of broils and quarrels was the liquor trade with the Indians.  The rougher among the new-comers embarked eagerly in this harmful and disreputable business, and the low-class French followed their example.  The commandant, Monsieur J. M. P. Legrace, and the Creole court forbade this trade; a decision which was just and righteous, but excited much indignation, as the other inhabitants believed that the members of the court themselves followed it in secret. [Footnote:  Do., John Filson; MS. Journey of Two Voyages, etc.]

In 1786 the ravages of the Indians grew so serious, and the losses of the Americans near Vincennes became so great, that they abandoned their outlying farms, and came into the town. [Footnote:  Do., Moses Henry to G. R. Clark, June 7, 1786.] Vincennes then consisted of upwards of three hundred houses.  The Americans numbered some sixty families, and had built an American quarter, with a strong blockhouse.  They only ventured out to till their cornfields in bodies of armed men, while the French worked their lands singly and unarmed.

    Indians Attack Americans.

The Indians came freely into the French quarter of the town, and even sold to the inhabitants plunder taken from the Americans; and when complaint of this was made to the Creole magistrates, they paid no heed.  One of the men who suffered at the hands of the savages was a wandering schoolmaster, named John Filson, [Footnote:  Do., John Small to G. R. Clark, June 23, 1786.] the first historian of Kentucky, and the man who took down, and put into his own quaint and absurdly stilted English, Boone’s so-called “autobiography.”  Filson, having drifted west, had travelled up and down the Ohio and Wabash by canoe and boat.  He was much struck with the abundance of game of all kinds which he saw on the northwestern side of the Ohio, and especially by the herds of buffaloes which lay on the sand-bars; his party lived on the flesh of bears, deer, wild turkeys, coons, and water-turtles.  In 1785 the Indians whom he met seemed friendly; but on June 2, 1786, while on the Wabash, his canoe was attacked by the savages, and two of his men were slain.  He himself escaped with difficulty, and reached Vincennes after an exhausting journey, but having kept possession of his “two small trunks.” [Footnote:  Do., Filson’s Journal.]

Two or three weeks after this misadventure of the unlucky historian, a party of twenty-five Americans, under a captain named Daniel Sullivan, [Footnote:  Do., Daniel Sullivan to G. R. Clark, June 23, 1786.  Small’s letter says June 21st.] were attacked while working in their cornfields at Vincennes. [Footnote:  State Dept.  MSS.  Papers Continental Congress, No. 150, vol. ii., Letter of J. M. P. Legrace, “Au General George Roge Clarck a la Chate” (at the Falls-Louisville), July 22, 1786.] They rallied and drove back the Indians, but two of their number were wounded.  One of the wounded fell for a moment into the hands of the Indians and was scalped; and though he afterwards recovered, his companions at the time expected him to die.  They marched back to Vincennes in furious anger, and finding an Indian in the house of a Frenchman, they seized and dragged him to their block-house, where the wife of the scalped man, whose name was Donelly, shot and scalped him.