UNIVERSITY OF PIl-TSBimGH M-m-^sr °f 'Yt^hAwm/* S fiy. LIBRARY •" ^-' -%i 'f1 ••sSiiBi#-Wi ^-.m i:i.^- m^ ^^^^^^^^^^ THE EARLY HISTORY OF ILLINOIS, FROM ITS DISCOVERY BY THE FRENCH, IN 1673, INCLUDING THE NAR- UNTIL ITS CESSION TO GREAT BRITAIN IN 1763. RATIVE OF MARQUETTE'S DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. By SIDNEY BREESE, Late Justice 0/ the Supreme Court of Illinois. WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR BY NIELVILIvE W. KULLER. EDITED BY THOMAS HOYNE, LL. D. CHICAGO: E. B. MYERS & COMPANY, 1884. , 4)aif COf. \ Entered, accordingto Act of Congress, in the year eighteen hundred and eighty-four By EUGENE B. MYERS, for the Estate of Sidney Breese, In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. CONTENTS. Portrait of Sidney Breese, - ... - Frontispiece, Preface by Thomas Hoyne, ... ... in Biographical Memoir by Melville W. Fuller, ... 3 Introduction, 63 Chapter I.— The Jesuit Order in Illinois, 1536 — their His- tory and Organization, 67 Chapter II. — The Jesuit Order in America — their Pilgrim- ages AND Discoveries, - - 72 Chapter III. — Marquette — as a Discoverer of the Missis- sippi (with original map), 78 Chapter IV.— The Mississippi River — The First Voyage DOWN that river 83 Chapter V. — Return up the Mississippi to the Illinois River, 89 Chapter VI. — La Salle and Hennepin (with original map), - 98 Chapter VII. — Father Hennepin, .... loi Chapter VIII. — Illinois Lake and Peoria, - - - - 108 Chapter IX. — Hennepin's Return to Quebec — Starved Rock — Tonty's Return to Green Bay, - - - 117 Chapter X. — La Salle Reaches the Mouth of the Missis- sippi and takes Formal Possession in the Name of France, --. 126 Chapter XI. — La Salle obtains the Patronage of Louis XIV TO Colonize the Mississippi, 133 Chapter XII.— The Foundation of Kaskaskia on the Mis- sissippi, -.,--. 141 Chapter XIII.— The Church, and not a Fort, the Begin- ning OF the Colony in Illinois, 151 Chapter XIV.— Louis XIV, in 1712, grants the Country to Crozat and it is called Louisiana, - - - - -i57 Chapter XV. — Crozat Surrenders his Privileges to Louis XV, 1717 — Law's Mississippi Scheme, - - - - 162 Chapter XVI.— Rise of New Orleans, and the Entre-pot OF Twenty Thousand Miles of Inland Navigation, - 169 — iv Contents. Page. Chapter XVII.— The Royal India Company Surrenders its Privileges to the Crown. April, 1732. — Real Control WITH THE Jesuits. — A New Company Organized, and Illinois made a French Dependency, - - - - 177 Chapter XVIII. — Old Fort Charter and the New Site built in 1744. — War with England, . 189 Chapter XIX..— Peace of Aix La Chapelle, 1748. —Popula- tion OF the Villages. — Indians and French. — Habits of THE People, ...-----. 201 Chapter XX. The Roman Catholic Church.—The Author's Estimate of its Services to the State, - - - - 210 Chapter XXI.— The Mode of Government. — Officers and the Powers they Exercised. — Judgment of Court, etc., 214 Chapter XXII. — Civil Jurisdiction and the Courts. — How Justice was Administered, - - - - - - -217 Chapter XXIII. — Peace of Aix La Chapelle Broken.—War between France and England Fatal to the Prosperity OF the French in America, ...... 223 Chapter XXIV.— The Proper Monuments of Marquette and La Salle — the Illinois and Mississippi, .... 232 Appendix, 235 A. — Voyage and Discovery of Father Marquette and Sieur Joliet in North America ; Translated by Sidney Breese, from Mons. Thevenot's Collection OF Voyages, Published at Paris, 1682, ' Discovery OF some Countries and Nations of North America," 235 B. — Letters-patent Granted by the King of France to Le Sieur de La Salle, on the i2th of May, 1678, 271 C. — Petition of Chevalier de Tonty to Count Pont- chartrain. Minister of Marine, .... 273 D — The Letters-patent Granted by the King of France TO M. Crozat, - - 276 E. — Petition of Inhabitants of Kaskaskia to the Pro- vincial Commandant and Judge of the Country of Illinois, - . 286 F.— Confirmation of Commons under which the Inhab- itants of Kaskaskia held their Claims, - - 294 G.— Form of Application for a Grant of Land, - - 297 H.— Description of Fort Chartre by Captain Philip Pitman of the H. M. Royal Engineers, as it was IN 1765, WHEN he saw IT, ..".-- 300 Cofttents. V Appendix {Contimied) : Page. Origin of the Pacific Railroad (with the map suppressed in Congress), 303 Sidney Breese, deceased : Eulogies of his Associates on THE Bench and at the Bar, .... 367 Resolutions, 368 K. Edsall, Attorney-General, .... 371 J. Thomas Hoyne, 374 Isaac N. Arnold, 389 Robert Hervey, 395 John D. Caton, 399 Scott, Justice 403 Walker, Justice 417 Adjournment of Court, 422 PREFACE. The late Hon. Sidney Breese died on the evening of June 27, 1878. He had resided in the State since the year 1S18, when IlHnois was admitted by Congress into the American Union. Upon his first entrance into the State he located himself at Kaskaskia, the then capital, and found an office to pursue his professional studies with the late Hon. Elias K. Kane, to whom, as his early in- structor and friend, he afterward dedicated, in 1 831, the volume of Breese's Reports, the first volume of law re- ports ever compiled in this State, and the first book ever printed in Illinois. From that day until the day he died he was in active professional, judicial and political, employment. His pub- lic life from its commencement was contemporary with that of the State. As United States Attorney, as a Mem- ber of the General Assembly of the State, as a Senator of the United States, as a Circuit and Supreme Court Judge, of which latter court he filled the office of Chief Justice at three several periods, he had been in the public service of the State for a period of nearly sixty years at the time he died. Judge Breese did not live to accumulate a large prop- erty. His whole time was too exclusively absorbed in viii Preface. his public duties. He was distinguished by his close application to his literary and professional labors. At Carlisle, in Clinton county, where he so long lived, he owned a modest homestead — a house and furniture, with two or three small farms in the immediate vicinity. His last will and testament, written by himself, covered but a single page of legal cap paper. After desiring his funeral expenses to be confined within the most reasonable limits, and his debts to be paid, he gave, to his friends Thomas Hoyne, Melville W. Fuller and Henry S. Monroe, his library of law and miscellaneous books to be sold and the proceeds thereof to be given to his wife or invested for her use. After which the will leaves her all his estate, real and personal, of every kind and description. It was hoped by nearly all who had known Judge Breese and his high literary culture, together with his large opportunities to obtain information, his intimate knowledge of the early settlement of the State, his long experience, and his mature judicial habits of mind, that he had written up for the generation he was leaving be- hind him some history or sketch of his own times, in- cluding many of the public men with whom he had been so long associated. In this respect, however, his literary executors and the public at large are greatly disappointed. His executors, however, did find among his papers the copy of a historical discourse, delivered before the Gen- eral Assembly of this State, at their request, in December, 1842. It proves to be a most useful and highly interesting narrative of the earliest period of any regular, permanent and civilized community settled in the State. It embodies all of the social and domestic life of Kaskaskia for a period of ninety years, while Illinois was under the juris- diction of the French government. It takes in what the ; Preface. ix author describes as the earliest epoch or cycle of our State history. Beginning with a graphic and historical account of the order of Jesuits in Europe he follows them to the Amer- ican Continent until they are found traversing the un- broken solitudes of the lakes and forests of the West and, he takes in the entire period from the discovery of the Mississippi, in 1673, by Marquette and Joliet until the territory passed under the dominion of Great Britain, in 1763. It is especially interesting to the citizen of this State as it brings before him the daily life, the customs, occupations, opinions and laws of the earliest civilized people who became inhabitants of the territory upon which we live. He leads us with Marquette and Joliet in their first voyage from the Wisconsin river down the Mississippi in 1673, and afterward describes to us the foundation and progress of Kaskaskia. Here was planted what became the first capital of the Illinois territory and also the first capital of the State when she entered the Union. He gives us, as if he had been a personal ob- server, life-like sketches of that primitive French popu- lation who seemed to live in one of the most simple and innocent seasons of the world, a pastoral life under the government of the grandest monarch of France. This narrative and this epoch no other writer has at- tempted. Some writers have, it is true, described the labors and trials of the same missionaries and their mis- sions, followed them to their tragic ends, and described the fearful sacrifices made by them as men who in that age carried the knowledge of Christianity, at the peril of their lives, to savage tribes at every remote distance, but the special history of Illinois as a part of the North-west is not followed. Here the whole field is covered by Judge Breese, as it was for this purpose his narrative was written.