Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 57 



cultivator. 17 The arpent, as used by the western 

 French, was a rather rough measure of surface, 

 less in size than an acre. 18 The farms held by pri- 

 vate ownership likewise ran back in long strips from 

 a narrow front that usually lay along some stream. 19 

 Several of them generally lay parallel to one an- 

 other, each including something like a hundred 

 acres, but occasionally much exceeding this amount. 

 The French inhabitants were in very many cases 

 not of pure blood. The early settlements had been 

 made by men only, by soldiers, traders, and trap- 

 pers, who took Indian wives. They were not tram- 

 meled by the queer pride which makes a man of 

 English stock unwilling to make a red-skinned 

 woman his wife, though anxious enough to make 

 her his concubine. Their children were baptized 

 in the little parish churches by the black-robed 

 priests, and grew up holding the same position in 

 the community as was held by their fellows both of 

 whose parents were white. But, in addition to those 

 free citizens, the richer inhabitants owned both red 

 and black slaves; negroes imported from Africa, 

 or Indians overcome and taken in battle. 20 There 



17 Billon, 91. 



18 An arpent of land was 180 French feet square, MS. copy 

 of Journal of Matthew Clarkson in 1766. In Durrett collec- 

 tion. 



19 American State Papers, Public Lands, I., n. 



20 Fergus Historical Series, No. 12, "Illinois in the i8th 

 Century." Edward G. Mason, Chicago, 1881. A most excel- 

 lent number of an excellent series. The old parish registers 

 of Kaskaskia, going back to 1695, contain some remarkable 

 names of the Indian mothers such as Maria Aramipinchi- 



