The original French commandants had exercised the power of granting to every person who petitioned as much land as the petitioner chose to ask for, subject to the condition that part of it should be cultivated within a year, under penalty of its reversion to “the king’s demesnes."[15] The English followed the same custom.  A large quantity of land was reserved in the neighborhood of each village for the common use, and a very small quantity for religious purposes.  The common was generally a large patch of enclosed prairie, part of it being cultivated, and the remainder serving as a pasture for the cattle of the inhabitants.[16] The portion of the common set aside for agriculture was divided into strips of one arpent in front by forty in depth, and one or more allotted to each inhabitant according to his skill and industry as a cultivator.[17] The arpent, as used by the western French, was a rather rough measure of surface, less in size than an acre.[18] The farms held by private ownership likewise ran back in long strips from a narrow front that usually lay along some stream.[19] Several of them generally lay parallel to one another, each including something like a hundred acres, but occasionally much exceeding this amount.

The French inhabitants were in very many cases not of pure blood.  The early settlements had been made by men only, by soldiers, traders, and trappers, who took Indian wives.  They were not trammelled by the queer pride which makes a man of English stock unwilling to make a red-skinned woman his wife, though anxious enough to make her his concubine.  Their children were baptized in the little parish churches by the black-robed priests, and grew up holding the same position in the community as was held by their fellows both of whose parents were white.  But, in addition to these free citizens, the richer inhabitants owned both red and black slaves; negroes imported from Africa, or Indians overcome and taken in battle.[20] There were many freedmen and freedwomen of both colors, and in consequence much mixture of blood.

They were tillers of the soil, and some followed, in addition, the trades of blacksmith and carpenter.  Very many of them were trappers or fur traders.  Their money was composed of furs and peltries, rated at a fixed price per pound;[21] none other was used unless expressly so stated in the contract.  Like the French of Europe, their unit of value was the livre, nearly equivalent to the modern franc.  They were not very industrious, nor very thrifty husbandmen.  Their farming implements were rude, their methods of cultivation simple and primitive, and they themselves were often lazy and improvident.  Near their town they had great orchards of gnarled apple-trees, planted by their forefathers when they came from France, and old pear-trees, of a kind unknown to the Americans; but their fields often lay untilled, while the owners lolled in the sunshine smoking their pipes.  In consequence they were sometimes brought to sore distress for food, being obliged to pluck their corn while it was still green.[22]