8.  “Annals of St. Louis.”  Frederic L. Billon.  St. Louis, 1886.  A valuable book.

9.  In the Haldimand MSS., Series B, vol. 122, p. 2, is a census of Detroit itself, taken in 1773 by Philip Dejean, justice of the peace.  According to this there were 1,367 souls, of whom 85 were slaves; they dwelt in 280 houses, with 157 barns, and owned 1,494 horned cattle, 628 sheep, and 1,067 hogs.  Acre is used as a measure of length; their united farms had a frontage of 512, and went back from 40 to 80.  Some of the people, it is specified, were not enumerated because they were out hunting or trading at the Indian villages.  Besides the slaves, there were 93 servants.

This only refers to the settlers of Detroit proper, and the farms adjoining.  Of the numerous other farms, and the small villages on both sides of the straits, and of the many families and individuals living as traders or trappers with the Indians, I can get no good record.  Perhaps the total population, tributary to Detroit was 2,000.  It may have been over this.  Any attempt to estimate this creole population perforce contains much guess-work.

10.  State Department MSS., No. 150, Vol.  III., p. 89.

11. Do Harmar’s letter.

12.  State Department MSS, No 30, p 453.  Memorial of Francois Carbonneaux, agent for the inhabitants of the Illinois country.  Dec 8, 1784.  “Four hundred families [in the Illinois] exclusive of a like number at Post Vincent” [Vincennes].  Americans had then just begun to come in, but this enumeration did not refer to them.  The population had decreased during the Revolutionary war, so that at its outbreak there were probably altogether a thousand families.  They were very prolific, and four to a family is probably not too great an allowance, even when we consider that in such a community on the frontier there are always plenty of solitary adventurers.  Moreover, there were a number of negro slaves.  Harmar’s letter of Nov. 24, 1787, states the adult males of Kaskaskia and Cahokia at four hundred and forty, not counting those at St. Philip or Prairie du Rocher.  This tallies very well with the preceding.  But of course the number given can only be considered approximately accurate, and a passage in a letter of Lt-Gov Hamilton would indicate that it was considerably smaller.

This letter is to be found in the Haldimand MSS, Series B, Vol. 123, p. 53, it is the ‘brief account’ of his ill-starred expedition against Vincennes.  He says “On taking an account of the Inhabitants at this place [Vincennes], of all ages and sexes we found their number to amount to 621, of this 217 fit to bear arms on the spot, several being absent hunting Buffaloe for their winter provision.”  But elsewhere in the same letter he alludes to the adult arms-bearing men as being three hundred in number, and of course the outlying farms and small tributary villages are not counted in.  This was in December, 1778.  Possibly some families had left for the Spanish possessions after the war broke out, and returned after it was ended.  But as all observers seem to unite in stating that the settlements either stood still or went backwards during the Revolutionary struggle, it is somewhat difficult to reconcile the figures of Hamilton and Carbonneaux.