The attempt to immediately transform a
subject people was a signal failure, but neither the attempt nor the
failure was unique.

CHAPTER III.

I. The Land and Indian Questions. 1790 to 1809.

A proclamation issued by Estevan Miro, Governor and Intendant of the
Provinces of Louisiana and Florida in 1789, offered to immigrants a
liberal donation of land, graduated according to the number of laborers in
the family; freedom of religion and from payment of tithes, although no
public worship except Catholic would be allowed; freedom from taxation;
and a free market at New Orleans for produce or manufactures. All settlers
must swear allegiance to Spain.(146) This proclamation came at a time when
the West was divided in opinion as to whether to make war upon Spain for
her closure of the Mississippi or to secede from the United States and
become a part of Spain.(147) It tended to continue the emigration from the
Illinois country to Spanish territory, for public land was not yet for
sale in Illinois.

To the professional rover, the inability to secure a title to land was the
cause of small concern, but the more substantial and desirable the
settler, the more concerned was he about the matter. Settlement and
improvements were retarded. Before the affairs of the Ohio Company had
progressed far enough to permit sales of land to settlers, the little
company at Marietta saw, with deep chagrin, thousands of settlers float by
on their way to Kentucky, where land could be bought.(148) Squatters in
Illinois were constantly expecting that the public lands would soon be
offered for sale. The natural result was petitions for the right of
preemption, because without such a right, the settler was in danger of
losing whatever improvements he had made. In 1790, James Piggott and
forty-five others petitioned for such a right. The petitioners stated that
they had settled since 1783 and had suffered much from Indians. They could
not cultivate their land except under guard. Seventeen families had no
more tillable land than four could tend. The land on which they lived was
the property of two individuals.(149)

[Illustration: Indian Cessions.]

Petitions from various classes of settlers, not provided for by the acts
of June 20, August 28, and August 29, 1788, led Congress to pass the act
of March 3, 1791. By this act, four hundred acres was to be given to each
head of a family who, in 1783, was resident in t