Louisiana : a record of expansion

Preface

Undoubtedly the earlier development and primary importance of the original thirteen English colonies, which formed the nucleus of the present United States, justify all the attention that has been given to their institutions, and even the somewhat exclusive prominence which they maintain in popular histories and in the mind of the general reader ; hut a glance at a map which pictures the expansion of the country by territorial acquisition, and the miraculous peopling of the wilderness, reveals a vast process of which the whole history of the first Federation of States yields only an embryonic suggestion.

The Latin settlements in the Mississippi Valley, designed as they were by France to restrict the English colonies between the Atlantic and the Alleghany Mountains, threatened the coherence of the feeble Federation of States, checked the drift of pioneers that instinctively bore the destiny of the nation ever westward, and, even as late as 1803, offered a dangerous and alluring scheme of conquest to Napoleon. The mere fact that the possession of the Mississippi Valley by a foreign power prevented, and would forever prevent, the United States from becoming an equal nation among the powers of the earth, gives the final acquisition of this wide territory an importance fully as great as the act of independence which definitely committed the confederate colonies to a destiny free from European control. In the records of Louisiana,

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PREFACE one finds, also, the story of the final conflict of Latin against Saxon for the domination of North America; and thus the history of Louisiana becomes a leading episode in the vast western movement of the Anglo-Saxon race — one of the triumphant incidents in the slow unification of humanity.

The main theme of the present volume is the attempt to trace this episode in broad lines. In Gayarr^s English “ History of Louisiana ” and in Miss King’s “New Orleans ” the romance and individual peculiarities of Louisiana are accessible. But there seemed need of a critical handbook that should give a running commentary upon the whole narrative, fixing the place of the State as an individual in the union of commonwealths, and emphasizing the part which it has played in the development of the nation and of national and international policies, in the hope that other readers than Louisianians may find matter that concerns every citizen of the country.

Naturally, so large a theme, when compressed within the present limits, must be handled with frequent disregard of details. Nevertheless, although the special student may find little in the book that is likely to be new to him, — so far as the facts are concerned, — and although only a small part of the material examined and collected could be used, still the volume as it stands has been based entirely upon examination of the original sources. It had been possible occasionally to bring forward new particular facts of more or less importance to the special student, but this temptation has been set aside with a view to making the book more useful and interesting to the general reader.

The result is the sifting of much crude matter of fact collected from many sources ; but the bulk of the material used in the book itself has been found in the extensive

PREFACE

Vll

Louisiana collection of Mr. Gaspar Cusachs, of New Orleans, in the manuscripts owned by the Louisiana Historical Society, and in newspaper files and official records, with several important additions from the papers of Judge Gayarre, kindly put at my disposal by Mrs. Gayarrd through Miss Grace King, to whom the book owes much more than can be reckoned in a mere acknowledgment of indebtedness.

A. P.

New Orleans, 3 October, 1905.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Early Exploration of the Mississippi Valley

and the Gulf of Mexico 1

Chapter I Early Exploration Of The Mississippi Valley And The Gulf Of Mexico

Towards the close of the fifteenth century a new era of exploration had marvelously extended the physical and mental horizon of the world and laid open dazzling new fields for conquest and colonization in Africa, in Asia, and in the Americas. Almost simultaneously the long process of political centralization, which for many generations had been removing the feudal characteristics of governments, had then put the power of each of the chief monarchies of Europe into the hands of strong kings ; nations had been born as unified governments, as organic masses ; and, for the first time since modern Europe had risen from the fragments of the Roman Empire, international policies began to come into prominence. Almost at the moment when a universal spirit of activity and zeal for wider knowledge had roused the whole world to a sense of new needs, and when each of the lusty new powers had begun to dream itself an empire, came Columbus hack from his voyage into the unknown with almost incredible tales of golden islands beyond the farthest rim of the western seas. Thus, at the one point of destiny towards which the retrospective view of history unfolds the progression of a twofold converging succession of events, the need and the power met ; and, as just such an analogous combination of circumstances resulting from Roman conquest made possible the marvelous spread of Christianity, so an equally vast process of evolution prepared for the discovery of new worlds and made that event serve, as if by design, the end towards which the political growth of European nations had been shaping.

The inevitable result — national expansion — brought about the tremendous series of international wars which for hundreds of years have kept the balance of power unstable and changed the character of modern history. Henceforth the histories of the several nations became inseparably international. The first explorations rapidly lost their imaginative and religious motives for others more purely political and practical ; and the first wars of the new period ceased to be, as they had been hitherto, either feudal or religious, and became, in the modern sense of the word, political and economic, and were destined to be fought out finally in those very lands which exploration and colonization soon made the field of newer and wider policies. Pope Alexander the Sixth, by his famous Bull of Demarcation issued after the return of Columbus, had divided the new lands, whose vastness was all unguessed, between Spain and Portugal ; but no earthly power might restrain or guide within fixed bounds the sudden flood of migration from Europe to the west. As early as 1497 the English had established a claim to North America by the discoveries of Cabot ; and throughout the whole of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries, during the period occupied by the growth of the Empire through the power of Spain and Austria under Charles Y, by the Deformation and the Thirty Years’ War, each of the powers sent expeditions into the ever widening region of the New World, regardless of all claims save the imperative need which drove the whole race to this greatest migration of all its wandering history. Out of the maze of tangled motives, wars, alliances, and the rise and decline of Spanish, Austrian, and Swedish influence, the two great protagonists of the drama slowly stand forth — France and England. In North America and in India, as well as in Europe, these two powers were gradually brought face to face in final conflict. The power of France at last hung upon the possession of the valley of the Mississippi and the domination of the Gulf of Mexico ; and thus the history of Louisiana, even to the time of Napoleon Bonaparte, is chiefly the narrative of the attempt of France to check the growing power which England was arming against her throughout the world. Outside and above the smaller internal history of Louisiana rolls the vast struggle of the nations, while the young colony, remote from the scene of conflict, remains almost passive, as if conscious that another destiny awaited it unguessed by the rivals that shed their blood to possess it.

The history of Louisiana, therefore, practically begins with the French expeditions of exploration which emanated from Canada in the latter part of the seventeenth century. It is true that the Spaniards had traversed a great part of the country, but their expeditions had been barren of results, and in so far as they bear upon the subsequent story of the French province of Louisiana may he summarized in a few words. The expedition of De Leon, in 1513, had not only failed to find the Fountain of Youth, but had not even determined whether Florida itself was an island or a part of the mainland. In 1519, Francis de Garay had sent Alonzo Alvarez de Pineda from Jamaica to explore the northern shore of the Gulf. Pineda had skirted the coast from St. John’s Elver in Florida to Mexico, and had discovered the mouth of a great river which his map names Eio del Espiritu Santo and which may perhaps indicate the Mississippi. In 1527, Panfilo de Narvaez received from Charles Y a grant to all the northern coast of the Gulf and set out to explore it, but he and his whole party were lost, with the exception of Cabeza de Yaca, two of the men, and a negro slave, who finally reached the Spanish outposts on the Mexican frontier after almost ten years of wandering in the wilderness. The accounts of the country which De Yaca gave out and the things he said, or, rather, did not say, hut mysteriously hinted, gave the impulse to the brilliant expedition which De Soto, in 1539, led from Florida across the present states of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to the Great Fiver and over into the present state of Louisiana ; but this exploration, too, came to naught, for at the death of the commander his followers knew but one desire, to get out of the country as quickly as might he ; and the long march through western Louisiana under the leadership of Muscoso, the return, the descent of the Mississippi, and the voyage through the Gulf to Panuco were all so hastily made that but little observation was taken that might serve to guide subsequent explorers.

The fatal hope of finding a repetition of the spoils of Peru and Mexico had been the only motive of these early expeditions and had been the chief cause of their failure. Nevertheless, the Spaniards, until they were finally aroused to jealousy by the later explorations and claims of the French, made no attempt to colonize the Gulf coast, with the exception of the settlement established by Tristan de Luna in 1559, at what was called the Bay of Ichuse ; but this settlement was abandoned and the actual situation forgotten, for the power of Spain had already begun to decline perceptibly, and she was soon too much busied with the struggle for the retention of what she held to make further large attempts to extend her already vast colonial domain. The destruction of her Great Armada, in 1588, overthrew her naval supremacy ; and England, freed from this menace, began to graft permanent establishments upon the eastern seaboard of North America. The time of England’s great power, however, was not yet come, and in the story of the rise of France lies the story of the Mississippi Valley.

The Peace of Westphalia, in 1647, marks the beginning of the supremacy of France among European powers, for upon her had fallen the chief burden and glory of defeating the Empire. In the impulse given to her national growth by the consciousness of this new ascendency, her attention was naturally directed more than heretofore towards North America, where the early explorations of Cartier and Champlain and her establishments in Canada at Port Royal, Quebec, and Montreal gave her a claim and a firm hold upon a promising territory. North of the Gulf of Mexico, she had but one serious rival, in the English colonies ; but these, clinging in a narrow strip to the Atlantic, left free the unknown region of the interior of the continent, and their apparent insignificance gave but little indication of their inherent strength and capability of growth. The new reign of Louis XIV saw the first serious attempts of France to hold the continent of North America, and to meet and check the efforts of England in the same direction. From the establishments in Canada, the path of French exploration and colonization was forced by the position of the English colonies to move westward up the St. Lawrence, and led, as it were, by what might be called a natural predestination, to the discovery of the Great Lakes and of the valley of the Mississippi, bending completely about and half encircling from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico the territory claimed and held by England. From the ambition of Louis XIV and the young enterprise of Canada, therefore, spring the first sources of the story of Louisiana, named, as it was, for the Great Monarch, and intended to tighten in strangling growth about his one great rival for the possession of the western world.

Perhaps because of the same physical necessities which laid out so definitely the direction of French expansion, as much as from any differences of racial temperament, their methods and tactics in the whole struggle about to commence were in striking contrast with those of the English.

The English colonies were peopled chiefly by emigrants who sought homes and liberty. Permanent settlements and governments were established at once. There was little time or desire to explore, for too much work had to be done about the young villages. As a result, these colonies remained near the seacoast, traded but little inland, had few friendly relations with the natives, and expanded slowly in extent of territory ; but population increased rapidly, the wild land was brought under profitable cultivation, towns and villages sprung up in numbers, and the spirit of independence developed by the zest of their vigorous life showed itself in their customs and government.

France, on the contrary, sent out few colonists of the right sort. The policy of the priest-ridden government was to keep Canada Foman Catholic. Followers of that creed were allowed to go there freely ; but, as they were likewise the favored class at home, few of these had reason to emigrate, and those few were often the least useful as colonists. Had the country been open as a refuge to the Huguenots, Hew France might have been settled as quickly and thoroughly and much in the same manner as Hew England had been by the Puritans ; but, as this was not permitted, Canada, for many critical years, depended for population upon the roving adventurer and the religious zealot. It thus came about that Hew France practically depended for its existence upon the fur- trade and the J esuit propaganda ; and thus, while the early history of French expansion in America is a record of daring and brilliant exploration, colored with endless romance and thrilling with spectacular heroism, both fur-trader and priest pass as mere transients, clearing the way to the west for the steady Saxon, who stopped to plant firmly his home, his school, his courthouse, and his fort before his sons went out into the wilderness. For the young Frenchman of spirit there was but little occupation. Government offices were few and, by their very nature, scarcely to he desired ; there was but little tilling of the soil, and, moreover, that source held out no promise of quick wealth which might enable the possessor to return to Paris and cut a figure in that brilliant city ; and even the fur-trade was hampered by attempted restrictions which authority was supposed to have placed upon it for its own advantage and profit.

The vast shades of the illimitable forest, however, and the strange new life of the Indian villages, the wild hunting-parties of the savages, and the promise of novelty in the not unwilling eyes of the Indian girls, held out hints of romantic adventure that were irresistible to those young imaginations already fired to a keen temper in the vivid life of the France of that dashing age. Then, too, in that secret wilderness, no eye of governor or intendant might count the number of rich beaver skins that changed hands for a few bright beads or a swig of heart-softening brandy ; and the laws of companies and governments might be as lightly forgotten in that easy profit as the frowns of the solitary black-robed Jesuit might be dissipated in the laughter of the Indian girls. The charms of life in the merry greenwood were the charms of hell in the eyes of parents, priests, governors, and directors of companies ; but into the wilderness the young men went, and in such numbers that the weak settlements were all but depopulated of robust youth. Bushwhackers, runners of the woods, coureurs de hois , they were called. Wherever the Indians went they followed, by stream or lake or obscure forest-trail. They became hardy fighters, invaluable as guides and scouts, they did the best fighting in later wars with the English, and in after years even built themselves strong forts, such as Michillimackinac and Detroit ; but for the most part they lived a savage, wandering life or sported in the native villages, to the horror and disgust of the priests.

Sometimes, dressed in gorgeous finery, or often as naked as the Indians themselves, they would return to the settlements to dispose of heaver skins, to drink and swagger, and show their contempt for the bourgeois habitants. These picturesque young men, despising marriage and commonplace labor, were of little use to the growing and needy colony ; but upon their wanderings France was to base her claim to the interior of the continent.

Equally as daring, though from far different motives, and almost as far-wandering as the coureur de bois , was the Jesuit missionary. To the priest, the vague inland wilderness was a land of heathendom and spiritual darkness, a land abandoned to the actual possession of the devil. To win this unholy domain to subjection to Christ and to save the abandoned souls of the doomed savages was the glorious vision that dazzled the eyes of the early missionary, and everywhere the indomitable Jesuit scouted in advance of the army of salvation. To his overwrought enthusiasm and fired imagination the supernatural powers of darkness were as real and as potent as they were even to the superstitious Indian. In the horrid glooms of the forest, the solitary priest saw many a demonic apparition, sometimes in the shape of men, sometimes in the forms of wolves or wildcats, sometimes in the yet more dangerous shape of woman. The same religious superexcitation which multiplied these supernatural obstacles produced a corresponding number of miracles and heavenly interventions, so that the “ Relations ” of the Jesuits read like tales from the lives of mediaeval saints. But, aside from supernatural dangers and miraculous works, there was fully enough of real peril and of actual achievement to win for these early missionaries a high place among the French explorers.

Priest after priest broke the health of his body at this life, and many a one met a more certain martyrdom at the hands of the savages ; but nothing held them back, — not famine, nor cold, nor fatigue, nor fire and torture, nor even loneliness and failure. Fearlessly the black robe went into the very stronghold of Satan, into the filthy hovels of the Indians, suffering their obscene jokes and mockery, serving the needs of soul and body, tending their sick in the hopes of turning a parting soul from hell, baptizing in secret and even by tricks that were often ludicrous the unsuspecting infants, preaching and teaching whatever the minds of his flock would receive or their patience tolerate. One by one they met the hideous deaths to which each of this indomitable advance guard seemed almost inevitably doomed, Brebeuf and Lallemant by torture and at the stake, De Noue in the snow, Jogues after the most hideously prolonged agony, from which he escaped only to return again though he knew that his death was certain, Chabanel, Gamier, and many another. Some, like Brebeuf and Jogues, suffered with an adamantine stoicism that astonished even the hardened savages, others, like the feeble Lallemant, with shrinking nerves and agony that was not wholly physical, but all with unhesitating bravery and unfailing heroism ; and to their wonderful zeal the greater obstacles only made the hoped-for victory seem greater and more sublime, and the greater martyrdom of the body meant only the greater reward of the eternal soul.

Like the coureurs de bois , though in a different way, the Jesuits served to cement a friendly relationship between French and Indian and did inestimable service in softening the temper of the savage tribes and clearing the path for the explorer and settler. Though they failed of their chief aim, and though later on they departed from the unworldly motives of the earlier martyrs, brought scandal upon the Order, and were a stumbling-block in the way of such men as La Salle, still they sowed some seeds of civilization, and made even the mind of the savage feel and trust the benignant policy which always guided France in her dealings with the natives. Thus, while the wild coureurs de bois scouted in advance of the colonist, the indefatigable Jesuits, insinuating their way into the very heart of Indian life, left there an influence which made more easy the spread of French power over the West and helped to explain that peaceful hold upon the native tribes which is perhaps the chief glory of French colonial history.

The national government was slow to take advantage of the chance discoveries made by these men and formed no consistent colonial policy. Nevertheless, until the attention of Louis XIV was finally caught by the discoveries within the territory called Louisiana, private enterprise of Canadians continued to push French claims farther into the West. Among these many enterprises we are here concerned only with those which contributed to the discoveries upon which France based her claim to the valley of the Mississippi.

The old hope of finding a water-way to the western ocean, and thus an easy trade-route to China and Japan, had not been abandoned, and therefore the adventurers who were attracted to the region of the Great Lakes with the hope of trading in furs and discovering copper mines were also eager to find in the tales of the savages some clew to that western passage. In this way, about the year 1634, Jean Nicollet, an interpreter and indefatigable bush-ranger, almost stumbled upon the Mississippi 1 while on a journey to make a treaty of peace between the friendly Hurons and a tribe of wandering Winnebagoes then living near Green Bay on the western shore of Lake Superior. He brought back the exciting report that his guides had assured him that the Wisconsin Fiver emptied into a “ great water. ” This he supposed to be the Western Sea, and so the Canadians believed when the account of his journey was blown about the settlements ; but the Indians meant, of course, the Mississippi.

Unfortunately, an outbreak of Iroquois hostilities prevented further exploration for some years. When 1 Pere Vipont’s Relation for 1640.

EARLY EXRLORATION peace was again made, in 1654, traders and priests began to push westward once more. In 1659, the Sieur ues Groseilliers, one of the most energetic of the coureurs de hois , reached the upper end of Lake Superior, and journeying thence westward for about six days met some wandering tribes who told him of “ a beautiful river, long, wide, deep, and comparable, so they say, with our great river, the St. Lawrence.” In a second journey, a year later, Des Groseilliers was accompanied by Father Menard, who was lost in trying to find the Hurons in the marshes of Wisconsin. In after years traces of him were found among the Sioux, and Perrot relates that Father Menard followed some Ottawas into Louisiana. If this were the case, the priest Menard was the first Frenchman to see the Mississippi. Father Allouez, who succeeded Mdnard, explored a portion of the Lake country, and he too heard from the Sioux of the great river, the “ Messipi ” as he calls it ; and his accounts gave new stimulus to the hope of finding a water-way to the Western Sea or to the Gulf of California.

The able Intendant Talon now took up the matter in correspondence with Colbert, the great minister and secretary of state to Louis. Talon foresaw the inevitable conflict which must take place between the opposing claims and interests of France and England in America, and to him the weakness of the French colonies and the strength of the English were apparent. The English, moreover, had now gotten possession of the Dutch colony of New York, and Talon urged that the time was now ripe for offensive and defensive measures against them and their powerful allies the Iroquois. Colbert’s reply, however, to the Intendant’s recommendations shows plainly that the government intended that Canada should deal with the problem alone.

Meanwhile, the one man with the brain and imagination to conceive and the power and will to put into execution the plan which should have been the colonial policy of France had appeared. Robert Cavelier de la Salle, a Norman of Rouen, who had settled upon his estate about nine miles below Montreal, had been told by some wandering savages, probably Iroquois, that a river which rose in their country flowed towards the west, and that by following its course one came after a journey of eight or nine months to the sea.1 This river they called the Ohio, though evidently they included under that name both the Ohio and its continuation in the Mississippi, for Dollier de Casson writes that the Iroquois always called the Mississippi the Ohio. La Salle naturally concluded that by following the Ohio he might reach the Pacific. We know nothing of the expedition which he made in this direction after the time when he was deserted by the Seminary priests who had set out with him, for the only journal was kept by Father Gallinee. Nor do we know what La Salle did for the next two years. That he did, indeed, reach the Ohio and descend it as far as the site of the present Louisville seems certain ; but that he pushed on and actually discovered the Mississippi at this time (1670 ?), or during his expedition to the Illinois the following year, has not been sufficiently proved even from the documents advanced by Margry.

These attempts, however, seem to have borne some fruit, for the Intendant Talon wrote urging Colbert to seize New York, to take and hold the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, and explore the intervening country.

He met no response from the government, but himself took one official step when, in 1670, he sent Daumon de Saint-Lusson to take formal possession of all the country “ bounded on the one side by the seas of the North and West and on the other side by the South Sea.” This impressive act took place at Saut Ste. Marie near the entrance of Lake Superior, in the presence of some interpreters and priests and the representatives of fourteen tribes.

1 See Relation officielle de V entreprise de La Salle .

But the king, though steadily petitioned for support, paid little heed to what must have seemed to him and to his statesmen the wild dreams of mad Canadians.

On assuming control of the government, in 1661, at the death of Mazarin, Louis was the greatest sovereign of the world. All Europe seemed to lie at the mercy of his ambition in those years between the Peace of Westphalia and the Dutch War of 1672. His plans for European conquest were well laid and, up to a certain point, successful, but he never saw, or saw too late, that in his colonies lay the undeveloped wealth and power that would stay him in the struggle, that in those distant lands France would submit to her worst loss, her hardest humiliation, and that she would be checked and humbled there by the silent, slow-moving power of England, which he found no better means to thwart than by crossing with his gold the itching palm of its thoughtless and powerless king.

Hew France must have seemed in those days an unpromising field of glory to the Sun-King, nevertheless, though he never gave all the support for which his Canadian petitioners hoped, he at last sent out, in 1672, an able lieutenant-general and governor in the person of Count Erontenac. Acting upon the advice of Talon, Frontenac ordered Louis Joliet to seek the Great River which the Indians said flowed into the sea, and to trace it to its mouth if possible.

In 1673, Joliet, in company with Father Marquette, descended the Mississippi by way of the Wisconsin, as far south as the Arkansas ; and Frontenac, upon receiving Joliet’s report, named the river Colbert, in honor of the great minister upon whom the hopes of the Canadians depended.

Meanwhile, La Salle also had secured the support of Frontenac for the tremendous scheme which he had evolved. He had explored for himself the Ohio valley and the Illinois country, and he was now convinced that the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of Mexico. His aim was now no longer the mere hope of finding a direct route by which trade might reach the riches of Asia, hut the creation of an empire for France in the west. After building a fort on Lake Ontario and establishing treaties with the Indians, it was La Salle’s intention to descend the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico and there build a strong fort by means of which the river might be held against Englishman and Spaniard. Holding firmly the Mississippi by forts established at suitable distances along its course, he hoped to form the Indian tribes into a peaceful confederation under French influence.