Page:History of Southeast Missouri 1912 Volume 1.djvu/152

 92 HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST JIISSOURI equally as well as badly, about an acre of corn, and they all found time to smoke their pipes and give balls and entertainments. How often have I heard them regretting those happy days, when they swam in grease, and when abundance of every description was the cause of waste and extravagance, and the stores of fish from their dragnets gave them whiskey at four or five reaux (bit of 121,2) a gallon, and flour at four or five dollars a barrel, maintained and kept up these fes- tivals and pleasures, which only came to an end when their purses were exhausted. ilr. Forcher, a young man who. during his command of the post, never neglected his work or business for amusements, yet found time to be at them all, and often was the first to start them, but M. Portell was not so soci- able in this respect. He found fault with this giddiness and folly, and judged that a col- ony, peopled by such individuals, could not attain a very brilliant success. At last, game in these parts becoming scarcer, the Indians removed themselves fur- ther off. and were seldom here; the traders knew very well where to find them, but the inhabitants waited for them in vain; then grease, suet, meat and peltries being no longer brought by the Indians, it was only a few resident hunters and the traders them- selves who provisioned the village : the un- fortunate habit of not working had gained the day, it was too difficult to overcome it, so great distress was often seen in the coun- try before they could snatch a few green ears of corn from a badl.v cultivated field. Three or four Americans, at most, as far back as 1793. bad risqued the settlement of farms on large tracts of land. The Creoles under- valued them, did not eat their fill of dry corn bread, and smoked their pipes quietly. They were, however, surprised to see that, with sev- eral cows, they often had not a drop of milk, while these three or four Americans gorged themselves with it, and sold them butter, cheese, eggs, chickens, etc. By dint of looking into the matter, and waiting in vain for the Indians to supply them with provisions, it struck them that the most prudent thing they could do would be to become farmers. It became, then, a species of epidemic, and the malady spreading from one to another, there was not a single one of them but who. without energy, spirit, animals or ploughs, and furnished only with his pipe and steel, must needs possess a farm. It was towards the close of the year 1793 that this disease spread itself, and towards the spring of 179-1 all the lands in the vicin- ity of New Madrid wei'e to be broken up and torn into rags, to be seeded and watered by the sweat of these new farmers. Who can tell how far this newly awakened entliusiasm might have been carried? It might have pro- duced a salutary crisis, and self-love and ne- cessity combined, we should be supplied with farmers at all hazards, and whose apprentice- ship might, perhaps, have resulted in some success. An unlooked for occurrence calmed this etfervescence ; all were enrolled into a militia to be paid from January 1. 1794, and they found it uuich ]ileasanter to eat tlie King's bread, receive his pay, and smoke his pipes, than to laboriously grub some patches of land to make it produce some corn and po- tatoes. These militiamen were disbanded about the middle of 1794; their pay was al- ready wasted. They found it a great hard- ship to be no longer furnished with bread by the King, the largest portion of them had neglected their planting, they found them- selves at the year's end in want, and clam- ored as thieves against the King, saying it