Illustrated Historical Atlas
of the State of Indiana.
Baskin, Forster and Company,
p. 203.
203 |
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EARLY DISCOVERIES.
The first discoveries in Indiana were made by the French, who penetrated the territory from Canada as missionaries and fur traders among the Indians. After they had pushed their explorations as far westward as the head of Lake Superior, and had established trading posts and missionary stations at Mackinaw and Green Bay, they began to penetrate the waters along Lake Michigan, and to discover and pass the portages from these to the tributaries of the Mississippi. One of these portages lies between the Fox and the Wisconsin Rivers, another between the St. Joseph of Lake Michigan and the Kankakee, leading to the Illinois and thence to the Mississippi. Marquette and Joliet, by following the former route from Green Bay, in 1673, discovered and passed down the Mississippi to near the mouth of the Arkansas; and, by following the latter route on their return the same year, discovered that portion of Indiana which lies along the Kankakee River, and perhaps north of that point. These were the first Europeans who are positively known to have visited the territory embraced within the present State, although it is probable that Pierre Claude Allouez and Claude Dablon, who traversed Southeastern Wisconsin and Eastern Illinois in 1671 and 1672, visited the northern portion of Indiana at about the latter of these dates.
Marquette and Joliet returned to Canada without having traced the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. In 1679, M. de LaSalle, with a number of French colonists for Illinois, arrived at the mouth of the St. Joseph River. Here he built a fort, which he named Fort Miami, and proceeding by the way of the St. Joseph and the portage to the Kankakee, descended the latter to Lake Peoria on the Illinois, where he made a treaty with the Illinois Indians, and established a small fort and settlement. In 1682, after he had made a trip to Canada and returned, he constructed a barge and descended the Mississippi to its confluence with the Gulf of Mexico. He erected the King's arms near the mouth of the great river, and took possession of the whole country watered by it and its tributaries in the name of Louis XIV, in honor of whom he named the vast territory Louisiana.
Indiana was embraced in Louisiana till the downfall of the French Colonial Empire in North America, and the change of its political relations by the British in 1774. Its history during this period is therefore a part of the history of the French colony of Louisiana.
EARLY FRENCH SETTLEMENTS.
On LaSalle's return to France, after the discovery of the Lower Mississippi, he was, in 1685, appointed Governor of Louisiana, and sent to the colony with a fleet and a large number of emigrants. He sailed into the Gulf of Mexico, but failing to find the mouth of the Mississippi, up which he intended to proceed to his settlement in Illinois, he was deserted by Beaujeau, his associate commander, who abandoned him and returned to France. LaSalle, with his store ship and two hundred and thirty passengers, was driven ashore and wrecked on Matagorda Bay. Here he constructed a fort out of the fragments of his stranded vessel, and formed a little settlement which he named St. Louis. After a fruitless search of four months for the mouth of the Mississippi in canoes, he turned his steps toward New Mexico, in April, 1686, with twenty companions, in hope of discovering the mines of St. Barbe, the fabled El Dorado of Northern Mexico. Returning once more, he found his little colony reduced to about forty, and he resolved to travel on foot to his settlement in Illinois, and thence to Canada to obtain recruits and supplies for his settlements. He started on the 12th of January with sixteen men, and had passed the basin of the Colorado and reached a branch of Trinity River, where, on the 20th of March, 1687, he was assassinated by three of his companions.
Although this first attempt at colonization proved disastrous, the French, from the time of LaSalle, were actuated by large hopes respecting Louisiana. From 1688 to 1697, little progress was made in colonization, owing to the wars between France and Great Britain, but after the peace of Ryswick, Louis XIV determined to send out a large number of colonists. Lemoine D'Iberville was appointed Governor, and M. de Bienville, Commandant of the Province. Under the conduct of these officers a large number emigrated from France in 1698. The following year, they founded the settlement at Biloxi, on Mobile Bay, one of the most important settlements to the early traders, particularly on the Wabash, of any in the colony of Louisiana.
In 1701, a permanent settlement was made a Detroit by Antoine de Lamotte Cadillac, who, in July of that year, arrived from Montreal with a missionary and one hundred men. In 1705, this officer was invested by the Crown of France with power to grant lands in small quantities to actual settlers in the vicinity of Detroit. Among many interesting and curious conditions upon which these lands were granted, there was one of special importance, considering the circumstances of those early outposts of civilization. We refer to the prohibition against selling or trading spirituous liquors to the Indians. This custom was everywhere the great curse of the early trading posts, and was complained of by the missionaries as the chief hindrance to the civilizing influences of Christianity upon the Indians of the West.
Within the territory now embraced in Indiana the earliest French settlement was made at Vincennes. A post was established here by Sieur Juchereau and a missionary named Mermet, as early as 1702. This has been disputed by some authorities, who think the settlement was made near the mouth of the Ohio River, but more careful investigations have shown this latter opinion to be erroneous. The first published account of the "Poste" is found, in a letter written by Gabriel Marest, a missionary, to Father Gerom, and dated Kaskaskia, November 9, 1712. It was embodied in a book published in Paris in 1761. The citizens of Vincennes consider the origin of their town as a French trading post to date back to 1702, and have so engraved it on a marble tablet placed in the front of their present fine court home. [See history of Vincennes, under the head of Knox County, in this work.
As early as the year 1700, traders and hunters had penetrated the fertile region of the Wabash, and in 1705, 15,000 hides and skins had been collected at this point and shipped to Mobile, for the European markets. In 1716, the French population on the Wabash kept up a lucrative commerce with Mobile Bay, by means of traders and voyageurs, while as yet the Ohio River was comparatively unknown, it being out of the line of French immigration from Canada, and the English colonies had made no movement west of the Alleghany Mountains.
In 1746, agriculture on the Wabash had attained to greater prosperity than in any of the other French settlements of Louisiana. In that year, six hundred barrels of flour were manufactured and shipped to New Orleans, together with considerable quantities of hides, peltries, tallow and beeswax.
In 1712, an attempt was made by the Indians to destroy the post and settlement at Detroit.
The English had not only extended their Indian trade into the vicinity of the French settlements, but, through their friends, the Iroquois, had gained an ascendancy over the Foxes- a fierce and powerful tribe, of Iroquois descent- whom they incited to hostilities against the French. The Foxes began their movements with the siege of Detroit, in 1712- a siege which they continued for nineteen consecutive days, and although the successes achieved over them by the French and their Indian allies resulted in diminishing the number of the Foxes and humbling their pride, yet it was not until after several successive campaigns, embodying the best military resources of New France, had been directed against them that they were finally defeated at the great battles of Butte des Morts (hill of the dead) and on the Wisconsin River and driven across the Mississippi, in 1746.
THE CHARTER OF CROZAT.
By the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, France ceded to England her possessions in Hudson's Bay, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. England also obtained supremacy in the fisheries, and stipulations that France should not molest the Five Nations subject to the dominion of Great Britain. France still retained Louisiana, but the province had so far failed to meet the expectations of the crown and people of France, that a change in the government and policy of the country was deemed indispensable.
Accordingly, in 1711, the colony was placed in the hands of a Governor General, with headquarters at Mobile. But this scheme lasted only one year, and in 1712 another change was made. The resources of the province were transferred to individual enterprise- a charter being granted to Anthony Crozat, a wealthy merchant of Paris, giving him the entire control and monopoly of the trade and resources of Louisiana.
This scheme also failed of success. Crozat attempted to carry on commercial intercourse with Spain; but every Spanish harbor on the Gulf was closed against his vessels. The occupation of Louisiana was deemed an encroachment upon Spanish territory, and Spain looked with jealousy upon the ambition of the French.
Having failed with the Spaniards, Crozat sought to develop the internal resources of Louisiana, by causing trading posts to be opened and explorations made to its remotest borders. But he actually accomplished nothing for the province. Even the small sources of profit made by barter with the Indians and a petty trade with neighboring European settlements was cut off by his monopoly; the Indians were too numerous to be resisted by his factors; the English gradually appropriated the trade of the natives; every Frenchman in Louisiana, except his agents, fomented opposition to his exclusive privileges; and after three years spent in fruitless negotiations with the Spanish Viceroy of Mexico, relative to commercial intercourse with ports on the Gulf, and after much delay, vexation and expense, his vessels were finally prohibited from trading in any of the Spanish ports, and he surrendered his charter in August, 1717.
THE MISSISSIPPI COMPANY.
Under the Mississippi Company Louisiana was somewhat more fortunate, although this was an outgrowth of a scheme without solid financial foundation, and devised to save the failing revenue of the National Government. France had become involved in debt at the time that John Law, a Scotchman, proposed his famous paper money scheme, and got it endorsed by Louis XIV under the name of the Bank of France.
Probably there never was such a huge financial bubble ever blown as this scheme of Law's; nevertheless, such was the financial condition of France that it was accepted as a national deliverance. Orders were given to the officers of the revenue in all parts of the kingdom to receive the currency at par for the payment of taxes, and this, together with its convenience, quickness and promptness of payment, soon brought it into great repute. In a little while it rose to a premium of one per cent. On the 4th of December, 1718, the Bank was declared to be a Royal Bank of France- thenceforward to be administered in the name of the King.
In this financial high tide the Mississippi Company floated into existence. It was at first organized to take charge of the affairs of Louisiana; and, in 1717, soon after the surrender of the charter of Crozat, the whole province was made over to it by royal charter. In May, 1719, the company obtained of the Regent a monopoly of the trade with the East Indies, China and the South Seas, and, thus enlarged, changed its original name to the Company of the Indies, at the same time creating fifty thousand additional shares of stock at an increased price. In July, 1719, the National Mint was made over to it. In August following, it assumed the farming of all the taxes of the nation. Other interests quickly followed, so that before the end of 1719 the company had absorbed within itself nearly every commercial and financial interest of the country. Law was now the most powerful man in France. He became a Catholic, and was appointed Comptroller General of Finance.
Among the first operations of the Mississippi Company was to send eight hundred emigrants to Louisiana, who arrived at Dauphine Island in 1718. For the future home of these, as well as the capital of Louisiana, Bienville had selected the site of New Orleans. But he had brought over a very poor class of people to build a city. At the end of three years the place was still a wilderness, where two hundred of the immigrants had only encamped in the unsubdued cane brake. Of the eight hundred brought out by Bienville, some perished for the want of enterprise, others from the sickliness of the climate. Instead of ascending the river in ships, they all blindly disembarked on the miserable coast to make their way, as best they could, to the lands which had been ceded to them.
The charter of the Mississippi Company was limited to twenty-five years. Although, in May, 1720, the company was declared bankrupt, yet it continued to administer the affairs of Louisiana, and, under its administration, the colony enjoyed the most prosperous period of its history. The directors of the company endeavored to turn the attention of the colonists to agricultural pursuits, and the cultivation of the mechanic arts, rather than the visionary search after mines of gold and silver, which had occupied so largely the attention of the restless and floating population.
In 1721, the company divided the colony of Louisiana into nine districts, as follows: New Orleans, Biloxi, Mobile, Alabama, Natches, Yazoo, Natchitoches, Arkansas and Illinois. Indiana was included in the latter district. Factories or storehouses were established in each district and the cultivation of rice, tobacco, indigo, etc., strongly urged upon the people. About the year 1721, Negro slaves were first imported from Africa, under the auspices of the Company of the Indies, and sold to the planters in Louisiana on a credit of three years. In the month of March, 1724, Louis XV published a famous ordinance for the regulation of slavery and other domestic and civil matters within the Province of Louisiana.
FORT CHARTRES.
This celebrated French fortress, on the Mississippi, was first built under the direction of the Mississippi Company, in 1718, by M. de Boisbraint, a military officer, under command of Bienville. It stood on the east bank of the Mississippi, about eighteen miles below Kaskaskia, and was for some time the headquarters of the military commandants of the district of Illinois. At the time of the breaking out of the war between France and Spain, the Lower Mississippi was threatened by the Spaniards. The offices and principal depot of the Mississippi Company were removed to New Orleans, and measures taken for the improvement and fortification of the town. It was decided at that time to make New Orleans a commercial port. In order to test the capabilities of the Mississippi for shipping up to that point, a complete survey was made of it below the site of the city, including all its bars, channels and passes, by M. Pauger, a royal engineer.
Fort Chartres was rebuilt in 1756, and was designed to be the strongest fortification on the continent. It was in the form of a polygon, the sides of which were 490 feet in extent, containing commandants' and commissaries' houses, magazine, guard house and two rows of barracks, all constructed of solid masonry. A hundred years after its construction, its massive ruins could be seen, overgrown with trees and vines almost impenetrable to the traveler. For many years Fort Chartres was the most celebrated fortress in all the Mississippi Valley, and was the center of wealth and fashion of the West. The last French commandant who had his headquarters here was M. de St. Ange. On the surrender of the French posts in the West to the British, in July, 1765, St. Ange evacuated Fort Chartres and retired, with his company of twenty men, to St. Louis, on the west side of the Mississippi, into territory which had been ceded to Spain. St. Louis was founded in 1764. A detachment of British troops took possession of the evacuated fort, and Capt. Sterling, British Commandant in Illinois, made it his headquarters. In 1769, the post was in charge of Lieut. John Wilkins, who granted several large tracts of land to British traders in that vicinity. Some of the French population took the oath of allegiance to the government of Great Britain, and continued to occupy their ancient possessions in and around Kaskaskia, Cahokia and Prairie du Rocher; others removed to the Spanish territory on the west side of the Mississippi.
DESTRUCTION OF THE NATCHEZ.
The nation of the Natchez had their villages on the banks of the Lower Mississippi, among the most fertile plains of the Southwest. They were a more highly civilized people than the generality of American Indians, and, in their manners and customs, resembled the Aztecs of Mexico. The French had a post at Natchez, and the settlements in that vicinity, on the Yazoo and Washita Rivers, contained about seven hundred inhabitants. In the year 1729, the Natchez, excited by the encroachments of the French, and the attempt of one Chopart to take forcible possession of the site of their principal village for a plantation, decided, in council with the Chickasaws and Choctaws, upon a general massacre of the French inhabitants. On the morning of the 28th of November, 1729, the work of blood began, and before noon nearly every Frenchman in the colony was murdered. Scarcely enough survived to carry the tidings of destruction to New Orleans.
The news spread terror and dismay in the city; each house was speedily supplied with arms, and the place fortified by a ditch. The citizens, at that time, numbered about four thousand, beside two thousand Negro slaves. The French forces were assembled on the bank of the river and placed under command of Col. Lubois. The famous explorer, Le Sueur, was then in New Orleans. He immediately repaired to the country of the Choctaws, won them to his aid, and was followed across the country by seven hundred warriors, arriving first at the village of the Natchez. On the morning of the 29th of January, 1830, the Choctaws made an attack upon the Natchez village, and, losing only two of their men, brought off sixty scalps and eighteen prisoners.
Lubois arrived on the 8th of February, and completed the work of destruction. Some of the surviving Natchez fled for protection to the neighboring tribes; the remainder crossed the Mississippi; both parties were pursued and their places of refuge taken. Their chief- Great Sun- and some four hundred prisoners were sold as slaves among the Spaniards. The nation of the Natchez was thus entirely exterminated.
The Company of the Indies, having found that the cost of defending Louisiana exceeded the return from its commerce, sought wealth by conquest or traffic on the coasts of Guinea and Hindostan, and solicited leave to surrender the Mississippi wilderness to the home government. Accordingly, on the 10th of April, 1732, the jurisdiction of the colony reverted to the Crown of France. The company had held possession of Louisiana fourteen years. In 1735, Bienville reappeared to assume command for the King.
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