USA > Louisiana > Romance of the history of Louisiana. A series of lectures > Part 10
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Before taking possession of his government, Cadil- lac went to France, to receive the instructions of the ministry, and to revisit his paternal domain. His re- turn produced no slight sensation within a radius of forty miles round his so long deserted hearth. If the waggish boys who used to torment him with their pranks had grown into manhood, tradition had handed down so much of Cadillac's peculiarities to their suc- cessors, that when he appeared before them, it was not as a stranger, but rather as an old acquaintance.
183
CADILLAC VISITS HIS BIRTHPLACE.
Dressed in the fashion which prevailed at the time he left his native province, twenty years before, and which at present helped to set off with more striking effect the oddities of his body and mind, he was, as before, an object of peculiar attraction to the mischiev- ous propensities of the juvenility of his neighborhood. One of them, still fresh from the university, where he had won academical honors, availing himself, in order to display the powers of his muse, of Cadillac's re- appearance at home, composed a ballad which he called, " The Return of the Iroquois Chief," and which was a parody of a celebrated one, well known as " The Knight's Return from Palestine." It met with great success, and was sung more than once under the Gothic windows of Cadillac's tower. But he listened to the sarcastic composition with a smile of ineffa- ble contempt. "Let them laugh at my past misfor- tunes," he would say to himself, "the future will avenge my wrongs, and my enemies will be jaundiced with the bile of envy. I am now governor of Louis- iana, of that favored land, of which so many won- ders are related. This is no longer the frozen climate of Canada, but a genial region, which, from its conti- guity, must be akin to that of Mexico, where the hot rays of the sun make the the earth teem with gold, diamonds, and rubies!" Working himself into a par- oxysin of frenzied excitement, he struck passionately,
184
CADILLAC'S FIRST IMPRESSIONS
with the palm of his hand, the wall of the room he was pacing to and fro, and exclaimed, " O venerable pile, which derision calls Cadillac's Rookery, I will yet make thee a tower of strength and glory ! I will gild each of thy moss-coated stones, and thou shalt be a tabernacle for men to wonder at and to worship!" As he spoke, his eyes became suffused with tears, and there was so much feeling and pathos in his action, and in the expression of his aspirations, that, for the first time in his life, not only he momentarily ceased to be ridiculous, but, to one who had seen him then, would have appeared not destitute of a certain degree of dignity, and perhaps not unworthy of respectful sympathy. Such is the magic of deep sentiment !
When Cadillac landed on the bleak shore of Dau- phine or Massacre Island, what he saw was very far from answering his expectations. From the altitude of flight to which his imagination had risen, it is easy to judge of the rapidity of its precipitate descent. The shock received from its sudden fall was such as to pro- duce a distraction of the mind, bordering on absolute madness. As soon as Cadillac recovered from the be- wildered state of astonishment into which he had been thrown, he sent to the minister of the marine depart- ment a description of the country, of which I shall only give this short abstract : " The wealth of Dauphine Island," said he, " consists of a score of fig-trees, three
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185
OF LOUISIANA.
wild pear-trees, and three apple-trees of the same na- ture, a dwarfish plum-tree, three feet high, with seven bad looking plums, thirty plants of vine, with nine bunches of half-rotten and half-dried-up grapes, forty stands of French melons, and some pumpkins. This is the terrestrial paradise of which we had heard so much ! Nothing but fables and lies !"
It will be recollected that Lamothe Cadillac had arrived on the 13th of May. He had since been ex- ploring the country, and with his usual sagacity, he passed this remarkable judgment on Lower Louisiana : " This is a very wretched country, good for nothing, and incapable of producing either tobacco, wheat, or vegetables, even as high as Natchez." It is fortunate that from this oracular decision there has been an ap- peal, and we now know whether it has been confirmed or annulled.
The 1st of January, 1714, had come in due time, and Cadillac had not allowed his unfavorable opinions of Louisiana to depart with the expiring year, if we may judge from the dispatch in which he said : " The inhabitants are no better than the country; they are the very scum and refuse of Canada, ruffians, who have thus far cheated the gibbet of its due, vagabonds, who are without subordination to the laws, without any respect for religion or for the government, graceless profligates, who are so steeped in vice that they prefer
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186
CADILLAC'S QUARRELS.
the Indian females to French women ! How can I find a remedy for such evils, when his Majesty instructs me to behave with extreme lenity, and in such a manner as not to provoke complaints ! But what shall I say of the troops, who are without discipline, and scattered among the Indians, at whose expense they subsist ?" Cadillac went on in this strain, in no sparing style, and summed up the whole with this sweeping declaration : " The colony is not worth a straw for the moment ; but I shall endeavor to make something of it, if God grants me health."
God granted the worthy governor as robust health as he could have wished, but without enabling him to redeem his word, with regard to bettering the condition of the colony ; and at the expiration of the year 1714, Cadillac found out that his situation, as an administrator, was far from being an enviable one. He had quarrelled with Dirigoin, one of Crozat's agents, because, if we take his representations as true, he was a fool; and with the comptroller, Lebas, because he was dissipated ; with the inhabitants, because they were dissolute and had hitherto refused to build a church, which was a thing not yet to be found in the whole colony; with the soldiers, because they were without discipline ; with the officers, and particularly with Bienville, Boisbriant, Chateaugué, and Sérigny, because they neglected to apply for the holy sacrament, even at Easter ; with the
187
DISSENSIONS IN THE COLONY.
commissary, Duclos, because his views were different from his own on more than one occasion ; with Riche- bourg, a captain of dragoons, who had come with him in a ship of the line, because he had seduced most of the girls who had embarked with them for Louisiana, and who ought to have been respected ; with the girls themselves, because they had suffered their virtue to be seduced, which was the cause of their remaining on his hands, inasmuch as every one refused to marry them on account of their known misconduct. Is it astonish- ing that, under such untoward circumstances, Cadillac's displeasure at his situation should have swelled into such gigantic proportions as to induce him to allow his gathering indignation to embrace the whole of America within the scope of his animadversion ? Is it not to be supposed that his understanding must have been a little confused by his perplexities, when he wrote to the min- istry-" Believe me, this whole continent is not worth having, and our colonists are so dissatisfied that they are all disposed to run away?"
The feud between the magnates of the land grew every day more fierce, and the colony presented the aspect of two hostile camps, Trojans and Greeks, tug- ging in irreconcilable enmity. On one side, there was the governor, who was the Agamemnon of his party, and who was backed by Marigny de Mandeville, Bagot. Blondel, Latour, Villiers, and Terrine, scions of noble
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188
DISSENSIONS IN THE COLONY.
houses, and all of them young and brilliant officers, who would join in any strife merely for the sake of excite- ment. The fanatic Curate de la Vent, was their Cal- chas, and stimulated them to the contest. On the other side stood Lieutenant-Governor Bienville, the Hector of the opposition, with the king's commissary Duclos, Boisbriant, Chateaugué, Richebourg, Du Tisné, Sérigny, and others of some note or influence, who were at least fully a match for their antagonists. Thus, on this small theatre, the human passions were as keenly at work, and there was as hot a struggle for petty power, as if the stage for their display had been a more elevated one, and the objects of contention more exciting to am- bition.
From the annals of the Dutch settlements of New- York, or rather from the overflowing richness of his own imagination, which, to be prolific, had only to alight on and to be connected with a favorite subject, Wash- ington Irving drew those humorous sketches, which first gave celebrity to his name. But in the early his- tory of Louisiana, which has nothing to borrow from the fields of fiction, there spring up characters and inci- dents, fraught with as much originality, and tinged with as much romance, as any so felicitously described by him in his productions, or by other authors in any work of fancy. What writer could pretend, in his most whimsical creations, to produce a being more fantasti-
189
CADILLAC NEGLECTS ITS INTERESTS.
cal than Lamothe Cadillac ? What powers of inven- tion could match his style and the sentiments expressed in his letters ? But let us follow the erratic course pur- sued by this eccentric personage.
He had come to Louisiana to acquire sudden wealth by the discovery of mines, and not to superintend and foster the slow and tedious progress of civilization. Hence, it is not to be wondered at, that, on his receiv- ing, one day, positive orders to assist the agents of Crozat in establishing trading settlements or posts on the Wabash and on the Illinois, he got out of humor, and in a fit of impatience, had the hardihood to write back to the ministry, in these terms: " I have seen Crozat's instructions to his agents. I thought they issued from a lunatic asylum, and there appeared to me to be no more sense in them than in the Apoca- lypse. What! Is it expected that, for any commercial or profitable purposes, boats will ever be able to run up the Mississippi, into the Wabash, the Missouri, or the Red River ? One might as well try to bite a slice off the moon ! Not only are those rivers as rapid as the Rhone, but in their crooked course, they imitate to . perfection a snake's undulations. Hence, for instance, on every turn of the Mississippi, it would be necessary to wait for a change of wind, if wind could be had, because this river is so lined up with thick woods, that very little wind has access to its bed."
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190
CADILLAC. ENDEAVORS TO DISCOVER MINES.
As to the ministerial expectations that he should devote most of his time to favoring agricultural pur- suits among the colonists, Cadillac took it in high dud- geon, that such recommendations should ever be ad- dressed to him, as if he had not something better to attend to-the discovery of gold, diamonds and pearls ! To trouble himself about conceding and locating lands, was a thing concerning which he never admitted the possibility of his being seriously employed, and he treated the matter very lightly in one of his dispatches, in which he said to the ministry, " Give the colonists as much land as they please. Why stint the measure ? The lands are so bad that there is no necessity to care for the number of acres. A copious distribution of them would be cheap liberality."
Thus, agriculture and commerce had failed to en- gage the sympathies of Cadillac, who, since the first day he landed in Louisiana, had bent all his energies and all the means at his command, towards the disco- very of mines. He had sent Canadians in every di- rection to explore for the hidden treasures of the earth, but months had elapsed without gratifying the cravings of Cadillac's appetite for gold. Some of the Canadians had been killed by the Indians :- others found so much amusement in their favorite avocations of fishing and hunting. that they forgot the duties im- posed upon them, and for the discharge of which they
191
EMBARRASSMENTS OF THE GOVERNOR.
were paid :- there were more than one who, having gone so far as the Illinois and the Missouri, suddenly be- thought themselves of some love-sick maid, some doting mother or aged father, whom they had left pining on the banks of the St. Lawrence, and instead of return- ing down the Mississippi, to give to Cadillac an account of their mission, they pursued their way up to their native villages. It must be confessed that all were little competent and too ignorant to investigate proper- ly the object of their inquiries. The few who came back had but " a beggarly account of empty boxes " to lay before Cadillac. But if he had been favored with a romantic turn of mind, he would have found some indemnification in the recital of their marvellous ad- ventures.
Cadillac came at last to the conclusion that he was in a sorry predicament. Sancho, when assailed with the cares of his insular government, never felt the tenth part of his embarrassment. So much so, that Cadillac deeply regretted that he could not be for ever asleep; because, when awake, he could not but be aware that he had spent all the funds he could com- mand, and had no more left to consecrate to his favor- ite scheme. The sad reality stared him in the face :- his purse was empty, and his Canadians were gone. But when he was asleep, his dreams beggared the wonders of the Arabian Nights. Then Queen Mab
192
EMBARRASSMENTS OF THE GOVERNOR.
would drive, four in hand, her tiny cobweb carriage through his brain : some merry elf of her court would tickle his nose with a feather from a humming-bird's tail, and instantly Cadillac would see a thousand fairy miners, extracting from the bowels of the earth and heaping upon its surface enormous piles of gold and silver, having a fantastic resemblance to those Indian mounds which, in our days, make such strong appeals to our curiosity. Heated by those visions, Cadillac ad- dressed himself to Duclos, the king's commissary, for more funds to prosecute his researches after the pre- cious metals for which he thirsted. Duclos replied that the treasury had been pumped dry. "Borrow," an- swered Cadillac. " I cannot," observed Duclos. " Well, then !" said the governor very pithily, " what is the use of your being a financier, if you cannot raise money by borrowing, and what is the use of my being a gover- nor, if I have no funds to carry on the purposes of my government !"
Low did Cadillac hang his head, in spite of all his pride, when he found himself so cramped up in his operations. But it would require a more powerful pen than mine to describe his indignation, when Duclos, the king's commissary, requested him to render his ac- counts for all the funds which had been put in his hands, and for all the goods and trinkets which had been delivered to him for distribution among the In-
193
THE GOVERNOR'S TROUBLES INCREASE.
dians. It was long before he could be made to under- stand what was expected from him, so strange and unnatural to him did such a pretension, as Cadillac called it, really seem on the part of the commissary. There was to him something stupendous in the idea that there should ever be the possibility of any such event hap- pening, as that of a commissary calling upon him, Ca- dillac, the noblest among the noble, him, the governor, him, the representative of the Lord's anointed, to fur- nish his accounts, just in the same way that such a call might have been made upon any ordinary biped of the human species. Was not such a pretension the forerunner of some extraordinary convulsion of nature? Be it as it may, Cadillac immediatety wrote to the ministry to inform them of this astounding fact, which, in his opinion, was a demonstration of the wild notions that had crept into the colony. Evidently, the com- missary was " non compos mentis !"
The tribulations of Cadillac were destined to pur- sue a progressive course, and he was hardly out of one difficulty, when another and still another came in quick succession, like the ghosts that haunted Macbeth. To increase his perplexities, the troops refused to go through all the duties of their regular service, on the ground that they had nothing to eat but corn, when they were entitled to wheat bread. " A deputation of twenty of them," said Cadillac, in his communications to the min-
194
THE GOVERNOR'S TROUBLES.
istry, "had the impudence to address me on the sub- ject. I immediately sent the spokesman to prison, and having convened the officers, I told them that the troops in Canada were satisfied with corn for their food, that those in Louisiana had, as I had been informed, lived on it three years, and that I saw no reason why they should not continue. None of the officers dis- sented from me, except the commissary, who expressed a different opinion, which he supported with the most puerile reasoning ; but I chid him and gave him a good rapping on the knuckles."
The spirit of discontent was not confined to the soldiery, but had spread through the minds of the colo- nists themselves. "They have dared to meet without my permission," said he, in another dispatch, "and to frame a petition to demand that all nations should be permitted to trade freely with the colony, and that the inhabitants should have the right to move out of this pro- vince, according to their pleasure. Freedom of trade, and freedom of action !- a pretty thing! What would become of Crozat's privileges ? The colonists also insist on Crozat's monopoly of trade being confined to the wholesale disposition of his goods and merchandise. They pretend that he should in no case be allowed to retail his goods, and that his gains should be limited to fifty per cent on the original cost. Their petition con- tains several other demands equally absurd. In order
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195
HE REFUSES TO EXPEL LOOSE WOMEN.
to cut all these intrigues in the bud, I declared that if this petition was ever presented to me, I would hang the bearer. A certain fellow, by the name of Mira- goin, had taken charge of this precious piece of com- position, and had assumed the responsibility of its pre- sentation, but on his being informed of my intentions, he tore it to pieces."
One would have thought that Cadillac had supped full of annoyances, if not of horrors. But another cause of deep mortification, particularly for one so pious and so strictly moral as he was, had been kept in reserve ; which was, his finding himself under the ne- cessity of resisting the solicitations of his friend, the Curate de la Vente, and of the other missionaries, who insisted upon his expelling out of the colony, two wo- men of bad character, that had lately arrived. "I have refused to do so," said he, in one of his dispatches, " because if I sent away all women of loose habits, there would be no females left, and this would not meet the views of the government. Besides, (he slyly ob- served,) one of these girls occupies the position of a servant in the household of the king's commissary, who will no doubt reclaim her from her vicious propensities. After all, I think that the members of the clergy here are perhaps too rigid, and too fond of exacting long and repeated confessions. A little more lenity would better suit the place and time. Let me add, in conclu-
196
CADILLAC'S DAUGHTER
sion, that if you do not check the intrigues of Bien- ville and of the commissary, who have gained over to their side most of the officers and of the inhabitants, Crozat will soon be obliged to abandon his enterprise."
We see that there was a deep feeling of animosity between Cadillac and Bienville, which threatened to be of long continuance. But Cadillac had a daughter, and Bienville was a young man, and one of such as are framed by nature to win the affections of the fair de- scendants of Mother Eve. Whould not a novel-writer imagine, under such circumstances, a love story, either to soothe the two chiefs into a reconciliation, or to fan into more sparkling flames the slow burning fire of their inextinguishable hatred ? Is it not strange that what would certainly be devised to increase the inter- est of a dramatic plot, did actually turn out to be an historical occurrence? But what fact or transaction, commonplace as it would appear any where else ac- cording to the ordinary run of things, does not, when connected with Louisiana, assume a romantic form and shape ?
Thus Cadillac's daughter did really fall in love with Bienville. But although her eyes spoke plainly the sentiment of her heart, Bienville did not seem to be conscious of his good fortune, and kept himself wrapped up in respectful blindness. The lady's love, however, made itself so apparent, that it at last flashed upon
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197
FALLS IN LOVE WITH BIENVILLE.
Cadillac's mind. This was indeed a discovery ! How he did wince at the idea that one whom he looked upon as so inferior to himself in birth and rank, and particularly that a Canadian should have won the heart of his daughter! Vehemently and long did he remonstrate with his progeny on the unnatural passion which she had conceived; but the love-sick maid . thought it perfectly natural, and showed a pertinacity which greatly shocked her equally obstinate parent. Nay, she did what others had done before her, and be- came so pale and emaciated that she frightened her fa- ther's opposition into an acquiescence with her wishes. So much so, that Cadillac brought himself, at last, to think that this match would not be so disproportionate as he had conceived it at first. Bienville, after all, was a gentleman by birth, he was the founder of a colony, and had been a governor !- That was something to begin with, and he might, in the course of time, rise to an eminence which would show him worthy of an alli- ance with the illustrious Cadillac family. Besides, Ca- dillac was getting old, and had so far had a poor chance of acquiring the wealth he had been in quest of so long. If he died, what would become of his daughter ? These reflections settled the question, and Cadillac said to himself, " Bienville shall be my son-in-law." Never did he, for one single moment, dream of any obstacle. Nothing remained but to encourage Bien- -
198
BIENVILLE DECLINES MARRYING HER.
ville's fancied timidity, and to lift up the curtain which concealed from him the bliss awaiting his unconscious innocence.
One morning, Bienville, much to his astonishment, received a friendly invitation to the governor's closet. There, the great man proffered to his subordinate the , olive branch of reconciliatian, and by slow degrees, gave him to understand that the god Hymen might seal the bond of their amity. Bienville received this communication with low and reverential obeisance. Much delighted did he show himself at this offer of reconciliation, and much honored with the prospect, however distant, of an alliance so far beyond his hum- ble aspirations ; but, at the same time, he plainly inti- mated to Cadillac his firm determination, for reasons best known to himself, for ever to undergo the mortifi- cations of celibacy ! So unexpected this answer was, that Cadillac reeled in his seat, as if he had been stunned by a sudden blow. There he stood in a trance, with his mouth gaping wide, with his eyes starting from their sockets, and with dilating nostrils, while Bienville and the very walls, and every thing that was in the room, seemed to spin and whirl madly around him, with electric rapidity. Now, indeed, he had known the worst, fate had entered the lists, and Birnam wood had come to Dunsinane ! What! his daughter, a Cadillac, to be refused by a Canadian ad-
199
BIENVILLE ORDERED TO PUNISH THE NATCHEZ.
venturer ! No doubt a screw had broken loose in the machinery of the universe, and our whole world was to be flung back into the womb of old chaos again ! Before Cadillac had recovered from this paroxysm, Bienville had made his exit, and had gone to tell the anecdote to some confidential friends. The fact which I have related, is thus briefly mentioned by Bienville in one of his dispatches : " I can assure your excellency that the cause of Cadillac's enmity to me, is my having refused to marry his daughter."
Bienville did not wait long to receive a signal proof of Cadillac's vindictive spirit, and he anticipated a mani- festation of it, when summoned a second time to ap- pear before his chief. Nor was he deceived ; and when he was ushered into Cadillac's presence, that dignitary's countenance, which looked more than usually solemn and stern, indicated that he had ma- tured his revenge for the insult he had undergone. " Sir," said he to Bienville, " I have received secret information that four Canadians, on their way to Illi- nois, have been massacred by the Natchez. You must punish the murderers, and build a fort on the territory of that perfidious nation, to keep it in check. Take Richebourg's company of thirty-four men, fifteen sailors to man your boats, and proceed to execute my commands." " What !" exclaimed Bienville, " do you really intend to send me with thirty-four men to en-
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