Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 148, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 January 1904 — Jasper’s Early History. CROSS TITLES. [ARTICLE]

Jasper’s Early History. CROSS TITLES.

After the Revolution, America, made the Indians title a subject of purchase. It was in 1815 that our lauds were bought by the United States from the Pottawattamie*. In 1838 our soldiers escorted them to a new hunting ground on the Missouri. Their possession of the Kankakee Valley was peaceful between cession and possession as our early settlers will testifv. The French claim of a century was romantic in its inception and assertion. Ou June 14 1671, at Sault San Marie, Sieur LaSalle, stood on a hill, holding in his right hand a sword and in his left a tuff of grass, in the presence of the chiefs of fourteen tribes of Indians, besides all the French that could be mustered and spoke in a bold strong voice “In the name of Louis the Great King of France I take possession of all north, west and south to the sea.” Father Allonz assured the Indians that “the King is more terrible than thunder, in the midst of his warriors covered with the blood of his enemies, with hatchets enough to hew down all tree and beads to fill all wigwams.” On April 6, 1682 LaSalle standing near -the mouth of the Great River took possession of all lands and waters tributary thereto. Io 1763 France

surrendered the Continent to the British, On Deo. 20th . 1803 France sold all its -new claims to our nation. The queens and Kings or England asserted title from the Atlantio.Cosst to theObica Sea in their colonial charters. Our land was claimed by Virginia and one or two other oclonies as against France, Great Britian and the X. nation. As the revolutionary war drew to a close, the other colonies, grtw envious of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia and demand ed that their western claims be transfered to the general government, to help pay the cost of the war. Sooa after the surrender at Yorktown the colonies led by Virginia in 1681 ceded their claim west of the present limits of the states. Connecticut retained a space one hundred and twenty miles long and sixty miles wide in Onio known as the western Reserve. This is sold for near $200,000 which became a part of its permanent school fund and it then surrendered its govermental right in 1796 to the nation.

The American Magna Charts known as the Ordinance of 1787 was an impulse to emigration north of the Ohio. The lands boasted a clear title from the White Man’s stand point subject to purchase from the Indian Chiefs. The Constitution went into foroe and soon Maine (1791) Kentucky (1792) and Tennessee (1796) became states and expansion west, southwest and northwest of American civilization made rapid and sure progress on a basis of free men and free holders in a free country.

S. P. THOMPSON.

January 18.1904.