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Hubert and Duvergier took to France their accusations in written documents with notarial signatures and attestation. These produced prompt effect in official headquarters. A letter from the king directed Bienville to sail to France im- mediately and answer for himself.
Black Code. 1724 .- To provide the growing number of negro slaves imported into the colony with the security and the protection of the law, Bienville published his celebrated Code for the Blacks, or "Code Noir," taken from the regu- lations compiled by the jurists of Louis XIV for the island of St. Domingo. It was the last public ordinance to which he affixed * his name before returning to France. After his departure the Superior Council investigated the charges made by Hubert and Duvergier. They reported that they found them to be only the calumny of the malicious. The notary who had signed them had his commission revoked and was himself condemned as a libeler.
*Also signed by De la Chaise, Fazende, Brusle, Perry, members of the Superior Council. De la Chaise had succeeded to Duvergier as Commissary General of the colony. The following is the list of captains commanding in Louisiana, with the date of their commissions : 1714, Marigny de Mandeville ; 1717, De la Tour, D'Ar- taguette ; 1719, Du Tisne, Lamarque; 1720, Leblanc, Desliettes, Marchand de Cour- celles, Renault d'Hauterive and Pradel.
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The year following, rumors were rife in the colony that the Indians were rejoicing over the recall of Bienville, and that his reappearance in the colony would be the signal for hostilities from them. De Noyan, Bienville's nephew, made a request to the Superior Council that the Natchez, Houmas, Tunicas and other tribes might give voice to their sentiments and refute so grievous a calumny against his uncle. The Superior Council consenting, these nations made their dec- larations that they all regretted Bienville.
Bienville was, nevertheless, dismissed, and in his ruin in- volved his family and friends. Chateauguay was deprived of his rank, as were the two De Noyans, who were sent to France.
Boisbriant was recalled to give an account of his conduct. Pauger, Perry, Perrault, as members of the council, were censured ; the two latter were sent to France. Fazende, also dismissed, was allowed to remain in the colony. In short, for the first time since its colonization, Louisiana was to own in its government neither member nor friend of the family of its founders
On his arrival in France, Bienville presented to the minis- ter, as a justification of his conduct, a memoir* of the serv- ices that had filled his life since the day when, a mere strip- ling, he had followed his brother Iberville in quest of the
*The following is an extract from his memoir:
" It was not without trouble that I became absolute master of so many nations " with such barbarous tempers and different characters. One can imagine how "many difficulties I encountered and what risks I ran to found the colony ans " maintain it to the present time. Necessity, it is said, renders one industrious; " experienced that it also renders one intrepid in danger, and makes one perform " so to speak, the impossible in the different conjunctures one has to meet in an un. " known world with so small a force. I first strove to qualify myself to govern with- "out the aid of an interpreter. I applied myself to learn the language which ap- " peared to me to be the dominant one among the savages, the knowledge of which " would help me in learning the others. I was fortunate enough from the first to " gain the confidence and friendship of the savages. I studied their customs in "order to retain them in peace, one with the other; so that for the twenty -seven " years during which I had the honor of commanding in the province I was the ar - " biter of their differences. I always governed these nations-born in indepen- " dence, so to speak -- despotically, pushing my authority even to the deposing of " their chiefs.
" The Siear de Bienville dares say that the establishment of the colony is due " to the constancy with which he has attached himself to it for twenty-seven years " without bring out of it since he made the discovery of it with his brother ther. " ville."
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ville in quest of the country for the government of which he was now, a middle-aged man, called to account.
QUESTIONS.
Give an account of the removal of capital to New Orleans. What of the beginning of the city? What of the Germans belonging to Law's concession? When was Pensacola restored to the Spanish? Give an account of the Natchez war. The recall of Bienville. The Black Code. What of the investigation into his conduct by the Superior Council? What of Bienville in France?
CHAPTER XIV.
NATCHEZ MASSACRE.
Perier Governor. 1725 .- Bienville's successor, Perier, arrived and took up his abode in the capital, where, for a time, all went well in the march of improvement.
Ursuline Sisters .- A great event in the community was the arrival of six Ursuline Sisters to found a convent for the education of the young girls of the colony, and to serve in the hospital. While their convent was being built, they took up their residence in Bienville's* old hotel.
The Jesuits, who came over at the same time as the Ursulines, were given a tract of land immediately above the the city, in what was long known as the faubourg St. Mary. They had a house and chapel built, and laid out their ground in a plantation for Myrtle waxt trees.
*Situated in the space now bounded by Chartres, Decatur, Bienville and Cus- tomhouse streets. One of the nuns thus describes it in a letter to her father : "The " finest house in the town. It is a two-story building with an attic . with six " doors in the first story. In all the stories there are large windows, but with no " glass. The frames are closed with very thin linen, admitting of as much light as " glass."
t Wax was an important and valuable article ot trade at a time. when candles were the principal means of illumination,
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City in 1725 .- The government house had been built on the land next to the Jesuits. In the centre of the city stood the Cathedral ; facing it was the Place d'Armes, on each side of which were the barracks. A house for the sessions of the Superior Council and a jail were built on the square immediately above the Cathedral. A levee ran in front of the city, and a wide ditch for drainage on Bourbon street. In addition to the large ditches around the squares, each lot was at first surrounded with a small ditch, but these in course of time were filled. On the plantations the culture of indigo had been added to that of tobacco and rice ; the fig tree was introduced from Provence, and the orange from St. Do- mingo.
To provide wives for the bachelors, numbers of young girls were again brought into the colony. They were poor, but of good character and honest family. Each of them was supplied with a small box, called in French " cassette," con- taining clothing, which gave the girls the name of filles à la cassette. They remained in charge of the nuns until mar- ried.
Natchez Massacre. 1727. - After Bienville's last treaty with them the Natchez seemed determined to remain on good terms with the French, but the systematic tyranny and injus- tice of Chepart, the officer in command of Fort Rosalie, in- furiated the tribes to such a degree that they inflicted a blow which made the colony reel, and appalled the home govern- ment. The crowning outrage of Chepart was most wanton. Looking for a suitable tract of land for a plantation, he cast his eyes upon the charmingly situated White Apple village, and determined to possess it. He sent for the Sun of the village and ordered him and his tribe to vacate it. The Sun replied that the ancestors of his tribe had possessed the vil- lage as many years as there were hairs in his war lock, and it was only right that he and his descendants should still live in it. But the French commander, refusing to listen to reason
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or remonstrance, fixed the day for evacuation. The Sun assembled the council of his village and made a speech, in which he exposed the rapacity and tyranny of the French and urged the tribe to make. a stand against it.
Village by village was aroused, and the different Suns adopted the determination to strike one bloody blow, and free themselves forever from the burdensome yoke upon them. Emissaries were sent to the adjoining tribes. Packages con- taining an equal number of sticks were prepared and sent to every village, with directions to take out a stick every day after the new moon. The attack was to be made on the day on which the last stick was taken out.
Great care was taken to keep the design from the women. One of the female Suns, however, had her suspicion aroused, and extracted the secret from her son. The bundle of sticks for her village had been deposited in the temple, the keeper of which was to take out a stick daily and burn it in the sacred fire. The princess, by reason of her rank, had access to the temple at all times. She found an opportunity to take one or two sticks from the bundle and threw them into the fire ; this destroyed the count and prevented unanimity of action. It is said that she even gave notice of the massacre to one of the officers of the garrison ; but her warning was unheeded.
The fatal day arrived. By daylight the Natchez, in small groups, strolled into Fort Rosalie and the establishment ad- joining until they outnumbered the whites. Pretending that they were going on a hunt, they borrowed guns and offered to buy powder and shot. At 9 o'clock the signal was given. Each Indian fell on his man. By noon two hundred were killed, and ninety-two women and fifty-five children and all the negroes were made prisoners. Chepart was among the first slain. During the massacre the great Sun, with appar- ent unconcern, smoked his pipe in the government ware- house. His men brought in to him the heads of the officers,
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placing that of Chepart in the centre and the others around. When the Sun was informed that not a white man was left alive, except a carpenter and tailor specially reserved from the massacre, he gave the command to pillage. Every build- ing was sacked and the spoils divided. Two soldiers, who were accidentally in the woods, escaped and carried the news to Perier, in New Orleans.
The colony trembled from limit to limit. New Orleans was given over to panic. Every settlement of Indians, how- ever small, became an object of dread. There was an insig- nificant and peaceful group of Chouachas living above the city. Perier sent a band of negroes from the neighboring plantation and had them ruthlessly destroyed-men, women and children.
Ships were sent to France for troops. Couriers were des- patched to the Illinois, Red river and Mobile countries, warning the white men there. Emissaries were also sent among the Yazous to hold them true to France.
The Choctaws were the first in the field. Seven hundred of them, under the Canadian Le Sueur, fell upon the Natchez while they were still in the midst of their feasting and re- joicing, killed sixty of their warriors, and rescued fifty-nine women and children, and one hundred slaves who had been taken prisoners. It was February before the troops from New Orleans, fourteen hundred men, under Loubois, ar- rived. The Natchez, in the meantime, had fortified them- selves in the White Apple village in two strong houses, Fort Flour and (as the French well named it ) Fort Valor. Their defence was splendid. The French opened seige with all science of continental warfare-sappers, miners, cannon ; but from the first they were hopelessly overmatched in every soldierly qualification by their savage foes.
The honors of the campaign rested with the Choctaws. They at least had the merit of terminating it. Waiting in vain for the French to make a promised breach in one of the
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forts, and seeing one day thirty Frenchmen running from the trench before a sortie of the Natchez, the Choctaws opened a parley with Fort Flour. Alabamma Mingo, one of their most famous chiefs, made a speech to the obstinate foes, in which he convinced them that although the French could not fight them the Choctaws were sufficient in numbers and pos- sessed patience enough to blockade them and force them in- to surrender through starvation. The Natchez agreed to de- liver to the Choctaws the remainder of the women, chil- dren and negro prisoners, if the French would evacuate thei: position and with their guns retire to the banks of the river. This was carried out. Two nights after the Natchez secretly made their escape from their forts, eluding all pur- suit of the French. With their allies, the Yazous, some of them sought refuge with the Chickasaws. The others, cross- ing the Mississippi, made their way westward through forest and swamp to an imposing mound, in the present parish of Catahoula, just above the juncture of Little river with the Ouachita. Here they remained until tidings reached them that a great ariny of white men and Indians led by Perier was close upon them. They then withdrew to a far stronger mil- itary position, to a thirty-foot bluff on the eastern end of a plateau, known now as Sicily Island, situated at the south- west extremity of a small lake (Lake Lovelace), where they intrenched themselves. It took Perier nine months with' twenty different scouting parties to locate them.
Last Stand of the Natchez. 1731 .- In the middle of the summer the reinforcements from France arrived-eight hun- dred French soldiers and Swiss mercenaries. This, with what he could raise from among the colonists and his Indian allies, enabled Perier to garrison all his settlements and lead a thousand men against his enemies.
In the beginning of the year 1731 he ascended the Mis- sissippi to the mouth of the Red river, where all of his forces were to assemble. Proceeding through Red river to
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Black river and up the Ouachita, he reached the lair, in which the Natchez stood like beasts at bay. As before, the Natchez held their own gallantly, until they brought about a parley. Perier refused to treat with any but chiefs. Two Suns and the great warrior who had defended Fort- Flour presented themselves. They were treacherously made prisoners. Perier then demanded the surrender of all French prisoners ; this was acceded to. During the night the war- rior from Fort Flour made his escape; the two Suns, not so fortunate, were discovered and held. Perier then offered to spare the lives of all the Natchez men, women and children, who delivered themselves up to him. The next day four hundred women and children and forty-five men left the Natchez fortifications and ranged themselves inside those of the French; but they came in such small groups that the whole day was consumed in the surrender. Seventy still remained in their fort, asking a delay until the morrow. It was raining in torrents. Between the water under foot and the water overhead, Perier, not being able to take them, was forced to consent. At 9 o'clock at night the weather cleared, and the French could approach the Natchez forts. They were found deserted! Again the great fighting bulk of the nation, under the leadership of the redoubtable warrior of Fort Flour, had given the slip to their captors. The strong- hold was destroyed and two prisoners taken were scalped and burned. Perier returned to New Orleans with his trophies of women and children, the two Suns and forty men, all of whom he sold into slavery in St. Domingo.
Escaped Natchez .- The number of Natchez Indians who escaped during the siege and capitulation was three hundred. They spread themselves over the Red river coun- try, savagely attacking St. Denis in the Natchitoches fort. Beaten back, they took possession of a deserted Natchitoches village, from which they were driven out by St. Denis, after an obstinate fight. They then sought refuge with the Chicka-
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saws, who from the first had offered their villages and strong- holds to them.
QUESTIONS.
Give an account of the city in 1725. What product had been added to agriculture? Give an account of the Natchez massacre. The effect on the colony. Describe the expedition against them. What of the treaty? Describe the last stand of the Natchez. What became of those who were taken prisoners? Those who escaped?
CHAPTER XV.
LOUISIANA A ROYAL PROVINCE. 1731.
With the peace, prosperity and life of the colony threatened by an Indian war, the administrators in France could not hope to carry on its development with any profit. They therefore surrendered their charter to the king, and Louisiana once more came back into the wardship of the royal govern- ment. The colonists themselves, shaken by past events, lost confidence in the men over them. The commandants of the different posts who had served under Bienville's long admin- istration, wrote to the Minister of the Marine representing his merits over those of any other man who had ever gov- erned in the colony. Pontchartrain himself must have felt the force of their arguments even if he was not convinced by his own experience with Bienville. Perier was recalled, and the Canadian, relieved of his disgrace, reinstated.
Bienville Governor. 1733 .- Stopping at St. Domingo on his way to Louisiana, Bienville had an interview with his old friends, the unfortunate Natchez who had been sold into slavery. They assured him that they had been driven into revolt only by the hard treatment they had received from the French officers at Fort Rosalie, and that they bitterly re- gretted the sad termination of their long alliance with the
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French. The governor was much impressed with their changed fate and the wretchedness of their demeanor.
Arrived in New Orleans, Bienville took up his residence in his former hotel and addressed himself to his old routine of governing.
War With the Chickasaws. 1736 .- The first and most important claim upon his attention was naturally the Natchez question. He could arrive at no accurate estimate of the number of them still at large. But, through his Indian allies, he knew that there were three bands of them; one on the Ouachita, one on the Yazoo and one with the Chickasaws.
French security demanded that these last should be pro- ceeded against in an exemplary manner. In case the Chick- asaws could not be forced or bribed to give them up, they must be included in the war also. The Choctaws were his main reliance. Strong and powerful, their rivalry of the Chickasaws had kept them in a state of well disciplined war- fare. But Bienville found that during Perier's unskilful ad- ministration a division had crept into the Choctaw nation ; that English traders and emissaries, with liberal display of promises and presents, had won over a considerable party among them in favor of the English. While he prepared his armament against the Chickasaws he addressed himself to healing this division. He sent his Canadians among them again. At their instigation many of the Choctaw villages rose and killed the English staying there, and afterward they were incited into keeping up a succession of war parties in the field against the Chickasaws, which, burning their corn- fields and waylaying their hunting parties, harassed them greatly. The same tactics were employed to induce the In- dians along the Mississippi to strike down from the north against the Chickasaws, who, between two fires, kept close in their territory, appealing for help to the English.
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Bienville's plan of campaign was one in which he thought he had secured every possible means for success. It was to
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penetrate by the Tombigbee river into the Chickasaw coun- try, where he was to be joined by d'Artaguette (a young brother of Diron), commandant at the Illinois, with a force of three hundred good men. Orders were sent to d'Arta- guette fixing the place of meeting on the Tombigbee, four days' journey from the Chickasaw villages; the time, be- tween the 10th and 15th of March.
Bienville, the better to further his preparations, took up his position during the summer in Mobile, where, in a grand council, he exposed his plans to the Choctaw chiefs, and se- cured their willing co-operation in them. But the means of transportation, to be furnished by the middle of October, were not ready by the middle of January. A courier was des- patched to D'Artaguette, putting off his march until the middle of April.
Finally, all was ready and a grand start was made on the Ist of April. The armament made a fine show on the Mobile, rowing up the river in the early morning sunlight; thirty pirogues followed by thirty flat-boats loaded with five hun- dred soldiers, without counting the brilliant staff of officers and company of forty-five blacks commanded by free negroes.
It took twenty-three days to get to the place of meeting on the Tombigbee. No trace of D'Artaguette was to be seen. The Choctaw chiefs arrived, however, and promised to meet the French, with all their warriors, in fourteen days, at the little creek, Ottibia, that separated the Choctaw and Chicka- saw territories. They arrived promptly at the time and place shortly after the French.
After throwing up a fortification to protect their boats and provisions, and leaving a small garrison behind them, the army set out on the march to the Chickasaw country. It was a hard march, through deep ravines filled with water waist high, and across thick-grown canebrakes. But after this they came to a beautiful country easy of travel. Camp was pitched about six miles from the Chickasaw villages. The great chief
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of the Choctaws asked Bienville which village he intended attacking first. Bienville told him the Natchez, as they were the authors of the war. . The great chief then explained that the first village was the nearest Chickasaw village to the Choctaws, and did them most harm, and that he would like to attack that first, particularly as it was filled with provi- sions which the Choctaws needed. Hardly doubting but that the Choctaws would return home after taking this first vil- lage, their habit being to fly after they had struck a blow, Bienville persuaded them to attack the Natchez village first, promising to return and take the other one afterwards. The Choctaws appeared satisfied, and their guides, leading thie army as if to conduct it to the point agreed upon, came to a small prairie, where were three little villages placed trian- gularly on the crest of a ridge, at the foot of which flowed a brook almost dry. This little prairie was separated only by a small forest from the large prairie where lay most of the Chickasaw villages. Bienville defiled his army the length of the woods that skirted the prairie, and stopped on a slight eminence, where a halt was made for dinner. It was just past mid-day.
The Choctaws, who had gained their point by a ruse and were before the village they desired, hastened to complete the trick by bringing on the action. With war cries and yells, they began skirmishing around the village, and drew its fires upon the French. The French officers then joined their demands to the Choctaws that this village should be at once taken. Pressed on all sides, Bienville ordered the attack. A company of grenadiers-a detachment from the French and Swiss troops-and forty-five volunteers under De Noyan, were commanded to lead it.
From the height where the French were, four or five Eng- lishmen could be seen bustling around among the excited Chickasaws, and over one village floated the English flag. The French battalion moved out of the woods,
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crossed the brook, and began to ascend the ridge. A mur- derous fire poured upon them simultaneously from the three villages. One of the negro mantelet bearers in front was killed. The rest threw down their mantelets and fled. The column of grenadiers, attaining the summit of the ridge and the entrance to the village, met the full fire of the hid- den batteries * about them. Two or three cabins were taken and burned; but when it came to crossing, under fire, the open space between these and the next, the Chevalier De Noyan, looking about him, saw only a few officers, a rem .. nant of grenadiers, and about a dozen volunteers. The other soldiers, hopeless at fighting an unseen enemy, were seeking shelter from the range of the loopholes behind the captured cabins, and refused to be driven out by their sergeants. Almost all the officers were killed or disabled. De Noyan and four officers fell wounded at the same moment. In vain he sent his aide to rally the soldiers; the killing of the aide among them only added to their panic. He finally got a message to Bienville that unless assistance were sent, or a retreat sounded, not an officer would be left alive. There was also a sudden alarm in the camp that a reinforcement from the Chickasaws of the great prairie was approaching. Bien- ville ordered the retreat, sending a company to protect it and fetch off the wounded. The officers, massed together, were found still fighting and holding their own. The Choctaws were under cover of the hill ; they had lost twenty-two men, which discouraged and disgusted them not a little.
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