USA > Louisiana > The history of Louisiana : from the earliest period, Volume I > Part 28
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31
While Duvivier was gone to France to induce the minister to furnish means for the re-capture of Nova- Scotia, Governor Shirley of Massachusetts had despatched captain Ryall, an officer of the garrison captured at Canceaux, to represent the danger, in which the province of Nova-Scotia stood, to the lords of the admiralty, and press them for some naval assis- tance. The captain was also charged to present a plan, which Governor Shirley had formed for the sur- prise and capture of the island of Cape Breton, the possession of which, in the neighbourhood of New- Foundland. enabled the French to annoy the fishe- ries and commerce of Great Britain. Although near- ly eight millions of dollars had been spent by France : on the fortifications of that island. the smallness of the garrison. and the vicinity of the British provinces, induced Shirley to conclude it Light easily be taken by surprise : the idea had not originated with him. . but had been suggested by Vaughan, a merchant of New-Hampshire.
Ryall's mission had no other effect than a direction to the commander of the squadron, in the West In-
315
THE THIRTEENTH
.1745]
dies, to proceed to the north in the spring, to afford protection. to the commerce and fisheries of the New-England provinces, and distress those of the French : and the governors were instructed to aid him with transports, men and provisions.
In the meanwhile, Vaughan's plan had been submit- ted to the legislature of the provinces, and those of New-Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut, had raised about four thousand men, and the gover- nors of the two first colonies, had taken upon them- selves, on this occasion, to disregard their instructions, and to give their assent to bills for the emission of paper money.
The colonial forces assembled at Canceaux, to- wards the middle of April, and were put under the order of Vaughan, and soon after the West India fleet arrived.
A landing on the island was effected a few days af- ter, and while the fleet was cruising off Louisbourg, it fell in with a sixty-four gun ship from France, with five hundred and sixty men, destined for the garri- . son and an ample supply of provisions and military stores: she was captured, and the land forces soon after compelled the garrison to surrender.
In the mean while, the succour Duvivier had been sent to solicit, had been obtained ; seven ships of war, with a considerable land force, sailed from France, in the month of July. They were ordered to stop at Louisbourg, where they were to be joined by a num- ber of volunteers from Canada, for the attack of Nova- Scotia. Information reached the fleet, soon after its departure, of the fall of Louisbourg, and of a British fleet cruizing in its vicinity ; the plan was aban- doned and the fleet returned into port.
Great preparations were made by both nations, in the following year. The British determined on
31G
. CHAPTER
[1746
simultaneous attacks on Canada, from sea and the lakes, and a very esseiderable force was collected for this purpose. The French equipped a large fleet under the Duke d'Anville, for the re-capture of the island of Cape Breton and Nova Scotia; but like the Spanish armada. this fleet was, if not destroyed. dis- persed by the winds and the waves: most of the ships were disabled. The apprehension which its approach excited, induced the British to turn to- wards the protection of their own territories the forces they had assembled for the reduction of Canada.
Philip the fifth of Spain ended his second reign and his life, in the sixty-third year of his age, on the ninth of July and was succeeded by his second son, Ferdinand the sixth, having himself, been succeeded by, and succeeded. his first.
Louisiana was this year visited by a destructive ` hurricane, which laid the plantations waste, and total- ly destroyed the rice crop. This article was used in most families, as a substitute for bread. The conse- quent distress was greatly increased by the capture of several vessels, that had failed from France, with provisions. The province was, however, relieved by large supplies of flour, from the district of the Illinois, amounting it is said to four thousand sacks. This part of the province was already, at this period, of considerable importance. In a letter to the minister, Vaudreuil wrote, " we receive from the Illinois flour, corn, bacon hamna, both of bear and hog, corned pork and wild beef. myrtle and bees wax. cotton, tal- low. leather. tobacco, load, copper, buffalo, wool, venison, poultry, bear's grease, oil, skins, fouls, and hides. Their boats come down annually, in the latter part of December and return in February. "
War drew off the attention of the people of South
317
THE THIRTEENTH.
1748]
Carolina and Georgia; and the Indians, left to them- selves, did not annoy the distant settlements of the French, and that in the neighbourhood of Fort Char- tres was in a very flourishing condition.
The extension of agriculture and commerce drew the attention of government to the roads in the colo- ny, and regulations were made for their construction and repairs. The office of overseer of the high-ways was created and given to Olivier Duvezin, who was also appointed the king's surveyer general in the pro- vince. . His commission bears date the month of Oc- tober 1747.
The incapacity of many of the persons who had been appointed, principally in the distant posts, to make inventories of estates of the deceased and similar acts, joined to the impossibility often of finding any person to be appointed, had caused, in many in- stances, the omission of the formalities required by law ; great inconvenience had resulted from the ne- cessity imposed on the superior council, of declaring some of these acts absolutely null. On the representa- tions of the colonists, a remedy for this evil was sought, and a declaration of the king's council of the thirteenth of March, 1748, provided that any invento- ry or other instrument, made in any of the posts of the province, in which there was no public officer, and even in those in which there was such an officer as in New Orleans, Mobile and the Illinois, where the legal formalities were omitted, should be valid, provided there was no fraud ; and such inventory or other public instrument should, within the year after the publication of the declaration, be presented to the superior council, and on the motion of the attor- ney general, recorded, in order to prevent litiga- tion, and promote the peace of families,
New Orleans, Mobile and the Illinois being the
318
CHAPTER
· · [1748
only places in the province, where public officers re- sided, it was directed that elsewhere, inventories and other public acts might in future be made by two no- table inhabitants, attended by an equal number of witnesses, and within the year transmitted for regis -. try to the superior council in New Orleans, or the in- ferior tribunals in Mobile, or the Illinois.
The winter was this year so severe, that all the orange trees were destroyed-a misfortune of which this is the first instance on record.
The peace of Aix la Chapelle, on the eighteenth day of October, settled the dissentions of Europe and put an end to the warfare between Canada and New England. Maria Theresa was recognised as Em- press, and Don Carlos, the third son of Philip, re- tained the crown of the two Sicilies. Louis XV. and George II. agreed that all conquests made during the war should be restored, and the French re-possessed the island of Cape Breton.
The provision made by the treaty of Utrecht for defining the boundary between Canada and Acadia, bad not been carried into effect. The cabinet of Versailles urged that by the cession of Acadia, noth- ing had been yielded, but the peninsula formed by the bay of Fundy, the Atlantic and the gulf of St. Law- . rence-that of St. James claimed all the land to the south of the river St. Lawrence. Unfortunately, measures were not taken, at the pacification of Aix la Chapelle, to remove this source of controversy.
On the twenty-fifth of November, the king prolong- ed for six years, the exemption he had granted to ves- sels trading to Louisiana, from carrying thither the number of redemptioners and muskets, which were re- quired to be taken to his other American colonies.
Larouvilliere, succeeded Salmon as Commissary Ordonnateur, in the latter part of the following year.
·
319
THE THIRTEENTH.
1750]
Several individuals in England and Virginia had associated themselves, under the style of the Ohio company for the purpose of carrying on the Indian trade, and effecting a settlement on the land border. ing on that stream. They obtained from the crown a grant of six hundred thousand acres of land, on the western side of the Alleghany mountains. Their surveyors and traders soon crossed the ridge, and erected block houses and stores among the Indians .- The Marquis de la Jonquiere, who had succeeded the Count de la Gallissoniere in the government of New- France, considering the country thus occupied as part of the dominions of his severeign, complained to governor Colden, of New York and governor Hamilton of Pennsylvania, of what he viewed as an encroachment, and assured them that, if this notice was disregarded, he should deem it his indispensa- ble duty to arrest the surveyors and traders, and to seize the goods of the latter.
The French had then a large force at Presquisle on Lake Erie, and small detachments on French creek and the Alleghany river, and were making preparations for building a considerable fort, at the confluence of the latter stream and the Monongahela, the spot on which now stands the town of Pittsburg. This fort, with those on lake Ontario, at Niagara, the Illinois, the Chickasaw bluffs, the Yazous, Natch- ez, Pointe Coupec and New Orleans, was intended to · form a connecting line, between the gulfs of St. Law- rence and Mexico.
The quota of troops for the service of the pro- vince, on the peace establishment, was fixed by an arrest of the king's council dated the 30th of Septem- ber 1750, at eight hundred and fifty men, divided into seventeen companies.
The agriculture of the province was favoured by
·
320
CHAPTER
[1751
an arrangement with the farmers general of the king- dom, who agreed to purchase all the tobacco, raised in Louisiana, at thirty livres the hundred, equal to six dollars and two thirds.
The remonstrances of the Marquis de la Jonquiere to the governors of New York and Pennsylvania hav- ing been disregarded. he put his threats into execu- tion, by the seizure of the persons and goods of seve- ral British traders among the Twigtwees.
The king had favoured in 1731, the commerce of his subjects to Louisiana, by exempting all merchan- dize sent to, or brought from the province, from duty, during a period of ten years, and the exemption had in 1741, been extended for a like period. It was by an arrest of the king's council. dated the last of Sep- tember, farther prolonged during a third period of the same duration: but with regard to foreign mer- chandize sent there, it was restricted to salt beef, butter, tallow and spices.
Two hundred recruits arrived from France on the seventeenth of April, for the completion of the quota of troops allotted to the province. The king's ships, in which they were embarked, touched at the cape, in the island of Hispaniola, where, with a view of try- ing with what success the sugar cane could be culti- vated on the banks of the Mississippi, the Jesuits of that island were permitted to ship to their brethren in Louisiana, a quantity of it. A number of negroes, acquainted with the culture and manufacture of sugar, came in the fleet. The canes were planted on the land of the fathers immediately above the city, in the lower part of the spot now known as the suburb St. Mary. Before this time, the front of the planta- tion had been improved in the raising of the myrtle wax shrub; the rest was sown with indigo.
The myrtle wax shrub is very common in Louisi
-321
THE THIRTEENTH.
1751]
ana, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia, and not rare in the more northern states on the Atlan- tic. It bears grapes of very diminutive bluish ber- ries, the seeds of which are included in a hard, oblong nucleus, covered by an unctuous and far- inaceous substance, easily reducible into wax. In November and December, the berries, being perfect- ly ripe, are boiled in water, and the wax detaches itself and floats on the surface. It is then skimmed off and suffered to cool. It becomes hard and its colour a dirty green : after a second boiling, the colour be- comes clearer. The candles made of this wax ex- hale, in burning, a very pleasant odour. Unsuc- cessful attempts have been made to bleach it. It is apt to crack, and is rendered tenacious, by being mixed with tallow or soft wax.
The ships landed also sixty poor girls, who were brought over at the king's expense. They were the last succour of this kind, which the mother country supplied. They were given in marriage to such sol- diers whose good conduct entitled them to a discharge. Land was allotted to each couple with a cow and calf, a cock and five hens ; a gun, axe and hoe. Dur- ing the three first years, rations were allowed them, with a small quantity of powder, shot and grain for seed.
Macarty, on the twentieth of August, went with a small detachment to take command of Fort Chartres of the Illinois, left vacant by the death of the unfortu- nate chevalier d'Artaguette. This district had, at this period, six villages; Kaskaskias, Fort Chartres, Caokias, Prairie des rochers, St. Philip and St. Gene- vieve.
Tranquillity being now restored to the British pro- vince, traders from the southernmost, poured in their goods, and erected stores and block houses, in the LOU. I. 41
-
322
CHAPTER
[1752
villages of the Indians, on their back settlements; and those of the French on Mobile and Alibamon rivers began to be distressed by the renewed irruptions of the Chickasaws. In consequence thereof, the Mar- quis de Vaudreuil marched into their country at the head of a body of seven hundred men of the regular forces and militia, and a large number of Indians. He was not very successful : the enemy had been taught by the British to fortify their villages. Each had a strong block house, surrounded by a wide and deep ditch. The colony was badly supplied with field artillery and soldiers skilled in the management of the pieces. The Marquis lost little time in lay- ing sieges, but wandered through the country, laying the plantations waste. He enlarged the fort of Tom- beckbee. left a strong garrison in it and returned to New Orleans.
The settlements along the Mississippi, above the city and below, as far as the English turn, were now in high cultivation. The Marquis, in a letter to the minister of this year, observed it was almost an im- possibility to have plantations near the river, on ac- count of the immense expense, attending the levees, necessary to protect the fields from the inundation of sea and land foods. He recommended that the idea of settling the part of the country below the English turn should be abandoned, till the land was raised by the accession of the soil. He observed there had been an increase of three feet in height, during the last fifteen years.
A detachment from the troops in Canada had been sent under the orders of Legardeur de St. Pierre, a knight of St. Louis, to erect a fort on the western branch of French creek, which falls into the Ohio. This officer, on the twelfth of December, 1753, re- ceived by the hands of major Washington of Virginia
1753]
THE THIRTEENTH.
323
(a man whose name willlong attract the admiration of the world and forever that of his country ) a letter from governor Dinwiddie, summoning him to withdraw, with the men under his command, from the dominions of the British king. He wrote to the governor, he had been sent to take possession of the country, by - his superior officer, then in Canada, to whom he would transmit the message, and whose order he would implicitly obey.
In a quarrel between a Choctaw and a Colapissa, the former told the latter, his countrymen were the dogs of the French-meaning their slaves. The Co- lapissa, having a loaded musket in his hands, dischar- ged its contents at the Choctaw, and fled to New Or- leans. The relations of the deceased came to the Marquis de Vaudreuil to demand his surrender: he had in the mean while gone to the German coast. The Marquis, having vainly tried to appease them, sent orders to Renaud, the commandant of that post to have the murderer arrested; but he eluded the pur- suit. His father went to the Choctaws and offered himself a willing victim : the relations of the deceased persisted in their refusal to accept any compensation in presents. They at last consented to allow the old man to atone, by the loss of his own life, for the crime · of his son. He stretched himself on the trunk of an old tree and a Choctaw severed his head from the body, at the first stroke. This instance of paternal affection was made the subject of a tragedy, by Le- blanc de Villeneuve, an officer of the troops lately arrived from France. This performance is the only dramatic work, which the republic of letters owes to Louisiana.
The Marquis de Vaudreuil was this year promoted. and succeeded Duquesne, in the government of New France, and was succeeded, in that of Louisiana by
.
334
CHAPTER
[1754
Kerlerec, a captain in the royal navy ;- and Auber- ville was, on the death of La Rouvilliere, appointed commissiary ordonnateur.
On the return of major Washington, the legislature of Virginia, directed a regiment to be raised, of which he was appointed Lieutenant Colonel. He was then in his twenty-second year.
Washington advanced with two companies of his regiment, in the middle of April, 1754, and surprised a party of the French, under the orders of Jumonville, . a few miles west of a place then called the Great meadows, in the present county of Fayette, in the state of Pennsylvania. and on the first fire this gentle- man fell. He was the only man killed. but the whole party surrendered. The rest of the regiment came up soon after. Colonel Fry, its commander. having died on the way, Washington found himself at the head of it, and was soon after reinforced by detach- ments from New York and South Carolina.
There was then at Fort Chartres of the Illinois, an officer named Villiers, brother of Jumonville, who hearing of his death, solicited from Macarty, who had succeeded La Buissonniere, in the command of Fort Chartres, to be allowed to go and avenge his brother's death, with the few soldiers that could be spared and a large number of Indians. Villiers des- cended the Mississippi and ascended the Ohio .- Washington, having erected a small fort as a place of deposit to which he gave the name of Fort Necessity, the traces of which are still visible near Union, the chief town of the county of Fayette, was marching towards the confluence of the Monongahela and the Aleghany, where the French were building the fort to which they gave the name of Duquesne. He heard of the approach of Villiers, from the Indians. who said that his followers were as numerous as the
1754]
THE THIRTEENTH. 325 .
pigeons in the woods, and was advised by his offi- cers to march back to Fort Necessity, which was at the distance of thirteen miles; he yielded to their sug- gestion. The party had hardly entered the fort, when Villiers approached it, and immediately began a brisk fire, and an engagement now commenced which lasted from ten o'clock till dark, when the assailants offered terms of capitulation, which were rejected : during the night, however, articles were agreed upon. By these Washington having obtained that his men should be allowed to return home with their arms and baggage, surrendered the fort. This was on the now most venerated day, in the American calendar, the fourth of July.
During the summer, some soldiers of the garrison of Cat Island, rose upon and killed Roux, who comman- ded there. They were exasperated at his avarice and cruelty. He employed them in burning coal, of which he made a traffic, and for trifling delinquencies had exposed several of them, naked and tied to trees in a swamp, during whole nights, to the stings of mus- quetoes. Joining some English traders in the neigh- bourhood of Mobile, they started in the hope of reaching Georgia, through the Indian country. A party of the Choctaws, then about the fort, was sent af- ter and overtook them. One destroyed himself ; the rest were brought to New Orleans, where two were broken on the wheel-the other, belonging to the Swiss regiment of Karrer, was, according to the law of his nation, followed by the officers of the Swiss troops in the service of France, sawed in two parts. He was placed alive in a kind of coffin, to the middle of which two sergeants applied a whip saw. It was not thought prudent to make any allowance for the provocation these men had received. The Indians seldom losing the opportunity of claiming remunera-
-
326
CHAPTER
[1754
tion, the Alibamons made a demand from Kerlerec, for the pollution of their land by the self destruction of a soldier, who had avoided, in this manner, the dire fate that awaited him. He accordingly made them a present.
In the latter part of this year, Favrot was sent to the Illinois, with four companies of fifty men each, and a large supply of provisions and ammunition.
The Marquis de Vaudreuil, on his arrival at Que- bec, had received instructions to occupy and estab- lish forts in the country to the south of the river St. Lawrence.
In the spring, as he was preparing to carry these instructions into effect, the British regular forces in Boston, with two provincial regiments. joined the gar- rison kept in Nova Scotia,-and landing on the main. marched against Beausejour, which was surren- dered on the fifth day ; and in the summer possession was taken of all the posts of the French, in the dis- puted territory, and every part of Nova Scotia, as claimed by Great Britain, was conquered.
In the cession of Acadia, Louis the fourteenth had stipulated that his subjects there should be allowed to retain their land on swearing allegiance to Queen Anne. They had declined doing so unqualifiedly. and insisted on such a modification of the formula pre- sented to them, as would dispense them from the obligation of turning their arms against their country- men, in the defence of the rights of Great Britain to the country. No oath had been imposed on them. Although this indulgence had been complained of in England, no order had been sent either to require an absolute oath of allegiance or to expel those who had refused to take it; so the Acadians considered themselves as neutrals.
The vicinity of a country, with the inhabitants of
327
THE THIRTEENTH.
1754]
which, these people were so intimately connected by the ties of nature, allegiance and national character, who spoke the same language and professed the same religion, prevented them from considering them- selves, as of a different country, or as sub- jects of a different crown. They saw in the neigh- bouring Canadians a band of brothers, on whose as- sistance, in an emergency, they might rely, and con- sidered, themselves as equally bound to yield theirs in return. They had, on every occasion, enlisted theirs feelings their passions and their forces, with these neighbours, and in the late attack against Beause- jour, a considerable , number of them were found arrayed against the conquerors, under the banner of France.
Nova Scotia is a rocky, barren country. The win- ter lasts seven months and is of dreadful severity; it keeps the people almost as lifeless and torped state as their vegetables. The summer comes suddenly (for there is no spring) and the heat is greater than is ever felt in England. Perpetual fogs render the country equally unwholesome and unpleasant. It pre- sented so few advantages to new comers that the re- moval to it of such a number of British subject's, as would give them a preponderance over its former in- . habitants, could not soon be effected.' The transpor- tation and maintenance of such a body of regular troops, as might keep the latter in awe, was a measure that must necessarily be attended with an expense totally unproportioned to the benefits, which Great Britain could expect from the possession of the coun- try.
It appeared equally dangerous to permit them to depart or stay. For it seemed certain that, if they were left at liberty to chuse the place of their re- moval. they would set down, as nearly as they could
628
CHAPTER
[1756
to the country they should leave, that might could be ready to follow any troops, the government of Canada might send to retake it.
In this dilemma, it was deemed the safest expedi- ent to remove these people, in such a manner as to lessen or destroy, by their division, the danger that might be apprehended from them. They were ac- cordingly, at different periods, shipped off in small numbers to the British provinces to the south of New Jersey. This act of severity, which the circum- stances were thought to justify. was not the only one that was exercised against them ; their land and goods were taken from them and they were permit- ted to carry nothing away, but their household furni- ture and money ; of the last article few, very few in- deed, had any. It was determined to take from them all means of travelling back; and to deprive them, even of the least hope, as respects this, their fields were laid waste and their dwellings and fences consumed by fire.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.