ace of '83. The spongy
turf of her prairies bore the weight of many a fort, and drank the
blood of the slain in many a battle, when all around her was at peace.
The fertility of her soil and the comparative mildness of her climate
caused her to be eagerly contended for, as far back as 1673, when the
pioneers grew poetical under the inspiration of "a joy that could not
be expressed," as they passed her "broad plains, all garlanded with
majestic forests and checkered with illimitable prairies and island
groves." "We are Illinois," said the poor Indians to Father
Marquette,--meaning, in their language, "We are men." And the Jesuits
treated them as men; but by traders they soon began to be treated like
beasts; and of course--poor things!--they did their best to behave
accordingly. All the forts are ruins now; there is no longer occasion
for them. The Indians are nothing. There can scarcely be found the
slightest trace of their occupancy of these rich acres. Nations that
build nothing but uninscribed burial-places foreshadow their own
doom,--to return to the soil and be forgotten. But the mode of their
passing away is not, therefore, a matter of indifference.

On the stronger and more intelligent rests the responsibility of such
changes; and in the case of our Indians, it is certain that a load of
guilt, individual and national, rests somewhere. Necessity is no
Christian plea, "It must needs be that offences come, but woe to him
by whom the offence cometh!" The Indian and the negro shall rise up in
judgment against our rich and happy land, and condemn it for
inhumanity and selfishness. Have they not already done so? Blood and
treasure, poured out like water, have been the beginnings of
retribution in one case; a deeper and more vital punishment, such as
belongs to bosom-sins, awaits us in the other. Shall no penitence, no
sacrifice, attempt to avert it?

Illinois, level, fertile, joyous, took French rule very kindly. The
missionaries, who were physicians, schoolmasters, and artisans, as
well as preachers, lived among the people, instructed them in the arts
of life as well as in the ceremonies and spirit of the Catholic faith;
and natives and foreigners seem to have dwelt together in peace and
love. The French brought with them the regularity and neatness that
characterize their home-settlements, and the abundance in which they
lived enabled them to be public-spirited and to deal liberally even
with the Indians. They raised