USA > Louisiana > Orleans Parish > New Orleans > Standard history of New Orleans, Louisiana, giving a description of the natural advantages, natural history settlement, Indians, Creoles, municipal and military history, mercantile and commercial interests, banking, transportation, etc. > Part 4
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In June, 1801, Don Juan Manuel de Salcedo arrived in Louisiana to suc- ceed Casa Calvo as governor. Preliminaries of peace were signed between France and England on October 1, 1801, and the treaty of cession of Louisiana to France became known in the United States. The news eaused great excite- ment in the West and in the colony itself. Robert R. Livingston was sent as minister to France in 1801, and, together with Rufus King in London and Pinck- ney in Madrid, attended to the Louisiana matter. The French government gave no definite information about the subject, but when the peace of Amiens was signed between France and England on March 25, 1802, the First Consul began to prepare for the occupation and government of Louisiana. Livingston, how- ever, continued his negotiations, and on September 1, 1802, he predicted, in a dispatch to Madison, then Secretary of State, that ultimately the United States would obtain possession of Louisiana. He had a conversation with Joseph Bona- parte, in which he suggested that Louisiana be returned to Spain, and the Flori- das and New Orleans be given to the United States for the debt due by France. The First Consul did not send his expedition to Louisiana during the year 1802, and the agitation about the question became so intense that President Jefferson, in a message to Congress on December 15, 1802, called attention to the cession of Louisiana to France, and in January, 1803, James Monroe was sent to that
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country as envoy-extraordinary. In Congress some of the members were in favor of violent measures; that is to say, they favored taking possession of New Orleans by force, as that port had lately been closed to the Americans.
In the meantime, Livingston continued urging on the French government the policy of selling to the United States New Orleans and the Floridas, and finally Tallyrand asked, "What we would give for the whole ?" Negotiations with Tallyrand were not successful, and on April 13, 1803, Bonaparte sent Barbé Marbois, his Secretary of the Treasury, says Livingston, to refer again to the Louisiana matter. The First Consul, according to Marbois, was willing to give the whole country to the United States for one hundred millions of francs. The reason of this offer of Bonaparte's was that the treaty of Amiens was about to be broken, and the great general who ruled over France knew that he would not be able to retain Louisiana in case of war with England. He was, therefore, anx- ious to sell Louisiana, as he was in need of money for his coming war with Great Britain.
The treaty of cession to the United States was signed on April 30, 1803. The Americans were to pay eighty millions of francs, of which twenty millions were to be assigned to the payment of the debt due by France to the citizens of the United States. Article 3 of the treaty was prepared by Bonaparte himself, and the Louisianians should be grateful to him for having provided with so much foresight for their future happiness. The article is as follows: "The inhabi- tants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the union of the United States and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages and immunities of citizens of the United States, and in the meantime they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property and the religion which they profess."
The first Consul added, says Marbois : "Let the Louisianians know that we part from them with regret ; that we stipulate in their favor everything that they can desire, and let them, hereafter, happy in their independence, recollect that they were Frenchmen, and that France, in ceding then, has secured for them ad- vantages which they could not have obtained from an European power, however paternal it might have been. Let them retain for us sentiments of affection, and may their common origin, descent, language and customs perpetuate the friend- ship." Bonaparte said also: "This accession of territory strengthens forever the power of the United States, and I have just given to England a maritime rival that will sooner or later humble her pride."
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The sale of the province to the United States was communicated to the Brit- ish government, and in reply, says Gayarre, Lord Hawkesbury said: "I have received His Majesty's commands to express to you the pleasure with which ITis Majesty has received this intelligence." England was satisfied, but Spain was not, and the Spanish minister protested against the transfer to the United States. Livingston and Monroc had done more than they had been asked-to do when they agreed to buy from France the whole of Louisiana.
The question now came up whether the Floridas were included in the ces- sion, and the American negotiators contended that Louisiana extended, at the time of the cession to France in 1800, to the Perdido river. The treaty with the United States stipulated as follows: "The colony or province of Louisiana is ceded by France to the United States, with all its rights and appurtenances, as fully and in the same manner as they have been acquired by the French Republic, by virtue of the third article of the treaty concluded with His Catholic Majesty on the 1st of October, 1800." There was an obscure point in the treaty, the Florida question, and the First Consul made the remark "that if an obscurity did not already exist, it would perhaps be good policy to put one there." Presi- dent Jefferson informed Congress of the treaty on April 30, 1803, and after long discussions the treaty was ratified and a bill was passed for the government of the new territory.
While the events leading to the purchase of Louisiana were taking place in France, Laussat, the colonial prefect, arrived in New Orleans, on March 26, 1803. He announced the cession from Spain to France, and received, in an- swer to his proclamation, an address from a number of planters and one from the merchants of New Orleans. In those addresses the Louisianians expressed their joy on "resuming the glorious name of Frenchmen," but they paid a handsome tribute to the Spanish administration, which, from the departure of O'Reilly in 1770, had been most kind to the inhabitants of the colony. There was some anx- iety felt on account of the supposed doctrines of the French Revolution, which might be introduced into the province, but there is no doubt that the great major- ity of the Louisianians, at that time, were delighted to become Frenchmen again.
On November 30, 1803, Laussat received in the Cabildo building from the Spanish commissioners, Salcedo and Casa Calvo, the keys of New Orleans, and was put in possession of the province. On the same day he abolished the Ca- bildo, and appointed a mayor, two adjuncts and a municipal council composed of ten members. It may be interesting to give the names of the men who
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formed the first city council of New Orleans: Etienne de Bore, mayor; Pierre Derbigny, secretary ; Destrehan, first adjunct ; Sauvé, second adjunct ; Livau- dais, Petit Cavelier, Villeré, Johns, M. Fortier, Donaldson, Faurie, Allard, Tu- reaud and John Watkins, members of the council. Labatut was treasurer.
Laussat had already received notice of the cession of Louisiana to the United States, and was appointed a commissioner to deliver the province to the Ameri- cans. On Tuesday, December 20, 1803, Louisiana was formally tranferred to the United States, and possession was taken in the name of the American Repub- lie by General Wilkinson and W. C. C. Claiborne, the commissioners appointed by President Jefferson. The event took place on the balcony of the Cabildo, where is now the Supreme Court of Louisiana, and this building should forever be held sacred by all Louisianians as having been the cradle of free and American Louisiana.
"No authentic census of the inhabitants of the province," says Judge Mar- tin, "since that of 1788 is extant, but one made for the Department of State, by the consul of the United States at New Orleans, from the best documents he could procure in 1803, presents the following result: In the City of New Or- leans, 8,056; in the whole province, 49,473."
In the beginning of 1804 the Spanish ambassador at Washington made known to the United States government that the King of Spain renounced his protest against the cession of Louisiana to the United States. The act of trans- fer was thus officially recognized by Spain. The French and Spanish Domina- tions had passed forever, and the Louisianians were henceforth to be independ- ent citizens of an independent country.
CHAPTER II.
THE INDIANS OF LOUISIANA.
FOR THE STANDARD HISTORY OF NEW ORLEANS. BY PROFESSOR JOHN R. FICKLEN, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN TULANE UNIVERSITY.
DEFORE beginning this short history of the Indians in Louisiana from early times down to the twentieth century, it may be well to remind the reader that during the period of exploration and settlement in the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries the province of Louisiana had much wider boun- daries than the present state of that name. It was generally understood to em- brace the whole Mississippi Valley, from the Rockies to the Appalachian range, and from the Gulf to the borders of Canada. For the earlier period, therefore, in order not to exceed the limits of space imposed upon the writer, it will be nec- essary to confine ourselves to those Indian tribes that lived within what is now the State of Louisiana, or who, by their proximity to the present state, came into contact, or more often into conflict, with the early settlers on the lower Missis- sippi.
Of these tribes it is impossible to give a satisfactory ethnological grouping. Some of them, like the Chickasaws and the Choctaws, spoke practically the same language; but others, like the Natchez, though living not far away, spoke so strange a dialect that they are always classified apart from their friends and neighbors. Of late years much has been done in the investigation of the lan- guages of the Southwestern Indians, and many old errors have been corrected ; but at best language is not a sure test of race kinship, and the problem of settling the origin and the kinship of these Indians has reached no satisfactory solution.
From the time of the earliest voyages on the Mississippi, however, we have interesting accounts, more or less contradictory in detail, of the life and manners of these Indians, and are able to form a fairly clear idea of what advance towards civilization the various tribes had made. We know that they differed consider- ably, one from another, in language and habits. There may have been a com- paratively wide gulf separating the man-eating Attakapas from the intelligent,
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semi-civilized Natchez, with their cultivated fields, their temples sacred to the worship of the sun, and their altars ablaze with perpetual fires. Le Page du Pratz, the earliest historian of Louisiana, who lived among the Natchez in 1720, is never weary of praising their virtues, and says: "It is a great mistake to apply the name of savage to men who know how to make a very good use of their reasoning powers, who think justly, and whose conduct is marked by generosity, prudence, and good faith." Yet the Natchez themselves, though it has been claimed for them that they were as far superior to the tribes that dwelt around them as the Athenians were to the rest of the Greeks, followed many of the su- perstitious rites of savagery, and occupied a far lower grade in social evolution than the Aztecs that Cortez found in Mexico.
It is easy to exaggerate the virtues of these children of the forest; it has proved still easier to exalt the virtues of the early explorers by painting the Indian in the darkest colors. It is well to beware of such extremes. At first view the Southern Indians were disposed to regard the Europeans as demi-gods, and to bow down and worship them; but from the day that De Soto swept over a part of this continent, killing and enslaving with ruthless barbarity the natives he encountered, until finally he perished on the banks of the great river he had discovered, the Indians began to understand that their visitors with the pale faces could be guilty of gross injustice and oppression, and deserved more often their hatred than their worship. Indeed, the modern reader who follows the nar- rative of that wonderful march cannot escape the conviction that in many of the best qualities of human nature the red man was superior to the Spaniard of that day. It may be that the tradition of how the followers of De Soto fled down the Mississippi pursued by the vengeance of the Indians along its banks was handed down from father to son among the natives, and influenced the conduct of later generations when the French began to settle in Louisiana.
At first, however, the French found the Indians for the most part hospitable and disposed to welcome them to the land, especially when they were conciliated with a rich array of scarlet cloth, knives and trinkets. But before very long it was discovered that the Indian knew nothing of the total alienation of the land. The land belonged to the tribe, and their only conception of selling it was that it should be occupied in common by themselves and their white brethren. It was a very long time before the Indians of the United States grasped the idea of land possessed in fec simple; and when the full force of the idea dawned upon them, and when they realized that for a few blankets and glass beads, they had
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bartered away their birthright in perpetuity, the more warlike tribes were dis- posed to expel both Englishman and Frenchman from the country. To this inisunderstanding as a source may be traced many-though not all-of the early Indian wars and massaeres. It is noteworthy that the Hudson Bay Company in Canada, though it was trading with the Indians for two hundred years, never had a war on its hands. The reason is easy to guess. It established trading posts over the country, but never tried to monopolize the land .*
It has often been remarked that if the early settlers had found the Indians united or capable of union in a great confederacy it would have been impossible for the infant colonies to survive. But the natives were not living in that ideal condition, which the philosophers once believed the state of nature to be, and to which they were anxious to restore mankind. The various tribes, like the old cities of Greece, were often at bitter enmity with one another, and by secking the friendship of the Europeans to exterminate their enemies they opened the way for the advance of the white man. Tonti tells us that when he and La Salle first penetrated to the mouth of the Mississippi in 1682 they came, not far above the Delta, to the village of the Tangibaos (Tangipahoas), but it had been utterly destroyed by a hostile tribe, and they beheld quantities of dead bodies piled one upon another. It was a spectacle, he says, which made them all shiver ; but on their way up the river they stopped at the village of the Quinipissas, and here, the Indians proving treacherous, "We contented ourselves," he says, "with killing a few of them, and carrying off their scalps as a trophy. These we presented to the chief of the Natchez, who was not displeased to recognize the scalps of his inveterate enemies."
This incident shows how ready the early explorers were to adopt the ways of the natives. Doubtless a review of the relations of the French with the In- dians would prove that they found the savages ready to requite good with good and evil with evil, and that neither by precept nor by example did they endeavor to raise the standard of conduct to the Christian ideal of returning good for evil. An exception must be made, however, in favor of the Catholie missionaries. From the time that Pere Marquette made his voyage down the Mississippi, de- elaring that he was greatly pleased at the prospect of risking his life in order to carry the gospel of peace and good-will among the heathen savages, until the death of Abbé Rouquette in our own day, the Catholic missionaries labored nobly
* Sec Winsor's America, Vol. I.
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to soften the manners and reform the lives of these wayward children of the for- est ; and it may be that their work was not without fruit. At first, however, the natives were so unprepared to receive the message that the teaching of the good fathers resulted in nothing more than a veneering of religion, which, taken on as a eloak of hypocrisy, made the latter condition of their disciples worse than the first. Father Davion, who taught among the Tunicas, was asked by Du Pratz what progress his zeal had made among the natives. With tears in his eyes, he replied that, notwithstanding the profound respect these people showed him, it was with the greatest difficulty that he had managed to baptize some in- fants who were at the point of death. The adults, he added, exeused themselves from embraeing his religion, saying that they were too old to aeeustom them- selves to regulations so difficult to observe. The chief, however, since he had killed the Indian doctor who had attended his son in the siekness that caused the young man's death, had resolved to fast every Friday for the rest of his life, and even attended morning and evening prayer. The women and children, also, came regularly, but the braves did not come often, and took more delight in ring- ing the bell of the chapel.
What the missionaries must have had especially to struggle against was the lex talionis that the French adopted in their dealings with the natives. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, was the only rule that it was thought possible to observe. They often burned their Indian captives as the Indians burned theirs, thus giving full recognition to the custom among the savages. One is not astonished at the failure of Father Davion, when one reads in Du Pratz the fol- lowing ineident : During Perier's administration (about 1727) a party of these same Tunieas, who were at that time assisting the French against the Natehez, having captured a Natehez woman, brought her to New Orleans as a present to the governor. Perier, however, abandoned her to her captors, and, binding her to a frame, they put hier to death by slow torture, "in order to show the French how they treated the enemies of their friends." The execution took place in front of the city, near the levee. No one interfered, but in spite of the suffering the woman underwent, in spite of the ingenious torture to whieli the Tunieas sub- jected her, she shed not a tear. With Indian stoicism she met her fate, and was content to prophiesy the speedy destruction of her tormentors-a prophesy that was fulfilled a few days later, when the Natchez, under the guise of smoking the peace calumet with the Tunicas, approached their village and nearly anni- hilated them.
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In reading of such horrors one cannot help reflecting that if the French had adopted the conciliatory methods that were so successful under Roger Williams in Rhode Island and William Penn in Pennsylvania the province would have had a very different history. Not only would the labors of the missionaries have. been facilitated, but it would not perhaps have been necessary for the historian to record the Natchez massacre of 1729 and the disastrous wars waged against the Chickasaws. Peace, rather than the dread of Indian scalping parties, might have hovered over the early settlements in the colony.
Louisiana is dotted over with a great number of earth and shell mounds, which have proved of great interest to archaeologists. The Museum of Tulane University, thanks to the energy and scientific zeal of Professor George E. Beyer, has an important collection of skulls, pottery, etc., gathered from the ex- cavations of these mounds.
The shell mounds seem older than the earth mounds, but both belong to a prehistoric age, and it is much disputed whether they were constructed by the ancestors of our Indians or by a distinct race. The natives who were questioned by the early explorers on this subject were unable to say when, for what purpose, or through whose agency these mounds came into existence. Professor Beyer, who has explored both the shell and the earth mounds, believes that the latter were used as dwellings, and were originally constructed as a place of refuge in case of high water. Incidentally, however, they were used for sacrificial and burial purposes. An examination of the skulls and pottery that have been brought to light forces on him the conclusion that the builders were a race distinct from our Indians and related to the Caribs of the Antilles. The shell mounds seem to be merely the heaps of débris or middens left by an ancient race that used to migrate for a season of each year to the shores of the sea and lakes to en- joy the shell fish with which they abounded.
Keeping ourselves, therefore, within historic limits, let us consider the prin- cipal tribes which, at the time that New Orleans was founded (1718), dwelt within the present State of Louisiana, or sufficiently near to have constant inter- course with the French. Fortunately for this period we have brief descriptions of the various tribes in the pages of Le Page du Pratz, who, as was said above, lived in Louisiana for a number of years, and was much interested in the Indians. While his descriptions must be corrected in parts, they are the most complete that have come down to us. Most of his statements may be verified by reference to the explorations made among the Indians by Bienville, the founder of New Orleans.
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Du Pratz first calls attention to the fact that many of the Indian tribes rep- resented on the old maps had either been destroyed by smallpox or had taken refuge among other tribes, and, by amalgamation, had lost their identity. Of those dwelling in the southern part of the Mississippi Valley in his day he cites the following :
1. At the headwaters of the Pascagoula river in Mississippi was the tribe of Chatkas or Choctaws (Flat Heads). They derived their name from the cus- tom of compressing the foreheads of their infants, but, as this custom was found among other Indians, Du Pratz is at a loss to say why this should be the distinct- ive name of the tribe." The Choctaws were so numerous that they were said to be able to put 25,000 ( !) warriors in the field. Until some of the divisions of the tribe fell under English influence, they were the friends and allies of the French, often joining them in their expeditions against the Natchez and other tribes.
2. One hundred and twenty miles to the north of the Choctaws were the fa- mous Chickasaws, a fierce, warlike tribe, which allied itself with the English, and constantly defied the arms of the French. Bienville found it impossible to subdue them or to force them to surrender the Natchez, when the latter took refuge among them. "The Natchez have come to us for refuge," was their noble response, "and they cannot be surrendered." Both the Choctaws and the Chicka- saws, as we shall see, emigrated in the present century to the Indian Territory, where, forgetting their former enmity, they now dwell side by side.
3. To the west of Mobile, which was as yet the capital of Louisiana, dwelt a small tribe of Pascagoulas (meaning "bread nation"). They had only thirty lodges, and among them had settled some Canadians, who lived with them like brothers.
4. Three miles from the present site of New Orleanst had lived a small band of Colapissas (properly Aquelou-pissas, or "nation that hears and sees") ; but they had moved farther north to the banks of the lake. Their deserted vil- lage was seen by Iberville on his first voyage up the Mississippi.
* The writer is informed by Dr. McGee of the Bureau of American Ethnology that Choc- taw or Chahta is not originally an Indian word. It is derived from the Spanish Chata (flat), and it was applied by the Spaniards to these Indians possibly on account of their flattened skulls. As the tribe had no general designation for itself, it seems to have gradually adopted this alien name.
" There is an old tradition that the site of New Orleans was originally occupied by a band of Indians named Tchoutchoumas; but this tribe seems to have had its home on the Yazoo river.
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5. On the left bank, about sixty miles above the city, was the tribe of Houmas (or Red Indians). . Though the neighborhood of the French and the immoderate use of brandy are said to have had an injurious effect upon the Hou- mas, they dwelt here for many years. As Iberville ascended the river he saw on the bank a tall May-pole, painted red and hung with offerings of fish and game. This pole (baton rouge) marked the boundary between the hunting grounds of the Houmas and a neighboring tribe. From it the capital of Louisiana derives its name.
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