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Poskoia, in the upper part of the river of that name. This post has been farmed in consideration of a sum of eight thousand francs; the commandant is its farmer, with a fourth interest in its trade. The Indians who trade there are the Cristinaux and the Assiniboëls;. these two tribes form each twelve villages, inhabited respectively by two hundred and fifty men (hommes.) This post produces usually from three to four hundred bundles of furs; we must take into account also fifty to sixty slaves, Rouges or Panis, of Jatihilinine, a nation situated on the Missouri, and which plays the same rôle in America that the negroes do in Europe. This is the only post where this traffic takes place.

The post of La Mer d' Ouest merits special attention for two reasons - the first, that it is the nearest to the establishments of the English at Hudson's Bay, and from which their movements can be watched; the second, that from this post the discovery of the Western Sea may be accomplished; but to make this discovery it will be necessary that the travellers (voyageurs) give up all views of personal interest.

The one who advanced this discovery most was the Sieur de la Veranderie; he went from Fort de la Reine to reach the Missouri. Upon this river he first met the Mandanes or Blancs-Barbus, numbering seven villages surrounded by forts of staked earthworks with a moat; then the Kinongewiniris or Brochets, composing three villages; at the upper part of the river he found the Mahantas, also composing three villages, and along the Missouri in descending it to the discharge of the river Wabiek, or to the Coquille, twenty-three villages of Panis.

To the south-west of this river, and on the two shores of Ouonaradeba, or à la Graisse, are the Hactannes or Gens du Serpent. They extend from the foot of a chain of very high mountains (the Rocky Mountains), which run north, east, and south, and to the south of which is the River Karoskiou or Cerise-Pelée, which is supposed to reach California.

He continued his journey, and found in those vast territories, where the Missouri has its sources opposite to, and about forty leagues from, the Mahantas, the Owilinioek or BeauxHommes, four villages; opposite the Brochets the Macateoualasites or Pieds Noirs (Blackfeet), three villages, of about 100 cabins each; opposite the Mandanes are the Ospekakaerenousques or Gens du Plat Côté, four villages; opposite the Panis are the Gens de l'Arc, named the Atchapcivinioques by the Christinaux, and Utasibaoutchactas by the Assiniboëls, three villages; after these are found the Makesch or Petits Renards, two villages; the 'rivassa or Grands-Parleurs, three villages; the Kakakoschena, or Gens de la Pie, five villages; the Kiskipisounouinini or Gens de la Jarretière, seven villages.

He could not go further on account of the war which was then being waged between the Gens de la Jarretière and the neighbouring nation. I may here observe, that it is perhaps improper to use the term villages as I have done, for all these nations which inhabit the prairies, form like the Tartars, wandering hordes, live by the chase, and dwell in huts covered with skins.

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NEPIGON. Les Népigons, a post established to the north of Lake Superior; the commandant is its farmer, and pays for that privilege about 4,000 francs; it includes the Lake à la Carpe. The Indians who trade at the post are the Saulteux; this tribe, one of the most numerous in these regions, is wandering, plants nothing, and subsists solely by the chase and fishing. The post produces generally every year from eighty to one hundred bundles of fur.

CHAGOAMIGON POINT.--The post of Point de Chagoamigon [La Pointe] (Monsieur de Beaubassin) .. is farmed in consideration of a sum of eight thousand francs, to Sieur de Saint Luc until 1758; there are neither presents nor certificates sent, only the interpretor to be paid. The commandant receives a gratuity of three thousand francs. The Indians who trade at the post are the Saulteux. Generally, the post produces each year about two hundred and fifty bundles.

KAMANISTIGOYA.-The post of Kamanistigoya, or Les Trois Rivières (Monsieur de Repentigny) was farmed to the late M. Cugnet in consideration of a sum of four thousand francs, he having sub farmed the same to M. Toussaint Portier, the Crown has granted him the surplus in order to indemnify him for the loss of the licenses of the Saint Maurice. The King bears no other expense than a gratuity of two thousand francs to the commandant;

there are neither presents nor certificates; the farming of this fort will expire in 1758. The Indians who trade are the Salteux. The fort produces annually from sixty to seventy bundles.

MICHIPICOTON.-A post situated to the north-east, as that of Kamanistiguia is to the north-west, of Lake Superior. The Saulteux trade at this post. It produces from fifty to sixty bundles of furs.

SAULT STE. MARIE.-Fort built with palisades, situated on the strait which unites Lake Superior to Lake Huron, established in 1750. The fur trade was granted gratis to the commandant in order to promote the settlement. The King gives 400 francs of gratuity charged against Michilimakinac, on which this post depends. The Indians who trade there are the Saulteux. The post produces annually one hundred bundles. The Sieur Debonne and the Sieur de Repentigny have obtained its possession by way of a grant, as an hereditary seigniory.

TEMISCAMINGUE.-A post situated on a lake of that name, and farmed in consideration of the sum of 7,000 francs; the Indians call the place where stands the post Aubatswenanek. The tribes that trade there are the Têtes de Boule, or Gens des Terres and the Namcosakio, who come from the shores of Hudson's Bay.

TABITIBI. Is a post dependent upon Temiscamingue, situated at one hundred and twenty leagues from the preceding fort, towards Hudson's Bay; each post may contain one hundred men; they subsist on game and fishing; they sow no grain, and have no village. All this country is mountainous and not at all fertile. The post produces about 120 bundles

of furs.

FUR TRADE AND LICENSES (Congés). In almost every post, the house occupied by the commandant, being surrounded with palisades, is honoured with the name of Fort. People in Canada give this name to public stores, (comptoirs), where the fur trade with the Indians takes place, who, in exchange for their peltries, receive the goods wanted by them. In earlier times these posts were sold by auction, and the traders could obtain their possession, but the Governor-General disposes of them now for his favourites, with the approbation of the Court. The most important are La Mer d'Ouest, La Baye [des Puants], St. Joseph, Nepigon, and Michilimakinac. The post of Detroit is granted to no one; the system of licenses (congés) prevails there.

There are posts where the fur trade goes on for the benefit of the King, such as Toronto, Frontenac, Niagara, Petit Portage, Presqu'Isle, Riviére au Boeuf, Fort Machault, Fort Duquesne. The traffic in these posts is not a profitable one for the King, who always loses

money in this way; he retains it only to preserve the alliance of the Indians; the storekeepers

and the commandants know, however, how to enrich themselves.

We call congé the licenses or permits that are granted by the Governor-General for a canoe laden with six thousand pounds of merchandizes intended to be sold in one of the posts indicated; such a license costs fifty pistoles.

The Governor-General, who is at liberty to give more or less, applies these funds to the maintenance of poor families of officers. Account is given to the King of only twenty-two licenses; the Governor sometimes gives as many as forty; the half of the fifty pistoles goes to the King, and the other half is at the disposal of the Governor for gratuities.

The post of La Baye has given in three years to MM. Rigaud and Marin three hundred and twelve thousand francs, and at the time of M. Marin, the father, who was associated with MM. de la Jonquière and Bigot, it produced more than one hundred and fifty thousand francs per annum, all expenses paid.

TRADING POSTS.

Northern Posts.-1. Themiskaming (no coinmandant there); 2. Michilimakinac ; 3. La Baye; 4. La Mer d'Ouest; 5. Sault Ste. Marie (the seigniory and the exclusive trade are granted in perpetuity to M. Deboune or his heirs); 6. Chagouamigon; 7. Kamanistigouya; 8. Nepigon; 9. Michipicoton (no commandant); 10. St. Joseph; 11. The River of the Illi

nois (no commandant has yet been appointed for that post.) The General sells licenses to the traders in order to allow them to trade with the Indians.

Southern Posts.-La Présentation, Frontenac, Toronto, Niagara, (the small Fort of Niagara,- the Indian trade is for the King's benefit); Detroit (Licenses are sold to the traders.) The Miamis, sixty leagues above Detroit; Ouyatanons, sixty leagues above Miamis, on the Ouabache river; Presque Isle; River au Boeuf; Fort Duquesne; Fort Machault_(the trade is controlled by the King.) Below Quebec there are the posts of Tadoussac and Saguenay, controlled by the King, Anticosty.

Mingan,

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EARLY POPULATION OF THE COUNTRY BETWEEN LAKE MICHIGAN
AND THE MISSISSIPPI.

MICHIGAN COMMISSION ON LAND CLAIMS.

Extract from the letter of instructions to the Agent appointed to receive claims and take evidence concerning land claims at Green Bay and Prairie des Chiens.*

TERRITORY OF MICHIGAN,

Land District of Detroit August 8, 1821.

It is not practicable for the Commissioners to prescribe the period of time which, by your notices, you will assign at Green Bay and Prairie des Chiens respectively, for receiving the evidences of claims and titles. The law requires reasonable notice; what may be deemed reasonable notice must depend upon the number of claimants and the remoteness of their relative situations. You must judge of it.

Though the settlement of Green Bay is spoken of by Charlevoix as early as 1720, yet it is believed the whole number of claimants there cannot exceed one hundred and fifty. The settlement at Prairie des Chiens is supposed to have been some thirty years later, though the number of claimants is believed to be considerably greater; but, in respect to both, it is said the settlements are quite compact. All the traditionary or other information which can be procured by you concerning the origin and history of these settlements would be very desirable, and may be of much use in the ultimate investigation of their land claims.

WM. WOODBRIDGE,
Secretary of Michigan.

PETER AUDRAIN,

Registrar.

J. KEARSLEY,
Receiver.

Commissioners.

ISAAC LEE, ESQ., Agent, etc.

Report of Michigan Commissioners concerning the land titles at Prairie des Chiens, in the
County of Crawford, and Territory of Michigan. (1828.)†

Few difficulties have been met with by the Commissioners in their investigation of these titles; they are not individually intricate. The determination of a few principles of general applicability, has furnished a rule by which they have all been decided, for they rest upon long continued possession.

Notwithstanding the high antiquity which may be claimed for the settlement of Prairie des Chiens, and the very considerable numbers of which it has so long consisted, no one

American State Papers, Vol. V., pp. 306-7.

+ Ibid., pp. 303-5.

perfect title, founded upon French or British grant, legally authenticated, has been successfully made out; comparatively but few deeds of any sort have been exhibited to us. To an American, unacquainted with the astonishing carelessness of the Canadians in respect to whatsoever concerns their land titles, this fact must seem unaccountable. It nevertheless accords with whatever is known in this regard of the French population throughout this country.

It became manifest, therefore, immediately after the Commissioners were possessed of the report of the Agent, that whatever claim the people of Prairie des Chiens might have for a confirmation of their land titles, must be founded upon proof of continued possession since 1796, a basis sufficiently broad to have comprehended perhaps all their claims, but for the changes which have occurred within a few years among them, and the interruptions and occasional evictions from their possessions, consequent upon the establishment there, since the late war, of bodies of American troops.

Such interruptions and evictions, though frequent since the period alluded to, seem never, among the French population, to have excited a spirit of resistance, but to have been submitted to in silence. Since their ancestors were cut off, by the treaty which gave the Canadas to the English, from all intercourse with their parent country, the people, both of Green Bay and Frairie des Chiens, have been left, until within a few years, quite isolated, almost without any government but their own. And although the present population of these settlements are natives of the countries which they inhabit, and consequently are by birth citizens of the United States, yet, until within a few years, they have had, apparently, as little political connection with its Government as their ancestors had with that of the British. Ignorance of their civil rights, carelessness of their land titles, docility, habitual hospitality, cheerful submission to the requisitions of any Government which may be set over them, are their universal characteristics. With those who know them, their quiet surrender of their fields and houses upon the demand of those who came ostensibly clothed with authority, would constitute no evidence of the illegality of their titles, or of the weakness of their claims.

A few additional remarks, in conclusion, might seem sufficient to satisfy the requisition of the law, and to explain adequately the grounds of the decisions the Commissioners have made. A circumstance has occurred, however, which seems to call for a more detailed exposition of their views. After the Agent had returned from Green Bay and Prairie des Chiens, and when it seemed too late to obtain rebutting or further testimony, a caveat was filed with the Commissioners, at the instance of the Superintendent of Indian trade, by John W. Johnson, Esq., Indian Factor, against the claim to Village Lot No. 14, preferred by the American Fur Company. The principles upon which that caveat is founded, and by which it is endeavoured to be supported, apply with equal force to all the other land claims at Prairie des Chiens. The objections against the claim, and the documents adduced in its support, consist in this that the settlement at Prairie des Chiens is of recent origin; that its residents have intruded upon the public lands in violation of the laws of the United States, and that, in truth, the Indian title to the country in question has not been extinguished; objections which, if sustained in one case, must conclude all cases there. Upon a critical examination of this matter, so unexpectedly and so recently presented to them, the Commissioners have not been able to discover anything in the protest of the United States Indian Factor, in the documents he has adduced, or in his own fair and candid statement, which could sanction a doubt as to the propriety of confirming the claim set up by the American Fur Company.

It appears to have been in the spring of 1673 that Père Marquette and Mons. Joliet took their departure from the French establishment at Green Bay, on a voyage of discovery up the Fox River, and down the Wisconsin to the Mississippi. This channel of communication between the great lakes and the Mississippi, from about that period, had attracted a considerable portion of public attention. The French voyageurs continued afterwards generally to take that route; their Indian traders most usually did; and it is the same channel through which Carver also penetrated into the Mississippi country in 1766.

Although the Commissioners have not, on this head, been able in so short a time, to procure that ample and certain information which is desirable, yet it is believed that not very many years after its first discovery in 1673, by the French, a permanent establishment was made by them at the Prairie des Chiens. Vestiges of an old and a strong French fort are still discernible there, although it is stated to have been destroyed so early as in the first years of the Revolutionary War.

When, in 1805, the late General Pike was on his voyage up the Mississippi, he computed the fixed white population of the place, in the absence of the traders and those connected with them, at 370, and the total number at from 500 to 600. Mr. Schoolcraft, in 1820, estimates the population of the place at 500. No evidence can be obtained from the traditionary history of the country that, at any one period, that settlement has received, by emigration, any sudden and large augmentation in the number of its inhabitants. It has never been characteristic of the French Canadian settlements to increase rapidly, and it is considered a fair inference, from all that can be learned on the subject, that for a long and indefinite time its numbers have been considerable, and increasing only at a tardy pace. This consideration is supposed to be eminently corroborative of the position the Commissioners have assumed, of the antiquity of this settlement.

With what propriety the inhabitants of Prairie des Chiens who were born there, and whose ancestors have for more than a century resided there, may be said to have "taken possession of the public lands in violation of the laws;" how they may be said to be "intruders" who, and whose ancestors through so many political changes, have, with the assent, express or implied, of each successive sovereignty, continued to inhabit the country which gave them birth, it is hard to imagine.

It has been urged against them that their only right in the soil which they occupy consists in the permission accorded them by the Indians to remain there. Surrounded as that settlement always has been, by numerous hordes of ferocious savages, quite well disposed at all times to cause their power to be felt, it may, perhaps, be emphatically said (especially since the power of the French Government here was overthrown), that its inhabitants have occupied their lands "by permission of the Indians." Left with none to defend them, they must have accommodated themselves to their humours; it has from necessity resulted that they have been compelled to submit to their commands, and, however reluctantly, to subserve, perhaps often, their vindictive views. But it is not considered that anything in their history, in such respects, detracts from the force of their present claims.

The Commissioners have not had access to any public archives by which to ascertain, with positive certainty, whether either the French or English Government ever effected a formal extinguishment of Indian title at the mouth of the Wisconsin; yet the same observation, with the same truth, may be made in relation to the land now covered by the City of Detroit. It is believed that the French Government particularly, was not accustomed to hold formal treaties for such purposes with the Indians. And when lands have been anciently procured from them, either in virtue of the assumed right of conquest or by purchase, evidence of such acquisition is rather to be sought for in the traditionary history of the country, or in the casual and scanty relations of travellers, than among collections of State papers Tradition does recognise the fact of the extinguishment of the Indian title at Prairie des Chiens by the old French Government before its surrender to the English. And by the same species of testimony, more positive because more recent, it is established also that, in the year 1781, Patrick Sinclair, Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of Upper Canada, while the English Government obtained over this country, made a formal purchase from the Indians of the lands comprehending the settlement of Prairie des Chiens.

In Pike's Journal allusion is made to the last-mentioned purchase (Pike's Journal, appendix to part I. page 47). The agent also took down some testimony concerning the same facts, which may be found in the subjoined abstracts.

Whatever purchases, may thus have been made by the French or British authorities, have since been sanctioned by the Treaty of St. Louis, holden June 3, 1816; and by another treaty (see Acts of 2nd Session of the 14th Congress, pp. 307-309), concluded also at St. Louis, on the 24th of August, of the same year. It is provided (Art. 2) that the United States relinquish to the tribes with whom that treaty was holden, a certain tract of country lying north of a west line from the south bend of Lake Michigan, "excepting out of said relinquishment a tract of three leagues spare at the mouth of the Wisconsin, including both banks," &c.; thus giving additional sanction to the allegation of a previous acquisition of the country comprehending the Prairie des Chiens settlement. For it will not escape observation, upon a reference to the Treaty of November 3, 1804 (U. S. Laws, vol. I. p. 428), that the last mentioned treaty does not contain a cession of the tract thus excepted by the United States from their relinquishment. The real object of the clause alluded to in the

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