receive the
same pay as Continentals. Any soldier who would serve in Illinois during
the war should receive a bounty of seven hundred and fifty dollars and a
grant of one hundred acres of land.(26)

Acting upon the policy that caused Virginia to warn all intruders not to
settle northwest of the Ohio, Todd issued a proclamation warning all
persons against such settlement, "unless in manner and form as heretofore
made by the French inhabitants." All inhabitants were ordered to file a
description of lands held by them, together with a deed or deposition, in
order to be ready for the press of adventurers that was expected.(27)

Some of the incidents of the summer of 1779 indicate difficulties of the
new government. When the governor was to be absent for a short time, he
wrote to Winston, who as commander of Kaskaskia would be acting governor,
telling him not to impress property, and by all means to keep up a good
understanding with Col. Clark and the officers. The judges of the court at
Kaskaskia were ordered to hold court "at the usual place of holding court
... any adjournment to the contrary notwithstanding." Richard McCarty, of
Cahokia, wrote to the county-lieutenant complaining that the writer's
stock had been killed by the French inhabitants. McCarty had allowed his
stock to run at large and they had destroyed uninclosed crops, which
crops, he contended, were not in their proper place. Two months later,
McCarty wrote from Cahokia: "Col. Todd residence hear will spoil the
people intirely. I think it would be a happy thing could we get Colol Todd
out of the country for he will possitively sett the Inhabitants and us by
the Ears. I have wrote him a pritty sharp Letter on his signing a Death
warrant against my poor hog's for runing in the Oppen fields ... on some
complaints by the Inhabitants the other day he wished that there was not a
Soldier in the country."(28) McCarty's hogs were not his only trouble. A
fellow-officer wrote: "I received a line from Capt. McCarty [captain of
troops at Cahokia] yesterday. He is well. He writes to me that he has lost
most of his French soldiers, and that the inhabitants are so saucy that
they threaten to drive him and his soldiers away, telling him that he has
no business there--nobody sent for him. They are very discontented. The
civil law has ruined them."(29)

Col. Todd's position was difficult because of the discontent prevailing
among both the French and the Americans in Illinois