USA > Louisiana > The history of Louisiana : from the earliest period, Volume I > Part 24
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The Spaniards being badly supplied with provisi- ons, Wauchop made application to the French for flour; intimating that, if he could be accommodated, he would send for it to New Orleans, and probably improve the opportunity of paying his respects to Bi-
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enville there, as he was authorised by the viceroy to receive the arms taken at Pensacola; for the restora- tion of which, a clause had been inserted in the late treaty. The council advised Bienville to decline the honor of the intended visit: it being thought impru- dent to allow the governor of Pensacola, to reconnoi- tre the passes of the Mississippi, while they were un- guarded by any fort, or to become acquainted with the state of the forces of the colony. The flour was accordingly sent to Mobile, where Wauchop was re- quested to send and receive it.
While the Spaniards were thus resuming possession of Pensacola in the east, they were reinforcing their garrisons of the west, in the scattered posts of the pro- vince of Texas. St. Denys, in a letter from Natchi- toches of the sixteenth of January, informed Bien- ville the Marquis de Gallo had lately received five hundred soldiers.
On the other hand, accounts were received that the Chickasaws had lately been defeated in a pitch- ed battle by the Choctaws, in which the former had sustained a loss of four hundred men.
The distresses, that had followed in France the failure of Law's scheme, were now most heavily felt. Louisiana deeply participated in them, and the French cabinet thought of no better plan of affording relief to the colonists, than an alteration of the value of money.
The first attempt was by a rise at the rate of eighty seven and a half per cent. The dollar of Mexico was the only silver coin in circulation in the province ; its value was accordingly raised from four livres, at which it was then received in payment, to seven and a half; so that the creditor of a sum of four thousand livres, or one thousand dollars before the edict, which bears date the twelfth of January, 1723, was compel-
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led to accept in discharge five hundred and thirty dol- lars and a third.
Matters remained thus during one year. Experience shewed the measure adopted was not the right one. As a rise had proved disastrous, it was thought a fall or reduction would have the contrary effect. But, as in the natural body. disease comes on rapidly, and the cure proceeds slowly, it was thought best that the healing of the political should be gradually effect- ed. Accordingly, by an edict of the twenty-sixth of February, in the following year a reduction of six and two thirds per cent. was ordered, and the value of the dollar was brought down from seven and a half to seven livres. Thus, the creditor of a sum of four thousand livres before the rise. who had not been ten- dered after it, five hundred and thirty three dollars and a third, was now permitted to demand five hun- dred and sixty two dollars and eighty seven cents and a half.
But, this small and tardy relief was paid for by those who had contracted between the publications of the two edicts. He who, on the twenty-fifth of Februa- ry, had made a note for seven thousand five hundred livres, which could be discharged by the payment of one thousand dollars, was, after the publication of the last edict, compelled to pay an advance of seven- ty dollars and upwards. 1
What was intended for, and was called, a healing process, was the administration of poison in lieu of a remedy; the doses were not strong, but came in rapid succession. Within sixty days, on the second of May. a new edict proclaimed a further reduction of twen- ty per cent ; the value of the dollar being lowered to five livres and twelve sous.
Within six months, a farther reduction of twenty per cent. was operated; and the value of the dollar LOU. I. 33
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was reduced by an edict of the thirtieth of October, to four livres and a half. Thus, within less than ten months, was the money raised in its value eighty seven and a half per cent. and gradually reduced to its ori- ginal rate.
Public and private distresses are curable by the same remedies only : for the former is only the accum- ulation of the latter. A violent medicine often injures the natural, so do violent measures the political, body.
Indolence, improvidence and extravagance, at times, occasion private distress, and this the public. Industry, economy and order alone can relieve the first; and if the latter be curable by the same means 'only, it is vain to resort to alterations in the value of money, a paper currency, or tender laws-indeed to any such artificial remedies. Loans are palliatives only, and frequently injurious ones. They may, for a moment, mitigate the effect of the disease; but they foment the cause, which should be removed, if a radi- cal cure be intended. If the extravagant, the impro- vident and the idle be indulged, there can be but lit- tle hope of their becoming economical, provident and laborious.
The company, with the view of providing for the spiritual wants of the upper part of the province, in which clergymen were most wanted, entered into ar- rangements with the order of the Jesuits, by which curates and missionaries were obtained. Persons, professing any other religion than the catholic, were not treated with equal charity, and the spirit of into- lerance dictated an edict, in the month of March, by which the exercise of any other religion was prohibi- ted in Louisiana, and jews were directed to be ex- pelled from it, as enemies of the christian name. A black code for the government of the slaves was given to the colony this year.
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Gross infidelities having been committed in the transmission of letters and packets in Louisiana, the king, by an edict of this summer, denounced against persons, intercepting letters and packets in the colony, or opening them and disclosing their con- tents, a fine of five hundred livres, and the offender, if holding the king's commission was to be cashiered, otherwise put in the pillory.
The colonists considered the preservation of hor- ses and cattle as an object of primary importance; and the superior council had framed regulations for this purpose, as well as for the propagation of these animals. They had proved ineffectual: the inter- position of the royal authority had been solicited, and by an edict of the twenty-second of May, the punish- ment of death was denounced against any person kil- ling or wounding another's horses or cattle. The kil- ling of one's own cow or ewe, or the female young of these animals, was punished by a fine of three hundred livres.
This was a most flagrant instance of the abuse of the punishment of death. It is inflicted for the wound- ing of an animal ; neither does the legistator stop to distinguish between the most deadly stroke and the slightest solution of contiguity.
In no period, in the annals of Louisiana, does the province appear to have engrossed so much legisla- tive attention. Louis the fifteenth, had some time in the preceding year, reached his thirteenth, de- clared himself of age, and assumed the government of his dominions. Happy the country when legisla- tion is never confided to a boy ; happier that, in which it is only trusted to representatives, chosen by the peo- ple, and for a very limited period.
Lachaise and Perrault, lately appointed commissi- oners to examine and make a. report concerning the
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agents and clerks of the company in Louisiana, reach- ed New Orleans in the fall, with two capuchins. La- chaise was a nephew of father Francois de la Chaise, an eminent jesuit, who, being confessor to Louis the fourteenth, had the firmness to withhold absolution from his royal penitent, till he abandoned or married the celebrated madam de Maintenon.
Philip the fifth of Spain gave to the world the rare spectacle of a monarch relinquishing and reassuming a crown, within one year. A prey to superstition, me- lancholy and suspicion, he imitated Charles the first; abdicated the throne in favour of Louis, his eldest son, and retired into a cloister. The new king dying a few months after. from the small pox, the royal monk threw off the cowl, with the same facility as he had the diadem, and leaving in the convent his supersti- tion, suspicions and melancholy, with renovated vigour, successfully directed the destinies of Spain during a second reign.
The superior council now held its sessions in ยท New Orleans, presided by Lachaise, who had suc- ceeded Duvergier as ordonnateur. Brusle, Perry, Fa- zende and Fleuriau, had lately been called to seats in that tribunal. Fleuriau had succeeded Cartier de la Baune in the office of attorney general, and Ros- sart was clerk of that tribunal.
With the view of providing for a speedy determi- nation of small suits, an edict of the month of Decem- ber, 1725, directed that. independently of the month- ly sessions of the council, particular ones should be holden, once or twice a week, by two of its members, chosen and removeable by it, to try causes, in which the value of the matter in dispute did not exceed one hundred livres, or about twenty-two dollars.
The provision lately made for clergymen having proven insufficient for the wants of the colony, and the
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bishop of Quebec, within whose diocese it was find- ing it inconvenient to send the necessary number of curates and missionaries to the upper district, the company entered into a new treaty with the jesuits, . on the twentieth of February 1726.
By this, that of 1724 was annulled. Father Beau -. bois, the superior of the missionaries, who had come over in that year, was allowed eighteen hundred li- vres for his services, and a gratification of three thou- sand livres was divided between his associates for their past services.
The jesuits engaged to keep constantly, at least fourteen priests of their order in the colony, viz : a curate and missionary at Kaskaskias; a missionary in the village of the Brochigomas; a chaplain and mis- sionary, at the fort on the Wabash ; a missionary at the Arkansas; a chaplain and Missionary at fort St. Peter, among the Yazous; another missionary there, whose duty it was to endeavour to penetrate into the country of the Chickasaws, to propagate the Catho- lic religion, and promote union between these In- dians and the French; two missionaries at the Ali- bamons, one of whom was to preach the gospel to the Choctaws. These locations were not to be altered without the governor's. consent.
Father Petit, the superior of the jesuits in the pro- vince, was permitted to reside in New Orleans, but not to perform any ecclesiastical functions there, without the license of the superior of the Capuchins. The company engaged to furnish him with a chapel, vestry room, and a house and lot for his accommoda- tion, that of a missionary, and the temporary use of such priests of his order, as might arrive in New Orleans.
The order was to have a grant of land of ten arpents
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in front on the Mississippi, with the ordinary depth, and negroes, on the same terms as the planters.
The jesuits were to be conveyed to Louisiana, at the expense of the company, and a yearly salary of six hundred livres, one hundred and thirty-three dol- lars and thirty-three cents, was to be paid to each, with an addition of two hundred livres, forty-four dol- lars and forty-four cents, during each of the first five years ; every missionary was to have an outfit of four hundred and fifty livres, or one hundred dollars, and a chapel.
Money or goods were furnished at each mission for building a church and presbytery.
Jesuit lay brothers were to receive their passage, and a gratification of one hundred and fifty livres, thirty-three dollars and thirty-three cents, but no sal- ary.
The churches and presbyteries, built at Kaskas. kias and the village of the Michigourras, were given to the order.
The treaty received the king's approbation, on the seventeenth of August.
Similar arrangements were made with the Capu- chins, those with the Carmelites having been annul. led.
All the lower part of the province was put under the ecclesiastical care of the Capuchins. Father Bru. no, their superior in Louisiana, received the appoint. ment of vicar-general of the bishop of Quebec. A convent was built for them in New Orleans. on the square, immediately below the church. The superi. or, aided by two monks as his vicars, acted as curate of the parish; a third was chaplain to the milita ry force in New Orleans, and another at the Balize, Curates were stationed at Mobile and Biloxi, the Ger- man coast and Natchitoches.
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For the purpose of providing for the education of young girls and the care of the hospital, the compa- ny entered into an agreement with sisters Marie Fran- coise Tranchepain St. Augustin and Mary Ann Le Boulanger, St. Angelique, Ursuline nuns of the con. vent of Rouen, on the thirteenth of September. by which these ladies, assisted by mother Catherine Bruscoli of St. Amand, undertook to pass over to Louisiana with several other nuns of their order. The company engaged to provide for the wants of the hos. pital, and the subsistence and maintenance of the nuns. The king gave his assent to this arrangement, on the eighteenth of August.
During the fall, Perrier, a lieutenant of the king's ships, having been appointed commandant general of Louisiana, reached New Orleans, and shortly after Bi. enville sailed for France. We have seen, that in 1698 he came over at the age of eighteen, with Iberville, his brother; he was then a midshipman; and four years after, he succeeded Sauvolle, another brother; in the chief command of the province, which, with little in- terruption he exercised till this period.
George the first, of Great Britain, died on the ele- venth of June, 1727, in his sixty-seventh year, and was succeeded by George the second, his eldest son.
The Jesuits and Ursuline nuns arrived this summer in a company ship. The fathers were placed on a tract of land immediately above the city, which is now the lowest part of the suburb St. Mary. A house and chapel were erected on it for their use. They impro- ved the front of their land by a plantation of the myr- tle wax shrub. The nuns were for the present lodged in town, in a house on the northern corner of Chartres . and Bienville streets, but the company soon after laid the foundation of a very large edifice for a nunnery, in the lowest square on the levee, The ladies remo.
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ved to it in the latter part of 1730, and occupied it until 1824. It was, till the construction of the new convent the largest house in Louisiana. A military hospital was built near it.
A government house was erected immediately be- low the plantation of the jesuits, and two very long warehouses were built in the two squares below the church, on the levee : one of them was nearly consu- med by fire in 1818, the other is now occupied by the United States. This building and the old convent are probably the two oldest edifices in the state.
Barracks were built on each side of the place d'ar- mes, the square fronting the cathedral. A house for the sessions of the superior council, and a jail, were built on the square immediately above the church.
The land on which the city stands, till protected by a levee, was subject to annual inundations, and a perfect quagmire. The waters of the Mississip- pi and those of the lakes met, at a high ridge formed by them, midway between the bayou St. John and New Orleans, called the highland of the lepers. To drain the city, a wide ditch was dug in Bourbon street, the third from and parallel to the river; each lot was sur- rounded by a small one, which was in course of time filled up, except the part fronting the street, so that every square instead of every lot, was ditched in. In this way, a convenient space was drained.
In the beginning of the winter, a company ship brought a number of poor girls, shipped by the com- pany. They had not been taken, as those whom it had transported before, in the houses of correction of Paris. It had supplied each of them with a small box, cassette, containing a few articles of clothing. From this circumstance, and to distinguish them from those who had preceded them, they were called the girls
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de la cassette. Till they could be disposed of in mar- riage, they remained under the care of the nuns.
To the culture of rice and tobacco, that of indigo was now added; the fig tree had been introduced from Provence, and the orange from Hispaniola. A considerable number of negroes had been introdu- ced, and land, which hitherto had been consider- ed as of but little value, began to be regarded as of great relative importance. Much attention had not been paid to securing titles ; much less to a compli- ance with the terms on which they had been granted. This began to create confusion, and confusion litiga- tion : for the purpose of stopping this evil, in its be- ginning, the king's council published an edict on the tenth of August, 1728.
All orders of the directors of the company in France, issued to those in Louisiana, before the last ' of December, 1723, not presented to the latter and followed by possession and the required improve- ment, were annulled.
Landholders were required to exhibit their titles, and to make a declaration of the quantity of land claimed and improved by them, to the senior member of the superior council, within a limited time, under the penalty of a fine of two hundred dollars, and in case of continued neglect, to comply with these requi- sites, the land was to be resumed and granted to others.
Grants of more than twenty arpents in front, on ei- ther side of the Mississippi, below bayou Manchac, were to be reduced to that front, except in cases, in which the whole front had been improved; it was thought necessary to have a denser population above and below the city, for its better protection and secu- rity.
Lands, therefore granted, were required to be im- LOU. I. 34
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proved, by one third of the quantity in front being put in a state to be ploughed and cultivated ; but the two chief officers of the colony were authorised, on application. to make exceptions in favor of such land- holders who, having large herds of cattle, kept their land in pasture.
The depth of every grant was fixed at between twenty and one hundred arpents, according to its si- tuation.
The company, as lords of all the land in the prov- ince, were authorised to levy a quit rent of a sous (a cent) on every arpent, cultivated or not, and five li- vres on every negro, to enable it to build churches. glebes and hospitals.
Grantees were restrained from aliening their land until they had made the requisite improvements.
Hunting and fishing were permitted; provided no damage was done to plantations and enclosures, and no exclusive right thereto was to be granted.
The company were empowered to grant the right of patronage. to persons binding themselves to build and endow churches.
At the departure of Bienville, the colony had made very rapid strides, and reached. in comparison to pre- ceding years, a very high degree of relative prosper- ity. During the short space of eleven years, since it passed under the care of the company, agriculture had engaged the attention of European capitalists ; eighteen hundred negroes had been introduced from Africa, and twenty-five hundred redemptioners brought over: the military force was increased to upwards of eight hundred men. But the moment was approaching, when Louisiana was to receive a very severe check. which was to cause her to retro- gade, as fast as she had advanced. In the concerns of communities, as in those of individuals, the tide of
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prosperity does not always flow uninterruptedly ; ad- versity often causes it to ebb, and a change. of fortune is often experienced, at the moment a reverse appears less to be dreaded.
Charlevoix .- Laharpe .- Vergennes .- Dupratz .- Archives.
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CHAPTER XI.
The Chickasaws meditate the overthrow of the colony- they engage other nations in the plot .- The. Chortaus discover it .-- Perrier sends for some of the chiefs .- They deceive him .- He represents the helpless condition of the province .- His representations are disregarded .- The Chickasaws abandon or delay their plan .~ Ill conduct of Chepar, at the Natchez .- They determine on the slaugh- ter of the French, and engage the neighbouring tribes in the plot .- A female discovers and discloses it .- Boats arrive from New Orleans .- Massacre at Fort Rosalie . and. Fort St. Peter .- Father Doutrefleau .- Perrier sends a vessel to France and two up the Mississippi .- He des- patches Courriers to the Illinois and his Indian allies .- He fortifies New-Orleans and collects a small force .- Apprehension from the negroes .- Loubois .- Mispleix. -The Natchez make propositions of peace .- Their high pretentions .- Lesueur arrives with the Choctaus- They cannot be restrained, and make a bold charge with some success .- The army arrives ; the trenches are open- ed .- Loubois is compelled to accept the propositions of the Natchez .- He builds a Fort and returns .- The Chickasaws afford an asylum to the Natchez and endca- vour to gain the Illinois .- Fidelity of the latter .- The Chouachas, influenced by the Chickasaws, attempt to rise against the French .- The negroes are employed to des- troy the succour from France .- Perrier goes to Mobile. - His call on the Militia .-- Some of the Natchez cross the Mississippi .- Symptoms of insurrection among the . negroes .- Perrier goes with a small army to Black river. -He reaches an Indian fort .- Opening of the trenches. -A Parley .- The Great Sun and two other chiefs come nut and are detained .- One of them escapes .- Part of
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the Indians leave the Fort .- The Wife of the Great Sun. comes to the camp .- Part of the remaining Indians sur- render ; the rest leave the Fort-they are pursued and some prisoners taken .- The army returns to New-Or- leans .- Four hundred prisoners shipped to Hispaniola .- Surrender of the Company's Charter .- State of the pro- vince.
THE Chickasaws instigated, as French writers. urge, by the English of Carolina, now meditated the total ruin of Louisiana, and the destruction of every - white individual in it. They had carefully conceal- ed their design from the Illinois, the Arkansas and the Tunicas, whose attachment to the French they knew to be unshakeable. All the other tribes had been engaged in the plot. Each was to fall on the settlement of the French designated to it, and the at- tacks were to be simultaneous. Even the Choctaws, the most numerous nation in the neighbourhood and that on whom the French placed the greatest reli- ance, had been gained, though partially only.
Their villages were divided into two distinct set- tlements. The eastern or the great, and western or the little nation .- The former had refused to join in the conspiracy ; but they kept it secret, till it would have been too late to have warded off the blow, if it had been struck at the time.
Perrier was informed that these Indians had some misunderstanding with Diron d'Artaguette (the son of the former commissary ordonnateur) successor, in the command of Fort Conde of Marigny de Mande- ville. who had died during the preceding year, after having received the appointment of Maj. General of the troops. He therefore desired the attendance of the headmen of every village of both nations, at New Orleans.
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In this interview, he succeeded in removing all grounds of complaint. The head men of the west- ern villages left him determined to break the promise they had given to the Chickasaws to fall on the settle- ment of Mobile, but equally so to deceive him and have the part, that had been cast off to them in the dire tragedy, performed by the Natchez, in the hopeof reaping a double advantage from the French, for their assistance; in . the pillage made on, and the prisoners taken from, the Natchez, whose discomfi- ture, they considered as certain.
Perrier had been sensible, from his arrival in the colony, of the necessity of strengthening distant posts. . The province had indeed many forts ; but none of any importance, except that of Mobile. . The others were heaps of rotten timber, and hard- ly one of them was garrisoned by more than twenty
men. He had frequently represented his dangerous situation to the company and solicited a reinforce- ment of two or three hundred men. His fears had been considered as chimerical. It was thought he desired only to increase his command, or sought to embroil the colony in war, in order to display his skill in terminating it.
In the meanwhile; the execution of the plan of the Chickasaws had been abandoned or delayed. Per- haps they had discovered symptoms of defection, in the behaviour of the Choctaws. The indiscretion and ill conduct of Chepar, who commanded at Fort Rosalie in the country of the Natchez, induced these Indians to become principals, instead of auxiliaries, in the havock.
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