The Winslow mail. (Winslow, Ariz.) 1893-1926, 1911-04-08


woods. The river continually depos-
tied soil at the end of the point, build
ing it up at the rate of about a mile in
rs years. The swamps disappeared
and turned into land of the highest
fertility.
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
lions 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 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.
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
VaudreuiFs 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 SO voters and the rest of
the island about $50.
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
ouette. There he established a mis-
sion. the first in the Mississippi val
ley.
Twenry-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
1855 and appointed as governor the
Cheyalier de Rocheblave. In 1778 1t
was wrested from Great Britain by
General Clark, commanding an expedi-
ton of Virginian 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 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-
dav The destruction wrought by the
food of 1874 was completed by the In
vasion 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
hell which was founded in Rochelle
France. and whose peal was the first
heard between the Alleghentes and
the Mississippi river.