River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1911-04-06

empowered them to lease the com
mons to farmers, the rent to be paiG
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
the commons were opened to settle
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 CONFUSION 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 con-
sequence, it 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
VaudreuiTs grant expressly vested the
ownership of the commons in all the
inhabitants Of the Immaculate Cons
ception parish, which included the en-
tire island.
But for more than a century, the
villagers excluded all but themselves
from 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 so voters and the rest of
the island about $50.
Judge Crows decision, anticipating
the final determination of the SUI
preme court, is that title to the com.
mons of Kaskaskia is vested forever
in the inhabitants of the Immaculate
Conception parish. To this extent it
was gratifying to the insurgents. but
it disappointed their wish to purchase
the land outright instead of renting It,
Some of the leaseholders, who had
lived on their farms for so years and
seen their children and grandchildren
grow up about them, feel that the
land already belongs to them by vir.
tue of long occupancy"
In the meantime, the Mississippi
river is laboring to convert the entire
island into commons, by tearing away
soil from the upper shore, which is
owned by individuals, and depositing
it upon the south shore, which is COM
mon land. Old inhabitants assert that
within the last 80 years two miles Of
soil have been added to the commons.
This accretion was one Of the sections
recently opened to renters.
The present Kaskaskia, venerable as
it 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 a 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 safer stu
alton. Let by priests, they settled up
on the fertile site of the present Kas-
kaskia.
In 1853 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 ITS 1t
was wrested from Great Britain by
General Clark, commanding an expedi-
ton of Virginian troops, called Long
Knives" by the Indians. Virginia
coded Illinois to the United States in
1874 and six years later, when Illinois
was erected into a territory of the
United States, a 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
yasion of the Mississippi river.
Even before that time the house in
which General Lafayette slept in
1925 had been carried away piecemeal
nv 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.