CHAPTER XII
IN 1809 the population north of the Ohio River and west of the Walbash had reached about ten thousand, located largely along the valleys of these rivers and the Mississippi. The western portion of the Territory of Indiana was detached and organized into Illinois Territory, embracing the great prairie region west of the Wabash, north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi River. It extended north to the British possessions. Ninian Edwards was appointed Governor and the capital established at Kaskaskia.
Two years later great alarm was felt by the people in the Mississippi Valley over a succession of earthquake shocks which prevailed at intervals for several months. The point where the severest shocks were experienced was in the vicinity of New Madrid, in the southeast corner of what is now the State of Missouri. The convulsions were so great that immense sections of land sunk, the channel of the river was changed, lakes and swamps disappeared and low lands were elevated into hills. The waters of the Mississippi near Madrid were rolled with a mighty force up stream for nearly ten miles, causing destruction of life and property. It was during the continuance of these convulsions that the first steamboat that ever navigated a western river was making its way cautiously down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. The name of the steamer was the “Orleans,” of four hundred tons, commanded by Captain Nicholas I. Roosevelt. It was built at Pittsburg, from whence it departed on the 6th of December, 1812, for New Orleans, and, reaching that place in safety, inaugurated steamboat transportation, which opened a new field of commerce on western waters. Heretofore the products of the West had found a route to the world's markets in the slowly floating flatboats, or bateaux, propelled by poles, oars or the current
