s the centre and citadel of a curious little forest
settlement, the only vestige of civilization through all this region. At
Kaskaskia, extended along the borders of the stream, were seventy or
eighty French houses; thirty or forty at Cahokia, opposite the site of
St. Louis; and a few more at the intervening hamlets of St. Philippe and
Prairie a la Roche,--a picturesque but thriftless population, mixed with
Indians, totally ignorant, busied partly with the fur-trade, and partly
with the raising of corn for the market of New Orleans. They
communicated with it by means of a sort of row galley, of eighteen or
twenty oars, which made the voyage twice a year, and usually spent ten
weeks on the return up the river.[3]

[Footnote 3: Gordon, _Journal_, 1766, appended to Pownall,
_Topographical Description_. In the Depot des Cartes de la Marine at
Paris, C. 4,040, are two curious maps of the Illinois colony, made a
little after the middle of the century. In 1753 the Marquis Duquesne
denounced the colonists as debauched and lazy.]

The Pope and the Bourbons had claimed this wilderness for seventy years,
and had done scarcely more for it than the Indians, its natural owners.
Of the western tribes, even of those living at the French posts, the
Hurons or Wyandots alone were Christian.[4] The devoted zeal of the
early missionaries and the politic efforts of their successors had
failed alike. The savages of the Ohio and the Mississippi, instead of
being tied to France by the mild bonds of the faith, were now in a state
which the French called defection or revolt; that is, they received and
welcomed the English traders.

[Footnote 4: "De toutes les nations domiciliees dans les postes des pays
d'en haut, il n'y a que les hurons du detroit qui aient embrasse la
Religion chretienne." _Memoirs du Roy pour servir d'instruction au S'r.
Marqius de Lajonquiere_.]

These traders came in part from Virginia, but chiefly from Pennsylvania.
Dinwiddie, governor of Virginia, says of them: "They appear to me to be
in general a set of abandoned wretches;" and Hamilton, governor of
Pennsylvania, replies: "I concur with you in opinion that they are a
very licentious people.[5] Indian traders, of whatever nation, are
rarely models of virtue; and these, without doubt, were rough and
lawless men, with abundant blackguardism and few scruples. Not all of
them, however, are to be thus qualified. Some were of a better stamp;
among whom were Christopher Gist