This very year I had a strong inclination to quit the post at the Natchez, where I had continued for eight years. I had taken that resolution, notwithstanding my attachment to that settlement. I sold off my effects and went down to New Orleans, which I found greatly altered by being entirely built. I intended to return to Europe; but M. Perier, the Governor, pressed me so much, that I accepted the inspection of the plantation of the Company; which, in a little time after, became the King's.
Footnotes:
[28] It is thus they express their joy and caresses, at the sight of a person they respect.
[29] The Governor of Louisiana.
[30] Red and blue Limburgs, shirts, fusils, sabres, gun-powder, ball, musket-flints, gunscrews, mattocks, hatchets, looking-glasses, Flemish knives, wood cutters knives, clasp-knives, scissars, combs, bells, awls, needles, drinking glasses, brass-wire, boxes, rings, &c.
[31] The Author should likewise have informed us of the fate of those intended settlements of the French, which Dumont tells us were destroyed, and all the French murdered by the Indians, particularly among the Missouris; which is confirmed below in book 11. ch. 7.
[CHAPTER XI.]
The War with the Chitimachas. The Conspiracy of the Negroes against the French. Their Execution.
Before my arrival in Louisiana, we happened to be at war with the nation of the Chitimachas; owing to one of that people, who being gone to dwell in a bye-place on the banks of the Missisippi, had assassinated M. de St. Come, a Missionary of that colony; who, in going down the river, imagined he might in safety retire into this man's hut for a night. M. de Biainville charged the whole nation with this assassination; and in order to save his own people, caused them to be attacked by several nations in alliance with the French.
Prowess is none of the greatest qualities of the Indians, much less of the Chitimachas. They were therefore worsted, and the loss of their bravest warriors constrained them to sue for peace. This the Governor granted, on condition that they brought him the head of the assassin; which they accordingly did, and concluded a peace by the ceremony of the Calumet, hereafter described.