most intelligent and upright men.  He was to cooeperate in every way with Clark and his troops, while at the same time the militia were to be exclusively under his own control.  The inhabitants were to have strict justice done them if wronged by the troops; and Clark was to put down rigorously any licentiousness on the part of his soldiers.  The wife and children of the former British commandant ­the créole Rocheblave ­were to be treated with particular respect, and not suffered to want for any thing.  He was exhorted to use all his diligence and ability to accomplish the difficult task set him.  Finally Henry advised him to lose no opportunity of inculcating in the minds of the French the value of the liberty the Americans brought them, as contrasted with “the slavery to which the Illinois was destined” by the British.

This last sentence was proved by subsequent events to be a touch of wholly unconscious but very grim humor.  The French were utterly unsuited for liberty, as the Americans understood the term, and to most of them the destruction of British rule was a misfortune.  The bold, self-reliant, and energetic spirits among them, who were able to become Americanized, and to adapt themselves to the new conditions, undoubtedly profited immensely by the change.  As soon as they adopted American ways, they were received by the Americans on terms of perfect and cordial equality, and they enjoyed a far higher kind of life than could possibly have been theirs formerly, and achieved a much greater measure of success.  But most of the créoles were helplessly unable to grapple with the new life.  They had been accustomed to the paternal rule of priest and military commandant, and they were quite unable to govern themselves, or to hold their own with the pushing, eager, and often unscrupulous, new-comers.  So little able were they to understand precisely what the new form of government was, that when they went down to receive Todd as commandant, it is said that some of them, joining in the cheering, from force of habit cried “Vive lé Roi.”

For the first year of Todd’s administration, while Clark still remained in the county as commandant of the State troops, matters went fairly well.  Clark kept the Indians completely in check, and when some of them finally broke out, and started on a marauding expedition against Cahokia, he promptly repulsed them, and by a quick march burned their towns on Rock River, and forced them to sue for peace.

Todd appointed a Virginian, Richard Winston, as commandant at Kaskaskia; all his other appointees were Frenchmen.  An election was forthwith held for justices; to the no small astonishment of the Créoles, unaccustomed as they were to American methods of self-government.  Among those whom they elected as judges and court officers were some of the previously appointed militia captains and lieutenants, who thus held two positions.  The judges governed their decisions solely by the old French laws and customs. Todd at once made the court proceed to business.  On its recommendation he granted licenses to trade to men of assured loyalty.  He also issued a proclamation in reference to new settlers taking up lands.  Being a shrewd man, he clearly foresaw the ruin that was sure to arise from the new Virginia land laws as applied to Kentucky, and he feared the inrush of a horde of speculators, who would buy land with no immediate intention of settling thereon.  Besides, the land was so fertile in the river bottoms, that he deemed the amount Virginia allotted to each person excessive.  So he decreed that each settler should take up his land in the shape of one of the long narrow French farms, that stretched back from the water-front; and that no claim should contain a greater number of acres than did one of these same farms.  This proclamation undoubtedly had a very good effect.

    Financial Difficulties.

He next wrestled steadily, but much less successfully, with the financial question.  He attempted to establish a land bank, as it were, setting aside a great tract of land to secure certain issues of Continental money.  The scheme failed, and in spite of his public assurance that the Continental currency would shortly be equal in value to gold and silver, it swiftly sank until it was not worth two cents on the dollar.

This wretched and worthless paper-money, which the Americans brought with them, was a perfect curse to the country.  Its rapid depreciation made it almost impossible to pay the troops, or to secure them supplies, and as a consequence they became disorderly and mutinous.  Two or three prominent créoles, who were devoted adherents of the American cause, made loans of silver to the Virginian Government, as represented by Clark, thereby helping him materially in the prosecution of his campaign.  Chief among these public-spirited patriots were Francis Vigo, and the priest Gibault, both of them already honorably mentioned.  Vigo advanced nearly nine thousand dollars in specie, ­piastres or Spanish milled dollars, ­receiving in return bills on the “Agent of Virginia,” which came back protested for want of funds; and neither he nor his heirs ever got a dollar of what was due them.  He did even more.  The créoles at first refused to receive any thing but peltries or silver for their goods; they would have nothing to do with the paper, and to all explanations as to its uses, simply answered “that their commandants never made money.” Finally they were persuaded to take it on Vigo’s personal guaranty, and his receiving it in his store.  Even he, however, could not buoy it up long.

Gibault likewise advanced a large sum of money, parted with his titles and beasts, so as to set a good example to his parishioners, and, with the same purpose, furnished goods to the troops at ordinary prices, taking the paper in exchange as if it had been silver.  In consequence he lost over fifteen hundred dollars, was forced to sell his only two slaves, and became almost destitute; though in the end he received from the government a tract of land which partially reimbursed him.  Being driven to desperate straits, the priest tried a rather doubtful shift.  He sold, or pretended to sell, a great natural meadow, known as la prairie du pont, which the people of Cahokia claimed as a common pasture for their cattle.  His conduct drew forth a sharp remonstrance from the Cahokians, in the course of which they frankly announced that they believed the priest should confine himself to ecclesiastical matters, and should not meddle with land grants, especially when the land he granted did not belong to him.

It grew steadily more difficult to get the Créoles to furnish supplies; Todd had to forbid the exportation of any provisions whatever, and, finally, the soldiers were compelled to levy on all that they needed.  Todd paid for these impressed goods, as well as for what the contractors furnished, at the regulation prices ­one third in paper-money and two thirds in peltries; and thus the garrisons at Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes were supplied with powder, lead, sugar, flour, and, above all, hogsheads of taffia, of which they drank an inordinate quantity.

The justices did not have very much work; in most of the cases that came before them the plaintiff and defendant were both of the same race.  One piece of recorded testimony is rather amusing, being to the effect that “Monsieur Smith est un grand vilain coquin.”

    Burning of Negroes Accused of Sorcery.

Yet there are two entries in the proceedings of the Creole courts for the summer of 1779, as preserved in Todd’s “Record Book,” which are of startling significance.  To understand them it must be remembered that the Créoles were very ignorant and superstitious, and that they one and all including, apparently, even, their priests, firmly believed in witchcraft and sorcery.  Some of their negro slaves had been born in Africa, the others had come from the Lower Mississippi or the West Indies; they practised the strange rites of voudooism, and a few were adepts in the art of poisoning.  Accordingly the French were always on the look-out lest their slaves should, by spell or poison, take their lives.  It must also be kept in mind that the pardoning power of the commandant did not extend to cases of treason or murder ­a witchcraft trial being generally one for murder, ­and that he was expressly forbidden to interfere with the customs and laws, or go counter to the prejudices, of the inhabitants.

At this time the Créoles were smitten by a sudden epidemic of fear that their negro slaves were trying to bewitch and poison them.  Several of the negroes were seized and tried, and in June two were condemned to death.  One, named Moreau, was sentenced to be hung outside Cahokia.  The other, a Kaskaskian slave named Manuel, suffered a worse fate.  He was sentenced “to be chained to a post at the water-side, and there to be burnt alive and his ashes scattered.” These two sentences, and the directions for their immediate execution, reveal a dark chapter in the early history of Illinois.  It seems a strange thing that, in the United States, three years after the declaration of independence, men should have been burnt and hung for witchcraft, in accordance with the laws, and with the decision of the proper court.  The fact that the victim, before being burned, was forced to make “honorable fine” at the door of the Catholic church, shows that the priest at least acquiesced in the decision.  The blame justly resting on the Puritans of seventeenth-century New England must likewise fall on the Catholic French of eighteenth-century Illinois.

Early in the spring of 1780 Clark left the country; he did not again return to take command, for after visiting the fort on the Mississippi, and spending the summer in the defence of Kentucky, he went to Virginia to try to arrange for an expedition against Detroit.  Todd also left about the same time, having been elected a Kentucky delegate to the Virginia Legislature.  He afterwards made one or two flying visits to Illinois, but exerted little influence over her destiny, leaving the management of affairs entirely in the hands of his deputy, or lieutenant-commandant for the time being.  He usually chose for this position either Richard Winston, the Virginian, or else a Creole named Timothea Demunbrunt.

    Disorders in the Government.

Todd’s departure was a blow to the country; but Clark’s was a far more serious calamity.  By his personal influence he had kept the Indians in check, the Créoles contented, and the troops well fed and fairly disciplined.  As soon as he went, trouble broke out.  The officers did not know how to support their authority; they were very improvident, and one or two became implicated in serious scandals.  The soldiers soon grew turbulent, and there was constant clashing between the civil and military rulers.  Gradually the mass of the Créoles became so angered with the Americans that they wished to lay their grievances before the French Minister at Philadelphia; and many of them crossed the Mississippi and settled under the Spanish flag.  The courts rapidly lost their power, and the worst people, both Americans and Créoles, practised every kind of rascality with impunity.  All decent men joined in clamoring for Clark’s return; but it was impossible for him to come back.  The freshets and the maladministration combined to produce a dearth, almost a famine, in the land.  The evils were felt most severely in Vincennes, where Helm, the captain of the post, though a brave and capable man, was utterly unable to procure supplies of any kind.  He did not hear of Clark’s success against Piqua and Chillicothe until October.

Then he wrote to one of the officers at the Falls, saying that he was “sitting by the fire with a piece of lightwood and two ribs of an old buffloe, which is all the meat we have seen this many days.  I congratulate your success against the Shawanohs, but there’s never doubts where that brave Col.  Clark commands; we well know the loss of him in Illinois....  Excuse Haste as the Lightwood’s Just out and mouth watering for part of the two ribs.”

    La Balme’s Expedition.

In the fall of 1780 a Frenchman, named la Balme, led an expedition composed purely of Créoles against Detroit.  He believed that he could win over the French at that place to his side, and thus capture the fort as Clark had captured Vincennes.  He raised some fifty volunteers round Cahokia and Kaskaskia, perhaps as many more on the Wabash, and marched to the Maumee River.  Here he stopped to plunder some British traders; and in November the neighboring Indians fell on his camp, killed him and thirty or forty of his men, and scattered the rest. His march had been so quick and unexpected that it rendered the British very uneasy, and they were much rejoiced at his discomfiture and death.

The following year a new element of confusion was added.  In 1779 Spain declared war on Great Britain.  The Spanish commandant at New Orleans was Don Bernard de Galvez, one of the very few strikingly able men Spain has sent to the western hemisphere during the past two centuries.  He was bold, resolute, and ambitious; there is reason to believe that at one time he meditated a separation from Spain, the establishment of a Spanish-American empire, and the founding of a new imperial house.  However this may be, he threw himself heart and soul into the war against Britain; and attacked British West Florida with a fiery energy worthy of Wolfe or Montcalm.  He favored the Americans; but it was patent to all that he favored them only the better to harass the British.

Besides the Créoles and the British garrisons, there were quite a number of American settlers in West Florida.  In the immediate presence of Spanish and Indian foes, these, for the most part, remained royalists.  In 1778 a party of armed Americans, coming down the Ohio and Mississippi, tried to persuade them to turn whig, but, becoming embroiled with them, the militant missionaries were scattered and driven off.  Afterwards the royalists fought among themselves; but this was a mere faction quarrel, and was soon healed.  Towards the end of 1779, Galvez, with an army of Spanish and French Creole troops, attacked the forts along the Mississippi ­Manchac, Baton Rouge, Natchez, and one or two smaller places, ­speedily carrying them and capturing their garrisons of British regulars and royalist militia.  During the next eighteen months he laid siege to and took Mobile and Pensacola.  While he was away on his expedition against the latter place, the royalist Americans round Natchez rose and retook the fort from the Spaniards; but at the approach of Galvez they fled in terror, marching overland towards Georgia, then in the hands of the tories.  On the way they suffered great loss and damage from the Creeks and Choctaws.

    A Spanish Attempt on St. Joseph.

The Spanish commander at St. Louis was inspired by the news of these brilliant victories to try if he, too, could not gain a small wreath at the expense of Spain’s enemies.  Clark had already become thoroughly convinced of the duplicity of the Spaniards on the upper Mississippi; he believed that they were anxious to have the British retake Illinois, so that they, in their turn, might conquer and keep it. They never had the chance to execute this plan; but, on January 2, 1781, a Spanish captain, Don Eugenio Pierro, led a hundred and twenty men, chiefly Indians and Créoles, against the little French village, or fur post, of St. Joseph, where they burned the houses of one or two British traders, claimed the country round the Illinois River as conquered for the Spanish king, and forthwith returned to St. Louis, not daring to leave a garrison of any sort behind them, and being harassed on their retreat by the Indians.  On the strength of this exploit Spain afterwards claimed a large stretch of country to the east of the Mississippi.  In reality it was a mere plundering foray.  The British at once retook possession of the place, and, indeed, were for some time ignorant whether the raiders had been Americans or Spaniards. Soon after the recapture, the Detroit authorities sent a scouting party to dislodge some Illinois people who had attempted to make a settlement at Chicago.

At the end of the year 1781 the unpaid troops in Vincennes were on the verge of mutiny, and it was impossible longer even to feed them, for the inhabitants themselves were almost starving.  The garrison was therefore withdrawn; and immediately the Wabash Indians joined those of the Miami, the Sandusky, and the Lakes in their raids on the settlements. By this time, however, Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown, and the British were even more exhausted than the Americans.  Some of the French partisans of the British at Detroit, such as Rocheblave and Lamothe, who had been captured by Clark, were eager for revenge, and desired to be allowed to try and retake Vincennes and the Illinois; they saw that the Americans must either be exterminated or else the land abandoned to them. But the British commandant was in no condition to comply with their request, or to begin offensive operations.  Clark had not only conquered the land, but he had held it firmly while he dwelt therein; and even when his hand was no longer felt, the order he had established took some little time before crumbling.  Meanwhile, his presence at the Falls, his raids into the Indian country, and his preparations for an onslaught on Detroit kept the British authorities at the latter place fully occupied, and prevented their making any attempt to recover what they had lost.  By the beginning of 1782 the active operations of the Revolutionary war were at an end, and the worn-out British had abandoned all thought of taking the offensive anywhere, though the Indian hostilities continued with unabated vigor.  Thus the grasp with which the Americans held the conquered country was not relaxed until all danger that it would be taken from them had ceased.

    Confusion at Vincennes.

In 1782 the whole Illinois region lapsed into anarchy and confusion.  It was perhaps worst at Vincennes, where the departure of the troops had left the French free to do as they wished.  Accustomed for generations to a master, they could do nothing with their new-found liberty beyond making it a curse to themselves and their neighbors.  They had been provided with their own civil government in the shape of their elective court, but the judges had literally no idea of their proper functions as a governing body to administer justice.  At first they did nothing whatever beyond meet and adjourn.  Finally it occurred to them that perhaps their official position could be turned to their own advantage.  Their townsmen were much too poor to be plundered; but there were vast tracts of fertile wild land on every side, to which, as far as they knew, there was no title, and which speculators assured them would ultimately be of great value.  Vaguely remembering Todd’s opinion, that he had power to interfere under certain conditions with the settlement of the lands, and concluding that he had delegated this power, as well as others, to themselves, the justices of the court proceeded to make immense grants of territory, reciting that they did so under “les pouvoirs donnes a Mons’rs Les Magistrats de la cour de Vincennes par lé Snr.  Jean Todd, colonel et Grand Judge civil pour les Etats Unis”; Todd’s title having suffered a change and exaltation in their memories.  They granted one another about fifteen thousand square miles of land round the Wabash; each member of the court in turn absenting himself for the day on which his associates granted him his share.

This vast mass of virgin soil they sold to speculators at nominal prices, sometimes receiving a horse or a gun for a thousand acres.  The speculators of course knew that their titles were worthless, and made haste to dispose of different lots at very low prices to intending settlers.  These small buyers were those who ultimately suffered by the transaction, as they found they had paid for worthless claims.  The speculators reaped the richest harvest; and it is hard to decide whether to be amused or annoyed at the childish and transparent rascality of the French Créoles.

    Lawlessness in the Illinois.

In the Illinois country proper the troops, the American settlers, speculators, and civil officials, and the Creole inhabitants all quarrelled together indiscriminately.  The more lawless new-comers stole horses from the quieter Créoles; the worst among the French, the idle coureurs-des-bois, voyageurs, and trappers plundered and sometimes killed the peaceable citizens of either nationality.  The soldiers became little better than an unruly mob; some deserted, or else in company with other ruffians, both French and American, indulged in furious and sometimes murderous orgies, to the terror of the Créoles who had property.  The civil authorities, growing day by day weaker, were finally shorn of all power by the military.  This, however, was in nowise a quarrel between the French and the Americans.  As already explained, in Todd’s absence the position of deputy was sometimes filled by a Creole and sometimes by an American.  He had been particular to caution them in writing to keep up a good understanding with the officers and troops, adding, as a final warning:  “If this is not the case you will be unhappy.”  Unfortunately for one of the deputies, Richard Winston, he failed to keep up the good understanding, and, as Todd had laconically foretold, he in consequence speedily became very “unhappy.”  We have only his own account of the matter.  According to this, in April, 1782, he was taken out of his house “in despite of the civil authority, disregarding the laws and on the malitious alugation of Jno.  Williams and Michel Pevante.”  Thus a Frenchman and an American joined in the accusation, for some of the French supported the civil, others the military, authorities.  The soldiers had the upper hand, however, and Winston records that he was forthwith “confined by tyrannick military force.”  From that time the authority of the laws was at an end, and as the officers of the troops had but little control, every man did what pleased him best.

In January, 1781, the Virginia Legislature passed an act ceding to Congress, for the benefit of the United States, all of Virginia’s claim to the territory northwest of the Ohio; but the cession was not consummated until after the close of the war with Great Britain, and the only immediate effect of the act was to still further derange affairs in Illinois.  The whole subject of the land cessions of the various States, by which the northwest territory became Federal property, and the heart of the Union, can best be considered in treating of post-revolutionary times.

The French Créoles had been plunged in chaos.  In their deep distress they sent to the powers that the chances of war had set above them petition after petition, reciting their wrongs and praying that they might be righted.  There is one striking difference between these petitions and the similar requests and complaints made from time to time by the different groups of American settlers west of the Alleghanies.  Both alike set forth the evils from which the petitioners suffered, and the necessity of governmental remedy.  But whereas the Americans invariably asked that they be allowed to govern themselves, being delighted to undertake the betterment of their condition on their own account, the French, on the contrary, habituated through generations to paternal rule, were more inclined to request that somebody fitted for the task should be sent to govern them.  They humbly asked Congress either to “immediately establish some form of government among them, and appoint officers to execute the same,” or else “to nominate commissioners to repair to the Illinois and inquire into the situation.”

One of the petitions is pathetic in its showing of the bewilderment into which the poor Créoles were thrown as to who their governors really were.  It requests “their Sovereign Lords,” whether of the Congress of the United States or of the Province of Virginia, whichever might be the owner of the country, to nominate “a lieutenant or a governor, whomever it may please our Lords to send us.” The letter goes on to ask that this governor may speak French, so that he may preside over the court; and it earnestly beseeches that the laws may be enforced and crime and wrong-doing put down with a strong hand.

The conquest of the Illinois Territory was fraught with the deepest and most far-reaching benefits to all the American people; it likewise benefited, in at least an equal degree, the boldest and most energetic among the French inhabitants, those who could hold their own among freemen, who could swim in troubled waters; but it may well be doubted whether to the mass of the ignorant and simple Créoles it was not a curse rather than a blessing.