USA > Louisiana > The history of Louisiana : from the earliest period, Volume I > Part 30
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In the mean while, George Johnston, a captain in the royal navy, appointed governor of the prov- ince of West Florida, arrived at Pensacola with ma-' „ jor Loftus, who was to command at the Illinois. They were accompanied by a considerable number of high- landers from New York and Charleston. Detach- ments of these were sent to take possession of Fort Conde, Fort Toulouse, Baton Rouge and the Natch- ez.
Fort Conde was now called Fort Charlotte, in com- pliment to the young queen of Great Britain.
Most of the Indians, in alliance with the French, followed the white banner to New Orleans, on its be- ing lowered in the forts of the ceded territory ; lands were allotted to them on the western side of the Mis- sissippi.
In the fall, Kerlerec was recalled; and the chief ma- gistracy of the province vested in d'Abadie, under the title of director-general. The military force was reduced to three hundred men, divided into six com- panies, under the orders of Aubry, as senior captain.
Kerlerec's conduct was highly disapproved of in France: he was confined, for some time, in the Bas- tile, and died of grief shortly after his release.
Major Loftus, who commanded the twenty-second regiment, came from Pensacola to New Orleans, on his way to the Illinois, early in 1764. He proceeded up the river, on the 27th of February, with a detach- ment of the thirty-fourth, who had been employed in reconnoitreing the river Iberville. His whole force.
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consisting of about four hundred men, was embarked in ten batteaux of from sixteen to twenty oars each and two canoes. They reached the heights now called Fort Adams, then La roche a Davion, in three weeks.
In the morning of the twentieth of March, the two canoes being a little a head of the major's batteau, and close to the right bank, which was covered with brush, a volley was fired on them and three privates were killed and one wounded in the first canoe and oue sergeant and two privates wounded and two pri- vates killed in the second. The boats going back with the stream, and there being no possibility of landing on that side, the river having overflowed its banks, the major ordered his small fleet on the op- posite shore, and as he approached, received a second volley. Both sides of the river appearing strongly guarded by the Indians and the stream narrow, he de- termined on descending the river and taking post for the present at bayou Manshac. The mount, near which the party was fired on, was afterwards called Loftus's heights.
Having at disembarked bayou Manshac and re- connoitred the ground, major Loftus thought it better to return to New Orleans, where finding a brig ready to sail for Pensacola, he took passage in her ; his men floated down in their batteaux, to the Balize, except a captain and twenty men of the twenty- second regiment, whom he ordered to proceed by the lakes to Mobile.
As they were ready to start d'Abadie received information that sixty Indians of the Colapissa tribe from the western side of lake Pontchartrain were preparing to intercept the batteaux in the rigolets.
The captain represented to the French chief that major Loftus had departed fully suspecting that the French had prevailed on the Indians to prevent
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his ascent of the river to the Illinois, and an attack of the Indians. who were known to be in the interest of the French, would not fail to increase the suspicion. D'Abadie proposed to send an officer, with a de- tachment to escort the British. This was declined, and an interpreter, acquainted with the lurking places of the Indians, was sent forward to assure them the British wished to live in peace and friendship with them; and would treat them as brethren. The Cap- tain and his men reached Mobile safely, on the fifth of April.
The Indians, who fired on the British force up the river, were parties of the Tunicas, Oumas, Cheti- machas and Yazous.
On the twenty-third of March, the lords commissi- .oners of trade and plantations, in Great Britain, represented to the king that it appeared from obser- vations and surveys, made since the province of West Florida was in his possession, that there were consi- derable settlements on the left bank of the Mississip- pi, above the thirty-first degree of northern latitude, and recommended that the northern boundary of the province of West Florida should be a line drawn from the mouth of the river of the Yazous, running due west to the river Apalachicola. Accordingly, on the tenth of June, a new commission was issued to go- vernor Johnston, extending thus the limits of his go- vernment.
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During the summer, a large detachment occupied Fort Rosalie of Natchez.
In the mean while, British vessels began to visit the lower banks of the Mississippi-after passing New Orleans, they cast anchor, made fast to a tree above it, opposite the present suburb Lafayette, where the people of the city and neighbouring plantations
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came to trade with them. The spot, at, which they stopped on their way up the river, under the pre- tence of going to bayou Manshac and Baton Rouge, received the appellation of Little Manshac. The wants of the colony induced its chief to overlook and tolerate the illegal traffic-extremely advantageous to the colonists, whose honesty and good faith render- ed it equally so to their visitors.
The colonists began now to be distressed by ru- mours from France of their approaching passage un- der the yoke of Spain. These fears were realized early in October, when officialintelligence of the cession was received by d'Abadie, in a letter of his sovereign, bearing date the first of April preceding.
In this document, the king, after announcing the cession to the director general (copies of the treaty and its acceptance being inclosed) manifests his in- tention, that, on the receipt of the letter and its in- closures, whether it be delivered him by any Spanish officer, or brought by any French vessel, immediate possession should be delivered to the governor, or any other officer of the Catholic king, of the city of New Orleans and the rest of the ceded territory ; it being the object of the cession that the country should in future belong to the latter sovereign, and be ruled and administered by his governor or chief officer, as being his, in full property and without re- serve.
D'Abadie is accordingly instructed, on the arrival of the Spanish officers and troops, after having yield- ed possession, to withdraw with all the officers, sol- diers and other persons, in the service of France, who may not be desirous of remaining, and afford them a passage to some of the king's dominions in Europe or the West Indies.
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He is directed, immediately after the evacuation, to collect all papers, relative to the finances, and the administration of the province, and to return and give an account of his proceedings; delivering how- ever, to the governor or other officer of the Spanish king, such papers, as may especially relate to the af- fairs of the colony, in regard to the land, the diffe- rent posts and Indian affairs; taking receipts for his discharge. It is recommended to him to afford such information, relative to the concerns of the colony, as may enable the officers of Spain to administer its affairs to the satisfaction of both nations.
Duplicate inventories are ordered to be made by the director general, and a Spanish commissary, of all the artillery, goods, magazines, hospitals and ves- sels of the province; so that, after delivery, an ap- praisement may be made of such articles as may be kept by the Spanish king.
The hope is expressed and the king declares he expects it from the friendship of the monarch of Spain, that, for the advantage and tranquillity of the inhabi- tants, orders will be given to the governor and other officers, employed in Louisiana, that the regular and secular clergy, acting as curates or missionaries, may be allowed to continue the exercise of their functions and enjoy the rights, privileges and exemptions, gran. ted to them by the royal charters, and that the infe- rior judges, as well as those of the superior council, may be allowed to continue to administer justice, ac- cording to the present laws, forms, and usages of the colony, that the inhabitants may be confirmed in their estates according to the grants of the former gover- nors and cominissaries ordonnateurs, and that such grants may be confirmed by the Catholic king. even, when they were not so by him. Finally, the king hopes the new sovereign will give to his subjects in
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Louisiana such marks of his protection and favour, as they have heretofore experienced from the former. of which, nothing but the disasters of the war, could ave prevented them from enjoying the full effect.
The director general is enjoined to cause the royal letter to be transcribed on the minutes of the superior council. that every one in the province may become acquainted with its contents, and recur thereto, in case of need.
This intelligence plunged the inhabitants in great consternation. They bewailed before their estrange- ment from their 'kindred and friends in the eastern part of the province; that they were now them- selves transferred to a foreign potentate, filied their minds with the utmost sorrow.
The fond hope was howeverindulged that their uni- ted solicitations might averting the impending calamity. Every parish was accordingly invited to send its most notable planters, to a general meeting, in the city of New Orleans, in the beginning of the following year.
The council, according to its new organization, on the dismemberment of the province, was compos- ed of d'Abadie, the director general, Foucault, the commissary ordonnateur, Aubry, the commandant of the troops, Delalande, Kernion, Delaunay, Lachaise, Lesassier, Laplace, councillors, Lafreniere, attorney general, and Garic, clerk.
The general meeting was attended by a vast num- ber of the most respectable planters from every part of the province, and almost every person of note in New Orleans. The most prominent characters were Lafreniere, the attorney general, Doucet, a lawyer, who had lately come from France, St. Lette, l'in, Villere, the chevalier d'Arensbourg, Jean Millet, the wealthiest merchant of New Orleans, Joseph Milhet his brother, St. Maxent, Lachaise, Marquis, Garic,
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Mazent, Mazange, Poupet, Boisblanc, Grandmaison, Lalande, Lesassier, Braud, the kings printer, Kernion, Carrere and Desalles.
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Lafreniere addressed the meeting, in an animated speech, which he concluded by a proposition that the sovereign should be entreated to make such arrange- - ments, with his catholic majesty, as might prevent Louisiana being severed from the parent stock, and that a person should be immediately sent to France to lay the petition of the inhabitants of the province, at the foot of the throne. Without a dissenting vote, the proposition was assented to, and with the like unanimity, Jean Milhet was selected for the im- portant mission.
At this period, a number of families emigrated to Louisiana from the British provinces, principally from the banks of Roanoke river, in North Carolina, and settled above Baton Rouge : this was the beginning of the settlement, which was afterwards called the dis- trict of Feliciana.
Till now the post of the Illinois remained in the possession of the French, and St. Ange, the comman- dant, continued to exercise his authority over it. A proclamation of General Gage, the commander in chief of the forces of the king of Great Britain in North America, issued at New York the thirteenth of December, was brought to the post early in the new year, by captain Sterling, who was instructed to receive the oath of allegiance and fidelity of the in- habitants, to their new sovereign.
By this proclamation they were informed that the taking possession of their country by the king's forces, although delayed, had been determined on; and the sovereign had given the most precise and effective orders, that his new Roman Catholic subjects of the Illinois should be allowed the exercise of religious
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worship, according to the rites of their church, in the same manner as the Canadians-that he had agreed that the French inhabitants and others, who had been subjects of the most christian king, might retire in full safety and proceed, where they pleased ; even to New Orleans, or other parts of Louisiana, although the Spaniards might take possession of it; that they might sell their estates to the king's subjects and transport themselves and their effects, without any other restraint, but that which might result from civil or criminal process. The rights and immunities of British subjects were promised to those who might chuse. to stay, but they were required to take an oath of allegiance and fidelity.
The commander in chief recommended to the peo- ple to demean themselves as loyal and faithful sub- jects, by a prudent conduct to avoid all causes of complaint, and to act in concert with the royal forces. on their arrival, so that possession might be taken of every settlement, and good order preserved in the country.
Civil government, being established, under the au- thority of Great Britain, a few months after in the post, St. Ange, the French commandant there, crossed the Mississippi, with a number of his countrymen, who were desirous to follow the white flag, and laid the foundation of the town of St. Louis, which with that of St. Genevieve, was the first settlements of the country, now known as the state of Missouri.
The province laboured under great difficulties, on account of a flood of depreciated paper, which, inun- dating it, annihilated its industry, commerce and agriculture. So sanguine were the inhabitants of their appeal to the throne, that they instructed their emis- sary, after having accomplished the principal object of his mission, to solicit relief in this respect.
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Destrehan, the king's treasurer, and a number of other planters, had been induced by the success of Dubreuil, in manufacturing sugar, to erect mills ; most of these establishments were below New Orleans and on the same side of the river. Hitherto, the su- gar made in Louisiana had been all consumed in the province. This year, a ship was laden for France with this article. It had been so inartificially manu- factured, that it leaked out of the hogsheads, and the ship was so lightened by this accident, that she was very near upsetting.
Milhet saw, at Paris, Bienville, who having spent the most and best years of his life in Louisiana, and having long presided over its concerns, still felt much interest in its prosperity. He had bewailed its dis- memberment, and grieved to see the last remnant of it transferred to Spain: he was then in his eighty-se- venth year, having first landed in Louisiana in his twentieth. He attended Milhet to the Duke de Choiseuil. This nobleman received the representa- tive of the people of Louisiana, with marked civility : but, having been the prime mover of the measures which terminated in the cession, he felt more inclina- tion to thwart, than to promote, his views ; he artfully prevented Milhet's access to theking, and the mission entirely failed.
The British this year established a post at bayou Manshac, the southwesternmost point of their posses- sions in North America. A number of traders had opened stores in the neighbourhood, from which the planters on the right bank of the Mississippi obtained their supplies, and where they found a sure sale for every thing they could raise. A part of the thirty- fourth regiment was sent to garrison the post : but, in the summer, the appearance of the weather, indu-
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cing the apprehension it might fall a victim to disease, it was removed beyond Natchez.
While the people of Louisiana were thus distres- sed by the thought of being severed from the domin- ions of France, those dissentions prevailed in the Bri- tish provinces on the Atlantic, which about ten years- after, broke asunder the political ties which united them to the mother country. On the twenty-fitth of October, commissioners from the assemblies of Mas- sachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and South Carolina, met in the city of New York. They published a declaration of the rights and grievances of the colonists-asserted their exclusive right to tax themselves, and to the trial by jury, unequivocally expressing the attachment of the colonists to the mo- ther country. They recommended to the several co- lonies to appoint special agents, with instructions to unite their utmost endeavours, in soliciting a redress of grievances.
The fall was extremely sickly. D'Abadie died, and the supreme command of the province devolved to Aubry, the senior military officer.
The West India seas were at this time greatly in- fested by pirates ; and on the eleventh of March 1766, the sensibility of the inhabitants of New Orleans was much excited on the arrival of the sloop Fortune, of that port, which on her return picked up, near the is- land of Cuba, a small boat, in which madam Desnoy- ers, a lady of St. Domingo. had been committed to the mercy of the waves, with a child, a sucking babe, and a negro woman, by a pirate, who had captured a vessel (in which she was going from the Spanish to the French part of St. Domingo,) and had murdered her husband. They had been seven days in the boat when they were taken up. She was received, with
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great cordiality, and after she had spent a few months in New Orleans, the means were furnished her of re- turning to her friends.
Although Jean Milhet had informed his countrymen of the ill success of his mission, they still flattered . themselves with the delusive hope that the cession might be rescinded. Upwards of two years had now elapsed, since the king had directed d'Abadie to surrender the province to any officer who should come to take possession of it for the king of Spain, and that monarch did not appear to have taken any measure to obtain it. These fond hopes vanished, in the sum- mer, by intelligence from Havana, that Don Antonio de Ulloa, the officer appointed by Charles the third to the government of Louisiana, had arrived in that city : from whence, on the tenth of July, he addressed a letter to the superior council of the province, ap- prising them, that having been honored with the king's command to receive possession of the colony, he would soon be with them for this purpose, and ex- pressing his hope that his mission might afford him a favourable opportunity, of rendering them and the other inhabitants any service they might require.
Don Antonio was known in the republic of letters, as an able mathematician, who had accompanied La Condamine, Bourguet and Godin, for the purpose of determining the figure of the earth, under the equator.
He landed at New Orleans, in the fall, with two companies of infantry, under the orders of Piernas. He was received with dumb respect, and declined exhibiting his powers, intimating he wished to delay receiving possession of the country, until such num- ber of the Spanish forces arrived, as would authorise the departure of those of France.
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a party of the twenty-first regiment ; it was called Fort Bute. The trade, carried on in this neighbourhood, at Baton Rouge and Natchez, increased considera- bly ; the French supplied themselves with goods at those places, and British vessels were almost contin- ually anchored, or fastened to the trees, a little above New Orleans. Guinea negroes were now introduced by these vessels, or brought from Pensacola through lakes Pontchartrain to bayou Manshac and Baton Rouge. The facility, thus afforded to French plant- ers to supply themselves with slaves, was the origin of the fortunes of many of them.
Ulloa visited the several posts of the province, and spent a considerable time in Natchitoches.
According to a census of the inhabitants of the pro- vince which was taken this year, it appears it had one " thousand eight hundred and ninety-three men, fit to bear arms; one thousand and forty-four marriagea- ble women; one thousand three hundred and seventy five boys, and one thousand two hundred and forty four girls ; in all, five thousand five hundred and fifty- six white individuals. The blacks were nearly as numerous.
This year, the province was visited by a disease. not dissimilar to that now known as the yellow fever. It was severely felt in West Florida, where a number of emigrants had lately arrived. Sixteen families of French protestants, transported at the expense of the British government on the river Escambia, consisting · of sixty-four persons, were almost entirely swept away by the deleterious sickness.
Ulloa, in the following year, went to the Balize to await the arrival of a Peruvian lady, the marchioness of Abrado, who landed and whom he married, soon af- ter. He was then in the fifty-first year of his age.
Soon after his return to New Orleans, he received
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a considerable reinforcement of troops from the Ha- vana, and although again pressed to publish his com- mission and take formal possession of the country, he persisted in delaying this.
He sent two companies to build a fort, on the left bank of the Mississippi, below bayou Manshac, with- . " in four hundred yards of Fort Bute; two other com- panies were sent on the same service, on the opposite side, a little below Natchez, and two others on the left side of Red river, on an eminence between Black river and the Mississippi. A stronger detachment was sent to the Illinois : but its commanding officer was instructed not to interfere with the civil concerns of the inhabitants, who continued under the orders of St. Ange, the British commandant having died.
General Phineas Lyman, contemplating a large es- tablishment on the Ohio, applied to parliament, for an extensive grant of land. He enforced the propri- ety of the measure by the argument that there could be but little danger of the colonies becoming indepen- dent, if confined to agricultural pursuits, and the in- habitants dispersed over the country. "A period" said he, "will no doubt arrive, when North America will no longer acknowledge a dependence on any part of Europe; but it seems to be so remote, as not to be at present an object of rational policy or human preven- tion, and it will be made still more so, by open- ing new schemes of agriculture, and widening the space which the colonists must first occupy.
Jean Milhet now returned from France ; his pro- tracted absence had kept the hopes of his country- men alive, and when his presence among them, put an end to every expectatation from his mission, they became exasperated, and began to manifest their ill disposition towards Ulloa, who, although he continu- ed to decline an official recognition, had gained a
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powerful influence over Aubry, which was exercised to the injury of some of the colonists.
On the seventeenth and eighteenth of January, 1768, the most intense cold, of which there is any re- membrance, was felt in Louisiana. The river was frozen before New Orleans for several yards, on both sides. The orange trees were destroyed throughout the province.
Partial meetings were had in the city and at the German coast ... In the latter place, a perfect unanim- ity prevailed. Father Barnabé, a capuchin mission- ary, who was curate of that parish, took an active.part with the most influential of his flock. At last, the pro- ple of the province were invited to a general meet- ing at New Orleans, to which every parish sent its wealthiest planters. Lafreniere was again the principal speaker, and was supported by Jean Mil- het, Joseph Milhet, his brother, and Doucet, a lawyer, lately arrived from France. The proceed- ings terminated by the subscription of a petition to the superior council to order Ulloa and the principal officers of the Spanish troops away. It was ciculated through the province, and received five hundred and fitty respectable signatures. The printing of it was authorised by the ordonnateur, and it was circulated in every parish.
The French, as well as the few Spaniards who had come to the province, blamed the obsequiousness of Aubry towards Ulloa. They believed that the for- mer's instructions might be, occasionally to consult the latter, but they thought that nothing could autho- rise the subserviency of the French chief to a Span- ish officer. who refused to avow the authority with which he was clothed.
Lafreniere having introduced the petition of the inhabitants to the council, this tribunal which was
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