USA > Louisiana > The history of Louisiana : from the earliest period, Volume I > Part 16
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Iberville went with most of his people to Ship island, where they began to erect huts. He sent two boats to the main. They entered the bay of Pasca- goula, where they discovered a number of Indians, who fled at their approach and were pursued in vain. On the next day a boat was again sent on shore. On the landing of the French, the natives ran away as before; but a woman, lagging behind, was caught, and was so much pleased at the behaviour of the strangers, that she went and induced her countrymen · to meet them. Four of these Indians were persuaded to go on board; Bienville, a brother of Iberville, who commanded the boat, remaining in the meanwhile, as an hostage, with the rest. After spending some time in the vessel, they returned, much gratified with their courteous reception, and a few presents that were made them. For want of an interpreter, no other information could be obtained from them, ex- cept that they were of the Biloxi tribe.
On the following day, another party of Indians pas- sed by. The same circumstance prevented any knowledge being obtained from them, except that they were Bayagoulas, that their tribe dwelt on the bank of a very large river, a little to the west, and that they were out on a war expedition against the Mobilians, who dwelt on a smaller stream, not far to the east.
On the twenty-seventh of February, Iberville and Bienville, each in a barge well manned, went in quest of the Mississippi. They were attended by father Athanase, a recollet monk, who had accompanied the unfortunate Lasalle, both in his descent of that river, and on his last voyage from France. The third day, they entered a wide stream, which, from
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the turbidness of its waters, the friar justly concluded was the mighty river.
Having ascended it, according to their reckoning about one hundred and twenty miles, on the fifth day after they entered it, they discovered a party of Indians, who, on perceiving the barges, sought their safety in flight. One of them, however, soon turned, and fearlessly awaited the approach of the strangers. His good will having been secured by a present, he went and brought back his companions. It was un- derstood from them, that they were of the Bayagoula tribe. One of them was easily prevailed upon to get into Iberville's barge and accompany the French. , A few days after, the French overtook at the fork of the Chetimachas, a party of the Warshas, and two days after, reached a village of the Bayagoulas.
Here they were shown some capots, or great coats, made of blankets, left there by some of Lasalle's com- panions. They were treated with great hospitality. The Indians supplied their guests with a few fowls, giving them to understand they proceeded from others, which they had received from a tribe of In- dians (the Attakapas) dwelling northerly, near the sea; a vessel Having been cast ashore there, from which a few of these animals came out.
Iberville was still apprehensive that father Atha- nase was mistaken, and the river he was on was not the Mississippi, until the natives produced a pray- er book, in which the name of one of Lasalle's men was written, and at last, a letter from the Chevalier de Tonti, bearing date from the village of the Quin- ipissas, the twentieth of April, 1685. The chevalier . lamented his being obliged to return, without having met his chief, whose departure from France with the intention of settling a French colony on the banks of the Mississippi, he had learned from Canada. He
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observed he had descended the stream, as far as the sea, with twenty Canadians and thirty Indians. Iber- ville was also shown a coat of mail, with double mashes of wire. From the accounts the Indians gave of the length of time this piece of armour had been among them, Iberville guessed it to have belonged to one of the Spaniard, who accompanied Soto.
Having left another fork of the Mississippi, (now known as the Bayou Plaquemines) on the left hand, they soon came to another outlet of the river, on its opposite side, which separated the land of the Bay- agoulas, from that of the Oumas. It is now called Bayou Manchac.
Several days afterwards they came to a place where the river made a considerable bend. Iberville, perceiving a large outlet, caused a number of trees that obstructed it to be cut down, and the barges were drawn through. The Mississippi afterwards so widened the outlet, that in time, the former bed of the river being much obstructed by trees, the stream altered its course, and the outlet became its bed. The place was hence called Point Coupée.
They afterwards came to another considerable bend thro' which the natives made a portage, and had cut a road-the isthmus was but a few yards in width ; the French gave it the name of the Portage de la Croix, from the circumstance of their having erect- ed there a cross. in token of having proceeded so far up the river, and of having taken possession of it. It is believed that this is the great bend of the Missis- sippi opposite the mouth of Red River. The Oumas Indians had a considerable village near this spot. The French repaired to it and were hospitably re- ceived.
Iberville now retrogaded, and the barges having floated back as far as Bayou Manchac, Bienville
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proceeded down the river to the sea, and Iberville entered the s nall stream and proceeded, through two lakes. to which he gave the names of Maurepas and Pontchartrain: to a bay which he called St. Louis, and reached his shipping. Bienville arrived shortly af- terwards.
It was now determined to fix the principal estab- lishment of the colony at the eastern extremity of a bay. which, from the Indians dwelling nearit, was call- ed the bay of Biloxi ; it lies between the bay of Pen- cagonda and that of St. Louis. A fort with four bas- tions, was immediately begun, and completed on the first of May Twelve pieces of cannon were pla- ced in it, and the command given to Sauvolle, a bro- ther of Iberville; and Bienville, their younger brother, was appointed his lieutenant. The colonists settled around it, and Iberville and the Count de Sugeres sailed for France in the frigates, on the ninth, leaving the two small vessels for the service of the colony. .
In the mean while, the Scotch had made an unsuc- cessful attempt to plant a colony, near the isthmus of Panama. King William had given his assent to an act of the parliament of Scotland, incorporating a company to carry on trade in Africa and the Indies; and the association equipped three ships and two ten- ders, on which were embarked one thousand colo- nists.
This fleet cast anchor near Cape Tiberon, in lati- tude 8. 40. N. on the second of November of the prece- ding year; the Indians received the adventurers with cordiality, and led their ships to a bay within Golden Island, about five miles wide and very deep. The Scotch. having sounded along the shore, found a la- goon on the south east side of the bay, running up within the land for about two miles and a half, and selected a spot, which nature had rendered easily de- I.OU. I. 19
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fensible. for the chief place of the colony. They called it New Edinburgh, and the harbor before it, Caledo- nia harbor. They erected a platform, on which they placed sixteen guns, and dignified it with the name of Fort St. Andrews.
The Indians continued friendly; the colony was vi- sited by small vessels from Jamaica and St. Domingo. It was several times harrassed by irruptions of Spani- ards from the neighbouring colonies, whom they always successfully repelled. In the spring, however, the cabinet of Madrid made loud complaints of this in- vasion of the territory of Spain, and William, being averse to a rupture with that nation, immediately af- ter the conclusion of the war, disowned the Scotch colony. and the governors of Jamaica, Barbadoes, New York and Massachusetts issued proclamations, commanding the king's subjects, in their respective governments, to forbear holding any correspondence with, or giving any aid to the Scotch colony. Wil- liam was deafto the representations of the company, and the colonists, unable to repel the Spaniards, and to sustain themselves without aid from home, dispers- ed soon after.
Sauvolle, after the departure of the two frigates, despatched one of his two vessels to St. Domingo for provisions. Nothing now appeared to him of greater importance than to secure a good understanding with the Indian tribes near the fort. For this purpose, in the beginning of June, he sent his young brother with a few Canadians, and a Bayagoula chief as a guide, towards the Colapissas, who dwelt on the northern bank of lake Pontchartrain. This tribe had three hun- dred warriors. On secing Bienville approach, the Colapissas ranged themselves in battle array. He stopped and sent his guide to inquire into the cause of this hostile appearance. The Colapissas
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replied, that three days before, two white men, whom they took to be English from Carolina, came at the head of two hundred Chichasaws, attacked their vil- lage and carried away some of their people into cap- tivity, and they had at first considered Bienville and bis white companions as Englishmen. The Baya- goula chief undeceived them, and told them, that those who came to visit them were French, and ene- mies of the English-that their object. in coming to the village. was to solicit the friendship and alliance of its inhabitants. The Colapissas laid down their . arms and received and entertained the French with great cordiality. Bienville made them a few presents, and exchanged with them promises of reciprocal friendship, alliance and support.
On his return to the fort, he spent there but a few days, and sat off easterly on a like errand; he ascend- ed the Pascagoula river, on the banks of which the nation who gave it its name, the Biloxis and the Moe- tobies had villages-and he proceeded as far as the Mobilians. Having been as successful with these tribes as with the Colapissas, and equally anxious to live on good terms with his white as his red neigh- bours, he paid a visit to Don Andres at Pensacola.
Ever since the discovery of the Mississippi by La- salle, Canadian huntsmen, or coureurs de bois, strayed at times to the banks of that river, and missionaries from that colony had been led by their zeal to locate themselves among the Indians on the Wabash, the Illinois and other streams that pay the tribute of their waters to the Mississippi, and of late among se- veral tribes on the very banks of that river; and on the first of July, Sauvolle had the pleasure, which he lit- tle expected, of receiving the visits of two of these missionaries, who resided with the Tensas and Ya- zou Indians.
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The holy men, coming to preach among the Ou- mas, had heard of a French settlement on the sea . shore; they floated down the Mississippi to visit it, and reached the fort through the lakes. Their names were Montiguy and Davion; the latter resided on an eminence, on the east side of the Mississippi, between the present towns of St Francisville and Natchez, which the French called after him La Roche a Darion. While the English held this part of the country, the spot was called Loftus' heights. From a fort, built under the presidency of John Adams, it bears now the name of Fort Adams. These clergymen spent a few days with their countrymen, and returned to their respective missions.
Parties from the Mobile and Thome Indians visit- ed their French neighbours in the month of August, and the vessel despatched to St. Domingo on the de- parture of Iberville, returned with an ample supply of provisions, which began to be much needed.
Iberville, on ascending the Mississippi, had noticed three outlets ; one on the eastern side. and two on the western, now called the fork of the Chetimachas, and Bayou Plaquemines. He had descended through the first, and had instructed Sauvolle to have the two others explored. Perfect tranquillity reigning in the settlement, Bienville was sent, with ten Canadians in two pirogues, on this service.
They crossed lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas, and ascending through Bayou Manchac, reached the Mississippi and floated down to the fork. Taking al- ways the western prong, whenever the stream fork- ed, Bienville fell into a bayou in which the water failed; visiting several villages of indians on the way, he returned to the Mississippi, which he descended, and on the sixteenth of September, met an English ship of sixteen guns. Captain Bar, who commanded
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her, informed Bienville he had left below another ship of his nation of the same force; these ships were sent by Daniel Coxe of New Jersey, who then was the proprietor of the immense grant of land from Charles 1. of England to Sir Robert Heath, in 1627. The object of captain Bar and his companion was, to sound the passes of the Mississippi. They were afterwards to return and convoy four smaller vessels, bringing several families, intended as the beginning of an English colony, on the banks of the river. Capt. Bar was uncertain whether the stream he was explo- ring was the Mississippi or not.
Bienville told him it was further west, that the country they were in was a dependence of the French colony of Canada, and the French had a strong fort and some settlements higher up, which induced Bar to retrogade. The part of the river, in which Bien- ville met him, was the beginning of a large bend, where the ship was detained; the wind which brought her up ceasing, from the very great turn of the river, to be favorable. From this circumstance, the place was called the English Turn; an appellation which it still retains.
While Bienville was on board, a French engineer, named Secon, handed him a memorial to be forward- ed to the court of France. It stated, that the memo- rialist, and four hundred protestant families who had emigrated from France to Carolina, in consequence of the revocation of the edict of Nautz, in 1684, were · anxious to come and live under the French govern- ment in Louisiana, provided liberty of conscience was promised them. This paper was accordingly forwar- ded; but the Count de Pontchartrain answered, that his sovereign had not driven these protestants from his kingdom to make a republic of them in America. Re- ligious intolerance had greatly thinned the population
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of France, and was now to check that of her colonies. Its dire evils were not confined to Catholic countries nor to the old world-they have been felt even in "the land of the free." About sixty years before, the general court of Massachusetts excluded from the enjoyment of political rights. those who had not been received into the church as members; and even at this day, the constitution of North Carolina withholds , some of them from those who deny the truth of the protestant religion.
Bienville, after the departure of the English ships, descended the river to the sea, and sounded its wes- tern pass; he found eleven feet of water on its bar.
Returning, he reached the village of the Bayagou- las on the first of October. These Indians were in the greatest consternation ; having been lately surprised by the Oumas, who made several of their people pri- soners. The war that had broke out between these two tribes was occasioned by a dispute about their limits. Bienville, on leaving them, promised to the . Bayagoulas, that he would soon return with some of
his men, and compel the Oumas to make peace with them.
On his way down, he was guided to a portage or crossing place: his pirogues were carried over to bayou Tigouyou, through which he reached lake Pontchartrain, and in four days arrived at the fort of Biloxi.
Several guns fired at sea, attracted the attention of the colonists on the seventh of December. Sauvolle sent out a light boat, which soon came back with the pleasing intelligence of the approach of a French fleet.
It consisted of a fifty and a forty gun ship, com- manded by Iberville and the Count de Sugeres; Sau- volle had been appointed governor, Bienville
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lieutenant governor of Louisiana; and Boisbriant major of the fort. This officer, with two others, St. Denys and Maton, came in the ships, with sixty Ca- nadians; they were accompanied by Lesueur, a geo- logist, who was sent to examine a greenish earth or ochre, which some of the men, who had accompanied Dacan up the Mississippi, had noticed on its banks.
Iberville, finding from Bienville's report, that the English meditated an establishment on the Mississip- pi, determined on effecting one immediately. He de- parted for that purpose in the smallest vessel, with fifty Canadians, on the seventeenth of January, having sent Bienville by the lakes to the Bayagoulas to pro- cure guides to some spot in the lower part of the ri- . ver, secure from the inundation. They led him to an elevated one, at the distance of fifty-four miles from the sea; where Iberville met them soon after, and the building of a fort was immediately begun.
... Towards the middle of February, they were met by the Chevalier de Tonti from the Illinois with se- ven men ; he had left others, who had accompanied him, at the Bayagoulas. The object of his journey was, to ascertain the truth of a report which had reached him, of the establishment of a French colo- ny.
Three days after, Iberville and Bienville sat off with the chevalier and a small party for the upper part of the Mississippi. They stopped at the Baya- goulas, with whom they remained till the first of March, and proceeded to the Oumas, with the view of inducing or compelling them to release the prison- ers they had taken from the Bayagoulas. On ap- proaching the village of the Oumas, Iberville went forward with a few Bayagoula chiefs ; as he approach- ed their village, the Oumas met and received him with much respect. He was successful in his endea-
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vours ; peace was made between the two tribes, and the Bayagoula prisoners were liberated.
From the Oumas, the French proceeded to the - Natchez ; this nation had been lately reduced by ` wars to twelve hundred warriors. A missionary, na- med St. Come, had arrived some time before from Canada, and fixed his residence among them, The king. or Great Sun of the nation, on hearing of the ap- proach of the French, came forward on the shoul- ders of some of his people. attended by a large reti- nue, and welcomed Iberville; those Indians appear- ed much more civilized than the others. They pre- served in a temple a perpetual fire, kept up by a · priest, and offered to it the first fruits of the chase.
The Tensas, a neighbouring nation, were in alliance with the Natchez, and much resembled them in their . manners and religion.
While Iberville remained there, one of the temples was struck and set on fire by lightning. The keeper of the fane solicited the squaws to throw their little ones into the fire, to appease the divinity; four infants were thus sacrificed, before the French could prevail on the women to desist.
On the twenty second of March, Iberville returned to the fort near the mouth of the Mississippi, and from thence to that at the Biloxi. 'He was much pleased with the country of the Natchez, and considered it as the most suitable part of the province, for its princi- pal establishment : he selected a high spot, which he laid out for a town, and called it Rosalie, in honor of the countess of Pontchartrain, who had received that name at the baptismal fount.
On the day that Iberville left the Natchez, Bien- ville and St. Denys, attended by a few Canadians and a number of Indians. sat off for the country of the Yatassees, in the western part of Louisiana.
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Iberville, on his arrival at the fort of Biloxi, was in- formed that the governor of Pensacola had come to Ship Island with a thirty gun ship, and one hundred and forty men, with the view of driving the French away. He found there a superior force, and content- ed himself with a solemn protest against what he cal- led the usurpation of a country which he consider- ed as part of the government of Mexico. He fur- nished the Count de Sugeres with a copy of thisin- strument, which the latter, sailing for France a few days afterwards, carried thither.
Lesueur, with a detachment of twenty men, sat off for the country of the Sioux, in the latter part of April.
In the mean while, Bienville and St. Denys return- ed to Biloxi ; they had found the country thro' which they intended to pass, entirely covered with water, and had proceeded to the village of the Washitas, in which they found but five huts; the Indians having mostly removed to the Natchitoches. They crossed Red river, and met six of the latter Indians who were carrying salt to the Coroas, a tribe who dwelt in the vicinity of the Yazou river. On the seventh of April they reached the village of the Outchiouis, in which were about fifty warriors; here they were supplied with provisions, and one of the Indians accompanied them as a guide to the Yatassees, whose village was very large, as they had two hundred warriors. The information the travellers obtained of the country to the west was imperfect. They did not hear of any Spanish settlement in the vicinity.
On their way down the Mississippi, they stopped at the Bayagoulas, whose village was almost entirely destroyed by the Mongoulachas, a tribe who dwelt near them.
Iberville returned to France, towards the last of LOU. I. 20
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May. He left Bienville in command, in the fort on the Mississippi, and sent St. Denys with twelve Cana- dians and a number of Indians to prosecute the disco- veries he had begun on Red river.
Although the French had now been upwards of two years in Louisiana, they do not appear to have resorted to the culture of the earth for subsistence; they depended entirely on supplies from France or St. Domingo. Fishing and hunting afforded the co- lony fresh meat, and the people carried on a small trade with the Indian tribes on the sea coast. Govern- ment, instead of concentrating the population, seem- ed more intent on making new discoveries where other settlements might be made, and to seek in the bowels of the earth for metals and ochres. The at- tention of the colonial officers had been directed to a search for pearls. The wool of buffaloes was pointed out to them as the future staple commodity of the Country, and they were directed to have a number of these animals penned and tamed. Nay, thoughts were entertained of shipping some of the young to France, in order to propagate the species there.
Charles the second, the fifth and last monarch of Spain of the house of Austria, died on the tenth of No- vember 1700, in the thirty-ninth year of his age, and without issue. His will called to the throne, he was leaving, Philip, Duke of Anjou, a grandson of Louis the fourteenth. Although the new king was received with acclamations in Madrid, his elevation was pow- erfully opposed by the Archduke Charles, who was supported by his father, and by England. Holland, Sa- voy, Prussia and Portugal. Thus, the flames of war began to rage in Europe, in that contest, which is called the war of the Spanish succession.
St. Denys returned in the fall, after a very tiresome journey of upwards of six months. without any mate-
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rial information respecting the Indians in the upper part of Red river.
Lesueur had ascended the Mississippi, as high as the falls. to which Dacan and Hennepin had given the name of St. Anthony, proceeded up St. Peters' river upwards of one hundred and twenty miles, and enter- ed a stream, which he called Green river, from the hue imparted to its water, by a greenish ochre, which co- vered the land around a copper mine, and was inter- mixed with the ore on the surface. The ice prevented his advance more than three miles, although it was now the latter part of September. He employed his detachment in building a small fort, in which they wintered. It was called Fort Thuillier, in compliment to a farmer-general of that name, one of Lesueur patrons. In the spring, the party proceeded to the inine. at the foot of a mountain, which the Indians said was thirty miles in length. It was very near the bank of the river : thirteen thousand weight of a mixture of ochre and ore were gathered, brought to Biloxi, and shipped to France. From the circumstance of the mine having been abandoned, it is concluded that no value was attached to the shipment. Lesueur had left the greatest part of his men in the fort, to keep possession of the country.
A frigate arrived from France on the thirtieth of May, under the orders of Delaronde. Government, always under the impression that wealth was to be sought in the bowels of the earth, in Louisiana, ra- ther than gathered from its surface, by the dull and steady process of tillage, and listening with unaba- ted credulity to the tales of every impostor, who came from America, a Canadian, of the name of Mathew Sagan, who had furnished the Count de Pontchar- train with feigned memoirs, in which he pretended to have ascended the Missouri and discovered mines of
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