USA > Louisiana > The history of Louisiana : from the earliest period, Volume I > Part 7
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A party of these Indians attacked him at night, in the latter part of January following, by torch light. The torches were formed of a grass, which made into a rope, takes and retains fire like a match. The Chickasaws darted arrows, armed with this grass thus lighted, on the huts of their invaders. prin- cipally those used as stables, thus setting the proven- der on fire; several horses were burnt at their man- gers, to which they were made fast with small chains. The Indians, hovering round their enemy, became visible only when they agitated their torches. The musketry, artillery and cavalry, however, soon com- pelled them to disperse; the Spaniards had forty
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men and fifty horses killed in this attack. Soto re- moved his camp to what he conceived a more de- fensible spot, about three miles to the west. But notwithstanding his utmost vigilance and the alert- ness of his men, the army, while it remained in the country of the Chickasaws was incessantly harrassed by hovering parties, and every individual who strag- gled to any distance from the camp, was almost in- stantly made a prisoner or killed.
Early in April, Soto marched north-westerly thro' the country of the Choctaws, and the western parts of the present state of Mississippi and Tennessee. He reached the mighty stream, then called by the Indians Cicuaga and now Mississippi, a little below the lowest Chickasaw bluff. Having employed some time in building flats, he overcame without much difficulty the opposition made by the Indians to his crossing it. On the western bank, he proceeded as high up as White River, and then downwards ina circuitous route, to avoid the swampy shore, through the present territory of the Arkansas, to his winter quarters. On the left side of the Mississippi, the Spaniards met with the same reception from the In- dians, as on the opposite. At titnes the natives were confident and friendly, at others reserved, often cruel and treacherous, rarely, though some times, approach- ing in hostile array.
In the spring, the army proceeded southerly by slow marches ; but in the beginning of the summer, fatigue, dearth of provisions, the intense heat and the impure air of the swamps. greatly injured the health of the Spaniards; many sickened and died. At last after long and frequent halts, the army reached the mouth of Red River. Here the chief was seized with a fever, the mortal character of which became mani- fest in a few days. It was not long before he became
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conscious of his situation, and he contemplated ap- proaching dissolution with composure. He appoint- ed Luis Muscoso de Alvarado his successor, calmly conversed with his officers on the most proper move- ments of the army, had almost all the individuals in it brought to his bed side, received their oaths of fidelity to the future chief, recommended to the men obed- iance to him, and affection to each other, discipline, unanimity and perseverance. Then, giving his re- maining moments to the rites of the church of Rome, expired about the 30th of June.
He was in his forty-second year-ambitious to have his name as conqueror of Florida, in the page of his- tory, between those of Cortez and Pizarro, the con- querors of Mexico and Peru : he spent in this scheme an immense fortune, acquired in the conquest of the latter kingdom, and was the indiscreet cause of the death of the greatest portion of his followers, without any advantage to his country or himself. In republics, as wealth is seldom acquired with great rapidity and ease, and is more generally divided, it is seldom so profusely lavished, and it rarely enables the possessor to command the sacrifice of the lives of men to his am- bitious views.
His remains were inclosed in a strong coffin, which was filled with bullets and sunk in the Mississippi, op- posite to the mouth of Red River, to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Indians.
In the meanwhile, the plan of settling a colony in Canada, though abandoned by the monarch, had been resumed by individuals, in France. Francis de la Roque, Lord of Robertval, a man of considerable influence in the province of Picardy, had solicited Francis the first, to permit him to prosecute the dis- coveries of Cartier. He had been, by letters patent of the fifteenth of January 1540, created "Lord of
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Norimbegue, Viceroy and Lieutenant-General of Can- ada, Hochelaga, Saguenay Newfoundland, Belisle, Carpen, the great bay and Bacaloes."
The Viceroy, in the following year, sailed with five ships, having taken Cartier as his first pilot .- The voyage was prosperous. He built a fort (some say on the river St. Lawrence, others on the island of St. John) of which he gave the command to Car- tier. Leaving a good garrison in it, and a barque for the protection of Cartier's discoveries, he sailed for France, in search of farther aid for his colony.
Incessantly annoyed by the natives, assailed by disease, and unable to withstand the severity of the weather, the colonists prevailed on their chief, in the following year, to carry them back to France. Near the island of Newfoundland, they met Robertval, who, by solicitations and threats, induced them to return. Having restored order among them, he pro- ceeded up the rivers St. Lawrence and Saguenay to explore their shores. He sent one of his pilots in quest of a north-west passage to China and went back to France.
Muscoso, the successor of Soto in the command of the Spaniards on the Mississippi, conducted the re- mainder of the army up Red River, through that part of the country now called Natchitoches and Nagodo- ches, to a nation of Indians, whom from the number of wild cattle he found among them, he called los va- queros ; probably, in that part of the country now known as the province of Texas. Proceeding about one hundred miles further, the army reached the foot of a mountainous country. Muscoso had been induc- ed to march this way in the hope of getting to Mexico by land. He now determined. on the account of the distance which he received from the Indians, to re-
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trogade, and float down the Mississippi to the sea .- The army accordingly marched into winter quarters, at the mouth of Red River.
During the month of January, Muscuso employed his carpenters in the construction of vessels, to con- vey his men to Mexico. The neighbouring caciques, apprehensive that his views. in going thither, were to apprise his countrymen of the fertility of the land on the Mississippi, and to solicit aid to return and sub- jugate the Indians, leagued themselves for the pur- pose of raising a sufficient force to destroy the Span- iards, or at least to set fire to the vessels they were building. Garcilasso relates the league was so gen- eral, that the caciques, who entered in it, agreed to raise forty thousand men. The plot, however, be- come known to some Indian women, who attended the Spanish officers, and was disclosed to Muscoso .- The measures he took to defeat it, induced most of the caciques to withdraw from the league. Those who dwelt immediately on the river and their nearest neighbors, persevered in their intention, and collect- ed a considerable number of canoes and pirogues and made rafts. with the view of pursuing the Spaniards down the stream.
On the twenty-fourth of June, the vessels were launched, and soon after the army went on board; hides having been placed around the bows, as a pro- tection against the arrows of the Indians. Out of the twelve hundred and fifty men who were landed at the bay del Spiritu Santo, there remained now but three hundred and fifty, and the three hundred and fitty horses were reduced to thirty. On the second day after their departure, the Indian fleet hove in sight towards noon; Garcilasso says, it consisted of one thousand pirogues, canoes or rafts of various sizes : the largest containing eighty men and the least hav-
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ing four oars on each side. Each: pirogue was neatly painted in and outside, with blue, red, yellow or white. The oars and feathers, bows and arrows of the warriors in each pirogue, was of the same colour with it. The oars were plied in measure and cadence. the rowers singing to mark the time. The fleet advanced in five divisions, each pouring a volley of arrows, as it passed the Spaniards; the pursuit was continued during ten days, when it was given up. Almost every Spaniard was wounded, and of the thirty horses that were embarked, twenty-two were killed. The Spaniards had been unable to defend themselves. having no longer any powder.
Muscoso perceiving a village near the shore, and concluding he was approaching the sea, deemed it prudent to land one hundred of his men in quest of . provisions. As they advanced towards the village, the Indians left it, flying in all directions. The Spa- niards found in it abundance of corn, venison and dried fruit. But a part of the Indian fleet, having landed above, a junction was formed between it and the Indians of the village, and they marched down against the Spaniards. who were compelled to re- turn in great haste to their shipping; leaving their horses behind, which the Indians destroyed with their arrows.
Four days after. the Spaniards reached the sea, and sailing slowly along the coast, arrived at Panuco, a port distant about sixty leagues from the city of Mexico.
. Garcilasso de la Vega, who has written the best account that has reached us of this expedition, en- titles his work the history of the conquest of Florida. With as much propriety, an Engliah writer might entitle his memoirs of Sir Edward Packenham's ex-
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pedition in 1814, the history of the conquest of Loui- siana. Perhaps Garcilasso wrote more as a lawyer than a soldier, and imagining that this burthensome perambula ion of the country had acquired a title to the crown of Spain, considered Florida as thereby acquired, and called the act an acquisition or con- quest. So might the sailing of Cabot in 1198, in a vessel fitted out by Henry the seventh of England, be" called the acquisition or conquest of the northern continent of America. Although the name was not given, the effect was claimed ; and General Hill, in 1711, demanded the surrender of the fortress of Quebec, on the incontestible title, acquired to the crown of England to all North America, by the dis- covery, or occular occupation, of the country, by Cabot.
The sceptre of England, on the twenty eighth day of January 1547, passed from the hands of Henry the eighth, in the fifty seventh year of his age, into those of his infant son, Edward the sixth; and that of France, on the thirty first of March following, from those of Francis the first, in his fifty third year, into those of his son, Henry the second. Francis . had entirely lost sight of the new world, during the war with England, in the latter part of his reign.
History has not recorded any attempt of Henry the eighth, to extend his dominions to the western hemisphere. English vessels, however, were em- ployed during his reign, in the fisheries of New- foundland ; and, in the reign of his youthful succes- sor, was passed the first English statute, which relates to America. Its object was to repress the extortions of the officers of the Admiralty, who de- manded a duty, or part of the profits made on every voyage to Ireland, Iceland or Newfoundland .- 2 Ed. vi. 6.
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Edward died in 1553, at the age of sixteen, and - was succeeded by Mary, his sister.
America does not appear to have attracted the attention of this princess, nor that of Henry the se- cond of France, who prosecuted the war his father had begun with England. At the conclusion of it, he entered into a league with the elector of Saxony and the Margrave of Brandenburg, against Charles the first; but when his antagonist had reconciled himself to his German adversaries, Henry was left to maintain the war alone. Philip the second of Spain, on the abdication of his father in 1556, pro- secuted it with great vigor, aided by the English, whose queen he had married.
Mary, who ended her life, on the seventh of No- vember 1558, at the age of forty one, without issue, had for her successor Elizabeth, her sister; and on the 10th of July of the following year, Henry the second died, at the same age, in consequence of a wound he had accidentally received, in a tourna- ment. The wars, that desolated France during al- most the whole reign of this prince, were probably the cause that the French made no progress in the new world.
His son and successor, Francis the second, the husband of the unfortunate Mary Stuart of Scotland, reigned but seventeen months. and was succeeded by Charles the ninth. Henry'second son.
In the beginning of Charles's disturbed reign, Ad- miral Coligny sought in Florida, an asylum for his protestant adherents. He equipped two ships at Dieppe, under the direction of Jean Ribaud, whom. he put at the head of a small military force, and a considerable number of colonists. Ribaud weighed anchor, on the eighteenth of February 1562, and made land in the thirtieth degree of northern lati-
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. tude, near a cape, to which he gave the name of Cap Français: it is one of the promontories of the estuary on which the town of St. Augustine now stands. He landed on the banks of the river St. Mary, which now separates Georgia from Florida. He called it the river of May. from the circumstance of his enter- ing on the first day of that month. The Indians received him with much hospitality. He erected a column on the banks of the stream, and affixed to it an escutcheon of the armorial of France, in token of his having taken solemn possession of the country. After a short stay, he proceeded northerly to an island. at the mouth of Edisto river, in the present state of South Carolina. He called this stream the great river, a fort which he erected on the .island Charles's Fort, or Arx Carolina, and the place, before which he anchored, Port Royal; an appellation. which it retains at this day. Having settled his colony around it, he placed Albert at the head of the colonists, and returned to France. Although he had been very friendly received by the natives, he in vain endeavoured to prevail on some of them to accompany him.
Albert visited the Indian tribes near the fort, and found them all disposed to live on the most friendly terms with the whites. These were more anxious to ramble over the country, in search of mines of the precious metals, than to till the earth; and the stock of provisions left by Ribaud, although conside- sable, was at last exhausted. This chief, on his arrival in France, had found his countrymen dis- tracted by a civil war, and his patron out of favour at court, so that he was unable to procure for the colony the needed supplies he had come after. . For awhile, Albert procured relief from the natives; corn and peas were obtained in tolerable abun-
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dance; but fire consumed the building in which the succour had been stored. The Indians became unable or unwilling to minister to the encreasing wants of the colonists. The distress, attending the penury that followed, heightened the discontents which the ill conduct or misguided severity of Al- bert had excited, and the colonists rose against and slew their chief.
Nicholas Barré was called by the insurgents to the supreme command. They had ascertained that . there was no gold mine near them, and thought it preferable to return to the old world, than to seek a scanty and precarious subsistance by labour, in the new. Unanimity strengthened their efforts; a ves- - , sel was built and corked with Spanish beard; ropes were made of grass, and sails, with the tents, bags and linen cloth that remained ; but as famine drove them from the land. the stock of provisions they carried to sea. was not abundant; calms retarded their progress : they were reduced to a scanty ration of eighteen grains of corn a day to each man; and the moment came when there was not a single grain to deal out. Lots were cast. and the wretch point- , ed out by chance, tamely submitted his neck to the butcher's knife, to appease the hunger of his companions. Soon after this. they were met by an English ship, which enabled them to reach France.
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Coligny had been restored to favour. and he did not solicit in vain his sovereign's aid, for the prose, cution of his plan to settle a colony in Florida. Three ships were fitted out at Havre de Grace ; and Laudonniere to whom the command of them was given. sailed on the twenty second of April, 1564,. and landed on the shores of the river St. Mary, near the monument, erected two years before by Ribaud,
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as an evidence of his having taken possession of the country around it, in the name of Charles the ninth.
The Indians manifested great joy, at the arrival of the French, and led Laudonniere to the column. He directed a fort to be built, on the southern bank of the stream, and called the country Caroline, in" honor of his king. Parties of his men went in dif- ferent directions, to explore the country. The In- dians, discovering that the precious metals were the main object of the pursuit of the whites, played on their credulity, amused them with fanciful stories and pointed to the westward, as the part of their country, in which mines of gold could be found. No success attended a search for metals ; but a ship arrived from France, laden with provisions.
Laudonniere's administration did not please the colonists. A mutiny ensued, but its consequences were not so fatal to the chief, as the former had been to his predecessor. Some of the mutineers possess- ed themselves of two barques, which Laudonniere had caused to be constructed, and sailed on a pi- ratical cruize down the canal of Bahama, towards . the Havana.
On the third of August, in the following year, Sir John Hawkins, a renowned English navigator, visit- ed Caroline, with four vessels. Laudonniere ob- tained one of them, and made preparations to sail in her for France. He was near his departure, when, on the twenty-fifth a small fleet, was descried approaching the coast. It consisted of seven sail, and was commanded by Ribaud. Complaints against . Laudonniere had been made to the King; he was represented as oppressing the men under him, and" it had been strenuously urged, that, unless he was recalled, there was much ground to apprehend that Nie garrison would redress their own wrongs, in the
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same manner as the former colonists had redress- ed theirs. Ribaud was accordingly appointed governor of Caroline, and instructed to send his predecessor home. Contrary winds compelled the fleet to seek shelter successively in the ports of Havre de Grace and Portsmouth ; it had sailed from the latter towards the middle of June, and the pas- sage had been tedious. Ribaud had hardly deliver- ed the minister's despatches to Laudonniere, when a Spanish fleet hove in sight.
Philip the second. apprised of the progress of the French in Caroline, had ordered a fleet to be equip- ped at Cadiz, under the orders of Don Pedro Menen- dez, for the purpose of destroying their colony. Don Pedro had sailed on the twenty-ninth of June. At the departure of Ribaud from France, notice of the preparations making at Cadiz had reached Pa- ris, and although the object of them was not known, an attack on Caroline was suspected. He was, therefore, instructed. whilst he was charged, to at- tempt nothing against the rights of the Spanish King, to resist any encroachment, on those of his own sove- reign.
Don Pedro landed near the mouth of a stream, which the French had called the river of the dol- phins, to which he gave the name of St. Augustine, who, on the day of his arrival was honored in the Romish Church: it is now known by that of St. John. He took formal possession of the country in Philip's name, and gave orders for the immediate erection of a fort. Ribaud thought it best to set sail. . and attack the Spanish fleet, before the land forces could be put a shore, and invest the French fort. Leaving therefore a few men with Laudonniere, he took in all the rest. and hoisted sail. A violent storm overlook and dispersed his vessels, and drove
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several of them on shore. In the meanwhile, the Spanish chief had landed his troops and marched to- wards the fort. He reached it, on the nineteenth of September. before sun rise. The weather was foggy, and the Spaniards were in the fort, while several of the French were still in bed. An immediate slaugh- ter began. But Laudonniere, with a few of his men, effected his escape, on board. of a vessel, in which they sailed for France.
Don Pedro now went in quest of Ribaud; he found him at anchor: after a parley of twenty-four hours, the French chief surrendered his vessels and the men under his orders. Two hundred soldiers or sailors, having refused to yield themselves priso- ners, escaped during the night, and marched through the woods southerly. Notwithstanding his pledged faith, Don Pedro caused all such of his prisoners as were protestants to be hung or slaughtered. The Catholics, who were in a small number indeed, were spared. The bodies of those who were hung were left on the trees along the shore; and an inscription was set up announcing they were hung " not as French, but as heretics."
Laudonniere's fort was repaired and garrisoned, . and it, as well as the river on which it stood, was called San Matheo, after the saint, the festival of which was celebrated in Spain, on the day on which . Don Pedro entered the stream.
A strong party was sent after the men, who part- ed from Ribaud, the night preceding his surrender ; they were overtaken at a place, afterwards called by the Spaniards, Punta de Canaveral, in the 28th degree of latitude, and made prisoners.
Six hundred French are reckoned to have fallen victims to the cruelty of the Spaniards, whose force. at the end of this tragedy, is said to have been re-
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duced to four hundred, who were divided between. the forts of San Matheo and St. Augustine.
This is the first act of hostility, between European nations. in the new world.
Charles the ninth, took no measure to avenge the murder of his protestant subjects. The apathy of the monarch, of the court and the nation, excited the valiant spirit of Dominique de Gourgues, of Pont Marsan, in the province of Gascony. " Having sold his patrimony, aided by two of his friends, he equip- ped three vessels in the port of Bordeaux, engaged two hundred men to accompany him, and left the Garronne on the second of August 1567. As he approached the river of San Matheo, the Spaniards mistaking his vessels, for some of their nation, fired a salute. De Gourgues, unwilling to undeceive them, returned the compliment, and passed on. He landed at the mouth of the river then called the Seine, now Alatamaha. With the neighbouring In- dians, who ran to the shore on the approach of the vessels, came some of Laudonniere's men, who had found a refuge in their towns. By their assistance, - De Gourgues was enabled to converse with the na- tives, who greatly dissatisfied with their new neigh- bours, offered to join him. if he would dislodge the Spaniards. De Gourgue- told them his voyage had not been undertaken with any hostile intention ; but, if the Indians desired it. he was ready to assist them in getting rid of their unwelcome neighbours. He was informed that besides the fort at San Matheo and St. Augustin. the Spaniards had a third, - which they called St. Helen, at a small distance to the south of the second : and their effective force, in the three, was about four hundred men.,
A number of warriors, from the more distant tribes,
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came and joined those from the sea shore, who had put themselves under De Gourgues.
The combined army was soon in the neighbour- hood of the northernmost fort. De Gourgues sent some of his allies to form a cordon around it, into. the woods; he went after them, accompanied by a considerable part of his men, whom he placed as near the edge of the woods as could be, without be- ing seen by the enemy ; while the rest of his force, in a small body, approached slowly in front, and halted out of the reach of the artillery of the fort. On their being perceived by the Spaniards, a strong detach- ment sallied out to attack them. De Gourgues then came forth, placing the detachment between him and the party they expected to attack. They were completely routed. He now turned against the fort, and the Indians contracting the circle, they had form- ed round it, rushed forward, giving the war whoop. The garrison, intimidated by this unexpected ma- nœuvre, became an easy prey. A great carnage ensued. A few Spaniards flew to the woods, where they were pursued and despatched by the Indians. De Gourgues had the survivors hung on trees along the shore, with an inscription announcing they were thus treated " not as Spaniards, but as murderers."
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