ARTHUR C. BOGGESS. Pacific University, Forest Grove, Oregon. September 14, 1907. CHAPTER I. THE COUNTY OF ILLINOIS. An Act for establishing the County of Illinois, and for the more effectual protection and defence thereof, passed both houses of the Virginia legislature on December 9, 1778.(1) The new county was to include the inhabitants of Virginia, north of the Ohio River, but its location was not more definitely prescribed.(2) The words “for the more effectual protection and defence thereof” in the title of the Act were thoroughly appropriate. The Indians were in almost undisputed possession of the land in Illinois, save the inconsiderable holdings of the French. Some grants and sales of large tracts of land had been made. In 1769, John Wilkins, British commandant in Illinois, granted to the trading-firm of Baynton, Wharton and Morgan, a great tract of land lying between the Kaskaskia and the Mississippi rivers. The claim to the land descended to John Edgar, who shared it with John Murray St. Clair, son of Gov. Arthur St. Clair. The claim was filed for 13,986 acres, but was found on survey to contain 23,000 acres, and was confirmed by Gov. St. Clair. At a later examination of titles, this claim was rejected because the grant was made in the first instance counter to the king’s proclamation of 1763, and because the confirmation by Gov. St. Clair was made after his authority ceased and was not signed by the Secretary of the Northwest Territory.(3) In 1773, William Murray and others, subsequently known as the Illinois Land Company, bought two large tracts of land in Illinois from the Illinois Indians. In 1775, a great tract lying on both sides of the Wabash was similarly purchased by what later became the Wabash Land Company. The purchase of the Illinois Company was made in the presence, but without the sanction, of the British officers, and Gen. Thomas Gage had the Indians re-convened and the validity of the purchase expressly denied. These large grants were illegal, and the Indians were not in consequence disposessed of them.(4) Thus far, the Indians of the region had been undisturbed by white occupation. British landholders were few and the French clearings were too small to affect the hunting-grounds. French and British alike were interested in the fur trade. A French town was more suited to be the center of an Indian community than to become a point on its periphery, for here the Indians came for religious instruction, provisions, fire-arms, and fire-water. The Illinois Indian of 1778 had been degraded rather than elevated by his contact with the whites. The observation made by an acute French woman of large experience, although made at another time and place, was applicable here. She said that it was much easier for a Frenchman to learn to live like an Indian than for an Indian to learn to live like a Frenchman.(5)