ners
complained that the undisciplined militia quartered among them, who on
their arrival were "in the most shabby and wretched state," and who had
"rioted in abundance and unaccustomed luxury" at the expense of the
Creoles, had also maltreated and insulted them; as for instance they had
at times wantonly shot the cattle merely to try their rifles. "Ours was
the task of hewing and carting them firewood to the barracks," continued
the petition, complaining of the way the Virginians had imposed on the
submissiveness and docility of the inhabitants, "ours the drudgery of
raising vegetables which we did not eat, poultry for their kitchen,
cattle for the diversion of their marksmen."

The petitioners further asked that every man among them should be
granted five hundred acres. They explained that formerly they had set no
value on the land, occupying themselves chiefly with the Indian trade,
and raising only the crops they absolutely needed for food; but that now
they realized the worth of the soil, and inasmuch as they had various
titles to it, under lost or forgotten charters from the French kings,
they would surrender all the rights these titles conveyed, save only
what belonged to the Church of Cahokia, in return for the above named
grant of five hundred acres to each individual. [Footnote: State
Department MSS., No. 48, "Memorial of the French Inhabitants of Post
Vincennes, Kaskaskia, La Prairie du Rocher, Cahokia, and Village of St.
Philip to Congress." By Bartholemew Tardiveau, agent. New York, February
26, 1788. Tardiveau was a French mercantile adventurer, who had
relations with Gardoqui and the Kentucky separatists, and in a petition
presented by him it is not easy to discriminate between the views that
are really those of the Creoles, and the views which he deemed it for
his own advantage to have expressed.]

The memorialists alluded to their explanation of the fact that they had
lost all the title-deeds to the land, that is all the old charters
granted them, as "ingenuous and candid"; and so it was. The immense
importance of having lost all proof of their rights did not strike them.
There was an almost pathetic childishness in the request that the United
States authorities should accept oral tradition in lieu of the testimony
of the lost charters, and in the way they dwelt with a kind of humble
pride upon their own "submissiveness and docility." In the same spirit
the inhabitants of Vincennes surrendered their ch