St. Clair and Wayne 329 



tomahawk claims on the west bank of the upper 

 Ohio. They lived in angry terror of the Indians, 

 and they also had cause to dread the regular army ; 

 for wherever the troops discovered their cabins, 

 they tore them down, destroyed the improvements, 

 and drove off the sullen and threatening squatters. 

 As the tide of settlement increased in the neighbor 

 ing country these trespassers on the Indian lands 

 and on the national domain became more numerous. 

 Many were driven off, again and again; but here 

 and there one kept his foothold. It was these 

 scattered few successful ones who were the first 

 permanent settlers in the present State of Ohio, 

 coming in about the same time that the forts of 

 the regular troops were built. They formed no 

 organized society, and their presence was of no 

 importance whatever in the history of the State. 



The American settlers who had come in round 

 the French villages on the Wabash and the Illinois 

 were of more consequence. In 1787 the adult males 

 among these American settlers numbered 240, as 

 against 1,040 French of the same class. 1 They 

 had followed in the track of Clark's victorious 

 march. They had taken up land, sometimes as 

 mere squatters, sometimes under color of title ob 

 tained from the French courts which Clark and 

 Todd had organized under what they conceived to 



1 State Dept. MSS., No. 48, p. 165. Of adult males there 

 were among the French 520 at Vincennes, 191 at Kaskaskia, 

 239 at Cahokia, n at St. Phillippe, and 78 at Prairie du 

 Rocher. The American adult males numbered 103 at Vin 

 cennes and 137 in the Illinois. 



