The Early History of Illinois, from its discovery by the French, in 1673, until its cession to Great Britain in 1763, including the narrative of Marquette's discovery of the Mississippi. By S. Breese ... With a biographical memoir by Melville W. Fuller. Edited by Thomas Hoyne [With maps and a...

Front matter

THE EARLY HISTORY OF ILLINOIS, FROM ITS DISCOVERY BY THE FRENCH, IN 1673, UNTIL ITS CESSION TO GREAT BRITAIN IN 1763, INCLUDING THE NAR RATIVE OF MARQUETTE'S DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. By SIDNEY BREESE, Late Justice of the Supreme Court 0/ Illinois. WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR BY MELVILLE W. FULLER. EDITED BY THOMAS HOYNE, LL. D. CHICAGO: E. B. MYERS & COMPANY. 1884. Entered^ according to 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, - ... iii Biographical Memoir by Melville W. Fuller, ... 3 Introduction, ._. -63 Chapter I. — The Jesuit Order in Illinois, 1536 — their History and Organization, - 67 Chapter II. — The Jesuit Order in America — their Pilgrimages and Discoveries, ---..---72 Chapter III. — Marquette — as a Discoverer of the Mississippi (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, .... 101 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 Mississippi 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 Mississippi, .--- 141 Chapter XIII. — The Church, and not a Fort, the Beginning of the Colony in Illinois, - - - - - 151 Chapter XIV. — Louis XIV, in 1712, grants the Country to Crozat and it is called Louisiana, ----- 157 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, - Contents.

Page. Chapter XVII.— The Royal India Company Surrenders its Privileges to the Crown.

Preface

. The late Hon. Sidney Breese died on the evening of June 27, 1878. He had resided in the State since the year 18 18, when Illinois 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 Avith the late Hon. Elias K. Kane, to Avhom, as his early in structor and friend, he afterward dedicated, in 1831, the volume of Breese's Reports, the first volume of laAV reports 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 public 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 Avhich 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 Preface. VIII his public duties. He was distinguished by his close application to his literary and professional labors. At Carlisle, in Clinton county, Avhere 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 Avithin 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 Avas hoped by nearly all Avho 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 Avritten up for the generation he Avas 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 folloAvs 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 Ave 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 population 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-Avest is not followed. Here the whole field is covered by Judge Breese, as it was for this purpose his narrative was written. Preface. X He no doubt intended his narrative to be followed, if he did not himself intend to note the progress made in the same locality, after the English obtained possession of the field in 1763. This period, it will be noted, comes close upon the movements of the American colonies in 1 775 and 1 776, when the same territory falls under the j uris diction of the American Union.

In 1778 it will be re membered George Rogers Clarke made his capture of Kaskaskia as the military subordinate of Governor Patrick Henry, who claimed Illinois as a county of the State of Virginia. Among the papers of Judge Breese which furnish the text of his narrative, the editor found a note in which he says : " All who are acquainted with the history of Illinois knoAV that it has several distinct epochs, each with its own peculiarities and marked characteristics. The first com prehends that portion of time when France exercised dominion over it, commencing with its discovery and terminating by the Treaty of Paris, February 10, 1763. Another would be from that time to the capture of the county of Virginia, on the 4th of July, 1778, including its cession by that State to the general government in 1784, and perhaps its organization with the North-west territory in July, 1787, under the celebrated ordinance of that year.

And, another including the period betAveen that time and the erection of Indiana territory in May, 1800 — the erection of Illinois territory in 1809, and finally in 1818 the erection of the State government by its ad mission into the Union in December, 1818." In the part written up by Judge Breese he covers only that first period of ninety years. He has left one hundred and twenty years of periods since elapsed to be covered by those who noAV folloAv him. At the request of the editor, Hon. Melville W. Fuller has revised his admirable address delivered before the Preface. XI State Bar Association of this State at their invitation upon the death of Judge Breese and furnished it for publication in this volume. It is a full review of the life and services of Judge Breese. answering the purposes of a biography which it was supposed at one time the late Mr. James W. Sheahan would be able to prepare for this purpose.

His recent and very generally mourned death has deprived us of such a contribution. Mr. Fuller does his subject full justice. While his labor is of great value, in filling the place which even Judge Breese himself could not fill in this portion of our history on account of his personal agency in the transactions that have been recorded, Mr. Fuller reviews his subject from all points of his character as a great jurist and a great statesman. His long judicial career before and after his six years' service in the United States Senate enabled him to leave nineteen hundred judicial decisions, or opinions, in the volumes of our Law Reports, including the 89th volume. His learning and his eloquence, illustrating, as they never failed to do, the practical axioms of his wisdom, furnish for his fame a monument of his labors which cannot perish.

Let me here cite his own language as respects monuments of the distinguished dead. He says : " Jurisprudence and laAV are more durable than marble or brass ; the lofty column or colossal statue. These crumble and decay, but law and jurisprudence the printing press makes eternal. The rubbish of centuries collects around and obscures other mementos, but the printing press makes its objects eternal." The writer may be pardoned for calling the attention of the reader to one service of Judge Breese in the United States Senate which failed to receive the recognition to Avhich it was entitled from his own State, and Avhich the people of the United States seemed to have forgotten, Preface. when, in 1869, they celebrated with public rejoicings the completion of the Great Pacific railroad. Twenty-three years before, on the 31st day of July, 1846, Senator Breese, as Chairman of the Committee on Public Lands, made to the United States Senate the first report ever made upon the subject.

Upon a map accom panying it were delineated the lines of the route after ward adopted. A portion of this report is given in the appendix and will repay the reading. Many will be surprised to learn that a report contain ing such a mass of facts and figures, so much useful knowledge of the histories of China and Japan and the wonderful industry displayed in collecting statistics, upon which the author ventures predictions that have since been verified, was nearly overwhelmed in the Senate by ridicule and incredulity. Senator Benton opposed the printing of the report and succeeded in preventing the ac companying map from being published. St. Louis shows a statue in her board of trade of her great Senator point ing out the way westward to the Pacific as a reAvard for the support he afterward extended to a similar enterprise from his own city.

Senator Breese lived and died in Illi nois, suffering the neglect proverbial in all times of the " Prophets without honor in their own country." Is it not time that Chicago should have a monument of the author of the Pacific road ? Why should not Illinois recognize the fact that the first congressional effort tobuild the Pacific railroad originated with a Senator of her own State? THOMAS HOYNE. NOTE.— Mr. HOYNE completed his editorial labors upon this book on the 25th day of July, 1883, and having left Chicago on the next day for the east to pass his accustomed vacation, met his death through a railroad cas- Preface. XIII ualty on the night of Friday, July 27th, near the village of Carlyon, in the State of New York. Born in the city of New York, in 1817, Mr. Hoyne came to Chicago in 1839, was admitted to the bar in 1839, and pursued the active practice of his profession until so suddenly called away.

He became eminent in his chosen walk in life through his marked intel lectual ability, coupled with the learning and culture, Avhich untiring industry enabled him to attain, but he Avas chiefly remarkable for a sincerity of conviction, and an intrepidity of utterance so unusual, as in them selves to ensure distinction. Of unswerving integrity, the simple honesty of his character was as marked as its fearlessness, and in a just sense he kept himself unspotted from the world, whose corruption he regarded Avith indignant hate. Impetuous in action, his instincts naturally led him in the right direction ; impetuous in speech, his speech was naturally in support of that which was true and honest, and of good report. He acceptably filled the offices of City Clerk, Pro bate Judge, United States District Attorney, United States Marshal, and acting Mayor of the city of Chi cago.

He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Chicago, of the Chicago Astronomi cal Society, of the Chicago Historical Society, the Me chanics' Institute, the Chicago Bar Association, the Citi zens' Association, and the first President of the Board of Directors of the Chicago Public Library. He took a leading part on the Democratic side in advocating the Mexican war ; Avas a member of the Union Defense Committee during the four years of the Civil contest ; and al though never a candidate for office, Avas ahvays fore most in all political, social and business movements. Judge Breese and himself were intimate friends for many years, and the preparation of this volume Avas to him a labor of love. No citizen was more beloved, no citizen more con spicuous in the display of those qualities which render their possessor deservedly eminent.

His death touched every heart Avith a sense of a personal loss, and is mourned as a personal bereavement. BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR. Upon the evening of January 9, 1879, tne following address was read before the Illinois State Bar Association, at Springfield, Illinois, and it is given here as perhaps a sufficiently comprehensive sketch of the life, character and services of Judge Breese, in the absence of a memoir, prepared especially for this volume, which, it Avas hoped until recently, would have been furnished. Illinois was admitted into the Union on the 3d day of December, A. D. 1818. The settled part of the State, according to Governor Ford, extended a little north of Edwardsville and Alton ; south along the Mississippi to the mouth of the Ohio ; east in the direction of Carlyle to the Wabash ; and doAvn the Wabash and the Ohio to the mouth of the last-named river ; there being a very large unsettled Avilderness tract of country within these boundaries, lying between the Kaskaskia river and the Wabash; and between the Kaskaskia and the Ohio, of three days' journey across it.

The population was about forty thousand, scattered through fifteen counties, of which the most populous Avere Madison, Gallatin, and St. Clair. The capital was the village of Kaskaskia, then the largest in the State, and inhabited for the most part by the descendants of those who occupied it when it was the seat of French Empire in this portion of the great valley. The State House was a large rough building of uncut limestone, with gables and roof of unpainted boards and shingles, and dormer win dows, which had been the headquarters of the French military commandant prior to 1763. The revenue due December 1, 1818, was reported by the Auditor at $7,510.44, part of which was in the hands of delinquent collectors, while for another part, the Sheriffs of St. Clair and Gallatin counties had refused to receive the Avarrants ; and Governor Bond advised a temporary loan, Avhich, to the amount of $25,000, was authorized by Act of the Legislature, February 19, 1819.

There was practically no commerce, and all foreign products had been nearly or quite up to this time brought via New Orleans in keel-boats, toAved by ropes and pushed by poles, or Avagoned over the Alleghenies and floated in flat-boats down the Ohio. Slavery existed to some extent, notwithstanding the ordinance of 1787, and was apparently a settled institu tion in half the other States. The pursuits of the people during territorial times had been mainly agricultural, varied by hunting and trapping. Maize was the staple production, but wheat, rye, oats, cotton, tobacco and hemp were also grown, and the vine cultivated ; and the attention of the inhabitants, Avhich had been chiefly devoted to raising a sufficiency for their own consumption, was being directed to the development of the vast agricultural resources of the new State.

On the 24th day of December, 1818, a youth of eighteen years of age, who had come from central New York, by the way of the then village of Buffalo, and thence by boat to Sandusky, stage coach to Marietta, and boat to Shawneetown, arrived at Kaskaskia. He came upon the invitation of Elias Kent Kane, who had been his school companion, and at one time an in mate of his family, and having graduated at Yale College in 1 8 14, had settled at Kaskaskia in 181 5, had been prominent in the convention which framed the State Constitution, and was now the Secretary of State. He lived to see the forty thousand multiply into millions, and the infant commonwealth then struggling into existence, become a mighty empire in the' van and press ing to the leadership in the glorious sisterhood of States. He lived to see the old stone house give place to this magnificent structure ; the feAV thousands of revenue, partly in arrears, expand into as many millions, collected without difficulty ; the necessity of borrowing Avholly obviated ; and the indebtedness incurred in the progress of the State placed in the process of ultimate extinction and already rendered insignificant.

He lived to see vast inland seas whitened Avith the sails of innumerable vessels laden with the products of this most fertile soil, and the country covered Avith a Aveb of iron tracks, along which mighty trains of cars, propelled by steam, conveyed in that form these products to a market. He lived to see the twelve thousand three hundred and ninety-five persons engaged in agriculture, the two hun dred and thirty-three in commerce, and the one thousand and seven in manufactures, as shown by the census of 1820, become three hundred and seventy-six thousand four hundred and forty-one in agriculture, eighty thousand four hundred and twenty-two in commerce, and one hun dred and thirty-three thousand two hundred and twenty one in manufactures, etc., as stated in that of 1870, and to witness the increase of the eight succeeding years.

He lived to see a single city of Illinois, then unknown, and described as late as 1823 in the Gazetteer of that day, a copy of which is in his library, " presented by the author," as " a village of Pike county, situated on Lake Michigan, at the mouth of Chicago creek," containing " twelve or fifteen houses, and about sixty or seventy in habitants," the metropolis of the West, with nearly half a million population. He lived to succeed his old friend Kane in the United States Senate, not quite eight years after the latter's death, which happened December 12, 1835, in the tenth year of his incumbency of that exalted position. He lived to see seventeen stars add their light to the national constellation, the shackles stricken from the limbs of every slave, and Illinois, whose very boundaries had been fixed upon with the view of making her the strong connecting link between the Eastern, Western and South- "ern States, give to the country the administrator of its civil government, and the leader of its embattled hosts, during the war, upon whose issue hung the preservation of the Union.

When he entered Kaskaskia, Marshall, and Story, and Brockholst Livingston were members of the Supreme Court of the United States, Kent was Chancellor, Gibson was entering upon his judicial career, Shaw and Taney were at the Bar, Eldon was on the woolsack, Ellenborough had but just been succeeded by Abbot. He lived to lay deep the foundations of the jurisprudence of his adopted State, to build thereon with the cunning hand of the master, and to knoAv that his name was written with the names of Marshall, and Story, and Kent, and Shaw, and Gibson, and Taney, and Eldon, and Tenterden, high on the roll of those whose fame the world will not " willingly let die.'' In 1756, Sidney Breese, a Welsh gentleman, after some years of service in the Royal Army, settled in NeAV York, became one of the merchant princes of the day, and died June 9, 1767, leaving one son, Samuel, who lived in NeAV Jersey, and whose sons, Arthur and Sidney, were born in that State.

Arthur adopted the law as a profession, and in 1793 settled at Whitestown, in Avhat was then Herkimer, but is now Oneida county, NeAV York ; Whitestown being but a few miles from Utica, and at present forming practically a suburb of that city. He married Catharine, daughter of Henry Livingston of Poughkeepsie, and Sidney Breese, of Illinois, was the second son of this marriage, born July 15, 1800. Catharine Avas the great-granddaughter of Gilbert Liv ingston, whose father, Robert, a descendant of the Lords of Livingston of Scotland, came to America in 1654, inter married with Alida Van Rensselaer, daughter of Philip Schuyler, in 1679, and through the sons of this union be came the ancestor of that family so prominently connected with the States of New York and New Jersey, and whose members have shed such lustre upon the jurisprudence, the diplomacy, and the statesmanship of this country.

Young Breese entered Hamilton College when fourteen years of age, was transferred to Union College in 18 16, and there graduated in 1818, standing third in a class of sixty-four. Among his classmates were Alonzo Potter and George W. Doane, who as Bishops of Pennsylvania and New Jer sey, and men of eminent talents, learning and piety, acquired celebrity ; A. S. Porter, Avhom Mr. Breese subse quently met at Washington, where both were members of the United States Senate, and James A. Bayard, who came to the Senate in 1851 from DelaAvare, having been preceded by his father, and being now succeeded by a son, who represents with uncommon brilliancy the third gener ation of a family in which statesmanship appears to be hereditary. Mr. Breese had commenced reading law before he left New York, and continued his studies in the office of Mr. Kane ; at the same time acting as Assistant Secretary of State ; and it has been stated that " such was his position in the office, and such the frequent necessary intercourse of the counties with the seat of government, that the young clerk personally knew every prominent man in the State."

This assertion might probably always have been made of him, for, notwithstanding the increase in the number of the distinguished citizens of Illinois, accompanying her growth in population, wealth and importance, Judge Breese appears to have had substantially a personal acquaintance with them all. He was admitted to the Bar, being not yet of age, in 1820, and commenced practice in Jackson county, Avhere he regarded his first appearance before a jury as such a failure that he almost resolved to abandon the profession. It may be assumed that this failure was not attributable to any want of knowledge of the laAV, or of the facts of the particular case, but perhaps to a lack of facility in adapt ing himself to the needs of a jury trial at that time, or to a diffidence which has been ascribed to him as a constitutional peculiarity.

It was in December of this year that he removed the archives of the Secretary of State to Vandalia, to Avhich the seat of government had been transferred, in a small road-wagon, having to cut a Avay through the woods at several points. He opened the Secretary's office in a little room in the second story of the then new State House, a plain two-story frame building of rude architecture, set upon a rough stone foundation, and during the entire session of the Legislature, commencing on the first Mon day of the following November, kept it in that apartment. In the appropriation bill for the year 1821 is to be found the item, "To the Secretary of State the sum of twenty-five dollars, for the sum necessarily expended by him in the removal of the books, papers, etc., belonging to his office, from Kaskaskia to Vandalia ; " which pre sents rather a striking contrast with what Ave may con jecture it would cost to make such a transfer at the present time.

In 1 82 1, he resumed the practice of his profession at Kaskaskia, and it was in this year that he was offered, unsolicited, and accepted the office of Postmaster. In September, 1822, he was appointed Circuit Attorney for the Third Judicial Circuit, in place of Thomas Reynolds, who had become Chief Justice, and resigned the Post mastership, but continued for some time to discharge its duties, the letter lists running along into 1823, as pub lished in the Kaskaskia Advocate, being signed " Sidney Breese, acting P. M." The newspapers of that day fully justify the original cause of their existence, the conveyance of intelligence on current events, and, so far as I have had opportunity to examine them, it is evident that the prominence of Mr. Breese was such that complete files would of them selves furnish a sufficient sketch of his career.

Thus we are informed by advertisement, under date " Kaskaskia, Jan. 4, 1823," that " Elias K. Kane and Sidney Breese practice law in copartnership," and in 1824, that this partnership was dissolved " agreeably to its terms," Mr. Kane in the same year being elected to the General Assembly, and by that body transferred to the United States Senate, dying in his second term. Again, in July, 1823, among accounts of celebrations of the anniversary of Independence, is to be found a record of the proceed ings " at the inn of Dr. E. Paine in this village," presided over by General Phillip Fouke, at which was given the fol loAving toast : " By Sidney Breese, Esq. ' Ourselves — We paddle our own canoe, chew our own tobacco, and smoke our own segars," which, I presume, was literally true. In the same summer, the Illinois Intellige?icer notices the trial at a special term of court held at Vandalia, July 29, of an indictment for murder by six distinct wounds by a Spanish knife, in which the prosecution was con ducted by " Sidney Breese, Esq., Cir.

Att'y, " and " Edward Bates, Esq., of St. Louis, and S. McRoberts, Esq.," represented the defendant, who, after an " investigation " of three days, was acquitted in three minutes. In the Advocate of February 24, 1824, a meeting in favor of calling a convention to amend the State Consti tution is noticed, at which "Sidney Breese, Esq., made some pertinent remarks on the important subject before the people," and an elaborate address was adopted, on motion of Mr. Kane. The introduction of slavery is understood to have been involved in the adoption of the call for a convention, but it is quite clear that it was favored for other reasons, many of which are presented in this address, and that the question of slavery Avas discussed largely upon grounds of expediency ; nor does the attitude of leading men in relation to this subject appear to have affected their public standing, as, notwithstanding the convention was voted down, its supporters continued to be placed and retained in office.

In the Advocate of Thursday, September II, 1823, appears this announcement : "Married — On Thursday evening last, by Raphael Widen, Esq., Sidney Breese, Esq., to Miss Eliza, daughter of William Morrison, Esq., all of this place." Mr. Morrison was a wealthy pioneer merchant of Kas kaskia, the descendants of whom and whose family have been honorably conspicuous in the affairs of this State, winning distinction for Illinois and for themselves upon the battle-field, in the halls of State legislation, and in Congress, where one of them to-day maintains high and deserved position with the foremost.* Fourteen children Avere the fruit of this marriage, of whom six are yet living, and she Avho came to him in all her youth and beauty, to be the partner of his joys and sorrows for nearly fifty-five years, yet survives to miss " the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still," but to feel a tender pride in the tributes so universally paid to the greatness of the departed, and sustained by the everlasting arms, which never fail to lift those of a sincere faith into the region of a certain hope.