asing power. Making shoes was two
dollars per pair; potatoes were one dollar per bushel; brandy, one dollar
per quart; corn, one dollar per bushel.(223)

Among the early difficulties in the way of settlement, one of the most
persistent was the presence of prairies. This is by no means far-fetched,
although it sounds so to modern ears. In 1786, Monroe wrote to Jefferson
concerning the Northwest Territory: "A great part of the territory is
miserably poor, especially that near Lakes Michigan and Erie, and that
upon the Mississippi and the Illinois consists of extensive plains which
have not had, from appearances, and will not have, a single bush on them
for ages. The districts, therefore, within which these fall will never
contain a sufficient number of inhabitants to entitle them to membership
in the confederacy."(224) Some of the most fertile of the Illinois
prairies were not settled until far into the nineteenth century. The false
prophets of the early days will be judged less harshly if we recall that
wood was then a necessity, that no railroads and few roads existed, that
wells now in use in prairie regions are much deeper than the early
settlers could dig, and that the vast quantities of coal under the surface
of Illinois were undiscovered.

As causes for the fact that more than a quarter of a century after the
Revolution, Illinois had a population estimated at only eleven thousand,
may be suggested the presence of hostile Indians; the inability of
settlers to secure a title to their land; the unsettled condition of the
slavery question; the great distance from the older portions of the United
States and from any market; the fact that Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana had
vast quantities of unoccupied land more accessible to emigrants than was
Illinois; the danger and the cost of moving; privation incident to a
scanty population, such as lack of roads, schools, churches and mills; the
existence of large prairies in Illinois. To remove or mitigate these
difficulties was still the problem of Illinois settlers. On some of them a
beginning had been made before 1809, but none were yet removed.

CHAPTER IV. ILLINOIS DURING ITS TERRITORIAL PERIOD. 1809 TO 1818.

I. The Land and Indian Questions.

Probably nothing affected settlement in Illinois from 1809 to 1818 more
profoundly than did changes in the land question, for during this period
Congress passed important acts relative to land sales, and this was also