Chapter XIV
Supplement to
The Executor of La Salle’s Plan of Colonization.—First Experiences of the Settlers.—Bienville’s Shrewdness in getting rid of the English.—New Orleans Founded.—Character of the Population.—Indian Wars.
La Salle was dead, but his bright dream of France enthroned on the Mississippi, holding in her hand the sceptre of the great West, was too vital to die. It was growing more and more into the consciousness of sea-going Europe, that the nation holding the mouth of the Great River would grasp the key to the undeveloped wealth of the Western World. So it was that when France stretched forth her hand to seize the coveted prize, she found rivals in the field, Spain and Great Britain struggling for a foothold, Spain already planted at Pensacola, the English nosing about the mouth of the Mississippi.
The man who was destined to achieve what La Salle had been hindered from accomplishing only by the blunder of his pilots and the jealousy of his associates, was Jean Baptiste LeMoyne de Bienville.
He was of that fine French Canadian stock that had already produced Joliet, the brave explorer, and he belonged to a family whose seven sons all won distinction, four of them dying in the service of their country. When he came on the enterprise in which he was destined to complete La Salle’s unfinished work, he was a midshipman of twenty-two serving with his older brother, Iberville, who was winning renown as a brave and skilful naval captain. Though possessing none of La Salle’s brilliancy of genius, and never called on to make those heroic exertions or to exhibit that amazing fortitude which were so conspicuous in the case of the great explorer, he still exhibited qualities which well fitted him for the task that fell to him, and which earned for him the title of “Father of Louisiana.”
To us it may seem strange that the first reaching out of France toward the incredibly rich Mississippi Valley did not touch the valley itself, but made its lodgment on a sandy bluff overlooking a bay in the territory of what is now the State of Mississippi. So it was, however, and the fact only shows how little was grasped the true meaning of La Salle’s gigantic scheme.
In January, 1699, fifteen years after the great Pathfinder had made his misguided landing in Texas, a small fleet from Brest was hovering about the mouth of Mobile River seeking a place for settlement. It was commanded by Pierre LeMoyne d’Iberville. With him were his two brothers, Sauvolle and Bienville, and Father Anastase Douay, who had accompanied La Salle.
One of the first spots which the Frenchmen visited bore evidences of a ghastly tragedy. So numerous were the human bones bleaching on the sandy soil that they called it Massacre Island (to-day Dauphin Island). It was surmised—and with some plausibility—that here had perished some portion of the ill-fated following of Pamphile de Narvaez. (See “Pioneer Spaniards in North America,” p. 200.)
Another island, farther to the west, chiefly impressed the visitors by the great number of animals, of a species new to them, which they found there. Isle des Chats they called it, and as “Cat Island” it is known to this day. Had the Frenchmen been naturalists, they would have seen that there was more of the bear than of the cat about this creature, for it was none other than our sly friend, the raccoon.
Leaving his vessels at anchor near the mouth of Mobile River, Iberville, with his brother Bienville and Father Douay, went in search of the mouth of the Mississippi. They found it and ascended the river a considerable distance. What assured them that they really were on the Great River was that they received from the Bayagoulas a letter which Tonty had left with them for La Salle, when he made, in 1686, that heroic journey all the way from the Illinois country to the Gulf, in the vain effort to succor his chief.
Another interesting relic which the explorers are said to have seen, was a coat of mail shown to them by the Indians near the Red River, as once having belonged to a Spaniard. Though nearly one hundred and sixty years had gone by since Hernando de Soto’s famous expedition, it is by no means improbable that this was a genuine relic of that enterprise. Naturally, the Indians would have highly prized and would have kept, as a precious trophy, such a reminder of their forefathers’ heroic stand against the dastardly invaders.
The appearance on the river of the two English vessels, whose captain frankly said that he was seeking a place for a settlement, was conclusive evidence that France was none too early in reaching out for the prize that others coveted. Bienville has the credit of getting rid of the Britons by telling the officer that he might easily judge how numerous and strong were his master’s, the French King’s, subjects, in that region, from seeing them on the river in small boats—a piece of reasoning which was rather ingenious than ingenuous. It had its effect in sending away the Briton with “a flea in his ear.” “English Turn,” the name given to a great bend in the stream some miles below New Orleans, keeps alive the memory of that piece of shrewdness. Not far distant, by the way, is the field where, in 1815, the British regulars, under Sir Edward Pakenham, received a disastrous defeat at the hands of Andrew Jackson and his American riflemen.
Iberville planted his first settlement at Biloxi, on Mississippi Sound. Other French posts were shortly afterward established on Cat Island, Dauphin Island, which is at the mouth of Mobile Bay, and at Mobile. A little later Bienville built a fort fifty-four miles above the mouth of the Great River, and he early began to insist that the future of the colony lay on its banks, not on the shores and sandy islands of the Gulf. But the time had not yet come when his ideas would prevail. The wretched colony must first go through a dismal experience of languishing, in consequence of which the seat of government was removed to Mobile, and of actual famine.
At last, in 1718, Bienville, who by the death of his brother had succeeded to the direction of affairs, with twenty-five convicts from France and as many carpenters and some voyageurs from the Illinois River, founded the city of New Orleans.
At the first the outlook was far from hopeful. The site was but a few feet above the sea-level and was subject to constant inundation. Most unfavorable reports went back to Mobile, which for five years longer remained the seat of government. The population, too, was rude and lawless, being made up of trappers, redemptioners having a period of years to serve, transported females, inmates of the House of Correction, Choctaw squaws, and negro slave women—all, as an old writer says, “without religion, without justice, without discipline, without order, without police.”
Bienville, however, held firmly to his purpose and, in 1723, procured the royal permission to transfer the seat of government from Mobile to the new settlement on the banks of the Great River. Thus, at last, was La Salle’s prophetic dream realized. France had become awake to the importance of concentrating her strength where it could be effective, rather than frittering it away on the shores of the Gulf.
One of the most striking evidences of the warm interest which the King felt in the colony was his sending out, in 1728, a number of decent girls, each with a trunk filled with linen and clothing (from which they were called filles à la cassette, or girls with a chest), who were to be disposed of under the direction of the Ursuline nuns, in marriage to the colonists. Other consignments followed; and the homes thus established soon gave to the population of the city a more quiet and orderly character.
Through various experiences, chiefly disastrous wars with the Natchez, that remarkable people whom La Salle visited on his great exploration, and whom the French finally broke up and scattered, and with the Chickasaws in Mississippi, that hardy breed of warriors who had fought Soto so fiercely, and who now sent the Frenchmen back discomfited, Bienville in his later years lost much of his earlier prestige. But the fact remains that it was he who grasped the meaning of La Salle’s plan, he who founded New Orleans, and he who guided the struggling colony through its perilous infancy. He well earned his title of “Father of Louisiana.”
[1] These matchless horsemen, probably unsurpassed in the world, are also great jockeys, passionately fond of horse-racing and deeply versed in all its tricks. The following laughable account of a race that he witnessed is given by Col. Dodge in his very entertaining book, “Our Wild Indians”: “A band of Comanches once camped near Fort Chadbourne, in Texas. Some of the officers were decidedly ‘horsey,’ owning blood horses whose relative speed was well known. The Comanche chief was bantered for a race, and, after several days of manoeuvring, a race was made against the third best horse of the garrison, distance four hundred yards. “The Indians wagered robes and plunder of various kinds, to the value of sixty or seventy dollars, against money, flour, sugar, etc., to a like amount. At the appointed time the Indians ‘showed’ a miserable sheep of a pony, with legs like churns, a three-inch coat of rough hair stuck out all over the body; and a general expression of neglect, helplessness, and patient suffering struck pity into the hearts of all beholders. The rider was a stalwart buck of one hundred and seventy pounds, looking big and strong enough to carry the poor beast on his shoulders. He was armed with a huge club, with which, after the word was given, he belabored the miserable animal from start to finish. To the astonishment of all the whites, the Indian won by a neck. “Another race was proposed by the officers, and, after much ‘dickering,’ accepted by the Indians, against the next best horse of the garrison. The bets were doubled; and in less than an hour the second race was run by the same pony, with the same apparent exertion and with exactly the same result. “The officers, thoroughly disgusted, proposed a third race and brought to the ground a magnificent Kentucky mare, of the true Lexington blood. The Indians accepted the race and not only doubled bets as before, but piled up everything they could raise, seemingly almost crazed with the excitement of their previous success. The riders mounted, and the word was given. Throwing away his club, the Indian rider gave a whoop, at which the sheep-like pony pricked up his ears and went away like the wind almost two feet to the mare’s one. The last fifty yards of the course was run by the pony with the rider sitting face to his tail, making hideous grimaces and beckoning to the rider of the mare to come on. “It afterwards transpired that the old sheep was a trick and straight-race pony, celebrated among all the tribes of the south, and had lately won for his master six hundred ponies among the Kickapoos of the Indian Nation.”
[2] They learned from these Indians to handle skin-boats, or “bull-boats,” such as we shall see were in constant use among the Mandans of the upper Missouri.
[3] These people, sometimes called the Pawnee family, were scattered, in various wandering bands, from eastern Texas as far north as the Missouri.