The History of Louisiana, from the earliest period

Front matter

FR A NCOIS-X AVI ER MARTIN THE HISTORY OF LOUISIANA, FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD, BT FRANCOIS-XAVIER MARTIN. '' Hœc igitur formam crescendo mutat et olim, Immensi caput orbis erit sic dicere votes." —OVID METAM. XV., 434 and 435. WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR, By JUDGE W. W. HOWE, (NKW ORLEANS BAR.) TO WHICH IS APPENDED ANNALS OF LOUISIANA, From the Close of Martin's History, 1815; to the Commencement of the Civil War, 1861, By JOHN F. CONDON. NEW ORLEANS: JAMES A GRESHAM, Publisher and Bookseller, 26 CAMP STREET. 1882. Entered according to the Act of Congress in the year 188a, fry JAMES A. GRESSAM, In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. T. H. Thomason, Printer, New Orleans. TO THE HONORABLE LOUIS BUSH : Dear Sir, The dedication of this new edition of Martin's " History of Louisiana " to you is, personally, but a slight acknowledgment of your manifold kindness to me.

Aside from this, I am simply giving public testimony to the universal esteem in which you are held in your native State. You have been long identified with her best interests ; and your devotion, zeal, and courage have been unquestioned in every position which you have been called upon to occupy. That you may long live to enjoy the appreciation and confidence so justly won, is the sincere wish of THE PUBLISHER. Publisher's notice. In issuing this New Edition of Martin's History of Louisiana, the publisher feels assured that he is supplying a general want, and preventing the almost total disappearance of a rare and valuable record of our State. In addition to the original work, which has been faithfully reproduced, will be found much new and important matter, consisting of a Memoir and Portrait of the distinguished author ; the Act of Purchase of Louisiana from the French ; Brief Annals of the leading events in the History of the State, from 1815 to the beginning of our Civil War, with other information that cannot but interest the general reader.

The mechanical portion of the work, which has been entirely executed in this city, will compare favorably with that of similar publications issued elsewhere. The Publisher offers thanks to his numerous subscribers, whose generous encouragement has done much to promote the success of this enterprise. FRANCOIS-XAVIER MARTIN. i. The history of Louisiana will always be an interesting chapter in the history of the world. It does not concern merely the area which is now included within the boundaries of the present State; it embraces of necessity the story of the repeated and persistent attempts of France to found an empire in the new world, which should extend from the mouth of the St. Lawrence across the great Lakes to the mouth of the Mississippi. The Louisiana of the seventeenth century extended from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains, and from the Rio Grande and the Gulf to the dim regions which now constitute British America ; while Canada or New France stretched from the upper Mississippi to the Atlantic Ocean.

Chapter I

Charles the eighth, the seventh monarch of the house of Valois, wielded the sceptre of France, and Henry the seventh that of England, in 1492, when Columbus, under the auspices of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, discovered the western hemisphere. Charles, during a reign of nineteen years, sought military glory, and an extension of territory, in the invasion of Italy. Success, for a while attended his arms, and with the aid of the Pope, he caused himself to be crowned Emperor of Constantinople and King of Naples ; but, he was soon driven back, and died in 1496, the fiftieth year of his age, without having ever sought to avail himself of the advantages the discovery of the new world offered. Less ambitious of warlike fame, Henry made an early effort to share them. He fitted out a small fleet, the command of which he gave to Cabot, a Venetian adventurer, settled in Bristol, whom he sent on a voyage of discovery.

No historical record informs us of the success of this expedition ; but in 1496, this navigator sailed in a ship furnished by the crown, and four barques, supplied by the merchants of Bristol. He discovered a large island, to which he gave the name of Prima vista, now known by that of Newfoundland, and soon after the continent. He sailed southwardly along the coast, as far as the bay of Chesapeake. It is not known that he effected or even attempted a landing, and the ocular possession he took of the country is the origin and basis of the claim of the English nation to all the land in North America, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Charles the eighth, having left no issue, was succeeded by Louis the twelfth, a distant kinsman ; their common ancestor being Charles the seventh, the grandfather of the deceased monarch.

Louis continued the war in Italy with the same spirit, and with as little success as his predecessor ; and viewed the progress of the Spaniards in America with equal unconcern. His subjects, however, extended their industry and their commerce to the new world. In 1504, the Biscayans, the Bretons and the Normans, visited Newfoundland, in quest of fish. Two years after, Denys entered, and made a map of the Gulf of St. Lawrence ; and in 1508, Aubert carried over the first American Indians who trod the soil of France. The crown of England in the following year, passed, on the death of Henry the seventh, in his fifty-second, to his son Henry the eighth. The southernmost part of the continent of North America, was first discovered bv a Spanish adventurer in 1513. Not impelled by avarice or ambition, but led by credulity and chance, Ponce de Leon, believing that the island Binimi, in the archipelago of Bahama, possessed a fountain, the waters of which had the virtue of repairing the ravages of time on the human frame, sailed from the island of Porto Rico, in search of this renovating stream.

A violent storm disappointed his hopes, and threw him on the cape, opposite to the northern side of the island of Cuba. He called the country thus discovered Florida, either from its flowery appearance, or from the circumstance of his having discovered it on Palm Sunday, Pasqua de Flores. Erecting a large cross on the beach, he took formal possession in the name of his sovereign, Charles the first of Spain, the grandson of Isabella, the late Queen of Castile. He returned in the following vear and landed on the same spot, with a number of his countrymen ; but the natives fell on the intruders and killed them all but six, who were grievously wounded. The chief was among the latter. He sailed for the island of Cuba, where he and his five surviving companions died of their wouuds. Louis the twelfth died on the first of January, 1515, the fifty third year of his age, without issue.

His successor was Francis the first ; their common ancestor was the Duke of Orleans, a brother of Charles the sixth. The first attempt of the French to plant a colony in America, was made in the second year of Francis' reign. A few adventurers of that nation, were led by the Baron de Levy to the small island, in the forty-fourth degree of northern latitude, now known as Sable Island, part of the province of Nova Scotia. The spot was most unfavorable ; at a great distance from the continent, or any7 other island ; the soil is rocky and sterile. These men were unable to derive their subsistence from it. They suffered much from the cold ; many sickened and died. The Baron carried back the survivors to France, leaving some cattle and hogs on the island. In 1520, Vasquez de Aillon sailed from Hispaniola for the northern continent, with views not quite so unexceptionable as those of Ponce de Leon.

His object was to seize some of the Indians, transport them to Hispaniola and sell them to his countrymen, who could not obtain from Africa a sufficient number of negroes to work the mines. He made land on the coast of the present state of South Carolina, near the mouth of a river to which he gave the name of Jourdain, after a man on board of one of his ships, who first descried it ; it now bears that of Santee. He was received with hospitality : after staying awhile, and supplying himself with provisions, he invited a number of the natives to a banquet on board of his ship, made them dance at the sound of his trumpets, plying them with abundant doses of ardent spirits. When exercise and ebriety had lulled their senses, he hoisted his sails and brought off his unwary guests. Heaven did not allow him to reap the fruits of his treachery.

One of the ships perished in a storm. The sturdy captives in the other, for a long while, refused to take any food ; the voyage was long, and disease made a great havoc among the Spaniards and the Indians. Velasquez made another voyage to Florida in 1552, with two ships ; he was quite unsuccessful. He lost one of the ships, and the Indians killed a great part of his people. Veranzany, a Florentine, employed by Francis the first, appears to have been the first navigator, who visited America at the expense of the crown of France. He reached it in the month of March, 1524, a little below Cape Hatteras, near the spot on which sixty years after, the first attempt towards English colonization in America was made, under the auspices and at the cost of Sir Walter Raleigh. He sailed up the coast, as far as the fiftieth degree of northern latitude, entered a few of the rivers, had some little intercourse with the aborigines, by whom he was every where friendly received, and returned to France, without any attempt towards a settlement.

He made other voyages, in the two following years, and it is supposed perished in the last. The misfortunes of Francis, made a prisoner at Pavie, his long captivity in Spain, and his distresses till the peace of Cambray, prevented the execution of the plan he had formed of planting a French colony in the new world. Pamphilo de Narvaez, having obtained from Charles the first of Spain, the government of all the countries he could discover from Rio de Palma, to the undefined limits of Florida, sailed from the island of Cuba, with four ships and a barque in March, 1528, with four hundred foot and eighty horse. He landed near the bay del Spiritu Santo, called, in modern times, the bay of Tampa. The Indians cheerfully supplied him with corn and other provisions. He landed a part of his force and took solemn possession of the country, in the name of his imperial master.

Noticing, at this ceremony, a cymbal of gold, in the hands of an Indian, his hope of securing a large quantity of this metal was greatly excited. He was told that the Apalachians, a nation not far distant, had much of it. Under the influence of the excitement which the information created, he put the shipping under the orders of Cabeca de Vacca, with directions to sail along the coast ; he landed the rest of his force, and marched up the country the last day of May7. On the next, he crossed a river, on the banks of which was a town, where the Indians supplied him with provisions. He ranged the country for several days, without meeting a human being ; at last he overtook a chief preceded by men blowing flutes, and followed by a large party. He gave them to understand, he was going towards the Apalachians ; the chief told him these Indians were at war with his nation : Narvaez travelled with him to his village, in which he was hospitably entertained.

Proceeding, he reached on the 25th the first village of the Apalachians, which consisted of about forty cabins. He took possession of it without opposition, and found corn, venison and skins ; but no metal. He sojourned near this village for several days, making occasional excursions into the country; during which, he had frequent skirmishes with the natives, who darted their arrows at his people and hid themselves in the swamps. At last, destitute of provisions, seeing nothing but a sterile country and unpassable roads, he determined on marching towards the sea, and reached Aute, an Indian town, not far distant from the spot on which the Spaniards afterwards erected the fort of St. Mark of the Apalaches. The Indians followed on the flanks of their invaders, harrassing them at times by clouds of arrows.

Their countrymen at Aute, strongly defended themselves and killed a number of Spaniards. Cabeca de Vacca approached the coast, and Narvaez and his men took shipping ; but the greatest part perished through fatigue, hunger, disease and shipwreck. Those who escaped these complicated disasters, reached Rio de Palma. Narvaez was not among them ; his vessel foundered in a storm and he never was heard of. Francis, having married his rival's sister, and released his sons, detained as hostages in Spain, availed himself of the tranquillity that followed the peace of Cambray, to resume his plan of adding a part of America to his dominions. For this purpose, he directed two barques of sixty tons, with one hundred and fifty men, to be fitted out at St. Maloes, and gave the command of them to Carrier, who sailed on the 30th of April, 1534.

He reached Bonavista in the island of Newfoundland in twenty days, crossed the gulf and entered a bay, which from the extreme heat at the time, he called Chaleur bay ; it is a little to the south of the mouth of the river St. Lawrence. Two sailors (the wretched remnant of the crew of a Spanish ship, which had been wrecked there) were wandering on the beach, wdien Cartier's boat approached. The French inquired what country they were in ; one of the Spaniards, who, being pressed by hunger, imagined he was asked whether there was any thing to eat, replied, Aca nada; "there is nothing here." The French in the boat, on returning to Carrier, told him the Spaniard said the country was called Canada. Carrier visited several parts of the gulf, and took possession of the country for the crown of France.

The king, on the return of Carrier, ordered a new expedition, consisting of three ships ; the largest, commanded by Cartier, was of one hundred and twenty tons ; they sailed on the 19th of May, 1535. On reaching the continent, Cartier was obliged by stress of weather, to put into a port which he called St. Nicholas. He gave the name of St. Lawrence to the gulf and the river ; leaving the two small vessels at the mouth of the stream, he proceeded to an Indian town called Hochelaga, near the spot on which the city of Montreal now stands. The friendly reception the Indians gave him, induced him to send for the vessels he had left, and to build a number of cabins, which he surrounded with a strong palisado, that might enable him to resist a sudden attack ; and he made other preparations to winter there.

The season proved extremely severe, and the scurvy broke out among his men ; he was himself attacked by it. Twenty-five of his people had already perished, and two alone escaped the disease, when a specific remedy was pointed out by the Indians, in a decoction of the bark of the Abies Canadensis, (the Canadian fir.) Eight days after it had been resorted to, Cartier found all his men perfectly recovered. Some who had been afflicted with another disease, and had been but partially cured, were perfectly restored to health by the use of this specific. In the spring, Cartier brought back such of his men as the fell disorder had spared ; but nothing more was done in Francis' reign, towards the settlement of a French colony in America. Two years after, Charles the first of Spain gave the government of St. Yago de Cuba to Hernandez de Soto, with permission to prosecute the discovery of, and subjugate, Florida ; and on the twelfth of May of the following year, he sailed from the Havana with an army of nine hundred foot and three hundred and fifty horse.

The fleet was equipped, and the naval and land forces raised and supported at Soto's expense. He had amassed considerable wealth in Peru, in the conquest of which he had accompanied Pizarro. The fleet was delayed by contrary winds, and at last reached the bay in which Narvaez had landed eleven years before. Three hundred men, having landed and marched a short distance, were repelled with great loss. Soto now disembarked his horse and foot, and sent back the large vessels. He proceeded northerly, his march being retarded by frequent interruptions from the natives, who hung on his flanks ; and he halted at Herriga, the first town he came to, at the distance of six miles from the shore. He spent some days there, to give time to the baggage to come up and afford some rest to his men, and began his march for the country of the Apalachians, which was at the distance of about four hundred miles.

The country was divided into small districts, each governed by a Cacique ; the chief, the district and its principal town, generally bearing the same name. The town was a collection of from fifty to two hundred houses ; surrounded by a strong palisado. Garcilasso de la Vega, in his history of this expedition, has recorded the names of the towns through which Soto passed, from the bay del Spiritu Santo to the Apalachians. They are many, but it is believed the name of none of them corresponds with that of any of the present divisions of the country. Two of the principal districts, or provinces, were governed by a female cacique. After advancing into the country, Soto's progress ceased to be obstructed, and at several towns he was hospitably received, and obtained abundant supplies of corn and venison.

One of the female caciques added to this needed succor, presents of pearls. If we credit Garcilasso, these presents in the quantity and value of the pearls, were immense ; they were often as large as hazel nuts and were dealt out by the bushel, except those of the smallest kind, called seed of pearls, which were weighed. But this writer speaks of lions in the forests of Florida, and of a number of caciques, who commanded several thousands of wrarriors. It is believed those who furnished this Indian author with the memoirs on which he wrote, were less fond of truth than of the marvellous. Several caciques opposed the passage of the Spaniards through the country, but none could resist, with bows and arrows, an army with musketry and artillery7. By courtesy, threats and violence, Soto made his way to the country of the Apalachians.

There, after taking some rest, a part of his army was sent in strong detachments to reconnoitre the ground ; while the rest proceeding southwesterly, reached Aute, a town near the sea shore, which Narvaez had visited. There, this party dividing itself in two detachments, one of them marched westerly to Anchusi, another large town, on the spot on which, about a century and a half after, was built the town of Pensacola ; while the latter, proceeding at first easterly, then southerly, reached the bay in which the army had landed, from which one of the small vessels was sent to Cuba, with an account of Soto's progress, and to obtain supplies. The two detachments uniting again at Aute, joined the main body at the Apalachians, where Soto had determined on wintering. The army resumed its march early7 in the spring ; its direction w7as at first northwesterly ; passing through the back parts of the present state of Georgia, it marched for some time northerly, then northwesterly through the country of the Cherokees, then a large and warlike nation, crossing the present state of Tennessee and proceeding to that of Kentucky, as high up as the thirty-seventh degree of northern latitude.

It marched thence southwesterly to the bay of Mobile. Of the Indians thus visited by Soto, the Tuscaloosas, Mobilians and Alabamans, are the only ones who, at this day retain their names. The Mobilians made a furious resistance, but were at last overpowered. Garcilasso reckons they lost in several skirmishes, a pitched battle and the defence of their principal town, upwards of eleven thousand men, and that more than one thousand women were burnt in a single house. Soto, having subdued the Mobilians, gave one month's rest to his army; then continued his march to the Chickasaws, among whom he wintered. A party of these Indians attacked him at night, in the latter part of January following, by torch light. The torches were formed of a grass, which made into a rope, takes and retains fire like a match.

The Chickasaws darted arrows, armed with this grass thus lighted, on the huts of their invaders, principally those used as stables, thus setting the provender on fire ; several horses were burnt at their mangers, to which they were made fast with small chains. The Indians, hovering round their enemy, became risible only when they agitated their torches. The musketry, artillery and cavalry, however, soon compelled them to disperse; the Spaniards had forty men and fifty horses killed in this attack. Soto removed his camp to what he conceived a more defensible spot, about three miles to the west. But notwithstanding his utmost vigilance and the alertness of his men, the army, while it remained in the country of the Chickasaws was incessantly harrassed by hovering parties, and every individual who straggled to any distance from the camp, was almost instantly made a prisoner or killed. , Early in April, Soto marched northwesterly through the country of the Choctaws, and the western parts of the present states of Mississippi and Tennessee.

He reached the mighty stream then called by the Indians, Cieuaga, and now Mississippi, a little below the lowest Chickasaw bluff. Having employed some time in building flats, he overcame without much difficulty the opposition made by the Indians to his crossing it. On the western bank, he proceeded as high up as White river, and then downwards in a circuitous route, to avoid the swampy shore, through the present territory of the Arkansas, to his winter quarters. On the left side of the Mississippi, the Spaniards met with the same reception from the Indians, as on the opposite. At times the natives were confident and friendly, at others reserved, often cruel and treacherous ; rarely, though some times, approaching in hostile array. In the spring, the army proceeded southerly by slow marches ; but in the beginning of the summer, fatigue, dearth of provisions, the intense heat and the impure air of the swamps, greatly injured the health of the Spaniards; many sickened and died.

At last, after long and frequent halts, the army reached the mouth of Red river. Here the chief was seized with a fever, the mortal character of which became manifest in a few days. It was not long before he became conscious of his situation, and he contemplated approaching dissolution with composure. He appointed Luis Muscoso de Alvarado his successor, calmly conversed with his officers on the most proper movements of the army, had almost all the individuals in it brought to his bedside, received their oaths of fidelity to the future chief, recommended to the men obedience to him, and affection to each other, discipline, unanimity and perseverance. Then, giving his remaining moments to the rites of the church of Rome, expired about the 30th of June. He was in his forty-second year. Ambitious to have his name as conqueror of Florida, in the page of history, between those of Cortez and Pizarro, the conquerors of Mexico and Peru, he spent in this scheme an immense fortune, acquired in the conquest of the latter kingdom, and was the indiscreet cause of the death of the greatest portion of his followers, without any advantage to his country or himself.

In republics, as wealth is seldom acquired with great rapidity and ease, and is more generally divided, it is seldom so profusely lavished, and it rarely enables the possessor to command the sacrifice of the lives of men to' his ambitious views. His remains were inclosed in a strong coffin, which was filled with bullets and sunk in the Mississippi, opposite to the mouth of Red river, to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Indians In the meanwhile, the plan of settling a colony in Canada, though abandoned by the monarch, had been resumed by individuals, in France. Francis de la Roque, Lord of Robertval, a man of considerable influence in the province of Picardy, had solicited Francis the first to permit him to prosecute the discoveries of Cartier. He had been, by letters patent of the fifteenth of January, 1540, created " Lord of Norimbegue, Viceroy and Lieutenant-General of Canada, Hochelaga, Saguenay, Newfoundland, Belisle, Carpen, the great bay7 and Baccalocs."

The Viceroy, in the following year, sailed with five ships, having taken Cartier as his first pilot. The voyage was prosperous. He built a fort (some say on the river St. Lawrence, others on the island of St. John) of which he gave the command to Cartier. Leaving a good garrison in it, and a barque for the prosecution of Carrier's discoveries, he sailed for France, in search of farther aid for his colony. Incessantly7 annoyed by the natives, assailed by disease, and unable to withstand the severity of the weather, the colonists prevailed on their chief, in the following year, to carry them back to France. Near the island of Newfoundland, they met Robertval, who, by solicitations and threats, induced them to return. Having restored order among them, he proceeded up the rivers St. Lawrence and Saguenay to explore their shores.

He sent one of his pilots in quest of a northwest passage to China, and went back to France. Muscoso, the successor of Soto in the command of the Spaniards on the Mississippi, conducted the remainder of the army up Red river, through that part of the country now called Natchitoches and Nagodoches, to a nation of Indians, whom from the number of wild cattle he found among them, he called los vaqueros; probably, in that part of the country now known as the province of Texas. Proceeding about one hundred miles further, the army7 reached the foot of a mountainous country. Muscoso had been induced to march this way in the hope of getting to Mexico by land. He now determined, on account of the distance which he received from the Indians, to retrograde, and float down the Mississippi to the sea. The army accordingly marched into winter quarters, at the mouth of Red river.

During the month of January, Muscoso employed his carpenters in the construction of vessels, to convey his men to Mexico. The neighboring caciques, apprehensive that his views, in going thither, were to apprise his countrymen of the fertility of the land on the Mississippi, and to solicit aid to return and subjugate the Indians, leagued themselves for the purpose of raising a sufficient force to destroy the Spaniards, or at least to set fire to the vessels they were building. Garcilasso relates the league was so general, that the caciques, who entered in it, agreed to raise forty thousand men. The plot, however, became known to some Indian women, who attended the Spanish officers, and was disclosed to Muscoso. The measures he took to defeat it, induced most of the caciques to withdraw from the league.

Those who dwelt immediately on the river and their nearest neighbors, persevered in their intention, and collected a considerable number of canoes and pirogues and made rafts, with the view of pursuing the Spaniards down the stream. On the twenty-fourth of June, the vessels were launched, and soon after the army went on board ; hides having been placed around the bows, as a protection against the arrows of the Indians. Out of the twelve hundred and fifty men who were landed at the bay del Spiritu Santo, there remained now but three hundred and fifty, and the three hundred and fifty horses were reduced to thirtv. On the second day after their departure, the Indian fleet hove in sight towards noon ; Garcilasso says, it consisted of one thousand pirogues, canoes or rafts of various sizes; the largest containing eighty men and the least having four oars on each side.

Each pirogue was neatlv painted in and outside, with blue, red, yellow7 or white. The oars and feathers, bows and arrows of the warriors in each pirogue, was of the same color with it, The oars were plied in measure and cadence, the rowers singing to mark the time. The fleet advanced in five divisions, each pouring a volley of arrows, as it passed the Spaniards ; the pursuit was continued during' ten days, when it was given up. Almost every Spaniard was wounded, and of the thirty horses that were embarked, twenty-two were killed. The Spaniards had been unable to defend themselves, having no longer any powder. Muscoso perceiving a village near the shore, and concluding he was approaching the sea, deemed it prudent to land one hundred of his men in quest of provisions. As they advanced toward the village, the Indians left it, flving in all directions* The Spaniards found in it abundance of corn, venison and dried fruit.