USA > Louisiana > The history of Louisiana : from the earliest period, Volume I > Part 23
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According to the observation Laharpe made, the shore of the bay extended to the south, in a series of hills and prairies, interspersed with well timbered land. In the bottom of the bay, he saw a river, the mouth of which appeared to be about one hundred yards wide ..
On the fifth, a number of Indians came on board, unarmed. Laharpe was unable to prevail on them to consent to his making a settlement in their coun- try.
Finding that the number of Indians on the bay was LOU. I. 31
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considerable, and that but little dependence could be placed in his soldiers, he united with his lieuten- ant in the opinion, that it would be imprudent to at- tempt to force himself upon the natives ; but he took the ill judged resolution to carry off a few of them by stratagem, in the hope, that the manner in which they would be received at Fort St. Louis, and the view of the establishment of the French there, might operate on their minds, so as to conquer their obstinacy, and dispose their countrymen to forbear any further op- position to the settlement of the French among them.
Accordingly, he detained twelve of his visitors, as hostages for some of his men who were sent ashore for water, dismissing the other Indians with presents. He learned from his captives, that their nation was at war with the Assinais and the Adayes, and that a num- ber of Spaniards had lately passed through their country with large droves of cattle.
The water being brought, the anchor was weigh- ed, and the vessel went into deep water. At night the Indians manifested their uneasiness, and wished to be sent ashore, but were told to wait till the morn- ing.
At sunrise, Laharpe sent nine of them into the ca- bin, and made a few soldiers stand by with fixed bay- onets. to prevent any of them to come out. This pre- caution excited great alarm among them, and they manifested their apprehension that their destruction was intended. They were told not to fear any thing for themselves or their companions-that they would be carried to the chief of the French, in order that he might learn from them the motives of their people in preventing his warriors from settling among them, after receiving the presents he had sent them-that they would be treated kindly and allowed soon to re- turn.
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The Indians on deck were now furnished with a canoe to reach the shore. Laharpe made them a few presents, and recommended to them not to allow the Spaniards to settle in their country. Immediate- ly on their leaving the vessel, the guard was remo- ved, the Indians in the cabin allowed to come on deck, and a boat was sent on shore to set up a post on a point of land, with a leaden plate on which the arms of France were engraven.
The Indians on board still imagined they were to be landed ; but on the return of the boat, they disco- vered their error, and endeavoured by various means to induce Laharpe' to change his determination; sometimes telling him, if he kept in, he would run on the shoals ; at other times offering to conduct him to places where good oysters were to be had, or to point out spots, in which treasures were hidden.
According to the information of the Indians, and the judgment of Laharpe, the bay he came from was the one Don Martin de Alacorne discovered in 1718, which he placed in twenty-nine degrees, five min- utes, and which he called del Spiritu Santo.
Bienville highly disapproved. the conduct of La- harpe in decoying these Indians, and gave orders to carry them back immediately; but while preparations were making, they escaped and sought their home by land.
No further attempt to settle the bay of St. Bernard appears ever to have been made by the French. La- harpe was greatly mortified at the abandonment of the plan. He thought considerable advantages might have been derived from it, as the situation of the bay afforded safe harbours and a great facility to com- merce with the Spaniards, and its navigable rivers invited population. The scarcity of provisions, arms and ammunition in the colony, the smallness of its mi-
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litary force, in relation to the many posts to be pro- tected, were considered by the colonial administra- tion, as insuperable obstacles.
On the day after Laharpe's return, Bienville learnt by despatches from the commissioners, that he was restored in the presidency of the council, and they had resolved that the principal establishment of the colony should be removed to New Orleans. They al- so directed him to order a survey of the river of the . Arkansas, with the view of ascertaining how far it was navigable. It seems the council of the company in France still thought it their interest to extend its possessions in Louisiana, rather than to avail them- selves of the advantages the part now occupied presented. They flattered themselves that by pur- suing their discoveries to the west, mines of the pre- cious metals might be reached, or a trade with the Spaniards insured. The latter, however, were not inattentive to the views of the French.
St. Denys, who commanded at the fort of Natchi- toches, was apprised by a trader from the Adayes, that the Marquis de Gallo, lately appointed governor of the province of Texas, had come among these In- dians, with four hundred horsemen, and about fifty thousand dollars worth of goods ; he had also a large number of waggons loaded with provisions and effects. He had begun to burn bricks for a fort which he in- tended to build immediately. The unpleasant infor- mation was received at the same time that the Chick- asaws had murdered two Canadians.
In pursuance of the orders of the commissioners. Delorme removed to New Orleans on the first of No- vember.
Laharpe. finding himself unemployed by the de- termination of the colonial administrators to suspend the execution of the plan of settling the bay of St.
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Bernard, offered his services to Bienville for the exe- cution of the orders of the commissioners in regard to the river of the Arkansas.
Notwithstanding this measure was positively or- dered by the commissioners, the company's agent op- posed it strenuously. Bienville however, consider- ed it as one of vital importance. He was anxious to establish a post in that part of the province, to pro- tect the commerce with the Illinois, and facilitate the introduction of cattle from the Spanish provinces.
Laharpe was detached with sixteen men for this service. He was directed after having rested his men, at the mouth of the river, to ascend its main branch as high as he could, to take notice of every island and creek, to look for mines and in case he discovered any to bring some of the ore. In case of any attempt on the part of the Spaniards to effect 'a settlement on any of these streams, the same in- structions were given him, as when he went to the bay of St. Bernard, to insist on the possession, taken by Lasalle in 1678, when he descended the Mississipi.
In December father Charlevoix reached Louisiana from Canada, by the way of the Illinois. He stop- ped at the fort of the Yazous, spent the Christmas holidays at the Natchez, and floated down to New- Orleans, which he reached on the sixth of January.
He gave out that he had the king's order to seek a northwest passage to China, and to inquire into the state of the southern province ; but as he produced no official letter, not much credit was given to his as- sertion. He was however treated, wherever he went. with considerable attention.
New Orleans, according to his account, consisted at that time of one hundred cabins, placed without much order, a large woo len warehouse, two or three dwelling houses, that would not have adorned
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a village, and a miserable store house, which had been at first occupied as a chapel ; a shed being now used for this purpose. Its population did not exceed two hundred persons.
The father stopped at the island of the Balise, which had just been formed. He chaunted a high mass on and blessed it, according to the ritual of his church. He gave it the name of Toulouse island, which it does not appear to have long retained.
The only settlements then begun below the Natchez were those of St. Reine and Madam de Mezie- res, a little below Pointe Coupee-that of Diron d'Artaguette, at Baton Rouge-that of Paris, near bayou Manchac-that of the Marquis d'An- conis, below Lafourche -- that of the Marquis · d'Artagnac, at Cannes Brulees-that of de Meuse a little below, and a plantation of three brothers of the name of Chauvin, lately come from Canada, at the Tchapitoulas.
Charlevoix reached Fort St. Louis of the Biloxi on the thirty-first of January, and left it on the twenty fourth of March for Hispaniola.
Duvergier returned to France in the same month.
Loubois, a knight of St. Louis, arrived soon after and took the command of Fort St. Louis, and Latour received the commission of lieutenant gene- ral of the province, much to the mortification of Bien- ville and Chateaugué.
The Commissioners forwarded for publication a set of rules they had adopted for the management of the company's concerns in Louisiana. They provided that negroes should be sold at six hundred and seventy livres, or one hundred and seventy-six dollars, payablein three annual instalments, in rice or tobacco.
Rice was received at twelve livres or three dollars the barrel, and tobacco at twenty-six livres or six dollars and fifty cents.
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Wine was sold at twenty-six livres or six dollars and fifty cents the barrel, and brandy at one hundred and twenty livres or thirty dollars the quarter cask.
A copper coinage had lately been struck for the use of the king's colonies in America, and ordered to be used in the payment of the troops. It was declared. a lawful tender in the company stores.
The province for civil and military purposes, was now divided into nine districts. Alibamons, Mo- bile. Biloxi, New Orleans, Natchez, the Yazous. the Illinois and Wabash, Arkansas and Natchitoches. A commandant and judge was directed to be appoint- ed in each.
For religious purposes, there were three principal divisions. The first was under the care of the capu- chins, and extended from the mouth of the Mississippi to the Iillinois. The barefooted carmelites attended to the second, which included the civil districts of Biloxi, Mobile and Alibamons. The Wabash and Illinois formed the last, confided to the Jesuits. Churches and chapels were directed to be built at convenient distances. Before this time, in many places, large wooden crosses were raised at conven- ient places, and the people assembled around them,' sheltered by trees, to unite in prayer.
The Chickasaws continued their hostilities : they' attacked a Canadian pirogue, descending the Mis- sissippi, near Fort Prudhomme and killed two of the men.
In the month of May, Fouquet brought to Biloxi the portion of the late copper coinage, for the pro- vince.
La Renaudiere, an officer, who had been sent at the head of a brigade of miners, by the directors, now led them up the Missouri. . Their labour had no ot her effect than to shew how much the company
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was imposed on, and the facility with which the prin- cipal agents themselves were induced to employ men without capacity and send them to such a dis- tance and at an enormous expense.
Since the failure of Law and his departure from France, his grant at the Arkansas had been entirely neglected, and the greatest part of the settlers, whom he had transported thither from Germany. finding themselves abandoned and disappointed. came down to New Orleans, with the hope of obtaining a passage to some port of France, from which they might be enabled to return home. The colonial government being unable or unwilling to grant it. small allotments of land were made to them twenty miles above New- Orleans. on both sides of the river, on which they settled in cottage farms. The chevalier d'Arens- bourg. a Swedish officer, lately arrived, was appoint- ed commandant of the new post. This was the begin- ning of the settlement, known as the German coast, OP the parishes of St. Charles and St. John the Baptist These laborious men supplied the troops and the inhabitants of New Orleans with garden stuff. Load- ing their pirogues, with the produce of their week's work, on Saturday evening, they floated down the river and were ready to spread at sun-rise, on the first market that was held on the banks of the Mis- sissippi, their supplies of vegetables, fowls and but- ter. Returning, at the close of the market, they reached their homes early in the night, and were ready to resume their work at sun rise; - having brought the groceries and other articles needed in the course of the week.
The island, which Father Charlevoix had lately blessed and to which he had given the name of Tou- louse, having been examined, under the orders of Bienville, by Pauger, appeared to be a convenient
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place for the residence of pilots. To afford the en- trance of the river some protection, a battery was now raised on it, with barracks, a magazine and chapel, and a small garrison was sent there.
Laharpe returned from his expedition to the river of the Arkansas, on the 20th of May: he had reached the Natchez on the seventeenth of January and found Fort Rosalie a heap of rotten timber: Manneval, who commanded it, had only eighteen soldiers. He staid but one day with him aud met, at the mouth of the river of the Yazous, two Canadians pirogues, loaded . with 50,000 lb. weight of salt meat. They had killed eighteen bears about the head point of Point Coupee.
Laharpe reached, nine miles up Yazou river, a settlement called Fort St. Peter, commanded by de Grave. There were not more than thirty acres of arable land near the fort; the rest was nothing but stony hills. On digging turf and clay, it was found the water was bad and the place sickly.
A little above the fort were villages of the Coroas, Offogoulas and Oatsees. Their huts were scattered on small hillocks artificially made in the valley. Their whole population did not exceed two hundred and fifty heads. About one hundred miles to the northeast, were the Chouactas, about forty in number, and still higher the Chachoumas, who numbered about one hundred and fifty. In high water, these vil- lages were inaccessible by land. Nine miles higher were the Outaypes, a very small tribe, and fifteen miles farther the Tapouchas, near the Choctaws.
Laharpe left the Yazou river, on the fifteenth of Feb- ruary, and ascending the Mississippi one hundred and sixty-four miles, came to the lower branch of the river of the Arkansas. He found its current extremely rapid, and stopped a little above its mouth, near that, of a stream coming from the north west from the Osa- LOU. r. 32
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ges. The large quantity of rock in its bed prevent- ed its navigation.
The first village was reached on the first of March. It consisted of forty-one cabins and three hundred and twenty persons. Laharpe found here Duboulay, who was there since the month of September : hav- ing been sent thither from the fort of the Yazous, to protect these Indians, and the boats from the Illi- nois, which commonly stopped at this place, to pro- cure provisions.
The Arkansas were not pleased at the arrival of the French among them, nor disposed to afford to their leader any information of the typography of their coun- try. They saw with pain his preparations to visit and form alliances with the tribes in the west, and exer- ted themselves to dissuade him from it ; telling him that his party was in great danger of being murder- ed by the Osages. They refused to accommodate him with a pirogue, although there were upwards of twenty, fastened before the village, and he found also great difficulty in procuring provisions. He next proceeded to Law's grant; it lay N. N. W. from the village, on the right side of the river, at the distance of about seven miles. The buildings had been erected about a' mile from the water. There remained but forty persons of all ages and sexes : they had a small clearing sown with wheat.
On the third, he sent to the upper village for pro- visions. The Indians of it came from the Caenzas a nation who dwelt on the Missouri. This settlement was insulated, and had a population of about four hundred persons. Having obtained what he wanted, he sent five of his men forward, directing them to halt on the second day and wait for him. He sat off on the next. with the rest, in all twenty-two men, includ- ing Prudhomme and four others, whom he had taken at the fort of the Yazous.
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Proceeding the distance of two hundred and thirty miles, he came to a remarkable rock on the left bank of the river, mixed with jaspered marble, forming three steep hillocks, one hundred and sixty-nine feet high. Near it, is a quarry of slate, and at its foot a beautiful cascade and basin. The water of the river for the first ninety miles is redish; it afterwards be- comes so clear as to be potable.
The party proceeded seventy miles farther; but the current growing extremely rapid and disease prevailing among the soldiers, Laharpe determined to return, much against his inclination ; as, according to his reckoning, he was within three hundred miles of a nation, whom he visited in 1717, while he was sta- tioned at the Cadodaqueous, He saw red and white morillos in abundance.
After making a chart of the river, for three hundred and fifty miles from the first village, he landed and visited several nations on the west side of the river, and spent some time in exploring the country on the opposite shore. He then descended the river to Law's grant, where a boat had just arrived from New Or- leans, with provisions. They were so needed that the Germans were making preparations to abandon the settlement.
In floating down the Mississippi, Laharpe was near being surprised by a party of the Chickasaws.
Peace had in the mean time been made between France and Spain, and on the thirty-first of May, a Spanish vessel from Vera Cruz, landed Don Alex- ander Wauchop, a captain of the royal navy of Spain, at the Biloxi. He was bearer of despatches to Bienville from the Marquis de Valero, viceroy of Mexico, enclosing an official copy of the late treaty, which contained a clause for the restora- tion of Pensacola, of which Don Alexander was sent to take possession.
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Father Charlevoix returned on the fourth of June ; the vessel, in which he had sailed for St. Domingo having been wrecked on one of the Martyr islands, on the fourteenth of April. . He sailed soon after for the place of his destination.
A large party of the Chickasaws, attacked, in the month of July, the Indians on Yazou river, near Fort St. Peter, robbed them of their provisions and scalp- ed a sergeant of the garrison and his wife in their own cabin, within a musket shot of the fort. In apprising Bienville of this irruption, de Grave, the comman- dant of Fort St. Peter, added there were several par- ties of the hostile Indians hovering in the woods, with a view of surprising the Coroas, Offagoulas and Yazous. These had sent their women andchildren into the fort.
The beginning of August, Bienville removed his head quarters to New Orleans. In the latter part of the month, he was visited by a deputation of the Ito- mapas, a tribe on the western side of the Mississippi, who had stopped in the village of Colapissas, whose chief falling sick during their visit, his countryinen attributed his malady to a spell cast on him by their guests. They followed them to New Orleans, and solicited Bieneville's interference, in order to obtain the removal of the spell.
The company, at home, were still less intent to promote agriculture in the parts of Louisiana oc- cupied by the French, than on the discovery of mines of the precious metals, and the extension of trade with the most remote nations of Indians. Yielding to the representations of Boismont, an officer heretofore at- tached to the garrison of Fort Chartres of the Illi- nois, who had made several expeditions up the Mis- souri. and having gone over had been made a knight of St. Louis, they sent him to New Orleans and direc-
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ted Bienville to furnish him a detachment, pirogues, arms, ammunition and provision, that he might build a fort and begin a settlement on the banks of that river. Helanded early in September, bringing to the colonists. as a spiritual relief, three father capuchins and one lay brother.
In their despatches, the commissioners announced to Bienville that the company expected he should consider himself, not only as the commandant gene- ral of its forces in Louisiana, but also, principal direc- tor of its concerns, and as responsible for their suc- cess-that if they prospered, he should have all the credit of it, but, in case of their miscarriage the loss of the regent's favour. 1
They inclosed to him a printed copy of a royal proclamation, published on the twenty-first of May, announcing the failure of the bank established by Law. On the following day, its notes became abso- lutely worthless. By its failure an immense number of individuals were ruined, and many rich families re- duced to abject poverty. To sooth the general in- terest, d'Aguesseau was recalled from exile, and the seals were returned to him. About the same time the British nation was gulled, nearly in the same manner, but not to the same extent, by what was cal- led the south sea bubble.
A number of pirogues having been built, Boismont led his detachment to the Missouri.
A most destructive hurricane desolated the pro- vince on the eleventh of September. The church, hos- pital, and thirty houses were levelled to the ground in New Orleans; three vessels that lay before it were driven on shore. The crops above and below were totally destroyed, and many houses of the planters blown down. It prevailed with great violence at the Natchez and Biloxi. Three vessels that were at an-
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chor before the last place, were driven high up on the shore. Famine threatened the colony with its hor- rors, and the chief despatched vessels in search of provisions to Vera Cruz, Havana and St. Domingo.
Hitherto apprehension, in regard to Indian hostili- ty, had been confined to one quarter, and the Chicka- saws alone excited the alarm of the French. Dutisne an officer of the garrison of Fort Rosalie, came to New Orleans in the latter part of the month, with distres- sing accounts from that quarter.
A sergeant having quarrelled with an Indian, an affray ensued. The guard at the fort turned out to quell it. They were attacked by a numerous body of Indians, on whom they at last fired, killing one of them and wounding another. A few days after, Gue- not. the director of the grant of St. Catherine, was fi- red on in the road and wounded; and on the next, the Indians attacked, and attempted to carry away, a cart loaded with provisions, and guarded by a few soldi- ers. Hiding themselves under high grass, they fired and killed a negro, and wounded another. A party of eighty of them, a few days after, attacked the set- tlement; but were repulsed with the loss of seven men. They had taken two planters, whose heads they had cut off; they also carried away a considerable num- ber of horses, cattle and hogs.
Two suns of the Natchez were on a visit to Bien- ville, when Dutisne reached New Orleans. Instead of sending at once a strong force to chastise the of- fending Indians, presents were made to these chiefs, who promised to go and put a stop to the disorder.
Disease added, in the fall, its horrors to those of im- pending dearth; but the colonists were in some degree relieved by the appearance of an unexpected crop of rice. The grain scattered by the hurricane had ta- ken root, and promised a comparative abundance.
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" The directors who had remained at the Biloxi, now joined Delorme at New Orleans.
The scarcity of provisions created such distress, that several of the inhabitants seriously thought of abandoning the colony ; and a company of infantry, who had staid behind at the Biloxi, being ordered to New Orleans, were embarked on board of a schoon- er; but, as soon as she sailed, the captain and officers forced her master to sail for Charleston-where they landed with their arms and baggage.
Renaud, one of the directors of the company's con- cerns, had gone to the neighbourhood of the Missou- ri, whither he was industriously engaged in a search after mines. In the belief that several existed on the shores of the Mississippi, Missouri, Marameg and the river of the Illinois, he procured from Boisbriant, six grants of land on these streams, each three miles in front on the water, with a depth of eighteen.
The land in Louisiana had appeared very favoura- ble to the culture ofindigo; and measures were taken by the company, at the solicitation of the planters, to supply them with seed.
Laharpe, on his return from Pensacola, where he had been to bring back the troops and effects of the company, on the Spaniards taking possession of the place, reported that Wauchop, who remained there in command, had begun a settlement on the island of St. Rose, where his force was to stay till he was reinfor- ced by a sufficient number to allow a removal to the main : the island being more easily defensible, the post at the bay of St. Joseph had been abandoned.
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