"While the French explorers Louis Joliet and Pierre Marquette were traveling along the Illinois River in the 1670s, they discovered a peaceful tribe who called themselves the Kaskaskia." "First published in 1948, Kaskaskia under the French Regime focuses on the social and economic history of French Kaskaskia from 1703 to 1765. Natalia Maree Belting brings to life the prairie terrain, the Kaskaskia mission, early architecture, building methods and materials, the beginnings of government, everyday life, domestic tools and utensils, commerce, and the social customs of the pioneer."

"Belting draws on and translates from eighteenth-century French the Kaskaskia Manuscripts, in which French notaries recorded parish marriage contracts, property transactions (including slave sales), and estate inventories. She also examines the papers of the Marquis deVaudreuil, among them the most complete census ever done in French Illinois, which provides a household-by-household enumeration of the population."--Jacket.