sometimes confused with the village of that name, had been planted in 1720 contemporaneously with Fort Chartres in Illinois.

The first ruler over Indiana was that same Morgane (Sieur de Vincennes) who perished at the stake in 1736,- at the close of a battle between the English and Chickasaws on the one side and the French on the other,- exhorting his comrades, D'Artaguiette and fifteen others lashed with him, to die worthy of their religion and their country. Louis St. Ange succeeded, and commanded until 1764 in peaceful prosperity, a prudent, generous, philanthropic, unlettered man. He was transferred to Chartres, then "the best appointed fortress in America," and there in 1765 was written the instrument of formal transfer of the territory to English rule.

Photo by Taber.

assumed the office of ruler. He freed his slaves, discreetly declared that he died a bachelor, provided for those dependent upon him, and thus prepared, the second ruler of Indiana died December 27, 1774. His bones repose beneath the stony streets of St. Louis, where the beat of a commerce that he helped to make possible times an endless requiem to his memory.

The first white men in Indiana were

the coureurs des bois, those wild adventurers of pretentious families, who went out to explore because too proud to labor and too rebellious

to to obey.

This Canadian

young manhood

was at first of sad morals, but its succession was more creditable. The pioneer coureurs were guilty of about all crimes known to codes, but they were no worse than their English contemporaries, and if conscience is but the mistress of manners and accepted customs, they had nothing with which to reproach themselves. But the later brood was better. Romantic, poetic, daring, generous, adventurous, thriftless, roystering spirits, level with their times and environment, we forgive them their sins of commission, for the service they did unseen ideals and a dimly discerned independence, that even in that early time was making way, and the paths which these messengers of the woods were unconsciously clearing

Three years later the English commander established in Indiana the first court of law west of the Alleghanies, but the British did not take possession of Vincennes until some time after. The old capital of Indiana and Illinois, Fort Chartres, fell before the assault of the Mississippi in 1765. A few stones alone. bear witness to its one time importance in the scheme of Western civilization.

St. Ange on the surrender to the English went to St. Louis, took service under the Spanish, and for a time

To soldiers Indiana owes her first permanent settlements, and they planted well, albeit they were the offscourings of France. But removal to the wilds of the West, severe discipline, restricted opportunities for evil doing, and the inspiring companionship of nature, untouched by the arts of man, supplemented in time by English occupation and the introduction of British severity and sturdiness, worked out of such beginnings a population that does not shame Indiana. They gave it a class of rugged builders, chivalrous if lazy, loving if listless, romantic if improvident, graceful if careless, poetic of temperament and fearless in bearing. At Vincennes as elsewhere in the territory, they planted the first orchards of the West and grew those rich fruits whose juicy blood still gives reputation to much of Indiana's fruit. They ran the wooden plow through the generous soil of the river bottoms, with deer sinew

stretching from their cattle's horns, in lieu of traces. They cultivated rice, corn, wheat, and tobacco; they toiled, when they cared to, at skilled trades with rude implements; they rode upon soft buffalo robes in the quaint old calèche to visit their mistresses or transfer their produce; they kept all fête days, held their Mardi Gras, kissed the peachy cheeks of their hostesses modestly turned to them on holidays, sipped the thick wine of their own expressing, and by rude lights at night played billiards upon Parisian tables.

"Think of it," exclaims Dunn, "billiards upon the Wabash in those days! and what a time they must have had getting them there." And how they must have sorrowed when the English Hamilton came blustering and ruthlessly

1 One is preserved in the National Museum at Washington.

2A fair custom the English destroyed by seeking to transfer it to the lips. Dunn.

Photo by Taber.

turned out their wines and mercilessly burned their tables.

They were the same easy-going people at Kekionga (Fort Wayne), Post Ouiatanon, eighteen miles below the mouth of the Tippecanoe (Tuppeekhanna, or Big Spring River). Half French, half Indian in dress, customs, and behavior, and wholly picturesque, these early Indianians got more enjoyment and keen pleasure out of life in the wilds, than any

who have come after them. It is to their discredit that they held slaves; to their credit that no slavery was ever milder; none under which the slave, Indian or negro, had less cause for complaint, or master more reason to be satisfied with his methods. They made the savage mad with fire-water, despite the protests of the chiefs; but they were no more blameworthy than the English. They had the King's license to enslave the red.

ferson honored and Washington commended, was the victim of the ingratitude of a nation. That Colonel Vigo should totter to a pauper's grave, and yet die rich in honest claims for his fortune poured into the nation's lap in the hour of her greatest need, was sad enough,- the chief honor done him was to name after him a county of the State when it entered. the Union. He and faithful Father Gibault, the priest who gave his all for us, who won over the people of Vincennes to America in July, 1778, and who was cheated and deceived by our government as a reward, that these and the other early Indianians, who gave and died unrecompensed, should have been so cruelly neglected, is a shame not much softened by the fact that a hundred years later tardy justice was done and a few of the claims paid to their heirs.'

With the beginning of the passing of the French settlers came George Rogers Clark, the heroic Virginian, whose valor won for him the title, "The Hannibal of the West." He wrenched Indiana from British grasp, and in campaigns that for heroism, endurance, and unflagging loyalty, have no parallel in American annals, he established the independence of the Virginian possession of Indiana. The field of his greater achievements was Indiana soil; to no other hero of his time does the State owe so much. That he

should have felt the steel of ingratitude; that even Virginia should have so illrecompensed him; that he should have been driven by cruel injustice to intoxication, poverty, and an ignoble death, will forever remain a blot upon the national honor. While Americans applaud Clark for teaching British generals the penalty of hanging up purses for the scalps of Indiana Pioneers, let them cover their faces in shame that the man whom Jef

The period that next most attracts attention is that involving the great discussion, and campaign for the adoption of the ordinance of 1787, whereby Indiana and all the territory north of the Ohio was irrevocably dedicated to freedom. No page in our poliitical history possesses greater interest than the story of the adoption of that famous compact, and the record of the

The authorities are all one way. Government haggled and whimpered even after its own courts had decided against it. It never had any real defense. The record is one of shame and humiliation, and suggests the hope that never will it be paralleled.

decisions that followed it, concerning the rights of the early Indianians to their slaves under the guarantees of the Virginia cession, which decisions culminated in the famous Dred Scott case. A sketch of this remarkable passage in Indiana's career must be omitted here and I must pass, too, the formation of the Northwest Territory, the cessions of the Indian tribes of Indiania, the sufferings of the early settlers, the wrongs of the French pio

neers, the development of the laws, the incoming of varieties of people, the gradual elimination of French systems and civilization for the more robust and provident methods of the Americans, the his

tory of the territory under General Harrison, who was the first Territorial Delegate Congress honored with the chairmanship of a committee, and the efforts three times made to carry Indiana back to slavery, born of a sentiment that

Photo by Hodson.

bash, the repository of all legislative, judicial, and executive functions. From that time is dated the decline of the French influence in Indiana. The incoming Americans were sober, serious, concerned for gain; the old French were careless of tomorrow, vivacious, improvident, and gay. The two elements would not mix, much less amalgamate. Under the sharp competition that set up in industry and agriculture the French were

found an echo as late as 1861, when sections in the extreme lower part of the State sympathized with the cause of the Southern Confederacy.

Methodical government did not displace arbitrary rule over the Northwest Territory until 1778. But it did not operate upon the French settlements of Indiana until nearly three years later, during which time the redoubtable Major Hamtramck was the autocrat of the Wa

government, they sank to a condition that they considered that of the downtrodden and oppressed. In truth, it was but the result of the operation of natural law, which decrees the survival of the fittest, and makes dominant at the last the race that has the capacity to prevail.

The beginnings of this decadency were prior to the governorship of General Harrison over the territory; it was a ripe condition when on the fourth day