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 4
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The esplanade up the river was called Place Royale, and probably this was true at New Mobile. To this it may be due that the front street of French times has ever since been called Royal. The next street west was St. Charles, now St. Emanuel, but what the third street, renamed Conception by the Spaniards, was under the French we do not know. At all events. the habit of calling streets from the people who live on them, a custom of small towns, was left behind, and the streets of the new settle- ment were at an early date named for prominent people or institutions. Conti was called for the great family of that name, and Dauphin commemo- rates the remarkable change which death wrought now in the royal family. Dauphine Island relates to the same occurrence.
The new settlement was at first smaller than the old, but it enjoyed a better site and unlike the old was to prove permanent.
XI .- THE GREAT HAT QUESTION.
While Bienville was acting on his own responsi- bility in Louisiana in moving the capital from Twen- ty-seven Mile Bluff to the present site of Mobile, im-
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portant events were occurring in France. Bienville did not know it, but in the very April, 1711, in which he was arranging for his change of base; the Dau- phin died and the whole court of Louis XIV also made a change of base. Louis' grandson, the Duke of Burgundy, a pupil of Fenelon, became Dauphin, and his wife, the charming Duchess, became the Dauphine, for whom our Dauphine Island was to be named. The Duke of St. Simon was now in his glory and was prosecuting The Great Hat Question.
This was whether the president of the great French court called the Parlement should or should not take off his hat when the Dukes of France at- tended as members.
There was also a Great Hat Question in Louisiana, for ships arrived very seldom. The ladies made up for hats by the use of feathers, ribbons, and it must be confessed by rats also; for the coifures of that day were among the most marvelous inventions of history. Of course, those of Versailles were not quite reproduced in Louisiana, but Mobile was a piece of France, an extraterritorial city, so to speak. and as such followed, as nearly as possible, the French fashions. The dependence of the official class,-and they made up a large part of the Mobile population,-upon Versailles was something which has not been often paralleled, and if Marlborough could dispute the military supremacy of France, at least no one, as a recent writer expressed it. has from the time of Louis XIV disputed the milinery supremacy of Paris. We do not know that the Mo- biliennes imitated the extravagance of their French sisters, but the pictures which Paul LaCroix gives of headdresses imitating ships might well have been
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designed in Mobile; for longing for a ship from France was the only thing in which all agreed.
Of armor we know something, but that was rare, and of Indian dress more; but we are not told a great deal about the colonial costume of the day, for we are met with the lack of private letters and journals which even later has troubled Southern his- torians, French or English. The Yankees are mnuch more given to writing on private affairs than the habitans of Louisiana or Canada. Bienville and the other officials hardly ever discussed such matters. The skirts-jupes-of the ladies receive an occa- sional mention, however, and we may well imagine that some of these assumed the great balloon shape which was so common in France. The Andrienne is spoken of as a kind of flowing drapery,-possibly we have in it some reminder of the pleat which the painter Watteau was making fashionable by his pictures. Robe was the generic for women's cos- tumes then. as it is now. but details are wanting. Penticaut is our chief authority. and he was at this time a bachelor and could know little of the subject, even at what he could learn from the clothes lines of the "plusieurs femmes" in the suburbs.
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When we come to the men we know more, but our knowledge is mainly negative; for there is constant complaint that they did not have enough clothes. Bienville every now and then acknowledges the ar- rival of coats and shirts for the men, but says that socks have not come, and as for hat. it is seldom mentioned. The Indians. we are told, wore a "braguet," but we have little information as to the habitans. Perhaps in the nature of the case they sometimes anticipated the French Revolution and
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were Sansculottes. They occasionally had very se- vere weather at Mobile in winter, but this was easily met by the skins and furs which came for export to France. There was not much trouble about shoes, for tanneries were set up in the colony. and in this respect the people were independent of France.
No doubt much of the clothing was made up in Mobile, but there were no manufactories. The Eng- glish government was industrious in preventing the erection of manufactories in their colonies, but the French had no such trouble. The absolute govern- ment of Louis XIV made everyone dependent on the court at home and every colony dependent upon France, and indeed many of the articles were made up there. As to material, cotton was becoming more common, its habitat being still in Mexico and other southern countries, but wool had not yet been de- posed from its pre-eminence. It came mainly from England, and made Flanders the manufacturing centre of the world. Taffeta is mentioned, but the principal goods brought to America were Limbourg, Mazamet. Rouen, and they were largely used in the Indian trade. Every ship brought a consignment of these materials.
It would have been well if the French government had encouraged the manufacture of cloth and other articles in Louisiana, but the factories of France were languishing and desired every market possible. St. Simon tells us that the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes twenty-six years before had now become severely felt. The expulsion of the Huguenots had affected every industry, particularly in South France. and not only so, but the exiles carried their knowledge and skill to Holland, Germany and Eng-
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land to build up rivals in trade. This and the war were the two reasons the supplies from France were infrequent and unsatisfactory.
A native linen made from the fibre of the mul- berry bark is sometimes mentioned, but silk played little part at Mobile, except in the dress of a few ladies. It must be remembered that not only was Bienville not married, but the other officers were there for short times and did not always bring their families with them. This was not true from 1712, however, for the new governor was to bring his large family,-several of them young ladies,-and from that time there was a kind of court at Mobile; for Cadilac was to prove very punctilious.
The Great Hat Question of France related to whether nobles or the lawyers should take off their hats. In Mobile, the Great Hat Question in 1711 was how to get any hats at all.
XII .- A CHATEAU ON THE BAY.
Iberville had been disappointed in getting the lands about Mobile Bay ceded to him as a fief, but the practical Bienville built a chateau on what we call Garrow's Bend for a summer residence. Per- haps a nobleman of France would have laughed at a chateau built of lumber sawed on the spot and with open gallery looking out over the blue waters; but it was more comfortable than a stone castle would have been. The furniture was ample, consisting of armoire, tables, chairs and bed, all brought from France and in the style which Louis XIV had made the vogue. There Bienville spent his summers when uot called off on duty. From his gallery he could follow the movements of the shipping, great and
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small, and from the end of his spider-legged pier, jutting out to deep water, he could bathe and fish at will. Hunting and fresh water fishing were also near at hand. for a tramp of a mile or two through the woods would bring him to Dog River, famous then and since.
All around grew the stately magnolia and the pe- can, the evergreen live oak and the black and other oaks of this climate. The persimmon-which the French called plaquemine from the Choctaw word- the walnut, the cherry, the long-leaved tulip, and the locust or acacia were not far away, and the funereal cypress could be seen in a swamp near by.
Bienville was not a botanist, although the system of Tournefort was popularized in Europe, soon to be succeeded by Linnaeus. But he took interest in his garden, where were flowers as well as vegetables. Lilies were native and the fences were overhung with Cherokee roses, but the cultivated roses of our day were not yet introduced from France. Jessa- mine, begonia, smilax and aster were native to the soil and needed no cultivation. It was in his vege- tables, however, that the practical Bienville, looking out for his colonists, took most interest. The potato, not yet called Irish because it was really American, of course took the leading place, but turnips and the other bulbous plants were not generally culti- vated outside of industrious Holland. Peas, beans and especially Indian corn came down from the In- dians themselves, and formed the staple dishes of the table. Bienville hardly had space upon his town lot to have a garden, and he therefore devoted more attention to this suburban place: He realized from the beginning that agriculture must be the
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basis of the colony, although it was hard to get the habitans away from the more lucrative Indian and Spanish trade.
Whether Bienville went further and experimented with cotton and indigo, which were soon to be so prominent, we do not know. At this early date they form no item in the exports. He was much interested in tobacco, and if he did not experiment at Mobile, he certainly did at Natchez and other parts of the colony. This was ultimately to be one of the great Louisiana products. Grapes were miss- ing except the muscadine, and wine came from Spain or France.
The pleasant Charlevoix seems never to have come to Mobile, but Bienville met him some ten years later, and in after years was to know something of the book which the father wrote upon his travels in North America. Half of the fourth volume was to be taken up with the description of the flora. It is very likely that Bienville in his tramps abroad would pay no attention to the wild plants, but the learned Jesuit was, like many of his day, interested in the materia medica which the New World opened to the Old. The candle myrtle was rather useful for commerce than medicine, but the plant which the French called ipecacuanha, and the English the May apple, was to prove a valuable discovery. The sun- flower was to furnish aconite, and even the lowly sar- acenia was a specific in its way. Gensing was useful from Canada to the Gulf, and sassafras not only sup- plied a tea, but its ground leaves were to originate the famous Creole gumbo. The cassine or youpon furnished the black .drink which the Indians took before going on the war-path, and its medicinal
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properties were also to be valued by the habitans.
While Charlevoix was on the lookout for medi- cinal knowledge, he did not despise flowers which were merely grateful to the eye. He pictures for us fully the jack-in-the-pulpit, known to him as the Virgin's Slipper (sabot), and he tells also of the sweet shrub, together with many other pleasant things.
The fauna of the country was familiar to Bien- ville, for he was a thorough woodsman; but the ani- mals need not detain us, since, with the exception of the buffalo, they remain with us until now. The French even introduced some new ones. Horses were still rare, but cows, although the French strain had not been improved, were common enough. The business of herding was becoming almost as impor- tant under the French as among the Spaniards fur- ther south. Some of the early explorers found chickens on the lower Mississippi, but these came from some Spanish shipwreck. The poultry of Bien- ville's day was imported by himself and soon as- sumed great importance.
Bienville's chateau was truly French and life there was pleasant in every way. His friends were entertained with music, cards, and to some extent with books; but after all the unique feature con- sisted of the beautiful view over the bay and the "bel jardin" to which Penicaut so lovingly refers.
XIII .- INFANT INDUSTRIES.
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It is only since Lord Durham's report in 1830 that any nation has begun to recognize colonies as exist- ing for themselves. All colonial empires have been founded on the idea that colonists were merely
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hands for the home country, designed to extract from the New whatever would be useful to the Old World. This was the notion held by France in the time of Louis XIV, and the main question as to in- dustries was what would best supply France.
Columbus' discovery was a mere accident, and when the matter of colonization was taken up Spain sought for gold and silver, and other nations fol- lowed only to seek also for precious metals. Mining is one of the extractive industries and is of somewhat the same nature as the fur trade, cattle raising and even the logging business. They are all pioneer in- dustries, and sometimes rather injure a country than built it up. Productive rather than extractive is agriculture, for in the first place it supplies the colonial market and may afford a surplus for ex- port which gradually builds up capital. Perhaps most remunerative of all industries are manufac- tures, because the labor expended produces finer articles and secures greater returns. Necessary for any and all of these industries, however, is what is called trade in retail and commerce in its wholesale branches. Which of all these occupations predomi- nated in early Louisiana ?
It was soon discovered that there was little in the way of mines on the Gulf of Mexico, although Le Sueur and afterwards Cadillac found minerals, par- ticularly copper, near the sources of the Mississippi. This, however, went more readily through Canada than Mobile. It was still thought a possibility in Crozat's time, and even later, for the sources of the Red River were supposed to be in the country from which the Spaniards drew some of the precious
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metals of Mexico; but, although the king reserved one-fifth as his share, there was little realized.
Of furs and peltry there is a different tale to tell. Much was anticipated from the hair of the buffalo, but this was found too coarse and was soon aban- doned. Beaver skins were found in abundance, but the best were from the Northwest, and Canadian in- fluence soon prevented their reaching the sea via Louisiana. Furs and skins of other wild animals, however, always formed a large part of the exports. Domestic animals were never grown in sufficient quantity for export. Iberville tried to introduce the Spanish sheep, but the attempt was soon given up, and the Spanish colonists retained their monopoly of cattle raising. Hogs flourished, and these de- spised animals here as in the rest of the world form- ed the main staple for home consumption. Horses were valuable for agricultural purposes, and, al- though introduced by the Spaniards and the breed improved by Iberville, practically none existed in the colony when D'Artaguiette made his Domesday survey in 1708.
In agriculture we must distinguish the gardens from the plantations. There were always vege- tables, even on sandy Dauphine Island. but much time was lost experimenting with seeds from France, and it was some years before it was found that even wheat would not flourish in the Gulf country. The same resulted from the spasmodic attempts to intro- duce silk, and ultimately attention was concentrated on plantations for tobacco and indigo. These proved to be successful and led ultimately to a large export trade. It was doubtless agriculture that caused the introduction of slavery, first of Indians and after-
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wards of negroes. The negroes at first came from the French West Indies, but Crozat, and afterwards Law's Company, were obliged to bring them annual- ly from Guinea. During the Mobile period, how- ever, it cannot be said that agriculture had assumed the position which one would expect. Few farmers were brought out among the immigrants, and agri- culture in France was at this time at a low ebb, and famine frequently prevailed. The peasants were despised socially, although in the long run it was they who not only supported the court, but paid the big war budget of that time.
Of manufacturing there was little, for, except for silk in the South of France, woollen goods in the Northeast, and fancy articles about Paris, manufac- tures had not survived the wreck of Colbert's plans by the wars of Louis XIV. Manufacture still meant hand-made, for machinery was in its infancy and the factory system unknown. If we can count sawmills under this head, there was something to show about Mobile. In 1718 Law's Company directed the new governor to investigate carefully the mill of M. Mean, situated on a stream about a league from Mo- bile, but tradition has lost the site of this first flour- ishing sawmill. Bricks were also made in the vicin- ity and a great deal of lime came from the oyster shells, although naturally these products were main- ly for home consumption. Much was expected and something realized from naval stores. The first time Iberville went to Mobile he got a mast for the Pal- mier, and tar was made in quantity. Of finer man- ufactures there is little or nothing said.
The trade of that day was both internal and ex- ternal,-with the Indians and with France and the
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Spanish colomes. Both Crozat's and Law's exploita- tions were based largely upon commerce. Even dur- ing wartime, when there were few merchant vessels, the king relaxed his law against carrying merchan- dise so far as to make his ships bring whatever was offered as freight. In Mobile there were shopkeep- ers at least from 1707, and they are frequently mentioned afterwards. Their name, "marchand," is generic and is applied equally to such men as the twenty-five voyageurs engaged in the trade among the Illinois and to the resident shopmen. It would be interesting to see one of these little shops. It would doubtless be the front room of the colonial home, with wares displayed in the window, and the business conducted as often by the wife as by the husband. The wares would embrace everything from a piow to a wooden shoe, and we may be sure that even the ribbons, silks and millinery of France would not be lacking. The time had not yet come for shops having one line of goods. Each contained what now would be called general merchandise.
Mechanics and artisans were well known. Iber- ville insisted upon them from the beginning. He sent over four families of artisans in the Pelican, and next year we have the name of a carpenter. The mediaeval guilds still influenced nomenclature, although they hardly existed otherwise in Mobile. The carpenter is master carpenter, and the same is true even of such military employments as armorer and cannoneer.
On the whole, therefore, Mobile was quite a flour- ishing little town, and the centre of Indian and do- mestic trade for a large territory, but its chief in- dustries were trading and in raw materials.
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XIV .- COLONIAL HOMES.
John Fiske never wrote more charming pages than those in which he aseribes the different social char- acteristics of the North and South to the differing locations of the chimney in the houses. In New England, he says, the chimney is in the centre of the house, thus giving a fireplace in each room, no matter how small the number of rooms. This was necessary in order to warm the houses in that severe climate, and made the hearthstone the rallying point of the family. Down South, on the other hand, the type was the log cabin, consisting of two end rooms separated by an open passageway through the centre, each room having a separate chimney on the outside. There was less need of heat and the social centre was rather the open dining room in this hall. Fiske's idea is that the Northerner lived in- doors in winter and the Southerner in summer, re- versing customs with the climate. In any event, climate affects dwellings as well as clothing and cus- toms.
Mr. Fiske, however, did not notice that an impor- tant addition in the lower South was the porch, cov- cring the front of this hallway. In Virginia it be- comes the stately portico that we find in General Lee's old home at Arlington, and in Charleston it is the long, wide piazza which always faces the sea. Up in New York there is only a little Dutch stoop, and in New England a cover over the door.
When one reaches the Southwest, at Mobile and beyond, this piazza has assumed a different form and is known as the front gallery. It may be, as on the Atlantic, an extension of the central hall, or it
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may open directly upon rooms which join each other without halls; but a house without a gallery is a rarity and is undesirable in this warmer climate. Here the Creole gallery has conquered the Eastern porch and practically driven out the word. All these words are foreign and show a South European origin.
Maurice Thompson dubs this gallery a Creole in- stitution; and it surely is. It was brought here by the Canadians, however, and its primitive form is still found along the St. Lawrence. It is there a pro- jection from the house and does not rest upon pillars as with us. It is called galerie, the French form, as with the Southern Creoles. But from what part of France did the Canadians get it? If one travels through France, or if one looks at the illustrations under the word House in the new edition of the En- . cyclopedia Britannica, he will find nothing corre- sponding to our gallery. In that thickly settled country, the assembly place, so far as the weather permitted, was the porte cochere within the house, or the court and garden into which this opened. The origin of our gallery is therefore unsolved.
We have no illustrations of the Mobile house of 1711, but we have pictures of Dauphine Island places a few years later. These show one-story houses with the chimney at one end, but, with perhaps two ex- ceptions, no galleries or even sheds in front. They give us one striking feature, however, of Creole architecture,-the roof sloping to the front and to the rear. The American pioneer's cabin uniformly slopes also to the front, but the house is generally longer and the slope therefore is proportionately less than with the old. Creole houses. These, like
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those of the habitans along the St. Lawrence, have a curving slope so as partially to project over the front gallery. Tiles and even shingles were rare, and thatch, often of palmetto, was common. Some examples of early roofs are left in Mobile, but more are preserved in the French quarter of the daughter city, New Orleans.
One singular feature was that, although there was plenty of land, the houses were built near the street, and, instead of having front yards as with the Eng- glish. Flowers as well as vegetables were grown in a garden or court behind the house. Glass for win- dows was rare even in France, and solid shutters were the rule.
There were few public buildings, and they dif- fered from the residences in size rather than other- , wise. It was not yet the age of stone, hardly even of brick except for cellars and the like. Even two- story houses were rare. Visitors to and from Mex- ico,-New Spain,-were not unknown, but there was not here any use of its adobe houses, gradually ap- proaching over the narrow streets. The principal public buildings of 1711 were inside the fort, and they were not of a permanent character until the reconstruction of that stronghold of brick. Most of the buildings were frame, or wooden frames filled in with oyster shell plaster. Whitewash was used, and the streets were probably shelled, so far as any- thing was done to them at all. Vines and trees abounded, and the little city perched on the bluff marked by Royal street, dominated by the ramparts of Fort Louis, was a picturesque sight to any visitor. There was little imposing, perhaps, but there was much comfort and the savoir vivre which has mark- ed Mobile from the beginning.
XV .- ANCIENT PLACE NAMES THAT SURVIVE.
The name Mobile comes from the Indians once met by DeSoto somewhere below Selma, and whose rem- nants were known by Iberville near Mt. Vernon. The influence of this tribe was far out of proportion to its numbers. The French do not tell us the mean- ing of the name. Tradition had no doubt long since lost it, and it has been left for modern scholars to find that the word probably means Paddlers,-mark- ing connection of navigation with even the primitive Mobilians. The French settlement was not original- ly called Mobile, but Fort Louis, the words de la Mo- bile being added to distinguish it from other settle- ments of the same name. The name Mobile, how- ever, belonged to the bay and river as well as to the Indian tribe, and even from the first many of the colonists called their new settlement La Mobile. It was named for Louis XIV and was not one of the many St. Louis settlements. It was analogons to the great Port Louis which the king sought to build on the west coast of France. The official term Fort Louis gradually faded out and La Mobile became the name of the town.
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