--$2975.59

Of this amount, $1966.41 was paid, only Indiana and Missouri territories
paying a smaller proportion of their assessment.(309) The small proportion
paid in these three territories may have been due to the poverty of their
inhabitants.

Most of the manufactured articles were consumed within the territory. Both
cotton and flax were raised and made into cloth; maple sugar was sometimes
sold and exported, but a large proportion of the supply was used as a
substitute for sugar, another substitute much used being wild honey. A
certain Smith's Prairie was celebrated for the numerous plum and crabapple
orchards that grew around its borders. The large red and yellow plums grew
there in such abundance that people would come from long distances and
haul them away by the wagon-loads, and would preserve them with honey or
maple sugar, which was the only sweetening they had in pioneer times.(310)

Previous to the War of 1812, little commerce was carried on, although a
few trips had been made to New Orleans with keel-boats or pirogues, and
some goods were occasionally brought over the Alleghany Mountains by means
of wagons. The round trip to New Orleans and back then required six
months; the trip down was easy and required a comparatively short time,
but the return trip was slow. It was entirely a barter trade, money being
almost unknown. Furs, wild honey, and other commodities of Illinois, as
well as lead from the Missouri mines, were carried down and exchanged for
groceries, cloth, and other articles of a large value and small bulk. As a
natural consequence of having to be transported up stream, goods of that
nature were extremely dear, the common price of tea being sixteen dollars
a pound, of coffee fifty cents, and of calico fifty cents per yard.(311)
To go up the Mississippi from St. Louis to Prairie du Chien, in 1815,
required from twelve days to a month, while the return trip was made in
from six to ten days.(312)

In the great American Bottom of the Mississippi, extending from the mouth
of the Kaskaskia almost to the mouth of the Illinois, cattle raising was a
leading industry, the cattle being driven to the Philadelphia or Baltimore
markets.(313) Towards the close of the period land could easily be secured
by government entry. The fertility of the land was such as must have been
new to those immigrants who came from the poorer parts of the older
states. Land was subject to a tax of a little more that two cents p