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 8
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In other morals they were little better. They would lie for fun, and for gain. It is true that treaties be- tween the whites and the Indians were usually broken by the whites. It would have afflicted an Indian with syncope had he moved swiftly enough to get ahead of the whites in breaking treaties. Nevertheless, it is certain that the aboriginal Indians would strive by lying and deceit to gain advantages over their neigh- bors. And all of this but proves that he was a lower race of men-that is, not so far developed as the whites.
In religion the Indian believed in many super-
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natural beings or spirits. He did not believe in one supreme Gitche Manitou until the white man came. The early missionaries were led into error, in this matter, by asking leading questions. The religion of the Indian was, in short, a belief in devils-a be- lief quite as sincere and as intelligent as that of Milton, however. Among the Natchez, and apparently among some Arkansas Indians, they had arrived at that state of mental development where men were employed con- tinually as priests. It was a cruel priesthood. The whole system of Indian worship was, essentially, a series of attempts to bribe the gods into granting fa- vors and withholding evils, but their fear of devils was very much stronger and more influential with them than their hope of pleasures.
Nevertheless, if approached with sympathy, in- stead of prejudice-if the student is not quite sure that he has a monopoly of the knowledge of God- the Indian religions, so far as known, are worth study. The Indians saw in the blossoms of spring "the power that catches out of chaos charcoal, water, lime, or what not, and fastens them down into a given form," and they called that power a spirit. "And we shall not diminish but strengthen our conception of this creative energy by recognizing its presence in lower states of matter than our own," for it is "properly called spirit." He saw that the bird "is little more than a drift of air brought into form by plumes," and that "in the throat of the bird is given the voice of the air." A spirit was made tangible in this drift and voice of air. A god that was not always evil was found "in that running brook of horror on the ground,"
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the serpent. They believed gods move in a mysterious way their wonders to perform, and plant their foot- steps in the sea and ride upon the storm. As they gazed into the glories of the sunset they thought and said they "could almost see, through opening vistas into heaven." And when the milky way lay white across the vault of the purple night they said with hushed voices, "it is the pathway of the departed souls."
They had an unquestioning faith in the immortality of the soul. Whenever a Natchez chief died, says Father le Petit, (Jesuit Relations, vol. xlviii), "the women (wives) are always strangled to follow (him), except when they have infants at the breast, in which case they continue to live for the purpose of nourish- ing them. And we often see many who endeavor to find nurses, or who themselves strangle their infants so that they shall not lose the right of sacrificing them- selves." Neither by argument or force could the French keep these wives from following their dead chiefs. They had never heard of a city whose walls were made of diamonds and whose streets were paved with gold, but they dreamed of a land where lakes and streams and prairies and forests and hills and mountains forever charmed the eye; where the ills of life were un- known; where peace reigned; where friends gathered; where joy was untainted. And to that land they fain would go.
Unfortunately for the race the Indians saw the work of an evil spirit and nothing else in almost every case of sickness. The work of their medicine men was horrible and destructive. Their practices killed where rational nursing would have saved. The villages of the
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Indians generated diseases because of the utter lack of knowledge of the proper way to dispose of offal. They were inexpressibly filthy. They were worse even than the modern white villagers who dig wells between barns and cesspools, and ascribe the subsequent cases of sickness to the providence of God.
We think of the Indians as a healthy race, made robust by hardships endured in early life. It is a savage as well as an erroneous idea. The Indian suf- fered hardships and tortures voluntarily in order to toughen his fibre, and such acts helped him mentally, very likely, but they weakened his body. The lack of sanitation, the hardships of unsheltered lives, the prac- tices due to superstition, and famine due to thoughtless indulgence, were the chief causes of death among the Indians. Inability to cope with disease, and to look ahead to a time when food would surely be scarce, were the causes that exterminated some tribes, rather than war-that is to say, in the days before the whites came. Other tribes survived because their habits and practices were less destructive.
As one reads of the life of the Indians when the whites first saw them, and as one gains a knowledge of their lives as seen by whites among them, even in the modern days, it becomes evident that the red men were in many ways merely a human race less de- veloped than the whites, and with a smaller capacity for self-development. "They are like children," has been said by a thousand white men who knew them well. The words are accurately descriptive. They were, and they are children. In their villages they drummed and sang and danced, day and night ; they played tricks and
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cracked jokes and told stories that made the audiences shout with laughter.
To these tribes of undeveloped men-of children- came the whites bringing a book which, they said, (and believed), contained the Word of Life. Two courses were then open to the whites in their treat- ment of the Indians, and very good directions for fol- lowing each course were to be found in their Word of Life. There was the method of dealing with men which was laid down in the Sermon on the Mount. A notable command, (not yet fully comprehended), that was found in connection with the Sermon on the Mount plan said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," and the context of this command explained that it was to be applied more particularly to inferior people. The white men might have followed this plan, if they had comprehended it, but they didn't compre- hend it. The story of the Son of God coming to the earth to serve beings lower than angels was as pearls under their feet.
The other plan was found in the account of the Israelitish invasion of Canaan. The whites who came to America comprehended that plan very well, but they didn't adopt that either. They believed themselves the true and only accepted children of God, and that a Canaan was before them, but they could not bring themselves to wage a war of extermination against the red inhabitants. For they had left their homes proclaiming in one way and another that the first ob- ject of their migration was "to preach and baptize into the Christian religion, and by the propagation of the Gospel, to recover out of the armies of the devil,
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a number of poor and miserable souls wrapt up unto death in almost invincible ignorance, * and to add our myte to the Treasury of Heaven." They did not wish to add their "myte" by immediately exter- minating all the Indians.
Carlyle said that "true Guidance [is] properly, if he knew it, the prime want of man." It was the prime want of the red men, (and of all undeveloped men), beyond question, and it ought to have been given to him in a way that would have enforced "loving obe- dience." The thought is idle now, but suppose the whites had asked the Indians for pottery or baskets or corn, instead of furs, offering in exchange house- hold implements and tools as well as the harmless if silly mirrors, beads and trinkets. It is almost con- ceivable that all whites, being professed Christians, might have treated all Indians as the Quakers did some, or as the Moravians treated the Delawares in Gnadenhutten, (the story of which shall be told)- might have turned the wildmen into industrious, peace- loving agriculturists, thus deciding the land question before it arose.
It is conceivable that the whites might have given the Indian herded cattle and tame fowls, in time, and thus have fixed him in his sedentary pursuits, while they promoted his mental powers by a demand for the simple goods and ornaments he was able to make. They might have made a Gnadanhutten of every In- dian village in the land. This is the most important statement in this book. The Moravians took wild Delawares-Indians who lived wild lives, and were, moreover, exasperated at ill treatment received from
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the whites-and out of them made sober, earnest, stump-grubbing farmers.
There is even a practical side to this idle fancy. By adopting the Quaker and Moravian ideas, all the merciless slaughter, and, (here we are practical), the greater part of the infinite waste and expense of the Indian wars, would have been saved. We hope that this practical consideration may excuse the mention of such a sentimental proceeding as the application of Christian principals to a business transaction.
Sad to relate the white man did nothing like this. On the contrary the two white peoples who came to America in the Seventeenth Century utterly checked and turned back the Indian's natural current of evolu- tion.
In proof of this assertion consider the effect of the rum-how the squaws with trembling limbs hastened to hide all weapons when the trader arrived. Con- sider the smallpox and other diseases which the whites introduced among the red men.
Consider the effect of what is called the innocent trade that the whites established. The whites offered a variety of goods that were always tempting, and in some cases very useful to the Indians. But the whites wanted furs only in exchange and in order to get the goods offered for furs, the Indians abandoned all other pursuits to go hunting. The Indian had been "fast progressing from the hunter state," but the white de- mand for skins stopped that progress and turned him back to the slaughter of wild beasts. From 1610 until long after the end of the Eighteenth Century the whites assiduously cultivated the fur trade, and then won-
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dered why it was the Indians preferred the hunter's life to that of a stump-grubbing farmer! They made liquor the chief article of exchange, and yet the whites -even the historians-were disgusted because the In- dian became a drunken beggar.
Consider the effect of the guns which were sold to some tribes and not to others. Says the Jesuit Re- lation for 1659-60:
"The Dutch took possession of these regions and conceived a fondness for the beaver * * * and in order to secure them in greater number they furnished those people with firearms, with which it was easy to conquer ; it has also put into their heads that idea of sovereign sway to which they aspire, mere bar- barians although they are, with an ambition so lofty."
But the posession of arms and the greed of domin- ion were only the beginning of the cultivation of the red man's ferocity. In the journal of Father Le Moyne, written while on a mission to the Onondagas, in 1654, he describes at length a speech which he made to the Indians on August 10. This journal can be found in the Jesuit Relation for 1653-54, Thwaite's edition, p. III.
"I opened the proceedings with public prayers," says the Father and when that was ended, "I told them that in my speech, I had nineteen words to lay be- fore them." That is, he had nineteen propositions and statements to make, each of which was emphasized by a present. Of the first seven of these, nothing need be said here, but to quote the words of the father, "the purpose of the eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh pres- ents was to give each of these Iroquois Nations a
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hatchet to be used in the new war in which they were engaged with the Cat Nation."
A white missionary sicked on the Iroquois dogs to devour the unfortunate Eries. And the Abbe Piquet was the most active and the most influential man in Canada in instigating those bootless raids made by the converted Abenakas and Mohawks on the helpless set- tlers of New England previous to 1750.
Even that does not tell all the story. Read the following from Winsor's "Mississippi Basin," (pp. 242-243) :
"The several governments of the English Colonies," writes Colonel Stoddard at this time (1747) to Governor Shirley, "had for three years been persuading the Iroquois 'into a war wherein they had not any concern but to serve their friends, and they have left their hunting and other means of living and exposed themselves and families for our sakes, only to be left in the lurch.' * This failure of the English to support the Indians in wars which the savages undertook for the defence of the Colonies was nothing new."
This is a most important matter in any considera- tion of the character of the red Americans. Before the white men came "battle for plunder, tribute and conquest was almost unknown," says Powell, the best authority on the history of the red race. But from the time the whites came until the French rule in America was ended, the most conspicuous feature of the history of the white dealings with the Indians is found in the oft-repeated offers of rewards for scalps. The whites steadily incited the Indians to fight, and buying scalps did not cease until the last remnant of European power was swept from the Mississippi valley.
One reads much about the wickedness of robbing
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the Indian of his hunting grounds-as if that were the great wrong done him. It is all nonsense. The one injury done him that is worth remembering-the in- jury that was deadly to the white race as well as to the red-was in persuading him to abandon his self-ac- quired opportunity to develop himself, and go hunting for skins and for scalps.
The hunting grounds of the Indians should have been taken from him to the last acre. The writers who have bewailed his loss of hunting grounds do but show how much they, not the Indians, are to be pitied. And it is chiefly because the white race is still blind to the real wrong done the red that this wretched story is worth some consideration here. It is never in vain to remember that the whites, while boasting of their Christian religion, sowed saltpetre and sulphur, and were inexorably obliged to reap hell-fire.
It is a most pathetic story-a story of children ta- ken from peaceable play and set to the bloody work of butchers. And when New Orleans had been settled the time was at hand when the English and the French would grasp each other in mortal combat to determine which should have sole opportunity of robbing the un- fortunates-with such results as we shall see.
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JOHN LAW. Projector of the Mississippi Scheme.
VI
WORK OF THE FRENCH IN THE VALLEY.
Law's Mississippi Company and Law Himself Did Some- thing-Bienville's Way of "Booming" a Town Site-Character of the French-Americans Described by a Candid Priest-Indians Burned Alive by the French at New Orleans-A Southern Gentleman's Opinion of Such Deeds-Reasons for the French Failure as Colonists Plainly Stated by French Priests and Soldiers.
Stories of the work of the French in the Mississip- pi Valley, after the founding of New Orleans in 1718, are by no means uninteresting, nor are they without significance. John Law's company began work very earnestly. In June, after the founding of New Or- leans, three ships brought out "colonists, convicts and troops, in all 800 souls." Of the colonists, 148 were
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sent up to Natchitoches, on the Red River; 82 were sent to the Yazoo, and 68 remained in New Orleans. There were, it is seen, only 298 colonists among the "800 souls," and Bienville wrote that very few carpenters and plowmen were to be found among the colonists. The number of convicts is not stated, but the fact of their presence is significant.
(* In October, 1719, 200 Germans came to settle on a tract of land, twelve miles square, that belonged to Law. Others followed. It was in making a settle- ment of Germans that Law left a permanent impres- sion on the Mississippi Valley. For these Germans could and would work. When Law, after having flooded France with 3,000,000,000 livres of paper mon- ey, fled for life with only 800 livres in coin, the Ger- mans were evicted from the land he had owned. But other land was given them on the river. There they thrived by good work, and to this day the settlement is known as the German coast.
Besides the Germans the only valuable accessions to the population in 1719 were 500 negro slaves-the first importation of any size. This is not to commend slavery, but to point out the fact that in such a coun- try as Louisiana was then, any workers were better than idlers. Hard manual labor had to be done in un- healthy localities, and the slaves did it then, and they were found equally serviceable in later years, even though slavery was a curse to the whites in the long run.
In 1721 Bienville sent surveyors to lay out "a suit- able site for a city worthy to become the capital of Louisiana," and Louisiana in those days included the
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A History of the
whole Mississippi valley except some of the extreme upper part which was governed from Canada. He wished to remove the seat of government from Mobile to the new city, but, partly from a love of opposing the Governor, his associates refused to do so. What Bien- ville did at New Orleans, then, is worth remembering. By his orders streets were cut through the brush, and were ditched; palisades were erected around the town; a levee was made (the first attempt to confine the Mis- sissippi to its channel), and warehouses were built to accommodate trade. By practical, permanent improve- ments, Bienville brought all the traders of Mobile to the new town site, and the Government officials were obliged to follow to the new center of population.
In 1724, a company of Jesuits came bringing or- ange trees, fig trees, and indigo plants. They also gave attention to the native myrtle bush that produced a valuable wax. On April 1I, 1726, Bienville gave them a tract of land, 3,600 feet front on the river and 9,000 feet deep, where now is found the heart of the city, together with enough slaves to work the tract; and here they made a plantation that was in its day a sort of agricultural experiment station and therefore valu- able.
In 1727, a company of Ursuline nuns came to open a school for girls-the first of the kind in the val- ley-and to attend to the sick in the hospital that was built soon after the settlement was made. A letter written by sister Hochard, of this company, soon after her arrival, contains the following description of life as she saw it in times of plenty among the official and wealthy class in the young city.
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"Although I do not as yet know perfectly the province called Louisiana, still I will attempt, dear father, to give you some details about it. I assure you that I can hardly realize that I am on the banks of the Mississippi, because there is here, in cer- tain things, as much magnificance as in France, and as much politeness and refinement. Gold and velvet stuffs are commonly used, although they cost three times as much as in Rouen. Corn- bread costs ten cents a pound, eggs from forty-five to fifty cents a dozen, milk fifteen cents for a measure that is half that of France. We have pine apples-the most excellent of all fruit-peas and wild beans, watermelons, potatoes, sabotines- which are very much like our gray renette apples-an abund- ance of figs and pecans, walnut and hickory nuts, which, when eaten too green, act as astringents on the throat. There are also pumpkins. I do not speak of many other kinds of fruit of which I have heard, but with which I am still unacquainted.
"As to meat, we live on wild beef, venison, wild geese and turkey and a sort of swan, hares, chickens, ducks, teals, pheasants, partridges, quails, and other game. The river abounds in monstrously large fishes, among which the sheepshead must be mentioned as excellent; and we have also rays, carps, and an infinite number of other fishes unknown in France. A great use is made of chocolate and coffee with milk. We eat bread made of half rice and half wheat flour. We have wild grapes larger than those of France. They do not grow in bunches, but are put on the table in plates in the fashion that prunes are served.
"The dish most in favor is rice boiled in milk, and what is called sagamite, which consists of Indian corn pounded in a mortar and boiled in water with butter or lard. The whole people of Louisiana regard as most excellent this kind of food." (Translated from the Catholic World by Charles Gayarre. Italics not in original.)
Meantime there was some little growth of popula- tion elsewhere in the valley. In 1720, Major Pierre Dugue Boisbriant, (he whose wish to marry had been thwarted by Bienville), went up the river with 100 men and at a point sixteen miles above Kaskaskia built a fort which he named Chartres. The river chan-
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nel has changed to and fro since then, but Chartres Landing still perpetuates the memory of this fort. In 1721, Kaskaskia became a parish, and in 1722, Bois- briant, who ruled as commandant of the region, is- sued the first land warrant known to the records of what is now the state of Illinois.
In 1721, a capitalist named Philip Francois Re- nault brought 200 miners and 500 slaves to the point where Galena now stands, and opened the lead mines found there. In this year, also, the Jesuits established a college and monastery at Kaskaskia, and "Fort Char- tres became not only the headquarters of the comman- dant in Upper Louisiana, but the center of life and fashion in the West," as Monette says.
The details of this "life and fashion," (as he got them from Martin, Flint and Stoddard), are given by Monette, who, it should be said, is a most sympathetic recorder of the annals of the French in Louisiana. For the sake of comparison with a frontier manner of life to be described in another chapter the following is worth reading:
"The early French on the Illinois were remarkable for their easy amalgamation in manners and customs and blood" with the red men. "Their villages sprang up in long narrow streets," with each family home- stead so contiguous that the merry and social villagers could carry on their voluble conversation "each from his own balcony."
"Each homestead was surrounded by its own sepa- rate enclosure of a rude picket fence. The houses were generally one story high, surrounded by sheds (veran- das) or galleries; the walls were constructed of a rude
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framework, having upright corner posts and studs, connected horizontally by numerous cross ties, not unlike the rounds of a ladder. These [cross ties] served to hold the 'cat [straw or moss] and clay' of which the walls were made and rudely plastered by hand.
"The chimney was made of similar materials, and was formed by four long corner posts, converging at the top to about one-half, or less than the space below."
A large field nearby was fenced for the common use of the villagers. "The season for plowing, plant- ing, reaping and other agricultural operations in the 'common field' was regulated by special enactments, or by public ordinance, and to take place simultaneous- ly in each village. Even the form and manner of door yards, gardens and stable yards were regulated by special enactment."
"The winter dress of the men was generally a coarse blanket capote drawn over shirt and long vest," which served both as cloak and hat, "for the hood, attached to the collar behind, hung upon the back and shoulders as a cape, and, when desired, it served to cover the whole head from intense cold. In summer, especially among the couriers de bois, the head was enveloped in a blue handkerchief, turban like."
A handkerchief of "fancy colors, wreathed with bright colored ribbons, and sometimes flowers, formed the head dress of females on festive occasions." "The old fashioned short jacket and petticoat, varied to suit the diversities of taste, was the most common over dress of the women. The feet in winter were pro- tected by Indian moccasins, or the clog shoes; in
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