[Footnote: State
Department MSS., No. 48, "Memorial of the French Inhabitants of Post
Vincennes, Kaskaskia, La Prairie du Rocher, Cahokia, and Village of St.
Philip to Congress." By Bartholemew Tardiveau, agent. New York, February
26, 1788. Tardiveau was a French mercantile adventurer, who had
relations with Gardoqui and the Kentucky separatists, and in a petition
presented by him it is not easy to discriminate between the views that
are really those of the Creoles, and the views which he deemed it for
his own advantage to have expressed.]
The memorialists alluded to their explanation of the fact that they had
lost all the title-deeds to the land, that is all the old charters
granted them, as "ingenuous and candid"; and so it was. The immense
importance of having lost all proof of their rights did not strike them.
There was an almost pathetic childishness in the request that the United
States authorities should accept oral tradition in lieu of the testimony
of the lost charters, and in the way they dwelt with a kind of humble
pride upon their own "submissiveness and docility." In the same spirit
the inhabitants of Vincennes surrendered their charter, remarking
"accustomed to mediocrity, we do not wish for wealth but for mere
competency.
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