n
title, was being explored.(250)

Reports concerning the sales of public lands give the quantity of land
sold in Illinois toward the close of the territorial period, the figures
for 1817 and 1818 being as follows:

Acres in Acres in Jan. 1, Sept. 30,
1817. 1818. 1818. 1818.
Shawneetown 72,384 216,315 $291,429 $637,468
Kaskaskia 90,493 121,052 209,295 406,288
Edwardsville(251) 149,165 121,923 301,701 451,499(252)
312,042 459,290 $802,425 $1,495,255

The percentage of debt showed a marked increase in the first nine months
of 1818. There were received in three-quarters of 1817 and 1818,
respectively:

1817. 1818.
At Shawneetown $32,837 $112,759
At Kaskaskia 41,218 68,975
At Edwardsville 41,426 78,788

During this same period the receipts at Steubenville, Marietta, and
Wooster, Ohio, decreased,(253) showing that Illinois was beginning to
surpass Ohio as an objective point for emigrants wishing to enter land.

The Indian question was interwoven with the land question during the
territorial period. In 1809 the Indians relinquished their claim to some
small tracts of land lying near the point where the Wabash ceases to be a
state boundary line.(254) No more cessions were made until after the war
of 1812. Although the population of Illinois increased, during the
territorial period, from some eleven thousand to about forty thousand, the
increase before the war was slight, and thus it came about that during the
war the few whites were kept busy defending themselves from the large and
hostile Indian population. So well does the manner of defence in Illinois
illustrate the frontier character of the region that a sketch of the same
may be given. When, in 1811, the Indians became hostile and murdered a few
whites, the condition of the settlers was precarious in the extreme. Today
the term city would be almost a favor to a place containing no more
inhabitants than were then to be found in the white settlements in
Illinois. Moreover, few as were the whites, they were dispersed in a long
half-oval extending from a point on the Mississippi near the present Alton
southward to the Ohio, and thence up that river and the Wabash to a point
considerably north of Vincennes. This fringe of settlement was but a few
miles wide in some place