ENVIRONS DU MISSISSIPI, 1700.
[This is figure 3 of plate i. in R. Thomassy’s Géologie pratique de la Louisiane (1860), called “Carte des environs du Mississipi (envoyée à Paris en 1700).” He describes it (p. 208) as belonging to the Archives Scientifiques, and thinks it a good record of the topography as Iberville understood it. The material of this map and of another, likewise preserved in the Archives Scientifiques de la Marine, are held by Thomassy (p. 209) to have been unskilfully combined by M. de Fer in his Les Costes aux environs de la Rivière de Misisipi, 1701.
Thomassy also noted (p. 215) in the Dépôt des Cartes de la Marine, and found in the Bibliothèque Nationale, a copy of a map by Le Blond de la Tour of the mouths of the Mississippi in 1722, Entrée du Mississipi en 1722, avec un projet de fort, of which Thomassy gives a reproduction (pl. iii. fig. 1), and he considers it a map of the first importance in tracing the changes which the river has made in its bed. He next notes and depicts (pl. iii. fig. 2) a Plan particulier de l’embouchure du fleuve Saint-Louis, which was drawn at New Orleans, May 29, 1724, and is signed “De Pauger, Royal Engineer.” It assists one in tracing the early changes, being on the same scale as La Tour’s map.—Ed.]
Le Sueur explored the upper Mississippi in search of mines. In 1700 Bienville and Saint-Denys scoured the Red River country in search of Spaniards, but saw none. In 1701 Saint-Denys was gone for six months on a trip to the same region, with the same result.[40] The records of these expeditions and the Relations of the fathers have preserved for us a knowledge of the country as it then was, and of the various tribes which then inhabited the Valley of the Mississippi. From them we obtain descriptions of the curious temples of the Natchez and Taensas; of the perpetual fire preserved in them; of the custom of offering as a sacrifice the first-fruits of the chase and the field; of the arbitrary despotism of their grand chief, or Sun; of the curious hereditary aristocracy transmitted through the female Suns;[41] of the strange custom of sacrificing human lives on the death of a Grand Sun. To be selected to accompany the chief to the other world was a privilege as well as a duty; to avoid its performance when through ties of blood or from other cause the selection was involuntary, was a disgrace and a dishonor.
We find records of the presence of no less than four of the Le Moyne brothers,—Iberville, Bienville, Sérigny, and Chateauguay. Iberville was rewarded in 1699 by appointment as chevalier of the Order of St. Louis; in 1702 by promotion to the position of capitaine de vaisseau; and in 1703 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the colony, which Pontchartrain in his official announcement calls “the colony of Mississippi.” These honors did not quite meet his expectations. He wanted a concession, with the title of count; the privilege of sending a ship to Guinea for negroes; a lead mine; in short, he wanted a number of things. He bore within his frame the seeds of disease contracted in the south; and in 1706, while employed upon a naval expedition against the English, he succumbed at Havana to an attack of yellow fever. With him departed much of the life and hope of the colony. Supplies, which during his life had never been abundant, were now sure to be scarce; and we begin to find in the records of the colony the monotonous, reiterated complaints of scarcity of provisions. These wails are occasionally relieved by accounts of courtesies exchanged with the Spanish settlements at Pensacola and St. Augustine. The war of the Spanish Succession had brought Spain and France close together. The Spanish forts stood in the pathway of the English and protected Biloxi. When the Spanish commander called for help, Bienville responded with men and ammunition; and when starvation fairly stared the struggling Spanish settlement in the face, he shared with them his scant food. They in turn reciprocated, and a regular debit and credit account of these favors was kept, which was occasionally adjusted by commissioners thereto duly appointed. So few were the materials of which histories are ordinarily composed, during these years of torpor and inaction, that one of the historians of that time thus epitomizes a period of over a year: “During the rest of this year and all of the next nothing new happened except the arrival of some brigantines from Martinique, Rochelle, and Santo Domingo, which brought provisions and drinks which they found it easy to dispose of.”
France was too deeply engaged in the struggle with England to forward many emigrants. Canada could furnish but a scant population for the scattered settlements from Cape Breton to the Mississippi. The hardy adventurers who had accompanied Iberville in his search for the mouth of the Mississippi, and the families which had drifted down from Illinois, were as many as could be procured from her, and more than she could spare. The unaccustomed heat of the climate and the fatal fevers which lurked in the Southern swamps told upon the health of the Canadians, and sickness thinned their ranks. In the midst of the pressure of impending disasters which threatened the declining years of the most Christian King, the tardy enthusiasm in behalf of the colony, which his belief in its pearls and its buffalo-wool had aroused, caused him to spare from the resources of a bankrupt kingdom the means to equip and forward to the colony a vessel laden with supplies and bearing seventy-five soldiers and four priests. The tax upon the kingdom for even so feeble a contribution was enough to be felt at such a time; but the result was hardly worth the effort. The vessel arrived in July, 1704, during a period of sickness. Half of her crew died. To assist in navigating her back to France twenty soldiers were furnished. During the month of September the prevailing epidemic carried off the brave Tonty and thirty of the newly arrived soldiers. Given seventy-five soldiers as an increase to the force of a colony, which in 1701 was reported to number only one hundred and fifty persons, deduct twenty required to work the ship back, and thirty more for death within six weeks after arrival, and the net result which we obtain is not favorable for the rapid growth of the settlement. The same ship, in addition to supplies, soldiers, and priests, brought other cargo; namely, two Gray Sisters, four families of artisans, and twenty-three poor girls. The “poor girls” were all married to the resident Canadians within thirty days. With the exception of the visit of a frigate in 1701, and the arrival of a store-ship in 1703, this vessel is the only arrival outside of Iberville’s expeditions which is recorded in the Journal historique up to that date. The wars and rumors of wars between the Indians soon disclosed a state of things at the South which in some of its features resembled the situation at the North. The Cherokees and Chickasaws were so placed geographically that they came in contact with English traders from Carolina and Virginia. Penicaut, when on his way up the river with Le Sueur, met one of these enterprising merchants among the Arkansas, of whom he says, “We found an English trader here who was of great assistance in obtaining provisions for us, as our stock was rapidly declining.” Le Sueur says, “I asked him who sent him here. He showed me a passport from the governor of Carolina, who, he said, claimed to be master of the river.” Thus English traders were here stumbling-blocks to the French precisely as they had been farther north. Their influence appears to have been used in stirring up the Indians to hostile acts, just as in New York the Iroquois were incited to attack the Canadians. The Choctaws, a powerful tribe, were on the whole friendly to the French. The wars in Louisiana were not so disastrous to the French as the raids of the Five Nations had proved in the Valley of the St. Lawrence. The vengeance of the Chickasaws was easily sated with a few Choctaw scalps, and perhaps with the capture of a few Indian women and children whom they could sell to the English settlers in Carolina as slaves. Hence the number of French lives lost in these attacks was insignificant.
The territory of Louisiana was no more vague and indefinite than its form of government. Even its name was long in doubt. It was indifferently spoken of as Louisiana or Mississippi in many despatches. Sauvolle was left as commander of the post when Iberville returned to France after his first voyage. In this office he was confirmed, and Bienville succeeded to the same position. True, the post was the colony then, but when Iberville was in Louisiana it was he who negotiated with the Indians; it was he of whom the Company of Canada complained for interfering with the trade in beaver-skins; it was he whom the Court evidently looked upon as the head of the colony even before he was formally appointed to the chief command. This chaotic state of affairs not only produced confusion, but it engendered jealousies and fostered quarrels. The Company of Canada found fault with Iberville for interfering with the beaver trade. The Governor of Canada claimed that Louisiana should be brought under his jurisdiction. Iberville insisted that the boundaries should be defined; and complained that the Canadians belittled him with the Indians when the two colonies clashed, by contrasting Canadian liberality with his poverty.
This follows an engraving given in Margry’s collection, vol. v. Other engravings, evidently from the same original, but different in expression, are in Shea’s Charlevoix, vol. i. etc.