USA > Louisiana > The history of Louisiana : from the earliest period, Volume I > Part 27
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For this purpose, he directed the Chevalier d'Ar- taguette, who was now in command at Fort Chartres of the Illinois, to collect as many French and Indians as he could, and march them down to the country of the Chickasaws, in order to join the troops from New Orleans and Mobile, about the tenth of May.
Leblanc, who was the bearer of these orders to the chevalier, was sent up with five boats laden with pro- visions and ammunition for Fort Chartres. He suc- cessfully resisted the attack of a party of the enemy near the Yazou river. He reached that of the Ar- kansas, where he landed part of the loading of his boats, which had been too heavily laden. On his reaching Fort Chartres, one of the boats was sent for the provisions left at the Arkansas ; but the Indians, who had attacked him on his way up, fell on this boat and killed every man on board, except a lieutenant called Dutisne, who commanded the party, and a half breed of the name of Rosaly.
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In the meanwhile, another officer had gone among the Choctaws, for the purpose of inducing some of the chiefs, in the several villages of that nation, to meet Bienville at Fort Conde.
At this meeting, the French chief purchased the aid of his red allies. for a quantity of goods, a part of which he brought from New Orleans and now deliver- ed to them. The Choctaw chiefs engaged to collect · the warriors of their nation and bring them to the standard of the French; and Bienville returned to New Orleans to hasten the march of the force he had directed to be assembled.
A sufficient number of the militia was left in the forts, and two companies marched with the regulars and some negroes, whom it was not thought impru- dent to trust with arms. This force was embarked on the bayou St. John in thirty boats, and as many large pirogues. Bienville reached Fort Conde with it on the tenth of March.
He had before sent a strong detachment, under the orders of Lusser, to throw up a small work on the bank of the river, at the distance of two hundred and tifty miles above Fort Conde, and on the same side of the stream, in order to have a safe place of de- posit for the provisions, arms and ammunition that . had been sent up for the use of the Choctaws. Here some of busser's men, instigated by a sergeant of the name of Montfort formed the design of availing them- selves of the facility. presented by theirgreat distance from the settlements of the French, to release them- selves from subjection, by murdering their officers, . and seeking refuge among the Chickasaws, whom they were sent to combat. or among the English in Carolina. through the desert. The plot was luckily discovered. at the moment on which it was to have been executed. The sergeant and five men were
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arrested, but Lusser postponed their trial till the arri- `val of his chief.
The army had left Fort Conde on the fourth of April, and reached Tombeckbee on the twentieth; a court martial immediately sat on the prisoners, and they were shot. A few days after, the Choctaws, who had been engaged as auxiliaries, joined Bienville, and he delivered to them the balance of the goods he had promised.
Incessant rains and inclement weather prevented the army from leaving Tombeckbee before the fourth of May, and three weeks elapsed before it reached the spot on which it was intended to land. Some time was now spent in erecting a shed for the reception and protection of a part of the provisions and warlike stores, and a few huts for the accommodation of the sick. Here another party of the Choctaws joined the army : the number of these auxiliaries was now twelve hundred.
The nearest village of the Chickasaws was at the distance of twenty-seven miles to the north east. A sufficient force being left to protect the sick and stores, the army marched, in tw ocolumns, on the twenty-fifth: the Choctaws were on the flanks. A halt was made for the night at the distance of seventeen miles ; at day break, the troops started in perfect order and silence and came in sight of the village towards noon: a strong fort had been erected before it. The Choc- taws yelling ran forward, in the hope of surprising some of the Chickasaws, but without success.
. Bienville, at half past one, formed his army into a regular square: as it approached the fort in this order, he ordered it to halt, and directed the major part of the regulars and militia to form strong detach- ments and march to the attack. The British flag was flying over the fort, and a few individuals of thatnation
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were perceived in it. Fire had been set to a few ca- bins near the fort, from which the French might be annoyed ; they advanced ten deep. shouting vive le roy, but were much distressed by the smoke from the ca- bins, which the wind blew in their faces. The fort now began a galling fire ; a lieutenant, a sergeant and two men were killed, and Renaud d'Auterive, an offi- cer of the militia, was severely wounded. The Chick- asaws were in a strong fort, surrounded with a thick palissado full of loop holes, from which they poured forth an incessant shower of balls ; strong and thick planks, covered with earth, formed over the palissa- do, a covering impenetrable to the grenade. The French were unprotected and fell back. They soon advanced again ; but the fire from the fort made a great havock, while they fired in vain against the pal- issado. At five o'clock, Bienville seeing Noyaut, Lusser. Jussau, and Girondel. four of his best officers, and many others disabled, and the ammunition of his men nearly exhausted. without the hope of success, ordered a retreat, and sent a strong detachment to support it. It was made in good order. The loss was thirty-two killed and sixty-one wounded. The force employed joined the rest, without being able to bring away the bodies of their dead.
The evening was employed in throwing up a small entrenchment around the camp. In the morning, the French saw the bodies of their countrymen, who fell in the battle, cut into quarters and stuck up on the pickets of the palissado around the fort.
During this day, the Choctaws had severalskirmish- es with the Chickasaws.
On the twenty-ninth, the army began to retrogade, and encamped within three miles only of the field of battle, and on the next day, within the same distance from their place of landing, which they reached on
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the third day. Bienville, distributing the remainder of his goods among the Choctaws, dismissed them sa- tisfied. Taking in the suite of the army the invalids he had left on the river, he floated down to Fort Con- de, where he left a reinforcement in the garrison, and landed the rest of his men on the banks of the bayou St. John, in the latter part of June.
A sergeant of the garrison of the Illinois, who had been made a prisoner by the Chickasaws, succeeded so far in securing the good will of the Indian to whose lot he had fallen. as to obtain his liberty and a suffi- ciency of provisions, to enable him to reach the set- tlements of the French. He came to New Orleans on the first day of July. Bienville learned from him the unfortunate fate of the Chevalier d'Artaguette.
This officer was the youngest son of the com- missary ordonnateur of that name. He had served with distinction during the war of the Natchez, and had been left by Perrier to command the fort which this chief had directed to be built near the site of the present city of Natchez. In compliance with the or- ders, which Leblanc had brought him from Bienville, he had left his command at Fort Chartres, with twelve hundred men, chietly Indians. Warned by the fate of Lesueur, who having brought a body of Choctaws near the fort of the Natchez, had been unable to con- tain them, till the arrival of the Chevalier de Loubois ; d'Artaguette, by occasionally slacking his march. had arrived at the place of rendezvous mentioned in his orders, on the ninth of May; the eve of the very day he was directed to arrive, five days after Bienville had left the small fort at Tombeckbee. He had encamp- ed in sight of the enemy till the twentieth, in anxious expectation of the arrival of Bienville, who did not land until four days after ; when his Indians, like the Choctaws at the Natchez, grew impatient and uuma-
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nageable, and absolutely insisted on being allowed to fight or to withdraw. Incapable of restraining his turbulent allies, he had accepted the first alternative, and successfully attacked the fort before which he had encamped. He drove the Chickasaws from it and the village it protected. In the pursuit, the valorous youth had driven them to and out of the next fort, and was chasing them to a third, and per- haps their last, entrenchment, when he received a wound-then another, which threw him on the ground weltering in his blood. His Indians, on the fall of their leader, retreated in all directions. Forty-eight sol- diers, the whole of the garrison of Fort Chartres, which d'Artaguette had been able to bring, and Fa- ther Senac, its chaplain. stood by, and for a while de- fended their prostrated leader. But, what could the deserted few do? They were overpowered, and the Indians led their prisoners to the fort on which, had fate spared d'Artaguette but a few minutes, he would have planted the white banner. His companions washed and dressed his wounds, and his recovery was speedy. For a while, the Chickasaws treated their captives well: they knew Bienville was advan- cing with a strong force, and promised themselves great advantages from the possession of the French, and at least a large ransom. But the reports of the arrival and retrogade of the French army were si- multaneous, and the foe, elated by success and se- curity, dragged out his unlucky victims toaneighbour- ing field, bound the chevalier and the father to the same stake, and tying his courageous adherents. four by four around their worldly and spiritual leaders, extending protection to the sergeant only, consumed their victims, by a slow and often interrupted fire.
Vessels from France, St. Domingo and Martinico, frequently came to New Orleans ; and early in the
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next year the king extended a further encourage- ment to the commerce of the province, by permitting the exportation of any article of its produce to the West India Islands, and the importation of that of these islands, to Louisiana, during ten years. The royal edict is of February, 1737.
The Spaniards at this time began to make great- depredations on the commerce of Great Britain in the West India seas. Their guarda costas seized a number of vessels of that nation, which they carried into the ports of the main, the island of Cuba and Hispaniola, for condemnation, under the pretence that they were engaged in a contraband trade, with the colonies of Spain.
Bienville, on his return from the unsuccessful ex- pedition against the Chickasaws, planned a new one, in which he proposed to reach their country, by the . Mississippi. He communicated his views to the minister, who submitted them to the chevalier de Beauharnois (the father of the first husband of the Empress Josephine) then Governor General of New France.
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Louis XV. was not successful, in the war he had undertaken, to place his father in-law, on the throne of Poland. Tranquillity was momentarily restored to Europe by the peace of 1738, which left the Elector of Saxony in possession of the crown, and Don Car- " los, king of Naples. Stanislaus, however, was per- mitted to retain the title of king, and became Grand Duke of Lorrain and Bar. While the war that had been waged between the emperor and the kings of France and Spain, was thus brought to a close, the latter sovereign, began preparations for hostilities against Great Britain, and the garrison of St. Augus- tine received a very considerable reinforcement.
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with the view of an attack on the contiguous new British province of Georgia, which Philip V. consider- ed as an encroachment on the dominions of his crown. while George II. sent six hundred men there, under the orders of General Oglethorpe.
As soon as Bienville was informed that the minister approved his plan of an attack on the Chickasaws, with a force, which was to ascend the Mississippi from New Orleans, and come down from Canada and the Il- linois, he began his preparations. It is not easy to dis- cover, on what ground better success was promised, in this way, than by an approach of the enemy's coun- try up the river Mobile: the greatest fort of the country of the Indians, was to the west of that river_ and an army, landed on the bank of Mississippi, would have to cross the country of the Choctaws, in its whole width. It is true, the latter were friendly Indians-but, though this added much to the security of the forces, it increased equally the trouble, fatigue and expense. By the Mobile, the French landed at once in the centre of the enemy's country.
In the execution of his plans, Bienville ordered a very strong detachment to the river St. Francis, in the present territory of Arkansas, to be immediately .employed in building sheds for the reception of the troops, their provisions. arms and ammunition, and a fort for their protection; this spot appearing the most convenient as a place of deposit and a rendez- vous, for the forces that might come down from Canada and the Illinois.
In the month of May, of the following year, three of the king's ships, under the command of the chevalier de Kerlerec. landed at New Orleans a few companies of the marines who were commanded by the cheva- lier de Noailles.
Every thing having been previously arranged, the
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chevalier de Noyant, sat off with the van guard a few days after the arrival of the reinforcements. The main body successively followed in large detachments, and Bienville brought up the rear. The army reach- ed the river St. Francis, on the last of June, and with- out the loss of much time, crossed the stream to the - river Margot, on the opposite side, near the spot on which the present town of Memphis, in the state of Tennessee, stands.
The army was first employed in providing the means of conveyance, for the provisions, arms, am- munition and baggage, and in building a fort, which being completed on the fifteenth of August, the day on which the Catholic church celebrates the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin, was called the fort of the Assumption.
Labuissoniere, who had succeeded the unfortunate chevalier d'Artaguette, in the command of Fort Chartres, arrived a few days after, with his garrison, a part of the militia of the Illinois, and about two hundred Indians. He was followed, the next week, by Celeron and St. Laurent, his lieutenant, who.com- manded a company of Cadets, from Quebec and Mon- treal, and a number of Canada Indians.
The force from New Orleans, consisted of the Loui- siana regulars and militia, the companies of marines, lately landed from France, and upwards of sixteen hundred Indians. So that Bienville found himself at the head of upwards of twelve hundred white, and double that number of Indian and black troops.
This comparatively very large army, unaccounta- bly spent six months in making preparations for its march. In the mean while, the troops lately arrived from France became unhealthy, and many died-the climate had an almost equally deleterious influence on those from Canada. The provisions were now
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exhausted, and such was the dearth of them, that horses were slaughtered for food. Early the next year.the regulars and militia of Canada and Louisiana, who had escaped the autumnal disease were prostra- ted by famine and fatigue, and the chief was compel- led to confine his call for service, to his red and black men. They were his only effectual force. .
On the fifteenth of March, Celeron marched the remainder of his Canadian Cadets, to whom about a hundred other white soldiers were added, this small body, with the negroes and Indians, began the march towards the village of the Chickasaws, and Celeron was instructed to promise peace to these Indians, if it was asked.
The enemy had been apprised of the arrival of Bienville, with a very large army; and when they perceived the colours of Celeron's company. a few white men and an immense body of Indians, on each flank, they had no doubt that the whole force of Bienville was there. In the terror, which this delu- sion excited, most of the warriors came out of the fort, and approaching Celeron in an humble posture, beg- ged him to give them peace and vouchsafe to be their intercessor with Bienville ; assuring him they would be the inseparable friends of the French; swearing they had been excited to hostilities by the English from Carolina, who had come to their villages; and protesting they had entirely renounced any future connection with them. They said they had lately made two individuals of that nation prisoners and detained them in the fort; they pressed Celeron to send one of his officers to the fort that he might be satisfied of the truth of what they told him : St. Lau- rent was accordingly sent.
As he entered, the squaws began to yell and scream loudly, and demanded his head. On this, he
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was seized and confined in a hut, while the men were deliberating on the demand of the women: at last, the party who deemed it dangerous to grant it, pre- vailed, and St. Laurent was taken out, and shewn the white prisoners. Pleased at the happy turn the affairs had taken. he promised peace to the Indians, in the name of Celeron. They all followed him to the camp, where the captain ratified his lieutenant's promise.
A deputation of the Chickasaws, joining the French on their retrograde march, Celeron led back his force to the Mississippi, where the calumet was presented, by the Chickasaws, to Bienville. They renewed to him the protestation of their devotion, to the inte- rest of the French, and presented him the two Englishmen. The calumet was accepted, and the deputies were permitted to return.
The fort of the Assumption was razed and Labuis- sonniere and Celeron ascended the river with those of their men, whom disease and famine had spared. The force from New Orleans stopped at the river St. Francis to dismantle the fort, and then floated down to the city.
Thus ended the Chickasaw war, undertaken by Bienville to compel these Indians, to surrender the Natchez, who had found an asylum among the former. Peace was made on the promise of the Indians of one of the villages of the enemy, to be in future the de- voted friends of the French-purchased at the price of many valuable lives, at a vast expense besides, and with great distress and toil. The French chief acquired no military glory from the war.
While tranquillity appeared thus restored to Louisi- ana, that of Europe was disturbed, at the death of the Emperor Charles the sixth, on the twentieth of September, 1740, without male issue. According to
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the pragmatic sanction, by which in 1713 it had been provided, that his eldest daughter should succeed him, Maria Theresa ascended his throne. Louis the fifteenth united with Prussia and Poland. in support of the pretentions of the Duke of Bayaria, to the im- perial sceptre, and the dogs of war were let loose.
The chevalier de Beauharnois, Governor Gene- ral of New France, was succeeded by the count de la Gallissoniere.
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Charlevoix .- Laharpe .- Vergennes .- Dupratz .- Archives.
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CHAPTER XIII.
The Marquis de Vaudreuil .- Superior Council .- Georgia. -Nova-Scotia .- War .-- Irruption from Canada .-- Paper securities .- The Island of Cape Breton taken .- D'.An- ville's fleet .- Ferdinand, VI .- Hurricane .- Dearth .- Relief from the Illinois .- Overseer of the high ways .- Surveyor General .- Olivier Duvezin .- Civil Regulations. -Peaceof Aix-la-chapelle .-- Redemptioners and muskets. -Larouvillierc .- Ohio Company .- Complaint of the Governor General, of New-France .- Quota of troops in Louisiana .- The culture of tobacco encouraged .- Brit- ish traders among the Twigtwees arrested .- Exemption of duty .- Recruits from France .- Sugar Cane .- Myrtle Wax .-- Irruption of the Chickasaws .-- Vaudreuil marches into their country .- A fort built on French creek-Gover- nor Dinwiddie .- Major Washington .- Kerlerec .- Des- closeaux .- Jumonville .- Villiers .- Fort Necessity .- Mur- der of the Commandant on Cat Island .- Beausejour .- The Acadian Coast .-- General Braddock .- Fort Du- quesne .- Crown Point and Niagara .- Declaration of War .- The Earl of Loudoun .--- The Marquis de Montcalm .- Fort Oswego and William Henry taken by the French, and the Islands of Cape Breton and St. John by the British .- Fort Frontenac .-- General Forbes. -Fort Duquesne. " Fort Massac .- Barracks in New Orleans .- Rochemore .- Diaz Arria .- Belot .- Marigny .de Mandeville .-- Lahoupe .--- Ticonderoga .-- Crown Point, Niagara and Quebec taken .- Charles III .- George III .- Attakapas, Opelousas and Avoyelles .- Depreciated paper .- Unsuccessful negotiation .betucen Great Britain and France .- The family compact .- Martinico, St. Lucie, Grenada and Havana taken .- Treaty between France and Spain .- Peace of Paris.
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THE Marquis de Vaudreuil, a son of the late Gov- ernor General of New France, was in 1741, appoin- ted Governor of Louisiana, and Bienville sailed back to France, much_regretted by the colonists. The latter was the youngest son of Lemoyne de Bienville, . a gentleman of Quebec, who had seven sons in the service of his sovereign. Bienville, the eldest, fell in battle in Canada. Iberville, Serigny, Sauvolle, Chateaugue and St. Helene, have all been men- tioned in this work .- The youngest, to whom the name of the eldest had been given, came, as we have said, to Louisiana, with Iberville, in 1698. He was then twenty two years of age, and a midshipman, in the royal navy. He remained in the province con- tinually, except during the administration of Perrier, and was the chief in command, during most of the time. Ile was called the father of the country, and deserved the appellation.
. The commerce of Louisiana, released from the restraints of the exclusive privilege of the company, now began to thrive. Indigo was cultivated to a considerable extent, and with much success. and with rice and tobacco, afforded easy means of remit- tance to Europe, while lumber found a market in the West India islands. The Chickasaws were less tur- bulent ; a circumstance attributed to the employ- ment which war gave to the people of South Caro- lina and Georgia.
The increase of trade caused litigation, and it was deemed necessary to create new officers, in the superior council. Accordingly, the governor and the commissary ordonnateur were, by the king's let- ters patent of the month of August, 1742. directed to appoint four assessors, to serve for a period of four · years in that tribunal. They were to sit and rank after the councillors; but their votes were received
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only, in cases in which the record was referred to them to report on when they were called upon to complete a quorum, or in case of an equality of votes. The choice of the two administrators, for the first time, fell on Delachaise. a son of the late commissary ordonnateur, Delalande d'Aspremont, Amelot . and Massy.
The Spaniards this year made an unsuccessful at- tempt on the province of Georgia.
With a view of having that of Nova-Scotia, (which had been restored to Great Britain at the peace of Utrecht) occupied by national subjects. the former French inhabitants had been mostly driven away ; . three thousand families were brought over, at a great expense defrayed by government, and three regi- ments were stationed there to protect these people, against the French of Canada and the Indians.
George the second having taken arms, in support of the claim of Maria Theresa to the throne of her father, and having in person gained the famous battle of Dettingen against the allied forces, war was kindled between France and Great Britain.
Hostilities began in America, by frequent irrup- tions of the French from Canada into Nova-Scotia. A small land and naval force from the island of Cape Bretch, afterwards possessed itself of the town of Canceaux, and made its garrison and some of the in- habitants prisoners. A less successful attack was made on Annapolis-the French being driven back by the garrison, which had been reinforced by a strong detachment from Massachusetts The con- · quest of Nova-Scotia being a favorite object with the people of Canada, Duvivier was sent to France, to solicit the minister to send out a sufficient force for this purpose.
Louisiana suffered a great deal from the want LOU. I. 40
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of a circulating medium. Card money had caused the disappearance of the gold and silver, circulating in the colony before its emisssion, and its subse- quent depreciation had induced the commissary ordonnateur to have recourse to an issue of ordonances; a kind of bills of credit, which although not a legal tender, from the want of a metallic currency, soon be- · came an object of commerce. They were followed by treasury notes, which being receivable in the dis- charge of all claims of the treasury, soon got into cir- culation. This cumulation of public securities in the market, within a short time threw them all into dis- credit, and gave rise to an agiotage, highly injurious to commerce and agriculture.
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