56

Adventures of D'Iberville.

1699.

of Fort Crevecœur. An unsuccessful attempt was also made to found a colony on the Ohio,§ it failed in consequence of sickness. In the north De la Motte Cadillac, in June, 1701, laid the foundation of Fort Pontchartrain on the Strait, (le Detroit) while in the southwest efforts were making to realize the dreams of La Salle. The leader in the last named enterprise was Lemoine D'Iberville, a Canadian officer, who, from 1694 to 1697, distinguished himself not a little by battles and conquests among the icebergs of the "Baye d'Udson" or Hudson's Bay. He having, in the year last named, returned to France, proposed to the minister to try, what had been given up since La Salle's sad fate, the discovery and settlement of Louisiana by sea. The Count of Pontchartrain, who was then at the head of marine affairs, was led to take an interest in the proposition; and, upon the 17th of October, 1698, D'Iberville took his leave of France, handsomely equipped for the expedition, and with two good ships to forward him in his attempt.†

Of this D'Iberville we have no very clear notion, except that he was a man of judgment, self-possession, and prompt

action.

Such was the man who, upon the 31st of January, 1699, let go his anchor in the Bay of Mobile. Having looked about him at this spot, he went thence to seek the great river called by the savages, says Charlevoix, "Malbouchia," and by the Spaniards, "la Palissade," from the great number of trees about its mouth. Searching carefully, upon the 2d of March,

There was an Old Peoria on the north-west shore of the lake of that name, a mile and a half above the outlet. From 1778 to 1796 the inhabitants left this for New Peoria, (Fort American State Papers, xviii. 476.

Clark,) at the outlet.

Judge Law, in his address of February, 1839, before the Vincennes Historical Society, contends that this post was on the Wabash, and at Vincennes, (p. 14, 15, and note B.) Charlevoix, (ii. 266, edition 1744,) says it was "a l'entrec de la Riviere Ouabache, qui se decharge dans le Micissipi, &c."-"At the entrance (or mouth) of the River Oubache which discharges itself into the Mississippi." The name Ouabache was applied to the Ohio below the mouth of what we now call the Wabash. See all the more ancient maps, &c. [Fort Massac, on the Ohio, was a missionary station in 1712, and Ohio was then called Ouabache. -Ed.]

Charlevoix, ii. 284.-Le Detroit was the whole Strait from Erie to Huron. (Charlevoix, ii. 269, note: see also his Journal.) The first grants of land at Detroit, i. e. Fort Pontchartrain, were made in 1707.-(See American State Papers, xvi. 263 to 284. Lanman's History of Michigan, 336.)

*New France, vol. iii. pp. 215, 296.-Lettres Edifiantes, vol. x. p. 280.

† New France, vol. iii. p. 377.

our commander found and entered the Hidden River, whose mouth had been so long and unsuccessfully sought. As soon as this was done, one of the vessels returned to France to carry thither the news of D'Iberville's success, while he turned his prow up the Mississippi. Slowly ascending the vast stream, he found himself puzzled by the little resemblance which it bore to that described by Tonti. So great were the discrepancies, that he begun to doubt if he were not upon the wrong stream, when an Indian chief sent to him Tonti's letter to La Salle, on which, through thirteen years, those wild men had been looking with wonder and awe. Assured by this, that he had indeed reached the desired spot, and wearied probably by his tedious sail thus far, he returned to the Bay of Biloxi, between the Mississippi and the Mobile waters, built a fort in that neighborhood, and, having manned it in a suitable manner, returned to France himself.*

While he was gone, in the month of September, 1699, the lieutenant of his fort, M. De Bienville, went round to explore the mouths of the Mississippi, and take soundings. Engaged in this business, he had rowed up the main entrance some twenty-five leagues, when, unexpectedly, and to his no little chagrin, a British corvette came in sight, a vessel carrying twelve cannon, slowly creeping up the swift current. M. Bienville, nothing daunted, though he had but his leads and lines to do battle with, spoke up, and said, that, if this vessel did not leave the river without delay, he had force enough at hand to make her repent it. All which had its effect; the Britons about ship and stood to sea again, growling as they went, and saying, that they had discovered that country fifty years before, that they had a better right to it than the French, and would soon make them know it. The bend in the river, where this took place, is still called "English Turn." This was the first meeting of those rival nations in the Mississippi Valley, which, from that day, was a bone of contention between them till the conclusion of the French war of 1756.. Nor did the matter rest long with this visit from the corvette. Englishmen began to creep over the mountains from Caro-lina, and trading with the Chicachas, or Chickasaws of our day, stirred them up to acts of enmity against the French.

When D'Iberville came back from France, in January, 1700, New France, vol. iii. p. 380, et. seg.

58

Expedition of Le Sueur.

1708.

and heard of these things, he determined to take possession of the country anew, and to build a fort upon the banks of the Mississippi itself. So, with due form, the vast valley of the West was again sworn in to Louis, as the whole continent through to the South Sea had been previously sworn in by the English to their Kings; and, what was more effectual, a little fort was built, and four pieces of cannon placed thereon. But even this was not much to the purpose; for it soon disappeared, and the marshes about the mouth of the Great River were again, as they had ever been, and long must be, uninhabited by men.

D'Iberville, in the next place, having been visited and guided up the river by Tonti in 1700, proposed to found a city among the Natchez,-a city to be named, in honor of the Countess of Pontchartrain, Rosalie. Indeed, he did pretend to lay the corner-stone of such a place, though it was not till 1714 that the fort called Rosalie was founded, where the city of Natchez is standing at this day.

Having thus built a fort at the mouth of the Great River, and designated a choice spot above for a settlement, D'Iberville once more sought Europe, having, before he left, ordered M. Le Sueur to go up the Mississippi in search of a copper mine, which that personage had previously got a clue to, upon a branch of the St. Peters river;* which order was fulfilled, and much metal obtained, though at the cost of great suffering. Mining was always a Jack-a-lantern with the first settlers of America, and our French friends were no wiser than their neighbors. The products of the soil were, indeed, scarce, though valuable on a large scale, it being supposed that the wealth of Louisiana consisted in its pearl-fishery, its mines, and the wool of its wild cattle.† In 1701 the commander came again, and began a new establishment upon the river Mobile, one which superseded that at Biloxi, which thus far had been the chief port in that southern colony. After this, things went on but slowly until 1708; D'Iberville died on one of his voyages between the mother country and her sickly daughter, and after his death little was done. In 1708, however, M. D'Artaguette came from France as commissary of

*Charlevoix, vol. iv. pp. 162, 164. In Long's Second Expedition, p. 318, may be seen a detailed account of Le Sueur's proceedings, taken from a manuscript statement of them. Charlevoix, vol. iii. p. 389.

Louisiana, and, being a man of spirit and energy, did more for it than had been done before. But it still lingered; and, under the impression that a private man of property might manage it better than the government could, the king, upon the 14th of September, 1712, granted to Crozat, a man of great wealth, the monopoly of Louisiana for fifteen years, and the absolute ownership of whatever mines he might cause to be opened.*

Crozat, with whom was associated Cadillac, the founder of Detroit, and Governor of Louisiana, relied mainly upon two things for success in his speculation; the one, the discovery of mines; the other, a lucrative trade with New Mexico. In regard to the first, after many years' labor, he was entirely disappointed; and met with no better success in his attempt to open a trade with the Spaniards, although he sent to them both by sea and land.

Crozat, therefore, being disappointed in his mines and his trade, and having, withal, managed so badly as to diminish the colony, at last, in 1717, resigned his privileges to the king again, leaving in Louisiana not more than seven hundred souls.t

Then followed the enterprises of the far-famed Mississippi Company or Company of the West, established to aid the immense banking and stock-jobbing speculations of John Law, a gambling, wandering Scotchman, who seems to have been possessed with the idea that wealth could be indefinitely increased by increasing the circulating medium in the form of notes of credit. The public debt of France was selling at 60 to 70 per cent. discount; Law was authorized to establish a Bank of circulation, the shares in which might be paid for in public stock at par, and to induce the public to subscribe for the bank shares, and to confide in them, the Company of the West was established in connection with the Bank, having the exclusive right of trading in the Mississippi country for twentyfive years, and with the monopoly of the Canada beaver trade. This was in September, 1717; in 1718 the monopoly of tobacco was also granted to this favored creature of the State; in 1719, the exclusive right of trading in Asia, and the East

*The grant may be found, Land Laws 944.

†By Louisiana here is to be understood Louisiana proper; not the Illinois country commonly included at that period.-Ed.

60

The Great Bankruptcy.

1722. Indies; and soon after the farming of the public revenue, together with an extension of all these privileges to the year 1770; and as if all this had been insufficient, the exclusive right of coining, for nine years, was next added to the immense grants already made to the Company of the West.* Under this hot bed system, the stock of the Company rose to 500, 600, 800, 1000, 1500, and at last 2050 per cent.; this was in April, 1720. At that time the notes of the Bank in circulation exceeded two hundred millions of dollars, and this abundance of money raised the price of every thing to twice its true value. Then the bubble burst; decree after decree was made to uphold the tottering fabric of false credit, but in vain; in January, 1720, Law had been made minister of finance, and as such he proceeded first, to forbid all persons to have on hand more than about one hundred dollars in specie, any amount beyond that must be exchanged for paper, and all payments for more than twenty dollars were to be made in paper; and this proving insufficient, in March, all payments over two dollars were ordered to be in paper, and he who dared attempt to exchange a bill for specie forfeited both. Human folly could go no farther; in April the stock began to fall, in May the Company was regarded as bankrupt, the notes of the Bank fell to ten cents on the dollar, and though a decree made it an offence to refuse them at par, they were soon worth little more than waste paper.

Under the direction of a Company thus organized and controlled, and closely connected with a bank so soon ruined, but little could be hoped for a colony, which depended on good management to develop its real resources for trade and agriculture. In 1718, colonists were sent from Europe, and New Orleans laid out with much ceremony and many hopes; but in January, 1722, Charlevoix writing thence, says: “if the eight hundred fine houses and the five parishes that were two years since represented by the journals, as existing here, shrink now to a hundred huts, built without order,-a large wooden magazine,-two or three houses that would do but little credit to a French village,—and half of an old storehouse, which was to have been occupied as a chapel, but from

*After 1719, called the Company of the Indies.

†A set of regulations for governing the Company, passed in 1721, may be found in Dillon's Indiana, 41 to 44.