332 The Winning of the West 



The memorialists alluded to their explanation 

 of the fact that they had lost all the title-deeds to 

 the land, that is all the old charters granted them, 

 as "ingenuous and candid"; and so it was. The 

 immense importance of having lost all proof of 

 their rights did not strike them. There was an 

 almost pathetic childishness in the request that the 

 United States authorities should accept oral tradi 

 tion in lieu of the testimony of the lost charters, 

 and in the way they dwelt with a kind of humble 

 pride upon their own "submissiveness and docility/' 

 In the same spirit the inhabitants of Vincennes sur 

 rendered their charter, remarking, "Accustomed to 

 mediocrity, we do not wish for wealth but for mere 

 competency." 3 Of course the "submissiveness" and 

 the lightheartedness of the French did not prevent 

 their being also fickle; and their "docility" was 

 varied by fits of violent quarreling with their Ameri 

 can neighbors and among themselves. But the quar 

 rels of the Creoles were those of children, compared 

 with the ferocious feuds of the Americans. 



Sometimes the trouble was of a religious nature. 

 The priest at Vincennes, for instance, bitterly as 

 sailed the priest at Cahokia, because he married a 

 Catholic to a Protestant ; while all the people of the 

 Cahokia church stoutly supported their pastor in 

 what he had done. 4 This Catholic priest was Clark's 

 old friend Gibault. He was suffering from poverty, 



Creoles, and the views which he deemed it for his own ad 

 vantage to have expressed. 

 8 Do., July 26, 1787. * Do., p. 85. 



