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Gc 976.3 Sm68b 1758076
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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02282 3741
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016
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BRIEF HISTORY OF THE LOUISIANA TERRITORY
2
BY WALTER ROBINSON SMITH, PH. M. Instructor in American History in Washington University
St. Louis, Missouri. THE ST. LOUIS NEWS COMPANY, Publisher's Agents 1904.
1758076
F Smith, Walter Robinson.
876 Brief history of the Louisiana territory, by Walter .82 Robinson Smith ... St. Louis, The St. Louis news com- pany, publisher's agents, 1904.
iv, 98 p. 21em.
SHELF CARD
1. Louisiana purchase. 2. Louisiana-Ilist.
Library of Congress
F369.S66
5-7991
· C 23860
,
F 876.82
PREFACE.
The extraordinary revival of interest in all sorts of infor- mation regarding the Louisiana Purchase calls for a historical manual, brief, accurate, and readable, which the extensive litera- ture of the Territory does not at present contain. This volume is an attempt to supply such a want. It consists of the revised copy of four lectures delivered before the Washington University Association on the Mary Hemenway Foundation. The author lays no claim to exhaustive use of original sources but has ex- amined the wide range of literature touching upon the history of the Purchase Territory and accepted well authenticated facts wherever found. Special acknowledgments of aid and kindness are due to Miss Louise Dalton in charge of the Missouri Histor- ical Society Library, 1600 Locust Street, and to Dean Marshall S. Snow and Chancellor Winfield S. Chaplin of Washington Uni- versity.
St. Louis, April 25, 1904.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS.
I. LA SALLE AND NEW FRANCE.
Discovery of the Mississippi, 3. Early French explorations, 4. Quebec founded by Champlain, 4. Difficulties of exploration, 5. Gov- ernment of New France, 6. Jean Nicollet, 6. Early life of La Salle, 7. Explorations on the Ohio and Illinois, 7. Joliet and Marquette, 9, 10. La Salle's plan, 11. Journey, 12. Reaches mouth of the Mississippi, 13. In Texas, 14. Death and character, 15.
II. NEW ORLEANS AND FRENCH LOUISIANA.
D'Iberville takes up work of La Salle, 16. Bienville and the En- glish, 17. Settlements at mouth of the Mississippi, 18. Population in 1711, 18. Louisiana under a monopolist, 18. Failure of Crozat, 19. The Mississippi Company, 19, 20. Founding of New Orleans, 20. Ex- plorations, 21. Discovery of upper Rockies, 22. Cahokia and Kaskas- kia founded, 22. Development of Louisiana, 23. Government of Louis- iana, 25. French and Indian War, 28. Fall of New France, 29.
III. ST. LOUIS AND SPANISH LOUISIANA.
Effect of transfer on Louisiana, 30. Creole Revolution, 31. New Orleans occupied by Spanish, 33. Founding of St. Louis, 35. Develop- ment, 36. Life of early settlers, 37. Government, 38. The Spaniards in St. Louis, 39. Death of Laclede, 40. Indian attack upon St. Louis, 40. Condition at time of the Purchase, 41. Religious quarrel at New . Orleans, 42. Administration of Galvez, 43. Aid to Americans in Rev- olution, 44. Echoes of the French Revolution, 45. The right of de- posit and the treaty of Madrid, 46.
IV. A DIPLOMATIC DRAMA: THE GREAT PURCHASE .
Inauguration of Jefferson, character, 48. Godoy, 50. Talleyrand, 50. Napoleon Bonaparte, 50. Efforts of France to regain Louisiana, 50. X. Y. Z. affair, 51. Napoleon's plan, 51. Compensation to Spain, 53. Treaty of San Ildefonso, 53. Spanish America, 54. Livingston (III)
C23860
IV
Contents
sent to France, 55. St. Domingo, 56. Toussaint L. Ouverture, 57. Re- bellion in Hayti, 57. The elements of the struggle, 58. Napoleon's St. Domingan policy, 59. Le Clerc in St. Domingo, 59. Failure, 60. Jef- ferson's diplomacy, 61. Party management, 62. Monroe sent to France, 63. War excitement, 64. European war, 65. Napoleon decides to sur- render Louisiana, 66. Negotiations, 67. The Purchase, 68.
V. LOUISIANA TERRITORY UNDER THE UNITED STATES.
News of the purchase, 70. Jefferson's constitutional scruples, 70, 71. Provisions of the Treaty, 72. Party littleness, 72, 73. Government of the New Territory, 74. Boundaries, 75. Extent and ideas of the new territory, 75, 76. Transfer from Spain to France, 77. From France to the United States, 78. Division of Territory, 80. Loussat's letter, 81. New Orleans at time of purchase, 82. Upper Louisiana, 84. Burr conspiracy, 85. Lewis and Clark expedition, 86. Pike's explorations, 87. Louisiana admitted into the Union, 88. Speech of Josiah Quincy, 88. Jackson at New Orleans, 89. States carved out of the Territory, 90, 91. Riches of the Mississippi Valley, 91.
BRIEF HISTORY OF THE LOUISIANA TERRITORY.
CHAPTER I.
LA SALLE AND NEW FRANCE.
N ATIONS no less than individuals possess a variety of characteristics which give them success along different lines of activity. This truth is strikingly illustrated in the early history of the New World. The Spanish and Portuguese did most of the work of discovery and explora- tion by sea; the French were the most noted explorers by land and the most brilliant administrators over a widely extended territory and a diversified native population; and, while the English did little of the work of discovery and exploration, they were the most successful colonizers. With regard to the Mississippi valley, it may be said that the Spanish discovered it, the French explored it and conceived the idea of constructing therein a great empire, and the Anglo-Saxon settled it and de- veloped resources and a population beyond anything of which the boldest French pioneer ever dreamed.
The discovery of the Mississippi was the work of Hernando De Soto. He had been conspicuous in the ruthless conquest of Peru, and was later the Spanish Governor of Cuba. Landing on the coast of Florida with nearly six hundred well-equipped men he plunged boldly into the wilderness and after months of hardship and suffering, discovered the Mississippi river; but it was only to be buried beneath its turbid waters, while his followers fled down its friendly current, glad to escape from the Eldorado of their dreams which had proved rather to be a nightmare of misery and death. The discovery passed out of men's minds, and a century and a quarter later, when the French explorers floated down the same majestic stream, they were un- conscious that any European had ever before gazed upon its banks.
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Brief History of the Louisiana Territory.
The attention of France was called to the New World dur- ing a war with Spain which was begun in 1521. The exchequer of Spain was being gorged with gold and silver from the mines of Mexico, and the ambitious Francis I. decided that he would like to have his treasury supplied in the same way. In 1524 Verrazano was sent out to explore the regions north of Mexico, in the hope of finding gold and a northwest passage to the Orient. He skirted the American coast from North Carolina to Maine, and returned with the best map of the coast made during the epoch. Ten years later Jacques Cartier landed further to the north, and finally sailed up the St. Lawrence river as far as Montreal. In 1540 Roberval attempted to plant a colony in Canada, but failed. In 1562-65 followed Coligny's noble but unfortunate attempt to make a settlement in Florida. It was wiped out in cold blood by the Spaniards, forming a tragedy which has been most graphically portrayed by Francis Parkman , in his "Pioneers of France in the New World."
It was not until the opening of the next century that France succeeded in planting a permanent colony in the New World. The chimera of mines bursting with wealth and streams whose beds were studded with pearls had vanished, and the prospect of fortunes to be made in the fur trade and the New Foundland fisheries now lured on the adventurers. In 1603 the Sieur de Monts obtained a monopoly of the fur trade, with permission to plant colonies in a large tract of land extending from New York · to Cape Breton, known as Acadia. Port Royal was settled the next year, and in 1608 Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec. Champlain was cheerful; brave, adventurous, high-minded, a man of culture, shrewd, and enterprising; a hero worthy of France and of his reputation as the founder of Canada. The early history of America furnishes no more gallant and attrac- tive character. He made the one mistake of alienating the Iroquois Confederacy, but that was probably necessary, or at least defensible. No magnificent cavalcade of adventurers, backed by the treasures of Mexico and Peru, were at his com-
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La Salle and New France.
mand; he had to depend upon Indian allies, and without the aid of the Algonquins, which meant the fatal enmity of the Five Tribes, he could not have explored the strategic regions about the lake which bears his name. He remained in New France, guiding her destinies with ability and discretion until his death in 1635.
Before the death of Champlain trading-posts and missions had been planted along the banks of the St. Lawrence at Tadoussac, Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers, and the Jesuits had penetrated the western wilds and were baptising the naked savages on the coast of Lake Huron. But the growth of New France was slow. The interests of the adventurers who held a monopoly of the fur trade were opposed to the extension of set- tlements. A growth of population would divide their profits. Moreover, the class of pioneers was inferior. Few of them were animated by any high motives, while a vast majority were driven on solely by the free life of the wilderness, and the lust of trade. Montaigne's famous complaint that if you "Put three Frenchmen into the deserts of Lybia, they will not live a month together without fighting," is eminently justifiable. This spirit lost to France an empire in India, and in the early history of America, jealousies, bickerings, and petty squabbles over every conceivable situation were constant. The Franciscans opposed the Jesuits, and both opposed the Huguenots, who of all French- men were most capable .of success in colonizing America. The traders were always ready to cut each other's throats, and were continually harassed by the "coureurs-de-bois," a sort of French "poor white trash" who lived among the Indians, and carried on an independent traffic in spite of the fur trade monopoly. The support from France was vacillating and uncertain, yet the colonial.authorities of the mother country were ever ready to in- terfere, and their meddlesome changes of policy added not a little to the turbulence of the colony. Nor was the friendship of the Indians, which the Frenchman, with his facile and adapt- able nature, was able to obtain much more easily than the exclu-
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Brief History of the Louisiana Territory.
sive Englishman, wholly to be relied upon; for as soon as they found the French trader unable to defend himself, they were no less ready to take his scalp than his hatchets in return for furs. Only the devotion of the missionaries with the skill of a few of the leaders was able to save the colony from destruction.
Under such conditions the colony drifted until, in 1661, the young Louis XIV. assumed personal control of the government of France. He took great interest in New France, adopted it as a foster child, and injured it by excessive paternal care, rather than by neglect. Richelieu had established autocratic govern- ment in Canada in the early part of the century, and Louis XIV. now strengthened it by sending out three able men to take charge of affairs and inaugurate a new era. They were Marquis de Tracy, military commandant, in charge of all military affairs; Sieur de Courcelle, governor, who was to have charge of the gen- eral enterprises of the colony; and Jean Baptiste Talon, intend- ant, whose duties were to regulate the minor affairs of the colony and guard the actions of the other two. Large reinforcements came over, bringing the best army America had yet seen.
Canada immediately took on new life. An expedition of six hundred French regulars marched into the heart of the Iro- quois country and terrified the Long House into peace for twenty years. They were then ready for Western exploration. About 1640 a settlement had been made as far west as the Sault St. Marie and a missionary post established among the Indians on the borders of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Just before the death of Champlain, he had sent out Jean Nicollet to explore this region. Nicollet had been given by Champlain as a hostage to the Indians to bind a treaty of peace and to be trained as an interpreter for future dealings. He had been adopted and lived among the Ottawas and Nipissungs for sixteen years, and had just returned to the settlements. Champlain had heard of a race of beardless men beyond the great lakes and a "great water" still beyond. Who could doubt that these were Orientals and the great water beyond the Indian Ocean? Nicollet set out in
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La Salle and New France.
1635 with a small party, taking along a Chinese robe of bril- liantly flowered damask, in which to greet the Mongolians be- yond Lake Michigan. He reached the vicinity and sent some of his Indian attendants to announce his coming. Then, array- ing himself in his Chinese robe, and waiving a pistol in each hand, he advanced to meet the expectant savages, for they were none other than the tribe of Winnebago Indians. The women and children fled screaming with terror, but the warriors looked on in admiration and envy. A great feast was prepared, in which a hundred and twenty beavers were devoured, and Nicollet passed on. He crossed over to the Wisconsin river, and descended so far that he could report on his return that in three days more he would have reached the sea. The water which he called the sea was what the Indians called the "Messipi;" none other than the great river which nearly a hundred years before had kept from savage desecration the body of De Soto.
The report of this journey aroused in the Jesuits and others a great desire to solve the mystery of the forests and learn what became of the great water which was soon reported to be a river. This desire first took tangible form in the heart of a heroic young Frenchman who had recently come over to Canada from Rouen, Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle. He was the son of a wealthy merchant and had received a good education. Early in life he seems to have been fascinated by the mighty re- ligious organization which was then making its force felt through- out the world and allied himself with the Jesuits. But his tower- ing ambition and consciousness of ability chafed under its ma- chine-like routine, and he withdrew from the order with a reputa- tion for scholarship, unimpeachable integrity, and a determination which nothing could shake. His connection with the Jesuits had cut off his inheritance and with very limited resources he started for Canada where his brother was a priest of St. Sulpice. It is probable that before leaving France he had formed a stern re- solve to carve out of the Western wilderness a name for himself and an empire for France. At any rate, as soon as he arrived
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Brief History of the Louisiana. Territory.
at Montreal in 1666, he was offered some land above the La Chine rapids on the extreme frontier in a very dangerous position, and immediately settled upon it. The grant had been made because such an estate would be in the line of attack from the Indians, and serve as a warning to the priests of the Seminary; it was accepted because it was a post of advantage in carrying on the fur trade, and gave La Salle a good chance to study the Indian languages and customs. This opportunity was assiduously used, and he was soon master of a number of Indian dialects. From a party of Senecas he heard much of a river called the Ohio, or Beautiful River, which was so long that it took many months to traverse it. Common report apprised him of the geography be- yond the great lakes. Like nearly all of the early explorers his imagination flew across the wild and lonely regions that stretched away toward the sunset and he dreamed of new avenues of com- merce and riches in traffic with China and Japan. The long river mentioned by the Senecas was doubtless the Ohio and Mis- sissippi merged into one, and La Salle thought it must flow into the "Vermilion Sea." This sea was the Gulf of California, and La Salle thought it would open up a western passage to China.
La Salle was a man of action, and his resolution was soon formed. He hastened to Quebec to obtain the permission of the government to make his intended exploration. The cost was to be borne by himself, and since he had no money, it took nearly all of his estate to purchase four canoes with supplies and hire fourteen men for the expedition. It was midsummer, 1669, when the party set out. Soon the Indians became hostile, a large part of the men forsook him, but nothing daunted the resolution of La Salle. He pushed on to the Ohio, and floated down to the rapids near Louisville. During the next year he went north- ward, crossed Lake Erie, ascended the Detroit river, passed through Lake Huron, thence to Lake Michigan. From Lake Michigan he ascended the Chicago river, crossed the portage to the Illinois, and descended it far towards the Mississippi. Tra- dition says that La Salle reached the Mississippi by both the
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La Salle and New France.
Ohio and the Illlinois, but this is not probable. He had dis- covered these two rivers, however, gained confidence, broadened · his ideas, and returned ready to promulgate his larger plan.
Meanwhile, it is necessary to leave La Salle, and trace an- other expedition of importance. The governor and intendent of France had become interested in the discovery of the Missis- sippi. For this purpose an expedition was planned and put in charge of Louis Joliet. Joliet was a native of Canada, having been born in Quebec in 1645. He was educated by the Jesuits, but, like La Salle, had renounced the priesthood to become a merchant. There was no spark of genius in his make-up. He was simply an intelligent, courageous, prudent leader; possessed of abundant enterprise and sound judgment. A Jesuit priest, Jacques Marquette, was sent along as secretary of the expedition. Marquette was an excellent linguist, possessed of a gentle and poetic nature, a rare spiritual insight and elevation of character, coupled with the courage of a knight and the endurance of an Indian.
On a May day of 1673 these two men with five companions and two birch canoes, supplied with an abundance of smoked meat and Indian corn, turned their faces toward the unknown West. They plied their paddles by day and drew up their canoes into the edge of the forest where they encamped by night. Passing along the northern shores of Lake Michigan, they glided into Green Bay, thence up the Fox river past Lake Winnebago, and carrying their canoes across the narrow portage, they em- barked on the placid waters of the Wisconsin. They were warned by the Indians not to venture further, because the tribes beyond were ferocious, and the forests and rivers were inhab- ited by demons. . But on they floated, down the current which led they knew not where-perhaps to the Vermilion Sea, pos- sibly to the Gulf of Mexico, or perchance to the South Sea. One month after starting, to their inexpressible joy, they glided out upon the blue waters of the Mississippi, and turned their prows to the Southward. For days the solitudes along the
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Brief History of the Louisiana Territory.
stream were unrelieved by the faintest trace of man, but after a fortnight they reached the Indian village of Peoria, where they were feasted and again advised to retrace their journey. Un- heeding, they re-embarked, floated past the mouth of the Illinois, and soon their canoes were tossing about in the surging vortex formed by the mighty Missouri, whose angry current rushed in with a momentum that could only have been acquired by coursing through unknown vasts of barbarism to the West.
Recovering from their fright, they continued on their way down the swollen current, past St. Louis, beyond the mouth of the Beautiful River; on and on, until they reached the lands of the Arkansas. Here they landed and after a narrow escape, suc- ceeded in making friends with the Indians. The increasing danger of the situation now led to a serious council regarding a change of policy. They had gone far enough to prove that the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of Mexico, and not into the South Sea or the Gulf of California, and would it not be better to return and report progress preparatory to a more extended enterprise? They thought so, and beneath the sultry rays of a July sun, they set out to toil against the gloomy current and to drive their canoes up the river and thence to the Canadian set- · tlements on the St. Lawrence. Marquette sickened, but his in- domitable spirit encouraged the others. Reaching the mouth of the Illinois, they ascended it and slowly made their way to the mission settlement on Green Bay, where Marquette was left to a lingering death, while Joliet passed on to Montreal to report the result of the expedition.
While Joliet and Marquette were gliding down the bosom of the Mississippi, La Salle was making a friend of the new gov- ernor, Frontenac, and recovering from the bankruptcy into which his last explorations had plunged him. Even before their re- turn, he surmised that the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of Mexico, and when this notion was confirmed, his dreams began to materialize into. plans. He had been opposed in all of his work by the Jesuits; he had been ridiculed and persecuted by
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La Salle and New France.
the Canadian traders; why not leave to them the icy regions of the St. Lawrence, and found a new empire in the mild and fertile valley of the Mississippi? The bold genius of a natural soldier and frontiersman was his, and he readily blocked out the ele- ments of his plan. If he could erect a fortified post at the mouth of the Mississippi, it would serve as a defense against both England and Spain. Then a regular line of forts and trading posts could be established from Ontario to the Gulf, and the whole trade of the Mississippi valley could be converged into the fort at its mouth, and thence to Europe by sea. Ac- cording to the French theory of international law, the discovery of a river gave a tentative title to all of the lands drained by that river and its tributaries; how much more secure would be this title if that of occupation were added to that of discovery, and if a line of forts bearing aloft the fleurs-de-lis and bristling with French cannon warned the world that this territory from the Alleghanies to Mexico belonged to the King of France!
The scheme was brilliant and far-reaching, and success would require genius, daring, suffering; but La Salle was not daunted. With him, to form a plan meant an immediate and persevering effort to realize it. He appealed to Governor Front- enac, to whose imagination and ambition the idea appealed no less than to that of its originator. But the governor could lend no financial aid. The only resource was an appeal to le Grand Monarque of France. Consequently the autumn of 1677 finds him at the court of France, where he obtained permission to make the projected explorations, build forts, find a route to Mexico, and as a financial aid, he was given a monopoly of the trade in buffalo hides. He returned in 1678, and replaced with stone the wooden Fort Frontenac, on Lake Ontario, which was the first in his chain of forts to be extended to the Gulf. He engaged forty men for the expedition down the Mississippi.
Two of these deserve special mention. Henri de Tonty was a Neapolitan officer, who had had a hand blown off in the Sicilian wars. He had the hand replaced by one of iron, over
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Brief History of the Louisiana Territory.
which he wore a glove. From Italy he went to France, thence to Canada. He was sensible and brave, always loyal to La Salle, and his character was not badly typified by the Indian sobriquet of Iron Hand. The other was Louis Hennepin, a Franciscan friar, whose love of adventure had brought him to New France. He went along as reporter for the expedition, and was not without usefulness. His ability was undoubted, and he deserves credit for the exploration of the upper Mississippi; but his claim that he first descended the Mississippi to its mouth, put forth after the death of La Salle, was so preposterous that he has gained as great a reputation for mendacity as George Washington for truthfulness.
La Salle first set about constructing the Griffin, the largest vessel yet built for the navigation of the Lakes. A party under Tonty was sent in advance to build Fort Niagara, the second link in the chain of forts. Late in 1678 La Salle set forth in the Griffin, and after a mutiny and various buffetings on the stormy lake, reached the southern end of Lake Michigan. Here he built the third in the line of forts at the mouth of the St. Joseph river in Michigan. Meanwhile, the Griffin had been sent back to the St. Lawrence with a cargo of furs to appease the greedy and frightened creditors, who had loaned La Salle money at forty per cent. interest, and had later threatened to prevent his departure, for fear that he would never return.
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