Atheism and blasphemy, under which was included the denying that any of the canonical books of Scripture were the inspired word of God, were punished with six months’ imprisonment; setting in the pillory; whipping; boring through the tongue with a red-hot iron; sitting on the gallows with a rope round the neck; or any two of these punishments, at the discretion of the court. Adultery was punished by the guilty parties being set on the gallows with a rope round their necks, and on their way thence to the jail, to be severely flogged, not exceeding forty stripes; and ever after to wear the capital letter A, of two inches long, cut out of cloth of a contrary colour to their clothes, and sewed upon their upper garments on the outside of their arm or on their back in public view, and if caught without this, to be liable to fifteen stripes.[[21]]
This extraordinary mode of punishment has, it will be remembered by our readers, furnished the subject for one of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fine and graphic stories, “The Scarlet Letter.”
CHAPTER XXVI.
SETTLEMENT OF LOUISIANA.—QUEEN ANNE’S WAR.
The Peace of Ryswick restored to France all the places on Hudson’s Bay of which she had possession at the commencement of the war. With the exception of the eastern portion of Newfoundland, she retained the whole line of coast, with the adjacent islands, from Maine to beyond Labrador and Hudson’s Bay, besides Canada and the valley of the Mississippi; the boundaries, however, not being defined, remained subjects of dispute. The boundary between New France and New York was especially difficult of adjustment, each nation claiming the extensive intervening territory occupied by the Five Nations.
In the year 1700, the jealousy of the Five Nations having been excited by the claim of Bellamont to build forts in their territory, they began to suspect the British intentions towards them; and Callieres, the successor of Frontenac in Canada, taking advantage of their state of feeling, offered them either peace with the French, or a war of extermination. They chose the former, and sent envoys to Montreal, “to weep,” according to their phraseology, “for the French who had died in the war.” A grand treaty of peace was formally signed between the French and their Christianised Indian allies, and these their ancient, formidable enemies—each nation testifying its solemn assent by its symbol, that of the Senecas and Onondagas being a spider; the Cayugas a calumet; the Oneidas a forked stick; the Mohawks a bear; the Hurons a beaver; the Abenakis a deer; and the Ottawas a hare. Peace was also established between the French allies and the Sioux, which was to extend beyond the Mississippi. The hold which the French had upon these nations being through the Jesuit missionaries, a law was passed the same year in New York for the “hanging of every Popish priest who should voluntarily enter the province.”
Peace being established with England, the French, in 1698, renewed their endeavours, which the war had interrupted, to plant a settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi; and Lemoine D’Iberville, who had already signalised himself on the shores of Hudson’s Bay and Newfoundland, was selected for the enterprise. By birth he was a Canadian, one of the seven sons of Charles Lemoine, an early emigrant from Normandy; and with his two brothers, Sauvolle and Bienville, and 200 colonists and a few women and children, in two frigates and two tenders, D’Iberville sailed for the mouth of the Mississippi, which, as yet, had never been entered from the sea.
Unlike the enterprise of La Salle, good fortune attended that of Lemoine D’Iberville from the commencement. Cordially and honourably received by the governor of St. Domingo, his expedition was there increased by a larger vessel, and in January, 1699, he anchored in the Bay of Pensacola; but his landing was forbidden by a fort erected here by Spaniards, lately come from Vera Cruz, and under the guns of which lay two Spanish ships. Spain still claimed the whole range of the Gulf of Mexico.
Sailing westward, D’Iberville cast anchor south-east of Mobile, and landed February 2nd on Ship Island, where, the larger vessel having returned to St. Domingo, the people erected huts while he explored the opposite shore, the Bay of Biloxi, and the mouth of the river Pascagoula. On the 27th of the same month, D’Iberville, his brother Bienville, forty-eight men, and Athanase, a Franciscan, who had been one of the companions of the unfortunate La Salle, set forth in search of the mouth of the Mississippi. Floating trees and muddy waters led them to the obscure outlet of the great Father of Rivers, which they ascended to a village of the Bayagoulas, a tribe occupying the western bank, just below Red River, and with whom was found to be faithfully preserved that letter written by Tonti, and committed to their care in 1684; which circumstance was the joyful assurance to them that they had found the Mississippi.[[22]]
Returning from this point, D’Iberville, quitting the great river by the Manshac Pass to the eastward, sailed through the Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain, so called from two of the French ministers, and arrived safely at Ship Island. Preferring the shores of the Bay of Biloxi to the low lands of the Mississippi, a fort was erected there, the four bastions and twelve cannon of which were to maintain the French authority over the territory, extending from about the Rio del Norte to the confines of Pensacola; after which, D’Iberville set sail for France, leaving his brothers Sauvolle and Bienville in command of the fort, around which the huts of the settlers had clustered.
Though the fear of Spanish interference with this first French settlement in Mississippi was soon removed by the transfer of the Spanish throne to a branch of the Bourbons, still no great success could be looked for; the soil was arid sand, and the heat of the burning sun made the settlers remember with longing the invigorating climate of Canada. Nevertheless their settlement was not without its agreeable circumstances, among which were the visits of missionaries from their stations among remote tribes, and who, floating down the great river in their birch-bark canoes, came to visit them. “Already,” says Bancroft, “a line of communication existed between Quebec and the Gulf of Mexico. The boundless southern region, made a part of the French empire by lilies carved on the trees and crosses erected on the bluffs, and occupied by French missionaries and forest rangers, was annexed to the command of the governor of Biloxi.”