Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 63 



sessed unquestioned social and political headship 

 and were the military leaders; although of course 

 they did not have anything like such marked pre- 

 eminence of position as in Quebec or New Orleans, 

 where the conditions were more like those obtaining 

 in the Old World. There was very little education. 

 The common people were rarely versed in the mys- 

 teries of reading and writing, and even the wives 

 of the gentry were often only able to make their 

 marks instead of signing their names. 30 



The little villages in which they dwelt were 

 pretty places, 31 with wide, shaded streets. The 

 houses lay far apart, often a couple of hundred feet 

 from one another. They were built of heavy hewn 

 timbers; those of the better sort were furnished 

 with broad verandas, and contained large, low- 

 ceilinged rooms, the high mantel-pieces and the 

 moldings of the doors and windows being made 

 of curiously carved wood. Each village was de- 

 fended by a palisaded fort and block-houses, and 

 was occasionally itself surrounded by a high wooden 

 stockade. The inhabitants were extravagantly fond 



30 See the lists of signatures in the State Department 

 MSS., also Mason's Kaskaskia Parish Records and Law's 

 Vincennes. As an example ; the wife of the Chevalier Vin- 

 senne (who gave his name to Vincennes, and afterward fell in 

 the battle where the Chickasaws routed the Northern French 

 and their Indian allies), was only able to make her mark. 



Clark in his letters several times mentions the "gentry," 

 in terms that imply their standing above the rest of the 

 people. 



31 State Department MSS., No. 150, Vol. III., p. 89. 



