" [Footnote: _Do_., July 26, 1787.] Of course the
"submissiveness" and the light-heartedness of the French did not prevent
their being also fickle; and their "docility" was varied by fits of
violent quarrelling with their American neighbors and among themselves.
But the quarrels of the Creoles were those of children, compared with
the ferocious feuds of the Americans.
Sometimes the trouble was of a religious nature. The priest at
Vincennes, for instance, bitterly assailed the priest at Cahokia,
because he married a Catholic to a Protestant; while all the people of
the Cahokia church stoutly supported their pastor in what he had done.
[Footnote: _Do_., p. 85.] This Catholic priest was Clark's old friend
Gibault. He was suffering from poverty, due to his loyal friendship to
the Americans; for he had advanced Clark's troops both goods and
peltries, for which he had never received payment. In a petition to
Congress he showed how this failure to repay him had reduced him to
want, and had forced him to sell his two slaves, who otherwise would
have kept and tended him in his old age. [Footnote: American State
Papers, Public Lands, I., Gibault's Memorial, May I, 1790.
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