in point, affecting the Priest Gibault.

29. "History of Vincennes," by Judge John Law, Vincennes, 1858. pp. 18
and 140. They are just such carts as I have seen myself in the valley of
the Red River, and in the big bend of the Missouri, carrying all the
worldly goods of their owners, the French Metis. These Metis,--ex-trappers,
ex-buffalo runners, and small farmers,--are the best representatives of
the old French of the west; they are a little less civilized, they have
somewhat more Indian blood in their veins, but they are substantially the
same people. It may be noted that the herds of buffaloes that during the
last century thronged the plains of what are now the States of Illinois
and Indiana furnished to the French of Kaskaskia and Vincennes their
winter meat; exactly as during the present century the Saskatchewan Metis
lived on the wild herds until they were exterminated.

30. See the lists of signatures in the State Department MSS., also
Mason's Kaskaskia Parish Records and Law's Vincennes. As an example; the
wife of the Chevalier Vinsenne (who gave his name to Vincennes, and
afterwards fell in the battle where the Chickasaws routed the Northern
French and their Indian allies), was only able to make her mark.

Clark in his letters several times mentions the "gentry," in terms
that imply their standing above the rest of the people.

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

32. "Journal of Jean Baptiste Perrault," 1783.

33. "Voyage en Amérique" (1796), General Victor Collot, Paris, 1804, p.
318.