On June 20, 1788, a congressional committee reported that there were about eighty families at Kaskaskia, twelve at Prairie du Rocher, four or five at Fort Chartres and St. Philips, and about fifty at Cahokia, making one hundred and forty-six or one hundred and forty-seven families in these villages.(143) In 1766-7, the same villages, with Vincennes, were supposed to have about two thousand inhabitants(144); and about five years later, 1772, there were some fifteen hundred inhabitants in these villages, not including Vincennes.(145) It is not surprising that the population of the Illinois country decreased from 1765 to 1790. During these years, British and Americans had attempted to impose upon the French settlers a form of government for which they had neither desire nor aptitude. The attempt to immediately transform a subject people was a signal failure, but neither the attempt nor the failure was unique. CHAPTER III. I. The Land and Indian Questions. 1790 to 1809. A proclamation issued by Estevan Miro, Governor and Intendant of the Provinces of Louisiana and Florida in 1789, offered to immigrants a liberal donation of land, graduated according to the number of laborers in the family; freedom of religion and from payment of tithes, although no public worship except Catholic would be allowed; freedom from taxation; and a free market at New Orleans for produce or manufactures. All settlers must swear allegiance to Spain.(146) This proclamation came at a time when the West was divided in opinion as to whether to make war upon Spain for her closure of the Mississippi or to secede from the United States and become a part of Spain.(147) It tended to continue the emigration from the Illinois country to Spanish territory, for public land was not yet for sale in Illinois. To the professional rover, the inability to secure a title to land was the cause of small concern, but the more substantial and desirable the settler, the more concerned was he about the matter. Settlement and improvements were retarded. Before the affairs of the Ohio Company had progressed far enough to permit sales of land to settlers, the little company at Marietta saw, with deep chagrin, thousands of settlers float by on their way to Kentucky, where land could be bought.(148) Squatters in Illinois were constantly expecting that the public lands would soon be offered for sale. The natural result was petitions for the right of preëmption, because without such a right, the settler was in danger of losing whatever improvements he had made. In 1790, James Piggott and forty-five others petitioned for such a right. The petitioners stated that they had settled since 1783 and had suffered much from Indians. They could not cultivate their land except under guard. Seventeen families had no more tillable land than four could tend. The land on which they lived was the property of two individuals.(149) [Illustration: Indian Cessions.]