USA > Louisiana > The history of Louisiana : from the earliest period, Volume I > Part 26
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. proach him, except in the company of the latter, as he would order any one to be fired on, who would come with any other proposal.
· St. Come took leave, and half an hour after return- ed with the head sun, and another chief, called the chief of the flour, who was the prime mover of all the mischief; St. Come having sought to screen him.
The Great Sun assured Perrier, he had had no hand in the massacre of the French, and was very much pleased at the opportunity of treating with him; St Come, exculpated him. The chief of the flour said he was sorry for what had happened. As they were exposed to the rain, which was now increasing. Perrier, pointing to a cabin near them, bid them to take shelter in it: on their doing so, he ordered four men to guard the door, and directed Lesueur and two officers, attentively to watch them.
Lesueur, speaking their language, went in, and at- tempted to get into a conversation with them; but they kept a stubborn silence and lay down to sleep. The other two officers did the same on their rising, Lesueur went to rest towards mid-night .- About three hours after, he was awakened by a sudden noise, and saw the Great Sun and St. Come, endeavouring to es- cape from the sentry-the officers and the two other soldiers had gone in pursuit of the chief of the flour, who, having eluded their vigilance, had fled ; Lesueur pointing his pistol at the two captives, they refrained from any further attempt to escape.
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At day break, an Indian came from the fort to visit . the Great Sun : being conducted to the cabin, he told him the chief of the flour having reached the fort had called apart ten warriors, and assured them, Perrier was determined on burning them all; that for his part he had made up his mind, no longer to remain exposed to fall into his hands, and advised them to look for
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their own safety, with him. Accordingly they had . followed him, with their women and children, while the rest lost in deliberation, the favourable moments, and at day break found their flight was no longer pos- sible. The Great Sun observed this chief was an usurper.
Perrier bid his prisoner, towards the evening, to 'send word to his people to come out with their wo- ,men and children, and he would spare their lives, and prevent his Indians from hurting them. This was done, by the messenger of the morning; but compliance was refused.
In the morning, the Great Sun's wife and some other members of his family visited him. Perrier received them well. because they had afforded protection to the French prisoners. Sixty-five men and about two hundred women came in towards noon.
Word was sent to those in the fort, that, if they did not leave it, the cannon would be fired and no one spared. The Indians replied the fire might begin, and they did not fear death. They were restrained by the fear of falling into the hands of Perrier's Indians. if they went out in small parties, or of being discovered by the French, if they went out together.
The cannonade now began : a heavy rain was fal- ling, and it blew very hard. The besieged fluttered themselves with the idea the inclemency of the wea- ther would prevent the passes being strictly guarded; they were not deceived. At dusk, the cannon was stopped : towards eight at night, an officer reported that the enemy was flying; the cannonade was now re- sumed, but it was too late-a part of the army went after the foe and brought in upwards of one hundred ; Perrier vainly tried to induce his Indians to give the chase, they answered those should do so, who had suffered the Natchez to escape. The fort was now
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entered and no one found in it but a decrepit old man, and a woman who had just lain in.
There remaining now no enemy to fight, the pri- soners to the number of four hundred and twenty-se- ven, were secured and embarked. The army sat off on the twenty-seventh and reached New Orleans on the fifth of February.
The Great Sun, and the other prisoners were sent immediately to Hispanolia, where they were sold as slaves.
The war was not, however, at an end. Lesueur had ascertained that the Natchez were not all in the fort Perries had besieged. They had yet upwards of two hundred warriors, including the Yazous and Co- roas, and an equal number of young lads capable of bearing arms. A chief had lately gone to the Chick- asaws with forty warriors and many women : another was with seventy warriors, and upwards of one hun- dred women and many children on lake Catahoulou, to the westward of Black river. There were twenty' warriors, ten women and six children on the Washi- ta : the strength of the party who had gone towards the Natchitoches was not known.
In the mean while, the company finding themselves much diappointed in the hope they had entertained of the profits of their commerce, and the advantages they had imagined would result from their charter; alarmed at the great loss they had sustained at the Natchez, and the great expense necessary to be in- curred in the protection and defence of the province, if they retained the possession of it, solicited on the twenty-second of January, 1732, the king's leave to surrender the country and their charter. By an arrest of the council of the following day, and letters patent. which issued thereon, on the tenth of April, the retro- cession made by the company of the property, lord-
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ship and jurisdiction of the province of Louisiana and its dependencies, together with the country of the II- linois, and the exclusive commerce to those places, was accepted.
The arrest declares the commerce of the retroceded countries free, for the future, to all the king's subjects.
Thus ended the government of the western compa- ny. It lasted during about fourteen years-nearly one half of the time elapsed since Iberville had laid the foundation of a French colony on the gulf of Mex- ico.
When the company received its charter, the settle- ments in the wide extended country ceded to it. were confined to a very narrow space at the Biloxi, Mobile river, Ship and Dauphine islands. Two very small fortifications had been erected on the Mississippi- the one near the sea, the other at the Natchez, and ene at the Natchitoches on Red river.
Agriculture had hardly reared its head, though rice was sewed in the swamps. Horticulture supplied the tables of a few with vegetables, and enabled some of the rest to procure a little money by supplying the Spaniards at Pensacola.
Now all the original settlements had considerably extended their limits, a new one had been formed at. the Alibamons. On the Mississippi, the foundation of New Orleans was laid : although there was no planta- tion below it, a considerable one with a gang of up- wards of one hundred slaves had been formed oppo- site the city, and there were many smaller but still con- siderable ones at Tchapitoulas and Cannes brulées. A vast number of handsome cottages, lined both sides of the river at the German Coast; grantees of wide tracts had transported a white population, and sent negroesto Manshac, Baton Rouge and Pointe Coupee, and we have seen a smart settlement had risen at
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Natchez, the rival of New Orleans. Higher up, small colonies had gone to the Yazous and Arkansas ; while, others had descended from Canada to the Wabash and the Illinois.
To the culture of rice, that of indigo and tobacco had been added; the forests yielded timber for vari- ous uses and exportation ; wheat and flour came alrea -- dy down from the Illinois ; a smart trade was carried on with the Indians at Natchitoches, Mobile, Aliba- mons and the Cadadoquious, far beyond the western- most limits of the present state. Provision had been made for the regular administration of justice; church- es and chapels had been built at convenient distan- ces, and without perhaps any exception, every settle- ment had its clergyman, under the superintendence of a vicar-general of the bishopof Quebec, of whose diocese Louisiana made a part. A convent had been built, the nuns of which attended to the reliel of the sick of the garrison, and to the education of the young persons of their sex. The Jesuits had a house in New Orleans; a kind of entrepot of their order, from which their priests were located among the neighbouring tribes of Indians, or sent, as occasional emissaries. to the most distant; and those men attended to the edu- cation of youth.
The monopoly which the company and Crozat had enjoyed and strictly enforced, had checked, and it may be said destroyed, the incipient trade the colony had before the peace of Utrecht; but the produce of the tilled land and the forest, the hides, skins, furs and peltries, which were obtained from the Indians, for goods, which were easily procured in the company warehouses at the Biloxi, New Orleans, the Natchez and the Illinois, and which were disposed of at an enormous advance, enabled the company to dispose of considerable quantities of merchandize.
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The sums, spent by the company in the colony, suf- ficed to furnish the inhabitants with a circulating medium. It had a commandant general, two king's lieutenants, a commissary ordonnateur, six hundred and fifty men of French, and two hundred of Swiss troops, in its pay. Besides a number of directors, agents and clerks, it supported upwards of thirty clergymen.
According to the system of all commercial compa- nies, the supreme authority in the province resided in the directors and agents of the corporation ; and the military, incessantly controlled by men whose pursuit was wealth, not glory, lost their activi- ty and zeal. A conflict of powers necessarily crea- ted dissentions and animosities, fatal to the interest of the company and the province.
It cannot, however, be denied, that while Louisiana was part of the dominions of France, it never pros- pered, but during the fourteen years of the compa- · ny's privilege.
The white population was raised from seven hun- dred to upwards of five thousand, and the black from twenty to two thousand.
Charlevoix .- Laharpe .- Vergennes .- Dupratz .- Archives. Lettres edifiantes.
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CHAPTER XII.
Salmon takes possession of the province for the king .- Property of the company purchased .- Redemptioners and muskets .- Superior council re-organized .- The Natchez are repulsed at Natchitoches .- Negro plot .- Exemp- tion from duties .- Military peace establishment .- Geor- gia settled .- War in Europe .- Bienville re-appointed governor .- Troops .- Furloughs and grants of land .- Scarcity of provisions .- Card money .- Irruption of the Natchez .- Bienville prepares to march against them .- Conspiracy among the soldiers at Tombeckbee .- Bien- ville's unsuccessful attack on a fort of the Chickasaws .- The Chevalier d'Artaguette .- Spanish hostilities against the British in the West Indies .- The French cabinet ap- proves the plan of a new expedition against the Chicka- saws .- Peace in Europe .- The garrison of St. Augus- tine reinforced .- Bienville at the head of the colonial force ascends . the Mississippi .-- Detachments from Canada and the Illinois .- Injudicious delay .- Disease .- Fam- ine .- Celeron marches against the westernmost fort of the Chickasaws .-- They sue for peace .-- Bienville des- troys his forts and the army returns .- Death of Charles VI .- Maria Theresa .- War in Europe.
SALMON, who on the death of Lachaise, had suc- ceeded him in the office of Commissary Ordonna- teur, having been appointed the king's commissioner, received possession of Louisiana in his name, from the company.
The crown had purchased all the property of the corporation in the province. It wasnot considerable, and the appraised inventory of it, amounted only to
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two hundred and sixty-three thousand livres ; not equal in value to sixty-thousand dollars. It consisted of some goods in the warehouses, a plantation oppo- site the city, which was partly improved as a brick yard, on which were two hundred and sixty negroes, fourteen horses and eight thousand barrels of rice.
The negroes were valued at an average of seven hundred livres or one hundred and sixty three dollars and a third: the horses at fifty-seven livres or twelve and a half dollars, and the rice three livres or sixty-six cents and a third, the hundred weight. At these prices, nineteen hundred weight of rice were given for a horse ; at the present value of rice, four cents a pound, the animal was worth seventy-six dollars, and the negro nearly one thousand.
The company had contracted a considerable debt, with the planters, and obtained on the fourteenth of February, an arrest of the king's council, inhibiting creditors in Louisiana from suing in France. Brusle and Bru, two members of the superior council, were appointed commissioners to receive claims against it, in the province.
In order to facilitate the commerce of the colony, the king, by an ordinance of the fourth of August, dis- pensed the vessels of his subjects, trading thither, with the obligation of transporting redemptioners and mus- kets, which was imposed on those trading to his other American colonies.
The late change in the government of the pro- vince requiring one in the organization of the superior council, this was effected by the king's letter patent of the seventh of May. The members of this tribu- nal were declared to be the Governor General of New-France, of which Louisiana continued to con- stitute a part. the Governor and the Commissary of Louisiana, the king's lieutenants and the town major
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of New Orleans, six councillors, an attorney gene- ral and clerk.
The members of the council, at this time, were Perri- er, Commandant General; Salmon, Commissary Ordon- nateur; Loubois and d'Artaguette, the king's two lieu- tenants ; Benac, town major of New Orleans; Fazende, Brusle, Bru, Lafreniere, Prat and Raguet, Council- lors; Fleuriau, Attorney General, and Rossart, clerk.
The Natchez Indians continued to wage war, with the western parts of the province. The chief of the flour, who had effected his escape from Perrier's camp, on Black river, and who had afterwards left the fort with some warriors, their women and child- ren, had been joined by those whom he had left there, and had not fallen into the hands of the French. Af- ter wandering a while among the Washitas, this party, increased by other individuals of their nation, pro- ceeded to the Natchitoches. St. Denys, who com- · manded there, having early information of the ap- proach of the Natchez, and finding his garrison weak, dispatched messengers to New Orleans, the Cadod- aquious and Assinais, to solicit succour. ' According- ly Loubois left New Orleans with sixty men of the gar- rison ; but as he entered Red river, accompanied by one hundred Indians, whom he had taken at the Tu- nicas, he was met a little below Black river, early in November by Fontaine, who was sent by St. Denys to Perrier. From him, Loubois learned the Natchez had attacked the fort, being about two hundred; but they had been repulsed.
The Natchitoches had made a show of resistance ; but having but forty warriors, they had been compel- led to desist, after having lost four men. The Natch- ez took possession of their village: St. Denys had been reinforced by his allies, on Red river and the Opelousas. With his garrison, a few Spainards and
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these Indians. he sallied out, forced an intrenchment, the Natchez had made around their camp, and killed ninety two of them, among whom were all their chiefs. The rest fled into the woods, and St. Denys' Indians were in pursuit of them, when Fontaine left the fort.
With far less means than the commandant general on Black river, St. Denys had effected in much less time a more brilliant and useful exploit. It put an end to the war of the Natchez. The survivors of the nation sought an asylum among the Chickasaws, with whom they became incorporated. These In- dians had hitherto pretended to remain neutral ; but now excited by a number of English traders, who had settled among them, avowed themselves the open enemies of the French.
There were at the Natchez, on the plantations of the French, a considerable number of negroes; near- ly all of whom had joined the murderers of their mas- ters, inorder to gain their freedom, and had follow- ed their new friends among the Chickasaws. This circumstance, and their consequent emancipation, was known to their former companions, who had been recaptured or surrendered, and presented to them the evidence of the possibility of their own release from bondage; they became restless, indocile, and fit subjects to be wrought upon, by persuasion. In the hope of exciting, through them, the other slaves in the colony, to finish the work begun at the Natchez, several of the most artful negroes, among the Chicka- saws, were sent to Mobile, New Orleans and along the coast. to sow the seeds of rebellion among the peo- ple of their colour. in those places. These emissa- ries, being unable to shew themselves openly, had no success on the plantations, where the gangs being small, the slaves were fearful. It was in vain urged upon them, the moment was arrived to rid themselves
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of their masters, and secure their own freedom, by removing to. the Chickasaws, or the English in Carolina.
On the plantation opposite the city, lately the property of the company, but now of the king, there were upwards of two hundred and fifty hands. Seve- ral of these were seduced, and the contagion spread with considerable rapidity up the coast, where in the vicinity of the city, there were some estates with gangs of from thirty to forty slaves.
Meetings were held without the notice of the French; the blacks improving the opportunity, unsus- pectingly furnished them by their owners, to assemble in nightly parties for dancing and recreation.
At last, a night was fixed on, in which, on pretexts like these, the blacks of the upper plantations were to collect on those near the city, at one time, but on various points, and entering it from all sides, they were to destroy all white men, and securing and con- fining the women and children in the church, expect- ing to possess themselves of the king's arms and maga- zine, and thus have the means of resisting the planters when they came down, and carrying on conflagration and slaughter, on the coast. They hoped to induce or compel, by a shew of strength, the timorous of their colour, who had resisted the temptation to swell their number, and with them join parties of the Chicka. saws, who they were assured would advance to re- ceive and protect them. Fortunately, the motions of an incautious fellow were noticed by a negro woman, . belonging to a Dr. Brasset; she gave such information to her master as led to the discovery of the plot. Four men and a woman, who were the principal agents in it, were detected and seized. The men were broken on the wheel and their heads stuck on posts, at the upper and lower end of the city, the
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Tchapitoulas and the king's plantation: the woman was hung. This timely severity prevented the mis- chief.
The king extended further encouragement to the trade of the province, by an arrest of his council of the thirteenth of September, exempting from all duties of exportation, all merchandise, shipped by his sub- jects to Louisiana, and all duties of importation the merchandise of its growth, produce or commerce.
Shortly after, provision was made for its protection and defence, and an arrest of the thirtieth of Novem- ber ordered a military force to be kept there, consist- ing of eight hundred men ; six hundred and fifty of whom were to be detached from the regiment of Karrer. .
The year 1732 is remarkable as the period of the settlement of the last of the British provinces in Ameri- ca, which now constitute the United States. Charity devised the plan and furnished the means for its exe- cution. A society, formed in London, selected a large unoccupied tract of land between the rivers Sa- vannah and Alatamaha, a kind of neutral ground, which separated the provinces of South Carolina and Florida, as a spot on which the suffering poor might find an easy and quiet existence.
The abolition of the company's exclusive right to the trade of Louisiana, and the encouragement lately given to its commerce, excited the industry of the mer- chants in several of the sea ports of France and her colonies ; and several vessels from St. Maloes, Bor- deaux, Marseilles and Cape Francois, came to New .
Orleans, in the course of the following year.
a
The death of Augustus, king of Poland, in 1733, for a while disturbed the tranquillity of Europe. Louis XV. supported the claim to the crown of Stanislaus, whose daughter he had married in 1725, and was as-
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sisted by Spain, but was opposed by the emperor, who upheld the pretensions of the elector of Saxony.
Bienville was this year re-appointed governor of Louisiana. He did not however reach the province until the following year. The colonists hailed the re- turn of their former chief, who had devoted the prime of his life to the service of their country. Perrier, on his arrival, returned to France.
A frigate brought troops to complete the peace es- tablishment of the province. according to the arrest of the king's council of the month of November.
For the double purpose of promoting the king's service, and the extension of agriculture in Louisiana, itwas provided by an arrest of the king's council of the month of August 1734, that there should be annually granted to two soldiers, in each of the companies of French troops serving there, a furlough and a tract of land, subject to a yearly quit rent of a sous for every four acres. It was stipulated that the grantees should, within three years. clear such a part of the land as the governor should designate, and during that peri- od, their pay and rations were continued to them.
The Swiss soldiers were likewise entitled to such a grant, at the expiration of the time for which they had been enlisted.
We have seen the king kept six hundred and fifty soldiers in the province. They were divided into thir- teen companies of fifty men each, which gave annual- ly twenty-six new farmers. The Swiss companies gave four, in the same period.
In the French troops, the selection was made by the governor, from the soldiers who conducted them- selves the best. This proved a valuable measure, promoting good order among the men, and extending , agriculture. Those, who thus quitted the sword for the plough, became in time the heads of orderly fami- LOU. I. 38 -
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lies. and many of their remote descendants are now persons of wealth and respectability.
The French and Spanish arms had this year great success in Italy ; Don Carlos, the youngest son of Phi- lip the fifth, who afterwards was Charles the third of Spain, entered the kingdom of Naples, at the head of thirty thousand men, and made himself master of it. '
Although large quantities of coin were annually sent over for the pay and maintenance of the troops, and the expenses of the colonial government, the means of remittance which agriculture supplied being comparatively few and small, the merchants hoarded up for exportation all the coin they received. The province found itself drained of its circulating medi- um. to the great injury of its agriculture and internal trade.
By an edict of the king, which bears date the nine- teenth of September, 1735, an emission of card mo- ney to the amount of two hundred thousand livres, a little more than forty thousand dollars, was ordered to be struck, and declared receivable in the king's ware- houses for ammunition or any thing sold there, or in exchange, annually, for drafts on the treasury of the marine in France.
This measure had been solicited by the colonists ; cards were accordingly struck of the value of twenty, fifteen, ten and five livres; fifty, twenty-five, twelve and a half, and six and a quarter sous-answering to the emissions of the British provinces of four, three, two and one dollar, halves, quarters and eighths of a dollar.
They bore the king's arms, and were all signed by the comptroller of the marine, at New Orleans. Those of fifty sous and more were also signed by the gover- nor and ordonnateur-the others had the paraphe or flourish of these two officers only.
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The cards were declared a tender in all payments whatever.
The Natchez and Yazous, who had found refuge among the Chickasaws, now resumed their predato- ry war, on the distant settlements of the colony. and greatly obstructed its communication by the Missis- sippi, to the Illinois, the Wabash and Canada. A num- ber of Chickasaws generally accompanied these ma- rauding parties. As the province could enjoy no tran- quillity while such outrages were not suppressed, Bi- enville sent an officer, to the principal village of the Chickasaws to insist on the surrender of the Natchez. He was informed these Indians could not be given up, as they had been received by, and incorporated with, the Chickasaw nation. He determined to go and take them, and ordered immediate preparations for an expedition.
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