Kentucky. In 1817 he started again for Illinois, but died before he could reach here. The family, however, continued the pilgrimage. They settled in DuQuoin. Two sons, Drs. Octavus and Hiram Pyle, continued their father's practice. A niece, a daughter of William Pyle married Dr. Joseph Bradshaw.

The first commissioner of health in the state of Illinois was a woman named Madame Beaulieu. She was the beginning of a new regime that marked the termination of the reign of priests as medical advisers. She was also the pioneer woman physician in this part of the country. In about 1760 the settlers of Cahokia appointed Mme. Beaulieu, "Director General of Morals and Medical Matters," although she was still a young woman, having been born about 1742. Mme. Beaulieu had the right idea about curtailing venereal infection, as she tried to fight the curse of civilization by inculcating moral measures as a prevention. She was educated in Quebec under the direction of those Nuns who ran a dispensary from which the medical activities radiated to all points of the compass in the country under French rule. She practised obstetrics extensively, and of her the Chronicler of the times writes. "She was doctress in most cases and the Sage Femme General for many years."

A Doctor Annesley who had been appointed in 1766 by the Crown of England to look after the Indians' health has left behind him a bill that shows how the doctors received less remuneration than gunsmiths. In fact, the Indian Department Salaries at forts on the frontier held the wage scale, in pounds sterling of "Commissary, Two hundred pounds," gunsmiths, one hundred pounds, and interpreters and doctors eighty pounds each." This means that a doctor received about $400 per annum.

Dr. G. C. Ostrich of Belleville, Ill., found in early records recently, that a surgeon sued to compel a patient to pay him. three hundred pounds of deerskins for the amputation of a leg. The matter involved a Jean Racette, who had an accident at the home of Charles Gratiot, and Dr. M. Reynal who did the amputation was trying to get his pay from Gratiot, as Racette had gone to Paris. Gratiot said at the time of the accident, Racette happened to be in the house, and was a total stranger to him and disclaimed responsibility for anything but an act of mercy in calling a surgeon. As usual, the doctor was left holding the bag, as the notation giving the finding of the court read, "Since the Court cannot unconditionally condemn M. Charles Gratiot to pay M. Renal, the sum of three hundred pounds of deerskins for the amputation of the leg of Racette, it is decided that it is necessary to await the arrival here again of the named Parisian to whom the accident happened."

During the first quarter of the last century, practically a

century ago, Illinois was beset with banditti and lawless men. A doctor who traveled far and near and early and late and among the highways and byways had more than one chance to take with his neck. The direct road from Vincennes to St. Louis, Mo., had hardly been opened along in 1817 when a band of rogues opened a chain of bogus taverns. The names of the men included a "Gatewood, Rutherford, Grinberry, Cain, Young and Postlewaite." They had a lonesome prairie circuit of about eighty miles. With this crew a Dr. Hill, a Richard L. Mason and two strangers from Kentucky had a thrilling experience. The outlaws thought nothing of murder, counterfeiting and general all around wickedness.

Dr. Hill and his party were compelled to put up at one of these taverns, and not liking the first that was known as "The House of Gatewood," went further on, only to walk into a worse one known as "The House of Rutherford." The men were well armed with dirks and ammunition and determined to see the thing through. Only women were home at both places at the outset, save at the latter place where they were met by a man in the disguise of a Quaker. Mason recognized this man as a renegade engraver from Philadelphia. A few minutes later the outlaws entered disguised as drunken travellers, and giving examples of high marksmanship with lighted candles as targets, "the while eyeing the baggage of the travellers." The night was a nightmare but without crime, though there were subtle threats made constantly. Just as the party left, and had gotten a ways down the road, one of the outlaws came running up and asked Dr. Hill to take his saddle bags and come and see one of the men who was ill. Dr. Hill evaded the trap by suggesting that the invalid get "somebody who knew him better to do the work."

When the Chevalier de La Salle made his first voyage through Chicago Portage, Desplaines, and Illinois rivers, to the open waters of Lake Peoria, he had with him a physician. Dr. John Michel. To this man fell the tasks of combating injuries inflicted in warfare by the savages, and the scourges of the wilderness, from dysenteries to malignant fevers. This was in

1681-2. An earlier doctor had been Dr. Louis Moreau who had come to the Illinois country in 1678 with de La Salle but who had returned to Quebec, to rejoin his wife, whom he had married in 1676. Dr. Michel also returned to Canada where he practiced. until he died in 1691.

That it was not unusual for early physicians to feel the whip of the law, is evidenced by many records of legal procedure. On January 10, 1872, for instance, Dr. Michel Buteau was sued by Isaac Levy because Isaac claimed the doctor had not "perfectly cured him of disease."

The man who can get a superfine medical education in this country in these days, and especially in Illinois, the medical cen

ter of the world, by merely paying his tuition and studying to his capacity, can not realize how terrific were the hardships of the early medical student. Those who are familiar with Dr. Bridge's writings about early Illinois, are familiar with his poignant description of the difficulty of securing dissecting material. A body to dissect was rare luck for the man who would teach anatomy. In the early years of medical teaching in this state, to get a cadaver one stole it, or bargained with the coroner or the poorhouse for the pauper dead. In St. Charles a riot started and a physician, a Dr. Richards, lost his life from injuries received in the melee, because he was suspected of having opened the grave of a young married woman who had died recently and taken her body for use in his school.

The early doctors in the Illinois country and the almost as early teachers of medicine literally "made their bricks without straws." Theirs the fundamental task, ours the consequent glory. For we medical men of the current day possess a heritage that savors of the divine. We must pass it on to posterity as clean, pure and priceless as it came to us. To this end, a trail is blazed. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," and it is the life belt of the medical profession.

Never in history was the profession of medicine so beleaguered and attacked upon all sides as it is at the present day through the incursions of all sorts of fads and isms, charlatans and nefarious socialistic schemes.

To prevent their pollution of the sacred streams of the mother science, medical men must gird themselves for defense. There are still witches afoot who, to the public mind, can kill a cow with a ball of hair.

THE IMPERIAL INDIAN DEPARTMENT AND THE OCCUPATION OF THE GREAT WEST, 1758-1766.1

By ALBERT T. VOLWILER, Ph. D.

Professor of History, Wittenberg College, Springfield, Ohio.

Fort DuQuense was captured by General Forbes in 1758 and renamed Fort Pitt. By its capture the English secured their first foothold in the Indian country between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. Wolfe's victory at Quebec and other English successes gave them permanent possession of this vast wilderness in which the state of Illinois was included.2 The English military leaders considered their work completed when they had captured the important French forts and fretted if they were left marooned in the wilderness to garrison a post. The task of preparing the way for the occupation of the West was left by the military officers to the officials of the Indian department. It was the very pressing immediate military necessity that had caused the English imperial government to take over the control of Indian affairs from the various colonies. The imperial government divided the colonies at approximately the Potomac and Ohio Rivers into a Northern and a Southern District, and placed over each a Superintendent of Indian Affairs.

Sir William Johnson held this office in the Northern District for nearly twenty years. He was assisted by four deputies; three owed their appointment to political influence, but the fourth, George Croghan, was appointed on his merits. He had been a prosperous Indian trader on the Ohio for years, and had often acted as Indian agent for Pennsylvania and Virginia. To him were assigned the tribes of Pennsylvania and the Ohio Valley, including the distant tribes in Illinois. The formidable power of these tribes was shown in Braddock's defeat, in many bloody raids on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, and in Pontiac's conspiracy. The Indian agent who entered their country frequently did so at the risk of his life. Probably no man was better equipped to serve his fellow countrymen in this field than George Croghan. This interesting character has never been given his rightful place in American historiography. He was one of the first Englishmen of prominence to visit and ap

1 A paper read at the annual meeting of the Illinois Historical Society, May, 1925. 2 The story of these dramatic events has been told by Parkman and others, but the story of the subsequent occupation of the Great West has never been adequately told. In this paper only the broad outlines of this story, limited to the Northwest, are covered. For a fuller account and for the authorities upon which this paper is based the reader is referred to Dr. Volwiler's "George Croghan and the Westward Movement, 1741-1782", published by the Arthur H. Clark Company, Cleveland, Ohio.-Editor.

preciate the Illinois country, and he played an important part in the occupation of the West.

During the period after 1758, he spent most of his time at Fort Pitt, the gateway to the West. Indian problems focussed at this place, and from it expeditions were sent out to occupy other French posts. Numerous conferences were held at Fort Pitt with the Potawatomi, Ottawas, Miami, Wyandots, Shawnee, Delawares and Iroquois. The largest conference was that held in August, 1760, when General Monckton and Croghan met upwards of a thousand Indians.

At these conferences the following problems were encountered. First, grants of land had to be secured here and there in the wilderness where the English could erect forts and around them have gardens, cornfields and pastures. The release of numerous English prisoners was to be obtained. This was a difficult, long drawn out, and costly process. Intelligence of what was happening in the wilderness beyond Fort Pitt was to be obtained. This was usually done quietly in informal meetings with individual Indians, or by sending out Indian spies. The safety of person and property was also to be secured. Occasional murders of both Indians and whites were bound to occur and needed careful attention lest serious consequences should develop. Another problem was that of furnishing provisions. The English had the greatest difficulty to keep the garrisons in the wilderness supplied with provisions, ammunition, and clothing, because all goods had to be transported by wagons or pack horses over newly cut roads over the mountains. The savages came in large numbers to live off of the English, pretending the utmost friendship or the direst need. When distant tribes came for conferences, it was impossible to avoid a large expense. Finally, the greatest problem of all concerned the resumption of trade. If the English desired the alliance of the western tribes after 1758, it was absolutely essential that they supply the needs of the Indians in a just and fair manner; otherwise the savages would turn to the French and Spanish traders who came up the Mississippi and Ohio from New Orleans. An attempt was made to see that the Indians were treated justly, but with little success. Such were the chief problems that were encountered not only at Fort Pitt, but at every other western post as soon as it was occupied.

The small English garrison left at Fort Pitt in 1758 remained in a precarious situation for some time. No strong fortifications could be erected for over a year and the English convoys of supplies from the east were frequently attacked on the flank by parties of French and Indians sent out from Fort Venango. Reports of preparations to bring all the French militia from Illinois and Detroit with numerous western Indians to retake Fort Pitt, kept coming to the English from Indian spies. The