The French missionaries and fur-traders found their way from Canada into these parts at an early day; and in 1667 Robert de la Salle made his celebrated explorations, in which he took possession of the territory of Illinois in behalf of the French crown.  And here we may remark, that the relations of the Jesuits and early explorers give a delightful picture of the native inhabitants of the prairies.  Compared with their savage neighbors, the Illini seem to have been a favored people.  The climate was mild, and the soil so fertile as to afford liberal returns even to their rude husbandry; the rivers and lakes abounded in fish and fowl; the groves swarmed with deer and turkeys,—­bustards the French called them, after the large gallinaceous bird which they remembered on the plains of Normandy; and the vast expanse of the prairies was blackened by herds of wild cattle, or buffaloes.  The influence of this fair and fertile land seems to have been felt by its inhabitants.  They came to meet Father Marquette, offering the calumet, brilliant with many-colored plumes, with the gracious greeting,—­“How beautiful is the sun, O Frenchman, when thou comest to us!  Thou shalt enter in peace all our dwellings.”  A very different reception from that offered by the stern savages of Jamestown and Plymouth to John Smith and Miles Standish!  So, in peace and plenty, remained for many years this paradise in the prairies.

About the year 1700, Illinois was included in Louisiana, and came under the sway of Louis XIV., who, in 1712, presented to Anthony Crozat the whole territory of Louisiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin,—­a truly royal gift!

The fortunate recipient, however, having spent vast sums upon the territory without any returns, surrendered his grant to the crown a few years afterwards; and a trading company, called the Company of the Indies, was got up by the famous John Law, on the basis of these lands.  The history of that earliest of Western land-speculations is too well known to need repetition; suffice it to say, that it was conducted upon a scale of magnificence in comparison with which our modern imitations in 1836 and 1856 were feeble indeed.  A monument of it stood not many years ago upon the banks of the Mississippi, in the ruins of Fort Chartres, which was built by Law when at the height of his fortune, at a cost of several millions of livres, and which toppled over into the river in a recent inundation.

In 1759 the French power in North America was broken forever by Wolfe, upon the Plains of Abraham; and in 1763, by the Treaty of Paris, all the French possessions upon this continent were ceded to England, and the territory of the Illinois became part of the British empire.

Pontiac, the famous Ottawa chief, after fighting bravely on the French side through the war, refused to be transferred with the territory; he repaired to Illinois, where he was killed by a Peoria Indian.  His tribe, the Ottawas, with their allies, the Pottawattomies and Chippewas, in revenge, made war upon the Peorias and their confederates, the Kaskaskias and Cahoklas, in which contest these latter tribes were nearly exterminated.