USA > Alabama > Mobile County > Mobile > The founding of Mobile, 1702-1718, studies in the history of the first capital of the province of Louisiana, with map showing its relation to the present city > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
18
overlooking the St. Lawrence, faced by old-fash- ioned story and a half houses, with their galleries, the ancestor of our own, and a beautiful church guarding it all.
Here Bienville spent much of his childhood, and he naturally desired to introduce the same system into Louisiana. Originally the feudal system was based on the idea, common even now, of renting one's land for services rendered, but in time it had hardened into very oppressive services. Although it worked well in Canada, for some reason Louis XIV and his successors felt that the seigneurial plan was not applicable on the Gulf. From the first the king steadfastly declined to erect seigneuries in that province, and when at last he did it was only on a part of the Mississippi River below Manchac, and the system seems to have had little influence upon the development of the colony. Bienville, therefore, never rose to the dignity of a seigneur, although the shape of the grants about Mobile was based on the seigneuries of Canada.
Bienville obtained Horn Island, but not by a seig- neurial tenure. He owned a whole block of land on the south of both Mobiles, one bounded on the west by St. Charles street,-now our St. Emanuel. This seems to be a reminder of Montreal. St. Charles street there was named for the patron saint of the elder Le Moyne, and the existence of a St. Charles street in Mobile and of one in New Orleans,-both cities founded by Bienville,-seems to point back to a memory of childhood.
Bienville was called Sieur, but that is compli- mentary and not an abbrevation of seigneur; for ex- cept in a military way, Bienville seems to have had
19
no title. He had, so far as we know, no individual coast of arms, but the family were proud of that of his father, Charles Le Moyne, used at Longueuil, and preserved in the Chateau de Ramezay.
As with all others, it consists of a large shield surmounted by a crest, the helmet itself surmounted by a man standing, with an arrow, in a log fort. Underneath is the motto, "Labor et Concordia." On each side is a standing Indian, a man and woman holding an arrow. The main thing, however, is the shield and its ornaments. The upper third is red, and on it are two gold stars, five pointed, with a gold crescent between them. The lower two-thirds of the shield has a blue ground, and on it are found, placed in a triangle, three gold stars, also five point- ed, and each with a gold rose in its centre. It is odd that two such antipodal men as Martin Luther and Charles Le Moyne should have the rose as an em- blem. To Catholic and Lutheran it smelt as sweet.
The meaning of the different devices would take us far back into heraldry, for each means some- thing; but at least Bienville lived up to the family motto of "Labor and Concord." These arms, be it noted, were not those of the barony of Longueuil, as such; for this was not created until 1700, in the hands of Charles Le Moyne, Jr., Bienville's oldest brother, while Bienville was in Louisiana. The arms were granted their father in 1668, before Bien- ville's birth, and were in some sense shared by all those eleven Le Moyne children who made the name famous throughout the world. It was not the fash- ion then to have an engraved crest for a letterhead ; but seals were more used than they are now, and Bienville was a good correspondent when occasion
20
offered. So we may suppose that just as he affixed an official seal to his dispatches, he sealed his pri- vate letters, -- as one a year later to this much loved brother Charles,-with the Le Moyne star, rose and crescent. Mobile has her own seal, showing ship and cotton bale, "Agriculture and Commerce ;" but may be even in our day Bienville's motto of "Labor and Concord" would not be wholly amiss.
V .- RELIGION.
The ancients, from Babylon to Rome, founded no colony without sacrifices to the deity, and in modern times one of the objects alleged for colonization was the spread of Christianity. The French were no exception. The priest voyaged ahead even of the voyageur. When the Le Moynes came to the Gulf
Quebec missionaries from the Seminary of were found among the Indians of the Mississippi. DeSoto's Dominican friars were paralleled by the Jesuit Douge and his colleagues under Iberville. One of the earliest and best loved of the Seminary priests was Davion, who sometimes left his lonely Mississippi vigil (where the Americans were after- wards to build Fort Adams) to mingle with his gen- ial countrymen at Biloxi and Mobile.
The first entry in the venerable church registers of this post is by Davion, noting that he had baptized a little Indian boy, an Apalache, on September 6, 1704. Douge seems not to have obeyed the royal ordinance of 1667 as to keeping a baptismal register, -possibly he needed none; for, as far as is known, the first child was baptized October 4, 1704.
If there had been any doubt, it was finally settled that Louisiana was within the spiritual jurisdiction
21
of the Bishop of Quebec, at that time the celebrated St. Vallier, and in July, 1704, he constituted Fort Louis a separate parish. It was without a regular pastor until September 28, 1704, when it fell to . Davion's lot to induct La Vente with ceremonies recorded on a piece of paper made the first page of the register. We read :
"I, the undersigned priest and missionary apos- tolic, declare to all whom it may concern, that, the 28th of September in the year of Salvation 1704, in virtue of letters of provision and collation granted and sealed July 20 of last year, by which Monseig- neur, the most illustrious and reverend Bishop of Quebec, erects a parochial church in the place called Fort Louis of Louisiane, and of which he gives the cure and care to M. Henri Roulleaux De la Vente, missionary apostolic of the diocese of Bayeux, I have placed the said priest in actual and corporal posses- sion of the said parochial church and of all the rights belonging to it, after having observed the usual and requisite ceremonies, to-wit, by entrance into the church, sprinkling of holy water, kissing the high altar. touching the mass book, visiting the most sacred sacrament of the altar, and ringing the bills, which possession I certify that no one has op- posed.
"Given in the church of Fort Louis the day of month and year above, in the presence of Jean Bap- tiste de Bienville, lieutenant of the king and com- mandant at the said fort, Pierre du Q. de Boisbriant, major, Nicolas de la Salle, clerk and performing function of commissaire of the marine.
La Vente soon ran counter to Bienville and their unedifying quarrels lasted until La Vente returned
22
to France 1710 in a dying condition His successor was Le Maire, who was friendly with the governor. He came as a representative of the good Gervaise, whose means built the first church and parsonage.
The church records are invaluable as giving names, occupations and sidelights on the colony. The test of religion, however, is the inspiration it affords for good living, and in Louisiana re- ligious influences were largely neutralized by the roving life of many of the colonists and the whiskey trade among the Indians. However, Mobile was no worse than the average pioneer settlement.
Louis XIV had banished the Protestants from France and would not even permit them to settle in Louisiana. His minister announced that the king had not chased the Huguenots out of France to let them found a republic in America. Difference in re- ligion was to have no little to do with the enmity between the British and the French colonies, and, so far as religion was concerned, they were to grow up independently and afford an instructive contrast. There was little difference, however, in the woods. The British woodranger was not more moral and not less artful than the French coureur de bois. Whatever might be the merits of a religion which approached God through the old church and im- posing forms as contrasted with a faith which dis- carded forms and sought in Macaulay's words "to gaze full upon the intolerable brightness of the deity," it was not to appear when they came in con- tact with the natives. But on the other hand in self-denial the Jesuits of the Northwest were to be equalled by the fewer missionaries sent out from New England.
23
We generally think of the Jesuits as the pioneer Catholics of America, but, although they came down the Mississippi, the Bishop of Quebec soon substi- tuted the missionaries of his own Seminary, and the Jesuits were not active in the South. This seems strange when we remember how influential they were with Louis XIV. They were really the keepers of his conscience, but the Duke of Orleans was of a different mould. In the time of Law's Company the Mobile district was given over to the Carmelites, but in point of fact few of this small order ever came to America, and Jesuits are found on the headwaters of the Tombigbee and the Alabama.
At Mobile there was a separate cure for the Apa- laches as well as for Dauphine Island, and with per- haps better judgment the priests did not follow the plan of the Spanish padres. They civilized rather than domesticated the Indians.
On the whole the church did its duty by Louisiana, whether we look at the natives or at the colonists.
VI .- THE SOCIAL SIDE.
In early Mobile the houses were built close to- gether, partly as a reminder of the walled towns in France, and partly because of the sociable nature of the people. They would talk from window to win- dow, and often across the narrow streets, while the little front gallery was in some sense what Dr. Brinton would call the basis of social relations. Woman was here, as elsewhere, the centre of all social life, and woman has among the French always occupied an influential place. The two social foci were Woman and the Church. The age of the ency-
24
clopedists had not quite come, and the French colon- ists were devout Catholics.
If we stop to think of it, marriage, birth, sickness and death directly or indirectly make up a large part of all human life. The holy days, too-Christ- mas, Easter and different Saint's Days-were ob- served and tended to bring families and friends to- gether. One of the favorite holidays was St. Louis Day, July 24, and it is odd that this should conform so closely to the two great modern holidays-Bastille Day and the American Fourth of July. Merry Mardi Gras also can be found observed from the times of Old Fort Louis at Twenty-seven Mile Bluff.
Among the French the bride brought a dowry, which remained her own, but in Louisiana there was such a scarcity of women that dowry is not often mentioned. The king undertook to supply the colon- ists with wives, and among the oddest cargoes ever shipped were those every few years of marriageable girls. There was a famous consignment of twenty- three by the Pelican in 1704, and the first after the removal was probably that of 1712. The Pelican girls have been remembered for their revolt against cornbread, which was new to them, but they should be remembered as the women whose husbands and children founded Mobile. That their names may be honored, they are given : Francoise Marie Anne de Boisrenaud, Jeanne Catherine de Beranhard, Jeanne Elizabeth Le Pinteux. Marie Noel de Mesnil, Gabrielle Savarit, Genevieve Burel, Marguerite Burel, Marie Therese Brochon, Angelique Broupn, Marie Briard, Marguerite Tavernier. Elizabeth Deshays, Catherine Christophle. Marie Philippe, Louise Marguerite Housseau, Marie Magdeleine
25
-
--
---------- 1
-
Duanet, Marie Dufresne, Marguerite Guichard, Renee Gilbert, Louise Francoise Lefevre, Gabrielle Bonet, Marie Jeanne Marbe and Catherine Tour- nant, although the "N. P. P." after her name seems to indicate that she did not come. Maybe that is the origin of the tradition that one did not marry. It is pleasant to know that whatever was the case after John Law undertook to boom Louisi- ana, the women brought while Mobile was the capi- tal were uniformly of good character and founded
honored families. There was no Manon L'Escaut among them, of dubious if romantic story, and the best people could look back with pride to their Mo- bile origin. The social morality of that day was high, for the Regency had not yet come, and the Court of Louis XIV. had become sedate under Madame de Maintenon.
Education has assumed a much larger place with us than with these simple colonists, but it would be a mistake to think that there were no schools. Louis had subjected the church to the state, but within its limits the church exercised full jurisdiction not only over religion, but over education,-indeed education was a part of the duty of the priest or nun. The teaching Jesuits were not the official priests of Mo- bile, for these were missionaries of the Seminary of Quebec. Later came the Carmelites; but no mat- ter who they were, the priests as a rule were men of culture and earnestness. We learn nothing of the books they read, or of the school books of the chil- dren. Not only was the printing press unknown, but literature did not form the staple of family enter- tainment. Nevertheless the church records show that very many people could write, although later
26
the cross was often the method of signature. One of Cadillac's daughters made a cross and she was fresh from the schools of Canada. ยท
Cadillac was to bring with him quite a number of French "domestiques," but the usual servants of that day were little Indian slaves captured in war. There were not many negroes when Mobile was founded,-there were several at the Old Fort and only twenty in 1713. They began to be imported in numbers under John Law's Company. The slaves, Indian or African, were always baptized.
The original settlers were called habitans, as in Canada, but the second generation assumed the name of Creole. The word comes from the West Indies and mean indigenous. It is sometimes ap- plied to animals and fruits as well as to people. It came to mean people of French or Spanish extrac- tion who were born in Louisiana, old or new.
The first Creole was Francois Le Camp, born in old Mobile in 1704. Father Le Camp was a lock- smith, a habitant from France or Canada. The lit- tle boy, however, being a native, was a Creole, the "First Creole," as he was affectionately called. This seems to have become a kind of title held successive- ly by people afterwards.
It meant primarily persons of the purest white blood, and its use as applied to mulattoes is incorrect except in the sense that they, too, might be partly Latin in origin. Of Creoles in this sense of mixed blood we may have an instance in the modern Cajans near Mount Vernon. These are sometimes said to be descended from the gentle Acadians immortalized in Evangeline; but gentleness can hardly be said to be a Cajan trait. More certainty attaches to the
27
Chastangs of Chastang Station, who are said to have the blood of Dr. Jean Chastang. While he was in Mobile the doctor lived on Spira & Pincus' corner, but he afterwards moved to the bluff named for him. The Chastang patois is French, but much corrupted by African and English. The settlement is a very interesting one.
The habitans lived a contented rather than a strenuous life. Amusement then as now was one of the French arts, and music and dancing were com- mon. We read of Picard taking his "violon" with him when Bienville dispersed the people among the Indians to avoid starvation, and Picard taught the dark Nassitoche girls on Lake Pontchartrain the minuet and other dances familiar among the French at Mobile. Penicaut's best girl, by the way, was a Nassitoche. Of course wine was used, but the evil side of liquor seems to have been largely confined to its sale to the Indians. The coureurs de bois were intemperate in every way, but the habitans learned to live a plain and healthy life.
VII .- A COLONIAL BILL OF FARE.
It was the time of Louis XIV, soon to be followed by the Regency, when extravagance in dress and at table was the order of the day. Of course, Mobile was not Versailles, but a Frenchman knows no home but France, and at first brought everything from France. Among the greatest distresses of the colon- ists was the infrequency of ships from home. This caused the absence of not only of Parisian fashions, but at first of French fare as well. So far as food was concerned this lack was limited mainly to flour, lard, wine and salted meat, for fresh meat and fruit,
28
of course was not brought across the water. There werc French cooks in Mobile, however, and they gradually learned to dress the native products into appetizing dishes.
Only a little later than the founding of Mobile, the Spanish officers at St. Marks gave the Jesuit Clarlevoix a state dinner which made him think he was in Europe, and Penicaut even earlier tells of things which make one's mouth water.
The French breakfast has always been light, and the main meal has been dinner. While we cannot be certain of the order in which the menu was served, we know the name of a good many Mobile dishes. We may conjecture that soup,-the great national dish,-came first. It was so essential that it became the proverbial expression for a meal. Bienville, for instance, speaks of the priest, Le Maire, taking soup with him. Gumbo file goes back to colonial times, and indeed earlier, for it was ground up sassafras leaves as originally prepared by the Indians, while the oysters that go with it were so abundant as to give this name to what we call Cedar Point. Few kinds of fish are mentioned by the French, but they had the same sheephead, mackerel, trout and the like which are favorites with us. A stream over the bay was named Fish River. Meat was even more abundant. Bear and deer were familiar dishes, and much later a quarter of venison cost very little. Deer River, below Mobile, and Bear Ground, near the Old Fort, testify to the abundance of such game. Chickens, eggs and turkeys abound,-the latter be- ing called Indian fowl, Coq d'Inde, and giving the name to our Coden. In fact, game of every kind was common. A great dish borrowed from the In-
29
dians was the sagamite, a kind of mush made from corn meal, and bread made of acorns or other nuts was not unknown. Vegetables became cominon, especially corn and beans. prepared separately or served together as the Indian succotash. Hominy is mentioned oftener on the Virginia border than in Louisiana, but corn bread of different kinds was used. Something fried (friture) was often a part of the meal, and pastry (patisserie) was seldom absent in well-to-do households.
Fruits were abundant. The peach, cherry and plum were native, and enjoyed by the Indians as well as the French. Oranges were introduced from the West Indies and the fig from Provence, but bananas are not named. Grapes were not much es- teemed, as there was little besides the muscadine, which we know. The scuppernong does not seem to have been then introduced from the Atlantic coast. Strawberries, however, were much praised, and also watermelons, while mulberries were univer- sal. These are summer fruits, but in the fall the nuts of this climate were gathered. Walnuts, chest- nuts and chinquapins were frequent enough and much enjoyed. Pecans (pacanes) are mentioned as a common species of walnut (noyer).
Little native wine was made, although there is rea- son to think that some whiskey was; one of the greatest drawbacks connected with the infrequency of communication was the scarcity of wine. Peni- caut did not much esteem the native cherries. but casually remarks that they go well with eau-de-vie. This corresponds to the brandied fruit of American times.
We generally wind up a dinner, as well as begin
30
.
a breakfast, with coffee. This drink was coming into use in France. D'Argenson mentions it as a common custom,-and somewhat later it is known in Louisiana,-but we cannot be certain that it was used at the time that Mobile was founded.
Of course, the rich lived better than the poor, but there were not many poor. All cultivated the soil and raised something. The freshness and quality of the vegetables, and the fact that so many people were hunters and fishers, made conditions more equal than in later days. Creole cooking became one of the colonial institutions. Creole dishes, often highly seasoned, become common. After the removal of Mobile it was to make little difference whether vessels came or not. But at its founding this was not so : for Mobile was a part of France and had no other aspiration than to be a far-away suburb of Paris.
VIII .- THE MOSQUITO FLEET.
It was only once or twice a season that the big ships came from France, but Mobile Bay saw other sails during the year. The coasts of France, wheth- er on the Mediterranean, Atlantic or the Norman, developed a hardy sea-faring population, and not a few of these, as well as many Canadians, made up the early settlers. Dauphine Island,-Massacree as . it was first called,-was well settled from the be- ginning. and gradually the shores of the bay re- ceived many settlers. These habitans and Creoles loved the water and there is hardly a cliff on the bay or a fishing stream reaching back into the in- terior that does not show evidence, in name or other- wise, of their occupation. People now-a-daays seek- ing locations in Mobile and Baldwin counties are
31
1
confronted by French names which many of them do not understand.
At first glance it would seem that the principal commerce would be the lonely trip of the traversier from the Island to the city,-carrying supplies from the incoming ships and exports for them to take back to France, besides some local traffic and ex- change of goods. This was frequent enough, and even in 1702 a boat of sixty tons had to be built for this purpose, and still the commerce grew as port and town improved. But this was not all. During the war against England the Spanish ports were open and there was a large trade of every kind with Pensacola, besides traffic, only less in size, with Ha- vana and Vera Cruz. In addition to this, moreover, there was always the export of goods from Mobile to the French islands, particularly to Leogane and other parts of San Domingo. Indeed, we miss much of the spirit of the time if we think of Mobile alone ; for even Louisiana was only a part of a large French colonial empire, which in some respects had its earliest centre in San Domingo.
Nor is this coasting trade all that would build up shipping. The habitans were not only Frenchmen, but Catholics, and Catholicism incidentally meant a large fishing trade for Fridays and fast days. The people early began to raise cattle, but their prox- imity to the coast ever made fish one of the favorite articles of food. The fishermen lived principally near the mouth of the Bay, as indeed they have ever since, and, while the Bay of Bon Secours may have been a reminder of the Montreal church, it was also truly a haven of refuge for small craft. Perhaps the village above Daphne was later, but there grad-
32
ually came to be groups of dwellings on favored spots about the smiling bay.
Each civilization has to borrow much from that which went before, and we find reminders of Europe even in far away Louisiana. The French got much of their nautical speech from the Italians and Span- iards,-as these had earlier from the Romans and Moors,-and some of the boats which plied our bay are described in terms which would just as well fit the Mediterranean.
There are a number of small types of vessels men- tioned, whose size is somewhat uncertain. We have seen that a traversier running between Mobile and Dauphine Island; but a traversier of forty tons also sometimes went to Havana, and two even came with Iberville across the ocean in 1698. The chaloupe,- a variation of the Dutch sloop,-was also seaworthy, for one hailed from St. Augustine. Other kinds of boats are biscaienne, balandre, and pinque, all sail- ing craft with some difference in size and character. We know one balandre came from Vera Cruz, and a pinque could carry six hundred sacks of flour. Felouque is sometimes used interchangeably with frigate, as in the case of L'Aigle. By rights the felouque is the long. two-masted fast sailer with two Lateen sails still so common on the Mediterranean. Brulot and flute,-La Dauphine is a flute,-seem to have been generic words, while the pirogue was rather a flat bottom boat than the dug-out, which, among the Americans, came to bear that title. Canoes are often mentioned, and generally as made of bark; butwhat kind of bark was available in our latitude? Oak and pine were the principal trees, and their bark was certainly not used. Birch and
33
-
willow generally served in the north, but were un- common about Mobile. Doubtless some of these barks were secured from the upper rivers, but.this was the reason that the dug-out was common even in Indian days. In point of fact it was hollowed by fire rather than by chiselling.
Iberville planned a great ship-yard on Dauphine Island,-he said there was no reason why boats of any size desired could not be built there. His death and the Spanish Succession War made great changes .- but maybe our day is to effect what he dreamed.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.