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CHAP. her husband cheered her by pointing her to the "house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." "The 1704. mother's heart rose to her lips, as she commended her five captive children, under God, to their father's care, and then one blow of the tomahawk ended her sorrows." This family, with the exception of one daughter, seven years of age, were afterward ransomed, and returned home.

Many years after this, there appeared at Deerfield a white woman wearing the Indian garb; she was the lost daughter of Eunice Williams, and now a Catholic, and the wife of an Indian chief. No entreaties could influence her to remain with her civilized relatives; she chose to return and end her days with her own children.

Humanity shudders at the recital of the horrors that marked those days of savage warfare. Some of the Indians even refused to engage any more in thus murdering the English colonists; but the infamous Hertel, with the approbation of Vaudreuil, then governor of Canada, induced a party to accompany him on a foray. Why repeat the story of the fiendish work, by which the little village of Haverhill, containing about thirty log-cabins, was burned, and all the inhabitants either murdered or taken captive. 1708. 66 My heart swells with indignation," wrote Colonel Peter Schuyler, of New York, to Vaudreuil, "when I think that a war between Christian princes, is degenerating into a savage and a boundless butchery; I hold it my duty toward God and my neighbor, to prevent, if possible, these barbarous and heathen cruelties." This reproof was unheeded; the cruelties continued.

Under the feelings excited by such outrages, can we think it strange that the colonists resolved to hunt the Indians like wild beasts, and offered a bounty for their scalps? or that the hostility against the French Jesuit should have thrown suspicion upon the Catholic of Maryland, who about this time was disfranchised? or that even

LEMOINE D'IBBERVILLE.

215

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in liberal Rhode Island, he should have been deprived CHAP. of the privilege of becoming a freeman ?

With renewed energy the French began to press for- 1708. ward their great design of uniting, by means of trading posts and missions, the region of the Lakes and the valley of the Mississippi. The Spaniards had possession of the territory on the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico, while they claimed the entire regions lying around that expanse of water.

The energetic mind of Lemoine d'Ibberville conceived a plan for planting a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi. He was a native of Canada, and had, on many occasions, distinguished himself by his talents and great courage. Hopes were entertained of his success. The expedition, consisting of four vessels and nearly two hundred colonists, among whom were some women and children, sailed from Canada for the mouth of the Mississippi. 1699. D'Ibberville entered the Gulf and approached the north shore, landed at the mouth of the river Pascagoula, and with two barges and forty-eight men went to seek the great river. He found it by following up a current of muddy waters, in which were many floating trees. He passed up the stream to the mouth of Red River, where he was surprised to receive a letter dated fourteen years before. It was from Tonti; he had left it with the Indians for La Salle; they had preserved it carefully, and gave it to the first Frenchman who visited them.

As the shores of the Mississippi in that region are marshy, it was thought best to form a settlement on the Gulf at the mouth of the Pascagoula. This was the first colony planted within the limits of the present State of Mississippi. D'Ibberville sailed for France to obtain supplies and more colonists, leaving one of his brothers, Sauville, to act as governor, and the other, Bienville, to engage in exploring the country and river.

Some fifty miles up the Mississippi Bienville met an

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CHAP. English ship sent on the same errand. Seventy years before, Charles I. had given to Sir Robert Heath a grant 1630. of Carolina, which as usual was to extend to the Pacific. This worthless grant Coxe, a London physician, had purchased, and to him belonged this vessel.

1700.

From the time of La Salle the Jesuits had been busy ingratiating themselves with the tribes along the shores of the Mississippi, and under their direction trading posts were established, at various points, to the mouth of the Illinois, and up that river to the Lakes.

The following year D'Ibberville returned with two ships and sixty colonists, and the aged Tonti had just arrived from the Illinois. Availing himself of his counsel, D'Ibberville ascended the river four hundred miles, and on a bluff built a fort, which, in honor of the Duchess of Pontchartrain, was called Rosalie. These settlements languished for twenty years; the colonists were mere hirelings, unfitted for their work. The whole number of emigrants for ten years did not exceed two hundred persons. Instead of cultivating the soil, and making their homes comfortable, many went to the far west seeking for gold, and others to the north-west on the same errand, while fevers and other diseases were doing the work of death. Meantime MOBILE became the centre of French influence in the south.

Once more a special effort was made to occupy the territory, and a monopoly of trade was granted to Arthur 1714. Crozart, who was to send every year two ships laden with merchandise and emigrants, and also a cargo of slaves from Africa. The French government was to appropriate annually about ten thousand dollars to defray the expense of forts and necessary protection.

A trading house was established up the Red River at Natchitoches, and one up the Alabama near the site of Montgomery; Fort Rosalie became a centre of trade, and

FOUNDING OF NEW ORLEANS.

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the germ of the present city of NATCHEZ-the oldest town CHAP on the Mississippi.

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Bienville put the convicts to work on a cane-brake to 1718. remove the trees and shrubs "from a savage and desert place," and built a few huts. Such were the feeble beginnings of NEW ORLEANS, which it was prophesied would yet become "a rich city, the metropolis of a great colony." Still the colony did not prosper; instead of obtaining their supplies from that fruitful region, they were dependent on France and St. Domingo. Labor was irksome to the convicts and vagabonds, and the overflowings of the river, and the unhealthiness of the climate retarded progress. The chief hope for labor was based on the importation of negroes from Africa.

Some German settlers, who, a few years before, had been induced by one Law, a great stock-jobbing and land speculator, to emigrate to the banks of the Arkansas, decided to remove. A tract of land, lying twenty miles above New Orleans, known now as the "German coast," was given them. Their settlement was in contrast with 1722. the others. They were industrious, and cultivated their farms, raised vegetables, rice, and other provisions; also tobacco and indigo. The fig and the orange were now introduced. The Illinois region had been settled by emigrants from Canada, who raised wheat and sent flour to the colonists below. The priests meanwhile, were not idle in teaching the Indians, and a convent was founded at New Orleans for the education of girls. As the colonists had not energy enough to protect themselves, a thousand soldiers were sent from France for that purpose.

The Choctaws, the allies of the French, occupied the region between the lower Mississippi and the Alabama. The principal village of the Natchez tribe was on the bluff where now stands the city of that name. They were not a numerous people, unlike the tribes among whom they dwelt, in their language as well as in their

1724.

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CHAP. religion. Like the Peruvians, they were worshippers of the sun, and in their great wigwam they kept an undying 1724. fire. Their principal chief professed to be a descendant of the sun. They became justly alarmed at the encroachments of the French, who having Fort Rosalie, demanded the soil on which stood their principal village, for a farm. They suddenly fell upon the white intruders and killed two hundred of their number, and took captive their women and children. The negro slaves joined the Indians. Their principal chief, the Great Sun, had the heads of the French officers slain in the battle arranged around him, 1730. that he might smoke his pipe in triumph ;-his triumph

1735.

was short. A company, consisting of French and Choctaws, under Le Suer, came up from New Orleans, and surprised them while they were yet celebrating their victory. The Great Sun and four hundred of his people were taken captive and sent to St. Domingo as slaves. Some of the Natchez escaped and fled to the Chickasaws, and some fled beyond the Mississippi; their land passed into the hand of strangers, and soon, they as a people were unknown.

The territory of the brave Chickasaws, almost surrounding that of the Natchez, extended north to the Ohio, and east to the land of the Cherokees. They were the enemies of the French, whose boats, trading from Canada and Illinois to New Orleans, they were accustomed to plunder. English traders from Carolina were careful to increase this enmity toward their rivals.

Two expeditions were set on foot to chastise these bold marauders. Bienville came up from the south with a fleet of boats and canoes, and a force of twelve hundred Choctaws; he paddled up the Tombecbee as far as he could, and then hastened across the country to surprise one of their fortified places. D'Artaguette hastened down from the Illinois country, of which he was governor, with fifty Frenchmen and a thousand Indians, to attack an