He reached Vincennes safely, and after deploring the vices and disorders that prevailed, tells of his touching reception. "However on my arrival, all crowded down to the banks of the River Wabash to receive me; some fell on their knees, unable to speak; others could speak only in sobs; some cried out: 'Father, save us, we are almost in hell'; others said: God has not then yet abandoned us, for He has sent you to us to make us do penance for our sins.' 'Oh, sir, why did you not come a month sooner, my poor wife, my dear father, my dear mother, my poor child would not have died without the sacraments." "1 Father Meurin attests the good which his younger associate accomplished and joined him in urging the Bishop to send a resident priest to the Wabash.2

Very Rev. Mr. Gibault spent two months at Vincennes, laboring earnestly to revive religion in the people, and found a Presbyterian family settled there, who asked to be instructed and received into the true fold. Animated by his zeal, the people began to rebuild the church, which he made a very neat wooden structure of considerable height. The priest's house was a large one with a fine orchard, a garden and farming lands attached. He wished to make it comfortable for the expected priest. The Catholics in the district were estimated at seven or eight hundred, eighty being farmers cultivating the soil.'

Having reanimated the faith at Vincennes, the active

'Letters of Vicar-General for the Illinois and Tamarois, May 3, 1768. 'Archevêché de Quebec," C. 249. Very Rev. P. Gibault to Bp. Briand, June 15, 1769. In this letter he notes that Pontiac had been killed by a Peoria at Cahokia, two months before.

2 Same to same, June 15, 1770.

3 Very Rev. Mr. Gibault to Bp. Briand, June 15, 1770. "Registre de Vincennes."

FATHER MEURIN.

129

priest set out for Kaskaskia, escorted by a guard of twenty men. When he got back to his residence he found the Spaniards in possession of the western shore of the Mississippi, but that they had come unattended by a priest. He therefore continued his missionary visits to St. Genevieve and St. Louis, and in 1770 proposed to the Bishop to extend his labors to Peoria, St. Joseph, Michilimackinac, the Miamis, and Weas. But the failing health and memory of Father Meurin made it impossible to leave him alone to attend the Illinois missions, and on the withdrawal of the English troops the acts of Indian violence became fearfully frequent. Thrice did Rev. Mr. Gibault fall into their hands, escaping with life only on his promising not to reveal their presence in the neighborhood. Amid all these trials and labors he sank into discouragement, and implored the Bishop to send him to some other mission, or at least to allow him to go and make a retreat where he might recover a true ecclesiastical spirit.

At last in 1772 he was able to announce that the Capuchin Father Valentine had reached St. Louis as its parish priest, and the next year Father Hilary of the same order took up his residence at old Saint Genevieve. These priests were sent by Father Dagobert, the Superior of the Capuchins at New Orleans, who acted in utter disregard of the Bishop of Quebec.'

In 1774 Father Meurin received from New Orleans the news that a brief of Clement XIV. had been published extinguishing the Society of Jesus. He had for years been without a provincial or local superior; he now threw himself on the charity of Bishop Briand. "Free, I would beseech and

1 Doherty, "Address," p. 6; Rozier, "Address," p. 11. Very Rev. Mr. Gibault to Bishop Briand, June 20, 1772. The Catholics in English Illinois at this time asked the Bishop to retrench some of the holidays, Monday and Tuesday after Easter and Pentecost. Ib.

beg your charitable goodness to be a father to me, and admit absolutely among the number of your clergy, instead of an auxiliary as I have been since February 1, 1742. I should deem myself happy, if, in the little of life left me, I could repair the cowardice and negligence of which I have been guilty in the space of thirty-three years. If you will adopt I am sure you will pardon me and ask mercy for me." In the whole Mississippi Valley the Brief of the Suppression affected only this one lone Jesuit, laboring manfully to keep religion alive in the Western wilds.

me,

In 1775 Rev. Mr. Gibault visited Canada. Then returning to his laborious post, he reached Michilimackinac in September; but waited in vain till November for any opportunity of proceeding further. As he could not winter there or reach the Illinois country, he returned at great risk to Detroit, steering the canoe which was paddled by a man and boy who had never before made the trip. In constant peril from the ice and with great suffering, he at last arrived at Detroit. "The suffering I have undergone between Michilimackinac and this place," he wrote, " has so deadened my faculties that I only half feel my chagrin at being unable to proceed to the Illinois. I shall do my best not to be useless at Detroit, and to relieve the two venerable old priests who attend it." 1

When it was ascertained that Canada would be permitted to retain its clergy and religious institutions, many Acadians and persons who had emigrated to France embarked for that province. This recalled some who, under the first impulse, had crossed to the west bank of the Mississippi, and prevented the total removal of the population.

'Letter to Bishop Briand, December 4, 1775.

"New York Journal," October 23, 1766; "New York Mercury," February 2, 1767.

CHAPTER III.

THE QUEBEC ACT AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE ENGLISH COLONIES.

AFTER the Conquest of Canada, the King of England by proclamation established the four governments or provinces, Canada, East and West Florida, and Grenada.

For some unexplained reason, perhaps through mere ignorance, the limits given to Canada were not those of the French province of that name, which included Northern Ohio and Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin: Lower Indiana, including Vincennes and most of Illinois, having been subject to Louisiana, as we have seen. England, however, took them as part of Canada, yet the southern line of the new English government of Canada, as fixed by the royal proclamation of 1763, was a line from Lake Nipissing to Lake Champlain.

Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Virginia all laid claim to the territory northwest of the Ohio under their charters, but the English government did not for a moment recognize the shadowy claims of the seaboard colonies to territory which their people had never been able to reach, much less to occupy, and with which, even at this time, there was no direct communication or trade. The people in the unorganized territory were governed from New York by the British Commander-in-Chief, through officers appointed by him. The people had neither French nor English law, but were at the caprice of petty military tyrants.' A pamphlet

1 Detroit before 1775 was not governed by any system whatever, and

emanating from the French in Illinois in 1772, while stating that they had hitherto derived little benefit from their dependence on the English king, expresses the belief that had government fully understood the position of affairs "they would, doubtless, before this time have granted us a civil government, by means of which we should not have been subjected to the impositions and oppressions of our past tyrants . . . " and we have no doubt that the enjoyment of our religious rights will soon be confirmed to us and the administration of civil government established among us."

It recognized the services of the missionaries, to whom indeed civil order was mainly due. "We have had a long experience of the exemplary piety and virtue of our worthy Fathers Meurin and Gibault," it says, while urging the people to establish a school and pay a schoolmaster in each village. That any forms of civilized life prevailed was due entirely to the few priests and their influence. Lieut.-Gen. Gage, by a proclamation issued April 8, 1772, ordered "all those who have established themselves upon the Ouabache, whether at St. Vincent's or elsewhere, to quit those countries instantly and without delay, and to retire, at their choice, into some one of the colonies of his Majesty." The people of Vincennes, who were thus threatened with wholesale eviction, sent to General Gage a protest claiming, with some exaggeration indeed, that they had been settled there for seventy years, and that they held their lands under grants made by the order and under the protection of his most Christian

the commanding general and his subordinates could do as they chose." Campbell, "Outline of the Political History of Michigan," Detroit, 1876, p. 134.

Invitation Sérieuse aux Habitants des Illinois," signed "Un Habitant des Kaskaskia," printed apparently in 1772, pp. 13, 15.