6th Class: Notes on Early Vincennes/Migrations/Post Clark Situation

Additional book about Fr. Gibault is recommended by Gus Stevens:

Donnelly, Joseph P. Pierre Gibault, Missionary, 1737-1802. Chicago: Loyola UP, 1971.

Fr. Gibault was a People’s Priest, Gus said, and very well liked. Hamilton thought Gibault was dangerous and “should be hung.” Gibault was instrumental in George Rogers Clark’s wars, and there is a monument to Gibault in Sainte Genevieve, Missouri.

Local personage named General Washington Johnston. He was not a general but named after George Washington; hence “General” was his real name.

Territorial Period of Vincennes

See a book titled Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (Oxford UP, 1991), by David H. Fischer, discussed major British migrations in America.

Migrations were:

Puritans from New England
Southern England: Lower Coast of America/Virginia
Northern England: Chesapeake Bay/Pennsylvania area
Border/Lowland Scots: 1730s, settled in Uplands/Appalachia/Western Virginia, because the good land was taken. Moved into southern Indiana.

1787: New territory opened up and attracted the Scots-Irish. These were working people who sought a chance to own land. Very egalitarian people: independent, self-sufficient. Suspicious of William Henry Harrison and other upper class people. Became Hoosiers.

Book recommended: Emerging Midwest: Upland Southerners and the Political Culture of the Old Northwest, 1787-1861, by Nicole Etcheson (Indiana UP, 1996).

Post George Rogers Clark Events:

1780: French treated as subservient
1780: French aristocrat showed up: Augustin Mottin de la Balm; mobilized French army to march on Detroit. Little Turtle defeated him and some Vincennes French were killed.
1781: Clark had pulled back to Louisville; things were looking bad in Vincennes.
1783: Treaty of Paris; 10 year Indian War after this, in Kentucky. In Vincennes, people were confused.