A history of Mississippi : from the discovery of the great river, Part 8

Author: Lowry, Robert, 1830-1910; McCardle, William H
Publication date: 1891
Publisher: Jackson, Miss. : R.H. Henry & Co.
Number of Pages: 674


USA > Mississippi > A history of Mississippi : from the discovery of the great river > Part 8


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HISTORY OF MISSISSIPPI.


Governor Periere, in his dispatch to the home government thus describes the pitiable affair :


"Such being the disposition of the Indians, and the hour having come, the general assassination of the French took so little time, that the execution of the deed and the pre- ceding signal were almost but one and the same thing. One single discharge closed the whole affair, with the ex- ception of the house of La Loire des Ursins, in which were eight men, who defended themselves with desperation. They made the house good against the Indians during the whole day. Six of them were killed, and when night came the remaining two escaped. When the attack began, La Loire des Ursins happened to be on horseback, and being cut off from his house by the intervening foes, he fought to the death, and killed four Indians. The people who were shut up in his house had already killed eight. Thus it cost the Natchez only twelve men to destroy two hun- dred and fifty of ours, through the fault of the command- ing officer who alone deserved the fate which was shared by his unfortunate companions. It was easy for him, with the arms and forces he had, to inflict on our enemies a severer blow than the one we have received, and which has brought this colony to within two inches of utter destruc- tion." It is gratifying to know that Chopart met a most ignominious death. Having hidden in his garden, when he was discovered no warrior would soil his hands with such a wretch, and he was beaten to death with clubs by the lowest class of the Natchez tribe. The women and child- ren, to the number of some three hundred, with only an occasional exception, had their lives spared. They were reserved for a life of slavery, and a life worse than any slavery. Gayarre tells us that :


"The Natchez being under the impression that all the French were destroyed throughout the land, that they had no longer anything to fear from such redoubtable foes, and finding themselves more wealthy than they had ever been, gave themselves up to the wildest exhibitions of joy. They wound up that bloody day of the 29th of November by a general carousal, and they kept dancing and singing until late at night, around pyramids of French heads, piled up


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as cannon-balls usually are in an arsenal. The agonies of the wretched women and children, who witnessed the slaughter of their husbands and fathers, and who, amid the demoniacal rejoicings which had followed, had to bear outrages too horrible to be related, and far more easily conceived than described. Long before the next day dawned upon them, the Natchez were in such a state of inebriation, that thirty determined Frenchmen, says Du- mont, could have destroved the whole nation. The Indians had set fire to all the habitations of the French which were reduced to ashes."


It will never be known why the general combined attack of the Natchez, the Yazoo, the Chickasaw, and the Choctaw tribes was not made as concerted. Various rea- sons have been given why the attack by the Natchez alone was precipitated, but the most plausible one yet suggested is that the children of the Sun, regarding themselves as strong enough to cope with the French single-handed, anticipated the day of attack to avoid sharing the rich spoil with their allies. The French had built a fort among the Yazoo Indians, which they called Fort St. Peter. This fort was erected on the Yazoo river, in what is now Warren county. It was located on the bank of the river, on a bluff now known as "Snyder's Bluff," and about twelve or fourteen miles from the city of Vicksburg. The commander of Fort St. Peter, Captain Du Coder, was on a visit to Fort Rosalie at the time of the massacre there, and perished with his countrymen. The Indians, embold- ened by the massacre of the French at Natchez, deter- mined to attack St. Peter, and had but little difficulty in capturing it, as the garrison consisted of only twenty men. These were all killed, together with the few families who had settled under the protection of the fort. Fort St. Peter was captured, and the settlement around it destroyed on the 2d day of January, 1730.


The French Governors for the period embraced between the years 1717 to 1730, were :


First-Bienville, who was. for the second time, appointed Governor, to succeed M. L'Epinay.


Second -- M. Periere, who was appointed to succeed Bien- ville.


CHAPTER IV.


MISSISSIPPI AS A FRENCH PROVINCE, FROM 1730 TO 1763.


T HE alarm created by the massacre at Fort Rosalie by the Natchez Indians, and at Fort St. Peter, by the Yazoo tribe, was so great that the entire colony became panic stricken. Such was the demoralization exhibited by the people that Governor Periere deemed it necessary to write the government on the subject. In an official dis- patch the Governor used the following language :


"I am extremely sorry to see, from the manifestation of such universal alarm, that there is less of French courage in Louisiana than anywhere else. Fear had assumed such uncontrollable domination over all, the very insignificant nation of the Chouachas, a little above New Orleans, which was composed of thirty warriors, became a subject of terror to all our people. This induced me to have them destroyed by our negroes, who executed this mission with as much promptitude as secrecy. This example, given by our negroes, kept in check all the small nations higher up the river. If I had been inclined to avail myself of the good disposition of our negroes, I could have destroyed all those nations which are no service to us, and which, on the contrary, may stimulate our blacks to revolt as the Natchez have done."


On January 5th, 1730, Governor Periere dispatched a vessel to France to advise the government of the desperate condition of the colony and to demand the assistance so imperiously required. It was apparent that a telling blow must soon be struck against the Natchez tribe. The bloody massacre of two hundred and fifty Frenchmen at Fort Rosalie, the capture and detention of nearly three hundred helpless women and children, who had been sub- Page 81 follower fre og 112 113 24


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needed." This they could not do, and so the negotiations fell through.


A census was taken in 1744 for the entire colony, which demonstrated that there were four thousand white people, including eight hundred troops, and two thousand and twenty negroes of both sexes. This included what are now the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Illinois and Missouri. It is worthy of note that the settlement of Natchez contained only eight white males, and fifteen negroes, and that of Pascagoula is put down at ten white males and sixty negroes, while no mention of Bay St. Louis, Biloxi, the original seat of the colonial government or Pass Christian, is made. It is hardly probable that these settlements had all been broken up, or that the entire population of old and new Biloxi, Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian, had entirely disappeared.


The Marquis de Vaudreuil was no more fortunate than his predecessor had been, for he soon became embroiled with Lenormant, the King's Commissary, whom he denounced to the government, in a dispatch bearing date in January, 1746, as having "retained for his private use all the mer- chandise which he ought to have delivered as presents to the Indians, and that he had them retailed by his clerk to the inhabitants." In another dispatch, dated March 9th, 1746, the Governor renewed his complaint against Lenor- mant, who he declared, was "starving the troops, and fail- ing to supply the different settlements in the colony with the necessary provisions, and the Indians with the mer- chandise that they had a right to expect." "By his fault," said the Governor, "I am placcd in a very difficult position, being destitute of the means of paying for scalps and of remunerating our friends and allies."


"In the year 1752," says Gayarre, "the Chickasaws hav- ing renewed their depredations at the instigation of the English, the Marquis de Vaudreuil put himself at the head of seven hundred regulars and a large number of Indians, with whom he marched against the enemy. But this expedition was not more successful than those undertaken by Bienville. The Chickasaws shut themselves up in some forts, which the English had helped them to construct, and 7


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which proved impregnable. Contenting himself with set- ting fire to some deserted villages, and destroying the crops and the cattle of the Chickasaws, the Marquis returned to New Orleans after having considerably increased the forti- fications at the Tombigbee where he left a stronger garri- son."


On the 9th day of February, 1753, another change in the administration of the affairs of the colony occurred. The Marquis de Vaudreuil, having previously been appointed Governor of Canada, Captain Kerlerec, a distinguished naval officer, was appointed to succeed him. The new Governor arrived in New Orleans, and was installed in his office on the day above mentioned.


"In less than six months after his arrival in the colony," says Gayarre, "the Governor was beginning to see the tide of a sea of trouble and vexation rising fast upon him. Many of the officers were discontented, and the Capuchins, whom he seems to have offended, were using against him all their priestly influence. The state of the colony itself was not such as to present a very gratifying spectacle to its Governor."


At this juncture Kerlerec wrote to the home government the following extraordinary letter, an official communica- tion which surpasses in its severity against the troops which the French government was in the habit of sending to Louisiana, all the criticism and complaint from any of his predecessors, from the days of Bienville down to that of De Vaudreuil, his immediate predecessor. In this letter he said :


"The German settlement has not recovered from the un - fortunate blow which it received from the Indians, in or about the year 1748. The inhabitants of that post with- draw from it insensibly, and therefore their numbers di- minish every day. To those who remain nothing can in- spire a feeling of security, and they are so disgusted with their present position, that many of them have petitioned me for lands elsewhere, unless I grant them an increase of troops for protection. They even desire that those troops be Swiss, on account of the sympathies and affinities which they have with the men of that nation, and because


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the Swiss, being disposed to hard working, will help them in their agricultural labors, and will marry and settle among them much more than the French are likely to do. Another reason is, that the troops of our nation, on ac- count of the horrid acts of which they are known to be capable, have inspired the German settlers, who have re- tained a proper sense of their worth and dignity, with a deep aversion to having with them any communication. I have sent to those Germans fifteen men of the Swiss com- pany of Velezand, and for the reasons here given, I solicit an increase of the Swiss troops! The Swiss behave ex- ceedingly well ; it would be necessary to carry their num- ber to three hundred. I would prefer reducing the French troops and augmenting the Swiss, such is the superiority of the latter over the former !"


Governor Kerlerec found himself no exception to the long list of his predecessors, in so far as the difficulties that had surrounded them were concerned. He soon learned what all of his predecessors had ascertained, that the position of Governor of the Colony of Louisiana, was no sinecure. The policy of buying the friendship of the Indians, which had been adopted at the outset, was a fatally disastrous one, as the French had learned by a long and sad experience, and in the commencement of the year 1754 Kerlerec wrote to his government in the follow- ing doleful strain :


"I lack merchandise to trade with, and, particularly, to make to the Choctaws the customary presents which they expect, and of which three installments have now become dne, without this debt having been discharged. This is the cause of their addressing me with vehement and inso- lent reproaches."


On the 21st day of October, 1757, he advised his govern- ment that "he had written fifteen dispatches in cipher, without receiving an answer, and that the colony was so defenseless, that it would yield to the first attack, partic- ularly if the French were abandoned by the Indians, who, so far, had been their allies, and who were showing much dissatisfaction." Continuing, Kerlerec wrote : "The En- glish have taken very efficacious means to capture all ships


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bound to Louisiana. They have established a permanent cruise at Cape St. Antonio de Cuba, and their privateers are spreading desolation among our coasters, and pounce upon them at the very mouth of the Mississippi. In a word, we are lacking in everything, and the discontent of our In. dians is a subject of serious fear. So far, I have quieted them, but it has been at considerable expense. Had it not been for the distribution among them of some mer- chandise, procured from small vessels which had eluded the vigilance of our enemies, some revolution fatal to us would have sprung up among the Indians."


In August, 1758, De Rochemore, the new Intendant Com- missary, arrived in New Orleans with some of the supplies which had been so long demanded by Kerlerec, and "never," says Gayarre, "had help been more opportune, for the Choctaws, impatient at not receiving their custo- mary presents, had begun acts of hostility against the French. According to a statement made by Kerlerec, the Choctaws could then bring into the field four thousand warriors, and the Alibamons three thousand." "These two nations," wrote Kerlerec, are the bulwarks of the col- ony, and they must be conciliated, cost what it may."


Five years had sped away-five years of misery to the poor colonists, five years of frightful embarassment, an- noyance and disgust to Governor Kerlerec-when the world was to be astounded by an act of supreme folly and fatu- ity, an act perfectly in accordance, however, with the prof- ligate and licentious character of the weak, vicious and imbecile Louis XV, by the grace of God King of France, and derisively called "His Most Christian Majesty !" Gayarre tells the disgraceful story thus : "On the 3d day of November, 1762, the Marquis of Grimaldi, the ambas- sador of Spain at the court of Versailles, and the Duke of Choioseul, the premier of the French ministry, signed, at Fontainbleau, an act by which the French king ceded to his cousin of Spain, and to his successors, forever, in full ownership and without any exception or reservation what- ever, from the pure impulse of his generous heart, and from the sense of the affection and friendship existing be- tween these two royal persons, all the country known un-


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der the name of Louisiana. This apparent act of gener- osity had been so spontaneous and unforseen on the part of the French king, that the Spanish minister had no in- structions on the subject, and accepted the gift condition- ally, subject to the ratification of his Catholic Majesty. On the 13th day of the same month, the king of Spain de- clared that, in order to better cement the union which ex- isted between the two nations as between the two kings, he accepted the donation tendered him by the generosity of his most Christian Majesty.


"These acts of donation and acceptance were kept a secret, and the king of France continued to act as sov- ereign of Louisiana. Thus, on the first of January, 1763, he appointed Nicholas Chauvin de la Freniere, attorney- general, and, on the 10th of February, he appointed as comptroller, Foucalt, who already held the office of Inten- dant Commissary. On the same day, the 1st of January, 1763, a treaty of peace was signed at Paris, between the kings of Spain and of France on the one side, and the king of Great Britain on the other, with the consent and acquiescence of the king of Portugal. Article seven of this remarkable treaty recites :


"In order to re-establish peace on solid and durable foun- dations, and to remove forever all causes of dispute in re- lation to the limits between the French and British terri- tories on the continent of America, it is agreed that for the future, the limits between the possessions of his Most Christian Majesty and those of his Britanic Majesty in that part of the world shall be irrevocably fixed by a line drawn along the middle of the river Mississippi, from its source to the river Iberville, and from thence by a line in the middle of that stream and of the lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain to the sea; and to that effect, the Most Christian King cedes, in full property and with full guar- anty, to his Britanic Majesty, the river and the port of Mobile, and all that he possesses, or has a right to possess, on the left side of the Mississippi, with the exception of the town of New Orleans, and the island on which it stands, and which shall be retained by France with the understand- ing that the navigation of the Mississippi shall be free and


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open to the subjects of his Britanic Majesty as well as those of his Most Christian Majesty, in all its length from source to the sea, and particularly that part of it which is between said island and New Orleans and the right bank of the river, including egress and ingress at its mouth. It is further stipulated that the ships of both nations shall not be stopped on the river, visited, or subjected to any duty."


"By this treaty the king of France renounced his preten- sions to Nova Scotia, or Acadia, and guaranteed the whole of it with its dependencies to Great Britain, ceding also Canada with its dependencies, and whatever remained of his ancient possessions in that portion of North America.


"The king of Spain ceded also to Great Britain the Prov- ince of Florida, with the Port of St. Augustine and the Bay of Pensacola, as well as all the country he possessed on the continent of North America, to the east and north- east of the river Mississippi.


"It will be observed that, by this treaty, the king of France transferred to Great Britain, in 1763, a part of the territory he had already given to Spain in November, 1762.


"Thus France, with one stroke of the pen, found herself stripped of those boundless possessions which she had acquired at the cost of so much heroic blood and so much treasure, and which extended in one proud, uninterrupted line, from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to that of the Mississippi. The adventurous and much enduring popu- lation which had settled there, and had overcome so many perils under the flag of France, and for her benefit, was coldly delivered over to the yoke of foreign masters.


"Tradition points to the spot called 'El ultimo suspiro del Moro'-the last sigh of the Moor, where the infidel king, driven away from his fair city of Grenada, looked back on her white towers glittering in the distance, and wept like a woman for the loss of that which he had not defended like a man. But he of France, the most Chris- tian Majesty, did he sigh at the immensity of his loss, he who never had the tenderness of a woman's heart, the pride of a king, or the courage of a man ?"


"The English called West Florida that portion of ter- ritory they had acquired from Spain. George Johnstone


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having been appointed Governor of Florida, soon arrived at Pensacola in company with Major Loftus, who was to take command of the Illinois district, and they both lost no time in sending detachments to take possession of forts Conde, Toulouse. Baton Rouge, and Natchez. Thus the British lion had at last put his paw on a considerable por- tion of Louisiana, with no doubt a strong desire and with a fair prospect of grasping the rest at no distant time.


"On the 16th of March, 1763, the king of France, who still ruled that part of Louisiana which he had not given away to Spain, announced by royal ordinance his purpose to disband the troops in service in Louisiana, and that in future he proposed only to keep a factory, with four com- panies of infantry for its protection and police. D' Ab- badie was at the same time appointed director of the fac- tory, with the powers of a military commander.


"The colonists and the Indians alike were indignant at having their country given away to the king of Spain, and each rebelled against being transferred, like cattle, to for- eign masters without their consent. The Indians were especially indignant when they heard of the treaty of cession, and declared that the king of France had no right to transfer them to any white or red chief in existence, and threatened to resist the execution of the treaty. D' Ab- badie reached New Orleans on the 29th of June, 1763, and Governor Kerlerec soon after sailed for France, where, immediately after his arrival, he was thrown into the Bas- tile. He served as Governor for ten years and five months, and like all of his predecessors had met only with in- gratitude from a profligate monarch and a base and cor- rupt court."


Thus, after nearly two-thirds of a century, the territory of Mississippi was finally and forever released from the rule of venality and corruption, a rule of profligacy and imbecility never surpassed on the continent of America, save only during the period of reconstruction in the South- ern States of the American Union. No better evidence of this can be adduced than a memorial bearing date August 15th, 1763, prepared by Redon de Rassac, who


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seems to have held an official position in the colony. This memorial is believed to be yet in the archives of the Marine Department of France. Among the causes given by Redon de Rassac why the colony had not prospered, and among the most potent obstacles to its progress, pros- perity and happiness, he mentions the following :


"1st. Under M. de Vaudreuil, half of the women sent to Louisiana had no children and were between fifty and sixty years of age.


2d. A good many families were located below the English turn, on marshy and unwholesome ground, requir- ing incessant labor to make and keep up the embankments. To this must be added the deleterious influence of poverty, and every variety of misery, the abjection of the men and the prostitution of the women.


3d. The officers are addicted to trading and converting their soldiers into slaves, a shameful system of plunder, authorized by the governors, provided they had their share of it; the dissolute morals of the military ; drunkenness, brawls and duels, by which half of the population was de- stroyed !"


When it is remembered that the women referred to by Redon de Rassac were sent out as wives for the colonists- women, for the most part, selected from workhouses, cor- rectional institutions and other reformatories-the force of the statement contained in the memorial will be more readily comprehended.


Before taking a final leave of the French government of the Colony of Louisiana, we refer once more to Governor Kerlerec, whom it will be remembered, was, on his return to France, imprisoned within the walls of the Bastile. Anxious to regain his liberty, and still more solicitous to keep himself before the king and the court, Kerlerec pre- pared a memorial to the French government, in which he sought to show the importance of converting that colony, in concert with Spain, to some profitable use. The minister to whom this memorial was referred, made this brief endorsement on the proposition of Kerlerec :


"Considering that there are in this memorial some de- tails which might point out to the court of Madrid proxi-


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mate causes of conflict with the English, and therefore render the cession of Louisiana less acceptable to Spain, it seems proper that this memorial be recast, so as to pro- duce a favorable impression upon that government."


"It is evident from this circumstance," says Gayarre, "and many others, that the French government considered Louisiana as a burden of which it was anxious to disen- cumber itself, and that it was so fearful of the king of Spain altering or withdrawing his act of acceptance, that it took every precaution to prevent his Catholic Majesty from rejecting the gift tendered to him. It is not to be wondered at, after all, that France felt inclined to fling away Louis- iana in despair at her want of success in colonizing that distant possession. Louisiana had proved a dead weight in the hands of the great merchant, Crozat, who had buried several millions in her wilderness. The India Com- pany had, with the same result, devoted over twenty mil- lions to carry into execution, on the banks of the Missis- sippi, the grand scheme in which her charter originated. With regard to the French government, it does not seem an exaggeration to suppose that it had squandered from forty to fifty millions of livres in the attempt to colonize Louisiana. Thus an enormous capital had been disbursed, no return had been made for it, and what was still more discouraging, was the conviction brought home to France that if she retained possession of Louisiana, she would be under the necessity of incurring still more considerable ex- penses, for, at the very moment when the cession of that province was made to Spain, D' Abbadie was informing his government, in repeated dispatches, that the colony was in a state of complete destitution, that it was a chaos of in- iquities, and that to re-establish order therein, it would be necessary to have recourse to measures of an extreme char- acter. Hence the anxiety of the French government to part with a territory which, at a later period and in abler hands, was destined to astonish the world by its rapid and gigantic prosperity."




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