French Louisiana was in
its beginning more Canadian than "French." It was
claimed for France by a Canadian, named by that same Canadian,
explored by Canadians, settled by Canadians, and, during its first
dozen years of existence, struggled under two Canadian leaders who
happened to be brothers. Its first governor actually to hold
that title was a native of France but had been summoned to the
southern colony from Détroit, up in Canada. Its
first missionaries were from Canada, and when its first church
parish was established in 1703, its priest answered to the
Bishop of Québec, in faraway Canada. All of its secular
priests answered to the Bishop of Québec, in fact, for as long as
Louisiana remained a French possession.
The story of Louisiana,
then, begins in Canada, not France. By 1670, the year that
Britain returned Acadia to France, Champlain's Canada had transcended its shaky beginnings. Québec was secure,
as was Montréal, Trois-Rivière, and a dozen other settlements along
the great St. Lawrence. French priests from Québec and
Montréal, especially the black-robed Jesuits, had established
missions among the Indian tribes of the region as far west as the
outlet of Lake Superior at Sault Ste.-Marie and on Baie des Puants,
or Green Bay, along the western
shore of Lake Michigan. Coureurs de bois and voyageurs, in uneasy step with the black robes,
pushed the fur trade farther and farther into the wilderness, above,
below, and even beyond the lakes. "From the Indians," a great
historian writes, "the French heard of a great river to the west."
The Jesuit Relations of 1669-70, repeating what the
black-robe missionaries had heard from their native charges,
described "a beautiful River, large, wide, deep, and worthy of
comparison ... with our great river St. Lawrence." Champlain and the others had learned long ago that the
Fleuve
St.-Laurent drained the Great Lakes, but it was not the
Northwest Passage to Magellan's Southern Sea. Was the
beautiful
river of the Indians a route to the Orient? Those who had seen
the river did not
know. They could describe the upper reaches of the
belle rivière, but what lay below, even the direction the
river flowed along its lower reaches as well as the location of its
mouth, they could not say.01
In 1672,
about the time that the Acadians were beginning to settle at
Chignecto far to the northeast, the intendant of New France, Jean Talon, with
the approbation of Governor-General Frontenac, chose a 26-year-old voyageur to learn the truth about "the river Michissipi," as
the belle-rivière was called by the Ottawa.
Louis
Jolliet, originally spelled Jollyet but usually spelled Joliet, born at
Québec but raised on Île d'Orleans below the city, had attended a Jesuit school at Québec in
his youth and had come close to the priesthood before becoming a voyageur.
Jolliet could speak several European languages--French, English,
Spanish, Latin--and perhaps several native tongues as well, which
stood him in good stead as he pursued the fur trade. His
command of languages, the intendant
believed, were excellent qualifications for an explorer.
Jolliet's mission was to determine where the great river
flowed--into the Mexican Gulf or into the Mer Vermeille, the
French name for the Gulf of California. If the
river flowed into the Vermilion Sea, the French would be able to
flank the Spanish in Mexico with a direct route to the markets of
the East!
The intendant informed the
young explorer that New France could not spare funds for the voyage,
so Jolliet was compelled to form a fur-trading partnership and raise
money on his own. This delayed the voyage of discovery until
the following spring. In the winter of 1672, Jolliet, on
orders from the Jesuit superior of New France, took on a partner of
a different kind.
Père
Jacques Marquette, fluent in half a
dozen
Indian languages, was eager to spread the One True Faith to more
tribes of the region. In May 1673, Jolliet, with canoes manned
by Father Marquette and
five other voyageurs, at least four of them his trading
partners, followed the Indian route via lake, bay, river, and
portage
from the Jesuit mission of St.-Ignace at Michilimackinac, on the Straits of Mackinac,
to where Rivière Meskousing, the Wisconsin River, flows into the
Mississippi at present-day Prairie du Chien. When they got
there it already was mid-June.
They paddled down the
great river for hundreds of miles, following its many turns, passing
many tributaries, greeting many tribes, seeing, even
experiencing, many natural wonders, traveling not west but south,
always south. Near the mouth of the Arkansas
they came upon the Quapaw tribe, who showed them Spanish trade
goods. Jolliet and Marquette were now convinced that the
Mississippi flowed into the Mexican Gulf, not the Vermilion Sea.
Though Jolliet had promised Frontenac that "he would see the mouth
of the river," and the Quapaw informed him that he and his
companions were only 50 leagues from the river's mouth, he
knew that the Spanish would not be pleased to see a French exploring
party in that country. So, in late July, they
turned their canoes back up river, now fighting the mighty current
that had hurried them down. Following the advice of friendly
Indians, they followed a shorter route back to the Great Lakes via
the Illinois River and the Chicago Portage and then up Sturgeon Bay
to the mission of St.-François-Xavier near Green Bay, which they
reached in mid-October. Marquette resumed his mission work at
St.-François-Xavier and later among the Illinois in present-day
Michigan.
After spending the winter
at Sault Ste.-Marie, where he carefully compiled his maps and
reports and left copies with the Jesuits there, Jolliet headed back
to Québec to report to the intendant. An accident at the
St.-Louis rapids on the upper St. Lawrence led to the death of three
of his companions, including his Indian slave, and nearly drowned
the explorer himself. His maps and reports were lost to the
St. Lawrence, and, later, their copies were consumed in a fire at
the Sault Ste.-Marie mission. Though he did not follow the
great river to its mouth, or presume to claim its valley for King
Louis XIV, Jolliet's discoveries were valuable to France and
inspired others to explore Rivière Colbert, as the French would call
the Mississippi.02
.
Less than a decade later,
Jolliet and Marquette's efforts on the Mississippi were brought to
fruition by one of the most interesting characters in Canadian--and
Louisiana--history. René-Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, was not a
native of New France, but he made his reputation
and his fortune there. Born at Rouen into a wealthy upper bourgeois
family, La Salle, as history knows him, spent his youth as a student
of the Jesuits and then as a Jesuit noviate. He yearned to
become a missionary, but his superiors did not think he was mature
enough to pursue that difficult avocation. They were
especially troubled by the young novice's tendency to become easily
bored with his studies. Frustrated, La Salle had himself
released from his priestly vows and left the Jesuit convent at age
24, determined to make his way in the secular world. His vow
of poverty having denied him access to his father's patrimony, La
Salle followed a brother and an uncle to New France to seek his
fortune there and arrived at Québec in the fall of 1667, only a few
months after abandoning his religious studies. Probably
through the influence of his older brother Jean, a Sulpician priest at
Montréal, the young bachelor received a seigneurie at Côte St.-Sulpice
on Île Montréal.03
Soon bored with his life
as a Canadian seigneur, La Salle's youthful desire to become a great
explorer took hold of him. In January 1669, he sold the major
part of his seigneurie, for which he had paid nothing to the
priests, and kept only the house for his fur-trading interests.
He was determined to explore the distant Ohio River, stories of
which he had heard from the Indians. Perhaps that river, and
not the Mississippi, was the way to the Vermilion Sea. Despite
his complete lack of experience as a voyageur, he received
permission from Intendant Talon to lead an expedition to the
distant river. None of La Salle's companions, including
several Sulpicians, spoke the language of the Iroquois, through
whose territory they would pass, nor were any of them, including La
Salle himself, competent in cartography or celestial navigation.
La Salle managed to secure the services of a Dutch interpreter, but,
sadly, the Dutchman could speak little French. In nine canoes, the band
of misfits set off for Lake Ontario in early July and, after much
trial and error, reached the great lake in early August. The
Iroquois, being apprised of the Frenchmen's intentions, invited
La Salle and his party to the great Seneca village in present-day
western New York, where the wily Indians delayed their further
progress towards the land of their enemies. Finally, an
Iroquois wanderer agreed to lead La Salle and his party deeper into
the western country, and they followed him and other guides overland to the
shores of Lake Erie, which the Indians assured them was a more
efficient route to the headwaters of the Ohio. By then,
however, La Salle had fallen ill and become bored with the
venture, so he left the Sulpicians to minister to the Ottawa and abandoned his fantasy to explore the Ohio.
Despite his failure, La
Salle had powerful friends in France who, throughout the 1670s,
touted the young explorer's "discovery" not only of the Ohio but
also of the Mississippi! By then, La Salle had become a
champion of the anti-Jesuit party in France and New France. In 1673, during a dispute between the governor of
Montréal and Governor-General Frontenac, La Salle ingratiated
himself to the governor-general, who also distrusted the Jesuits.
Back in France in 1674-75, La Salle secured not only a title of
nobility for himself and his descendants but also the trading
concession at
Catararcoui, which he promptly renamed Fort
Frontenac. The post lay on the north shore of Lake Ontario
where it fell into the upper St. Lawrence and held every promise of
making La Salle a wealthy man. The post also was perfectly
positioned for further exploration of the western country, an
ambition La Salle still embraced.03a
But it was not enough. Hungry for more
concessions and preferment, La Salle returned to France in 1677 and
lobbied for authorization from the court "to construct, at his own
expense, 'two establishments ... one at the entrance to Lake Erie,
the other at the exit from the Lac des Illinois (Michigan);
to become seigneur of the lands that he might discover and populate.
...,'" as well as the office of governor of the new territory.
Amazingly, La Salle received much of what he sought, including
permission "to reconnoitre the western part of North America
between New France, Florida, and Mexico" from King Louis XIV
himself.04
Evidently the young
nobleman envisioned nothing less than a string of French forts from
the St. Lawrence through the Great Lakes, on into the Illinois
country, and down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico! By
the late 1670s, the English had established colonies along the
Atlantic littoral from Maine all the way down to Florida. From
La Salle's forts, the French could project power and influence not
only into the western lands to overawe more Indian tribes but also south into Spanish
Mexico with its gold and silver mines, and east to the mountains
behind the English, hemming them in against the sea. Compelling
economic interests also fueled his scheme. France--that is to
say, La Salle--would dominate the lucrative fur trade not only in
the Great Lakes region but also in the Mississippi valley.
La Salle was back at
Québec in September 1678 with craftsmen, seamen, and gentlemen to
help him secure his western domain. Among his new associates
was Henri de Tonty, the valorous Neapolitan-turned-French soldier
who had lost a hand in combat against the Spanish and who would stay
with La Salle to the end. Later in the year, La Salle and his
men became the first Europeans to see Niagara Falls. By late
summer of 1679, La Salle's men, under Tonty's supervision, had
constructed a fort, which La Salle called Conti, below the falls,
on the east bank of the Niagara near where it flows into Lake Ontario. Above the falls, on
the Lake Erie shore, they constructed a 70-foot, 45-ton galliot, the Griffon,
which La Salle and Tonty would use to explore the upper Great Lakes
and secure, if they could, an all-water route to the Straits of
Mackinac and the entrance to Lake Superior at Sault Ste.-Marie.
To see for themselves if this route
was possible, for 20 days, from late August into September, La Salle sailed the Griffon through Lake Erie, past Détroit,
into Lake St.-Claire, up Rivière St.-Claire, into Lake Huron, and on
to the mission of St.-Ignace at Michilimackinac. This voyage
alone would have secured La Salle's reputation as a significant
explorer, but he sailed on through the Straits of Mackinac into Lake
Michigan and down its western shore into La Baie des Puants, "the
stinking bay." Ignoring the King's insistence that he not trade with the
western tribes who provided beaver pelts for the merchant-priests at
Montréal, La Salle filled the Griffon with pelts from the
western country and sent the sturdy little ship back to Niagara via
Michilimackinac.05
Back at Michilimackinac,
La Salle, with 14 men in four canoes, headed south into Lake
Michigan and rendezvoused with Tonty at the mouth of the Rivière-des-Miami, on the lower eastern shore of the lake.
Impressed with the site, he ordered the construction of a palisade
at the mouth of the river, Fort St.-Joseph, also called Fort Miami, and ordered the Griffon to
rendezvous with him there instead of returning to Niagara.
However, word came back from Michilimackinac through Tonty that the
Griffon was nowhere to be found. Determined to lose no
momentum in his western explorations, the restless La Salle canoed
up the Rivière-des-Miami, portaged to the Kankakee, and followed
that stream to the magnificent Rivière Illinois. He reached the site of
present-day Peoria in early January 1680. No one could accuse
him now of lacking knowledge and experience. The young
nobleman was now a voyageur, as good as the best of that
hardy breed.
La Salle asked permission
from the Illinois to build a fort on the great river. He also
revealed his plan to build another bark there, which he would use to
complete the exploration of the Mississippi River.
Negotiations went well with the Illinois chiefs until a chief from
the Mascouten appeared at the village and accused the Frenchman of
being an ally of their common enemy, the Iroquois. The Indians
related tales to La Salle and his men about the perils of navigating
the great river. Some of La Salle's men took the Indian tales to heart and deserted the enterprise, but La Salle,
aware of Jolliet and Marquette's experience, ignored the warnings
and refused to give up his plan to build a fort in the area.
He ordered his men to build a palisade at a prudent distance below
the Illinois village and named it Fort Crèvecoeur, which in French
means "broken heart." He left Tonty on the Illinois
to survey the location of another fort he hoped to build at Le
Rocher, or Starved Rock, farther up, at the head of navigation.
In late February, La Salle
sent another of his lieutenants who would win historical fame,
Father Antoine dit Louis Hennepin, a French Recollet priest,
to scout the Illinois to its confluence with the Mississippi while
he and a small party of men searched for the Griffon.
Back at Fort Miami, La Salle heard nothing of the fate of his
vessel. Determined to return to Niagara, he and his men set
out across country and, after a difficult trek, reached Fort Conti in April.
But his
difficulties had only begun. The Niagara fort had
burned, and, worse yet, he learned that a ship from France bringing
him a large load of goods for his future endeavors had been lost in
the Gulf of St. Lawrence. He pressed on to Fort Frontenac,
where he arrived in May, completing one of the most amazing journeys
in the history of New France. He returned to Montréal to
settle some financial matters and returned to Fort Frontenac, "more
in debt than ever." In July, he received a message from Tonty
informing him that the fort on the Illinois had been sacked and then
abandoned by the men he had left there. Moreover, these
deserters were coming cross country to finish him, destroying all
they could find that belonged to him. Undaunted, La Salle and
some trustworthy associates waited in ambush and captured the
miscreants as they approached Fort Frontenac.06
La Salle wasted no time
returning to Illinois. Soon after capturing his
errant men, he set out in mid-August with 25 men in canoes
and, following an old Indian route to Georgian Bay, appeared at
Sault Ste.-Marie in mid-September before moving on to
Michilimackinac. On the way, he inquired about the fate of his
Griffon and was convinced by the time he reached the Sault
that his precious vessel had been lost in a storm, taking all hands
with it. He was especially anxious to learn the fate of his
trusted lieutenant Tonty, who was last heard of in hostile Illinois
country. Hearing no news, he pressed on to Fort Miami and then on to the
Illinois River to assess the damage to Fort Crèvecoeur.
Reaching Illinois, he found villages destroyed by the
Iroquois. He searched among the mutilated corpses for his
trusty friend but found no trace of Tonty. At Crèvecoeur, he
found more destruction, including the remains of his unfinished
bark. He moved on to the Mississippi, seeing more
signs of slaughter on the way but still no trace of Tony. For
the first time he laid eyes on the great river, but he could not
remain there. He retraced his steps to Fort Miami, which
he reached in January 1681.
It had been a maddening
year for him, but he did not give up. He sent a letter to
Michilimackinac in case Tony appeared there, and encouraged the
remnants of the Miami and Illinois to unite against the Iroquois.
Only by defeating their mutual enemy and returning to their villages
could there be peace enough in the western domain for La Salle to
pursue his interests there. Finally, in March, he received
word of Tonty. His single-handed friend had barely survived
the Iroquois onslaught the previous autumn. Failing to
dissuade the Iroquois from continuing on the war path, Tonty and the
few men he could trust retreated back towards Michilimackinac via
the upper Illinois and Lake Michigan, rediscovering the Chicago
Portage used by Jolliet and Marquette. While paddling up the
western shore of Lake Michigan towards the Stinking Bay, they wrecked their
canoe and nearly starved, but the Potawatomi took them in.
Rejoicing in the survival of his trusted lieutenant, La Salle
arranged via messenger to rendezvous at Michilimackinac.
After his reunion with
Tonty at Michilimackinac in June 1681, La Salle hurried back to Montréal, having
been summoned there by Governor-General Frontenac. Determined
to return to the dangers of the western country and to assuage his
creditors, he drew up a will in August, but his return was delayed.
The new intendant, Jacques Duchesneau, no friend of La Salle,
accused him of trading illegally with the Ottawa (which was true
enough) and of stirring up the Iroquois against the Illinois (which
was pure fabrication). La Salle was back at Fort Miami in
late December, so Frontenac must have deflected the intendant's
charges. La Salle was determined this time to see it through:
he would push on to the mouth of the Mississippi.
And so, with Tonty, 23
other Frenchmen, and 18 Indians, including women and children, La
Salle set off for Illinois, reaching Crèvecoeur sometime in January 1682 and the
Mississippi in early February.
La Salle and Tonty had to
wait a week for the ice to break on the upper Mississippi, and, in
the middle of the month, they headed downriver. The first
night they camped on the right bank of the Mississippi, near the
mouth of the Missouri River. Five days later, they came upon
the mouth of the Ohio--the Belle-Rivière which had eluded La
Salle a dozen years before. One of their camps was on the site
of the future city of Memphis, where they were delayed for 10 days
while searching for a crew member who had become lost while hunting.
While waiting, La Salle ordered the construction of a palisade
there, which he called Fort Prud'homme after a luckless gunsmith,
Pierre Prud'homme, who they rescued from the river. In
mid-March, they reached the country of the Arkansas, who were
alarmed at their approach, but La Salle reassured them that his
intentions were peaceful. They smoked the pipe of peace, after
which the Indians supplied the Frenchmen "sumptuously." The
writer goes on: "La Salle, with all the customary ceremonies,
took possession of the territory in the name of the king of France."
The Arkansas also provided them with two guides.07
Later in the month, they
reached the mouth of the Arkansas River, where Jolliet and Marquette
had turned back nine years before. "The otter country was now
giving way to the crocodile country." They next camped among
the Taensa, whom Tonty described as virtually civilized. Next
came their cousins the Koroa, who lived near their other cousins,
the Natchez. The Koroa welcomed La Salle and his party and said that they were only 10 days from the ocean.
La Salle waited until Easter to push on. They passed the final
bluff fronting the river at the site of today's Baton Rouge and, in
early April, briefly explored the natural levee where New Orleans
stands today. The delay almost cost them dearly. A
nearby tribe, the Quinapisa, fired upon them, hurrying the
Frenchmen on their way.08
Finally, on 6 April 1682, they caught sight of
the open sea. For the next few days, they explored the
Mississippi's bird-foot delta, and on April 9, "probably near the
place now called Venice," they "took solemn possession of
Louisiana," that is, La Louisiane, which was the name La Salle bestowed on the entire
Mississippi valley. The historian continues: "La Salle,
clad in scarlet trimmed in gold--where did the splendour of the
Great Century not manage to intrude itself!--to the sound of
triumphant hymns and salvoes of musketry, erected a cross and a
column bearing the arms of His Most Christian Majesty, and buried a
copper plate engraved with inscriptions. In ringing tones he
delivered the record of the territories that thus passed under the
rule of the French crown. Finally the document was
countersigned by twelve of the persons present."09
Far to the northeast, Acadians from Port-Royal were beginning a new
settlement, this time in the Minas Basin.
After the impressive
ceremony, La Salle was forced to make peace with the Quinapisa so
that they could secure supplies for their return upriver. This
was, after all, an exploration party. A French settlement in
the area would have to come later. After securing a supply of
maize, which they had to steal from the inhospitable Quinapisa,
they began their return voyage in mid-April. Suspecting that
members of that tribe were living among the Koroa, they hurried up to the Taensa village, where they were welcomed as before.
They were back in their canoes in early May. La Salle pushed
ahead to the Arkansas villages, leaving Tonty behind to command the
main party. La Salle had fallen ill and was recuperating at
Fort Prud'homme among the Chickasaw when Tonty and the main party
arrived there in late May. La Salle sent Tonty ahead to Fort
Miami with instructions to report to Frontenac the details of their
discovery. La Salle was well enough to resume the upriver
journey in mid-June and was back at Crèvecoeur in July. Still
convalescing, La Salle did not return to Michilimackinac via Fort
Miami and Lake Michigan until September. Tonty was
waiting for him. La Salle was too frail to return to Québec
and sail on to France to report his discoveries, so he remained at
Michilimackinac to compile his report and send out dispatches.
Frontenac had been replaced by a new governor-general,
Joseph-Antoine Le Febvre de La Barre, so La Salle was not ready to
return to the St. Lawrence just yet. After he recovered his health, he
returned, instead, to Illinois, where Tonty had built the fort atop
Starved Rock, on the east bank of the river, half way between
Crèvecoeur and the Chicago portage.10
Fort St.-Louis-des-Illinois was
completed in May 1683. Only then was La Salle was ready to return to Fort
Frontenac. On his way back to the St. Lawrence, he was
accosted by an officer sent out by the new governor-general to
return him to Québec to answer more charges against him!
Moreover, La Barre had seized Fort Frontenac on the pretext of
abandonment and awarded it to two of his favorites. La Salle
was now persona non grata in the colony; La Barre; De Meulles,
the new intendant; La Salle's creditors; and, of course, the
Jesuits, were all in league against him. La Salle, in a fit of
paranoia, accused La Barre and the others of plotting to have him
murdered and took the first opportunity, with the governor's
approbation, to sail back to France.
No one had extended the
reach, the glory, the influence of New France farther into the
western country than the sieur de La Salle. Yet he was not
welcomed in Canada, at least not in the established communities
along the St. Lawrence. Tonty and his other trusted associates,
who La Barre also ousted from the western forts,
remained in New France, waiting for their leader to return, but La Salle would never
see them again.
Nor did La Salle seem to be
much welcomed in old France. He sailed from Québec aboard the ship
Saint-Honoré and reached La Rochelle shortly before Christmas
of 1683. The King had written Governor-General La Barre the
previous August "that the Sieur de La Salle's discovery is
completely useless (and that) such undertakings must in future be
prevented." This convinced La Salle that his days in Canada
were numbered. He had hoped to use his new fort on Rivière
Illinois as a base from which to establish a French settlement among
the Taensa on the lower Mississippi. The King's dictum to La Barre made this impossible. But, luckily for La Salle, his
discovery had inspired powerful advocates in France for the creation
of a colony from which French forces could invade New Spain and
seize the gold and silver mines there. Abbé Claude Bernou, a
favorite at Court, with encouragement from a Spanish nobleman who
had deserted his post in Mexico and now worked for France, had
concocted a scheme to establish a colony at the mouth of the Rio
Bravo, today's Rio Grande, even before word of La Salle's discovery
had reached France. Bernou, evidently with La Salle's
assistance, created a map for presentation to the Court that showed
the mouth of the Mississippi not where La Salle had found it but 250
leagues farther to the west, closer to the mines of New Mexico!11
Bernou's and La Salles's lies
and schemes succeeded at Court. The King and his Minister of
Marine, Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Colbert, the Marquis de Seignelay, approved the venture. To ensure no interference
from his minions in New France, the King restored to La Salle
control of the western country. In April 1684, the King
ordered La Barre to restore Fort Frontenac to La Salle and then
granted La Salle "a commission to command in all the territory lying
between Fort Saint-Louis-des-Illinois and New Biscay," Spanish
territory in today's northeastern Mexico. This gave La Salle
control not only of the lower Mississippi valley but also the
northwestern shore of the Gulf of Mexico. He would need the
concessions as much as the title: "La Salle received the
authority he sought, though he was to pay most of the expenses of
the effort from his own fortune."12
La Salle would have his colony on the Mississippi, but not via Canada.
Preparations began promptly at Rochefort for the expedition to the
Gulf of Mexico. Four ships, including a warship, the Joly,
would sail with their crews of officers and sailors; 100 soldiers;
eight
military officers; 40 or so indentured servants, some of them women,
some of them children belonging to a married couple, Lucien and
Isabelle (Planteau) Talon; six missionaries, including the Recollet
Father Zenobius Membré who had served with La Salle and Tonty in Illinois; an
engineer; and nine volunteers, including La Salle's older brother Père Jean, two of their nephews, 14-year-old Pierre, son of
Louis Meunier, sieur de Previtte, and a bourgeois from
Rouen, Henri Joutel, who La Salle would come to trust as much as he had trusted
Henri de Tonty. Unfortunately, La Salle clashed immediately with
the captain of the Joly, Taneguy Le Gallois de Beaujeu, who
refused to take orders from a landsman, especially one as volatile
as the Sieur de La Salle. It did not help that La Salle
refused to impart to his captain the exact location of the planned
colony. Nor did it help that La Salle overloaded the Joly
with supplies and settlers, forcing the sailors to sleep on the
top deck, in the sun, wind, and rain.
The flotilla left
Rochefort at the end of July 1684, but only two days out the Joly
broke its bowsprit. A return to the Île d'Aix, near Rochefort,
delayed departure on an ocean crossing plagued by problems.
From Île d'Aix, the flotilla sailed southwest to Cape Finisterre and
then on to the Madeiras, off the coast the coast of North Africa.
When they crossed the Equator, the prickly La Salle refused to take
part in the traditional burlesque, which did not endear him to the
ship's sailors. Approaching the Indies, La Salle and dozens of
others took sick, so Beaujeu made for French St.-Domingue, the
gateway to the Gulf, as swiftly as the Joly's sails allowed.
They landed not at Port-de-Paix, the agreed-upon port on St.-Domingues's
north shore, but at Petit-Gouâve, along the southwestern coast, near today's Port-au-Prince.
Soon after landing, La Salle took sick again. Days later, two
of the other ships, the Aimable and the Belle, finally
arrived, but the fourth ship, the supply ketch St.-François,
failed to appear. In late October, they learned of the fate of
the St.-François--it had been captured by the Spanish.
Not only did the expedition lose most of its supplies, but the
Spanish were now aware of La Salle's intent! La Salle blamed
the loss on Captain Beaujeu, which only worsened their relationship.
Only with the help of the
governor of Île de la Tortue were they able to stockpile enough
supplies to begin the new settlement. The expedition left
St.-Domingue much diminished in size. La Salle had lost not
only the officers, crew, and passengers aboard the St.-François
but also a number of deserters who had jumped ship in
St.-Domingue. Perhaps blaming Beaujeu for this as well, La Salle
elected to travel on aboard the smaller ship Aimable, and by
late November they were on their way.
Hugging the south coast of
Cuba, Beaujeu managed to elude the Spanish and reach the Gulf of
Mexico by the middle of December. Late that month, they
"noticed the white colour of the sea, and the soundings revealed a
sea bed of 'fine, greyish and muddy sand,'" a certain sign that they
were near the mouth of a great river. And then La Salle made
his fatal mistake. Instead of trusting his intuition and
following the mud, he followed, instead, the faulty Spanish charts
and graphs he had taken with him, the advice from learned scholars
he had consulted in Paris, and, most ironic of all, his own
(inaccurate) calculations of longitude from his triumphal discovery
of 1682.
He reasoned that the flotilla had drifted too far eastward, that
they were looking at mud from Apalachee Bay, not from the mouth of
the Mississippi. So during the first week of January 1685,
amidst heavy fog, he signaled to Beaujeu, farther out to sea, to
turn the ships westward, towards "the hypothetical Baie du
Saint-Esprit," today's Mobile Bay, beyond which he expected to find
the mouth of his great river again. They landed next at what
probably was Atchafalaya Bay, which La Salle was convinced was not
the Baie du Saint-Esprit. Sailing west along what is now the
coast of South Louisiana and southeastern Texas, Beaujeu's larger ship had to
remain farther out to sea, while the Aimable and the Belle
sailed ahead, hugging the sandy coast, searching for signs of the
Mississippi. As the coast turned gradually southward, La Salle
soon realized that they had missed the mouth of the great river!13
The two smaller ships were
anchored off the southwest tip of Matagorda Island when Beaujeau and the Joly
caught up to them. Needless to say, the commander and the
captain "did not lose an admirable opportunity for a quarrel, with
mutual accusations of desertion." They spent the next few days
hunting, fishing, and exploring the coast "without managing to
acquire any certainty as to the exact place where they had landed."
La Salle was shaken, but he managed to convince himself that they
had reached one of the outlets of the Mississippi. In
mid-February, he decided that they would settle on what he called
Baie St.-Louis, today's Matagorda Bay. The channel leading
into the bay was too narrow and too shallow to accommodate the
larger hull of the Joly.
The Belle, only a bark, managed to negotiate the channel, but
the Aimable ran aground, broke apart, and spilled its
valuable contents onto the sandy shoal. Local Indians, alerted
to the Frenchmen's presence, tried to make off with as much as they
could. The Frenchmen fired on them, and they fired back,
resulting in two Frenchmen killed and two wounded, including La
Salle's nephew, Crevel de Moranget, who was wounded.14
In mid-March, Beaujeu could see that his task was complete. He
turned the Joly seaward and headed back to France. With
him were not only his officers and crew but also colonists and
volunteers who had their fill of the expedition.
For protection against the Indians they had just abused, La Salle
ordered the construction of a shelter from the wreckage of the Aimable. The site was poorly chosen, and many became sick.
After further exploration of the coast, which turned up no trace of
the Mississippi delta, La Salle ordered the construction of a more
substantial settlement, on the mainland, along the right bank of Rivière-aux-Boeufs,
today's Garcitas Creek, at the head of today's Lavaca Bay, the
northwestern arm of Matagorda Bay. The site of the new settlement, started in May,
consisting of eight wood and mud structures without an
enclosing palisade but "protected" by eight ship's cannon, also was
poorly chosen. The extra toil, as well as the unhealthiness of
the site, caused more sickness among settlers and soldiers.
This, along with La Salle's autocratic leadership, caused morale to
plummet despite the arrival of spring. In La Salle's mind, the
Rivière-aux-Boeufs settlement, though much more substantial than the
first, was only a temporary arrangement to shelter his colony until
he could move it to the Mississippi.15
In late October, leaving
Joutel in command at Rivière-aux-Boeufs, La Salle, with his
hot-headed nephew, Moranget, now recovered from his arrow wound, and
half a dozen of his best men, took
a canoe northward along the coast, determined to find a mouth
of the Mississippi. The remaining ship, the Belle,
followed their progress as close as it could. In mid-January
1686, a lone crewman from La Salle's canoe returned to the fort,
having become separated from the others because of the callousness
of Moranget, who also soon returned to the fort. La Salle did
not return until the end of March, empty-handed, and alone.
All of the men in his canoe had been killed by local Indians, and
the Belle also had disappeared.
Without a ship with which
to search for the Mississippi delta, the
settlement had little chance of survival. Desperate to find
the Mississippi and to seek help from his compatriots at Fort
St.-Louis-des-Illinois, in late April La Salle took 20 men,
including his brother the priest, and headed up the coast.
Meanwhile, survivors of the Belle, including the teenager
Pierre Meunier, appeared at
Rivière-aux-Boeufs with a tale of their own. Their pilot had
gotten drunk and run the bark aground. Only five of them survived
the disaster.
Meanwhile, La Salle pushed on, sending exhausted men, including the
younger of the two Duhaut brothers, Dominique, back to the fort.
Finally, among the Caddoan Hasinai in what is now East Texas, La Salle traded for five horses,
but only eight men, including his brother, still remained in the
party. Too few to continue such a long, perilous journey, La
Salle returned to Rivière-aux-Boeufs, where he learned that many of
the men he had sent back, including Dominique Duhaut, had not
returned. It took La Salle months to recover from his efforts
and from a painful hernia that laid him up until late October.15a
In January 1687, La Salle,
this time with 17 men and boys, including Joutel, started up the coast again,
determined to get to the Illinois country. Only 25 settlers
remained at Rivière-aux-Boeufs--seven of them women. This from
the complement of about 180 soldiers and settlers who had chosen to
remain with him two years before. La Salle left Lieutenant
Gabriel Minime, sieur de Barbier, who had a young wife and newborn,
in command of the settlement. (Barbier's marriage was the
first European marriage in the State of Texas not on the Rio Grande,
and Barbier's child, its name and
gender lost to history, was the first child of European
parentage born in what is now the State of Texas.)
This turned out to be La
Salle's final adventure. He, his brother, the nephew, and the
other priest, Father Anastase Douay, used the horses to carry
personal baggage as well as "several church ornaments, even a dozen
habits." Not even the wilderness could overcome European class
consciousness or La Salle's sense of entitlement. La Salle at
least treated the Indians they encountered more courteously than he
did most of his men. By mid-March, with the help of coastal
and inland tribes, he was in contact with the friendly Hasinai.16
La Salle and his party crossed Rivière-aux-Canots,
today's Trinity River, 80 miles up the coast, on March 14. Across the Trinity, La
Salle sent on ahead his servant with a Shawnee hunter named Nika and
several Frenchmen, including Pierre Duhaut, his surgeon, and
teenager Pierre Meunier, to
kill bison and dig up provisions that La Salle had buried on his
previous venture up the
coast. Two days later, La Salle sent his nephew Moranget and
two companions with the horses to bring the provisions back to camp.
When Moranget came upon the hunting party smoking bison meat, he demanded the choicest portions.
This angered
several of the men, especially Duhaut, who had never forgiven Moranget for previous slights, nor La Salle for causing the death of
his younger bother Dominique. That night, in league with four
accomplishes, including the teenager Jean L'Archevêque, Duhaut axed to death
La Salle's servant, the Shawnee, and Moranget,
who slept near the fire together. Pierre Meunier was a witness
to, but evidently not a participant in, the murder.
On the morning of 19 March
1687, La Salle was apprised of the treacherous deed. Never one
to retreat from a fight, he hurried to the scene of the murder with
the priest, Father Douay, intent on confronting Duhaut and his
companions. Duhaut anticipated the confrontation and hid in
tall grass with his musket loaded. La Salle confronted one of
the murderers, Duhaut's servant, and demanded to know the
whereabouts of his nephew. The servant's answer angered the
nobleman, who was in the act of striking the impudent fellow when
Duhaut fired his musket from ambush, the ball striking La Salle in the head. Not satisfied with killing the explorer,
the conspirators "insulted the corpse," stripped it, "and left it
naked in the thicket" for wild animals to devour. They seized
La Salle's personal belongings, including the famous scarlet cloak
which had survived so many exigencies. "Some time later," the
historian tells us, "feeling the threat of impending justice, the
conspirators, all but two [L'Archevêque and the leader, Duhaut],
finished by killing one another off." There would never be a
trial for the murders. No matter, La Salle was no more.
He was 44 years old when he died in that Texas clearing, still
unmarried. Fleeing the murderers, Routel, Père
Cavelier, Père Douay, and their companions left
one of the boys who had come with them, Pierre Talon, with the Hasinai, and headed cross country to
Fort St.-Louis-des-Illinois, which they reached the following
September.17
Meanwhile, in November
1685, the faithful Tonty had heard that La Salle had gone to
the Gulf of Mexico. The following February, having been
restored to command of Fort St.-Louis-des-Illinois, he hurried down
the Mississippi with 25 Frenchmen and 4 Indians to rendezvous with
the explorer. He reached the river's mouth--again--in April
1686 but found no trace of the colony. Canoes sent both east
and west through the marshes and bayous turned up nothing.
Local Indians did tell him that they "had seen him [La Salle] set
sail and proceed southward," perhaps witnesses to La Salle's turn
toward the west two Januarys before, perhaps someone else.
Tonty was so determined to find La Salle that he proposed to follow
the coast "as far as Menade (Manhattan), and by this means" return
to Montréal, but his men were opposed to such a foolhardy
venture. So they headed back upriver. At the first major
village above the mouth of the river, that of the Bayougoula, Tonty
left a message addressed to La Salle, dated April 20. He told
the Bayougoula to give it to another Frenchman who would come to
them from the sea.18
Tonty was at Fort St.-Louis-des-Illinois
when Jean Cavelier and La Salle's other companions arrived there in
September 1687. Père Jean, determined to collect the
furs and money owed to his brother, had insisted that La Salle's
death be kept from the world until he could complete the family's
business. Routel and the others complied with the priest's
wishes, and they
told Tonty that La Salle was still very much alive back at the
settlement on the Gulf of Mexico. Père Jean and his
nephew went on to Montréal, which they reached in July 1788, and
arrived at La Rochelle in early October, a year and a half after La
Salle's death. The family's business evidently incomplete, the
priest waited a few more weeks before revealing the fate of his
famous brother and the existence of the hapless colony on the Gulf
of Mexico.
Tonty did not learn of La
Salle's fate until a trading partner, having gone to the Arkansas country,
returned to Fort St.-Louis-des-Illinois in September 1689 and
related the sad news. In
December, the old soldier hurried down the Mississippi to the Taensa
village and then, with four Frenchmen, a Shawnee, and two
slaves, hurried
overland via the Natchitoches village on Rivière-Rouge into the
pinewoods of East Texas
to do what he could for the settlers on Baie St.-Louis. "He was the only person who
lifted a finger to help these unfortunate people, but the ordeal of
the journey proved too much for him." He got as far as
the Hasinai
before turning back, much too late to save his fellow
Frenchmen.19
Not for several years did
Routel, Père Jean, and the other survivors learn the fate of
their fellow colonists. During the Christmas season of 1688-89,
not long after Jean Cavelier had returned to France, the Karankawa,
who lived near the settlement, massacred
the remaining men and women at Rivière-aux-Beoufs. The
Indian women spared the children, including the infant Barbier, but
when the men returned to the village, one them killed the infant,
sparing only the older children. Three of the Talon children,
two brothers and a sister, were among the children spared.
Rescued by a Spanish expedition two years later, it was
Jean-Baptiste Talon who, in the late 1690s, revealed to the world the fate of his fellow colonists on that
terrible winter day.
Could La Salle's scheme
have worked? "What if" is not history, but questions must be
asked. What if, when he came upon the milky water off the
northern coast of the Gulf, the explorer had trusted his intuition
and signaled Captain Beajeu to follow the Aimable to the
source of the mud? What if, having found one of the mouths of
the Mississippi, the three ships could have maneuvered around the
petrified tree trunks La Salle had seen there two and a half years
before? What if, having reached the main channel of the great
river, the flotilla could have made its way up to the Taensa
village, near present-day Newellton, Louisiana, or had chosen the site of
today's New Orleans or Baton Rouge for the settlement? La Salle would have had his Mississippi
colony, with swift communication to Illinois above and to the
Gulf of Mexico below, and, as long as he kept the local Indians
happy, every promise of
success. And, knowing La Salle, it would have been
only the first of a string of settlements from the lower river up to Illinois. France would have had its western
empire decades before it actually existed.
But that is not what
happened. Even if the settlers and soldiers at Rivière-aux-Boeufs
could have remained friendly with the local Indians, the Spanish
would have visited the place in force, as they did in the summer of
1691, when they burned the eight structures erected by the French,
buried La Salle's eight cannon with their mismatched balls, and
rescued the Talon children from the local Indians.
La Salle's actual settlement, and therefore his plans for a
western empire, could not have survived so far away from its base on
the Illinois River.20
.
La Salle was gone, but his
vision had worked its way deeply into the minds of his fellow
Frenchmen. Louis Phélypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain, became
Louis XIV's Minister of Marine in 1690, early in the war against
William III and his Grand Alliance, and the year that Port-Royal up
in Acadia fell to
William Phips. Pontchartrain had not been
in the government when La Salle had secured his colonizing scheme in
1685, but the new minister, in charge of colonies, favored the idea
of colonizing the Gulf of Mexico in spite of La Salle's failure
there. It was Pontchartrain, in fact, who, learning of the
young man's return to France, ordered the interrogation of
Jean-Baptiste Talon about the fate of La Salle's colonists. Of
course, any new adventure in the Gulf of Mexico would have to wait
for the end of the war against England, Holland, and their allies.
This came finally in the autumn of 1697--the year that Henri de Tonty's
La
Salle's Discoveries in America was published in France.20b
In 1698, Pontchartrain
chose as leader of the next French effort in the Gulf of Mexico not the redoubtable Tonty,
who wanted the
job, but a 37-year-old native of Montréal,
Pierre Le Moyne, sieur d'Iberville et d'Ardillières. Pierre's
father was a Frenchman, a native of Dieppe, who had made his fortune
in Canada. Charles Le Moyne had come to New France as a
teenager in 1641, serving first as an indentured servant in
the Jesuit missions of the Huron country, where he learned a number
of native languages and grew to sturdy manhood. After
completing his service, he settled at Ville-Marie, the future
Montréal, where he served in the militia during Indian attacks and
as interpreter for and emissary to the natives during times of
peace. For his services, he received large grants of land
south of Montréal and, in 1668, a title of nobility--sieur de
Longueuil et de Châteauguay. Most importantly for his future
happiness, he married well. Catherine Thierry gave him 14
children, 3 daughters and 11 sons. Pierre, baptized at
Ville-Marie in July 1661, was the third son. Charles was, of
course, active in the fur trade. In 1682, he helped form the
Compagnie du Nord, which hoped to control the fur trade in the
Hudson Bay region. When Charles died in 1685, at age 59, he
was one of the wealthiest men in Canada.21
Pierre's formal education
was limited. He preferred the deck of his father's boat than
the classroom. He evidently showed promise as a seaman at an
early age. In 1683, Pierre met the Sieur de La Salle probably
at Montréal after the explorer had returned from his trip down the
Mississippi; La Salle shared with the eager young sailor "some
useful hints about soundings in the delta." In that same year, Governor-General La Barre entrusted
Pierre, only in his early 20s, with the important task of
transporting government dispatches to the king's court.
It is likely that Pierre and La Salle sailed to La Rochelle together
aboard the ship Saint-Honoré. Pierre's fighting career began in 1686 in an expedition to the
southern region of Hudson Bay, about the same time that he was
accused of seducing and impregnating a young woman back in Canada.
Not even his family's substantial influence, the personal
intervention of the governor-general, and his service in James
Bay, could save him from the judgment of the colonial council;
they found him guilty of the embarrassing offense and ordered him to support his "natural"
daughter until she turned 15. The council, however, did not
force him to marry the young woman. Like his father, when Pierre
did choose a wife, he married
well. Marie-Thérèse Pollet de La Combe-Pocatière was the daughter of
an officer in the Carignan-Salières regiment, which had come to
Canada in the 1660s; her mother was Marie-Anne Juchereau de
St.-Denis. Pierre and Marie-Thérèse married in October 1693
after a long courtship, the ceremony delayed perhaps by Pierre's
service in King William's War, which began in 1689.22
It was Pierre's impressive
service in the war against England that caught the attention of the
King's ministers. During the long eight-year war, the young
Canadian participated in numerous maritime campaigns in Hudson Bay
and along the coasts of Maine and Acadia, as well as in overland
campaigns in New York and Newfoundland that did great damage to
English interests in the region. During the war, as a reward
for his military exploits, Pierre had received a seigneurie on the
Baie des Chaleurs, which he promptly sold.
Iberville, as he became
known to history, proved to be a solid choice for commander of the
Gulf Coast venture. He was, from the beginning, enthusiastic
about colonizing the lower Mississippi valley as well as denying
England access to Canada's backdoor. No doubt
mentioning his conversations with La Salle 15 years earlier, he
communicated freely with Pontchartrain's son, Jérôme Phélypeaux,
comte de Maurepas, who, like his father, not only supported Gulf
Coast colonization but also had been tasked with organizing the
effort. It was Maurepas who, in evaluating La Salle's failure
in the Gulf, realized that command should be given to an experienced
sailor who could find the mouth of the Mississippi and navigate its
channel. Word had reached France that the English, as
well as the Spanish, were interested in establishing their own
presence on the Gulf of Mexico, so whoever commanded the French
force on the lower Mississippi needed to be a battle-tested commander as well.
Hence Maurepas's choice of Iberville, the hero of Hudson Bay.23
After the usual delays,
including time for the commander to recuperate from an annoying illness, Iberville's flotilla of four ships--two frigates and two supply
vessels--sailed from Brest in late October
1698. Two days before Iberville sailed, the Marquis Joubert de
Châteaumorant, aboard the ship François, 52 guns, escorting
the Wesp, which had participated in Iberville's last Hudson
Bay campaign, sailed from France with a cargo of munitions for the
governor of St.-Domingue, Iberville's first destination. After
his mission at St.-Domingue was complete, the marquis had orders to
cruise with the François for a month through the West Indian
islands before heading to the Gulf of Mexico. After finding
Iberville's settlement, and keeping in mind that France was still at
peace, he would offer assistance against the English or the Spanish
if they threatened the Mississippi venture.
Iberville took personal command of one of the frigates,
the Badine, 30 guns, which had been refitted at Rochefort.
The other frigate, the Cheval-Marin, called the Marin,
also 30 guns, commanded by the Chevalier Grande de Surgères, had
been refitted at Port-Louis, near Lorient.
One reason the expedition suffered so many delays was the need to
transform the two supply vessels, the traversiers Précieuse and
Biscayenne, into ships that were seaworthy enough to
meet Iberville's strict requirements. With the expedition were
several notables, including the chaplain of the Marin, Père Anastase Douay, who
had witnessed La Salle's murder; Iberville's 19-year-old brother, Jean-Baptiste
Le Moyne, sieur de
Bienville, the eighth of his father's 11 sons; the wealthy poet
and soldier Sieur Sauvole de la Villantray, eager for another
adventure. Besides detailed instructions from Maurepas,
Pontchartrain, and even the King himself on where to go, what to do,
and who would assist him, Iberville received written reports
compiled from interviews of La Salle's companions. Aboard his
vessels were Spanish-speaking sailors who could act as interpreters
if this flotilla also landed on the Texas coast. A contingent
of Canadians came along to serve as soldiers and colonists. No
women or children accompanied this expedition.24
Most of Iberville's
flotilla reached Cap-Français, today's Cap Haitien, St.-Domingue, on
the colony's north coast, in the first week of December, after the
hurricane season had ended. One of the traversiers had
become separated in a storm off the Madeiras but reached
Cap-Français 10 days later. Châtreaumorant reached
Cap-Français a week after Iberville. Iberville tried to
persuade the marquis to forgo his month-long cruise through the
islands and accompany him to the Gulf, but the marquis insisted on
following his orders. Meanwhile, the governor of St.-Domingue,
Jean-Baptiste du Casse, ordered the replenishing of Iberville's vessels at
Léogane, on the south shore of the island. Iberville secured a
pilot, Laurent de Graff, a former Dutch buccaneer, who was
knowledgeable of West Indians waters. De Graff informed
Iberville that four English ships had been spotted off Cap-Français,
destination unknown. This persuaded the marquis to modify his
orders and to follow Iberville into the Gulf. Iberville, with
the governor's permission, hired a number of St.-Domingue buccaneers
as colonists and laborers, but none of them--in fact, no one in the
colony--had ever seen the Mississippi.
The reinforced expedition
left Léogane at the end of December and rounded the western tip of
Cuba in mid-January. Far to the north, in Acadia, Pierre Thibodeau, Guillaume
Blanchard, and dozens of their
fellow Acadians were taking a winter's break from the toil and
trouble of constructing three new settlements at the head of the Bay
of Fundy.
After passing Apalachee
Bay, where the Florida coast turns from north to west, Iberville's flotilla
reached one of the finest harbors along the entire Gulf Coast,
Pensacola Bay. It was the last week of January 1699, three
months after the flotilla had sailed from Brest. What they
found in the beautiful bay should not have surprised them--two
Spanish vessels riding at anchor. Iberville sent a lieutenant
in a ship's boat to inspect the Spanish vessels under the pretense
of asking for wood and water. The Spanish commander, Andrés de Arriola, whose
ships were frigates of 18 and 20 guns apiece, treated the young
Frenchman cordially and even allowed him to observe what the Spanish
were doing on shore. There, on a well-positioned site along
the north shore of the bay, stood the Presidio Santa María de Galve.
Arriola informed the lieutenant that the post held some 300 men, and
the Frenchman could see that they were busy constructing a sturdy
stone fort for the presidio, Fort San Carlos de Austria. The post had been established the year
before, while Iberville was preparing to depart for the Indies. Arrioloa told the lieutenant that his orders would not allow
foreign vessels to enter the harbor, but they were welcomed to take
shelter in the outer bay.24b
Iberville continued
sailing westward along the unchartered coast, keeping an eye out for
English ships, making careful soundings, and never losing sight of
the northern shore. At the end of January, a month out of
St.-Domingue, the flotilla anchored off the mouth of a large bay
only 50 miles west of Pensacola, the fabled
Bahía del Espíritu Santo, today's Mobile Bay. Iberville
was convinced that he was not very far from the mouth of the
Mississippi, but he was determined to explore the big bay before
him just to be certain he was not already there. Today's Dauphin Island, at the mouth of the bay, where
the party took shelter from rain and storm, was first called
Massacre Island for the dozens of human skeletons found there in a
sandy Indian burial mound.
The two traversiers, the larger one commanded by Bienville,
explored the bay. Heavy wind and rain made it difficult to
sound the entrance to the bay, so they were not able to discover the
fine harbor that lies off the eastern end of Massacre Island. Two feluccas from Châteaumorant's squadron
sailed along the mainland, searching for the mouth of the
Mississippi. Iberville and Bienville led a party up along the
bay's western shoreline for several leagues northward, approaching the site
of today's city of Mobile. From the vantage point of a tall
tree standing beside the bay, Iberville concluded, correctly, that
the large, muddy river flowing into the head of the great estuary
was not the Mississippi.24a
Back in their vessels, the
Le Moynes sailed carefully westward along the south shore of
Massacre Island and then came upon a smaller wooded island, which
they called Petit-Bois. They next approached a larger island,
named Horn because, the story goes, someone would leave a power horn there. They could
see that these sandy islands, perhaps once connected, formed a barrier for the coast, important in this land of
sudden, devastating storms. It was only February, but
a storm was brewing off to the south. Hurricane season already
was upon them! Iberville turned
south, passed a long chain of small islands which he called Chandeleur,
after Candelmas, because it was February 2, and then headed back
north to the shorter chain of islands he had passed along the coast.
Between the islands and the mainland lay a long
stretch of open water, today's Mississippi Sound. Iberville
anchored off the south shore of a smaller island that seemed more
substantial than the rest, which they would called Île-des-Vaisseaux,
or Ship Island. He sent Bienville in a boat to find an
inlet deep enough to accommodate the larger ships so that they could
get inside the barrier islands and find shelter from the approaching storm.
Bienville found a good channel between Ship Island and the t-shaped island
next to it, named Cat for all the raccoons they would find there.
The next morning, with Iberville leading in the Badine, the
three large ships followed Bienville's channel into the sound,
turned east when the soundings allowed it, and dropped anchor in the lee
of Ship Island.
His fleet secure,
Iberville was determined to explore the mainland after the weather
cleared. In one of the traversiers, with Père
Douay, Bienville, and a small party of Canadians aboard, and a canoe
in tow, Iberville sailed across the sound to a spot on the mainland
where he had seen a column of smoke the day before. On the
sandy beach he found Indian tracks. Iberville and his party
built a quick shelter and spent the night on the beach. The
next morning, after leaving gifts of two axes, a pipe, and some odds
and ends, they followed the tracks, hoping to overtake the Indians,
which they did on the shore of a small bay.
What Iberville did next
revealed not only his courage and stamina
but also his impressive knowledge of Native Americans. When
the party of Indians, probably from a nearby Biloxi village, spotted Iberville and his men approaching them,
they paddled furiously to the other side of the bay, putting water
and time between themselves and the Europeans. "Climbing
hastily into the canoe he had brought with him, [Iberville] started
off in pursuit and caught up with the savages[sic] just as
they drove their boats up on the beach. Alarmed at the sight
of their pursuers, the Indians rushed into the forest abandoning
their canoes and property in their haste to escape from those they
believed to be Spaniards. But in their eagerness they had been
obliged to leave behind an elderly chief stricken ill with a disease
that was beyond cure. Iberville treated the old man kindly,
built him a hut, brought him food, and did everything to win his
confidence, while Bienville and two Canadians set out in pursuit of
the others."25
Bienville and his
companions returned with several
Indians. Iberville coaxed three of them into coming with him
aboard the Badine, leaving Bienville and two Canadians as
hostages. Iberville entertained the Indians royally, giving
them a tour of the ship, above and below decks.
He ordered his sailors to fire the ship's cannon to impress and
amuse the Indians, who were very much pleased with all they saw and
heard. More importantly, a party of Bayougoula and Mugulasha
from the lower Mississippi valley happened to be hunting in the
neighborhood, or so they said; they may very well have been in the
area to attack the Biloxi or the Mobile. They heard the cannon fire and rushed to the
shore, also much impressed with what they saw across the channel.
Back on the mainland, Iberville accepted their friendly greeting,
led them to his tent, now pitched on the shore, and smoked the pipe
of peace with them. In return, the Indians hurried back to
their hunting and killed enough game to provide their share for a
friendly feast. During
the ceremony, Iberville gave them presents as well as wine and
whiskey, which, to the Canadians' amazement, these southern Indians
drank in moderation, and thus secured what he hoped would be a
lasting alliance with several of the important tribes in the area.
The Indians informed
Iberville that he was not far from the Mississippi, which they
called Malabouchia. With his
ships anchored safely in the sound, he could now begin the next
phase of his expedition--finding the mouths of the Mississippi and
exploring upriver for a suitable site on which to locate a
future settlement. Châteaumorant and his François were no
longer needed, so, on February 20, Iberville dined with the marquis
aboard the Badine and explained his plan of leaving the two
smaller frigates with
Surgères and pushing on to the Mississippi with the traversiers. Châteaumorant agreed to leave provisions
which the governor back in St.-Domingue had given him and for which
Iberville promised payment. The marquis headed back to Léogane
the following day, arriving there the first of April. He did
not cruise the islands, as his orders had dictated, but sailed
around to Cap-Français, where he overhauled the leaky François,
and on May 10 headed back to France, which he reached six weeks
later. Meanwhile, Iberville and Bienville prepared for
their exploration of the Mississippi. To secure his flank in
the direction of Pensacola, Iberville sent two naval ensigns to
explore the Pascagoula River to the east. He left Surgères in
command of the expedition's base at the sound; assigned Sieur Sauvole
the command of one of the traversiers, with Père
Douay and 20 men aboard; and assigned brother Bienville and a like
number of Canadians and sailors to accompany him in the other traversier.
The two vessels headed
westward on February 27. With rain falling steadily, Iberville
sailed around to the south side of Ship Island, past Cat
Island, and then headed south into Chandeleur Sound, entering the
archipelago of small islands at the entrance to Lake Borgne that he
had seen a month before.
"For several days the little vessels threaded their way through this
maze, beating against head winds or bowled along by following
breezes, anchoring at sunset off some island to pass the night."
Everyone aboard kept a sharp eye southward and westward, looking for
signs of the mouth of the river. Until the second day of March
the weather was abysmal, including a northerly gale that threw waves
above the gunwales and into the tightly stretched tarpaulins rigged
around each vessel to keep the sea off the decks. But the
little coasting craft, designed for such labor, pressed on into the
waves, sailing southward, steadily southward, into Breton Sound.
Iberville had been determined to stay close in to shore despite the
danger of running aground, but the weather forced him to choose "the
lesser of the two evils," and he headed out into the open sea.26
As darkness descended on
March 2, Iberville spotted to the southeast what appeared to be a
line of rocks projecting from the coast. Almost dark when he
reached them, he spotted a break in the "rocks" that looked wide
enough to accommodate the vessels. Taking a chance, he put the
ship about, placed the wind behind him, and slid through the narrow
channel into a dozen feet of water--"the first Europeans to enter
the Mississippi from the open sea." The other vessel followed.
Inside the "rocks," there was light enough to detect the milky colored
water that La Salle had seen from the Aimable in December
1684. The whitish water was fresh and did not mix well with
the salt water of the Gulf. At first light, Iberville and his
party could see
that the "rocks" were "masses of petrified logs and driftwood piled
up by the current for generations until, blackened by age and
cemented together by fluvial sediment, ... resembled a rocky
palisade"--a place the Spanish called Cabo de Lodo, or Cape
Mud. Iberville knew from his reports that La Salle had
described such formations during his
exploration of the Mississippi delta in April 1682.27
But was this La Salle's
river? What proof was there that this was indeed
Rivière-Colbert, that it was the Mississippi? Iberville took a latitude reading--28 degrees, 50
minutes. This, too, suggested to him that he had found the
Mississippi, but he
would not be satisfied until he had dispelled all doubts about
the identity of this river. On March 3, Shrove Tuesday, they
headed upriver to find Iberville's proof. Two and a half
leagues upward, they came upon what appeared to be the river's main
channel and could see that it separated into three distinct
branches, the middle one as large as the one they had entered--more
proof, based on what La Salle had described, of the identity of the
river. As they ascended the main channel, they noticed that
the river widened to over a thousand feet above where the channels
parted and narrowed to half that width as they continued upward.
Farther up, Iberville, who was in excellent shape for a man in his
late 30s, climbed another tall tree and gazed upon a wide, flat
landscape of canes and rushes stretching as far as the eye could
see. To attract the attention of local Indians, and perhaps as
part of a brief Mardi Gras celebration, Iberville ordered the ships'
guns to be fired, but no natives appeared. He was determined
to press on to the Bayougoula village, but all the while keeping a
sharp look out for the tribe that had attacked La Salle 17 years
earlier.27a
The wind had died down, so
the sailors had to resort to their vessel's sturdy oars, which made
little progress against the river's strong current. Rounding
the first prominent bend in the river, they could see off to the
east the waters of Lake Borgne, the entrance past which they had
sailed a few days before. But still no Indians.
Provisions were getting low, and the land seemed to offer no
supplements to their diet. There were no fruit trees or berry
bushes or wild grains in sight. Deer and other wild game was
scarce, but the Canadians managed to corner and kill a wild steer,
perhaps on the site of today's Bayou Terre-aux-Beoufs.28
Not until March 7 did they
spot an Indian. It was still morning when they came upon a canoe
with two natives hurrying back towards the river bank, but the Indians
fled into the woods before anyone in the party could give the sign
of friendship. A bit farther up, they came upon five more, who
also fled, but one of the natives succumbed to curiosity and was
showered with gifts from the Frenchmen in exchange for some beef and
fried bear meat. Satisfied by the friendliness of the
Europeans, the Indian summoned his companions from hiding, and
they, too, received gifts and signs of friendship. They
belonged to a band associated with the Bayougoula and were in the
area to hunt for their village. Iberville asked them if the
Bayougoula and Mugulasha who he had feasted the week before were back in the area. The
Indians said that they were, that they had taken a
short cut to their village, which, the Indians said, was five more days travel upriver.
This news discouraged Iberville and the others, who hoped the
Bayougoula could replenish their supplies. Iberville beseeched the
Indians to guide them to the Bayougoula village, but the hunters
demurred. They were there to hunt, not to be tour guides for
Europeans. Iberville managed to convince one of them to remain
with the party, and the expedition got an early start the following
day. Evidently the spring thaw upriver had already begun,
because, when the wind did not cooperate, the sailors had to pull
harder than ever against the oars to make headway against the
powerful current. The land, at least, became more interesting.
The canes and rushes gave way to forests, and the river banks,
especially at the outside of the turns, rose higher from the river's
edge. Atop these natural levees, formed by hundreds of years
of annual spring flooding, they set up camp when they stopped for
the night, their fires visible for miles around.
About a hundred miles
above the river's mouth, at the head of a graceful crescent, a village
of the Quinapisa stood along the east bank atop a prominent
natural levee. As they rowed up to the village, their
Indian guide, perhaps a resident of the place, pointed to a spot that he insisted was a shortcut to
where they had told him their ships were anchored. While the
party was resting near the village from their labor at the oars,
the Indian led Iberville and some of his men down a well-worn
path through the canes and woods to a nearby ridge lying
perpendicular
to the curve of the natural levee. Running first northwestward
and then turning sharply westward,
about two miles or so from the natural levee, the trail ended at
the head of a small bayou. The Indian assured them that this
muddy little stream flowed into an arm of the sea. Being Canadians,
Iberville and his men knew instantly what the Indian was showing
them: here was one end of a portage
site, like the ones they had used back in Canada and Illinois.29
Somewhere in the vicinity
of the portage site, the party suffered its first mishap.
Two Breton sailors went hunting in the woods and did not return
before dark. Iberville ordered the firing of muskets to
attract the attention of the missing sailors. Night passed and
morning came, but the sailors did not return. Iberville sent
parties in all directions to find the missing Frenchmen. He
ordered them not to return to the camping site until they heard a
cannon shot. Meanwhile, the two boats searched up and down the
wooded river bank in case the sailors had returned to the water's
edge at a distance from the camp. Late in the afternoon,
Iberville ordered a cannon fired, and the search parties returned.
Forced to give the sailors up for lost, they continued upriver,
determined to get to the Bayougoula village before their food ran out.
Farther up, along the east
side of the river, "they saw a wide stretch of water in both
directions, where there were many water fowl, quite possibly brown
pelicans." The place came to be called Ance-aux-Outardes,
or Bustard Bay, and also Lake Outardes. Next, they passed a
small distributary that flowed through a break in the natural levee
along the west bank of the river, later called Lafourche, or the
Fork. Finally, on March 13, they
approached the landing in front of the Bayougoula village, which lay on the west bank of the
river. As they approached the landing, a Mugulasha chief,
serving as an ambassador for the village, where both the
Bayougoula and his own people dwelled,
greeted them from a canoe paddled by three other warriors.
The chief carried a yard-long calumet, shared the pipe with
Iberville and the other expedition leaders, and escorted them up to
the village. Iberville was surprised to see prominently
displayed on the path to the village a pipe he had given the Indians
whom he had met on the sound, mounted on two forked sticks and
guarded by a warrior--a very good sign. By now, the Frenchmen
were famished. They devoured the "rather unpalatable
concoction of sagamité, beans, and Indian corn, cooked in bear
grease," which the Indians proffered to them. Iberville broke
out whiskey, which he mixed with water, but even that was strong for
Bayougoula taste. Iberville gave out the usual gifts, and the
Indian youth danced for them.30
During the festivities,
Iberville and Bienville, who had picked up some of the local
dialect, secured the attention of the Bayougoula chief, who was
strutting about in a blue coat given to him many years before by
Henri Tonty. The chief related much information to them about
the other tribes in the area, including the Acolapissa who lived on
another river eight days to the northeast. Iberville asked
about a fork in the lower river that La Salle had mentioned in his
account of the 1682 descent and which Father Membré, who had served
with La Salle and Tonty in Illinois, had said in his journal they
had found on the lower river. The chief assured him that he
knew of no such place, that Tonty, who had come back down river
four years after La Salle, mentioned no such fork in the river either.
This placed Iberville in a
quandary. La Salle's and Father Membré's accounts of the lower
fork were well known
in France, and Father Hennepin's account of his descent of the river
(which had not yet been proven to be false) also mentioned
a lower fork. Among the Bayougoula, Iberville could see that he had stumbled into
the middle of a major Indian rivalry. He feared that the
Bayougoula chief was lying about the fork to dissuade him from
continuing up to the village of the Houma, who Iberville
hoped would be more knowledgeable--and forthright--about the
geography of the river above. The Bayougoula could not keep
him from going the village of their enemy, which Iberville was
determined to do, but there was something else
he had to consider. Before leaving Ship Island at the end of
February, he had given Surgères instructions to wait six weeks, that
is, until the middle of April, for his return from the river.
If he or any of his companions did not return by then, Surgères was
to take the frigates back to France, which would leave Iberville
vulnerable to attacks from the Spanish or, worse, the English.
He had only a month left to complete his survey of the river and get
back to the ships in the sound. He had no idea how far upriver
La Salle's fork lay, or if it even existed. He was determined
to avoid any question back home about his having found the
Mississippi, so he had little time to dally with the Bayougoula.
Iberville remained at Bayougoula until the morning of the 16th. There were
more feasts and dancing, more exchanging of gifts, even a tour of
the village and its sacred temple. None of what he saw, either
human or material, impressed the haughty Canadian, but, wisely, he
hid his true feelings behind a façade of smiles and gestures of
amicability. He was anxious to move up to the Houma village,
where he hoped they would be met with more smiles and handshakes.
They took with them a canoe full of Bayougoula guides. Past
a tributary entering the river from the west, which his guides no
doubt told him was a gateway to a great inland swamp, they entered
another sharp bend in the river that swung them eastward.
When they came upon the mouth of a small distributary that headed
eastward through the forest, their guides told them that here was
another short cut to where their ships had been anchored--today's
Bayou Manchac. This was not a portage site, the Indians
insisted, but an all-water shortcut back to the sea. It was the
route they usually took to and from the seaside hunting grounds
where Iberville had found them the month before.
On the 17th, as they
moved farther up through the territory of the Bayougoula, Iberville
and the others saw atop a bluff on the river's east bank a small
village with a painted pole that the Houma had erected as a boundary
marker, separating their land from the Bayougoula. The Indians
called the pole and the place where
it stood Iti Houma or Istrouma, but the Frenchmen, evidently more fascinated with
its color than its name, called the boundary marker baton rouge,
or "red stick." There, Iberville could see for himself what
LaSalle and Tonty, coming from the other direction, had seen nearly
two decades before, that the site of Baton Rouge marks the first--or
last--bluff above the Mississippi delta. South of the red
pole, the only "high" ground along the river were the natural levees
atop which they had pitched their shelters.31
The following day, they sailed past an island in the river, the
first they had seen. Next they observed "one of those
topographical peculiarities of the Mississippi formed by the river
swinging around in a loop, almost in a circle, in such a way as to
bring the banks close together. In the course of time erosion
eats away the banks and the river takes a short cut, forming a new
channel, and the erstwhile loops remains by itself separated from
the waters of the river in what is known as an ox-bow-cut-off."
They had reached the portage of Pointe-Coupée. The Indians
insisted that they could save a day's journey if they dragged their
canoes across the neck of land there. Iberville ordered it
done, sending the traversiers the long way around via the
main channel. But a huge log jam rising 30 feet blocked
the trail to a
small bayou that led back to the main channel. Undaunted, the
Frenchmen
cleared a path through the obstacle wide enough for the canoes,
dragged them through and into the bayou, and soon they were back in
the river's channel, the traversiers waiting for them.32
On March 20, they reached the landing that led to the Houma village,
near modern day Angola.
A Houma delegation was there to greet them. By now,
Iberville had learned that the Houma were a branch of the Choctaw
nation who spoke a different language from the Muskogean-speaking
Bayougoula and Mugulasha. But most of what the Bayougoula had
told him, he knew,
came from the prejudiced mind of an enemy. No matter,
Iberville had to make peace with the powerful Houma and learn from
them the geography of the river above where he had no time to go.
Iberville left most of the party at the landing and,
with his Bayougoula guides and a few companions,
followed the Houma
delegation to their village, where they endured the usual Indian
hospitality, including a dance by the brightly-painted,
scantily-clad youth that lasted three long hours. After the
usual feast, this time only of sagamité, the dancing resumed until
midnight.
Iberville remained at the Houma village the following day,
exchanging gifts as well as long speeches and, more importantly,
securing a promise of peace between them and the Bayougoula. The most prized
exchange was a generous supply of grain for their return downriver.
And then there was the question of the fork in the river. The
Houma knew nothing of it. Tonty had stayed with them five
days, they said, and also had said nothing of it. Iberville
saw no choice but to continue upriver until he either found the fork
or found enough evidence to prove it did not exist. He
remembered that Father Membré's account had placed the site of the
fork 15 leagues below the Koroa settlement up on the Yazoo.
Pushing upriver,
he took with him a half a dozen Houma guides as well as a
Taensa chief. With no Houma around, he asked the chief to draw
a map of the upper river. The Taensa complied, but his drawing showed
no fork in the river. It did show a large river flowing in
from the west divided into two channels. The chief also listed
the tribes who dwelled at various points on his map, including
distances between them. Iberville took from his baggage a
published account of the river's geography based on Father Membré's
journal. He compared the chief's handiwork with the published
account, especially the distances, and was chagrined to see that one
of his principal sources varied widely from what the Taensa chief
had shown him. If the published accounts were so wrong about
the distances, he reasoned, they also could be wrong about the
existence of the fork. Not a single Indian mentioned the fork.
And then a Bayougoula
recalled something that Iberville had not heard. Back at their
village was a document that Tonty had left with them years ago to
give "to a man who should come there from the sea." The letter obviously had
been left for La Salle during Tonty's 1686 descent. Now
everything came clear to Iberville. What
he was seeing around him, what the Indians had told him,
not what he had found in written reports, convinced him that this
was La Salle's Rivière Colbert, that for the last three weeks he and
his men had been traveling up the Mississippi.33
Convinced that he was
exploring
the lower Mississippi, Iberville turned back downriver to begin the next
phase of his Louisiana venture. At the landing for the Houma
village, there was no one waiting for him. He had left some of
his Bayougoula guides at the village, so he sent Bienville and two
Canadians to retrieve them. Bienville's hasty return to the
landing upset the Houma, who feared they had angered the Canadians.
To win the Frenchmen's favor, they staged an elaborate procession
down to the landing, where Iberville waited. Seeing his
opportunity, he asked them for more food, which they retrieved for
him, and he rewarded them with the usual trinkets. The next
morning, March 23, he and his party began the downriver trek in
earnest.33b
The current, once their
enemy, now was their friend. They did not bother with the
Pointe-Coupée portage, but they did stop at the mouth of Bayou
Manchac to test that shortcut to the Gulf. A brief
reconnaissance down the bayou revealed water too shallow for the
boats. Leaving them on the river with Sauvole and Bienville to
return the way they had come, Iberville joined four of his men and a
Mugulasha guide in a canoe and headed down Bayou Manchac, which the
French later called Rivière Iberville.
The Manchac shortcut was a
disappointment. Stretches of water not even deep enough for a
canoe, masses of fallen trees, and huge nests of sodden brushwood
rendered the lower bayou virtually impassable. Ten portages
the first day and 50 the second day considerably slowed their
progress. On the second day, the Mugulasha guide deserted, the
poor Indian frightened off perhaps more by the Canadians' curses
than the difficulty of the passage. Iberville had to choose
between returning to the river and catching up to the boats, or
pressing ahead into an unchartered wilderness without the benefit of
a local guide. These were sons of Canada! They pressed
on, determined to show the "savages" what Frenchmen could do.
The gamble paid off.
Bayou Manchac took them into a proper river, wide and peaceful, flanked by marshes as well as cypress swamps.
The Manchac had flowed eastward along its entire length; this river,
called the Amite, turned them southeastward. There were no
more portages to slow them, only the question of which branch of the
river they should follow. Game was plentiful, they even fired
at a herd of wild cattle in the distance, so food was not a problem.
Alligators, which they had seen in the river and had easily avoided,
were in great abundance here.
After three days of
travel, they entered a shallow lake, which Iberville called
Maurepas. He knew from what the Indians had told him that
there were two shallow lakes they would have to cross, the second
one larger than the first. They crossed Maurepas swiftly,
found its outlet, which they called Pass Manchac, and soon they were
on the shore of a much larger lake, which Iberville called
Pontchartrain. They chose to follow the big lake's southern
shore, which proved to be the long way around to its outlet.
Having no guide, so they probably did not know it, as they paddled
along the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain they passed the mouth of
the little bayou the Indian had described to them at the portage
site on the beautiful river crescent.
After two days of effort,
they found the big lake's outlet on its far eastern end, its water
brackish, its channel deep. Iberville called it the Rigolets,
and soon they were paddling along the shore of Lake Borgne, having
returned to the Gulf of Mexico. They followed the sandy coast
eastward, back towards the ships. On the evening of the 30th,
they lit a bonfire at a point of land on which they had stopped to
camp, hoping to attract the attention of a lookout aboard one of the
frigates. The next morning, they paddled their canoe across
the sound. Half way across, they met two ship's boats coming
to investigate the fire, and soon Iberville stood on the deck of his
flagship Badine.
He and his Canadians
returned to the ships only two hours ahead of Sauvole and Bienville.
Until the little distributary could be cleared of fallen trees and
more water from the river diverted into it, Bayou Manchac would be a
short cut only in distance, not in time.
Sauvole and Bienville had
much to relate about their week-long passage down the river.
From Bayou Manchac, they floated back down to Bayougoula, where, to
their utter amazement, they found the two sailors who had gotten
lost in the woods two weeks before. While resting at the
village, an incident occurred that soured relations between the
Frenchmen and the Indians. Father Douay had been keeping a
journal in his breviary, and he suddenly realized the book and other
personal belongings had been stolen. He blamed one of the
Bayougoula guides who had traveled with him in one of the boats and
who had shown interest in the little book. The chief called
the people together and asked them to produce the priest's
possessions. No one obliged. Father Douay lost his
dignity and wept like a child about the loss of his precious
treasures. To assuage the priest, the sailors and Canadians
searched the Indians' houses, insulting their hosts. The
Bayougoula chief angrily refused to provide the Frenchmen with
anymore food. Sauvole intervened and, with a gift of trinkets,
managed to calm the chief and secure enough supplies to allow them
to continue downriver. It was during the search of the Indian
dwellings that Bienville found the letter from Tonty to La
Salle, as well as a Spanish helmet from the time of De Soto--solid proof that they had found the Mississippi.33a
.
He had explored the great
river to the 31st parallel and was convinced it was the Mississippi.
He had surveyed the coast from the river's mouth east to Mobile Bay.
He had visited two major Indian villages and treated with members of
half a dozen local tribes. Soon the two frigates must return
to France for repair and refitting. Iberville would return
with them, not only to report to Pontchartrain and Maurepas, but also to organize
a relief expedition that would return to Louisiana the following
spring. But first he had to find a suitable place for the
men he would leave behind to maintain French presence on the Mexican
Gulf.
The chosen site had to be
defensible. It had to have ready access to the sound via a
channel deep enough to accommodate the traversiers when they
were fully loaded. It had to be close enough to friendly
Indians so that the settlers could trade with them for food.
Conferring with Sauvole, Bienville, and Surgères, three possible
sites emerged, none on the
lower Mississippi. His exploration of the river had convinced
him "to build his settlement on the Gulf coast instead of on
the lower Mississippi River. He thought that the river banks were
too low, and the land behind them too swampy. He was afraid that
large ships would not be able to cross the mudbanks and sand bars at
the mouth of the river, and he figured that a fort on the coast
would let France control the river's mouth while also helping to
hold the entire northern Gulf shore."34
The coastal sites that
Iberville and the others did consider were
Biloxi, Pascagoula, and the Rigolets. Having
passed through the Rigolets
only a few days before, Iberville had sounded its channel, and was astonished
to find it 36 feet deep. While he was exploring the
Mississippi, Surgères had sent officers to sound the Pascagoula
estuary, and they had reported an acceptable depth there.
Iberville took a party of his own to the place but was disappointed
with his soundings. Surgère's officers were not impressed with
the channel at Biloxi Bay, but Iberville went there, too. On
the first toss of the lead line at the entrance to the bay, he found
a seven-foot channel, deep enough for the traversiers.
He did not consider Mobile Bay as a potential settlement site
because no one in his party had yet discovered the deep harbor at
the east end of Massacre Island.34a
Iberville chose Biloxi Bay.
Fort Maurepas, as it came to be called, sited on a bluff at the east
end of the bay at present-day Oceans Springs, Mississippi, was the
first settlement in French Louisiana. The site commanded the
entrance to Biloxi Bay and lay across the sandy peninsula that
jutted from the mainland along the west shore of the bay. This
was not the simple palisade fort common in Illinois and Canadian
wilderness. Iberville insisted on "a regulation affair, square
in shape with four bastions, made of oak, with which the region
abounded." The walls and bastions held a dozen guns, most of
them trained on the channel. Iberville was confident that the
fort could withstand an attack from Pensacola or from hostile
Indians who ventured into the area. Though France was still at
peace with England, one never knew when those troublesome people
might suddenly appear, either overland or by sea from Carolina or
from their islands in the West Indies. And then there were the
Caribbean pirates, some of them brazen enough to attack a fortified
position.35
Work began on the walls of
Fort Maurepas on April 8, but progress was slow. Iberville
chose 70 men and 6 boys to remain at the fort under trusty Sauvole,
whose lieutenant would be brother Bienville. Many of the men
who remained were his sturdy Canadians. Supplies were brought ashore,
including livestock from the holds of the frigates, but Iberville
insisted that his men clear the sandy soil behind the fort and plant
peas and beans to supplement their diet.
While working on the fort,
five Spanish deserters from Pensacola stopped by on their way to
Mexico. They provided Iberville with valuable information on
the state of the Spanish settlement. They had come from Vera
Cruz, they said, about 300 of them, mostly slaves and at least 40
convicts whom the Spanish were not reluctant to work to death.
Food ran low, the commander sailed to Havana to secure provisions,
and the remainder began to starve. Many deserted to the
Indians, and soon only 50 of them remained in the stone presidio.
The deserters confirmed what Iberville had suspected all along--that
Pensacola was founded only to prevent the French from settling on
the coast. After choosing Pensacola as his base of operations,
the Spanish commander had not bothered to explore the other bays and
inlets, so they had no idea where the French might settle. If
Fort Maurepas could hold out until he could return with
reinforcements, the French would maintain the upper hand in this
part of the Gulf, which, after all, was the first of Iberville's
missions.
In late April, on the eve
of his departure, Iberville inspected the fort, including its oaken
walls and the placement of the cannon. He sent parties out to
explore the surrounding country, looking out especially for any
Indians in the area. A last-minute inspection of the fort's
provisions turned up many articles that had spoiled in the high
humidity. Seeing no choice, Iberville hurried one of the
traversiers back to St.-Domingue to obtain supplies from Governor
Du Casse. "Farewells were said and on May 3 the Badine
and the Marin raised their anchors and set sail for home."
Other than the usual separations in fog and storm, the voyage back
was uneventful. The Badine dropped anchor at Rochefort
on July 2, and the Marin appeared a few days later.36
Back at Versailles,
Iberville encountered the usual Court intrigues, but he remained
focused on his missions in Louisiana. Du Casse of St.-Domingue
had communicated his views to Pontchartrain on the Louisiana
venture, all of it negative. Aware of the limited resources in
France for support of its existing colonies, including his own, Du
Casse saw no reason for another French settlement near the Caribbean
Basin. He emphasized the might of Spain in Mexico and Cuba and
the vulnerability of a remote new colony on the lower Mississippi.
Then came word from the new governor-general in Québec that the
English and the Dutch were gathering forces not only to establish
themselves on the Gulf of Mexico, but also to seize the Illinois
from France!
So what did Louis XIV make
of all of this? His actions spoke volumes. After
evaluating the dispatches from St.-Domingue and Canada, as well as
Iberville's report on the Louisiana venture, he gave the Canadian
command of a new 560-ton, 46-gun frigate, the Renommée, recently built
at Bayonne, and a cargo ship full of fresh provisions to carry back
to Biloxi, the King's new outpost on the Gulf of Mexico. Iberville also would take with him more
Canadians, who had been brought to France by another of his
brothers, Joseph Le Moyne, sieur de Sérigny et de Loire, the sixth
of his father's sons. Joseph, also a battle-tested seaman, had
served under brother Pierre in the Hudson Bay campaigns. The
Canadians would go on to Louisiana with Iberville, but Sérigny, for
now, would remain in France.37
Supporting the King's actions were not only Pontchartrain and
Maurepas but also the redoubtable Sébastien Le Prestre, Marquis de
Vauban, considered to be one of the greatest military minds of his day.
Despite his "continentalism," Vauban was an enthusiast for French colonial expansion, which, to
his mind, meant securing what France already possessed. Vauban
insisted that if the colonization of Louisiana was to be pursued in
earnest, Biloxi, and any other post Iberville might establish, must
be properly fortified, reinforced, and maintained, or the Spanish,
the English, even the Dutch, would make short work of it. The
heart of New France had always been Canada, not Acadia or
Newfoundland or Hudson Bay. Securing Louisiana secured the
approach to Illinois, which in turn secured the approach to Canada.
The Louisiana venture, and Iberville's role in it, was
sanctioned now at the highest levels of royal policy making.38
Iberville responded with a lengthy memoir that extolled not only
Louisiana's geography, topography, and climate, but also its
grand-strategic value. As a devoted son of Canada, he was
perfectly aware of the importance of the Gulf and the Mississippi to
the survival of his native province. He, too, emphasized the
English threat, especially from its Atlantic colonies, to long-term
French interests in North America. Iberville, in fact, had
heard that the previous autumn the English had sent a colonizing
expedition to North America and could even name the captain who
commanded the venture--Captain Lewis Banks, whom Iberville had
encountered on Hudson Bay. Rumor had it that a second
expedition waited in the Thames to sail as soon as the first
returned. Among the colonists, supposedly, were French
Huguenots who, it was widely believed, would gladly settle in a French colony as long as they
were granted freedom of conscience, something the King, and
Iberville, were not disposed to do.
And then there was the King's obsession with finding valuable
mineral mines in La Salle's Louisiana. He reminded Iberville
that if such mines were found, they would belong to the Crown.
The King also had heard accounts of mulberry trees growing wild in
the region, perhaps the foundation for a silk industry there.
And what about the furry cattle out on the plains, and the accounts
of huge deer herds in the Louisiana forests? Could this wool
and deerskin trade do for Louisiana what the beaver fur trade had
done for Canada?
Although he was enthusiastic about returning to Biloxi with his
new warship and fresh provisions, and the King and Minister
urged him to hurry back to their outpost on the Mexican Gulf, Iberville delayed his departure
until October. There was much to do to guarantee the
success of his next expedition, not to mention that his wife and two
sons, one of them an infant, were living at Iberville's estate near
La Rochelle. The Renommée would not be the only ship
Iberville would take with him. A 700-ton flute, the Gironde,
and two feluccas for use on the Mississippi, also would come along.
Iberville offered command of the Gironde to
Surgères, whose rank allowed him to command a larger ship. Surgères magnanimously accepted command of the fluke, which
said much about his character as well as his view of Iberville as a
leader. Another reason for delay was the protection of the Renommée
and the Gironde from the marine
worms that had nearly ruined the hulls of the Badine and the
Marin during their months of exposure to tropical waters.
And then there was the impressive ceremony in which the King
conferred on Iberville and Surgères the coveted cross of the Order
of St.-Louis. Iberville was the first native-born Canadian to
receive the coveted honor.
Before sailing, Iberville submitted his plan of action to Maurepas.
He would sail not to St.-Domingue but directly to the Gulf (one
wonders if Du Casse's attitude about Louisiana influenced
this decision). After replenishing Fort Maurepas, he would
send Bienville with 50 Canadians in the feluccas and canoes up
the Mississippi to the mouth of Rivière-Rouge, which they would explore up to the
village of the Caddo. From Caddo, leaving the feluccas behind,
Bienville would send detachments as far as the Hasinai
in east Texas (these were the Indians who had been so friendly to La
Salle and his companions), and then push his main party overland to the
Texas coast. Meanwhile, Iberville would sail to Matagorda Bay,
inspect the site of La Salle's ill-fated settlement, and rendezvous
there with Bienville. White waiting for Bienville, Iberville
would survey the Texas coast down towards the Rio Brava, being
careful not to approach too closely to any Spanish settlements in
the area. Having rendezvoused with Bienville and the
Canadians, he would send them with the ships back to Fort Maurepas
while he and a small party would return overland to the Caddo village,
retrieve the feluccas, drift down the Red and into the Mississippi,
sail back to his ships, and return to France.
With approval of his plan by the King and Minister, Iberville
set sail from La Rochelle on October 17. Aboard his flotilla
were a few veterans of his first expedition, but most of the
personnel for this second trip had not been to Louisiana.
Three relatives, one of them by blood, the other two by marriage,
came along. One of Iberville's
youngest brothers, Antoine Le Moyne, sieur de Châteauguay, only 16
years old, was among them. Another relative on board was Louis
Juchereau de St.-Denis, a 22-year-old kinsman of Iberville's wife.
A cousin, Pierre Du Guay de Boisbriant, who had served with
Iberville and Bienville in Acadia and had been in the first
expedition to Louisiana, would return as Iberville's aide-major.
The notorious coureur de bois, Pierre-Charles Le Sueur, now 42 years old
and France's pre-eminent expert on the Sioux, Chippewa, other tribes
in the far western country, also was a relative. Le Sueur took with him a party of
prospectors who would develop any mineral deposits they would find
on the Mississippi. Jesuit Father Paul Du Ru came along to serve as Iberville's chaplain
and to take up a mission among the Indians.39
Despite his determination to sail directly to the Gulf,
Iberville made for Cap-Français, which he reached on December 11.
Many of the men aboard has fallen ill, some of them before they had
left La Rochelle. Not until 8 January 1700 did Iberville's
flotilla anchor at Biloxi Bay. Sauvole hurried aboard the Renommée and reported what had happened since the previous spring.
After Iberville's departure in early May, Sauvole had set about
preparing the post for the rigors of the coming winter. This
included the construction of a hospital building and removal of
trees around the fort to provide open fields of fire.
Meanwhile, a Bayougoula hunting party visited the fort. The
Bayougoula chief offered to lead Bienville to the village of the
Acolapissa, who lived up a river that flowed into the Gulf not far
from the Rigolets, four days cross country from Biloxi. In
June, Sauvole ordered a more thorough exploration of Mobile Bay and
the Pascagoula. He also sent a patrol to Pensacola to see if
the Spanish were still there, and they were. The patrol sent
to Pascagoula ascended the river for seven leagues before they
reached the Pascagoula village, which contained about 20 houses.
In August, Sauvole sent Bienville with a party in two canoes to the
Rigolets to survey the shores of lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas
for suitable settlement sites, and then to explore the southern
shore of Lake Pontchartrain to find the mouth of the little bayou
flowing into the lake that led to the portage site on the lower
Mississippi. Bienville and his Canadians did not disappoint.
They saw for themselves what Iberville had seen--lakes too shallow
and shores too marshy for any kind of settlement along them.
And they found what the Indians called Choupicatcha, perhaps
today's Bayou Tchoupitoulas, a branch of Bayou St.-Jean, which the Indians assured them
would lead on to the Mississippi. Bienville and some of his men in one of the canoes
ascended the little bayou to its narrow upper reaches, lugged
the canoe up a natural ridge near the bayou's head, and then hauled
it southward through a back swamp to the natural levee above the
sweeping river crescent they had passed the year before. Here
was the place where the Indian guide had shown them one end of a
portage. Further
exploration of the area revealed that the natural levee at the
portage site was "the widest swath of relatively dry land within one
hundred miles of the Mississippi's mouth ...." Most
importantly, the portage greatly shortened communication between the
lower river and Fort Maurepas.40
From the portage site, Bienville went up to visit the Quinapisa
and the Bayougoula. Back downriver, he explored the "fork of
the Chitimacha," which he called Lafourche, or the Fork, before heading back to
Biloxi via the river's mouth. It was
on the last leg of the river's descent that
Bienville encountered the bête
noir of France in North America. At the head of the
sweeping bend below the portage site, Bienville and his Canadians
came upon a sight they had long dreaded--a corvette, the Carolina
Galley, carrying a dozen
guns and flying the red and white flag of England. In command
of the English expedition was an old antagonist, Captain Lewis Banks. Bienville, as a lad, had confronted this
very Englishman in faraway Hudson Bay, and here he was on the lower
Mississippi, skulking about in French territory. Iberville's intelligence had been largely correct: Banks had
crossed from London, wintered in Carolina, sent one of his ships
back to England, and,
"with a view to establishing himself on the Mississippi,"
took two ships--the corvette and a larger vessel--around Florida and
into the Gulf of Mexico, only a few months after Iberville had
established Fort Maurepas! Banks sailed past the Mississippi,
cruised a hundred leagues or so to the west, doubled back to the
river's mouth, and, leaving the larger ship in the Gulf's deeper
waters, maneuvered the corvette into the river's channel.
Although England and France were still at peace, here was the
opportunity for an international incident that could complicate
matters between the imperial powers. The young Frenchman in
the canoe informed the Englishman in his warship that France already
had possession of the lower river, so he had no business there. Banks could have destroyed the Canadians with a single
broadside and continued on his way. Instead, he hoisted
anchor, turned his vessel about, and drifted slowly down the river, but not before uttering "dire
threats that he would return in greater force to found a settlement
on the river, which, he said, the English had discovered fifty years
before." Bienville named the spot Détour-des-Anglais, or English Turn,
its name to this day.41
Also, Sauvole related to Iberville, the English had appeared in
another quarter, this one as troubling as a ship on the lower river.
During Bienville's sojourns on the river, he learned that English
traders from Carolina had pushed as far west as the Chickasaw
villages, which the French considered to be part of their Louisiana
domain. Iberville vowed to capture the interlopers or drive
them away. Just as troubling,
war had broken out
between the Bayougoula and the Houma a month after Iberville had
returned to France.
Sauvole had good news and bad news from upriver. Two
missionaries who had been living with the Taensa had visited Biloxi during Iberville's
absence, the Louisiana post's first contact via the
upper river with Illinois and Canada. Unfortunately, soon
after Iberville's return, word reached him that one of the
missionaries, Father François Jollier de Montigny, had been murdered
by the Natchez, who lived on the river above the Houma. In the
eyes of the other Indians, this was an act of war. Tribes in
the area who were allied with the Natchez could cut his
communication with Illinois. He had no choice but to go to the
Natchez and make peace with that tribe, but he also had to demand
that they give him the missionary's killers; it was essential for
French dominion in the area "that the murder of a Frenchman should
not go unpunished." He would need all of his skills as a
diplomat as well as of a warrior. Also, war had once again
broken out between the Houma and the Bayougoula.42
Hearing all this, Iberville postponed his region-wide tour of
the Red River and the Texas coast, as he had described
in his report to Maurepas. However, he could not forgo an
expedition to the Illinois country to search for mines and mulberry
trees, as the King had wanted. But what if Banks
had not been bluffing about returning to the Mississippi with
a larger force? The commandant would first have to turn
his attention to more pressing problems on the
river.
Iberville's new expedition
set out in the middle of January 1700. Instead of going
to the mouth of the river with its troublesome "rocks" and currents,
he headed to Lake Pontchartrain with two feluccas and three canoes, searching for
mouth of the
little bayou that led to the portage site on the lower
river. He found it (Bienville had used it the summer before),
but he was not impressed. The bayou channel was so narrow that
only the canoes could get into it. The head of the bayou was a
muddy slough, and the portage was a league in length. Half of
that distance they had to slog through knee-deep mud, until they
finally reached the back of the natural levee which they had passed
the year before. Once atop the levee, though, the view of the
river was so
magnificent that their exertions were all but forgotten.
Iberville set up camp at the site and spent two days surveying the
surrounding terrain, even planting some sugar cane he had picked up
at Cap-Français in hopes that it would grow to maturity.42a
Bienville, meanwhile, with the three canoes and 11 men,
returned to the Bayougoula village to inform them of the return of
Iberville and the ships and to hear the latest news about the area
tribes. He was also tasked with finding a suitable site for a
downriver fort. At Bayougoula, he found a chief from a local tribe who
claimed to know the river well. The chief agreed to help him
find a suitable place on which to build a fort near the river's
mouth. Below English Turn, the river turned southward and then
southeastward, the banks on both sides lined by illimitable marsh.
The turns here were gentle, the river almost straight in places.
About 17 leagues above the river's mouth, on the left, or east, bank of
the channel, the Indian pointed to a natural levee that he assured
them would not be inundated even when the river overflowed its
banks. Bienville inspected the spot, sent a canoe back upriver
to alert Iberville, and then waited for his brother.
After his inspection of the land at the portage site, Iberville had
returned to the ships via the muddy portage and waited for word
from brother Bienville. Receiving it, he prepared to return to the river, this time via the "rock"-strewn outlet
which he had taken exactly a year before.
Sauvole, meanwhile, would remain at Biloxi with the ships.
On February 1, Iberville sailed southward with a traversier and the two feluccas, carrying 80 men this time. Among them
were Father Du Ru, young St.-Denis, and brother Châteauguay.
It took two days to reach the pass via Chandeleur and Breton sounds.
They rendezvoused with
Bienville and his party at midnight on the second day. After
Iberville approved the site, everyone at hand--Canadians, sailors, officers, even Father Du Ru--began construction of the fort "which was to stand as mute witness
to the French claims of dominion." Consisting of a
two-story blockhouse made of sturdy red cypress, surrounded by a
12-foot-wide moat,
Fort de La Boulaye, also called Fort de Mississippi, was Iberville's response to Banks's threat of returning to the river
with more Englishmen. The blockhouse and its armament--four
four-pounders and two 18-pounders trained on the channel--would be
garrisoned by Iberville's Canadians and commanded by his wife's
kinsman, Louis Juchereau de St.-Denis, when Bienville was not there.43
St.-Denis also was tasked with maintaining a presence at the
portage site a dozen leagues upriver, which Iberville planned to
use regularly when traveling by canoe. Later, when Bienville
commanded at Fort Maurepas, he coaxed the friendly Biloxi to move to
the bayou along the portage "in order to afford the new Fort [de] La
Boulaye some measure of native support." The Quinapisa, now
friendly, also lived near enough to offer assistance.43b
Before leaving
Fort Maurepas, Iberville had prepared for another expedition
upriver, hoping this time to get as far as
Illinois.
While his men were still laboring on the blockhouse, he sent
one of the feluccas loaded with provisions to the portage site
to meet
a party coming from Fort Maurepas via Lake Pontchartrain.
In this second party, led by fellow Canadian and kinsman Pierre du Guay de Boisbriant,
Iberville's aide-major, were 10 soldiers,
eight Canadians, and mining prospectors under Iberville's other kinsman, Pierre-Charles Le Sueur, who
would follow Iberville up to Natchez and beyond. After
replenishing their supplies at the portage site, Du Guay would take
the party up to Bayougoula, where they would wait for
Iberville. Iberville also sent a party of six men with axes,
under Louis Denys de La Ronde, to a grove full of cedars he had passed
along the river; there, Indian style, and probably with help from
the Indians, they fashioned a number of
dugout canoes, called pirogues, to navigate shallow streams.43a
Iberville was about to resume his upriver journey when
a canoe appeared at the fort that was not part of his
expedition. Henri de Tonty, La Salle's trusted lieutenant, now
age 50, stepped out of the canoe and, with his one good hand, greeted Iberville and his
officers. Since his return to the lower river 14 years before
searching in vain for La Salle, Tonty had pursued the troubled
Canadian fur trade from his base on the Illinois. When
Iberville had received the command of the new Louisiana venture,
Tonty had been ordered to co-operate fully. The previous
December, he had guided a party of Jesuits to the mouth of the
Arkansas River, where they would establish missions, arriving there
around Christmas. As soon as he could get away, Tonty, with
seven Canadians, pressed on--his third descent of the
Mississippi--and here he was. If Iberville had worried about
Tonty's attitude towards a venture the Neapolitan had hoped to
command, seeing the hearty old fellow dispelled all doubts.
Tonty was there to do his part in maintaining French presence in the
Mississippi valley. Never losing sight of La Salle's vision,
he had irked the buyers in Montréal by merely suggesting that the
furs from the western country be shipped to France via the Illinois
and the Mississippi, not the longer, portage-plagued route back to
the lower St. Lawrence. His arrival at Iberville's fort
with a canoe full of Canadians was a fulfillment of La Salle's great
scheme. "The work which La Salle had set out to do
twenty years before was at last accomplished."44
.
Tonty brought good news from upriver. Father Montigny,
supposedly murdered by the Natchez, was still alive.
Iberville now could treat with that powerful tribe living above the
Houma without the stigma of murder hovering above them.
Iberville informed Tonty of his plans to explore the Red River and
then move on to Illinois to fulfill the King's wishes.
What better guide could there be than the man who knew more about
the western country than anyone alive. With Tonty's Canadians
also coming along, Iberville could leave Du Guay's soldiers at Fort
de Mississippi, where the sick roll was growing longer.
And then the weather turned against them. By
mid-February, ice had formed in the streams, promising to delay any
travel upriver. Iberville left the Sieur de Maltot with 14 men
at the fort, including those too ill to travel, and sent Bienville,
Châteauguay, La Ronde, Father Du Ru, and a large detachment in a
felucca and two wooden pirogues to Bayougoula, where he would
rendezvous with them as soon as he could. The trip up was
arduous, and their camp at the Bayougoula landing was nothing more
than a vast sea of mud. On February 17, Iberville started up
from the fort with Tonty and his men, the weather still inhospitable. It
took them five days to reach the portage site, where they
rendezvoused with Le Sueur and his men. Iberville, Tonty, and
Le Sueur pushed on to the Bayougoula landing, which they reached on
February 26, and prepared to enter the village with the proper
formality that such occasions demanded.
After the
usual festivities, Iberville gathered his officers together and laid
plans for the next expedition. He sent a messenger to Surgères
on the
Renommée, instructing him to leave a month's
provisions at Fort Maurepas and then hurry back to France with a
report of what Iberville had accomplished, and hoped to accomplish,
on this second expedition to Louisiana. St.-Denis, who despite
his youth also was proving his worth, Iberville sent ahead with a
vanguard of hunters to keep the upriver expedition supplied with
fresh meat. Iberville gave Tonty the assignment of luring two English
traders, reported to be upriver with the Chickasaw, into the hands
of La Ronde, who would hold them as prisoners. Bienville, with
a hand full of men, would precede the main party to their next stop,
the Houma village. Du Guay would remain at Bayougoula to wait
for a squad of his men who had gone down to Fort de La Boulaye to
look after a comrade who was enduring emergency surgery.
Iberville began his expedition in earnest on March 1 with 58 men,
total, in the three upriver parties. He caught up to Bienville
on the second day out, and on the morning of the third day reached
the Houma landing, where he erected a cross at a nearby portage site.
He instructed the Houma not to remove the sacred symbol and
named the place Portage of the Cross. With too many men to
burden the Houma, who were suffering from the effects of a recent
malady, he led most of them up and around a long, sharp
bend, now today's Raccouri Island, where they would wait at a
landing above the mouth of Red River while he and a handpicked few,
including six Canadians and six Bayougoula, took the short portage
back down to the Houma village to endure the usual festivities.44a
It was important that
he take the Bayougoula along, for, despite the peace that he had
brokered the previous March, war had erupted
between the two old enemies
soon after he had left them. During a council that
followed the festivities, both sides blamed the other for the outbreak
of war, but both sides also welcomed Iberville's help in restoring the
peace. The Houma agreed to release Bayougoula prisoners, and
the Bayougoula proffered the appropriate gifts to ransom them.44b
Peace, and the tribal
balance of power, was restored on the lower river.
At the Houma village were warriors from the Little Taensa
village, located three days journey to the westward. The year
before, members of this tribe had related to Iberville the wonders
of the Red River valley. Prompted by Iberville, they described
the complexity of the river in more detail this time.
Iberville was intrigued. He asked them to guide him up the
river as far as the Caddo villages, but they demurred. At this
season, they explained, there was not enough water in the river for
his larger vessels. Without competent guides, Iberville knew
better than to ascend an unchartered river. They suggested
that he go on up to the Big Taensa village and send a party overland
to the Caddo villages. The overland party could see for
themselves the wonders of the river.
From the upper landing near the mouth of Red River, Iberville
sent 10 men in a pirogue back to Fort de La Boulaye with equipment he no longer needed and, on March 9, resumed the journey upriver,
now entering a part of the river he had not seen. In two days
he reached the village of the Natchez
at the site of the present city. After the usual greeting
ceremony, in which the Natchez chief, the Grand Soleil, showed all due respect to the
French commander, the chief handed to Iberville a letter from Father Montigny which informed him that he was returning to his post at
Taensa after staying among the Natchez. The missive contained
many details about the priest's impressions of the Natchez, his
supposed murderers. Two things impressed the French at
Natchez: the large number of people who lived there (perhaps
3,000), and the quality of the soil in the area, which produced
substantial harvests of maize. To learn more about this
important tribe, Iberville left two boys at the village to learn
their language and customs.45
On the morning of March 12, Iberville pushed on in a single canoe
with only six men to Taensa, leaving Bienville at
Natchez to gather supplies for an overland trek to the Hasinai.
At Taensa landing, which he reached in two days, Iberville left two
men to guard the canoe and pushed inland with the others to the
Taensa village. Their guides became lost, so Iberville lost
nearly a day getting to the village. There, to his great joy,
he found Father Montigny, alive and ministering to the friendly
Taensa. Father Montigny had built a house and was about to
construct a chapel in the village. Iberville learned from the
priest that the Taensa once had been a great nation, but disease had
reduced their numbers to only 300 warriors living on the shore of
the ox-bow lake. The tribe had traditionally practiced human
sacrifice, not unlike the cultures of ancient Europe, but Montigny
thought he had convinced them to halt the practice. However,
their old chief had died recently, and a bolt of lightning had
destroyed their stick-and-mud temple, so the village medicine man,
to assuage an angry deity, demanded a sacrifice. In a frenzy
of fright, five women surrendered their newborns, which the medicine
man flung into a fire. According to a witness's account, more
women would have sacrificed their infant children if the French had
not intervened.46
Through Father Montigny's efforts, Iberville secured a Taensa
guide to lead his party overland to the Caddo villages, and from
there he would continue to the
Hasinai village--a modification of the regional tour he had
described to Maurepas. But Iberville went no
farther. "And now for the first time," his biographer relates,
"the commander, who had undergone so many hardships and overcome so
many obstacles, found himself incapacitated by a violent pain in the
knee--possibly a touch of rheumatism, the result of constant
exposure--which prevented him from walking and compelled him to
abandon his plans for an overland journey. ..." Iberville was
not yet 39. He had no choice but to travel as much as
possible by water, which meant someone else would have to make
the overland exploration. He sent Du Guay ahead to Fort de La
Boulaye and to Fort Maurepas to announce his return. The
overland venture he left to Bienville, who had just turned 20.
Bienville explored the lower Red and Ouachita rivers
before returning to Biloxi.47
Father Montigny accompanied Iberville back
to Natchez, where he remained to found a mission. Just above
the Houma village, Iberville met Le Sueur, coming up with his
soldiers and mining prospectors. Iberville gave him a large
canoe and a guide for their journey up the river (they ascended the
Mississippi all the way up to its confluence with the Minnesota River,
near present-day Minneapolis/St.-Paul, and ascended that
river through Sioux country in their search for the King's minerals). Tonty and La Ronde, alerted by Du Guay,
were at the Houma village, waiting for Iberville. La Ronde
joined Iberville on his way down to Bayougoula. Tonty,
carrying presents for the Tunica and Chickasaw, continued up to Illinois. Iberville instructed him to tell the chiefs
of those two tribes that the French were now the indisputable power
in the region. They could please the French by ending their
war with the Natchez and other neighboring tribes. If not,
Iberville would give firearms to his Indian allies and consider
their enemies to be his enemies as well.47a
On March 16, Iberville returned to Bayougoula, where he met a
contingent of Canadian
coureurs de bois who had come downriver to trade
their beaver pelts; the Louisiana-Illinois trade connection already
was bearing fruit. Father Du Ru remained at Bayougoula to
found a mission while Iberville moved on to Fort de La Boulaye,
which he reached with brother Châteauguay the following evening,
"having covered forty-two leagues in thirty-four hours." There
he met Du Guay. Iberville was disappointed with the progress
on the fort, but he was pleased to see a crop of wheat and peas
planted beside a small bayou that flowed behind the site.
Determined to avoid the open-sea route back to Biloxi via the
river's mouth, Iberville sent Du Guay with three men into the maze
of bayous east of the fort, hoping to find a shortcut to Lake
Borgne. Du Guay and his men, understandably, became lost and
were back at the fort three days later. Iberville, with two
companions, went two leagues above the fort where there supposedly
was a portage, but the way proved to be impassable, so they returned
to the fort. Back at the fort, Iberville suffered a fever that
laid him low for several days. On March 31, a traversier
and a felucca arrived from Ship Island via the river's mouth with
provisions in the form of livestock. The trip had been
made in only 36 hours, proving that the all-water route to De La
Boulaye could be faster than the portage at Bayou St.-Jean.48
The
men aboard the relief boats had a strange tale to relate.
While Iberville was still upriver, the Spanish governor at
Pensacola, Andrés de Arriola, had appeared at Ship Island with a small
fleet of ships, including a 24-gun frigate. Determined to
enforce strict Spanish mercantilist policy, the viceroy of New Spain
had ordered him to drive the French away if they represented a
private trading company. Surgères, perhaps having not yet
received orders from Iberville to return to France,
assured the
Spaniard that they were not a private concern, that they were
there with the sanction of King Louis XIV. The governor chided
them for seizing territory that belonged to the King of Spain and
demanded that they build no new settlements. With that, the
Frenchmen wined and dined the governor, who admitted in his cups
that the viceroy maintained the post at Pensacola only because the
French were at Biloxi. And then the governor and his officers
continued on their
way. Nine days later, to the astonishment of the Frenchmen on
Ship Island, a ship's boat full of Spaniards pulled up to the Renommée, and the governor fell exhausted onto the ship's main
deck. Arriola related that soon after he had left them, a
sudden gale came up and drove his ships onto the Chandeleur islands.
The French immediately sent out a rescue party to retrieve the
stranded Spaniards. The French gave them new clothing and
fresh provisions and escorted them back to Pensacola.
Iberville lingered at Fort
de La Boulaye for two more weeks, enduring heavy
spring rains. The Indian who had recommended the site had
known his business: though the
high water swelled the river and overflowed its banks, the spot
on which the blockhouse stood remained above the flood.
On April 13, La Ronde arrived from Bayougoula. Iberville, well
enough now, turned the fort over to him and continued on to
Biloxi. His trip through the sounds was uneventful, and soon
he landed at Fort Maurepas. Despite his delicate health, he was
determined to do what he could to learn more about the surrounding
area. He returned to the Pascagoula to inspect the estuary,
hoping to find a channel through the sand bar blocking its entrance,
behind which he hoped to anchor his vessels. For two days, he
explored up the river farther than any of his men had gone. He
noted the condition of the banks and the few villages he
encountered. Evidently an epidemic had swept through the
valley and devastated the population. The villages, and the
people, were in sorry condition. When he learned that the
Mobile lived three days' journey to the northeast, he sent two men
there with an invitation to visit Biloxi.
On May 18, back at
Fort Maurepas, Bienville arrived from the Mississippi with
troubling news. The Bayougoula had turned on their cousins,
the Mugulasha, and massacred them. On the 19th, two
missionaries, Father Montigny and Father Antoine Davion, came to
Biloxi with several Natchez and Tunica warriors and reported that
English traders were stirring up trouble among the Indians on the
upper Mississippi. Iberville was well into his
preparations to return to France, so Sauvole, again left in command,
would have to deal with these new developments. Iberville instructed him to continue
exploration of the surrounding country, keeping an eye out for
natural resources, especially mineral deposits. St.-Denis would survey the land west of the Mississippi, including
the Red River valley, "with a view to locating mines" in the region. However, the young Canadian must be sure "to acquire land only in
the King's name and to send mineral samples to France for analysis."
Though the imperial powers were still at peace, Iberville authorized
Sauvole to use force, "if peaceful persuasion had no effect," to
repel "nationals of other countries who might cause trouble" in the
region. Bienville, meanwhile, would command on the river,
where he, too, was encouraged to continuation exploration and
maintain peaceful relations with the Indians.49
Iberville weighed anchor on
28 May 1700 and steered the
Renommée
out to sea. Instead of sailing directly back to La
Rochelle, he turned north after clearing the Florida Keys and sailed
all the way up to the entrance to New York harbor. He
believed, like many Frenchmen, especially his fellow Canadians, that
war with England was imminent. The next war, they hoped, would
break the English stranglehold on North America. An attack
against New York, by land and sea, likely would be part of that
cherished dream. So, in late June, Iberville made careful
soundings at Sandy Hook and other points at the harbor's entrance,
and, after taking on a New Jersey pilot, sailed through the Narrows
and on up to Manhattan, ostensibly to take on water and wood.
England and France were still at peace, but the arrival of a French
warship in the heart of the English North America alarmed colonial
officials. Governor Cornbury ordered a barge to shadow the
movements of the French vessel. Rumors spread through
Manhattan and the rest of New York colony that King James II, who
had been dethroned 11 years before, had given the colony to the King
of France! Was this the beginning of the new French
occupation? Were the Canadians about to attack the place and
make New York a part of Canada? The governor ordered the
immediate strengthening of the colony's fortifications, especially
the forts protecting New York harbor.
.
From New York, Iberville sailed on to La Rochelle, where a
recurrence of the fever that had felled him in Louisiana kept him
from proceeding on to Versailles. He did not recover enough to
go to Paris until January 1701. Meanwhile, Maurepas had
replaced his father as Minister of Marine, the older Pontchartrain
having been promoted to Chancellor of France. This was
all well and good for Iberville, who remained in the good graces of
these influential men. By then, Louis XIV had overseen the
placement on the
vacant Hapsburg throne of Spain his grandson, Philippe d'Anjou, now
Philip V of Spain. The Bourbon dynasty now ruled much of
Europe and most of the Americas as well. The old Dutchman, William
III, still occupied the thrown of England. The question of the
Spanish succession, and its unhappy result, likely would lead Louis XIV's old antagonist to create a new English-Dutch alliance, this
time with Hapsburg Austria.
Another war was imminent.
Maurepas tasked Iberville with concocting a plan to unite
French and Spanish interests in the Gulf of Mexico against English
interference there, especially from the Atlantic colonies.
Iberville now must view his Louisiana "creation" in the context of a
French-Spanish alliance. His report was a perceptive analysis
of North American geography, both physical and human, as perhaps
only a well-educated, well-traveled Canadian could give. He
had no illusions about the extent of English colonization along the
Atlantic seaboard. He was especially troubled by the amazing
differences in English and French populations in colonial North
America. He could report to Maurepas that the English
colonists could not be confined by the Appalachians to their coastal
domains, that they in fact already were extending their commercial
interests, if not their settlements, through and around the mountains,
west to the
Mississippi. That settlers would follow, he had no doubt,
Englishmen so aggressive, so hungry for land, that they would
overawe the Indians between the mountains and the great river before
moving on to the Spanish domains. They would be especially
dangerous if they could form alliances with the Mississippi valley
tribes. Only a strong French presence in the Mississippi
valley, anchored to a stronger presence along the upper Gulf Coast,
could hope to contain the English menace from the east of the
mountains. What
Spain had already established in the Gulf Coast
region--Apalachicola, Pensacola, Matagorda Bay, and a presidio among
the Hasinai of East Texas--was not enough to protect the approaches
to Mexico. Iberville had been to two of those places and was
unimpressed with the strategic value of
any of them. Not so the new French
settlements on the Gulf; thanks to his own efforts, they were well-placed, but
they were only a beginning.
Control of the major rivers flowing into the Gulf--the
Apalachicola, the Mobile, the Tombigbee, the Pascagoula, the Pearl,
as well as the Mississippi--and the Indians who lived on or near
them, was essential to maintain control of the
vast region between Carolina, Florida, and the
Mississippi--that is to say, Louisiana.
With the addition of a fortified settlement at the head of
Mobile Bay, coupled with Spanish cession of Pensacola and Apalachicola to the
French,
the Bourbon allies would be very well positioned
to increase their influence throughout the region.
To justify cession, he wrote a stinging critique of the garrison at
Pensacola but admitted that the site had such possibilities the
English might be tempted to seize it. Better France than
England should control that harbor, too.49a
The King and his ministers were so impressed by Iberville's
reasoning that they sent a copy of the report to Philip V of Spain.
Philip gave the plan to his Junta of War and the Indies, who, true
to the spirit of royal bureaucracy, set it aside for future consideration.
Meanwhile, Iberville's star rose higher in French royal
circles. The Canadian now was seen as a statesman as well
as a explorer and founder of colonies. Maurepas welcomed Iberville's advice on all matters pertaining to French colonial
interests. No Canadian of his day was held in higher esteem.
Iberville responded with frequent communications to the Minister,
submitting treatise after treatise that revealed not only wide
experience but also solid research on the grand-strategic picture of
France's place in North America. He felt comfortable enough
with his new status to give advice on where the French should attack
the English when the next war broke out, including an overland
assault against Boston from French-controlled Maine.
Iberville also addressed complications that had arisen in
French North America as a result of his Louisiana ventures.
His fellow Canadians, especially the merchants of his native
Montréal, were up in arms about the Illinois-Mississippi-Gulf Coast
route and its effect on the always precarious western fur trade.
Iberville himself had witnessed the arrival of Canadian coureurs
de bois in the lower Mississippi villages as well as at Fort
Maurepas. What now was a trickle could become a flood.
The governor-general of New France, Louis-Hector de Callière, former
governor of Montréal, requested that Louisiana be placed under his
authority so that he could extend his control over the fur trade,
still suffering in Canada. Nothing more could have guaranteed
the marginalization of Louisiana. Despite their concerns about
the fur trade, the King and Minister
rejected Callière's proposal; Louisiana would remain a royal colony,
"governed directly from Versailles." Though conceived and
nurtured by Canadians, Louisiana was safe from Canadian
interference, at least for now.50
Iberville now prepared for his third voyage to the Louisiana
Gulf Coast. Imminent war limited ministerial attention, as
well as
royal resources, to outfit another Gulf Coast expedition.
Nonetheless, there would be one. In late June 1701, the
ministry of Marine published the list of officers who would serve on
the Renommée and its consort, the Palmier, being
refitted at Rochefort. Iberville would command the Renommée,
with Du Guay as his second in command. Brother Joseph Le
Moyne, sieur de Sérigny et de Loire, like his older brother a distinguished
naval commander, was given the Palmier, which he had
commanded in Hudson Bay. (This time five Le Moyne
brothers would serve in Louisiana--Bienville, already there, plus
Iberville, Sérigny, Châteauguay, and Gabriel d'Assigny, one of the
youngest, who signed on to try his luck in the new colony.)
A traversier, the Espérance, under François-Alexandre Robinau
de Bécancour, would accompany the flotilla. Representing the King's financial interests in Louisiana was Nicolas de
La Salle, the colony's new commissaire; La Salle, from a
prominent Parisian family, was not a Cavelier and thus not a kinsman
of the great explorer, but in 1682, as a young man, he had
accompanied the Sieur de La Salle and Henri de Tonty on their famous
journey to the mouth of the Mississippi. The new commissary would take his
wife and children to Louisiana. Three other men would bring their wives and
children--the colony's first European families.50g
And then came an annoying delay--the French had not received
word from the Spanish about the status of Pensacola.
Iberville's plan of action called for the abandonment of Fort
Maurepas, at least as the colony's headquarters, for strengthening Fort de
La Boulaye, for building a new post on Mobile Bay from which to
treat with the Choctaw and the troublesome Chickasaw, and for rebuilding Pensacola to
protect the flank of the new post. The post
at Mobile would be a true colony, with families, marriageable young women for
the woodsmen already there, and a proper hospital staffed by Grey
Sisters from Rochefort. The King authorized funds not only for
an extensive trade with the Indians, including firearms to be given
or sold
to them, but also for a new fortification at either Mobile or
Pensacola if the Spanish ceded the place.
July turned into August, with still no word from Spain.
Biloxi had been left with only six months of provisions, and that
was 15 months ago! A small resupply had been sent from
Rochefort the previous February and was expected to return in August, but there
still was no word yet that it had even reached the colony. Iberville was determined to set sail by the
end of August regardless of word from Spain.
He left Rochefort on August 27 and
made for St.-Domingue. Soon after he left, word arrived
from the Spanish Junta about their plans for Pensacola. They
regretted to inform their esteemed allies that King Philip would not
surrender Pensacola to them. Not only that, but they were
determined to build a new fortress at Pensacola, reinforced from
Havana and Veracruz, to overawe any "foreign" challenge to their
hegemony in the region. The Junta registered their regret that
the French had built a colony in territory long claimed by Spain.
No matter, the Spanish hoped to cooperate with the usurpers, their
new allies, against their common enemy, the English.
Iberville reached Cap-Français on November 7. The
Palmier, whose refitting had not pleased Iberville, had lost her
mainmast in a storm. At Cap, he met the Enflammé, the
ship that had been sent to Louisiana the previous February and only
recently had returned from the colony. Iberville assigned
26-year-old Louis Denys de La Ronde to command the vessel on its
return to France. La Ronde took with him a memoir from
Sauvole addressed to Maurepas that detailed the sad state of Fort
de La Boulaye and Iberville's dispatches. Iberville then waited impatiently for repairs
to the Palmier. Mindful of conditions at his outposts,
Iberville sent a smack on ahead to De La Boulaye to succor the
garrison there. The smack's captain, Jean-Robert Jousselin de
Marigny, also would deliver
orders to Sauvole to dismantle the post at Fort Maurepas and move
down the coast to Massacre Island at the entrance
to Mobile Bay. To place the new settlement on a solid footing,
Iberville took on more provisions at Cap, including livestock.
He was determined that Mobile would become a self-sufficient colony,
not dependent on annual resupplies from France or on the local Indians. Before he left
in mid-November,
he was disappointed when d'Assigny, not an adventurer
like his older brothers, chose to remain at Cap-Français and accept
a position on the local council. Iberville agreed to ask
Maurepas to hurry his brother's appointment. Sadly, the
effort proved unnecessary--the young man died in St.-Domingue a few
months later, only 20 years of age.50a
Also before he left, Iberville took care of some personal
business. His share of the fur trade on Hudson Bay, plus his
bonuses and salaries from the royal treasury, had made him a wealthy
man, and he hoped to become even wealthier. While waiting at
Cap, he entered into a partnership to purchase a large cocoa and
sugar plantation in the colony. Four years later, he would
sell the plantation for a profit of nearly 14,000 livres.50b
The 20-day voyage from Cap
to Pensacola, his next destination, was pure agony for Iberville.
He had felt a pain in his abdomen back at Cap-Français, but now it
was a full blown abscess that required on-board surgery. His
surgeon, Pierre Clavery, did what he could for the commandant, whose
suffering must have been unbearable when the Renommée entered
the cold, choppy waters of the Gulf.50c
Finally, on December 15, Iberville's fleet arrived at
Pensacola. Evidently having received word from Versailles
during his long stay at Cap, he sent an officer ashore to ask
permission to anchor inside the harbor. The commander of the
post, still Andrés de Arriola, had gone to Veracruz, but the second in command, Don Francisco
de Córcoles y Martínez, sent a pilot to take them through the
channel. When
Martínez came
aboard the Renommée,
Iberville informed him of Philippe d'Anjou's accession to the
Spanish throne; they were now Bourbon allies. Martínez seemed
pleased with the news, but he had sad news for
the ailing Canadian. The trusty Sauvole had died
at Fort Maurepas. Fever, which struck others at the
settlement, had taken the old adventurer in late August.
Iberville surmised that after Sauvole's death Bienville had moved
from Fort de La Boulaye to take command at Biloxi, leaving St.-Denis
to command on the Mississippi. Iberville could not have known
that Bienville and many of his men also were sick with whatever had
killed Sauvole.50d
"In a private conference," Iberville informed Martínez of his
plan to fortify Mobile Bay. The proud Spaniard could not have
been pleased with the news, but he took it calmly, at first.
Two weeks later, however, after watching the Frenchmen come and go,
in late December he
protested verbally as well as in writing that Bahía Mobila belonged
to Spain. He beseeched Iberville to wait for a reply from his
viceroy before continuing his activities in the bay. He even
asked Iberville to loan him a ship to send a messenger to Veracruz.
Iberville agreed to the loan of a vessel but added that he was duty
bound to fortify Mobile. His orders came from his King, he
said, and he had only two months to complete them. To assuage the
Spaniard, he reminded him of how a fort at Mobile would help unite
the two nations against their common enemy, England. He
promised to help the Spanish in their common quest to defeat the
designs of the Carolina English, who were turning area tribes
against them. No surprise to Iberville, Martínez acquiesced in
what the French were doing at Bahía Mobila.50e
Lingering at Pensacola
into January 1702, still recuperating from his surgery, Iberville
sent François Desjordy-Moreau de Cabanac in a felucca to Fort Maurepas to hurry Bienville
and Marigny's movement to Massacre with what they could salvage from
Biloxi. Iberville instructed Desjordy-Moreau to tell Bienville
to build on Massacre a storage warehouse for the King's property,
and then sent Sérigny and Châteauguay in a borrowed launch to
rendezvous with their brother on the island. Iberville
next prepared a 45-ton ketch, the Dauphine, commanded by
Canadian merchant-sailor François Pillet dit Lajeunesse, to
follow the brothers to Massacre
with
80 hand-picked workers,
building materials, and other paraphernalia he had brought from France. Also aboard the ketch were Commissaire
La Salle and his family. Iberville, still recuperating from
his surgery, was forced to remain aboard the Renommée at
Pensacola. On January 12, the Dauphine returned with
the news that, after recuperating from his own illness, Bienville had reached Massacre
on the 5th with 40 men from Biloxi, rendezvoused with
Sérigny, La Salle,
and the working party, and was building the storage warehouse.
The stores being unloaded onto Massacre Island were protected
from the elements by the three large tents that Iberville had
purchased from a Canadian merchant. Bienville, Sérigny, and an
associate,
fellow Canadian Charles Levasseur dit
Ruessavel, already were on their way upriver, going as far up
as the Mobile village. While they surveyed the terrain along
the river for the best possible settlement sites, Châteauguay and the workers
at Massacre would
finish the warehouse at Massacre.50f
After reading Bienville's
report of the river survey and studying Levasseur's drawings,
Iberville chose for the new settlement
a bluff rising 21 feet above the water line
along the west bank of the Mobile River, 16 leagues (approximately
60 miles) north of
Massacre Island, at present-day Twenty-Seven-Mile Bluff. The
place commanded the head of the bay as well as the mouth of a major
river that led deep into the interior where thousands of Indians
dwelled. Bienville would guide the working party up to the
site, and Sérigny would supervise construction. The shallow
waters of the bay, especially at its entrance,
could not accommodate the larger vessels, so Iberville sent Jacques
Le Roux of Rochefort, his
master ship's carpenter, with mechanics and laborers to build a
flat-bottomed pinnace with a shallow enough draft--four and a half feet--to
move supplies from the island to the settlement and yet
be seaworthy enough to navigate the sounds and even the Gulf.
Levasseur, meanwhile, would oversee the construction of the fort, "an imposing structure of
logs about 375 feet square, flanked by four bastions each thirty
feet by twelve and each containing a battery of six guns.
Within the enclosure were four buildings used respectively as a
chapel, a guardhouse and storehouse combined, a residence for the
commander, and a residence for the officers. Outside the
palisade were the barracks, situated 150 feet north of the fort on
the riverbank." It was named Fort Louis-de-la-Louisiane, but
it came to be known as Old Mobile.51
After three years of
effort, here was a proper settlement. Maurepas and De La
Boulaye were simply garrisoned outposts.
Fort Louis would be a colony, with residents, not just soldiers,
with families and a chapel. Although the place would be
abandoned nine years later and New Mobile would reappear farther
downstream, here was a significant new step in the Louisiana
venture--a new colony for France in the American wilderness.51d
Still on his sickbed at Pensacola, Iberville gave Henri de
Tonty an important assignment. He ordered the Neapolitan to gather a
small force of voyageurs at Mobile and return to
the Chickasaw villages. To Iberville's dismay, the Chickasaw
had chosen to remain staunch allies of the Carolinians. Tonty
was to use his considerable charm, in lieu of gifts, to lure
the troublesome tribe, as well as their neighbors the Choctaw, into
an alliance with the French. Mobile was well positioned,
Iberville believed, to travel to and from the territories of the
largest tribes in the region--the Chickasaw in present-day northern
Mississippi, the Choctaw south and east of them, and the Alabama
east of the Choctaw at the strategic junction of the Tallapoosa and
Coosa rivers. According to Iberville's grand scheme, in fact,
"the pacification and unification of the principal Indian nations"
in the region was second in importance only to the creation of the
new settlement at Mobile.51b
Meanwhile, at Pensacola, the Spaniards had run dangerously low
on supplies.
Martínez, still in charge there, and still waiting for his
commander to return with provisions from Veracruz, beseeched
Iberville for the loan of a vessel with which to send to Veracruz.
Iberville consented, not only out of a sense of humanity but also
out of the hard, cold fact that he could not afford to feed
Pensacola as well as Mobile, which must depend on supply ships from
France or St.-Domingue before the settlers there could raise enough food
of their own.
The traversier Précieuse, which had been sailing Louisiana
waters for three years now, was refitted for the benefit of the
Spaniards. Cousin Jean-Sidrac Dugué de Sainte-Thérèse and 16 men would man the craft; one
of
Martínez's officers would serve as pilot and messenger.
Iberville also gave
Martínez 15 barrels of flour to help feed the Pensacola
garrison until Sainte-Thérèse
returned.51c
Finally, on February 15, after two longs months of convalescing at
Pensacola, Iberville was well enough to take the Palmier,
now under Sérigny's brother-in-law Pierre-Jacques Payen de Noyan,
to Massacre Island. After three days of fighting heavy winds, the ship
finally dropped anchor in the
harbor at the island's eastern end.
Here, weeks before, Sérigny and La Salle had found a flat, sandy bottom with 20 feet of water at low tide, deep enough for the largest
vessels, including ships of 40 or 50 guns, and shelter from the
area's prevailing winds. Iberville pronounced it the finest
harbor on the entire coast, large enough accommodate up to 30 ships,
and called it Port
Massacre. To protect the harbor and the entrance to the bay,
Iberville ordered the construction of a fort on the tip of Massacre
Island--Pointe-à-Guillory. The new fort also would
protect the
King's warehouse, which would store
provisions not only for Fort Louis but also for the Mississippi
garrison.
Unfortunately, when Iberville reached Massacre, Josselin de Marigny's
smack was fast aground on a sandbar near the entrance to the bay.
Two days of hard work and regular high tides could not free the
vessel, so Iberville hired François Pillet's ketch, the Dauphine, to
transport supplies and passengers to Fort de La Boulaye. There no longer was a
garrison to feed at Biloxi; Ship Island could serve as an anchorage on Mississippi Sound,
but Fort Maurepas would be no more.51a
The Dauphine carried a new priest who had come down the Mississippi,
Father Jacques Gravier from Illinois.
Also aboard were Canadian voyageurs interested in establishing
a trade connection for their furs and skins. After the Dauphine departed Massacre, Marigny's smack
came unstuck
during an unusually high tide, and Iberville sent it to Biloxi to
secure the remaining items at Fort Maurepas.
Amazingly, though its construction had been underway for several
weeks, Iberville had
not seen his new fort on the Mobile. He attempted to go up in
late February, but foul weather turned him back to Massacre.51e
On his return, Iberville learned that La Salle, a proud, prickly
Frenchman, whose job was to oversee the colony's stores, already was alienating some of the officers by
interfering with their established commissary arrangements.
Iberville tried to head off more conflict by appointing a
garde-magasin, or storekeeper, to run the King's warehouse on
Massacre, with
orders to issue munitions, provisions, even presents to the Indians,
only on written orders signed by the commissaire and the
commandant--a "bicephalous administration," typical in French
colonies, that would haunt Louisiana for decades to come.52
On his second attempt to visit Fort Louis, which began on
February 28, Iberville informed La Salle, who had taken up temporary
residence at the Massacre storehouse, that he could follow with his
family when another boat arrived. Contrary winds delayed
Iberville's arrival for several days, but, finally, on March 3, he reached the fort's landing, where
he was greeted by his brothers and the other officers.
This would be his new headquarters until he returned to the Renommée.52b
Always the explorer,
Iberville ordered a more thorough
survey of the Mobile Bay area. He was interested not only
in the waters but also the banks and the surrounding territory.
Bienville, who started out on March 4 with native guides, found many abandoned living sites
and even some sacred places. Among the latter was a small
group of islands on which the Indians had erected five plaster figures
which they considered to be idols; later, Iberville guessed,
wrongly, that they were from the De Soto expedition of the
1540s. The Indians believed that these figures were sacred and
that whoever profaned them would meet a terrible end. Ever the
Renaissance man, Bienville gathered them up to take to the fort to
show the others. The Indians were astonished that he did not
suddenly drop dead. After Bienville returned, Iberville went
out to find a fresh water stream that could generate enough power to operate
a sawmill and a tannery he hoped to build in the area. The
flat terrain provided no such flow of water, so the sawmill and the
tannery remained only ideas. And, of course, Iberville
had to
visit the local tribes,
including the Mobile and the Tomeh, who lived farther up the
Mobile River. On his way up to and from the
villages, he studied the river banks, noting the many abandoned
native sites, perhaps a clue that the area once supported a large
population. But he was more interested in the future than in
the past, "trying to determine if the bluffs along the river were
capable of supporting the plantations he envisioned."52a
Back at Fort Louis, Iberville oversaw the laying out of the village
behind the fort where the officers, administrators, artisans, and
voyageurs would soon build their houses. He also found a letter
from Martínez beseeching him for more supplies. Iberville
wasted no time complying with the Spaniard's request. "The
well-being of Fort San Carlo, he knew, would be beneficial to the
success of Fort Louis during the early stages." Moreover,
during "... the next few years, supply ships from Veracruz would be
coming regularly to Pensacola. No doubt they would arrive on
numerous occasions when Fort Louis was lacking in supplies."
This time Iberville would not give the Spaniards barrels of
flour from the Massacre warehouse. Instead, he sent Desjordy-Moreau
upriver to the Tomeh village to purchase maize from the natives and
sent a felucca filled with corn on to Pensacola.52c
On Sunday, March 26, having
taken a big step towards creating a Pax Gallica in the
region, Tonty
returned to Fort Louis with several Choctaw and Chickasaw chiefs, as
well as chiefs from the nearby Mobile and Tomeh villages.
Iberville welcomed the occasion to impress the leaders of these
tribes with the power and wealth of France. His gifts to them
must have made a large dent in the colony's stores: "Two
hundred pounds each of powder, shot, and musket balls, one hundred
axes, twelve guns, 150 knives, and a miscellaneous collection of
cooking utensils ..." placed at the feet of the awestruck chiefs.
"Never before had these bewildered natives seen such an array, and
all was theirs for the taking." Iberville, with brother
Bienville interpreting, addressed the chiefs. He praised them
for the peace that existed between them but warned them about the
machinations of the Carolina English, who were not above selling
their people into slavery. He reminded them of how the English
weakened the tribes living in their colonies not only with Indian
slavery but also with frequent warfare pitting tribe against tribe,
until the Indians could no longer defend themselves. He turned
to the Chickasaw chiefs and
threatened to arm the other tribes in the region, even their
arch-enemies, the Illinois, now allies of the French,
if the Chickasaw did not turn away from the English traders. Changing his tone, he promised to cajole the
Illinois into releasing their Chickasaw captives and to broker a
peace between the two tribes. He promised to build between the
Chickasaw and Choctaw villages
a trading post filled with high-quality goods and
promised reasonable prices for their furs and skins. After
smoking the calumet and hearing the chiefs' promises that they would expel the English
from their territories, Iberville and the chiefs negotiated prices.53
The regional Pax Gallica
had
been sealed.
After the conference, which Iberville intended to be an annual affair,
including exchange of presents, he asked the Choctaw and Chickasaw
chiefs to estimate for him the number of their people, including
warriors. He was told that the Chickasaw could send 2,000 men into the field, and
the Choctaw an astonishing 3,800, perhaps as many as 4,000. It would
take years, if not decades, if ever, for the French to be able to
gather such a force in the region. Diplomacy, for now and
well into the future, would have to take precedence over force.
It was important, then, that Iberville keep his promises. He
sent five Canadians up the Mobile River to build the trading post.
Three of them would continue to Illinois to secure the
release of the Chickasaw prisoners. They would then continue
on to the St. Lawrence with letters from Iberville to the vicar
general in Québec and the superior of the Jesuits, asking for more missionaries
for his tribal allies. He also sent messages to missionaries
already serving the Louisiana tribes, including Father Albert Davion, still
among the Tunica, Father Nicolas Foucault with the Arkansas, and
Father Jean-François Buisson de St.-Cosme with the Natchez.
They must inform their charges of the new alliance and dissuade them
from further conflict.53a
.
His work accomplished,
Iberville prepared to leave Louisiana for the third time. He
could not know it, but when he bid farewell to the officers and
settlers at Mobile on March 27, the founder of Louisiana colony
would never see his handiwork again. With him went brothers
Sérigny and Châteauguay; also kinsman Le Sueur, who had come back
downriver with a load of green and blue ore he had found in the
Sioux country; and Father Paul Du Ru, who had been in
the colony since January 1700. Brother Bienville, who had come
to Louisiana in January 1699 and had remained there each time
Iberville returned to France, would remain in the colony once again
and command at Fort Louis.53b
On March 31, after waiting
several days for a favorable wind, Iberville left Port Massacre and
sailed the Palmier back to the Renommée,
still anchored at Pensacola, which he reached in a day. He was
chagrined to learn that his traversier, the Précieuse, so
important for the Louisiana colonists, had not returned from
Veracruz. As a result, the Pensacola garrison was still short
of food. Moreover, Iberville was anxious to know how the
Spanish in Mexico were reacting to his presence on the Gulf.
He also was forced to wait for Pillet's ketch, supposedly carrying a cargo of pelts and skins
from the lower Mississippi; he had promised the Canadians to
take their goods to France and seek a market for them there.
The Précieuse returned from Veracruz on April 13, but carried
only a month's supply of food. The Dauphine returned
from the Mississippi on April 19, laden with furs and skins.
Iberville sent another traversier, the Espérance, under
trusted lieutenant Robinau de Bécancour, back to
Veracruz to purchase more supplies.53c
Iberville's final task
before departing Pensacola was the completion of
a long memorandum addressed to Bienville in which he detailed
what he wanted his brother to accomplish before he returned the
following year. Determined to placate his Indian allies,
Iberville prohibited Indian slavery in the colony. He
instructed Bienville to send Tonty and a party of Canadians to
the Tombigbee River, above the Mobile, to construct the trading post
he had promised the Choctaw and Chickasaw. He encouraged
Bienville to establish amicable relations with the
strategically-located Alibamon, who lived east of the Choctaw. To assuage an
important tribe on the river, Iberville suggested that Bienville
abandon Fort de La Boulaye and relocate the downriver post at the
portage site, near where a small Biloxi village now stood.
Bienville, with the help of the Spanish, must complete the overland
route from Fort Louis to Pensacola to improve communication between
the two posts.53e
On April 28, Iberville set
sail for
Havana, where he hoped to communicate with veteran French naval
squadron leader, François-Louis Rousselet de Châteaurenault, about
improving trade with Veracruz and other Spanish ports.
Unfortunately, when Iberville reached Havana during the first week
of May, Châteaurenault had already moved on to Veracruz.
Iberville lingered at Havana for 10 days, waiting for Châteaurenault
to return, but yellow fever broke out in the city, so he wisely
turned his ships out to sea. Following an uneventful crossing,
the flotilla reached La Rochelle by late June.53f
A month before Iberville's
return to France, England, under its new queen,
Anne, had declared war against the Bourbon powers and their
continental allies. After only five years of peace, war had
returned to Europe, and it soon would spread to the New World as
well.53d
At Rochefort, Iberville arranged for the resupply of his colony
via the ship Loire under the command of Jean-Sidrac Dugué de
Ste.-Thérèse.
He also recommended La Sueur for appointment as minister of justice
at Mobile. Iberville arranged to send more colonists to
Louisiana, including skilled craftsmen and marriageable women, but,
pessimistically, he did not recommend sending a midwife along with
them. Iberville had the temerity to ask permission for the Loire, on its return to France, to transport the produce of his
new sugar plantation in St.-Domingue. The Minister refused.
The King expected the colonists at Mobile to fill the Loire's hold with lumber, skins, and other products of his Louisiana
colony, not the commandant's personal goods. The Loire sailed in March 1703, with only 17
passengers but no maidens aboard, and arrived at Port Massacre the
following August, the first resupply of the Louisiana colony not
commanded by Iberville himself.
Iberville now was at the height of his career.
Soon after his return to France in the summer of 1702, the King promoted him
from capitaine de frégate to
capitaine de vaisseau, or
captain of
ships-of-the-line, which would ensure for him a major role in the
coming war. No one, not even the governor-general of New
France, knew more about North America--its geography, its
ethnography, its grand-strategic complexities--than France's new capitaine de vaisseau.
Iberville took full advantage of his heightened esteem by submitting
to the King and Minister a bold
proposal to shift the balance of power in
North America and give France control, once and for all, of the
continent's still valuable fur trade. First, Mobile
would become the headquarters of an expanded colony consisting of
Louisiana, Illinois, and Ohio country. New posts would
be erected on the Arkansas, Ohio, and Missouri rivers to supplement
the post near the mouth of the Mississippi. New
colonists, including families, would be sent not only to Mobile but
also to the new upriver posts and even to Indian villages
strategically played around the region. This would discourage
the settlers from becoming coureurs de bois and taking up
Indian wives. Once these settlements were established, tribes
living near English settlements and those that had fallen under
English influence would be moved to the vicinity of Mobile.
Meanwhile, the Illinois would be induced to move down to the Ohio
and settle near the mouth of the Wabash. Le Sueur would lure
the Sioux from their prairie villages down to the Des Moines, bringing
them deeper into the French orbit. How would these tribes be
motivated to move to new hunting grounds? The new colony would
refuse to trade with them, and they would be forbidden to trade with
Canada. As a result, the western fur trade would flow southward to Mobile,
not northward to Canada. This accomplished, the far northern
tribes, the Cree and the Assiniboine, would be enticed to abandon
their connections with the English on Hudson Bay and trade with the
French from Louisiana. Iberville, of course, would direct the
expanded colony from a large land concession near Mobile, which he
proposed to call the Comté d'Iberville.54
Amazingly, some parts
of Iberville's scheme would come to fruition, but not in the
foreseeable future. But the King and Minister were not pleased with the plan. Not only was much of it impractical,
especially the movement of entire tribes from their traditional
homelands, but they refused to grant to one man so much power and
influence. Iberville, clearly, had overstepped his bounds.
And then his service to France took a different turn. The new
capitaine de vaisseau
was needed on another front--the War of the Spanish Succession. Iberville's
fertile mind swirled with new ideas for attacking the English in
Europe and North America. Perhaps consumed by the new war and
what it could do for his career, Iberville seemed to lose interest
in the Louisiana venture and hinted to the Minister that he might wish
to be relieved of his command of the colony. The Minister and
the King paid no attention and ordered him back to Louisiana.
He was expected to set sail with the new resupply in September
1703, this time with the captured Dutch ship Pélican
accompanying the Renommée and the Charente.
But
Iberville's health collapsed again, this time from
recurring bouts of malaria.
His condition seemed so critical that his wife and brother
Sérigny rushed from La Rochelle to his sickbed in Paris to look
after him. After months of delay, the Pélican,
sans its powerful escorts but with 23 maidens and Le Sueur aboard,
sailed from Rochefort to La Rochelle and, finally, during the third
week of April 1704, headed out to sea. After an uneventful crossing, the overloaded
vessel arrived at Cap-Français in early June. The ship's
commander
carried orders for a detour to
Havana, which proved to be
disastrous.54a
Iberville, meanwhile, was still confined to his sickbed in
Paris. For the second time he had missed a resupply to
Louisiana. The war ground on, disastrously for France, both in
Europe and North America. Not until August 1705 was the
capitaine de vaisseau
well enough
to join the fray. He received orders that month to
outfit a fleet bound for Martinique, from which he would take on the
English in the Caribbean. He sailed from La Rochelle in
January 1706, and that spring his force devastated the small island
of Nevis, one of England's most important sugar colonies. The
campaign, though a military triumph for Iberville
and his brother Sérigny, proved to be a personal embarrassment.
The brothers and other high-ranking officers were compelled by lack of royal funds to help defray
costs for the expedition. They borrowed heavily, and to recoup
their investments and satisfy their creditors, they not only
tolerated wanton looting after their men had seized the island, but
also incurred "the suspicion of fraudulence" in outfitting the
expedition and transporting illicit merchandise in the King's
warships.55
It proved to be the
Canadian's greatest, and final, campaign. After his victory at Nevis,
Iberville temporarily disbanded his fleet,
sending four ships back to France with the regular troops.
He then
sailed to Cap-Français in his
flagship, the Juste, before moving on to Léogane, on the
other side of St.-Domingue, where he rendezvoused with four of his
ships. Determined to continue his depredations of the English
in the region, including an attack on Carolina, he had first to sell French iron he was carrying on
his flag ship, so he led his squadron on to Havana. There, he
sent Sérigny in one of the ships to Veracruz to sell more of the
booty, and sent another frigate, along with a captured English
vessel, to resupply the Louisiana colony. While waiting for
Sérigny to return, Iberville contracted yellow fever, which,
considering the state of his health, was a death sentence. He
died aboard his flagship on 9 July
1706, only two weeks shy of his 45th birthday. After an
elaborate funeral attended by Havana's elite, Iberville was laid to
rest in the church of San Cristóbal, next to his kinsman,
Pierre-Charles Le Sueur, who had died under similar circumstances
two years before.56
France in Louisiana:
Bienville in Charge, 1702-13
When Iberville left Mobile in late March 1702, leaving his younger
brother in charge of the colony, Bienville was only 22 years old and
still unmarried. His three years in the Louisiana wilderness
had shaped him into a woodsman of the first order, and the
responsibilities thrust upon him at an early age had transformed him
into a distinguished officer of the King. His
natural leadership abilities, reinforced by an amazing stamina,
common sense, a gift for languages, and a quiet ferocity, would make him,
in time, a
worthy successor to his older brother: "As a
colonial administrator he was obviously unqualified by virtue of
training or experience. His family prestige, his predilection
to lead, did not nearly begin to compensate for his youth, his small
education or his lack of executive skills. Nor was there any
administrative machinery present upon which he could rely. In
these early days, Louisiana had no Conseil superiéur, no
legislative body, not even a governor in absentia, in fact.
Iberville, as capitaine de frégate, had merely been the
officer in charge of a particular enterprise who, having had to
absent himself, had delegated his authority to a subordinate [first
Sauvole and now his brother]. Subordinate Bienville was merely
a lieutenant du roi faisant les functions de commandant until
Iberville's return. His authority at this time came to him
through Iberville whose authority flowed ultimately (though
sometimes through indirect channels) from the minister of the
marine."57
Bienville would need
every skill he did possess to command the
Louisiana colony. His first task was the completion of the
walls and redoubts at Fort Louis and the warehouses at Massacre and
Dog River. But he did not neglect the local Indians. In
April, a delegation of Alabama arrived at the fort for their share
of presents and to smoke the calumet of peace. Bienville
secured a promise from them not to war against their less numerous
neighbors, the Mobile and Little Tomeh.
Meanwhile, the craftsmen and Canadians began work on their
private dwellings behind Fort Louis. The dangerous drought of
the previous year had given way to heavy rains in late winter and
early spring, revealing a serious design flaw in the lay out of the
settlement's housing lots. Although the fort itself would
"never" flood, "perhaps eighty percent of the private sites were
now, and would continue to be, plagued with standing waters from two
to eighteen inches during the rainy seasons." The problem was
not the river but the surrounding countryside, which was flat and
poorly drained. When the rains came, the small streams in the
area, including the one that ran along the northern edge of the
village, invariably ran over their banks. This forced the
residents living closest to the creek to construct their houses atop
wooden pilings. Ironically, the residents who were able to
build their houses at ground level were plagued by termites and
"wood rot." Moreover, the residents constructed their houses
using the most readily available timber, the younger and smaller
pines that blanketed the area. The magnificent stands of
cypress and virgin pine, which would have provided better building
material, were, in the first instance, too difficult to get at, and,
in the second, too massive for their axes and saws. Only after
years of trial and error would these carpenters and their successors
master the characteristics of indigenous species in withstanding the
region's weather and insect pests.58
And then, in Commandant Bienville's view, there were pests of
the human kind. By early summer, the Spanish at Pensacola were
starving ... again. Their resupply from Veracruz still had not
arrived. Following his brother's lead, Bienville threw himself
into the task of replenishing the Spaniards' food supplies with what
he could spare. Having supervised the opening of the overland
route to the Spanish garrison, Bienville was well aware of the
limited local resources at Pensacola, where 200 men, many of them
servants and convicts, lived on the edge of mass starvation.
Looking at these limited resources--in arable land, in timber, and
especially in the dearth of friendly Indian villages near Fort San
Carlos--Bienville could take pride at what the French had selected
for their principal settlement site. He had learned from
Commandant Martínez that a new viceroy, Francisco Fernández de la
Cueva y Enriquez, Duque de Albuquerque, would take office at
Veracruz the following autumn. If Bienville could impress the
new viceroy with his generosity towards his Bourbon allies at
Pensacola, perhaps he could secure permission to trade with
Veracruz, Havana, and St. Augustin, each closer to him than Québec,
Rochefort, and even Cap-Français.59
And then there was a young
lieutenant whose eagerness to relieve the boredom at his lower
Mississippi River post jeopardized the hard-won Pax Gallica.
Louis Juchereau de St.-Denis had come to the colony with Iberville
in January 1700 and, like Bienville, had remained in Louisiana.
It was St.-Denis who commanded Fort de La Boulaye when
Bienville moved to Biloxi and then to Mobile to command the colony when
Iberville was away. In the summer of 1702, St.-Denis, some of
his fellow Canadians, a few soldiers from his garrison, and a hand
full of Quinapisa, began an unauthorized exploration in the area,
seeking a river route to New Spain. While moving down Bayou
Lafourche, they came upon a party of
Chitimacha, who attacked them without warning. Understandably,
St.-Denis and his men retaliated and drove off their attackers.
What they did next was the problem. Instead of letting the
miscreants go, they "vigorously pursued the fleeing Chitimacha,
managing to capture a number of prisoners whom he [St.-Denis] had
ideas of selling into slavery." Here was a clear violation of Iberville's proscription against Indian enslavement. When
Bienville heard of the incident, he was greatly distressed by the
actions of one of his most valued lieutenants. He upbraided
the proud Canadian for antagonizing a previously friendly tribe and
raising the specter of Indian slavery.
St.-Denis did not take the censure well and remained estranged from
Bienville for a number of years.60
And then there were the missionaries, some of whom proved to be as
troublesome as the termites and bored Canadians. They were an
important part of the Pax Gallica. Without them, it
would be difficult to keep the regional tribes securely in the
French orbit. In the beginning, there were never enough of
them. But more troubling was the ancient, medieval rivalry
between the missionary orders that they brought to the American
wilderness. In early Louisiana, there were the black robes and
the white collars; the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, and priests
from the Séminaire des Missions Étrangères, in Paris, who were called Seminary missioners.
Wherever the Church sent missionaries, each order vied
for exclusive control of a given region; Louisiana was no exception.
Nor did it help that the Le Moynes were long-time friends of the
Jesuits. Iberville's personal chaplain, after all, had been
Father Paul Du Ru, S. J., who, after working among the Indians on
the lower river for two years, returned with him to France, leaving
only two Jesuits, Fathers Joseph Limoges and Pierre Dongé, in lower
Louisiana. Among the Seminary missioners were Fathers
Albert Davion with the Tunica, and Nicolas Foucault, Jean-François
Buisson de St.-Cosme, and Balthazar-Michel de Boutteville, working
with other tribes along the river. So which of them would go
amongst the larger tribes to extend French influence there?
Bienville's was still pondering this question when tragedy struck on
the Mississippi. Father Foucault had been working among the
Arkansas, doing his best to convert that recalcitrant tribe to the
One True Faith. François Danbourné, an associate of Tonty's,
had been sent to Illinois to coax that tribe into releasing their
Chickasaw captives. His mission completed, Danbourné, on his
way downriver to report to Bienville, stopped at Arkansas.
Father Foucault, unhappy with his work there, decided to go
downriver with Danbourné to consult with Father Davion about going
among the Chickasaw. Danbourné agreed to escort the priest
down to Tunica. Unfortunately, Danbourné and some of his
companions got sick on the way down. At the Koroa
village, they hired two warriors to paddle them at least to the
mouth of the Yazoo, from where they hoped to be able to go on
without any help. On 29 July 1702, while the party was resting on
the river bank after a long day's journey, the two Koroa, determined
to make off with the priest's possessions, attacked Danbourné, the
two other Canadians, and Father Foucault as they slept, killing all
four of them. The bodies lay there for several days, until
Father Davion, coming upriver to visit Foucault, came upon the
horrible scene. Davion hurried downriver, picked up Jesuit
Father Limoges at Houma, and they hurried to Mobile to report the
murder. Word of Father Foucault's death sent Father
Boutteville hurrying to Mobile. Only Father St.-Cosme with the
Natchez remained with his mission on the lower river. Davion,
Boutteville, and Limoges refused to return to their missions until
Bienville chastised the Koroa, who reportedly were boasting about
the murder. Davion was especially vocal in urging the young
commandant to attack the errant tribe. Bienville knew that if he did nothing, the Indians would consider it a sign of
weakness, but a failed campaign against an aggressive people would
be even more disastrous for the French. Diplomacy, not force,
would have to be employed here, and so Bienville bided his time.
He was happy to see, at least, that the black robes and white
collars taking refuge at Mobile managed to get along with one
another. Jesuit Father Dongé was the chaplain there, but he
allowed the others, even the Seminary missioners, to use the fort's
chapel.60a
Meanwhile, in France and Rome, leaders of the two orders vied for
exclusive jurisdiction in Illinois and lower Louisiana. The
King, the Minister of Marine, and even the Pope chose to step away from the
struggle. They deferred the matter to the Bishop of Québec,
Jean-Baptiste de La Croix de Chevrières de St.-Vallier. In
July 1703, Bishop St.-Vallier, still in Paris,
created a new parish for Mobile and even named its first
pastor--50-year-old Father Henri Rouilleaux de La Vente of Bayeux,
who had served as a missionary at Île-de-Bourbon, now Réunion, in
the Indian Ocean. Father
La Vente belonged to the
Séminaire des Missions Étrangères, so
the white collars were emerging triumphant in the struggle for lower
Louisiana. Both Iberville and Bienville, still
champions of the Jesuits, were disappointed with the bishop's
decision when they learned of it, but Bienville decided to reserve
judgment until he could meet the new curé.61
In February 1703, for the first time in two years, the settlers in
lower Louisiana, both secular and religious, celebrated Mardi Gras.
There had been no time for it the previous winter when everyone was so
busy preparing for the construction of the new fort and village.
That it was celebrated this year was a sign of harmony among the
inhabitants at Mobile. But the harmony did not last. By
spring, food was running low. The resupply, expected in late
winter, had not arrived (they could not know that the relief ship
did not sail from Rochefort until March and would not get to them
until August). To preserve the food supply, Bienville sent
some of his
Canadians to live with the Mobile and Little Tomeh. In late
May, the resupply still not having arrived, Bienville sent Robinau
de Bécancour in the Précieuse back to Veracruz, this time to
purchase food for Mobile, not Pensacola. Significantly, much
of the money that Bécancour brought to the Mexican port came from the pockets of the colony's residents, not from
its administrative funds.62
It was then, during the long, trying wait for the resupply from
France, that Bienville was plagued by his most persistent
pest--Commissary Nicolas de La Salle. Bienville, and Iberville
before him, looked upon the prickly Frenchman as nothing more than a
glorified supply clerk, but La Salle saw his role in the colony's
administration as something much more significant. He
considered himself, in rank if not in social stature, the equal of
the young commander. In social stature, he saw himself as
eminently superior. Here, writes a biographer of one of the
men, was "the traditional hostility between the gens de plume
such as La Salle and the gens d'épée such as Bienville"--not
to mention the ancient antagonism between Frenchman and French
colonist.
La Salle scarcely hid his utter disdain for the Le Moyne clan and
their fellow Canadians. He insisted that he have a say
in every transaction, no matter how seemingly minor, involving the
King's storehouses. Bienville, who had better things to do,
wanted nothing more from his commissary than a signature on his
written requisitions. The problem with La Salle had only
worsened after garde-magasin Gerard, a Frenchman appointed by
Iberville the previous year, died in late February 1703.
Gerard had generally supported La Salle in keeping a tight reign on
the King's storehouse. Bienville, who, unlike La Salle, had
power of appointment, designated one of his Canadians,
Jacques Lémery, as Gerard's temporary successor. This infuriated La Salle, who
considered Lémery nothing more than a drunken lout. La Salle
also complained about Bienville's maintaining a magasin at
the fort for his own personal goods; having no access to the
warehouse, the commissary could only wonder which items in that
little building belonged to the commander and which belonged to the
King. The lean
times of that spring and summer only made things worse for
Bienville. Malcontents blamed him for the colony's problems
and formed around La Salle a coterie of critics dissatisfied with
the young commander. Whoever Bienville disciplined, including
fellow Canadians, joined La Salle and his confederates against him.
Fathers Davion and Boutteville, who Bienville had chastened for not
returning to their missions, also sided with the Frenchman.
Conditions at Mobile became even worse as summer approached.
Canadians from Le Sueur's Fort L'Huillier, in present-day southern
Minnesota, had been driven off by a force of Mascouten and sought
refuge at Mobile. Now more fearful than ever of the perfidy of
the Indians, Father Davion announced that he would go to Natchez to
"rescue" his colleague, Father St.-Cosme Then there would be
no more priests among any of the tribes in lower Louisiana.63
While waiting for the resupply, Bienville sent hunters to Baie
St.-Louis, west of Biloxi, to hunt for game, and dispersed
volunteers to Natchez, Bayougoula, and the Biloxi villages to ease
pressure on the fort's food supply. Relief
came in early summer not from France but from Pensacola.
Andrés de Arriola had returned after years of absence, and three
supply ships followed him from Veracruz. Arriola notified
Bienville that some of the supplies were for Mobile, repayment for
what the French had provided. Bienville sent Boisbriant to
fetch the much-needed supplies.
A few weeks later, Robinau de Bécancour returned from Veracruz with
the purchased supplies and a letter from the viceroy thanking the
French for helping the Spanish against their common enemies,
hunger and the English.63a
Meanwhile, the Loire arrived at Cap-Français
and then sailed on to Havana, where its captain, Ste.-Thérèse, was given a new command,
before sending the ship on to Massacre Island. The Loire reached
Port Massacre in
August 1703 with food, munitions, and
17 passengers, but no Iberville. For the first time since the
colony began, the Louisiana commandant had not made his annual visit to the
Gulf of Mexico. Several other colonial shakers and makers Bienville
had expected also did not cross on the Loire.
Châteauguay and Le Sueur were supposed to have recruited companies
of infantry, as well as more artisans and families, for the colony,
but they were not among the passengers. Bienville was not
happy about this, but he did welcome five new craftsmen to the
colony: three brick makers and two amuriers.
The ship's officers passed on the good news of Iberville's
promotion and the little they knew about the war against England.
The Loire lingered at Massacre until October and left under a new master, Nicolas Perrot. Aboard were two of the
missionaries, Fathers Limoges, the Jesuit, and Boutteville, the
Seminarian. Now only Fathers Davion and Dongé remained at
Mobile. Perhaps the next resupply would bring more priests,
whenever that might be.63b
.
Not until late autumn of 1702 had Bienville learned of the outbreak
of another war with England, and he learned it not via a ship from France
but from the Spanish at Pensacola. Even before war had broken
out in May, the new governor of Carolina, James
Moore, had planned an attack against San Agústín on Florida's
Atlantic coast, which he and militia Colonel Robert Daniel launched
in late October. The governor of
San Agústín, Joseph de Zúniga y Cerda, was begging for
assistance not only from Pensacola but also from his allies at
Mobile. In late November, Commandant Martínez at Pensacola
sent Ensign Diego de Florencia, recently arrived from
San Agústín, on to Mobile. It was the young ensign who informed Bienville
and the residents of Mobile that they, too, were at war with
England. Diego de Florencia noted that the colony at Mobile
was larger and in much better condition than the one at Pensacola.
However, influenza had spread from Pensacola to Mobile and had
reached epidemic proportions there. Bienville apologized for
not being able to spare any men for
the relief of San Agústín, but he did promise to send to
Pensacola a cache of materiel, including weapons, powder, and flint,
to send on to the beleaguered Spaniards at Castillo de San Marco.
Ignoring Commissary La Salle, who he knew would give him trouble
about the loan, he secured signatures from Boisbriant, Levasseur,
and Tonty to authorize the disbursement, and then sent the materiel
on to Pensacola under Tonty's supervision. He also promised to
send one of his traversiers back to Veracruz to ask the viceroy for
more support.64
Happily for the Spanish, as well as the French,
San Agústín was relieved by a large force from Havana. The
Carolinians, forced to burn their ships, returned to Charles
Towne, but not before burning the village at
San Agústín. Embarrassed by his defeat and aching
for vengeance, in late 1703, Moore, with a large force of Yamasee,
Tallapoosa, and Carolina militia, laid waste to the
Spanish-controlled province of Apalache, between Pensacola and
San Agústín, essentially ending Spanish control in the region.
Bienville was properly alarmed by these developments, but he was
more concerned about their immediate impact on Mobile. After
the Carolina onslaught, the Choctaw remained quiet, and, more
significantly, the Chickasaw seemed still disposed to remain at
peace with the French.
But what about the Alabama, who not only lived closer to Carolina
but occupied one of the most strategic points in the entire Gulf
Coast region? The Alibamon, as the French called them, were a
new tribal coalition in the region. Some of them were related
to the Cherokee of the eastern mountains; during the 1680s, they had
moved westward into present-day northern Alabama
to escape rival tribes encouraged to prey on them by Carolina
traders. Other members of the tribe were Muskogean speakers
who had moved into the area to escape the interminable wars
between the Chickasaw and the Choctaw. Still others, the
original Alibamon, were Choctaw-speakers who for decades had lived
in what is now south central Alabama but whose numbers had been so
reduced by war with the Mobilians and that they retreated north to
the river junction. This polyglot people now occupied three
villages--Koasati, Culasa, and Tawasa--around
the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers, at the head of
Rivière-des-Alibamons. Iberville had left Louisiana before he
could establish a personal relationship with the tribe. He
suspected that they, like the Chickasaw, were friends of the English
traders, but he was confident they could be won over to the French;
years later, in fact, Bienville learned from an Alibamon chief that
a hand full of his warriors had participated with the English in the
siege of
San Agústín!
A delegation of eight Alibamon chiefs came to Mobile in early May
1702, only a few weeks after Iberville had bid farewell to the
colony. Bienville plied them with gifts, though not any
firearms, powder, or flint, and secured from them the usual promise
to stop making war on their neighbors. Some 40 of them
returned in early October, smoked the calumet of peace, and again
promised to live in harmony with the Chickasaw, Pensacola, and
Apalache. In May 1703, the Alibamon returned, this time under
the leadership of a chief named Deerfoot. By then, Mobile was
in dire straits, short on food because the annual resupply still had
not come, and on weapons and ammunition because of the loan to the
Spanish the autumn before. Deerfoot offered to trade for corn,
which his people had enough to spare, he said. Bienville
agreed and sent five Canadians back to the Alibamon villages with
Deerfoot and his warriors. The leader of the Canadians,
Jacques-Philippe Matou dit Le Brie, had served in Louisiana
since early 1699 and had witnessed the massacre of his family up in
Canada, so "he was no stranger to savage behavior...." The
party of Indians and Canadians traveled in three large pirogues and
took 20 days to make the journey. All seemed well until they
reached the site of present-day Montgomery, Alabama, not far below
Koasti village. As La Brie and his Canadians rested for the
night before entering the village, a party of Alibamon, alerted by
the treacherous Deerfoot, fell on the Canadians. La Brie and
two of his companions were killed outright, but two others, savagely
wounded, managed to escape in one of the pirogues. Deerfoot
and his warriors, satisfied that the Canadians were mortally
wounded, did not pursue them.
This was a mistake. After a grueling, pain-ridden journey, the
wounded Canadians managed to get back to Mobile by early June.
Only later did Bienville learn of the English machinations behind
Deerfoot's treachery--a Carolina official, Thomas Nairne, using a
typical carrot-and-stick approach, had visited the Alibamon on the
eve of Deerfoot's visit and coaxed them into making war against
"these Gallic intruders."
Bienville now had no choice but to launch a punitive expedition
against the Alibamon, but not just yet. They would be waiting
for him. He was low on supplies. And he had not received
permission from the Minister of Marine to launch such an expedition.
He hurried a letter to the minister via a boat to Havana and
patiently waited for the resupply that he hoped would soon arrive
from France.
The Loire arrived in late August and departed in mid-October,
carrying another dispatch from Bienville to the Minister, this time
informing him that he would retaliate against the Alibamon.
His provisions replenished, Bienville was now ready to act, with or
without permission from higher authority. By
the end of October, he had sent messages to the Mobilians,
Pascagoula, Little Tomeh, and Choctaw, asking them to gather at the
main Mobilian village by the first week of November "for an event of
major importance." Many of them came, as did 60 soldiers,
sailors, and Canadians from the Louisiana garrisons led by St.-Denis
and the redoubtable Tonty. When the Frenchmen arrived at the
Mobilian village, the Indians already had begun the boisterous
festivities that always preceded a planned campaign. Bienville
became so caught up in the emotion-shaking ceremonies that he
allowed the Indians to tattoo figures of snakes across his chest!
Bienville harangued the chiefs and warriors, who responded
to his words with great enthusiasm. After distributing guns
and swords and explaining his plan of action, 280 French and Indians
took to the warpath. Only 15 miles above the Mobilian village,
they left their pirogues and shallops on the river bank and headed
overland towards the Alibamon, 170 miles away.
The campaign did not go well. The Mobilians already were
having second thoughts about provoking the Alibamon. No
Frenchman or Canadian, not even Tonty, had ever taken the back
trails through this country. Bienville was compelled to depend
upon Mobilian guides, whose reliability he questioned as soon as he
left their village. Moreover, the main Mobilian party lagged
behind the others, insisting that their slower progress was to
protect the line of communication with their village and Fort Louis.
Several days into the overland journey, more and more Frenchmen fell
ill, as did the chief of the Little Tomeh, who returned to his
village, taking all of his warriors with him. With more and
more Indians deserting the column, Bienville, St.-Denis, and Tonty
agreed that if they were ambushed in this unchartered wilderness,
there would be no viable defense left for the Louisiana colony.
So they retraced their steps back to Fort Louis, which they reached
towards the end of November.
Bienville refused to admit defeat. On the retreat to Fort
Louis, he already was planning a second expedition against the
Alibamon, this time with no Indian allies, especially the Mobilians,
who he suspected had warned the Alibamon of their approach. In
late December, he selected 48 men, including St.-Denis and Tonty,
and, using a survivor of the May massacre as their only guide,
headed upriver towards the Alibamon villages. They passed the
main village of the Mobilians in the dead of night and made record
time on their journey into enemy territory.
After reaching present-day Selma, they traveled only at night.
By New Year's Eve they came upon an Alibamon hunting party,
including women and children, not far from the bluff where they
found the grisly remains of the three dead Canadians. After
careful reconnaissance, Bienville wanted to attack during daylight
of the 2nd, but St.-Denis and Tonty convinced him to wait until
night, Indian fashion. Bienville waited until dawn of the 3rd,
determined to kill all of the Indians, including the women and
children. But the Alibamon warriors were
too alert, and the Frenchmen too clumsy. All of the women and
children escaped, covered by the retreating warriors. When the
firing ceased, the Frenchmen found only four Indian casualties, two warriors
dead and two of them wounded. Bienville allowed the wounded
Alibamon to return to their villages to spread the word that the
French were determined to exchange blood for blood. One of his sailors had been killed
in the initial assault, but Bienville and the others emerged unscathed.
Bienville and his war party returned to Fort Louis on 11 January
1704, and the young commander promptly notified his allies of what
he had done. The Indians were impressed. They also
remembered what he had promised them back in November. By the
middle of March, Chickasaw warriors were bringing in Alibamon scalps
to exchange for guns, powder, and lead.65
.
The year 1704 brought a special group of colonists to Louisiana, but it also was a year of suffering and death, more so than
usual. Though it had existed for two years now, Fort
Louis-de-la-Louisiane was far from self-sufficient, far from being
an actual colony. It was, in fact, nothing more than a
glorified outpost, different from Biloxi and De La Boulaye only in
size and the number of mouths that had to be fed. The war
against
England and its Atlantic colonies promised only to stifle what
little progress had been made. In its fifth year of existence,
France's Louisiana venture was not much more than a grand idea
poorly realized.
The resupply of the previous August kept the colony "in good style"
until late winter 1704. In early March, however, Bienville was
compelled to send 6,000 pounds of flour to Pensacola to tide the
garrison over until their next resupply from Veracruz.
Bienville now had to wonder if maintaining good relations with the
Spanish was worth the diminution in his food supply. But he
had no choice: "The Spanish had cash; the French did not."
And more than once they had shared what little they had with their
distressed neighbors at Mobile. As long as Bienville
maintained good relations with Pensacola, trade with Veracruz was
open to him. In late May, in fact, he sent Robinau de
Bécancour back to Veracruz in the Précieuse to secure more
supplies for Mobile; this time, however, the French could offer no
cash to the merchants, only "credit" for having assisted their
compatriots at Pensacola. Not long after Bécancour departed,
the Frenchmen still facing starvation, Arriola returned from
Veracruz with a large resupply and promptly shared it with his
Bourbon neighbors. There was no question that the new Spanish
viceroy, the Duque de Albuquerque, was friendly towards the French,
as were Arriola and Martínez at Pensacola, so Bienville had no
choice but to remain cordial with his Spanish allies.66
And then tragedy struck again. The
Précieuse
did not return to Massacre until late July, two months after it had
left for Veracruz. Aboard were welcomed supplies--the food
that Arriola had sent to Mobile two months before had largely been
consumed by then--but the crew of the trusty traversier also brought
tragic news. While waiting at the Mexican port for the Spanish
merchants and the viceroy's bureaucracy to approve the issuance of
supplies to the French on the credit of the King, Bécancour had
contracted a tropical fever--the Spanish called it the vómito
negro--and died at Veracruz on July 4! The colony had lost
its "most able sea captain," who was only 40 years old when he died.
Not until the second week of August, when the Précieuse
finally returned to Mobile, did Bienville and the others learn of
the captain's death.66a
Just as dangerous as the chronic shortage of food and the loss of a
valuable officer was the continued English threat from Carolina.
In the spring of 1704, the Carolinians were still threatening what
was left of the Apalache district, putting more pressure on the
Spanish at Pensacola, who in turn appealed to Bienville for help.
He sent more flour but also Tonty to help plan a defense of
Pensacola in case the English and their Indian allies attacked it
next. Bienville, through Boisbriant, also shared with Arriola
intelligence about the English he had gathered from the Indians.
During the summer, while Bienville was waiting for Bécancour's
return, the acting governor at Pensacola, Joseph de Guzmán, sent
word that the Carolinians and their Indian allies had attacked the Apalache
district
again and requested assistance to repel the new invasion. Not
long afterwards, two Choctaw appeared at Mobile with news that four
Carolinians had gone to the Chickasaw villages with packhorses full
of merchandise to lure the Chickasaw away from the French.
Bienville, skeptical of the report, sent a party of Little Tomeh to
see if the report was true. Bienville could not help blaming
Father Davion for this touchy situation; the white collar was still
living comfortably at Fort Louis instead of ministering to the
Chickasaw or some other tribe, where he could do more good for God
and France.67
At least Bienville and the other colonists could look forward
to the next resupply from France. Certainly Le Sueur would
return to them, as well as other trusted officers, and surely more
priests. Word had reached them that the ship also would be
carrying a most precious cargo--new wives for many of the bachelors
serving in Louisiana. These would be young women of virtue,
selected from the respectable families of Paris by the Bishop of Québec himself. The
Pélican
(not the frigate that had fought with Iberville on Hudson Bay, but a
600-ton ship captured from the Dutch and now carrying 58 guns), had
set sail from La Rochelle in late April
without escort
and reached Cap-Français on June 10 and remained there a week.
Aboard were the French maidens, Le Sueur, Châteauguay, and several
priests, including Mobile's new curé. The ship's
commander, René-Hervé Guymont Ducoudray, well-known to Bienville,
had orders to stop at Havana before sailing on to Mobile.
After scaring off two smaller English warships, the Pélican
stopped at the old Spanish port of Baracoa on the eastern tip of
Cuba. At Baracoa, Ducoudray was happy to hear that a rumor
they had heard at Cap-Français was entirely false; the English had
not taken Fort Louis-de-la-Louisiana; they were only threatening
San Agústín again. The Pélican left Baracoa at the end
of June and, with a Spanish pilot, continued on to Havana. As
it sailed along the northern coast of Cuba, high wind and seas
nearly capsized the vessel The Pélican arrived safely
at Havana on
July 7; the sight of the old port excited both passengers and
crew. For the first time in three months, the maidens, still
23 of them, were allowed to leave the ship. Their nursing
sisters and Father La Vente escorted them to a local convent, the
Collegium Virginium, and the Bishop of Cuba personally led them on a
tour of his 200-year-old city. Meanwhile, Ducoudray delivered
messages to Spanish officials, took aboard a French
prisoner named Artur, and, circumventing Spanish mercantilist
policies, attempted to sell some extra flour he was carrying aboard
his vessel. Alert Spanish officials disrupted the exchange,
jailing the two Spanish merchants involved, so Ducoudray decided it
was time to move on to Mobile. The Pélican left Havana
on July 14, but not before disaster struck. While in the hot,
steamy port, one of the women and some of the officers and crew fell
ill. The sickest of the passengers, Pierre-Charles Le Sueur,
was so weakened by his illness that he had to be left behind in
port. When the Pélican reached Port Massacre on July 22
after a brief stop at Pensacola, many more of its passengers and
crew were
suffering from fever. Months later, they would learn that back
in Havana the gallant Le Sueur had breathed his last
on July 17, only 48 years old.68
Sadly, the Pélican brought an unwelcome passenger to
Mobile--yellow fever. A ship's officer had died on
the crossing from Havana, and now more crewmembers as well as
soldiers and passengers were dying from the mosquito-borne disease.
One of the maidens, Louise-Françoise Lefevre, died on August 2, the
day after the young women and most of the other passengers had
reached Fort Louis. Father Davion officiated at her burial.
After a week, over 20 sufferers had died, most of them young
soldiers recently recruited in France, and the settlers were
convinced that the malady had passed. Bienville, meanwhile,
found temporary housing for the "Pélican girls" among the
more trustworthy settlers and in the empty houses of the Canadians
still hunting at Baie St.-Louis or with Bécancour (now dead) at
Veracruz. During the following weeks, most of the girls, now 21 of
them, chose their husbands among the eligible bachelors. After the requisite
courtship, document signing, and celebration, Fathers Davion and La
Vente married the couples in the roughhewn chapel--13 marriages by
August 17, less than three weeks after the young women had reached
the settlement. One of the new grooms was Commissary Nicolas
La Salle, a widower for two years, who wed Jeanne-Catherine de
Berenhardt, one of the older maidens. By the end of August,
most of the remaining girls had found their suitors, including
bachelor Charles Levasseur and widower Henri de Tonty.69
And then the dreaded fever returned. By the middle of August,
those aboard ship who had become sick were either dead, dying, or
recovered, but then settlers, none of whom had been sick when the Pélican arrived, began to show signs of the fever--flushed
faces, chills, headache, jaundice, muscle ache, back pain, nausea,
and, finally, the "black vomit." Not for
another 200 years would humanity understand how yellow
fever spreads through a population. We know now that the
native Aedes aegypti females living in the stagnant water in
and around the village had bitten infected passengers from the ship,
and in two weeks these mosquitoes, also, had become vectors of the disease. By the end of August, most of the town's residents
had been infected. Among the sickest were two of the young
women (now married); Fathers Davion, La Vente, and Huvé (who had
just arrived with La Vente); and two indispensible officers, Levasseur and Tonty. Although there had been more engagements
between the maidens and the bachelors, celebrations and
weddings had to be postponed until the fever passed ... again. Ducoudray, who had planned to sail back to France at the end of
August, was unable to secure enough healthy men his crew, so he had
to postpone the
Pélican's departure.70
While yellow fever was ravaging the colonists at Fort Louis,
Bienville received visitors from the east. A Spanish
Franciscan and chiefs from two Apalache tribes, the Chato and
Talimali, came to confer with Bienville about moving among the
French. The Carolinians and their Indian allies had driven
them from their homes. They retreated westward before the
onslaught, seeking refuge at Pensacola, but they could see that the
Spanish garrison offered them little protection, nor was the land
around the post suitable for them. So they moved on to the
eastern shore of Mobile Bay and were now beseeching the young French
commander to provide them land and protection. "Bienville
received the emissaries with mixed emotions. His difficulties
in Mobile were at the present vexing enough. Moreover, though
the storehouse was filled, another supply ship was not expected for
nearly a year; certainly he could not arm them all. Yet it was
no small opportunity for the French, a chance for an alliance that
Bienville actively sought. The Apalache were known to be
diligent workers and farmers. The fact that they were already
Christian might aid in furthering the gospel among the still-pagan
Choctaw, Chickasaw and Tomeh. Furthermore, since the English
were their proven antagonists, in war as well as in religious faith,
Bienville could be certain of their continued loyalty." After
consulting with his officers, at least those who were well enough to
consult, Bienville agreed to assign lands to the Apalache. The
Chato were sent to the mouth of the Mobile River, at a place called
Les Oignonets, or "the onion field." A small
band of Yamachee, former enemies of the Chato but now peaceful, were
settled below them. The Talimali were sent upriver to a site between
the Mobilian village and the confluence of the Alibamon and Tombigbee
rivers. Other Talimali remained along the eastern shore of the
bay.71
The timing of the Apalache arrival at Mobile could not have been
worse for them. By the first week of September, they, too,
were suffering from the fever. They brought their dying
children to the fort to be baptized, taxing the strength and the
patience of the three remaining priests, who themselves were
suffering from the illness. Fathers La Vente and Huvé, in
fact, were still too sick to minister to anyone, so Father Davion
had to perform the sacramental rites. There also was the
language barrier. No one at Mobile understood the Muskogean
dialect of the Apalache. These Indians knew Spanish, of
course, but the French priests, oddly enough, had not mastered that
language (these were Seminary priests, not Jesuits). Among the officers at Mobile,
only Châteauguay spoke Spanish fluently.72
The fever also struck nearby tribes long established on the Mobile
River. The Mobilians became sick, but the Tomeh, especially
the Little Tomeh, suffered most from the epidemic. And then,
in early September, the fever struck down two of the most
illustrious officers at Mobile. Henry de Tonty died on
September 4, and Charles Levasseur passed the following day.
This was devastating to the colony: "With the passing of
Tonti[sic] and Levasseur, Bienville had lost his two most
experienced army officers. Within a period of only sixty days
he had lost (not forgetting Bécancour in Veracruz) fully fifty
percent of his high-ranking command."73
By late September, the fever had subsided.
Ducoudray, after weeks of delay, was ready to take the Pélican
home. Before he left, the residents of Fort Louis conducted an
impressive, and long overdue, ceremony on September 28--the
induction of Father Roulleaux de La Vente as first pastor of
Mobile's new parish. Father Dongé, the last of the Jesuits,
already had gone down to the Pélican, leaving Seminarian
Father Alexandre Huvé to serve as chaplain for the Fort Louis
garrison. The parish church that the Bishop of Québec and
Father La Vente had expected to be built for him had not been
erected, nor would it be built for several years to come.
Bienville and the remaining high-ranking officers--Boisbriant,
Châteauguay, and La Salle--occupied the front benches during the
impressive ceremony held in the fort's humble chapel,
Father Davion officiating. Here was
another important step for the frontier colony, the induction of its
first curé. Bienville could not know that the
settlement's new pastor would become as troublesome a pest as any.74
The rest of the year was relatively uneventful for the survivors at
Mobile. Forty or more of them had died, but the great majority
had survived, some of them, like Commander Bienville, seemingly
untouched by the fever. The Pélican finally left during
the first week of October, having remained at Massacre Island for
two long months. Doucoudray returned to Havana, where Father
Dongé died, but the settlers back at Mobile would not hear of it for
weeks. Two more of the Pélican girls died in autumn,
but most of them remained, already contributing substantially to the
colony's success. The colony's midwife died, but she was
replaced by another woman, Marie Grissot, who had come on the Pélican. On October 4, Madeleine Robert, wife of carpenter
Jean
Le Caën, gave birth to a healthy boy--Jean-François--who was baptized in the
chapel the following day--one of the first créoles born in
French Louisiana. Some of the Pélican girls were
pregnant and were due to give birth the following spring. A
few days before Christmas, a delegation of Tunica chiefs appeared at
Fort Louis. They were there to coax Father Davion back to his
mission among them. Bienville saw an opportunity to settle an
old score. Two and a half years before, the Koroa, who lived
on the river above the Tunica, had murdered Seminarian Father
François Foucault, but Bienville did not have the force at the time
to chastise the murderous Indians. He suggested to the Tunica
that they strike the Koroa and bring him the heads not only of the
two murderers but also of the English traders who encouraged the
murders. Bienville would not only arm the Tunica but also send
a force of Canadians under St.-Denis from Fort De La Boulaye to help
them defeat the Koroa and their allies, the Yazoo. Bienville
told them that a large force of Canadians was coming downriver soon,
and they, too, would help them fight the Koroa. The Tunica
agreed and rejoiced when they were told that Father Davion would
join them in a few weeks.75
.
The new year did not begin well for Commander Bienville. In
January 1705, St.-Denis appeared at Fort Louis, and it was obvious that
the proud young Canadian was still smarting over the dressing down Bienville had given him two years before. But
it was Bienville's turn for a dressing down or at least a large dose of
reality. The Tunica chiefs had gone to De La Boulaye after
they had left Fort Louis and had apprised St.-Denis of Bienville's
scheme to punish the Koroa. St.-Denis, keenly aware of
conditions on the lower river, urged Bienville to cancel the attack.
St.-Denis had learned that the English had nothing to do with the
priest's murder, that, in fact, the Koroa themselves were not
responsible for it, only the two treacherous warriors from their village who had committed the deed. St.-Denis informed Bienville that the
miscreants already were dead, executed on the order of their own
chiefs. This they had done before Bienville had sent the
Arkansas down to attack the Koroa. Bienville, in other words, had
treated an important tribe unjustly. Seeing his error,
Bienville called off the attack, blaming his misjudgment on lack of
information about conditions on the river. St.-Denis promptly
returned to De La Boulaye, where the Tunica chiefs were waiting, and
told them the order for the attack was revoked. To assuage
them, he brought along their beloved priest, Father Davion; by late
February, the troublesome white collar was back at his Tunica mission, where Bienville felt
he belonged.
Thanks to St.-Denis's timely intervention, peace returned to
the river.76
Such was not the case in the wilderness north of Mobile.
Bienville had not been able to keep his promises to the Chickasaw,
and, by early 1705, there were signs that Carolina English traders
were back in the Chickasaw villages. This alarmed the Choctaw,
who, though more numerous than their former enemies, would not be
able to withstand an onslaught of Chickasaw armed with English
weapons. The Carolinians were hungry for Indian slaves and
evidently had coaxed a few Chickasaw warriors to bring in Choctaw
captives. In February, a large delegation of 70 Chickasaw,
including women and children, appeared at Fort Louis to beseech the
French commander to keep his promises. They had taken a
roundabout route, around the Choctaw villages, to avoid retaliation
for the slave raids. Bienville had not been able to build the
fort between the Chickasaw and Choctaw towns, nor did he have any
presents to give the Chickasaw, nor a priest to send among them.
He was angry with his superiors in France for not sending him what
he needed, but his missives to the minister had gone unanswered, and
he had heard nothing from brother Iberville. Bienville
promised the Chickasaw, again, to build the fortified trading post
between their villages and the Choctaw, but he refused to let them
return to their villages the way they had come. He ordered his
most trusted lieutenant, Aide-major Boisbriant, and 25
Canadians to escort the Chickasaw back to their village through
Choctaw territory. Here was a calculated risk to demonstrate
French determination to maintain peace between their allies. At
the main Choctaw village, the grand chief warned Boisbriant of
Chickasaw--and English--treachery, insisting that this "band of
traitors" had burned to death the French boy St.-Michel three years
before. The Chickasaw denied the terrible rumor and agreed to
remain as hostages at the Choctaw village until St.-Michel could be
brought there alive. Boisbriant, unfortunately, agreed to the
proposal, which required a long wait among the Choctaw. The
Choctaw chief, in fact, had sent two of his warriors to kill
the two Chickasaw couriers who had hurried ahead to retrieve
St.-Michel. At the end of February, the Choctaw chief, knowing
that St.-Michel was still alive but not having heard that the
couriers were dead, ordered his warriors to turn on the
Chickasaw, their French escort be damned. Boisbriant and his
Canadians tried to intervene, but the Choctaw were much too
numerous. Sparing the women and children, they butchered all
of the Chickasaw men, including the chief, after a spirited fight.
They also inadvertently wounded Boisbriant in the struggle.
The Choctaw now had their revenge, but at what cost?
Fearful of having alienated the French, the Choctaw chief ordered
his warriors to place the seriously wounded Boisbriant on a stretcher
and sent 300 of them to
escort the aide-major and the Canadians back to Fort Louis.77
Bienville was stunned, but should not have been surprised, by what
happened at the Choctaw village. But what could he do?
The Choctaw, sad to say, were still among his most trusted Indian
allies. They were spurning the English traders, bringing in
Alibamon scalps, begging him for a priest to send among to them, and
refraining from war against the smaller tribes. The
Chickasaw, on the other hand, seemed willing to return to the
English orbit, and perhaps they had murdered the boy. A war was still on, entering its third year, and
Bienville was receiving word from a number of sources that the
English were planning an attack in the region. It was best to
keep the Choctaw as allies despite their erratic behavior.
When the wounded Boisbriant returned to him, Bienville was still
waiting word from brother Châteauguay, who, after returning from
France aboard the Pélican, had been given command of the
trusty Précieuse. A fire had all but destroyed the
Pensacola presidio the previous November, and Châteauguay had used
the traversier to bring them aid. Arriola had asked for the
loan of a vessel to notify Veracruz of the disaster, so Châteauguay
had taken the Précieuse to the Mexican port in late January.
What choice did Bienville have in these matters? A well-fed,
well-fortified Pensacola was essential for the defense of the
Louisiana garrisons, not to mention a large force of Indians allies,
including 3,800 to 4,000 Choctaw.78
And then the Spanish tried his patience as well. Châteauguay
returned from Veracruz on March 20 with the happy news that the
viceroy had compensated the French for their assistance to
Pensacola. Unfortunately for the Spanish, the Pensacola
garrison suffered another destructive fire in February, when
Châteauguay was at sea! Veracruz sent a relief vessel to the
stricken post as soon as they could, but significant help did not
arrive until late summer, when the Nuestra Senora del Rosario under a vice-admiral
arrived at Pensacola with six months
supply of food, more arms and ammunition, and, just as importantly,
reinforcements in soldiers and artisans. Before the big ship
could return to Veracruz with a shipload of masts, a September
hurricane sank it in Pensacola Bay. Bienville offered the Précieuse to send the vice admiral back to Veracruz to inform
the viceroy of the mishap, but the traversier, which had been in the
Gulf since early 1699, was in serious need of another overhaul.
Bienville coaxed the Spanish into paying the cost of the repairs,
which would be made at Pensacola, and allowing Châteauguay to remain
in command of the vessel when it was seaworthy again.
Meanwhile, more of the Apalache, this time the Escambe, appeared at
Fort Louis, asking to join their fellow Apalache on the bay.
Here was a first bone of contention between the Bourbon allies.
The Spanish was determined to restore control over the Apalache
district, so they were not happy to see "their" Indians going over
to the French. In a report to the minister, Bienville
explained why the Apalache preferred to live near the French:
"... the French assisted their allies better than did the Spanish,
the French furnishing more arms,"
Bienville insisted, "in addition to the fact that the natives
were not masters of their own wives while among the Spaniards and
that among the French they had no fear on that point." And
then there was the question of boundaries between the French and
Spanish realms. More than once the issue had risen between the
Le Moynes and the Spanish commanders at Pensacola, first
Martínez then Arriola and now Guzmán, who reminded the Frenchmen
that a Spaniard named Luna had settled at Bahía Mobila in 1560!
The Spanish reasoned that since a natural boundary was needed
between their posts, the Mobile River would do just fine. The
French demurred, insisting that the entire bay, including its
eastern shore, was part of French Louisiana. But more pressing
matters had always set the issue aside--until the fall of 1705.79
In September, after the hurricane passed, Châteauguay was returning
to Massacre from Pensacola in a borrowed felucca when he came upon a
small brigantine that had run aground near Mobile Point, not far
from the entrance to the bay. Châteauguay approached the
vessel carefully, not sure if it was English. Hearing voices
calling out in French, he hurried aboard and found a Captain Maurice
and 90 men who had survived the recent hurricane. Their ship,
the St.-Antoine, was a privateer out of Martinique heading
home from a trip to Veracruz. Châteauguay and his crew took
the survivors aboard the Spanish felucca and hurried them on to
Massacre before sending them up to Fort Louis. Meanwhile,
Governor
Guzmán, hearing of the wreck, sent 60 men in two boats to salvage
what they could from the wreck. Châteauguay, of course, had
the same thing in mind, so after seeing the privateers safe at
Massacre, he returned with 25 Canadians to the St.-Antoine.
Encountering the Spanish, the young Canadian refused to allow them
to board the stranded vessel. The Spaniards prudently
retreated, and the Canadians loaded their feluccas with considerable
plunder, including silver and gold.
Guzmán wisely let the matter rest ... for now. They repaired
the Précieuse as they had promised, and Châteauguay
transported the vice-admiral to Veracruz.80
A few weeks after Boisbriant returned wounded to Fort Louis, another
delegation of Chickasaw, 10 headmen this time, appeared at the fort.
They had gone to Tunica, where Father Davion had urged them to visit
Bienville. They assured the commander that "despite the recent
massacre by the Choctaw they still desired peace." They were
saddened to learn that Bienville and Boisbriant would even question
the well-being of the young St.-Michel. Hearing this,
Bienville fully understood the treachery of the Choctaw. He
ordered the Chickasaw to bring St.-Michel to Mobile so that he could
use him to chastise the Choctaw chief. The Chickasaw agreed
and returned to their villages, leaving six of the chiefs as
security for the life of St.-Michel.81
Soon it was the Choctaws' turn to suffer at the hands of their
enemies. That August, unbeknownst to Bienville and his
officers, three Carolina Indian agents met with the chiefs of
several related tribes living in the wilderness north of Mobile--the
Alibamon, the Coweta, the Kashita, and the Okmulgee, who later would
be called collectively the Creek--at Coweta Town. The English
drew up a proclamation, agreed to by the chiefs, declaring that "all
of the natives allied to the French as 'enemies to be attacked and
annihilated.'" This was no idle threat. That autumn,
3,000 warriors from these tribes, spurred on by the English agents,
moved against the Choctaw. Having been warned, the Choctaw
abandoned their villages and retreated into the woods while the
Alibamon and their allies devastated their homes and crops. As
the Alibamon withdrew, the Choctaw counter attacked, killing several
hundred of the enemy. The Choctaw victory spared Mobile and
Pensacola from attack for now, but the Alibamon were still a
dangerous presence in the wilderness above the two posts.82
Though no resupply from France appeared in 1705, new settlers,
mostly Canadian voyageurs, arrived via the upper Mississippi
throughout the year. In January came Gabriel Philippe de
St.-Lambert and his younger brother François-Philippe Philippe de
Hautmesnil de Marginy de Mandeville, called Mandeville, both valuable officers, leading a
contingent of "renegade Canadians" who had lost their trade
concession on the Wabash. Fifty voyageurs from Illinois came
down later in the year and included two former residents of Fort
Louis, Pierre Sauton and Joseph Guillet de Bellefeuille. They
praised the value of the Missouri country, where they had traded
with Spaniards from Nueva Mexico and also had found mineral
deposits. They gave Bienville samples of what appeared to be
copper and some unknown substance, but the commander, having long
given up hope of finding valuable mines in Louisiana, was not
impressed with what he saw. Towards the end of summer, a
poignant moment occurred when Marguerite Messier, "slender blond
wife" of Pierre-Charles Le Sueur and Bienville's kinswoman, reached
Mobile with her children, a young son and three daughters, hoping to
rendezvous with her husband. At Kaskaskia on the way downriver
in April, Marguerite had lost her brother and one of her daughters,
and now she was told that her beloved husband had been dead for over
a year! Aware of the hazards of a return trip to Canada, the
grieving widow chose to remain at Fort Louis. She and her
children occupied the house her husband had left her on the Rue de
Ruessavel and sent a message back to Montréal requesting a merchant
friend there to sell her house and belongings and forward the
proceeds to Mobile.83
The settlers at Fort Louis also welcomed new residents of a
different kind. The Pélican girls, now proper wives,
began to give birth, the first of them that summer. One of the
newborns, Claude Joussette, would live to a ripe old age, dying at
New Orleans in 1781, "having amassed a considerable estate."
Later in life, he would claim to have been the first-born Frenchman
in Louisiana, even going to court to "prove" his claim. In
truth, he was not even the first born child at Fort Louis in 1705!
Sadly, but typical for a frontier community, many of the
settlement's newborns did not survive the year.84
Newborn infants were not the only casualties of the year. Fort
Louis itself, now three years old, was dying, literally rotting
away. Bienville beseeched the Minister of Marine to provide
funds to construct a new fort, this one of brick and stone.
What had eluded Iberville and the others in 1702 was now manifest:
the village site was so poorly located that "after each rain several
weeks were required for the standing water to drain." The only
agriculture attempted were house gardens, which barely supplemented
the post's food rations. Commissary La Salle and others
complained that the site was too far upriver; La Salle, in fact,
wanted the settlement relocated all the way down to Massacre Island.
Bienville refused. To do so would be a poor reflection on
Iberville, Levasseur, and himself.85
Some of the more ambitious settlers believed that up and down the
river were better drained and more fertile sites that were amenable
to plantation agriculture. With the proper means, they could
become wealthy by supplying produce not only for Mobile but for the
markets at Pensacola, Havana, and Veracruz. Proper means would
include the employment of slave labor, either Indian or, preferably,
West African. Many households at Mobile already employed
domestic "slaves" and had done so from the first days of the
settlement--young Indians, male and female, from the local tribes
whose parents had allowed them to live among the French in a sort of
unofficial indentured servitude. Some of the Indians were
employed in outside work, but there were, and never would be, enough
of them to sustain a large plantation. The putative planters
were constantly urging Bienville to import Africans from
St.-Domingue and Martinique. The blacks would be purchased,
not "borrowed"; they would, in a word, become chattel,
essential for the backbreaking work in the fields of a new French
socioeconomic elite. Bienville, like Iberville before him,
supported the importation of slaves, but the Minister in France
"had considerable reservations," so, until he approved, it
would not be done. Nor was the timing right. The war and
its curtailment of ocean voyages had severely reduced the
trans-Atlantic slave trade. Slaves could more safely be
brought in from the West Indies, but where would the colonists find
the capital to pay for slaves? Only a handful of merchants
could purchase them outright. The only alternative would be
slave-trading--Indians for blacks, like the Carolinians were doing,
the very thing that the French had vowed to end in the Gulf Coast
region. But even if the settlers at Mobile could afford to
purchase slaves, could they also afford to buy horses, oxen, and the
needed tools? There were only 13 oxen and a single horse at
Mobile in late 1705--not very promising for a plantation economy.
Nor was there a grist mill to grind any grain that the colonists
could produce; the millstones were there, brought over from Rochefort
on the Loire in 1703, but a mill for them had not been built.
Until then, the colonists would have to grind by hand whatever grain
they acquired from Pensacola or Veracruz. Mostly they
subsisted on maize grown by the local Indians, which the new wives
from Paris found difficult to stomach. Three enterprising
Canadians moved down to the Oignonets, near the village of the
Chato, and "were gamely trying to grow wheat and vegetables" at
"the onion field."86
Late in the year, the Chickasaw chiefs returned to Fort Louis with a
very much alive St.-Michel in tow. Boisbriant, especially, was
glad to see the young man still alive. Bienville sent an
officer and two Tomeh guides to retrieve the Choctaw chief.
Bienville was determined to re-establish the tribal alliance and put
an end to the war between the old enemies. First one and then
several Choctaw chiefs, carrying more Alibamon scalps, appeared at
the fort in January. Choctaw and Chickasaw smoked the calumet
again, and Bienville was satisfied that the alliance had been
restored, though he insisted that St.-Michel remain at Mobile.86a
Despite this potential triumph, by the end of the year, Bienville seriously considered returning to
France. He was only 25 years old, still a young man, but seven
years in the wilderness had taken its toll on his health and spirit.
In France, he could personally beard the Minister about what
Louisiana sorely needed. It had been a year and a half since
the Pélican had resupplied the colony. Prices at Veracruz were
exorbitant, even for merchandise of inferior quality. But even
that source of sustenance was in jeopardy. Earlier in
December, on its return voyage from Veracruz, the Précieuse
had been caught in a storm and driven upon a sandbar south of
Massacre Island. Châteauguay managed to save the food and
merchandise aboard the little ship, but, after seven years of
service, the Précieuse was no more. Only the Espérance, now four years in the colony, remained to transport
goods to the colony's two forts and to connect Louisiana to the
outside world.87
.
By the spring of 1706, the colony was in dire straits. The
fort's bastions were so badly rotted that the cannon could not be
safely fired. La Salle resisted any proposal to repair or
rebuild the fort, "blaming the Le Moyne brothers for their lack of
foresight in locating it 'in the midst of the woods.'" He
insisted on abandoning the site and relocating the settlement to
Massacre Island or to the Oignonets. But the
warehouses on Massacre and at Dog River, also four years old, were
rotting away, too. Even worse, for every colonist, the
resupply expected the previous summer never arrived. Soon it
would be two long years since the fever-laden Pélican had
reached Massacre. Food was
short, prices for everything were exorbitant, especially when
purchased from the Spanish, and a crippling
poverty permeated the settlement. Bienville and
Châteauguay, though deeply in debt, had cash reserves to make
purchases (thanks, no doubt, to Châteauguay's salvage of the St.-Antoine), and skilled craftsmen like carpenter Jacques Le Compte
and cooper Pierre Gagné could charge more for their valuable
services, but most of the colonists, especially the soldiers,
had to subsist on fixed incomes whose value steadily dwindled in the face
of high, persistent inflation. They had no specie--none
officially had
come to the colony since the Pélican--so nearly everyone was
in debt to the King's treasury, a situation made worse by
Bienville's policy of easy credit for the colonists. La Salle
complained about the policy, but, having six mouths of his own
to feed, he, too, was heavily in debt to the King's accounts. This
only worsened the relationship between the
commander and the commissary, a cloud hanging over the colony for
four years now. Moreover, Bienville was forced to purchase
food from Pensacola again, throwing out of balance the settlement of
accounts he had recently made with
Guzmán and his commissary. Bienville, and now
Châteauguay, were determined to return to France to address these
serious matters in person.88
The Le Moynes--Iberville, Sérigny, Bienville, and Châteauguay--had
long dominated the colony, but Iberville had not returned, Sérigny
also was gone, and Châteauguay was at sea most of the time.
Moreover, ever since the Pélican had arrived with its
girls from Paris, its young soldiers from Rochefort and La Rochelle,
and its two French priests, the Canadians no longer outnumbered the
continental French. In his opposition to Bienville, La Salle
could depend on many of his fellow Frenchmen to join him in carping
about the Canadians'
policies. And then, in the autumn of 1705, the petty incident
of the soldier's blanket pitted Bienville against the commissary's haughty
wife, who did not bother to hide her disdain for "this skulking
Canadian." Although the commissary "apologized" for his wife's
behavior, he could not forgive the commander's high-handed manner in
barring a pregnant Madame La Salle from chapel services. From this day forward, La Salle was determined to
make note of the Canadians' every transgression
and pass them on to the highest authority in France. Not even
the absent Iberville, once the commissary's champion, was exempt
from La Salle's stinging critiques. Nor was the commissary
averse to exaggeration in describing to the Minister Bienville's supposed
malfeasance. Bienville was just as diligent in reporting La
Salle's transgressions. He complained about the laziness of
many of the Frenchmen, especially the women Bishop St.-Vallier had
foisted on the colony.89
What was sorely needed was Iberville's return, bringing food, guns,
ammunition, presents for the Indians, specie, tools, and
hard-working artisans who could build a new grist mill and rebuild a rotting fort. Bienville had been apprised of
his older brother's promotion and his failing health and perhaps
other reasons why a resupply was taking so long. He could have
guessed that
in the minds of the King and Minister the war was taking precedence over supplies and personnel for distant colonies.
He could not yet know that in January, Iberville and Sérigny, as
well as other Le Moyne kinsmen, finally had set sail from La
Rochelle with a powerful fleet of a dozen ships, that Iberville's
orders, once again changed, were to attack English and Dutch sugar
islands in the Caribbean, that in April Iberville and Sérigny had
scored a dramatic victory against the English on Nevis and St.
Christopher, that they had looked the other way as their men looted
the islands and filled the ships' holds with booty. He could
not yet know that they had
sailed up to St.-Domingue before moving on to Havana, from
which Iberville would launch an offensive against Carolina.
Nor could Bienville know that the original plan was for Sérigny
to take the Coventry, a captured 48-gun English frigate, to Massacre Island with the colony's provisions, but that Sérigny had
taken the Coventry to Veracruz instead to sell some of the
captured booty as well as the "excess" supplies from France.90
To be sure,
Iberville had not forgotten "his" Louisiana colony. From Nevis, he sent a
captured English brigantine, the Aventurier, to Mobile to
supplement the Espérance as a transport. At Havana, after removing
from the Conventry most of the supplies intended for Mobile, he sent
one of his frigates,
the 34-gun Aigle, 300 tons, half the size of the
Conventry, and a smaller vessel, the Bienvenu, on to
Massacre. Commanding the Aigle was
Sérigny's
brother-in-law, Pierre-Jacques Payen de Noyan, who had gone to
Louisiana with Sérigny in 1702. Bienville,
meanwhile, learning of Iberville's presence in the West Indies, sent
Châteauguay to Havana in the Espérance to hurry the supplies
along. With him were the survivors of the Saint-Antoine,
who had become a drain on the colony's food supply.
Châteauguay had not returned by early June, so Bienville and the
hungry colonists had no choice but to wait.91
By then, conditions at Mobile had gone from bad to worse.
Clear factions had formed in the constant squabbling. Among
La Salle's supporters were many of the women from Paris, who were
not coping well with the poverty they were facing in a place they
had believed would be a paradise in the wilderness. Also
taking sides in the squabble was the post's curé, Father La
Vente. Bienville, who had been disappointed from the first
with the Seminarian's appointment, kept his distance from the pastor
for the first year of their acquaintance, but the peace between them
did not last. By the time the conflict between Bienville and
La Salle erupted in full force, La Vente clearly had taken sides.
He, in fact, became an even bigger thorn in the commander's side
than the prickly commissary and his arrogant wife.
One of the biggest bones of contention between the commander and the
curé was the question of European/native marriage. La
Vente saw such marriages as a means to control the wantonness of the
libertine Canadians and to increase the number faithful in the
colony. He encouraged the missionaries in the Indian villages
to perform such marriages and to baptize the resulting children.
Bienville, with his eye on social and military order, saw the
practice in a very different light. He was especially
concerned about the rootless, undisciplined coureurs de bois,
who had taken up with Indian women back in Canada, to the detriment
of relations with the Indians tribes there and, especially, to
military discipline. The commander wanted these troublesome
fellows to live at the posts, not among the Indians. To be sure,
when food was in short supply, which, sadly, occurred much too
often, Bienville had no choice but to send the unmarried Canadians
to live among the Indians, sometimes as far as Natchez and Taensa.
"It was not a move of which he thought well; it was a matter of
simple necessity."
When enough food was acquired, either from France or from the
Spanish, Bienville promptly called the Canadians back to their
posts. Sanctioning miscegenation, even in the guise of
marriage, threatened control over a volatile element in the colony,
something that the commander, and the colony, could ill afford.91b
The
conflict between the commander and the curé only worsened
when Jesuit Father Jacques Gravier, an old friend of the Le Moynes
who had served in Louisiana from 1700-02, suddenly appeared at the
fort. Wounded grievously in the arm by a Peoria devotee back at
his Illinois mission, the 55-year-old Gravier had come to Mobile in
hopes of finding a surgeon there who could properly treat his wound.
He was disappointed in the medical care he found at Fort Louis, but
remained, at Bienville insistence, to recuperate from the long
voyage down. Bienville appointed Father Gravier as his personal
chaplain, which infuriated the Seminarians.
Although Gravier urged Bienville to satisfy La Vente's demands for a
parish church, the fussy curé could not have been happy with
the result. The new church, a primitive wooden structure
standing on its long-allotted place at the edge of the village, was
hastily constructed and measured only 40 feet by 26 feet, slightly
larger than the post chapel. La Vente complained about the
small size of his parish seat, to which Bienville responded that the
curé had been begging for a larger church, and so he
had one. His dignity assaulted, La Vente refused to hold mass
in the structure and was even more incensed when Bienville proposed
to appoint Father Gravier as chaplain of the fort. The heated
exchange led to a threat of excommunication for Commander Bienville
and interdiction for Jesuit Father Gravier. A message to the
Minister of Marine, dated 28 July 1706, summed up Bienville's
feeling towards Father La Vente: "'I do not believe,
Monseigneur,'" the young commander fumed, "'that there could be
found a man on the face of this earth more violent, more hot-headed,
more two-faced or one who has a blacker soul.'"91a
And then there were the Indians. In late January, to fulfill a
promise to his allies, Bienville had sent Boisbriant, now fully
healed, and St.-Lambert with 50 Canadians on a raid into the
Alibamon country. They stumbled upon an Alibamon war party
just below present-day Selma, fought a lively skirmish, killing two
warriors and capturing a woman, before the Alibamon retreated.
Having lost the element of surprise, they returned to Fort Louis,
their female captive in tow. "Bienville sold the prisoner to one of
the colony's families and the woman went quietly to serve her owners
(with whom she remained for many years)." During the spring, the
Choctaw returned to complain about the Chickasaw, who had seemed
so eager for peace only a few months before. A party of
Chickasaw had attacked a Choctaw village and carried off 150
captives, who they promptly sold to the English as slaves.
"Bienville could only hang his head in despair: without
missionaries or close surveillance of the villages, it was
impossible to place any reliance on the conduct of the natives."
The Choctaw asked for powder and lead to defend themselves, and
Bienville gave them what they needed. He may not have won over
the Chickasaw, but the Choctaw remained his most valuable allies.92
Conditions on the lower river were even more troubling and promised
only
to get worse. The Chickasaw, Alibamon, and Yazoo, spurred on by the
English, attacked not only the Choctaw, who were more than a match
for them, but also the Taensa on Lake St.-Joseph, above Natchez, and
the Tunica lower down, who took refuge with the nearby Houma.
Unfortunately for the French alliance structure on the lower river,
"the Tunica turned upon their hosts and, for unknown reasons,
massacred more than half of the Houma tribe. The Houma
survivors evidently fled initially to the banks of Bayou St. John in
present-day New Orleans, but by 1709 they had migrated to a new
village site near present-day Donaldsonville," a place called
Lafourche, or the Fork.
Meanwhile, the Taensa abandoned their village site and moved downriver to
Bayougoula, where they were welcomed.
The Taensa did not return the welcome. As soon as they settled
at Bayougoula, "they betrayed the trust of their hosts:
wishing to appropriate the site, they slaughtered a majority of the
Bayougoula, then quickly drove the survivors into the forest."
The remnants of the tribe took refuge with the Houma and Quinapisa.
Fearing retaliation not only from those tribes but also from the French,
the Taensa decided to move to another site. Before they left,
however, they invited Chitimacha and Yakne Chitto families in the
area to join them in a feast. When only a small number of
Chitimacha appeared, the Taensa took them captive, sold them into
slavery, and occupied Bayougoula. This enraged the Chitimacha, who blamed the
French for Taensa treachery. Coureurs de bois, who
answered to no one, especially to distant commanders or local missionaries,
had been harassing the Indians along the river, murdering, raping,
kidnapping, even selling some of the Indians into slavery, all with
impunity. The Chitimacha may have been among the victims of these
miscreants. They certainly remembered their confrontation with
St.-Denis four years before, and how Bienville had mistreated the
Koroa after the death of the priest from Arkansas. So they looked for a chance to get their revenge
on the arrogant white men who had invaded their country.92b
.
Finally, on 13 June 1706, the lookouts on Massacre Island spotted two
sails on the southeastern horizon. Payen de Noyan's Aigle
and the Bienvenu, now under Châteauguay, had finally arrived.
The colonists were expecting a larger ship to make up for their not
having been resupplied for two long years. The Coventry
would have been that ship--at 670 tons, it was 70 tons heavier than
the Pélican and 170 tons greater than the Loire--but
here was a French-built frigate at least, plus a smaller English
vessel. Payen de Noyan, who had helped found the settlement at
Mobile four years before, was chagrined to see the King's warehouse
at Massacre in such disrepair. He also was surprised to see
the rest of the island still so bare. After he dropped anchor
at Port Massacre, he hurried a boat up to Fort Louis to apprise the
colonists of his arrival. Among the passengers who disembarked
at Massacre was Claude Allemand, a brother of the warehouse keeper at
Fort Louis; Claude was there to look after Iberville's personal
merchandise, which he hoped to sell for a profit. Another
passenger was 31-year-old Seminarian missioner François Le Maire,
whose romantic notions of ministering to Louisiana's natives was
shattered by the long, grueling voyage and the sight of
the barren island that lay before him. Another welcomed
passenger was Valentin Barraud, the colony's long-awaited chirurgien-major.93
Payen de Noyan did not begin unloading the
Aigle until the
day after his arrival. By then, Bienville had been notified of
the ships' arrival and made careful plans for the resupplies'
disposal. Aboard the Aventurier he sent
Châteauguay and a load of merchandise to sell to the Spanish, who
always had ready cash. Bienville had a ready response to La
Salle's inevitable complaint: the French were still in debt to
the Spanish. But La Salle suspected it was only an excuse to
engage in personal commerce. Bienville, in fact, had arranged
the unloading and redistribution of the goods so cleverly that the
commissary quickly lost control of the King's accounts.
Bienville had insisted that La Salle remain at Fort Louis and send
an assistant to Massacre. Some of the goods had been promptly
loaded into the Massacre warehouse, some of it was still aboard
ship, some of it was sent on to Pensacola, and some of it up to Fort
Louis. Meanwhile, colonists with means already were purchasing
the choicest items from whoever was temporarily in control of the
goods: a barrel of brandy, shoes and stockings, linen,
clothes, more brandy, more linen, thread, more brandy. La
Salle could not be in four places at once, and transactions were
being made without paperwork. Payen de Noyan handed him two
letters, one from Iberville, the other from the minister.
Iberville's instructions were threatening in tone as well as
confusing; the absentee commandant's feelings towards his commissary
obviously had been poisoned by Bienville's personal letters and
official correspondence. Even more preposterous, the letter
from the Minister instructed La Salle, among other things, to "'take
great care of the foodstuffs and munitions and to take the necessary
measures to have them used according to His Majesty's intentions.'"94
But Commander Bienville also was chagrined by what the paperwork was
telling him. Inspecting the bill of lading Payen de Noyan had
given La Salle, Bienville could not reconcile what the document said
he should be receiving and what he actually found aboard the two
ships. He knew instantly what his brothers had done with the
missing merchandise, and he was not happy about it. Where were
Iberville and Sérigny to explain this to him? Thanks to their
clever machinations, the colony would be in trouble again, long
before the next supply, which, as the Minister's instructions
hinted, "would be even fewer and farther between." Bienville
had expected more recruits for his two companies of infantry, but
only 16 boys, untrained, poorly clad, and very ill, stumbled off the
ships. He had expected several missionaries, two for certain
to send among the Choctaw and Chickasaw. Reading the
Minister's instructions, he could see that two priests were supposed
to have come, but here was only one. Father Le Maire informed
him that the other Seminarian, a young man of promise, had chosen to
remain in France. Back at Fort Louis, Bienville looked for a
silver lining around this cloud of disappointment. Châteauguay
told him that Sérigny was still at Veracruz or somewhere in the
Gulf, and Iberville was at Havana. Perhaps before they headed
to the Atlantic to attack the English there, or, more likely, after
they had made a successful attack against Carolina or Virginia, they
might see fit to send some of the booty to their brothers in
Louisiana.95
Bienville decided not to wait for his brothers' largesse. He
ordered Châteauguay to send the Bienvenu back to Havana and
purchase more supplies. Whoever commanded the vessel was
authorized also to purchase Negro slaves that Iberville had promised
for the more well-to-do colonists. These blacks would serve as
domestics for now, but perhaps soon they would be working in the
fields.95a
Bienville also had to address another problem, this one caused by
the misers in France. Despite La Salle's constant reminders
that the Minister of Marine had ordered Bienville to end support of
the Canadians at Fort Louis, Bienville decided to retain most of them on
the King's rolls for now. The reason was simple. The
Canadians could live without the colony, but the colony could not
survive without them. "Taken as a whole," Bienville knew, "the
Canadians were the colony's most valuable asset and, as far as [he]
was concerned, the colony could support them as far as possible."
And without them, Bienville also knew, his base of support at Mobile probably would disappear.
The few Canadians Bienville removed from the rolls generally had
become affluent enough to support themselves without a government subsidy, but
some of them complained anyway, becoming potential allies of La
Salle and La Vente.96
Sadly, the Aigle also brought yellow fever to the colony, but
this time there were few fatalities. A victim of the fever,
however, was one of Bienville's most important lieutenants.
Canadian Gabriel Philippe de Hautmesnil de St.-Lambert of Montréal
had come to the colony from Illinois several years before, and
Bienville promptly made him an ensign in one of his infantry
companies. St.-Lambert died of the fever in mid-July, and
Bienville chose to replace him with St.-Lambert's younger brother,
Mandeville, age 23.
Astonishingly, La Salle protested the appointment: he demanded
that Bienville appoint his son, Nicolas, fils, only 13 years
old, to succeed the dead St.-Lambert! La Salle, who lied about the boy's age, saying he was 16,
insisted that Nicolas, fils was bright, fluent in native
languages, a competent woodsman, and big for his age.
Bienville refused to change the appointment, and La Salle recorded
another complaint against the commander.97
In early August, after two months in port, Payen de Noyan prepared
to return to Havana. He set sail on August 14 with a load of
furs brought down from Canada. Father Gravier was one of his
passengers. Sailing with the Aigle was Châteauguay in the
Aventurier,
who would retrieve his
traversier, the Espérance, still at Havana, and inquire into
the delayed return of the Bienvenu. No one at Mobile
knew of Iberville's fate, which had been sealed the month before.97a
Before the Aigle sailed, Commissary La Salle hurried down to
Port Massacre to give Payen de Noyan his dispatches to the Minister,
including a long complaint against Bienville, and to make certain
that the Bienvillists did not make off with more of the colony's
merchandise to sell for personal gain. Back at the fort, La
Salle penned several more letters of complaint against Bienville and
his associates. By the time he finished them in early October,
the Aigle had sailed. Fearing that Bienville was
intercepting the mail, he sent his letters, including
duplicates, by every means he could. La Vente also sent
letters of complaint to his superiors in France. The
bureaucrat and the priest were determined to ruin Bienville's career.98
Fate also seemed to set itself against the young Canadian.
Bienville expected Châteauguay's return sometime in September, but
even when October came, he had received no word from his younger
brother. Finally, on October 19, Châteauguay reached Massacre
with the Aventurier and the Espérance and a very sad
story to tell: Brother Iberville was dead! He had died
in Havana over three months before of the dreaded yellow fever.
Sérigny had not reached Havana from Veracruz until three days after
their brother's death. He found the Espérance and the
Bienvenu still in port, watched over by the Spanish.
Most of the Bienvenu's crew had deserted. This was the
vessel he had loaned to Bienville earlier in the summer and which he
still considered his property. Determined to make as much
profit as he could out of his sojourn in the West Indies, Sérigny
sold the
Bienvenu to the Spanish. Most of Iberville's
squadron of 13 ships had returned to France.
Iberville and then his successor, Jacques Lefebvre, had tried to
enlist the help of the Spanish at Havana for the attack on Carolina,
but the new governor of Havana had died the day before Iberville; is replacement could promise only token assistance, and the viceroy
offered no help at all. Refusing to give up, Lefebvre sailed to
San Agústín. The new governor there,
Don Francisco
de Córcoles y Martínez, formerly of Pensacola,
agreed to help, and Lefebvre and the Spanish attacked Charles Towne
harbor on September 9. The result was a disaster for the
French and their allies, including a party of Indians; Lefebvre lost 30 men
dead and over 300 captured, along with his 72-gun ship, the Brilliant, in a battle off Holybush Plantation. Meanwhile,
Payen de Noyan and Châteauguay reached Havana in late August.
Only then did they learn of Iberville's death and Sérigny's sale of
the Bienvenu. Châteauguay remained at Havana through
September and into October, rounding up crewmembers and purchasing
what he could, including a few black domestic servants Iberville had
promised to send to the colony.
Before taking the Coventry to St.-Domingue to
complete his commercial transactions,
Sérigny informed brother Châteauguay that he and Bienville could keep the
Aventurier
in exchange for the Bienvenu. Châteauguay departed
Havana with his two ships in mid-October, and Payen de Noyan took
the Aigle on to Léogane and then to Martinique.99
Bienville and most of the colonists were deeply saddened by the
news of Iberville's death. "Unaware for the most part of Iberville's and Sérigny's
fraudulent commerce which had acted to the detriment of the colony,
the inhabitants deeply mourned his passing. Despite his long
absence, he had still been considered by the majority of the
officers and townfolk as being their chief voice in Europe, who more
than any other had been responsible for what concessions were wrung
from the purse of the court." Many of the Canadians had served
under the gallant commandant since the beginning of the Louisiana
venture, and some of the officers could recall their service with
Iberville as far back as Newfoundland and Hudson Bay. And there were his brothers, cousins, and in-laws, many of them still
in the colony.100
But not everyone mourned Iberville's death. La Salle, La Vente, and the young Huvé kept their own council of course, but they
knew that Bienville was much more vulnerable now without his brother
to look after his affairs. La Vente, in fact, referred to
Iberville as Bienville's "'chief and only parton.'" Earlier in
the month, Bienville, long aware of Iberville's diminished interest
in the affairs of the colony, had sent a message to the Minister,
reminding him "that for seven years I have had the honor of
commanding in this colony, and I beg you to grant me the
governorship of this land,'" but it would be months before he
received a reply. He could not know that
the persistent complaints of his enemies at Mobile were reaching Versailles and Paris, that they were stirring debate among powerful
men whose judgment would decide his fate.101
.
The year 1707, which would be the ninth in Louisiana's history,
began on
an especially troubling note. Yet another tragedy had shaken
the colony, this time on the lower river.
Father Jean-François Buisson de St.-Cosme, a Seminary priest serving
on the lower river since 1700, was for several years the only
missionary in the area who had remained at his post. In six
years of ministering to the Natchez, however, he had, he believed,
little to show for his efforts. More than once he had been
forced to use physical violence to protect his person against angry natives, and in
all the time he had served in the village he had failed to master the
Natchez language. So, in late November 1706, escorted by three
Canadians and a young slave of the Natchez, he journeyed downriver on his way to Mobile to confer
with his superior, Curé La Vente. After two days of
travel, the priest and his companions stopped to rest on the west
bank of the river near the confluence with Bayou Lafourche. While
they were sleeping, a party of Chitimacha fell upon them and hacked
them to death. Only the Indian slave
escaped the massacre and hurried downriver to relate what he had
seen.
St.-Denis was entertaining a visitor at
Fort de La Boulaye when the Indian
appeared there to report the murder of Father St.-Cosme. Abbé
Marc Bergier,
long-time missionary at Tamaroa in Illinois and vicar-general of the
Bishop of Québec for the Mississippi valley missions, had come down
the river a few weeks earlier and spent some time at Natchez with
Father St.-Cosme before moving on to Mobile to procure supplies for
his missions. Hearing the Indian's account, St.-Denis placed
his men on full alert and sent word of the travesty to Bienviille
via the vicar-general. Abbé Bergier, accompanied by the Indian slave,
reached Fort Louis on New Year's Day 1707, and now Bienville had to
address another crisis that threatened the entire colony.102
A message he would send to
the Minister in France in late February summed up the commander's
view of why the Indians in the region did not respect the French,
and why the colony was still so vulnerable to Indian depredations:
"All the savages of these lands are thoroughly treacherous," he
wrote, reflecting the typical European attitude towards natives in
every corner of the New World. "They have already committed
many assassinations and there is reason to believe they may
commit more because of the small fear that they have of the French.
They have such a low opinion of us that recently the Choctaw and
Chickasaw chiefs asked me in great seriousness if there were really
as many people in France as there were here or whether there were
very many more. I tried to make them see the truth of the
matter by striking comparisons, but it was impossible for me to make
them understand although I know their language very well. They
retorted that if there were really as many people as I claim, some
of them would come here to avenge the deaths of the Frenchmen, 'else
you have no courage at all,' they said to me: 'You have been
here for six years. Instead of increasing, you are
diminishing. The strong men are dying and only children come
in their places.'" The Choctaw and Chickasaw chiefs were
spending the winter at Fort Louis and were not impressed with what
they saw. Nor had Bienville kept their promises to him:
there still was no trading post between the territories, nor had he
given the Choctaw a missionary.103
Bienville's next action
was clear: he would have to use whatever "strong men" he had
left in the colony to demonstrate to the "savages" French power and
resolve. But where were those "strong men"? The chiefs
were right: he had been given nothing but boys to fill the
ranks of this companies. After deaths and desertions, he
commanded only 45 soldiers in these two "companies"! One of
the company commanders, François Juchereau de Vaulezard, a kinsman
of St.-Denis, refused to leave France. The other company
commander, brother Châteauguay, was the colony's principal navigator
and seldom was around to lead his men. Bienville was forced,
again, to rely on the very men he was purging from the King's
payroll--his trusty Canadians.104
The punitive expedition
began soon after Bienville was apprised of Father St.-Cosme's
murder. In early January, he sent the Espérance with 20
Canadians, guns, and ammunition to St.-Denis at Fort de La Boulaye.
Also aboard were presents for the friendly local tribes--the Biloxi,
Houma, Chawasha, Washa, and the remnants of the Bayougoula--to
secure an alliance against the Chitimacha. St.-Denis managed
to cobble together a force of 80 warriors, including four from the
distant Natchitoches. He led his 100 men in pirogues to the
mouth of Rivière des Chitimacha, today's Bayou Lafourche, and headed
down the bayou to the nearest Chitimacha village. They
attacked the suspecting Chitimacha at night, scattering the
survivors. They killed four warriors and captured a number of men,
women, and children. Satisfied, St.-Denis
returned to Fort de La Boulaye and sent the captives in shackles,
under careful escort, to Bienville.105
Bienville was happy to see
that among the captives brought back to Fort Louis in irons was the
warrior who had boasted of "having put six arrows" through Father
St.-Cosme. Here was an opportunity to mete out justice and
impress the "savages" with French resolve. "On Bienville's
orders, this prisoner was taken to the fort and tied to a stake in
the center of the square. After conferring with his officers,
Bienville decided the mode of execution for the confessed murderer:
he was forthwith bludgeoned to death with a heavy stone weapon.
His skull broken, he was then scalped and his body thrown into the
river. 'I did not do it,' Bienville later wrote [to the Minister],'without knowing the good effect that it would produce in
the villages of the other nations. It is the custom in all
these nations, not only in this province but also of those of Canada
to kill as many of the men of their enemies as they have lost on
their side; otherwise it is disgraceful among them to speak of
reconciliation if they have not got vengeance man for man.'"106
St.-Denis's offensive had
been a success in more ways that one. Not only were Indians in
the region taught a valuable lesson, but the Canadians were well-paid
for their enterprise, and the colonists at Mobile also secured
slaves for their households. But the enterprise had
its costs. There were no French casualties in the expedition,
but the Espérance, on its way back to Mobile, was lost in a
squall at Port Massacre. This left only the Aventurier,
in need of a thorough refitting, to resupply and communicate with
Fort de La Boulaye, which also was in need of serious repair.
Moreover, Bienville did not have enough men to man the post,
especially with a hostile tribe in the vicinity. So, sometime in the
spring, he ordered the abandonment of Iberville's fort and
instructed St.-Denis to move up to the portage site. Bienville planned, as Iberville had wished, to build another fortification
there, as soon as he could find the wherewithal to do it.
After tearing down the old fort, St.-Denis and the few Canadians he
was allowed to retain moved up to the Biloxi village on Bayou
St.-Jean.107
Meanwhile, Abbé Bergier
brought a breath of fresh air to the poisoned atmosphere of Fort
Louis. If Father La Vente assumed that the vicar-general would
take his side in the dispute with Bienville, he was sorely
disappointed. The abbé was a true ascetic, which greatly
impressed the Indians but which chagrined the portly French curé.
Nor was the abbé a fan of interdiction, a priestly power which the curé had not only threatened but had also used against his
detractors at Fort Louis. La Vente had complained of the noise
outside of the post chapel when he held mass there during
Bienville's Sunday drills. The commander refused to drill his
men at another time or another place, so the curé imposed an
interdict on the fort's chapel and returned to the ramshackle parish
"church" to conduct holy services. After a storm destroyed the
dilapidated structure, which had "stood" for less than a year, La
Vente resorted to holding services in his kitchen! Needless to
say, the inhabitants and the soldiers were most unhappy with this
arrangement, made worse by the persistent flooding around La Vente's
"rectory," located inconveniently at the edge of town. Bergier
listened patiently to his worldly colleague but could not approve of
his actions. He lifted the interdict on the chapel, coaxing
Bienville into restoring the recently-arrived Father Le Maire as
post chaplain, and found a house in the middle of the village in
which La Vente could conduct holy services;
the house would serve as the parish "church" for the rest of the
village's existence.108
Abbé Bergier's original
purpose in coming to Mobile was to secure supplies for his missions
upriver. By early 1707, however, Bienville had nothing to
give. The resupply of the previous June had long run out.
Bienville prepared to send his remaining ship, the brigantine Aventurier, to Veracruz and asked the abbé to remain until
Easter. Short on sailors, Bienville had to ask his trusty
Canadians to man the vessel. Châteauguay, of course, would
command the expedition. With messages in hand from both
Bienville and La Salle to the Spanish viceroy, Châteauguay and his
Canadians set sail in late February on what to the young Le Moyne
must have been a routine voyage and reached the Mexican port on
March 13. Châteauguay had penned his own letter to the viceroy
in hopes of expediting what usually was a long, trying effort in the
face of Spanish bureaucracy. The missives worked, but it was
not until the second week of April that Châteauguay could turn his
overloaded vessel back towards Port Massacre, which he reached on
May 9. The colony now had provisions for half a year or so.
A boat from Pensacola had resupplied Mobile while he had gone, and
Châteauguay was happy to send word to the Spanish benefactors that a
large resupply under Governor Arriola was on its way to them. But
Châteauguay had some bad news for his kinsmen and most of his fellow
colonists: Payen de Noyan, who had lived with them the
previous summer, had died en route to Martinique aboard the Aigle
several months before.109
The sad news
notwithstanding, morale in the colony was lifted. Thanks
to Spanish largesse and Châteauguay's efforts, there was plenty of
food ... for now. Though Bienville and most of the
colonists hated to see him go, Abbé Bringier headed back to his
mission at Tamaroa with two pirogues full of supplies. Thanks
to the abbé's calming effect and the successful resupply, the Le
Moynes were popular with the colonists again, no doubt to the
annoyance of La Salle and La Vente. But the curé and the
commissary were often too busy to pursue their offensive against
the post commander. Church records reveal that Father La Vente
performed at least 22 baptisms in 1707. He also performed
the usual burials and an occasional marriage. La Salle,
meanwhile, had to make certain that all of the supplies from
Veracruz and Pensacola were properly recorded, stored, and
distributed.110
Although the saintly
missionary from Tamaroa smoothed the feathers of the colony's
highest officials, a major subject of discord remained:
location of the colony itself. Now five years old, Fort
Louis-de-la-Louisiane was rotting away. Bienville's solution
was to remain at the present location and to rebuild the fort out of
brick or stone, otherwise a rebuilt wooden structure also would soon
rot away. La Salle and La Vente, on the other hand, continued
to advocate moving the post down to Massacre Island, or at least to
the mouth of the Mobile River, at a place called Les Oignonets.
Bienville reminded the Minister of Marine of why the present site
had been selected in the first place: Iberville wanted the
fort to serve as protection for the numerous plantations he expected
to see established on the river bluffs above and below the fort.
Bienville pointed out the many imagined defects of a site at the
mouth of the river: brackish water, nearby swamps, a general
unhealthiness as evidenced by the number of deaths among the Chato
living there. He insisted that "all the habitants" at Mobile
much preferred the present location, but his arguments were more
defensive than logical. In this debate, for once, the curé,
not the commander, proved to be the champion of reason ...
generally. When he wrote to a superior that the Oignonets was
"a spot where a city could be built much taller and larger than
Paris," he was engaging in hyperbole of course, but otherwise his
logic was solid. The mouth of the river, he pointed out, was a
better location by virtue of its being 26 miles closer to the
colony's port off Massacre Island. With only slight
exaggeration, he noted that supplies sometimes took as long as six
weeks to be moved from the port to the present location because of
the distance and the winding nature of the river. The
Oignonets, he insisted, was naturally protected by the water that
lay in front and behind it. Bienville shrugged off the curé's
arguments, admitting only that some day the French might build a
city on the lower part of the river to serve as "a warehousing
port." He attempted to mollify Commissary La Salle with
compromise. The storm that had destroyed the parish church
also had damaged the fort's chapel. Bienville suggested that
after he rebuilt the chapel, a part of it would be devoted to
extending the storage space at the fort. He also agreed to
build not only a new but a larger warehouse at Massacre Island.111
Despite these concessions
to La Salle, the conflict between the commander and the commissary
continued. There were heated words and even violence between
them, and also emotion-filled correspondence to superiors in France.
The Minister and even the King would have to intervene soon, or
their Louisiana colony would descend further into chaos.111a
The new warehouse at
Massacre, though an impressive structure, would have to remain empty
for a while. Bienville's only remaining ship, the
English-built Aventurier, did not survive the year.
After Châteauguay brought her back from Veracruz, she lay idle at
anchor in Port Massacre, food for marine worms and word borers.
Soon she began to take on water, and then she sank. Her
rigging and equipment were salvaged and stored in the warehouse with
the remains of the broken Espérance. Sadly, the Aventurier "was the last of the vessels at Massacre Island
capable of making voyages to Havana, Cap-français or Veracruz."
Until Bienville could secure another seagoing vessel, Mobile's communication with the outside world
remained dangerously limited.112
But the worse news, again,
came from the east: the English, according to numerous Indians
sources, were planning an attack that summer against Pensacola and
Mobile. Bienville warned the Spanish at Pensacola, who thanked
his messenger, but little was done to prepare Fort San Carlos for
the coming attack. The Carolinians and their Indian allies
attacked suddenly in mid-August, first burning surrounding villages,
ambushing small parties, and then, with at least 300 Indians,
assaulting the fort itself. The temporary governor,
Sergeant-major Sébastien de Moscoso, encouraged his hard-pressed
Spaniards to fight for their lives. After several days of
bloody fighting, the enemy retreated back into the woods.
Among the dead at Pensacola was a Canadian from Fort Louis who was
there to repair the ship San Joseph for Mobile's use.
Other Frenchmen inside the post were wounded in the fight.
During the third week of August, the English and the Indians struck
again, this time burning the entire village. Only the fort and
its presidio were left standing, but they, too, lay in ruin.
For the next several months, Indian attacks continued. All
Bienville could do to help was to send a war party of friendly
Tawasa and Chato to take more Koasati captives. Back at
Mobile, Bienville interrogated the Alibamon prisoners, who told of
an impending attack against Pensacola by land and sea. Among
the attackers would be dozens of English and French Huguenots on
horseback. Bienville was confident that Fort Louis was safe,
but he feared for Massacre Island. He led 80 of his best men
and 30 Indians to the island with the dual mission of protecting it
from an English assault and hurrying to Pensacola if the Spanish
called for help. In late November, after the English offered
Moscoso terms but he refused to surrender, the English and their
Indian allies assaulted the fort on three consecutive nights, but
the Spaniards repulsed each attack. The death of an important
chief in the third assault demoralized the Indians, and at the end
of November the English force retreated. Bienville reached
Pensacola on December 8, but by then the English had returned to
Apalachicola. Moscoso thanked Bienville for his good
intentions and for leaving him several Chato scouts to prevent
anymore surprises.113
The bloody siege of
Pensacola taught the Spaniards a lesson in maintaining friendly
relations with surrounding tribes. Moscoso offered the Chato
elaborate bribes to return to Pensacola, but they and the other
Apalache refused to leave Mobile; they remembered too well the
darker side of living near the Spaniards. Bienville had heard
rumors that in the West Indies and other parts of the Gulf of Mexico
the French and Spanish alliance was coming undone. He was determined to maintain good
relations with the Pensacola garrison, though not at the sacrifice
of his Indian friends. He returned to Fort Louis in
mid-December, confident that his men and his Indian allies could
resist whatever the English threw at them.114
.
Bienville did not know it
yet, but his dispute with La Salle and La Vente, and especially the
investigations into the conduct of his brothers Iberville and
Sérigny, were bearing bitter fruit for him at Versailles and Paris.
Thanks to his brothers' financial misconduct, his being a Le Moyne was now a liability, not an asset. Father Gravier, his old ally among the Jesuits, still in France, was doing
what he could for him, but it was too little too late. By the
first of May 1707, the Minister of Marine, in his search for Iberville's successor, had already removed Bienville from his list
of candidates for Louisiana's next "governor."
More ominous, the King and
Minister were contemplating the abandonment of the colony! The
King requested information "'as to the use it may be for the
kingdom' because if it proves itself of little value, he would
'abandon the colony without committing any more resources.'"
The Minister added: "'only in order to oppose English
expansion and stop it, would the King go to the expense of
maintaining Mobile.'" But the colony was not abandoned.
Evidently this original purpose for Louisiana, as well as future
plans to box in the British, was enough to keep the venture alive
... for now.114a
The Minister chose
as Louisiana's new governor 56-year-old Nicolas Daneau de Muy, a native of Picardy and recent
recipient of the Cross of St.-Louis who had served the King well in
Canada. De Muy recently had left Canada and taken his family back to France, where he
hoped to secure a higher position. His timing was right, as
were his associations. He was a champion of neither the
Jesuits nor the Seminarians, and, most importantly, he had no ties
to any of the Le Moynes. As soon as the Minister made the
choice, the King ordered De Muy, once he reached Louisiana, to
launch a thorough investigation into the charges leveled against
Bienville by La Salle and La Vente. Written instructions from
both the King and Minister ordered De Muy first to consult with
Bienville on conditions in the colony, including an accounting of
the colony's finances. Once the new governor learned all that
he could, he was to see that Bienville returned to France on the
ship that brought De Muy to Louisiana. De Muy also was tasked
with suppressing the trade in beaver fur from Illinois through
Louisiana. The Minister sent
Bienville written instructions repeating what the King had
instructed De Muy. Interestingly, the new governor's original instructions
said nothing about sending Commissary La Salle back to France.
In July, the Minister received more complaints from La Salle, which
prompted a modification of the King's instructions. The
Minister ordered De Muy to look into the fresh allegations
against Bienville and, if he found any evidence of theft or
malfeasance, to arrest the young commander and send him back
to France. If De Muy found no evidence of wrongdoing, he was
to leave Bienville in Louisiana, though in what capacity the
minister did not say. The Minister also notified De Muy that
he
would be accompanied by the chief commissary of
marine, Jean-Baptiste-Martin Dartaguiette d'Iron, who would audit Commissary La Salle's
financial records and help De Muy
investigate Bienville. Only recently appointed, Dartaguiette was even
younger than Bienville--age 24 to Bienville's 26. Dartaguiette
would bring along two of his younger brothers, Bernard, age 12 in
1707, and Pierre, who was even younger.115
Then there was the
question of Father La Vente. Complaints from Bienville,
Boisbriant, Father Gravier, and others at Mobile painted a dark
picture of the curé's conduct. The Minister of Marine,
weighing the evidence, was certain that the priest was a detriment
to the colony. The man who had appointed La Vente, Bishop St.-Vallier,
could not be consulted in the matter; he had been captured by the English on his way back to Canada
and was still being held in England. So the Minister had to
consult with Abbé Brisacier, head of the Paris Seminary. The
abbé and La Vente's other colleagues defended him passionately, but
the Minister, having read too many accounts of the pastor's surly
behavior, preferred to have him recalled to France and urged the abbé to find a replacement. Abbé Briscacier offered
the Minister a
compromise--the new Louisiana governor would
investigate the pastor also, and if he found fault with his
conduct, La Vente would be recalled to France.
If exonerated, he would remain at his post. The Minister agreed
to the arrangement, deferring to De Muy's judgment.116
By late summer, two ships
were being prepared at Rochefort for the voyage to Louisiana.
The Renommée, Iberville's former flagship, twice had
journeyed to Mobile, in 1700 and 1701. On this voyage, it would be accompanied by a
smaller ship, the Indien. Among the passengers aboard
the Renommée was Father Jacques Gravier, S. J., who, despite the
painful wound in his elbow, was determined to return to his mission
in Illinois. After the usual delays, the
flotilla, including now a merchant ship, the Branche d'Olivier,
which carried some of the reinforcements for Fort Louis, finally
left Rochefort in late October, but the crossing was not an easy one. A mid-November storm scattered
the vessels, and by the time the Renommée and Indien
reached Cap-Français, the merchant ship had not caught up to them.
Dartaguiette coaxed the governor of St.-Domingue into replacing the
recruits that may have been lost at sea
with soldiers from St.-Domingue. The flotilla then sailed on
to Havana, where the Renommée's captain would make
arrangements to pick up merchandise on the return trip to
France.117
And then things changed
dramatically. On 25 January 1708, off the coast of Cuba,
Governor Nicolas Denau de Muy suddenly fell ill and died aboard the
Renommée. At Havana, everyone looked to the young
nobleman for direction. Dartaguiette studied De Muy's papers,
which included letters from King and Minister, and decided that he
would follow the dead governor's instructions as well as his own,
except in the case of Father La Vente.
Jean-Baptiste Du Casse, former governor of St.-Domingue and now
générale des armées navales at Havana, also came into possession
of Du Muy's instructions; an ally of the Le Moynes now, Du Casse likely
alerted Bienville of what was on the way. The Renommée left Havana on February
2 and anchored at Port Massacre nine days later. The Renommée's captain, Henri-Joseph Beaumont d'Eschilais, informed
Dartaguiette that he would remain at Mobile only until March 1.
Dartaguiette's, and De Muy's, instructions stated that if Bienville
was found guilty of any of the charges against him, he must be
arrested and returned to France on the Renommée. This
gave the chief commissary precious little time to conduct his
investigation.118
Dartaguiette had to wait
two weeks at Massacre before the winds allowed him to sail up to
Fort Louis. Bienville and Châteauguay, who had come down to
meet him, escorted the chief commissary up to the fort. This
gave them two more days in the company of the young nobleman.
Dartaguiette agreed to lodge with Châteauguay, whose house was among
the largest at Fort Louis, but first he must return to Massacre
Island to supervise the unloading. What he observed there was
not theft or malfeasance but incompetence on the part of the
warehouse clerk in recording the disposition of the King's property.
Bienville, meanwhile, realizing that his fate was in the hands of
the young nobleman, stayed close to Dartaguiette. He showed
him the letter from the Minister detailing the charges against him
and offered to refrain from making anymore decisions without the
chief commissary's approbation. Dartaguiette was impressed
with Bienville's cooperation and displays of humility. Back at
the fort on February 23, Dartaguiette set himself up in La Salle's
office and began his interrogations. Dartaguiette began with
the habitants, as he called them, who seemed least involved
in the quarrel between Bienville and La Salle. Most of the
witnesses he called, he could not know, were staunch Bienvillists
who praised the young commander's leadership and denied La Salle's
scurrilous charges. Another witness, Father Le Maire, was
instrumental in convincing Dartaguiette that Bienville was innocent
of one of the most serious charges--intercepting the mail
between La Salle and La Vente and their superiors in France.
Two of Bienville's enemies were called to testify, and they were
more than happy to traduce their young commander. Only one of
the hostile witnesses, however, offered what seemed to be creditable
testimony. Meanwhile, the Le Moynes made use of Dartaguiette's dining arrangements to tell
him their side of the story. After four days of testimony, Dartaguiette
prepared his preliminary report for the Minister of Marine. He
concluded "that the bulk of the charges against Bienville were too
vague, too unsubstantiated to warrant an outright statement of
guilt." As to the conflict between Bienville and La Salle,
Dartaguiette observed that "Much of the difficulty in the colony ...
stemmed from private quarrels between [the two officials] and
there was little way to reconcile contentions of this nature."119
Although he was largely
exonerated, it was embarrassing to Bienville to be the subject of
investigation while he still commanded the colony. But La
Salle must have been even more embarrassed by the chief commissary's
report. Dartaguiette was displeased with the commissary's
haphazard
recordkeeping and lack of initiative, but, most damning, two of the
charges La Salle had made against
Bienville proved to be lies. Nor did it take the young
nobleman long to see that La Salle was indeed a prickly fellow, with
all of the faults the Le Moynes and many of the habitants
attributed to him.120
In the end, both Bienville
and La Salle would remain at their posts, with an important
modification: Dartaguiette would remain in Louisiana, where he
would serve not only as co-commissary but also as co-commandant, a
sort of
commissaire-ordonnateur.121
The Renommée was
not ready to sail on the first of March. The unloading had
taken much longer than
Eschilais had expected.
This gave La Salle extra time to pen more complaints against
Bienville. But La Vente, whose fate had been spared by the
death of the new governor,
was alarmed by Gravier's return to Louisiana and suspected that the
Jesuits were up to something. Despite the perils of another
sea crossing, he would
return to France on the Renommée to make his case in person.
Bienville, glad to be rid of the troublesome
priest, granted him permission to board the ship, but, after
consulting with Gravier and realizing how much damage La Vente could
do in Paris, he changed his mind and refused to allow the pastor to
abandon his parish. La Salle, on the other hand, would pursue
his vendetta only with ink and paper.122
When Dartaguiette began
his inquiries, there were five ordained priests residing at the
post--four Seminarians and a Jesuit. La Vente, irascible as
ever, still served as pastor of the village parish. Father
Huvé, still sickly and ineffectual, spent most of his time in the
Apalache villages, though he had made few converts there, and
returned to the fort only when he needed someone to look after him
during his frequent illnesses. On Abbé Bringier's orders,
Father Davion had left his post at Tunica to take charge of
provisions for the Mississippi River missions expected to arrive on
the next resupply ship. Father Le Maire, two years in the
colony, was still disillusioned with Louisiana; after Father Gravier
had left on the Aigle in 1706, Bienville had appointed the
young Seminarian as the garrison's chaplain, so he had not yet gone
among the Indians. And then there was the lone Jesuit,
recently returned from France. Father Gravier had failed to
stir interest at Paris and Versailles for a return of the Jesuits to
the lower Mississippi valley. His intention had been to return
to his mission at Peoria, but, at the urging of Bienville and
Châteauguay, he decided to remain at Mobile until the Easter season.
He was determined to keep an eye on the truculent La Vente, who was
chagrined to see the old Jesuit at the fort again. Father
Gravier's frère coadjuteur, Brother Guillaume-Richard Fortin,
also had come to Mobile on the Renommée; Brother Fortin was
exceedingly feeble, a victim of what was called the "quartan fever,"
but mostly he was a victim of advanced age. Sadly,
since Father St.-Cosme's murder over a year before, only Father
Davion was ministering to the Louisiana Indians, and now he, too,
was living at the fort.
Father Gravier remained at
Mobile through the Easter season, but he never returned to Peoria.
Easter ended on April 8, and then Father Gravier left for Massacre
Island, telling none of his fellow priests why he was going there.
Bienville probably knew: the old Jesuit was hoping to
establish a depot for the return of Jesuit missions to the area.
Father La Vente had hoped that "the instrument by which God punishes
me," as he referred to the Jesuit, had finally quit the colony, but
by the middle of April Father Gravier had returned, showing signs of
having contracted a fever. On the night of April 16, Father La
Vente visited Father Gravier in his quarters to comfort him, but the
old Jesuit, in his delirium, roundly rebuked him. The next
morning, Father La Vente returned to look after the sickly colleague
and found that he had died quietly in the night. Father La
Vente officiated at the Jesuit's funeral, and his eulogy was filled
with effusive praise. The threat of the Jesuits returning to
the colony also was laid to rest, at least for now.122a
Meanwhile, on his second
day back at the fort, Dartaguiette addressed what the Minister of
Marine believed was a major problem in Louisiana: Bienville's
flagrant and persistent violation of orders to remove the Canadians
from the King's payroll. For two years, in spite of these
orders, Bienville had kept as many Canadians as he could in the
King's employ. La Salle was aware of these orders and
complained mightily about their violation. Bienville had a
compelling reason for maintaining the Canadians on the rolls--the
security of the colony itself! The soldiers the Minister had
sent him to fill the infantry companies were only boys, many
of whom died before they had the chance to lay down their lives in
defense of the colony. But orders were orders. With
Bienville present, and with his reluctant consent, Dartaguiette
assembled all of the Canadians still on the payroll and informed
them that as of the first of March they no longer would be supported
by the King. The Canadians protested loudly. The married
ones had wives and even children to support. The unmarried
ones demanded to be allowed to live among the Indians and engage in
the skin trade, or they would return to Canada or become coureurs
de bois or even defect to Pensacola. No longer on the
King's rolls, they could not be charged with desertion if they quit
the colony. Dartaguiette say immediately why Bienville had
ignored the Minister's orders. Dartaguiette promised that "The
king would aid them as much as possible...." The Canadians
retorted that the King had not helped them at all even when they had
been on his payroll. As a war measure, no specie had come on
the Aigle or the Renommée for fear of capture; not
since the Loire had come to the colony three years before had
the Minister sent any specie to pay the officers, soldiers, and
Canadians. Bienville, despite La Salle's objections, had
"paid" the Canadians all these years with credit on supplies from
the King's storehouse. Bienville promised to extend them
credit, which the Canadians could settle when the Crown sent specie
to the colony.123
And then Bienville, with
Dartaguiette's approbation, offered the Canadians a bargain that
held promise of enriching the colony as well as the Canadians
themselves: he would issue them axes, mattocks, handsaws,
whatever was needed for them to work the soil on grants of land in
the colony. Several Canadians, on their own initiative,
already had left Fort Louis, where the soil was barren, and moved to
the Oignonets to raise vegetables. The Canadians
were welcomed to move to Massacre Island and work the soil there.
Explorations of the bay had revealed a number of other places fertile
enough to support agriculture.124
Most of the Canadians
remained in the colony, and many of them embraced the offer to take
up land in the area. Finally, after nine long years of being
nothing more than a fortified outpost, Louisiana had the potential to become
an actual colony, with real colonists working the
land. Guillaume Boutin and Nicolas Bodin moved
to Rivière-aux-Poules, today's Fowl River, along the southwestern
shore of the bay between Dog River and Cedar Point. Two
Carrière brothers settled at Bay Minette, east of
Mobile Bay. François Guillory and others, including Jean Roy, moved to Massacre Island, where
Guillory took up land on the east end of the island at what
became known as Pointe-à-Guillory. Living on the island next
to Port Massacre also would provide opportunities for commerce when
ships came to the bay.125
But the most promising
land in the colony was not on Mobile Bay. The Bayou St.-Jean
portage had been used as a shortcut to and from the Mississippi for
most of the colony's existence. Bienville and others who had
used the portage had noted the quality of the soil in the area.
Soon after Iberville had built Fort de La Boulaye, Bienville had
coaxed a band of friendly Biloxi to settle on the bayou as
protection for the fort. Iberville's fort no longer existed, but
St.-Denis and a few of his men had been living with the Biloxi to
observe movement on the river. "It was Saint-Denis who
first reported to Bienville (and later to Dartaguiette) on the
richness of these lands...." Bienville went so far as to tell
Dartaguiette, who had not yet visited the river, that the portage
site,
as Dartaguiette later reported, was "'the finest in the world
for raising crops,'" that it could even be a place "'at which a
large settlement could be made to carry on considerable commerce
with New Spain and the West Indies.'" In the spring of 1708,
Bienville granted farm lots, 4
arpents wide and 36 arpents deep, where Bayou Tchoupitoulas
joined Bayou St.-Jean. Five Canadians, including Antoine
Rivard de La Vigne, François Dugué, Jean-Baptiste Poitié, and
Nicolas Delon, took "their few Indians slaves" with them, plus the
necessary supplies and tools, and planted a crop of wheat along the
bayou, using seed they had brought from Fort Louis.126
As a result of Bienville's leadership and Dartaguiette's wise decision to let him lead, a potential disaster
was averted. At the time, the co-commandants could see only
that the volatile Canadians had been saved to the colony for now.
Until a mill could be constructed on one of the streams in the area,
a locally-grown wheat industry could not succeed. And until
more marriageable women could be brought to Louisiana, there was
little hope of keeping the Canadians there or luring more of them
down from Illinois.127
A month
before the Renommée arrived, "a small French sailing vessel,"
its name lost to history, appeared at Port Massacre. The ship
had sailed from Havana and carried a cargo of "tobacco, bacon, and
brandy," some of which was purchased by the more prosperous
colonists. Several weeks later, an 80-ton vessel out of Nantes
appeared, "bringing more vendibles." Louisiana now
was perceived as
a market for French goods. For years, Bienville had sent
traversiers to Veracruz and Havana to engage in questionable
commerce, but now legitimate commerce was coming to him.
Massacre was becoming a proper port, connected, at least, to the
francophone world.128
But, sadly, it was a port
without its own ship. With the exception, perhaps, of
Bienville and Châteauguay, the arrival of the Renommée was
welcomed by everyone; the first resupply in nearly two years. Iberville's old ship brought few soldiers, no women, and only a
single priest, but it did bring a plethora of food and
provisions, the largest resupply since the Pélican three and
a half years before. And therein lay the problem--there were
no more traversiers or feluccas to move the supplies from the ship
to the warehouse and then up to Fort
Louis. Every available canoe and pirogue converged on the
ship, but this "resulted in heavy fees, as well as losses in time
and merchandise"--a prolonged, inefficient, and chaotic transfer.129
The Minister of Marine had
anticipated the need for a new vessel at Mobile. One of the
passengers aboard the Renommée was Jacques Le Roux, a
shipbuilder--specifically, a second-master constructor--from
Rochefort who specialized in building small craft. Le Roux had
come to the colony with Iberville in 1702 and had been ordered to
build a flat-bottomed pinnance that was never finished and which had
rotted on the ways. He had returned to Rochefort, but now he
was back, tasked with building another flat-bottomed barge, this one
of 35 or 40 tons burden, "capable of transporting goods over the
sometimes shallow bars between the fort and Massacre Island." Dartaguiette's contract with Le Roux called for 15 workers, who
would be mostly Canadians, and an outlay of 3,000 livres.
The barge would be constructed at the fort, "near the small hospital
on the creek just north of town." Le Roux began construction
probably in the late winter, and the barge was ready by the first
week of June. The vessel was "constructed mostly of green oak
to ward off the insects and wood borers...." The final product
was between 30 and 35 tons burden, slightly smaller than what the
contract had called for, but, most importantly, the barge drew only
a foot of water unloaded and only four feet when fully loaded.
It completed its maiden voyage down to Massacre in late summer, and
the co-commandants were pleased with the vessel's performance.
They named it the Vierge de Grâce.130
Back at the fort,
Commissary La Salle continued his offensive against Bienville.
He was angered by Dartaugiette's obvious support of the
Canadian. And his bitterness towards Canadians in general
continued unabated. He was "especially bitter over Bienville's
attempt to establish himself and the Canadians as the only men
capable of conducting expeditions or carrying on commerce with the
natives," though one suspects that their commercial activities were
especially galling to him. But he had had another reason to
question the prowess of the Canadians. "'The belief is
exaggerated that it is imperative to have Canadians here or men who
have served in Canada," he complained to the Minister.
"We do not lack interpreters; two of my sons know the Indian
languages quite well." He then went on to tout his own
knowledge of the country based on long years of service there.
But most of La Salle's complaints were centered on Bienville's
supposed malfeasance, including theft of the King's powder.131
Bienville would have to
ignore for now La Salle's unending complaints and concentrate his
attention on a much more dangerous enemy: the English were on
the move again. The war against England had been lingering for
years, having begun only weeks after Fort Louis was settled in the
spring of 1702. In those six years, the English and their
Indians allies had attacked the Spanish at
San Agústín and Pensacola, but not the French at Mobile.
However, Bienville was hearing from his Indian allies that Mobile
was their next target. Pensacola had been surprised in August
1707 because there were no Indian villages near the post to warn
them of the enemy's approach. Such was not the case at Mobile;
no approach to the settlement was unguarded. Using interior
lines, allied Indians, after warning the French, could converge on
Fort Louis faster than an enemy approaching along exterior lines.
Moreover, Bienville, now with sufficient supplies and his co-commandants's
approval,
not only had begun repairs to the fort but also redesigned the
structure. Using
20 Apalache workers because none of the Frenchmen volunteered their
services, Bienville began the work in the heat of July.
The bastions were strengthened to hold more cannon, now seven per
bastion instead of four, and the rotting
curtains were repaired or rebuilt. Bienville's
new plan for the fort, which La Salle opposed but Dartaguiette
approved, called for the area within the palisade to be expanded to
accommodate 500 to 600 friendly Indians as well as the 300-plus inhabitants, thus increasing the size of Fort Louis by a third.
Theoretically, then, Mobile, thanks to its periphery of Indian
villages, could not be surprised, and it soon would be able to
withstand a siege, at least long enough for the Choctaw and other
friendly tribes to hurry to its assistance.132
The repairs and
improvements came none too soon. That summer, reports were
coming in that the English had gathered a force of 2,000 warriors
for an attack on Fort Louis. Bienville doubted the number, but
the reports nevertheless "made him uneasy." Bienville also had
learned from his Indian spies that English officials had visited the
Chickasaw and Choctaw
towns, trying, again, to turn those tribes against the French.
The Englishman who visited the Choctaw was summarily turned away,
but his companion went on
to the Yazoo, Arkansas, Koroa, Taensa, Natchez, and Tunica villages,
trying to stir up trouble among those Mississippi River tribes.
(Bienville knew that
if the Englishman valued his scalp, he would stay clear of the
Houma, Bayougoula, Biloxi, and Quinapisa on the lower river, though
the Chitimacha, still on Bayou Lafourche, would have welcomed a
chance to fight the French.)
Canadians who had been living among some of the tribes above the
Houma reported that the English planned to attack Mobile the
following winter. A delegation of Chickasaw came to the fort
and pledged their loyalty to the French. Knowing that the
English also had visited the Choctaw but uncertain of that tribe's
intentions, in late August Bienville assigned Châteauguay the dangerous
mission of escorting the Chickasaw back to their villages through
Choctaw country. Châteauguay would take the opportunity to
dissuade the Choctaw from following the English. Bienville had
no priests willing to live among the two tribes, so he sent two
young Frenchmen to live at their villages "to learn the respective
languages and above all to keep [him] informed on the political and commercial
activities of each nation." Happily, Châteauguay and his
party of 25 Canadians returned from the mission unscathed.133
By the time Châteauguay
returned from Chickasaw, Bienville had received more reports about
an impending attack. By early autumn, the attack had not
occurred, but Bienville and Dartaguiette used the alarm "to jolt
some of the inhabitants from their lethargy" and push the work on
the fort. By mid-October, Bienville could report to the
Minister of Marine that Fort Louis had been rebuilt and expanded and
was ready to resist attack. But the fort's garrison and
munitions were not so ready. At the end of September, the
fort's two companies of boys and men numbered only 139 effectives.
And the supply of gunpowder was dangerously low. Earlier in
September, he had sent an envoy to Pensacola to ask for powder, but
the Spanish were in no condition to assist him. Guzmán was
still absent in Mexico, and Moscoso still commanded at Fort San
Carlos. Arriola had helped him secure reinforcements (mostly
hardened criminals) and the wherewithal to reconstruct the walls of
the fort, which Moscoso had completed in February, but most of his
men were still sleeping in the open; he did not have the resources
to rebuild their burnt out barracks. In the spring, Moscoso
had asked Bienville for needed supplies, and the French had sent him
what they could spare. In early June, yellow fever broke out
at Pensacola, and by early September Moscoso had buried 22 of his
men, and many of the others were too ill to fight. Moscoso was
in no condition to assist the French the time; he did not have
enough powder for his own depleted garrison, which he believed was
still under seige.134
Having done
what he could with the resources at hand, Bienville refused to just
wait for his enemies, or his fellow Frenchmen, to act. In
early October, a vessel from St.-Domingue arrived at Port Massacre
in hopes of purchasing Indian slaves for the plantations back at
home. Bienville saw this as an opportunity to communicate with
King and Minister. He coaxed one of his most ambitious, and
vain, young officers, François Philippe de Mandeville, to take the
merchant ship to Havana, from where he could sail on to France.
There, Mandeville could seek from the Minister compensation for
goods he had loaned the Spanish during the siege of the previous
summer but which Bienville could not reimburse, and perhaps, on Bienville's and Dartaguiette's recommendation, even receive a
deserved promotion. He would also deliver a message from the
co-commandants beseeching the Minister for a quick resupply.
Bienville may have had mixed feelings about sending young Mandeville
to France. Were it not for an imminent threat to the colony,
Bienville may very well have sought to communicate with the Minister
in person. At Versailles, he could point out to the Minister
that earlier, optimistic evaluations of the colony's
self-sustainability were nothing more than dreams, that Louisiana
had not yet become self-sufficient no matter how much the Minister
wished it so, that Mobile still required assistance from France for
even its most basic needs. He also could make his case for
being appointed Louisiana's next governor. Instead, he
remained at Mobile and prepared for the English attack.135
In November, word came
down from Illinois that Father Bergier, who had lived at Mobile in
the winter and spring of 1707, had died at his mission at Tamaroa
the November after he had left Louisiana. Such depressing news
was mitigated only by more births and a few more marriages; the
colony's population was growing, slowly but surely. And,
despite its small scale, the planting along the bay continued; one
colonist even raised a crop of tobacco, though its marketing was
limited by the dearth of ships appearing at Port Massacre.
Despite Dartaguiette's optimism, the Canadians at Bayou St.-Jean had
lost their first wheat crop, but they were determined to try plant
another one. As soon as they succeeded, more colonists
certainly would follow them to the bayou, or so the co-commandants
hoped. Louisiana would then have its breadbasket and a chance
for self-sustainability. A large wheat crop not only could
feed the colony but also provide a surplus for commerce with
Pensacola, Veracruz, and Havana. In late December,
Dartaguiette pirogued to Bayou St.-Jean to see the place for
himself. The second crop of wheat appeared to be "'coming
along very beautifully,'" he reported, "although the grain had not
yet been harvested." Unfortunately, even if this crop
managed to survive, it would be months before the grain could be
consumed by the starving colonists.136
.
For the colonists at
Mobile, the winter of 1708-09 was "the most severe they had faced
since coming to Louisiana."
Having received no fresh clothing, or even cloth to fashion new
garments, for several years, the settlers, soldiers, and even some
of the officers literally wore rags that winter. Hunting was
dismal. None of the food crops had been harvested.
Although Jacques Le Roux had constructed a 12-ton pinnance capable
of sailing the Gulf, conditions in the open waters at that time of
year forbade a voyage to Havana or Veracruz until winter gave way to
spring.137
Spring of 1709--the
eleventh for the colony, the eighth at Mobile--came without attack
and only a few internal conflicts. More babies had been born
over the winter and most survived, and the dreadful famine would
soon be relieved not by a resupply from France but by the harvesting
of the wheat crop on Bayou St.-Jean and the vegetable crop down the
bay. Just as importantly, the colony gained a traversier for
communication with the outside world. In May, a sloop arrived
at Port Massacre from St.-Domingue, and her master agreed to sell
the vessel. No individual colonist could afford the purchase
price, so the co-commandants authorized a pool of officers to raise
the funds. Bienville promptly sent the sloop to Havana to
purchase livestock. He also sent a message to two French naval
officers he hoped were still on station at Havana, requesting that
they send to him a fresh supply of powder.138
And then, during the first
week of May, the enemy finally appeared. Shots were heard
coming from upriver. Bienville summoned the women and children
into the fort and sent a scouting patrol upriver towards the
Mobilian village. The scouts soon returned to report that a
large force of hostile Indians had attacked the Mobilian village 13
miles upstream. Bienville organized a relief force of 60 or 70
soldiers and Canadians and, with Boisbriant and Châteauguay, hurried
upriver. They reached the Mobilian village about noon. A
large force of Alibamon had attacked at dawn. After burning
the cabins and capturing over two dozen women and children, they
returned back upriver. Bienville had warned the Mobilians that
an attack would come sometime during the winter, and he had given
them all the arms and ammunition he could spare, so they were able
to avoid a massacre. The Mobilians, in fact, had inflicted
more casualties on the large attacking force than they themselves
suffered, but with the loss of so many women and children they were
screaming for revenge.
Bienville faced a hard
dilemma. Boisbriant and Châteauguay reminded him that the
protection of Fort Louis was their first priority; they advised him
to return to the fort. But the Mobilians were their closest
ally, and to spurn them now would alienate them perhaps permanently
and make the fort more vulnerable. The Alibamon probably were
heading for the Little Tomeh village, to the homes of more trusted
allies. He had no choice but to pursue.139
After torturing and
burning an Alibamon captive, the French-Indian force hurried upriver
in their pirogues. They met a force of Tomeh and Little Tomeh
at the head of the Mobile River and paddled hard to catch the
fleeing Alibamon, who still outnumbered them. With only a few
hours head start and so many prisoners filling their pirogues, the
Alibamon would not be able to escape to their villages, so what
happened next was inevitable. The following morning, the
pursuing party came upon a horrific scene on the right bank of the
river. The Alibamon had abandoned the water and taken to
the woods, but not before destroying their pirogues and massacring
all of the Mobilian woman and children who had survived the upriver
flight. Though enraged by what he saw, Bienville now had to
think of the safety of the fort, so he, Boisbriant, and the
Canadians returned to the fort and left Châteauguay and the young
soldiers to join the Mobilian and the Tomeh in pursuit of the
Alibamon. A week later, Châteauguay and the soldiers returned
to the fort with 34 Alibamon scalps and five prisoners. After
torturing information out of the captives, Bienville, knowing better
than to execute them at the fort, turned them over to the Mobilians,
who brought them back to their village and roasted them over a
slow-burning fire.140
Bienville learned from
Châteauguay and the captive Alibamon that the English were planning
another attack against the French the following autumn. An
Irishman who had fled from Carolina confirmed the reports, adding
that the English had brought cannon to the Alibamon villages,
evidence that they intended to attack Fort Louis, not just its
allied Indians, and that as many as 40 Carolinians and 2,500
warriors would comprise the attacking party. Bienville
beseeched the Minister for two more companies of soldiers--there
were only 70 effectives left at Mobile, he reported, "one-fourth of
whom are only children"--and the funds to fortify Massacre Island in
case the English attacked from the sea. But his biggest
concern was lack of powder for muskets and cannon, not only at the
fort but among his Indian allies. Stout new walls would do
little good if there were no gunpowder to defend them. Their
biggest hope was that the anticipated vegetable and wheat crops,
which would be harvested by late summer, could be bartered with the
Spanish for a fresh supply of powder. The fresh wheat also
could be taken to Veracruz in the new traversier and exchanged for
powder and other necessities.141
But the wheat crop at
Bayou St.-Jean failed again! "Although the wheat grew
admirably on the stalk, just before harvest time it fell prey to the
extreme heat and heavy humidity, the reddish brown fungus causing it
to apparently 'rust' just before reaching maturity." The same
thing had happened the year before, so it was not the fault of the
farmers; the climate at the portage site could not support a wheat
crop. Two of the Canadians, Rivard and Poitié, refused to
plant a third crop along the bayou; they asked, instead, for land
grants farther upriver, at Natchez, which they insisted was "'the
finest lands on this continent.'" Bienville gave them
permission to move, but, in 1710, after "an unusually desperate
effort," they failed to produce a crop of wheat there, too.
Defeated and dispirited, Rivard and his fellow Canadians returned to
Mobile. "The dream of a breadbasket
in lower Louisiana was shattered and the colony was forced to seek
success with other crops were they to market food in Pensacola and
Veracruz."142
In August, Bienville
learned that Pensacola had no powder to spare anyway.
Moreover, there were still hostile Indians lurking about in the
woods near Fort San Carlos, and the garrison was again on the verge
of starvation, so Governor Guzmán could not help his French allies
in any possible way.
Guzmán, in fact, asked to borrow the Vierge de Grâce to send
to Veracruz with a message to the viceroy. Bienville sent
Guzmán
what extra food he could spare from the Massacre warehouse and would
have let the Spaniard keep the ship as well, but Dartaguiette
proposed that they send more food to tide them over until the
arrival of a resupply from Veracruz. Sure enough, in late
August the viceroy's ship reached Pensacola with several months
supply of food and 11,000 pounds of powder. Hearing this,
Bienville breathed a sigh of relief--the powder shortage at Mobile
was finally over.
He asked Guzmán for a loan of 1,000 pounds of powder, but the
Spaniard, still smarting over Dartaguiette's refusal,
informed Bienville that there was no extra powder to lend, that what
he did have was only enough to defend his own garrison.
Bienville was stunned by the refusal. Did it reflect a change
in Spanish policy towards their Bourbon allies? He had
detected a coolness in the viceroy's latest communications. He
had not heard anything from the French naval officers he had
contacted at Havana. Were the Spanish interfering with his
communications? As for
Guzmán, his refusal to send him powder he considered an act of
betrayal.143
By August it had been a
year and a half since the last resupply had come from France.
Still desperate for powder, Bienville sent the
Vierge de Grâce to St.-Domingue to beg the governor there,
François-Joseph Choiseul, baron de Beaupré, for 1,500 pounds of the
precious substance. However, the Vierge de Grâce did
not make it to the French colony. A storm forced the vessel to
take refuge at San Carlos de Matanzas, on the northwest coast of
Cuba, and then it sailed on to Havana, where its crew secured a
small amount of food from a French concessioner and four barrels of
powder from the commander of the French fireship, the Nymphe.
The cost of the goods was prohibitive--2,451 livres--but
their mission was accomplished. They also heard the latest news of
the world at Havana, including the fate of their sister vessel, the
sloop that the officers at Mobile at purchased in May: an
English patrol in the Gulf had captured the sloop on its way to
Havana and exiled its crew along the Cuban shore. The
Vierge de Grâce
returned safely to Mobile, so Bienville had his powder at least,
enough, he hoped, until the long-awaited resupply finally reached
Port Massacre. The news of the sloop's fate must have struck
the fort's officers especially hard. Even more troubling, "the colony was
reduced to a single vessel again."144
That problem was solved
when, late in the year, a French merchant vessel, the Marguerite,
35-40 tons burden, returned to Mobile from La Rochelle to trade for
whatever goods the colony offered. The vessel was owned by a
consortium of Louisianians, including the Chauvin brothers,
and had come to Massacre the year before. Bienville and
Dartaguiette saw the vessel's arrival as an opportunity to make up
for the loss of the officers' sloop. They offered to purchase
the vessel for the colony's use. The ship's master,
Jean-Baptiste Baudreau dit Graveline, agreed to the sale, for
2,000 livres. The co-commandants then "chartered [the
Marguerite] to the king for fifteen hundred livres"
and sent it on to Veracruz. Graveline took up residence on
Massacre Island, with plans of raising vegetables there as well as a
herd of cattle.145
.
The new year--1710, the
twelfth for the colony and the eighth for Mobile--brought momentous
changes to Louisiana. Father La Vente's stubbornness over the
issue of European/native marriage irked the co-commandant once too
often, and, after Bienville complained to Versailles, the Minister
of the Marine demanded the priest's recall. Even more
significantly for the future of Louisiana, the Minister finally
found a new governor for the troubled colony, and it was not
Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville.146
Interestingly, the next
man who would hold the title of governor
of Louisiana was Acadian ... of sorts. Antoine Laumet, born at Les Lauments,
near Caumont, Gascony, in March 1658, was the son of Jean Laumet,
"a humble provincial magistrate." In c1683, in his mid-20s,
Antoine emigrated to Acadia and settled at Port-Royal, where, in the
late 1680s, he befriended the important colonial official Mathieu
de Goutin, who offered Antoine a post at Port-Royal. While
at the Acadian capital, Antoine was a keen observer of the Acadians
in the area, especially their farming practices. Not
interested in farming for himself, he soon joined the service of privateer François Guyon,
who operated along the New England coast. During a visit
to Beauport, near Québec, the young privateer fell in love with
his employer's niece, Marie-Thérèse Guyon, and married her at
Québec in June 1687. Their love may have been genuine, but
the groom was a fraud, "claiming in [his]
marriage certificate to be son of Jean de la Mothe, seigneur de
Cadillac, de Lassaye and de Semontel...." In July
1688, Governor-General Denonville and Intendant Champigny awarded the putative
nobleman a 25-square-mile seigneurie on the coast of Maine,
including Mount Desert Island, but evidently Cadillac did not develop
the holding. To
the consternation of Acadian governor Meneval, Cadillac
engaged, instead, in a shady trading venture with
the commandant of the
Port-Royal garrison, Sr. Soulègre, and with Cadillac's
friend, Mathieu de Goutin.146a
In May 1690, during King
William's War, New England forces under Sir William Phips destroyed
Cadillac's habitation at Mount Desert during their
expedition against Port-Royal. Ruined financially,
Cadillac took his family to Québec
during the summer of 1691
to live near his in-laws.
There and on the rugged Canadian frontier, his fortunes improved
considerably. Meneval had traduced Cadillac to the
authorities in Québec, but his friends at Court alerted the
governor-general of New France, Louis de Buade, comte de
Palluau et de Frontenac,
to the "Acadian"'s knowledge of the New England coast, which would
be valuable if Frontenac decided to attack Boston or New York.
Frontenac was charmed by the glib Gascon and made him a lieutenant
in the regular colonial troops. In 1692, the war still raging,
Cadillac made a reconnaissance of the New England coast with a noted
mapmaker and submitted an accurate report of the region's geography.
For this, he was promoted to captain in October 1693. The
following year, Frontenac sent him to command the post at
Michilimackinac, from which Cavelier de La Salle and Tonty had
launched so many expeditions a dozen years before. No post in
the western country was more important than the stockade at the
junction of lakes Huron and Michigan. That Frontenac awarded
command of such a place at such a time to a 35-year-old captain
speaks volumes about his faith in Cadillac, as well as the young
man's ability to ingratiate himself with men of power and influence.
War with the Iroquois was still raging on the western frontier, so
Cadillac's most important mission was to maintain the loyalty of the
tribes in the area and to keep them focused on fighting the Five
Nations, not among themselves. By the time he returned to
Canada in August 1697, by every measure of military and diplomatic
success, Cadillac had failed miserably, yet he retained Frontenac's
favor.146b
But Cadillac's tenure at
Michilimackinac was an unqualified success in another realm of
endeavor. When he reached the post in late 1693, he was living
only on his captain's pay of 1,080 livres annually.
When he left the post four years later, his wealth had increased
exponentially. The privateer/geographer/infantry officer had
discovered his true calling: commerce; that is to say, illicit
commerce, akin to latter-day organized crime. He sold brandy
to the Indians in unlimited quantities at inflated prices, Jesuit
protests be damned. Most impressively, he bilked the region's
coureurs de bois, underpaying them for their furs, when he
paid them at all, and reselling the pelts at exorbitant prices.
The tough woodsmen knew better than to complain of such treatment at
the hands of an officer so much favored by Frontenac. Cadillac
was compelled to return to Canada not because of his failure among
the western Indians but because the King's dictum of 21 May 1696
cancelled all of the western fur-trading licenses (the so-called congés) and shut down all of the the western posts, including
Michilimackinac--a drastic measure to halt the glut of Canadian furs
pouring into France. When Cadillac returned to Canada in
August 1697, he arrived at the head of flotilla of canoes carrying
176,000 pounds of beaver pelts! A Canadian official said of
the young commandant: "Never has a man amassed so much wealth
in so short a time and caused so much talk by the wrongs suffered by
the individuals who advance funds to his sort of trading ventures."
The King re-opened three of the western posts in 1697, including
Michilimackinac, but refused to lift the restrictions on the western
fur trade. "The sieur de" Cadillac was not interested in
returning to the western country if he could not make another
fortune in furs.146c
In 1698, the year
Frontenac died, Cadillac sailed to France to charm the King and his
Minister of Marine into sanctioning a new scheme--the settlement of a
strategic choke point between two of the great lakes. In the
late summer of 1679, La Salle and Tonty had sailed the Griffon
through détroit, French for strait or channel, between Lake
Erie and Lake St.-Claire, before sailing on into Lake Huron.
Cadillac proposed a settlement on the western shore of Détroit--not
just another fur-trading post but an actual colony, with the
requisite fort and palisade of course, but also houses, a church,
and a substantial French population. Moreover, the western
tribes would be pressured to relocate there, where missionaries
could convert them to the One True Faith, and they would be safe
from the moral degeneracy of the coureurs de bois.
Détroit's strategic position also would prevent the English from
moving into the Great Lakes region and, standing at the doorstep to
the Iroquois country, could be a staging point from which to attack
the Iroquois towns as well as new Dutch and English settlements
along the Ohio and other rivers in the region. Just as
importantly, Détroit could become the new center not of the
western fur trade but of control of that trade, preventing a
glut of the market then threatening the French economy. The
Minister of Marine, Louis, Comte de Pontchartrain, was impressed
with the proposal but was wise enough to consult the new
governor-general of New France, Louis-Hector de Callière, and the
intendant, Jean Bochart de Champigny. Callière and Champigny
were not impressed with the proposal, especially with its naive
expectations of Indian cooperation, and Canadians merchants
protested loudly that a man like Cadillac should not control such an important
point on the Great Lakes trade route.146d
Cadillac had returned to
Canada in the spring of 1699, but, surprised by the strength of his
opposition, he hurried back to France the following fall.
Using his substantial power of persuasion, he overcame the Minister's hesitations and returned to Canada triumphant. He
arrived at Détroit in summer of 1701 with his lieutenant, Alphonse
de Tonty, the famous "Iron Hand"'s brother, and 100 men. After
the death of Callière in May 1703, Philippe de Rigaud de Vaudreuil
became the new governor-general. A proud member of the real
French aristocracy, Vaudreuil soon clashed with the Gascon upstart,
who continued to antagonize the Jesuits.
In 1704, Cadillac secured ownership of his post and asked the Minister to make the area around Détroit a separate government.
Vaudreuil could see that Cadillac intended to make himself master of
the western county, but the governor-general would have none of
it. Cadillac saw Vaudreuil and the Jesuits as obstacles in his steady climb
to greater power and wealth. Cadillac courted Vaudreuil's most
powerful enemies in Québec and even offered a bribe to Vaudreuil
himself. Vaudreuil did his best to convince the Minister of the Gascon's nefarious schemes.146e
One of Cadillac's most
successful schemes was the deal he made with Iberville, first at
Biloxi and then at Mobile, to allow furs from his western domain to be
shipped to France via Louisiana. Cadillac also made deals with
the Indians, especially the Miami, to force
settlers going from Canada to Illinois or Louisiana to go no
farther than the fort at Détroit. His chief failure, however,
was losing control of the Indians he had lured to Détroit--the
Miami, the Huron, and the Ottawa--who, in June 1706, turned on one
another in what was known as the Le Pesant Affair. Thanks to Cadillac's misrule,
the sudden conflict unsettled the Great Lakes frontier and came
close to destroying decades of French goodwill among the western
tribes. Vaudreuil convinced the Minister of Marine to
investigate the affair, as well as Cadillac's commercial and
political schemes at Détroit. The investigator's report,
submitted in November 1708, "was a crushing indictment of Cadillac
as a profiteer and of his policy as a menace to French control of
the interior." Like a
modern-day organized crime lord, Cadillac controlled an entire community,
and almost an entire region, with
calculated trickery and intimidation, using Indians as his henchmen.147
This
was the man the Minister of Marine appointed governor of Louisiana
on 5 May 1710. Realizing his mistake in supporting Cadillac
for so long but unable to admit the mistake, the Minister had his
reasons for choosing the man, though none bode well for Louisiana:
"Despite his shortcomings, Cadillac possessed certain traits that
interested [the Minister]. Imaginative, persuasive,
persistent--who else could better promote private investment in
Louisiana? Disregarding his pervasive reputation as a tyrant,
his self-indulgent attitude, was he not a man who got things done?
With far fewer Frenchmen at Detroit than Mobile, did he not already
have over three hundred acres under cultivation, in comparison with
Bienville's meager achievement? If he could do nothing more
than cajole Mobile's inhabitants into planting, he would have
accomplished far more than the Le Moyne brothers had done in a
decade." By "promoting" Cadillac to the governorship of the
southern colony, he also could solve the touchy problem with Détroit--that
is to say, its very existence.148
The King's instructions to
the new governor, seconded by the Minister, contained the usual
mandates to promote Catholicism, harmony, and moral conduct among
the inhabitants and the natives. What stood out were the
King's insistence that Cadillac "investigate commercial
possibilities," especially in cowhides and lead mines, the
Mississippi valley and the Gulf Coast region. Since the war
began (it, like Mobile, was in its eighth year) the minister had
been searching for an investor, or a company of investors, who would
secure a commercial monopoly in Louisiana and relieve the Crown of
the expense of sustaining the colony during the long struggle with
Britain. But no one had yet taken the bait. Perhaps
Cadillac was the man to
transform Louisiana into the appearance, at least, of
a successful commercial enterprise, while at the same time using his
powers of persuasion to help reel in a wealthy investor.149
À la De Muy and
Dartaguiette, the Minister instructed Cadillac to investigate the
charges against Bienville as well as Father La Vente. There
was nothing in the new governor's instructions that would spare the
curé from recall; the Minister had concluded that he was a threat
to good order and was determined to have him replaced. As to
Bienville's fate, that would depend, again, on the conclusion of yet
another investigation into his conduct as colonial commander.
The Minister's instructions to Bienville contained a hint of what
was in store for him: "He [the King] desires that you stay on
good terms with this governor and give this your greatest attention
in order to deserve the favors His Majesty might grant you when you
have vindicated yourself against all the charges that have been
leveled against you." Bienville had celebrated another
birthday in February, again in Louisiana; one would suspect that
after a dozen years of living and working in the colony, he felt
older than his 30 years--much much older.150
.
Cadillac was appointed in
May 1710, but it would be months before he could receive notice of
the new appointment, complete his affairs at Détroit, and, following the Minister's instructions, go from there via the
Mississippi to his post at Mobile. Cadillac, of course, did
not care for this arrangement. When he received word of the
new assignment, he asked the Minister for permission to return to
France. Evidently the Minister agreed, so now it would take a
year or more for the new governor to reach Mobile. Meanwhile, Bienville and Dartaguiette
had to do what they could to keep the colony from starving or succumbing to
attack. About the time that the Minister appointed Cadillac
governor, Bienville ordered Châteauguay to prepare for
another voyage to Veracruz.151
Father La Vente, still
fuming at Bienville, went about his business, and Commissary La Salle more or less minded his
own. By the spring of 1710, however, the curé had
"suffered" enough. He asked the co-commandants for permission
to leave the colony aboard the next vessel arriving at Port Massacre
and asked Father Davion to take his place as pastor at Mobile. Bienville and
Dartaguiette granted the curé permission, happy to be rid of
the troublesome priest. The next resupply, now more than a
year late, was expected sometime that season. By mid-June,
however, the resupply still had not come, but a bilander from
Martinique arrived at Massacre, and Father La Vente chose to take
that vessel, instead, for the first leg of his return to France.
The ship departed on June 21, carrying not only the priest but also
a message to the Minister in which Bienville took one last
opportunity to traduce not only the former curé but also the
Paris Seminary from which he had come. With Father Davion no
longer among the Tunica, Bienville informed the Minister, "the
Foreign Missions do not have a single missionary in all this
country." Only three priests remained at Mobile--Seminarian
Father Davion, who was unhappy with his new role as Mobile's pastor
and preferred to return to his Indians, and young Seminarians Huvé
and Le Maire, who longed to return to France.152
Another epidemic struck Mobile during the summer, and dysentery
struck again in early winter. Few of the colonists died, but
they buried a ghastly number of Indian slaves, especially children.153
And then, in the eyes of
the co-commandants, there was that other plague, in human form, that
just would not go away. After his friend La Vente quit the
colony, Commissary La Salle stood virtually alone against the hated
Bienville, but he did not stand silently. In May and June he
fired off letters to the Minister detailing more complaints against
Bienville. The Minister, having chosen the commander's
replacement, was weary of the controversy, but he nonetheless "...
believed (or was trying desperately to believe) the worst" about
Bienville. He pushed Dartaguiette to dig farther into
Bienville's actions, hoping to learn of new evidence or catch the
commander off guard and finally be done with him and his brothers.
By 1710, however, the Minister could see in Dartaguiette's
dispatches that Bienville had won him over. Dartaguiette had
found more evidence of Iberville's wrongdoing, but he insisted that
La Salle's charges against Bienville had no merit, that the younger
Le Moyne "'works without ceasing in order to place this fort in a
state of preparedness.'"154
Having lingered in the
colony for two and a half years, Dartaguiette asked the Minister for
permission to return to France so that he could report to him in
person. The Minister might not welcome what the young nobleman
would have to say about Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, sieur de Bienville:
"If Bienville was a sloven civil administrator, if he were an
erratic military leader, if he were contentious, overweening,
opportunistic, even a petty thief, did it matter so much under such
conditions" as the colony had been enduring? "He could also be
decisive, inventive, even inspirational. He was, with all his
faults, a leader and the man in whom at least a majority of the
able-bodied inhabitants still had the most confidence. More
important, he commanded the undying respect of the two most
influential groups in lower Louisiana--the Canadians and the
Indians." On the other hand, his chief detractor, Dartaguiette
could testify, was little more than a whining, overpaid clerk whose
incessant complaints were doing no good for the colony.
Hearing this, the Minister could rest assured that the new governor
he had appointed would take up the question of Bienville's
competence, and perhaps this investigator would not succumb
to the clever Le Moyne's considerable charms.155
No matter, La Salle, like
La Vente, had to go. By the time he had appointed Louisiana's
new governor, the Minister had determined,
for the sake of the colony,
to replace the prickly commissary. He consulted Michel Bégon,
the intendant of New France, for La Salle's replacement.
Evidently Bégon recommended one Sieur Jamin, who would go to Mobile
"as a scrivener" aboard the Renommée. The Minister,
again, would defer to Dartaguiette about replacing La Salle with the
scrivener.156
But fate chose another,
darker path for the long-suffering commissary. In early
December, La Salle's second wife, Jean-Catherine, died after a short
illness, probably of influenza; his first wife, Madeleine, who had
come with him to colony in 1702, had died eight years before.
Two years after Madeleine's death, he had lost his five-year-old son
François. Next, he lost his first son by his second wife, and
then his only daughter in 1709. "Yet, for the La Salle
children, the worst was not over...." La Salle himself
contracted influenza, could not shake off the malady, and died on
December 31, probably in his late 40s. The Renommée, by
then, was on its way to Louisiana, the first resupply in nearly
three years. The ship also was carrying orders for Nicolas de
La Salle to return to France with his family and possessions.157
Despite the pitiful sight
of La Salle's five orphaned sons, ranging in age from 17 to 2,
Bienville must have breathed a sigh of relief each time he
contemplated the commissary's death. No man had done more to
deny him promotion, but,
in the colony at least, La Salle was the last of his influential enemies to stand in his way. La
Salle's successor as commissary, Christophe Poirier, "would
present no special problem." The three Seminarians, none of
whom cared much for him, did not, like La Vente, have powerful friends in France. Hotheads like René Boyer and Guillaume
Boutin he would see to in due time. Dartaguiette would
soon be gone, but he had become not an enemy but a treasured friend.
Ironically, "As the new year began, Bienville could look forward to
closer co-operation from his officials than at any time since the
spring of 1702. Perhaps, he hoped, the next ship from France
would bring news of a promotion, an increase in salary, a cross of
Saint-Louis--perhaps even the governorship itself."158
.
During the early autumn of
1710, while the colonists at Mobile waited impatiently for a
resupply that was more than a year overdue, at Port-Royal in faraway
Acadia momentous events were about to change the history of that
colony. On September 24, New English General Francis
Nicholson, at the head of 4,000 militiamen, Royal Marines, and
Iroquois, sailed into the entrance of Port-Royal basin and landed
his forces unopposed the following day. After a desultory
bombardment of the dilapidated old fort in the middle of the Acadian
capital, the French governor, Daniel d'Auger de Subercase, asked
Nicholson for terms. Once more the golden Bourbon lilies came
fluttering down the old fort's flagstaff, and the red-white-and-blue
Union Jack went slowly up the pole as the victorious New Englanders
drank to the health of their Queen. No one could know it, but
the fleurs-de-lis would never fly over Port-Royal again. The
conquerors even threw away the old capital's name; now it would be called
Annapolis Royal.
.
As 1710 gave way to 1711
and the colony approached its thirteenth year, Louisiana was worse
off than ever. The promised resupply still had not come and
soon would be two years late. The third Mississippi
wheat crop, this one up at Natchez, failed as miserably as the two
on Bayou St.-Jean. Food, clothing, trade goods, all were in
short supply. Dartaguiette was so embarrassed by the rag-tag
appearance of the colony's soldiers that he suggested taking a delegation of
local chiefs on a boat ride to Havana so that they could see the
power and glory of French and Spanish arms. What the
Indians saw at Fort Louis and Pensacola could only make them pity
the hapless white men. With the continuing shortage of
marriageable French women in the colony--only one shipment of them
had come, on the Pélican, over half a dozen years before--the
single Canadians reverted to their old coureur-des-bois
habits, and "libertinism" became the rule, not the exception,
in the colony.159
As another new year
dawned, the King and the Minister seemed to be so focused on
the lingering war against Britain that they had lost all interest in
the Gulf Coast colony. Officials in faraway Canada, even if
they could help, probably would not bother. Nor had supplies
come from fellow Frenchmen at St.-Domingue and Martinique, who
certainly had to know of Mobile's pressing needs.
Only the Spanish at
Havana, Veracruz, and especially Pensacola seemed to care if Mobile
lived or died: "The Carolinians had for the moment driven the
two Latin posts into each other's arms."160
Pensacola, in such
pitiful condition three years before, had not only survived but
seemed to be thriving. After the bloody siege of 1707, Spanish
officials in Mexico and Cuba awakened to the necessity of sustaining
the stricken outpost lest they lose "'the finest natural port on the
gulf.'" Reinforcements, resupplies, and, for the first time,
families had revived the Spanish outpost by 1710. Bienville,
remembering all the help he had given Pensacola over the years,
expected a helping hand in return. Ominously, though, Spanish
attitude towards the French seemed to have cooled somewhat.
Unlike
Arriola, Martínez, and Moscoso,
the current governor, Joseph de Guzmán,
seemed less inclined to aid the French, though Mobile was in as
pitiable a condition now as Pensacola had been a few years before.
Perhaps
Guzmán was still
embarrassed by the Apalache having abandoned Pensacola and gone over
to the French
back in 1704, while
Guzmán was commanding at Fort San Carlos. In September 1705,
it was
Guzmán who had attempted to salvage the French privateer St.-Antoine,
driven aground near Massacre Island, but
Châteauguay and his Canadians boarded the vessel instead. It
was
Guzmán who insisted that the boundary between Mobile and Pensacola
lay along the Mobile, not the Perdido, River and who was told by the
viceroy to let the matter alone. Evidently
the governor was still fuming over
Dartaguiette's refusal to lend him Mobile's only sea-going vessel
back in August 1709.
Hoping
to smooth relations with his erstwhile allies, Bienville invited
Guzmán and his
officers to visit Mobile, and the Spaniards complied the following
January. Bienville managed to finesse a supply of gunpowder
from the governor, again on credit, and reassured him
that he would not stand in the way of the Apalache returning to
Pensacola, as long as force was not employed (though he was certain
they would not go). After
Guzmán's
visit, relations between the
allies seemed normal again.
Bienville and Dartaguiette could not know it, but in the same month
that the Minister of Marine appointed Cadillac as governor of
Louisiana--May 1710--the Spanish court appointed a new viceroy for
New Spain, Fernando de Alencastre, Duque de Linarès, and a new
governor for Pensacoa, Captain Gregorio de Salinas y Varona.
The viceroy would take his seat at Mexico City in November 1710, but
the new Pensacola governor would take years to settle his affairs in
Guatemala and move on to his new post. Most significantly, the
appointments signaled a harder line in Spanish royal policy,
especially over questions of boundary lines and the enforcement of
mercantilist decrees.161
By December 1710, the
resupply still had not come, and the co-commandants had to concoct a
desperate scheme to feed the colony: "should a merchant ship
arrive from Martinique or Cap-français they would purchase the
entire shipload on credit, then attempt to sell or trade the
merchandise at Veracruz for supplies for the colony; this is,
provided the ship's captain were willing to hire his vessel out for
the voyage." They could not use force, only persuasion, to
pull off the scheme. And, like the angler, they must be
patient.162
Their opportunity came in
January 1711, when the bilander Profond out of Fort
St.-Pierre, Martinique, appeared at Massacre Island. The
ship's captain, Jean Béranger, seeing profit in the proposal, agreed
to it, but only if Bienville offered his personal guarantee that he
would reimburse the captain and the ship's owner in Martinique if
the Veracruz officials seized the cargo. Bienville, despite
all that accusations of profiteering against him, had nothing except
his 1,200-piastre annual salary to back up a cargo worth
10,747 livres. Dartaguiette stepped forward and offered
his personal guarantee, not imagining that the Spanish would do such
a thing and that his King would not stand behind his own colony.
While some of the wealthier colonists bought small items from the
ship's cargo, Bienville and Dartaguiette penned a message to the
viceroy detailing their proposal. Béranger set sail for
Veracruz on February 10 and reached the Mexican port on March 4.
The scheme soon unraveled. Veracruz officials notified the new
viceroy of the arrival of the French vessel and Bienville's
proposal. In an oily message filled with soft words and kind
sentiments, Linarès informed the French commander that he had no
choice but to obey the "specific orders of the King, my master,
which I found to absolutely prohibit any commerce in foreign
merchandise...." The viceroy had no choice but to order the
Veracruz officials to confiscate the cargo. Aware, however, of
the Louisiana colony's serious predicament, he would order the
governor of Veracruz "to send you immediately and by the same ship
at least the flour and foodstuffs for which you are asking."
He offered to supply them more food if they needed it and welcomed
them to apply to the Courts at Madrid and Paris for restitution of
the confiscated merchandise. He also ordered the governor of
Veracruz to send Bienville a small gift "to demonstrate the esteem I
hold for your fine qualities and for all that concerns France."163
The officials at Veracruz
took their time unloading the confiscated cargo. When the Profond finally returned to Massacre Island in June, all the
colony had to show for their efforts was a hundred barrels of flour.
The resupply still had not arrived, so the colony was not in much
better shape than when the Profond had left for Veracruz in
late February. Bienville was anger and perplexed over what the
new viceroy had done to them. Dartaguiette, who had the most
the lose in the venture, proclaimed that he was "ruined." Both
sent hard-worded messages to the Minister in France. Both
expressed their astonishment at what they considered nothing less
than Spanish perfidy. But messages were not enough.
Fearing that the resupply ship had been lost or captured (the war
against Britain was in its ninth year), Bienville and Dartaguiette
resolved to charter a vessel that would take one of them to France
to plead to the Minister and King in person.164
They could not know it,
but the resupply ship had been neither lost nor captured. Its
gross tardiness was the result of indifference on the part of French
officials, high and low, the hopes and schemes of a wealthy French merchant,
and the usual bureaucratic delays. The Minister had not begun preparations for the next
resupply until April 1709, more than a year after Dartaguiette and
the previous load of provisions had reached Port Massacre. By
then, he had turned the business over to merchant and former
privateer Antoine-Alexandre de Rémonville, sieur de Rochebonne.
Now that Iberville was dead and the Le Moynes discredited,
Rémonville was scheming to become the new governor of Louisiana,
which he believed held "commercial possibilities." By summer,
Rémonville assured the Minister, who notified Bienville, that the Renommée shortly would be on its way. The report was much
too optimistic. Rémonville soon realized that he could not
afford to bear the full expense of the voyage, and the Minister,
with the war against Britain still raging, insisted that the Crown
had no funds to spare. Both turned to the merchants of La
Rochelle, who saw nothing in it for them. "The primary
objective of the voyage," in the Minister's view, "was to assist an
impoverished colony and since most of the supplies aboard ship were
destined for that purpose it did not leave a great deal of
opportunity for private profit." But the Minister also
was concerned about the drain on the royal treasury. As the
ship was being outfitted, the Minister "haggled over the number of
persons to be sent [to] Louisiana with rations, 'the food being too
expensive to allow his Majesty to supply a large number,' and
ordered the passenger's food cut back from a ration and a half to
one ration only."164a
The Renommée still had
not sailed by the end of the year; in February 1710, it would be two full
years since the colony had been replenished. Rémonville did
what he could to secure partners in the venture, and in May 1710 the
Renommée appeared ready to sail. By then, however,
Rémonville's funds had run out--he could not even pay the waiting
ship's crew. This eliminated him as a possible successor to
Daneau du Muy, and the Minister appointed Cadillac to the post.
Rémonville, deep in debt, refused to give up and found a partner
from Tonnay-Charente would help fund the voyage, or at least provide
for the ship's crew. Rémonville was compelled to hire a new
crew, and the Renommée needing a thorough refitting. To
save more expense, Rémonville chose to captain the ship himself,
though his experience in oceanic navigation was limited. The
Court provided him with a competent navigator, Maximien Tivas de
Gourville, as well as a shipboard council. More months were
devoted to finding officers for the ship as well as passengers,
including former inhabitants who wished to return to Mobile.
One of them was François Philippe de Mandeville, whom Bienville and
Dartaguiette had sent to France via St.-Domingue in the fall of 1708
to plead the colony's case. Another
passenger would be François Juchereau de Vaulezard, whose company of
infantry had been stationed at Mobile for half a dozen years but who
had not bothered to go there to command his own men. Several
families would try their luck in the colony, but the number of
artisans that Bienville and Dartaguiette had requested would be
limited by the Minister's lack of funds to feed them on the voyage.
The outfitting of the Renommée suffered the usual delays, so
the vessel was still not ready to sail in the summer of 1710--nearly
two and a half years since the last resupply. In late
September, the Minister informed the new intendant of Rochefort,
François de Beauharnois de La Chaussaye, Baron de Beauville, that
the Renommée was about to sail, but a month later the ship
still floated at anchor at La Rochelle. By then, Vaulezard was
refusing to board the vessel; despite his orders, he was determined
to remain in France. Captain Rémonville became ill, and it was
discovered that there was not enough room aboard the ship for two
dozen new recruits being sent from La Rochelle to Fort Louis.
The Minister urged Intendant Beauharnois to hurry things along.
In early December
1710--only a few months shy of three years since the last resupply--the
Renommée finally set sail,
accompanied by the merchant ship Agathe. But only a fraction of the new recruits
left La
Rochelle, and Juchereau de Vaulezard again had refused to board.
Despite the unconscionable delays in France, Rémonville, a merchant
above all else, did not follow the usual route to Cap-Français.
The flotilla stopped in several Spanish mainland ports, including La
Coruna, with the usual delays in each of the ports, before crossing
the North Atlantic. Rémonville was a privateer as well as a
merchant, master, now, of a powerful French frigate of the "4ème
rang." He captured
several prizes on the Atlantic crossing and did
not reach the French West Indies until April 1711, more than three years since the last
resupply of Mobile. One of the prizes, the Catherine,
he refitted at Fort Royal, Martinique, to sell to the colonists at
Mobile. Meanwhile, the captain fought bitterly with some of his
officers and passengers. Navigator Tivas de
Gourville excoriated the captain for the many delays since they had
left La Rochelle nearly half a year before. Through the
summer, the Renommée lay at anchor in the port at Fort Royal
while the colonists at Mobile waited desperately for her arrival.165
.
By then, Bienville and
Dartaguiette had made a momentous decision that must have sent
Nicolas de La Salle spinning in his grave.
As 1710 gave way to a new
year, the Louisiana colony could boast only one successful
settlement in its prodigious expanse, and it was not Fort
Louis-de-la-Louisiane. Massacre Island had received its name
in 1699 during Iberville's first exploration of the coast.
Nothing was done on the island until early 1702, when the
commandant, back from another sojourn in France, decided to abandon
Biloxi and build a new fort on the Mobile River. At first,
only a warehouse and a few huts stood on the island, at its eastern
end, near what became Port Massacre. No plans were made at
first for the island's settlement, so only a warehouseman and a
handful of soldiers occupied the wind-swept place. The
commandant and then the commander understood the island's
vulnerability if a full-blown hurricane slammed into that part of
the coast. Port Massacre was essential to the colony's
existence, but not the island itself.
After Fort Louis proved
to be a poorly chosen site for agricultural development, some of the
colonists relocated to Massacre to try their hand at growing things
in the island's sandy soil. A hamlet soon emerged "near the
seashore ..., a long unvaried line of houses" facing a lagoon.
The settlement's pilot, Simon Coussot, lived there with his wife and
family, as did Jean Roy, now off the King's payroll, and his
family. They soon were joined by anti-Bienvillists Jacques
Allemand and Guillaume Boutin and their families, Boutin
having moved down from his habitation at Fowl River. Each
attempted to raise enough poultry and vegetables not only to feed
themselves and their families but also to trade with Fort Louis and
Pensacola and generate a predictable income to replace what the King
had given them.
Still on the island but
not living at the village was François Guillory,
also a Canadian formerly
on the King's payroll. The most important official living on
the island was warehousekeeper François Guyon Des Prés Derbanne,
also a former Canadian voyageur. Derbanne had important family
connections back in Canada; he was, in fact, first cousin of
Marie-Thérèse Guyon, wife of Antoine la Mothe de Cadillac. On
Massacre, Derbanne took up with his Chitimacha slave, Jeanne de la
Grande Terre, and she gave him a bastard son, Jean-Baptiste, whom
Father Le Maire agreed to baptize on one of his pastoral visits to
the island. Derbanne later married his Indian concubine, and
Jean-Baptiste Derbanne was a bastard no more.
The most important
settler on the island, however, was
Canadian-voyageur-turned-merchant Jean-Baptiste Baudreau dit
Graveline. After returning to France, purchasing his own
vessel, and taking it twice to Mobile to trade with his former
neighbors, he and his partners had sold their Marguerite to
Bienville and Dartaguiette. Graveline then took up residence
on the island with his wife Suzanne, who soon gave birth to their
son, Jean-Baptiste, fils. In his investigations of the
island's possibilities for commercial development, Graveline had
discovered a fine place "less than two miles to the northwest of the
warehouse near the edge of a large, logy[sic] inlet (today
called Graveline Bay) where the grasslands were abundant."
Here, with a fine bull he had purchased in Havana, he raised cattle
as well as vegetables for the regional market. At the cost of
2,000 livres, he constructed a two-story dwelling in the
Canadian style--"'the finest private home in the colony.'"
Graveline's wife, who he had married in La Rochelle between his
commercial ventures, was a Huguenot; and not the only one in the
colony. Unlike the other Protestants in Louisiana, however,
she did not go about her business unobtrusively. She refused
to hide her religious affiliation and even instructed her servants
in the Calvinist faith. If the Seminarian priests were aware
of Suzanne Baudreau's religion, they troubled no one about it; one
can only imagine how Jesuits would have treated a loud-mouthed
heretic female living in their colony. Also growing cattle on
the island, but on a smaller scale, was Canadian André Renaud and
his young son François, who also raised poultry and vegetables.166
By mid-1710, Bienville,
Dartaguiette, and Commissary La Salle agreed that Massacre Island
had become "a fairly prosperous settlement" and that something
needed to be done to protect the inhabitants there. For years,
first Iberville and La Salle, then Bienville, and now Dartaguiette,
had lobbied the Minister for funds to construct a proper fort on the
island. The Minister had not trusted Bienville's judgment in
the matter, fearing that this Le Moyne, too, as La Salle was warning,
also might mishandle royal funds, but now the trusted Dartaguiette
was urging the project. Typical bureaucrat that he was, the Minister
deferred the decision to the colony's new governor, who he naively
thought would soon be there to settle the matter. By
late summer of 1710, unfortunately, there still was no fort, no
cannon, no soldier, protecting Massacre Island.167
And then disaster struck
the colony again, this time at the island. On September 9, a
brigantine appeared off shore, flying the French
fleurs-de-lis. The inhabitants gathered together and watched
the ship, which soon fired two cannon shots. The settlers
feared that the vessel was in distress, perhaps lodged on a sand
bar off Pelican Island, and was signaling for help. Eventually, two ship's boats
made their way to the beach, which they reached in
half an hour. Two Frenchmen stepped ashore and convinced warehouse keeper Derbanne and
the lieutenant on duty,
Philippe Blondel, to return with them to the ship. Aboard the
vessel, the two officers quickly realized their mistake--this was no French
merchantman but a British corsair out of Jamaica under a Huguenot
captain who had once visited the island on a merchantman out of
Martinique. The captain held Derbanne and Blondel as hostages
while 30 or 40 of his heavily-armed pirates jumped into rowboats and
hurried back to shore. Still possessing the element of
surprise, they took Port Massacre without firing a shot; none of the
villagers escaped to alert the fort. The following day, the
pirates brought Derbanne
and Blondel back to the island because the warehouseman was the only
person who knew the location of the warehouse key. Having
herded the inhabitants and the officers into one of the houses, the
pirates spent the next two days loading the booty into their
rowboats and transporting it back to their ship.
Among the things they took was a supply of 71 barrels of flour that
the colony could ill afford to lose. At the end of the third
day, having loaded everything of value that they could find, not
only from the warehouse but from the houses and barns, the looters
tortured the inhabitants who seemed affluent enough to possess cash
or small valuable, and then they set fire to the warehouse, the
barns, and all the houses except the one in which the held the
captives. The pirates then hurried back to their boats,
satisfied that they had stripped the island bare.
Unfortunately for them, a Canadian voyageur had come to the island
to visit his friend, André Renaud, who lived with his son away from the village
. The visitor noticed the flames, hurried to the village,
encountered a looter still looking for
something to steal, and shot him dead. The departing pirates
heard the shot, paused for a moment, then, suspecting that a relief
force had reached the island, rowed like demons back to their ship.
As darkness fell, Blondel sent two men in a canoe to alert the fort
(several days' travel away), and the inhabitants hurried back to the
beach, hoping to see the brigantine hoist its anchor and sail
away. The following morning, however, the inhabitants noticed
that the ship had not departed but had moved to another part of the island, near the
homestead of François Guillory. Some of the islanders
had noticed two days before that the looters had shown interest in Graveline's grazing cattle, especially his prized Spanish bull. The
pirates, meanwhile, having realized that one of their men was
missing, showed every sign of caution as they maneuvered off the
island. To test whatever force
might be waiting for them there, a boatload of pirates rowed to
Pointe-â-Guillory, where Graveline, Guillory, and Renaud, whose
outlying homes had escaped the pillaging, waited in ambush with
Lieutenant Blondel and the visiting Canadian. When a small party of pirates came ashore,
Blondel and the Canadians opened fire from different positions.
The pirates took cover behind their boat, allowing the Canadians to
move to other positions before continuing a steady fire.
Fooled into believing that a relief
force had reached the island, the Jamaicans hoisted sail and hurried out to sea, leaving their
fellows to the mercy of the islanders.168
Graveline's and Renaud's
cattle, at least, were safe from the pirates, but the precious contents of the
warehouse, the warehouse itself, and most of the island's buildings
were a total loss. Derbanne and the others began
immediately to rebuild their dwellings, but now they, too, would be
dependent on the colony's meager resources, made even smaller by a
single ship from faraway Jamaica. Every colonist who cared had
to be astonished by how easily the Jamaicans had made off with their
possessions. What more could plague these hungry, weary
colonists? Bienville and Dartaguiette could count the ways:
Many of the soldiers, having heard that the English had ordered
their Indian allies not to torture or burn Frenchmen,
were slipping away from
the fort and heading to Carolina.
Even if an inhabitant bothered to plant some food, there was no
guarantee it would grow in this accursed place, or that the land on
which it was grown belonged to him who grew it, or that the harvest
might not be confiscated for the good of the colony. Some
colonists planted maize, but only out of necessity. It was the
rare Frenchman, or even a Canadian, who could stomach the taste of
Indian corn. A rumor had reached Louisiana that the King was
searching for a private investor to hand over the colony.
Another rumor insisted that the
colony would soon be abandoned. The most persistent rumor,
likely applauded by Commissary La Salle, was that the town would
soon be moved to another location.169
And so it happened.
Bienville fought the idea
of moving the fort to another part of the bay from the moment its
proponents introduced it.
None of them had the
courage to beard Iberville about it during the few weeks he had
spent there, but after the commandant's death in July 1704,
first La Salle and then
La Vente, who cared little for Bienville's leadership, agitated for
the move with
other disgruntled
colonists who saw the place for what it was.
Bienville did not stand in the way when a hand full of Canadians,
unhappy with the site, moved to other points along the bay. In
fact, after being forced to remove his Canadians from the King's
payroll, he encouraged more such moves, especially to Massacre
Island. The soldiers, however, along with the colony's
officials, must remain at the fort, and most of the residents, for
reasons of their own, chose to remain there. Bienville clung
tenaciously to his brother's reasoning behind locating the fort so
far upriver: it was closer to the major tribes of the region
which the French must win over; and, when the colony reached
self-sustainability, it would become the center of a burgeoning
plantation economy up and down the Mobile River. Even after
Mother Nature revealed that the site was poorly drained, something
Bienville himself had not understood when he, Sérigny, and Levasseur
had recommended the place to Iberville, Bienville refused to budge.
The rebuilding of the fort in 1708 with Dartaguiette's approbation
was a certain sign that Bienville would not be moved. But here
it was, only two years later, and the fort was rotting away again.
The fort--a fort--would have to be rebuilt. Advocates
of the move, including Dartaguiette, who had never thought much of
the site, used this circumstance to recommend a relocation, but
Bienville would not be moved.
Then came the attack on
Massacre Island in September 1710. The port there was just as
important to the colony as Bienville's upriver fort. Would the
Crown grant the wherewithal to build two forts--the old one
upriver, and a new one at Massacre? Would the Crown send
another company of soldiers to man the fort at Massacre? No
wonders a rumor would circulating that the colony might be
abandoned. Look how long it took the Crown to provide the
money and manpower to rebuild the old fort, and now the colony
needed a second one that would cost even more. The new year
had come, and the expected resupply was now two years late.
What disaster could befall them next? Could Bienville be
moved?
Mother Nature again
stepped in and washed away--almost literally--Bienville's arguments
for rebuilding his brother's fort. In April, the spring rains
came and continued into May, more rain than the older residents had
ever witnessed in the region. So much rain fell that it kept
"... swelling the little creek that ran behind and to the northwest
of the fort; the overflowing waters, unable to escape, glutted the
low places behind the bluff on which the fort stood. By the
end of the first week in May they had risen even higher than had the
waters of 1707 and 1710. Nearly two-thirds of the houses were
completely flooded." Dartaguiette was appalled by what he
witnessed. "'The waters have risen so greatly this spring, and
with so much force,'" he
informed the Minister,
"'that most of the houses in this village were submerged to the
ridgepole in five or six days; this lasted almost a month.'"
The inhabitants complained bitterly, not to Bienville but to
Dartaguiette this time. They knew that the younger
co-commandant retained the ear of the older commander. Perhaps
through the sensible Dartaguiette they could convince the stubborn
Bienville to abandon this accursed place.170
Bienville finally
relented, but not without insisting that he had been considering the
move since the flooding of the year before, which had destroyed the
pitiful maize crop some of the colonists had planted. However,
he argued, he did not possess the power, nor the permission, to make
a momentous decision such as relocating a fort. Dartaguiette
was ready for such an argument. First, he informed Bienville,
he knew the Minister's intent, as found in the discretionary orders
given to Daneau du Muy. Secondly, in the case of emergency it
was essential for a leader to use his own discretion in making such
decisions. Bienville, as well as Dartaguiette, possessed that
discretion. The correct decision was clear: the fort
must be moved. 171
The decision made,
Bienville's moved immediately to implement the move. First,
the port at Massacre must be fortified, which would be done as soon
as the resupply arrived there. As to the best site for a new
town, there was only one wise choice: the Oignonets at the
mouth of the Mobile River. By mid-May, the co-commandants and
a coterie of important officers--Châteauguay, Boisbriant, and
Jacques Barbarzant de Pailloux, who had engineering experience --had
journeyed down to the new town site to inspect it carefully.
The new site was some eight leagues, or 26 miles, below Fort Louis,
"near the vicinity where in 1700[sic] Charles Levasseur had
planted his cross." Their inspection was revealing: "The
land there was sandy, the soil not much different in fertility than
the land at the present site. Moreover, the water was more
brackish. Yet overall it was a site much more desirable for a
large town. Though the small bluff back from the marsh along
the riverbank was only half as high as the bluff on which Fort Louis
stood, the plateau behind it was broad and expansive, extending
several miles into the woods. What was of greater importance,
the new site did not seem likely to suffer from poor drainage and in
fact those who were familiar with the area over a long period of
time (the Mobilians and the Little Tomeh) had never known it to
overflow."172
The site already was
occupied, another testament to its qualities. A few hundred
yards to the north of the chosen town site stood the village of the
Chato, an Apalache tribe who Bienville had given permission to
settle there in the summer of 1704. Since their village now
would lay too close to the town site, Bienville decided that the
trusty Chato should move south to Dog River, their village to stand
three quarters of a league above the site of the old warehouse where
the river flowed into Mobile Bay. Another Apalache tribe, the
Talimali, who, like the Chato, had been granted permission to live
near the French in the summer of 1704, would move from their present
site on the river between the Little Tomeh village and Fort Louis to
a new site along the south bank of Rivière St.-Martin, today's
Chickasaw Creek, just above the new town site. Bienville had
used Talimali labor to rebuild Fort Louis in 1708 and hoped to use
them to help construct the new fort at the Oignonets.
Bienville would ask--he could not order--the Mobilians to abandon
their ancient village at the fork of the Mobile and Tensas rivers
and move downriver to a bluff just north of Fort Louis.172a
The site also was
occupied by former residents of Fort Louis. Three quarters of
a league south of where the town would be rebuilt stood a small
settlement of Canadians who had moved there in 1706. The
pioneer of the little settlement was Pierre-René Leboeuf, who had
come to the colony with Iberville in 1701 and had remained on the
King's payroll for five years. He took with him to the
Oignonets his Taensa slave, Marguerite, who soon would be baptized
by Father Huvé; a year after her baptism, he would marry her, and a
year after that she would give him a son they named Claude.
Leboeuf had been joined by Gilbert Dardenne, with his wife
Marguerite Burelle, one of the Pélican girls, and their three
children; Claude Parent, a master edge-tool maker from Québec; and
Charles Rochon of Québec, a widower, who came there with a son and a
man named Marchand in 1708. Being Canadians, they would not be
required to move their homes. Bienville and Dartaguiette
interviewed the Canadians at length to learn what they could about
the characteristics of the new site.173
After their inspection,
Bienville and Dartaguiette left the site in charge of Barbazant de
Pailloux, who would lay out the town as he had been instructed.
The new fort would stand "just back from the edge of the marsh on
the first rise of ground. The town was to be more regularly
shaped than the old town. Except for larger lots given to
Bienville and the seminary priests, the new assignments were all
practically the same size--approximately 80 by 160 feet, or about
the size of some of the smaller lots at the old site...."174
The colonists back at Old
Mobile were thrilled by the new development, especially with
Bienville's decision that the move be made immediately. Thanks
to the spring floods, there was no crop to abandon; it was too late
in the year for a replanting at the new site, so the inhabitants
would be able to devote their time to building their new dwellings.
Thanks to the Chato having lived near the new site for so many
years, much of it already was cleared. The new site was not a
great distance away, and the movement from the old site would be
downriver thankfully. But therein lay the biggest problem in
the move--the means of transportation. The colony still had
its flatboat, with its impressive cargo capacity, but, the French
social order being what it was, the flatboat was reserved for the
officials and the officers; the other inhabitants would have to
provide their own transportation and labor. They could always
move their belongings on the old Indian path down the river, but it
was seldom used and required several annoying stream crossings.
The river route always was more efficient if a reliable craft could
be secured. The clever Frenchmen and Canadians soon realized
that it would be "more feasible to disassemble their houses, float
them down to the new site, then reassemble them there than to fell
and hew new timbers." Some of the inhabitants owned their own
canoes and pirogues and put them to good use as soon as they could.
From late May through June and into the heat of July, the
inhabitants filled the river with their pirogues and canoes, some,
heavily loaded, moving downriver, others, now empty, returning
upstream. By the third week of July "nearly half of the
inhabitants had succeeded in transferring their dismantled
dwellings," and Bienville could report to the Minister that New
Mobile slowly but surely
was being built.175
Only the inhabitants
moved down to New Mobile in the summer of 1711. Until a new
fort could be built, the soldiers must remain at dilapidated Fort
Louis. The three priests left in the colony, all Seminarians,
no longer would be living in one place. Father Davion would
have to follow his congregation to New Mobile, where he purchased an
already existing dwelling, part of a duplex, next to Charles Rochon.
Father Huvé would move down to Massacre Island and minister there.
Father Le Maire, still the fort's chaplain, would have to remain at
Fort Louis for now.176
Also remaining at the
fort was a delegation of some 20 or 30 Chickasaw, who had
come down to receive gifts from the French. The resupply had
not yet come, so Bienville and Dartaguiette had nothing to give.
The Chickasaw reminded Bienville that he had not built the fortified trading post he
had promised them years ago, nor had he given them any presents for
quite some time. Bienville was perfectly aware of these
failings. He would report to the Minister in October that the
French had given to their Indian allies 10,000 livres in
presents over the previous ten years, while the English had been able
to give their allies 300,000 livres worth of presents!
The Carolina traders were telling the Indians in the region that the
French were a dying nation, that they were "merely the remnants of a
civilization that the English had already virtually destroyed."
The English then persuaded a village of Chickasaw to attack a
Choctaw village, and now Bienville would have to use presents to
coax the Choctaw into choosing peace over war. But none of
this could be done until the resupply arrived. By the end of
July, Bienville also was wondering if the rumor about the
Renommée's capture was true. If it was true, it might
be many more years before they saw another ship from France,
certainly not until the war ended, a war now nine years long.
Such a circumstance could lead to only one conclusion:
abandonment of the Louisiana colony.177
The resupply by then was
two and a half years late, so something must be done. On
July 29, Bienville sent Barbazant de Pailloux to Veracruz to finesse what he could from the authorities there.
With luck, the new viceroy would feel
compassion for his starving Bourbon allies. Meanwhile, Bienville
worked out a system of precise signals--using gunshots and smoke in
an unbroken relay from one point to another along the bay's
west shore--to alert New Mobile of either friend or foe arriving at
Port Massacre. If the relay worked, Bienville could be
apprised of a vessel's approach in less than an hour. If the
new arrival was foe, he could dispatch a relief force to the island that very day.
If friend, the inhabitants could hurry down to Port Massacre to
welcome the ship.178
Finally, in early
September, gunshots rang out from the north shore of Massacre
Island, 30 miles south of New Mobile, announcing the arrival of a
most welcome visitor.
Vincent Alexandre, who owned the first house on the mainland
above the island, relayed the message to Nicolas Bodin, who sent the
signal to Guillaume Boutin, who alerted the village of Yamasee,
who notified the Chato on Dog River, who signaled Charles Rochon,
who alerted Claude Parent, and when his shots were heard by the
residents of New Mobile, many of them hurried out of their
dwellings, which were in various stages of reconstruction, and they cheered and
danced happily in the sandy streets.
Officials, including
Bienville, and many of the colonists rushed to their boats and
paddled furiously down the bay shore to Massacre Island and then
along the north shore of the island around to Port Massacre.
There, at anchor, floated the Renommée, at the end of its
fourth--and final--voyage to Louisiana.179
Bienville hurried aboard
and was greeted by Captain Rémonville, who he likely did not know,
and a number of officers he knew quite well. Mandeville was
back, and Canadian Louis Bécart de Granville, who had lived briefly
at Old Mobile in 1702. Engineer Guillaume-Philbert Chevillot,
who had come to help with construction of fortifications, was a new
face to Bienville. But where was Vaulezard, and nephew Jacques
Le Moyne de Ste.-Hélène, fils, son of one of his older
brothers? Bienville learned that Ste.-Hélène was accompanying
the Renommée in a smaller vessel from Martinique, had become
separated in a storm, and was feared lost. As to Vaulezard,
he, too, was lost to the colony, so Rémonville offered the services
of Bécart de Granville to command Vauzelard's company, to which
Bienville consented.180
Elation at seeing brother
Iberville's old ship, greeting old friends, and meeting new ones,
gave way to disappointment when Bienville was apprised of what the
ship had brought. The resupply was much smaller than he had
expected, especially the load of flour. Much of the
merchandise had been damaged from poor packing. The soldiers'
new uniforms were stained with rust from having been carelessly
packed in kegs of iron nails. Most disappointing, Rémonville
had brought no specie with which to pay off the Canadians and other
inhabitants to whom the King's account owed money. But there
also were things to cheer about. The captured Catherine
would be left with the colony to supplement the Marguerite
and Le Roux's flat bottom barge--Bienville now had three ships
again, two of them that could sail anywhere in the Gulf.
Rémonville offered the colony flour and other merchandise from his
own store of supplies, which Bienville gladly accepted. The
captain also agreed to help finance the building of a church at New
Mobile, handing over half of what he had pledged. Most
significantly, the fact that the
resupply was here,
despite its being two and a half years late, demonstrated that the
King and the Minister still cherished the colony. Here was a
sign that the Louisiana experiment would not be abandoned, that
Bienville and the others could go on with their efforts of building
a new settlement on Mobile Bay.181
While the supplies were
being loaded into the rebuilt warehouse on Massacre Island,
Barbazant de Pailloux returned from Veracruz with more supplies,
mostly much-needed food. Most of the gunpowder unloaded from
the Renommée was destined for Pensacola to repay the Spanish
for what they had loaned them, but then nephew Ste.-Hélène arrived
after his brush with the storm, and Mobile had a ready supply of
powder again. Bienville gave the Chickasaw chiefs their
presents and sent Châteauguay and a handful of men to escort them
back home via the Choctaw country, where Châteauguay would explain
the move to the new settlement site and do what he could to restore
the peace.182
There remained one final
task for Bienville to perform before the ship could sail, and it was
not a happy one for him. Dartaguiette had remained in the
colony for three and a half years, and in that time, as far as
Bienville was concerned, the young nobleman had become not only a
friend but also the colony's savior. Without the young chief
commissary of marine, Bienville could not have neutralized the
threat to good order posed by La Vente and La Salle as effectively
as he did. Dartaguiette had set the colony's financial records
straight and kept them that way. Bienville could name no one
in the colony who did not admire the young nobleman. When the
colony's morale was at its lowest ebb, it was Dartaguiette who had
restored confidence in the colony's survival. More than
anyone, he had been responsible for moving the settlement to the
mouth of the river, where it had a better chance to thrive.
Before he boarded the Renommée to return to France,
Dartaguiette, evidently for the first time, handed to Bienville a
copy of Nicolas Daneau de Muy's orders from the Minister, now four years old.
Most of the dead governor's mandates largely had been carried out.
There was, however, one more task that the Minister demanded.
The King had never cared much for the name "Mobile"; it lacked a
sense of permanence, so Daneau de Muy had been tasked with
renaming the settlement, as well as Massacre Island and Port
Massacre. The two friends decided upon the name "Immobile,"
first in jest and then as their official proposal. Renaming
the island was easier: Île Massacre would be called Île
Dauphine and Port Massacre Port Dauphine, "both after the new
dauphine of France, news of whose recent ascendency had reached
Saint-Domingue only shortly before the Renommée left Cap-français
for Mobile." This done, Bienville escorted his friend to Port
Dauphine, and, on October 20, Dartaguiette sailed away.183
Once again, Bienville
remained in Louisiana, having come there nearly a dozen years
before. Reading the
latest messages from the Minister of Marine, the most recent
one dated 2 September 1710, he saw nothing about the appointment of a new governor for the colony, something the
Minister had done 16 months before!
Although Rémonville had
left La Rochelle seven months after Cadillac had been offered the
position, the captain and the
others aboard the Renommée had not been apprised of the
development. If Dartaguiette had read of it in his latest
dispatches from France, he kept it to himself. Confident that Dartaguiette's
report to the Minister could only help him receive a much-deserved promotion,
Bienville could only wait patiently for the King's decision.184
Bienville and his fellow
colonists could not know it but the governor-designee, now back in France, was preparing to work his
magic on another powerful patron. Financier Antoine Crozat, marquis du Châtel,
was the Minister's latest hope for relieving the King of his
Louisiana burden. In the months
ahead, "Cadillac presented Crozat with memorials which spoke of the
gulf colony as a land of immense mineral wealth. Like the
minister of Marine ..., the millionaire entrepreneur could not keep
himself from falling under the amazing Gascon's spell."
On 14 September 1712, exactly a year after the Renommée reached
Massacre Island, Crozat swallowed the tantalizing bait that the
Minister and the governor had dangled before him. The
financier, son of a peasant from Toulouse but now one of the
wealthiest men in France, contributed 600,000 to 700,000 livres
to a company recently
formed "for the development of Louisiana...." A new
chapter was about to be written in the history of the colony, and,
again, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, sieur de Bienville, would play a
major role in it.185
France in
Louisiana: Bienville and the Company Men, 1713-31
By 1712, the long war with
Britain--in its tenth year now--finally was winding to an end.
After months of surreptitious communication, envoys from the
contending powers met at Utrecht in Belgium to cobble together
another peace. The first in a series of treaties was signed at
the Belgium city in April 1713. The House of Bourbon retained
the throne of Spain. Britain, the big winner in the long
conflict, secured the asciento, long held by Spain, and also
French and Spanish territory in the Americas, including peninsula
Acadia, which the British called Nova Scotia. France managed
to hang on to Cape Breton Island, off the northeast coast of Nova
Scotia, as well as Île St.-Jean, north of Nova Scotia and at the
southern end of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. British attacks
against
San Agústín and Pensacola had been unsuccessful, so Spain kept
Florida.
As for Louisiana, neither
the British nor their Indian allies attacked Old or New Mobile or
any other French post in the region. This bode well for French
interests in North America: their policy of containment, first
postulated by La Salle in the early 1680s, now could be pursued with
vigor. During the late 1710s, at great expense, the new power
in France, Philippe, duc d'Orléans, Regent for the boy King Louis
XV, who had succeeded his great-grandfather in 1715, authorized the
construction of a fortress at Havre-à-l'Anglois, renamed Louisbourg,
on Cape Breton Island, renamed Île Royale. From Louisbourg, a
sturdy chain of French fortifications ran from the Gulf of St.
Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, with important links at Québec,
Trois-Rivières, Montréal, Fort Frontenac, Détroit, Fort
St.-Joseph-des-Miami, Michilimackinac,
Fort St.-Louis-de-Illinois, Fort Crèvecoeur, Cahokia, Kaskaskia, and
New Mobile. Links would soon be added all along the chain, including
a new one on the lower Mississippi in 1718. The Regent and his
ministers were dusting off La Salle's old scheme for French
dominance of North America, something Iberville also had advocated
after founding Louisiana. "Because this
strategic system would restrict the demographically expansive
British colonists to the area east of the Appalachians by denying
them access to the rivers that permitted trade and travel through
the interior of the continent, it held out the promise of rewards
beyond America alone. Once the encirclement was complete,
French diplomats reasoned, the British would have to divert so much
naval and military strength to protect their colonies that they
would be hobbled in Europe."186
.
By the time the initial
Treaty of Utrecht was signed in the spring of 1713, Louisiana was no
longer a royal colony. It now belonged to Antoine Crozat, who
received proprietary rights there for 15 years and promised to send
two ships a year to "his" colony. Crozat "saw
Louisiana as an investment. He had been convinced to assume
the proprietorship by Cadillac who vaunted the mineral wealth of the
region and the potential trade with Spanish colonies, displaying
true Gascon eloquence and unabashed mendacity." In truth, the
new governor of Crozat's proprietary colony, as well as the Minister
of Marine, had perpetrated on the new proprietor an elaborate fraud.
Had Crozat bothered to send scholar-agents to comb the archives
and gather testimony on the real Louisiana since the days of
La Salle, the financier may have questioned his investment of 700,000
livres. After diligent search, Le Seur had found some kind
of blue ore near the upper Mississippi, but he discovered no El
Dorado on the Minnesota prairie. No evidence of gold or silver
had been found anywhere in Louisiana. Copper perhaps, but no
gold or silver. In 1708, the French had sent an expedition to
the Missouri area in search of mines and found deposits of lead.
More French expeditions searching for precious
metals or strategic minerals anywhere near the Spanish domain
probably would strain the Bourbon
alliance to the breaking point. As for trade with Mexico,
Cuba, and other parts of New Spain, the Spanish Court had not
relented in its strict mercantilist policies other than to keep the
colonists at Mobile from starving. Even then, Jean Béranger's
experience at Veracruz in March 1711 revealed how tough the Spanish
could be if there was any hint of foreign trade at any of their
ports. From before its establishment in 1699, the Spanish
had viewed Louisiana as a violation of their long-established
territorial claims along the entire Gulf shore.
If La Salle's coastal Texas settlement had survived Indian attack,
the Spanish would have ended it soon enough. They had
protested the very presence of Iberville on the Gulf in 1699, and
even more so the establishment of fortifications at Biloxi and Old
Mobile. They had tolerated the French presence only because
Iberville and the French Court convinced them that their goal
was to prevent the hated English from settling in the region.
What would the Spanish now think of a proprietary colony in
the midst of their territorial claims, a French colony bent more towards
profit than regional defense?187
No matter, the deal was
done. The royal treasury, so depleted by the long continental war, no longer would be burdened by the Louisiana succubus.
To sweeten the deal, Crozat's charter gave him governance not only
of lower Louisiana but also of Illinois, which alarmed not only the
Spanish but the Canadian colonial hierarchy as well. Crozat's
Company claimed that the Illinois country ran all the way up the
Mississippi River as far as Lake Winnipeg!187a
Having secured not only
the governorship but also a proprietor for "his" colony, Cadillac
prepared to take his family to New Mobile. He had naively
expected to be Crozat's "principal representative" in the colony,
but the Company and the Crown had other plans for Louisiana's
administration. Like Canada, the Gulf Coast colony would
continue to function under a "bicephalous administration":
Cadillac would serve as governor and act as a sort of glorified
commandant, but there also would be a
commissaire-ordonnateur, or
authorizing commissioner, not unlike a Canadian intendant, who would
administer the colony's finances, supplies, and trade. Crozat
appointed Jean-Baptiste Du Bois Duclos as his ordonnateur. One
of Duclos's functions would be to prevent the governor, or any other
colonial official, from enriching himself at the expense of
proprietor and King.188
But what about Bienville,
who was still in charge at New Mobile? Years before,
Dartaguiette's investigation had exonerated this Le Moyne of malfeasance and misadministration, so Bienville could not
be recalled. Most importantly, no one knew the colony as well
as he did, and, according to Dartaguiette, the Indians respected no
one as much as they did Bienville. So the Minister fashioned a
new title for him: the King's Lieutenant. He would serve
directly under the governor and be responsible for improving
relations with the Indians, all the way up into the Illinois country.
Cadillac and Duclos
sailed on
the Baron de La Fauche and reached Port Dauphine on 5 June 1713.
The crossing was not a happy one for either of the new officials.
It behooved Cadillac to maintain amicable relations with two men in
Louisiana, Duclos and Bienville, but even before he had reached the
colony he alienated Crozat's ordonnateur. During the crossing,
Cadillac warned Duclos "that it would be dangerous to quarrel with
him because he had a superior mind." Duclos judged the
governor's mind "to be quite mediocre except when his own interests
were involved" and noted that Cadillac "was 'very troubled and
very restless' and 'the most barefaced liar I had ever seen.'"188a
Another mishap occurred
aboard the
Baron de La Fauche, this time a failing of Mme. Cadillac.
"Twelve girls crossed with Cadillac and his wife ..., but improperly
supervised by Mme Cadillac, who spent more time quarreling with the
officers than watching her wards, the young ladies landed in
Louisiana with sadly besmirched reputations. The Sieur de
Richebourg, a colonial captain who crossed on the same ship, a man
said to have married two women at the same time and debauched
another, seduced some of the girls (some reports say all twelve), as
well as Mme Cadillac's maid." Things only spiraled downward
after the ship reached Massacre: "The worst of it however, was
that the poor girls were so unprepossessing, 'si laides et mal
faittes,' that after taking one look, the colonial bachelors
returned to the words, declaring that all things considered, they
preferred Indians. Du Clos, the ordonnateur who reports
this fiasco, suggests that in the future it would behoove recruiters
to 'seek looks rather than virtue,' for, he says, the Canadians 'who
are all well-built men' are not too 'particular' about the girls'
behavior before marriage."188b
As soon as he stepped off
the ship at Port Massacre, Cadillac wasted no time alienating
Bienville. The new governor's first impression of New Mobile could not
have endeared him to the former commander or to the long-suffering
colonists who must now endure his leadership. "The colony, he
informed the Minister, was a 'wretched place' inhabited by
'gallows-birds with no respect for religion and addicted to vice.'" According
to the King's lieutenant, the trouble with the new governor began when the 33-year-old bachelor refused to marry Cadillac's daughter,
Marie-Madeleine. "Thereafter," Bienville complained,
Cadillac treated him "like a corporal. On one occasion the assistant town
major paid Bienville a visit to inform him in the governor's name
that he was a 'dolt' and a 'fop.'" Unlike La Salle and La Vente,
whom he could overawe with rank and privilege, Bienville was subject
to the orders of this strange new administrator.189
Unfortunately for
Bienville, Cadillac was tasked with investigating his conduct; the
King and Minister evidently had not been satisfied with
Dartaguiette's conclusions. Try as he might, Cadillac could
find nothing incriminating against the King's lieutenant, but it did not stop
him from humiliating the proud Canadian. If Cadillac hoped to alienate Bienville farther from the King and Minister, he
evidently failed. In 1714, the Minister awarded Bienville
military command of the Mississippi valley from the Ohio down to the
Gulf. This allowed the King's lieutenant to treat with more
tribes in the region and ensure the safety of the colony. Only with the
Indians' favor could Louisiana have any chance of surviving much
less rewarding the proprietor with a return on his investment.
Unfortunately, the governor "out of spite ... obstructed Bienville's
work among the Indian tribes[,] and Louisiana's relations with the
native populations sharply deteriorated."190
The most dangerous crisis
with the Indians during Cadillac's tenure involved one of the
largest tribes along the river.
From early in their presence on the Gulf Coast, the shakers and
movers of French Louisiana saw the Natchez (pronounced NOT-chee) as an important
pawn in their rivalry with England. The tribe, first visited
by Iberville and Bienville in 1700, occupied a prominent position on
the lower Mississippi athwart the primary route of communication
with the rest of New France. Although the Natchez were among the first tribes on the lower river
to welcome French missionaries, they refused to give up their old
religion. However, secularists like Bienville were less
interested in souls than in natural resources; the French considered
the site of the
Natchez village to be "'the finest land on
this continent.'" In 1710, after twice failing to produce a
wheat crop on Bayou St.-Jean, several
Canadians, with permission from Bienville, had taken up land at Natchez, but they failed to produce a wheat crop
there, too.191
In 1713, soon after he reached New Mobile, Cadillac sent the La
Loire brothers, Marc-Antoine and
Louis-Auguste, with a dozen companions to Natchez to
establish a trading post. In a single stroke,
Cadillac reasoned, he could "encourage Crozat's commercial
enterprise and ... maintain good contact with the native." By
1715, the trading venture at Natchez was being used "as a base for
bartering with the Indians." Cadillac evidently coaxed from
the Minister permission to build a fort near the trading post, not
only to protect the commerce there but also to keep the
British away. Bienville was given the task of building the
fort, but he complained to the Minister that the governor "had
assigned him only a few raw recruits and had allotted a minimum of
supplies for the construction." Bienville nevertheless made
plans to go to Natchez and fulfill the Minister's wishes.192
It was about that time, in
the fall of 1715, that Cadillac made his grand tour of the
Mississippi up to Illinois. The governor was determined to
find mineral deposits, if not gold or silver, somewhere in the
French domain, and why not overawe the tribes along the river
while he was at it. The governor did not bother to invite
Bienville to come along, and evidently no other sensible officer was
part of the governor's entourage. Cadillac did find minerals
on his tour--a deposit of copper ore in the Illinois country--but
his treatment of the Indians was disastrous. When the
tour was finished, news of it "was circulating throughout the colony
among both the white and the Indian populace. Cadillac had
apparently insulted all the tribes along the river during his
journey northward. He had quarreled with them, accepted their
gifts without giving anything in return and had refused their
hospitality. 'All of the nations are talking about it with
very great scorn to the shame of the French,'" Bienville lamented to
the Minister. The Natchez were especially insulted by the
governor's behavior. "According to Bienville, when Cadillac
had declined to smoke the calumet of peace on passing through the
Natchez country, the Indians had been insulted by the Great Chief of
the French. Bienville learned that this refusal to accept the
calumet, especially among the leaders, had been interpreted by the
Natchez as a gesture of war." This made them
vulnerable to the entreaties of Carolina traders in the region, who
were adept at bribing the Indians into turning against the French,
even in times of peace. Word spread through the colony that
the Natchez had killed four Canadians traders.
Unmoved by the news, Cadillac insisted that Bienville follow
his orders and build the fort at Natchez.193
Bienville set out from New Mobile in March 1716 with only 43 men.
As he was approaching Tunica, he learned that the Natchez had killed
another Canadian voyageur--the fifth victim of the tribe's
treachery. Forced, now, to deal with the crisis, Bienville
lingered at Tunica to oversee the construction of a supply depot, a
guardhouse, and a small prison. He sent word ahead to the
Natchez that he was in the area. Here was the formidable
Bienville, not the inscrutable Cadillac.
Three lower members of the Natchez nobility appeared, offering the
calumet of peace. Bienville refused to smoke the pipe with
them and insisted that their chiefs come to him.
Soon, eight Natchez "Suns" appeared at Tunica, replete with
impressive retinues. Bienville refused to smoke the pipe with
them, as well, and demanded to know who had slain the Canadians and
why. "Receiving no answer, he had the suns put in chains."
Bienville then sent for the three highest chiefs--Grand Soleil,
Serpent-Pique, and Petit Soleil. When they arrived, he chided
them for what his people had done and made the usual threat of
uniting all the other tribes in the region against them. Petit
Soleil hurried back to his village and returned with the severed
heads of three warriors who he insisted had murdered the Canadians.
Bienville, still unsatisfied, rebuffed the pathetic act of
appeasement and threw Petit Soleil into the little prison with the
other Suns. Realizing that the Frenchman would not be moved
until they confessed the truth to him, the high Suns revealed that
the Canadians were the victims of another power struggle within the
tribe, encouraged, if not instigated, by British agents, who awarded
hefty bribes. The guilty chief, White Ground, had fled to the
British before Bienville had reached Tunica. Now satisfied
that he had heard the truth, Bienville released Petit Soleil and
allowed the two other high Suns to go. The lesser chiefs he
retained as hostages. On the return trip to Mobile, perhaps as
soon as he left Natchez territory, he tomahawked the hostages and
continued on his way.194
When Cadillac heard of the executions, he charged Bienville with
committing an atrocity. More important than the volatile
governor's reaction, however, would be the
Natchez response to Bienville's brutality.
A student of the incident reminds us: "If ... the execution of
the Natchez, whether in Tunica territory or in the Mobile country,
had been poorly received by the tribe, it seems unlikely that the
French could have built Fort Rosalie that summer with Natchez
assistance." The new fort, named after a daughter of the Minister of Marine,
was finished in August 1716 and stood near the Grand Village of the
Natchez, amidst some of the finest farm land in the colony.195
.
Ironically, another
failure of Cadillac's disastrous governorship proved to be his most
enduring contribution to the colony. In 1700, the year that
Iberville had built Fort de La Boulaye near the mouth of the Mississippi, brother
Bienville had explored the Red River as far up as a huge log jam
that blocked further navigation. In the spring of 1707,
Bienville ordered Louis Juchereau de St.-Denis, who
commanded the fort,
to abandon De La Boulaye and shift the French observation post on
the lower Mississippi to the portage site near the head of Bayou
St.-Jean.
St.-Denis and a hand full of his Canadians took up residence with
the Biloxi who Bienville had moved to Bayou St.-Jean soon after
Iberville had built De La Boulaye. St.-Denis and his Canadians
remained at their new station for half a dozen years.
Soon after he came to the
colony, Cadillac was determined to establish a French post in the Louisiana
interior to trade with the Indians, especially the friendly Caddo, and, despite
mercantilist restrictions, with the
Spanish in Texas and Mexico. In 1714, on orders from Cadillac, St.-Denis led
his Canadians up the Red River and sited what became the Poste des Natchitoches on
an island in a branch of the river just below the log jam.
From Natchitoches, St.-Denis moved on to Presidio del Norte, now
Eagle Pass, Texas, to fulfill the governor's charge. The
Spanish promptly arrested him, took him to Mexico City, and
imprisoned him there.
St.-Denis, however, had ingratiated himself with the Spanish in
Texas by wooing and then marrying Manuela Sánchez y Navarro, the
step-granddaughter of a Spanish commandant on the lower Rio Grande,
in 1715. This immediately changed his status in the eyes of
Spanish authority. The viceroy, still the Duque de Linarès, sent the young Frenchman to
East Texas to help re-establish Spanish missions among the Caddo
Indians. This fit nicely with French commercial plans, and
St.-Denis saw his opportunity. He slipped back to Louisiana,
purchased a consignment of goods, and engaged in smuggling to the
new missions in Texas. As a result, the clever Canadian
spent more time in Mexican prisons.
Meanwhile, in 1716, after
he had resolved a conflict
with the powerful Natchez on the Mississippi River, Bienville, in his role as
the King's lieutenant, ordered the
construction of a fort, called St.-Jean-Baptiste, on the site of the Poste des
Natchitoches. Spanish mercantilist policy had long prohibited trade with foreigners, so they
did not welcome a new French fort
among Indians they hoped to dominate. In early 1717, the Spanish countered by
establishing a mission post, called Los Adaes, also named after local
Caddo Indians, near present-day Robiline, some 20 miles southwest of
Natchitoches. Fort St.-Jean-Baptiste at Natchitoches, then,
served not only as a trading post from which to win the favor of
local Indians but also as a strategic point from which to observe
the Spanish in the region.196
.
By 1716, Crozat and the
powers that be in France were thoroughly disillusioned with
Cadillac. In the eyes of the proprietor, the colony was a
dismal failure; he, in fact, accused the Gascon of having concealed
"Louisiana's real wealth in order to profit from it personally."
Cadillac, not to be outdone, accused Crozat of "breach of contract."
The newly empowered Conseil de la Marine, created by the Regency
council under Philippe, duc d'Orléans, who came to power after the death
of Louis XIV, ordered Cadillac's recall on 3 March 1716; the Conseil also recalled Duclos. The disgraced governor was
unable, or chose not, to sail from New Mobile until the summer of
1717. Again, Bienville served as acting governor until Cadillac's successor reached New Mobile.
Bienville hoped, of
course, that he would succeed the wily Gascon, but the Conceil, likely
prompted by the Minister, chose
someone else.197
Jean-Michel, sieur de
l'Epinay et de Longueville, born at Fougères, Brittany, was 15 years
older than Bienville, who turned 36 in 1716. L'Epinay had
become a naval officer in 1683, when Bienville was still a toddler,
and joined the French forces in Canada in 1687. There, he was
promoted to ensign and lieutenant and for a time served as honorary
port captain at Québec. At Rochefort in the early 1700s, he
was promoted to lieutenant commander. As a protégé of
Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon, comte de Toulouse, duc de Penthiève,
who happened to be head of the Conseil de la Marine, L'Epinay
secured appointment as Cadillac's successor on 16 March 1716; he was
51 years old. In October, while waiting to sail to New Mobile, he received
the Cross of St.-Louis. He left France
in December and reached New Mobile on 9 March 1717, almost exactly a
year after his appointment. Cadillac did not return to France
until the summer of 1717, so one can imagine the awkwardness
L'Epinay endured setting up his new regime with his predecessor
still around.198
L'Epinay brought good news
for Bienville, who doubtless was disappointed by the Breton's
elevation. The previous October, the King had granted his lieutenant in Louisiana
the concession of Horn Island in the Mississippi Sound,
between Ship Island and Île Petit-Bois. Bienville had hoped
that he would be granted property in Louisiana en seigneurie,
but the King had decided that, unlike Canada and Acadia, there would
be no seigneurial titles attached to land concessions granted in
Louisiana. Bienville received his grant at Horn Island
en roture, which would be typical of concessions in the
southern colony. Bienville also had lobbied the Court to become a
chevalier of the Order of St.-Louis, which the Regent ranted
to him in September 1717. As to his title and function under
the new governor, Bienville would continue to serve as the King's
lieutenant, still in charge of Louisiana's military and Indian
affairs.199
L'Epinay's stay at New
Mobile was brief and undistinguished. He soon alienated many
colonists by banning the sale of brandy to the Indians, threatening a dependable source of revenue
for many inhabitants.
The new governor also quarreled with the colony's commissaire-ordonnateur, Marc-Antoine Hubert, who had come to
New Mobile aboard the same vessel. L'Epinay likely quarreled
with the King's lieutenant as well.200
L'Epinay's short-lived
tenure did accomplish one thing that had eluded both Iberville and
Bienville. Perhaps as one of its final accomplishments,
Crozat's company founded the Poste des Alibamons near the confluence
of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers, just above the Alibamon
villages. To protect the post, in 1717 the Crown approved the
construction of Fort Toulouse, named for L'Epinay's patron and the
head of the Conseil de la Marine. The fort was manned by
troupes des
marines, who suffered from the usual neglect, including hunger, at
the hands of indifferent officials. Influenced
by deserters from Mobile, including several sergeants, the garrison mutinied in
late August 1721, during Bienville's tenure as commandant general.
Two thirds of the men overpowered their officers, including the
fort's commander, Captain Jean-Baptiste-Louis De Courtel
Marchand, who had married a high-status Alibamon, and, with stolen
arms and supplies, hurried on their way to the nearest Carolina
settlement, but they did not get far. The French officers, who
the men had released on their departure, beseeched the nearby Alibamon
to help them stop the mutineers. A force of 250 warriors
caught up with the soldiers only 30 miles from the fort, ambushed
them, killed 18 and captured the rest, but not without loss.
The sergeant most responsible for the mutiny was tomahawked on the
spot, and the officers escorted the remainder to New Mobile, where
they were tried and condemned to life in prison. Four years
later, another group of soldiers at Fort Toulouse deserted to the
English, but, eventually, the marines assigned there brought their
families to the fort. As a result, though it remained one of the most isolated
outposts in lower Louisiana, it evolved into a small
agricultural settlement as well as a trading post and military
establishment.200a
.
Back in France, Crozat begged the Regent and his Conseil
to release him from his charter. Crozat suggested that another
company be formed for the colony's development, this one "with 500
shares at 3,000 livres each payable in state notes. The
company would take charge of development, the king [that is, the
King's Regent] would keep the responsibility of defense." In
January 1717, the Conseil de la Marine approved the organization of
a new company for Louisiana, but Crozat was not relieved of his
charter until August 1718. A monopoly that was to have lasted
15 years had stumbled along for less than five.201
The new company, called
originally the Mississippi Company, was renamed Le Compagnie
d'Occident, or the Company of the West, in 1717. The
"letters patent" for the joint-stock company's charter were approved
by the Conseil de la Marine in August of that year, and the charter
was issued on September 6. The
Company's director was John Law, the nation's Controller General.
A native of Scotland and a survivor of small pox, which disfigured
an otherwise handsome face, Law was facing a
murder charge in London, the result of a duel, when he escaped to
Amsterdam in the 1690s. There, he coaxed the Dutch into
forming a national bank based on credit, not specie. In the
following decade, now a published economist stressing the importance
of currency and credit over specie, he returned to his native
Scotland, where his ideas were rejected. He then traveled, and
gambled his way, across much of Europe, to Flanders, Holland,
Germany, Hungary, Venice, Genoa, and France, studying carefully the
monetary systems of each of these places. In the early 1710s,
he remained in France to
take advantage of an economy wrecked by Louis XIV; among Law's
devotees were the duc de Vendôme, the prince de Conti, and, most
importantly, Philippe, duc d'Orléans, who became Law's patron.
Soon after assuming power as Regent to the boy King Louis XV, the duc
d'Orléans appointed the
Scotsman his Controller General. In May 1716, with the Regent's
approval, Law, with his brother William, formed the Banque Générale Privé, France's
first national bank, which, again with the Regent's approval, became
the Banque Royal in 1718. Law had been a notorious
gambler in his youth and made his fortune not only as an economist
and financier but also as a speculator. His acceptance of the
monopoly for Louisiana was simply another opportunity to enhance his
considerable fortune as well as his power and influence.202
Law's economic scheme was not only
elaborate but impressively modern: "Louisiana with its vast
agricultural and mineral potential was central to the development of
Law's system. Settlers were to brought to exploit the
resources which would enrich the Company, the undertaking to be
financed, of course, with state notes issued by the bank. The
Company was to enrich the state through trade and the retiring of
the public debt; the bank would lend the Company the money it
needed, and would issue notes to individuals that they might buy
stock in the Company, the entire operation being sustained and
fueled by the wealth from Louisiana." But there was the catch:
convincing investors that Louisiana did have vast
agricultural and mineral potential. Law launched an effective
marketing campaign to exaggerate the colony's potential, painting
Louisiana as another El Dorado. To enhance the success of this
marketing scheme, the one man who had the temerity to challenge the
Company's claims must be silenced immediately. Former
governor Antoine La Mothe de Cadillac, who had called Louisiana "a monstrous
confusion," wasted no time protesting "publicly and loudly
against the company's fanciful description. Lest he jeopardize
its entire publicity campaign it was deemed prudent to remove him
from circulation for a few months." In late September 1717,
less than a month after he and his family returned to France,
authorities arrested the ex-governor and his eldest son, Antoine, fils,
and shunted them off to the Bastille in Paris, where they remained in
close confinement until the following February.203
To govern Law's Louisiana and secure its defense, the Conseil de la Marine abolished the office of
governor and created the position of commandant general. The
new commandant general would
not be
Jean-Michel, sieur de
l'Epinay et de Longueville, however; the Conceil recalled L'Epinay
in February
1718 and, like the colony's leaders before him, subjected his
performance to intense investigation. Louisiana's
new commandant general would be none other than Jean-Baptiste Le
Moyne, sieur de Bienville, to be assisted for a time by his notorious older brother, Joseph Le Moyne,
sieur de Sérigny et de Loire. Joseph was a dozen years older
than Jean-Baptiste and could count on one hand the number of months
he had spent in the colony. Jean-Baptiste, on the other hand,
had lived in Louisiana for 18 years, having never returned to
France. He
would continue to answer to the Regent's Conceil de la Marine
and, after 1723, to Jean-Frédéric, Comte de Maurepas, son
of Jérôme Phélypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain.
The colony also would have a new headquarters: the directors
of Law's Company decreed that New Mobile would give way to New Biloxi, to
be built across the bay from where Fort Maurepas once stood.
The commandant would have to cooperate with a
commissaire-ordonnateur, who answered to the Company directors.
The Company retained Marc-Antoine Hubert, who had come to the colony
with L'Epinay, but sacked him in 1720, after the Company went bankrupt, and replaced him with M. Duvergier.
Also present, with his own pretensions to power, was a company director, Charles Legac,
who reached New Mobile in early 1718.204
A major innovation of the
Crozat period,
continued under
the Law regime, was a Superior Council on which the governor,
now the commandant general,
and the
commissaire-ordonnateur sat as voting members and which was responsible "for the
colony's civil affairs of finance, administration, and justice."
The ordonnateur, in fact, oversaw Superior Council sessions as
premier conseilleur or first judge. Originally,
the Superior Council exercised largely administrative and judicial functions, but by the mid-1730s, within a decade of its founding,
the Council had assumed a quasi-legislative
function as well. As a result, the institution would
play a major role in Louisiana politics for decades to come.204b
Someone as proud and independent-minded as Bienville
could not have been happy with so many
checks on his power and privileges. But the directors of Law's
Company, including Bienville's old friend, Jean-Baptiste-Martin Dartaguiette d'Iron,
serving as the Company's Receiver General of Finances, were
determined to take advantage of Bienville's vast experience and his proven qualities as a leader.
The extent of territory to
be controlled by Law's Company in New France was neither
increased nor reduced from what Louis XIV had granted to Crozat.
The Company of the West could award land concessions from the Perdido
River, bordering Spanish Florida, along the wide swatch of coast to
Texas, though the boundary between French Louisiana and Spanish
Texas, like the boundary between French Mobile and Spanish
Pensacola, was still in dispute. The Company also "possessed"
all that territory in the interior of the Gulf Coast region from the
Appalachians west to the
Mississippi valley. Its most lucrative possession, of course,
was the Mississippi valley itself, stretching as far westward as the
headwaters of the Red, Arkansas, Missouri, and Des Moines rivers, as
far eastward as the Appalachians, and as far up the great river as its
still-undiscovered source, which the Company believed was Lake
Winnipeg.
Thus, to the continued consternation of Canadian authorities, Illinois, which
the King had granted to Crozat, would remain a part of Louisiana
under Law's regime.204c
Law's Company received from the Regent a
monopoly for commerce in Louisiana for 25 years, including control
of the lucrative tobacco trade, but his
personal involvement in the Company's schemes was short-lived.
After the Company of the West absorbed the
Company of Senegal in December 1718 (giving it a monopoly on the
West African slave trade), the Company of China and the East Indian
Company in 1719, and the Company of St.-Domingue and the Company of
Guinea in September 1720,
all with the approval of the Regent and his
ministers,
it renamed itself the Perpetual Company of the Indies. At the
same time, the Regent awarded Law control of tax collection and the
minting of the kingdom's money, granting him, in other words,
control of French foreign trade and national finances.
By 1719, Law was able to merge his Company with the Banque Royal, and he
focused on eliminating the huge national debt created by Louis XIV.
Meanwhile, Law's marketing campaign
for Louisiana was too successful, creating what soon would be
called the Mississippi Bubble. Investors
could see the potential for profit in buying and selling shares in
the Company of the Indies, and soon wild stock speculation engulfed
not only France but also much of Europe. The French
treasury, following Law's economic theories disparaging specie,
printed paper currency, backed by shares in Law's Company, to
increase the amount of money available for more investment. A
sharp inflation resulted, and the value of the Company's stock
plummeted. The Regent dismissed Law from his ministry in May
1720. The inevitable crash came soon afterwards. Law
was not the only leader responsible for the financial debacle, but
he was a convenient scapegoat for the bursting of the Mississippi Bubble.
Reportedly disguised as a woman, he fled to Belgium in December 1720
and never returned to France. Meanwhile, the Regent's
government reorganized the Company of the Indies, leaving the young King's
subjects to pick up the financial pieces.203b
.
Bienville,
once again the real power in Louisiana, was determined to relocate the
colonial headquarters to the lower Mississippi, where he was certain
the future of the colony lay. For years he had kept his eye on
the portage site that he and brother Iberville had "discovered" in
their first exploration of the lower Mississippi.
There, soon after Iberville had built his lower river fort 20
leagues farther down, Bienville had
coaxed a band of friendly Biloxi to settle along the little bayou
the French called St.-Jean. After Bienville abandoned his brother's fort in 1707, the
only French military presence on the lower river was an unfortified
observation post
near the Biloxi village.
There,
in the spring of
1708, in hopes of creating a breadbasket for the colony, still headquartered at
Old Mobile, Bienville had sent five Canadians to Bayou St.-Jean,
where they planted two wheat crops. In 1710, the Canadians
abandoned the site and moved up to Natchez. Once again, only
the Biloxi and a few French soldiers occupied the narrow swatch of land between the Mississippi and Lake
Pontchartrain. Bienville, however, refused to give up on establishing a
fortified settlement
at the portage site.
During
the 1710s,
he had done the next best thing by relocating several friendly
Indian tribes to the lower river above and below the Bayou St.-Jean
portage, and moving two troublesome tribes away from the portage. In 1712, he
moved the friendly Chawasha from Bayou Lafourche to the west bank 75
miles above the river's mouth, near the bottom of English Turn.
The friendly Washa, kinsmen of the Chawasha, he moved from
the Lafourche to a site on the west bank six miles above the Bayou
St.-Jean portage in c1715. A few miles above the Washa stood a village
of the Taensa at another portage between the river and Lake
Pontchartrain, this one at the head of Bayou La Sueur, which was
more than twice as long as Bayou St.-Jean. However, judging by what the
Taensa had done to the Bayougoula in 1706, this tribe was
not reliable, so Bienville removed some of them to upper Mobile Bay about
the time he moved the Washa from the bayou to the river. In
1716, he signed a treaty with the Chitimacha, with whom he had been
fighting, off and on, since they had murdered a French missionary
ten years before. The treaty stipulated that the Chitimacha
would abandon their lands along Bayou Lafourche and retreat to the
shores of present-day Grand Lake, at the southern end of the great
Atchafalaya swamp--far from any future French settlement along the
river, or anywhere else the French cared to settle in the region.
Later in the decade, the Acolapissa, probably after Bienville's urging, moved from their
villages on the Pearl River to the lower Mississippi about 35 miles
above the Bayou St.-Jean portage and a few miles above the Washa,
near where Taensa were still living.
These villages, combined with the friendly Biloxi on Bayou St.-Jean,
could help the French oppose anyone who ascended the river or
approached the lower river via the portages
from Lake Pontchartrain.
From farther upriver, the Houma, still formidable and always
reliable, could hurry down and reinforce the other friendly
tribes--an impressive defense in depth for what Bienville believed
was the most important section of the lower Mississippi.203e
The next
post founded on the lower river was even more distant from the Bayou
St.-Jean portage than had been Iberville's Fort de La Boulaye. Interestingly, it was
Bienville, then the King's lieutenant for the Crozat regime, who had
sited the new garrison. In the summer of 1716, Indian
relations and the dictates of commerce led to the construction of Fort Rosalie. Nearby stood the grand village of the powerful
Natchez. The soil around Fort Rosalie was fine and well-drained, and
the post stood on a bluff above the river's flood plain, so Natchez had wonderful potential for agricultural development.
The site also was at the southern end of a long, well-used trail
running northeastward into the Indian country, the Natchez Trace.
The
following year,
in
September 1717, while Bienville was still serving as the King's lieutenant,
a Company of the West official recorded the following directive in a
company ledger: "Resolved to establish, thirty
leagues up the river, a burg which should be called Nouvelle
Orléans, where landing would be possible from either the river
or Lake Pontchartrain." Here, in other words, was the
portage site, so one can see Bienville's influence at work. During the following
March and April, Bienville's men, including a number of convicts, cleared the
thick canebrakes covering the natural levee at the south end of the
portage and prepared a foundation for a
settlement there. Named for Philippe, duc
d'Orléans, nephew of King Louis XIV, regent of the boy king Louis XV, and
patron of John Law, New Orleans began as a ramshackle collection of
thatched-roofed huts not much more different in appearance from the
Quinapisa village that Bienville had visited there two decades
before.204a
No matter, Bienville hoped that the ragged little village would
become the colony's new headquarters. While his men were still
clearing away the village foundation, the Conseil de la Marine had
appointed Bienville commandant general, making him the colony's
governor in everything but name. Such a momentous decision as
moving the capital from New Mobile, however, would be made by higher
authority, not by a putative governor. All Bienville could do
was advise the decision makers back in France and hope they honored his incomparable
experience.
In April 1718,
while his men were clearing off the portage site, the
Company directors ordered
another new post to be constructed along the lower Mississippi, this one "on the Manchac brook,"
also called Rivière d'Iberville, a location the Company believed
would provide the most direct route for trade between Canada and the Gulf
of Mexico. There, at Bayou Manchac, was a possible alternative
for the site of the colony's new capital. Then death
intervened. Sieur Perrier, the royal engineer who had been
assigned to the Bayou Manchac project, died en route to the
Mississippi. His replacement, brigadier of engineers Pierre Le Blond de La Tour,
who reached Ship Island aboard the Dromadaire in December
1720, chose what he believed was a better site for the colony's new headquarters. New Biloxi,
which stood across the bay from the site of old Fort Maurepas, lay not on the Mississippi River but on Mississippi Sound. Bienville's efforts to move his
headquarters to New Orleans seemed to have come to naught. The
new post at Biloxi, to be called Fort Louis, designed by Le Blond de La
Tour and his assistant engineer, Adrien de Pauger, was supposed to
have risen in 1721, but by year's end virtually nothing had been
accomplished there. Only the crude huts of hundreds of
immigrants, waiting to be transported to their concessions, occupied
the sandy shore at New Biloxi. In 1722,
probably under Bienville's influence,
officials of the reorganized Company of the Indies gave up on New Biloxi as the colony's new headquarters. Bienville took full advantage of the decision
and transformed words into action.205
In
March 1721, Bienville sent Pauger to New Orleans to lay out a formal
street plan based on his and La Tour's design for the
streets at New Biloxi. Pauger was empowered to destroy any
dwellings at New Orleans that did not conform to the engineers' new
plan. To the chagrin of many of the hamlet's original
settlers, Pauger followed orders religiously. In
late December 1721, over opposition in
favor of Bayou Manchac, Natchez, English Turn, Lake Pontchartrain,
Natchitoches, New Biloxi, New Mobile, and even Pensacola, the
Company directors chose New
Orleans as the new capital of French Louisiana.
Despite a devastating hurricane in September 1722, ever-present
disease, more flooding, and frequent desertion,
by 1723, Bienville had moved his headquarters from New Mobile to his
ragged little "city" on the beautiful crescent.
By 1728, a
decade after its founding, New Orleans could boast a population of
nearly a thousand souls.206
Meanwhile, in 1719, Church authorities created a parish at New
Orleans--the first in the colony since Old Mobile was given a parish
of its own in 1703. The first recorded pastor at New Orleans,
Franciscan Recollet Father Prothais Boyer, like the parish priest at
New Mobile, answered to a distant prelate, the Bishop of Québec.
By the spring of 1727, New Orleans had a church of its own, L'Église St.-Louis,
a humble frame structure that served the city for nearly four
decades.206a
There was a
problem with the location of New Orleans, however, that required the
creation of another post on the lower river. As a recent historian has
observed: "The lower Mississippi presented serious problems for tall
sailing vessels. Besides the dangerous and unpredictable nature of the
riverbed, a sandbar in the main pass of the river often had a sounding of
only 10-12 feet, while most large ships laden with cargo drew 15-20 feet.
To address these problems, the French built La Balize ('the beacon'), a fort
at the mouth of the river's birdfoot delta. There incoming ships could
hire resident pilots or transfer their cargo to barges and smaller craft
(called lighters) that would complete the journey to New Orleans."
The fortification at "the beacon" arose on "the small mud island"
at the toe-end of East, now North, Pass in 1722, soon after the city
became the colony's new capital. New
Orleans lay a hundred miles above Balize, so relatively few large sailing ships
risked passage up to the city throughout Louisiana's colonial period.207
.
French foreign policy
changed dramatically after Louis XIV breathed his last in September
1715. The Regent, well aware of the opposition of Britain and
Spain to Crozat's limited activities in Louisiana, insisted that
when Law took over the Mississippi Company he change its name to the
Company of the West to cloak the central role of the Gulf Coast
colony in his investment scheme. The Regent, having cobbled
together a Triple Alliance of France, Britain, and the Netherlands
soon after coming to power,
was especially concerned about British reaction to Law's monopoly.
The Triple Alliance already had alienated France from its
former Bourbon ally, so Spain's reaction to the Louisiana venture
was of lesser concern. Conditions in Spain also contributed to
that kingdom's alienation from France. Philip V's Italian
wife, Elizabeth Farnese, "pursued her dynastic aims, seeking thrones
for her sons in Italy." In 1717, while the Hapsburg emperor
fought the Turks on his eastern border, Spanish troops invaded
Sardinia, perilously close to French Corsica. Meanwhile,
French agents exposed a Spanish plot to assassinate the Regent.
Britain reacted even more violently to "Hispanic adventurism,"
declaring war on Spain in December 1718. France followed suit
in January 1719, and the former Bourbon allies were now at each
other's throats.208
Commandant Bienville
watched these developments with mounting concern. When war
erupted, New Mobile was still his headquarters--perilously close to
the Spanish at Pensacola. However, Bienville's brother
Sérigny, returning to Mobile in April 1719, was the first to bring
news of the war to the Gulf coast region. Bienville, having "the advantage of
earlier news," sent Sérigny and younger brother Châteauguay with three ships and 150 men to seize
Pensacola. The Spanish soon counter-attacked and drove off the
French, capturing and holding Châteauguay. Sérigny escaped and led a successful defense of Dauphin Island.
By war's end, Bienville had returned and retaken Fort San Carlos,
which he had to surrender after peace came.209
The coast was not the
only scene of conflict in the region between the erstwhile Bourbon allies.
Philippe Blondel,
commander at Poste des Natchitoches, upon hearing of the war in June
1719, sacked the Los Adaes mission, established two years before.
The few Spanish who escaped retreated all the way back to San
Antonio in Spanish Texas. A tenuous peace between France and Spain returned in 1721, after
which the Spanish not only re-established the mission at Los Adaes but also
erected a fortified outpost, which they called Presidio
de Nuestra Senora del Pilar de Los Adaes.210
.
The war between France and
Spain was mercifully short and did not stop the shipment of
thousands of new
colonists to Louisiana. Despite the collapse of Law's Company
of the Indies in late 1720, its policies of land
concessions and,
most importantly, emigration, did unleash Louisiana's pent-up potential.
Promising the colony two ships a year, Crozat had sent few new settlers to
the Louisiana. Not so the Company under Law. The first of the Law settlers, 99 of them, appeared at
Port Dauphin aboard three ships, the Neptune, the Dauphine,
and the Vigilante, in February 1718, on the same day that
Commandant l'Epinay was recalled to France. Over the next
three years, during Bienville's tenure, thousands more came to Port
Dauphin and Ship Island: 741 immigrants in 1718; 1,367 more
immigrants, plus 450 African slaves, in 1719; 2,576 immigrants and
126 more slaves in 1720; and 360 immigrants and 868 slaves in 1721;
a total of 5,044 immigrants and 1,444 slaves, 6,488 souls, to
supplement the 350 to 400 inhabitants counted at New Mobile in 1718!203d
But there was a dark side to the dramatic increase in the colony's
population. Despite Law's success in attracting financial
investors, his Company, like Crozat's, failed miserably in luring
"respectable" French volunteers to Louisiana. Undaunted, Law's
agents, with the Regent and his ministers looking the other way, put
into effect a policy suggested by Crozat and sanctioned by royal
decree: the rounding up salt smugglers, vagabonds, beggars, "libertines,"
galley slaves, or galèriens,
even thieves, murderers, and prostitutes--collectively known as
forçats--and packing them off to the distant colony on the
Company's crowded ships. "But ill-prepared for the rough life
of the frontier, weakened by the crowded unsanitary conditions
during the long crossing, most forced immigrants died from fevers,
exhaustion, and privation." The ultimate forçats,
of course, would be African slaves, to be introduced into the colony
in substantial numbers for the first time in its history. The
Company was so desperate for settlers that it even proposed sending
pirates from Cartagena to man the Louisiana concessions.
Jean-Baptiste-Martin Dartaguiette d'Iron, the only member of the
Company's board who had any personal knowledge of Louisiana and
whose two younger brothers were serving in the colony, refused to
sanction such a ridiculous settlement scheme. Dartaguiette
urged the Company to recruit "farmers whose clearing of virgin land
and tilling of the fertile soil would eventually make Louisiana
self-sufficient." These immigrant farmers, mostly foreigners, fared somewhat
better than the pitiful forçats, but only after they finally
reached their destinations. Among these foreigners were
hundred of
German families, some of them Protestants, most of them volunteers,
who had come to make a new home for themselves in the
Louisiana wilderness.203a
Those who received the land grants--always
en roture, never en seigneurie--were known as
concessionaires. Those who worked the land on these
concessions, or who provided skilled labor
or special services for the concessionaires, were called engagés,
akin to the indentured servants of the British Atlantic colonies.
Engagés, whose passage to Louisiana
was paid for by the Company, generally served a contract of three
years, after which they were given a small piece of land either
within the concession to which they had contracted or at some other
place of their choosing, sometimes near relatives or friends.
Along with the land, they also received a cow, four pigs, four
sheep, seven hens, one cock, furniture, and cooking utensils.
If the concession to which they were contracted failed before their
three-year service ended, their contract usually was abrogated, and
they were free to go where they wished. Some of them returned
to France; many remained in Louisiana. By 1721, a year after the Mississippi Bubble burst, an anonymous memoirist,
perhaps a Company official, found 119 concessionaires and 2,462 engagés
still living in the colony. An historian of early Louisiana
notes: "The [concession] tracts were usually stated as being
four leagues square, the maximum size that the company allowed;
however, few of the colonists knew whether this meant two leagues by
two leagues (five miles by five miles) or four leagues by four
leagues (ten miles by ten miles). This was a somewhat moot
point and made very little difference since the assignments or
contracts had conditions for the loss of lands not cleared in the
first three years. None of the concessions ever developed the
manpower to be capable of cleaning either amounts of land." As
a result, "by 1730, most of the land of the concessions returned to
the royal domain."203g
During the brief period before the Bubble burst and for a few months thereafter, concessions
arose on the Gulf coast at New Biloxi, Old Biloxi (Madame de
Mézières), and Pascagoula (Madame de Chaumont); on the river below
New Orleans at
English Turn
(Le Blanc); above New Orleans at
Chapitoulas (Bellisle),
Cannes Brûlé
(Martin Dartaguiette), Taensa (Étienne Demeuves), Bayougoula (Paris Duverny), Baton Rouge (Bernard Dartaguiette,
whose settlement came to be called Dironbourg), Pointe Coupée
(De Mézières),
Tunica (Ste.-Reine), Houma (Marques d'Ancenis),
Natchez (a number of them, including Moulins, Cleracs or
Cleras,
Coly or Kolly, De La Houssaye, Deucher, and Coetlogon), Fort de
St.-Pierre at Yazoo (Le Blanc), and Arkansas (Law's
personal "duchy"); and in the interior on the Red River
above Natchitoches near Caddo (Bernard de La Harpe) and on Black River
(Villemont).
The Company recommended that concession owners grow certain
crops on their land, for food and for trade: tobacco, corn,
wheat, rice, and indigo. Board member Dartaguiette insisted
that "there was an abundance of mulberry trees and silk worms,
needing only hard working men and girls to work at silk-making.
Tobacco, he said, had the potential to rival that grown in Virginia
and in the south of France." He recommended that experts from
established tobacco-growing regions be sent to Louisiana "to
demonstrate and teach the colonists" how to grow, process, and
market the lucrative weed. Most concession owners remained in France,
sending managers to look after their interests and to supervise the
engagés, but even under careful management, most of the concessions failed. A student of early Louisiana
notes, with only slight exaggeration:
"Everybody who could, obtained grants of land, almost of duchy
proportions. To this was added a great deal of imagination,
but in many cases very little work, so many concessions were
abandoned." However, a few concessions succeeded, some of
them impressively, contributing much to the wealth of the colony in more ways than one:203f
The
Côte des
Allemands, Les Allemands, or German Coast, was appropriately named,
but the area where it arose did not begin as a German settlement.
Originally, it was the "temporary" home of the Demeuves
Concession, which was French. The concessionaires and
their engagés, about 80 of them, reached Port Dauphin in August 1718
aboard the flûte Marie and two other ships, the Duchesse
de Noailles and Victoire, but, typically, there were
not enough boats to take them to their grant on the Red River.
As a result, they were forced to remain on Dauphin Island for
several more months.
Finally, giving up on transporting them as far as Red River, Company
officials allowed them to choose a closer site--33 miles above New
Orleans, where an Indian village stood; the site was
called Les Chaouachas, after the Chawasha, who Bienville had
settled there with some Taensa the decade before.
The village site had the advantage of fields already cleared
for the growing of Indian corn. Another reason for locating the Demeuves
Concession there was the existence of another
portage between the river and Lake Pontchartrain, this one
along what the French called Bayou Le Sueur or Le Sueur River, named after the old
prospector from Iberville's day; today's Bayou Trepagnier. Twice as long as Bayou St.-Jean,
but much shorter than the Bayou Manchac/Amite River/Maurepas/Pontchartrain
lakes route,
above it, Bayou La Sueur flowed northeastward into Lake
Pontchartrain, its head waters resting behind the natural levee on
the east bank of the Mississippi near present-day Norco. The Bayou La Sueur portage
allowed easier travel
from Île Dauphin to the Taensa village than did the long, difficult voyage via the mouth of the
river or the short cuts above and below it; this was especially
important because, after managers and engagés reached the
colony, they were responsible for the cost of transportation
to their own concessions. The Demeuves managers and their engagés reached the Taensa village
site in January 1719. The Marie brought more engagés
for the concession the following September, but over the next year
or so the budding enterprise did not do well. In early 1721, on further
examination, "the company probably concluded that the Demeuves
concession, with only [manager] Michel Delaire and a few servants residing,
was virtually abandoned," so they decided to move dozens of German
immigrants, still
languishing at New Biloxi, to this well-positioned site on the lower
river. To protect the site, authorities eventually built two small
stockades, Fort Allemand, or Poste des Allemands, and Fort Tigougou,
at the Bayou Le Sueur portage, the former on the river side, the
latter on the lake side.212
The Germans, recruited in early spring of 1720, numbered close to
4,000 when they reached their port of embarkation. Beginning
in mid-May, at Law's expense (but at the same time that Law
was being ousted from the Regent's ministry), agents escorted the Germans--450
families at first--from their
homes
in Baden, Württemberg, Bavaria, Alsace, and Switzerland, across France to Lorient in Brittany. Those families who were
Lutherans and Calvinists were advised to convert to Catholicism as
soon as possible, or their travel through France could be
problematic.
Some converted; others did not. The various "troops," watched
closely by Company "conductors" or commissaires, were still making
their way across the kingdom in late August. From the Rhine
valley, the Germans followed the Canal de la Marne au Rhin to
the Marne, which took them to the Seine, which they followed to
Paris, from which they headed south on the ancient road to Orléans.
From that ancient city, they followed the Loire through Tours and
Nantes to the port of Paimboeuf, and from there, either by land or
sea, they moved on to Lorient, where their "conductors" reported to
a certain Rigby, commandant of the Breton port. While waiting
for their ships, some of the families stayed in the nearby towns of
Ploemeur and Port-Louis, where, along with Lorient, one can find
baptismal, marriage, and burial records for many of them; sadly,
burials generated most of these sacramental records. One
student of the German Coast settlement contends that many of the
hundreds of Germans who died at Lorient perished from an outbreak of bubonic plague, which struck much of France in 1720 and
lasted for two years. Only five of the Germans converted to
Roman Catholicism while they waited for their ships.213
From Lorient, the destination of the long-suffering Germans would be Law's personal "duchy,"
far up the Mississippi at Arkansas.
However, the first vessel to take some of the families to the colony, the
Deux Frères, did not leave Lorient until December 1720, months
after the Mississippi Bubble burst and about the time that Law was
fleeing from
Paris.
His and all the other concessions reverted to the re-organized Company,
still determined to send the rest of the Germans to Arkansas.
The Deux Frères reached Louisiana in March 1721; sadly, of
the 259 passengers who left Lorient, 225 of them Germans, only 40 survived the
voyage! Other ships that took the Germans from Lorient and
other ports to Louisiana were the Portefaix, out of Le Havre,
with 330 passengers, most of them German, in June 1721 (among the
passengers were Swedish-German officer Karl Friedrich Darensbourg, who brought news
of John Law's flight from Paris); the St.-André, with 161
passengers, in September 1721;
the Durance, which brought 109 Germans, in October 1721;
the Saône, via St.-Domingue, reached Louisiana in late November
1721 with 269 Germans;
and the Garonne with 210 Germans, left Lorient in
January 1721 but, because of the plague, lingered at Brest until
February 1721, losing some of its passengers, reached the waters off St.-Domingue in April, was captured
by the pirate ship Gaillarde in the Bay of Samana, rescued by
an expedition sent out by the governor of St.-Domingue, arrived at
Cap-Français in July, and did not reach Louisiana until early 1722
with only a few Germans still aboard. The Foudroyant,
which arrived with the Deux Frères in March 1721, also may
have carried Germans to the colony. The Charente, out of Lorient, did not go to Louisiana, though some
of the Germans on its passenger list did settle in the colony,
probably having gone there on other ships.214
In Louisiana, the German families were dumped on the barren, "rat-infested" shore at New
Biloxi, where they were forced to fend for themselves while they
awaited passage to Arkansas. At New Biloxi, 500 more colonists,
many of them Germans, died of famine. The food shortage was so
acute that a witness,
Antoine Le Page du Pratz, noted: "The great plenty of oysters,
found upon the coast, saved the lives of some of them, although
obliged to wage almost up to their thighs for them a gun-shot from
the shore. If this food nourished several of them, it threw
numbers into sickness; which was still more heightened by their long
time they were obliged to be in the water." In August 1721,
after word arrived that Law's Company was bankrupt and that Law's Concession now belonged to the restructured Company, the
concession's new manager, Jacques Levens, who had come to the colony
the previous November, set up about a hundred skilled workers,
craftsmen, and engagés at the
Arkansas site,
most, if not all of them, French,
but the remnant of the Germans intended for
the concession still lingered at Biloxi.
Beginning in late summer or early autumn and continuing
into late winter of 1722, agents of the reorganized Company moved the Germans
from Biloxi to the river via Lake Pontchartrain and the Bayou Le
Sueur portage. Unable to provide transportation
for them the rest of the way to Arkansas, or perhaps respecting the
wishes of Commandant General Bienville, who wished to establish more
settlements on that part of the river, the Company
retained the Germans at the Demeuves Concession, 33 miles above New Orleans, and
there the great majority of them remained.217
The original villages of Les Allemands, lying a mile or so
back from the natural levee
on the west bank of the river, were Marienthal, later called the Old
Village; Augsburg; and Wen; another village, Hoffen, was established
later.
The settlement's commander, Karl Friedrich Darensbourg, a
German bachelor who had lived in Sweden most of his life and had
been many times wounded in the Swedish service, came to the colony aboard
the
Portefaix in June 1721, at age 27; his rank in the Company
was "reformed captain" on half pay. His habitation, named Carlstein, also
lay on
the west bank of the river.
In March 1722, a Company official counted 330 settlers at Demeuves,
evidence that most of Law's German recruits had perished on
their long odyssey to the Louisiana wilderness. In May, they
numbered only 247. They, too, were hit hard by the hurricane of
mid-September 1722, which evidently drowned a number of them
when a tidal surge from Lac des Allemands, then called Lac Ouachas,
south of them, slammed into the villages. In December, on a
tour of the river to evaluate the impact of the September storm, the
Company's Inspector General, Bernard Dartaguiette,
visited the Coast. In his report, the Inspector General added this sad
observation: "... there are three little villages of Germans,
commanded by Sr. Darensbourg. They may be about three hundred
in number, including women and children. They are the remnant
of that multitude of Germans whom the Company has sent here and who
have, for the most part, died of destitution." Dartaguiette's report must have shaken Commandant General Bienville.
Soon after reading it, he petitioned the Company's Council of
Administration for permission to move 12 to 15 of the flooded-out
German families to his plantation above the city, where, after
working his land, he would cede some of it to them; the Council
approved the petition. A
general census in November 1724 counted only 161 settlers in 56
families in the
villages on the German Coast, so some of them must have gone up to Bienville's
to accept his offer. One suspects that such a dramatic
reduction in numbers during only two years time reveals also the
terrible damage done by the storm of 1722 and subsequent flooding.
A freshet in the spring of 1724, the year of the general census,
likely had contributed to a number of deaths at Les Allemands.
The plight of the Germans was so dire by 1725 that the parsimonious
Company resorted to issuing to some families advancements of rice to
prevent starvation.219
Despite these terrible early years, the German Coast settlement
thrived ... eventually. By 1724, probably because of flooding, the
old villages of Marienthal and Augsburg were disappearing, the
residents seeking higher ground along the river's natural levee.
After 1724, Germans and Frenchmen also moved across the river to the east bank
and established a new settlement, Ance-aux-Outardes, just above the
Bayou Le Sueur portage. Others moved downriver to Cannes
Brûlé, also on the east bank. By 1731, a census counted 394 settlers
at Les Allemands, including 115 black slaves; none of the old
villages were mentioned, so they probably had
been abandoned by then, the inhabitants, no longer engagés but land
holders, occupying their own long lots fronting the natural levees.
The community, having found its
economic niche as the breadbasket of New Orleans, was growing now by
natural increase. As a recent historian of the community attests:
"The inhabitants of the German villages became farmers on the land,
and ... they saved the early colony from starvation by their skill
in gardening, animal husbandry, and hunting. Scattered among
the German population were a few Frenchmen, some of whom had come
with the Demeuves Concession."220
The
inhabitants of Les Allemands built their first, primitive chapel at Carlstein.
The community was served first by Capuchin Father Philibert de
Viauden, who had come to Louisiana with three other members of his
order in 1722 and who was assigned to minister to the concessions
along the river from Chapitoulas below New Orleans up to Pointe Coupée. Other
Capuchins who served Les Allemands in its earliest days were
Capuchin Fathers
Mathias de Sedan, Hyacinthe de Verdun, and Philippe de Luxembourg.
As revealed in the census of 1724, not all of the German families
were Roman Catholic; of the 58 heads of households counted in the
census, 48 were Catholic, 10 were Lutheran, 4 were Calvinist, and 1
was "unknown." Among the Lutherans was the commandant himself,
Karl Friedrich Darensbourg. The Capuchin superior at
New Orleans, Father Raphaël de Luxembourg, "spoke of a promise by
Darensbourg to convert," but, the good father lamented, "'I fear
that this is only to gain time, but in a little while I shall press
him so hard that he will not be able to trifle with me long.'"
Darensbourg did convert, but not until 1729.215
Concessions above the German Coast included Baton Rouge and Pointe
Coupée, both visited by Iberville and Bienville on their first
exploration of the lower Mississippi. The concession holder
at Baton Rouge was Bernard Dartaguiette, younger brother of Jean-Baptiste-Martin Dartaguiette d'Iron
of Old Mobile fame, who was still in France and serving as an
influential member on the board of the Company of the Indies, while
Bernard served in
Louisiana as the colony's Inspector General. Their youngest
brother Pierre also was serving in the colony as an officer.
Soldiers and engagés, as well as supplies,
for Bernard's concession came on the ship Profond, which
reached Ship Island from La Rochelle in September 1720.
Bernard's concession at Baton Rouge was one of the few that
survived, but it did not evolve into a significant settlement.216
Not so the concession at Pointe Coupée. The first European
settlers there,
from the Hainaut region of Belgium and France, reached the colony,
according to one historian,
aboard the
Loire, the so-called "Mayflower of Louisiana," in 1720, the year
the Bubble burst. They were taken to the De Mézières
Concession near the portage site that Iberville first visited in
1699. In 1722, a Capuchin
missionary, Father Philibert de Viauden, included Pointe Coupée at
the northern end of his rounds along the river. The Pointe
Coupée settlement was so successful that Church
authorities created a parish there, dedicated to St.-François of Assisi, in 1728, but
the settler's did not build a substantial church of their own for
another decade. By 1730, Pointe Coupée had replaced Natchez as
the colony's leading tobacco-producing area.211
Fort Rosalie at Natchez
became more than a far-flung French garrison protecting passage
along the Mississippi. The soil around the fort was fine and
well-drained, and the post stood on a bluff above the Mississippi
flood plain. During the late 1710s, Law's Company allowed
settlers from the lower river to move to Fort Rosalie and establish
tobacco plantations on Natchez territory. Recently-arrived
African slaves worked the soil and harvested the precious weed under
the supervision of tobacco experts brought to the colony from the
south of France as well as the French West Indies.
One of the new concession
holders at Natchez in the early 1720s was former ordonnateur Marc-Antoine Hubert, who named his tobacco
plantation Ste.-Catherine. Hubert not only raised tobacco but
introduced silk production to the colony. After Bienville
moved Louisiana's headquarters from New Mobile to New Orleans in
1723, Hubert, hoping to make Natchez the new center of the colony,
went to France to convince the Company officials to move the capital
from New Orleans. His efforts failed, and he died soon after
he returned to Ste.-Catherine. Another important
concessionaire at Natchez was Antoine Le Page du Pratz, a
Dutchman of French heritage, who came to Louisiana in 1720 and
received a land grant on Bayou St.-Jean before moving up to Natchez.
Le Page du Pratz returned to New Orleans in 1728 to take charge of a
Company plantation there. Back in France, he became one of the most important chroniclers of
early Louisiana ethnography, especially of the Natchez.
Another Natchez concessionaire was Jacques Cantrelle of
Picardy, who had lived at first on the Arkansas concession.
After it failed, he settled at Natchez, where his wife, Théressé
Marquant, served as the settlement's midwife.
The largest
plantations at Natchez were Hubert's Ste.-Catherine, and Terre
Blanche, near the Natchez village of Pomme Blanche. For a dozen years, Fort Rosalie and its satellite
plantations led the colony in tobacco production. But there was a price to
pay for the intensive cultivation of an area still occupied by a
large, powerful tribe. In 1722 and again in 1723, during
Bienville's last years as commandant, "war"
broke out between aggrieved Natchez and belligerent local Frenchmen, but
Bienville and
the tribe's war chiefs managed to prevent a full-blown conflict. By
mid-decade, however (after Bienville's recall), many Natchez, drawn to the white man's goods, were deeply indebted
to local French traders. At the same time, the French brought Old World
diseases that decimated the Indian population. The tribe's principal
chief, the Great Sun, died in 1728, and his successor, the Young
Sun, cared little for the French.221
In spite of its remote
location relative to the settlements along the Mississippi, Natchitoches, thanks to intelligent
leadership, became an indispensable asset to the colony. In July 1719, Bienville, reportedly "against his will," appointed Natchitoches's founder, Louis Juchereau de St.-Denis,
to succeed Philippe Blondel as commander of Fort St.-Jean-Baptiste.
Ignoring Spanish mercantilist policy and the presence of a
substantial Spanish force at Los Adaes, so close to his post, St.-Denis--he with the Spanish wife--restored commercial ties with the missions in
East Texas. After war with Spain ended in the early 1720s, St.-Denis
sought a lasting peace in the region between the French and Spanish,
something he managed to achieve despite the odds against it.
As a result, the Spanish reduced the size of their garrison at Los Adaes in
1730. Five years later, dissatisfied with the location of the
original post, St.-Denis moved Fort St.-Jean-Baptiste to the west
bank of the river, where a Spanish observation post had stood for
years. By then, with its growing population, including
many black slaves, Natchitoches had become an important
tobacco-producing area as well as a center for regional
trade.
Like his old commander Bienville, St.-Denis also was named a Chevalier of the Order of St.-Louis.
He served as commandant at Natchitoches for a quarter century, until his death in June 1744,
at age 70.222
.
The reorganized Company of the Indies wisely retained Bienville as
commandant general in 1722, but soon after he moved the headquarters
to New Orleans, he was recalled to France "for
consultation." The Company also nullified his land grants
along the Mississippi. One of Bienville's biographers explains
the commandant's sudden fall from grace:
"Being of the gens d'épée, this Le Moyne was not attractive
to the new commercial managers who were sending out gends de
plume and company men to control the colony. Always
tempted to feel a paternal or proprietary right over Louisiana,
Bienville was obliged to sail in the summer of 1725 for the mother
country he hardly knew; the company judged that 'it was not suitable
to its interests' to retain him in office in Louisiana." The
biographer goes on: "Controller General Charles-Gaspard Dodun,
head of the Conseil des Indes, understood the company's position,
and explained to Maurepas," the new Minister of Marine, "that
Bienville was 'a man of courage and a good officer; (and that)
although it would not be good for him to go back as commandant,
there is in this position no attack on his honour or honesty, and he
could indeed be capable of serving well in all other posts to which
you might name him.'" One can imagine Bienville's frustration as he waited
in France for the new Minister of Marine to grant him his next assignment.
Bienville turned 45 in 1725, and he was still a bachelor. He
had spent 26 years--more than half of his life--serving in
Louisiana.218
Bienville's temporary replacement was an old hand in the colony: Pierre Du
Guay, sieur de Boisbriant, who, with Bienville's brother
Châteauguay, had served Louisiana so well since the days of
Iberville. It was during Boisbriant's tenure as temporary
commandant, on 10 September 1724, that the Company of the Indies
read, recorded, and published in New Orleans a Code Noir, or Black Code, for
Louisiana, based on the 1685 Code for the West Indies. "The
provisions of the Code were derived from well-established French
precedents and practices regulating vagabonds, beggars, apprentices,
children and wives, in other words, members of the lower orders or
persons unfit to act for themselves. Neither humanitarian nor
racist, the Code reflected the French monarchy's preoccupation with
order, centralization, and unity, as well as its belief that the
American colonies should be 'New Frances' ... 'a transatlantic
France, closely united to the fatherland, with a population enjoying
all the rights of Frenchmen.'" Why was such a Code necessary
for Louisiana in 1724? Five years before, the Company had
imported 450 Africans into the colony, 126 more in 1720, and 869 in
1721. These were not the first Africans to come to
Louisiana--Iberville and Bienville had brought a few black slaves
from Havana and St.-Domingue
to Old Mobile
two decades before--but never before had Africans been imported in such
numbers. The Black Code was issued for another compelling
reason: the purging of Jews and Protestants from Louisiana.
No Jews had come to the colony, at least none who had the temerity
to proclaim their faith, but among the Germans who had arrived in
1720-21 were dozens of Lutherans and Calvinists. "The
[original] Code [was] in part a religious document, promulgated the
same year as the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and drawn up with
the same intent: achieving religious unity which was
considered indispensable for civil peace." German Protestants
were welcome as engagés and even concessionaires who could help to
enrich the colony, but the Capuchin missionaries headquartered in
New Orleans were determined to convert them all. The
Black Code was as important as overweening righteousness in their
campaign against heresy.226
The Company would have been wise to keep the
experienced, level-headed Boisbriant as commandant general, but the
board of directors saw fit to recommend someone else. Bienville's successor was Étienne Boucher de
Périer, commissioned in August 1726 in France. To prepare the way for
Périer, the Company directors purged a number of so-called Bienvillists at
Mobile and New Orleans.
The new commissaire-ordonnateur would be Jacques de la
Chaise, who came to New Orleans in 1725. Périer reached New
Orleans in 1727 and bickered constantly with the new
ordonnateur--soon to be the norm in Louisiana government.
Périer also had to deal with a Superior Council coming into its own.223
Except for the constant bickering with La Chaise and an ill-advised
favoritism towards officers who did not deserve it, Périer's
administration went smoothly at first. Then, in Périer's
second year as commandant general, the colony was driven to its
knees.
In the summer of 1729, the
unpopular and tyrannical commandant at Fort Rosalie, Captain Detchéparre, a
favorite of Périer, went looking
for land near the fort on which to build his own plantation. He chose the
site of the Grand Village of the Natchez and ordered the Indians to move.
The Natchez, who numbered at least 1,200 in their several villages, demurred.
The captain would
not back down, and so the Natchez asked him for a few month's time to bring in
their harvest. The Natchez had occupied the site of the Grand Village for
generations, and it had been occupied by other tribes for countless generations
before them. Giving up the site would require the dismantling of the house
of their chief, the Young Sun, and, most troubling of all, moving the sacred
temple of the Suns, which held the tribe's eternal flame, from the mound on
which it stood for as long as they had lived there.
The proud Natchez had
endured enough French intrusion on their tribal grounds.
On November 28, with British encouragement and the help of local African slaves,
a large band of warriors turned on the unsuspecting French and killed or
captured most of the settlers at Fort Rosalie. Captain Detchéparre was the
first of 144 men, 35 women, and 56 children to die in the attack--approximately
10 percent of Louisiana's European population! Owing to
the distance of the settlement from New Orleans, French retaliation under
Commandant Périer was slow and hesitant.
When it came, the Natchez slipped across the river to the western bank and
headed north to the Black River. For two years, the French and their Indian allies,
including the Choctaw, Tunica, and Caddo, attacked the Natchez refugees and their
Chickasaw benefactors wherever they could find them, and recaptured or killed the Africans
who had aided the Indians. The French showed no mercy to the errant
Indians.
In 1731, a combined French and Spanish force under Louis Juchereau
de St.-Denis
attacked
a party of Natchez who had retreated to the Natchitoches area.
St.-Denis
sent the survivors, including captured chiefs and their
families, under heavy guard to Périer, who promptly
shipped them off to Cap-Français, St.-Domingue, where
they were sold into slavery.
The tribe's remnants sought refuge among the Chickasaw and eventually
with the Alibamons and the Cherokee, now seen as enemies of the French.
Meanwhile, at New
Orleans, French authorities suppressed a black slave conspiracy just
before it broke out into open rebellion.223a
But the 1729 attack and the
cost of retaliation had taken its toll on the French as well.
Fears of more Indian and African uprisings panicked the population.
The Company of the Indies, seeing no chance of profiting from a
colony torn by bloody strife, beseeched the young King, Louis XV, to
revoke its charter and reassume administration of the colony.
The King and his ministers complied, and, by the summer of 1731, Louisiana
was a royal colony again. Jacques de la Chaise was removed as
commissaire-ordonnateur,
Edmé Gatien Salmon replaced him. The Company retained Périer for now, his
title changing from commandant general to royal governor.224
The ecclesiastical picture also had changed since Bienville had left the
colony. Now, in 1733, serving the religious needs of
the residents of lower Louisiana
were a series of unprepossessing churches visited by Capuchin
priests of the Champagne Province, headquartered at New Orleans.
The city had its St.-Louis parish, created in 1719 and administered
now by the Capuchin superior, or vicar general, who still answered
to the Bishop of Québec, but the first church had not been dedicated
at New Orleans until April 1727. Only St.-Louis parish could
boast a resident pastor. When the Company had sent the
Capuchins to Louisiana in 1723, they had expected them to minister
to the Indians as well, but so few were sent that they could not
do it. So, in February 1726, the Company had secured via
"treaty" with the Capuchin order the restoration of Jesuit missions
among the Indians not only in Illinois but also in lower Louisiana,
with the Capuchins retaining the French posts throughout the colony.
One happy result was that priests finally were serving as
missionaries among the Chickasaw and Alibamon, tribes long at
odds with the French in Louisiana. The new Jesuit superior for Louisiana, Father Ignatius de Beaubois,
a favorite of Bienville's if not of the Bishop of Québec, had established a Jesuit chapel at the
order's plantation just above New Orleans, on land once owned by
Bienville; the agreement with the Capuchins had stipulated that the
Jesuits would perform no religious services at New Orleans, so the
chapel was essential for the Jesuit Fathers' daily observances.
Before he had returned to France, Bienville had urged Father de
Beaubois to secure nuns for the hospital at New Orleans, and the
black robe had succeeded magnificently. In late July 1727, the
colony had been blessed with the arrival at Balize of 10 Ursuline
Sisters from their convents at Rouen and several other communities.
The Sisters not only worked at the city hospital but also had opened
a school for girls at their house on Chartres Street--the first
school of any kind anywhere in the colony. The Ursulines were
the first of many orders of nuns who would come to Louisiana in the
following decades. In the
New Orleans area, mission chapels stood downriver at Balize, built in 1722,
and
upriver at Chapitoulas, built in 1724. Above
Chapitoulas, the
chapel at Les Allemands, not much more than a shed, still stood at Carlstein. Pointe Coupée had received its own parish,
dedicated to St.-François, in 1727, but they would not receive a
regular pastor for a few more years. On the Red River at
Natchitoches,
as they had
done before the French sacked their mission in June 1719, Spanish
priests from Los Adaes resumed administering the sacraments at the
isolated French post in the early 1720s, until Natchitoches could
receive a priest of its own. This was not until 1728, when the
Capuchin superior in New Orleans had sent Father Maximin as a missionary to
the Red River. Language barriers notwithstanding, the Franciscans at Los Adaes
had
continued to serve the French at Natchitoches after Father Maximin
had moved on to Natchez in 1729. A temporary church structure
had appeared at
the original site of the Poste des Natchitoches in c1730, and another one would
be
rebuilt on the post's new site later in the decade. The parish
church at Natchitoches, like the one at Pointe Coupée, would be dedicated to St.-François.227
.
The colony's relations with the Indians also had changed
dramatically, and not for the better, after Bienville's return to France. "When ... Bienville was reappointed[sic]
governor of Louisiana in 1733 he faced a daunting challenge:
the reconstruction of Louisiana in the aftermath of the Natchez
uprising. The Company of the Indies had disavowed the colony;
the Indians threatened it at every turn; and the English seemed
poised on the brink of total victory in the Anglo-French contest for
the allegiance of the Southeastern Indians. Bienville's
herculean task was to repair this dangerous situation and restore
Louisiana to it former position as a major power in the region."
Although France and Britain still were a part of the Regent's Triple
Alliance with Holland, the English and Huguenots of South Carolina
and Georgia, the latter colony founded only the year before Bienville's
return, thought nothing of such agreements cobbled together in
Europe. They had their
own local issues with the French and Spanish in Louisiana and
Florida. As long as British
colonial traders, still seeking deerskins and, especially, Indian slaves,
were determined to maintain their hold on the Alibamon and the Chickasaw and were just as determined to lure the Choctaw away from
the French, Indian wars by proxy were unavoidable.229
The only bright spot in the dark picture of French-Chickasaw
relations was the presence of a small pro-French party among the
tribal chiefs. Courseac, leader of the Chickasaw peace party, had gone to
Fort Toulouse to tell the commander there, one Benoit, that
he, Courseac, wanted peace. The chief agreed that the Natchez
should become the slaves of the French for having shed so much
French blood. He informed Commander Benoit that the
Natchez who had taken refuge near the Chickasaw town were being used
as menials there. Courseac offered to go to Mobile to report
to the governor himself. Commander Benoit reminded
Courseac that until all of the Natchez at Chickasaw were
surrendered to the French, there could be no peace with his tribe.
Bienville was not happy with Benoit's performance and
reprimanded him "for not demanding the heads of at least some
Natchez as a sign of good faith." Bienville refused to treat
with Courseac, though he allowed him to go down to Mobile. The
French governor, with the dignity of his own nation in mind, would
treat only with all of the Chickasaw leaders at once so that he could overawe
them with eloquence and dire threats.230a
Information arrived that gave the governor a clearer picture of the
condition of the defeated Natchez. He learned from the Tunica
"that the Natchez were divided into three groups. One group,
the weakest, was hiding in the deep forests not far from their old
fort. A second group, larger than the first, was staying along
the Mississippi near the Yazoo River. A third party, the most
numerous, was living with the Chickasaws, who had allowed the
refugees to build their own village just south of the main Chickasaw
village."
Bienville learned through military channels that there were about 60
Natchez living among the Chickasaw. The Minister recommended
an attack against the Chickasaw from Illinois, but Bienville was
alerted to trouble in that quarter as well as in the country above
Mobile. Old allies of
the French, the Illinois and the Miami, were said to be succumbing
to British traders because the French could not satisfy their
needs. To resolve this problem, Bienville sent an acquaintance
from Old Mobile days
and
"one of the colony's most able officers,"
Pierre Dartaguiette, younger brother of
Jean-Baptiste-Martin Dartaguiette d'Iron, as major
at Illinois. The
Alibamon, no longer at war with the French, were quarreling with the Mobilians again,
which threatened the peace at Fort Toulouse, located at the
confluence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers, in the heart
of Alibamon territory. At the same time, the
Tallapoosa, cousins of the Alibamon and longtime allies of the British, were trying to lure the
Choctaw away from the French.231
The Choctaw, those essential allies, were complaining about the
dearth of presents they had been receiving from the French--a
neglect likely to continue now that Louisiana was a
victim, again, of royal parsimony. Périer, especially with
Company largesse, "had accustomed them to his generosity," or at
least promises of generosity. Bienville was determined to do
more than promise--he saw no choice but to increase the amount of
presents for the Choctaw chiefs, "especially when France's enemies
were ready to take up the slack." Périer also had weakened
French ties with the Choctaw by his ill-advised policy of creating
new chiefs within the tribe. Jesuit Father Michel Baudouin,
working among the Chickasaw, counted 111 chiefs among the Choctaw, "each with his own
party, and every one of them extremely difficult to influence at
all." As a result, the grand chief, "who had little authority
at the best of times, was barely able to maintain a semblance of
order only because the French would communicate with the nation only
through him." Moreover, each chief demanded his share of
presents, which placed a greater burden on French resources to keep
them happy. No matter, the Choctaw, for now, seemed more than
happy to join tribes from the north in making war against their old
enemy. Bienville hoped that constant harassment of the
Chickasaw might force them to leave their homeland along the river
so that "the French would be able to use the Ohio and Mississippi
rivers in almost complete safety."232
But would such a strategy be enough to neutralize such a powerful
enemy? The King and Minister agreed with Bienville that
volunteer removal would be preferred. If Bienville could
manage to make peace with the Chickasaw, "the terms should be hard."
If Bienville was forced to attack them, forces from Canada as well
as lower Louisiana must cooperate in the venture, and it must be
done in autumn. However, until the Illinois could be appeased,
an offensive against the Chickasaw was out of the question.
The King approved the construction of a stone edifice to replace the
wooden stockade at Fort de Chartes in Illinois as well as young
Dartaguiette's appointment to command there, and Bienville had to
promise not to attack the Chickasaw until the Illinois had been
returned to the French orbit of influence.233
Bienville had to make no such promises in dealing with the remnants
of the Natchez. He had been in France in November 1729 when
that tribe had massacred 235 French settlers, including 35 women and
56 children. Bienville was determined to hunt down every
single member of the tribe that he once had befriended.
Learning of the location of the three refugee bands, in the summer
of 1733, only a few months after his return, he sent a Sieur Juzant
to the woods near Natchez to destroy the remnant there. Living
in constant fear of French retaliation, the Natchez were on constant
alert and managed to elude the French, who captured only an old
woman too feeble to get away. She told them that her tribe,
once numbering in the thousands, had only 200 warriors left.
In July 1733, Bienville sent the commandant at Fort Rosalie, an
officer named Coustilhac, with a small party of soldiers and 20
Ofogoula, to attack the Natchez at Yazoo. The French and
Indians surprised a small Natchez hunting party, killed three
warriors, keeping their heads for Bienville, and learned from the
captured women that the scattered Natchez, hearing that Bienville
had returned, hoped to meet with him at Fort Rosalie or New Orleans
to beg for peace. Needless to say, any Natchez who went to
Fort Rosalie or New Orleans to parlay with the French would have
ended up on a ship to the West Indies, or worse.234
The following autumn, Bienville ordered the first major offensive
against the Chickasaw who were harboring Natchez. His goal was
to drive the Chickasaw from their villages and destroy their crops
so that they could not survive the winter. The attacking force
would consist of a thousand Choctaw led by Bienville's nephew,
Jean-Paul Le Sueur, son of the old prospector, and 20 French
soldiers. Unfortunately, so many of the soldiers became ill
that only the Choctaw were able to launch the attack.
Bienville postponed the offensive until the French could muster more
troops, and then he made the mistake of sending a friendly Choctaw
chief, perhaps one of Périer's creations, to a Chickasaw village
with an offer for peace while the French and the large force of
Choctaw attacked another village. The friendly chief arrived
at the Chickasaw village as planned, after a Carolina trader had
arrived with presents for the Chickasaw. The Choctaw was so
enamored of the English goods that he revealed Bienville's plans to
the Chickasaw before hurrying back to his own village to tell his
people about the plethora of English goods that the Carolina trader
had promised them. Comparing the quality of goods the English offered
them, to what they had
received from the French, other Choctaw chiefs made peace with the
Chickasaw, followed by many of the small coastal tribes. Now
French relations with the regional tribes were shakier than ever!
Worst of all, "The French position relative to the Choctaws had
never been so bad." Needless to say, when the young Le Sueur
went among the Choctaw to recruit men for his offensive against
the Chickasaw, he met with strong resistance. Haranguing them
about their long friendship with Bienville and all that the governor
had done for them, he cowed the older warriors, but the younger ones
showed no interest in past relationships. They pointed out
that the English at that very moment had a ship at Mobile trading
with the French. Le Sueur managed to recruit 500 warriors, but
so many of them deserted on the way to the Chickasaw villages he had no choice but to call off the attack.235
Bienville was stunned by these developments. At the annual
distribution of the presents at Mobile later that autumn, he met the
Choctaw delegation not as a whole, as usual, but in four separate
bands two weeks apart. His excuse for the change was "not to
expose the women and children to enemy attacks," but his true
motive was to minimize the usual haughty behavior towards him and
his officers--treating with smaller groups meant more French
control. He then distributed the presents unevenly, giving
more to faithful chiefs and none to those whose loyalty he
questioned. "When less faithful chiefs asked where were their
presents, Bienville asked them where were the heads of their
enemies?"236
Bienville's ploy worked. Later in the year, the spurned
Choctaw, under the powerful chief Alabama Mingo, brought in 45
Chickasaw scalps--"the heads of their enemies." Bienville
learned from the scalp-takers that the Chickasaw, facing attack from
French allies north and south, had abandoned their tradition
villages and taken refuge inside palisade forts; the scalp-takers
had attacked one of the forts near Chatala. Playing on
Chickasaw pride, the Choctaw had lured many of them from behind
their stockade and into an ambush, hence the dozens of fresh scalps
for the governor. Unfortunately for the Choctaw, but
fortunately for the French, one of Chief Alabama Mingo's brothers
and the son of another grand chief had fallen in the fight;
the Choctaw had no choice now but to take revenge. One of
their chiefs declared to Bienville that he and his warriors would
return to Chatala and take many more scalps as well as slaves.
Bienville now had his war by proxy between the two powerful tribes.237
But not all the news was good news. Bienville learned that the
Alibamon had told the Chickasaw that help was on its way, not from
the Alibamon, who were still avoiding conflict with the French, but
from a large convoy from the British colonies filled with enough "goods, arms, and
ammunition sufficient for a large party." This could mean only
one thing--a Chickasaw counter-attack against the Choctaw and
perhaps against the French settlements on the river as well.
In the spring of 1734, Bienville learned from another officer who
had spent time at the Choctaw village of Tuscaloosa that Carolina traders were back among
the Choctaw as well--specifically, at the southern village of Chief
Grand Fanimingo, who not only treated with the Carolinians but also
agreed to accompany them to the villages of other tribes.
Bienville called in the loyal Choctaw chiefs to prevent further
inroads by the British and coaxed a young Yazoo warrior, married to
a Choctaw woman, to assassinate Grand Fanimingo. But there was good
news as well. Some Shawnee from the north, who had moved down
into Alibamon country, had attacked a party of Choctaw and Chickasaw, killing 10 of them. "Such attacks,
when successful, usually inspired imitation. A number of these
would help render France's Choctaw allies more vulnerable to their
enemies, and thus more 'tractable'" to entreaties from the
French.238
Bienville also had to address more mundane matters in the
colony's Indian policy, especially the bounty his officers were
paying for Chickasaw scalps. He
knew from what he had read in the colony's account books, as well as
from the anecdotal evidence he could gather, that Périer and his
officers had been paying too much for scalps of every kind.
Bienville urged his officers and Jesuit Father Baudouin, still among
the Chickasaw, to discern the number of enemy warriors killed in
each foray so that bounties were rewarded for actual damage to
Chickasaw fighting strength.239
Bienville's parsimoniousness could not be avoided. The
colony's resources, even for defense, were severely limited.
This was demonstrated in an exchange between the governor and one of
his officers, Bernard Dartaguiette, commander at Mobile, during the troubles with the
Choctaw in 1734. Dartaguiette proposed the construction of a
fort on the Tombigbee River in Choctaw territory, a promise made to
the tribe by Iberville, Bienville, and Dartaguiette's elder brother
from the earliest days of the colony. Bienville demurred.
"Even if the fort were necessary," and Bienville no longer believed
that it was, he did not have the funds to build it nor "the men to
staff it."240
Bienville soon learned that the younger Dartaguiette had not
inherited the qualities of the elder brother. During the
summer of 1734, Bienville learned that Red Shoes, a troublesome
chief among the Choctaw, was on his way to Carolina to treat with
British colonial authorities! Bienville ordered Dartaguiette
to keep an eye on the situation while organizing a coordinated
attack of French soldiers and friendly Choctaw against the Chickasaw
villages. Despite Bienville's note of urgency, Dartaguiette
delayed his departure from Mobile to the Choctaw villages. Meanwhile,
most of the Choctaw chiefs spurned the Carolinians and prepared for
their grand offensive against the Chickasaw. Bienville
promptly sent a message to Dartaguiette, in whom he seems to have
lost trust, to cancel his visit to the Choctaw so as not to alarm
them. Bienville's message arrived too late. When
Dartaguiette reached the Choctaw villages, he mistrusted their
friendly greetings. Convinced that they were about to seal an
alliance with the British, he stood up during a grand council and
"informed the stunned Choctaw chiefs and notables that the shades of
their ancestors had appeared to him in a dream and warned of
impending disaster for the Choctaws if they did not hold fast to
their true friends the French." The Choctaw insisted that they
were about to attack the Chickasaw, not treat with the British.
They asked Dartaguiette to lead them into battle, but he declined,
using the inane excuse that "he had no authority to do this."
He suggested that they turn for leadership to
Jean-Paul Le Sueur. Dartaguiette later informed the Minister
of Marine that he declined the command because he was not "sanguine
for the expedition's success."
Despite the French officer's dire prediction, the Choctaw gathered a
force of 1,000 to 1,200 warriors and followed Le Sueur to the
nearest Chickasaw enclosure. They approached the enemy's camp
so closely that they could hear the Chickasaw war songs, which
normally would have thrown the Choctaw into a frenzy of vengeance,
but instead it unnerved them even further, and they chose to retreat
instead of attack. Le Sueur did his best to lead them into
battle, but fear already had taken hold of them. They dropped
their weapons and hurried from the field. Unable to rally them
with promises and curses, Le Sueur and his men decided to attack the
Chickasaw on their own. The Choctaw seized Le Sueur to save
him from the spirits, forcing him and his men to join them in their
flight, which covered 20 leagues in a single day without stopping
for rest.241
Dartaguiette blamed Le Sueur and Father Baudouin for the failed
offensive, but Bienville, the old Indian fighter, knew better.
He informed the Minister in a September message that Dartaguiette
"had no real plan or policy for governing the Indians, and that he
lacked every one of the qualifications necessary for that crucial
task." Unfortunately, this would not be the last time that
Bienville would lock horns with this troublesome officer.242
With the Choctaw alliance in shambles again, Bienville beseeched the
Minister for reinforcements to his French Marines and to the company
of Swiss mercenaries who manned the colony's garrisons. The
Swiss companies, first four and later five, commanded by Colonel
François Karrer, were recruited for St.-Domingue, Martinique, and
Île Royale in 1719, but these excellent soldiers did not come to Louisiana until
1731, at the end of the Law period. Many of the men in
Karrer's companies were in fact Germans and had been recruited in
some of the same provinces as the German settlers who had come to
Louisiana in 1721. When their
enlistments ended, Karrer's men, with much encouragement, tended to remain in the colony,
especially at Les Allemands, where they often married fellow Germans.
Bienville could see this only as a positive good; without
reinforcements for his "regular" units, he would be forced to rely
on militia, which he feared "would be difficult and disruptive to
the general tranquility of the colony"; former Swiss mercenaries in
the militia would be most beneficial to the colony.243
In France, the King and Minister mulled over events in
Louisiana, and they were alarmed by what they were hearing.
The King chided Bienville for the failure of
the attack against the Chickasaw. He asked Bienville to choose
the best policy to pursue against the troublesome tribe: a
campaign with combined forces of French and Indians, a war by Indian
proxy, or a negotiated peace. Before Bienville could respond,
the King decided that the Chickasaw must be destroyed. Louis
XV reasoned that, continental dynastic
rivalries being what they were, conditions for peace in Europe could
evaporate at any moment, and
the long peace with Britain, now 15 years old, also could end
suddenly. If the general peace ended before Bienville
could destroy the Chickasaw and the Natchez remnants, the British
would have a powerful ally athwart the line of communication between
lower Louisiana and Illinois.244
The Minister's messages to Bienville reflecting the King's decisions
were dated 1 December 1734 but could not reach New Orleans until many weeks later.
The harried governor could not have been happy with what the
Minister's messages contained: "Bienville should practice all
economy possible in planning the campaign" against the Chickasaw and
Natchez, "but at the same time he should make any expenditure
necessary to ensure its success. In another letter of the same
date Maurepas informed Bienville that he could not at present
procure for him the royal favors that he had requested. News
of the defeat of the Chickasaws, however, would surely result in the
royal good will." What could be clearer: the Chickasaw
must be destroyed.245
That winter, Bienville was given another chance to treat with the
Chickasaw. While he was at Mobile distributing the annual
presents to his Indian allies, half a dozen Alibamon appeared at
Fort Condé carrying a message from a delegation of Chickasaw chiefs
waiting at their village. The Chickasaw demanded that
Bienville allow them to move down to Mobile "to ask for peace."
Bienville sent word back to the Chickasaw that he would receive them
only if they brought the heads of the Natchez who lived among them.
When the chiefs said they were willing to do this, Bienville allowed
them to come down to Mobile. Meeting with the governor
face-to-face, the chiefs offered one excuse after another for not
having brought any Natchez scalps with them. Seeing that
Bienville would not be moved on the issue, they asked for three
months time to comply with his wishes, but only if he asked the
Choctaw not to attack them during that time. Knowing that the
Choctaw were not ready to take the warpath, Bienville acceded.
He "had good reason to believe the Chickasaw offer to make peace was
genuine and sincere. The Chickasaws had killed few Frenchmen
in recent years, yet had been under constant pressure from both
north and south, talking peace at all was totally out of character
for them. Their willingness to consider killing the Natchez
was further evidence for their humiliation. The Natchez
bolstered Chickasaw fighting strength with badly needed numbers, and
the loss of those numbers made the Chickasaws vulnerable to their
many enemies. But if they did not satisfy the French, they
knew, the guerilla war being waged against them would not end, and
they feared being destroyed through attrition as well. Either
way, they would no longer be a threat to Louisiana. The
declaration of war on the Chickasaws, Bienville knew, would mean
vast expenditures which the government could ill afford."246