The old French life at Vincennes is described at some length by J. P. Dunn in his "Indiana." Like the American pioneer life it was rude and to primitiveness, in many respects, but with many distinctive features. The log house or cabin, instead of being laid horizontally with notch and saddle like the familiar American type, was often built by setting the logs upright in a trench, like pickets.

Sometimes grooved posts were set a distance apart with horizontal slabs to fill in the intervening spaces, the ends fitting in the grooves. Thatching or strips of bark were often used for roofs. There were a few stone houses with piazzas. Of the rude furniture usually found the conspicuous article was the high corded bedstead with its big feather bed and gay patch-work quilt, while occasionally in the the better families a display would be made of a little treasured silverware or some ancient heirloom that had come long ago from the motherland. They were fond of flowers and these usually could be found in profusion in their gardens, fenced in by sharpened pickets to set close together in the ground. Every man, practically, was his own artisan, and as there was no great skill and perhaps less love of labor the home-made articles were few and crude. The women, we are told, had neither spinning wheels nor looms, and the clothing, half Indiana and picturesque, was a mixture of leather and the fabrics brought in by the traders -- leggins, moccasins, the capote or cloak, a fancy sash beaded by the Indians and a gaudy handkerchief for the head being in the sartorial inventory. Their agriculture was primitive and the natural fertility of the land was relied upon to obviate the necessity for skillful husbandry. Their cumbersome, awkward plows had a wooden mold-board and, drawn by oxen by a means of a rope of twisted rawhide attached to a horn-yoke, instead of a neck-yoke, could turn only a shallow furrow. About the only other farm implement was a clumsy iron hoe, and their one vehicle was a light two-wheeled cart without iron work or any kind about it, known as a calache.

Socially, they were a gay, pleasure-loving people and perpetrated Gallic customs that look picturesque in the perspective. Marriage was the great event and was preceded by the publishing of bans and by the betrothal contract witnessed by relatives and friends, while the ceremony was celebrated by feasting and dancing that sometimes lasted for several days. There was the charivari and even a so-called Mardi Gras preceding Lent, which consisted of dancing and feasting and a trial of skill at cooking of flapjacks. On New Year's day it was the custom for the men to go the rounds making calls in which it was their privilege to kiss the hostesses. Sometimes the young men masked on New Year's eve and went from fuse to house singing a carol, and a feature of this custom at one time was to take with them a cart and receive gifts of clothing and provisions, which were afterward given to the poor. ONe of the luxuries we hear of, which sounds oddly out of place in the Wabash wilderness, is that of billiards. Hamilton. in 1778, wrote that he intended to destroy all the billiard tables.