torical sketch of early Vincennes, made this mistake by misinterpreting the letter of November 9, 1712, written by Father Marest, then stationed at Kaskaskia, in which he said: "The French, having lately established a fort on the River Wabash, demanded a missionary, and Father Mermet was sent them.”* That this letter referred to the Ohio, instead of the Wabash river, will be demonstrated. This statement of Law conflicts with the claim of the authors claiming 1702 as the time that a missionary first came to this point with Juchereau. If one had come in 1702, why the request of Marest to send a missionary in 1712, when it is said Mermet came here? From the fact that up to the middle of the eighteenth century the Wabash river was regarded as the main stream and the Ohio as its tributary, much confusion follows in describing localities. In alluding to this matter of locations of Juchereau's posts, established in 1702 (at the mouth of the Ohio river), Dunn says: "It is unquestionable. Its complete history is preserved in contemporary official documents. It was abandoned three years after it was established and existed only as a landmark.”+ The Mascoutens and the Prairie Indians, having been gathered about the fort of Juchereau, Father Mermet was sent to them at the instance of Charlevoix by Father Marest, who was in charge of the mission at Kaskaskia. He immediately engaged in the work of spreading the Gospel among the Indians. The following is Father Mermet's statement of his labors: "The way I took was to confound, in the presence of the whole tribe, the Char Law's Hist. Vincennes, p. 12. † Dunn Ind. Mag. West. Hist., Vol. XII, p. 579. Magazine of Amer. Hist., XXII, p. 143. latan, whose Manitou or Great Spirit which he worshipped was a buffalo. After leading him insensibly to the avowal that it was not a buffalo that he worshipped, but the Manitou or Spirit which animated all buffaloes, which heals the sick and has all power, I asked him if all other beasts, the bear, for instance, and which some of his nation worshipped, was not equally inhabited by a 'Manitou,' which was under the earth?" "Without doubt," said the grand medicine chief. "If this is so," said the missionary, "men ought to have a Manitou who inhabits them." "Nothing more certain," said the medicine man. "Then, ought not that to convince you," said the Father, pushing his argument, "that reasonable? For, if man upon you are not very the earth is master of all animals, if he kills them, if he eats them, does it not follow that the Manitou which inhabits him must necessarily have a mastery over all other Manitous? Why, then, do you not make him, instead of the Manitou of the buffalo and bear, your Manitou when you are sick?" "This reasoning," says the Father, "disconcerted the Charlatan," but, like other good logic in the world, I am sorry to add, in his own words, this was all the effect it produced.* While Father Mermet was at this post, established at the mouth of the Ohio river, "a pestilential malady soon. broke out among the Indians who were settled around it, and, notwithstanding the kind offices of the missionary, they died in great numbers. With the hope of arresting the progress of the fatal epidemic, the Indians determined to make a great sacrifice of dogs. Forty of these animals, innocent as they were of the epidemic, to satisfy their *Dillon's Hist. Ind., pp. 21, 22. suspicious Manitou, were immolated and carried on poles in solemn procession around the fort. But as their orgies were of no avail, the Indians soon moved away from the place of mortality. Mermet retired to the village of Kaskaskia and Sieur Juchereau abandoned the sickly post.' 99% This account of the labors of Father Mermet with the Mascoutens, given by himself, corresponds with what Father Charlevoix said in relation to the former's labors with the Mascoutens at the mouth of the Ohio, at Sieur Juchereau's post, who made a trip down the Mississippi from Kaskaskia in 1721. He said: "The labors among the Mascoutens met with little success. The Sieur Juchereau, a Canadian, had begun a post at the mouth of the Ohio, which emptied into the Mississippi, constituting the shorter and most convenient communication between Canada and Louisiana, and a great many of the Indians had settled here. To retain them he had persuaded Father Mermet, one of the Illinois missionaries, to endeavor to gain them for Christ, but the missionary found an indocile tribe, exceedingly superstitious, and despotically ruled by medicine men."+ The testimony given by this distinguished and wellinformed Father, independent of any other authenticated evidence, ought to be considered enough to give a quietus to the misstatements in relation to the alleged settlement that Sieur Juchereau established a mission or builded a fort on the site of Vincennes in 1702. In ascertaining the time when Vincennes was founded. the confusion existing in relation to the names of the two 21-22. Charlevoix Letter, Ed. VI, 333, Charlevoix III-30; Dillon's Hist. Ind., pp. p. 133. rivers referred to also obtains as to the words, "St. Vin cent" and "Vincennes," the first being the name of an individual and the second being only a title inherited from the Bissot family. * * * The fief of Vincennes was established in 1672. The Sieur de Vincennes, who died in 1719, was Jean Baptiste Bissot, the son of the first holder of the fief. Louisa Bissot (daughter) married Seraphim Morgane de la Valtrie, and her son Francois Morgane (he dropped the e final in writing his name) was the founder of Post VinSieur de Vincennes must not be confounded with the members of the St. Vincent family, of whom there were two or three in the French service in the Northwest.* cennes. * .* * Jean Baptiste Bissot, Sieur de Vincennes, died about the year 1717 and his nephew, Pierre (Francois) Morgan, son of Louisa Bissot, who obtained an ensign's commission in 1799, assumed the style of Sieur de Vincennes, and retained much of his uncle's influence in the West. He was sent to the present Indiana to control the Miamis. He erected a post known as Ouiatenon, and about 1735 another on the Wabash, which took his name-Vincennes.t It will be observed that the date, 1717, in the foregoing differs by two years from all other writers as to the timeof the death of Jean Baptiste Bissot, and differs as to the time Vincennes founded the post that took his name, making it 1735, when Vincennes' letters from this place, known to exist, are dated as early as March, 1733, and from the tenor of them he must have been at the post at least as *Dunn Hist. Ind., p. 49. † Shea, "The Hoosier State," in the Catholic News, September 10, 1890. early as 1732, as he speaks of the fort and buildings hav ing lately been erected by himself. Roy, in Memories de la Societie Royal du C. Canada, Section 1, 1892, p. 39, has this to say: "Jean Baptiste adopted the military service as a profession and illustrated the name Bissot de Vincennes. He was the founder of the Post Ouiatenon. In 1736 he died, burned by the Chicachas (Chickasaws). The name of the capital of Indiana, Vincennes, is borrowed from that officer."* This statement is in contradiction of almost all writers on the subject. Jean Baptiste Bissot died at the Miami's post in 1719, and was not burned at the stake in Louisiana, but his nephew, Francois Morgan, Sieur de Vincennes, did suffer so in 1736 in company with his commander, Diron de Artaguette, Father Senat and other prisoners captured in battle by the Chickasaw Indians. Having discredited the claim that this site was occupied by Europeans in 1702 by the testimony of Law's History, page 15, where he said: "Records of the Catholic Church here make no mention of a missionary until the year 1749, when Father Meurin came here," and having the testimony of divers authorities that Sieur Juchereau erected his fort at the mouth of the Ohio river, instead of the Vincennes site, and that the Missionary Mermet's labors were at the mouth of the Ohio river, I will try to show the time when the Indian village Che-pe-ko-ke was first occupied by Europeans. The Chronological History of the United States says: "1732-Vincennes founds Vincennes, the first European settlement in Indiana."+ Taking this statement as the Edmund Mallet, Ind. H. Soc., p. 56. † Robert James Belford, in the N. Y. World's Chro. Hist. U. S., p. 60. |