Louisiana

Colonial

The history of Louisiana forms an important part of the history of the United States, and is romantic and interesting. It is closely connected with the history of France and of Spain, somewhat more with that of England, and for this reason is more picturesque than the history of any other state of the American Union. Alvarez de Pineda is said to have discovered the Mississippi River in 1519, but his Rio del Espiritu Santo was probably the Mobile River, and we have to leave to Fernando de Soto the honour of having been in 1541 the discoverer of the mighty stream into which his body was projected by his companions after the failure of this expedition, undertaken for the conquest of Florida. Some time before the discovery by De Soto, Pamphilio de Narvaez had perished in endeavouring to conquer Florida, but five of his followers had succeeded in reaching Mexico. One of them, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, described their wanderings, in which they must have crossed the Mississippi. Many years after de Soto the great Mississippi was rediscovered in 1673 by the Canadian trader Louis Joliet, and by the saintly missionary, father Jacques Marquette, forerunners of Robert Cavelier de La Salle, the celebrated Norman explorer. The latter floated down in Illinois River in 1682, and, entering the Mississippi, followed the course of the river to its mouth, and on 9 April took possession, in the name of Louis XIV, of the country watered by the Mississippi and its tributaries. To that vast region he gave the name of "Louisiane" in honour of the King of France, who carried royal power to the highest point, and who was always firm, energetic, and courageous. Among La Salle's companions were the chivalric Henry de Tonty and Fathers Zénobe Membré and Anastase Douay. The name Louisiane is found for the first time in the grant of an island to François Daupin, signed by La Salle, 10 June, 1679.

Louis XIV wished to colonize Louisiana, and unite it to his possessions in Canada by a chain of posts in the Mississippi valley. England would thus be hemmed in between the Atlantic Ocean and the Appalachian range of mountains. la Salle endeavoured in carry out this scheme in 1684, but his colony, Fort Louis, established by mistake on the coast of what is now Texas, perished when its founder was murdered on the Trinity river by some of his own men on 19 March, 1687. In 1688 James II was expelled from England, and the war which ensued between Louis XIV and William III lasted until 1697. When there was peace, the King of France thought once more of settling the land discovered by La Salle, and his Minister Maurepas chose Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville as the man best fitted to accomplish that task. Iberville was the third son of Charles Le Moyne d'Iberville, a Norman established in Canada. He was a native of Villemarie (Montreal), was "as military as his sword", and was a brave and able marine officer. He left Brest on 24 Oct., 1698, and that date is of great importance in the history of the United States, for on board the small frigates, the Badine and the Marin, were the seeds from which was to grow Louisiana, the province which was to give the American Union thirteen states and one territory and to exert a great influence on the civilization of the United States. In February, 1699, Iberville, and his young brother Bienville saw the beautiful coast of the Gulf of Mexico, where are now Biloxi and Ocean Springs, and after having found the mouth of the Mississippi on 2 March, 1699, and explored the "hidden" river, they built Fort Maurepas and laid the foundation of the French colony on the Gulf Coast, on the Ocean Springs side of the Bay of Biloxi. Iberville ordered a fort to be built fifty-four miles from the mouth of the Mississippi. This was the first settlement in the present state of Louisiana, and was abandoned in 1705. On 4 May, 1699, Iberville sailed for France on board the Badine, with the Count de Surgères who commanded the Marin. Sauvole, a young French officer, had been given command of the fort at Biloxi, and Bienville had been appointed lieutenant (second in command). Sauvole, who may be considered the first governor of Louisiana, died on 22 August 1701, and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville succeeded him in the command of the colony. Iberville ordered Bienville to remove the seat of the colony from Biloxi and form an establishment on the Mobile River. This was done in January, 1702, when Fort Louis de la Mobile was constructed at a point eighteen leagues from the sea. In 1711 the settlement was moved to the site which is now occupied by the city of Mobile. In 1704 the devoted friend of La Salle, Henry de Tonty, died at Mobile, and on 9 July, 1706, Iberville, the founder of Louisiana, died at Havana of yellow fever.

The founders of Louisiana had made the mistake of neglecting the banks of the Mississippi, when the fort on the river was abandoned in 1705, and, although there was Old Biloxi and Mobile, the settlement could not proposer as long as it was limited in its site to the land on the gulf. The colony might not have been permanent had not Bienville, in February, 1718, twelve years after the death of Iberville, founded New Orleans, so admirably situated between the deep and broad Mississippi and beautiful lake Pontchartrain. In 1722 the seat of the colony was transferred from New Biloxi, which had been founded in 1719, to New Orleans, and the future of Louisiana was assured. It was then directed by the Western Company, had received for a time the help of the bank of John Law, and from 1712 to 1717 had been conceded to another banker, Crozat, who had agreed to develop the resources of the colony, but who had failed his enterprise. On 10 January, 1722, Father Charlevoix, in a letter dated from New Orleans says: "This wild and desert place, which the weeds and trees still cover almost entirely, will be one day, and perhaps that day is not distant, an opulent city, and the metropolis of a rich and great colony." The distinguished historian based this hope "on the situation of this town thirty-three leagues from the sea, and on the bank of a navigable river, which one can ascend to this place in twenty-four hours; on the fertility of its soil, and the mildness and goodness of its climate, at a latitude of thirty degrees north; on the industry of its inhabitants; on the proximity of Mexico, where one can go in two weeks by sea; on that of Havana, which is still closer, of the most beautiful islands of America and of the English colonies."

It was no easy matter to establish a successful colony in the New World, and the French under Iberville and Bienville, and the descendants of these men, were just as energetic as the Englishmen who settled in Virginia and Massachusetts. There were on the banks of the Mississippi primeval forests to be cut down, in order to cultivate properly the fertile land deposited by the great river in its rapid course toward the gulf. The turbulent waters of the river were to be held in their bed by strong embankments, and the Indians had to be subdued. It was only then that the work of civilization could be begun, and the admirable culture of the French extended to the Mississippi Valley. The elegance and refinement of manners of Paris in the eighteenth century were found in New Orleans from the every foundation of the city, and the women of Louisiana were mentioned by the early chroniclers with great praise for their great beauty and charm. They owed, to a great extent, their mental and moral training to the instruction and education they received at the convent of the Ursuline nuns. The sons of wealthy colonists were set to France to be educated, or were taught at private schools at home, such as the one kept in 1727 by Father Cécile, a Capuchin monk. As girls could not be sent to Europe to obtain an education, a school for them was absolutely necessary in New Orleans, and Bienville, at the suggestion of the Jesuit Father de Beaubois, asked that six Ursuline nuns be sent from France to attend to the hospital and to open a school for girls. The nuns arrived in July, 1727, and were received with great kindness by Governor Périer, his wife, and the people of the town. In her letters to her father Sister Madeline Hachard gives an interesting account of New Orleans in 1727, speaks of the magnificent dresses of the ladies, and says that a song was publicly sung in which it was said that the city had as much "appearance" as Paris, and she adds quaintly, "indeed, it is very beautiful, but besides that I have not enough eloquence to be able to persuade you of the beauty which the song mentions, I find a difference between this city and that of Paris. It might persuade people who have never seen the capital of France, but I have seen it, and the song will not persuade me of the contrary of what I believe. It is true that it is increasing every day, and may become as beautiful and as large as the principal towns of France, if there still come some workmen, and it become peopled according to its size. Sister Madeline was prophetic, as Father Charlevoix had been in his letter quoted above (in 1722). In 1734 the Ursulines occupied the convent, built for them by the Government, which is still standing on Chartres street. They remained there until 1824, when they moved to another building down the river. Their services as educators of the girls of Louisiana in colonial times were invaluable.

The Province of Louisiana had been divided on 16 May, 1722, into three spiritual jurisdictions. The first, comprising all the country from the mouth of the Mississippi to the Wabash, and west of the Mississippi, was allowed to the Capuchins, whose superior was to be vicar-general of the Bishop of Quebec and was to reside in New Orleans. The second extended north from the Wabash and belonged to the Jesuits, whose superior, residing in the Illinois country, was also to be vicar-general of the Bishop of Quebec in that department. The third comprised all the country east of the Mississippi from the sea to the Wabash, and was given to the Carmelites, whose superior was also vicar-general and resided usually at Mobile. The Capuchins took possession of their district in 1722. The Jesuits had already been in theirs a long time. The jurisdiction of the Carmelites was added to that of the Capuchins on 19 December, 1722, and the former returned to France. In December, 1723, the jurisdiction of the Capuchins was restricted to the country on both sides of the river from Natchez south to the sea, as the Capuchins were not very numerous. It was, however, decided in 1725 that no monks or priests could attend churches or missions within the jurisdiction of the Capuchins without the consent of the latter. A little later the spiritual care of all the savages in the province was given to the Jesuits, and their superior was allowed to reside in New Orleans, provided he performed no ecclesiastical functions without the consent of the Capuchins. Several Jesuits arrived in New Orleans with the Ursuline nuns, and Father de Beaubois soon became their superior. It was the Jesuits who in 1751 introduced the sugar cane into Louisiana from Hispaniola. They cultivated on their plateau the sugar cane, indigo, and the myrtle-wax shrub.

The tribes with which the early colonists had principally to deal were the Natchez, the Chickasaws, and the Choctaws. The last named were very numerous but not warlike, and were generally friendly to the French, while the Natchez and the Chickasaws were often at war with the colonists, and the former had to be nearly destroyed to insure the safety of the colony. The village of the Natchez was the finest in Louisiana, and their country was delightful. The men and women of their tribe were well-shaped and very cleanly. Their chief was called the Great Sun, and inheritance of that title was in the female line. They had a temple in which a fire was kept burning continually to represent the sun which they adored. Whenever the Great Sun died, or a female Sun, or any of the inferior Suns, the wife or husband was strangled together with the nearest relatives of the deceased. Sometimes little children were sacrificed by their parents. The Natchez were defeated by Périer and by St. Denis, and what remained of the tribe were adopted by the Chickasaws. The name of the Natchez as a nation was lost, but it will live forever in the literature on account of the charming pages devoted to them by Chateaubriand. Bienville wished to compel the Chickasaws to surrender the Natchez who had taken refuge among them, and his ill-success in two campaigns against that powerful tribe was the cause of his asking in 1740 to be allowed to go to France to recuperate his exhausted health. He left Louisiana in May, 1743, and never returned to the colony which he and Iberville had founded. He had endeavoured to establish in New Orleans a school for boys, but had not been successful. La Salle, Iberville, and Bienville are the greatest names in the history of French Louisiana.

Pierre Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil, arrived in Louisiana on 10 May, 1743. He was known as the "Grand Marquis", and his administration was very popular. In 1752 he became governor of Canada, where he was not as successful as he had been in Louisiana. The time had come to settle forever the question of the supremacy on the American continent between France and England, and the brave Montcalm and his able lieutenant Lévis could not prevent the British from capturing Quebec and Montreal. On the plains of Abraham in 1759, where both Wolfe and Montcalm fell, the fate of Canada was decided, and the approaching independence of the English colonies might have been foreseen. By the Treaty of Paris in 1763, Canada was ceded by France to England, as well as the city of Mobile, and the part of Louisiana on the left bank of the Mississippi River, with the exception of New Orleans and the island of Orléans. Spain, in her turn, ceded to Great Britain the province of Florida and all the country to the east and south-east of the Mississippi. Already, by the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau (3 Nov., 1762), the wretched Louis XV had made to Charles III of Spain a gift of "the country known by the name of Louisiana, as well as New Orleans and the island in which that city is situated." This was the province which was retroceded to France in 1800, and ceded by France to the United States in 1803. Although the King of Spain had accepted, on 13 Nov., 1762, the gift of his gracious cousin, the Treaty of Fontainebleau was announced to the Louisianians only in 1764 by a letter from the King of France to the Director-General d'Abbadie, dated at Versailles, 21 April. The selfish monarch who cared nothing for his subjects in Europe, in India, or in America, ended his letter with these hypocritical words: "Hoping, moreover, that his Catholic Majesty will be pleased to give is subjects of Louisiana the marks of protection and good-will which they have received under my domination, and which only the fortunes of war have prevented from being more effectual." The Louisianians were remote from France and they were attached to their sovereign, whose defects they really did not know. They wished, therefore, to remain Frenchmen and sent Jean Milhet as their delegate to beg Louis XV not to give away his subjects to another monarch. It was in vain that Bienville went to see Minister Choiseul with Milhet. They were kindly received, but they were told that the Treaty of Fontainebleau could not be annulled. In the meantime Don Antonio de Ulloa had arrived in New Orleans on 5 March, 1766, as governor, and the Spanish domination had begun.

The rule of the Spaniards was more apparent than real, for Ulloa came with only two companies of infantry, and did not take possession officially of the colony in the name of the King of Spain. Indeed the Spanish banner was not raised officially in the Place d'Armes in New Orleans, the capital of Louisiana, and the orders of Ulloa were issued through Aubry, the French commandant or governor. The colonists should have been treated with gentleness at the very beginning of a change of regime, but Ulloa, who was a distinguished scientist, lacked tact in his dealings with the Louisianians and issued unwise commercial regulations. Jean Milhet returned from France at the end of 1767, and the colonists were greatly excited by the narrative of the failure of his mission. The inhabitants of Louisiana resolved to expel the foreign governor, and held a meeting in New Orleans, where it was decided to present a petition to the Superior Council on 28 Oct., 1768. The colonists said that they would "offer their property and blood to preserve forever the sweet and inviolable title of French citizen." Nicolas Chauvin de Lafrénière, the attorney-general, who had been the principal speaker at the great meeting in New Orleans, addressed the council in favour of the petition, and delivered a bold and eloquent discourse. On 29 Oct., 1768, the council rendered a decree in compliance with the demands of the inhabitants and the conclusions of Lafrénière. Aubry protested against the decree, but the council ordered its enforcement, and on 31 October Ulloa embarked aboard a French ship which he had chartered. The next day the cables of the vessel were cut by a