[110] This man was in reality captured. See Parkman, _Conspiracy of Pontiac_, ii, p. 289, _note_.—ED. [111] The Kickapoos and Mascoutins were allied Algonquian tribes who were first encountered in Wisconsin; but being of roving habits they ranged all the prairie lands between the Wisconsin and Wabash rivers. In 1712, they were about the Maumee and at Detroit. Charlevoix describes them (1721) as living near Chicago. Being concerned in the Fox wars, they fled across the Mississippi; and again, about the middle of the eighteenth century, were with the Miamis on the Wabash, where they had a town near Fort Ouiatonon. They were always somewhat intractable and difficult to restrain. The remnant of these tribes live on reservations in Kansas and Oklahoma.—ED. [112] This branch of the Wabash is now called the Little Wabash River. The party must have taken a very circuitous route, else Croghan greatly overestimates the distances. Vincennes is about seventy-five miles from the point where they were made prisoners.—ED. [113] The date of the founding of Vincennes (Post or Port Vincent) has been varyingly assigned from 1702 to 1735; but Dunn, in his _Indiana_ (Boston and New York, 1888), p. 54, shows quite conclusively that François Margane, Sieur de Vincennes, went thither at the request of Governor Périer of Louisiana in 1727, and founded a fort to counteract the designs of the English against the French trade. The French colony was not begun until 1735, and the next year the commandant Vincennes was captured and burnt by the Chickasaws, while engaged in an expedition against their country. Louis St. Ange succeeded to the position of commandant at Vincennes, which he continued to hold until 1764, when summoned to the Illinois. He left two soldiers in charge at Vincennes, of whom and their companions Croghan gives this unfavorable account. No English officer appeared to take command at Vincennes until 1777; meanwhile General Gage had endeavored to expel the French inhabitants therefrom (1772-73). It is not surprising, therefore, that they received the Americans under George Rogers Clark (1778), with cordiality; or that after Hamilton’s re-capture of the place, they were unwilling to aid the English in maintaining the post against Clark’s surprise (February, 1779), which resulted in the capture of Hamilton and all the British garrison. After this event, Vincennes became part of the Illinois government, until the organization of a Northwest Territory in 1787.—ED. [114] A johannies was a Portuguese coin current in America about this time, worth nearly nine dollars. The Indians, therefore, paid over forty dollars for their pound of vermillion.—ED. [115] The Piankeshaws were a tribe of the Miamis, who had been settled near Vincennes as long as they had been known to the whites.—ED.