USA > Alabama > A Catholic history of Alabama and the Floridas Volume 1 > Part 7
USA > Florida > A Catholic history of Alabama and the Floridas Volume 1 > Part 7
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' La Salle placed Chevalier Tonti in command at Crève Coeur- Rock Fort-an issolated cliff, rising 200 feet above the river, which flows near its base, in the centre of a lovely country, of verdant prairies richly tufted with black walnut, etc. This rocky site may still be seen.
Some years ago a few enterprising Yankees chose it as the site of a town they wished to call Gibraltar. But it remains as it was in the days of La Salle, an impregnable site for a fortress.
2 The whole distance from the mouth of the Arkansas to the Falls of St. Anthony is about 1500 miles. This distance he crossed twice.
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ness of treachery. His richly-freighted vessel, the Griffon, with its cargo was lost. Discontent among his men foreboded mutiny, dispelled his hopes and broke his spirits. His crosses and afflictions may be judged from the name he gave, in the bitterness of his spirit, to one of the later forts he built: Crève Coeur, the broken heart.
After having navigated three of the great lakes he found himself launched on the Mississippi with several Franciscans, twenty-three Frenchmen, and eighteen Indians. He steered south, the priests visiting the Indian villages on the banks, and evangelizing them. The vessel kept a southerly direction until the great gulf opened on their enraptured vision.
La Salle and his companion now chanted the Te Deum and planted a cross. Then in the name of the King of France, amid volleys of musketry, they took possession of the whole country, and in his honor La Salle called it by the sweet-sounding name, Louisiana, a name on which he had fixed before he left Canada.
" We stand," writes McGee, " sword in hand under the banner of the cross, the tutelary genius of those great States which stretch from the Ontario to the Rio Grande, and from the Gulf to the sources of the Missouri. Every league of that region he trod on foot, and every league of its waters he traversed in frail canoes, or crazy schooners."
April 6, they came to the three mouths by which the river discharges into the sea. People afterwards gave one of these a bad name, saying that it was easier to pass an elephant through the eye of a needle, than a ship through it; that other passes should be closed so that the current thus increased would carry off the bar before the Balize. La Salle examined the Western;
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Tonty, the middle; and d'Autray, the other. Soon the water under the boats became brackish, and changed to brine; the breeze smelt salt and they saw the waves of the Gulf so long sought, so long dreamed of. Then came more exploration, and lastly La Salle's taking possession, the grandest event since the Landing of Columbus.
On a dry spot above the passes, they landed, and prepared a column and a cross. On the column they painted the arms of France with the King's name. Then they sang the Te Deum, the Exaudiat, the Domine Salvum fac Regem; then, salvos of artillery and shouts of Vive le Roi! At the foot of the column, La Salle declared: "On part of the high powerful, invincible, and victorious Prince, Louis the Great, by the Grace of God, King of France and Navarre, four- teenth of the name, to-day, April 9, 1682, by virtue of the commission of His Majesty which I hold in my hand, open to the inspection of all whom it may concern . I take possession of this coun- try of Louisiana
. I call to witness those who hear me, and I demand the certificate of the Notary present for confirmation." La Salle placed in the ground at the foot of the tree to which was at- tached the cross, a leaden plaque. It has on one side the arms of France and on the other Robertus Cavalier cum Domino de Tonty, legato, R. P. Zenobio Membre Recollecto To the proces-verbal, made by Jacques de Metairie Notary, were signed twelve names, including La Salle, Father Zenobio, Henri de Tonty, and Nicholas de la Salle.
La Salle was a great explorer, but he was not an expert in dealing withh men. He was at once un- amiable and dictatorial, and while he expected all to
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obey him, he suffered none to share his counsels. After disasters of various kinds, he returned to France, leaving Tonty his deputy, in America. Tonty did not share the prejudices of his commander against the Jesuits.
La Salle was the hero of the day in France, and he secured all he asked for : he and his colonists sailed for the Gulf, 1685. They missed the mouths of the Mississippi, and it is said that his Lieutenant Beaujeu abandoned him, and sailed back to map the Mississippi passes.
He went ashore with some colonists near Matagorda Bay, on Texas soil. Terrible were their sufferings, and the men mutinied against a leader whom they con- sidered the cause of their miseries. March 19, he was murdered from an ambuscade, near Trinity River. When the faithful Tonty heard of La Salle's troubles he went to the Gulf in search of him, 1686. Not finding him, he left a letter (speaking bark) which an Indian was to give him. For a hatchet, the Indian produced the letter Tonty had written to La Salle many years before. He produced also an Imitation of Christ, and a gun, which he said the Iron Hand had given him.
When Tonty descended to the mouths of the Mississippi, with twenty-five men, to aid his friend, he found the cross which La Salle had erected eight years before, lying half buried in the sand, and set it up again, but found no trace of his beloved friend. All the Indians he met going and coming were friendly. On a tree, standing near the cross, he fixed a sign, and in the hollow of it, he placed a letter addressed: "A M. De La Salle, Governeur-General de la Louisiana." This letter was never delivered.
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La Salle's is perhaps the saddest history among the great explorers. His murderers perished deservedly. His plans died with him. The great river had proved fatal to many. It seemed as if the legends were true that evil spirits guarded this stream. Let us hope that the assassin's bullet brought rest to the troubled soul of this great explorer.
" His capacity for large designs," says Sparks, " and for procuring the resources to carry them forward, has few parallels amongst the most eminent discoverers."
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CHAPTER XII.
MANY richly freighted vessels started on their home- ward path and never returned. Tradition points to spots in the ocean where millions of doubloons lie, which will probably remain among the "Treasures of the deep " of which Mrs. Hemans sings. Expedi- tions were frequently organized to search in Barbadoes, and in the isles of the Carribean Sea, for these buried hoards. Men spent time and money hunting for the lost galleons of Spain, undeterred by the fact that many a serious commercial undertaking has proved a mere " will o' the wisp," and of treasure troves, so far, none have proved available, whether in the palm- covered isles of the Gulf of Mexico, or the coral cays of the Carribean. Thirty-seven millions in gold, and silver sank in the harbor of St. Vigo, in Spain. One company after another vainly sought the treasure. A richly-freighted ship sank off San Domingo, but neither wreck nor prize was ever found.
The first commercial highway in America, and for three centuries the most important, was designed by Cortez, chiefly for the transfer of such treasurers-the romantic calzada or shod-mule track, from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico. This was a paved highway, one hundred leagues long, from the sea-board to the ex- terior on which, besides the gems and precious metals, were carried indigo, silk, spices, cochineal, cacas, from
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one extremity to the other. The military roads of the incas were used in the same way, and are often com- pared, but not aptly, to the famous Roman roads of yore. These, however, were in a different part of the country. Good roads or even paths through the forest, were useful not only in carrying wealth and produce from one point to another, but in affording passage to apostolic men, going from tribe to tribe, to convert souls: "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel, who bring to souls the glad tidings of Salvation !
The first teamster who introduced the wheel in America, and the driving of oxen, was Blessed Sebas- tian de Aparicio, an early immigrant, who drove ox- carts from Vera Cruz to Mexico. He became a Franciscan Lay Brother, and died in Pueblo, in 1600, in the odor of sanctity, aged ninety-eight years. He was all but worshiped by the Indians, and in his humble state must have converted thousands. He wrought many miracles and was beatified by Pope Clement XIII. His life was published some years ago by the late Very Rev. Dr. Faber. He has been selected chief Patron of Pueblo, where his ashes repose.
Discovery, exploration, and settlement were the usual titles to ownerships. Florida was the objective point of many an expedition which sailed by way of Jamaica. Narvaez left Spain, June 17, 1527, with 600 men in five vessels. All but four were drowned; these after weary wanderings reached Mexico, and were re- ceived as brethren and friends. De Soto's march as we have related, is almost without a parallel, in song or story. He died of wasting fever at the early age of forty-one. He had crossed the country like a meteor, and he reposes in his oaken coffin beneath the waves
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of the awful Mississippi, until, at the voice of the archangel, the earth and the water will give forth their dead.
The whole valley of the Mississippi was the mag- nificent domain which La Salle added to the kingdom of France, April 9, 1683. Not a fountain babbled west 'of the Alleghany but was described as being in the French empire.
To colonize this immense region came the famous Lemoyne Brothers, Iberville, Bienville, and the rest. To aid them in this came Crozat, the merchant Prince, born a peasant, in whom lived again the spirit of the Medici, and of the powerful Company of the Indies, which had obtained from the French Government large Colonial grants, and was connected with Louisiana from 1713 to 1732. To-day the name is confined to a single State, and not a very large one.
Needless to follow the career of John Law, the Scotch " Magician of Finance," who failed utterly to do what was expected of him, and, having returned to Europe, died in poverty and obscurity at Venice. He had become a Catholic shortly before. Grants of estates along the river attracted many French gentle- men of family. Peasants were induced to try their ' fortunes in Louisiana, and Germans settled on the estate of John Law, still called " the German Coast." The country seemed for the time unable to take care of all who emigrated, and, in 1721, the troops had to seek support among the Indian villages.
In Florida, Melendez wanted laborers instead of gentlemen. Too many of the colonists were deserters and galley slaves, and it is only by exception that criminals make good colonists. Those who had only aristocratic blood to recommend them were soon at a
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discount. In 1573, fifty men with their families came from Asturias, one hundred and fifty from the Azores, fifty from Seville, and one hundred Portuguese laborers, brought much prosperity to Florida.
It is an historical fact that " runners " brought fresh fish from the ocean one hundred leagues inland, in something over two days. Muleteers were of wonder- ful swiftness. At one period a law forbade any one to ride on mules save children and members of religious congregations. But the people " circulated," to use the new English, as fast as they pleased, and, above all, the missioners seem to have found out their flocks with lightning speed. They went knee-deep, or waist deep, in water. They toiled through the morass, and went forward in the desert, where miniature cyclones swirled and gyrated clouds of dust,-they moved on until they found their flocks, as patiently and as suc- cessfully as if relays of horses or oxen awaited them at every post.
In the dim aisles of the forest they pressed forward in primeval silence, carrying their God-given message to savage and slave. The Name of Jesus and the love of Jesus allured them. Like Jogues carving the Name of Jesus on the treees, as he passed on, hungry, cold, and weary, seeking the lost sheep of the House of Israel, the light of divine love on his face, his tortured hands, mute witnesses of the sufferings he had under- gone for that Sacred Name, which is above all Names, and through which alone we can be saved !
Between 1528 and 1536, Cabeza de Vaca and three comrades walked ten thousand miles. Andrew D'Ocampo and Lucas and Sebastian Donados trudged over twenty thousand miles of the transcontinental wilderness in the nine years following their escape
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from Kansas, 1542. The Esquimaux with dog-teams, five hundred sometimes in a pack-train; the incas with their lamas; the kyaks of the North Pacific, could hardly do more. Distance seems to have been anni- hilated for the sainted missioners and the fearless pioneers.
When De Soto and his men were marching in the vicinity of Macon, Georgia, two Indians near the mounds, Mark and Peter, being assailed by the devil, at night, as the story runneth, asked to be baptized. They were guides, and hence the devils punished them. They showed De Soto the marks on their bodies. He asked the priests to baptize them, so that the devil could no longer have power over them.1
1 Herrera. Expedition of De Soto.
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CHAPTER XIII.
AGAIN as a crux of the missioners we must mention that terrible atom, the mosquito. A missioner said he would rather be devoured by lions than by these insects. " Many things one gets accustomed to," said another " but not to the irritation of mosquitoes." Bars of any stuff are of little use. The boils they raise upon those they prey on must be lanced, and this severe remedy scarcely relieves them. Madeleine Hachard, the youngest of the Ursulines who came in 1727, says she lived in "perpetual fear of being assassinated by the mosquitoes," blood-thirsty atoms, to this day the plague of the Passes. As they ascended the river, they went ashore every night and slept in the forest, though the air was on fire with mosquitoes " every one," says she, " provided with a sting like a red hot-nail." The ugly fashion of wearing patches on the face prevailed among the colonial ladies, as among their Sisters by the Thames, the Seine, and the Liffey. They may have been useful in concealing the bites of the myriads of mosquitoes, " which hide in the trees till sundown and then come out to prey on us all night." Matters were not improved when they landed from their chaloupes in New Orleans, August 7, 1727. The monastery the West Indian Company was building them was far from completion, and they were hospitably received in
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Bienville's Country house, the best in the Colony. The surrounding wilderness full of specimens of the fauna of Louisiana,1 was the home of reptiles, vultures, and wild beasts. But it bred especially fire-flies and mos- quitoes, which our novice calls Frappe d'abord " which sting without mercy." They hovered about the nuns from sunrise to sunset, never failing to leave their traces.
The religious establishments of Louisiana in 1725, consisted of New Orleans with 600 families, Mobile 60, Apalache 30, mostly Indians, Balize 6, Les Allemands 200, Pointe Coupée 100, Natchez 2 6, Natchitoches 50. The governors were unanimous in complaining of the troops sent hither from France. Bienville inveighs against their small size, some being only four and a half feet tall, and says their vices equalled their cowardice. The French had generally good leaders. Gravier is one of many who praises Bienville's Government (1700) and Kerlerec was styled the " Father of the Choctaws."
Towards the middle of the eighteenth century the Jesuits received a royal warrant from the King of Spain, empowering them to repeat in California the Reductions of Paraguay. Within sixty years sixteen missions were established. Around each mission were clustered villages of converted savages. A royal de- cree, signed Yo el Rey, expelled the originators of this useful work. This King, Charles III., died December 14, 1788. Solemn services were held for the repose
' The tropical forest is almost a solid mass of trailing vines and thorny brush, alive with insects ; every insect has a mouth of fire.
2 Villa Gayoso, a Spanish church and village, was near the bluff, about fifteen miles above Natchez. It always had a resident priest in early days. It was also called Cole's Creek.
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of his soul, in St. Louis Church, New Orleans, May 7, 1789.
Many Franciscans came with the saintly Junipero Serra. They led the lives of Apostles, and often met the fate of Apostles. They were ready to go any- where for the succor of the infant Church. Thus Father Margil having heard that the French at Natchitoches had seldom or never been visited by a priest, went thither from Dolores, on foot, said mass for the people and administered to them the sacra- ments of penance and the Holy Eucharist. The Vicar General of Mobile, probably the Abbé de la Vente, forwarded to the zealous missioner a letter of thanks for this great charity.
Louisiana was divided into nine districts, by the Company of the Indies, (1721),-Mobile, New Or- leans, Biloxi, Alibamons, Natchez, Yazoo, Natchi- toches, Arkansas, and Illinois. Mobile was the great rendezvous of the savages. The climate was mild and healthy, and the people kind and pleasant. The Colony of Louisiana had increased from 500 whites to 5000, and from 20 negroes, to 250. The Spaniards con- ceded that Louisiana of which we shall soon speak more immediately, extended beyond Mobile Bay to the east.
Sauvolle, Governor of Fort Maurepas, at Biloxi, ex- amined and sounded the coast; and, from a daring fighter, became a practical colonizer. From time to time Colonists were brought out, and soon the old forts, were enlivened by women and children. The priests came among them to soothe their sorrows, share their trials, baptize their children, anoint them in their last illness, and invoke the blessing of the church over their graves. When, in 1717, at the command of that grand
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organizer, Bienville, the capital was removed; another of these matchless brethren was on hand to take his place.
Iberville, a youth in Canada and in France, was educated in schools, and ship. He had taken part in four expeditions in Hudson Bay. In 1694, he and four younger brothers, undertook to capture Fort Nelson. Their chaplain was the Jesuit, Gabriel Marest. When the wind became adverse they made a vow to St. Anne that they would give her part of their treasures, and almost all received the sacraments. Thereupon, the wind became favorable. They were brave and gallant men, but, above all, good Christians. In 1693, Iberville married, and his first child was born off the grand bank of Newfoundland. His wife was often the companion of his voyages. But the chief man who knew how to manipulate both whites and Indians, so as to bring about their allegiance and subjugation, was Bienville.
Iberville returned from France, 1702. The climate of the Tropics had begun to tell on the hardy Cana- dian, and still more his incessant labors and privations. Sauvolle died at Biloxi, July 22, 1701, of bilious or yellow fever. Iberville was attacked by a similar disease. He died at Havana, whither he had gone to recuperate, July 9, 1706, tenderly nursed by his de- voted wife. His remains were laid to rest in the Parish Church of St. Christopher, where for a time reposed the bones of Columbus.
Almost all the Spanish clergy and officials visited Mobile, and it can scarcely be doubted that there were more Catholics in the little town, once the capital of half the continent, than history mentions; the death of Iberville was a severe blow to the infant Colonies.
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He had only left Rochelle, October, 1698, and, in January, 1699, made land near the Gulf, stopping at night, and in the fogs. It took their squadron two days to arrive opposite the thin strip of land which half encloses Mobile Bay on the South; a low, flat island covered with sand and bones, suggesting some barbarity on part of the Indians and for this named by the brothers, Massacre Island, (now Dauphin Island). They crossed to Biloxi, built a fort of four bastions upon which were mounted twelve guns, over which waved the lilies of France.
Sometimes a good came, so to say, indirectly to the Colonists. The English settlers in Carolina treated the French Huguenots with much severity, though they finally admitted them to citizenship. About 1695, a vessel from Madagascar touched at Carolina. The captain gave Governor Archdales a bag of seed rice and imparted to him the manner of its culture. This was distributed among many planters and to this acci- dent the State owes its staple commodity. We recall the nursery rhyme
"Tea comes from China Rice from Carolina."
Tobacco became early an article of commerce, and was raised as well as rice in many parts of the country. " What a pity," said poor Charles I.1," that so much of our prosperity in America should be founded on smoke.
The United States early took hold of the Indian problem. George Washington, as a youth, had been much with Indians, and, when President, often sought
1 " Charles I. our late most excellent and undoubtedly sainted King.'
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to protect them in their rights. He advised them to cultivate the soil, as game would necessarily soon be scarce-an advice the Catholic Bishops and clergy had frequently given them. Indians were removed from Alabama in 1836, but many remained and were found in various places years after, always objects of solici- tude to the church. The great fires of 1827 and 1839, almost destroyed the old town of Mobile. Historic points are still shown, but French and Spanish build- ings are but little known in the Gulf City.
" The Catholic Church in the United States claims all the early struggles of the first Apostles, their weary marches, their untiring toil to instruct the rude people and the savage; the constant offering of the Holy Sacrifice, the imparting of the sacraments; as part of her glorious heritage to men of all races; the heroic days of her history. Her priests were the pioneers to plod over the Indian trail, to study the vegetable and mineral wealth of the land, and perpetuate in scientific form the unwritten languages of our countless Indian tribes, to discharge unflinchingly the ministry of the altar and the word, and to die, as fully a hundred did, by savage hands while heroically discharging their duty."
In the partition of America between Spain and Portugal, May 4, 1493, Pope Alexander VI., may have had in view to preserve the rights of Columbus and his heirs to the vice-royalty and tenths of the riches of the new continent. solemnly guaranteed to them. Humbolt says:
" The state of science and the imperfectness of all the instruments that could serve on sea to measure time and space, did not permit yet, in 1493, the practical solution of so commonplace a problem. In this state
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of things, Pope Alexander VI., in arrogating to him- self the right of dividing a hemisphere between two powerful nations, rendered, without knowing it, a signal service to nautical astronomy, and to the phys- ical theory of terrestrial magnetism."
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CHAPTER XIV.
WE give here the names of the early priests who labored in Louisiana :
Mons. Le Maire, 1723-1734; C. P. Mathias, 1734 -1739; Mgr. de Mornay, Bp. of Quebec, Sep. 12, 1733; Mgr. Dosgnet, Aug. 16, 1739; C. P. Philippe, 1739; Superior and Grand Vicar; Mgr. Lauberive, 1739-1741; Quebec, 1840.
Mgr. De Ponttriand, sacré à Paris, 7 April, 1741.
Le P. Charles de Ramberrillier, named Superior of the Capuchines, in New Orleans, in 1741, died some years later, (was alive in 1746.) Le Père Dagobert, 1753; Le Père George Fanquemont, 1753.
Le Père Vitry, S. J., Grand Vicar of Upper and Lower Louisiana, in 1730. Succeeded by Le Père Baudouin, Jesuit. He continued till the expulsion of the Jesuits, 1765.
Dagobert named Grand Vicar of Louisiana by l'abbé de l'Isle-Dieu (V. G. in France, for Louisiana, May, 1765. )
GRAND VICARS IN LOUISIANA.
SUPERIORS OF THE CAPUCHINS.
1723,
Raphael,
1734.
1734,
1734.
1734, Mathias,
1739.
1734,
Mathias,
1739.
1739, Philippe,
1741.
1739,
Philippe,
1741.
Vitry, S. J.,
1765.
1741, Charles de Kamber- villier,
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