USA > Louisiana > Historical memoirs of Louisiana, from the first settlement of the colony to the departure of Governor O'Reilly in 1770; > Part 10
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As the race of hangmen have not yet emigrated, and a well- ordered government must have them, they had to choose one of the company's negroes to fill that post in the early part of the establishment of the colony. His name was Johnny; when he was called and they had explained their wish, he tried to get clear of it, although they promised him his liberty. But when he saw that they would force him to it, he exclaimed : " Well ! that is right, wait a moment," and running to his cabin, took an axe, and laying his arm on a block cut off his hand, and returning to the meeting showed his maimed limb, and his consequent inability to exercise the office with which they would have honored him. It is easy to imagine the effect produced by this action : the first thought was to save his life ; he was put in the hands of surgeons, cured, and made com- mander of the company's negroes. As for the office, another less delicate was found, who accepted it as the price of his freedom, so that the hangman in the colony is a negro. 1
* In order to regulate the treatment of slaves, Bienville drew up a code in ro- ference to them which he promulgated in 1724. It remained in full force till after the cession of Louisiana to the United States, when a new code was drawn up, which is now the law of the land .- Historical Collections of Louisiana, vol. iii., p. 89.
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1
CHAPTER XLI.
NEW DISCOVERIES TO REACH THE WESTERN SEA BY THE MISSOURI.
I SHALL close what I have to say of Louisiana, by some remarks sent me by a friend, (Lepage du Pratz,) whom I have already frequently cited. They relate to the Western Sea, and the means of reaching it by the Missouri River. I will in this chapter give his own words :
" An Indian from near the Yazoos," says he, "called Mon- cachtabé, surnamed by the French interpreter, because he spoke almost all the Indian languages of North America, was brought to me at my request. He had been mentioned to me as an extraordinary man for long voyages; he had in fact traveled three years on the Canada side and one on the other, and in the west-northwest. I received him well, and as he stayed sometime at my house, I was enabled to get from him, at leisure, an account of his travels. In' one of our conversa- tions on this subject, I learned the following of his voyage to the west-northwest :
" He ascended the St. Louis (Mississippi) to the Illinois ; thence, crossing the river either on a raft or by swimming, he began to travel by land north of the Missouri, a river which the Sieur de Bourmont, who ascended it to its source, gives a course of eight hundred leagues from its rise till it empties in the Mississippi. Following the north bank of this river, Mon- cachtabe reached a nation said to be the nearest to the place of his departure; here he made some stay to perfect himself in their language, which he knew already, and to learn that of the nearest nation in the direction where he proposed going. He followed this course, advancing from tribe to tribe, and
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thus greatly prolonged the time of his travels, which embraced five years. Having at last reached the source of the Missouri, always keeping to the west-northwest, he visited several nations on a neighboring river, which ran in the opposite direction, since, as he judged, it ran from east to west into a sea, of which the Indian did not know the name}any more than of the river.
" Moncachtabé followed it, however, for some time, always keeping on the same route, but he could not reach its mouth, because the last tribe, where he was forced to abandon his progress, was at war with another between it and the sea. He was very anxious to see it, but the open war between the two tribes prevented it, and even prevented his learning any more about it then, because the few prisoners in the hands of his hosts were too young to give him any information on the point. However, the hope of getting some light in the course of time induced him to stay there a considerable time; he even went on a war party with his hosts, and as soon as winter came, the season set apart by the Indians for hunting and war parties, he joined the first one that started against the enemy. It was not successful; they made no captives, and lost some of the party. The first parties indeed seldom succeed, because the enemy are then on their guard, Moncachtabe was not discouraged; he joined a second party against the same nation, which proved more fortunate. They defeated a party of the enemy and took four prisoners, three men and a woman of about thirty-two, who, taken by our traveler, became his slave. These four Indians were led in triumph by the Indians to their village to be burnt with their ceremonies. The men were in- deed burnt, but Moncachtabé kept the woman in his cabin, married her and treated her kindly, in hopes of deriving from her some information on the point he desired.
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" In fact, after wiping away her first tears, this woman the more readily answered her husband's questions, and satisfied his curiosity, as he showed her much friendship, and she knew that he did not belong to the enemies of her tribe. She told him then as follows :
"'Our country,' said she, 'is only two days' journey from the great water. I went there about four years ago with some men and women of our village to get some of those large shells which they use as ear-rings, and the large flat ones worn by men around their necks. While we were gathering them there appeared on the great water a large piragua, in which there were two or three bodies standing up, with something hanging from the top that swelled up. (This sorry description, it is clear, means only a ship and its sails.) After this large piragua,' continued she, 'we saw a smaller one (a boat); it entered a large and beautiful river, and took wood and water to the large piragua. Those in the little piragua saw us, and we apparently were equally afraid of each other. We returned to a wood on a height whenee we could easily see them ; they were five days taking in wood and water, and then all got into the large piragua, though we were too far off to see how they .got the little one in. After that, they swelled up the hanging thing in the large piragua, and were carried far away, and disappeared from our eyes as if they went down in the water.
" ' As we had had time to examine them during the five days which they spent near us, we saw that the men were smaller than ours, with white skins, black and white hair on the chin, no hair but something round on the head. They wore some- thing on their shoulders which passed over their shoulders, covered their bodies and came down to the middle of the leg ; they had also leggings and shoes different from ours. We
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never could count more than seven in the little piragua, and one little boy, but no women.'
"Such is, in substance," adds my friend, "the answer of Moncachtabe's wife to that traveler; and from it I am inclined to believe that the great water of which she spoke was the western sea, so long sought."
Think what we may of this account of Lepage's, which some will perhaps regard not as a reality, but as a poor imita- tion of Robinson Crusoe, it cannot possibly suffice to give our geographers much new light as to the real position of the western sea and the means of reaching it. To have better, the reader must consult De Lisle and Bubache's new map of North America.
[It is much to be regretted that M. Dumont, who lived some years after he re- turned to France, had not brought down his history of Louisiana to its abandon- ment to Spain. Few events of importance occurred however in Louisiana from 1740 until that period. The colonists were exempted from disastrous wars, which enabled them to extend their settlements, to cultivate their fields, and to prosecute their trade with the West India Islands. They now began to export some cotton, also, considerable quantities of indigo, peltry, hides, tallow, pitch, tar, ship-timber, and other raw materials. These exports continued, and gradu- ally increased till the country was ceded to Spain in 1762. The fate of the Louisianians will now form the subject of the next memoir, by the Chevalier de Champigny, which will throw new light upon the cruelty and oppression of the Spanish government in Louisiana. ]
MEMOIR
ON THE
PRESENT STATE OF LOUISIANA :
BY 1
CHEVALIER DE CHAMPIGNY,
,
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH.
PREFACE.
Louis XV. had just, by the treaty of Versailles, restored to France the repose and tranquillity which had become an urgent necessity . The multiplied and bril- Liant victories of the English had totally changed the face of America. Canada had fallen a prey to the conqueror, Florida had been ceded to him in exchange for Havana, and the limits of French Louisiana had been rolled back to the right bank of the mighty Mississippi ; the whole left bank, except the isle of New- Orleans, formed by the Mississippi, and Iberville or Manchac River, having been surrendered to the English. They thus became the possessors of the immense tract of country which, running from east to west, lies between the Mississippi throughout its course, and the ocean which bathes the coasts of Florida, New- England and Canada. Hudson's bay bounded these possessions on the north, and the gulf of Mexico in part on the south.
What remained to France of her vast province of Louisiana, comprised a strip eighty leagues from cast to west, from the mouth of the Mississippi to Mexico. The Del Norte (Rio Grande) on the west and the Mississippi on the east bounded these possessions, which extended from 29º N. to 50° N., and even beyond.
At the moment of the cession of a part of Louisiana to England, we shall see flashing in its French inhabitants a spark of that fire of loyalty that bound them to their king. We shall see this spark, secretly kindled, burst forth in all its violence at the moment when Spain undertook to enter into possession of a pro- vince which France, (through private arrangements, incident however to the treaty,) had ceded to that country to indemnify her for the expenses of the war.
It will, however, I believe, be better to give first a short sketch of what part of Louisiana had been, from its discovery to the treaty of peace in 1762; then, con- sider it from the dismemberment, to which it was then subjected, till the arrival of the Spaniards, and finally from their arrival to the present time.
These three epochs will form the three ages of the colony : they will divide, accordingly, this memoir into as many parts. The last will be subdivided into two sections : the first will comprise the period between the arrival and depar- ture of Don Antonio de Ulloa; and the second, the subsequent period down to the present.
1
MEMOIR
OF THE
PRESENT STATE OF LOUISIANA:
BY
CHEVALIER DE CHAMPIGNY.
FIRST PART.
F RANCE will not long forget the famous projector, Law, who was the first to give any impulse to the colony of Louisiana. After the attempt at discovery by M. de la Salle, t Iberville, a Canadian gentleman,¿ laid the foundations of an establishment in 1699 and 1701 at Mobile and Biloxi, and went around the isle of New-Orleans to reconnoitre the famous river Mississippi, the principal object of his voyage.
As long as that great man lived, he protected this rising colony, composed then of some Canadian families who had come after him. After his death, in 1706, the court neglected Louisiana; the wretched state of the kingdom excluded every
* John Law was the comptroller-general of the finances of France, and projector of the famous " Western Company." Sce the charter of, in the third volume of the Historical Collections of Louisiana.
t For a full account of the discovery and exploration of the Mississippi valley sce the first and fourth volumes of the Historical Collections of Louisiana.
# Iberville was the first royal Governor of Louisiana .- Historical Collections of Louisiana, vol. iii., p. 10.
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idea of colonization and expense. Louisiana was ceded to M. Crozat in 1712,* retroceded to the king in 1717, and at last Law's project came forth with the ostensible pretext of estab- lishing the India Company there.
The vast territory of Louisiana was represented as the richest part of the world ; "pearls," said they, "could be fished there in abundance ; the streams which watered it rolled on sands of gold, and that precious metal was found on the surface of the earth without any need of profaning its bosom." What a bait for avarice! The company easily sold at excessive prices estates very rich and fertile indeed. But this was not the ob- ject of the purchasers, they wished gold and silver. Immense grants were sold to the wealthiest men in the kingdom. Loui- siana was soon occupied by greedy possessors, whose main ob- ject was the discovery of mines; but although there are many in that great colony, they were either not discovered at first or did not exist on the grants assigned, or were too remote or too badly located to satisfy the cupidity of the owners. Thus disappointed avarice or miscalculation threw the fault on the territory. The grantees were obliged to abandon an ill- conducted and still more badly executed project. The em- ployés sent into that country perished mostly on the sands of Biloxi, the rest scattered through Louisiana or returned to Europe. Louisiana soon lost the degree of importance which it had enjoyed. The company did not however abandon its plans of colonization which it had resolved to carry out in that vast country.
The settlers sent out soon felt that they must abandon the insane project of mine-seeking to apply themselves exclu- sively to the cultivation of the ground. The fertility of that,
* See Letters Patent .- Historical Collections of Louisiana, vol. iii., p. 38. The monopoly of Crozat was terminated by its surrender. He had advanced the
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watered by the Mississippi, encouraged settlements on its banks, and they now thought of transferring to them the chief settlement, which had been first at Mobile, and then at Biloxi.
M. de Bienville, * a brother of Iberville's, founded New- Orleans in 1718, 1719 and 1720. This city, situated on the banks of the Mississippi, thirty-two leagues from the mouth, became the chief town of the colony. The company sent over many settlers at its own expense, but of what character was their choice of persons? They gathered up the poor, mendi- cants and prostitutes, and embarked them by force on trans- ports. On arriving at Louisiana they were married, and had lands assigned them to cultivate; but the idle life of three- fourths of these folks rendered them unfitted for farming. Necessity vainly calls us to a laborious life, if the knowledge acquired by habit do not enlighten and sustain our efforts.
colony hut little. The mines and commerce of Louisiana were now invoked to re- lieve the debt of France, which now exceeded two thousand millions of livres.
At this period of depression John Law proposed to the regent a credit system
which should liberate the kingdom from its enormous burden. Under his auspices a new company was formed, under the name of the Western Company, but better known as the Mississippi. The exclusive commerce of Louisiana was granted to this company for twenty-five years. The stock was divided into two hundred thousand shares of five hundred livres each, to be paid in any certificates of the public debt. The stockholders flattered themselves with large profits, and the Directory soon after declared a dividend of two hundred per cent. The delu- sion was now complete, and the stock rose to sixty times its par value. In 1719, the Bank of Law became the Bank of France-Law was looked upon as the greatest man of his age. In 1720, the public began to lose confidence in his management ; and in May, bankruptcy was avowed by a decree which reduced the value of his notes to one half . He fled to England, and afterwards to Venice, where he died on the 21st of March, 1729, in the 58th year of his age. Such was the issue of Law's celebrated system, which left to the world a lesson on the credit system which it has been slow to learn.
Although it proved disastrous to France. it cannot be doubted that it gave an impetus to the successful colonization of Louisiana.
* See a sketch of the public life of Bienville, in the Historical Collections of Louisiana, vol. iii., p. 20.
1
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Accordingly, you cannot find twenty of these vagabond fami- lies in Louisiana now; most of them died of misery or returned to France, bringing back such idea which their ill success had inspired. The most frightful accounts of the Mississippi soon began to spread among the public, at a time when German colonists were planting new and most successful establishments on its banks, within five or seven leagues of New-Orleans. This tract, still occupied by their descendants, is the best culti- vated and most thickly-settled part of the colony, and I regard the Germans and Canadians as the founders of all our estab- lishments in Louisiana.
The fertility of this country presented important objects of culture ; that of tobacco alone sufficed to indemnify the French company for all its expenses in colonization, if, in consequence of the pride which had ruined it, it had not sought to extend its possessions and assume everywhere an air of sovereignty which never sits well on a company of merchants, whose attention should be exclusively directed to the means of ex- tending commercial relations and increasing the number of articles of trade. If the company, instead of building forts at excessive prices, keeping up considerable bodies of troops, raising buildings which served only to gratify vanity and give a vain idea of its greatness and power, and furnishing its agents every means of increasing the expenditure, had confined itself to encouraging the culture of articles of which they knew the importance, we should not now see all good citizens of France sighing over the failure of the attempts to establish a colony, whose fertility is admired and importance felt.
The company then enjoyed in France a monopoly of the tobacco trade, and drew a great quantity from Louisiana.
The post founded at Natchez was as wise as well conceived ; this canton would have furnished all the tobacco needed
A
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in France, and the quantity (? quality) is superior to that which this kingdom now derives from our provinces of Mary- land and Virginia. The misconduct, cupidity and injustice of the French commanders drove the Natchez to destroy com- pletely all the establishments begun on their lands. In one day they massacred the inhabitants, pillaged the storehouses, and the whole colony would have met the same fate but for the assistance of an old woman, who found a means of hasten- ing the day chosen by all the nations in unison, for massacring the French scattered through that vast province. By this means the Natchez alone massacred the settlers among them.
On escaping from this danger, the French had no alternative but to take quick vengeance, in order to strike other Indians with awe and hold them in check.
The Natchez who had struck the French post were destroy- ed, and of that nation, once the oldest and most important in all Louisiana, there remain now only some few families dis- persed in other tribes.
After this heavy loss, and the outlay of immense sums use- lessly spent in forts and buildings, the preservation of Louisi- ana became burthensome to the company." Its monopoly, too, was expiring ; and the king, having accepted its surrender in 1732, sent out cargoes of men and women, in whose selection the same vice prevailed, and which accordingly could not but result as did those of the company. The little revenue de- rived, the immense sums which had without return to be pour- ed into that rich country without any visible advantage, and
* The monopoly which Crozat and the India Company enjoyed and enforced, checked and destroyed in some degree the incipient trade which the colony en. joyed before the peace of Utrecht. Yet it cannot be denied that at the surrender of the charter, the colony was found in a prosperous condition ; the white popu- lation had increased from seven hundred to upwards of five thousand, and the black from twenty to two thousand persons.
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the wars necessarily carried on with the Indians, sickened them of a colony thenceforward regarded as a burthen.
Let us say all. The Frenchman, quick to conceive and undertake, would have the execution and success keep pace with the vivacity of his character. Hence his inaptitude for founding colonies ; hence his failure in the attempts made by his nation ; for, if we compare their possessions to those of the Dutch and English, we must, after observing the means used by both, admit that new establishments require the same reg ime as children; they must be furnished with the necessary food, suitable to their development, be neither hampered nor pushed on prematurely, leaving time and nature to bring the work to perfection.
I pass rapidly over the events which concern Louisiana. The notes will supply the deficiency. The various Indian wars carried on by France from 1730 to 1762, form the most interesting portion. They serve to prove that the colonists in Louisiana were animated with the same spirit of patriotism which rendered the conquest of Canada so difficult. But I in- tend to regard only the political side of Louisiana, and in this view I stop to consider an event stated in the different memoirs, which have within the last few years appeared on that colony.
The money current there, as in our New-England provinces, was paper having the value of silver. In Louisiana this paper was signed by the intendant, comptroller and treasurer ; every year a certain quantity was withdrawn and bills of exchange on the royal treasury in France given instead. Nothing was better planned. Sales and exchanges were at once facilitated, and the connection between the colony and the mother country strengthened. The war of 1744 multiplied expenses and pre- vented drawing bills of exchange. The quantity of paper
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HISTORICAL MEMOIRS OF LOUISIANA.
spread in the place exceeded the sums destined by the govern- ment for the colony. It was in consequence called in, the holders losing two-fifths of the value-a signal fault, though represented as necessary and indispensable, but which has greatly impeded the progress of the colony.
The peace of 1748* tended to make the evils produced by the depreciation of the paper currency less sensibly felt. A contraband trade with the Spaniards of Mexico and Havana brought much silver into the colony between 1748 and 1752. But an essential, though then unnoticed vice in this trade was, that it was not based on the productions of the colony ; it was founded on the affluence of strangers, who brought their dollars and Campeachy wood. This flourishing state could last only as long as the trade lasted ; yet all turned their attention to trade and neglected agriculture. Lands were abandoned, comfortable planters sold their negroes and cattle to engage in commerce ; but from 1753, when M. de Kerlerec came to succeed M. Vaudreuil, t the Spaniards no longer ap-
* After the peace of 1748, the French ministry took a deep interest in the set- tlement of Louisiana, and held out encouragements to all those who wished to establish themselves there. They gave lands, cattle, and instruments of tillage to all settlers.
t The Marquis de Vaudreuil was promoted to the government of Canada. He was the son of a distinguished officer who had been governor-general of Canada, and belonged to an influential family at the French court. His arrival in the colony was therefore hailed with joy, as the harbinger of better days. His ad- ministration was long remembered as a brilliant one.
Kerlerec, his successor, was a captain in the royal navy. He had been twenty years in active service, and was distinguished for his bravery. He reached the Balize on the 9th of January ; and on the 9th of February, 1753, he was install- ed Governor of Louisiana. He began his administration by being kind to the Indians, especially to the powerful tribe of Choctaws. He reduced the army to thirteen hundred men. Although the French government had recommended the strictest economy, and had reduced the army, the expenses for the year 1754 amounted to near a million of livres. In the following year the English had attacked the French in Canada, and he expected soon to be attacked himself. In 1757, they had cut off nearly all communication between France and Louisiana,
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peared in Louisiana in such numbers; this governor was accused of having kept them off, but if he did it with the view of re- calling the colonists to agriculture, they can complain only of the means he took to attain it. The fact is, that when these Spanish interlopers abandoned Louisiana the colony was loaded with all the useless mouths that had subsisted by the Spanish trade. Agriculture having been neglected, no longer furnished the same resources; the city had been peopled at the expense of the country.
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