CHAPTER I

SETTLEMENTS BEYOND THE ALLEGHANIES IN

COLONIAL DAYS

THE greatest question before America in the eighteenth century was the control of the Mississippi valley. This was the finest river valley in the world, with great but undeveloped and unknown possibilities in it. Should this remain the home of the Indian, or should it become the future home of Europeans? And furthermore should these Europeans be British or French? The advancing civilization made the continued control of the territory by the Indians an improbability. The conflict must be settled between the British and the French. It did not reach its final settlement until the beginning of the next century, but the forces were at work all through the latter half of the eighteenth which would finally give the control to the British. Possibly the United States might have become a world power without the control of this valley, but it is doubtful. The natural outlet for the commerce of all the vast interior is the Mississippi, and if cut off from this, the nation would have been confined to the Atlantic seaboard, with no possibility of westward expansion to the Pacific, and no chance for contact with the Orient. It is certain that the history of the United States would have been very different, if the new nation had been confined to the eastern slope of the Alleghanies. In 1750 the prospect of any expansion of the American colonies to the west seemed very small. The mountains, range beyond range, made a natural barrier to

any extension toward the west. There was very little knowledge of the country beyond the mountains which would induce anyone to make the journey, and there still remained in the east vast stretches of unused lands, enough apparently, to support all the emigrants and their children for many generations. The difficulties of the journey over the mountains or down the rivers were very great, and there were dangers in the wilderness and from the Indians. The land was believed to be held by powerful Indian tribes, hostile to the British, who would dispute any encroachments on their hunting grounds. More important than this, the French, the hereditary enemies of the British and therefore of the colonists, laid claim to the valley and would resist any attempt which the British might make to settle there; but these and other excellent reasons did not appeal to the settlers. There was the restless desire to improve their condition which made men hope that better fortune would come to them in the land beyond the mountains; and so, in spite of danger and difficulty, the westward movement of population began and continued until it filled the valley with growing cities and prosperous States. It did not stop, until, having passed the valley and the highlands beyond, it reached the Pacific. Like the pioneer everywhere, the man who, with his family and meagre household goods, made the weary journey over the mountains or floated his flatboat down the Ohio into the disputed lands, did not understand the importance of the work he was doing. Nor do we yet know, but we are beginning to understand that it was a preparation by which the little strip of Atlantic colonies was to become a world power in which certain Anglo-Saxon ideas of equality and liberty were to have their fairer trial under more favorable circumstances than they possibly could under any Old World conditions, or if hemmed in by the mountains which would make them a strip of Atlantic seaboard States.

Who owned this land beyond the mountains? According to the early English colonial charters it belonged to the king,

and he granted it to the colonists in a very generous way. Many of the charters were given with the Pacific as the western boundary, on the supposition that the Pacific was but a short distance to the west of the sources of the rivers flowing into the Atlantic. The French claimed this territory because they had been the early explorers, and their trading posts, scattered here and there through the vast wilderness hundreds of miles apart, seemed to give them a right to the country. They did not claim the exclusive right, because they wished to keep it a wilderness and use it as a wide hunting ground in which the Frenchman and Indian would live together like brothers. Their little settlements were, at best, trading posts, and their attention to agriculture was so slight that there seemed to the Indians no danger that they would ever drive out the old owners or interfere with them seriously. While there were these different claims, many of them very shadowy, it became evident that the nation strong enough to hold the land would be the one whose claim would finally be made good; and this is true in spite of Indian treaties or purchases from the natives. Much of the land first settled by the whites was land to which no Indian tribe had a claim, but was the common hunting and fighting ground for several tribes. This is notably true of the "Dark and Bloody Ground" where the British settled in the valleys of Kentucky and Tennessee Rivers.

In a condition of this kind the real ownership and right of settlement had to be determined by other principles than those of primitive ownership. There was no justice in allowing a few Indians to use Kentucky and Tennessee as a fighting ground when the surplus population of the world needed it for its cornfields. There was no abstract justice in closing some millions of acres of the best farming lands in the world to all settlers in order that a few French fur traders might be undisturbed in the use of it. It was theirs if they could properly use it, but they could not and showed no disposition to attempt to do so. So it came into the hands of the British, because as a people they could

2

make good use of it. The Frenchman had no inherent right to the valley because he had discovered it. Neither had the Briton a right to it by his sea to sea charter. Legally, the British gained it by conquest and treaty. Morally it was theirs, because they, of all people of the world, could make the best use of it. But the French were the only settlers in the Mississippi valley at the beginning of the movement from the Atlantic seaboard toward the West. There were, however, very few French settlements; some were among the Illinois Indians and others on the lower courses of Mississippi River, but over the rest of the great valley there were only here and there the huts or camps of the fur trader and adventurer, and probably no more of these than of those of the British who were trading with the Indians. Roosevelt estimates the number of French in the settlements in 1775 as only four thousand. This estimate does not include the scattered traders who were with the various Indian tribes. The settlements in the Illinois country were due to the work of the Jesuits, who established mission stations designed to form centres for their work with the Indians. Many of these stations were only transitory; others, because of their favorable locations, became permanent settlements. Kaskaskia was one of these because of its location near the Mississippi. It was within reach of the traffic up and down the river and so became a fur trading centre. It was a prosperous village in 1705, and by 1721 contained a Jesuit college and monastery. Under French control it became a little city of two or three thousand population, but at the beginning of the Revolution it had not more than five hundred inhabitants. Another important early settlement was Cahokia, situated a short distance below the present city of St. Louis. It was built in 1699 upon the bank of the Mississippi, but changes in the current of the river left it a mile and a half inland in the course of three years.

In the Illinois country in 1750 there were some half dozen settlements on or near Mississippi River. Farther to

the east, on the Wabash, there was another centre for settlement in the trading post St. Vincent, though this did not become a permanent town till 1734. These small, widely scattered settlements could hardly be considered strong enough to hold the Mississippi valley by right of possession. Vast stretches of country which now form populous States were entirely unoccupied except by the Indians. There was not a French settlement between the Great Lakes and the Illinois country. These French settlements were self-reliant communities, made so by their isolation. The settlers came hundreds of miles from their old home in Canada and were compelled to depend upon their own resources. They received news of the outside world only through the trappers and traders who made infrequent visits to them. Unlike the later pioneers who came over the mountains, the French liked to settle in compact villages, with the houses so near together that the people could talk with each other from their doors. When the emigrant from the Atlantic coast crossed the mountains, he settled as far as he could in safety from his nearest neighbor and only lived near his fellow pioneer when danger from the Indians made it necessary. He wished to be a great landholder and settle in the midst of his untamed acres which were to be for him and his children a prosperous farm. But the Frenchman did not care to hold much land, because he was, first of all, a trader or hunter, and agriculture had only a secondary interest for him. He was interested in retaining the forests as they were, the undisturbed home of the fur-bearing animals. Farthest from the centre of the village was the expanse of forest and prairie of hundreds or perhaps thousands of acres which could not be held in private ownership. This was the common pasture land of the village and the source from which each man might gather the fuel he needed and the timber for making or repairing his dwelling. Nearer the village was the common field enclosed by a fence, in which sections for cultivation were assigned to the different heads of families according to the needs of each or his taste and ability as a farmer. The