The Oakley herald. [volume] (Oakley, Idaho) 1908-1961, 1911-05-19

mills were busy cutting down the
woods. The river continually depos-
tied soil at the end of the point, build
ing 1t up at the rate of about a mile in
20 years. The swamps disappeared
and turned into land OF the highest
fertility.
In 1851, at the request of the resi-
dents OF the parish, the legislature
empowered them to lease the COM
mons to farmers, the rent to be paid
into the village treasury. Part of the
land was surveyed into 40-acre sec
tons and offered for rent at one dol
lar an acre per year. The leases were
to run for so years.
At various times other sections of
ment on the lease system. One sec
ton became known as "ten-cent land"
because the board Of five trustees in
charge of the rents leased it at ten
cents an acre per year.
1t was charged that the friends Of
the trustees profited by the nominal
price and that their opponents were
excluded from participation.
Then came the convulsion which
rent the peninsula from the main
land of Illinois and set the channel
of the Mississippi to the east instead
of the west of Kaskaskia. The histor-
ic site of the old village was almost
completely engulfed by the invasion
of waters, and only one corner Of the
old state house. the first in Illinois,
was spared.
The villagers had foreseen the
catastrophe, and obtained permission
from the legislature to move the town
two miles further south. AS a con-
sequence, 1t is said that little proper
ty and no lives were lost.
In the meantime, there grew up a
bitter antagonism between the tenants
of the commons and the residents in
the village of Kaskaskia. Governor
Vaudreuils grant expressly vested the
ownership of the commons in all the
inhabitants of the Immaculate Con
ception parish, which included the en-
tire island
But for more than a century, the
villagers excluded all but themselves
from a voice in the government and
the expenditure of the rents The
tenants were not permitted to vote
for village trustees.
The settlers resentment was the
greater because they outnumbered the
villagers three to one. At present the
village has 80 voters and the rest OF
the island about $50.
The present Kaskaskia, venerable as
ii is, is the daughter of a still older
Kaskaskia, an Indian village on the
Illinois river near Utica, which was
discovered in 1878 by Father Mar
quette. There he established mis-
sion, the first in the Mississippi val
ley.
Twenty-seven years later, the Kas-
kaskia indians. who were ON the peril
GUS frontier between the warning
tribes of Illinois and Iroquois, deter.
mined upon an exodus to a safer stu
alton. Let by priests, they settled up
on the fertile site of the present Kas-
kaskia.
In 1863 the Illinois territory was
ceded by the French to Great Britain,
which took possession of Kaskaskia in
1865 and appointed as governor the
Chevalier de Rocheblave. In 1878 1t
was wrested from Great Britain by
General Clark, commanding an expedi-
ton of Virgnian troops, called Long
Knives" by the Indians Virginia
ceded Illinois to the United States In
1874 and six years later, when Illinois
was erected into a territory of the
United States, governor was sta
toned at the capital Kaskaskia
AS has been related. but few of the
ruins of the old Kaskaskia remain to-
day. The destruction wrought by the
food Of 1874 was completed by the in
vasiou of the Mississippi river.
Even before that time the house Ia
which General Lafayette slept In
1925 had been carried away piecemeal
by souvenir hunters. There still re-
mains. however, the ancient parish
bell, which was founded In Rochelle, |
France, and whose peal was the first |
heard between the Alleghenies and |
the Mississippi river.