CHAPTER LVII
HISTORY, THE CREOLE, AND HIS DUELS
Canal Street is to New Orleans much more than Main Street is to Buffalo, much more than Broad Street is to Philadelphia, much more than Broadway and Fifth Avenue are to New York, for Canal Street divides New Orleans as no other street divides an American city. It divides New Orleans as the Seine divides Paris, and there is not more difference between the right bank of the Seine and the Latin Quarter than between American New Orleans and Creole New Orleans: between the newer part of the city and the vieux carré. The sixty squares ("islets" according to the Creole idiom, because each block was literally an islet in time of flood) which comprise the old French town established in 1718 by the Sieur de Bienville, are unlike the rest of the city not merely in architecture, but in all respects. The street names change at Canal Street, the highways become narrower as you enter the French quarter, and the pavements are made of huge stone blocks brought over long ago as ballast in sailing ships. Nor is the difference purely physical. For though they will tell you that this part of the city is not so French and Spanish as it used to be, that it has run down, that large parts of it have been given over to Italians of the lower class, and to negroes, it remains not only in appearance, but in custom, thought and character, the most perfectly foreign little tract of land in the whole United States. Long ago, under the French flag, it was a part of the Roman Catholic bishopric of Quebec; later under the Spanish flag, a part of that of Havana; and it is charming to trace in old buildings, names, and customs the signs of this blended French and Spanish ancestry.
La Salle, searching out a supposed route to China by way of the Mississippi River, seems to have perceived what the New Orleans Association of Commerce perceives to-day: that the control of the mouth of the river ought to mean also the control of a vast part of the continent. At all events, he took possession in 1682 in the name of the French King, calling the river St. Louis and the country Louisiana. The latter name persisted, but La Salle himself later rechristened the river, giving it the name Colbert, thereby showing that in two attempts he could not find a name one tenth as good as that already provided by the savages. The "St. Louis River" might, from its name, be a fair-sized stream, but "Colbert" sounds like the name of a river about twenty miles long, forty feet wide at the mouth, and five feet deep at the very middle.
La Salle intended to build a fort at a point sixty leagues above the mouth of the river, but his expedition met with disaster upon disaster, until at last he was assassinated in Texas, when setting out on foot to seek help from Canada. In 1699 came Iberville, the Canadian, exploring the river and fixing on the site for the future city. Iberville established settlements at old Biloxi (now Ocean Springs) and Mobile, but before he had time to make a town at New Orleans he caught yellow fever at Havana, and died there. It therefore remained for his brother, Bienville, actually to establish the town, and New Orleans is Bienville's city, just as Detroit is Cadillac's, and Cleveland General Moses Cleveland's.
Bienville's settlers were hardy pioneers from Canada, and presently we find him writing to France: "Send me wives for my Canadians. They are running in the woods after Indian girls." The priests also urged that unless white wives could be sent out for the settlers, marriages with Indians be sanctioned.
Having now a considerable investment in Louisiana, France felt that a request for wives for the colony was practical and legitimate. Louisiana must have population. A bonus of so much per head was offered for colonists, and hideous things ensued: servants, children, and helpless women were kidnapped, and the occupants of hospitals, asylums, and houses of correction were assembled and deported. Incidentally it will be remembered that out of these black deeds flowered "the first masterpiece of French literature which can properly be called a novel," the Abbé Prévost's "Manon Lescaut," which has been dramatized and redramatized, and which is the theme of operas by both Massenet and Puccini. Though a grave alleged to be that of Manon used to be shown on the outskirts of the city, there is doubt that such a person actually existed, although those who wish to believe in a flesh-and-blood Manon may perhaps take encouragement from the fact that the arrival in the colony of a Chevalier des Grieux, in the year 1719, fourteen years before the book appeared, has been established, and, further, that the name of the Chevalier des Grieux may be seen upon a crumbling tomb in one of the river parishes.
When the girls arrived they were on inspection in the daytime, but at night were carefully guarded by soldiers, in the house where they were quartered together. Miss Grace King, in her delightful book, "New Orleans, the Place and the People," tells us that in these times there were never enough girls to fill the demand for wives, and that in one instance two young bachelors proposed to fight over a very plain girl—the last one left out of a shipload—but that the commandant obliged them to settle their dispute by the more pacific means of drawing lots. As the place became settled Ursuline sisters arrived and established schools. And at last, a quarter of a century after the landing of the first shipment of girls, the curious history of female importations ended with the arrival of that famous band of sixty demoiselles of respectable family and "authenticated spotless reputation," who came to be taken as wives by only the more prosperous young colonists of the better class. The earlier, less reputable girls have come down to us by the name of "correction girls," but these later arrivals—each furnished by the Company of the West with a casket containing a trousseau—are known to this day as les filles à la cassette, or "casket girls."
A curious feature of this bit of history, as it applies to present-day New Orleans, is that though one hears of many families that claim descent from some nice, well-behaved "casket girl," one never by any chance hears of a family claiming to be descended from a lady of the other stock. When it is considered that the "correction girls" far outnumbered their virtuous sisters of the casket, and ought, therefore, by the law of averages, to have left a greater progeny, the matter becomes stranger still, taking on a scientific interest. The explanation must, however, be left to some mind more astute than mine—some mind capable, perhaps, of unraveling also those other riddles of New Orleans namely: Who was the mysterious chevalier who many years ago invented that most delectable of sucreries, the praline, and whither did he vanish? And how, although the refugee Duc d'Orleans (later Louis Philippe of France) stayed but a short time in New Orleans, did he manage to sleep in so many hundred beds, and in houses which were not built until long after his departure? And why are so many of the signs, over bars, restaurants, and shops, of that blue and white enamel one associates with the signs of the Western Union Telegraph Company? And why is the nickel as characteristic of New Orleans as is the silver dollar of the farther Middle West, and gold coin of the Pacific Slope—why, when one pays for a ten-cent purchase with a half-dollar, does one receive eight nickels in change? Ah, but New Orleans is a mysterious city!
Once, when the French and English were fighting for the possession of Canada and New Orleans was depending for protection on Swiss mercenaries, the French officer in command of these troops disciplined them by stripping them and tying them to trees, where they were a prey to the terrible mosquitoes of the Gulf. One day they killed him and fled, but some of them were captured. These were taken back to New Orleans, court-martialed, and punished according to the regulations: they were nailed alive to their coffins and sawed in two.
Ceded to Spain by a secret clause in the Treaty of Paris, of which she did not know until 1764, Louisiana could not believe the news. Even when the Acadians, appeared, after having been so cruelly ejected from their lands in what is now New Brunswick, Louisiana could not believe that Louis XV would coldly cast off his loyal colony. The fact that he had done so was not credited until a Spanish governor arrived. For three years after, there was confusion. Then a strong force was sent from Spain under Count O'Reilly, a man of Irish birth, but Spanish allegiance, and the flag of Spain was raised. O'Reilly maintained viceregal splendor; he invited leading citizens to a levee; here in his own house he caused his soldiers to seize the group of prominent men who had attempted to prevent the accomplishment of Spanish rule, and five of these he presently caused to be shot as rebels.