USA > Mississippi > A history of the Mississippi valley, from its discovery to the end of foreign domination. The narrative of the founding of an empire, shorn of current myth, and enlivened by the thrilling adventures of discoverers, pioneers, frontiersmen, Indian fighters, and homemakers > Part 12
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HERNANDO DE SOTO. The spelling of his given name is as varied as his biographers.
Hecha ny River
PITTSBURG
1759.
IX
THE SPANISH IN THE GREAT VALLEY.
De Soto's Character as a Highway Robber Plainly Des- cribed-Raids through the American Wilderness that turned an Army of Glittering "Knights" into Wilder- ness Tramps-The splendid Courage of an Explorer compared with the stubborn folly of a Highwayman -The first thought of Proclaiming an American Nation-A peep into the Bed Chamber of a French Lady-"Ca ira, les Aristocrates a la Lanterne."
Brief shall suffice for the story of the first Span- ish expedition to the banks of the Mississippi, for the men in it were animated by the spirit of highway rob- bers, and nothing came of their work.
It was on April 6, 1538, that Hernando de Soto sailed from Spain on the expedition that led him to the banks of the Mississippi River, and gave him the
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credit of being the first more or less civilized man to see the stream and explore any part of the mighty basin. The story of this expedition has fascinated more than one poetic mind. "It was poetry put into action; it was the knight-errantry of the Old World carried into the depths of the American wilderness," says one writer. A calm study of the facts, however, shows that the work was detestable. Hernando de Soto had been a follower of Pizarro, and had enriched him- self by the merciless slaughter and robbery of the Pe- ruvians. Returning to Spain he was greatly honored because of his success, but neither his vanity nor his greed was satisfied.
"De Soto burned with ambition to signalize him- self equally with Cortez and Pizarro;" the region north of the Gulf of Mexico was the only one left to explore; this region was supposed to hold as much gold and sil- ver as the countries to the south, and to Florida De Soto would go.
In all, 1,000 men, of whom 350 were mounted, sailed from Havana on May 12, 1539, to Florida. "They provided everything which the experience of former expeditions could suggest, or avarice or cruelty dictate * * chains and fetters for the captives, and even blood hounds to assist in drawing them from their hiding places."
The soldiers were completely covered with armor that was trimmed with gold, and they were armed with swords, spears and cross bows, only eighteen hav- ing arquebusses, as the rude muskets of the period were called. They were gay "as if it had been an ex- cursion of a bridal party." Whether awake or asleep,
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they dreamed only of finding cities of red men, with gold-filled temples devoted to the worship of the sun. These temples were to be robbed. The red men were to be set to work as slaves in the mines, with armed men to keep them at it, and priests to baptize them as they expired under the lash or by more cruel torture.
Having landed at Espiritu Santo Bay, Florida, De Soto led his "steel clad cavaliers" on their "prancing steeds" into the wilderness of Florida. Thereafter, until the spring of 1541, this "glittering host" with their waving plumes ranged the interior in search of gold. The red men were slaughtered in open battle, and by deliberate butchery after they had surrendered as pri- soners. They were maimed and they were tortured, because they had no gold or silver. A thousand, chiefly women and children, were burned alive in a huge pub- lic wigwam at one village, after one battle. But the Indians were not cowed, for they never ceased to hover around and fight back.
The Spaniards had come to take gold from its rightful owners, but they never saw a color in the pan. Instead of finding gold they lost what they had brought with them. Their waving plumes were broken in the brush. Their glittering armor was rusted in the swamps, and battered by the impetuous red home- defenders. Their clothes were worn out. Their horses were killed. A time came, (it was in the second year), when they were glad to use rawhide shields in place of glittering steel, and the skins of wild animals in place of velvets and laces. With the war whoop of the red man ever sounding in their ears, many of them came at last to long for a speedy return home.
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But the vanity of De Soto held them fast. Others might return and admit defeat, not he. The poet says that ambition fired his fortitude, but in cold fact, it was sheer vanity, what would have been called splen- did courage in an explorer, was stubborn folly in him. The motive made the difference. So he led his droop- ing, fagged followers away from the port, (Bay of Achusi), where ships were awaiting to carry him to Cuba, and continue on through the wilderness.
It was now that De Soto found the Mississippi. On April 13, 1541, he reached a stream which he named Rio Grande because it was so large-the Mis- sissippi of modern days. Up this stream the expedition toiled for four days to an open country. There they encamped for twenty days while they built boats to carry them over, and, presumably on May 7, they crossed the river-fought their way across, for armed red men stood on the western bank and came afloat tomeet them.
A local historian (Monette) thinks De Soto crossed "within thirty miles of Helena," but he adds that "the changes of the channel in the lapse of 300 years may have been such as to defy identification."
From the Mississippi, De Soto marched west and north to a mountainous region-the Ozarks-and then gave up hope. Turning around he came once more to the Great River. He arrived in the spring of 1542, at the village of Guachoya, located on the Mississippi, twenty miles below the Arkansas river. Here, while building vessels, "the incessant fatigue of body and anxiety of mind, together with the influence of climate, brought on a slow, wasting fever; and here, on June 5, 1542, De Soto died."
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It had been the habit of the near by Indians, (Qua- paws they, and a fierce nation when defending their homes), to dig up the body of every buried Spaniard, quarter it and hang the pieces on trees and posts, as a warning to the predaceous host. To save the body of De Soto from such a fate, his followers made a cof- fin of a green oak log, placed the body therein, and, carrying it to the center of the Great River, sank it "in nineteen fathoms of water."
It was for an end like this that vanity and greed had carried De Soto into the American wilderness. His followers, under Luis de Mascoso, made another trip into the wilds to the west of the river, but re- turned in fewer numbers and with fewer arms and less clothing. No leader now had any thought but to es- cape the wilderness, and building such boats as they could, they launched forth on the Great River, on July 2, 1543, a remnant of 350 squalid, ragged wilderness tramps out of the plumed, glittering "knight-errants" that had come to fatten on blood and gold. So they reached Panuco, Mexico, and disappeared in the armies maintained in Spanish America by the throne of Spain.
If a first view of the mouth of a river gave its water shed to the nation whose explorers obtained such a view, then the Mississippi Valley was right- fully Spain's. Don Alonzo de Pineda discovered the mouth of the stream in 1519, and named it Espiritu Santo. In 1528 Cabeza de Vaca crossed the river, and then De Soto explored, after a fashion, a consid- erable portion of the valley. Spain might, indeed, have said that De Soto's expedition "took out the first pa-
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pers" for a claim, if we may use the homesteader's vernacular. But De Soto's expedition completely sat- isfied the Spanish in one sense; they would have no more of that region for more than 100 years. But it was a copy of the Spanish history of this region that in- spired La Salle in his work.
When, in November, 1762, the peace commissions gathered at Paris to end the Seven Years War, France was not only anxious to thwart as far as possible the British ambition for territorial expansion, but she was willing to get rid of the burden involved in supporting a governor in Louisiana. The last Governor, (Ker- lerec), had used 10,000,000 livres in four years-os- tensibly in preparing for war. Spain therefore once more sent a soldier of repute to the banks of the Mis- sissippi.
The treaty by which Spain acquired Louisiana was completed on November 13, 1762, but for a time the French retained control, and the people of New Or- leans knew nothing of the transfer.
It was during this period of Spanish ownership and French control that St. Louis was founded. Pierre Liqueste Lacede obtained a charter which gave "the necessary powers to trade with the "Missouri river In- dians, and "as far north as the river St. Peters." On August 3, 1763, Laclede, with August and Pierre Cho- teau, members of his family, (sons of his mistress), left New Orleans. He reached St. Genevieve on No- vember 3. Finding no houses large enough to hold his goods, he went on to Ft. Chartres, where he re- mained for the winter, spending the time in explor- ing the Mississippi for a site for a trading station.
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DON ANTONIO DE ULLOA. Governor of Louisiana, 1764.
Mississippi Valley.
At a distance of eighteen miles below the mouth of the Missouri river he found, on the west bank, "a growth of heavy timber, skirting the river bank, and behind it, at an elevation of some thirty feet," a "beau- tiful expanse of undulating prairie." To this spot he brought his party and possessions on February 15, 1764, and laying out a town site, he named it St. Louis.
Meantime M. D'Abbadie was sent out by the French government to rule New Orleans. He took command June 29, 1763, knowing nothing of the sale to Spain, but during the summer rumors of the sale came and in October the Government confirmed the rumors. Meantime D'Abbadie died and one Aubry succeeded him.
The French inhabitants were excited and alarmed. Commissioners were sent to Paris to petition for the repurchase of the territory, but in vain. In 1765 a let- ter was received from Don Antonio de Ulloa, a com- modore in the Spanish navy, and a man of letters as well. It was written at Havana, on July 10th, and an- nounced that he had been appointed governor and would "soon have the honor" to come and render "all the services the inhabitants may desire."
He arrived at New Orleans on March 5, 1766. He was a man of learning and an author of wide repute, but he was coldly received. A committee of merchants presented a petition that seemed to Ulloa to be "inso- lent and menacing" in its tone. The superior council, a legislative body, demanded the exhibition of Ulloa's commission. The French troops declined absolutely to enter the Spanish service, although the agreement with Spain had provided that they should do so.
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Because of the mutinous spirit of the people "the really mild and liberal Ulloa" did not show his com- mission, or take formal charge of affairs, but man- aged matters as well as he could through Aubry. He began a series of concessions for the benefit of trade. He allowed the French flag to fly. He did more to conciliate the people than he should have done, for his mildness was misunderstood, and as time passed, advantage was taken of it to create an insurrection. "Now it was that a deficiency in habits of mature thought and self-control, and, in that study of recipro- cal justice and natural right, became to the people of New Orleans and Louisiana a calamity." (Cable.)
On October 25, 1768, a great mob from the Aca- dian and German coasts entered the city. They were armed with fowling pieces, with muskets and all sorts of weapons." The cannon at the gates of the fortifi- cations had been spiked during the night. The people of the city rose in a body. Ulloa and his family were obliged to board a Spanish frigate to escape the mob. The superior council at a meeting, the next day, adopt- ed a report demanding that Ulloa leave the colony, and on October 31, he did leave, "enduring at the last moment the songs and jeers of a throng of night roy- sterers."
The leaders of the mob at first thought to set up a new nation, and they applied to the British of Pen- sacola for help. But failing to get help they abandoned this early thought of American freedom, and begged Louis XV. to take them back. "Great King, the best of Kings, father and protector of your subjects, deign, sire, to receive into your royal and paternal bosom the
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children who have no other desire than to die your subjects!" said the petition sent to Paris. Neverthe- less here was the first colony in America that enter- tained the idea of proclaiming her independence.
But both the thought of liberty, and the petition to "the father and protector of your subjects," failed. On August 18, 1769, Don Alexandre O'Reilly, landed at New Orleans with 600 picked soldiers, from a fleet of twenty-four ships, that lay at anchor in the Crescent. The jeers that filled the ears of the departing Ulloa were hushed. In place of them were heard the cheers of the thronging soldiers. But when the flag of France came down, and that of Spain arose, the people wept aloud in spite of bayonets.
O'Reilly was Irish by birth, but by long training had become a Spaniard in his mental characteristics. He had come to punish the leaders of the insurrection, but he concealed his thoughts. On August 31, he in- vited, with "professions of esteem and friendship," the leaders of the insurrection to attend a levee at his official residence. They accepted, and "while enjoy- ing the hospitality of his house, were invited by O'Reil- ly himself into an adjoining apartment," where they were arrested by armed soldiers. (Monette.) The men so arrested were Focault, former commissary- general; De Noyant and Boisblanc, of the superior council; La Freniere, attorney-general, and Braud, public printer ; Marquis, an officer; Doucet, a lawyer ; Villiere, Mazeut and Petit, planters. John and Jo- seph Milhet, Caresse, and W. Poupet, merchants, were arrested several days later. "The trials which followed were hasty, arbitrary and tyranical in the extreme."
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De Noyant, La Freniere, Marquis, Joseph and Caresse were convicted and sentenced to die, with confiscation of property. They were shot to death on September 28.
In connection with the execution of these French mutineers Gayarre gives us an interesting, and per- haps not impertinent peep into the bed chamber of a grand lady of the day. The property of the executed men having been confiscated, an inventory of the house- hold effects of each was taken. In the bed room of Madam Villiere the confiscators found a "cypress bed- stead, three feet wide, by six in length with a mattress of corn shucks and one of feathers on the top; a bol- ster of corn shucks, (split fine and curled, without a doubt), and a coarse cotton counterpane; six chairs of cypress wood, with straw bottoms; some candle sticks with" candles made of the wax of the myrtle bush. It was a bed room in marked contrast to "the hooped petticoat, the brocaded gown, the rich head dress;" and other fine clothing of the lady.
O'Reilly came to enforce the submission of the people. His power was ample and his methods ef- fective. Having shot five, he sent four more to Morro Castle, at Havana, where they were imprisoned one year. That ended the insurrection spirit.
Martin says the population of Louisiana, at this time, was estimated at 13,540 souls. New Orleans held 3,190, of whom 1,803 were free whites, 31 free blacks, 1,225 slaves. Martin gives St. Louis a population of 891, meaning thereby, apparently, the region of which St. Louis was the chief settlement.
The pictures of life under the early Spanish rule are interesting. "I found the English in complete pos-
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session of the commerce of the colony. They had in this town their merchants and traders, with open stores and shops, and I can safely assert that they pocketed nine-tenths of the money spent here," reported O'Reil- ly. But he soon "drove off all the English traders," and all other individuals of that nation.
The British having, meantime, come into control of West Florida, and the east shore of the Mississippi above the Bayou Manchac, and having moreover, the right of free navigation of the big river, had not only established trading posts on their own territory, con- tiguous to the French domain, but during the rule of D'Abbadie and Aubry had entered the city itself, ob- taining permits, no doubt, by bribing the officials.
When driven out by O'Reilly the British merchants, knowing that they had the right to the free navigation of the river, built "two large floating ware houses, fit- ted up with counters and shelves, and stocked with as- sorted merchandise"-the first houseboat of the Mis- sissippi known to the record. These were moored at Gretna, opposite the city, a good part of the time, but where poled (pushed), up stream when the exigencies of trade among the "Cajuns" or at the German Coast demanded. "Anything offered in trade was acceptable, revenue laws were mentioned only in jest, profits were large, credit was free and long, and business was brisk."
Martin makes an estimate of the business of Louisi- ana province, at this time, and places the annual ex- ports at : Indigo, $100,000; deer skins, $80,000; lum- ber, $50,000; naval stores, (resin, etc.), $12,000; rice, peas and beans, $4,000; tallow, $4,000-a total of
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$250,000. The smuggling trade done with the Span- ish colonies before O'Reilly's time reached $60,000 a year.
"The indigo of Louisiana was greatly inferior to that of Hispaniola; the planters being quite unskill- ful and inattentive in the manufacture of it."
The culture of sugar cane, introduced by the Jesuits, had not flourished. A M. Dubreuil, in 1758, had erected a sugar mill in the lower part of the present city, and a cargo of soft sugar was exported to France in 1765. But half of it leaked from the barrels during the voyage, and the sugar made thereafter, for a long time, was consumed at home.
Some time after O'Reilly arrived at New Orleans, a fleet of transports came up the river bringing 2,600 Spanish soldiers. The ships with food supplies failed to arrive in time, and provisions became so scarce that the price of flour quickly rose to $20 a barrel. In this condition of affairs came Oliver Pollock, a Balti- more merchant, with a ship load of flour which he offered to O'Reilly for the use of the soldiers, and the people, at his own price-a notable incident in the his- tory of American commerce. O'Reilly declined to fix the price and Pollock put it at $15. Then O'Reilly bought it and "granted to Pollock the free trade of Louisiana" for life-a privilege worth much more than five dollars per barrel on one cargo of flour.
O'Reilly sailed from New Orleans on October 29, 1770, leaving Louis de Unzaga, with 1,200 soldiers, to rule. O'Reilly having pacified, Unzaga was to concili- ate, the people. How he succeeded he tells in a letter to the Bishop of Cuba (1773), in which he says there
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are not in New Orleans and its environs 2,000 souls of all professions and conditions. Many Creoles (that is, as Cable says, "the French speaking ruling class"), had emigrated to St. Domingo, taking with them me- chanics and other valuable citizens-a movement which those who lived long enough, greatly regretted, less than twenty years later, when the negroes arose."
In place of these emigrants came many Spaniards, and in one respect the Spanish families were better for the country than the French had been, for they came to make Louisiana their home, where the French had, to a great extent, looked upon the country as an abiding place where those with sufficient influence could accumulate wealth. But not all the French emi- grated, and in consequence two social communities were created in one town-an official Spanish com- munity, and a land-owning, French-speaking aristoc- racy.
A curious result followed. Many Spanish officials, including Gov. Unzaga, who succeeded him, married French ladies. But "in the society balls when the un- compromising civilian of the one nationality met the equally unyielding military officers of the other, the cotillion was French or Spanish, according to the superior strength of the Creole or Spanish party." And "more than once" there was "actual onset and bloodshed," to determine which was the stronger, with duels a plenty next day.
Spanish Ursuline nuns, brought from Havana to teach Spanish, "found themselves compelled to teach in French, and to content themselves with the feeble achievement of hearing the Spanish catechism from
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girls who recited it with tears rolling down their cheeks" (Cable).
"I cannot flatter his majesty so much as to say that the people have ceased to be French at heart," wrote Unzaga in 1773, and Bishop Penalvert in 1795 re- peated the same thought.
Not only did Unzaga fail to make Spanish of the Creoles; he and his successors failed absolutely to create a colony worth comparison in any respect, save one, with the Anglo-Saxon communities at the North- east. When a stranger passed the thresholds of New Orleans he was "welcomed with such manners as were habitual in the most accomplished court of Europe." In "artificially graceful deportment" (Gayarre), and in that only, this Latin-American colony led all other American colonies. In all practical matters, the Lou- isiana territory was sunk into the rich soil of the valley by its official incubus.
The local historians tell of the convents, the churches, the hospitals and the fortifications that were built in New Orleans, but the most careful search of all that they have written shows but one indication or promise of the magnificent future that awaited the city. It was this-When the French Republic arose to "fire the Creoles' long-suppressed enthusiasm," the "Mar- seillaise was wildly called for in the theatre; and in the drinking shops was sung defiantly the song, ' Ca ira- ca ira, les aristocrates a la lanterne.' " A thought- even a hope of self-government, ill-conceived, and dimly seen, indeed, and yet unmistakable, was in the hearts of this people. They were lying in the cradle of a paternal despotism, but by and by they would walk.
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1
S"William Johnson. Bar' Majortieneal of the English Portes In North America.
X
PONTIAC'S WAR AS SEEN IN THE VALLEY.
The True Cause of Pontiac's War Considered-The Sav- age Victories at Erie, Le Boeuf and Venango-Fort Pitt twice Besieged-Saved by the First Armored War Ship known to American History-The Des- perate Fight at Bushy Run-A Comparison of Losses-The Universal Law of Compensation has been Written in Blood from the Blue Juniata to Jackson's Hole.
To learn the origin of Pontiac's war, one must go back to the evacuation of Fort Duquesne, November 24, 1758, because the Indians began to grow angry very soon after that event; and they were angered because of what followed naturally (alas!) as a result of British domination. As soon as Fort Duquesne came into the possession of the British, the traders
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began to stream through the passes. These traders had, in former times, defrauded the Indians by finesse. The French traders had made more than 700 per cent. profit (La Houtan), but both the British and French had always made many presents to the influential mem- bers of the tribes. When the French government could no longer assist the French trader, however, the Brit- ish traders had almost a monopoly of the Indian traffic, and the one brutally odious characteristic of the Anglo- Saxon-his contemptuous disregard of the rights of inferior races-displayed itself. Where the traders had bribed, they now bullied, the Indians. Whom they had caressed, they now kicked from their path. In- stead of adroit swindlers, they became highway rob- bers without masks.
Even the officers and the soldiers who replaced the French in the frontier posts after the fall of Quebec (1760), forgot, if they ever learned, that soldiers are trained solely to protect the weak. The Indian had been received at the stations with flattery and feasting ; he was now, with undisguised disgust, kicked from the premises.
This matter seems important because the Indians, as a mass, were not incited to go to war under Pontiac by any encroachment of settlers actually made in the territory France had surrendered. The prime moving cause of this war was the bearing of the traders and soldiers who came to and were stationed among the Indians. Pontiac and his long-headed sachems saw, indeed, that British colonial farmers would follow the soldiers to the British forts, and would there clear away the forests-destroy the hunting grounds-but
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MAJOR ROBERT ROGERS. Indian fighter, ranger, English spy, etc. From an engraved portrait of 1770.
Mississippi Valley.
they were not aroused to a point where they would resent the foreseen intrusion until the aggressive ar- rogance of the British forerunners became unbearable.
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