The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-05-16

every movement attracts the rosiest color
ing of Imagination. We see them gliding
along the streams in their long canoes.
: We catch afar off the thrilling ca
dence OF their choruses, floating over prai-
RE and marsh. echoing from forest and hill,
startling the buffalo from his haunt in the
reeds: telling the drowsy denizens of the
posts of the approach of revelry, and whis-
pering TO the Indian village of gaudy fab
RIGS, OF trinkets and of frewater = " =
Another night they have reached the little
post and we are overwhelmed by the con-
fusion of chattering, laughing. singing and
bargaining"
A HARD LIFE.
With all this gaiety, however. the lot of
the voyageur was by no means an easy one.
His food was such as few civilized men
could live on. a days ration being simply a
quart of hulled corn and a pint of bears
grease. while a ceaseless plying of the
paddles from dawn till dusk could not have
been less laborious than the toll of the Ro-
man galley slave. whose task has become
a synonym for hard work. As Mr.. Dunn
again says: For every real or imaginary
joy they knew there was an offset of hard
ship and privation, so that the content
ment and joility for which they were noted
should be ascribed to the French tempera-
VII AACN ~ tAiC hhRAAANoo VI hANh w."
Thus. taking life and it's hardships light
Iy, these sons of nature piled up and down
the winding river, their favorite craft being
the pirogue, a large canoe made from the
followed boles of trees, propelled with pad
dies by four men. Coming, they bore, ac-
cording to Dillon, coarse blue and red
cloths, fine scarlet, guns, powder, balls,
knives. hatchets, traps, kettles, hoes,
blankets, coarse cottons, ribbons, beads,
vermilion, tobacco, spirituous liquors, etc"
Returning, they carried away, as a load,
some forty packs of skins Weighing about
one hundred pounds each, and that the ex-
change of the clrgoes proved profitable to
the traders we can readily believe when in
cidentally told that the Indians were
charged at the rate of 81 a hundred for
bullets.
OF the three Wabash settlements named,
two, Ouiatenon and the one at Kekionga,
were never more than mere posts, consist
ing of traders and their families. and the
little garrisons maintained by the French
government. A valuable old document pub
lished by the Indiana Historical Society,
which has been called 1.-THE First Census
of Indiana gives the names of the heads
of families at these points, there being nine
at Fort Miamis CFort Wayne, and twelve
at Ouiatenon. These, with sixty-six names
at Vincennes, represented the white popu-
lation of our territory in 1859. Colonel Gro
CHAN, an officer in the British service, who
was captured by the Kickapoo Indians and
carried up the Wabash in 1765, describes
Kekionga as forty or fifty Indian cabins
and nine or ten French houses occupied by
a runaway colony from Detroit.
OF Fort Ouiatenon, which, in all proba-
bility, was the first settlement in Indiana,
m is so meager that the historians
have waged a spirited controversy as to it's
site. A few years ago a skeleton in the
remnants of a French uniform, along with
some silver c~rucifixes, utensils and various
fragments of military equipments were dug
up on the north bank of the river near the
mouth Of Wea creek, which would seem to
determine the spot. During the French oc-
cupancy this post, situated in the very
heart of the fur country, did a thriving
business, the annual trade being estimated
at $4,000, but after the English conquest it
was gradually abandoned.
The date of the founding of Vincennes is
also involved in obscurity, and there has
been not a little ingenious but barren spec
ulation upon the subject. Dillon suggests
1902, Dunn 1927 and Bancroft about 1716.
The names that attached TO it in the earlier
days were various. 1t is first mentioned as
the Post du Ouabache,'' which became
contracted into au poste, and this in turn,
when the American settlers came, was cor
rupted into Opost. It has also been referred
TO as 1.-The post of Pianguichats'' and IL.
Qittle) Wiaut.' Sometimes it took its
name from st. Ange, the first commandment,
and from this was anglicised into Fort st.
Anne, or Fort Anne. 1t finally became Post
st. Vincent, and then V~incennes, in honor
of it's founder, Sieur De Vincennes. Vim
cennes was not a surname, but a title APP
pertaining to one of the Canadian fiefs, this
successor to it being FRANCHISE Inorganic.
POINTS OF ADVANTAGE.
Unlik Oulatenon, Vincennes, almost from
the first, had in it the elements of perma-
hence. Peopled by emigrants from New Or
leans, Kaskaskia and various parts of
Canada, it was an agricultural community
in a crude way, and here, shut off from
civilization by untrod leagues of wilderness,
they led a shiftless, indolent, contented life,
still retaining the customs and gaieties of
La Belle France and adding to their cos
tunes and house furnishings a picturesque
ness borrowed of the Indians. There were
few iron-workers among them, and their
implements of husbandry were of the most
primitive kind. The rich Wabash lands re-
turned them a subsistence with a minimum
OF toll; the more well-to-do class held slaves
who relieved them of that little toll, and so
there was an abundance of time for the
consumption of tobacco and snuff and
homemade wines; for the keeping of holi-
days and for the indulgence of the French
passion for social intercourse and amuse-
ments. Among other things we learn, Incl
dentally, of billiard tables among them,
though how they were transported thither
we are left to imagine. Being of the Roman
Catholic faith, these ~easy-going souls were
not called upon to solve religious problems,
and they were quite as free from RESPONSE
bility and worry in political affairs. The
commandant was king in a small way and
the grand arbiter in all matters pertaining
to the community. They carried on some
with New Orleans, sending thith-
er flour pork. hides. etc, and bringing back
sugar, metal goods and fabrics.
For more than half a century this iso-
lated little community fiourished. or, rath-
CT, perhaps, "vegetated' here, untouched
by outer influences, but the English acqui-
sition of the West was the beginning of the
end for them. Their first realization of the
seriousness of the change. perhaps, was in
1772, when General Gage, commander of the
nation which, treating them as mere
squatters, ordered them TO leave the Indian
country and retire to the colonies of his
Majesty The poor French, in great con-
4.un,+gou xa+urnad N apnOpStrapoa nIo;o,