Part 3 (1/2)

To the professional rover, the inability to secure a t.i.tle to land was the cause of small concern, but the more substantial and desirable the settler, the more concerned was he about the matter. Settlement and improvements were r.e.t.a.r.ded. Before the affairs of the Ohio Company had progressed far enough to permit sales of land to settlers, the little company at Marietta saw, with deep chagrin, thousands of settlers float by on their way to Kentucky, where land could be bought.(148) Squatters in Illinois were constantly expecting that the public lands would soon be offered for sale. The natural result was pet.i.tions for the right of preemption, because without such a right, the settler was in danger of losing whatever improvements he had made. In 1790, James Piggott and forty-five others pet.i.tioned for such a right. The pet.i.tioners stated that they had settled since 1783 and had suffered much from Indians. They could not cultivate their land except under guard. Seventeen families had no more tillable land than four could tend. The land on which they lived was the property of two individuals.(149)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Indian Cessions.]

Pet.i.tions from various cla.s.ses of settlers, not provided for by the acts of June 20, August 28, and August 29, 1788, led Congress to pa.s.s the act of March 3, 1791. By this act, four hundred acres was to be given to each head of a family who, in 1783, was resident in the Illinois country or at Vincennes, and who had since moved from the one to the other. The same donation was to be made to all persons who had moved away, if they should return within five years. Such persons should also have confirmed to them the land they originally held. This was intended to bring back persons who had gone to the Spanish side of the Mississippi. Grants previously made by courts having no authority should be confirmed to persons who had made improvements, to an extent not exceeding four hundred acres to any one person. As these lands had in some cases been repeatedly sold, the parties making the improvements were frequently guiltless of any knowledge of fraud. The Cahokia commons were confirmed to that village. One hundred acres was to be granted to each militiaman enrolled on August 1, 1790, and who had received no other grant.(150) This act throws considerable light on the causes of discontent then prevailing among the settlers and on the conditions to which immigrants came.

This same spring, about two hundred and fifty of the inhabitants of Vincennes had gone to settle at New Madrid.(151) It is not strange that the act of March 3, 1791, made provisions intended to induce the Americans who had emigrated to the Spanish possessions to return. The history of the threatened Spanish aggression upon the western part of the United States is known in essence to anyone who has made the slightest special study of the period at which it was at its height. Morgan's scheme for a purchase of land in Illinois was not carried out, and he turned his attention to peopling his settlement at New Madrid. Down the Mississippi to New Orleans seemed the natural route for Illinois commerce. Slavery flourished unmolested west of the Mississippi. In 1794, Baron de Carondolet gave orders to the governor of Natchez to incite the Chickasaw Indians to expel the Americans from Fort Ma.s.sac. The governor refused to obey the order, because Fort Ma.s.sac had been occupied by the Americans in pursuance of a request by the Spanish representative at the capital of the United States that the president would put a stop to the proposed expedition of the French against the Spanish. The claim was advanced by Carondolet that the Americans had no right to the land on which the fort stood, but that the land belonged to the Chickasaws, who were independent allies of Spain. Two other reasons given for not obeying the order were that it would preclude the successful issue of the Spanish intrigue for the separation of Kentucky from the United States, and would hinder negotiations, then pending, for a commercial treaty between Spain and the United States.(152) Carondolet regarded the Indians as Spain's best defence against the Americans,(153) yet the whites prepared for defence, and in antic.i.p.ation of the proposed French expedition of George Rogers Clark, a garrison of thirty men and an officer was placed at Ste. Genevieve, opposite Kaskaskia. Carondolet said: ”This will suffice to prevent the smuggling carried on by the Americans of the settlement of Kaskaskias situated opposite, which increases daily.”(154)

Early in 1796, a pet.i.tion was sent from Kaskaskia to Congress. The pet.i.tioners desired that they might be permitted to locate their donation of four hundred acres per family on Long Prairie, a few miles above Kaskaskia, on the Kaskaskia River, and that the expense of surveying the land might be paid by the United States. The act granting the donation-land had provided for its location between the Kaskaskia and the Mississippi. This land the pet.i.tioners declared to be private land and some of it was of poor quality.(155) Confirmation of land claims directed to be made upon the Governor's visit in 1790 were delayed by the lack of a surveyor and the poverty of the inhabitants.(156) The pet.i.tion was signed by John Edgar, William Morrison, William St. Clair, and John Demoulin(157) ”for the inhabitants of the counties of St. Clair and Randolph”(158)-the Illinois counties. The pet.i.tioners ranked high in the mercantile and legal life of the Illinois settlements, but they must have been novices in the art of pet.i.tioning if they thought that a pet.i.tion signed by four men from the Illinois country, with no sign of their being legally representative, would be regarded by Congress as an expression of the opinion of the Northwest Territory. The part of the pet.i.tion relating to lands was granted, but the major part, which related to other subjects, was denied on the ground that the pet.i.tioners probably did not represent public sentiment.(159) During this same year Congress denied a number of pet.i.tions for the right of preemption in the Northwest Territory, because such a right would encourage illegal settling. It was also during this year that the first sales of public land in the Northwest Territory were authorized. The land to be sold was in what is now Ohio. No tract of less than four thousand acres could be purchased.(160)

In 1800, two hundred and sixty-eight inhabitants of Illinois, chiefly French, pet.i.tioned Congress that Indian t.i.tles to land in the southern part of Illinois might be extinguished and the land offered for sale; that tracts of land at the distance of a day's journey from each other, lying between Vincennes and the Illinois settlements, might be ceded to such persons as would keep taverns, and that one or two garrisons might be stationed in Illinois. The pet.i.tioners state that the Kaskaskia tribe of Indians numbered not more than fifteen members and that their t.i.tle to land could be easily extinguished; that not enough land is open to settlement to admit a population sufficient to support ordinary county establishments; that roads are much needed, and that many of the inhabitants are crossing the Mississippi with their slaves. The pet.i.tion was not considered.(161)

A new factor now appears in the forces affecting Illinois settlement. The Northwest Territory having advanced to the second grade of territorial government, in December, 1799, its delegate took his seat in Congress. The step was an important one for the struggling colony. Before this time such pet.i.tions as were prepared by inhabitants of the territory for the consideration of Congress had been subjected to all the vicissitudes of being addressed to some public officer or of being confided to some member of Congress who represented a different portion of the country. Up to this time the public lands could only be bought in tracts of four thousand acres. Largely through the influence of the delegate from the Northwest Territory, a bill was pa.s.sed which authorized the sale of sections and half-sections. In consequence, emigration soon began to flow rapidly into Ohio. Land in Illinois was not yet offered for sale, but this bill is important because the policy of offering land in smaller tracts was to continue.(162)

The territorial delegate was also active in procuring the pa.s.sage of a bill for the division of the Northwest Territory. While the bill was pending, a pet.i.tion from Illinois, praying for the division and for the establishment of such a government in the western part as was provided for by the Ordinance of 1787, was presented. The act for division was signed by the President on May 7, 1800; it formed Indiana Territory, with Vincennes as its capital.(163)

The propositions made by a convention of representatives elected by the citizens of Indiana to prepare pet.i.tions to Congress, near the close of 1802, ill.u.s.trate the needs of the time. It was desired that the Indian t.i.tle to land lying in Southern Illinois and Southwestern Indiana might be extinguished and the land sold in smaller tracts and at a lower price;(164) that a preemption act might be pa.s.sed; that a grant of seminary and school lands might be made; that land for taverns, twenty miles or less apart, might be granted along certain specified routes; that donation-lands might be chosen in separate tracts, instead of in three specified areas, in order to avoid ”absolutely useless” prairies, and also lands claimed by ancient grants; and that the qualification of a freehold of fifty acres of land, prescribed for the electors of representatives to the territorial legislature, might be changed to manhood suffrage, because the freehold qualification was said to tend ”to throw too great a weight in the scale of wealth.” The pet.i.tion was considered in committees, but it led to no legislation.(165)

None of the above complaints was better founded than that concerning the restriction of the suffrage, and it is well to note subsequent proceedings in regard to it. No qualification less suitable to the time and place could well have been devised, and this is especially true of the Illinois portion of the territory, because there unsettled French claims were to delay the sales of public lands until 1814, and thus early settlers could neither buy land nor vote unless they owned it, unless indeed they purchased land claims from the needy and unbusiness-like French. An interesting pet.i.tion of 1807 from the settlement on Richland Creek,(166) for the right of preemption, throws light upon conditions then obtaining.

The pet.i.tioner inclosed a map of the settlement, with the following explanation: ”Those persons whose names are enclosed in said plot, within surveyed lines, have confirmed and located rights, amounting to 3,775 acres; ... the residue of the said settlers, occupying about 6,000 acres of land, have, without any right, settled upon the public land.” The map shows that there were eleven owners and twenty-two squatters.(167) As the law then stood, the twenty-two squatters, occupying more than three-fifths of the land, could not vote. The eleven land-owners must have secured their land either under the acts of 1788 or that of 1791, or by the purchase of French claims, a trade vigorously carried on. In 1808,(168) Congress so far extended the suffrage in Indiana as to make the owners.h.i.+p of a town lot worth one hundred dollars an alternative qualification to the possession of a freehold of fifty acres. This was in advance of the law in some of the Eastern states.

After 1802, the land question can not be traced without reference to the Indian question in Illinois. That question became important as soon as American occupation was a.s.sured, and it remained important for fifty years after the Revolution. The desire of the American settlers for land was directly counter to the desire of the Indians to preserve their hunting-grounds. Before the close of the eighteenth century, the list of b.l.o.o.d.y deeds in Illinois had grown long.(169) The United States Government appreciated the gravity of the situation and early made efforts to purchase the land from the Indians. That part of the treaty of Greenville, of 1795, which affected Illinois, extinguished the Indian t.i.tle to a tract six miles square, at the mouth of Chicago River; one six miles square, at Peoria; one twelve miles square, near the mouth of the Illinois River; the post of Fort Ma.s.sac, and the land in the possession of the whites.(170) The treaty of Fort Wayne, in 1803, ceded four square miles or less, at the salt springs on Saline Creek, and some land west and southwest from Vincennes. This treaty, with another made in the following August, ceded three tracts of land, each one mile square, between Vincennes and Kaskaskia, to be sites for taverns.(171) The treaty of Vincennes, of August, 1803, ceded land in Illinois bounded by the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Illinois, and the western watershed of the Wabash, except three hundred and fifty acres near Kaskaskia, and twelve hundred and eighty acres to be located. This last treaty was made with the depleted Kaskaskia tribe.(172) As the claims of various tribes overlapped, an Indian treaty rarely signifies that all controversy in regard to the land ceded is at an end. Frequently one or more treaties must yet be made with other tribes, and frequently a tribe refuses to abide by its agreement.

Previous to 1804, no land was sold in the Northwest Territory west of the mouth of the Kentucky River. An act of March 26 of that year provided for the opening of a land-office at Detroit to sell lands north of Ohio; one at Vincennes to sell lands in its vicinity ceded by the treaty of Fort Wayne; and one at Kaskaskia to sell so much of the land ceded by the treaty of Vincennes (August, 1803) as was not claimed by any other tribe than those represented in the cession. The register and the receiver of public moneys of these respective districts were to be commissioners to settle private land claims. Evidences of claims should be filed before January 1, 1805, and after the adjustment of claims the public lands should be sold at auction to the highest bidder. Two dollars per acre was to be the minimum price; no land should be sold in less than quarter-sections, except fractional portions caused by irregularities in topography or survey, and lands unsold after the auction might be sold at private sale. Although this act provided for the sale of public lands in Illinois after private claims should have been satisfied, and directed that such claims should be filed not later than January 1, 1805, Congress repeatedly extended the time for the filing of claims, and ten years after the pa.s.sage of this act there were still unsatisfied claims.(173) Not until 1814 did sales of public land begin in Illinois. The delay r.e.t.a.r.ded immigration of that cla.s.s which would have made the most desirable citizens.

By the treaty of St. Louis, November 3, 1804, the Sauk and Foxes ceded that part of Illinois west of the Illinois and Fox rivers. Black Hawk, the princ.i.p.al chief of the Sauk, did not sign the treaty.(174) By the treaty of Vincennes, 1805, the Piankashaws ceded a tract lying between the lower Wabash and its western watershed.(175) No more Indian t.i.tles to land in Illinois were extinguished, and no public land was sold in Illinois until after that part of the country became a separate territory.

Early in 1806, there came to Congress from Illinois a pet.i.tion which betrayed the anxiety of the French settlers, and of the Americans who had bought French claims, lest the peculiar shape of their holdings should be disturbed by the orderly system of government surveys. The pet.i.tioners asked that a line might be run from a point north of Cahokia to an unspecified river south of Kaskaskia, in such a manner as to include all settlements between the two points, and that the land so included be exempt from the mode of survey and terms of sale of other public lands of the United States. The pet.i.tion was apparently not reported upon, but a detailed map of the region referred to shows that the holdings were left in their bewildering complexity.(176)

By the time Indiana Territory was divided some progress had been made in extinguis.h.i.+ng Indian t.i.tles, and some also in investigating land claims of the French and their a.s.signees; but the American immigrant had still the hard choice of buying a French claim with uncertain t.i.tle or squatting on government land with the risk of losing whatever improvement he might make, and often the added risk of being killed by the suspicious, hostile, untrustworthy Indians. This was one cla.s.s of hindrances to settlement.

Another hindrance, next to be noticed, was the unstable governmental conditions following the anarchy already recited.

II. Government Succeeding the Period of Anarchy, 1790 to 1809.

When St. Clair County was formed, in 1790, it was made to include all the settlements of the Northwest Territory to the westward of Vincennes. On account of its geographical extent it was divided into three judicial districts, but it could not be made into three separate counties, because there were not enough men capable of holding office to furnish the necessary officials. The American settlers were few and a large proportion of them were unskilled in matters of government, while the French were totally unfit to govern. In 1795, St. Clair, when referring to conditions in 1790, wrote that since then the population of Illinois had decreased considerably.(177) Combining this decrease with the fact that there were in the settlements in what is now Missouri 1491 inhabitants in 1785, 2093 in 1788, and 6028, including 883 slaves, in 1799,(178) the conclusion is inevitable that emigration across the Mississippi was the immediate cause of the decrease in Illinois.

In 1795, notwithstanding the decreased population, and perhaps in the hope of checking the decrease, St. Clair County was divided by proclamation of Governor St. Clair. The division was by an east and west line running a little south of the settlement of New Design.(179) St. Clair County lay to the north, Randolph County to the south of the line.(180)

The early laws of the Northwest Territory throw light upon the conditions existing upon the frontier. Minute provisions for establis.h.i.+ng and maintaining ferries, with no mention of bridges, indicate the primitive methods of travel.(181) Millers were required to use a prescribed set of measures and to grind for a prescribed toll, the toll for the use of a horse-mill being higher than that for a water-mill, unless the owner of the grain furnished the horses.(182) Guide-posts were to be put up at the forks of every public road.(183) No stray stock should be taken up between the first of April and the first of November, unless the stray should have broken into the inclosure of the taker-up.(184) In those days stock was turned out and crops were fenced in. Prairies or cleared land were not to be fired except between December 1 and March 10, unless upon one's own land.(185) The following rates of county taxation were prescribed:

Horses, per head, not more than $.50 Neat cattle, not more than .12- Bond servant, not more than 1.00 Single man, 21 yrs. or older, with less than $200 worth of property, not more than 2.00 nor less than .50 Retail merchants, not more than 10.00(186)

A bounty, varying at different times between 1799 and 1810 from 50 cents to $2 per head, was given for killing wolves.(187) Imprisonment for debt, a law antedating by many years similar laws in several of the other parts of the United States, was practically abolished.(188) A frontier region does not have that social stratification which makes oppression of the debtor cla.s.s easy. A county too poor to build a log jail without difficulty is not likely to be so senseless as to make a practice of confining and boarding its debtor cla.s.s.

For the purpose of taxation land was to be listed in three cla.s.ses according to value. No specification as to the value of the respective cla.s.ses was prescribed. The tax was eighty-five, sixty, or twenty-five cents per one hundred acres, according as land was first, second, or third cla.s.s. No unimproved land in Illinois was to be listed higher than second cla.s.s.(189)

The laws above cited were enacted by the legislature of the Northwest Territory. In May, 1800, that territory was divided, the western part, including Illinois, becoming Indiana Territory. This made the Illinois country more distinctly frontier by again reducing it to the first grade of territorial government, Indiana Territory, as such, not being represented in Congress until December, 1805.(190) Among the reasons advanced for dividing the Northwest Territory was the fact that in five years there had been but one court for criminal cases in the three western counties.(191)