d because
the grant was made in the first instance counter to the king's
proclamation of 1763, and because the confirmation by Gov. St. Clair was
made after his authority ceased and was not signed by the Secretary of the
Northwest Territory.(3) In 1773, William Murray and others, subsequently
known as the Illinois Land Company, bought two large tracts of land in
Illinois from the Illinois Indians. In 1775, a great tract lying on both
sides of the Wabash was similarly purchased by what later became the
Wabash Land Company. The purchase of the Illinois Company was made in the
presence, but without the sanction, of the British officers, and Gen.
Thomas Gage had the Indians re-convened and the validity of the purchase
expressly denied. These large grants were illegal, and the Indians were
not in consequence disposessed of them.(4) Thus far, the Indians of the
region had been undisturbed by white occupation. British landholders were
few and the French clearings were too small to affect the hunting-grounds.
French and British alike were interested in the fur trade. A French town
was more suited to be the center of an Indian community than to become a
point on its periphery, for here the Indians came for religious
instruction, provisions, fire-arms, and fire-water. The Illinois Indian of
1778 had been degraded rather than elevated by his contact with the
whites. The observation made by an acute French woman of large experience,
although made at another time and place, was applicable here. She said
that it was much easier for a Frenchman to learn to live like an Indian
than for an Indian to learn to live like a Frenchman.(5)

In point of numbers and of occupied territory, the French population was
trifling in comparison with the Indian. In 1766-67, the white inhabitants
of the region were estimated at about two thousand.(6) Some five years
later,(7) Kaskaskia was reported as having about five hundred white and
between four and five hundred black inhabitants; Prairie du Rocher, one
hundred whites and eighty negroes; Fort Chartres, a very few inhabitants;
St. Philips, two or three families; and Cahokia, three hundred whites and
eighty negroes. At the same time, there was a village of the Kaskaskia
tribe with about two hundred and ten persons, including sixty warriors,
three miles north of Kaskaskia, and a village of one hundred and seventy
warriors of the Peoria and Mitchigamia Indians, one mile northwest of Fort
Chartres. It is s