enlarging its scope, soon absorbed the French East India Company, under the general title of the 'Company of the Indies.' It extended its capital to 624,000 shares of 550 livres each, and engaged itself to lend the King 1,600,000,000 livres at three per cent. An extraordinary fever of stock gambling had been gradually excited by these financial efforts, and the result was that the shares of the company rose to thirty-five or forty times their original value. Great extravagance resulted. Land near Paris rose to the value of 100 years' purchase, and most objects of commerce in the same proportion. But the constant decrease of specie in France, and the constant issue of Government notes, which by May, 1720, had reached the sum of 1,925,000,000 livres, soon undermined the company. A crash. came, the shares sank in value, and Law, from the position of the Comptroller-General of Finances, became a fugitive. It seems, however, to be well established that he was a sincere believer in his own scheme, and that he acted honestly, and with a lively desire to promote the public welfare. He laid by no money, and when he left France took with him only 800 louis d'or. He finally died in great poverty in Venice."

1718.

The city of New Orleans founded by Bienville.

1719.

The following is copied from Hale's History: "M. Dutisne, a French officer, was sent from New Orleans, in 1719, by Bienville, the Governor, into the territory west of the Mississippi. He visited the village of the Osage Indians, five miles from the Osage river, at eighty leagues above its mouth. Thence he crossed to the northwest, one hundred and twenty miles, over prairies abounding in buffalo, to the villages of the Panionkees or Pawnees. Here were two villages, of about one hundred and thirty cabins, and two hundred and fifty warriors each, who owned nearly three hundred horses. They were not civilized, he says, but readily accessible on receiving a few presents. Fifteen days more westward marching brought him to the Padoucahs, a very brave and warlike nation. Here he erected a cross, with the arms of the King, September 27th, 1719. In his report of his expedition, he gives the details which we have quoted, and notices the salines and masses of rock salt found to this day in the region he travelled over. He found the Osages at the spot which they still occupy. If his measurements were exact, his first Pawnee or Panionkee village was near the mouth of Republican Fork. Fifteen days' westward travel must have been up the valley of one of the forks of the Kanzas river; but the name of the Padoucah Indians is now lost. From the time he reached the Osage villages, Dutisne was exploring the territory of Kanzas."

Dutisne was the first Frenchman who trod this soil. His line of travel in Kansas, coming in along the Osage, was probably through the counties of Linn, Miami, Franklin, Osage, Lyon, Morris, Davis, and then west some two hundred miles. On this supposition he crossed Coronado's route near Fort Riley, thus making that point the junction of the great trails made by the Spanish and French explorers.

1720.

A Spanish force, from New Mexico, ravages an Indian village in Kansas, and is cut to pieces by the Indians.

1723.

The seat of government removed to New Orleans.

1724.

The Pawnee Indians visited by Bourgmont. They inhabit the country on the river Platte, and their hunting ground extends as far south as the Arkansas.

1732.

The Mississippi Company, for 1,450,000 livres, surrender their charter to the Government. Thus the "Mississippi bubble" burst. The Company had held possession of Louisiana for fourteen years, and left it with a population of 5,000 whites, and 2,500 blacks.

1755.

Ste. Genevieve, Mo., settled by the French.

1760.

The English defeat the French in Canada, and complete the conquest of that country. Louisiana alone remains to France.

176 2.

NOVEMBER 3.-France cedes Louisiana to Spain. On the same day, all the region east of the Mississippi, except the island of New Orleans, was yielded, by the treaty of Fontainebleau, to England, by France. The navigation of the Mississippi was to be free to both parties. The sovereignty. of the eastern half of North America, from Hudson's Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, is vested in the British crown.--Louisiana contains about ten thousand inhabitants.-M. D'Abbadie, Director-General of Louisiana, grants to a company of merchants, of whom Pierre Laclede Liguest was the leader, the exclusive right of trade with the Indians on the Missouri.

1763.

FEBRUARY 10.—Definitive treaty of peace and friendship, similar to the preliminary articles of November 3, 1762.

France cedes Canada and Nova Scotia, or Acadia, to Great Britain. The boundary between the British and French territories "shall be fixed irrevocably by a line drawn along the middle of the river Mississippi from its source to the river Iberville, and from thence by a line drawn along the middle of this river, and the lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain, to the sea." The nineteenth article provides for the restoration of Cuba to Spain. In consequence of this stipulated restitution, Florida and all Spanish possessions east of the Mississippi are ceded to England.

OCTOBER 7.-Proclamation of the King of Great Britain, erecting the

countries and islands ceded to him by the treaty of February 10 into four Governments, called Quebec, East Florida, West Florida, and Grenada.

1764.

FEBRUARY 15.-Laclede's company establish themselves on the present site of St. Louis. He founds the city, and gives it its name.

APRIL 21.-A letter from Louis XV., King of France, to M. D'Abbadie, in Louisiana, ordering him to deliver up the country and colony of Louisiana to the Governor or officer appointed for that purpose by the King of Spain.

Colonel Bouquet estimates that the Shawnees have 500 fighting men. This tribe of Indians belongs to the Algonquin group, living on the Wabash and other neighboring affluents of the Ohio.

1766.

Don Antonio d'Ulloa, the Spanish Governor, arrives in New Orleans. He was coldly received, and departed in 1767, without having produced his credentials.

1768..

AUGUST 11.-A company of Spanish troops under Captain Rios take possession of St. Louis, in the name of the King of Spain, under whose sway it remained until its transfer to the United States, in 1804. Rios retired early in the summer of 1769.

1769.

JULY 28.-Don Alexander O'Reilly, Captain-General, lands at New Orleans, and the dominion of Spain begins in Louisiana.-Pontiac, the Ottawa chief, visits St. Louis. He was killed soon afterwards at Cohokia, and his remains buried in St. Louis.

1770.

Lieutenant Governor Piernas arrives in St. Louis and extends the Spanish authority over Upper Louisiana.

1780.

Early in this year, Benjamin Franklin, in Paris, writes to John Jay, at Madrid, respecting the value to the United States of the Mississippi river. He says: "Poor as we are, yet, as I know we shall be rich, I would rather agree with the Spaniards to buy at a great price the whole of their right on the Mississippi than sell a drop of its waters. A neighbor might as well ask me to sell my street door."

1782.

NOVEMBER 30.- Provisional articles of peace negotiated at Paris between Great Britain and the United States. Boundaries of the United States defined. The navigation of the Mississippi shall forever remain

free and open to the subjects of Great Britain and the citizens of the United States.

The western and southern boundary line is declared to be the middle of the Mississippi river from as far north as the Lake of the Woods and south to the thirty-first degree of north latitude.

1783.

SEPTEMBER 3.- Definitive treaty of peace negotiated at Paris between the United States of America and His Britannic Majesty. The independence of the United States acknowledged. Boundaries established.

September 3, 1783, by treaty with Great Britain, the territory of the United States was declared to extend from the Atlantic ocean westward to the Mississippi river, and from a line along the great lakes on the north southward to the thirty-first parallel and the southern border of Georgia.-U. S. Census Report, 1870, Vol. 1, p. 573.

1787.

SEPTEMBER 17.-The Convention of Delegates, in the State House at Philadelphia, adopt the Constitution of the United States.

1790.

The following is copied from James Parton's Life of Jefferson :

"As Secretary of State, in 1790, when there appeared some danger of Great Britain seizing New Orleans, Jefferson gave it as his official opinion to President Washington, that, rather than see Louisiana and Florida added to the British empire, the United States should brave the risks of joining actively in the general war then supposed to be impending. But, not less averse to the French possessing it, he warned them also, in the same year, to let it alone."

1798.

Population of St. Louis, 925 persons.

1800.

MAY 7.-The Ordinance of 1787, amended in 1789, provided that the legislative power should be vested in the Governor and Judges, who were directed to adopt and publish such laws as they considered necessary. The act of May 7, 1800, creating the Territory of Indiana, conferred the same powers upon its officers as had been exercised by the officers of the Northwestern Territory under the Ordinance of '87.

MAY 9.--John Brown born, at Torrington, Litchfield county, Conn. He was of the sixth generation in regular descent from Peter Brown, one of the Pilgrim Fathers who landed from the Mayflower, at Plymouth, in 1620. His grandfather, John Brown, was a captain in the Revolutionary army and died in the service.

OCTOBER 1.—Treaty concluded at St. Ildefonso, the 9th Vendemiaire, an 9, (1st October, 1800,) between Napoleon, the First Consul of the French Republic, and the King of Spain. By the third article of the treaty, the King of Spain agrees to retrocede to the French Republic "the colony or province of Louisiana, with the same extent that it now has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it." This treaty was con

firmed and enforced by the treaty of Madrid, March 21, 1801. Spain had held Louisiana thirty-seven years-from 1763 to 1800.

1801.

MARCH 29.-A despatch of this date, from Rufus King, American Minister in London, contains an intimation that Spain has ceded Louisiana and Florida to France.

DECEMBER.-Rufus King sends what he believes to be a true copy of one of the treaties making the cession.

1802.

APRIL 18.-Jefferson writes to Livingston that the intimated cession of Louisiana to France

"Completely reverses all the political relations of the United States, and will form a new epoch in our political course. We have ever looked to France as our natural friend-one with whom we could never have an occasion of difference; but there is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three-eighths of our territory must pass to market; and from its fertility it will ere long yield more than half of our whole produce, and contain more than half of our inhabitants. France, placing herself in that door, assumes to us the attitude of defiance. Spain might have retained it quietly for years. Her pacific dispositions, her feeble state, would induce her to increase our facilities there, so that her possession of the place would be hardly felt by us, and it would not, perhaps, be very long before some circumstance might arise which might make the cession of it to us the price of something of more worth to her. Not so can it ever be in the hands of France. The day that France takes possession of New Orleans fixes the sentence which is to restrain her forever within her low-water mark. It seals the union of two nations, who, in conjunction, can maintain exclusive possession of the ocean. From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation. We must turn all our attentions to a maritime force, for which our resources place us on very high ground; and having formed and connected together a power which may render re-enforcement of her settlements here impossible to France, make the first cannon which shall be fired in Europe the signal for tearing up any settlement she may have made, and for holding the two continents of America in sequestration for the common purposes of the united British and American nations." The whole letter was an argument that it was for the interest of both countries for France to cede Louisiana to the United States.

OCTOBER 16.-The Spanish Intendant of Louisiana issues a proclamation interdicting the privilege, secured by the treaty of 1795, of depositing American merchandise in New Orleans. Hildreth says:

"This interruption to their commerce produced a great commotion in the Western country, and led to emphatic remonstrances from the Governor and Legislature of Kentucky, threatening to drive the Administration to a speedy use of force."

It was the disaffection in the Southwest that led Burr to engage in his conspiracy.

-James Pursley the first hunter and trapper to cross the plains to New Mexico.

Greeley says, in the American Conflict:

"In 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul, induced the feeble and decaying Bourbons of Spain, then in close alliance with revolutionary France, to retrocede to her Louisiana, almost without consideration; and the French flag once more waved over delighted New Orleans.”