Volume I Part 20 (1/2)
[303] D'Artaguette in Gayarre, _Histoire de la Louisiane_. This valuable work consists of a series of doc.u.ments, connected by a thread of narrative.
[304] _La Mothe-Cadillac au Ministre_, in Gayarre, i. 104, 105.
[305] ”Que si M. de Lamothe-Cadillac lui portoit tant d'animositie, c'etoit a cause du refus qu'il avoit fait d'epouser sa fille.”--_Bienville in Gayarre_, i. 116.
[306] _Memoire du Cure de la Vente, 1714._
[307] The earlier cargoes of girls seem to have been better chosen, and there was no difficulty in mating them. Serious disputes sometimes rose from the compet.i.tion of rival suitors.--Dumont, _Memoires historiques de la Louisiane_, chap. v.
[308] Prominent officials of the colony are said to have got wives from these sources. Nicolas de la Salle is reported to have had two in succession, both from the hospitals. Benard de la Harpe, 107 (ed. 1831).
[309] _Lettres patentes en forme d'edit portant etabliss.e.m.e.nt de la Compagnie d'Occident_, in Le Page du Pratz, _Histoire de la Louisiane_, i. 47.
[310] _Reglement de Regie, 1721._
[311] Saint-Simon, _Memoires_ (ed. Cheruel), xvii. 461.
[312] _De Cha.s.sin au Ministre, 1 Juillet, 1722_, in Gayarre, i. 190.
[313] A considerable number of the whites brought to Louisiana in the name of the Company had been sent at the charge of persons to whom it had granted lands in various parts of the colony. Among these was John Law himself, who had the grant of large tracts on the Arkansas.
[314] Benard de la Harpe, 371 (ed. 1831).
[315] _Lettre du Pere le Pet.i.t_, in _Lettres edifiantes_; Dumont, _Memoires historiques_, chap. xxvii.
[316] ”Nos soldats, qui semblent etre faits expres pour la colonie, tants ils sont mauvais.”--_Depeche de Perier, 18 Mars, 1730._
[317] _Memoire de Bienville, 1730._
[318] For a curious account of the discovery of this negro plot, see Le Page du Pratz, iii. 304.
[319] _Depeche de Bienville, 6 Mai, 1740._ Compare Le Page du Pratz, iii. chap. xxiv.
CHAPTER XIV.
1700-1732.
THE OUTAGAMIE WAR.
The Western Posts.--Detroit.--The Illinois.--Perils of the West.--The Outagamies.--Their Turbulence.--English Instigation.--Louvigny's Expedition.--Defeat of Outagamies.--Hostilities renewed.--Lignery's Expedition.--Outagamies attacked by Villiers; by Hurons and Iroquois.--La b.u.t.te des Morts.--The Sacs and Foxes.
The rulers of Canada labored without ceasing in their perplexing task of engrossing the fur-trade of the West and controlling the western tribes to the exclusion of the English. Every day made it clearer that to these ends the western wilderness must be held by forts and trading-posts; and this policy of extension prevailed more and more, in spite of the league of merchants, who wished to draw the fur-trade to Montreal,--in spite of the Jesuits, who felt that their influence over the remoter tribes would be compromised by the presence among them of officers, soldiers, and traders; and in spite of the King himself, who feared that the diffusion of the colony would breed disorder and insubordination.
Detroit, the most important of the western posts, struggled through a critical infancy in the charge of its founder, La Mothe-Cadillac, till, by a choice not very judicious, he was made governor of Louisiana.
During his rule the population had slowly increased to about two hundred souls; but after he left the place it diminished to a point that seemed to threaten the feeble post with extinction. About 1722 it revived again; _voyageurs_ and discharged soldiers settled about the fort, and the parish register shows six or eight births in the course of the year.[320]
Meanwhile, on the banks of the Mississippi another settlement was growing up which did not owe its birth to official patronage, and yet was destined to become the most noteworthy offspring of Canada in the West. It was known to the French as ”the Illinois,” from the name of the group of tribes belonging to that region. La Salle had occupied the banks of the river Illinois in 1682; but the curious Indian colony which he gathered about his fort on the rock of St. Louis[321] dispersed after his death, till few or none were left except the Kaskaskias, a sub-tribe of the Illinois. These still lived in the meadow below Fort St. Louis, where the Jesuits Marquette, Allouez, Rale, Gravier, and Marest labored in turn for their conversion, till, in 1700, they or some of them followed Marest to the Mississippi and set up their wigwams where the town of Kaskaskia now stands, near the mouth of the little river which bears the same name. Charlevoix, who was here in 1721, calls this the oldest settlement of the Illinois,[322]--though there is some reason to believe that the village of Cahokia, established as a mission by the Jesuit Pinet, sixty miles or more above Kaskaskia, and nearly opposite the present city of St. Louis, is, by a few weeks, the elder of the two.
The _voyageurs_, _coureurs de bois_, and other roving Canadians made these young settlements their resort, took to wife converted squaws,[323] and ended with making the Illinois their home. The missions turned to parishes, the missionaries to cures, and the wigwams to those compact little Canadian houses that cause one to marvel at the ingenuity which can store so mult.i.tudinous a progeny within such narrow limits.