These figures show how conspicuously small was the immigration to Illinois. Enough has already been said to show some of the reasons for this sluggish settlement. When, in 1793, Governor St. Clair wrote to Alexander Hamilton, “In compassion to a poor devil banished to another planet, tell me what is doing in yours, if you can snatch a moment from the weighty cares of your office,”206 he doubtless felt that the language was not too strong, and voiced a feeling of loneliness that was common to the settlers. Nor was there a lack of land in the East to make westward movement imperative. Massachusetts was much opposed to her people emigrating to Ohio, because she wished them to settle on her own eastern frontier (Maine), and Vermont and New York had vacant lands.207

One who settled in Illinois at this period came through danger to danger, for Indians lurked in the woods and malaria waited in the lowlands. The journey made by the immigrants was tedious and difficult, and was often rendered dangerous by precipitous and rough hills and swollen streams, if the journey was overland, or by snags, shoals and rapids, if by water. A large proportion of the settlers came from Maryland, Virginia, or the Carolinas. Those from Virginia and Maryland were induced to emigrate by the glowing descriptions of the Illinois country given by the soldiers of George Rogers Clark, and these soldiers sometimes led the first contingent. A typical Virginia settlement in Illinois was that called New [pg 092] Design, located in what is now Monroe county, between Kaskaskia and Cahokia. Founded about 1786 by a native of Berkeley county, the settlement received important additions in 1793, and four years later a party of more than one hundred and fifty arrived from near the headwaters of the south branch of the Potomac, this last contingent led by a Baptist minister, who had organized a church on a previous visit.208 In general, persons Scotch-Irish by birth were opposed to slavery, as were also the members of the Quaker church. This caused a considerable emigration from the Carolinas. Another motive for people from all sections was that expressed by settlers of Illinois, in 1806, when they said that they came west in order to secure “such an establishment in land as they despaired of ever being able to procure in the old settlements.”209 We have seen how long deferred was the fulfillment of their hope of getting a title to the coveted land. Although the East was not crowded, it is true that land there was more expensive than that of the same quality in the West. In 1806, three dollars per acre was the maximum price in even the settled parts of Indiana Territory, while fifty dollars per acre had been paid for choice Kentucky land.210

The greater number of immigrants came by water, but a family too poor to travel thus, or whose starting-point was not near a navigable stream, could come overland. Illinois was favored by having a number of large rivers leading toward it; the Ohio, Kentucky, Cumberland, Tennessee, and their tributaries were much used by emigrants. [pg 093] The chief route by land was the Wilderness Road, over which thousands of the inhabitants of Kentucky had come. Its existence helps to explain the wonderful growth of Kentucky—in 1774 the first cabin, in 1790 a population of 73,000. It crossed the mountains at Cumberland Gap, wound its way by the most convenient course to Crab Orchard, and was early extended to the Falls of the Ohio and later to Vincennes and St. Louis. The legislature of Kentucky provided, in 1795, that the road from Cumberland Gap to Crab Orchard should be made perfectly commodious and passable for wagons carrying a weight of one ton, and appropriated two thousand pounds for the work. Two years later five hundred dollars were appropriated for the repair of the road, and the highway was made a turnpike with prescribed toll, although it did not become such a road as the word turnpike suggests.211

A traveler of 1807 described the river craft of the period. The smallest kind in use was a simple log canoe. This was followed by the pirogue, which was a larger kind of canoe and sufficiently strong and capacious to carry from twelve to fifteen barrels of salt. Skiffs were built of all sizes, from five hundred to twenty thousand pounds burden, and batteaux were the same as the larger skiffs, being indifferently known by either name. Kentucky boats were strong frames of an oblong form, varying in size from twenty to fifty feet in length and from ten to fourteen in breadth, were sided and roofed, and guided by huge oars. New Orleans boats resembled Kentucky boats, but were larger and stronger and had arched roofs. The largest could carry four hundred and fifty barrels of flour. Keel boats were generally built from forty to eighty feet in length and from seven to nine feet in width. The largest [pg 094] required one man to steer and two to row in descending the Ohio, and would carry about one hundred barrels of salt; but to ascend the stream, at least six or eight men were required to make any considerable progress. A barge would carry from four thousand to sixty thousand pounds, and required four men, besides the helmsman, to descend the river, while to return with a load from eight to twelve men were required.212

Shipments of produce from Illinois were usually made in flat-bottomed boats of fifteen tons burden. Such a boat cost about one hundred dollars, the crew of five men was paid one hundred dollars each, the support of the crew was reckoned at one hundred dollars, and insurance at one hundred dollars, thus making a freightage cost of eight hundred dollars for fifteen tons. The boat was either set adrift or sold for the price of firewood at New Orleans. It was estimated that the use of boats of four hundred and fifty tons burden would save four dollars per barrel on shipping flour to New Orleans, where flour had often sold at less than three dollars per barrel, but such boats were not yet used in the West.213 Canoes cost an emigrant from one to three dollars; pirogues, five to twenty dollars; small skiffs, five to ten dollars; large skiffs or batteaux, twenty to fifty dollars; Kentucky and New Orleans boats, one dollar to one and one-half dollars per foot; keel boats, two dollars and a half to three dollars per foot; and barges, four to five dollars per foot.214

Horses, cattle, and household goods were carried on boats. Travel by either land or water was beset with difficulties. The river, without pilot or dredge, had dangers [pg 095] peculiar to itself. Sometimes, when traveling overland, a broken wheel or axle, or a horse lost or stolen by Indians, caused protracted and vexatious delays. It is well to notice, also, that to travel a given distance into the wilderness was more than twice as difficult as to travel one-half that distance, because of the constantly increasing separation between the traveler and what had previously been his base of supplies.215

Sometimes immigrants debarked at Fort Massac and completed their journey by land. Two roads led from Fort Massac, one called the lower road and the other the upper road, the former, practicable only in the dry season and then only for travel on foot or on horseback, was some eighty miles long, while the latter was one hundred and fifty miles long. Roads of a like character connected Kaskaskia and Cahokia.216

A party of more than one hundred and fifty, which came from Virginia to the New Design settlement in 1797, set out from the south branch of the Potomac. They came from Redstone (now Brownsville), on the Monongahela, to Fort Massac, on flat-boats, and then by land, in twenty-one days, to New Design. The summer was wet and hot, a malignant fever broke out among the newcomers, and one-half of them died before winter. The old settlers were not affected by the fever, but they were too few to properly care for so many immigrants.217

Commerce in Illinois was in its infancy. Some cattle, [pg 096] corn, pork, and various other commodities were sent at irregular intervals to New Orleans.218 The fur trade was carried on much as under the French rÉgime. Salt was made at the salt springs on Saline Creek, the labor being performed chiefly by Kentucky and Tennessee slaves under the supervision of contractors who leased the works from the United States. The contractors agreed to sell no salt at the works for more than fifty cents per bushel, but by means of silent partners to whom the entire supply was sold, the price was sometimes raised as high as two dollars per bushel.219 The commerce of the West suffered from a lack of vessels going from New Orleans to Atlantic ports, and as a result corn sold in New Orleans at fifty cents per bushel in 1805, while in some of the Atlantic ports it sold for more than two dollars. At the same time the West had a good crop, and Kentucky alone could have spared five hundred thousand bushels of corn, if it could have been shipped.220

To secure laborers was difficult. A petition of 1796 said that farm laborers could not be secured for less than one dollar per day, exclusive of washing, lodging, and boarding; that every kind of tradesman was paid from one dollar and a half to two dollars per day, and that at these prices laborers were scarce. Labor was cheaper on the Spanish side of the Mississippi, because of the larger proportion of slaves.221 These wages were doubtless high in comparison with those paid in the East, just as the one dollar per day and board paid at the Galena lead mines in [pg 097] 1788 was more than double the wages then paid in New England,222 but an Illinois price list of 1795 shows that the wages of 1796 were by no means comparable to those of today in purchasing power. Making shoes was two dollars per pair; potatoes were one dollar per bushel; brandy, one dollar per quart; corn, one dollar per bushel.223

Among the early difficulties in the way of settlement, one of the most persistent was the presence of prairies. This is by no means far-fetched, although it sounds so to modern ears. In 1786, Monroe wrote to Jefferson concerning the Northwest Territory: “A great part of the territory is miserably poor, especially that near Lakes Michigan and Erie, and that upon the Mississippi and the Illinois consists of extensive plains which have not had, from appearances, and will not have, a single bush on them for ages. The districts, therefore, within which these fall will never contain a sufficient number of inhabitants to entitle them to membership in the confederacy.”224 Some of the most fertile of the Illinois prairies were not settled until far into the nineteenth century. The false prophets of the early days will be judged less harshly if we recall that wood was then a necessity, that no railroads and few roads existed, that wells now in use in prairie regions are much deeper than the early settlers could dig, and that the vast quantities of coal under the surface of Illinois were undiscovered.

As causes for the fact that more than a quarter of a century after the Revolution, Illinois had a population estimated at only eleven thousand, may be suggested the [pg 098] presence of hostile Indians; the inability of settlers to secure a title to their land; the unsettled condition of the slavery question; the great distance from the older portions of the United States and from any market; the fact that Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana had vast quantities of unoccupied land more accessible to emigrants than was Illinois; the danger and the cost of moving; privation incident to a scanty population, such as lack of roads, schools, churches and mills; the existence of large prairies in Illinois. To remove or mitigate these difficulties was still the problem of Illinois settlers. On some of them a beginning had been made before 1809, but none were yet removed.