Volume I Part 19 (2/2)

Accusations were renewed against Bienville, till in 1724 he was ordered to France to give account of his conduct, and the Sieur Perier was sent out to take his place. Perier had no easy task. The Natchez Indians, among whom the French had made a settlement and built a fort called Fort Rosalie, suddenly rose on their white neighbors and ma.s.sacred nearly all of them.[315] Then followed a long course of Indian wars. The French believed that there was a general conspiracy among the southern tribes for their destruction,--though this was evidently an exaggeration of the danger, which, however, was serious. The Chickasaws, a brave and warlike people, living chiefly in what is now western Tennessee and Kentucky, made common cause with the Natchez, while the more numerous Choctaws, most of whose villages were in the present State of Mississippi, took part with the French. More than a thousand soldiers had been sent to Louisiana; but Perier p.r.o.nounced them ”so bad that they seem to have been made on purpose for the colony.”[316] There were also about eight hundred militia. Perier showed little vigor, and had little success. His chief resource was to set the tribes against one another. He reports that his Indian allies had brought him a number of Natchez prisoners, and that he had caused six of them, four men and two women, to be burned alive, and had sent the rest as slaves to St. Domingo. The Chickasaws, aided by English traders from the Carolinas, proved formidable adversaries, and when attacked, ensconced themselves in stockade forts so strong that, as the governor complains, there was no dislodging the defenders without cannon and heavy mortars.

In this state of things the directors of the Mississippi Company, whose affairs had gone from bad to worse, declared that they could no longer bear the burden of Louisiana, and begged the King to take it off their hands. The colony was therefore transferred from the mercantile despotism of the Company to the paternal despotism of the Crown, and it profited by the change. Commercial monopoly was abolished. Trade between France and Louisiana was not only permitted, but encouraged by bounties and exemption from duties; and instead of paying to the Company two hundred per cent of profit on indispensable supplies, the colonists now got them at a reasonable price.

Perier was removed, and again Bienville was made governor. Diron d'Artaguette, who came with him as intendant, reported that the colonists were flying the country to escape starvation, and Bienville adds that during the past year they had subsisted for three months on the seed of reeds and wild gra.s.ses.[317] The white population had rather diminished than increased during the last twelve years, while the blacks, who had lately conspired to ma.s.sacre all the French along the Mississippi, had multiplied to two thousand.[318] A French writer says: ”There must have been a worm gnawing the root of the tree that had been transplanted into so rich a soil, to make it wither instead of growing.

What it needed was the air of liberty.” But the air of liberty is malaria to those who have not learned to breathe it. The English colonists throve in it because they and their forefathers had been trained in a school of self-control and self-dependence; and what would have been intoxication for others, was vital force to them.

Bienville found the colony again threatened with a general rising, or, as he calls it, a revolt, of the Indian tribes. The Carolina traders, having no advantage of water-ways, had journeyed by land with pack-horses through a thousand miles of wilderness, and with the aid of gifts had instigated the tribes to attack the French. The Chickasaws especially, friends of the English and arch-enemies of Louisiana, became so threatening that a crus.h.i.+ng blow against them was thought indispensable. The forces of the colony were mustered to attempt it; the enterprise was mismanaged, and failed completely.[319] Bienville tried to explain the disaster, but his explanation was ill received at court; he was severely rebuked, reproved at the same time for permitting two families to emigrate to St. Domingo, and sharply ordered to suffer n.o.body to leave Louisiana without express license from Versailles.

Deeply wounded, he offered his resignation, and it was accepted.

Whatever his failings, he had faithfully served the colony, and gained from posterity the t.i.tle of Father of Louisiana.

With the help of industrious nursing,--or, one might almost say, in spite of it,--Louisiana began at last to strike roots into the soil and show signs of growth, though feebly as compared with its st.u.r.dy rivals along the Atlantic seaboard, which had cost their King nothing, and had been treated, for the most part, with the coolest neglect. Cavelier de la Salle's dream of planting a firm settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi, and utilizing, by means of it, the resources of the vast interior, was, after half a century, in some measure realized. New France (using that name in its broadest geographical sense) had now two heads,--Canada and Louisiana; one looking upon the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the other upon the Gulf of Mexico. Canada was not without jealousy of her younger and weaker sister, lest she might draw away, as she had begun to do at the first, some of the most active and adventurous elements of the Canadian population; lest she might prove a compet.i.tor in the fur-trade; and lest she should encroach on the Illinois and other western domains, which the elder and stronger sister claimed as her own.

These fears were not unfounded; yet the vital interests of the two French colonies were the same, and each needed the help of the other in the prime and all-essential task of keeping the British colonies in check. The chiefs of Louisiana looked forward to a time when the great southern tribes,--Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and even the dreaded Chickasaws,--won over by French missionaries to the Church, and therefore to France, should be turned against the encroaching English to stop their westward progress and force them back to the borders of the Atlantic. Meanwhile the chiefs of Canada were maturing the plan--pursued with varying a.s.siduity, but always kept in view--of connecting the two vital extremities of New France by a chain of forts to control the pa.s.ses of the West, keep communications open, and set English invasion at defiance.

FOOTNOTES:

[287] _Henri de Tonty a Cabart de Villermont, 11 Septembre, 1694_ (Margry, iv. 3).

[288] _Memoire sur le Projet d'establir une nouvelle Colonie au Mississippi, 1697_ (Margry, iv. 21).

[289] _Iberville au Ministre, 18 Juin, 1698_ (Margry, iv. 51).

[290] _Memoire pour servir d'Instruction au Sieur d'Iberville_ (Margry, iv. 72).

[291] _Journal d'Iberville_ (Margry, iv. 131).

[292] This letter, which D'Iberville gives in his Journal, is dated ”Du Village des Quinip.i.s.sas, le 20 Avril, 1685.” Iberville identifies the Quinip.i.s.sas with the Bayagoulas. The date of the letter was evidently misread, as Tonty's journey was in 1686. See ”La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West,” 455, _note_. Iberville's lieutenant, Sugeres, commanding the ”Marin,” gives the date correctly. _Journal de la Fregate le Marin_, 1698, 1699 (Margry, iv.).

[293] _Journal du Voyage du Chevalier d'Iberville sur le Vaisseau du Roy la Renommee en 1699_ (Margry, iv. 395).

[294] Gayarre, _Histoire de la Louisiane_ (1846), i. 69. Benard de la Harpe, _Journal historique_ (1831), 20. c.o.xe says, in the preface to his _Description of Carolana_ (1722), that ”the present proprietor of Carolana, my honour'd Father, ... was the author of this English voyage to the Mississippi, having in the year 1698 equipp'd and fitted out Two s.h.i.+ps for Discovery by Sea, and also for building a Fortification and settling a Colony by land; there being in both vessels, besides Sailors and Common Men, above Thirty English and French Volunteers.” c.o.xe adds that the expedition would have succeeded if one of the commanders had not failed to do his duty.

[295] Gayarre, _Histoire de la Louisiane_ (1846), i. 69.

[296] _Memoire pour servir d'Instruction au Sieur d'Iberville_ (Margry, iv. 348).

[297] _Journal du Voyage du Chevalier d'Iberville sur le Vaisseau du Roy la Renommee_, 1699, 1700.

[298] _Memoire de la Junte de Guerre des Indes. Le Ministre de la Marine au Duc d'Harcourt_ (Margry, iv. 553, 568).

[299] Iberville wrote in 1701 a long memorial, in which he tried to convince the Spanish court that it was for the interest of Spain that the French should form a barrier between her colonies and those of England, which, he says, were about to seize the country as far as the Mississippi and beyond it.

[300] _Nicolas de la Salle au Ministre, 7 Septembre, 1706._

[301] ”Il est clair que M. de Bienville n'a pas les qualites necessaires pour bien gouverner la colonie.” Gayarre found this curious letter in the Archives de la Marine.

[302] _Depeche de Bienville, 12 Octobre, 1708._

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