Note 132 — JOURNAL OF ANDRÉ MICHAUX

The French villages in Illinois resulted from the plans of La Salle; the earliest grew up about Fort St. Louis, on the Illinois River. In 1700, the Kaskaskia tribe of Indians removed to the river bearing their name, the Jesuit missionaries and traders followed, and the village at this place began. The inhabitants were chiefly descendants of the coureurs des bois, intermixed with Indian blood. The Jesuit plantation at Kaskaskia consisted of two hundred and forty arpents of land, well-cultivated and stocked with cattle, containing also a brewery. When the Jesuits were suppressed, the buyer, Beauvais, raised eighty-six thousand weight of flour from a single harvest. The French dominion came to an end in 1765 (see Croghan’s Journals, vol. i of this series). Kaskaskia was captured from the English in 1778 by George Rogers Clark, and the American régime was instituted by John Todd, under appointment from Virginia. See Mason, Chapters from Illinois History (Chicago, 1901), pp. 250-279.—​Ed.