252 THE ILLINOIS. [1764. 



were the prevailing currency, and in every village 

 a great portion of the land was held in common. 

 The military commandant, whose station was at 

 Fort Chartres, on the Mississippi, ruled the colony, 

 with a sway absolute as that of the Pacha of 

 Egypt, and judged civil and criminal cases without 

 right of appeal. Yet his power was exercised in 

 a patriarchal spirit, and he usually commanded the 

 respect and confidence of the people. Many years 

 later, when, after the War of the Revolution, the 

 Illinois came under the jurisdiction of the United 

 States, the perplexed inhabitants, totally at a loss 

 to understand the complicated machinery of re- 

 publicanism, begged to be delivered from the 

 intolerable burden of self-government, and to be 

 once more subjected to a military commandant.^ 



The Creole is as unchanging in his nature and 

 habits as the Indian himself. Even at this day, 

 one may see, along the banks of the Mississippi, 

 the same low-browed cottages, with their broad 

 eaves and picturesque verandas, which, a century 

 ago, were clustered around the mission-house at 

 Kaskaskia ; and, entering, one finds the inmate 

 the same lively, story-telling, and pipe-smoking 

 being that his ancestor was before him. Yet, with 

 all his genial traits, the rough world deals hardly 



1 The principal authorities for the above account of the Illinois colony 

 are Hutchins, Topographical Description, 37. Volney, View of the United 

 States, 370. Pitman, Present State of the European Settlements on the Missis- 

 sippi, passim. Law, Address before the Historical Society of Vincennes, 14. 

 Brown, Hist. Illinois, 208. Journal of Captain Harry Gordon, in Appendix 

 to Pownall's Topographical Description. Nicollet, Report on the Hydrograph- 

 ical Basin of the Mississippi, 75. 



