Norman's New Orleans and Environs / Containing a Brief Historical Sketch of the Territory and State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time

by Benjamin Moore Norman

No sooner had they put to sea, than a violent tempest arose; when another calamity befell them, which will be feelingly understood by many of the navigators of these waters, in our own day. I will give it in the language of the historian, who was one of the party. "While they were in this tempest, in great fear of being cast away, they endured an intolerable torment of an infinite swarm of musketoes, which fell upon them, which, as soon as they had stung the flesh, it so infected it, as though they had been venomous. In the morning, the sea was assuaged, and the wind slacked, but not the musketoes; for the sails, which were white, seemed black with them in the morning. Those which rowed, unless others kept them away, were not able to row. Having passed the fear and danger of the storm, beholding the deformities of their faces, and the blows which they gave themselves to drive them away, one of them laughed at another."

It is manifest from the narrative of de Soto's expedition, that a dense population once covered this whole territory. It is equally manifest that they were a race infinitely superior to the almost exterminated tribes which still remain. In the arts of what we term civilization, in the comforts and conveniences of social life, in the organization of society, in works of taste, in a knowledge of the principles, and an appreciation of the beauties of architecture, and in the application of the various mechanical powers requisite to the construction of buildings on a grand and magnificent scale, they may challenge comparison with some of the proudest nations of antiquity, in the old world. What has become of those mysterious nations, we are at a loss to conjecture; but their works remain, though in ruins, eternal monuments of their genius and power. As far as they have been explored, they afford ample evidence that the appellation "New World" is an entire misnomer. As the eloquent Mr. Wirt once said—"This is the old World," and the day may come, when the antiquarian will find as much that is attractive and interesting in the time hallowed ruins and the almost buried cities, of America, as those of Pompeii and Herculaneum, of Thebes and Palmyra.

Changed as the whole country has been, in the lapse of three centuries, in respect to most of those things which must have struck the original discoverers with wonder, admiration, and awe—there is one feature, as described by de Soto, that still remains, so distinct and characteristic, that, if the brave old Adelantado should suddenly rise from his watery grave, he would immediately recognize the place of his burial.

The Mississippi is still the same as when those bold adventurers first beheld it. The historian describes it as "a river so broad, that if a man stood still on the other side, it could not be discerned whether he was a man or no. The channel was very deep, the current strong, the water muddy and filled with floating trees."

Of all the great rivers of this continent, it is a distinction which is probably peculiar to the Mississippi, that it was discovered, not by navigators entering it from the ocean, but by a band of adventurous explorers, striking it in their march, at some thousand miles from its mouth!

For more than a century after the expedition of de Soto, these mighty regions were suffered to remain in the quiet possession of their original owners, undisturbed by the visits of white men. In 1654, the adventurous Col. Woods, from the infant colony of Virginia, wandered into these then remote regions, and crossed "the great river," after which it lay forgotten for twenty years longer.

In 1673, Marquette, a French monk, and Joliet, a trader, starting from Quebec, traversed the great northern Lakes, ascended the Fox River to its source, made a small portage west to the Wisconsin, and descended that river to the Mississippi, where they arrived on the 7th of July. Committing themselves to the current, the two solitary travellers reached a village of the Illinois, near the mouth of the Missouri, where they were kindly received and hospitably entertained. After a brief stay, they proceeded down to a settlement of the Arkansas, near the river of that name. They did not proceed farther at this time, but returned to Quebec, by the same route, fully impressed with the belief that they could reach the Gulf of Mexico, by continuing their course on the great river. There was immense rejoicing in Quebec at the result of this adventure. Te deum was sung in the Churches, on the occasion, and the great Western Valley set down as belonging to France by right of discovery. They were little aware how brief their dominion in that land would be, or how soon the fruits of all their toils would fall into the hands of a nation then unborn, that in one little century, should leap to independence and power, and claim an honorable place among the hoary empires of the earth.

Six years after the return of Marquette and Joliet, Robert, Chevalier de la Salle, commenced operations for a further exploration of the Mississippi. With seventeen men, he proceeded to the Little Miami, near the mouth of which he built a fort. From thence he traversed the country, till he came to the Falls of St. Anthony. Descending the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, he returned by land to Quebec during the year 1681. He then proceeded to France, procured a vessel, and sailed in 1685, with the intention of entering the river through the Gulf, but was unable to find its mouth.

In his next voyage, having met with the same disappointment, he erected a fort in the Bay of St. Bernard, near the mouth of the Colorado. Ascending that river, about sixteen miles, he established another fort, which, however, he soon destroyed, and returned to the first settlement. Here he built houses, erected another fort, which he called St. Louis, and prepared the ground for cultivation. He made many abortive attempts to find the entrance to the Mississippi. At length, a conspiracy was formed among his own party, and he was cruelly murdered by Dehault, on the 19th of March, 1687, near the western branch of Trinity River. Thus fell, in the midst of his toils, and in the prime of his years, by the hand of an assassin, one of the most renowned adventurers of the 17th century—a man who may be justly claimed as an honor to the country that gave him birth. He deserved a better fate. In cool courage, in hardy enterprise, and in fertility of resources, he was second only to Columbus. And in the power of subduing the wild spirits of his men, and bending all their energies to the one object before him, he displayed much of the sagacity and tact of that great navigator. In vigor, decision and promptitude, he much resembled the renowned Cortes, without any of the bigotry or cruelty, that tarnished the reputation of the Conqueror of Mexico.

In 1699, eighteen years after La Salle had demonstrated the connection of the Mississippi with the Gulf of Mexico, by passing out at its mouth, Iberville succeeded in entering it from the Gulf. Ascending as far as the junction of Red River, he returned, and proceeded, by way of the Gulf, into Lake Pontchartrain. He formed a settlement and erected a fort, at Biloxi, which he left under the command of his brother Bienville, while he returned to France, to induce others to join the colony. Soon after he left, the new commander ascended the Mississippi as far as the present site of New Orleans. In returning, he met a British vessel of sixteen guns, under the command of Capt. Bard, who enquired the bearings of the great river, intimating that it was his intention to establish a colony upon its banks. Bienville, in reply, directed him to go farther west, and thus induced him to turn about; from which circumstance, the place of their meeting was called "The English Turn," a name which it retains to this day.