Acres in Acres in Jan. 1, Sept. 30, 1817. 1818. 1818. 1818. Shawneetown 72,384 216,315 $291,429 $637,468 Kaskaskia 90,493 121,052 209,295 406,288 Edwardsville(251) 149,165 121,923 301,701 451,499(252) 312,042 459,290 $802,425 $1,495,255 The percentage of debt showed a marked increase in the first nine months of 1818. There were received in three-quarters of 1817 and 1818, respectively: 1817. 1818. At Shawneetown $32,837 $112,759 At Kaskaskia 41,218 68,975 At Edwardsville 41,426 78,788 During this same period the receipts at Steubenville, Marietta, and Wooster, Ohio, decreased,(253) showing that Illinois was beginning to surpass Ohio as an objective point for emigrants wishing to enter land. The Indian question was interwoven with the land question during the territorial period. In 1809 the Indians relinquished their claim to some small tracts of land lying near the point where the Wabash ceases to be a state boundary line.(254) No more cessions were made until after the war of 1812. Although the population of Illinois increased, during the territorial period, from some eleven thousand to about forty thousand, the increase before the war was slight, and thus it came about that during the war the few whites were kept busy defending themselves from the large and hostile Indian population. So well does the manner of defence in Illinois illustrate the frontier character of the region that a sketch of the same may be given. When, in 1811, the Indians became hostile and murdered a few whites, the condition of the settlers was precarious in the extreme. Today the term city would be almost a favor to a place containing no more inhabitants than were then to be found in the white settlements in Illinois. Moreover, few as were the whites, they were dispersed in a long half-oval extending from a point on the Mississippi near the present Alton southward to the Ohio, and thence up that river and the Wabash to a point considerably north of Vincennes. This fringe of settlement was but a few miles wide in some places, while so sparse was the population near the mouth of the Ohio that the communication between northern and southern Indians was unchecked. Carlyle was regarded as the extreme eastern boundary of settlements to the westward; a fort on Muddy River, near where the old Fort Massac trace crossed the stream, was considered as one of the most exposed situations; and Fort La Motte, on a creek of the same name above Vincennes, was a far northern point. The exposed outside was some hundreds of miles long, and the interior and north were occupied by ten times as many hostile savages as there were whites in the country, the savages being given counsel and ammunition by the British garrisons on the