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 6
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"The males in the colony begin through habit to be reconciled to corn as an article of nourishment; but the females, who are mostly Parisians, have for this kind of food a dogged aversion. Hence they inveigh bitterly against his Grace, the Bishop of Quebec, who, they say, has enticed them away from home under the pretext.of sending them to enjoy the milk and honey of the land of promise."
The usual cargo of a ship from France in this per- iod, contained (to quote from the manifest of one of them), "goods, provisions, ammunition; Flesh-pots of France, rivalling, to a certainty, those of Egypt ; spark- ling wines to cheer the cup; twenty-three girls to glad- den the heart; five priests to minister to the soul and to bless holy alliances; two sisters of charity to attend on the sick, and seventy-five soldiers for protection against the inroads of the Indians. This was some- thing to be thankful for." (Gayarre).
As in Canada the Louisiana colony was governed by an Intendant as well as a Governor, the Intendant's chief business being to spy on the deeds of the Govern- or. In a letter dated December 7, 1706, Intendant Nicolas de La Salle says that the Le Moyne brothers were guilty of "every sort of malfeasances and dilapi- dations. They are rogues who pilfer away his majes- ty's goods and effects."
A partisan of Bienville writes that among men "none was better calculated than La Salle to personate the toad. His mission was to secrete venom. Fat, short, sleek, with bloated features and oily skin. * * * Puffed up in conceit, an eternal smile of contentment was stereotyped on the gross texture of his lips."
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A History of the
The Curate de la Vente, the leader of the priests, was opposed to Bienville, and Bienville wrote that La Vente "has tried to stir up everybody against me by his calumnies, and who, in the meantime, does not blush to keep an open shop, where his mode of trafficking shows that he is a shrewd compound of the Arab and the Jew."
Even one of Bienville's own family helped to stir up strife. A nephew, Major Boisbriant, fell in love with the lady who was in charge of the girls brought out, at the King's charge, to marry colonists. She re- turned his passion, but Bienville refused to allow them to marry, on the ground that the lady was of a lower social rank. Thereupon the lady wrote the story of her woes to the Colonial Secretary, and ended it by saying: "It is therefore evident that he has not the necessary qualifications to govern this colony."
It was in the condition of things that the troubles with the Indians should be never ending. The colony was weak in numbers. There were but 279 people all told in 1708-and yet they were full of arrogance in dealing with the Indians. The Chickasaws, being allies of the English, were steadfast enemies. The Choctaws, as enemies of the Chickasaws, were encour- aged to go hunting both Chickasaws and English, but their friendship was not always to be trusted. The Alibamons ( from whom Alabama was named), though nominally at peace, frequently waylaid and murdered the French for the sake of the plunder. And when they heard the French boast of the greatness and pow- er of the French King, these redmen asked with unconcealed contempt, , how it happened then
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Mississippi Valley.
that this great king did not send soldiers to avenge the many murderous aggressions under which the colony had suffered. "The very existence of the colony is daily threatened by the Indians," says one account.
But a worse picture than that remains. In 1709 provisions became so scarce that the colonists were reduced to a diet of acorns, and Bienville reported that he had been obliged to send half his soldiers among the Indians because he could not obtain enough food for them in any other way.
For ten years these people had been in the country. They had come there not merely to man forts but to people the region-to create a new French empire. They were at the gateway of the most wonderful farm- ing region of the world-a valley that can readily sup- port 200,000,000 people. And yet here they were in more desperate straits than the Indians whom they despised.
Few words suffice to tell of the actual work in the interior of the great valley by the French people. Late in 1702, Juchereau, of Montreal, established a fur- buying station near, if not exactly, where Cairo, Ill., now stands. He helped to make a profit from copper and lead ores that had been found not far away. In the course of two years he built a tannery, made some leather, shipped out a few furs and accumulated a stock of 30,000 buffalo skins. Then he fled through fear of the Indians, (whom he had wronged, no doubt), leav- ing the huge store of skins to waste.
Some prospectors went up the Missouri river, in 1705, and built a small fort above the Ossages, but
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A History of the
it was afterward abandoned. Explorers went above the Natchitoches on the Red River. The coureurs de bois from the upper lakes region, in some numbers, brought their furs to Mobile, but Bienville himself describes them as Canadian vagabonds leading a wan- dering and licentious life among the Indians, rather than additions to the new settlements. The indefa- tigable Tonti came to live at Mobile, but soon (1702) died of the yellow fever. In short it was, as a whole, a colony of paupers.
Finding that his politicians were unable to make the colony self-supporting the King, on September 14, 1712, turned it over to Anthony Crozat, a wealthy merchant who undertook the task of managing it on business principles for fifteen years.
Crozat was to have the exclusive privileges of the Louisiana trade, all mines of precious metals to be dis- covered were his on payment of a royalty of one-fourth of the yield; he was permitted to import one ship load of negroes per year; the King was to pay $10,000 a year toward the expenses of the garrison, for nine years. In return Crozat was to send out "two ship loads" of colonists a year, and pay all the expenses above the King's contribution.
La Mothe Cadillac, who, for a number of years. had been the governor of Detroit, (at which point the French located on July 24, 1701), was made governor of Louisiana, where he arrived May 17, 1713. The instructions from Crozat to Cadillac were brief in sub- stance, if multitudinous in words. He was to search "diligently" for mines, and to open a trade with Mexi- co-with the consent of the authorities, if that were
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Mississippi Valley.
possible, but without it if they refused. He was to trade with the Indians, also, of course.
From the settling of Biloxi, the French had traded
CANAD
Trad
Quebec1
Functie
The great R.of Ontahavas
Nipifin
Fort Trordenge
Lake of Huror
bake Ontario
Frontenac
M
The Catand of Ningar
Sake of Erla
New England
Fort Illinois
Pintebouy
Mumellos
eni
Han arm of the Mifsifipi which
ult operates its self for bo Leagues Labovey Bay of S. Efprit.
Carolina
FLORIDA
C. Apalacha
Provin
The Mouth of the Mysifipi
The Baham
Legeféa
R Madoleina THE
ULF OF MEXICO C. Florida
Banks of
A SECTION OF JOUTEL'S MAP, 1713.
with the Spanish of Pensacola, contrary to law, but now smuggling was to be part of the business com- manded by the ruler of Louisiana.
65
Virginia
The Ripper
The Entrans into the Bay of S. Lewis ý R. Baro
Ufof Florida
Mount
A History of the
The population at this time, it is said, included one hundred soldiers, seventy-five Canadians in the pay of the King, twenty negro slaves and 300 plain citizens, who were much scattered, owing to the fam- ines that had prevailed.
Cadillac wrote a frank description of his colony, on January 1, 1714, saying, as quoted by Gayarre: "The inhabitants are the scum and refuse of Canada; ruffians who have thus far cheated the gibbet of its due; vagabonds who are without subordination to the laws, without any respect for religion or the govern- ment ; graceless profligates who are so steeped in vice that they prefer the Indian females to French women.
But what shall I say of the troops, who are without dicipline, and scattered among the Indians at whose expense they subsist ?"
To learn the ways of life under this commercial regime we need only read the complaints of Governor Cadillac, as set forth in his despatches. He quarrelled with the soldiers because they were "without disci- pline," and with their officers because they refused to apply to the priests for the holy sacrament, "even at Easter." "He complained bitterly of one officer, Capt. Richebourg, of the dragoons, (an officer who came to the colony in the ship with Cadillac) because he "se- duced most of the girls" sent over by the King to be- come wives of the colonists. These girls, Cadillac says, very justly, "ought to have been respected," but he quarrelled with them also, on arrival, because they did not at once find husbands. He says they were left on his hands because of Richebourg, but Duclos, the commissary, whose despatches also show an all-
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Mississippi Valley.
absorbing interest in this matter, wrote that the girls were "so ugly that the inhabitants are in no hurry to take them."
Then came the priests who "insisted" that he ex- pel out of the colony two women of bad character. "I have refused to do so," he wrote, "because if I sent away all women of loose habits there would be no fe- males left, and this would not meet the views of the government. Besides, one of these girls occupies the position of a servant in the household of the King's commissary, who will, no doubt, reclaim her from her vicious propensities."
There is but one reason, of course, for making these quotations from the official despatches. It is to show clearly the character of these so-called settlers and their habits of thought while engaged in found- ing a French empire in America.
However, Cadillac did try to open trade with Mexi- co. In the voyage which Iberville made to Louisiana, in 1699, he brought an adventurous youth named Juchereau de St. Denis. After his arrival, St. Denis was a good soldier. He obeyed orders; avoided the ever present disputes between those over him as much as possible; made friends with the Indians, and went exploring the region west of the Mississippi, especially along the Red River.
In 1714, Cadillac sent him to Mexico. He went up the Red River as far as the Natchitoches, and thence struck out on the route to the Spanish settlements ly- ing along the Rio Grande, where he arrived in August. It was an eminently successful expedition, for St. Denis. He fell in love with the daughter of the Span-
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A History of the
ish Governor, was arrested as a smuggler, refused splendid offers to enter the Spanish service, escaped from prison, served as peacemaker between the fron- tier Spaniards and plains Indians, married the lovely senorita, and returned safe to the French settlements. A subsequent expedition made by St. Denis was not so fortunate even for him. He barely escaped from Mexico with his life. Every sou of Crozat's money spent in the two expeditions was lost, and large quan- tities of goods sent out in anticipation of a successful smuggling business were wasted.
The search for mines had a similar result. As a rule Cadillac employed coureurs de bois as prospectors, and they proved to be the fore-runners of the "grub stake eaters" of modern days. They accepted their supplies of food and instruments, and going to some favorite Indian village gave their goods to their friends, and remained there until the time came to report pro- gress, when they returned to Cadillac for further sup- plies.
Lead ore was found in southeastern Missouri. The lead and zinc mines in Missouri have been, and are now, the source of immense wealth. The French be- gan working the "prospect" and established a supply station for the miners, but they were incapable of mak- ing the ore profitable.
Crozat's commercial agents did something in the way of establishing trading stations. Natchez, Miss- issippi, and Nashville, Tennessee, have grown where trading stations were built in 1714. In 1717 Cadillac sent a force to occupy the land of the Natchitoches Indians, on Red River, and in 1719 Bernard de la
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Mississippi Valley.
Harpe built Fort St. Louis de Carlorette near where Natchitoches now stands.
Before Cadillac's time (in 1700), a mission for the Illinois Indians had been established where Kaska- skia, Ill., now stands. It was in 1717 a considerable settlement. Under the influence of the priests ploughs had been introduced, windmills erected and horsepower tread-mills constructed.
Crozat finding no returns even from the trade in furs, which lesser merchants had found so profitable, remonstrated, and Cadillac replied :
"What! Is it expected that for any commercial or profitable purpose boats will ever be able to run up the Mississippi, into the Wabash, the Missouri, or the Red River? One might as well try to bite a slice off the moon."
One quotation from the despatches will suffice for Cadillac's Indian policy. He wrote:
"I have persuaded the brother of the great chief of the Choctaws to kill his sovereign, and brother, pledging myself to recognize him as his successor. He did so and came here with an escort of 100 men. I gave him presents and secured from him an advan- tageous peace."
On June 22, 1716, Cadillac wrote a despatch say- ing :
"Decidedly this colony is a monster without head or tail, and its government is a shapeless absurdity." The minister of the colonies department, for a reply, added a postscript to a letter from Crozat, saying :
"The Governor, La Mothe Cadillac, and the com- missary, Duclos, whose intellects are not equal to the
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A History of the
functions with which His Majesty has instructed them, are dismissed from office."
On August 13, 1717, Crozat, having concluded that his intellect was not equal to the task of managing Louisiana on business principles, surrendered his con- tract to the King.
John Law, with his wondrous schemes of finance, then took hold of the colony through what he called the Mississippi company. Law at 23 years of age, fled for his life from England. By his love for deep play and his gallantries "he had squandered a fortune." In a duel he had killed a man-unfairly, it is presumed,- for he was tried, convicted and sentenced to be hanged, on a charge of murder. On the continent he intro- duced the game of faro, and won large sums-more than 2,000,000 francs, it is said. He established a private bank in Paris, (May, 1716), that received Government support. Louis XIV. had died on Sept. I, 1715. Louis XV. was then a child of five years, and the Duke of Orleans ruled as Regent. Louis XIV. had left France with a debt of 80,000,000 livres, while the new ruler could, at best, raise 9,000,000. Law proposed solving the difficulty of paying eighty mil- lions with nine by issuing notes based on the real estate of the nation-a million in paper money for every two millions assessed valuation of the real estate. The scheme was accepted. There was soon an abundance of "money" in the nation. Prices rose steadily; with each issue of "money" prices rose in geometrical ratio. Fortunes were made in a day. Law became such a favorite with the Regent that he "was admitted into all the licentious privacies of the Palais Royal."
70
LOUIS XV., KING OF FRANCE.
Mississippi Valley.
On September 6, 1717, when his schemes were dazzling all France, he floated the Mississippi com- pany. This company was to develop the boundless resources of the great valley-to take up the work in which Crozat had failed. The valley was to be peo- pled ; a great commerce between it and France created ; the smuggling trade with Spanish-America was to be promoted; mines of gold and silver were to be dis- covered and many of those of the Spanish were to be appropriated, while the fur trade, already established, was to be greatly enlarged. And all this for the benefit of Law's bank. England had, just then, a South Sea bubble. That company (it was established in 1710), did not fail until 1720, and it was therefore reaching its greatest reputation when Law floated his Mississippi scheme. Law was familiar with the plans successfully used by the South Sea Company to "boom" their shares, and his Mississippi company was managed in much the same way.
Pamphlets were distributed setting forth the won- ders of the Mississippi Valley. The deposit that could be filtered from the water of the river yielded gold in immense quantities, said these pamphlets, and bars alleged to be of this gold were placed in the shop win- dows of Paris. The liquid found in the cup of a cer- tain flower, in Louisiana, turned to a diamond in a single night, at a certain season, and diamonds from these flowers, as alleged, were also on exhibition.
Men of money fought for place in the line when the books of the Mississippi company were opened for subscriptions.
For a time, too, people-especially those of broken
A History of the
fortune, and all who were of undue greed-flocked to the company's ships that were sent to the Mississippi; but this human tide began to ebb within a year; for they learned the truth, on landing, of course, and they found means to tell the facts in France where their stories of hardship were exaggerated as much as the real productiveness of the region had been.
Then the company, under due license, resorted to press gangs to fill the necessary quota of emigrants. These gangs swept the beggars from the streets, the tramps from the highways, the vile from the houses of correction. With these were taken some whose sole offence was the mistake of having offended people of influence, while others were carried to the shipping ports in order to extort blackmail.
In spite of these frauds and outrages, however, some real work was done in Louisiana. Even John Law, though a thief and a murderer, was to leave his mark on the Mississippi River.
When Law's company took charge of Louisiana, Bienville, who was really the only man of notable ability in the colony, was made governor once more, and his first work under his new commission was to be of lasting importance to the Mississippi Valley.
The fort built by Iberville on the bank of the Missis- sippi had been abandoned. Bienville had wished to build a new one at a point higher up the river, while Cadillac ruled, but Cadillac refused permission. Now Bienville could do as he pleased, and the new fort was at once planned.
The point at which he determined to build is of special interest. In his travels through the neighbor-
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Mississippi Valley.
hood Bienville had observed that two bayous running from Lake Pontchartrain were "navigable by small sea-going vessels to within a mile of the bank of the
EXPLICATION DE CHIFFRES
Crand Bayou de S. Jean
" Eglise SL Louis Paroisse
2 Los Capucine'
3 La Corpe de Cardo
4 La Prison
5 Place d'Armos
2.2
6 Cazernes
7 Intendance
8 Magazins
...
9 Quartiere dos habitana
FO Couvernement
# Poudrière
12 Endroit ou étoit le Moulin
13 Briqueterie
14 Convont des Ursulines
15 Mouillago dos Vaissoaui
16 Mouillage dos Firoquos ou Batcaus
17 La Levoe
13 Petit Bayou ou Lavoir
19 Lo Marche
20 Fosse
21 Hotel Dist
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NEW ORLEANS 1728.
Mississippi." There was an Indian portage from one
of these bayous to the great river. Bienville had
passed his youth in Canada-he saw that a trading sta-
73
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A History of the
tion built where this trail reached the Mississippi would have communication with all points on the Great River and its tributaries, and at the same time, would, by the back door of Lake Pontchartrain, reach with equal ease the region to the east. A fort there would com- mand the river, and, in a way, Lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas, and the waters beyond.
On an unnamed day in February, soon after the arrival of his commission, Bienville sent "twenty-five convicts, and as many carpenters, with some voyageurs from the Illinois," to the river end of that portage trail. A narrow strip of dry land was found there. It lay about ten feet above the ordinary stage of the river surface, but had been formed by deposits of sediment made when the river was flooding high. This bank was plainly subject to overflow, and the slope toward the lake reached the swamp level a mile back of the river. But Bienville was willing to risk the damage that extra high water might do, and the convicts and carpenters he sent there, cleared away the moss- covered trees and underbrush.
Then they built on the height of land a straggling row of houses having log walls that were not snake proof, bark roofs that were not rain proof and chim- neys-fire places-made of sticks plastered over with thick masses of clay. And to these shelters came "three companies of infantry and a small body of colo- nists," on March 9, 1718.
In such fashion was the great city of New Orleans founded.
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LOUIS XIV., KING OF FRANCE.
V
INDIANS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.
The Pathetic Story of a Race of Children Who Were Taken from Their Play and Set at the Work of Butchers and Scalp Hunters-Indian Motives Com- pared with Those of the Whites-Story of a Kansas Real Estate Agent and Charlie Quapaw-The Mora- vian and the Quaker Methods of Treating Indians Considered-The Most Important Statement in This Book.
With the founding of the city of New Orleans the movement which was to people the valley of the Missis- sippi with the white race and displace the red men, was fully begun. For while Father Gravier was making ploughs and horse-power tread-mills at Kaskaskia, and Bienville was working after a fashion at New Orleans, the British colonies were spreading to the Alle-
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A History of the
ghanies. Gov. Spotswood of Virginia, with fifty fol- lowers, "Knights of the Golden Horseshoe," and "an abundant variety of liquors" went (1716) to the crest of the Blue Ridge, where with his eyes to the west "he took possession of this place, in the name and for King George the First, drank the King's health in cham- pagne, and fired a volley." From this height, or some other, he saw that "the British plantations are sur- rounded." The French are in position, he said, not on- ly to "engross the whole skin trade," but to "send such bodies of Indians on the back of these plantations" as might "greatly distress his Majesty's subjects here."
The remedy for these well-seen evils was to form settlements beyond the range, and in saying so Gov. Spotswood voiced the sentiment of nearly all the think- ing people in the British colonies.
Therefore mighty hosts were to gather, later on, at the passes of the Alleghanies-mighty, if few by count, and sometimes not well ordered. The volley which Spottswood fired while on the crest of the Blue Ridge, though fired with powder only, and heard no further west than the springs that fed the Shenandoah, -was in a way the first in the conflict that drove the foolish cackling French from their stations in the Great Basin, and with many whirligigs of dust and smoke, swept the red nations into the refuse heaps, unpleasant enough to look at, that we call reservations.
It seems necessary, therefore, to stop here and con- sider what manner of men these Indians were original- ly; what influence the white men had upon their char- acter; what rights they had in the land, and in what ways and how far their rights were violated.
76
.
Mississippi Valley.
In the days between Champlain's battle on the outlet of Lake Champlain, (1610), and the found- ing of the city of New Orleans, (1718), the important families or "linguistic stocks" of Indians occupying the Mississippi Valley were the Algonquian, the Siouan, the Iroquoian, the Muskhogean and the Cadoan. They covered the whole region save only for six spots, rel- atively very small, that were occupied by small com- munities, having languages of their own, the remnants, very likely, of ancient tribes that had been reduced to insignificance by the inexorable law of the survival of the fittest.
The location of these families are shown at a glance in a map prepared by Major J. W. Powell ("Linguistic Stocks of American Indians North of Mexico").
Of the different tribes into which the families were divided, some account may be given here. Along the Alleghanies were the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choc- taws and Creeks, though the Creeks were mainly found in what is now Georgia, and had an offshoot in Flori- da, called Seminoles. In 1785 they were supposed to number 70,000 souls. The Cherokees were Iroquoian, the others Muskhogean. One writer believes there were 9,500 warriors among the Southern Indians.
Northwest of the Ohio, in the 18th century, were the Shawanees, Delawares and Miamis, of Algonquian stock, with the Wyandots, (a remnant of the old Hu- rons), and as years passed, many of the Iroquois con- federation who were here called Mingos. Mingled with these, when the whites came to the Ohio, were indi- viduals from further west-Pottawattomies, Ottawas, Chippewas and Foxes. Andrew McFarland Davis,
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