Kaskaskia, where conditions were to be investigated. The August sun poured
down its rays upon the parched prairies and dwindling streams. Water was
bad and scarce, but buffalo, deer, bear, and smaller game were abundant.

Harmar found life in the settlements he visited as crude as the path he
traveled. Kaskaskia was a French village of one hundred and ninety-one
men, old and young, with an accompaniment of women and children of various
mixtures of white and red blood. Cahokia, then the metropolis, had two
hundred and thirty-nine Frenchmen, old and young, with an accompaniment
similarly mixed. Between these settlements was Bellefontaine, a small
stockade, inhabited altogether by Americans, who had settled without
authority. The situation was a beautiful one; the land was fertile; there
was no taxation, and the people had an abundance to live upon. They were
much alarmed when told of their precarious state respecting a title to
their lands, and they gave Tardiveau a petition to carry to Congress. On
the route to Cahokia, another stockade, Grand Ruisseau, similarly
inhabited by Americans, was passed. There were about thirty other American
intruders in the fertile valleys near the Mississippi, and they, too, gave
Tardiveau a petition to Congress.

The Kaskaskia, Peoria, Cahokia, and Mitcha tribes of Indians numbered only
about forty or fifty members, of whom but ten or eleven individuals
composed the Kaskaskia tribe; but this does not mean that danger from the
Indians was not great, because other and more hostile tribes came in great
numbers to hunt in the Illinois country. The significance of the
diminished numbers of these particular tribes lies in the fact that they
had the strongest claim to that part of Illinois which would be first
needed for settlement. At Kaskaskia and Cahokia, the French were advised
to obey their magistrates until Congress had a government ready for them,
and Cahokia was advised to put its militia into better shape, and to put
any turbulent or refractory persons under guard until a government could
be instituted.(102)

Having finished his work in the settlements near the Mississippi, Harmar
returned to Vincennes, where he held councils with the Indians, and on
October 1, set out on his return to Fort Harmar. Although without
authority to give permanent redress, he had persuaded the French at
Vincennes to relinquish their charter and to throw themselves upon the
generosity of Congress. "As it wo