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 7
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It is unfortunate that we cannot supplement this study of the Baptismal Register by study of the death register, but the latter record was not begun until 1726. We know that in 1704 there was a visi- tation of what is supposed to be yellow fever and which was very destructive, sweeping off half the sailors of the Pelican and thirty of the newly arrived soldiers. At that time also the great explorer Tonty died, and a number of the colonists. Fever is com- mon in newly settled countries, particularly where, as in this case, the settlement is in the lowlands. In order to better communication the inhabitants at first settled on the rivers and other streams and were thus exposed to malaria. The same trouble oc- curred in Virginia among the English, but in both provinces the colonists gradually became acclimat- ized, and we have less complaint in subsequent years. Quinine was not yet known in Louisiana, although it had been discovered by the Indians in Peru. We
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do not hear as yet even of coffee, which was to prove something of a specific against malaria. As they learned to live on the sea coast, or on bluffs and away from the lowlands and bottoms, the Creoles came to be a longlived race.
XXII .- THE INDIAN TRADE.
The statement of William Garrett Brown that the fate of North America was decided by traders on the Gulf coast seems a paradox, and yet there is prob- ably much truth in it. These men represented the two hostile civilizations of France and England, then dividing the world. The country in which they contended was the Alabama-Tombigbee Basin, ex- tending east and west almost from the Mississippi River to waters draining to the Atlanic, and from the Gulf up to the Ohio Valley. The English of Vir- ginia and afterwards of Carolina carried their wares from the ocean across the watershed to the Alabama- Tombigbee Basin, while on the other hand the French had a nearer port at Mobile and water com- munication the whole way into this interior.
To understand the situation it must be remember- ed that three of the greatest Indian tribes upon the American continent inhabited this Basin. The Chickasaws were at the sources of the Tombigbee and the Choctaws nearer its mouth, while the Mus- cogees in their four divisions lived on the upper Alabama, and the Cherokees, a fourth great tribe, occupied the mountains to the northeast. These tribes communicated also by land trails, indistinct to the white men, but well understood by the In- dians. Some were made by prehistoric animals or . by the buffaloes, and they were not only the aborigin-
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la roads, but the routes of the first European ex- plorers, of colonists, and sometimes even of our rail- ways. There is no doubt that they served for the native trade long before Columbus' day. Just as French was the language of commercial develop- ment in the East, so in this Western territory the Mobilian tongue furnished the trade jargon from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. This seems to point back to a time, perhaps before DeSoto, when the Mobile tribe was the head of a great confederacy. A French map of 1733 shows "Old Mobilians" not far from our Claiborne, besides those near Mount Ver- non on Mobile River.
The aboriginal commerce related mainly to wea- pons and ornaments, and arrow-heads and other in- struments are found made of stone brought some- times from a great distance. The trade after the white men came was in clothing and blankets, which simple enough, but superior to the old skins and furs, and also in liquor, and. curiously enough, to- bacco and tools. The three implements which have most influenced civilization are the plow, the anvil and the saw, but in French times these were special- ties even among the Europeans, and only the axe and mattock were much used by the natives. Among the English trade goods we also find hoes; but the Indian was rather a hunter than a farmer. At first the Spaniards and even the French would not supply arms to the savages, but very soon guns and ammu- nition became staples of trade.
The earliest explorers hunted for gold and silver, and even Cadillac did not give over the search; but they soon found. that, although there was little gold, the furs and skins which the Indians brought fur-
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nished a basis of exchange. A deerskin became the standard of value by which everything else was measured. Twice a year, in spring and fall, the furs and skins were brought by canoe or packhorse to Mobile, or later to Fort Tombeche on the one river and to Toulouse on the other, and thence shipped to Mobile for export. In return blue and red cotton goods, blankets, ribbons, guns and ammunition, brass kettles. axes and hatchets were taken back to the nation. The French called their cloth Mazamet and Limbourg, while the British had their strouds from Gloucestershire; but the proverb as to the rose has analogies in dry goods also.
The French trader was really a royal officer. If he went into the woods as a coureur it was as the agent of the commandant at the fort. On the other hand, the British trader was generally a Scotchman trading for himself.
Several stages in the history of the trade should be noted. Before Mobile was settled the British were supreme, and after Mobile was built the first years were of uncertainty ; but the easy water com- munication soon gave the coast country to the French and confined the British to the Cherokees and Chickasaws. This result was largely accom- plished by the energy of Bienville and was sealed by his building Fort Toulouse among the Alibamons in 1714. The time of Crozat was essentially a trade epoch, although so far as it was successful this was due to Bienville, whom the Indians loved for his fairness, and not to the governor Cadillac, who early offended them. Cadillac had been in charge of De- troit, where the beaver trade centred, and could not get used to the less valuable products of his South-
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ern government. He almost lost the Choctaws. As late as 1715 English influence was so strong even among the friendly Choctaws that only two, villages, -Tchicachae and Conchaque,-remained friendly to the French. Bienville's success in winning back the upper Choctaw villages was so complete that it has been forgotten. We are apt to think that what he effected had always been so; but it was a black day when he had to give refuge to these two villages and started the work of reclaiming the others. By 1718, however,-with Cadillac gone,-the tables were turned and the French traders from Toulouse had practically run the English out of the Alibamon territory.
The rivalry was between Mobile and Charleston. Mobile traders had establishments where Nashville now stands and shipped from Toulouse beyond modern Atlanta. The Charleston trade crossed the Savannah River near where Augusta was to be,- indeed the future Georgia city was largely a Charles- ton outpost,-and thence forked to the Cherokees on the north and to the Creeks on the west. The Brit- ish trader crossed the rivers above the French forts and passed through the rough country of northern Alabama to the upper tribes of the Muscogees, Chickasaws, or even to the Choctaws. The first, called the Creeks by the British and the Alibamons by the French, were a bone of contention, while the Chickasaws at first favored the French but then went over wholly to the British. The Choctaws in later years were always in the French interest. Sta- tistics are wanting, but it is clear that the Indian trade was very large and constituted the basis of European diplomacy in the South.
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The French were more liberal in their presents. In 1711 they gave 4,000 livres, about what they spent on their fortifications. The more presents, the less fortifications necessary. An epitome of the case lies in the fact that Charleston was fortified, while Mobile, nearer the savages, never had a wall.
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XXIII .- CONCLUSION.
Mobile was founded as the basis of French colonial effort on the Gulf of Mexico, and was the first capi- tal of Louisiana. This province embraced the whole of the Mississippi Valley, with the Alabama-Tombig- bee Basin added on the east and with indefinite claims to the Texan coast towards the west. We have seen the town on its first site at Twenty-seven Mile Bluff, and afterwards on the permanent loca- tion where Mobile River joints the Bay. We have seen it not only firmly established, but in Crozat's time reaching out in all directions towards the real- ization of its American empire.
Its story up to this removal is that of an earnest effort to found a French colonial capital in America, and, as a second generation was now coming to ma- turity, it could be called the First Creole Capital. Whether regarded from the point of view of its sites, from the political side of governmental experi- ments, from the economic attempt of Crozat to build up a monopoly. or in other ways, it was an essay full of interest, and not without a measure of success.
Its supremacy was imperilled by the formation of Law's Company to settle the Mississippi Valley it- self, which led to the removal of the colonial offices. Mobile ceased to be the capital, but it never ceased
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to be important, its historical importance was henceforth based on other grounds.
And while the main development left the Ala- bama-Tombigbee Basin for the greater Mississippi Valley, this was only an expansion of what had be- gun at Mobile, just as Law's Company was an ex- pansion of Crozat's. The expansion was by men who had received their training at Mobile, now transplanted to a larger field to put in execution the lessons they had learned. And, moreover, the future history of the Alabama-Tombigbee Basin it- self was to be no small one. It remained the bul- wark of Louisiana against the English on the At- lantic as well as the centre of French Indian trade and policy throughout the entire South. If there must come a conflict between the French and Eng- lish civilizations for the control of the Mississippi Valley, it would be fought out by traders and by sol- diers on this Gulf coast or in the mountains between the Mobile and Georgia frontiers.
The foundation of Mobile was therefore one step in the long duel of Teuton and Latin which has pre- vailed since the days of Rome, which reached a crisis in the Anglo-French wars of the eighteenth century, and culminated in Napoleon's day. It took in the world from India to America. British colonies contended with Canada on the north and Louisiana on the west until the war ended with the Peace of Paris in 1763. Although Canada has attracted more attention, Louisiana was the greater prize,-and Louisiana became an accomplished fact with the set- tlement of Mobile in 1702 and its upbuilding on a new site in 1711-1718.
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The masterful Teuton thinks that he is conquer- ing the world, but the study of races seems to show, that, while he may have to create a ruling class, his civilization is made up of institutions which he adopts from the East or the South. Even his blood is less persistent than that of the darker races. The blonde type is yielding to the brunette. It may be that the historical contributions of the Franco-Span- ish type in America are not yet closed. Already the old Creole has influenced the whole Mississippi Valley more than the American generally realizes.
Whatever the future, whatever the silent- in- fluences since the Treaty of Paris, the colonial period is becoming clearer as we study its records. The contest of the British and Latin civilizations for what is now the United States was in the South East, where Louisiana adjoined the British colonies. As the beginning of British institutions was at James- town and Plymouth Rock, the beginning of Louis- iana was at the founding of Mobile.
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