e
the successful issue of the Spanish intrigue for the separation of
Kentucky from the United States, and would hinder negotiations, then
pending, for a commercial treaty between Spain and the United States.(152)
Carondolet regarded the Indians as Spain's best defence against the
Americans,(153) yet the whites prepared for defence, and in anticipation
of the proposed French expedition of George Rogers Clark, a garrison of
thirty men and an officer was placed at Ste. Genevieve, opposite
Kaskaskia. Carondolet said: "This will suffice to prevent the smuggling
carried on by the Americans of the settlement of Kaskaskias situated
opposite, which increases daily."(154)

Early in 1796, a petition was sent from Kaskaskia to Congress. The
petitioners desired that they might be permitted to locate their donation
of four hundred acres per family on Long Prairie, a few miles above
Kaskaskia, on the Kaskaskia River, and that the expense of surveying the
land might be paid by the United States. The act granting the
donation-land had provided for its location between the Kaskaskia and the
Mississippi. This land the petitioners declared to be private land and
some of it was of poor quality.(155) Confirmation of land claims directed
to be made upon the Governor's visit in 1790 were delayed by the lack of a
surveyor and the poverty of the inhabitants.(156) The petition was signed
by John Edgar, William Morrison, William St. Clair, and John Demoulin(157)
"for the inhabitants of the counties of St. Clair and Randolph"(158)--the
Illinois counties. The petitioners ranked high in the mercantile and legal
life of the Illinois settlements, but they must have been novices in the
art of petitioning if they thought that a petition signed by four men from
the Illinois country, with no sign of their being legally representative,
would be regarded by Congress as an expression of the opinion of the
Northwest Territory. The part of the petition relating to lands was
granted, but the major part, which related to other subjects, was denied
on the ground that the petitioners probably did not represent public
sentiment.(159) During this same year Congress denied a number of
petitions for the right of preemption in the Northwest Territory, because
such a right would encourage illegal settling. It was also during this
year that the first sales of public land in the Northwest Territory were
authorized. The land to be sold was in what is now Ohio. No tract of le