rendered the American cause and civilization a very great service.

All this time the British were not idle. War-party after war-party was sent against the American border. In 1780 a grand expedition was organized at Detroit and sent to Kentucky, under the command of Captain Bird. But it accomplished nothing commensurate with its magnitude and cost. Great efforts were made to raise a white contingent, but they brought together only some eighty men. Judge Walker finds, among the bills for supplies furnished the British Indian Department, items that plainly reveal the character of Bird's command; viz., 476 dozen scalping-knives, 1,206 pounds of vermilion, 21,663 yards tinsel roll, 301 dozen looking-glasses, 8,200 ear-bobs, etc.

The Northwest had been won by a Virginia army, commanded by a Virginia officer, put in the field at Virginia's expense. Governor Henry had promptly announced the conquest to the Virginia delegates in Congress. He spoke of Detroit as being "at present defended by so inconsiderable a garrison, and so scantily furnished with provisions, for which they must be still more distressed by the loss of supplies from the Illinois, that it might be reduced by any number of men above five hundred," and closed his interesting communication with the words: "Were it possible to secure the St. Lawrence and prevent the English attempts up that river by seizing some post on it, peace with the Indians would seem to be secured." In the same letter he also expressed much gratification at the spirit in which Clark's command had been received by the French settlers. But before Patrick Henry wrote this letter Virginia had welded the last link in her chain of title to the country beyond the Ohio. In October, 1778, her Legislature declared: “All the citizens of the commonwealth of Virginia, who are actually settlers there, or who shall hereafter be settled on the west side of the Ohio,

1

1 Tyler Patrick Henry, 230, 231.

shall be included in the district of Kentucky, which shall be called Illinois County." Nor was this all. Soon after, Governor Henry appointed a lieutenant-commandant for the new county, with full instructions for carrying on the government.' The French settlements remained under Virginia jurisdiction until March, 1784.

Attention should more particularly be drawn to the spirit in which the French settlers beyond the Ohio received the Americans. It is perfectly clear that had they actively taken the side of the British, Clark could never have done his work. The ancient antipathy to the British; a desire to see the work of 1763 apparently undone, although it was only being perfected; the French alliance of 1778, which made them think they were again opposing the old enemy-these, with the intelligent and spirited conduct of the Kaskaskia priest, decided the habitants of the Illinois and the Wabash. In the far North, where the straggling white men were more reckless, and at Detroit, the centre of British influence, the French were more favorably disposed to the British. even at Detroit the British officers complained of the apathy of the Canadians, and the small number of volunteers enrolled in the expeditions there organized confirms the complaints. It is not too much to say that, in the end, the settlements upon which the British so much relied proved a means of their destruction.

But

In future chapters we shall have occasion to refer to these French settlements again. But this is the place to say that the welcome which they gave the Americans did not arrest their fate or retard their decline. The breath of Anglo-American civilization seemed almost as fatal to them as to the Indians themselves. Louisiana and the fur lands continued to draw away their strength; and scarcely a trace of them can be found in Northwestern life to-day. Champlain laid the foundation of the British Province of Quebec; the State of

1 Edwards: History of Illinois, and Life of Ninian Edwards, 5, 7.

Louisiana is the child of the French colony; but the habitants of the Northwest seem as effectually lost in the past as the Mound Builders.

Although the French settlements did not become an element in the civilization of the Northwest, they will always remain an attractive and, in many respects, a pleasing chapter of American history. The story of Northwestern discovery and exploration will long be drawn upon for examples of heroic endurance, high courage, and unyielding devotion. It will long point the moral that sound ideas and practical purposes are as essential to success as zeal and enthusiasm. The French colonies as much surpass the English in poetic elements as the English surpass them in strength and permanence; and the long procession of discoverers, explorers, priests, coureurs des bois, traders, voyageurs, soldiers, and habitants, with its retinue of bedizened savages, will stir the hearts of those who respond to high qualities, and catch the attention of those who have an eye for the picturesque. French life was marked by a good humor, contentment, simplicity, freedom from cankering care and desire for acquisition, hospitality, childlike faith, and sociability that make it very attractive. Cable has touched some of its phases in his Creole pictures. Longfellow idealizes some of its traits, as well as much of its scenery, in "Evangeline." The descriptions written by tourists and United States officers at the time of the Louisiana purchase are more prosaic, but still have many elements of charm. Detroit stood the shock of the American emigration better than any other of the Western posts; and many of the striking features of the old French town remained until they were fixed in enduring colors. Mr. Bela Hubbard's chapters, entitled "French Habitants of the Detroit," are a series of delightful pictures of the "pipe-stem farms," the uncouth ploughs and carryalls, the pony-carts, the races, the apple-orchards, the cider-mills, and ancient pear-trees whose origin no one can explain, the quaint houses, the windmills, the jaunty costumes, the fishing, the language, religion,

manners, and recreations, and the voyageurs, with a few specimens of their songs.'

But while the French life has so thoroughly disappeared from the old Northwest, some of its wilder aspects may still be seen far north in the Great Fur Land. The voyageur, for example, has disappeared from the streams of Michigan and Wisconsin; but he still paddles his canoe on the rivers falling into Hudson's Bay and on the affluents of the Mackenzie. His blood is more mixed, his language more corrupt, and he is more a savage than one hundred years ago; but he still preserves the main features of the type. A traveller who has visited those haunts describes him as merry, light-hearted, obliging, hospitable, and extravagant; when idle, devoted to singing, dancing, gossip, and drinking to intoxication; having vanity as his besetting sin; intensely superstitious; completely under the influence of his priest; devoted to the forms of religion, grossly immoral, often dishonest, and generally untrustworthy; with no sense of duty in his daily life; controlled by passion and caprice, and having little aptitude for continuous labor. "No man will labor more cheerfully and gallantly at the severe toil pertinent to his calling; but those efforts are of short duration, and when they are ended, his chief desire is to do nothing but eat, drink, smoke, and be merry-all of them acts in which he greatly excels."

1 "The labor of the oar," says Mr. Hubbard, "was relieved by songs, to which each stroke kept time, with added vigor. The poet Moore has well caught the spirit of the voyageurs' melodious chant, in his 'Boat-song upon the St. Lawrence.' But to appreciate its wild sweetness, one should listen to the melody as it wings its way over the waters, softened by distance, yet every measured cadence falling distinct upon the ear."-Memorials of a Half Century, 107-154. Robinson: The Great Fur Land, 108, 109.

II

X.

THE UNITED STATES WREST THE NORTHWEST FROM ENGLAND.

THE SECOND TREATY OF PARIS.

On the Fourth of July, 1776, the thirteen British colonies in North America, by their chosen representatives in general congress assembled, solemnly published and declared that they were, and of a right ought to be, free and independent States. By this act they assumed a separate and equal place among the powers of the earth as the United States of America. Less than two years thereafter—that is, on February 6, 1778-the King of France entered into two treaties with the new nation: one of alliance, and one of amity and commerce; the essential and direct end of the first being, as declared in the second article, "to maintain effectually the liberty, sovereignty, and independence absolute and unlimited of the said United States, as well in matters of government as of commerce." Article 5 stipulated that, if the United States should conquer the British in the Northern parts of America, or the Bermuda Islands, those countries or islands. should be confederated with, or be made dependent upon, the said United States. Article 7 stipulated that if His Majesty the King of France should attack any of the islands in the Gulf of Mexico, belonging to Great Britain, or islands near that gulf, such islands should, in case of success, appertain to the Crown of France. In Article 6 the king renounced the possession of the Bermudas, as well as those parts of North