USA > Louisiana > A history of Louisiana, revised edition > Part 9
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The night was passed in felling trees and making hasty de- fences against surprise, but the Chickasaws held themselves silent and secure in their strongholds. Bienville dared not
* Bienville thus describes the Chickasaw stronghold: "After having surrounded " their cabins with several rows of great stockades filled with earth, they hollow out "the inside until they can let themselves down into it shoulder deep, and shoot " through loopholes almost level with the ground; but they obtain still more ad- " vantage from the natural situation of their cabins, which are placed so that their " fires cross, than from all the arts of fortifying that the English can suggest. The " coverings of the cabins are a thatching of wood and mud, proof against fire -arrows
" and grenades ; nothing but bombs could damage them.">
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renew the attack the next morning. Litters were made for the wounded, and the humiliated French troops led the way back to the Ottibia and embarked. The water was now so low that in many places a passage had to be cut for the boats. The Tombigbee was slowly reached, and finally the Mobile. From the Tohomes Bienville heard the first news of the full extent of his disaster.
The young commandant, d'Artaguette, had set out from the Illinois at the date first named, with one hundred and forty white men and two hundred and sixty Iroquois, Arkan- sas, Miamis and Illinois. Arrived at the place of meeting, his scouts could discover no signs or traces of Bienville's army. The next day, the courier who had been sent to the Illinois appeared with Bienville's letter and change of plan. D'Artaguette called his officers and Indian chiefs together in a council of war. They advised striking a blow immedi- ately. Pushing forward their march they arrived within a mile of the great Chickasaw prairie. It was Palm Sunday. The army left their baggage under a guard of thirty men and confidently took the road to the village. It was the road to certain death for all but two of them. Hardly had the at- tack on the village begun, when d'Artaguette saw a troop of from four to five hundred savages issue from behind the neighboring hill, and bear down upon him with such rapidity aud force that the Miamis and Illinois Indians, the greater part of his army, took to flight. He turned to gain the road to his baggage, to save or at least blow up his powder. Fighting desperately, step by step, he, his officers, men, and the Iroquois and Arkansas who stood by him, struggled a short space. Then the savages overwhelmed them. Nine- teen were taken alive, among them D'Artaguette, wounded in three places, and Father Senac, a Jesuit priest.
An Avoyelle woman slave, who escaped from the Chicka- saws to the Alabamas some time afterwards, related the fate of the prisoners. Two were put aside to exchange for a
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Chickasaw warrior in the hands of the French. The remain- ing were divided into two lots and burned in two huge fires prepared by the Chickasaw women. All died heroically, one Frenchman singing his death song to the last like an In- dian brave.
Bienville never recovered from the pain and humiliation of this double defeat, and Diron D'Artaguette, maddened with grief at the loss of his young brother, changed from a trusty friend into a carping enemy of the governor.
Chickasaw War .-- Bienville returned to New Orleans, inflexibly determined to retrieve himself by another expedition against the Natchez-an expedition which must be not only a brilliant success, but a brilliant triumph.
He wrote to France for artillery and bombs and soldiers, and to the governor of Canada for a reinforcement of volun- teers. He sent engineers to explore the best routes to the Chickasaws by the Mobile and Mississippi rivers, and he kept his coureurs de bois diligently employed in maintaining the French sentiment among his Indian allies.
On the reports of the engineers the route by the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers was selected. Two years, 1738-1739, were consumed in building a fort and depot for provisions, at the mouth of the St. Francis river and on the opposite side of the Mississippi, at the mouth of the Margot river. The latter, Fort Assumption, was to be the meeting place for the whole army.
Two hundred horses were sent from New Orleans for trans- portation of the provisions, which were to be drawn from the abundant fields of the west. Beeves and oxen were ordered from the Natchitoches district. In the summer of 1739, the assistance demanded from the home government arrived- arms, ammunition, provisions, with seven hundred soldiers- bombardiers, cannoneers, miners-under the Sieur de Noailles D'Aime, who was put in command of all the troops.
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But the new soldiers, on their arrival, suffered so severely from scurvy and fever that less than half were able to go on duty. Shipped from New Orleans as fast as possible, great numbers of them died on the way up the river. Bienville himself landed at Fort Assumption in November, with his colonial troops and Indians. He found the reinforcements from Canada and the Illinois waiting. They raised his army to the respectable strength of twelve hundred white men and two thousand four hundred savages. But it was one thing to get an army to the fort on the Margot, and another to get it into the Chickasaw country. The continual rains and the overflow made the routes laid out by the engineers impass- able for the heavy wagons and artillery, while the bottom lands could be crossed only by boats or bridges. More than one-half of the live stock from Natchitoches perished in the woods before reaching the Arkansas. Three months passed and the situation did not improve. Without a road to the Chickasaws and without the means of transportation, the French army on the Mississippi saw itself threatened with a more inglorious fate than befell the one on the Tombigbee ; and the safety of the Chickasaws was more brilliantly proved than ever. A council of war was held to decide how to end the campaign in the manner least mortifying to the French.
The Chickasaws, on their side, were not indifferent to the tremendous preparations made against them. From the first they had dropped, all around the neighborhood of the French camp, calumets and symbols of peace. On these hints, dis- dained at first, the French were now glad to act. But some warlike demonstration was necessary to satisfy the Indians, so five hundred of them, with one hundred Canadians, were permitted to go against the Chickasaw villages. With no hamperings but their light savage accoutrements, they made their way through the forest with ease and celerity. But the Chickasaws, thoroughly warned and on their guard, held themselves close in their strongholds, from which no demon-
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strations could entice them, save once or twice when they came out for a brief moment to display a white flag. After some days of skirmishing, negotiations were opened, and the Chickasaw chiefs were induced to go to the French camp and ask for peace. They were cautioned, however, that they would not get it unless they consented to deliver up their Natchez refugees. The cunning savages, prepared for this condition, declared that although they had bound and im- prisoned their Natchez guests, in order to surrender them to the French, unfortunately some of their young men had re- leased them and all had escaped to the Cherokees except three.
Under the circumstances, peace was soon agreed upon. The Chickasaws made no further excuse for or explanation of the escape of the Natchez ; and again the French were forced to submit to having them slip through their fingers. Bien- ville destroyed his buildings and returned with his army to New Orleans.
There, oppressed with his sense of failure, and feeling his old reputation to be no longer the same in the colony, he wrote to the Minister of Marine, asking to be relieved of his office.
1741 .- While awaiting the minister's answer he applied himself with his characteristic care and solicitude to the needs of the colony. He vainly tried to get from the king the establishment of a college iu New Orleans for the edu- cation of boys ; and also some relief for the suffering caused by the depreciation of paper money,* by epidemics, over- flows, and short crops.
* The financial affairs of the colony had been necessarily carried on largely with paper money. During the period of settlement royal warrants on the treasury in payment of salaries were used; during the Crozat charter, checks upon him had passed into current use. The card money of Canada, a most fluc- tuating medium, had always been in circulation, and finally the Company of the West had made an issue of paper for the payment of its debts. All these different issues appearing, and being retired, added to the arbitrary fixing of prices in the colony, and consequent speculation of money lenders, had produced financial chaos. Now, an edict of the royal government, withdrawing at short notice the paper of the Mississippi Company from circulation, threatened utter collapse and ruin.
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A Charity Hospital. 1739 .- An humble sailor, Jean Louis, dying in 1739, left his savings to found a hospital where the poor could be tended for charity. Bienville ap- plied the legacy, as directed; bought a suitable piece of property, provided the beds and proper furniture, with medi- cal and nursing attendance, and so inaugurated the first charity hospital in the city .*
The Minister of Marine granted Bienville's resignation and named the Marquis de Vaudreuil to succeed him. Pending the arrival of his successor Bienville endeavoured to arrange the affairs of the Indians, so that his absence from the colony would not injure it. He convened the prominent chiefs of the Alabama country at Mobile, made them presents, and had them sign treaties, which would pave the way for their good understanding with his successor. He left Louisiana forever on the 10th of May 1743. He came into the colony a youth, full of hope and courage ; he left it a prematurely aged man, worn with care, anxiety and disappointment. He had given forty-five years of unremitting toil to the task left him by Iberville.
QUESTIONS.
How did Louisiana once more become a royal province? Give an account of Bienville's interview with the Natchez at St. Domingo. What did he find out about the escaped Natchez? Of the division among the Choctaws? Of his tactics against the Chickasaws? Give an account of his expedition into the Chickasaw country; his defeat and the fate of D'Artaguette. How did Bienville prepare for his next expedition? Give an account of it. What did his sense of failure force him to do? What of his solicitation for the colony? Of the first charity hospital in New Orleans? Who was Bienville's suc- cessor? When did Bienville leave the colony forever?
*This hospital was on Rampart street near Toulouse. In 1779 it was destroyed by a hurricane, but (1756) Don Andres de Almonaster, out of his own fortune, erected another hospital on the same site. In 18co this was burned, and in 1815 a third hospital was built on the square on which Tulane University now stands. When this square was purchased by the State as a site for the new University of Louisiana (1331) the present noble institution, the Charity Hospital on Tulane avenue, was built from the proceeds of the sale and the contributions of philan - thropic citizens.
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CHAPTER XVI.
The Marquis de Vaudreuil, Governor. 1743-1753. The Marquis de Vaudreuil was a Canadian and a son of a former governor of Canada. He came to Louisiana and found it suffering the usual fate of the royal provinces of France.
War * had been relighted in Europe between France and England, and in America the colonies of the two rival pow- ers, always glad of an excuse, sprang also eagerly to arms, and from Canada to New Orleans the rifle and the tomahawk were kept on the alert. The Chickasaws, who from the first had only made a pretence of observing the recent treaty, rose against the French more vindictively than ever. Traveling along the Mississippi became a perilous adventure, and life in the Mississippi settlements most insecure. Even the environs of New Orleans were not safe. The German coast was surprised and pillaged, many of its farmers killed, and its women and children taken prisoners, and every- where in the French lines sudden alarms would send the colonists, fleeing in terror-stricken bands, to the city or nearest garrison post. At Mobile the panic became so ex- treme that Vaudreuil had to remain there with troops for awhile to restore calm. Reinforcements arriving from France, he was able to station garrisons at the various threat- ened points. To protect the city from an attack by the Eng- lish, he erected batteries on each bank of the river at English Turn. He also led an army against the Chickasaws, but he was no more successful than his predecessors had been. The savages, resorting to their former successful tactics, shut themselves in their forts and defied him and his army.
More alarming to the colonists than the hostilities of the Chickasaws, even, was the increasing division among the
*Called the war of the Austrian Succession, 1740, over the succession of Maria Theresa, of Austria, to the throne of her father.
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Choctaws, who now, instead of using their strength in de- fending the French against the English, were consuming it in domestic strife and civil warfare.
In 1751 the mother country sent her last ship load of emi- grants to her daughter colony, and her last donation of mar- riageable girls, sixty in number, to be wives for deserving bachelors.
To encourage agriculture, the king promised to buy all the tobacco raised in the colony.
Sugar Cane .- Besides tobacco and indigo another com- modity had been added to the agricultural products and profits of the soil. The Jesuits of Hispaniola obtaining per- mission to send sugar cane and some negroes acquainted with its culture to their brethren in Louisiana, the latter were soon producing this important staple on their plantations.
Levees .- As the settlements above and below the city were now in a flourishing state of cultivation, the question of levees began to be an important one. De Vaudreuil issued the first levee ordinance in the State, requiring the inhab- itants to keep up the levees before their property, on pain of having it confiscated. He also issued the first police regula- tions in the city of New Orleans, restricting the number of drinking saloons and the sale of liquors, and adjusting the civic relations of negroes.
In 1753 the Marquis de Vaudreuil was promoted to the governorship of Canada and left Louisiana .*
M. de Kerlerec was appointed to succeed him.
De Kerlerec. 1753-1763 .- De Kerlerec was an officer of the royal navy, in which he had served for twenty-five years.
* During the last year of De Vaudreuil's government the following incident occurred, which was made the subject of a drama by a French officer, Le Blanc de Villeneuve, who was stationed in the colony at the time.
A Choctaw and a Collapissa had a quarrel, in which thedatter killed the former and fled to New Orleans. The relatives of the Choctaw came to the city to demand the Collapissa from de Vaudreuil. The Marquis, after trying in vain to pacify the Choctaws, was obliged to order the arrest of the murderer ; but he made his escape. His father went to the Choctaws and offered his life in atonement for the crime ot his son. They accepted. The old man stretched himself on the trunk of a fallen tree, and a Choctaw at one stroke cut his head from his body.
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Like his predecessor, he was to conduct his administration under the shadow of war.
Seven Years' War. 1757-1763 .- It was no mere ques- tion of succession to distant thrones that was this time to wet the soil of America with the blood of her colonists. The dispute was native to the country and one which had been growing since its first settlement. The time had come when it had to be decided to which of the European powers America was to belong ; whether its future development was to be according to the religion and thought of the Anglo- Saxon or of the Latin race; whether the Lilies of France or the Cross of England should recede.
The rival colonists had clashed over every boundary line, and fought over every advanced post in the continent. As we have seen, the policy of France was to unite Canada and New Orleans by a chain of fortified posts, which should insure her the possession of the great waterways of the continent, and crowd England between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic coast. Midway between Canada and Louisiana lay the valley of the Ohio. Should the English gain possession of it, they would cut in two the French line of fortifications and sever the territory of Louisiana. The English had already sent out from Virginia and established trading posts along the branches of the Ohio, and their trad- ers were deftly winning the Indians into allies. The French, quicker in action than their rivals, descending through Lake Erie, drove the English away and built three forts to guard their position. One of them, Fort Duquesne,*
* An interesting episode connects Louisiana with Fort Duquesne. George Washington, then a colonel in the Colonial army, was sent by Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia, against the fort. On the route he heard of a French detachment com- ing to surprise him. He manœuvred to surprise it, and in the engagement Jumouville, the ensign in command, was killed. Jumonville de Villiers (the ancestor of one of our distinguished creole families ), the brother of the ensign, obtained permission of Kerlerec to leave his station at Fort Chartres and go to avenge his brother's - death. He hastened to Fort Duquesne with a large force ot Indians and soldiers, Washington, with his men, lay entrenched in a rude fortification called Fort Ne. cessity, not far from the scene of his first engagement. Jumonville attacked him, and, after a sharp fight, had the honor of forcing the future "Father of his country" into surrender.
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on the forks of the Monongahela and the Alleghany rivers (site of the present city of Pittsburg), commanding the key of the situation, became the first objective point in the mo- mentous conflict.
Although the seat of war was in the far north, Louis- iana suffered her measure of damage from it. Her ships of supplies from France and the islands were intercepted and captured by vigilant British privateers. Her commerce was burdened with the expenses and necessities of the war in Can- ada, could neither renew the supplies nor protect the com- merce. The yearly tribute of presents to the various Indian tribes had to be suspended, and this sent the discontented warriors into trading and treating with the English. The poorly clad, poorly nourished and ill paid soldiers also de- serted in large numbers from their different garrisons to the ever convenient English .*
Kerlerec put the colony into the best state of defence pos- sible with his inadequate means. ITis only reliance was upon the Swiss mercenaries, and these he distributed among the untrustworthy French soldiers in the different posts throughout the Mississippi and Alabama country.
City Defences .- A fortification consisting of a palisade wall was made around the city. The batteries at English Turn were repaired and resupplied, and a vessel was stationed at the mouth of the river, to be sunk in the pass in case of emergency.
From time to time the news of the fortunes of the distant hostilities drifted into the colony. Early in 1759 there came floating down the river boats containing the garrison and officers of Fort Duquesne, which, after much gallant fight-
* In the summer of 1754, four of the soldiers of the garrison of Cat Island rose and murdered their officer, who ill treated them. They tried to escape to Georgia, but a party of Choctaws sent after them captured them. One killed himself. The rest were brought to New Orleans. Two were broken on the wheel; the other, be- longing to a Swiss company, was, according to the law of Swiss troops, nailed into a coffin, which was sawed in two through the middle.
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ing on both sides, was evacuated and abandoned by the French. The news of the fall of Quebec and Montreal fol- lowed in due time, and eventually that of the complete tri- umph of the English over the French. The Lilies of France had been forced to retire and yield the north to the Cross of England.
Treaty of Paris. 1763 .- By this treaty between England, France and Spain, France signed her defeat and made over to Great Britain all her territory on the North American con- tinent, east of the Mississippi, with the exception of New Orleans, and the - adjacent district called the Island of Orleans, lying between Manchac and the Lakes.
Spain received back Havana, which had been captured by the English, but paid for it by the cession of Florida, and all her possessions east of the Mississippi.
Louisiana Ceded to Spain .- With the loss of his Cana- dian possessions, the King of France could not hope further to withstand the advance of England in America. To save Loui- siana, therefore, from the fate of Canada, he made a secret donation of it to his kinsman, Charles III, King of Spain, at Fontainebleau, on the 3d of November, 1762, the same date on which he signed the preliminaries of the peace of Paris.
During Kerlerec's administration, discord both civil and ecclesiastical was rife in the city. Violent quarrels broke out between the Capuchin priests, who had legal spiritual charge of the colony, and the Jesuits, who, though only tolerated as visitors, had managed to gain a large following, to the weakening of the influence of the Capuchins. The Superior Council was invoked by the Capuchins to interfere and prohibit this usurpation, as they called it, of the Jesuits.
A still more violent quarrel broke out between the governor and the royal commissary, Rochemore. On charges of the latter, an investigation was ordered into Kerlerec's administration. The report being against him, Kerlerec was recalled to France and thrown into the Bastile.
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A stride in advance in the sugar culture has to be chron- icled during this administration. The experiment of the Jesuits having proved successful, the Sieur Dubreuil put his whole plantation in cane, and erected a mill and made an experiment at boiling the juice .*
Abadie Governor. 1763 .- The chief magistracy of the province was vested in M. d'Abadie, under the title of Director General. The military force was reduced to three hundred men, under the orders of Aubry, as senior captain.
The cession to Spain being, however, still a secret in Louisiana, the colony thought herself to be, and appeared still to be as before, a French province.
British Take Possession .- The Spaniards retired from Florida; and from post after post in the Illinois, Alabama and Mississippi regions, the French flag and garrison were withdrawn, to be replaced by the British. French and Span- ish names were changed for English ones: Fort St. George at Pensacola ; Fort Charlotte at Mobile; Fort Panmure at Natchez, etc. The transfer of authorities was made amica- bly and expeditiously. The Indian allies of the French made here and there a few attempts at guerilla warfare against their new masters; but the French interposing peaceably, most of them ended by following the French flag in its re- treat and settling around New Orleans.
In a few months English vessels traveling up and down the Mississippi became a familiar sight. They became also a welcome one, for, fetching in articles of commerce of which the colonists had been so long deprived by the war, they ac- quired a thriving though illicit trade all along the coast. Tying their boats to a tree a short distance above New Or- leans, they attracted customers even from the city. t
* The sugar was so badly made, however, that it leaked out of the hogsheads on its way to France; and the ship was so lightened that it came near upsetting.
t As it was under the pretext of going to Manchac, where they were building a fort-Fort Bute-that the English vessels traveled up the river, the place where they tied up for the contraband trade was called " Little Manchac." "I am going to Little Manchac" was the current expression for a shopping excursion to this con-
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Jesuits Expelled. 1763 .- In accordance with the policy in Europe toward the Jesuits, by which they were expelled from France, Spain and Naples, Abadie was forced to expel them from Louisiana. All their property, including their fine plantation, was sold at auction, and the Fathers made to leave the colony in which, in truth, they had done all to benefit and nothing to injure.
Cession to Spain Made Known. 1764 .- In the month of October, 1764, Governor Abadie received from his sovereign, Louis XV, the communication which made him acquainted with the cession of Louisiana to Charles III, King of Spain. He was ordered to remit the government to the officer or envoy sent by the King of Spain to receive it, evacuate the territory and retire to France with all his officers and all the soldiers who did not wish to engage in the service of Spain.
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