(1884) The Creoles Of Louisiana

Jnckson Square,

Now

Orleans, formerly the Place crArmt";.

.

The Creoles OF

Louisiana

BY

George W. Cable Author of " Old

Creolf Piiys," "The Craudisuiue!:," " Dr. Sevii-r;' ft,

''

Mudautf

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 18S4

/'.//////.,,"

CorvRiGHT,

1884,

nv

CHARLKS SCKIIiNKk'S SONS

3(J5929

TROWS ifllNTmO AND BOOKBINDING COMPANy,

—

CONTENTS. I.

Who auk

t!!k C!i{K»)Li:sy

....

1

II.— FllENtH For.NUEH.x, III.— TiiK Ckkoi.ks' City,

.

IV.— AFHK AN Sl.AVKS ANU IXDI V.

—Tin;

Nkw

Gknkhation,

VI.— The Fikst Cukoi.es, VII.— PuAYiNd TO

TIIK Kino,

.

,

iN WaI{S,

.... ....

VIII.— Ui.i.oA, AiHUY, Axn THE Sri'EKiou CorxciL,

IX.— The iNsuKUErrioN,

X.— The Price of

XL— CoiNT

O'Reim.y and

Si'AxiisH

XII.— Spanish Conciliation,

Law.s,

....

XIV.— Spanish New Oui.eans Sicjar,

SiN(i

XVII.—The Americans

I-*-

41 rt2

57

i\H

XIII.—The Amehican Revolition on the Gulf Side,

XVI.— The Creoles

•

•>#

04

Halk-convictions,

XV.— How Bohe made

i:

.

72 Hi)

M.")

04

....

the Marseillaise,

.

KIS

114 118

CONTKXTS.

vi

PAOK 133

XVIII.— Spain acainst Fatk,

XIX.— New Ouleanh

XX.— New

Soi.cuit— Louisiana Bouoht,

Oui.eanh in

XXL — FllOM

.

.

135

180;{,

SllWKCTS TO CiTIZKNH,

XXIL— BruK's

141

Y,

147

Indian Cousin,

156

CoxHi'iuAc

XXIIL— The West

XXIV.—The Pirates of Bakatakia,

XXV.— Bauatauia XXVI. —The

161

Destuovei),

172

Bkitisii Invasion,

186

XXVIL— The Battle

ok

New

XXVIIL—The End of the XXIX.— FAUBouim

Orleans,

XXXL— Flush

.

.

.

.189 203

Pirates,

Ste. Marie,

XXX.— A Hundred Thousand

XXXIL—Why

130

210

People,

Times,

not Bigger than London

....

217 227 240

XXXIII.—The School-master,

256

XXXIV.— Later

Days,

261

XXXV.— Inundations

266

XXXVI.— Sauve'8

Crevasse,

XXXVII.— The Days of Pestilence,

XXXVIIL—The Great XXXIX.— Brighter

Epidemic,

Skies,

276

284 291

303

1

OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

LIST

Jackson

d'Akmes,

'

Map

New

StiiAUR, .

PAGE

Ouleanb,

kohmehly the /T

.

ok Louisiana, '

Place

•

...

^

.

rroHtispiece .

z,. racing

\

p.

Bienville, •

Plan ok

City, kiiowino Buildings,

.

•

•

Old Uksulixe Convent, In the

New Convent

q.

Garden,

Old Villa on Bayou

St.

Old Canal kormerly

in

.

John.

.,.

.

.„

.

Dauphine Street,

"Cruel O'Reilly." (From

...

a miniature in possession of

Charles Gayarre, of Louisiana. \ '

47

Hon. ^r

.

Old Cabildo as built by Almonaster,

•

1794,

•

•

.

The "Old


and corner op

''"^P^-^^^'

" Gratinos, balconies,

1

.r

.

97

and lime-washed stucco,"

Basin,"

.

.

101

^^^

Etienne de Bore,

...

In the Cabildo,

...

A Royal Street Corner,

jj~

LIST OF ILLl STHATIONS.

Vlll

AlAHKlNY IlOfSK, WIIKUK LolIS PlIILIPrK STOri'KI)

lllK

IN

ITUH,

1^7

Al TOCHAIMIS

Tkansom

KUOM THK

in tiik

I'ontamja HriLDiNds, Jackson

WiM.IAM ClIAULKS COI.K

ana kkom IlKv.

In

Cl.AllJOKNK,

1)1!

auk,

Si^t

GoVKUNOH OK

.

140

Ski)i:i,i,a

(Pkuk Antoink),

.

.

Maine,

BAHATAKIAN

LrOJiRIlS at tiik

FiUIT LAXUINii,

.

.

.

.

Battlk-Guoino, in

Royal

Stiikkt, S(

knk ok Andukw

Jackson's Tui.y.,

GOVKKNOK ClAIHOHXK's FAMILY, St.

Loims Hotkl.

....

204

20«

(Aktekwahd the Statk

House.),

The Picayune

15>7

^Ol

Old Spanish Cottaoe

Old Bouhsk and

^H'i

1«)5

PACKKNIIAM'S HKAIXilAUTRUS (KKOM TIIK KKAU),

TOMII OK

145 l.-)})

Jackson's HKAiKiiAinKKs,

Tiik

140

LolISI-

lo imk;,

1H(>:1

Fatiikk Antonio ok

RiK

DU

AUCIII VKS,

00,

Tikh,

00,5

A Cotton Puess and Yard,

2.2!)

Entkanck to a Cotton Yaud,

'):{;5

Tiik

Old Bank

in

Toulouse Street,

2JV7

AMON
ExciiANOE Alley,

(Old Passage de la Bourse.)

04;}

Looking

toward the American Quarter,

247

Old Passage de la Bourse. Looking toward the French Quarter,

350

—

LIST OK ILLISTUAI IONS.

HkHIM)

TIIK

A CiiKVAssK. In TIIK .\

OM) rUKNC

II

M.VUKKT,

(Stouy's Plantation,

IX

....

l'A(iK

IHS'2.),

QlAIHJOON yiAKTKH,

Fri.l- lllVKU.

(LoWKll KIIONT COKNKIl

A Ckmktkky Walk.

«»K

TIIK 0|,|)

(Tombs ani> "Ovkns."),

ToW N.l,

.

TlIK Oi,i> Cai.aijoza,

An iNNKIt CoIKT

Old

Si'AMSii

Roy A

I-

Stukkt,

Gateway and Staih

.... in

thk

IJaiiii-oo,

:n4

MAP OF Showin..

n.m

1.t. th<.

iin. ^

a.lj.ufnf

to

.

„,l. ,,1. ,i,,

til,.

LOUISIAXA,

oountry of the French-.sp.akin, populations.

l,oun,l.,l

on

tlu>

h^,,,,, .p.,^,,^ ^^„,,,j,,^ so.itla.ast.rlv tl.n „d, this ...uion

MississipjM, tlie

home

of

tlie

Treulfs.

oa.t

bv the

and ,Uv,7

^

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

I.

WHO ARE THE CREOLES?

QXE

city in the

United States

or intention, picturesque

Southern-European aspect

is

streets of its early boundaries,

along

its

is,

witliout pretension

and antique.

encountered in

on

its

A

(luaint

tiie

nan-ow

old Place d'Arnies,

balconied fa9ades, and about

its

cool,

flowery

inner courts.

Among Saxon

life

the great confederation of States whose Anglo-

and inspiration swallows up all alien immigraone in which a Latin civilization, sinewy,

tions, there is

valiant, cultured, rich, tion.

There

Louisiana,

is

and proud, holds out against extinc-

a people in the midst of the popuhition of

who send

representatives

Federal Congress, and

They

who

to the

vote for the nation's rulers.

celebrate the Fourth of July

with far greater enthusiasm, they 1

and senators

;

and ten days

commemorate

later,

that '^ -reat

THE CKKOLES OF LOUISIAXA.

2

Fourteenth that saw the zens of

tlie

fall

Other

of the Bastile.

citi-

United States, but not themselves, thev

call

Americans.

Who

are they

Where do they live l^ouisiana. Draw

?

i

Take the map of

a line from the

southwestern to the northeastern corner of the State it

turn thence

down

the Mississippi to the

town of Baton llouge, the there train,

draw

it

State's

little

seat of

;

let

river-side

government;

eastward through lakes Maurepas, Pontchar-

and Borgne,

to the

Gulf of Mexico; thence pass

along the Gulf coast back to the starting-point at the mouth of the Sabine, and you will have compassed rudely, but

enough, the State's eighteen thousand seven

accurately

hundred and

fifty

square miles of delta lands.

About half the State

more or

less hilly.

Its

lies

outside these bounds and

population

American moneyed and landed mulattoes

who were once

mainly an Anglo-

is

class,

its slaves.

is

and the blacks and

The same

is

true of

the population in that part of the delta lands north of

Red

River.

The

Creoles are not there.

Across the southern end of the State, from Sabine

Lake

to

Chandeleur Bay, with a north-and-south width of

from ten

to thirty miles

stretch the

and an average of about

Gulf marshes, the wild haunt of myriads of

birds and water-fowl, serpents and

saurians, hares, rac-

coons, wild-cats, deep-bellowing frogs, sects,

fifteen,

and by a

f

»

^v

and clouds of

in-

hunters and oystermen, whose solitary

and rarely frequented huts speck the wide, green horizon

AVllo ai:k at rcDiote intervals,

to be

^^eitlier

('UKnjj;s

is tlie

^

[^

Iiome of

tlic

Creoles

found here.

Xorth of set lie still

tlK >e

white

;

sorts of delta country.

rv-nch-speakini,^

and colored.

lakes, villages,

French

marslies anl within the bounds already

two other

dwell most of the

both

THK

In these

people of Louisiana,

Here the names of bayous,

and plantations

for

are,

the

most

part,

the parishes (counties) are

church-feasts,

named after saints and and although for more than half a centurv

there has been a strong inflow of Anglo-Americans and

English-speaking blacks, the youth cation principally colleges

still

receive their edu-

from the

priests and mms of small and convents, and two languages are current in :

law and trade, English

;

in the sanctuary

and

at

home,

French.

These two

Dayou Teche.

sorts

of delta

country are divided by the

AVest of this stream

a beautiful ex-

lies

panse of faintly undulating prairie, some thirty-nine hun
home-

stead groves, with fields of sugar-cane, cotton, and corn,

and with herds of ponies and keen-horned cattle feeding on its short, nutritious turf. Their lierdsmen speak an

ancient French patois, and have the blue eyes and light brown hair of Northern France.

But not yet have we found the smile,

and sometimes even frown

children of those

The

Creoles.

at these

famed Xova Scotian

;

these are the

exiles

ishment from their homes by British arms

Creoles

in

whose ban1755 has so

THE CKEOLES OF LOUISIANA.

4

often been celebrated in romance

They

of Acadians.

But

tlicy still

bear the

name

are found not only on this western

side of the Teehe, but in

of Louisiana.

;

this

all

French-speaking region

these vast prairies of Attakapas and

Opelousas are peculiarly

theirs,

and here they largely

numl)er that haughtier Louisianian withhold as well from him

out-

who endeavors

to

as from the " American " the

proud appellation of Creole.

Thus we have drawn

in the linos

upon a region lying

between the mouth of Red liiver on the north and the Gulf marshes on the south, east of the Tcclie and south of

Lakes Borgno, Pontchartrain, and Maurepas, and the

Bayou Manchac.

However he may be found

elsewhere,

home, the realm, of the Louisiana Creole.

this is the

It is a region

of incessant and curious paradoxes.

The

feature, elsewhere so nearly universal, of streams rising

from elevated

moving on absent.

to

The

observation

sources,

empty

growing by tributary inflow, and

into larger water-courses,

circuit of inland

is

is

entirely

water supply, to which our

accustomed elsewhere

— commencing with

evaporation from remote watery expanses, and ending with the junction of streams and their down-flow to the sea is

here in great part reversed

influx of streams into

cludes the seaward streams, yet

it

;

begins, instead, with the

and over the

movement

yields

it

land,

and though

in the channels of

up no small part of

its

it in-

main

volume by an

enormous evaporation from millions of acres of overflowed

swamp.

It is

not in the general rise of waters, but in

WHO AUE their subsidence,

tl.at

ckeoles

^

5

the smaller streams deliver

contents toward the sea.

the early explorers

tup:

From

their

lied liiver to the Gulf

Louisiana found the Mississippi, receiving no true tributary; but instead, all streams, though tending toward the sea yet ^loing so by a course directed «..v.y /,,„,

on

Its

>f

western side,

,ome

larger

channel.

Being the offspring of the larger strean.s, and either still issuing from them or being cut off from them only by the growth of sedimentary

deposits, these smaller bodies were seen taking their course obliquely away from the greater, along the natural a(iueducts raised sh^htly above the general level by the deposit of their own allu-

vion.

This deposit, therefore, formed the bed and banks of each stream, and spread outward and gently downward on each side of it, varying in width from a mile to a few yards, in proportion to the size of the stream tance from its mouth.

Such streams

called for a

new

dis-

generic term, and these

explorers, generally military engineers, ous,

and the

named them bay-

or loi/aus: in fortification, a branch trench

The

Lafourche ("the fork,") the Bceuf, and other bayous were manifestly mouths of the Red and the Mississippi gradually

grown longer and longer through thousands of

From these the lesser bayous branched off confusedly hither and thither on their reversed watersheds "ot tributaries, but, except in low water, tribute takers' bearing off the sediment-laden back waters of the swollen' channels, broad-casting them in the intervening swamps years.

"

THE CHKOLES OF LOUISIANA.

8

came

and, as the time of subsidence

on, returning them,

greatly diminished by evaporation, in dark, wood-stained,

and

shiggish, but

was one

])rimarily

irrigation,

ot"

The whole system

streams.

clear

and only secondarily of

drainage.

On and

the banks of this innnense fretwork of natural dvkes

sluices,

though navigation

impeded with

risks,

now

lie

slow, circuitous, and

is still

hundreds of miles of the

was that the

richest plantations in

America

French

on the Mississippi and

colonists, first

;

and here

it

later

on the

great bayous, laid the foundations of the State's agricultural wealth.

The scenery state, is

of this land, where

open out

at

is

still

in

its

wild

;

but on the banks of the large

coi-n,

of cotton, of cane, and of rice,

weird and funereal

bayous, broad fields of

it

frequent intervals on either side of the bayou,

pushing back the dark,

swamp, and presenting

pall-like curtain of

to

moss-draped

the passing eye the neat and

often imposing residence of the planter, the white double

row of

field-hands' cabins, the tall red

chimney and broad

gray roof of the sugar-house, and beside

it

the huge,

square, red brick bagasse-burner, into which, during the

grinding season, the residuum of crushed sugar-cane passes unceasingly day and night, and

smoke and

consumed wuth the

glare of a confiagration.

Even when stream there scene

is

the forests close in upon the banks of the

is

a wild

which appeals

and solemn beauty to

the

in the shifting

imagination

w-ith

special

WHO AKE

TlIK CliEciI.ES

;

.

j

wl.c, the cool morning lights or the warn.or glows oi evening impart the colors of the atmosphere sti-cngtl.

t„

the surrounding wiklerness, and to the glassj water, of the narrow and tortuous bayous that n.ove anion., iu shadows. In the last hour of day, those seeues are often lliuninated with an extraordinary splendo,-. Kron. the boughs of the dark, hroad-sprea,li„g live-oak, and the I.l.anton..like anus of lofty eypresses, the long, n.otionless |.endauts of pale gray moss point down to their inverted images in the unruffled waters beneath

them, .\othin.. breaks the wide-spread silenee. The light of the deelin! lug sun at one moment brightens the tops of the ev-

presses, at another

glows like a furnace behind their black branches, or, as the voyager reaches a western turn of the bayou, swings slowly round, and broadens down in da,.hng crimsons and purples upon the n.irror of the streaui

iNow and then, fron, out son.e l,a.y shadow, a heron, wlute or bine, takes silent flight, an alligator crossin. the

stream sends out long, tinted bars of widening ripple or on some high, fire-blackened tree a flock of roostinl na-

tures

silhouetted on the sky, linger with

unwlbng wing, and tree

is

bare.

Shonld

.note intensely black

overspreads >n

true

flap

away by ones

an,l

the traveller descrv.

in the tnidst of the

the water,

half-opcne.l

twos until the first

as

a

brilliancy that

and by-and-by revealing

itself

and proportion as a small canoe containmg two men, whose weight seems about to en-mlf >t, and by wl.ose paddle-strokes otttline

it

is

in.pelled

with

THE CUEOLKS OF LOI'ISIANA.

8

such evenness and speed that a lung, glassy wave gleams continually at either side a full inch higher than the edge

of the boat, he will have before

and human

life

him

a picture of nature

that might have been seen at any time

since the French fathers of the Louisiana Creoles colonized

the Delta.

Near the southeastern limit of where these ancestors

tirst

this region is the spot

struck permanent

root,

and

the growth of this peculiar and interesting civilization

began.

II.

FRENCH FOTINDERS.

J^ET

give a

lis

liiuil

ghuice at

map.

tlie

It

is

tiie

general belief that a line of elevated land, now some eighty or ninety miles due north of the Louisiana eoast, is

tlie

abrupt

prehistoric shore of tlie (iulf. hills

or bluffs,

A

range of

high,'

which the Mississippi

first encounters at the city of Vicksburg, and whose southwestward and then southward trend it follows thereafter to the town of Ikton Kouge, swerves, just

point, rapidly to a until,

some

Louisiana,

below this due east course, and dechnes gradually

thirty miles short of the eastern it

sinks entirely

down

green and ilowery sea-marsli that

boundary of

into a broad tract of

skirts, for

many

leagues,

the waters of Mississippi ISound.

Close along under these subsiding bluffs, where they stretch to the east, the Bayou Manchac, once Iberville

Kiver, and the lakes beyond artificially

it,

obstructed, united the

before the bayou was

waters of Missis8ii)pi

Kiver with those of Mississippi Sound. line of

water was once the river

itself.

Apparently

this

Xow, however,

the great flood, turning less abruptly, takes a southeasterly course, and, gliding tortuously, wide, yellow,

and sunny,

THE CREOLES OF LOriSIAXA.

10

between low sandy ])anks lined with endless brakes of Cottonwood and willow, cuts

between

off

ancient channel a portion of

its

own

itself

delta

and

its

formation.

This fragment of half-made conntiy, comprising something over seventeen hundred square miles of river-shore,

dark swamp-land, and

known, both

in

bi'ight

marsh, was once widely

convuerce and in international

politics, as

Orleans Island. Its outline is

extremely irregular.

fifty-seven miles across

edge of the marshes.

from the

At one

place

it

river shore to the eastern

Near the lower end there

is

scarce! v

the range of a " musket-shot " between river and sea. a point almost

midway

founded the

it

citv of

was here

New

In

for itself, let

IGOl),

to within six miles of

that, in February, 171^,

was

Orleans.

Strictly, the genesis of earlier.

At

of the island's length the river

and Lake Pontchartrain approach each other, and

is

Louisiana dates nineteen years

while Spain and Great Britain, each

were endeavoring

to

pre-empt the southern out-

of the Mississippi Valley, France had sent a small fleet

from Brest for the same purpose, under command of the brave and adventurous Canadian, D'Iberville. This gallant sailor

was the

brilliant grouj) of

oldest living

mend)er

brothers, the sons of

Bienville, a gentlemai. of (Quebec, it

appears, to add to the family

title

in a

remarkablv

M. Lemoyne de

who had been able, as name of Lemoyne the

of a distinct estate for six of his seven sons.

With

D'Iberville

came

several remoter

kinsmen and

at

KRENCII FOCNDKIIS. least

two of

his brothers, Sanvolle and

eldest of the seven

Bienville,

11

had

was dead, and the name of his

fallen to the youngest,

The

liienville.

Jean

estate,

IJaptisto

name, a midshipman of hut twenty-two, but destined

bv to

Bienville.

be the builder, as his older brother was the founder, of Louisiana, and to weave his name, a golden thread, into the history of the Creoles in the Mississippi delta.

D'lberville's arrival in the northern waters of the

was none too soon for

his ])uri)ose.

Gulf

lie found the Spau-

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

12

iards just establishing themselves at Pensacola with a fleet

of too nearly his own's strength to be amiably crowded aside,

and themselves too old

graceful dissimulations

and planted

in diplomacy to listen to his

wherefore he sailed farther west

;

his colony

upon some low,

red,

infertile,

sandy blufPs covered with live-oaks and the towering yellow-pine, on the eastern shore of a beautiful, sheltered

water,

naming the bay

after the small tribe of Indians

The young

that he found there, Biloxi.

Bienville, sent

on

to explore the water-ways of the country westward,

met a

two

vessels

British officer ascending the Mississippi with in search of a spot

fit

for colonization,

and by assertions

more ingenious than candid induced him where a long bend of the plain, is

of

New The

still

river,

to

withdraw,

shining in the distant

pointed out from the towers and steeples

Orleans as the English Turn.

may be

story of the nineteen years that followed

told almost in a line.

Sauvolle, left

by D'Iberville

in

charge at Biloxi, died two years after and was succeeded by

The governorship of

Bienville.

the province thus assumed

by the young French Canadian

sailor

manhood he did not

down

finally lay

on the threshold of until,

an old Rniglit

of St. Louis turning his sixty-fifth year, he had

earned the

title,

fondly given

father of Louisiana."

He

him by

the Creoles, of " the

was on one occasion

advocate before the prime minister of

bowed by

more than

still

France,

the weight of eighty- six winters, and

their

when

still

the

object of a public affection that seems but his just due

FKENCJI FOUNDEUS. wlien

I3

we contemplate

in his portrait the broad, cahn forehead, the studious eve, observant, even seareliing, and yet quiet and pensive, the slender nostrils, the firm-set jaw the lines of self-discipline, the strong, wide, steel-clad shoulders and the general air of kind sagacity and reserved candor, which it is easy to believe, from his history,

were

nature's, not the painter's, gifts.

was he who projected and founded Kew Orleans. The colony at Biloxi, and later at Mobile, was a feeble and It

ravenous infant griped and racked by two internal factions. One was bent on finding gold and silver,

on

a fur trade, and a

pearl-fishing,

commerce with South America,

and,'

therefore, in favor of a sea-coast establishment

; the other advocated the importation of French agriculturists, and then- settlement on the alluvial banks of the Mississippi Bxenville, always the foremost explorer and

the wisest

from the beginning m-ged For years he was overruled under the counsellor,

of the merchant monopolist,

Anthony

this wiser design

commercial policy

Crozat, to

whom

the

French king had farmed the province. IJut when Crozat's large but unremunerative privileges fell into

John Law, Company,

the liands of

director-general of the

renowned Mississippi

Bienville's counsel prevailed,

and steps were

taken for removing to the banks of the Mississippi the handful of French and Canadians

who were struggling agamst starvation, in their irrational search after sudden wealth on the sterile beaches of Mississippi Sound and Massacre Island.

THE OKEOLES OF LOUISIANA.

^'^

The year before

Bienville

authorization to found a

had selected

its

new

secured

this

long-sought

post on the Mississippi he

was immediately on the bank ^^o later sagacity has ever succeeded in pomtmg out a more favorable site on which to put up the gates of the great valley and here-though the land was only ten feet above sea-level at the water's edge, and sank quickly back to a minimum height of a few inchessite.

It

of the stream,

;

though

it

was almost wholly covered with a

swamp and was

cypress

visibly subject to frequent, if not annual

overflow; and though a hundred miles lay between it and mouth of a river whose current, in times of flood it was maintained, no vessel could overcome-here the

Bienville

1718, changed

from the midshipman of twenty-two to the frontiersman, explorer, and commander of forty-one 111

placed a detachment of twenty-five convicts and as many carpenters, who, with some voyageurs from the Illinois River, made a clearing and erected a few scattered huts along the bank of the river, as the beginning of that which

he was determined zation to

later to

whose planting

dedicated his

life.

make

in this

the capital of the

civili-

gloomy wilderness he had

III.

THE CREOLES'

S

\

t„!„

«-"^!

CITY.

'" '""' ^'"^ «'""-?» of a few woods. ''"'

"'''

"'""^''

seasons their lonely seasons, s„,oke-wreaths

ow jungles

of the Mississippi,

when

'^

^'"S'«

«'-"S« oi

among

the silent wil Bienville bej o

:i^t:^:ir\:ti-^::ri: U

prope,. place for the seat of

government

Thereupon might have been seen Le Blond de la Tour, in the garb

S.e„..

J;0«.s,

and

C

this engineer

of a

modified as might be b, the exigencies of^l e

dnvmg

stakes,

drawmg

lines,

marking

the

W

IcniJlf S

off streets

and lot. a place for the ch„,.eh and a middle front square f. a' Place-d'armes; da, b, day ditching and Ja.isad

n"

18

THE CKEOLES OF LOUISIAXA.

tlirowing np a rude levee along the i-iver-front, and gradually gathering the scattered settlers of the

neighborhood

form of a town.

into the

Eut the

location remained the

same.

A

•

hundred

frail

palisade huts,

some rude

larger size to serve as church, hospital,

and company's warehouses, a few

shelters of

government house,

vessels at anchor in the

muddy river, a -such was the

population of three hundred, mostly men dreary hunter's camp, hidden in the stifling ^ undergrowth of the half-cleared, miry ground, where, in the naming of streets, the dukes of Orleans, Chartres,

Maine, and Bourbon, the princes of Conti and Conde, and the Count of Toulouse, had been honored where, finally, ;

in

June

senting,

to August, 1722, the royal commissioners con-

the company's

effects and troops were graduremoved and Bienville set up his head-quarters and where this was but just done when,

ally

;

in

an earnest of the land's whisked away church, prostrated

the crops,

September, as

fierce inhospitality, a

hospital,

tornado

and thirty dwellings,

and, in particular, destroyed the

priceless rice.

The next

year, 1723, brought

no better fortune. At home, the distended Mississippi Bubble began to show its filminess, and the distress which it spread everywhere

came

across the Atlantic.

stay-stomach was credit.

As in France, On this basis

the momentary

the company's agent and the plantation grantees harmonized new industries, notably indigo culture, were introduced debts ;

;

TIIK CKEOLES' CITY.

were paid with paper, and the embryo

number

of

hundred

sixteen

tural province,

city reached the

inhabitants

;

an

agricul-

whose far-scattered plantations, missions,

and military posts counted nearly promised her

10

commercial

its

Then followed

live thousaiid souls,

tribute.

collapse, the scaling of debts

by royal

edict, four repetitions of this gross expedient,

and, by

1720, a sounder, though a shorn, prosperity.

The year 1728 completed

Few who know

existence.

the its

first

decade of the town's

history will stand to-day in

Jackson Square and glance from

its

quaint, old-fashioned

gardening to the foreign and antique aspect of

rounding architecture

—

its

broad verandas,

its

tlie

deep

surar-

cades, the graceful patterns of its old wrought-iron balconies, its rich effects of color,

of

cool

stirred

shadow

up

—without

of blinding sunlight, and

finding the fancy

to overleap the beginning of

even these time-

stained features, and recall the humbler

Baptiste

Lemoyne de

classic spot

when but

blow of the

settler's

Bienville, as

it

presently

town of Jean-

huddled about this

ten years had passed since the

first

axe had echoed across the waters of

the Mississippi. This, from the beginning, was the Place d'Armes.

was of the same rectangular

figure

it

has to-day

:

It

larger

only by the width of the present sidewalks, an open plat of coarse, native grass, crossed by two diagonal paths and

occupying the exact middle of the town front. it,

in the mid-front of a like

Behind

apportionment of ground

20

TIIK

CUKOLKS OF LOnsiA.VA.

reserved for ecclesitistical uses, where St. Louis Cathedral

now

overlooks the Sijuare, stood the church, huilt, like

On

most of the public buildings, of brick. right were the small guard-house left the

of

all

of the

and

the church's

prisons,

The

dwelling of some Capuchins.

and on the

spiritual care

that portion of the province between the Mississippi and the

Illinois

Mas

front of the s(|uare that Hanked the Place

scpiare,

on the lower

side,

the

d'Armes above,

the government-house looked out upon the river.

corresponding

mouths

On

theirs.

In the

but facing from

the river and diagonally opposite the Capuchins, were the

The grounds

quarters of the government employes.

that

faced the up})er and lower sides of the Place d'Armes were still

unoccupied, except by cordwood, entrenching tools,

and a few pieces of parked

artillery,

on the one

side,

a small house for issuing rations on the other.

Just

and off

the river front, in Toulouse Street, were the smithies of the Marine

;

correspondingly placed in

Du

Maine Street

were two long, narrow buildings, the king's warehouses. Ursulines Street was then Arsenal Street.

upper corner was the hospital, with back to the street behind site,

;

its

On

its iirst

grounds extending

while the empty square oppo-

below, reserved for an arsenal, was just receiving, in-

stead, the foundations of the convent-building that stands

there to-day.

A company of Ursuline nuns had come the

year before from France to open a school for to attend

girls,

and

the sick in hospital, and were quartered at the

other end of the town awaiting the construction of their

TliK riJKOLKs' CITY.

nunnery.

It

was

linisliecl

in IT^Jo.

ninety -four years, and vacated to the larger

2ii

Tlicy occnpied

it

for

only in 1S24 to remove

it

and more retired convent on the river yhore,

near the present lower limits of the city, where they

remain at the present day.

—one of

The

older house

the

oldest, if nut the oldest building, standing in the Missis-

sippi

Valley— became,

1834,

as

at

in JSHl, the State

House, and

present,

the

seat

Archbishop of

there

was

little

of the

in

Louisiana.

For

tlie

rest,

Though the plan

but forlorn confusion.

of the town comprised a parallelogram

of five thousand feet river front by a depth of eighteen

hundred, and was divided into regular squares of three

hundred feet front and breadth, yet the appearance of the place

was disorderly and

squalid.

A

few cabins of

split

boards, thatched with cypress bark, were scattered con-

fusedly over the ground, surrounded and isolated from

each other by willow-brakes and reedy ponds and sloughs bristling with

Xo

dwarf palmetto and swarming with

one liad built beyond Bauphine Street, the

the river, though twenty-two squares stood

among

;

reptiles.

fifth

empty

from

to clioose

nor below the hospital, nor above Bienville Street,

except that the Governor himself dwelt at the extreme

upper corner of the town, now the corner of Customhouse

and Decatur

Streets.

Orleans Street, cutting the town

transversely in half behind the church,

vored by the unimportant

and

also in Chartres

;

was a quarter

fa-

while along the water-front,

and Iloyale

Streets, just behind, rose

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

24 the

homes of the

tates

some

:

colony's official

small, low,

brick, or brick

and

and commercial poten-

built of cypress,

others of

and frame, broad, and two or two and a

But about and over

half stories in height.

all

was the

rank growth of a wet semi-tropical land, especially the water-willow, planted here and there in avenues, and else-

where springing up

at wild

random amid

occasional es-

says at gardening.

In

Such was cial life

higher

New

the

New Convent

Garden.

Orleans in 1Y28.

The

had, until now, been few and weak.

officials

had brought

their wives

a few Canadians theirs from Canada small fraction of soldiers,

restraints of so-

all.

The mass

trappers, redemptioners

;

Some

of the

from France, and but they were a

of the men, principally

bound

to

three years'

THE CREOLES' millers, galley-slaves,

sci'vice,

CITY.

knew

25

little,

and cared

for citizenship or public order; while the

few, were, almost

all,

less,

women,

still

the unreformed and forcibly trans-

ported inmates of liouses of correction, with a few Choc-

taw squaws and African duels,

They gambled, fought

slaves.

lounged about, drank, wantoned, and caroused

" Sans religion, sans justice, sans discipline, sans ordre, et sans police."

Yet the company, as required by

its charter,

had begun

to improve the social as well as the architectural features

of

its

provincial capital.

bonds had ceased

;

The importation

stringent penalties

of

male vaga-

had been

laid

upon

gambling, and as already noted, steps had been taken to

promote education and

had been

religion.

The

aid of the Jesuits

enlisted for the training of the

male youth and

the advancement of agriculture.

In the winter of 1727-28 a crowning benclit had been reached.

On

the levee, just in front of the Place d' Amies

the motley public of the wild town was gathered to see a

A ship had come

goodly sight.

across the sea and

up the

river with the most precious of all possible earthly cargoes.

She had

tied

up against the

grassy, willow-planted

bank, and there were coining ashore and grouping gether in the Place d' Amies under escort of suline

to-

the Ur-

nuns, a good threescore, not of houseless girls

from the

streets of Paris, as heretofore,

from the hearthstones of France,

to

but of maidens

be disposed of under

the discretion of the nuus, in marriage.

And

then there

THE CREOLES OF

26

came ashore and were

set

LOUISIAJfA.

down

in the

rank grass,

many

small, stout chests of clothing.

There was a trunk for each maiden, a maiden for each trunk, and both maidens and trunks the Vive

roi !

le

but the

initial

gift of the king. it

was a golden day.

consignment.

Better

still,

was

this

Similar companies came in

subsequent years, and the girls with trunks were long

known

in the traditions of their colonial descendants

the honorable distinction of the casket-girls.

slender fact, life,

that

it

''''jilles

a la cassette

"—the

There cannot but linger a regret around so full of romance and the best poetry of so slender.

is

by

this

real

But the Creoles have never

been careful for the authentication of their traditions, and the only assurance left to us so late as this

good blood of these modest

is,

that the

girls of long-forgotten

names,

whom they gave their hands with the king's assent and dower, flows in the veins of and of the brave

soldiers to

the best Creole families of the present day.

Thus, at the end of the

up

all

community

:

town summed

the church, the school, courts, hos-

council-hall, virtuous

commerce. of the

ten years, the

the true, though roughly outlined, features of a

civilized pital,

first

This

company

;

last

homes, a military arm and a

was fettered by the monopoly rights

but the thirst for gold,

silver,

and pearls

liad yielded to wiser thought, a fur trade

had developed, and the scheme of an agricultural colony was rewarded with success.

But of

this

town and province,

to

whose development

THE CREOLES' tlieir

founder had dedicated

CITY.

all his

Bienville was no longer governor.

27

energies and sagacity,

In October, 1726, the

schemes of

official rivals had procured not only his displacement, but that of his various kinsmen in the colony.

was under a new commandant-general, M. Perier, that protection from flood received noteworthy attention, and that, in 1726, the first levee worthy of the name was built on the bank of the Mississippi. It

IV. AFRICAN SLAVES AND INDIAN WARS.

rrillE problem of

civilization

Louisiana was early

in

complicated by the presence and mutual contact of three races of men. tural colonial

of

Afri«..iu

The

Mississippi

Company's

agricul-

scheme was based on the West Indian idea

slave labor.

Already the

total

number of

blacks had risen to equal that of the whites, and within

the Delta, outside of

they must have largely

In 1727 this idea began to be put into

preponderated. effect just

Xew Orleans,

without the town's upper boundary, where the

Jesuit fathers

accommodated themselves

to

it

in

model

form, and between 1720 and 1745 gradually acquired and

put under cultivation the whole tract of land

by the city's

First District of

Xew

wealth and commerce.

space between

Common

sequent accretions of

soil

ann L

now

covered

Orleans, the centre of the

The

slender, wedge-shaped

lal Streets,

and the sub-

on tne river front, are the only

parts of the First District not once comprised in the Jesuits'

plantations.

Education seems not to have had their

immediate attention, but a myrtle orchard was planted

on their

river-front,

and the orange,

fig,

and sugar-cane

AFRICAN SLAVES AND INDIAN WARS. were introduced by them into the country at

29

later inter-

vals.

Other and older plantations were yearly sending

in

the products of the same unfortunate agricultural system.

The wheat and

the flour from the Illinois and the

were the results of free farm and mill labor

and the

tobacco, the timber, the indigo,

from the

slave-tilled fields of the

tered at wide intervals in the

of the great Delta.

The only

rice

;

Wabash but the

came mainly

company's grantees

more free

accessible

scat-

regions

labor of any note

employed within that basin was a company of Alsatians, which had been orighially

settled

on the Arkansas by

John Law, but which had descended to within some thirty miles of

Xew

Orleans, had there

ket-gardeners of the growing town, in verse season

had been

its

main

stay,

become the mar-

more than one

ad-

and had soon won

and long enjoyed the happy distinction of hearing their region called in fond remembrance of the rich Burgun-

dian hills of the same

name

far

beyond the ocean

— the

Cote d'Or, the " Golden Coast."

The Indians had welcomed with feasting and dancing.

them

at Biloxi, Mobile, the

the settling of the French

The

erection of forts

Xatchez

gave no confessed offence. Their game, the traps, their lentils, their corn,

and

among

and elsewhere,

bluffs,

spoils of their

their woodcraft

were

always at the white man's service, and had, more than once,

come between him and

starvation.

They were not

the less acceptable because their donors counted on geuer-

80

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

0118 offsets in

powder and

ball,

brandy, blankets, and gew-

gaws.

In the Delta proper, the Indians were a weak and

vided remnant of the Alibamon race, dwelling in tered sub-tribal villages of a

warriors each.

few

scores or

was only beyond these

It

di-

scat-

hundreds of

limits that the

powerful nations of the Choctaws, the Cliickasaws, and the Natchez, offered any suggestions of possible war. Bienville had,

from

his first contact with them,

a thorough knowledge of the Indian character.

ronage supported on one side by

inflexibility,

By

shown a pat-

and on the

other by good faith, he inspired the respect and confi-

dence of ful

all alike

and, for thirty years, neither the sloth-

;

and stupid Alibamons of the Delta nor the proud and

fierce nations

around his distant posts gave any serious

cause to fear the disappearance of good- will.

But M.

Perier,

who had

succeeded Bienville, though up-

right in his relations

with his ministerial superiors, was

more harsh than

and one of his subordinates, hold-

ing the

wise,

command

of Fort Rosalie,

among

the distant

Natchez (a position requiring the greatest diplomacy), was arrogant, cruel,

displaced

when

who had come

and unjust.

Bienville had not long been

to be likely that the

Frenchmen

to plant a civilization in the

swamps of

it

began

Louisiana, imder circumstances and surroundings so

and strange as those we have noticed, would have into their

problem

to take

this additional factor, of a warfare

the savages of the country.

new with

AFKICAX SLAVES AND IXDIAX WARS. AVIien the issue came,

moved from

that region

bloody scenes were far

its

which

ly the land of the Creoles

;

lias

grown

re-

to be special-

and, in that region, neither

Frenchman nor Creole was ever forced necessity of defending his

31

home from

to confront the

the torch, or his

wife and children from the tomahawk.

The

first

symptom

of danger

of the Chickasaws, with

and of the Choctaws. of their chiefs in

whom

was the

visible discontent

the English were in amity,

Perier, however, called a council

Kew

Orleans, and these departed with

protestations of friendship and loyalty that deceived him.

Suddenly, in the winter of 1729-30, a single soldier

New Orleans from Fort Kosalie, with the word that the Xatchez had surprised and destroyed the arrived in

massacred over two hundred men, and taken captive ninety-two women and one hundred and fifty-five chilplace,

A few others,

dren.

who had news.

all

Smaller settlements on the Yazoo Kiver and on

Sicily Island,

In

who, with their forerunner, were

escaped, appeared soon after and confirmed the

New

on the AVashita, had shared a like

Orleans

fate.

was confusion and alarm, with preparations for war, offensive and defensive. Arms and amall

munition were hurriedly furnished to every house in the town and on the neighboring plantations. Through the

weedy

streets

and

in

from the adjacent country, along

the levee top and by the plantation roads and causeways, the militia, and, from their wretched barracks in Koyale Street, the dilapidated regulars, rallied to the Pla( j

88

THE CBEOLES OF LOUISIANA.

three hundred of each, under one of his captains; to the eeat of war. The entrenching tools and artille y we e brought out of the en.pt, lot in St. Peter Street,

and a

until at the

end of a year the town was, for the surrounded with a line of rnde fortifications

first

time '

Meanwhile, the burdens of war distributed themselves upon the passive as well as upon the active terror of I ^e^ sndden alarms, false hopes, ;

fit

an.io„s susVensZ

east, the restn-eness

of the negroes.

The bad effects of began to show themselves. The nearness of some small vagrant bands of friendly Indians, lb u hangers-on o the settlement, became «a subje t of -, and, with a like fear of the blacks, fier Afridns taken .n war, led to an act of shocking cruelty.

sWholdmg

L

A

bid of negroes, slaves of the company, armed and sentlor he pu^ose by Perier himself, fell „p„„ , ;*' ,„,„ Chouachas Indians dwelling peaceably on the town^s lower horde, and massacred the entire village.

EmboldZ

but the,r plans were discovered and the leaders were executed. In the year after, the same fugitive

blacks, incited

slaves sent

among them by

T

the Chickasaws

ag..ed upon a night for the massacre of the whites a negress who had been

•

b" ^

struck by a soldier let sli; the

AFRICAN SLAVES AND INDIAN WAUS.

33

secret in her threats,

and the ringleaders, eight men and the woman, were pnt to death, she on tlie gallows and tiiey on the wheel. The men's heads were stuck upon posts at the upper and lower ends of the town front, and at the Tchoupitoulas settlement

and the king's plantation on the farther side of the Mississippi.

But turning a page of the record we see our connnon

human fifty

nature in a kindlier aspect.

women and

Two

hundred and

children taken by the Xatche/ had been

retaken, and were brought to

Kew

Orleans and landed on There they were received by the and laughter and open arms. At first,

the Place d'Armes.

people with tears

room was made for them

in the public hospital

Ursulines, probably having just pleted

convent,

adopted the

moved

orphan

but the

;

into their

girls.

com-

The boys

found foster-parents in well-to-do families, and the whole

number of refugees was

presently absorbed,

widows again becoming wives. The Chickasaws and Yazoos

became

many

allies

Natchez, and the Choctaws of the French. does not permit nor our object require

of the

of

the

But space

us to follow the

camp of

the latter, to recount their somewhat dilatoiy sucon the Xatchez hills, and in the swamps of the AVashita, or on the distant banks of Red River under the intrepid St. Denis. The Natchez nation was con.pletely dismembered. The prisoners of war were sent across the Gulf to die in the cruel slavery of the San Domingo suc-ar cesses

plantations.

Tlie

few survivors who escaped Captivity

34

CKKOLES OF LOUISIANA.

TIIK

M'cre adopted into the qualified

Chickasaw nation but even so, they by repeated depredations the limited peace that ;

followed.

In 1733, Bienville was restored to the governorship but his i)ower to connuand the confidence and good faith of the savages was

lost.

In 1735, aggressions

still

con-

he demanded of the Chickasaws the surrender of their Katchez and Yazoo refugees, and was refused. Thei-eupon he was ordered to make war, and the early tinuing,

spring of 1730 saw :New Orleans again in the stirrincr confusion of marshalling a small army. The scene of its embarkation was the little village of St. John, on the

bayou

of that name, where, in thirty barges and as noes, this motley gathering of

shirted militia,

Indians, set off

many

ca-

uniformed regulars, leather-

naked blacks, and feathered and painted through the tall bulrushes, and canebrakes,

and moss-hung cypresses, and so on by way of the lakes, Mississippi Sound, and the Alabama River, to exterminate the Chickasaws.

A

few months passed, and the same

spot witnessed another scene,

under

its

renmant of his

forces, sick,

after a short, inglorious, is

when

Bienville disembarked

wide-spreading oaks and stately magnolias, the

now Northeastern Bienville's

years

wounded, and discouraged,

and disastrous campaign

in

what

Mississippi.

— he

was

—

still but fifty-six will hardly account for the absence of that force and sagacity

which had once made him so admirable and of such great value but whatever may have been the cause, the colo;

AFIUCAX SLAVES AND INDIAN AVARS. nists, in wliose affections

found

in

him only

into disasters,

he

still

a faltering

35

the foremost place,

lickl

and mismanaging leader

whose record continued from this time

to be

an unbroken series of pathetic failures. the French authority

The year 1739 saw

the colony's frontier harassed.

The

mustered another force.

started for the

regulars, the militia, three

France, and sixteen

out through Tchoupitoulas gate and

filed

Chickasaw country,

the Mississippi.

At

were joined by

levies

IJienville

deiied and

In September, Bienville

companies of marines lately from

hundred Indians,

still

the present

this time

by way

«^f

of Memphis, they

site

from Canada and elsewhere, and

counted a total force in hand of thirty-six hun-

dred men, white, red, and black.

?so equal force had

ever taken the field in Louisiana.

But plans had mis-

were

carried, provisions

failing, ill-health

wide country lying eastward and full of

took up the line of march, retreat

without

dians, French, officer,

and

little

found

was

army again

itself in full

the enemy's country.

having reached

Only a detachment of some

the

actually

it

to be crossed

still

when

swollen streams, and

was general, the

six or

seven hundred Cana-

IS'orthern Indians,

under a subordinate

moved upon the Chickasaws, and meeting them

own weakness

could be

feeble concessions in

exchange

with sudden energy, before their discovered, extorted for peace.

some

In the spring of 1740 Bienville returned with

a sick and starving

remnant of

his

men, and with no

better result than a discreditable compromise.

TlIK CitEOLKS UF LOUISIANA.

86

Ten years

of unrest, of struggle against savage aggres-

and for

sion,

passed.

begun

mastery over two naked races, had

tlie

^[eantinie, to

The Company

have a history.

of the Indies,

which the Compagnie de TOccident, or Mississippi

into

Company, had been absorbed, discouraged by war and better pleased with and

coast,

tlie rs'atchez

privileges on the

its

had

effected, the surrender of its

The king had thereupon

western charter.

established be-

tween Louisiana and his subjects elsewhere a trade

;

a fresh intercourse

West

Indies

Guinea

East Indies, had, as early as June, 1731,

in the

tendered, and in April

the

now

commerce of the colony had

tiie

;

an innnigration had

islands, and, despite the

virtual free-

had sprung up with France and set in

from these

Chickasaw campaigns and paper

money, had increased from year

to year.

At

the close of

these campaigns, business further revived, and the town, as

it

never had done before, began spontaneously to deits

own

but Bienville's was

still

velop from within outward by the enterprise of inhabitants.

The

colony's star

was

The new

going down. attributed, nor

ment.

As time

he had

lost

is

it

rising,

prosperity and growth was not

traceable, to

passed on he was

his continued govern-

made

easily to see that

the favor of the French minister.

to be recalled

;

and in May, 1743, on the

He

begged

arrival of the

Mar-

quis de Yaudreuil as his successor, he bade a last farewell to the city he it

had founded and

was proper for the people

to that Louisiana of

still

to call

him "

which

the father."

V.

THE NEW GENERATION.

Ty^lIEX,

on the

lOtli

of May, 1743, the Marquis do

Vaiidreiiil landed in

New

Orleans, private enter-

prise—the true foundation of material prosperity— was iirnily established.

Indigo, rice, and tobacco were

moving

in quantity to

Europe, and lumber to the AVest Indies. Ships that went out loaded came back loaded again, especially from St. Domingo; and traffic with the Indians, and with the growing white population along the innriense length of the Mississippi and its tributaries, was bringing

money

into the

town and multiplying business year by

year.

Hope

ran high

family had

much

when

the Marquis was appointed.

influence at court,

His and anticipations were

bright of royal patronage and enterprise in the colony

and to

in its capital.

Xew

in the

But these

expectations, particularly as

Orleans, were feebly met.

number of the

supei-ficial

There was an increase

troops and a great enhancement of

military splendor, with an imscrupulous getting and reckless spending of Government goods and money, and a large importation of pretentious frivolity from

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

38

By

the Bourbon camps and palaces.

man

Kew

in the streets of

1751, every second

Orleans was a soldier in daz"

Grand

zling uniform.

They

Marquis."

was graceful and comely, dignitied

IJe

called the governor the

in

bearing, fascinating in address, amiable, lavish, fond of

marchioness, during the twelve

pleasure, and, with his

years of his sojourn in Louisiana, maintained the

pomp and

colonial court with great

little

dissipation.

Otherwise the period was of a quiet, formative

sort,

and the few stimulants to growth offered bv Government overshot the town and

the agricultural grantees.

fell to

The production of tobacco and myrtle-wax was aged, but

it

was

Through the

also taxed.

by year came the

and Mere given in marriage good conduct, with a last ship-load

The most conspicuous

begin

to

casket-girls,

to the soldiers

tract of land to

came ashore

Jesuit fathers,

But one boon continued

sugar-cane w\as introduced. eclipse all the rest: year

encour-

chosen for

life on.

The

in 1751.

attentions offered Kc\. Orleans

were a prohibition against trading with the English and Dutch, and further inundations of paper money. little

Gulf,

The

port continued to grow, though pirates infested the British

mouth of the insolent.

It

privateers

wei'e

river, seasons

were

the

veiy

and Indian

allies

sometimes at advei'se,

was reported with

pride,

that

forty-live

brick houses were erected between the autumns of 1749

and 1752.

Among

the people a transmutation

was going

on.

THE NEW GENERATION.

39

French fathers were moving aside to make room for Creole sons. The life of the seniors had been what the of redemptioners and liberated convicts, combining

life

with that of a French and Swiss line and

staff

abont the ontposts of such a frontier, might be

brought into

bv the introduction of African

:

and scornful of

thriftless, gallant, bold, rude, free,

which the company had

in

and idle,

labor,

permanent contempt In this atmos-

slaves.

phere they had brought up their children.

Xow

these

children were taking their parents' places, and with I.atin ductility

were conforming to the mold of their nearest

They

surroundings.

differed

from

their transatlantic stock

nuich as the face of nature in Louisiana differed from that in France.

A

slavery, not

an incentive to industry, but a promise of un-

earned plenty. its

soil

of unlimited fertility became, through

A luxurious and

enervating climate joined

influence with this condition to debase even the (iallic

love of pleasure to an unambitious apathy and an untrained sensuality.

The courteous manners

abject slave class, over which a " black

man

full

powers of

iuiperiousness of will

police,

and temper

France

connnanding

largely retained ;.but the habit of

white

of

code" gave every

induced a certain ;

were

a dull aiul

tierce

while that proud love

of freedom, so pervasive throughout the

American wilder-

ness, rose at times to an attitude of arrogant superiority

over

ment king.

all

constraint,

and became the occasion of harsh com-

in the reports sent to

France by the

officers of their

In the lakes, canebrakes, and swamps, and on the

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

40 bayou

ridges, of their dark,

wet

forests,

and on the sunny

expanses of their marshes, a great abundance of bears, panthers, deer, swan, geese, and lesser

form of

As

The chase became almost

arduous sport.

zest to

game gave

a bold

the only

and woodcraft often the only education.

exertion,

for the gentler sex, catching less grossness

negro slavery and were, in

mind

less

as well as morals, superior to the

They could read and French vivacity as

write and

still

make

a

little

reliant,

music.

men.

Such

remahied chose the ball-room as

their chief delight, while the gaming-table

passion of the men.

from

rudeness from the wilderness, they

was the indoor

Unrestrained, proud, intrepid,

self-

rudely voluptuous, of a high intellectual order,

yet uneducated, unreasoning, impulsive, and inflammable

—such

was the

Louisianians.

first

native-born generation of Franco-

VL THE FIRST CREOLES.

TTTIIAT

is

a Creole

?

Even

in Louisiana tlie question

would be variously answered.' here

first

French

The

But such a meaning implied a

excellence of origin, native, of

certain

and so came early to include any

French or Spanish descent by either parent,

whose non-alliance with the slave race social rank.

among

did not

belong to the descendants of Spanish, but of

settlers.

ceded to

title

Later, the

— the natives of

themselves.

At

entitled

term was adopted by

mixed blood, and

him

— not

is still

to

con-

so used

length the spirit of commerce

As to the etymology of the word there are many conjectures, but few bold assertions. Is it Spanish ?— Italian V— Carib V— an Invention of West Indian Spanish conquerors ? None of these questions meet an answer in the form of hearty assertion. In the American Journal of Philology (October, 1882), Professor Harrison, of Washington and Lee '

University, Virginia, after exhausting Littre on the subject, says of Skeat, that "He proceeds with agile pen— dashes, abbreviations, e
deduce the word, though with many misgivings, from the Spanish crioUo, a native of America or the West Indies a corrui)t word made by the negroes, said to be a contraction of rriadillo, diminutive of

tion lines— to

;

crmfo—oue educated,

instructed or bred up, pp. of criar,

also to nurse, instruct."

lit.

to create,

42

saw its

OF LOUISIAXA.

TJIE CIJKOLES tlie

money

meaning

value of so Iioiiored a

and broadened

title,

any creature or thing of variety or

to take in

manufacture peculiar to Louisiana that might become an object of sale:

as Creole ponies, chickens, cows, shoes,

eggs, wagons, baskets, cabbages, negroes,

etc.

Yet the

Creoles pi-uper will not share their distinction with the

He

worthy "Acadian." and

in the second

a Creole only by courtesy,

is

person singular.

JJesides

French and

Spanish, there are even, for convenience of speech, "colored"' Creoles; I)ut there are

no

any English, Scotch, Irish, or " of parentage

proselyted

in,

married

Yankee "

nor

Creoles, unless

into,

and themselves thoroughly

Creole society.

Xeither Spanish nor Amer-

ican domination has taken vernacular.

Italian, or Sicilian,

This, also,

there seems to be no

is

from the Creoles part of their

more

title

their ;

French

and, in tine,

serviceable definition of the

Creoles of Louisiana than this: that they are the Frenchspeaking, native portion of the ruling class.

There

is

no need

to distinguish

Innnbler grades of those from settlers

only were jiersons of

were the children

t)f

between the higher and

whom j-aidc

they sprang.

A

and

Many

station.

the casket-girls, and

such stock as society pronounces

less

few

many were

than nothin<»-

•

of

vet

view of that state of society which the French revolution later overturned, any present overj^lus of honor may in

as well fall to the children of those before, as of those mIio filled

convulsion.

who

tilled

the prisons

them during

that bloody

THE FIRST CKEOLES. In the days of ter class that

Do

45

Vaudreuil, the dwellings of the bet-

had stood

of the town, or on the

at first

on the immediate front

behind, seem to Iiave drawn back a square or two. They were also spreading toward and out through a gate in the palisade wall first street

near

its

north corner.

issued

from

Bayou

this gate

of St. John.

Along

lload,

northward

now

a street of the city,

to the village

and bayou

suburban way, surrounded by broad grounds, deeply shaded with live-oaks, magnolias, this

and other evergreen forest

trees, and often having behind them plantations of indigo or myrtle, rose the wide, red-

roofed, but severely plain dwellings of the rich, generally of one or one and a half stories, but raised

on

pillars

often fifteen feet from the ground, and surrounded by wide verandas.

In the lofty halls and spacious drawing-rooms of these

liomes— frequently,

too, in the heart of the

drained even of

storm water, infested with reptile

town, in the houses of the humblest exterior, their low, sin<-le-storv wooden or brick walls rising from a ground but partly its

and frequently overflowed— was beginning

to

life

be shown a

splendor of dress and personal adornment hardly in har-

mony with ture,

the rude simplicity of apartments and furni-

and scarcely to be expected

in a

town of unpaved,

unlighted, and often impassable streets, surrounded

swamps and morasses on one of

by

the wildest of iVmerican

frontiers.

Slaves—not always or generally the

dull,

ill-featured

TIIK

46

Congo

CUEOLES OF LOUISIANA.

or fierce l>anbara, imported for the plantations, but

comely Yaloff and Mandingo boys and for their scanty dress

good or

ill,

— waited

shapelier

girls, tlie

on every

whether

caprice,

and dropped themsehx's down

in the corridors

and on the veranda§ for stolen naps among the dogs, and whi})s and saddles, in such

odd moments of day or night

as

found •their masters and mistresses tired of being served.

Tsew Orleans had been the one colonized spot

where

slaves

Delta

in the

were few, but now they rapidly ])ecame

numerous, and black domestic service made

it

easy for the

Creoles to ennilate the ostentatious livmg of the colonial officials.

living, these dignitaries,

almost

without exception, added that of corruption in

office.

To

their

bad example in

post-commandants,

Governors, royal commissaries,

Marchioness lesser

ones,

de

Yaudreuil

conspicuously,

—and

— the many

accusing and accused of the

stood boldly

grossest and the pettiest misdemeanors.

corruption was exaggerated

;

Doubtless the

yet the testimony

abundant, and corroborative, and

is official,

is verified in the ruinous

expenses which at length drove France to abandon the

maintenance and sovereignty of the colony she had mis-

governed for sixty-three years.

Meanwhile, public morals were debased intemperance were general

;

;

idleness

and

speculation in the depreciated

paper money which Hooded the colony became the principal business,

and insolvency the

Religion and education

common

condition.

made poor headway.

Almost

^T^^

^

^.

Old Canal

in

Dauphine Street

-v

49

TlIK FIRST CKKOLES. the only item in their Ijistory Its "

Capuchins."

quinades "

were

heat for years.

Ireard, it appears, in

the drawing-rooms as well as in

for the fair sex took sides in

;

songs

Its satirical

it

with lively

In July, 1703, the Capuchins were left masters of

zeal.

the

a " war of the Jesuits and

acrimonious writings, squibs, and pas-

made nmch

the street

is

The

lield.

decree of the French parliament had the

expulsion from

the

year before

ordered

realm

wide plantations just beyond the town wall

;

their

the

being desirable, the Creole bold,

Jesuits'

"Superior Council" became

and the lands already described as the

richest district in the present

site of

^Xew Orleans were

the

confis-

cated and sold for $180,000.

In this same year, a

flag,

not seen there before, began

to appear in the yellow harbor of ]S'ew Orleans.

ruary, a treaty between England, France,

Great Britain

all

and north of Orleans Island.

Delta remained to France and to her

The

and Spain, gave

that innnense part of the Mississippi

Valley east of the river

Louisiana.

still

British vessels

The

vast province of

navigation of the Mississippi was

free to the subjects of both empires alike.

lively

In Feb-

Trade

was forbidden the French colonies

commerce soon sprang up with them

;

made Avith

yet a

at a point just

above the plantations of the dispossessed Jesuits, after-

ward the

river front of the city of Lafayette,

the Fourth District of

New

Orleans.

and now of

Here numerous

trading vessels, sailing under the British flag, ascending

the river and passing the town on the pretext of visiting 4

THE CliEOLKS OF LOUISIANA.

50 the

new

posts of

Hiitisli

Manchac

tied to the waterside willows

P>aton Kouge,

uiul

and carried on a conmierce

with the merchants of the post they had jnst passed by.

The

corrupt

authorities

brouglit wealth to

all,

winked

a i)ractice

at

and the getting of

that

lionest rights

by

disingenuous and dishonest courses became the justified habit of the highest classes and the leading minds. shive trade, too, received an unfortunate stimulus

:

The

a large

business was done at this so-called " Little Manchac," iu

Guinea negroes,

whom

the colonists bought of the Eng-

lish.

The governor

of Louisiana at this time

was Kerlerec, a

He had

distinguished captain in the French navy.

ceeded the Marquis in 1758, and had province for ten years. to return to

A

office.

But he had

suc-

now governed the

lately received orders

France and render account of his conduct in

work of retrenchment was begun.

were reduced

to three hundred.

die landed in

New

In June, a

The troops M. d' Abba-

Orleans, commissioned to succeed the

governor mider the shorn honors and semi-commercial title

of director-general.

east into the Bastile

Kerlerec, sailing to France, was and " died of grief shortly after his

release."

The

Creoles

noted, with

much

agitation,

these and

other symptoms of some unrevealed design to alter their political condition.

cretly

By and

by,

rumor of what had

se-

been transacted began to reach their ears in the

most offensive shape.

Yet, for a time,

M. d'Abbadie

TIIK FIUST CUKOLKS. JiiiuseJf

remained

officially as

51

uninfonned as they; and

was only

in October, 1754, twenty-tliree niontli/after

tiie signi^ig

of a secret act at Fontainebleau, that the au-

it

thoritative cession,

announcement reached

with

all

of

Aew

(Jrleans of

lier

French Louisiana, to the King of

Spain.

Such

the origin, surrounding influences, and resultin
station of a proud, freedom-loving, agricultural,

mercial people,

who were now about

and com-

to strike the flrst

armed blow ever aimed by Americans against a royal decreo

Their descendants would be a comnumity still more unique than they arc, had they not the world-wide trait of a pride of ancestry. B„t they might as easily be excused for boasting of other things which they have overlooked. pride of ascent would be as well grounded ; and it will be pleasant to show in later chapters that the decadence imputed to them, sometimes even by themselves, lias no foundation in fact, but that their course, instead, has been, the main, upward from lirst to

A

m

tinues to-day.

last,

and so con-

VII.

PRAYING TO THE KING. paragrapli J^ SIXGLE In 1699, France,

in recapitulation.

hy the Land of l.er gallant '""'""^ "" ^'"''^''<'^' ^o'^™-

7

n 1T18, 17,. ]„s , r Bienville, In brother, laid ont the little parallelogram of streets and ditches, and palisaded lots which

forn^d .New Orleans. Here, amid the willow-jungles of he M,ss,ss,ppi's low banks, under the glaring sunshine

of l.ayo„ clearings, in the dark shadows of the Delta's wet forests, the Louisiana Creoles came into e.xistence-valorous, unlettered, and unrestrained, as military ontpost I.fe an such a land might make

them. In sentiment they were loyal to their king; in principle, to themselves and hea. sod. Sixty-three years had passed, with floods and fannnes and Indian wars, corrupt u.isgovernment and its resnitant distresses, when in 1702 it suited the schemes of an unprmcipledcourt secretly to convey

-land and

the nnprofitablecolony

people,

In the early

all

and sing„lar-to the King of Spain

summer of 1764, before the news of this un eehng barter had startled the ears of the colonists, a eertam class n. New Orleans had begun to n.ake formal

PRAYING TO THE KING. complaint of a condition of

town (commercial and seemed

68

affairs in their sorry little

financial rather than political) that

them no longer bearable. There had been commercial development; but, in the light of their grievances, this only showed through what a debris of public to

disorder the

commerce of a country or town may make

a

certain progress.

These petitioners were the merchants of New Orleans. Tiieir voice was now heard for the first time. Tlie

pri-

vate material interests of the town and the oppressions of two corrupt governments were soon to come to

struggle.

It

But

disaster.

in store

was

an open

to end, for the Creoles, in

in better years further

ignominy and on there was a time

when arms should no longer overawe; but when

commerce, instead, was

to rule the

French or Spanish military

destinies, not

of a

post, but of the great south-

ern sea-port of a nation yet to be. Meanwhile the spirit of independence was stirring within the inhabitants.

They

scarcely half recognized

it

certain unconsciousness in truth

director-general's zeal for royalty

"

As

I

was finishing

" the merchants of petition, a

You

themselves (there

and

copy of which

;

but their

wrote M. d'Abbadie,

Orleans presented I

a

was chafed.

this letter,"

New

right)

is

me

with a

have the honor to forwaid.

will find in it those characteristic features of sedjiion

and insubordination of which I complain." A few months later came word of the

cession to Spain.

The people

refused to believe

it.

It

was nothing that the

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

54

king's letter directly stated the fact.

M. d'Abbadie

instructions to

official

was nothing that

It

as to the

manner of

evacuating and surrendering the province Mere full and precise.

It

was nothing that copies of the treaty and of

Spain's letter of acceptance were spread out in the council

man

chamber, where the humblest white

Such perfidy was simply

read them.

could go and

incredible.

transfer ')nust be a make-believe, or they were

bankruptcy

— not figuratively

we

only, but, as

The

doomed

to

shall pres-

ently see, literally also. So,

place

when doubt

— the

avert the

could stay no longer, hope took

hope that a prayer

consummation of the

been so inexplicably delayed. fore, early in 1765, there

that Place iscences.

treatj^

On

might

which had already

a certain day, there-

was an imposing gathering on

d'Armes already the place of romantic remin-

The

town were present

;

Xearly

all

planters, too,

parts of the Delta, with officials

was

voice of the people

advocacy of their rights.

other

to their sovereign

its

— an odd

to be heard in

the notables of the

from

all

the nearer

some of the superior council and motley of lace and

fiannel,

pow-

dered wigs, buckskin, dress-swords, French leather, and cow-hide.

One Jean Milhet was

wealthiest merchant in the town.

there.

He

Uq

was the

had signed the

petition of the previous June, with its " features of sedition

and insubordination."

And

he was now sent to

France with this new prayer that the king would arrange with Spain to nullify the act of cession.

PRAYING TO THE KINO.

55

But the ex-gov-

Milhet, in Paris, sought out Bienville.

ernor of the province and unsuccessful campaigner against its

Indian foes, in his eighty-sixth year, was fated to

once more in his effort to serve Louisiana.

But the

together the royal audience.

fail

They sought

minister, the

Due

de Choiseul (the transfer had been part of his policy)

They never saw the

adroitly barred the way. their mission

patch.

was brought

to

king, and

naught with courteous des-

Such was the word Milhet sent back.

hope without foundations

But a

The

not to be undermined.

is

Creoles, in 1TC(>, heard his ill-tidings without despair,

and

fed their delusion on his continued stay in France and on the non-display of the Spanish authority.

By

another treaty Great I^ritain had received, as already

mentioned, a vast territory on the eastern side of the Mississippi. Englisli

This transfer was easier to understand.

had gone promptly

into possession, and,

The much to

the mental distress of the acting-governor of Louisiana,

M. Aubry (M. d'Abbadie having ing the harbor of

New

died in 1765), were

mak-

Orleans a highway for their men-

of-war and transports, while without ships, anmmnition, or money, and with only a to their discharge,

few

soldiers,

and they entitled

he awaited Spain's languid receipt of

the gift which had been

made her only

to

keep

it

from

these very English. liut, at length,

Late

in

the

Spain moved, or seemed about to move.

summer

a letter

from Havana, addressed

to

it

came by

to the superior council

Don Antonio

de Ulloa, a

56

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

commodore

in the

autlior of renown,

Spanish navy, a

Don Antonio would

after

month went

not

made

This

soon arrive in

Here was another seed ruary, 1766,

and

and now revealed as the royally com-

missioned governor of Louisiana. that

scientific scholar

letter

New

of cruel delusion.

announced

Orleans.

For month

by, the year closed, January and Feb-

came and passed, and the new governor had

his appearance.

Surely,

a mere diplomatic manceuver.

done as nmch harm as 1766, Ulloa landod in

it

New

seemed, this was

it

But,

when

the delay had

could, on the 5th of

Orleans.

He

all

March,

brought with

him only two companies of Spanish ii Jantry, his Government having taken the assurance of France that more troops would not be needed.

VIII.

AND THE SUPERIOR COUNCIL.

ULLOA, AUBRY, ^ I

had now only

^11 E cession

to

go into

It

effect.

seemed

to tlie Louisianians a sentence of conuiiercial

and

industrial annihilation,

it

was

this belief,

to France, that furnished the true

and

were, therefore,

Who,

people.

—

are not

They were behind and under

then, or what,

body whose growth and power influence in

The merchants

But merchants

mainspring.

its

not loyalty

motive of the Creoles

justification of the struggle of 17C8.

apt to be public leaders.

and

was

in front

in the colony

?

An

the

official

had had great

forming the public character of the Creoles

the Superior Council.

but two members,

New Orleans. Formed in of whom the governor was

gradually enlarged,

it

It

civil

was older than

1712 of one, but

dispensed justice and administered

government over the whole colony, under the ancient

" custom of Paris," and the laws, edicts, and ordinances of the

kingdom of France.

popular government in of a

quorum by

selection.

its

It early

power

to

contained a

make good

germ of

the want

calling in notable inhabitants of its

By and by

its judicial

functions had

own

become

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA

58

purely appellate, and

of representative rule.

least,

It

took on features suggestive, at

it

was

this

Superior Council which, in 1722, with Bien-

head, removed to the

ville at its

made

Orleans, and so

it

was issued

in 1724,

the

throuffh

police.

of

1726,

its

assigned to

it

— the

Black Code.

forbade the freeing of a slave without

too free spirit

of the

body

this

successive national

three

reason shown to the Council, and by

mand

it

that dark enactment which,

dominations of

its articles

In 1723,

was by

It

powers, remained on the statute-book

One

New

settlement of

the colony's capital.

was exercising powers of that,

new

it

home government.

In

esteemed good.

was already receiving the

repri-

Yet, in 172S, the king

the supervision of land

titles

appoint and remove at will a lower court of

and power to its

own mem-

bers. AV^ith

grown

each important development in the colony in

numbers and powers, and,

it

had

in 1748, especially,

had been given discretionary authority over land

titles,

such as must have been a virtual control of the whole agricultural connnunity's

moral support.

'

About 1752

it

is

seen resisting the encroachments of the Jesuits, though these were based on a commission from the Bishop of

Quebec; and possessed this

the

it

was

this

same order

home government

with Kerlerec at

its

body

that, in

of

plantations, a year before

its

expelled

it

1763, boldly dis-

from France.

In 1758,

head, this Council had been too strong

for Ilochemore, the intendant-commissary,

and too free

ULLOA, AriniY, AXn THE SUPERIOR COUNCIL.

50

jostled liim rudely for tliree years,

and then procured of

the king his dismissal from

And

body that d'Abbadie,

office.

in another

lastly, it

was

quoted from, denounced as seditious in

already

urging the displacement of

this

part of the despatch spirit,

Creole members, and the

its

of their seats with imported Frenchmen.

tilling

Ulloa, the Spanish

governor, stepped ashore on the

Place d'Armes in a cold rain, with that absence of ])omp

which characterizes both the

sailor

and the

recluse.

Tlie

people received him in cold and haughty silence that soon turned to aggression. sary,

was the

first to

Foucault, the intendant-connnis-

move.

On

the very day of the gov-

ernor's arrival lie called his attention to the

money

unprovided for in the province.

left

seven million livres of

"What

value.

-was to

it,

ing

medium

at

its

be done about

A

few days

:

later

They presented a their connnercial

:

It

it

?"

its

face

The governor

should be the circulat-

market value, pending instructions

But the people

took another stand

There were

worth only a fourth of

answered promptly and kindly

from Spain.

French paper

It

instantly

must be redeemed

and clamorously at par.

he was waited on by the me '-chants. series of written

interests.

questions tcuching

They awaited

his answers,

know hoiu to direct their future In a despatch to his government, Ulloa termed

they said, in order to actions.

the address " imperious, insolent, and menacing."

The

first

offensive.

approach of the Superior Council was quite as

At

the head of this body sat Aubry.

lie was

60

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

loyal to his king, brave, and determined to execute the

orders he held to transfer the province.

The

troops were

under his command.

But, by the rules of the Council it was the intendant, Foucault, the evil genius of the hour,

who performed

the functions of president.

ruled the insurgent Council and signed

while Aubry,

tos,

governor,

filled

Lafreniere,

harangued the notables and the

to the king

And

the seat of honor. It

but helpless here,

too,

sat

was he who had

peoj^le

on the Place

sent Milhet to France.

was from

Foucault

pronunciamien-

the sternly protesting

the attorney-general.

d'Armes when they

its

his turgid pen.

The

petition

lie was a Creole,

the son of a poor Canadian, and a striking type of the

people that

now looked

to

manding mien, luxurious bearing,

ambitious,

him

as their leader

of com-

:

in his tastes, passionate, over-

replete

with

wild

energy,

and

equipped with the wordy eloquence that moves the ignorant or half-informed.

The

exhibit his commission.

He

Council requested Ulloa to replied coldly that he

would

not take possession of the colony until the arrival of additional Spanish troops,

which he was expecting; and

that then his dealings would be with the French governor,

Aubry, and not with a subordinate

civil

body.

Thus the populace, the merchants, and the civil government which included the judiciary— ranged themselves

—

at once in hostility to Spain.

The

military soon

forward and took their stand on the same

line,

point-blank to pass into the Spanish service.

moved

refusing

Aubry

ULLOA, AUBKY, AND THE SUPERIOR (X)rNCIL.

61

alone recognized the cession and Ulloa's powers, and to

him alone

L'lloa

showed

assumed

ish governor virtually

ish soldiers to building

points

portant

in

Yet the Span-

his commission.

control, set his

few Span-

and garrisoning new forts at im-

various quarters,

and,

with Aubry,

endeavored to maintain a conciliatory policy pending the of ti'oops.

arrival

was a policy wise only because

It

momentarily imperative in dealing with such a people.

They were but

partly conscious

were smarting under a

lively

t)f

their rights, but they

knowledge of their wrongs',

and their impatient temper could brook any other

ment with which

better dignity

trifled

and

less

treat-

resentment than that

with their feelings.

An

began, before long, to tind open utterance.

Ill-will

arrangement by which the three or four companies of

French

soldiei's

remained in service under Spanish pay,

but under French colors and

denounced.

fiercely

Illloa

was a man of great amiability and enlighten-

ment, but nervous and sensitive. fective civilization tastes,

Kot only was the

was an

intolerable offence

easily recognized that

frivolous criticisms

to

the people.

behind and beneath

all

and imperious demands, and the

determination of their Superior Council to resist tractions of its powers, the true object of dread

sion

de-

around him discordant to his gentle

but the extreme contrast which his personal char-

acter offered

Yet he

Aubry's command, was

all

their fierce

con-

and aver-

was the iron tyrannies and extortions of Spanish

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

62

colonial revenue laws.

This feeling it was that had produced the offensive memorial of the merchants and yet he met it kindly, and, only two months after his arrival, ;

began a

series of concessions looking to the preservation

of trade with France and the French the colonists had

The people met

One

strance.

believed

West

which

Indies,

themselves doomed to

lose.

these concessions with resentful remon-

of the governor's proposals was to fix

schedule of reasonable

jirices

on

all

imported

through the appraisement of a board of disinterested zens.

Certainly

it

a

goods,

was unjust and oppressive,

as

citi-

any

Spanish commercial ordinance was likely to be but it was intended to benefit the mass of consumers. But con;

sumers and suppliers for once had struck hands, and the whole people raised a united voice of such grievous complaint that the ordinance

A

further

the oflfice-holders,

Every

was verbally revoked.

motive— the

harmless

fear of displacement— moved

and kept them maliciously incident,

caught up vindictively.

every

The

trivial

governor's " manner of

ing, his tastes, his habits, his conversation, the ial

diligent.

mistake,

most

was liv-

triv-

occurrences of his household," were construed offen-

sively.

He grew

incensed and began to threaten.

In

December, 1767, Jean Milhet "returned from France. His final word of ill-success was only fuel to the fire. The year passed away, and nine months of 1768 followed. Ulloa and

thought

ill

Aubry kept

well together, though

Aubry

of the Spaniard's administrative powers.

In

ULLOA, AinniY,

AND THK srPKKlou COTNCIL.

63

their

own

They

were, wrote Aubry, "gradually molding Frenchmen

eyes they seemed to be haviiifr some success.

The Spanish

Spanish domination."'

to

new

the

flag floated over

military posts, the French ensign over the old,

and the colony seemed

to be dwelling in peace

under both

standards. Ihit Ulloa

and the Creoles were sadly

innovations in matters of

many

so

painful

commerce and

distressed.

their seven million livres of

Even the debts

tell.

were unpaid.

to

nt)

become of

one yet could

that the Spaniards had

Values had

on every hand

What was

paper money

There was a specie famine. self

were only

police

They were embar-

surprises to them.

They were

rassed.

Repeated

apart.

and the

assumed

shrunk sixty-six per cent. Insolvency was showing disasters that

it-

were

to follow the complete establishment of Spanish power were not known but might be guessed. They returned the gov;

ernor distrust for distrust, censure for censure, and scorn for scorn.

And now Indies. its

It

came rumor of a royal decree suppresscommerce with France and the West

there

ing the town's

was enough.

The people

of

Xew

Orleans and

adjacent river "coasts," resolved to expel the Span-

iards.

IX.

THE INSURRECTION.

"VTEW ORLEANS,

in 1T08,

was

still

thirty-two hundred persons only, a third of

had

some

a town of

whom

lain for thirty -five years in the

were black

slaves.

reeds and

willows with scarcely a notable change to re-

It

lieve the poverty of its aspect.

During the Indian wars

barracks had risen on either side of the Place d'Arnies.

AVhen, in 1758, the French evacuated Fort Duquesne

and

floated

down the Ohio and

leans, Kerlerec still

Mississippi to

New

added other barracks, part of whose ruin

stands in the neighborhood of Barracks Street.

lients

had been made

Sa-

at the corners of its palisade wall

there was " a banquette within and a very without."

Or-

trifling ditch

Just beyond this wall, on a part of the land of

the banished Jesuits, in a large, deeply shaded garden,

was a house that had become the rendezvous of a conspiracy.

Lafreni^re sat at the liead of airs

its

board.

His majestic

had got him the nickname of "Louis Quatorze."

Foucault was conspicuous.

His friendship with

Pradal, the lady of the house, was what

is

Madame

called notor-

THE

INSI'IIHECTIOX.

Jean Milliet and a

ions.

brotlier,

60

Josepli Milhct, and

other leading merchants, Caresse, Petit, and Ponpet, were also Doncet, a

prominent lawyer, and Marqnis, a captain of Swiss troops with Balthasar de Masan, Hardy present

;

;

de Boisblanc, and Joseph Villere, planters and pnblic men, the last, especially, a man of weight. And, as if the

name

of the city's fonnder mnst be linked with

patriotic disaster, ville's

and

among

nephews— Xoyan,

all

nnmber were two of Bienyonng ex-captain of cavalry,

the a

Bienville, a naval lieutenant,

Xoyan's

still

younger

brother.

On

the 25th of October, ITCS, the mine was sprung.

From twenty

to sixty miles

banks of the Mississippi,

German

lies

above

Xew

Or:eans, on the

the Cote des Allemantio, the

coast, originally colonized

by John Law's Alsa-

Here the conspirators had spread the belief that the Spanish obligations due the farmers there would not be paid ; and when, on the date mentioned, Ulloa sent an agent to pay them, he was arrested by a body of citizens under orders from Villere, and deprived of the tians.

money.

Just beyond the " Acadians."

German coast lay the coast of the From time to time, since the peace with

England, bands of these exiles from distant had found their way to Louisiana, some

Nova Scotia by way of the and some-many,

American colonies and the Ohio Kiver, indeed-by way of St. Domingo, and had shores of the Mississippi above

settled on the and below the mouth of La

Fourche and down the banks of that bayou.

Hardships

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

66

and

now

afflictions

had come

to

be the

and

salt of tlieir bread,

a last hope of ending their days under the flag for

whicli they

had

so pathetic

the success of this uprising.

On

an

affection

depended upon

They joined the

insurgents.

the 2Tth, Foucault called a meeting of the Superior

In the night, the guns at Tchou-

Council for the 2Sth. pitoulas gate

— at

the upper river corner

— were

spiked.

Farther away, along a narrow road, with the wide and

now hidden by intervening brakes of willow and now broadening out to view,

silent Mississippi

cotton-wood or

but always on the right, and the dark, wet, moss-draped forest always

weapons

on the

— muskets,

left,

garb and with rude

in rude

fowling pieces, anything

mans and Acadians were marching upon

On

the morning of the

toulas gate.

At

2Stli,

— the

Ger-

the town.

they entered Tchoupi-

the head of the Acadians was Xoyan.

Yillere led the Germans.

Other gates were forced, other

companies entered, stores and dwellings were closed, and "All," says Aubry,

the insurgents paraded the streets. " was in a state of combustion."

the square.

The people gathered on

" Louis Quatorze " harangued them.

Doucet and the brothers Milhet.

So did

Six hundred persons

signed a petition to the Superior Council, asking the official

ting,

action which the

members of

were ready and waiting to

Aubry had

What he

that body, then

sit-

give.

a total force of one hundred and ten men.

could do he did.

lie sent for Lafr^niere,

and

afterward for Foucault, and protested bitterly, but in vain.

THE IXSURRECTIOIf. Under

67

his protection, Ulloa retired with his family ft/

on

board the Spanisli frigate, which liad slipped her cables from the shore and anchored out in the river. The Spanish governor's staff

remained in his house, which they had barricaded, surrounded by an angry mob that filled the air

with huzzas for the King of France.

The Council met

A

again on the 29th.

French flag had been hoisted in the Place d'Armes, and a thousand insurgents gathered around

it

demanding the action of the Council.

body was about to proceed to peared before

Two

it,

its final

measure,

warning and reproaching

its

As

that

Aubry

ap-

members.

or three alone wavered, but Lafreniere's counsel pre-

vailed,

and a report was

adopted enjoining Ulloa to " leave the colony in the frigate in which he came, with-

out delav."

Aubry was government.

invited

by the conspirators to resume the

His response was

bellion

and predict their

French

vessel, endi.

to charge

them with

re-

ruin.

Ulloa, the kindest if not the wisest well-wisher of Louisiana that had held the gubernatorial commission since Bienville, sailed, not in the Spanisli frigate, which remained " for j-epairs," but in a -ig

at the last

jeers of a throng of night

re

moment

sterers, ar.d

the songs and the menacing

presence of sergeants and bailiffs of the Council.

X. THE PRICE OF HALF-CONVICTIONS. concerned was to next move on the part of all declarations, to the hurry forward messengers, with

THE

courts of France

The

and Spain.

colonists sent theirs

and Foucanlt, his-a paper which leaves characterized by a shameless double-dealing

Aubry and

Ulloa, each, his

;

the intendant-commissary alone, of these events, an infamous

The memorial pleadings.

It

the participants in

memory.

of the people

truth and misstatement.

all

It

was an absurd confusion of fatal to its

made admissions

made

r^rogant announcpinents of unap-

It

enumerated real wrongs, for which

plied principles.

blame. And France and Spain, but not Ulloa, were to the banished with these it mingled such charges against own house governor as That he had a chapel in his churches; that that he absented himself from the French :

he enclosed a fourth of the public common private horses

;

that he sent to

that he ordered the

town, on account of

moved

Havana

abandonment of its

to pasture his

for a wet-nurse

a brick-yard near the

pools of putrid water

;

that he re-

inhospitable leprous children from the town to the

THE PRICE OF HALF- COX VICTIOXS. settlements at the

month of the

river

had

go

to

six miles to get a

landed in

Xew

and under other the colony

Xot

who tors

ill

omens

;

that

he claimed

;

;

that he had

to

be king of

and that he added to these crimes— as the others, equally just

unhappy were the adulations

[!]

and terrible!"

offered the king,

so justly deserved their detestation.

had

;

Orleans dnring a tlmnder-and-rain storm,

it— "many

less

that masters

;

negro flogged

that he offended the people with evidences of

sordid avarice text has

he forbade

that

;

the pnblic whipping of slaves in the town

69

The

conspira-

at first entertained the bold idea of declaring the

colony's independence

and setting up a republic.

To

this

end Xoyan and his brother Bienville, about three months befoi-e the outbreak, had gone secretly to Governor ElPensacola, to treat for the aid of British troops. In this they failed ; and, though their lofty i-esolution, liott, at

M'hich,

by wiser

leaders,

among

a people of higher disci-

pline or unuer a greater faith in the strength of a just

might have been communicated to the popular will, was not abandoned, it was hidden, and finally suffocated cause,

under a pretence of the most ancient and servile loyalty

"Great king, the best of kings [Louis XY.], father and protector of your subjects, deign, sire, to receive into your

and fraternal bosom the children who have no other desire than to die your subjects," etc. royal

The

bearers of this address were

Le Sassier, St. Lette, They appeared before the Due de Choiseul

and Milhet. unsupported

;

for the a^red Bienville was dead.

St. Lette,

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

7D

chosen because

was

lie

had once been an intimate of the duke,

But the deputation

cordially received.

only frowns and the intelligence that the earlier informed,

as a

body met

King

of Spain,

was taking steps for a permanent occu-

pation of the refractory province.

St. Lette

remained in

Milhet and Le Sassier returned, carry-

the duke's bosom.

ing with them ^nly the cold comfoi't of an order refund-

ing the colonial debt at three-fifths of

its

nominal value,

in five per cent, bonds.

was the fate of the Creoles

It sult

— to

and

be slack-handed

month followed the October

—possibly dilatoiy.

a climatic re-

Month

after

uprising without one of those

incidents that would have succeeded in the history of an

earnest people.

In March, 17G9, Foucault covertly de-

serted his associates,

and denounced them, by

letter, to

the French cabinet.

In April the Spanish frigate sailed

from xSew Orleans.

Three intrepid men (Loyola, Gay-

and Xavarro), the governmental

arre,

had

left in the province, still

a fort was taken, though withstood

assault.

it is

Kot

staff

which Ulloa

remained, luimolested.

Kot

probable not one could have

a spade was struck into the

ground, or an obstruction planted, at any strategic point,

throughout stretches

in

that its

whole " Creole "

spring

time

which

exuberant perfection from January to

June.

At

length the project of forming a republic was revived

and was given

definite shape

and advocacy.

time had been thrown away, the opportune

But

priceless

moment had

THE PRICE OF IIALF-COXVICTIONS.

71

overwhelming Spanish army and fleet was approaching, and the spirit of the people was paralyzed. passed, an

The

revolt against the injustice

royal powers at once,

entertained the

was It

virtually at

" the

by

first

European colony that

idea of proclaiming her independence,"

an end.

was the misfortune of the Creoles

habits of mature thought

not

and oppression of two

made

rights

that

and of

to

be wantino* in

They had

self-control.

study of reciprocal justice and natural

which becomes men who would

tyranny.

resist

Tiiey lacked the steady purpose bred of daily

toil.

With

these qualities, the insurrection of 1768 mio-ht have been a revolution for the overthrow of French and Spanish

misrule and the establishment and maintenance of the right of self-government.

The Creoles were valorous but

unreflecting.

They had

the spirit of freedom, but not the profound pi-inciples of right which it becomes the duty of revolutionists to assert

and struggle

for.

They

arose fiercely against a confusion

of real and fancied grievances, sought to be ungoverned rather than leaders, ness,

self-governed,

and, following distempered

became a warning in their many-sided short-sighted-

and an example only

They had now only an entire inversion of

to

in their audacious courage.

pay the penalties

all their first

;

and

it

was by

intentions that they at

length joined in the struggle which brought to a vigorous birth that

a part.

American nation of which they

finally

became

XL COUNT O'REILLY AND SPANISH LAWS.

o

:XE morning toward the end of July, ITCO, the people of Kew Orleans were brought suddenly to their

by the news that the Spaniards were at the mouth of the river in overwhelming force. There was no longer

feet

any room

to postpone choice of action.

Marquis, the Swiss captain, with a w^iite cockade in his hat (he had been the leading advocate for a republic), and upon the Petit, with a pistol in either hand, came out ragged, sunburnt grass of the Place d' Amies and called

upon the people dred less

men

defend their

to

them

joined

with dismay

;

;

liberties.

About a hun-

but the town was struck motion-

who had

the few

gathered soon disap-

peared, and by the next day the resolution of the leaders

was

distinctlv taken, to submit.

On Place

the second morning d' Amies,

Irishman

Aubry

But no one

fled.

called the people to the

promised the clemency of the

who commanded

the

illustrious

approaching expedition,

and sent them aw^ay, commanding them to keep within their homes.

Lafreniere, Marquis, and Milhet descended

the river,

COUNT O'kEILLY and SPANISH LAWS.

73

appeared before the commander of the Spaniards, and by the

mouth of Lafreniere

in a submissive but brave

manly address presented the liomage of the people. captain-general in his reply let fall the

word

and

The

seditious.

Marquis boldly but respectfully objected.

He was answered with gracious dignity and the assurance of ultimate justice, and the insurgent leaders returned to Xew Orleans and to their homes.

The Spanish

fleet

numbered twenty -four

more than three weeks

it

slowly pushed

For

sail.

way around

its

the bends of the Mississippi, and on the 18th of August it finally

furled

its

canvas before the town.

up his French troops with the of the Place d'Armes, a of the

and

fleet,

gun was

Don Alexandro

fired

bottom

from the flagship

O'Reilly, accompanied

by twenty-six hundred chosen Spanish fifty pieces

Aubry drew

colonial militia at the

troops,

and with

of artillery, landed in unprecedented

pomp,

and took formal possession of the province.

On

the 21st, twelve of the principal insurrectionists

were arrested. prisoner.

One

Two

days later Foucault was also made a

other. Brand, the printer of the seditious

documents, was apprehended,

and a proclamation an-

nounced that no other arrests would be made. pleading his

ofl[icial

capacity,

was taken

by his government, and thrown into the

Foucault,

to France, tried

Bastile.

Brand

pleaded his obligation as government printer to print public documents, and was set at liberty.

" died raving

mad on

all

Villere either

the day of his arrest," as stated in

74

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

the Spanish

official

met

report, or

his

end in the act of

where he had

resisting the guard on board the frigate

been placed in coniinenient.

Joseph Milhet were

Marquis, and

The

hanged. officials

Xoyan, Caresse,

condemned

fire

volley

be

to

supplications both of colonists and Spanish

saved them only from the gallows, and they

before the

The

Lafreniere,

of a

file

made

fell

of Spanish grenadiers.

at least

one young bride at once an

For the youthful DeNoyan had the daughter of Lafreniere. Judge

orphan and a widow. been newly wed to

Gayarre, in his history of Louisiana, that the

young

tells,

as a tradition,

chevalier, in prison awaiting execution,

being told that his attempt to escape would be winked

by the cruel captain-general, replied that he would live or die w^ith his associates, and so met his untimely

fit

end.

Against his young brother, Bienville, no action seems to

have been taken beyond the sequestration of his prop-

He

erty.

and

assumed the

as the Chevalier de

of the line, died at St. Petit,

title

of his unfortunate brother,

Koyan and

lieutenunt of a ship

Domingo nine

years after.

But

Masan, Doucet, Boisblanc, Jean Milhet, and Pou-

pet were consigned to the Morro Castle, Havana, where

they remained a year, and were then set at liberty, but

were forbidden

to return to Louisiana

of their property. leased

from the

and were deprived

About the same time Foucault was

Bastile.

The

re-

declaration of the Superior

Council was burned on the same Place d'Armes that had

COUNT O'REILLY AXD SPANISH LAWS seen

Aubry refused

proclaimed.

it first

a

liigli

7.")

commis-

sion in the Spanish army, departed for France, and had

ah-eady entered the Itiver Gai-onne,

wrecked and eral

was

justly

" Cruel O'Reilly."

when ]ie was sliip"Cruel Olteilly "— the captain-gennamed.

lost.

(From a miniature

in

possession of Hon. Charles Gayarre, of Louisiana.)

There could, of course, be but one fate for the Superior Council as an official body, and the Count O'Reilly,

armed with plenary powers, swept

The

cahildo took

its place.

it

out of existence.

This change from French

rule to Spanish lay not i3rincipally in the laws, but in the

redistribution of power.

The crown,

the sword, and the

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

76

cross absorbed the lion's share, leaving but a morsel to be

doled out, with

much form and pomp,

to the cabildo.

Very quaint and redolent with Spanish romance was

this

body, which for the third part of a century ruled the Louisiana Creoles.

pettier destinies of the

Therein

the six reyidors, or rulers, whose seats, bought at

sat

first

at

auction, were sold from successor to successor, the crown

always coming in for

share of the price.

its

them were loaded down with ponderous reed or royal standard bearer cial,

town

who

;

titles;

Five of

the cdferez

the alcalde-mayor-])romn-

overtook and tried offenders escaped beyond

limits

;

the alguazil-mayoi\ with his eyo on police

and prisons; the depositario-general, who kept and pensed the public stores

camara^ the receiver of six sat four

elected to

whom

sit

the

and the recihidor de jpenas de

;

fines six,

and

penalties.

Above

annually passing out of

be residents and householders of

these office,

These four must

over their six successors.

ficer or attache of

dis-

New

Orleans.

No

of-

the financial department of the realm,

nor any bondsman of such, nor any one aged under twenty-six, nor any

could qualify.

new

convert to the Catholic faith,

Two were

alcaldes ordinarios,

common

In addition to other duties, they held petty courts at evening in their own dwellings, and gave unwritten decisions ; but the soldier and the priest were be-

judges.

yond

their jurisdiction.

general,

town

A third

was sindico-procurador-

and sued for town revenues

treasurer, the

;

and the fourth was

mayor-domo-de-projmos.

At

the bot-

COUNT O'kEILLY AND SPANISH LAWS. toiii

77

of the scale was the esail/ano, or secretarv, and at

the top, the governor. It

was

like a crane,

powers was

—

feathers.

all

A

sample of

its

and revoke at will the meat monopoly and the many other petty municipal privileges its

right to sell

which characterized

the

Spanish rule and have hoen

handed down to the present day license system.

The underlying

in the city's offensive

design of the cabildo's

creation seems to have been not to confer, but to scatter

and neutralize power

and

this

hands of royal

Loaded with

body.

minute ministerial Council shorn of

in the

duties,

its

locks

and fettered with

was, so to speak, the Superior

it ;

titles

sub-officials

or if not, then, at least, a

whose members recognized their standing

body

as (juardianH of

the people and servants of the king. O'Reilly had come to set up a government, but not to

remain and govern.

On

organizing the cabildo, he an-

nounced the appointment of

Don

Louis de Unzaga, colonel

of the regiment of Havana, as goveri jr of the province,

and yielded him the

chair.

But under

his

own

hiirher

commission of captain-general he continued for a time in control.

He

had established

in force the laws of Castile

and the Indies and the use of the Spanish tongue in the courts

and the public

offices.

Those who examine the

dusty notarial records of that day find the baptismal

names, of French and Anglo-Saxon origin, changed to a Spanish orthography, and the indices made upon these stead of

upon the surnames.

in-

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

78

So, if laws

and government could have done

made

siana would have been

it,

Loui-

But the change

Spanish.

in

There was a tone of severity

the laws was not violent.

in those of

and a feature of arbitrary surveillance

Spain

;

but the principles of the French and Spanish systems had

One

a connnon origin. rectly,

remotely, the other almost di-

was from the Iloman Code, and they were

point-

edly similar in the matters which seemed, to the Creole,

of supreme impoi'tance,

But

tance.

it.

— the marital

relation,

and inheri-

was not long before he found that now

under the Spaniard,

as,

under the French, the

earlier,

laws themselves, and their administration, pointed in very different directions.

Spanish rule in Louisiana was better,

at least, than French, which,

the is

name

of government.

it

As

is

true, scarcely

deserved

to the laws themselves, it

worthy of notice that Louisiana "

is

at this

time the

only State, of the vast territories acquiied from France, Spain, and Mexico, in which the civil law has been re-

and forms a large portion of

tained,

jurisprudence."

the 29th of October, 1770, O'Reilly sailed from

On

New

its

Orleans with most of his troops, leaving the Spanish

power

entirely

by him

in

dred men.

and peacefully established.

the colony amounted

He

it

advantageous to

terrible

only with velvet strokes.

home government

Xew

Orleans

The

force left

one thousand two hun-

had dealt a sudden and

he had followed tions to the

to

blow; but

His sugges-

of commercial measures

and

the

colony,

were

many, and his departure was the signal for the com-

COITNT O'REILLY

meneement of

AND SPANISH LAWS.

active measures

intended

to

induce,

79 if

possible, a cliange in the sentiments of the

people,— one

consonant with

'

upon them. mild Unzaga.

the

political

changes

he

had forced Such was the kindlier task o£ the wise and

XII. SPANISH CONCILIATION.

c of

PwOZAT— Law— Louis XV.— Charles

III.— whoever

one time or anotlier was the transatlantic master prinLouisiana managed its affairs on the same bad at

ciple

:

They

To none

of

them had a colony any inherent

rights.

pasentered into possession as cattle are let into a It

ture or break into a field.

was simply a commercial

sovereign's or venture projected in the interests of the or indulmonopolist's revenues, and restrictions were laid

gences bestowed upon to require.

And

it

merely as those interests seemed

so the Mississippi Delta, until better

ideas could prevail, could not ill-nourished civilization.

show other than a gaunt,

The weight

of

oppression, if

the spot had not the governors and other officers on taught the evaded the letter of the royal decrees and

have crushed the Creoles to do the same, would actually life

out of the province.

The merchants

of

New

Orleans,

jrovernor's chair, dared not

when Unzaga took the

import from France anything

consider articles but what the customs authorities chose to With St. Domingo and Martinique they of necessity.

SPANISH COXCILIATIOX.

Ql

only exchange lumber and grain for breadstnffs and wine. Their ships must be passported their bills of lading were offensively policed and these " privileges " ; coulcl

;

were only to

commerce

last until

Spain could supplant them by a exclusively her own. They Mere completely

shut out from every other market in the world except certain specified ports of Spain, where, they complained, they could not sell their produce to advantage nor buy what was wanted in the province. They could employ

only Spanish bottoms

commanded by subjects of Spain ; these could not put into even a Spanish-American inter' mediate port except in distress, and then only under onerous

restrictions. They were virtually throttled merely by a rigid application of the theory which had always oppressed them, and only by the loose and flexible administration of which the colony and town had survived

and

grown, while Anthony Crozat had become Law's Compagnie d'Occident Iiad b^en

bankrupt,

driven to other

fields of enterprise,

of millions

and Louis

XV. had

heaped up a

loss

more than he could pay.

Ulloa's banishment left a gate

wide open which a kind of cattle not of the Spanish brand lost no time in entering-

^" I found the English," wrote O'Reilly, in October, 1769, "in complete possession of the commerce of the colony.

They had

in this town their merchants and with open stores and shops, and I can safely assert that they pocketed nine-tenths of the money

traders,

spent

THE CItKOLKS OF LOUISIANA.

82

...

here.

drove

I

off all

the English traders and

the other individuals of that nation

whom

I

found

in this

town, and I shall admit here none of their vessels."

he reconnnended what may have seemed measure,

— an entirely free

to Iiim a liberal

trade with Spain and Havana,

and named the wants of the people iron instruments, arms,

But

:

"

wine,

flour,

oil,

ammunition, and every sort of

manufactured goods for clothing and other domestic purposes," for ton, furs,

which they could pay

in " timber, indigo, cot-

and a small quantity of corn and

rice."

Unzaga, a mai^ of advanced years and a Spaniard of the indulgent type,

when

in

1770 he assumed control, saw

the colony's extremity, and began at once the old policy of meeting desirable ends by lamentable expedients.

method was

double-acting.

hand, repeated

lie procured,

concessions and

His

on the one

indulgences

from the

king, while on the other he overlooked the evasion by the

people of such burdens as the government had not

The

Creoles on the plantations took advantage of this

state of affairs.

posts

lifted.

Under cover of trading with the

British

on the eastern bank of the Mississippi above Orleans

Island, the English traders returned

and began again

supply the Creole planters with goods and slaves.

to

Busi-

ness became brisk, for anything offered in exchange was acceptable, revenue laws were profits

were large,

the river bank, where lay

mentioned only

and credit was free and long.

now

in

jest,

Against

stands the suburb of Gretna,

moored (when they were not trading up and down the

SPANISH CONCILIATIOX.

S3

shores of the stream) two large floating warehouses, fitted up with counters and slieives and stocked

with assorted

merchandise.

TJie merchants, sliut out

from

traband benefits, complained loudly to irnzaga.

complained in vain. prospered

The

tliese conJ

Jut

they

trade went on, the planters

the merchants gave them crop-advances, and they turned about and, ignoring their debt, broadened ;

their lands

and bought additional slaves from the J3ritish Hereupon ITnzaga moved, and drawing upon his

traders.

large reserve of absolute power, gently but firmly checked this imposition.

Tiic

governor's

qniet

n.le worked another benefit AVlule the town was languishing under the intiietion of so-ealled concessions tlmt were so narrowed by provisos aa to he al„,ost nentralized, a new oppression showed itself.

The newly imported Spanish Capnchins opened such a crnsade, not only against their French brethren, bnt also agan.st certain customs which these had long allowed an.ong the

laity, that but for Unzaga's pacific intervention an exodus would have followed which he feared „,i.d,t ° < ven have destroyed the colony.

The province been one.

could not bear two, and there had already Under O'Reilly so many n.erchants

and me-

chan.cs had gone to St.

he had ceased to

Domingo

that just before he left

gr,<,nt p..ssports.

Their places were not 1773 Unzaga wrote to the Bishop of Cuba that, " There were not in New Orleans and its environs two thousand souls (possibly filled,

and

in

meaning whites) of

all

pro-

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

84 fessions

and conditions," and that most of

tliese

were ex-

tremely poor.

But

conciliation soon

began to take

effect.

Commis-

sions were eagerly taken in the governor's " regiment of

Louisiana," where the pay was large and the sword was

the true

emblem

of power, and the offices of regidor and

alcalde were by-and-by occupied

ancient Creole

names

Forstall, Duplessis,

by the bearers of such

as St. Denis,

La

Chaise, Fleurieu,

Bienvenue, Dufossat, and Livaudais.

In 1T76, Unzaga was made captain-general of Caracas,

and the following year,

left in

charge of

Don Bernardo

de Galvcz, then about twenty-one years of age, a people still

French in

feeling,

measure to Spanish

rule.

it

is

true, yet

reconciled in a

XIII.

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION ON THE GULF

^^OW, at

length, the Creole

SIDE.

and the Anglo-American

were to come into active relation to each other— from that day to the present, has qualified

relation which,

every public question in Louisiana.

At

a

happy moment the governorship of Unzaga,

advanced in

who

a

man

of impaired vision and failing health, was begging to be put on the retiree: list, gave place life,

to the virile administration of

one of the most

brilliant

characters to be seen in the history of the Southwestern

United States.

Galvez was the son of the Viceroy of Mexico and nephew of the Spanish secretary of state,

who was

also president of the council of the Indies,

lie

was barely grown to manhood, but he was ardent, engaging, brave, fond of achievement and display, and, withal, talented and sagacious.

Says one who fought under him,

He was distinguished for the afeability of his manners, the sweetness of his temper, the frankness of his character, the kindness of his heart, and his love of "

justice."

A change in

now took place, following Europe. The French, instead of

the drift of affairs the English, mer-

THE CIIEOLES OF LOUISIANA.

80

coininamled the trade of

cliants, Jjritisli

traders found

seized

tlieiii.selvcs

Eleven of their

great rigor.

tlic

The

Missisiiippi.

suddenly treated witli

ships, richly

Mere

laden,

by the new governor, while he exceeded the

letter

of the Franco-Spanish treaty in bestowing privileges upon

New

the Frencli.

liberties

gave fresh value to the trade

with French and Spanish-American ports.

Slaves were

not allowed to be brought thence, owing to their insurrectionary spirit

was now

but their importation direct from Guinea

;

specially encouraged,

tion against those of the

Galvez was, as

own

his

West

yet, only

and presently the prohibi-

Indies was removed.

governor

ad

into'lm / yet, by

proclamation, he gave the colonists the right to

trade with France, and, a few days later, included the ports of the thirteen British colonies then waging that

war ly,

in

which the future of the Creoles was so profound-

though obscurely, involved.

given to traders with Spain

;

Xew

liberties

were

also

the government became the

buyer of the tobacco crop, and a Frencli and Frencli-AVest Indian immigration was encouraged.

But these

privileges were darkly overshadowed

by the

clouds of war.

The English

against Spanish

commerce, and the French took open

issued

part in the American revolution.

was looking

to his

defences,

letters

of

marque

The young governor

building gun-boats,

awaiting from his king the word which would enable

and

him

to test his military talents.

Out of these very

conditions, so disappointing in

one

THE AMEiticAx

i:kv(H.t'tion-

direction, sprang a

significance

years

in

tlie

before, at

now

tni
liistoiy of

tlie

on the

OT'LF sidk.

of

greatest possible

tlic

the i.eople.

moment when

tlie

Some

87

eigiit

arrival of

two

thousand six hundred Spanish troops and the non-appearance of their supply-ships had driven the ])rice of pro-

visions in

Xew

Orleans almost to famine

entered port, from

rates,

lialtimore, loaded with

owner of the cargo was one Oliver Pollock, to sell

and rel,

it

to O'lieilly

a brig

Hour.

The

lie offered

on the captain-general's own terms,

finally disposed of

it

to

him

at fifteen dollars a bar-

two-thirds the current price.

liberality

O'Reilly rewarded his with a grant of free trade to Louisiana for his

Such was the germ of the commerce of New-

life-time.

Orleans with the great ports of the Atlantic. In 1770, Pollock, with a number of other merchants from

Xew

York, Philadelphia, and Boston, who had established themselves in N'ew Orleans, had begun, with the countenance of Galvez, to supply, by fleets of la)-ge

canoes, arms and ammunition to the American agents at Fort Pitt (Pittsburg). This was repeated in 1777, and, in 1778,

Pollock became the avowed agent of the American Government.

Here, then, was a great turning-point.

Immigration became Anglo-Saxon, a valuable increase of population taking place by an inflow from the Floridas and the United States, that settled in the town itself and took the oath of allegiance to Spain.

ance

made

a

Tlie commercial

few years before with the Atlantic

acquaintports

was

THE CIIEOLES OF LOUISIAXA.

88

now

extentled to the growing AVcst, jurI to bo cut off

from European sources of supply was no longer a calamity, but a lesson of that frugality and life wliich

self-lielp in

the domestic

Between

are the secret of public wealth.

St.

Louis and >»ew Orleans, Natchitoches and Xatchez (Fort

Panmure), there was

sufficient diversity of

industries to complete

merce

the circuit of an internal com-

the Attakapas and Opelousas prairies had been

;

settled

products and

by Acadian herdsmen

;

in 1778,

immigrants from

the Canary Islands had founded the settlement of zuela on

La Fourche, Galveztown on the Amite, and that

of Terre aux Banifs just below

Xew

medium, and the

ercmzanj were redeemed

paper

call for a circu-

colonial tj-easury warrants, or 111-

by

receipts of specie

Cruz often enough to keep them fair

A

Orleans.

currency supj^lied the sometimes urgent lating

Vene-

afloat at a

from Vera moderately

market value.

"Were the Cj-eoles

satisfied

be practically tested.

?

This question was

declared war against Great Britain.

to

Galvez discovered

that the British were planning the surprise of leans.

now

For in the summer of 1779 Spain

Under cover of preparations

haste to take the offensive.

New

for defence he

Or-

made

Only four days before the

time when he had appointed to move, a hurricane struck the town, demolishing dwellings up and

gun

flotilla.

called

down

many

houses, ruining crops and

the river " coast," and sinking his

Nothing dismayed, the young commander

the people to their old rallying ground on the

THE AMERICAN REVOLT'TIOX OX THE CILF

SIDE.

8$)

Place d'Armes, and with a newly received con„„is.sion in oiie hand confirmini,. him as governor, and J,is .huwn SNvord in the other,

demanded of them to answer his "Should he appear before the cabildo

lenge:

chal-

as that

commission required, and take the oath of governor? Should lie swear to defend Louisiana

byhnn?" lie,

The

"Let them

?

Would

response was enthusiastic.

that love

Creoles flocked around pairing his disasters as ostensibly defensive

me

follow where I

him ready

they stand

Then

lead,''

said

and ihe

for his behest.

Re-

best lie could, and hastenin.. his preparations, he marched,

22d ot August, 1779, against the British sissippi. His force, besides the four

on°the

forts

Spanish

on the Misofficers

who

ranked in turn below liim, consisted of one hundred and

seventy

regulars,

three hundred and thirty recruit, twenty carbineers, sixty militia men, eighty free men-ofcolor, SIX hundred men from the coast (" of every condition and color"), one hundred and sixty Lidians,

American

nine

volunteers,

and Oliver Pollock. This army of 1,430 men was without tents or other

little

military

furniture, or a single engineer.

The gun

followed in the river abreast of their line of inarch, carrying one twenty-four, five eighteen, and four four-pounders: On the 7th of September Fort Bute fleet

on Bayou Manchac, with

Its

garrison of twenty

sault of

men, yielded

the unsupported

easily to the first as-

Creole militia.

The

fort

0*=

Baton Rouge was found to be very strong, armed with thirteen heavy guns, and garrisoned by five hundred men

00

ckkolks of lokisiana.

rm<:

Tlio

tr(>o])s

landed Ids

lK>^t:;o(l

to 1)C lod to tho ussjuilt; but (Jalvez

tilst of September, alter

the

dni'e«l

that hv

])lac'e

out

included the surrender of

position woidd luive been very ditlieult gun-lH>ats captured in the

J\Iis-

and Manchac four schooners, a brig, and two cut-

t^issippi

ters.

re-

garrison of eighty grenadiers, a

its

The Spanish

assault.

<»f

its

tlio

an engagement oE ten hours,

Its eapituilation

fort.

Panimnv, with

l"\)rt

erected Initteries, uiid on

lu'jivy urtillerv,

On lake Tontchartrain an American schooner fitted A at New Orleans captured an Knglish ])rivatcer.

])arty

of fourteen Creoles surprised an Knglish cutter in

he narrow waters of I'ayou Manchac, and rushing on lH)ard

after

their

first

tire,

and

fastening

down

hatches, captured the vessel and her crew of seventy

The Creole mander

nulitia

won

tho

men.

the generous praise of their com-

for discipline, fortitude

showed an impetuous fury

:

and ardor; the Acadians

wliilo the hulians presented

the renuirkable spectacle of harming no fugitives, and of

who

bearing in their arms to (lalvcz, uninjured, children Nvith their

mothers had hid themselves in

tlie

woods.

In the following Februarv, reiinforced from Havana,

and commanding the devotion of his Creole vez set

sail

down

— regulars, that

Gal-

militia,

the Mississippi, with two thousand men,

Creoles, and

mouth of the

river

free

blacks

known

— and

issued

from

as the Balize or Pass

il

rOutre, intending to attack Fort Charlotte, on the Mobile Iviver.

His

tieet

narrowly escaped

his landing on the eastern shore of

total destruction,

Mobile Kiver was

and at-

TJIK

AMKKirAX liKVOLlTIOX ON

tended

witl.

so

fov u moMicnt

event of a

pushed forward

and en-a^.ed ]\rarch,

SIDK.

to

tlio

u precipitate retreat in

advance from

I<\>rt

fort,

91

c.nfusi^m a.id cMnl,aiTuss,„cnt that

lu' (•.>Mteini»latod

Hritisii

crLF

I^ensacola.

J]„t

«omc reason were not prompt, and

for

IJritisli

mud,

Till.;

tlie

the

(ialvez

Charlotte, cn-ected six batteries

which surrendered on

to avoi
A

few

tlie

J

4th of

(hiys later,

the iM.ghsh arriv(Ml from Pensacohi in nund>ers sufficient to have raised the siege, l>ut with no ch..ice then hut to return whence they had con.e. Galvez, at that time twentyfour years of age, was i-ewarded for this acliievement with tlie rank of major-general.

He now

conceived the project of taking Tensacola.

was an enterprise of altogether another magnitude. Failing to secure rcenforcements from Jiavamrhy writing for them, he sailed to that place in October, 1780 J>nt this

to

to

make

liis

application in person, intending, if successful' directly upon the enemy.

move thence

Delays and

diisappointments could not baffle him, and early in March, ITSl, lie appeared before Pensacola with a ship of the line, two frigates, and transports containing fourteen

hundred soldiers, well furnished with artillery and ammunition. On the IGth and 17th, such troops as could be spared from Mobile, and Don Estcvan Miro from Kew Orleans, with the Louisiana forces, arrived at the western bank of the Perdido Kiver and on the afternoon of tlie ISth, though unsupported by the fleet until dishonor was ;

staring

its

jealous

commander

in the face, Galvez

moved

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

92 under hot

fire,

up a besieging

through a passage of great

Miro began

at once

Early in April, their batteries and those of

to contract.

the fleet opened fire

and took

position.

investing lines of Galvez and

The

peril,

from every

fire

side.

But the return

of the English, from a battery erected under their

the

fort, beat off

and as week after week wore on

fleet,

it

began to appear that the siege might be unsuccessful.

However, in the early part of May, a

shell

from the

Spaniards having exploded a magazine in one of the English redoubts,

the troops from Mobile pressed quickly for-

ward and occupied the storm the main

fort,

ruin,

and Galvez was preparing

when the English

to

raised the white

Thus, on the 9th of May, 1781, Pensacola, with a

flag.

garrison of eight hundred men, and the whole of "West Florida,

was surrendered

to Galvez.

Louisiana had here-

tofore been included under one domination with

but

now

one of the several rewards bestowed

Cuba

;

upon her

governor was the captain-generalship of Louisiana and

West

Florida.

He, however,

sailed

from

St.

Domingo

to

take part in an expedition against the Bahamas, leaving

Colonel Miro to govern

ad

interim^ and never resumed

the governor's chair in Louisiana.

generalship of in the

same

Cuba was given him

year,

he

laid

down

In 1785, the captainin addition,

later

these offices to succeed his

father, at his death, as Viceroy of Mexico. office

and

He ruled in this

with great credit, as well as splendor, and died sud-

denly, in his thirty-eighth year, from the fatigues of a hunt.

THE AMEniCAN REVOLUTION ON HIE GULF Such

is

SIDE.

93

a brief snm.nary-too

brief for full j„stice-of the aclnevements of the Creoles under a gallant Spanish old,er an a,d of the war for An,eriean independence. Lndoubtedlythe motive of Spain was more .onspicnous-

and exclusively selfish than the aid furnislied by the French; yet a greater credit is due than is popularly accorded to t;.e help afforded ly

in the brilliant e.vploits of Galvez, discouraged at first by a timid cabildo, but supported initially, flually, and in the beginning „,ainly, by the Creoles of the Mississippi Delta. The fact is enually

though much overlooked even in Xew Orleans, that whde Andi-ew Jackson was yet a child true,

the city of the Creoles had a deliverer from British conquest in Bernardo de Galve., by whom the way was kept open for the Umted States to stretch to the Gulf and to the Pacific

XIV. NEW

SPANISH

TN

tliat city still

you may go and stand to-day on the spot

as antique

heart which

ORLEANS.

and quaint as the Creole mind and

cherish

it,

— where

gathered in 17C5 the

motley throng of townsmen and planters whose bold pudiation of their barter to the just reviewed

;

where

in

King

of Spain

re-

we have

ITCS Lafreniere harangued them,

and they, few in number and straitened

in purse but not

in daring, rallied in

arms against Spain's indolent show of

authority and drove

it

people in America to

make open war

expulsion of European rule.

sode

—

it

They were the

into the Gulf.

But

it

first

distinctly for the

was not by

this epi-

was not in the wearing of the white cockade

that the Creoles were to

become an independent republic

under British protection, or an American State.

"We have seen them

in the following year

overawed by

the heavy hand of Spain, and bowing to her yoke.

have seen them ten years by the chivalrous Galvez,

later,

at

We

under her banner and led

Manchac,

at

Baton llouge,

at

Mobile, and at Pensacola, strike victoriously and " wiser

than they knew " for the discomfiture of British power in

SPANISH

NEW

ORLEANS.

95

America and the promotion of American independence and unity. Bnt neither was this to bring them into the union of free States. For when the United States

becan.e a nation the Spanish ensign stiil floated from the flacr-staff the Plaza de Armas where " Cruel O'KeiU j " l,ad lioisted

m

It,

and

rights

at wliose base tlie colonial council's declaration of

and wrongs had been burned.

to pass through,

many

There was much more

events and conditions, before the

r^^K^K"^

hand of tonisiana should be nnclasped from the hold of distant powers and placed in that of the Througli

all,

New Orleans

the land and river and of glance around the old

A

streets that

run from

it

all

A.ncrican States.

continued to be the key of questions concerning then..

square, a walk into any^ of the north, east, or south,

shows the dark unprint of the hand that held the town and province nnt.1 neither arms, nor guile, nor counterplots, nor bribes could hold them back from a destiny that seemed the ap-' pointment of nature.

THE CHEOLES OF LOUISIANA.

90

For a while, under Unzaga and Galvez, the town of thirty-two hundred

souls, that

new

trade,

little

change.

It

brought also Miro's able ad-

new

courage, " forty vessels [in

But 17S3 brought peace. ministration,

wooden

had been the cap-

under French domination, showed but

ital

frail

the river] at the same time," and, by 1788, an increase in

number

to fifty-three hundred.

the great purger of towns

Don in

Vicente Jose

—

In the same year came

fire.

I^ufiez, the military treasurer, lived

Chartres Street, near St. Louis, and had a private

On Good

chapel.

Friday, the 21st of March, the wind

was very high and from the south, and, either from a ing candle of the

altar,

inadvertence, not the

or

first

fall-

from some other accident or or the worst

fire

kindled by

Spanish piety flared up and began to devour the

flammable town.

The

The

best of the residences,

before

it.

It

— the

—the

fell

The town

hall,

the arsenal, the

parish church, the quarters of the Capuchins, dis-

In

the morning the

were white with fire,

tents,

and

the

in the

the levee

smoldering path of

monuments.

immediate riverfront

nearly half the town, including in ashes.

plaza and

the naked chimneys of eight hundred and fifty-

six fallen roofs stood as its

along

the wholesale stores,

it.

inmates of which were barely rescued alive

appeared.

the

all

in-

swept around the north of the plaza, broad-

ening at every step. jail

people were helpless to stop

still

The

buildings

remained

;

but

its entire central part, lay

\'^'ir^.''->;

n c

o

> 3 o a fit

a n

o o

3 a

NEW

SPANISH

OHLKAXS.

Another SpaiiianVs name stands a miniature

renaissance.

lioxas was the royal notary as

99

as the exponent of

Don Andreas Almonaster y and alferez real. As far back

1770 the original govermKcnt reservations on either

side the plaza

had been granted the town

Almonaster be-

of perpetual revenue by ground-rents.

came

came down,

their perpetual lessee, the old barracks

and two rows of pillars,

roofs

be a source

to

stores, built of

of two and

brick between

wooden

a half stories height, with broad, tiled

and dormer windows and bright Spanish awnings, and long continued

l)ecame,

to be the fashionable letail

quarter of the town. ,Iust outside

the " Rampart," near St. Peter Street, the

hurricane of 1770

— Galvez's

had blown down the

hurricane, as

frail charity hospital

thousand livres of Jean Louis, a dying in 1737.

that city

is

now

located in

It

say

which the few

sailor,

In 1781-80 Almonaster replaced

edifice costing $114,000.

we may

it

had founded with a brick

was the same institution

Connnon

Street, the pride of the

and State.

In 1787 he built of stuccoed brick, adjoining their convent, the well-remembered, quaint,

the Ursulines. in

And

and homely chapel of

now. to repair the ravages of

1792 began, and in two years completed

fire,

he

sufficiently for

occupation, the St. Louis Cathedral, on the site of the

burned parish church.

Louisiana and

Florida had just

become a bishopric separate from Havana. works had been

at his

own

charge.

All

these

Later, by contract,

THK rUKOLKS OK

KM)

ho

the void

iilled

made by

which had stood on the the plaza

same

—

not more

now

still,

town

hall

church, tacin«^

isouth side of the

the hall of the cabildo, the

more outlandish, but

ir.ade

roof.

the other side of the church, had

replaced their iM-esbvterv bv the bnildint^ that

serves as a court-house.

rivi'i'-front just

the "old

below the

The town

])laza,

French niarket."

a

l>ut,

belongs

standard-bearer,

the

alferez real, or royal

fame

of

most picturesque group of

spires in picturesque l>ut fate

New

— some

having thrown the Mississippi

in

fa9a(.les, roofs,

and

On

the

Orleans.

made room again

Sth of December, 1794

—

except for these two

together around the most classic spot \'alley, the

on the

erected,

luille
structures, to the hantl of the old

north

tlic

by the addition of a French

beautiful,

The Capuchins, on alr(!adv

the burning of

eroctinjjj in its ]>lace

that stands there

LOl'ISIANA.

for hnprovement.

— the wind was

this

time from the

children, playing in a court in Ivoyale Street,

too near an adjoining hay-store, set lire to the hay.

ernor Carondelet

— Colonel

Gov-

Fran9ois Louis Hector, Baron

de (^irondelet, a short, plump, choleric Fleming of strong business qualities, in 1702,

provided, as he

when

lie

succeeded Miro, had

thought, against this contingency.

But,

despite his four alcaldes de harrio, with their lire-engines

and firemen and axmen, the hours

—for

tlie

lire

spread

houses were mere tinder

;

and

in three

— again

burned

out of the heart of the town two hundred and twelve stores

and dwellings.

The new

buildings at the bottom

0S»^

•

"C&i bi.

'

Gratings, balconies, and limc-washed stucco."

SPANISH of the plaza escaped

;

oulkans.

xp:\v

hut

tlie

loss

was greater than that

of six years hefore, whicli was nearly

two

were

stores

standing

left

;

103

.^2,0(>.

Onlv

the levee and the square

again became the eaniping-gruund of hundreds of inhab-

and the destruction of

itants,

provisions

threatened

a

famine. JSo

shingles and

From

enough. use.

As

thatch and

this

time the

cypress l)oards had cost

tile

roof

came

into ireneral

the town's central parts filled up again,

with better structures, displaying

it

was

many Spanish-American

—

adobe or brick walls, arcades, inner courts, ponderous doors and windows, heavy iron bolts and ijratings features

(for liouses

began

to be

worth breaking

portes-cocheres, and white

into), balconies,

and yellow lime-washed

stucco,

soon stained a hundred colors by sun and rain. Two-story dwellings took the place of one-story, and tlie general appearance, as well as public safety, was enhanced.

The people were streets,

levee.

busy, too, in the miry, foul-smellino-

on the slippery side-walks and on the tree-planted Little by little the home government, at the inter-

cession of the

governors— old IJnzaga, young Galvez, the Miro— had relaxed its death-grip.

suave and energetic

A

wooden custom-house, very promptly erected at the upper front corner of the town, had fallen into sio-nifilittle

cant dilapidation, though it

on

it

was not yet such a sieve but

could catch an export and import duty of six per cent, all

merchandise that did not go round

sions of 1778, neutralized

it.

The

conces-

by war and by English block-

104

OF

TIIK CIIKOLKS

iide, liad

JMoored llie

revived,

hocii

ai;aiiist

l»laei<

weie

takiiiu'

bacco.

by

tlie

(

hriiimiiiii!: river,

bales of

I'lirs,

Sj)ainsli

i'ov llie

West Indian

the

lor

]>oni;lit

tlie

hides and

in

cotton, stavi's, and skins of indio-o i)o.\-sliooks

cxlciidcd ten years.

("nl;iri;i'd, aiitl

urassv hank of

tlie

.^liij»s

l.oriSlA.NA.

market,

snuar-niakers, and

iovtM-nni<'nt

;

and were

over Iheir sides machinery and utensils, the

lettini;'

or in

sinii'ly

On by,

men and women,

nc'uro

lots

on the

and

girls

ot"

— be-

boys, lor

isalo

landiiii;-.

the other side of the town, also, tlicrc was, by ami

!!(»

askinii'

A

activity.

lit til'

lake and

bayou business was

room, and a (luestion of salutation was demandinir

attention, and

in

I7i>4 iX;

the practical ('aron
ered a lar^e foice of slaves, b(»rrowe(l

and country owners, and reekino- black

the town,

name.

tiu;

The

soil

''Old

canal

just

with pick and shovel

dui;-

beyond the rear

in tlio

lortilications of

llasin" and canal that

joined the

<:-ath-

from their town

still

bear his

i>ayou St. John, and thus

connected ten thousand scpiare yards of M-itli

out

wines

I'cd

Catalonia, and v\"vy [)r(»dnct of the nKinufacturei-, sides

to-

artilicial

harbor

l.ake Pontchartrain and the sea-coast bevond.

The

lands contiii'uous to this basin and canal were covered with

noisome pools, the source of years

later, as

them

low ground-rents

salubrity

fevers,

into

garden

to those

who

lots

and

let

some

first,

the

them out

M'ould destroy their in-

by ditching and draining them

They began

and,

Oarondelet had n.ged fi-om the

cabildo divided at

jMiti-id

into the canal.

soon to be built on, and have long been en-

SPANISH NK\V (HILKAXS. tirelj settled

up; but their drainage can

sidered to have l)een tliorougli and

1()7

liardly

final, as,

l)o

con-

during an

in-

ujidation eighty years afterward, the present writer passed

throuiih

its

the water as hi<;h as

streets in a skiff, with

the gate-knobs. l>y ''

such measures

it

was that the Spanish king sought

to secure to his vassals the

utmost

This was

felicitv."

much more than the ])ossession of Louisiana afforded the king. The treaty of peace, signed in IT^^J by (ireat Ihitain, the Tnited States, France, and Spain, had made the

new American power

The western Ixumd-

his rival.

ary of the States was fixed on the Mississipi)i from the great lakes to a point nearly opposite the Itiver,

and the

fortified points

along that

mouth

of lied

line, wliich

had

fallen so short a

time before into the hands of (ialvez,

were

be yielded up.

re(|uired to

Such was the

croachment of American upon Spanish power

in

first

(ni-

the great

basin.

Another influence tending

to turn the scales in favor of

the States was a change in the agricultural products of the Delta, giving to the

commerce of

value for the settlers of the the Atlantic seaports.

Xew

West and

Orleans a

new

the merchants of

XV. HOW BORE MADE n^IlE

planters of

Delta, on their transfer to Span-

tlie

ish domination,

saw indigo, the ehief product of

their lands, shut out of market. lost

SUGAR.

French protection was

and French ports were closed

to

Those of

them.

Spain received them only into ruinous competition with

made

the better article

tions offei'ed

began

and

able,

a certain relief

to beset them. at length

and more southern

in the older

Bj and by

Spanish colonies.

kinder commercial regula-

;

but then

new drawbacks

Season after season was unfavor-

an insect appeared which, by the years

1793-04, was making such ravages that the planters were in despair.

what

to

If they could not

do for a

They had

indigo they

myrtle-wax and

silk,

Everybody made a

and had long ago

little

tobacco, but the

conditions were not favorable for a large

crop in the

known

Delta.

Cotton their grandfathers had

The

and climate above Orleans Island suited

soil

had always been raised breuil, a

knew not

livelihood.

tried

given them up.

make

in

since 1713.

moderate quantity.

wealthy townsman of

New

it,

and

it

M. De-

Orleans and a land-

HOW BORE holder, a leading

mind among the

cotton-gin effective in the

better

enough

amount of cotton

mode

109

ST^dAK.

3IA1)P:

people, had invented a

to induce a decided increase

Yet a

raised in the colony.

still

the seed was

of ginning the staple from

needed to give the product a decided connnercial value.

There was some anticipation of

its

and certain ones who gave the

liiiatter

1700,

recommended the importation

could be found in India. article of export from

possible im])()rtance,

thought had, in

of such apparatus as

In 1708 cotton had become an

Xew

Orleans, and in the manifesto

with which the insurgents banished Ulloa as a

it is

product whose culture, " improved by experience,

promised the planter the recompense of his

At

mentioned

toils."

the time of the collapse in the indigo production,

the Creoles were

fame of

Eli

still

experimenting with cotton

;

but the

Whitney's newly invented cotton-gin had

probably not reached them.

There must have been few

of them, indeed, \vho supposed that eight years later the cotton crop of Louisiana and export from

Kew

Orleans

would be respectively 20,000 and ;i4,000 300-pound

They turned Delta was a

They would

for a time in another direction. little

bales.

The lower

too far south for cotton as a sure crop.

try once more, as their fathers

had

tried, to

nuike merchantable sugar.

On

a portion of the city's present wholesale business

district,

been 1751.

near Tchoupitoulas Street, this great staple had

first

planted in Louisiana by the Jesuit fathers in

They had

received

their seed, or rather layers,

il^

TIIK CliKOLKS

from

St.

Domingo.

It

OF LfMlSIA \A. been gn.wn

liad

vicinity ever since, l)ut there only,

Nothing more from

it

tlian

syrup,

and

in

even so much, was made

if

who had

l)erimented with cotton, built a sugar-mill on

tion—now

tovvn'.s

in trivial (iiiantitv.

ITaS M. Debreuil, the same

until in

tlie

liis

e.\-

planta-

that pai-t of the third district adjt)ining the

second, on the

river-front

— and

endeavored

U)

turn

a

large crop of cane into sugai-.

Accounts of the result vary.

Sugar,

seems, however, was made, and for a time the industry grew, r»ut the sugar was not of a sort to ship to the Avorld's markets it it

:

was poorly granulated and very wet, and for several vears was consumed within the province. In 17^.") the effort

was

at length

first

made

cai-go leaked

make port. Then came the

to export

it t(»

France: but half the

out of the packages before the vessel

could

cession to Spain, and with

The half-developed

industry collapsed.

it

i)aralvsis.

l>ut in lTi)l

blacks of St. JJomingo rose in rebellion.

the

Refugees tlew

A few found their way to Louisiana. They had been prosperous sugar-makers, and presentlv in

every direction.

the efforts that

again to

life.

had ceased for twenty-five years came

Two

Spaniards,

Mendez and

year erected on the confines of distillery

Xew

Solis, in that

Orleans, the one a

and the other a battery of sugar-kettles, and

manufactured rum and syrup. Still

fore to

the Creoles, eveiy year less able than the year be-

make

rash experiments, struggled against the mis-

]I()\V

HOKE MADK

fortunes that imiltiplied aruuiid

found

until 171>4:

At

num

tliis

Sl'CiAK.

tlie ciiltivatioii

juncture appeared Ktienne dc

Creole of

Etienne

of

IJori'.

He

tlie Illinois district,

cle

iiidii^o,

hope.

tlicni witliout

of fifty-four, a

Ill

^vas a

hut

ot'

a

Bore.

distinguished

Nornum

from the

of four to thirtv-two, had served with the

ay-e

king's inoHHqneiati't'fi, in Louisiana near

family

;

lie

liad

lived

in

France

had married a lady whose estate was

New

C)rleans, an
THE CKKOLKS OF LOUISIANA.

112 to

the province, had

year 17l>4 found

liiiu

l)eeorne

abandon

to

warned

liini

if

Tlie

His father-

former years been one of the

sugar culture.

His wife and friends

against the resolution he

persisted in his determination to ail

indigo planter.

face to face witli rnin.

in-hiw, Destrelian, liad in hist

an

was taking

abandon

indiiio,

;

but

and

lie

risk

that M-as left to liim on the chance of a success which,

achieved, Mould insure deliverance and fortune to him-

self

He

and the community.

from :Mendez and Seventh District his ci'op

for the

Solis,

bought a quantity of canes

planted on the land where the

now

(late Carrollton)

was gi-owing erected a

momentous season of "

mill,

stands, and wliile

and prepared liimself

iJrindin«^"'

His fellow-planters looked on with the liveliest— not always with the most hopeful— interest, and at length they gathei-ed about Iiim to see the issue of the experi-

ment

in M-hich only lie could be

than they. siana Ci-eoles

more deeply concerned In the whole picturesque history of the Loui-

few scenes

offer so striking a subject for the

painter as that afforded in this episode

house

;

:

The dark

sugar-

the battery of liuge caldrons, with their yellow

juice boiling like a sea, half-hidden in clouds of steam

the half-clad, shining negroes swinging the gigantic utensils with which the seething flood is dipped from kettle liere, grouped at the end of the battery, the Creole planters with anxious faces drawing around their

to kettle

;

central figure as closely as they can

old mousquetaire, dipping,

;

and in the midst the

from time

to time, the thick-

HOW BORE MADE ening

juice, repeating again

until, in

the

moment

of tinal

and again

breath of relief

—"

it

The people were

there

trial,

of suspense, and instantly after

heads are raised, the brow

SUGAll.

is

his simple tests, is

sell

his

had

Xew

electrified.

product to advantage.

is

a long

" !

Etienne de Bore mar-

stifled earlier trade

;

connuon look

wiped, and there

granulates

Delta was revolutionized

a

the hands are dropped,

it

keted $12,000 worth of supei-ior sugar. interdictions that

113

The

The absence

of

enabled him to

agriculture

of the

and, seven years afterward,

Orleans was the market for 200,000 gallons of rum,

250,000 gallons of molasses, and sugar.

5,000,000 pounds of

The town contained some twelve

distilleries

probably not a subject for unmixed congratulation

—

and a sugar refinery which produced about 200,000 pounds of loaf sugar; while

on the other hand the production

(.f

indigo had declined to u total of 3,000 pounds, and soon after ceased.

8

XVI. THE CREOLES SING THE MARSEILLAISE.

n^IIE

ypauisli occupation never

conquest.

TJie Spanish

became more

tluui

tongue, enforced

a

the

in

courts and principal public offices, never superseded the

French

in the

months of the

people,

and

left

but a few

words naturalized in the corrupt French of the

To African organs

of speech eocoihne, ,.

from

crocodile,

slaves.

cococh'ilo,

was

the

easier than

caiman, the alligator

the

;

terrors of the calaboza, with its

chains and whips and

branding irons, were condensed

into

French

the

tri-sjllabic calaboose,'

while

the pleasant institution of

na^a

— the

petty gratuity

added, by the

retailer,

anything bought pleasanter, In

to

—grew the

drawn out

into

the Cabildo.

Gallicized lagnajype.

The only newspaper also the

first,

in the

town or province,

as

it

was

though published under the auspices of Car-

THE CKEOI.KS SIXO

TlIK MAKSKILLAISK.

was the "Monitenr de

oiulelet,

LMitirely in

French.

It

made

la

printed

Loiiisiaiic,"

appearance

its first

llf)

in 1704.

Spanish rrsulines, sent from Havana to impart their

own

French instead, and

tongue, liad to teach in

tent themselves with the feeble

the Spanish catechism from girls rolling

down

The

their cheeks.

who

recited with tears

mind followed

puljlic

though at a distance— the progress of thought

Many

Spaniards of rank cast their

Unzaga married it

is

arrc

said, of

a

Maxent

;

to con-

achievement of extortinir

France.

in

with the Creoles.

lot

Galvez, her sister

— a woman,

extraordinary beauty and loveliness; CJay-

wedded Constance de Grandpre

vardo, her sister

;

INIiro,

never became Spanish

;

;

the intendant Od-

a de Macarty.

and

Jhit the

in society balls

Creole civilian met the Spanish military

(

'reoles

where the

official,

the

cotil-

lon was French or Spanish according as one or the other

party was the stronger, a question more than once decided

by

actual

least

onset and bloodshed.

The Spanish

rule

was

unpopular about 1791, when the earlier upheavals of

the French revolution were regarded distantly, and before the Eepublic had arisen to

lied heartily

the Creole's long-sup-

fire

Under Galvez,

pressed enthusiasm.

in

1779-82, they

ral-

around the Spanish colors against their hered-

itary British foe.

But when,

in 1793, Spain's

foe was

republican France, Carondelet found he was only holding

Then the Creole could no longer

a town of the enemy. restrain

himself.

"La

he cried in his sorry

Marseillaise!

little

theatre

;

La Marseillaise!"

and

in the drinking-

THE CRKOLKS OF LOUISIANA.

116 shops

that were tliick as

iiantly,

" fa

qa ira^

ira,

autumn

though there was not a lamp-post years later,

when

Meantime

the

were made iards,

mind the

come up and

to

The baron

his

lie

la lantenie,'"

town

down

reljuilt

sang, de-

until three

eighty.

agahi with a pres-

The

cruel past.

peoi)le

subscribe themselves Span-

and sundry persons were

Havana.

in

— d

same governor put up

Spain's hand eanie

sure that brought to

leaves

les aristocrates

arrested

and sent to

the fortifications on a

new

At

the lower river corner was Fort

St. Charles, a Hve-sided

thing for one hundred and fifty

and stronger plan.

men, with brick-faced parapet eighteen and a covert way Louis, like

it,

;

at the

upper

but smaller.

i-iver

feet thick, a ditch,

corner was Fort St.

They were armed with about

twelve eighteen- and twelve-pounders.

Between them, where Toulouse Street opened upon the river-front, a large battery crossed fires with both.

town

M^ere three lesser forts,

In the rear of the

mere stockades, with

fraises.

All around from fort to fort ran a parapet of earth sur-

mounted with

palisades,

seven deep.

"These

'•

and a moat forty feet wide and

fortifications,"

would not only protect the

enemy, but them," he

also

keep

wrote Carondclet,

city against the attack of

in check its inhabitants.

an

But for

said, " a revolution would have taken place."

This was in 1794.

The enemy looked

for

out was the pioneers of Kentucky, Georgia,

from withetc.

The

abridgment of their treaty rights on the Mississippi had fretted them.

Instigated by Genet, the French minister

THE CREOLKS SIXG THE MARSEILLAISE.

117

United States, and headed by one Clark and bv Anguste de la Chaise, a Lonisiana Creole of powerful

to tlie

family, \vho had gone to

Kentucky for the purpose, they

were preparing to make a descent upon its

deliverance

;

when events

Orleans for

that await recital arrested the

movement.

A Royal

New

Street Corner.

XVII. THE AMERICANS.

/^AROXDELET

had strengthened the walls that

umred the Creoles of

Xew

ini-

Orleans; but, outside,

the messenger of their better destiny was knocking at the

gate

with angry impatience.

Congress had begun, in

1779, to claim the freedom of the Mississippi. treaty of 1783 granted this fact.

;

Spain intrigued. Congress menaced, and oppres-

sions, concessions, aggressions, deceptions,

lengthened out the years.

Westerners

called

greatness.

the

To Spain

West

it

it

and corruption

New Orleans—" Orleens "

it— there was

Every one could see now

To

The

but in words onlv, not in

its

the

main

the

difficulty.

approaching commercial

was the key of her

possessions.

was the only possible breathing-hole of

its

commerce.

Miro was

governing ad interim, -when, in 1785, there came to him the commissioners from the State of still

Georgia demanding liberty to extend her boundary Mississippi, as granted in the treaty of peace. .

swered wisely, referring the matter

to the

Miro an-

to the governments of America and Spain, and delays and exasperations con-

THE AMERICANS.

By

tinned.

came

178G,

if

119

not earlier, the flat-boat

floating ont of the

fleets that

Ohio and Cnniberland,

seeking'

on the lower Mississippi a market and port for their hay and bacon and flonr and corn, began to be challenged

from the banks, exasperated

halted, seized,

of breadstuffs, and

Xew

fnll

The

confiscated.

Kentuckians openly threatened

planned to descend in flat-boats

capture of

and

of long

and

rifles

even

instead

make an end

Orleans.

of controversy by the But milder counsels restrained

them, and they appealed to Congress to press Spain for the commercial freedom which they were determined to be depi'ived of no longer. Miro, and Xavarro, the intendant, did well to be alarmed. They wrote home urging relief through certain measures which they thought imperative if

Xew

Orleans, Louisiana, the Floridas, or even Mexico, was to be saved from early conquest. " No tiemjpo

"— " There

schemes

:

hcuj

is

no time to be

down upon

They had two commerce that the

lost."

one, so to indulge the river

pioneers swarming

que perdcr

their borders

might cross

them, not as invaders, but as immigrants, yielding allegiance to Spain the other, to foment a revolt against Congress and the secession of the West. These schemes ;

were

set

on foot

a large American immigration did set in, and the small town of New Madrid still commemorates ;

the extravagant calculations of Western grantees.

There had

come to Kentucky a certain man whose ready insight and unscrupulous spirit of intrigue lately

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

120

promptly marked

liad

tlie

turn of events.

This was Gen-

eral

James Wilkinson, of the United States

man

early distrusted by President Washington, long sus-

service, a

pected by the people, and finally tried for treasonable designs and

acquitted

want of evidence which the

for

archives of Spain, to which access could not at that time 1)0

obtained, have since revealed.

and

Orleans a large

This cunning schemer

June, 1787, sent and followed to

speculatoi', in

ileet of flat-bo^ts

New

loaded with the produce

of the West, and practising on the political fears of Miro,

many

secured

By

concessions.

this

means he made way

for a trade M'hich began at once to be very profitable to

Xew it

many Spanish officials. But At the same time, he

Orleans, not to say to

was not by

means

this

only.

entered into a secret plot with Miro and Spain for that disruption of the West from the East which she sought to

"The

effect.

delivering

Majesty's hands, which

up

Kentucky into

of

his

the main object to which Wilk-

is

inson has promised to devote himself entirely," so wrote

Miro

to the

Spanish Secretary of State, January

and Wilkinson's own

letters,

8,

1788,

written oi-iginally in cipher,

and now in the archives of Spain, reduced to the Spanish tongue, complete the overwhelming evidence. "When this is done,

...

"Be

great scheme," etc.

me from hand."

~"

.

.

I shall disclose so satisfied,

much

of our

nothing shall deter

attending exclusively to the object we have on " The only feasible plan "—this was a year later .

was

.

.

.

separation

from the United

THE AMEKICANS. States,

boat

and an alliance with Spain."

toll

paid by this lover of

121

Such was the

money and

Hat-

drink.

But, neither for the Kentuckian nor the Creole was an export trade more than half a connnerce. Philadelphia partly supplied the deficiency, though harried by corrupt

Miro and Xavarro favored and pro-

double-dealings.

moted

this trade

but Gardoqui, the Spanish minister at

;

Philadelphia, not sharing in the profits, against

moved

vigorously

and there was dodging and doubling— all the

it,

subterfuges of the contrabandist, not excepting false arrests

and

forced

him

to imprison,

fiscated goods.

and

of 1788 gave Navarro fear of the king

to give tliem

had

back their con-

Such was one branch of the academy

that, in later years,

The

The lire number whom

false escapes.

excuse to liberate a

graduated the pirates of Jiarataria.

scarcity of provisions after the lire

help this Philadelphia

ti-ade. Miro sent Gardoqui (who was suddenly ready to

was made

to

tliree vessels to

cocipei'ate)

for

3,000 barrels of flour, and such other goods as the general ruin called for. And here entered Wilkinson, and in August, 1788, received through his agent, Daniel Clark, in

New

for the

Orleans, a cargo of dry goods and other articles

Kentucky market, probably the

flrst

boat-load of

manufactured connnodities that ever went up the Mississippi to the Ohio. Others followed Wilkinson's footsteps in matters of trade,

and many were the devices for doing

one thing while seeming to do another.

coming

to

buy lands and

settle

A

pretence of

secured passports for their

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

122 flat-boats

and keel-boats, and the privilege of

buying free of duty. ilies

A

selling

and

profession of returning for fam-

and property opened the way back again up the

tuous river, or along the wild, robber-haunted

trails

tor-

of the

interior.

So the Creoles, in

their domestic

commerce, were

strik-

ing hands with both the eastei-n and western "American,"

As

to their transatlantic

1782 had yielded

it

commerce, the concessions of hands of the French, and

into the

there

it still remained. " France," wrote Miro in 1790, " has the monopoly of the commerce of this colony." It

suited

him no

to

mention Philadelphia or the Ohio.

war presently brought another change.

But

XVIII. SPAIN AGAINST FATE.

^T^IIE port of

New

Orleans was neither closed nor open.

Spain was again in fear of Great Britain.

United States minister

at

Madrid was

diligently pointing

to the possibility of a British invasion of Louisiana

Canada, by way of the Mississippi the Spanish foothold treat}'

of 1783

;

;

;

The from

to the feebleness of

to the unfulfilled

to the restlessness of the

terms of the

Kentuckians

;

tu

everything, indeed, that could have effect in the effort to extort the cession of

Spain held

fast,

''

Orleans " and the Floridas.

and Miro,

to the

plotted with Wilkinson and with a growing lesser

schemers

ecpially

But

end of his governorship,

number

of

worthy of their country's execra-

tion.

Difficulties

were nndtiplying when,

ternal

;

the close of in-

and the interdiction of the slave-trade with

re-

volted St.

Domingo, the baron's

ment of Yankee Liberty,

at

Some were

1791, Miro gave place to Carondelet.

etc.,

fortifications, the banish-

clocks branded

with the Goddess of

were signs of them, not

1793, America finally

cures.

wormed from Spain

In February, a decree of

124

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIAXA.

open commerce, for her colonies,

and Europe. lish

witli the

Tnited States

Thereupon Philadelphians began

commercial houses in

New

to estab-

Orleans.

On

the side of the great valley, the Kentuckian was pressing with all the strength of his lean and sinewy shoulder.

"Since

my

taking possession of the government," wrote Carondelet, in 1794, "this province

has not ceased to be threatened by the ambitious designs of the Americans." " nation," as

A

called

them, "

restless,

Navarro had

the most daring enterprise."

La

earlier

proud, ambitious, and capable of

Besides them, there were

Chaise, also, and Genet, and the Jacobins of Phila-

delphia.

was to President Washington's vigilance and good faith that the baron owed the deliverance of the province It

from

its

dangers

;

not to his

own

defences, his rigid police,

nor his counter-plots with Thomas Power and others. These dangers past, he revived the obstruction

and oppression of the river trade, hoping, so, to separate yet the Western pioneers from the union of States, to

they had

now become

which

devoted.

But events tended ever one way, and while Carondelet was

courting Wilkinson through Power, a treaty, signed at Madrid October 20, 1795, declared the Mississtill

sippi free to the Americans.

New

Orleans was

made

a

port of deposit for three years, free of

all duty or charge, save " a fair price for the hire of the store-houses." The

privilege

was renewable

at the

end of the term, unless

SPAIX AGAIXST FATK. transferred

by Spain

125

some "equivalent establishment"

to

on the river bank. Carondelet held the east bank of the river, temporizin«5 with the American authorities thi-ougli his colStill

league. General

Gajoso de Lenios, the Spanish connni^for making the transfer. ]Je spent bribes freely,

sioner,

and strengthened his

commanders

fortifications,

only, but

who had crowded

not against Federal

against the western

into the province,

and against the

newed probability of invasion from Canada. He made two other efforts to increase

At

immigrants

his

re-

stren^-th.

the request of the cabildo he prohibited, for the time,

the further importation of slaves, a plot for a bloody slave

insurrection

having

Coupee, a hundred and

from

Xew

been

fifty

Orleans, and put

discovered

in

Pointe

miles up the Mississippi

down with nmch

killing,

whipping, and hanging.

And he received with extravagant hospitality certain noble Fi-ench refugees, who had sought asylum from the Keign of Terror on the wild western border of the United States.

They were

nished with

Madrid

ti-ansportation

AYashita,

and were there

of land

and one hundred

from

Xew

to receive

to

fur-

the

two hundred acres

dollars in

money

for everv

mechanic or farmer brought by them into the projected colony.

The grant

to

the IMarquis of

Maison Rouge

under these conditions was to embrace thirty thousand Tliat to the Baron de Bastrop was to cover one Inmdred and eight square miles, and there were others

acres.

THE

12G

ckk<)Lj:s

of less imperial extent.

of LOTISIANA.

The

royal approval was secured

U})on these grants, but the grantees ne\'er fuitille
laid

upon them, and these great enterprises

melted down to famous lawsuits.

and had already

theless, did

French

cm'xjris, never-

settled in Louisiana

under

more reasonable grants got with more modest promises. The town of St. ^Martinsville, on the Bavou Teche, Mas settled

Paris;

by them and nicknamed

le

jutit J\(ju.s

— the

and a chapter might well be devoted

episode in the history of the

to

Xew

C.'reoles.

little

this

Orleans

even had the pleasure at length of entertaining for Meeks, with great gayety and social pomp, the Orleans, afterward brothers, the ]>eaujolais. ville

King Louis

Philippe,

of Montpensier

and

two

his

and the Count of

Boro and the Marquis Marigiiy de Mande-

were among their entertainers.

The little

Duke

many Duke of

Creoles' republican enthusiasm found vent patriotic

singing and shouting, that cost

them twelve months each of Cuban they remained, through

all,

passive.

exile

;

in a

six

of

otherwise

have seen how

AV^e

they passed through an agricultural revolution.

But they

were no more a writing than a reading people, and what tempests of emotion

many

of

them may have concealed

while war was being waged against France, while the Gulf

was being scoured by F'rench privateers, and when one of these seized, and for eight days held, the Mississippi,

may

only be conjectured.

mouth

of the

^VG know that

Etienne de Bore escaped arrest aid transportation only by

SI'AIX ACiAIXST FATE. reason of Lis rank and the poople's devotion to hi,„ «, iniblic benefactor.

1\.lU„son

wl.0 was in cl.ief connnand of

can forces „,

West, gre». coy and

tl,e

ti,e

,,

A,„eri-

The encroach.ne„ts of the donh.e-dcah-ng .enera.-s subordinates JIach l,9s, he abandoned by rendered, the

All the

stealth, rather

territor, east of

'".jnstly retained

from

tlie

cold.

than sur-

the Mississippi, so

States

ll ^

more did the Creole

city remain a bone of conthe close of the three-years' tern. nan,ed in the treaty of n»o, the intendant. Morales, a narrow and iuarrelsome old man, closed the port, and assigned ,o other pomt to take its place.

tent on.

On

But the place had becon,e too important, and the States too strong for this to be endured.

muster twenty thousand Preo'donf c . l-iesident. Secret

The West

fightin,. men "omen.

preparations were at

foee.

Boats were

alone cluld

John \ ,. J olm Adams was once sot on foot

and troops had already bee^ when it began to be plain

built,

ordered to the Ohio,

President must retire from then drawn,g near;

tLtZ

office at

the close of his te,™

and by and by Spain disavowed

intendant's action and reopened the closed port

«;

Meanwhile another eye was turned covetously „p„„

h":r'rt:::Lr'"---^'----o 9

XIX. NEW ORLEANS SOUGHT-LOUISIAXA BOUGHT. " JpilANCE

lias cut

the knot," wrote Minister Living, Secretary Hadison. It is the word of I3onaparte liiniself, that his first diplomatic ston

to

Spain liad for

its

object

power enabled him tions,

tlie

act

with

recovery of Louisiana.

His

easily to outstrip

American negotiaand on the 1st of October, 1800, the Spanish Kino-

entered privately into certain agreements by which on the 21st of March, 1801, Louisiana, vast, but to Spain nnremunerative and indefensible, passed secretly into the hands of the First Consul in exchange for the petty Italian "kingdom of Etruria." When Minister Livino-ston wrote, in

Xovember, 1802, the

secret

unknown.

On

the 26th of March, 1803, Colonial Prefect, landed in ^^ew

M.

was no longer "

Laussat, as French

Orleans, specially com-

missioned to prepare for the expected arrival of General Victor with a large body of troops, destined for the occupation of the province, and to arrange for the establishment of a new form of government. The Creoles

were

filled

with secret consternation.

Their

fields,

and

streets,

NEW ORLEANS SOUGHT— LOUISIANA and dwellings were

IJOUOIIT.

They had heard the

full of slaves.

First Consul's words to the St. Doniingans

:

be your color or your origin, you are free." fears

131

" Wliatever

But

their

were soon quieted, when Laussat proclaimed the

tie-

new ruler to " preserve the empire of the laws and amend them slowly in the light of experience oidy." The planters replied that "their long-cherished sign of their great

hope was

ium

gratified,

and their souls

of extreme felicity

"Happy

;

" and the

filled

with the

delir-

townsmen responded

are the colonists of Louisiana

who have

:

lived

long enough to see their reunion to France, which they have never ceased to desire, and which now satisfies their

utmost wish."

Governor Gayoso had died of yellow fever is

in

1700— it

said shortly after a night's carousal with Wilkinson.

He and

had been succeeded by the Marquis of Casa Calvo, he, in 1801, by a weak, old man, Don Juan Manuel

de Salcedo. hate, dread,

The intendant Morales had continued to and hamper American immigration and com-

merce, and in October, 1802, had once more shut them out of

Xew

Orleans until six months later again discoun-

tenanced by his king.

In Congress debate narrow^ed down

to

the question

whether jS'ew Orleans and the Floridas should be bouirht or simply swept tive

down upon and

But the execu-

taken.

department was already negotiating

;

and, about the

time of Laussat's landing in Louisiana, Messrs. Livingston

and Monroe were commissioned to

treat with

France for

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

132 a cession of

Xew

Orleans and

Floridas,

tlie

'*

or as nnicli

thereof as the actual proprietor can be prevailed on to part with."

Bonaparte easily saw the

Louisiana, always light to get and

of the United States.

heavy

was slipping even from

to hold,

was about

to rush into

a

war

moment

ask of

me

liis

in the Gulf of Mexico.

to lose in putting

They

of their reach.

his grasp.

He

"

They

war with the English.

have," he exclaimed passionately to ships of

nneonfessed wish

larger, but

[the

it

... new

[his

one town in Louisiana

acquisition] out

but I already consider

;

And

a little later, walking

he added to Marbois

in the garden of St. Cloud,

he trusted rather than

Talleyrand — " AVell

charge of the treasury;

let

country."

I have not

American commissioners] only

the colony as entirely lost."

million francs,

"twenty

ministers,

!

—whom

you have

them give you one hundred

pay their own claims, and take the whole

When

the minister said something about +he

rights of the colonists,

"Send your maxims

to the

London

market," retorted the First Consul.

The

price finally agreed

upon was eighty million

francs,

out of which the twenty million francs of American zens' claims

iana

was bought.

ston and

1803.

"

due by France were

finished,

We have lived long,"

noblest

citi-

be paid, and Loui-

Monsieur Marbois and Messrs. Living-

Monroe signed the

As they

to

work of our

treaty on the 30th of April,

they rose and shook hands.

said Livingston,

lives."

''

but this

is

the

>^EW OKLEAXS SOUCIIIT— LOUISIANA BOUGHT.

About

tlie last

133

of July,

,vlieri Casa Calvo aud Salccdo, Spanish commissioner and governor, had proclaimed the

coming transfer fect,

to France, and Laussat, the French prewas looking hourly for General Victor and his force,

Xew Orleans a vessel from Bordeaux with' announcement that Louisiana had been ceded the United States.

there the to

came

to

official

On

the 30th of November, with troops drawn up in Ime on the Place d'Armes, and with dischargees of artillery, Salcedo, fitly typifying, in his infirm

okfage, the decaying kingdom which he represented, delivered to Laussat, in the hall of the cabildo, the keys of Xew Orleans while Casa Calvo, splendid in accomplishments, titles, and' appearance, declared the people of Louisiana absolved from their allegiance to the King of Spain. From the fliig-staff in the square the Spanish colors descended, the French took their place, and the domination of Spain in Louisiana was at an end. •

On Monday, December

the 20th, 1803, with similar ceremonies, Laussat turned the province and the keys of Its port over to Commissioners Claiborne and AV^ilkinson

The French

tricolor, which had floated over the Vhc'o d'Armes for but twenty days, gave place to the stars and stripes, and New Orleans was an American town Within a period of ninety-one years Louisiana had

changed hands Louis

XIY.

six times.

From

the direct

authority

<.f

had been handed over, in 1712, to the commercial dominion of Anthony Crozat. From Crozat it it

134

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

had passed,

in

1717, to

from the company, of Louis

XV.

;

Compagnie de I'Occident;

tlie

in 1731, to the undelegated authority

from him,

in 1762, to

Spain

;

from Spain,

m \

Q^JjjJtdjL

£^^.^

mm

c^^jffe^^-^.

If

ij

\k^.::vv^ I

Autographs from the Archives,

in 1801, back to France

;

and

France to the United States, service

at length, in

finally

1803, from

emancipated from the

and bargainings of European masters.

XX. NEW ORLEANS

IN

1803.

"VTEW ORLEAXS had been under the actual sway of ^^ the Spaniard for thirty-four years. Ten thousand inhabitants were gathered in and about

Even

of the whites were Creoles.

Most

its walls.

in the province at

Immigrants from

large these were three in every four.

Malaga, the Canaries, and ^ova Scotia had passed on

through the town and into the rural

districts.

Of

the

thousands of Americans, only a few scores of mercantile

came

pioneers ilies,

as far as the

town

— sometimes with

Free

but generally without.

fam-

trade with France

had brought some French merchants, and the Reign

we have The town had

of Terror, as royalists.

had driven here a few

seen,

and overflowed

filled

its orig-

harbor

From the mast-head of a ship in the one looked down upon a gathering of from

twelve

hundred

inal boundaries.

stores,

to

fourteen

or say four thousand

hundred roofs

did slavery multiply outhouses.

— to

such an extent

They were

kinds, covered with half-cylindrical or with shingles, or with slates,

and

dwellings

many

of

flat tiles,

with

and showed an endless variety in

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

136

height and in bright confusion of color and form

das and balconies, dormer windows, deres.

Under the

river

lattices,

" within

bank,

— veran-

and belve-

ten

of

steps

Tchoupitoulas where

Street,"

land

has

since

formed and been

covered with brick stores for several squares,

the fleets of barges and

flat-

boats from the

West moored and unloaded, or retailed their contents at the water's edge.

Far-

down, immediately abreast of the town, between the npper limits and the

d'Armes, lay

Place

the

shipping

twenty or more vessels of from 100 to 200 tons burden, hauled close against the bank. on,

Still

farther

beyond the Government warehouses, was the mooring-

place of the vessels of war.

Looking down into the

streets

—Toulouse, Peter, Conti, Louis, Royale, Chartres — one caught the brisk movements of a commercial St.

St.

port.

They were

straight,

and

unpaved, ill-drained,

fairly spacious, for the times;

filthy,

passable for the mire.

poorly

lif;lited,

but

and often im-

NEW ORLEANS The town was of America.

fast

IX 1S03.

137

becoming one of the chief seaports

Ah'eady, in 1802, 158 American merchant-

men, 104 Spanish, and 3 French, registering 31,241

had

sailed

from her harbor, loaded.

tons,

The incoming

ton-

age for 1803 promised an increase of over 37 per cent. It

exported of the products of the province alone over

$2,000,000

vahie.

Its

imports

reached

Thirty-four thousand bales of cotton

sugar; lasses

;

;

82,500,000.

4,500 hogsheads of

800 casks— equivalent to 2,000 barrels— of morice, peltries, indigo,

lumber, and sundries, to the

value of $500,000; 50,000 barrels of flour; 3,000 barrels of beef and pork ; 2,000 liogsheads of tobacco

;

and smaller

quantities of corn, butter, hams, meal, lard, beans, hides, staves,

and cordage, had passed

in

1802 across

its

famous

levee.

Everywhere the

restless

American was conspicuous,

and, with the Englishman and

the Irishman, composed

the majority of the commercial

class.

The French,

ex-

cept a few, had subsided into the retail trade or the

mechanical callings. civil service

The Spaniards not

in military or

were generally humble Catalans, keepers of

shops, and of the low cabarets that occupied almost every street corner.

proud, office

The

illiterate,

Creole was on every side

—handsome,

elegant hi manner, slow, a seeker of

and military commission, ruling society with

exclusiveness,

badge, lending

looking upon

money now

at

toil

as

fierce

the slave's proper

twelve and

now

at

twenty-

four per cent., and taking but a secondary and im&ympft-

1^8

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

thetic part in the commercial life

from which was spring-

"ig the future greatness of his town.

The American

filled

What could he do the upper Mississippi Vallev. En...

land and the Atlantic States, no longer France and Spain, took Its products and supplied its wants. The An-^loSaxon and the Irishman held every

advantage ; and,°ill. equipped and uncommercial, the Creole was fortunate to secure even a third or fourth mercantile rank in the city of his birtli. But he had one stronghold. lie owned the «rban and suburban real estate, and presently took high station as the seller of lots and as a Tcnticr. The confiscated plantations of the Jesuits laid ont in streets.

From

had been, or were bein^ 1801, when Faubourg St. Mar°y

contained only five houses,

it

rapidity.

had grown with great ^

other faubourgs were about springing up.

The high

roofs of the aristocratic suburb St. Jean eould be seen stretching away among their

Bayou

groves of evergreen along the

and clustering presently into a village near where a "Bayou bridge" still crosses the stream, some two hundred yards below the site of the old one Here road,

gathered the larger craft of the lake trade, while the

smaller

still

pushed

its

way up

neglected, yet busy canal.

Carondelet's shoaled and

Outwardly the Creoles of the Delta had become a gi'aceful, well-knit race, in full keeping with the freedom

of then, sun-oundings. but

It

Their complexion lacked

was free from the sallowness of the

ruddiness,

Indies.

There

NEW ORLEANS .

I.x

1803.

jgg

was a mucl. larger proportion of blondes an,ong ti.em as connnonly supposed. Generallychestnut or but

little

deeper

tint,

a Spanish tmcture

an- and eyes.

P easn.g

Ws

tl.an

their hair M-as of a

exeept that in the city

now and then asserted The won.en were fair,

features

itself in black

sy.„,„etrical, with

lively,

and superb hair;

e..pressive

eyes,

well-roinded

vivacious, decorous, e..c.eding,y

aste ul an dress, adorning then.seives with superior an drapenes of n.uslin enriched with

e^t

embroideries and

.aueh garn.ture of lace, but .ith a more n.oderate display o jewels, winch .ndicated a connnunity of lin,ited we Ith They were .nueh superior to the n.en in quickness of wit and excelled the.n in annability and i„ ,„,„y „,,,,

qnaht,es.

The more pronounced

faults of the men :.c:e generally those moral provincialisn.s which travellers re

count w.th nndue impatience. They are said to a been coarse, boastful, vain; and they were, also, deficient n en and application, without well-directed 'ambiti

T

and totally wantmg "atiotin begets the study of

"'""^^^^^^ n. that

comnmnity

reciprocal

rights

and reveals the individual's advantage of the

common

feeling ,vhieh

and obl^at^ in the

'

promoi

mterest.

Hence, the Creoles were fonder of pleasant fictions regarding the salubrity, beauty .o„c "st.ty thear assumptions.

Wjtu African slavery they of course, licentious, and they were always ready f^^ the duelhng-ground ; yet it need not seem surprising th ea-e

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

140

a people so beset

by

evil influences

from every direction

were generally unconscious of a reprehensible state of fairs,

and preserved

their self-respect

in their moral excellence.

easily discouraged,

ered, trivial

af-

and a proud belief

Easily inflamed, they were as

thrown into confusion, and overpow-

and they expended the best of their energies pleasures, especially the

in

masque and the dance;

yet they were kind parents, affectionate wives, tractable children,

and enthusiastic

Transom

in

patriots.

the Pontalba Buildings, Jackson Square.

XXI. PKOM SUBJECTS TO

J^ITTLE

wonder that

they stood on

tlie

it is

CITIZENS.

said

Creoles wept as

tlie

Place d'Armes and saw the stand-

arc) of a people, whose national existence was a mere twenty-years' experime.it, taking the place of that tricolor

on which perched the glory of a regenerated France. that very spot some of them had taken part

On

in the ai-med

repudiation of the

first cession.

the two events differed alike.

The two attitudes and The earlier transfer had

come loaded with drawbacks and tyrannous exactions the latter came freighted with long-coveted benefits and with some of the dearest rights of man. ;

This second, there-

might bring tears of tender regret it might force the Creole into civil and political fellowship with fore,

;

tested

Ameneam;

but

it

the decould not rouse the sense of

outrage produced by the cession to Spain, or of uniform popular hatred against the young Virginian whom President Jefferson had transferred from the Governorship of the Territory of Mississippi to that of Louisiana. O'Reilly the Spanish Captain-General, had established

whose only excellence

a government

lay in

its

strength; Claiborne

came

THK CKKOLES OF L0UI8IAXA.

142 to set lence.

np

a

power wljose only strength

His task was

difficult

lay in its excel-

mainly because

it

was

done among a people distempered by the badness of rule,

aTid

be

earlier

and diligently wrought upon by intriguing Frenchmen

Spanish

officials.

His wisest measures, equally with his

broadest mistakes, were wordily resented.

His ignorance

William Charles Cole Claiborne, Governor of Louisiana from

of the French language, his large son's

to

official

1803 to 1816.

powers, Wilkin-

bad habits, a scarcity of money, the introduction of

the English tongue, and of a just proportion of American

appointees into the

new

courts and public offices, the use

of bayonets to suppress disorder at public balls, a sup-

posed partiality for Americans

in court, the jDersonal char-

FROM SUBJECTS TO

CITIZKXS.

acter of officials, the formation of

American

I43 militia

com-

panies and their parades in the streets-all alike fed tho iianies of the Creoles' vehement indignation. In March, 1S04, Congress passed an act dividing tho province into two parts on the present northern

boundary

of Louisiana, giving each a distinct government, and to the lower the title of the territory of Orleans. This act which was to take effect the following October, interdicted the slave-trade. Then, indeed, anger burned. Insurrectionary sentiments were placarded on the street corners, crowds copied them, and public officers attemptii.g to remove them were driven away. But that was all.

Claiborne-young, like Bienville and like Galvez, but benevolent, wise, and patient-soon saw it was not the Government, but only some of its

so

much

measures, that caused

The merchants, who

heat.

in 176S had incited revolt against legalized ruin, saw, now, on the other hand, that American rule had

lifted them out of commercial serfdom, and that, as a port of the United States, and only as such, their crescent city could enter upon the great future which was hers by her geographical position. But we have seen that the merchants were not principally "^

Creoles.

Although the Creoles looked for a French or Spanish re-cession, yet both interest and probability were so plainly against

it

that they were presently

demanding im-

patiently, if not imperiously, the rights of American citizens as pledged to them in the treaty. They made no

TIIK C'UEOLES

144

01-'

LOUISIANA.

appeal to that France which had a second time cast them off;

June and July,

hut at three puhllc meetings, in

petitioned Congress not to rescind the cession but

leave

tt>

Louisiana undivided, and so hasten their admission into the Knion.

Tliis appeal

was

fruitless,

and

tlie territorial

government went into operation, Claiborne being retained

The

as governor.

ple, the nullification

an

its

election

by the peo-

of certain Spanish land grants, and

re-inspection of

official

appointment

partition, the presidential

of a legislative council instead of

all

titles,

Avere accepted, if not

with patience, at least with that grace which the Creole

But

assumes before the inevitable.

his respect

was not

always forthcoming toward laws that could be opposed or evaded. police

:

" This citv," wrote Claiborne, " requires a strict

the inhabitants are of various descriptions

;

many

highly respectable, and some of them very degenerate."

A sheriff and posse

attempted to arrest a Spanish

Two hundred men

interfered

resistance ceased only

troops

try "

—was

swords were drawn, and

a detachment of United States

seen hurrying to the rescue.

W'ei'e

slave-trade

when

;

— " all-important

officer.

Above

all,

the

to the existence of the coun-

diligently plied through the lakes

and the

in-

lets of Barataria.

The winter

of 1804-05 was freer from bickerings than

the last had been.

The

lingered in the district

intrigues of Spanish officials

ernor reported a gratifying state of order. 3!!arch,

with

who

were unavailing, and the Gov-

many unwelcome

On

the 2d of

safeguards and limitations,

FROM

SI'IUKCTS TO CITIZENS.

the right was accorded the people to elect a Ilcprcseiitatives,

tion

14.">

House

of

and "to form for themselves a constitu-

and State government

so soon as the free population

Rev. Father Antonio de Sedella (P4re Antoine).

of the territory should reach sixty thousand souls, in order to

be admitted into the Union.*'

For a time events.

was open leans

followini; there

was feverishness rather than

Great Britain and Spain were at war to neutral vessels

was stimulated, 10

;

the conmierce of

;

Havana

Xew

Or-

liut the pertinacious lingering of

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

146

Casa-Calvo, Morales, last

had

and

away

to force

others,

—whom

in February, 1806,

Claiborne

— the

at

rumors

they kept alive, the fear of war with Spain, doubts as to

how

the Creoles would or should stand, party strife

among

the Americans in T^ew Orleans, and a fierce quarrel in the

Church between the vicar-general and the famed Pere Antoine, pastor of the cathedral, kept the public mind in a perpetual ferment.

Still,

in all these things there

The Creoles

only restiveness and discord, not revolution.

had

at

length nndergone their last transplanting, and

taken root in American privileges and principles. the guilt of the plot whose events were

the Creole's hand

mony

is

clean.

We

From

now impending

have Claiborne's

testi-

:

" AVere

who

was

are

it

not for the calumnies of some Frenchmen

among

unjprincipled

us,

and the intrigues of a few ambitious,

men whose

native language

is

English, I do

believe that the Louisianians would be very soon the most

zealous and faithful

On

members

of our republic."

the 4th of November, 1811, a convention elected by

the people of Orleans Territory met in

on the

28tli of

constitution

;

New

Orleans, and

the following January adopted a State

and on the SOth of April, 1812, Louisiana

entered the Union.

XXII. BURR'S CONSPIRACY.

/^N

one of those summer evenings wlien

tlic

in the early years of the century, were

Creoles,

wont

to

seek the river air in domestic and social groups under the

willow and china trees of their levee, there glided around the last bend of the Mississippi above

New

Orleans " an

elegant barge," equipped with sails and colors, and impelled

by the stroke of ten picked oarsmen.

down the

It

came

harbor, drew in to the bank, and presently set

ashore a small, slender, extremely handsome man, passenger.

troducing

its

only

lie bore letters from General Wilkinson, in-

him

in

New

Orleans, and one, especially, to

Daniel Clark, AVilkinson's agent, stating that " this great

and honorable

man would communicate

him many

to

things improper to letter, and which he would not say to

any other." onel

Claiborne wrote to Secretary Madison, " Col-

Burr arrived in

this city on this evening."

The date was June

26, 1805.

The

distinguished vis-

itor, a day or two later, sat down to a banquet given to him by the unsuspecting Governor. He was now in full downward career. Only a few years before he had failed

of the presidency by but one electoral vote.

Only a few

148

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

months had passed

since,

on completing

liis

term, he liad

vacated the vice-presidencj.

In tlie last year of that term Alexander Hamilton had fallen by his hand. Friends and power, both, were lost. But he jet had strength in the AYest.

Its people

for adventure. ditional idea.

were

still

wild, restless,

and eager

The conquest of " Orleans " was Its

banks were

revolution were gathering

regions beyond the

Ked and

full of specie.

all

a tra-

Clouds of

around the Gulf.

The

the Sabine Rivers invited con-

The

quest.

earlier schemes of Adams and Hamilton, to Orleans Island and the Floridas for the United States that of Miranda, to expel the Spanish power

seize

from

;

the farther shores of the Gulf; the plottings of Wilkinson, to surrender the AYest into the hands of

Spain— all

these abandoned projects seem to have cast their shadows on the mind of Burr and colored his desiirns

The hhn

stern patriotism of the older States liad

in its balances

weighed

and rejected him.

He had turned with a vagueness of plan that waited for clearer definition on the chances of the future, and, pledged to no principle,

had

set out in quest of

aggrandizement and empire, either on the Mississippi or among the civilizations that encircle the Gulf of Mexico, as the turn of events might decree. In the West, he had met Wilkinson, and was now in correspondence with him.

The Governor M'ho had

feasted

gay society of the Creoles.

him moved much

in the

was not giddiness, but anxious thought and care that pushed him into such It

burr's conspiracy. scenes.

Troubles and

marked

afflictions

149 his footsteps; his

wife and child stricken brother-in-law rashly

down by yellow fever, her championing him against the

of his enemies, fallen in a duel

;

but

it

younosneers

was necessary

to

avoid the error— Ulloa's earlier error— of self -isolation. lie wisely, tiierefore, mingled in the gayeties of the touchy people, even took from among them— after a short year

of

widowhood— a

second wife, bore

ment, and by thus studying the

all

things without resent-

social side of the people,

viewed public questions from behind.

The question ever before

him— which he was incesand which he showed an almost morbid wish to be always answering to the heads of desantly asking himself,

partments at Washington— was whether the Creoles over whom he was set to rule were loyal to the government of the nation.

It

was a

The bonds of tho Union, even outside of Louisiana, were as yet slender and frail. The whole Mississippi valley was full of designiuir vital question.

adventui'ers, suspected

and unsuspected, ready to reap any advantage whatever of any disaffection of the ])eople. He

knew

there were such in

The

difficulty

Xew

Orleans.

of answering this

question lay in one

broad difference between Claiborne himself and the civilization which he had been sent to reconstruct into single,

harmony with Xorth American thought and With him loyalty to the State meant obedience laws.

The Creole had never been taught

any necessary connection between the two.

action. to

that there

its

was

The Govern-

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

l.oO

young Virginian

or's

a

man would

was a strange

spirit

assumed

it

as self-evident that

either keep the laws or overturn them. state of society to

It

him, where one could be

a patriot and yet ignore, evade, and override the laws of the country he loved. « Occasionally, in conversation with ladies,"-so he writes-" I have

denounced smug-

gling as dishonest, and very generally a reply, in substance as follows,

my

would be returned

grandfather, or

my

:

^

father, or

That

my

is

impossible, for

husband was, under

the

Spanish Government, a great smuggler, and he was always esteemed an honest man.' " They might have added, " and loyal to the kinff."

With some men Claiborne had had no

trouble.

"A

beginning must be made," said Poydras, a wealthy and benevolent Frenchman " we must be initiated into the sacred duties of freemen and the practices of ;

liberty."

But the mass, both high and low, saw

in the

abandonment

of smuggling or of the slave-trade only a surrender of existence-an existence to which their own consciences

and

the ladies at the ball gave

them a

clean patent.

These,

by their angry obduracy, harassed their governor with ungrounded fears of sedition. In

the issue before governor and people was one to which the question of fealty to overnment fact,

was quite was the struggle of a North American against a Spanish American civilization. Burr must have seen this and probably at this date there was '

subordinate.

It

nothing

;

clearly

and absolutely fixed in his mind but

this,

that the

burr's co:j^spiracy. former

civilization

had

cast Iiim off,

151

and that he was about

to offer himself to the latter.

Kew events were to answer the Governor's haunting question, and to give a new phase to the struggle between these two civilizations in

the Mississippi vallej.

Colonel Burr remained in Kew Orleans ten or twelve days, receiving much social attention, and then left for St. Louis]

saying he would return in October. But he did not appear! During the winter the question of boundaries threat-

ened war with Spain, and the anger of Spain rose high when, in February, 1806, Claiborne expelled her agents, the resplendent Casa-Calvo and the quarrelsome Moi-ales,'

from the Territory. retorted

The Spanish governor

mails through that province.

threatened

hardly

;

less.

toine, the

inside,

know

there

is

Spaniards

certain

beloved pastor of the cathedral, was suspected

unaccountably I

Outside, the

Americans of influence did The Creoles were again supine. Pere An-

— unjustly — of ^'

of Florida

by stopping the transmission of the United States

not

sedition; Wilkinson with his forces

idle.

whom

" All

was

not right," wrote Claiborne to censure ; but it seems to me that is

wrong somewhere."

The

strange character of the Creole people perplexed and M-earied Claiborne. Unstable and whimsical, public-

spirited

and sordid by

turns, a display of their patriotism

caused a certain day to be life;"

"among

the happiest of his

and when autumn passed and toward

its close

their

enthusiasm disappeared in their passion for money-getting,

152 lie

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

" began to despair."

But, alike

unknown in the Creole nionej-getters and to patriots-the only real danger had passed. Wilkinson had decided to betray Burr J.ate in September the General had arrived

town-to

at K-atehi-

todies,

and had taken chief connnand of the troops con-

fronting the Spanish forces.

On

Samuel Swartwout brought him a Colonel Burr.

He

attention, stayed leans.

Avas received

the Sth of October one confidential letter

by Wilkinson

witli

from

much

oight days,

On the 2 1st, He despatched

and then left for IS^ew OrWilkinson determined to expose

the a messenger to the President of the United States, bearing a letter which apprised him of Colonel Burr's contemplated descent of the Mississippi plot.

with an armed force.

Eiglit days later, the General arranged with the Spaniards for the troops under each fla-

withdraw from the contested boundary, leaving its by the two governments, and hastened toward Kew Orleans, hurrying on in advance of him a force of artificers and a company of soldiers. to

location to be settled

Presently the people of

from apathetic

Kew

Orleans were startled

tranquillity into a state of panic.

explained, these troops

had

All un-

arrived, others

had re-enforced there was hurried repair and preparation and the air was agitated with rumors. To Claiborne, the revelation had at length come from various directions that Aaron Burr was plotting treason. Thousands

them

;

;

were said

to be involved with to be in

Xew

him

Orleans.

;

the

first

outbreak was expected

burr's conspiracy. Wilkinson had arrived style of

one who plays a

in the town.

part,

153 In the bombastic

he demanded of Claiborne

the proclamation of martial law.

Claiborne kindly, and

with expressions of confidence in the General, refused; but the two met the city's chamber of commerce, laid the plot before eral

it,

and explained the needs of defence.

Sev-

thousand dollars were at once subscribed, and a tran-

sient

embargo of the port recommended,

for the purpose

of procuring sailors for the four gun -boats and two

bomb-

ketches lying in the harbor.

There were others no

The

place.

Claiborne will

:

in

whose confidence Wilkinson held

acting-governor of Mississippi wrote to

" Should he [Colonel Burr] pass us, your fate

depend on the General, not on the Colonel.

Burr, this

may

United States.

If I stop

hold the General in his allegiance to the

But

if

Burr passes the

two

territory with

thousand men, I have no doubt but the General will be your worst enemy. Be on your guard against the wily General.

He is not much better than Catiline. and

act as if certain thereof.

On

Consider him a traitor

You may

save yourself by

it."

Sunday, the 14th of December, a Dr. Erick Boll-

man was

arrested

by Wilkinson's

order.

Swartwout and

Ogden had already been apprehended

at Fort Adams, and were then confined on one of the bomb-ketches in the

harbor.

On

the 16th, a court

oflicer,

armed with

writs of

habeas corpus, sought in vain to hire a boat to carry oif

to the bomb-ketch,

could be procured, only

him

and on the next day, when one

Ogden could be found.

154

THE CEEOLES OF LOUISIANA.

He was

Jiberateil, b,,t

only to be ro-an-ested witi, one Alexander, and bold in tbe face of tbe haUa. corpus.

be court issued an attacbn.ent against Wilkinson was powerless. Tbe J

'.orne to snstaia

it

It

Jndge-Work.nan-appealed to Claiwitb force. Tbe Governor promptly

dccbned, the Judge resigned, and Wilkinson ruled. One of Burr's intimates was General Adair. On tbe litb of January, 1807, he appeared in Kew Orleans unannounced. Colonel Burr, he said, witb only a

would arrive

servant

in a

few days.

As he was

sitting at dinner,'

his hotel w.as surrounded

by regulars, an aide of Wilkinson appeared and arrested bini he was confined, and presently was sent away. The troops ;

and

M

beat to arn.s, regulars

paraded through the terrified orkman, with two othc's, were thrown ,n,Iitia

city,

and J«d<.e

into confinement, 'n.ey were released within twenty-four hours ; but to intensify the general alarm, four

hundred Spaniards from Pen-

sacola arrived at the n>onth of

Bayou

St. John, a few miles Baton Eouge, and their commander asked of Claiborne that be and his staif mi^bt

from the

city,

pass tbrough

AH

on their way

New

Orleans.

to

He was refused the

liberty

time the Creoles had been silent. Now how ever, tbrough their legislature, tbey addressed their governor. Tl>ey washed their hands of the treason this

which

threatened the peace and safety of Louisiana, but boldly announced their intention to investigate the "extraordinary measures " of Wilkinson

and

to complain to Con-^ress

Burr, meanwhile, witb the mere nucleus of a force had

burr's coxspiracy. set his expedition in

by

years' threatening

15.5

motion, and at length, after twenty tlie

of boats actnally bore an

Americans of the

AV^est, a fleet

armed expedition down the Ohio

and out into the Mississippi, bent on conquest.

But

disaster

strength as

reached

It

it.

failed

to gather

came, and on the 2Sth of January the news

it

Xew

lay in wait for

Orleans that Burr, having arrived at a point

near Xatchez with fourteen boats and about a hundred

men, had been met by Mississippi to Xatchez,

and released on bond

militia, arrested,

to

appear for

taken

trial at

the

next term of the Territorial Court.

This bond Burr ignored, and

left tiie Territory.

The

Governor of Mississippi offered ^2,000 for his apprehension, and on the 3d of March the welcome word came to

New

Orleans that he had been detected in disguise and

re-arrested at Fort Stoddart,

Alabama.

About the middle of May, AVilkinson

sailed

Orleans to Virginia to testify in that noted

though final

it

from trial

did not end in the conviction of Burr,

wreck of his designs, restored public

Xew

which,

made

tranquillity,

and assured the country of the loyalty not only of the AVest, but also of the Creoles of Louisiana.

between the two

civilizations

withdrew

narrowest limits of the Delta, and

thought found

its

next and

last

and chivalrous; a

patriot,

struggle

finally into the

Spanish American

exponent in an individual

without the ambition of empire,

outlaw, and in the end a

The

—a

man

polished, brave

and yet a contrabandist; an

pii-ate.

XXIII. THE WEST

B^™^'

'''' -<•

pop«lat,o„.

INDIAxX COUSIN. J'^lO.

^^ew Orleans doubled

eommou

Tlie

notion

is

that there

a large „.fl„x of Anglo-Au.ericans.

its

was

This was not the ease. earef ul estunate shows not more than 3,100 of these in the c.ty an 1809, yet in the following year the whole populafon, inclnding the suburbs, was

A

Amencans, crease

24,5.2.

therefore,

were numerically

came from another

feeble.

in

direction

Napoleon's wai^s were convulsing Europe. of Ins enemies

tZ

The

The

navies

upon the French West Indies. I„ Cnba large numbers of white and mulatto refugees who,

m

the St.

Cuba w.th

fell

Dommgan

insurrection,

the,r slaves,

had escaped across to were now, by hostilities between

I ranee and Spain, forced again to become "" si.xty days,

vessels

between

from Cuba

exiles. Withand July, 1809, thirty-fonr

set ashore in the streets of

leans nearly fifty-eight

mulattoes,

May

New Or-

hundred persons-whites, free

and black slaves in almost equal numbers. Others came later from Cuba, Guadaloupe, and other

THE WEST INDIAN COUSIN. islands, until they

settled

The West

amounted

permanently in

Kew

m?

to ten thousand.

Nearly

all

Orleans.

Creoles of Louisiana received the Creoles of the Indies with tender welcomes. The state of society

in the islands

As

scription.

island of

from which these had come needs no deand '73, there were in the

late as 1871, '72,

Guadaloupe only three marriages

inhabitants.

But they came

the

common

ties

of a

to a

thousand

to their better cousins with

common

religion, a

tongue, nuich

commo'i sentiment, misfortunes that may have had some resemblance, and with the poetry of exile. They were reenforcements, too, at a

moment when

the power of the number, but potent in energies and advantages— was looked upon with hot jealousy.

Americans—few

in

The Anglo-Americans clamored against them, for they came in swarms. They brought little money or goods. They

raised

the price of bread

and of

lowered morals and disturbed order. true

the Anglo-Americans

had done

They

rent.

it

was certainly

little to

improve

Some had come to stay many more make a fortune and get away both sorts were sim-

either of these. to

Yet

;

;

ply and only seeking wealth.

The West Indians had not come zation could afford to absorb them.

needed a better infusion, and yet in the

community.

scribed

by one

it

to a city

whose

civili-

The Creole element was probably the

The Spaniards were few and

best

bad, de-

as capable of the vilest depredations, " a

nuisance to the country," and even by the mild Claiborne

OF LOUISIANA.

TllK CREOLE?^

ins as " for the

most part

.

.

.

The

ous and wicked enterprises."'

about two

were

The Moating

feeble.

Sailors

thousand,

from

all

parts

well suited for mischiev-

unaspiring,

|)opulation oi:

free people of color

was

corrupted,

and

extremely bad.

the world took sides, according

to nationality, in bloody street riots

and night brawls

;

and bargemen, flat-boatmen, and raftsmen, from the wild banks of the Ohio, Tennessee, and Cumberland, abanat the

doned themselves

end of their journey to the most

shameful and reckless excesses.

up

The

spirit of strife

ran

A newspaper article reflecting but caused a riot. A public uprising

into the better classes.

upon Xapoleon

all

was hardly prevented when three young navy officers reIn Septemleased a slave girl who was being whipped. The hatture was ber, 1807, occurred the " batture riots.''

made by the Mississippi in front of the Marie. The noted jurist, Edward Living-

the sandy deposits

Faubourg ston,

St.

representing private claimants, took possession of

this ground,

and was opposed by the public

tinct outbreaks.

decision of the

in

two

dis-

In the second, the Creoles, ignoring the

Supreme Court,

rallied to the

thousands, and were quieted only by of Claiborne, addressed to

spot by

the patient appeals

them on the

spot,

and by the

recommittal of the contest to the United States courts, in Preparations wdiose annals it is so well-known a cause.

war with Spain heightened the general fever. Claiborne's letters dwell on the sad mixture of society.

for

"England," he

writes,

"has her

partisans;

Ferdinand

THE WKST INDIAN the Scvciitli,

fioiiic

mirers; and there nionly

called

('(H'SIN.

faithful subjects is

;

150

I»onap.arte, his ad-

a fourth description of men, com-

Burr'deSy

who would

which would promise rapine and

had a newspaper, "La Lanterne

join

any standard

plunder.''

Mai;ique,"'

These

whose

last

lihols

gave the executive much anxiety.

In

Kow,

into such a city

—say of fourteen thousand inhab-

— swarm

ten thousand white, yellow, and

itants, at

black

Rue du Maine.

most

West

India islanders

absolute destitution, and

;

"

some with means, others

many

character and desperate fortune."

...

in

of doubtful

Americans, English,

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

160

Spanish, cry aloud slaves

;

the laws forbid the importation of

Claiborne adjures the American consuls at Ha-

;

vana and Santiago de Cuba

to stop the

movement

;

the

free people of color are ordered point-blank to leave the

country

;

execution

the actual effort ;

and

still all

is

made

to

put the order into

three classes continue to pour into

the streets, to throw themselves upon the town's hospitality,

and daily to increase the

number

the

and the

of distressed poor.

Thoy came and they Maine,

cost of living

stayed, in Orleans Street, in

St. Philippe, St. Peter, DauDliine,

rest,

all

Du

Burgundy, and

too readily dissolving into the corresponding

parts of the nn^ive Creole connnunity, and

it is

easier to

underestimate than to exaggerate the silent results of an

event that gave the French-speaking Louisianians twice the mimerical power with which they had begun to wage their long battle against

American absorption.

XXIV. THE PIRATES OF BARATARIA.

TT

has already been said that the whole Gulf coast of Louisiana

is

sea-marsh.

an immense, wet, level

It is

expanse, covered everywhere, shoulder-high, with marshgrasses,

rivers

and indented by extensive bays that receive the

and larger bayous.

For some

sixty miles

on either

side of the Mississippi's

mouth,

ly contorted shore-line

and into bright archipelagoes of

hundreds of small, reedy

it

breaks into a grotesque-

islands,

with narrow and ob-

scure channels writhing hither and thither between them.

These mysterious passages, hidden from the eye that overglances the seemingly unbroken sunny leagues of sur-

rounding distance, are threaded

only by the far-seen

white or red lateen-sail of the oyster-gatherer, or by the pirogue of the hunter stea

g upon the myriads of wild

fowl that in winter haunt ihese vast ^ 'een wastes.

To such

are

known

the courses that enable

them

to

avoid the frequent culs-de-mc of the devious shore, and that lead to the bayous which open the ited interior. silent waters, 11

They

way

to the inhab-

lead through miles of clear, brown,

between low banks fringed with dwarf oaks,

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

162

across pale green distances of " quaking prairie," in

whose

shallow, winding cooUes the smooth, dark, sliining needles

of the round rush stand twelve feet high to overpeer the bulrushes, and at length, under the solemn shades of cypress swamps, to the near neighborhood of

tiie

Mississippi,

from whose

flood the process of delta-growth has cut the

bayou

Across the mouths of the frequent bays that

off.

indent this marshy coast-line stretch long, slender keys of dazzling, storm-heaped

About sippi

sand— sometimes

as that river flows eastward

Grande Terre, a very small

of cultivable

from the bank of the

sixty miles south

by

Xew

soil.

Missis-

Orleans,

lies

island of this class, scarce

two

miles long, and a fourth as wide, stretcliing across two-thirds of the entrance of Earataria Bay, but leaving a pass of about a mile width at its western end, with a navigable channel.

Behind

this island the waters of the

At

harbor.

fenny

the west of the bay

islands,

interwoven with

lies

bay give a

safe,

deep

a multitude of snjall,

lu>'^s,

bays,

and

passes,

named and unnamed, affording cunning exit to the bayous La Fourche and Terre Bonne and the waters still beyond. They

are

populous beyond estimate with the prey of

fowler and fisherman, and of the huge cormorant, the gull, the man-of-war bird, the

brown

Here

uralist,

Audubon, sought and found

in

tude the white

his

p^jlican,

sound of his gun and that

time

and the

pelican

tross.

alba-

the illustrious Creole nat-

now

in

great

so rare, that rose

sailed unwillingly

multiat

the

away on wings

measured eight feet and a half from

tip to tip.

THE

PIIIATES OF BAllATAIUA.

1G3

Xortliward the bay extends some sixteen miles, and then hi-eaks in every direction across the illimitable ries into lakes

and bayous.

Through one

bayou Barataria, with various other

of

wet prai-

these— the

names— a way

local

Xow and then it widens into and narrows again, each time more than the last,

opens irregularly northward. a lake,

the leagues of giant reeds and rushes are left behind, a few sugar and rice plantations are passed, standing, lonely and silent, in

the water and out of the water, the dark shad-

ows of the moss-hung swamp

close

windings become more and more

head a short canal

is

down, and the stream's difficult, until

near

its

entered on the right, and six miles

farther on the forest opens, tations,

you pass between two planand presently are stopped abruptly by the levee of

the Mississippi.

You mount

the low-lying citv, with

sunken plain,

its

the silent stir of

its

crown, and see, opposite,

up from the few wreaths of manufactory smoke, and its

its

spires peering

winding

former upper boundary,

is

away down the stream.

liarbor.

Canal Street,

its

hidden two miles and a half

There are other Baratarian

through lakes Salvador or Des Allemands, and obscure avenues of return toward the Gulf of Mex-

routes,

many

ico or the

In the

had

filled

maze of wet lands

intervening.

deeade of the century the wars of France this gr.lf with her privateers. Spain's rich

first

connnerce was the prey aiound which they hovered, and

Guadaloupe and Martinique their island these the English, operating hi the

liaunts.

West

From

Indies, drove

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

164

them

and wlien

out,

pleted the

were

They were its

exiled on the open Gulf, with the Spaniards

every shore, except one, where American neu-

trality

motioned them austerely away.

iana.

But

this,

of

all

Orleans, and

best.

Thou-

the streets of

filled

commanded the sympathies

The

Creoles.

This was Louis-

them

shores, suited

sands of their brethren already

known

com-

of their conquests, the French privateers

list

homeless as Koah's raven.

as

lining

in February, 1810, Giiadaloupe

Xew

of the native

tangled water-ways of Barataria, so well

to smugglers

and

slavers,

and

to so

few

beside,

leading by countless windings and intersections to the

markets of the thriving for their purposes.

the rarest

city, offered

Between

this shelter

facilities

and the distant

harbors of France there could be no question of choice.

Hither they came, houses, sailed

which

prizes

fortified

Grande Terre,

ai-e

built store-

away upon the Gulf, and re-appeared with it seems were not always Spanish. The

most seductive auctions followed. there

.

All along this coast

vast heaps of a species of clam-shell, too great to

admit the idea of their being other than the work of nature.

Great oaks grow on them.

The

aborigines,

mound-builders, used these places for temple-sites.

One

of them, in Barataria, distinguished from larger neighbors

by the name of Petit Temple, "the

moved

of late years for the value of

material, yielded three

A

Little

Temple,"

its shells

re-

as a paving

hundred thousand barrels of them.

notable group of these mounds, on one of the larger

THE PIRATES OF BARATARIA. islands of Barataria,

and

sale

was no

barter.

It

became the

privateers' chief pLace of

was known as the Temple.

scarcity of buyers

rounding country.

105

from

Xew

Goods were

various bayous, especially

There

Orleans and the sur-

also

smuggled up the

La Fourche.

Then

the cap-

tured vessels were burned or refitted,

sails were spread and prows were pointed toward the Spanish Main. The Baratarians had virtually revived, in miniature, the

again,

life

of the long-extinct buccaneers.

On

the beautiful, wooded, grassy and fertile " Grande lying just west of their stronghold on

Isle,"

Terre," and separated

from

it

that led out to sea, storehouses

"Grande

only by the narrow pass

and dwellings were

built,

farms and orangeries yielded harvests, and green meadows dotted with wax-myrtles, casinos, and storm-dwarfed oaks rose

from the marshy inland

women down

side

where the children and

plied their shrimp and crab nets, and, running

to

the surf- beach on the

across the boundless

The fame of

southern side, looked

open Gulf toward the Spanish Main.

the Baratarians spread far and wide

;

and

while in neighboring States the scandalous openness of their traffic brought loud

condemnation upon Louisiana

citizens and officials alike, the merchants and planters of the Delta, profiting by these practices, with the general public as well, screened the contrabandists and defended

their character.

Mucli ink has been spilled from that day to this to maintain that they sailed under letters of marque. But

166

THE CItEOLES OF LOUISIANA.

certainly no

commission could be wortl) the unrolling carried hy men who had removed them.selves

when

be"^

vond

all

the restraints that even

privateering from piracy.

seem

Thej were

to

distinguish

often overstodced

with vessels and booty, but they seem never to have been embarrassed with the care of prisoners.

There lived Pierre Lafitte.

at this time, in

John and John, the younger, but more conspicuous

of the two, was a

and

eyes,

Orleans,

handsome man.

fair, with black hair wearing his beard, as the fashion was, shaven

away from the front of

neatly

Xew

his face.

His manner was

generally courteous, though he was irascible and in graver moments somewhat harsh. He spoke fluently English,

Spanish, Italian, and French, using them with fability at the hotel where he resided, and

much

af-

indicating, in

the peculiarities of his French, his nativity in the city of

Bordeaux.

The in the

elder brother

French navy.

was a seafaring man and had served He appears to have been every way

less showy than the other but beyond doubt both men were above the occupation with which they began life in ;

Louisiana.

This was the trade of blacksmith, "though at their forge, on the corner of St. Philip and Bourbon Streets,

probably none but slave hands swung the sledge or shaped the horseshoe.

was during the embargo, enforced by the United States Government in 1808, that John Lafitte began to be a merchant. His store was in Royal Street, where, beIt

THE PIUATE8 OF HAKATARIA. hind a show of legitimate trade,

embargo with goods and carelessly.

lie

167

was busy running the

He

xifricans.

wore the

disf^uise

lie was cool and intrepid and had only the

courts to evade, and his unlawful adventures did not his

name from

balls or

the published

lists

lift

of managers of society

break his acquaintance with prominent

legislators.

In 1810 came the AVest Indian refugees and the Guadaloupian privateers. The struggle between the Xorth

American and the AVest Indian

ideas of public order and

new energy on the moment. The plans of bandits who infested the coast and overran

morals took the "set of

the country " were described by Government as " extensive

and well

eral

seemed the disposition to aid in their concealment,

laid,"

and the confession made that " so cen-

that but faint hopes were entertained of detecting the parties

and bringing them to

justice."

Their trade was impudently open.

Merchants gave and

took orders for their goods in the streets of the town as frankly as for the merchandise of Philadelphia or Kew

York.

Frequent seizures lent zest to adventure without

greatly impairing the extravagant profits of a that paid neither duties nor

John and Pierre

Lafitte

of the " privateers." chiefs.

They won

became the commercial agents

By and by

Lafitte did not at this

vessels, sent

they were their actual

great prosperity for the band

were rich and frequent, and

John

commerce

first cost.

them on

slave

time go to

;

prizes

cargoes profitable. sea.

He

equipped

their cruises, sold their prizes

and

108

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

and moved hither and thither tlirougliout the Delta, administering affairs with boldness and sagacity. The Mississippi's " coasts " in the parishes slaves,

and

St. Jolin

of St. Tjames the Baptist were often astir with his known

presence, and his smaller vessels sometimes pierced the interior as far as

Lac des Allemands. lie knew the value of popular admiration, and was often at country balls,

where he enjoyed the fame of great riches and courage,' and seduced many of the simple Acadian youth to slil in his cruises. His two principal captains were Beluche and Dominique You. "Captain Dominique" was small, graceful, fair, of a pleasant, even attractive face, and a skilful sailor. There were also Gambi, a Iiandsome Ital-

ian,

who

died only a few years ago at the old pirate village

of Cheniere Caminada

and Rigoult, a dark Frenchman, liouse still stands on Grande Isle. And yet again Johnness and Joliannot, unless-which appears ;

whose ancient

likely-these were only the Beluche.

j-eal

names of Dominique and

Expeditions went out against these men more than once but the Government was pre-occupied and embarrassed, and the expeditions seemed feebly ;

conceived.

They only harassed the mouth of La Fourche in

Baratarians, drove

them

to the

vessels too well

armed to be attacked in transports, and did not prevent their prompt return to Grande Terre.

The

revolution for the independence of the Colombian States of South America began. Venezuela declared her

THE PIRATES OF BAIIATAKIA. independence in July, 1811.

1G9

The Baratarians procured

marque from the patriots in Carthagena, lowered the French flag, ran up the new standard, and letters of

thus

far

and no farther joined the precarious fortunes of the

new

while Barataria continued to be their liaunt and booty their only object. states,

They reached Their moral

the height of their fortune in 1S13. condition liad declined in proportion.

"Among

them," says the Governor, "are some mingo negroes of the most desperate character, worse

than

most

of

their

white

St.

Do-

and no

associates."

Their

avowed purpose, lie says, was to cruise on the high seas and commit " depredations and piracies on the veLls of nations in peace with the United States."

One of men were Terre. their

these nations

was the

British. Its merchantcaptured in the Gulf and sold behind Grande The English more than once sought redress with

own powder and

shot. On the 23d of June, 1813, a British sloop-of-war andiored off the outer end of the

channel at the mouth of La Fourche and sent her boats to attack two privateers lying under the lee of Cat Island ;

but the pirates stood ground and repulsed them with considerable loss.

Spain, England, and the United States were

now

their

enemies; yet they grew bolder and more outrageous.

Smuggling increased.

The Government was

ance in broad daylight."

" set at

defi-

" I remember," reads a manuscript kindly furnished the present writer, "when three

170

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

Spanish vessels were brought in to

They

Cailloii Islands.

were laden with a certain Spanish wine, and the citizens of Attakapas went out to see them and purchased part of the captured cargoes. There were no traces of the former crews."

In October, 1S13, a revenue

band goods near

Xew

officer seized

Orleans.

He

party under John Lafitte, one of his the goods taken from him.

was

some

lired

contra-

upon by

a

men wounded, and

The Governor

offered

$500

for Lafitte's apprehension, but without avail.

In January, 1814, four hundred and fifteen negroes, consigned to John and Pierre Lafitte, were to be auc tioned at " The Temple." An inspector of customs and twelve

men were

stationed at the spot.

John

Lafitte at-

tacked them, killed the inspector, wounded two men, and made the rest prisoners. Still

he was not arrested.

His island was

schooners and feluccas were swift, his

fortified, liis

men were

well or-

ganized and numbered four hundred, the Federal Government was getting the worst of it in w\ar with Great Britain, and, above

ideas in

Kew

all,

the prevalence of

Orleans was a secure shelter.

West Indian

He

sent his

up La Fourche to Donaldsonville on the Misand to other points. Strong, well-armed escorts

spoils daily sissippi,

protected them.

one hundred

men for six months' At the same time

was neglected. tion against

Claiborne asked the legislature to raise service.

The

request

a filibustering expedi-

Texas was only stopped by energetic meas-

THE PIRATES OF BAIIATAKIA.

171

ures.

Tlie Federal courts could effect nothing. An expedition captured both Lafittes, but they disappeared, and the writs were returned " not found."

But now the the

outlaws.

them

as pirates,

tide turned.

Society began to repudiate

In July, 1814, a grand jury denounced and exhorted the people " to remove the

stain that has fallen

on

all classes

of society in the

of the good people of the sister States."

minds

Indictments

were found against Johnness and Johannot for piracies the Gulf, and against Pierre Lalitte as accessory.

was last

arrested, bail

shut

up

was refused, and he found himself

in the calaboza.

in

Lafitte at

XXV. BARATARIA DESTROYED.

TTTEIGIIIXG

the facts,

all

it is

small wonder that the

Delta Creoles coquetted with the Baratarians. say no more of Spanish American or French tincture, there

ships of

was the Embargo.

Europe skinmiing ever

trances and exits of the Gulf.

To

West Indian

There were the warto

and fro

in the en-

Karelj in days of French

or Spanish rule had this purely agricultural country and lion-manufacturing town been so removed to the world's

end

as just at this time.

free

;

but

its perils

of Spanish rule.

The

Mississippi, northward,

had hardly lessened

Then

it

was

since

said, in a curious old

ern advertisement of 1797, whose English

is

was

the days

West-

worthy of

notice

*'

Xo danger need be apprehended from

the enemy, as every person

whatever will be under cover, made proof against

and convenient port-holes

for firing out of.

rirte

Each

or

musket

balls,

of the boats are

armed with six pieces, carry a pound ball, also a number of muskets, and amply supplied with plenty of ammunition, strongly manned with choice Ixands, and masters of approved knowledge."

BARATARIA DESTROYKD.

173

Scarcely any journey, now, outside of Asia, Africa, and

the Polar seas,

from

St.

more arduous than was then the

is

Louis to

Xew

Orleans.

trip

Va<^abond Indians, white

marauders, Spanish-armed extortion and arrest, and the natural perils of the stream, less

dangerous than the Gulf.

were the baser

wood Creek

And

Latittes of

the river

little, if

any,

Culbert and Maglibray

the Mississippi, and Cotton-

their Barataria.

the labors and privations were greater than the

dangers. flat-boats.

up

made

The conveyances were keel-boats, barges, and The flat boats, at New Orleans, were broken

for their lumber, their slimy gunwales forming along

the open gutter's edge in

many

of the streets a nari'ow

and treacherous substitute for a pavement.

The

boats and barges returned up-stream, propelled

keel-

now

l)y

sweeps and now by warping or by corddle (hand towropes), consuming " three or four months of the most painful

toil

that can be imagined."

Exposure and bad

diet " ordinarily destroyed one-third of the crew."

But on the

lOtli

to the landing at

of January, 1812, there had pushed in

Xew

Orleans a sky-blue thing with a

long bowsprit, " built after the fashion of a ship, with portholes in the side,"

and her cabin

in the hold.

She was

the precursor of the city's future greatness, the Orleans^

from Pittsburg, the

first

steam vessel on the Mississippi.

Here was a second freedom of the great than that wrested from Spain.

seemed

just at hand.

river mightier

Commercial grandeur

All Spanish America was asserting

^^1 its

THE CliKOLES OF

LOLl.SIAXA.

independence; Wl.itney's ge„i.,s «-as n.akini; eorton

tl.e

world's greatest staple;

'"to the

West; the

i,„,„igra„t8 were 6war,„i„. Mississippi valley would

be the pro! v.s,on-house of Europe, the i.uporter of untold niillions of

manufaetures;

Xew

Orleans would keep the only gate this, i„ J„„e, 1«,2, Congress declared wa.: aga,nst Great Britain. Harataria seen.ed indispensable, and J, ew Orleans was infested with .langers. In. 1813, Wilkinson, still commanding in the West marched to Mobile Kiver; in April he drove the Span-' -ards out of Fort Charlotte Instea

of

and

raised a sn.all fortiHeation,

tort Bowyer, to connnand the entrance of Mobile Bay Thus tl^ Spanish, neighbors only less objectionable than done,

AVdkmson was ordered

and even took part of

his

to the

Canadian frontier

few reg,dar« with

hin..

Ilie

English were already in the Gulf; the Indians «ere gro«.ng offensive; i„ July seven hundred crossed the lerd,do :„to Mississippi; in September they massacred three hundred and fifty whites at Fort Minuns, and opened the Creek war. Within Jsew Orleans bands of drnnken Choctaws roamed the streets. The Baratarians

were seen daily in the public

came

alarn.ingly

Bp.-a..g ..p.

resorts.

common, and the

Incendiary

fires

be-

iatture troubles again

Naturally, at such a junction, Lafitte and his reached the summit of power. In February, 1814, four hundred country militia reported at Magazhne Barracks,

men

opposite

New

Orleans.

The

15A11ATAKIA DESTIIOYED.

Governor

175

He

tried to force out tlie city militia.

The country

clamorous denunciation and refusal to obey.

The

nnister offered their aid to enforce the order.

companies heard of

it,

got only

citv

and only Claiborne's discreetness

averted the mortifyin«jj disaster of a battle without an

enemy.

Tlie country militia, already deserting,

Even the

banded.

was

dis-

legislature withheld its sui)port,

and

Claiborne was everywhere denounced as a

had lie

He

traitor.

to report to the President his complete failure.

ready to "turn out in case of actual invasion." patient a

man

Still,

people were emphatically

insisted apologetically, the

Only

so

could understand that the C'reoles were con-

scientious in their lethargy.

Fortunately the invasion did

not come until the Creek war liad brought to view the genius of

Andrew

Jackson.

In April, Government raised the embargo. lief

was tardy

;

the banks suspended.

Paris had fallen.

l>ut the re-

Word came

Kapoleon had abdicated.

that

England

would throw new vigor into the war with America, and could spare troops for the conquest of Louisiana.

In August the officers

Some

Creeks made peace.

Some

landed at Apalachicola, Florida, bringing

disaffected Creeks joined

armed and

drilled.

But now,

British artillery.

them and were by them

at length, the

Government

took steps to defend the Southwest.

General Jackson was given the undertaking. to Claiborne to hold his militia ready to

very easy to give.

march

He

wrote

— an order

In September he repaired to Mobile,

176

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIAXA.

which was

ah-eady threatened.

Tlie

British

Colonel

landed at Pensacola with some companies

]S'icholls liad

of infantry, from two sloops-of-war.

The

from

officers

Apalachicola and a considerable body of Indians had joined him, without objection from the Spaniards.

On

Suddenly attention was drawn to the Baratarians. the third of September an

armed brig had appeared

Grande Terre,

on an inbound

She

fired

off

vessel, forcing

her to run aground, tacked, and presently anchored some six miles

from

Certain of the islanders went off

shore.

in a boat, ventured too near, and, turning to retreat,

were

overhauled by the brig's pinnace, carrying British colors

and a white

flag.

In the pinnace were two naval

and a captain of infantry. one

a

They asked

"lie

is

man

of dignified and

officers

Lafitte,

ashore," said the chief person in the island boat,

pleasing address.

handed him a packet addressed

and asked that

The

person.

Mr.

French for the other.

officer speakinij; in

taria,"

for

it

officers

Lafitte,

Bara-

be carefully delivered to him in

receiver of

continue on, and

"To Mr.

The

it,

however, induced them to

when they were

\

lainly in his

power

revealed himself.

"

I,

shore, liis

myself,

am Mr.

Lafitte."

As

they drew near the

he counselled them to conceal their business from

men.

More than two hundred

Baratarians lined the

beach clamoring for the arrest of the " spies," but Lafitte contrived to get

them

safely to his dwelling, quieted his

men, and opened the packet.

IJAltATAKIA DESTROYED.

There were four papers

in

177

First, Colonel Xicholls's

it.

appeal to the Creoles to lielp restore Louisiana to Spain to Spaniards,

abolishing

;

French, Italians, and Britons, to aid in

American usurpation

and to Kentuckians, to exchange supplies for money, and neutrality for an open Second, his letter to Laiitte

Mississippi.

commission to him, lands to

captain's

and protection pirates,

;

in

with their

offeriuir a naval

all

his followers,

persons and property to

all,

the

if

would put themselves under the British naval connnander, and announcing the early infleet,

vasion of Louisiana with a powerful

Third, an

force.

order from the naval

commander in Pensacola Bay, to Captain Lockyer, the bearer of the packet, to procure res-

titution at Barataria for certain late piracies, or to

destruction over the whole

Colonel Kicholls's overtures.

place;''

And

fourth, a copy of the

orders under which Captain Lockyer had come. to secure the BaraUrians'

Mobile, or, at

all

He

was

co-operation in an attack on

events, their neuti-ality.

Lafitte, the captain

"carry

but also repeating

added verbally the

According

offer of

to

$30,000

and many other showy inducements. Lafitte

a

asked time to consider.

moment

He

w'Midrew; M'hen

in

the three officers and their crew were seized by

the pirates and imprisoned.

ment

all

with

many

night.

They were kept

in confine-

In the morning Lafitte appeared, and,

apologies for the rudeness of his men, con-

ducted the

oflScers to their pinnace,

the brig.

The same day he addressed a

and thej went letter to

off to

Captain

THK CKKULIOS OF LOUISIANA.

178

Lockyer asking a fortnight to '-put his

" eiitirely at his disposal.''

when he would be able for

affairs in order/'

It is notice-

polished dignity and the purity of

its

its

Eng-

lish.

anything more than stratagem

AV'as this

Creoles were his friends. scattered

all

;

set of ideas not superficially fairer

seemed to him unsuited

did.

The SpanThe prey.

interests

has

liis patriotism

side,

was only with

than his own.

he— to

a

They

to the exigencies of the times

Thousands of Louisianians thought

They and

were

and yet we may allow him patriotism.

whole war, on the main-land

the country.

and his

His own large

over Lower Louisiana,

been overpraised llis

his foe

Englishman were

iard and

?

and he

as

borrow from a distance the phrase

of another— were "polished, agreeable, dignified, averse to baseness

and vulgarity."

They accepted

friendship,

honor, and party faith as sufficient springs of action, and and only dispensed with the sterner question of right wrono".

True, Pierre, his brother, and Dominique, his

most intrepid captain, lay then in the calaboza.

Yet

should he, so able to take care of himself against

comers and

all fates,

all

so scornful of all subordination, for

thirty thoua paltry captain's commission and a doubtful country and sand, help his life-time enemies to invade the city of his

He

sat

commercial and

down and penned

social intimates

?

a letter to his friend Blanque,

packet, askof the legislature, and sent the entire British " amelioration of the situation of ing- but one favor, the

IIAIIATAKIA DKSTUOYED.

ami the next morning one of the

his luiliapi.y Ijiotlier;*'

!Ne\v OrleauH papers

170

contained

the fuUowin*'- ailvertisc-

nient: $1,000 HEWAIin

Will be

paid for the appivlu'iiding of

and escaped fitte is

about

last

live feet

he

is

brokt^

Said Pierre La-

ten inches lieight, stout made, light complexion,

and somewhat crosy-eyed, further sary, as

Pierre Lafitte, who

night from the prison of the parish.

known

very well

him

Said Lafitte took with

and those of their owners]

;


unneces-

in the citv.

three negroes, to wit: [giving their

names

the above reward will be paid to any per-

son delivering the said Lalitte to the subscriber. J.

H. Holland, Keeper of

•

On

the

Ttli,

John

ofling,— shoukl he

Government

joined

make

inclosed

made such in

him— to M.

hovered

still

in

is

not

overtures

known

by

;

the

but on

letter to Clai-

one from Pierre Lafitte— who had Blanque.

The outlawed bi'others offered themselves and men to defend Barataria, asking only oblivion of the The

— the

overtures to the United States

BlaiKpie's advice

?

the 10th, Lafitte borne,

Lafitte wrote again to Blanque,

and two sloops-of-war

British brig

the Prison.

high-spirited periods of

John

their past.

Lafitte challenge ad-

miration, even while they betray tinges of sophistry that

may

or

may

not have

"All the ofPence

I

been apparent to their writer.

have connnitted,'' wrote he, "I was

forced to by certain vices in our laws."

lie did not say

THE CliEOLKS OF LOUISIANA.

180

that these vices consisted mainly of enactments against

smuggling, piracy, and the slave-trade.

The heads near

Xew

of the small naval and military force then

Orleans were Connnodore Paterson and Colonel

They had organized and were hurriedly preparing

Koss.

a descent militia

A general of

upon the Baratarians.

was

Villere, son of the

the Creole

unhappy

patriot of 1708.

met

in council, with

Claiborne, with these three officers,

the Lafittes' letters and the British overtures before them,

and debated the question whether the

Claiborne being in the chair was not

should be accepted.

upon for a

called

what, with his character and

would

vote.

now

all

pirates' services

It

would be

interesting to

know,

thorough knowledge of the Creole

the expediencies of the situation, his vote

liave been.

Yillerc voted yea, but Ross and Pater-

son stoutly nay, and thus

it

British send ashore for Lafitte's final

lingered distantly for

Nor did the answer. They only

was decided.

some days and then vanished.

Presently the expedition of Ross and Paterson was ready.

the

Stealing

down

mouth by some

the Mississippi,

it

was joined

at

gun-vessels, sailed westward into the

Gulf, and headed for Barataria.

There was the schooner

Carolina^ six gun-vessels, a tender, and a launch.

On

the

16th of September they sighted Grande Terre, formed in line of battle,

and stood for the entrance of the bay.

Within the harbor, behind the low fleet

was soon descried forming

in

island, the pirate

line.

Counting

schooners and feluccas, there were ten vessels.

Two

all,

miles

IJAWATAKIA DKSTIIOVKI). iV-ni shore tlio ('.n'olhm

two

tlie

stoppo.!

l,y sl.oal

lioavior gun-vossels -roundel.

M-ere launcl.ed,

on into

was

and

j^.^

water,

]{„t arnu,,]

attack entered the pass and

tlie

a.,
boats

moved

tlie liarbor.

Soon two of

tlie

Baratarians' vessels were seen t.> be -.n another, attempting to escape, grounded, and the pii-ates, except a few brave leaders, M-ere flving. One of the fired vessels burned, the other was Imarded^and saved the one which grounded got off again and escaped. All the rest were presently captured. At this moment, a fine, fire

;

armed schooner appeared outside the island wis chased and taken. Scarcely was this done when another showed herself to eastward. The fully

The

Carolina gave cha^e

stranger stood for

Grande Terre, and ran

into water

where the Carolina could not follow. Four boats were l:uniched whereupon the chase opened tire on the CaroUna, and the gun-vessels in turn upon the chase, firin>. across the island from inside, and in half an hour ;

she su.^

rendered.

She proved

to be the

General

JUimr,

ariucd

with one eighteen, two twelve, and one six-pounder. The nest was broken up. " All their buildings

and

tal>lishments at

Grande Terre and Grand

telegraph

stores

^^troyed.

and

On

Xew

es-

with their

Cheniere Caminada, were de-

the last day of September, the elated squad-

ron, with their

armed

at

Isle,

prizes-seven cruisers of Lafitte, and three under Carthagenian colors-arrived

sciiooners

in

Orleans liarbor amid the peal of guns from the old barracks and Fort St. Charles.

184

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

But among the prisoners the commanding countenance of John Lafitte and the cross-eyed visage of his brother Pierre were not to be seen.

Both men

liad escaped

up

Bajou La Fourche to the " German Coast." Others who had liad like fortune by and by gathered on Last Island, some

sixty miles west of

asylum in

Xew

Grande Terre, and others found

Orleans, where they increased the fear of

internal disorder.

XXVI. THE BRITISH INVASION.

pATERSOX and Koss liad struck the Baratarians just in time. fitte

The

fortniglit

expired the next day.

asked of the

The

Britisli

Britisli

by La«

themselves were

away eastward, drawing off from an engagement of the day before, badly worsted. A force of far

seven hundred hundred Indians, and four vessels of M-ar had attacked Foit Bowyer, commanding the entrances of Mobile Bay and Mississippi Sound. Its British troops, six

small

garrison had repulsed

them and they

retired again to

sacola with serious loss, including a sloop-of-war

Pen-

grounded

and burned.

Kow the

General Jackson gathered four thousand

Alabama Eiver,

regulars, Tennesseeans,

men on

and Missis-

sippi dragoons,

and early in November attacked Pensacola with great spirit, took the two forts-which the Spaniards had allowed the English to garrison-drove the English to their shipping and the Indians into the interior, and returned to Mobile. to nnister his militia.

and

laid the call

Here he again

called

on Claiborne

Claiborne convened the Legislature before it.

THE CKEOLES OF LOUISIANA.

l&'i

llis

was not the master-spirit to command a people so from himself in a moment of extremity. On

different

every side was discord, apprehension, and despondency that he could not cure. Two committees of safety eni^aged

miserable

in

disputes.

Credit was

Money commanded thi-ee or four The Legislature dawdled until the uttered a noble isin is to

pi'otest.

"

Xo

destroyed.

per cent,

a month.

Louisianian himself

other evidence of patriot-

be found," cried Louallier, of Opelousas, " than a

disposition to avoid every expense, every fatigue." It

was easy to count up the resources of defence

erson's feeble

navy, the weak Fort

river, the unfinished lets,

mustered at

last after

short supply of

three imperative

calls,

ammunition— nothing more.

"seemed desperate."

known

to

But suddenly, one ;

Philip on the

Fort Petites Coquilles on the Rigo-

a wretchedly

" Our

situ-

La Carriere Latour

ation," says

returned

Pat-

seven hundred regulars, a thousand militia

Ptoss's

troops were

St.

:

in his admirable memoir, Twelve thousand chosen British have sailed for Louisiana.

day, the

first

enthusiasm sprang up

moment by

;

of winter, confidence all

was changed

in a

the arrival of one man, whose spare form

thrilled everything with its electric energy.

He

reviewed

the Creole troops, and praised their equipment and drill

he inspected

their forts; he was ill, but he was everyand everyone who saw that intense eye, that unfurrowed but fixed brow, the dry locks falling down over

where

it

;

as if

blown there by hard riding, and the two double

THE Side lines wliicli

and

shall "

liis

had dug

BKITLSII INVASIOX.

^j^-

overwlielming and perpetual " mnsl: at either corner of his firm but pas-

sionate mouth, recognized the master of the liour, emulated his confidence and activity.

and Like the Creoles

themselves, brave, impetuous, patriotic, and a law unto lumself, and jet supplying the qualities they lacked the contment could hardly have furnished a

man

to be their chief in a

day of

peril than

better fitted

was Andrew Jack-

son.

Soon the wliole

militia of citj

tlie hi-st tlioiisand,

was anotlier spring ships, it

was

said,

and State were added to organized and ready to marcl.. Tliero to tlieir tardy alacrity.

Eigl.ty British

were Iwaring down toward

Sliip Islan.l Cochr.^,e, the scourge of the Atlantic coast, was admiral of the fleet. On the 14th of Decen.ber forty-five

bar-es carrynig foriy-three gm.s and one thousand two Inmd'ed Lritish troops, engaged the weak American flotilla of six s>nall vessels near the nan-ow passes of

There was a

Lake liovme

short, gallant struggle,

masters of the lake and

Even then the

its

Legislatnre

borne's recommendation that

adjom-n. ^vords.

and the British

pronounced against it

mamtained

Clai-

declare martial law and

But Jackson instantly proclaimed " The

L-o

shores.

it in

rin-in..

district's safety,"

he said, " must and wiM bo with the best blood of the country," and he

would "separate the country's friends from Measures of defence were pushed on.

ades were manned,

new companies and

its

enemies."

Forts and stockbattalions

were

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

188

among them one of Choctaw Indians and two men of color. The jails were emptied to swell

mustered, of free

the ranks.

And

hereupon Jolm

Lafitte,

encouraged by Claiborne

and the Legislature, came forward again.

Jackson in one

of his proclamations had called the Baratarians " hellish banditti,"

whose aid he spurned.

trepid leaders

met

face to face in a

But now these two

in-

room that may

be

still

pointed out in the old cabildo, and the services of Lafitte

and his

skilled artillerists

the defence of the city.

were suspended

;

were offered and accepted for All proceedings against them

some were sent

to

man

the siege-guns

of Forts Petites Coquilles, St. John, and St. Philip, and others were enrolled in a body of artillery under " Cap-

tains" Beluche and Dominique.

One

of the General's

later reports alludes to the Baratarians as " these gentle-

men."

XXVII. THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS.

QXCE more the Creoles sang the "

Marseillaise.-'

The

invaders hovering along the marshy shores of Lake Borgne were fourteen thousand strong. Sii- Edward

Packenham, brother-in-law to the Duke of Wellington, and a gallant captain, was destined to lead them. Gibbs, Lambert, and Kean were his generals of division. As to Jackson, thirty-seven hundred Tennesseeans under Generals CofPee and Carroll, had, when it was near Christmas, given him a total of but six thousand men. Yet confidence, animation,

concord,

and even gaiety,

filled

the

hearts of the mercurial people.

"The

citizens," says the eye-witness, Latour, "were preparing for battle as cheerfully as for a party of plea-

The

sure.

'La

streets

Marseillaise,'

martial

airs.

The

resounded

Yankee Doodle,' *Le Chant du Depart,' and other with

*

fair sex presented themselves at the

windows and

balconies to applaud the troops going through their evolutions, and to encourage their hus-

bands, sons, fathers, and brothers to protect their enemies."

them from

190

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIAXA.

That

enemj, reconnoitring

found in

mouth of

tlie

niarslies of

its

on

Lake

Borgne,

soon

extreme western end the

a navigable stream,

Bayou Bienvenue. This water flowed into the lake directly from the west— tlie

direction of

suburb

it

AVithin

its

more than

had

Xew

its

mouth

the

Orleans, close behind whose lower

beginning in a dense cypress swamp. it

was over a hundred yards wide, and

six feet deep.

As

they ascended

its

waters,

everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, stretched only the unbroken quaking prairie. But soon they found and bribed a village of Spanish and Italian fishermen, and

under their guidance explored the whole region.

By

turning into a smaller bayou, a branch of the

the

first,

was found a very few miles away on the left, hidden from view by a narrow belt of swamp and hurrying southeastward toward the Gulf. From the plantations Mississippi

of sugar-cane on

its

border, various

draining canals ran

back northward to the bayou, offering on their margins a fair though narrow walking way through the wooded

and vine-tangled morass shore,

just

below

Xew

to the

open plains on the river

Orleans.

which has never been explained, city's

very outskirts had been

21st of

December some Creole

the fishermen's

The

left

By some

oversight,

this easy route to the

unobstructed.

On

the

scouts posted a picket at

villag-e.

Xew

Orleans & Mobile Railroad, he enters the southeastern extreme of Louisiana, gliding along the low, wet prairie margin of the Gulf, passes as

traveller on the

THE HATTLE OF across an island It rises

made by

just high

on

it is

the two mouths of Pearl Pavor.

A

dry ground.

lost its

aux Poix (Pea Island).

18U, the

IQl

sportsmen's sta-

called English Look-out; but the island itself

seems to have quite Isle

OIILEANS.

enough above the surrounding marsh

to be at times tolerably

tion

NEW

name.

was known then as Here on December the 21st, It

had been for days disembarking. Early on the 22d General Kean's division re-embarked from this British

island in

barges, shortly before dawn of the 23d captured the picket at the fishers' village, pushed on up the bayou, turned to the left, southwestward, into the smaller bayou (Mazant), entered the swamp, disembarked once

morJ

the

mouth

of a plantation canal,

at

marched southward along

edge through the wood, and a little before noon emerged upon the open plain of the river shore, scarcely seven miles from Kew Orleans, without a foot of its

fortification

between them and the

city.

But the captured

pickets

had

reported Jackson's forces eigliteen thousand strong, and the British lialted, greatly fatigued, until they should be joined by other divisions.

Kot, however, to

rest. At about two o'clock in the afternoon, while the people of the city were sitting at their midday dinner, suddenly the cathedral

bell staitled

them with

notes of alarm, drums sounded the long-roll, and as military equipments were hurriedly put on° and its

Creoles, Americans,

and San Domingans, swords and mus-

kets in hand, poured in upon the Place d'Armes

from

every direction and sought their places in the ranks, word

102

CKEOLES OF LOUISIANA.

TlIF

passed from montli to

and that

der,

force tion

enemy was but seven miles away

in

— " sur Vhabltation Villeie — " on Yillerc's planta!

"

!

lines

tlie

there liad been a blun-

inoiitli tliat

But courage was

*'

in every heart.

Quickly the

were formed, the standards were unfurled, the huzza

resounded as the well-known white horse of Jackson came

— —

down their front with his staff Edward Livingston and Abner Duncan among them at his heels, the drums sounded quickstep and the columns moved down galloping

through the streets and out of the anxious town to meet the foe.

In half an hour after the note of alarm the

Seventh regulars, with two pieces of

and some

artillery

marines, had taken an advanced position.

An

hour and

a half later General Coffee, with his Tennessee and Mississippi cavalry, took their place along the small Rodriguez canal, that ran

from the

and into the swamp, and which afterward became Jackson's permanent line of defence.

river's levee to

Just as the sun was setting the troops

that had been stationed at

Bayou

St.

John, a battalion of

free colored men, then the Forty-fourth regulars, and then

the brightly uniformed Creole battalion,

first

came

into

town by way of the old Bayou Road, and swept through the streets

toward the enemy on the run, glittering with accou-

trements and arms, under the thronged balconies and amid the tears and plaudits of Creole mothers and daughters.

Night came on, very dark. The Carolina dropped lessly

shore,

down

noise-

opposite the British camp, anchored close in

and opened her broadsides and musketry

at short

OF \K\V OIJLKAXS.

TinO IJATTLK

A

rfiJiM;c.

inonieiit later

foo with twelve hnndi-ed striking

them

upon the

fell

men and two

])iec'es

startled

of artillery

near the river shore, and prescntlv

tirst

along their whole

Jackson

\\K]

Coffee, with six hundred men, unseen in the darkness, issued from the M'oods on the

north,

line.

and attacked the British

right, just as

was

it

trvin*--

to turn Jackson's

left— Creole troops, mIiosc ardor would have led them to charge with the bayonet, but for the prudence of the liegular

officer in

the smoke of battle rested on the ened, and

all

talions—red

was soon coats,

command. field,

in confusion.

blue coats,

A fog rose,

the darkness thick-

Companies and

Highland

bat-

plaidies,

and

" dirty shirts " (Tennesseeans), from time to time got

lost,

fired into friendly lines, or

Out

encounters.

met

their foes in liand to

in the distant prairie

hand

behind the swamp

forest the second division of tlie British

coming

on, heard

the battle, hurried forward, and began to reach the spot while the low plain, wrapped in darkness, was still Hashing'

with the dischai'ge of

artillery.

The engagement was soon beyond that

over, without special results

which mo may be confident was, at the moment, Jackson's main aim. Before day he fell back two miles, and in the narrowest part of the plain, some jvesiiy/e

four miles from town, began to

make

Ids

permanent

line

behind Rodriguez Canal. Inclement weather friend and foe.

The

set in, increasing the hardships of

British toiled

miry ground of the sugar-cane 18

incessantly in

fields to

the

bring up their

ntEOLES OK LOIISIA.VA.

TIFK

]i)4

liCJivv artillerv,

and

batteries,

and

botli

forward tbeir

burried

and

sides crect'.'d breastworks

re-enforcoments.

Skinnisliing Mas Iretjuent, an
verv valnable. stroyed

made

tlie

Ueddiot

CdmliiKi

sliot fr(»ni

Ibitisli w(»rks de-

tlie

bnt ber arnuinient was savi'd and

;

a sliore l)atterv on tlicfartlier river baidc.

Year's day a lew bales

oi"

on

lire,

and

was tbe

tins

first

during tbe campaign.

matei'ial

^'ew

cotton, forming part of tlie

Anicrieau fortifications, M^cre scattered in set

On

and

AViien

directions

all

last

use

made

of

bad been

it

and tliis

called

to (ieneral flackson's notice tbat tbis cotton M'as tbe prop-

erty of a foreigner, it,"

—

"'

dred and arrived,

fifty

;

blest

a

nun and

and sucb

as bore serviceable

bim defend

weapons raised Jack-

men on bis main Duke of 8axe-Weimar, tbe very fee-

tbousand two bundred

a line, says tbe

'•

an engineer could bave devised, tbat

Yet on

let

tbe 4tb, two tbousand two bun-

Kentuckians, poorly clad and worse armed

sou's force to tbree line

Givcbim

On

was bis answer.

tbis line

is,

a straigbt one."

tbe defenders of ^'ew Orleans were

about to be victorious.

It consisted of balf a mile of

very

uneven eartbworks strctcbing across tbe plain along tbe inner edge of tbe canal, from tbe river to tbe edge of tbe

wood, and coutimiing a like distance into tbe liere

it

In

quickly dwindled to a mere double row of logs two

feet apart, tilled in lery

forest.

on tbis wbole

served by

men

between witb eartb. line

of rare

was twelve

skill, artillerists

tbe sailors of the burnt OaroUna,

Tbe

pieces.

entire artil-

But

it

was

of the regular army,

some old French

soldiers

Tin:

liAi'i'Li:

nkw

ov

out/kax;

un(U3rT''l!Uijcacoiie(>f IJonaparto'sgumiors,

ami

10.")

and

Doiniiii^iio

r>L'ludie, witli tlie tried cannoiieors of their pirate siiips.

Fi'oiri

battery to battery

with a droll confusi(»ii of dress.

tlic

riulc line

was

tilled

out

arms and trappings, men and

Here on the extreme

right,

just

on and under

the levee, were some rei^ular infantry and a comi)anv of ''

Oileans Uitles," with some dragoons

itzer.

oles in

Next ij-av

to

them was a

Creoles" midst

twenty-fours. color,

another

served a how-

battalion of Louisiana Cre-

and varied miiforms.

Una were grouped around

who

The

sailors of the Oo'o-

the battery between.

In the

were the swarthy privateers with their two

Then came a bunch

battalion of native

of sailors

pounder, a battalion of St.

around

Domingau

men

of

a thirtv-two-

mulattoesj a stretch

'im;

1-''^

l.lno fur HtiiM! rc^nilar

(»f

iaiifrv,

tAV('Iv(!-}>oim(l('r;

^nm

next, a

liiiiitini^-shirts

himcli

regular arfillcrv hi'lniid a

nii;lit in tlio

id"

l(»nu-

lank Tcimcs-

inariiu's,

then

sojiii;

brass culvoriiie and a

disai)pi'arini,^

in

in

the

at

tbe swamp,

water and slept at

innd

AVintry rains liad retarded every tliiiii;- in eamj), but at lengtli Laml)ert"s division

eamc

tlie

Uritish

up,

IVken-

took eonimand, and ])]ans wei-e perfected

liani

lionio-

Kentnckians, and

hy dav knee-doe])

iii-

brass

a

hiuwn

Carroll's

six-ponndor, tlicn Adair's raii^cd

wlicrt' tlioy stood

beliiiid

sIcMidcr line of

draped

end, ("ofUr's TiMnu'ssot'ans,

Fortv-fourtli

tlio

Francs

Ills

I«»n«,^

tliat

si'cans, tluMi a small, luinlit iMori'

isiaxa.

i.oi

artillm- and

and

riaujcacr

tlii'M

ok

«'i:i:(»m;s

for

tlic

A

narrow continuation of the canal bv which the Kiiiilish had come up through the swamp to attack.

final

its

liead at the rear of \'illere"s i)lantatioii

their boats could be floated

up

was

duir, so that

to the river front close

under the back of the levee, and then dra«;ged over top aiul launched into the

rivei-.

that fish for crawfish along call

'-(annal

it,

Jamiary there came across

the

through

narrow passage.

decisive battle

was

to

rauk, fiowery banks

plain a noise It

Mas impending.

its

squalid iiegresses

All night of the

to the alert ears

intervening

this

its

Packin'ani."

The

«»f

of

still

Ttli

of

the Americans

getting boats

was evident that the

Packenhanrs intention

throw a considerable part of

his force across the

river to attack the effective marine battery abreast of the

American

line,

erected

there by

Connnodore Paterson,

IIIK wliilo oil

lio, oil

Ills

line,

ill

lint

the

should

OF

M<:\V

I'lili

ri\X'r

upon

1)7

J

imembanassed bv

ruriiuisly

had

fallen.

.lacksoi

Colonel Thornton,

on the farther hank, was

his l)(»ats across the levee.

swifter than

OIM.KANS. its 's

tiro

niuiii

iHTpoiidicular coluimis.

to lead the niovenient tiiiu"

I'lJ-:

liithor sliore,

till'

tlaiik, tliri'O

I5AI

it

hail

awav and ojdv a

seemed.

The

who was loiiu-

current, too,

Eight priceless hours

was

^ctfar

sli}>j»i'(l

third of the inti'iided I'orce crossed.

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

198

Presently day broke rind rapidly brightened, the

them.

mist lifted a

little

fully descried

and the red

lines of the British

were

fit-

from the American works. Outside the levee

the wide riv^r and farther shore were quite hidden by the fo*^

which now and then floated hitherward over the land.

Packenhani was listening for the attack of Colonel

Thornton on the opposite

main

The sun

tery. till

from the

assault

rose

half -past seven

;

bardv, that

over

still

at the inaction.

A

longer.

was the

lay in

and wondering

Packenham could wait no

British rocket went

siy-nal for attack.

their long trench,

breastworks,

at length

np near the swamp.

It

A sins-le cannon-shot answered

from the Americans, and the opened with a frightful

waited

there was no sound.

sorry

But

marine bat-

He

but he heard nothing.

;

their

to relieve his

cross-fire of Paterson's

Meanwhile the Americans peering

was

roar.

artillery

On

on both sides

eTackson's

extreme

some black troops of the British force made a

left,

feint

against the line in the swanip and were easily repulsed.

On

his right, near the river, the

enemy charged

in solid

column, impetuously, upon a redoubt just in advance of the

YiuG.

Twice only the redoubt could

British were over

and

breastwork behind.

inside and pressing

on

and the

to scale the

Their brave and much-loved Colonel

Rennie was leading them. lie fell

reply,

But on the top of the works

dead with the hurrah on his

lips,

and they were

driven back and out of the redoubt in confusion.

Meantime the main attack was being made

in the

open

THE ]JATTLE OF :iEW OKLEAXS. plain near the edge of the

yards in front of tlie

swamp.

10<)

Some four

Iiuiu^ichI

American works lay a ditch. IJerc English formed in close colunm of "about sixty men tlie

They should have

front.

laid off their

heavy knapsacks,

for they were loaded besides with big fascines of ripe sugar-cane for filling up the American

and with

ditch,

scaling ladders.

But with

nu.skets, knapsacks

they gave three cheers and advanced.

shower of Congreve

a

partly covered by an

rockets.

arm of the

and

all,

Before them went

For a time they were and hy the fog, but

forest

soon they emerged from both and moved steadily fonvaid in perfect ordei-, literally led to the slaughter in the brave old British way.

"Where

are

you going?

"

asked one English

officer of

another.

"

I'll

be hanged

if I

" Then," said the

know."

first,

" jou have got into what I

call

a good thing; of you at

afar-famed American battery is in front a short range, and on the left of this spot is

flanked, at jight

hundred yards, by their

batteries

on the

opposite side of the river."

"The little

first

objects

saw, enclosed as

it

were

hi

this

world of mist," says this eye-witness, " were the can-

non-balls tearing

up the ground and crossing one another,

and bounding along air,

we

coming on our

like so

many ci-icket-balls through

the

from the American baUeries on the right bank of the river, and also from their lines in front."

left flank

THE eUEOLES OF LOUISIANA.

20()

The musketry tillery,

lire

of the Americans, as well as the ar-

was given with

Unhappily for

terrible precision.

the English they had singled out for their attack those

homely-clad shirts,''

men whom

— the

they had nick-named the " Dirty-

of Kentucky and Tennessee

ritlemen

— In-

dian fighters, that never fired but on a selected victim. Flaujeac's battery tore out whole files of

Yet the

men.

brave foe came on, veterans from the Cape of Good

Hope

and from the Spanish Peninsula, firndy and measuredly, and

a

few platoons had even reached

the canal,

when the

colunni faltered, gave way, and fied precipitately back to

the ditch where

it

had

Here there was a

first

rally.

lie-enforcements came up. dreadful mistake in

its

formed.

The knapsacks were taken off. The first charge had been a

lack of speed.

Xow

the start was

quicker and in less order, but again in the fatal columnar

form. "

At

a run," writes the participant already quoted, "

neared the American clearing away, but,

not at

first

The

line.

owing

mist was

distinguish the attacking

troops to our right.

.

.

now

the dense smoke,

to

we

and tumbling

seemed

to pieces.

as if .

.

could

column of the British

nonade and musketry was so tremendous in the that the vibration

rapidly

The echo from the

.

can-

forests

the earth were crackinjr .

The

coming out of the bowels of the

flashes of fire

looked as

if

above

surface were the batteries of the Americans."

its

Packenhani led the van.

On

we

earth, so little

a black horse, in brilliant

THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS.

201

uniform, waving his hat and cheering the onset, he was a

mark the backwoodsmen could not and

fell

from

Then

lowed him. field

with

recoiled

many

and

fol-

others of high rank, and the colunni again

fell back, tinallj discomfited.

" There

staff.

Foi'tv-third

wound; Gibbs

Ivean was struck and borne from the

" Did you ever see such a scene

ham's

Soon he reeled

miss.

his horse with a mortal

'.

nothing

is

?

" cried one of I*acken-

left

but the Seventh and

"'

"iw'ir

J

I'

"''wiu^ ^t.^-feiJ,,;'.!^-

riiriir.ajmMfcuiit^'''iiw'.'«v:rii t-i-linA

The Battle-Ground.

" They

fell,"

says another Englishnum, " like the very

blades of grass beneath the scythe of the mower.

teen hundred and eighty-one victims, generals, seven colonels, and

including

Seventhree

seventy-five lesser officers,

were the harvest of those few minutes."

At teries

length the American musketry ceased.

were answering shot for

side of the Mississippi came,

shot,

all

Only the bat-

when from

too late, a

the further

few reports of

202

THE CKEOLES OF LOUISIANA.

cannon, a

sliort,

brisk rattle of fire-arms, a hnsh, and three

British clieers to

few raw American troops on had been overpowered, and that Paterson's bat-

that side tery,

that the

tell

prevented from defending

the militia in

The

its

front,

by the blundering of

had been spiked and abandoned.

batteries of the British line continued to fire until

two in the afternoon

;

but from the

ing to the abandonment of

works

itself

M-as

was over

first

all effort to

signal of the

but one hour, and the battle of

at half-past eight.

From

at six killed

Orleans

;

Jackson, the

and seven wounded.

the 0th to the ISth four British vessels bom-

barded Fort

St. Philip

the 19th the British deserted,

forces

Xew

General Lambert reported

the British loss two thousand and seventeen

American

morn-

storm the American

without result

camp

and eight days

:

on the mornintr of

in front of- Jackson

was found

later the last of the enemies'

embarked from the shores of Lake Boro-ne

The

scenes of ti-iumphant rejoicing, the hastily erected arches in the Place d'Armes, the symbolical impersona-

myriads of banners and pennons, the columns of victorious troops, the crowded balconies, the rain of flowers tions, the

in a

town where flowers never

fail,

thronging populace, the salvos of

crowned

victor,

one

jieople,

artillery,

the garland-

and the ceremonies of thanksgiving in the

solemn cathedral, form a part that imagination.

the huzzas of the

may be entrusted

to the

One purpose and one consummation made and

little

of sorrow and naught of discord in

that hour mingled with the joy of deliverance.

XXVIII. THE EXD OF THE PIRATES.

]V^EWORLEAXS

emerged from the smoke of

battle

comparatively Americanized.

Peace followed, or rather the tardy news of peace, which had been sealed at Ghent more than a fortnight before the battle.

With

peace came open ports.

The highways

of commercial

greatness crossed each other in the custom-house, not beit as in Spanish or embargo days, and the Baratarians were no longer esteemed a public

hind

necessity.

Scattei-ed,

and pardoned, they passed into eclipse-not but fatally dark where they most desired used,

to shine

ill-founded tradition after the battle

total,'

The

that the Lafittes were never seen

of ^e^y Orleans had thus a figurative

reality.

In Jackson's general order of January 21st, Captains Dominique and Beluche, "with part of their former crew," were gratefully the

and

and

field,

mentioned for their gallantry in and the brothers Lafitte for " the same coura-e

fidelity."

settled

On

down

these laurels

to quiet life in

the vulgar admiration which

is

Dominique You rested

Xew

Orleans, enjoyin-

given to the survivor of

204

TIIK

(KKOLKS OF L(>UISIAXA.

lawless adventures.

he became a leader

It

may seem

ward

in

siipertliious to

add

tliat

politics.

In the spring of 1815, ffackson, for certain imprison-

ments of men who boldly o})posed the severity of longed

Old Spanish Cottage

in

his pro-

>»ew Orleans, was forced at length

dictatorship in

Royal Street, Scene of Andrew Jackson's Trial.

to regard the decrees

of court.

"hellish banditti," turned

'•

It

was then that the

Jacksonites," did

their

swaggering in the famous Exchange Coffee-liouse, corner of

St.

lined $1,000

carriage

Louis and Chartres Streets, and foi'

contempt of

by hand through the

court, aided in streets.

at

last

the

when he was drawing his

Of Belnehe .^

-"own.

illK

END OK

or „f

Pienc Ufitte

But

Tin; I'TUArKS.

little or nothing more Join, Ufitte eo,.ti„„o,l to i.ave a record.

After the e,t/s deliverance a he ar,.,,.. Oe„e,-al

ball

was

give,, to office's of

Coffee wa. ,„.e.e„t.

fttte^ ()„ the,r bo,,,. h,.o„.ht together tl.e Ge„e,-al showed so,„e

hositatio,, of

"pon the «-,tl,

O0.5

testy JJa,-ataria,.

So, too,

,.,a„„e,-,

1,1

e,„phasis, " Latitte, the ph-ate.''

That

whce-

adva„ced haughtily a„d

said.

Thus, „„co„scio„slv,

-nay I,e,hefo,-etoid that part of his life which the f„tu,-e.

|t

.., La-

a„d iufodaced,

still la'J

'

fut„,-e

belougs p,-operly to the historv of Texa. vesto,. Islaud had ea,-ly bee,, one of LafittVs stations,' and now beca,ne his per„,unent depot, when..e he ca,-ried on extensive ope,-atio„s,

Ga

c„nt,-aband and

pnncpal

c-uiser

an eonunission.

was the Jupit,,.. She

Under the

iSacogdoches, Lafitto became

An

filibuster

His

pi.-atical.

sailed „n,ler a

Long,

Govcnor

who

Tex-

,„led at

of (iaheston

A,nerican ship was i^obbed of a ,,„antitv of specie seas. Sho,-tly afterward the Jupiter

on the high

ca„,o

into (ialvoston with a siniilar quantity on boa,-d. Unit ed States cruiser accordingly w.as sent to lay off the coast

A

and watch her

n,a„«,„v,-es.

],atitte

and sent to the Ainc^ican co,n,„a„der tion.

ll,s

lette,-,

took offence at this' to

don.and explana-

,na,-ked with „.o,-e haughtiness, as well

as w,th ,nore iIl-conceale.l cu,„,i„g than his eai'lier con^e-

spondenee swered.

«-itl,

the British and An,e,-ica„s, was not an-

Tn ISIS a storm destroyed four of his

fleet.

He

sent

THE CKKOLES OF LOUISIANA.

2<)()

one Lafagc to

New

Orleans,

of two guns,

new schooner

presently took a prize

;

who brought out thence a manned by fifty men. He

but had hardly done

so,

when he

was met by the revenue cutter Alaknna, answered her challenge with a broadside, engaged her in a hard battle, and only surrendered after heavy prize were carried into

Xew

Bayou

St.

loss.

The schooner and

John, the crew taken to

Orleans, tried in the United States Court,

condemned

and executed, Lafittc took

Once more

the disguise of a Colombian

The name

connnission and fitted out three vessels. is

Another was the General

not known.

third the schooner it

Blanqae.

Blank— ov, we may

of one

Victoria,

and a

venture to spell

lie coasted westward and southward as far

as Sisal, Yucatan, taking several small prizes, and.one that

was verv valuable, a schooner that had been a slaver. Thence lie turned toward Cape Antonio, Cuba, and in the

open Gulf disclosed to his followers that his Colombian commission had expired. Forty-one

men

insisted

the guns of the General

on leaving him.

He

Victoria, crippled

her rigging,

and gave her into their hands. sissippi,

dered to

They

removed

sailed for the Mis-

and after three weeks arrived there and surrenthe officers of the customs. The Spanish Consul

claimed the vessel, but she was decided to belong to the

men who had Lafitte lere,

fitted

her out.

seems now to have become an open

pirate.

V^il-

Governor of Louisiana after Claiborne, and the same

THK

OF THE PIKATKS.

KXI)

007

wlio liad counselled the acceptiuico of LaiitteV tures in ISII), s])oke in no

measured terms of

^'

over-

first

those

men

wlio lately, under the false pretext of serving the cause of the Spanish patriots, scoured the Gulf of Mexico, makin.^ Its

waves groan,"

liomes in

Xew

etc.

It

seems many of them

Orleans, nuiking

it

"the

and crnnes which he would not attempt The end of this uncommon man is

of unprobable traditions.

As

late as

found

ha
seat of disorders to descril.e."

lost hi a

confusion

1S22 his name,

if

not

his person, ]^

londa.

was the terror of the Gulf and the But in that year the irnited States

Straits of

Xavy swept

those waters with vigor, and presently reduced the perils of the Gulf-for the first time in its history-to the Jiazard of wind and wave.

A few steps down tery of those that

down

house

lie

the central walk of the middle cemealong Claiborne Street from Custom-

to Conti,

on the right-hand

side, stands

the

low, stuccoed tond) of liis

Dominique You. The tablet bears name surmounted by the end^Iem of Free Masonry.

Some one takes good care of it. An epitaph below proclaims him, in French verse, the "intrepid hero of a hundred battles on land and sea who, without fear and without reproach, will one day view, ;

of the world." Ins

To

this spot, in

way by

unmoved, the destruction 1830, he was followed on

the Louisiana Legion (city militia), and laid to rest with military honors, at the expense of the town council.

Governor Claiborne

left the

executive ehaii- in 1816 to

208

TIIK

CUEOLES OF LOUISIAXA. His

represent the State in the United States Senate. cessor

was a Creole, the

Villere tlie

who

in

son, as

ITOD had died

we

in

suc-

luive seen, of that fierv

Spanish captivity one of

very earliest martyrs to the spirit of American free>-' •

Tomb

"M-'f^i^-^

of Governor Claiborne's Family,

[From a Photograph .^

dom.

Claiborne did not live out the year, but in the win-

ter died.

In the extreme rear of the old

St.

Louis ceme-

tery on Basin Street, ^N^ew Orleans, in an angle of

brick wall, shut off

from the

rest of the place

low fence of cypress palisades,

is

its

high

by a rude,

a narrow piece of uncon-

THE E\D OF THE PIRATES. secrated ground wliei-o

0()jj

tombs of some of New Orleans' noblest dead are huddled together in miserable oblivion.

Rank weeds and

tlie

poisonous vines have so choked up the

whole place, that there

is

no way for the foot but over the

tops of the tombs, and one

ware of snakes is

the

who

at every step.

tomb of

Eliza

ventures thus, nnist be-

In the midst of this spot

Washington Claiborne, the Gover-

nor's first wife, of her child of three years

same day

as she,

twenty-five,

who

and of his

who

died the

secretary, her brother, of

a few months later

fell in a duel, the rash victim of insults heaped upon his sister's husband

through the public press.

Near by, just within the picketed enclosure, the sexton has been for years making a heap of all manner of grave-yard rubbish, and under that pile of old coffin planks, broken-glass, and crockery, tinand rotting evergreens, lie the tomb and tlie ashes of William Charles Cole Claiborne, Governor of Louisiana. cans,

14

XXIX. FAUBOURG

"TF one

will stand to-daj

vanished

left

little

Or-

and riverwurd from the spot where the longFort

St.

Louis once made pretence of guard-

ing the town's upper river corner, he will look streets at

Xew

on the broad levee at

with his bac'k to the Mississippi, a short way

leans,

out to the

STE. MARIE.

They

once.

are Canal

down two

and Connnon, which

gently diverge from their starting-point at his feet and

narrow away before his eye as they run down toward the low, unsettled lots and

commons behind

Canal Street, the centre and pride of its

name from

the city.

Xew Orleans, takes

the slimy old moat that once festered under

the palisade wall of the Spanish town, where

from

river to

swamp and

now marked by the Connnon

Street

tates wrested tion.

ran back

turned northward on the line

beautiful tree-planted

Rampart

Street.

marks the ancient boundary of the

from the

exiled Jesuit fathers

by

es-

confisca-

In the beginning of the present century, the long

wedge-shaped

ment

it

tract

between these two

lines

was a Govern-

reservation, kept for the better efficiency of the for-

tifications

that

overlooked

its

lower border and for a

FAUBOrK(J STE. MARIK. public road to No-iium's

laud.

It

was

Oj]

called the Terrc

Conuuuue.

That part of

tlie

Jesuits' foruier plantatious that lay

next to the Terro Couiuiuue was niaiuly the property of a singular personage uauied Jean Gravier. Its farther-side

boundary was on a

When

the

lire

now

line

in ashes, his father, Hertrand,

laid off this tract into lots

sciuares

indicated by Delord Street.

of 1788 laid nearly the half of

and

backward from the

and

streets, to the

river,

New Orleans

his mother, ]\[arie,

depth of

and called

it

had

tliree

Villa Gra-

On

her death, the name was changed in her honor, and so became the Faubourg 8te. Marie. vier.

had smiled upon the adventure. Julian PoyClaude Girod, Julia a free woman of color, and others had given names to its cross-streets by buying Capitalists

dras,

cor-

ner-lots

on

its

river-front.

Along

this front, under the breezy levee, ran the sunny and dusty Tchoupitoulas road, entering the town's southern river-side gate, where

a

sentry-box and Spanish corporal's guard drowsed in the scant shadow of Fort St. Louis. Outside the levee the deep Mississippi glided, turbid, silent, often overbrimmincr,

with many a swirl and upw^ard heave of its boiling depths, and turning, sent a long smooth eddy back along this "

making bank,"

w^liile its

townward, northward, as pursuers before

main current hurried onward, would double on invisible

if it

swept to the east and southeast from the Place d'xVrmes and disappeared behind the low groves it

of Slaughterhouse Point.

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

212

In the opening years of the century only an occasional villa

and an isolated roadside shop or two had arisen along

the front of Faubourg Ste. Marie and in the behind.

Calle

(lei

name, for

this street's

across the Terre

lower (northern) end looked

its

Commune upon

thought

it

wise to keep

;

but

it

it,

was

Don

Estevan Miro

Storehouse Street,

and the Americans made still

or

with purchases from the per-

Rue du Magasin,

the Creoles translated azine Street

filled

Almazen

the large

store-house of Kentucky tobacco which

fidious Wilkinson.

street

first

Almazen, the Spanish notary wrote

only a straight road.

it

Mag-

Truck-

gardens covered the fertile arpents between and beyond.

Here and there was a grove of wide-spreading

live-oaks,

here and there a clump of persimmon trees, here and there

an orchard of

figs,

here and there an avenue of bitter

The

present site of the

" St. Charles " was a cabbage-garden.

Midway between

oranges or of towering pecans.

Poydras and Girod

Streets,

behind Magazine, lay a canvpo

de negros, a slave camp, probably of cargoes of Guinea or

Congo del

slaves.

The

Campo — Camp

street that cut

through

it

became Calle

Street.

Far back in the rear of these lands, on the old Poydras draining canal, long since lonely, dreary waste of

filled

up and

built

upon

—

in a

weeds and bushes dotted thick

with cypress stumps and dwarf palmetto,

ponds choked with bulrushes,

flags,

full of rankling

and pickerel-weed,

fringed by willows and reeds, and haunted by frogs, snakes, crawfish, rats, and mosquitoes, ou the edge of the

FAUBOURrr STE. MARIE. tangled

swamp forest—stood

213

the dilapidated

"Doctor" Gravier. It stood on high pillars. dows and doors were lofty and wide, its

home Its

of

win-

verandas were

broad,

its

roof was steep,

its

chimneys were

tall,

and

its

occnpant was a childless, wifeless, companionless old man, whose kindness and medical attention to negroes liad woii

him

his professional

title.

He

claims mention as a type

of that strange group of

men which at this early period figured here as the shrewd acquirers of wide suburban tracts, leaders of lonely lives, and leavers of great fortunes. John McDonough, who

at this time was a young -man, a thrifty trader in Guinea negroes, and a suitor for the hand of Don Andreas Almonaster's fair daughter, the late Baroness Pontalba, be-^ame in after days a like solitary type of the same class. Jean Gravier's house long survived him, a rendezvous for desperate characters, mid, if ' rumor is correct, the scene of many a terrible murder.

In the favoring eddy under the river-bank in front of Ste. Marie landed the flat-boat fleets from the Ohio, the Tennessee, and the Cumberland. Buyers

Faubourg

crowded here for cheap and fresh provisions. huddled arks became a floating

The huge,

market-place, with the kersey- and woolsey- and jeans-clad bargemen there, and the Creole and his sometimes brightly clad and sometimes picturesquely ragged slave here, and the produce of the

West changing hands between. this.

Warehouses began

pitoulas road,

to

But there was more than appear on the edge of Tchou-

and barrels of pork and

flour

and meal

to

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

214

run bickering down into their open doors from the levee's

Any

top.

eye could see

tliat,

would be a wonderful change

only in

war

let

cease, there

the half-drained, sun-

baked marshes and kitchen-gardens of Faubourg

Ste.

Marie. Presently the change came. "

of j)eace.

Our

levee

is

the

news

official

harbor," wrote Claiborne, the Governor,

March, 1815, "

in

It outran

is

again whitening with canvas

crowded with cotton, tobacco, and other

;

the

articles

for exportation."

A full sunrise The whole

of prosperity shone upon

great valley above began to

derful speed and to pour

homes and

palisade.

thickets.

the old bounds.

They shovelled

works into the moat and pushed their

and

up with won-

into her lap the fruits of

They overran

streets.

They pulled up the old fields

Orleans.

Thirty-three thousand people were astir

its agriculture.

in her

down

till

New

streets out into the

In the old narrow ways

wider new ones alike

—

halls,

the earth-

— and

the

churches, schools, stores,

warehouses, banks, hotels, and theatres sprang up by day

and

night.

Faubourg

The

Ste.

Marie outstripped

all

other quarters.

unconservative American was everywhere, but in

Faubourg

Ste,

Marie he was supreme. The Western trade

crowded down

like a

breaking up of

ice.

In

1817,

1,500 flat-boats and 500 barges tied up to the willows of the levee before the ports ran

up

new

faubourg.

Inflation set in.

to thirteen million dollars' worth.

Ex-

FAUIJOUKG STE. MAIUK.

OJ5

In 1819 came the collapse, but development overrode Large areas of the hatture were reclaiiried

it.

in front of the

faubourg, and buildings.

the Americans covered

In 1812, the

first

the Mississippi; in 1810, for the

and reascended

its

them

witli

store

steam vessel had come down time, one overcame

first

current

in 1821, 441 fiat-boats and 174 ; barges came to port, and there were 287 arrivals of steam-

boats.

The

kitchen-gardens vanished.

Tchoupitoulas

Gravier Street, between and Magazine, was paved with cobble-

stones.

The

ment

^^ew Orleans

in

Creoles laughed outright. soil

"

It will sink

?

A

stone pave-

out of sight

!

"

I3ut it bore not only their ridicule, but

an uproat- and There was an avalanche of

gorge of wagons and drajs. trade.

It

crammed

new-with The

Up came

it.

stone went

and ocean

river

cry was for

the whole harbor-front— old town and

room and

their

down

fieets.

choked the

It

facilities.

The

streets.

Creoles heeded

wooden sidewalks and in their place,

curbs, brick and and by 1822 gangs of

street paviors

were seen and heard here, there, and yonder, swinging the pick and ramming the roundstone. There' were then 41,000 people in the town and its suburbs.

The

old population held

the failing trades of the

still

handled

in the

breath.

West

Coffee, indigo, sugar, rice,

were

its

It

clung bravely to

Indies, France,

and foreign

fruits

Rues Toulouse, Conti,

Chartres, St. Peter, and Royale

and Spain. and wines St. Louis,

but the lion's share-^ the cotton, the tobacco, pork, beef, corn, fiour, and north;

THE CREOLES OP LOUISIANA.

210

ern and British fabrics— poured into and out of Faubourg Ste.

Marie through

" Xevv Orleans in effect, "

is

hands of the swarming Americans.

going to be a mighty city," said they

and we are going to be

the Creole was that hinted of ill

tlie

still

Kew

Orleans."

But

powerful, and jealous of everything

American absorption.

1816, he elected one of his

own

race,

We have seen

that,

General Villere, to

succeed Claiborne in the governor's chair, and to guard the rights that headlong Americans might forget. this governor wrote in a special

" Indeed,"

message on the " scan-

dalous practices almost every instant taking place in

Orleans and

its

suburbs "

in receiving all foreigners." avail.

Kew

— " Indeed, we should be cautious That caution was of

little

XXX. A HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE.

"^^IIAT

a change

!

not but say, "

The same Governor Villere could The Louisianian who retraces the

condition of his country under the government of kings can never cease to bless the day when the great Americrn

confederation received

him

into

for Louisianians to be Americans

its ;

bosom."

but to

let

It

was easy

Americans be

Louisianians!— there was the rub. Yet it had to be. In ten years, the simple export and import trade of the port had increased fourfold

;

and

in the face of inundations

pestilences, discord of sentiment

and and tongues, and the sad-

dest of public morals and disorder, the population had nearly doubled.

Nothing could stop the inflow of people and wealth. In the next ten years, 1820-30, trade increased to one and its already astonishing volume. The inhab-

three-quarters

were nearly 50,000, and the strangers from all parts of America and the commercial world were a small army. itants

Sometimes there would be live or six thousand up-river bargemen in town at once, wild, restless, and unemployed.

On

the levee especially this

new tremendous

life

and

THE CKEOLES OF LOUISIANA.

218

energy heaved and palpitated.

Between 1831 and 1835,

the

mere foreign exports and imports ran up from twenty-

six

to nearly fifty-four million dollars.

wharves

built out into the harbor yet,

There were no and

all

the vast

mass of produce and goods lay out under the open sky on the long, wide, unbroken level of the curving harbor-front,

Ohio bargemen, (lermans, Mississippi raftsmen,

"whei-e

Irishmen, French, English, Creoles, Yankees, and negro

and mulatto

slaves surged

and jostled and hlled the

air

with shouts and imprecations.

Vice put on the same activity that conunerco showed.

The Creole had never been American came to

i!:rab

in as to gold diggings or

and run.

The

The

a strong moral force.

diamond

fields,

transatlantic immiu:rant of those

days was frequently the offscouring of Europe. The

West

gambUng and

duel-

Indian was a leader in licentiousness,

The number of

ling.

lottery-offices

billiard-rooms, gaming-houses,

was immense. In the old town they seemed

There was the French Evan-

to be every second house. gelical

and

Church Lottery, the Baton Kouge Church Lottery,

the Natchitoches Catholic Church Lottery, and a host of others less piously inclined.

were

full

of filibusters.

left

New

cafes of the central

town

In 1819, " General " Long sailed

hence against Galveston.

men

The

In 1822, a hundred and

fifty

Orleans in the sloop-of-war Eiweka, and

assisted in the taking of

Porto Cabello, Venezuela.

The

paving movement had been only a flurry or two, and even in the heart of the town,

where carriages sometimes sank

A IIUXDUED THOUSAND PEOPLE.

219

to tlicir axles in

mud, highway robbery and murder lay always in wait for the incautious night wayfarer who ventured out alone. The police was a mounted gendarmerie. If the Legislature conunitted a tenth of the wickedness

was charged of

the

all

open,

but

was sadly corrupt.

M-ith, it

week was Sunday.

The

stores

it

The worst day and shops were

slackened

and license gained headway. Gambling-rooms and ball-rooms were full, weapons were often out, the quadroon masques of the Salle de Conde toil

were thronged with men of high standing, and crowds of barge and raftsmen, as well as Creoles and St. Domin<'-ans gathered at those open-air African dances, carousals, and debaucheries in the rear of the town that have left their

monument Yet

in the

name

of "

Congo

"'

Scpuire.

prosperity smiled and connnerce roared alon^*the streets of the town and her faubourgs— Ste. Mario on still

her right, Marigny on her left— with ever-rising volume

and

value,

was deadly immigrant.

and

in spite of fearful

to Americans,

The

drawbacks.

and more deadly

climate

to the squalid

Social life, unattractive at best, received the

Creole and shut the door. beauty,

The main town was without and the landscape almost without a dry foothold.

Schools were scarce and poor, churches few and

ill

at-

tended, and domestic service squalid, inefficient, and corrupt. ics

Between 1810 and 1837 there were

of yellow fever.

M'liile

Small-pox was frequent.

yellow fever was

carried off one

i

lifteen

still

epidem-

In 1832,

epidemic, cholera entered and

erson in every six;

many

of the dead

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

220

were buried wliere the river. a journey

tliey died,

]\Ioreovcr, to get to the

famed

for

;

town or

On

dangers.

its

liundred lives were lost thirty

and many were thrown into

The

on another, one

;

them

For, with

'i

New

Orleans

and with others wliich we

all,

pass by, her population between 1830 and 1840 once

doubled

its

She was the fourth

numbers.

cd States in the number of her people. in the previous decade

Only

and distanced.

more were

her numbers.

Cincinnati, which her,

was surpassed

York, Philadelphia, and Balti-

was no other

Faubourg

suburbs above her until

Ste.

it

more

citv of the Unit-

Boston was uearlv as large

larger.

sides these there

had outgrown

Xew

was

lakes.

AVithout tliese drawbacks what would

have been

was

one steamboat, three

cost of runnintf a steamer

on the northern

six times as great as

it

on another, one hundred and

;

on another, the same number

hundred and twentv.

to leave

city in the

Marie

liad

;

but be-

Union of half

swallowed up the

comprised ths whole expanse of

the old Jesuits' plantations to the line of Felicity lload.

The

old ^larquis

Marigny de Mandeville, whose plantation

lay on the lower edge of the

nade, had turned

had run over upon

it it

and here and there a

into lots

town and

and covered villa.

The

it

just across the Esplastreets,

and the town

M'ith small residences,

city boundaries

extended to take in both these faubourgs

;

had been

and the three

" immicipalities," as they were called, together numbered

one hundred and two thousand inhabitants.

The ends

of the harbor -front were losing sight of each

A nUNDKED TIIOrSANl) other.

In

tlio

PEOl'LE.

seasons of liigh water the

tall,

looking steamers that crowded in together, "

ftm

hroad,

how

f^ ±.

frail-

on," at

the hiisy levee, hidden to their hurricane roofs in cargoes

Old Bourse and St

of cotton bales, looked

Lnuis Hotel.

(Afterward

tile

State House).

down upon not merely

Spanish-American town of narrow

streets,

a (juiet

little

low, heavy,

rugged roofs, and Latin richness and variety of color peeping out of a mass of overshadowing greenery.

Fort

St.

CKEOLES OF LoriSIAXA.

TJIE

'J'22

the last fraction of the okl fortifications, was

Cliailcj;,

gone, find

smoked

loftv

tlie

chimney of a United States mint

The new

in its place.

]>oni"se, later

known

as St.

Louis Hotel, and yet later as the famed State-house of lieconstrnction days, just raised

view above the intervening lifted its

dome

low, black

its

into

A huge prison

piles of brick.

frowning walls and quaint Spanish twin belfries

At

gloomily over Congo Square.

the white-stuccoed Mer-

chants' Exchange, just inside the old boundary on the Ca-

nal Street side, a stream of

was the

Post-office.

men poured

Down

in the lower

bend shone the Third Municipality,

On

bourg Marigny.

its front,

Here on the

out, for there

arm

of the river's

— which

liad

been Fau-

behind a net-work of ship-

ping, stood the Levee Cotton Press

million dollars.

and

in

;

it

had

cost half a

south, sweeping far around

and beyond the view almost to the " Bull's Head Coffeehouse," was the Second Municipality, once Faubourg Ste.

Marie, with Press, that

its lines

must needs

the other, and

banks

:

and

many

lines*

of warehouses,

cost a quarter million

a lesser one.

its

Orleans

more than

The town was

full of

the Commercial, the Atchafalaya, the Orleans, the

Canal, the City,

etc.

Banks's Arcade was there, a glass-

roofed mercantile court in the midst of a large hotel in

Magazine tels

Street,

now long known

were numerous.

In

as the St. James.

Camp and

St.

Ho-

Charles Streets

stood two theatres, where the world's stars deigned to present themselves, and the practical jokers of the upper galleries concocted

sham

fights

and threw straw

men

over

A HUXDIIKD THOUSAND PDOPLK. into

a

tl.c

i>03

pit below, with cries of

church— tlie

murder. Here and there First rresbyterian, the Carondelet :Metho-

dist-raised an admonitory linger.

The

site of okl

Gravier's house was hidden beliind Toydras

Market

;

Jean •

the

,

uncanny iron frames of

tlie Gas Works rose beyond. The reservoir of the water-works lay in here to the left near

the river, whose

muddy water

the street

for Julia, the

named

it

used.

Back yonder

in

f. w. c.,* a little bunch of schooner masts and pennons showed where the Canal Bank liad dug a "Kew Basin " and brought the waters of Lake Pontchartrain up into this part of the city

also.

It

•

was the period when the American idea of

" Free woman of

notarial documents.

architect-

color "-initials used in the Louisiana courts and

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

224 lire

had passed from

nioric affectation of

its

untrained innocence to a sopho-

Greek forms. Banks,

hotels, churches,

were Ionic or Corinthian,

theatres, mansions, cottages, all

and the whole American quarter was a gleaming white.

But the commercial shadow of

this quarter fell darkly

the First Municipality, the old town.

The

the line Toulouse.

A

fashionable shops on the

Koyale slipped away and spread out in Canal vault of the St. Louis

dome

still

upon

quiet crept into

Street.

Kuo The

echoed the voice of the

double-tongued, French-English auctioneer of town lots

and

slaves

but

;

in

the

cabbage-garden of

" old Mr.

Percy," in the heart of Faubourg Ste. Marie, a resplen-

dent

rival,

the

palatial St.

cupola high above

town and new, tunda was the

all

Charles, lifted its

surroundings and overpeered old

river, plain,

and receding

unofficial guildhall of

Here met the

active elements.

dazzling

all

forest.

Its ro-

the city's most

capitalist,

the real estate

operator, the merchant, the soldier, the tourist, the politician, the filibuster, the convivial ist, the

the horse-fancier

—which had a behind the

words

New

—was

;

steamboat captain,

and ever conspicuous among the throng

trick of separating

pillars of

suddenly and dodging

the rotunda at the sound of high

a man, a type, an index of great wealth to

Orleans,

who

in this spot

was never quite at home.

was never a stranger and

0)

c

I-

XX XL FLUSH

TLAIES.

'J^IIE brow and cheek of

tliis man wore darkened l)y ontdoor exposure, but they were not weatJier-beaten Ills sliapely, bronzed liand was no harder or rougher than was due to the use of the bridle-rein

and

Ills

eve was

Lair

was a

tlie

little

eye of a steed luxuriant.

manner M-as military,

;

Ids

tiie

ueck-the same

His speech was

Ins sentiments

gurustock

positive,

Jlis

hh

were antique, his cloth-

ing was of broadcloth, ]r. boots were neat, and his Imt soft, broad, and slou.i.ed a little

was

to show its fineness was the Mississippi River planter ^V]m^ sugar was his crop and Creole French liis native

Such

in his best aspect

tongue, his polish would sometimes be finer finish

got in Paris, and his

He was growing

liotel

Mould be the

to be a great power.

still,

with a

St. Louis.

The enormous

agi-icultural resources of Louisiana, Mississippi,

Arkansas,

and Tenuessee were liis. The money-lender gyrated around liim with sweet smiles and open purse. He was mortgaged to the eyes, and still comn.anded a credit that courted and importuned hin,. He caused an increase of trade.

immense His extravagant wants and the needs

TJIK (III'.OLES OF

2^28

of his armies of slaves kept

almost or

<|iiite

LonsiAXA. drained of

tlie city

its capital

Borrower and

the whole year roimd.

Much

lender vied with each other in recklessness.

larger portion of all the varied products of the

ceived in

New

the

West

re-

Orleans Avas reshipped, not to sea, hut to

the plantations of the interior, often returning along the

same route half the distance they had originally come. capital that

]\rillions of

immenselv better

would have yielded slower but

iinal results in

the planters' paper, based

other channels went into

on the value of slaves and of

lands whose value depeiuled on slave labor,

—a

species of

wealth unexchangeable in the great world of commerce, fictitious as

paper money, and even more

illusory.

But,

like the

paper money that was then inundating the coun-

try, this

system produced an innnense volume of business;

and

this, in turn, called into

the

city, to

landings and the thousands of

fill

the streets and

humble dwellings that

sprang up throughout the old Faubourg Marigny and spread out on the right flank of Faubourg Ste. Marie, the

and German emigrant, by tens of thousands.

Irish It

was

lations in

States

in the midst of these conditions that

Bank

rolled the great financial crisis of

Where

large results

1837 across

had intoxicated enter-

banks without number, and often without founda-

prise,

But

specu-

Western lands and the downfall of the United

the continent.

tion,

mad

strewed in

New

their notes

among

the infatuated people.

Orleans enterprise had forgotten everything

but the factorage of the staple crops.

The banks were

FLUSH TIMES.

231

not so many, but tliey followed the fashion in havintr make-believe capital and in crumbling to ashes touch.

at a Sixty millions of capital, four of deposits, twelve

hundred thousand estate,

specie, eighteen

and seventy-two millions

tested,— such was their record "

A

hundred thousand

real

receivables, mostly pro-

when they suspended.

whirlwind of ruin," said one of the newspapers,

" prostrated the gi-eater portion of the city." Everybody's hands were full of " shin-plasters." There was no other currency. Banks and banking were execrated, and their

true office so

understood that a law was passed preventing the establishment of any such institution in the State.

A few old

ill

banks that weathered the long financial

accepted, with silent modesty, the into their liands, and in

weaker concerns

The

city's foreign

;

but, for the

having abandoned the

resumed specie payment.

connneice had dropped to thirty-four

and three-quarters million lions

1843,

to shipwreck,

stress

monopoly thus thrown

first

dollars, a loss of

time in her

liistory,

nineteen milshe sent to sea

a million bales of cotton.

The

crisis

had

set

only a momentary check upon agri-

culture. The financiers of Kew Orleans came out of it more than ever infatuated with the plantation idea. It had become the ruling principle in the social organism of

the South, the one tremendous drawback to the best de-

velopment of country and Mississippi Valley threw

city

all its

into this seductive mistake.

;

and now the whole lower energies and

all its

fortune

-'^^

Tin-:

And which

still

of loiisiaxa.

ci:i:oLi;s

the city grew;

grew

The

the Mississippi.

1840,

was it

in 1850,

.s^f),

700,000

;

it

184:L>,

in 1.S44,

was over S77,000,00O

;

it

it

lifted its

the value of these reM-as S(;o,000,000

in 1847, it

M'as close to )?0 7,000,000.

l»roadened;

it

Delta saiuls on

great staples of the A^alley poured

down ever more and more. In ceipts

as the

stands had grown, by the compulsory tribute of

it

The

head higher.

;

in

was ,S90,000,000 city

The

lengthened

;

;

trowel rano-

everywhere on home-made brick and imported granite, and hou.^es rose by hundreds. The Irish and Germans thronged

down from

the decks of emigrant ships at the

rate of thirty thousand a year.

out slave service.

They even

partly

crowded

In 1850, there were 5,830 slaves

in the city than in 1840.

The

less

free mulatto also gave way.

rnenterprising, despised, persecuted, this caste, once so scant in numbers, liad grown, in 1840, to be nearly as nu-

merous as the whites.

them double

liatred

" abolition " (piestion brought

and suspicion

and intolerant State it

The

;

and

restrictive, unjust,

legislation reduced their

numbers-

by exodus— from 10,000 to less than Allowing for natural increase, eleven or

nnist liave been

10,000 souls.

twelve thousand nuist liave left the city. The proportion of whites rose from fifty-eight to seventy-eight per cent.,

and the whole i)opulation of

Xew Orleans

and

its

environs

Mas 183,050. Another dary.

city

had sprung upon the

city's' upper bounIn 1833, three suburbs, Lafayette, Livaudais, and

Keligeuses, the last occupying an old

plantation of the

.>'>>i

km;sh iimks. into u town,

Ursiiliiio iiuiis, coiubini'd wciiltliy Anioiicjuis

^.).)

lioii'iiM

to

movo

iij)

Al)ont liorr

1S4<>, the

into "large,

Entrance to a Cotton Yard.

coniniodious, sides,

ono-stoiy liousos, full

and surrounded

by broad

of

M'indows

and t>hady

on

all

gardens."

234

TIM-:

CKEOLES OF LOUISIAXA.

Here, but nearer the tlie

former

—

river,

filed in continually,

Lafayette contained nearly It

all

Germans and

Irish

— especially

and by 1850 the town of

over fourteen thousand

residents,

white.

was a

The

red-letter year.

large, square granite blocks

in strongly.

The

was

first street

pavement of

Wharf

laid.

building set

wires of the electro-magnetic telegraph

drew the

city into

The mind

of the financier was aroused, and he turned his

with

The " Tehuantepec

eye toward railroads. its first

connection

closer

;

much

The Mexican Government was to be bargained with.

route " received

Mexican grants were bought

decided impulse.

surveys were procured

civilization.

effort

made— and

lost.

too unstable and too fickle

IJut in 1851,

improvements were actually

was

set

meantime, two great

on foot; to wit, the two

railways that eventually united the city with the gi-eat central system of the

Union

in the Mississippi-Ohio Valley,

and with the vast Southwest, Mexico, and

California.

These two works moved slowly, but by 1855 and 1857 the railway trains were skimming out across the bowery prairies tremhlantes eighty miles

westward tow^ard Texas, and

the same distance northward toward continent.

the centre of the

In 1852, Lafayette and the municipalities were

consolidated into one city government. subdivision under

r

Sixteen years of

parate municipal councils, and similar

expensive and obstructive nonsense, had taught Creole,

American, and immigrant the value of unity and of the

American

principles of

growth better than unity could

FLUSH TIMES. have done

23,T

Algiers, a suburb of machine shops and

it.

nautical repair yards, began to

farther side of

grow conspicuous on

Tlie consolidation

was a great

step.

Tiio

quarter became the centre and core of the whole

new and

excessively classic

came the

city hall.

rendezvous of

tlio

tlie river.

all

American city.

marble municipality

Its public

Its

hall be-

grounds became the chosen

popular assemblies. All the great trades

sought domicile in its streets and the St. Charles, at whose memorable burning, in 1850, the people wept, being ;

restored in

1852-53,

made

final

eclipse of

the old St!

Louis.

A

small steel-engraved picture of

just before this period,

Now

Orleans,

made

obviously the inspiration of the commercial and self-important American. The ancient is

plaza, the cathedral, the old

hall of the cabildo, the calaboza, the old Spanish barracks, the emptied convent of

the Ursulines, the antiquated and decayed Rue Toulouse, the still quietly busy Chartres and Old Levee

Streets— all

that was time-honored and venerable, are pushed out of view, and the lately humble Faubourg Ste. Marie fills the picture almost from side to side. Long ranks of huge,

lofty-chimneyed Mississippi steamers smoke at the levee

and high above the deep and stone rise the

and the

stately

majestic

tower of

solid

dome

;

phalanxes of brick and

of the

St. Pati-ick's

first

St.

Charles

Church, queen and

bishop of the board.

But the ancient landmarks trembled

to a

worse fate than

21)0

'llli;

the

Js.^o,

out of

loft

Iji'iiii;-

and

and

the

;i

a_
littki

and the

t(tiii

IJaroness

down

in

OM

bron/.e

that her father

new

had

Ituilt

her

,i;i'assy

I

figure

«>f

classics

dauii'liter.

The

city

]>lay-i;T(»und,

shruhhery, and

placed in

Nr>r>,

its

centre

the deliverer of

spot dackson Square.

remains to the presinit the

so, it

its i-i^'ht

on either side of

of red brick.

i-o\vs

later, in

e(]uestrian

On

buautv.

walks, tiimnied

M'hlte-shell

Orleans, and called the

even

and

the <juaint tile-roofed

IVmtalha, replacecl

dusty ilower-beds, and the

i'oundations,

Don Andreas's

laid out th(! Place d'Arnies, onct; hlindiiii;'

its

roofs Mcro clapped n[ton the ca-

j-'rcncli

the s(piare ^ith lar^e,

in

to

witli all of its Spaiusli picturcs^ueness

coni't-hous(!.

.store l)nil(linirs

In

liciiovatioii cuuiO in.

picture,

notliini;' uaiiicd

<»i'

left al)>urd

1)ildo

KKolJiS or I.nriSIAXA.

t'uthcMlral ^va.s

l)eg'au to rise

lost

(

Xew Yet,

last lurking-placc of

the i-onumce of primitive; ?Sew Oi'leans. It

was

Jiot

a time

thouiihts were led

mercc.

In

IS.-)!,

to

look for verv good taste.

All

awav hv the golden charms of com-

the value of receipts from the interior

M-as nearly Sl(»T,»>Oo,(i(

Ml.

The mint coined SlO,000,UOU,

mostly the pi'oduct of Califorida's new-found treasurefields.

The

vear

isr*.')

cotton alone, there dollars' worth.

brouiiht

came

still

sixtv-eiiiht

The sugar crop was

liogsheads larger than ever before.

ureater increase.

and

Of

a (luarter million

tens of thousands of (

)v(.'r

a tentli of all

the arrivals from

sea

another intlation.

Leaving out the immense unascertained

amounts of shipments

were of steamships.

There was

i/do the interior, the city's business,

The Old Bank

in

Toulouse Street.

FLUSH TIMES.

2;j9

two liundrcd and soventj-one and a qnarIn 1857 it was three hundred and two mil-

in 1850, rose to

ter millions. lions. felt.

In this year

Xew

Orleans

came a felt it

crash,

which the whole country

rather less than other

cities,

and

quickly recovered.

We pause

at 1800.

In that year

New

Orleans rose to

a prouder connnercial exaltation than she had ever before

enjoyed, and at

its close

scent which

is

tunate

war.

civil

began that sudden and swift de-

not the least pathetic episode of our unforIn that year, the city tha. a hundred

and forty years before had consisted of a hundred bark and palmetto-thatched huts in a noisome swamp counted, as the fraction of its

commerce comprised in its exports, imports, and domestic receipts, the value of three hundred and twenty-four million

dollars.

XXXII. WHY NOT rrillE great Creole

BIGGER THAN LONDON. city's

geograpliieal position has

ways dazzled every eye except the of capital.

"

The

position of

Xew

cold, coy scrutiny

Orleans," said Presi-

dent Jefferson in 1804, "certainly destines greatest city the world

Home

neither dictions

has ever seen."

nor Babylon.

are based

tainties of ties

them down

to-morrow are changed

of to-day

;

deserts

;

;

and

to

be the

positive pre-

one unforeseen

seeming

tiie

cer-

to the opposite certain-

become gardens, gardens

older cities the haunts of bats

When

it

lie excepted

But man's most

upon contingencies

victory over nature bowls

al-

cities,

and

foxes.

the early Kentuckian and Ohioan accepted na-

ture's

highway to market, and proposed the conquest of

Kew

Orleans in order to lay that highway open, they hon-

estly believed there

commercial world. hailed

it

was no other possible

When

outlet to the

steam navigation came, they

with joy and without question.

seemed an ultimate Creole, to the

result.

To

To them

it

the real-estate hoarding

American merchant who was crowding and

chafing him, to every superticial eye at least,

it

seemed a

WHY NOT

BIGGER THAN LONDON.

241

pledge of unlimited commercial empire bestowed by laws of gravitation.

Few saw

in

it

tl.e

tl.e

stepping-stone

from the old system of commerce by natnral highways a new system by direct and artificial lines. It is hard to understand, looking

how

to

back fron, the present,

so extravagant a mistake could

have been n.ade by Fron, the «rst_or perhaps, we shonid rom the peace of lS15-the developn.ent

w,se minds.

J,

of the

declmed to wait on Kew Orleans, or even on steam. 18.0 the new principle of

West I„

coum.ercial transportation-

that despises alike the aid and the interference of nature -opened, at Buffalo, the western end of the Erie (imal the gate-way of a new freight route to northern AthuJ fc t.de-waters, n.any hundreds of leagues more direct

than the long journey

down

the Mississippi to Iv'ew

and around the dangerous capes of Florida. same year another canal was begun, and in 1S32 ^ected the Ohio with Lake Erie; so leans

Or

In the it

con-

that, in 1835, the

btatc

of Ohio alone sent through Buffalo to Atlantic ports 86,000 barrels of ilour, 98,000 bushels of wheat

and

2,500,000 staves.

Another

ontlet

manufactures.

was found,

Steam, driving

better than all

all

transits-

manner of machinery

built

towns and cities. Cincinnati had, in 1820, 32 000 inhabitants; in 1S30, 52,000. Pittsburg became, "in the extent of ,ts manufactures, the only rival of Cincinnati in the West." St. Louis, still i„ embryo, rose from 10,000 to

U.OOO.

Bijffalo, a

town of 2,100, quadrupled

its

nun.bcrs

Tin: ciiiooLKs

242

Meanwhile, far down

in

of lovisiana.

Xew Orleans tin; Creole, p^rimly,

and the American, more boastfully, rejoiced prospei'ity that blinded both.

How

in a blaze of

should they, in a rain

of wealth, take note that, to keep pace with the wonderful

development

in the great valley above, their increase

should have been thn^e times as great as the sun of

illimitable empire,

it

was, and that

which had promised

to

shine brightest upon them, was shedding brighter promises

and kinder rays eastward, and even northward,

nature's hiiirhwavs and barriers. l)egan, tolls

aorm

Kven steam navigation

on the great lakes, to demonstrate that the golden

of the Mississippi were not

all to

be collected at one

or even two gates.

How

might

this

have been stopped

The moment East and toward

connnercial

"West saw that

?

By no

straiu'liter

means. courses

Europe could be taken than wild

nature offered, the direct became the natural route, and the circuitous the unnatural.

meant, sooner or

later,

East-and-west trade

the connnercial

>^'ew Orleans, until such

lines,

subordination of

time as the growth of countries

behind her in the Southwest should bring her also upon an east-and-west

line.

Meantime the new system could

be delayed by improving the backs were removable.

old,

many

of whose draw-

That which could not be stopped

could yet be postponed. -But there

Through

was one drawback that riveted

all

the rest.

slave-holding, and the easy fortmie-o-etting

it

afforded, an intellectual indolence spread everywhere, and

WHY XOT

BIGGER THAN LOXDOX.

245

the merchant of Faubourg Ste. Mario, American-often

Aew

Englander~as he

M-as, sank under tlie seductions of a livehliood so simple, so purely executive, and so

m perquisites,

rich

as the

marketing of raw crops. mental inertia sprang an invincible Creole, It.

A

whose

From

this

provincialism;

the

society

he was always courting, intensified lierier civilizations were too far away to disturb it "pKuliar institution" doubled that remoteness, and an

enervating, luxurious climate folded It colored his financial convictions

and

pnbhc

again upon

it

all liis

itself

conduct of

affairs,

lie confronted obstacles with serene apaboasted of his city's natural ; advantages, forgetting that It was man, not nature, that he had to contend with" surrendered ground which he might have held for generations; and smilingly ignored the fact that, with all her increase of wealth and population,

thy

his

back along the comparative "

Was

scale

of

town was

she not the greatest in exports after

The same

influence

and only a sugar,

that

made

slipping.

American

the

cities"

Xew York Creole

?

"

always

tobacco, or cotton factor, waived

away

the classes which might have brought in manufactures

with them.

Its shadow fell as a blight upon intelligent trained labor. Immigrants from the British Isles and froni

Europe poured in

but those adepts in the ; mechanical and productive arts that so rapidly augment the fortunes of a commonwealth staid away ; there was nothing in surrounding nature or society to evolve the operative from the hodcarrier and drayman, and the prospecting manufacturer and

his capital tnnied aside to uncoiiteniiied,

and

forward at the

call of

Men tlie

OF J.OUISIAXA.

TIIK (IIKOLES

24(J

skill

newer towns where labor was

and technical knowledge sprang

enlightened entcrj)rise.

ne\'er ijruessed the wliole nionev value of time until

great inventions for the facilitation of connuerce began

to appear.

"

Adopt

us,''

these seemed to say as they

came

forward in protession, "or you cannot l)econie or even

main

Hut, even

great."

where on right and demand

lines

only

between

tliose cities

Xew

Louisville,

It M'as the fate,

Orleans not to be one such. Pittsburg,

Cincinnati,

York, Philadelphia,

lying some-

great centres of supply

tlie

could seize and iiold them.

not the fault, of Louis,

so,

more fortunate

were

Ijaltimore,

domain of

The

New

new

locomotive engine smote the connnercial

Orleans in half, and divided the best part

of her trade beyond

tlie

mouth

of the Ohio

In that decade of development

rivals.

Ht.

New

l)OSton,

while Cleveland, 'Buffalo, Chicago, were l)orn of these conditions.

re-

among her

— 1830-40 — when

the plantation idea was enriching her with one hand and

robbing her of double with the other, the West was with town

life,

and

railroads

filling

and canals were starting

eagerly eastward and westward, bearing innnense burdens of freight and travel, and changing th^ scale of miles to that of minutes.

Boston and

New York

had pre-empted

the future with their daring outlays, and clasped hands tighter with the States along the transit. iviver,

Ohio by

lines of direct

Pennsylvania joined Philadelphia with the same

and spent more money

in railroads

and canals than

Exchange

Alloy.

(O'd Passage de

'a

Bourse.)

Looking toward the Amer can Quarter.

WJIV :S0T lUGGKU TIIAX LOXDOX. any other State

i.i

the Union.

C'liesapeake ct Oliio canal

ana spent millions.

I^altiniorc

and railway.

i>40

readied out

licr

OJiio and Indi-

IJut the census of

1840 proclaimed

^c^v Orleans the fourth

city of the Union, and her merchants openly professed the belief that they ^vere to become the metropolis of America Avithout

exertion.

Kapid

transit only annised

milled breadstuffs

They looked

sought the cheapest rates of

still

at the tabulated figures; they

ping their share of the ducts.

It

that they

was not '^

them, while raw crops and

true,

were

fi-eight.

still

ship-

A^alley's vastly increased field pro-

they

said,

with sudden resentment,

sold the skin for a groat

and bought the tail But they did not look far enough. Im-

for a shilling."

proved transportation, denser settlement, labor-saving mahad immensely increased the West's producing

chinery,

power.

IS^ew Orleans should

have received and exported an even greater proportion— not merely quantity— of those products of the able to help

it,

field.

Partly not heeding, and partly un-

she abandoned this magnificent surplus to

the growing cities of the

she

fail to notice that

West and

more did the manufactures of the Mississippi

and Ohio States had risen from sixty-four millions. as another decade

East.

She began was closing

fifty to

one hundred and

to observe these facts oidy

M-ith 1850,

import trade had shrunken to

less

Boston and a tenth that of

York.

Xew

Still

when her small

than a third that of

Her people then began to call out in alarm. :N^ow admitting, now denying, they marked, with a loser's impa-

250

THE CKKOLKS OF LOIISIAXA.

tience, tlio progress

their expense.

ot"

other cities at what seemed to

Boston had surpassed tliem

Brooklyn was fonr-tifths

tlieir

size;

St.

in

l)o

numbers

;

Louis, seven-

i4

S

,w

'^ilm^^ Old Passage de

la

Bourse.

Looking toward the French Quarter.

eighths ; Cincinnati was but a twenty-fifth behind ville,

;

Louis-

Chicago, Buffalo, Pittsburg, were coming on with

populations of from forty to fifty thousand.

Where were

when Xcnv Orleans was the connnercial empress of her great valley and heir-ap])arent t,> the soverei-nty of the world's trade? New York, Thiladelphia, 15altinl<>re, tlio day.-,

Liverpool-eonld they ever be overtaken merchant and Creole property-holder

i

Anieriran'

eried to each other

to

throw

Xature

The

off their letliargy

liad destined

was

air

and place

her to

Xew

Orleans where

sit.

of diagnoses: There had been too exclusive an attention to the moving of crops: there had been too much false pride against mercantile pursuits sanitation had been neglected there liad not been full

;

even'

;

the pretense of a quarantine since Lsl>5

pu^ Mc improve-

;

ments had been few and

made

tlie

trivial;

a social

town mdiomelike and repellant

order of inunigrant

exclusiveness to

the higher

the port charges were suicidal.

One

pen even brought out the nndei-lying fact of slave and contrasted its voiceless acceptation of

labor,

;

antiquated

methods of work with the

reflecting, outspeaking, actin-

I"

liberty of the

Korthern workman which filled the Xorthern communities with practical thinkers. The

absurd numicipality system of city government, which split the city into four towns, was rightly blamed for much nonprogression.

Much,

was the moi-e unjust blame and capitalists. Railways >

too,

of financiers

swing a railway from

would not be better tre of

But who could

Kew Orleans, in any direction, that it from some point near the censome other centre in the manu-

to stretch

Western supply

laid at the door

to

TJIK

'2k)2

factui'in<j;

and

CKKOLKS OF

('oiisiiinlng

Kast

J.oriSIAN.V. {

Slave labor liad handed

over the rich prize of Kiiropeau and Xcnv England innnigration to the mnnonopolized West, and the purely for-

tune-hunting canal-hoat and locomotive put?hed aside the slave

and his owner and followed the free immigrant.

And,

in truth,

iron

when

the outstretched

arms of Northern enterprise began

to grasp the pro-

was years

it

ducts of the Southwest M'ith

later,

itself,

that 2s'ew Orleans

capitalists,

more misi-iving than enthusiasm, thrust out

railway Avorthy of the

name through

their first

the great plantation

State of Mississippi.

Some lamented a lack of banking capital. J>ut bankers knew that Xew York's was comparatively smaller. Some cried against

summer absenteeism

;

but absenteeism was

equally bad in the cities that liad thriven most.

pointed to the large proportion of foreigners census that gave this proportion showed

and a half per cent, of the whites in forty-two

New

;

but the

The

first

but forty-fom*

Orleans, against

iu Cincinnati, forty-eight in !New York,

fifty-two in St. Louis.

those cities

it

Some

truth lay deeper hid.

and In

American thought prevailed, and the incoming

foreigner accepted

it.

In

Xew

Orleans American thought

was foreign, unwelcome, disparaged by the unaspiring, satirical Creole,

and often apologized for by the American,

who found himself forces oftener in

a minority in a combination of social

sympathy with European ideas than with

the moral energies and the enthusiastic and venturesome enterprise of the

New

World.

Moreover, twenty-eight

WHY NOT

IJKWiKIl THAN' L«)M)0\.

thousand slaves and free blacks luunpered the projjjress

Was

it

2r)3 spirit

<»f

by sheer dead weight. true that the import trade needed only to be cul-

Behind the Old French Market

tivated

?

Who should

the planter,

all

support

it

beside the planter

?

And

powerful as he was, was numerically a

small minority, and his favorite investments Nvere land and neo;roes.

The wants

of his slaves were only the most

254

TJIE

CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

primitive, and their stupid and slovenly eye-service

made

the introduction of labor-saving machinery a farce.

AVho

or

what should make an import trade?

valley.

xS

ot the AVest, either

have straight

lines

;

and prompt

Kot

?

easily, at least.

shadow fell upon them. The

fatal

must

deliveries.

Could manufactures be developed

The same

Not the Southern

for her imports, she

unintelligent,

uneconomical black slave was unavailable for

its

service

and to graft upon the slave-burdened South the high-

was impossible.

spirited operatives of other countries

"What did

all

this

sum up

?

Stripped of disguises,

it

stood a triumph of machinery over slavery that could not

be retrieved, save possibly tlu'ough a social revolution so great and apparently so ruinous that the mention of

it

kindled a white heat of public exasperation.

All this was emphasized by the Creole.

much power

still, [is

well

He

by his natural force

retained as

by

ownership of real estate and his easy coalition with eijrners of like ideas.

was

He

cared

little

lyzed public sentiment

when he

calls for

with the most unbending conservatism. chanore,

It

divided and para-

could no longer rule

and often met the most imperative

ment was

to understand.

He

his pride not to be understood.

his for-

it,

innovation

For every move-

and everv chansre carried him nearer

and nearer toward the current of American ideas and to absorption into their flood, which bore too

blance of annihilation.

formation was

Hold back

appallingly swift.

as

much

the sem-

he might, the trans-

And now

a

new

influ-

1VIIV

once l,ad sot

NOT

lilGCSKU

i„, whicl.

THAN LOXDOX.

250

above all others was destined to promote, ever >„ore and ,nore, the n.nty of all the diverse elements of Xew Orleans society, and their e-mipnient for the task of placing their to«n in a leading rank a.nong the greatest cities of the world.

xxxin. THE SCHOOL-MASTER.

n^IIE

year 18J-1 dates the

modern

rise in

New

Orleans of

tyhteni of free public schools.

tlie

It really be-

gan in the G'erman- American suburb, Lafayette

; but the next year a single school was opened in the Second Municipality " with some dozen scholars of both

sexes."

All the way b tck to the Cession, feeble,

efforts,

more or

had been made for public education

them lacked

that idea of

;

but

less

all

of

popular and universal benefit

which has made the American public school a welcome boon throughout America, not excepting Louisiaui.. In

180J:,

an act had passed " to establish a university in the

territory of Orleans."

"college of

Xew

The

university

was

to

comprise the

But seven years later nothing In 1812, however, there rose on the old Bayou road, a hundred yards or so beyond the former line Orleans."

had been done.

of the town's rear rampai-ts, at the corner of St. Claude Street, such a modest Orleans college as

$15,000

build and equip.

charity scholars.

But

The

it

was not

idea was

free, except

Ai^ould

to fifty

that of condescending benevolence, not of a i)aying investment by society for its still

THE SCIIOOL-MASTEK.

257

own

protection and elevation. Ten years later this was the onlj school in the city of a public character. In 1820, there were three small schools where "all the branches of a polite education " were taught. Two of these were in the old Ursnline convent. fourth finds mention in 1838, but the college seems to have disappeared.

A

Still the

mass of educable youth,-the children who

played " oats, peas, beans," with French and German and Irish accents, about the countless sidewalk doorsteps of a city of one and two-story cottages (it was almost such) the girls who carried their little brothers and sisters on one elbow and hip and stared in at

weddings and funerals;

the boys whose Idte-flying and

games were full of tefnis and outcries in mongrel French, and who abandoned everything at the wild clangor of bells and ran to fires M'here the volunteer firemen dropped the hose and wounded and killed each other in pitched battles ; the ill-kept lads

risked their lives daily five

in the yellow whirlpools of the Mississippi

wharves and

flat-boats,

among

the

who, naked and dripping, dodged

the dignified police that stalked

them among the cotton

bales,

who robbed mocking-birds' nests and

trees,

and trapped nonpareils and

and indigo-birds

who

months of the year swimming

orange and

fig-

cardinals, orchard-orioles

the gardens of Lafayette and the suburban fields,— these had not been reached, had not been sought by the educator. The public in

recognition of a

common

vital interest in a

lacking. 17

connnon elevation was

totally

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

258

At spirit

Men

length this feeling was aroused.

spoke and acted

Touro, Martin,

and such pioneers

;

De Bow, and

of public

as Peters,

Burke,

the Creoles Dimitry, Forstall,

remembered by a

later

generation for their labors in the cause of education.

In

Gayarre, and others are gratefully

the beginning of 1842 there were in the

American quarter

At

300 children in private schools and 2,000 in none. close,

the public schools of this quarter and Lafayette had

over 1,000 pupils. 1,300

its

;

In the next year, there were over

in 1844, there

were 1,800. In 1845, the University

The medical

of Louisiana was really established.

ment had already an existence law were in

full

;

this

depart-

branch and that of

operation in 1847, and Creole and Ameri-

can sat side by side before their lecturers.

Meanwhile the impulse for popular enlightenment took another good direction.

In 1842, Mr. B. F. French threw

open a library to the public, which in four years numbered 7,500 volumes.

The

State Library was formed, with 3,000

The City

volumes, for the use, mainly, of the Legislature. Library, also 3,000 volumes, was formed.

bered 7,500 volumes

;

but

it

threw open a collection of 2,000 volumes.

was revived.

About

num-

An

association

An

historical

In 1846 and 1847 public lectures

were given and heartily supported series

it

was intended principally for

the schools, and was not entirely free.

society

In 1848

was cut short by a

;

terrible

the same time, the " Fisk

*'

but, in 1848, a third

epidemic of cholera. Library of G,000 vol-

umes, with " a building for their reception," was offered

THE SCHOOL-MASTER.

259

to the citj.

But enthusiasm had declined. The gift was neglected, and as late as 1854, the city was still wkhout a single entirely free library.

In 1850 there was but one school, Sunday-school, or public library in Louisiana to each 73,960 persons, or 100 volumes to each 2,310 persons. In Rhode Island, there

were eleven and a half times

as

many books

to each perIn Massachusetts, there were 100 volumes to every 188 persons. In the pioneer State of Michigan, without

son.

any large

there was a volume to every fourth person. True, in Louisiana there were 100 volumes to every 1,21S free persons, but this only throws us back upon the fact city,

that 245,000 persons were totally without books and were forbidden by law to read. It is pleasanter to

grew rapidly

in

know

that the city's public schools

numbers and

efficiency,

and

that,

even

when her

library facilities were so meagre, the proportion of youth in these schools was larger than in

Baltimore or

Cincinnati, only slightly inferior to St. Louis and

Xew York,

and decidedly surpassed only in Philadelphia and In the old French quarter, the approach of

Boston.'

school-hour saw

thousands of Creole children, satchel in hand, on their

way

to

some old live-oak-shaded

colonial villa, or to some old theatre once the scene of nightly gambling and swo.xlcane fights, or to some ancient ball-room where the no^v

faded quadroons had once shone in splendor and waltzec with the mercantile and official dignitaries of city and State, or to

some

brigiit,

new

school building,

all

windows

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

260

and verandas. tion.

It

Thither they went for an English educa-

was not

first

choice, but

it

was

free,

father and niotlier admitted, with an amiable

was

and— the shrug— it

also best.

The

old, fierce

enmity against the English tongue and

American manners began

to lose its practical

weight and

to be largely a matter of fireside sentiment.

Creole, both of plantation and town,

still

drew

The

rich

his inspira-

—

from French, tradition, not from books,— and sought both culture and pastime in Paris. His polish heightened his language improved he dropped the West Indian softtions

;

ness that had crept into his pronunciation, and the African-

isms of his black nurse.

His children

but they were expected to cast them

still

off

babbled tliem,

about the time of

communion. However, the suburban lands were old town and down-town property was sinking in

their first sold,

value, the trade with Latin countries languished,

and the was only one here and there among throngs of humbler brethren who were learning the hard lessons of rich Creole

pinched

living.

was too valuable

To to

these an

Endish -American

be refused.

American's connting-room desk. emigrate across Canal Street.

training

They took kindly to the They even began to

XXXIV. LATER DAYS.

"^OT

schools only, but cliurclies, multiplied rapidly.

There was a great improvcinent in public order. Affrays were still coinmon the Know-:Xothing movement ;

came paign

on, and a

few " thugs " terrorized the

broils, beating, stabbing,

cal leaders

and spoilsmen

city with

and shooting.

Base

utilized these disorders,

cam-

politi-

and they

reached an unexpected climax and end one morninf>confronted by a vigilance committee, which had, under cover of night, seized the town arsenal behind the old Cabildo

and barricaded the approaches uptorn paving-stones. of the city.

It

But

riots

d'Armes with

were no longer a feature

was no longer required that

watch within a mile's a rattle.

to the Place

all tlie

circuit sliould rally at the

sound of

Fire-engines were no longer needed to wet

huge mobs that threatened

to

night-

down

demolish the Carondelet

Street brokers' shops or the

bargemen had ceased

to

Cuban cigar stores. Drunken swarm by many liundreds against

the peace and dignity of the State, and the publicity and respectability of

many

other vicious practices disappeared.

Conmiunication with the outside world was made inuch

THE CKEOLES OF LOUISIANA.

262 easier,

prompter, and more frequent by the growth of

Both the average Creole and the average

raih'oads.

The two types lost The American ceased some of their points of difference. to crave entrance into Creole society, having now separate circles of his own and when they mingled it was on more American became more

refined.

;

equal terms, and the Creole was sometimes the proselyte.

They were one on the

made

great (piestion that had

American southerner the exasperated champion of

the

ideas

contrary to the ground principles of iVmerican social order.

The Kew Orleans American was apt, moreover, by this time to be Xevv-Orleans born,

Creole's lethargy,

much

lie

had learned some of the

of his love of pleasure and his child-

ish delight in pageantry.

St.

Charles Street

—the centre

of the American quarter, the focus of American theatres

and American indulo:ences in decanter and dice strangely un-American

crowds,

tinsel,

when Mardigras

with dense

rouge, grotesque rags, Circean masks, fool's-

caps and harlequin colors, lewdness, buffoonery.

filled it

— seemed

"

We

mock

music, and tipsy

want," said one American of strange

ambition, " to make our city the Xaples of America."

By and by on.

The

a cloud darkened the sky.

Civil

war came

Creole, in that struggle, was little different

the Southerner at large. be, a little

more gayly

son from desire

;

A little more impetuous,

reckless, a little

more prone

it

from

may

to rea-

gallant, brave, enduring, faithful

;

son,

grandson, great-grandson, of good soldiers, and a better soldier every

way and

truer to himself than his courageous

LATE 11 DAYS.

OQ'J

•

He

forefathers.

was early

Charleston when the

first

at

Pensacola.

gun was

Jle was

The

fired.

first

came back from the Virginia Peninsula on his was a Cj-eole. It was often he who broke the that

along the Potomac,

He was fields

now with song and now with

at ^Uill-Pun, at Shiloh,

arouhu Richmond.

At

Stonewall Jackson.

on

all

at

hero

shield

quiet

rifie-shot.

those blood-steeped

He marched

and foudit with

Mobile, at the end, he was there.

:Xo others were quite so good for siege guns and water-

What

batteries.

He

fields are

went through

Xeither

will

dread days.

we

it

not on

JJut

all.

we

iiis

will

folded banners

'i

not follow him.

write the history of his town in those

Arming, marching, blockade,

siege, surrender, military occupation, grass-grown streets, hungry women,

darkened homes, broken hearts,— let ns not write the chapter

;

at least, not yet.

The war lowed.

passed.

They,

too,

brightening again.

come back

to

stronger, for

founded in a

The

bittei-

nmst

The

rest

days of Reconstruction unrecounted.

fol-

The sky

is

love of the

American Union has the Creole and the American of New Orleans

its

absence, than

it

ever was before

triple sense of right, necessity,

;

stron«'-er

and choice.

The

great south gate of the Mississippi stood, in ISSO, a city of two hundred and sixteen thousand people,

and

has been growing ever cince. Only here and there a broad avenue, with double roadway and slender grassy groves

of

forest trees between,

marks the old dividing

lines of the faubourgs that have from time to time been gathej-ed

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

2G4

•

within her boiiiulariGs.

and

sixty-six

llcr streets measure five hundred

One hundred and Her wealtli in

miles of length.

miles of street railway traverse them.

was ^112,000,000.

American

Her

city save

Her imports

Xew York

forty

1SS2,

are light, but no other

has such an annual export.

harbor, varying from GO to 280 feet in depth, and

from 1,500 in length

to 3,000 feet in width, measures twelve miles

on either shore, and more than half of

actual use.

In 18S3, over 2,000,000 bales of cotton passed

through her gates, to

One of

this is in

the

home

or foreign markets.

many developments

im foreseen by New Orleans was the increase

in the world's

commerce,

in her days of over-confidence,

in the size of sea-going vessels.

It

had

been steady and rapid, but was only noticed when the larger vessels began to shun the bars and

the river's mouths.

mud-hnnps of

In 1852 there were, for weeks, nearly

forty ships aground there, suffering detentions of

some slack-handed

two days

to eight weeks.

attention

had been given to these bars from the

Even

times.

in 1T21,

It is true,

M. de Pauger,

from

earliest

a French engineer,

had recommended a system for scouring them away, by confining the current, not materially different fi-om that

which proved so successful one hundred and latei*.

The United

States

fifty

years

Government made surveys and

reports in 1829, '37, '39, '47,

and

'51.

But, while nature was

now shoaling one " pass " and now deepening another, the effort to

keep them open

persistently

made.

artificially

was not

efficiently or

Dredging, harrowing, jetty ing, and

LATER DAYS.

205

sitle-canalling— all were proposed, and

some were

tried

but nothing of a permanent character was effected.

1853 vessels were again grounding on the some of them remained for months.

At

bars,

;

In

where

length, in 1874,

Mr. James B. Eads came forward with a proposition to secure a permanent channel in one of the passes, twenty-eight feet deep, by a system of jet-

He met with

ties.

strenuous opposition from professional

and unprofessional sources, but overcame both man and nature, and in July, 18T9, successfully completed the work

which has made him world-famous and which promises to Orleans once more a magnificent future. Through

Xew

"pass" where a few years ago vessels of ten feet draft went aground, a depth of thirty feet is assured, and there are no ships built that may not come to her wharves. a

Capital has responded to this great change.

Railroads

have hurried and are hurrying down upon the city, and have joined her with Mexico and California manufactur;

ing interests are multiplying steadily ambitions, are felt by her people

;

;

new

for the

energies,

first

new

time within

a quarter of a century buildings in the heart of the town are being torn down to make room for better. As these lines are being written the city is engrossed in preparations for a universal exposition projected on the largest scale

;

the very Creole himself

come and

see him.

is

going to ask the world to

In every department of

life

branch of society there is earnest, intelligent effort

and every to

remove

old drawbacks and prepare for the harvests of richer years.

XXXV. INUNDATIONS.

rrillE people It

was

is

of

to the

take pride in Canal Street.

modern town what the Place d'Arnies

Here

to the old.

riety of heljj*it

Xew Orleans

and

stretch out in long parade, in va-

color,

the great retail stores, display-

ing their silken and fine linen and golden seductions

;

and

the fair Creole and American girls, and the self-depreciating all

American mothers, and the majestic Creole matrons,

black lace and alitbaster,

and out and and

flit

swarm and lium and push

here and there

fine things, the novelties

among the

rich things,

and the bargains.

teen-feet sidewalks are loftily roofed

in

Its eigh-

from edge to edge by

continuous balconies that on gala-days arc stayed up with extra scantlings, and yet seem ready to

down mider

come

splintering

the crowd of parasolled ladies sloping

on them from front

to back in the fashion of the

upward amphi-

Its two distinct granite-paved roadways are each " forty feet wide, and the tree-bordered " neutral ground between measures fifty-four feet across. It was '' neutral "

theatre.

when

it

divided

between the French quarter and the

INT'XDATIOXS.

American

were

irients

In

at the

time wlien

distinct

from

" municipalitv " goverii-

tlieir

eacli other.

Canal Street, well-nigii

town begin and end.

The

the Art Tnion.

The

also,

2G7

the street-car lines

all

(irand Opera 11 oiiise

is

in

here;

club-houses glitter here.

If

Jackson Square has one bronze statue, ("anal Street has anothei',

and

it is still

an open question which

is

the worst.

At the base of Jlenry

Clay's pedestal, the people rally to

hear the demagogues

in

tooth-paste

orator

days of political fever, and the

nights of

in

Here are the grand reviews. tic

Krewe marches by calcium

one roadway and down the " Pt'ifmiif That

Hero l»ut

is

;iinl

financial

hypertroi)hy.

Here

the resplendent ^Nfys-

lights

on carnival nights up

othei-,

and

flowers fall in shuwrrs,

liglitiy rain

from

ladii's'

liauds."

the huge granite custom-house, that "never

always to be " finished.

Here

is

a

row of

stores

is

momi-

memory of the benevolent old PortuJew whom Newport, Tihode Island, as well as New

mental to the sweet guese

Orleans, gratefully honors

Hower

niai'cfiamh'.^

— Ju
Here sit the making bouquets of jasmines and roses,

clove-pinks, violets, and

Touro.

lady-slippers.

Here the Creole

boys drink mead, and on the balconies above maidens and their valentines sip sherbets in the starlight. in

New

Here

only,

Orleans, the American " bar " puts on a partial

way

disguise.

Here

Fort,

lakeside spots of a diminished

little

is

the

to

West End and

to Spanish

Coney Island

THE CREOLKS OF LOUISIANA.

208

Here the gay

sort.

away

ficurrying

caiTiage-partics turn northwestward,

Yea, here the funeral train

to tlie races.

breaks into a trot toward the cemeteries of Metairie liidge.

Here

Christ's

is

Here the

Church, witli

ring-politician

the gambler seeks

whom

his parlor in the

Hue

its

canopied weddings.

mounts perpetual guard, he

lleie

may induce to walk around

into

And

Itoyale or St. Charles Street.

here, in short, throng the

members of the great Xew Orleans

Creole- American house of " AValker, Doolittle tt Co.''

One does not need to be the the oldest member when this neutral ground in Canal

resident to re-

Street was

still

a place of tethered horses, roaming goats, and fluttering lines of

drying shirts and petticoats.

old nnilc used to drag his dejected

round in an unchanging

circle

way

In those days an slowly round and

on the shabby grassed ave-

Henry Clay

nue, just behind the spot where the statue of

was

later erected

tattered negro

by good Whigs

in 1.S5G.

An

aged and

was the nude's ringmaster, and an artesian

well was the object of his peaceful revolution.

Xo

effort

deeply to probe the

city's site

had ever before

been made, nor has there been any later attempt thus to

draw up the

pre-historic records of the Delta.

vial surface deposit is generally

and

rests

clay.

deep.

The

two or three feet

allu-

thick,

on a substratum of uniform and tenacious blue

The

well in Canal Street found this clay fifteen feet

Below

it

lay four feet

with woody matter.

and clay ten

Under

more of the same this

clay

mixed

was a mixture of sand

feet thick, resembling the annual deposits of

INUNDATIONS. the rivor.

Beneath

this

OgO

was found, one

after anotlier, continual, irregular alternations of these clay strata, some-

times a foot, sometimes sixty feet thick, and layers of sand and shells and of mixtures of these with clay. Sometimes a stratum of (luicksand was passed.

At

live

hundred and

eighty-two feet was encountered a layer of hard pan but throughout no masses of rock were found, only a few water-worn pebbles and some contorted and perforated ;

stones.

No

abundance of water flowed.

Still, in the shabby, goat-haunted neutral ground above, gaped at by the neutral crowd, in the wide, blinding Iieat of midsummer, the long lever continued to creak round its tremulous circle. At length it stopped. At a depth of six hun-

dred and thirty feet the well was abandoned-for vague reasons left to the custody of tradition ; some say the nuile died, some say the negro. Ilowevei-, the

work done was not without value. It must have emphasized the sanitary necessity for an elaborate artificial drainage of the city's site,

and

it

served to

contradict a very prevalent and solicitous outside belief that Xew Orleans was built on a thin crust of mud, which

she might at any

and

moment break

through,

when

towers,

would ingloriously disappear. The continual alternations of tough clay and loose sand and shells in such spires,

all

variable thicknesses gave a clear illustration of the conditions of Delta soil that favor the sissippi

banks and their

fall into

undermining of the Misthe river at low stages of

water, levees being often carried with them.

THE CUEOLES OF

270 These is

caviiij^s

commonly

LOUI.SIANA.

are not generully o'ci'asses.

A

crevasse

the result of the levee yielding to the press-

ure of the river's waters, heaped

\\\^

against

it

often to the

height of ten or fifteen feet above the level of the land.

Uut the caving-in of old

levees requires their replacement

by new and higher ones on the lower land farther back,

1

INUNDATIONS. froiM

and

base,

its

lets in

271

the tloutl,— roaring, leaping, and

tnnibling over the rich plantations

swamp behind them, stroying,

New by the

and sweei)ing awav as

Orleans rise of

IJayoii St.

its

either by a crevasse or

northern

John

is

wind

will obstruct

from J.ake

sitle

but a prehistoric cre-

vasse minus only the artiticial levee.

southeast

drowning, de-

goes.

it

may be inundated

backwater on

Pontchartrain.

and down into the

levelling, tearing np,

A

long-prevailing

the outflow of

the lake's

waters through the narrow passes by which they reach the Gulf of :\[e.xico, and the rivers

commonly

and old crevasses

emptying virtually

into the lake

from the north and

poured into the

lent storm

streets of

Xew

cast will be

Orleans.

A

vio-

blowing across Pontchartrain from the north

produces the same

result. At certain seasons, the shores of river, lake, and canals liave to be patrolled day and night to guard the wide, shallow basin in which the city lies from the insidious encroachments of the waters that overhang it on every side.

It

is difficult,

in a faithful description, to avoid giving

an exaggerated idea of these

floods.

tions of the city are inundated

;

(

'ertalnly, lariTe j,oi!

miles of streets

become

canals.

Tiie waters rise into yards and gardens and then into rooms. Skiffs enter the poor manVs parlor and bed-

room

to bring

the morning's milk or to carry away to higher ground his goods and chattels. All nianner of loose stuff floats about the streets the house-cat sits on ;

the gate-post

;

huge

rats

come swimming,

in

mute and

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

272

loathsome despair, from that house to this one, and are pelted to death from the windows.

Those who have the choice avoid such

same asylum. tricts,

Even snakes seek the

and the

city has consequently

dis-

lengthened out awk-

wardly along the higher grounds down, and especially up, the river shore.

But the town trade goes on in

is

not ingulfed

its

main

life is

;

not endangered

;

mostly dry-shod, and the

districts

merchant goes and conies between his home and his counting-room as usual in the tinkling ing glimpses of the water

The humbler

down

street-cars,

on the other hand,

classes,

merely catch-

the cross streets. suffer severely.

Their gardens and poultry are destroyed, their houses and

damaged

houseliold goods are

The

counted. in the

rich

and the

;

their

working days are

authorities,

dis-

having defaulted

ounce of preventive, come forward with their

effectual

pound of cure

;

relief

in-

committees are formed and

back and forth distributing bread to the thus

skiffs ply

doubly humbled and doubly damaged poor.

No

considerable increase of sickness seems to follow

They cannot more completely drench

these overflows. ill-drained

weather is

;

a

soil

but

it

so

than would any long term of rainy

hardly need be said that neither condition

healthful under a southern sky.

In the beginning of the town's existence, the floods

came almost

yearly,

were frequent.

The

and for a long time afterward they old

moat and palisaded embankment

around the Spanish town did not always keep them

out.

INUXDATIOXS. There was a disastrous one were strained darin<^'

ernor; anotlier in

another

17J>1,

ITOy.

in

now

part of

New

tliis

burdens of

tlieir

when

]\Iiru

was gov-

the last year of his incuinhencv

came from

;

river crevasses

occurred near wliere C'arrollton,

last

Oi-leans,

was afterward

built. Another came from a crevasse only a mile or two

overflow, in 1818,

above

in 17.S5,

All these

above the town. The

])ear tlie

(ialvez's cainpaii^^ns a<:ainst the

Another occurred

IJritisli.

ITSo, wlicn the Creoles

in

utmost to

to the

young (iovernor

273

one.

Next followed the noted overflow of May, 1810. The same levee that had broken in 1790 was undermined by the current, which

innnense power; sippi

still

it

strikes the baidv at Carrollton with

gave way and the floods of the Missis-

On

poured through the break.

ward, the waters liad

made

their

the fourth day after-

way

across sugar-flelds

and through swamps and into the rear of the liad covered the

little

suburbs of Gravier, Trc'nie, and

with from three to five feet of their

St.

citv

Jean

yellow flood,

turl>id,

and were crawling up toward the front of the river-side suburbs— Montegut, La C ourse, Ste. Marie, and Marigny. In those days, the corner of Canal and Chartres Streets

was only some three hundred yards from the

The

flood

came up

to

it.

One

could take a skiff at that

point and row to Dauphine Street, Bienville, St.

down

tliroughout the rear suburbs, 18

down Daupliine

Bienville to Burgundy, in

Louis Street, from St.

river shore.

Burgundy

to to

Louis to Bampart, and so

now

the Quadroon quarter.

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

274

The breach was stopped by sinking vessel.

in

Tlie waters found vent through

and Bienvenu

to tlie hd^e

;

but

fore they were quite gone.

it

it

a three-masted

Bayous

St.

John

was twenty -five days be-

Tliis

twelvemonth was the

healthiest in a period of forty years.

In

the

Quadroon Quarter.

In 1831, a storm blew the waters of Lake Pontchartrain

np

to within six

hundred yards of the

levee.

The same

when bankruptcy as well town. The same waters were

thing occurred in October, 1837, as back waters

swamped the

driven almost as far in 1844, and again in 1846. It

would seem

as if

town pride alone would have seized

a spade and thrown up a serviceable levee around the

city.

INUNDATIONS. Ilut

town pride

in

and was a puny

Xew Orleans

075

was only born about

Not one American

cbild.

on the place as his i)ennanent home. did, the life they

come modified.

As

ls;j«;,

in live looked

for those

who

had received from their fathers had beSome of them were a native generation.

Creole contact liad been

The same

felt.

influences, too,

of climate, landscape, and institutions, that had made the Creole unique was de-Saxonizing the American of the " Second Municipality," and givinir special force to those

two

which everywhere characterized the slave-holder —improvidence, and that feudal self-completeness which looked with indolent contempt upon public co-operative traits

measures.

The

Creole's answer to suggestive iufpiiry concerning

the prevention of overflows, a short,

warm

to tell him.

"can"— or 80

is

question

He

provincial exile

"

may

How

?

"

easily

He

be guessed, was

thought one ought

has ten good " cannots " to one small

once had

the drainage

:

it

;

;

the proportion

and

make

still,

better now,

and

heat, moisture, malaria,

and

is

a Creole of whoever settles

down

beside liim.

In 1836, a municipal draining company was formed, and one draining wheel erected at Bayou St. John. In 1838, a natural drain behind the American quarter was

broadened and deepened into a foul ditch known as

Melpomene

Canal.

And

in 1840,

tion the city has ever suffered.

came the worst inunda-

XXXVI. SAUVli'S CREVASSE.

/^X tlie than liere

3d of May, 1S49, the Mississippi was liigher it liad been before in twenty-one years. Every

and there

it

was licking the levee's crown, swinging

heavily around the upper end of

great bends, gliding

enormous volume down upon the opposite bank

in wide,

below,

its

heaving

its

vast weight

and force against the

earthen barrier, fretting, quaking, recoiling, boiling like a pot, and turning again and billowing strous yellow serpent, crested with

driftwood, to throw itself once

bank, in

its

its

away

like a

mon-

long black line of

more against the farther

mad, blind search for

outlet.

Everywhere, in such times, the anxious Creole planter may be seen, broad-hatted and swarthy, standing on his levee's top.

All night the uneasy lantern of the patrol

flits

along the same

road

— which in

levee's inner

line.

Rills of seepage water

wet the

Louisiana always runs along against the

side— and here and there make miry

" Cribs " are being built around weak spots. are held in readiness.

The huge, ungainly

places.

Sand-bags cane-carts,

with their high, broad-tired wheels and flaring blue bodies,

Mt.r^'VK'w-T v: .'-..jp

c

o 3

a

O a. H o S 3

SAUVij'S CREVASSE. each drawn by

tliree

sunburned mules

279

come hun-

al)rcast,

bering from the sugar-house yard with loads of haydsse,

which

M'ith

called for

to give a fibrous hold to the hasty earthworks

by the hour's emergency.

Here, at the most

dangerous spot, the muscular strength of the estate

grouped fence

;

;

is

a saddled Iiorse stands hitched to the road-side

the overseer

giving his short, eniT^hatic orders in

is

the negro French of the plantations, and the black man,

glancing ever and anon upon eye,

him with

comes here and goes there,

Will they bo able

to

make

U

vlnl

Iiis

large

'ci,

U

the levee stand

brown

coiirrl Id.

Nobody

?

knows. In 1849, some seventeen miles above

Xew

Orleans by

the river's course, and on the same side of the stream, was

Sauve's plantation.

—sometimes along

its

From some cause, known

the fact

is

was weak.

river-front

or

not even suspected,

unknown,

— the

3d of May, the great river suddenly burst through instantly defying

all

restraints,

levee

In the afternoon of the it,

and,

plunged down over the

land, roaring, rolling, writhing, sprawling, whirling, over

pastures and cane-fields and rice -fields, through groves and

negro quarters and sugar-houses, slipping through rose-

hedged lanes and miles of fence, gliding through willow jungles and cypress forests, on and on, to smite in rear

and flank the

city that, seventeen miles

away, lay peering

alertly over its front breastworks.

The people

town were

They

not, at

first,

concerned.

assured each other the water would find

its

of the

believed and

way across

into

THE CKEOLE.^ OF LOUISIANA.

280

Lake Pontchartrain without coming down upon them.

The Americans exceeded

They threw up no

line

the Creoles in absolute torpor.

behind their municipality.

day that passed saw the swamp yellow water

;

presently

it

filling

Every

more and more with

crawled up into the suburbs,

and when the twelfth day had gone by, Ilampart

Street,

the old town's rear boundary, was covered.

The

Creoles, in their quarter,

small levee of canal Carondelet on off

had strengthened the its

lower side and shut

the advancinjj flood from the district bevond

it

;

but

Lafayette and the older American quarter were completely exposed.

The water

crept on daily for a fortnight longer.

In the suburb Bouligny, afterward part of Jefferson or the Sixth it

DisLi-^at, it

reached to

Camp

Street.

In Lafayette,

stopped within thirty yards of where these words are

being written, and withdrawing toward the forest, ran along behind Bacchus (Baronne) Street, sometimes touching Carondelet, street

till

it

reached Canal Street, crossed that

between lloval and Bourbon, and thence stretched

downward and backward

to the

Old Basin.

" About two

hundred and twenty inhabited squares were flooded, more than two thousand tenements surrounded by water, and a population of nearly twelve thousand souls driven from their

homes

or conjpelled to live an aquatic life of

much

privation and suffering."

In the meantime, hundreds of men, white and black,

were constantly it.

at the

breach in the levee, trying to close

Pickets, sand-bags, hagasse^ were

all

in vain.

Seven

Sxvuvi:'s

CREVASSE.

281

hundred feet of piling were driven, but unskilfully placed a ship's hull was filled with stone and sunk in the halfclosed opening, but the torrent

swept away the works.

burrowed around

Other unskilled

and

it

efforts failed,

and

only on the third of June was professional scientific aid called in,

and seventeen days afterward the crevasse was

closed.

At

length, the long-submerged streets and

sidewalks

rose sliniily out of the retreating waters, heavy rains fell

opportunely and washed into the

swamp

had threatened a second

deposits that

the offensive

distress,

and the

people set about repairing their disasters.

were

The streets The Second Municipality alone

in sad dilapidation.

levied, in the following year, four lars to

hundred thousand

dol-

cover " actual expenditures on streets, wharves, and

crevasses."

The wharves

new work.

A

were, most likely, in the main,

levee was thrown

up behind the munici-

pality along the line of Claiborne Street

and up Felicity

road to Carondelet Street. oveifiows came, and came, and overcame. serious one occurred only four years ago.' At such times, the fortunate are nobly generous to the unfortunate but the distress passes, the emotional impulses pass with it, Still

A

;

and precautions for the future into neglect.

The inundation

ai-e

omitted or soon

fall

of ISNO simply overran the

dilapidated top of a neglected levee on the town's lake

'

1880.

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

282

The uneconomical

side.

habits of the old South

still

cling.

Private burdens are but faintly recognized, and the next

norther

ir

a/

swamp

the

little

fortunes of the city's hard-

working poor.

The hopeful

in

New

Orleans look for an early day

a proper drainage system shall change

which

all this,

when

—a system

underground sewerage and complete

shall incluue

the levee, already partly made, which

is

to repeat

on a

greatly enlarged scale, above and below the city and along

the lake shore behind

it,

the old wall and moat that once

surrounded the Spanish town in Canal, Rampart, and Esplanade Streets.

The

present system consists merely of a

poor and partial surface drainage in open street-gutters,

emptying into canals lifted

at

whose further end the waters are

over the rear levees by an appliance of old Dutch

pumps run by steam. heavy showers that come with their paddle-wheel

Even the sudden singeing lightnings

and ear-cracking peals of thunder, are enough,

at present,

to overflow the streets of the whole town, often to

sill

of opposite houses and

stores,

great city water-bound for hours,

way and door-way groups merchant,

artisan,

tattered girl,

holding the

from life

making strange

sill

of a arch-

of beggar and lady, clerk, fop,

fruit-peddler,

and every other

negro

porter,

sort of fine or pitiful

priest,

human

nature.

An

adequate system, comprising a thorough under-

drainage, would virtually raise the city's whole plain ten feet,

and give a character of

soil

under foot incalculably

SAUVE

CREVASSE.

S

valuable for the improvement

and energies of

'the

people.

feasible, is within the people's

where, extensively and

it

would

2^3

effect in the health

Such a system

is

entii-ely

means, has been tested

officially

else-

approved, and requires

only the subscription of capital.

But we go side of

astray.

We

have got out upon the hither

those volcanoes of civil

war and reconstruction were wiser for a time yet to stop short of. Let us draw back once more for a last view of the " Crescent which

it

City's " earlier and calmer, all

too tragic, past.

though once tumultuous and

XXXVII. THE DAYS OF PESTILENCE.

Kew

rpiIIE

Orleans resident congratulates himself

he does well other great

— that

he

is

fondness with which the Creole isolation

;

and as the way

with just a

little

farther, there little

still

clings to domestic

has passed into the sentiment of

city's life

is

men are, in The desperate

not as other

as to breathing-room.

cities,

— and

all

types of the

always open for the town,

is

river-sand filling, to spread farther and

no huddling in

New

Orleans, or only very

here and there.

There

is

assurance of plenty not only as to space, but

also as to time.

Time may be money, but money

is

not

everything, and so there never has been nnicli crowding

over one another's heads about business centres, never any living in sky-reaching strata.

every warm,

damp

rounding marsh and

an old ways."

Xew Few

swamp

lassitude

which loads

has always been against what

Orleans writer houses

lift

a third-story bedroom

many.

The

breeze that blows in across the all-sur-

is

calls

"knee-cracking

stair-

their roofs to dizzy heights,

and

not near enough to be coveted by

THE DAYS OF PESTILENCE.

— aiul the case not materially in Xew Orleans to-dav — the number of inmates

Shortly before the war

changed

was

to a dwelling

In

one.

it

Xew

in

in the

St. Louis, it

Cincinnati,

and

-was

is

proportion of six and a half to

was seven and three-quarters

more than eight

;

little

In Philadelphia,

;

Xew

in

;

it

York,

was eighty it

the

soil

that

more than

in Boston,

Avas eighty-

it

was one hundred and

forty-five.

thirtv-tive.

ing

which, just beneath, reeks with

Xew

not wind and

frost.

l)uilt

—an

against sun and rain,

This, with the ample spacings be-

tween houses, and an open plain tion of air

the foul liquids

average X"ew Orleans dwell-

thrown together,

loosely

all

brute life can produce in an unsewered

It is fortunate that the

is

in

Xeither would the badly scavenged streets or

human and

city.

in

The number

half.

The climate never would permit such swarming Orleans.

;

in JJoston, nearly nine;

York, over thirteen and a

of persons to the acre was a

two

285

air that

all

round, insures circula-

never blows extremes of hot or

cold. It is true the

on the

minimum temperature

is

lower than that

sea-coast of California, in pai't of Arizona,

South Florida.

and in

That of the Gulf coasts and the Atlantic

shores of Georgia and South Carolina in every other part of the

is

the same.

United States

it

is

But lower.

Once only the thermometer has

l^een

sixteen degrees Fahrenheit.

mean January tempera-

ture

is fifty-five

Its

known

to sink to

degrees to sixty degrees Fahrenheit, milder

than that of any other notable

city in the

Union, except

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIAXA.

280

Galveston and Mobile, wliich have the same.

Only Middle

and Southern Florida have a warmer midwinter.

As

to

sunnners, every State and Territory, except the five

its

Xew

England States

and north of Comiecticut, expe-

east

some portion of

riences in

it

a liigher

maximum

tempera-

ture than the land of the Creoles, and the entire country as high a temperature, except parts of California, Oregon,

AVashington Territory, and two or three regions directly within the Itoclcy Mountains. in the hottest

month

Even

its

mean temperature

of the year, July,

is

only the same,

eighty to eighty-five degrees, as that in every part of the

South that

is

not mountainous, even to the

mouth

of the

Ohio, with the Indian Territory and two-thirds of Kansas.

Only three times

since 1S19 has

risen to

one hundred

Whatever wind

and never beyond.

degrees,

it

prevails

comes tempered by the waters and wet lands over which it

has blown.

ever, is

what

The duration

of this moderate heat, how-

The mean temperature

counts.

of

Xew

Orleans for the year exceeds that of any region not on the Gulf.

It is

exceeded only in southernmost Florida.

That

of Arkansas, middle Mississippi, middle Georgia, and South

Carolina ter of

lina

is

Alabama, Korth Georgia, and AVestern Xorth Caro-

have a mean

parts,

thirty

moreover, to

ten degrees cooler, and the northeastern quar-

be

rains,

is

fifteen,

twenty, and in the mountainous

and more degrees lower. against strong vitality.

called a rainy

one

when they come,

;

there

is

The

humidity,

The country

no rainy season

are very heavy.

Over five

;

is

not

but the

feet

depth

THE DAYS OF PESTILENCE. of water

falls

yearly on this land of

287

swamps and marshes

south of the thh-ty-first parallel between Lake

and Apalachee Bay;

from four

a fall

Sabine

to six times as

great as Mie ra'nfall in the arid regions of the far West,

more than twice the average

for the whole area of the

United States, and greater than that experienced by over ninety-eight per cent, of the whole population. The air's diminished evaporating powers

and beast winds

in

summer and more

at greater

it

less cooling to

less

man

chilling in winter than drier

and lower temperatures would

comes always more or

it

make

be,

and

charged with that uncanny

quality which Creoles, like

all other Xorth Americans, maintain to be never at home, but always next door-

malaria.

The

city

does not tremble with ague; but malarial

fevers stand high in the annual tables of mortality, almost all

complaints are complicated by more or

influence,

and the reduction of

of the whole population

is

physicians, appreciate.

Lately,

such as few residents, except

fact that the old Creole life,

warm

climate,

more victims

however,— we

moment,— attention

the present but a

on ground

floors, in a

ill

soil,

damj),

has given

and tubercular diseases than

low fever has claimed, and tions or offset their

linger in

has turned to the

over an undrained clay

to malarial

less malarial

vital force in the daily life

efforts to

effects are

yel-

remove these condi-

giving a yearly improv-

ing public health.

What

figures

it

would require truthfully

to indicate the

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

288

New

Orleans

Governor Perier,

in 1720,

early insalubrity of gness. delet,

toward the close of the

it

would be hard to

and the Baron Caron-

last century,

stand alone as

advocates for measures to reduce malarial and putrid fe-

As time wore

vers.

on, partial surface drainage,

some

paving, some improvement in house-building, wiser do-

mestic

life,

the gradual retreat of the dank forest and air,

and some reduc-

effects.

Drainage canals

undergrowth, a better circulation of tion of humidity,

—narrow,

had their good

shallow, foul, ill-placed

contrive cities of

in, it

it

;

—began

to be

When

a system of municipal cleans-

was made

as vicious as ingenuity could

added one by one. ing came

things

or, let

us say, as bad as in other American

the time.

Xeither the Creole nor the American ever ulture in the ground of Orleans Parish.

accejDts sep-

Only the He-

brew, whose religious law will not take no for an answer,

and the pauper,

lie

down

in

tombs stand above ground.

undrained

its

They

are

soil.

now made

The

of brick

but in earlier days wood entered into their

or stone only

;

construction,

and they often

fell into

expose the bones of the dead.

decay so early as to

Every day the ground,

which the dead shunned, became more and more poisonous,

and the

city spread out its

homes of the

and more over the poisoned ground. ulation of

sand

;

her

New Orleans life

was something over

was busy, her commerce

tions against nature's penalties for

living

more

In 1830, the popforty-six thou-

great,

her precau-

human herding about

DAYS OF I'KSTILENCE.

TlIK equal to notliing.

was

that

Slic

was

fully ripe for

'2S0

the visitatiou

in store.

In that year the Asiatic cholera passed around the shores of the Caspian Sea, entered European Russia, and

moved l»y

slowly westward, i)receded by terror and followed

lamentation.

hi January,

In October, 1831,

183l>,

into Scotland, into

was

it

in

swept through Lontlon.

it

Ireland,

Franco, 8})ain,

crossed the Atlantic and ravaged the cities of

shore

An

;

and, on the 2.5th of October,

reached

It

passed

Italy. its

It

western

New Orleans.

epidemic of yellow fever had been raging, and had

not yet disappeared. it.

it

En«dand.

Many

of the people had Hed from

The population was reduced to about thirty-five thouHow many victims the new pestilence carried off

sand.

can never be the

people,

known fell

hundred persons

in

but six thousand, over one-sixth of

;

On some

twenty days.

died.

of the people was not the Place teries

days five

For once, the rallying-ground d^Vrmes.

The ceme-

were too small.

Trenches took the place of graves the dead M'ere hauled to them, uncoffined, in cart-loads

and dumped

in.

to the river-side, piles

abreast

Large numbers were carried by night weighted with stones from the ballast-

the idle

The same

Mississippi.

shipping,

mortality in

present population would carry

nine thousand victims.

hand.

and

Hundreds of

mud

and

oft",

thrown into the

Xew

Orleans with

its

in three weeks, thirty-

The Xew Basin was being dug by

were standing here in water and sun, throwing up the corrupted soil with 19

Irish

THK CIIKOLKS OF LOUISIANA.

290 tliuir sliovcb,

and the liuvuc aruoiig them, says

tradition,

was awful.

The

liistoiy of tlie

town sliows

tliat

much sum-

years of

mer-digging have always been years of great mortality. In 1811,

when

Carondelet's old canal was cleaned out,

seven per cent, of the people died.

In iMlS,

when

cleaned out again, seven per cent, again died.

when

its

was

lS2:i,

cleaning out was again begun, eight and a half

per cent. died.

In 1883, when, the year after the great

cholera fatality, the

and a

In

it

lialf

Xew

Canal was dug to the lake, eight

per cent, again died.

In 1887, when

numy

draining trenches were dug, seven per cent. died. In 1847, there was nnicli

new

ditching,

Melpomene Canal was

cleaned out, and over eight per cent, of the people died.

The same work went on through and eight per

cent. died.

'48

'49,

and seven

But never before or

after 1832

and

did death recruit his pale armies by so frightful a conscription, in this

plague-haunted town, as marked that

year of double calamity, when, from a total population of but fifty-five thousand, present and absent, over eight

thousand

fell

before their xVsian and African destrovers.

xxxviir. THE

(lllEAT EPIDEMIC.

rpiIREE-QrAIiTElIS the

of a century liad

Mississippi's downward-retreating its

Delta

passed over

France )-Spiinisli town, hidden under the

little

swamp on Orleans

bank

Island,

in

the

edue of

the sallow

l)ei"<no

spectre of yellow fover was distinctly recognized in her streets

and

That

it

in

her darkened chand)ers.

had come and gone

altogether likely.

UUoa came with possession for least

In

170<'»

earlier,

but unidentified,

especially, the year in

is

which

his handful of Ilavanese soldiers to take

Spain, there was an

epidemic which at

resembled the great AVcst Indian scourge.

Undei*

the commercial concessions that followed, the town ex-

panded into a brisk

port.

Trade with the AVest Indies

grew, and in 1796, the yellow fever was confronted and called

by name.

From

that date

it

appeared frequently

if

not yearly,

and between that date and the present dav twenty-four lighter

and thirteen violent epidemics have marked

visitations.

went.

At

their

own

horrid caprice they

its

came and

In 1S21, a quarantine of some sort was established,

THE CIIEOLES OF LOUISIAXA.

292 and

it

tlie

plague, and

was continued it

until

1825

;

but

it

did not keep out

was then abandoned for more than

JJetween 1S37 and 1S43, iifty-fiye hundred

thirty years.

deaths occurred from the feyer.

summer and

In the

uf 1847, oyer twenty-eight hundred

fall

people perished by

In the second half of 1848, eight hundred and seventy-

it.

two were

yictinis.

its

It

had barely disappeared when

cholera entei-ed again and carried off fortj'-one hundred.

A

month

after its disappearance,

feyer returned

and when,

;

— in August, 1849, — the

at the

end of Xovember,

it

had destroyed seyen hundred and forty-four persons, the cholera once

more

a])peared

;

and

l)y

the end of 1S50 had

added eighteen hundred and fifty-one

to the long rolls.

In the very midst of these visitations,

it

was the

dent conviction and constant assertion of the average

confi-

Xew

Orleans citizen, Creole or American, on his levee, in the St.

Charles rotunda, at his counting-room desk, in the

colunms of his newspaper, and hi his family his town

was one of the healthiest

fatality of the

acclimated.

was famous for

with orphan asylums.

But

cor^^arisons escaped him.

take the fever, and, taking had, and largely retains

immunity from else.

As

among

was not insensible to their his care of the sick

attack.

for strangers,

still,

;

The

in the world.

epidemics was principally

lie

circle, that

the

the un-

sufferings,

he

town was dotted

in this far-away corner crucial

The Creole did not it,

commonly

readily

recovered.

He

an absurd belief in his entire

When

he has

— he threw

up

it, it

his

is

something

palms and eye-

THE GKEAT EPIDEMIC. brows,

— nobody

The mind

asked

tlieni

come

t«^

:2'.)S

Xew

to

American turned only

of the

C)rleaiis.

to connnerce;'

and the commercial value of a well-authenticated low death-rate he totally overlooked.

bring plague It

thunder

The

;d

—

granted

;

l)ut

Every summer mii:ht

winter brought trade, wealth.

and tumbled through the

part of a good citizen seemed to

streets like a surf. l)e

to shut his eyes

and drown comment and debate with loud

tightly

asser-

tions of the town's salubrity.

was in these days that a

It

showed

itself,

De Bow's vieio

of

and

its

political science.

so did

;

monthly

issue, the

Comi/urclal Jit-

South and West, was circulating

able statistics and

sugar

taste for Itooks

patronized and dominated by commerce.

excellent

the

certain

invalu-

its

pro-Southern deductions in social

Judah P. Benjamin wrote about

Yalcour-Aime

sippi Iliver deposits, etc.

;

;

Iliddell treated of Missis-

Maunsell White gave reminis-

cences of flat-boat navigation; Chief Justice Martin Avrote

on contract of

sale; E. J. Forstall

French archives of

Xew

;

on Louisiana historv

and a great nian^ anonymous

Orleans " and " Gentlemen of

Xew

fact as

time, as

it

were.

"

Xew

we may," wrote De Bow this libel with facts."

In January, 1851, the mayor

Ladies

—

to

while

Orleans, disguise the

in 1840,

"has

abroad

liad

the reputation of being a great charnel-house.

AVe meet

in

Orleans " and

elsewhere, upon the absorbing topic of slavery

away the

''

But he gave no

.

figures.

pronounced the city " perfectly healthy during the past year," etc., omitting to oflicially

THE CllEOLES OF LOUISIANA.

294

say that the mortal ity had been tlirec times as higli as a

moderate death-rate would have been. alone,

A few medical

— Ijarton, Sjmonds, Fenner, Axson, — had

drag from oblivion the facts that should

men

begun to

and

to publish

have alarmed any connnunity.

But the

city's vital statistics

A Cemetery Walk.

blind are not frio-htened

(Tombs and

w'itli

ghosts.

" Ovens.")

Barton showed that

the mortality of 184:9, over a ?i(l ahove the deaths by cholera,

had been about twice the connnon average of Boston, York, Philadelphia, or Charleston. ing.

He

What

Xew

?

Noth-

urged under-ground sewerage in vain.

Quar-

antine was proposed; connnercc frowned.

then

A

plan was

THE riRKAT EPIDKMIC. offered for

diiilv

street-gutters

it

;

was

tombs above ground the burials went

As

the vear

seemed

to

eitv's

open

iniminerable

Tlie vice of burving in

rejected.

town was shown

in the lieart of

;

l)Ut

(tn.

drew

lsr).'>

near, a climax of evil conditions

be approached.

fullv unclean

tlie

riur^liiiijj:

205

The

city

The

than before.

became more

dreail-

was

beinu'

scavenninjj:

tried on a contract system, and the " foul and nauseous

steams" from gutters,

alleys,

and dark nooks became

and canal were being once more dug out

was being widened tended

;

in-

In the merchants' interest Carondelet basin

tolerable.

in the

;

the

New

Canal

gas and water mains were being ex-

;

Fourth

District,

Jackson Street and

St.

Charles Avenue wei-e being excavated for the road-beds of their railways. in";

In the Third District,

many

small drain-

trenches were beinn' dui;.

On

the 12th of March, the ship

Bremen

^1 }i(/usta sailed

for ^'ew Orleans with upNvard of two hundred

Thirteen days afterward the Xortluiinjdon

emigrants.

left Liverpool,

bound

in the

same

three and four hundred Irish.

direction,

While

with between

She had sickness on board

during the voyage, and some deaths. none.

from

IlXiq

Atir/usta

had

these were on their way, the bark Sin', in the

port of Rio de Janeiro, lost her captain and several of her

crew l)y yellow fever, and afterward

The ship Ccwihoden for the

same

fever.

On

Castle cleared

sailed for

from Kingston, Jamaica,

port, leaving seven of her

the 0th of

New Orleans.

crew dead of the

May, the y^o/iham/fton and the Siri

"

296

THE CKEOLES OF LOUISIANA.

arrived in the Mississippi. to the city alone,

The Northamjjton was towed

and on tlie 10th was moored at a wharf

the Fourth District, at the Iiead of Josephine Street. Siri was towed up in company witli another

in

Tlie

vessel, the

Saxon.

She was dropped

at a

wharf

in the First District.

The Saxon moved on and

rested some distance awav at a wharf opposite the waterwoi-ks reservoir, in front of

Market foul.

Street.

The Mrthamjyton was found

to be very

Hands

sent aboard to unload and clean her left on the next day, believing they had detected " black

vomit

in

her hospital.

One

of

them

three days after, but recovered.

ployed

several

became

fell

sick of yellow fever

A second force

was em-

; ; this was on the 17th. On the same day, the Augusta and the Camhoden Castle entered the harbor in the same tow. The Carnhoclen Castle was moored alongside the Saxon. At the next wharf,

ill

two or three hundred feet below, lay abreast the magara and the Harvest Queen. The Augusta passed on up and cast off her tow-lines only

the Northam^yton.

thousand landed in

when she was moored

The emigrants went

Xew

Orleans that year.

was every condition necessary

close to

ashore.

Five

Here, then,

to the outbreak of a pesti-

whether indigenous, impoi-ted, or both. On the same day that the fever broke out on Wi^Kortham])ton it appeared also on the Augusta. About the same time it showed itself in one or two distant lence,

parts of the city without discernible connection with the shipping. On the 29th, it appeared on the Harvest Queen, and, fi^-e

THE GlIEAT EPIDKMIC.

dap

later,

but,

on the

on

tl,e

Sa^on.

The J7«y<„.«

Sth, the fever broke out

OOr l,aj

p„t ,, ,„,

on her and carried

off

the captain and a n.nnber of the erew. Two fatal cases the town the attending physician reported under a disguised tern,, " not wishing to create alarm." Such wa. the inside, hidden history of the Great Epidemic's hc^in^

m

TllTlnr

On

the 2Tth of May, one of the en.igrants from the lTort/uw>pton was brought to the charity hospital He I.ad been four days ill, and he died the next day, of yellow fever. The Board of Health made official repor't of the case but the daily papers omitted to publish it Other reports followed in June; they ;

were shunned

the same way, and the great

and

fifty-four

was

to die that year,

city,

with

its

i„

one hundred

thousand people, one in every ten of whom remained in slumberous ignorance of the truth. It was one of the fashions. ()„ the '>d of July twenty-five deaths frou, yellow fever were reported for the closing week. Many "fever centres" had been developed. Three or four of then, pointed, for their ori-

gin, straight
back to the .y„rt/,<»,y,fo«; one to thevl«. and one to the Saxon.

A

season of frciuent heavy rains, alternating with hot suns and calms-the worst of conditions-set in. At the end of the ne.xt week, fifty-nine deaths were reported Ihere had not been less, certainly, than three hundred cases and the newspapers slowly

nut the presence of danger.

and one by one began to adBut the trutli was alreadv

THE CKKOLES OF LOUISIANA.

298

and alarm and dismay lurked eveiywliere. Kot in every breast, however; there were still those who looked about with rather impatient surprise, and— often gtiessed,

in Creole accent, and often

in print,

not— begged

to be told

The deaths around them, they

M-as the matter.

what

insisted,

were at that moment " fewer in number than in

any other

city of similar population in the

Indeed, the fever was

still

Union."

only prowling distantly in

those regions most shunned by decent feet and clean robes

about Eousseau Street, and the District river-front,

grants boarded in

where snch

little

was gathered

;

;

;

along the Fourth

where the forlorner German immi-

damp and miry

squalor

;

in the places

crowded living as there was

Lynch's

How

town and other blocks and courts

in the filthy Irish quarters of St. toulas streets

like,

and the

foul,

in the

Thomas and Tchonpi-

dark dens about the French

market and the Mint, in the old French quarter; amonothe Gascon vacJierles and houeheries, of repulsive uncleanness, trict

;

on the upper and rear borders of the Fourth Disand around Gormley's Basin— a small artificial har-

bor

at the intersection of

and

filth

Dryades Walk and Felicity Road, for the wood-cutters and shingle-makers of the swamp, and " a pestilential mnck-and-mirc pool of dead animals of every kind."'

But suddenly the contagion leaped the people.

In the single

hundred and four persons were carried

A

panic seized the town.

into the midst of

week ending July

16th, two

to the cemeteries.

Everywhere porters were

toss-

Tin; OliKAT EPIUKMic.

Oi)9

i"g tninks into wagons, carriages rattling over and M-liirling cut across tlic broad wl.ite

stones

tlio

levee

to

the Foot-passengers «-crc l.urrvi,,.' alon.^ the sidewalk, luggage and children in hand, and'oi.t of Wath, n,a„y a one with the ,,lag,.o already

steamboats' sides.

Iho

in his pulse.

iieenig

crowd was numbered bv thousands.

During the following week, the "charity hospital alone recen-ed from si.vty to one hm,dre
floors

were covered with the

Jts

Fron. the Kith to the 23d, the deaths averaged sixty-ouo a day. Presentlv, the average ran np toseventyuine. The rains continued; with much lightning and thunder. The weather becan.e troj.ieal the sun was scorching hot arul the shade chill v ; The streets became lieavy with nn„l, the air stifling with ba,l odors, and the whole town a perfect Constantinople sick.

for

loiiliiess.

August came on. The week ending the (Jth showed one Jmndred and eighty-seven deaths from oil,,;- disease, an enormons death-rate, to which the fever added nine hundred and forty-seven victin.s. For

a week, the deaths in the charity hospital-whero the poor immigrants lav-had been one every lialf liour.

The next day two hundred and twenty-eight persons died. The pestilence had attacked the Creoles and the

blacks. calls

door,

In every direction were confusion, for aid, the good "Howanls" hurrying

widows and orphans weeping,

fright, flight,

fron. doo; to

the city was, as an eye-witnesa says, a " theatre of horrors." till

30O

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIAXA.

" Alas," cried one of the city journals, "

even grave-diggers "

enough of them.

Some

of the dead went to the

with

pomp and

martial honors

gers, too,

with their

carts,

still

wc have

not

Five dollars an hour failed to hire

!

;

tomb

but the city scaven-

went knocking from house

liouse asking if there Avere

any

Long rows

to be buried.

of coffins were laid in furrows scarce

two

tu

feet deep,

and

hurriedly covered with a few shovelfulls of earth, which the daily rains washed left, "filling

the air far and near with the most intolerable

pestilential odors."

jostled

away, and the whole mass was

Around

and quarrelled for

the grave-yards funeral trains place, in an air reeking

the effluvia of the earlier dead.

buried their

own

the streets.

Hundreds

hand.

and hundreds

:

fell

victims to their cities

stores, in

the police

own noble

and towns sent

and

dvino-,

self-abnegarelief.

one day, the 11th of August, two hundred and three In the week ending two davs

the total deaths were fourteen hundred and ninetv-

Eain

four.

came

fiercely

and

was seen on everv

toiled for the comfort of sick

persons died of the fever. later,

too,

with

work and

fell to

dead in their beds, in

Heroism,

Forty -five distant

tion.

"

sick died in carriages

Vice and crime broke out

M-ere never so busy.

On

Many

dead."

Many were found

carts.

Many

so

eteries.

fell

every day for two months.

Streets be-

bad that hearses could scarcely reach the cem-

On

hundred and Despair

the 20th, the week's mortality was fifteen thirty -four.

now seemed

the only reasonable frame of mind.

THE GREAT EPIDEMIC. In

tlio

sky al)Ovc, every

less conditions of

Avith

new day

atmosphere.

poisonous gases.

801

bronglit the

Tlie earth l)eIo\v bnl)blc(l

Those wlio would

the scene saw no escape.

same merci-

To

still

have

tied

leave oy ship was to couit

the overtaking stroke

oi" the plague beyond the reach cf medical aid, and probably to find a grave in the sea; while to escape to inland towns was to throw one's self

into the

arms of the

pestilence, carried there

by

earlier fugitives.

The nundjers of the dead give but an imperfect the wide-spread suffering and anguish.

pulsive and treacherous, and requires the ting

and laborious

attention.

Its fatal

idea of

Tlie disease

is re-

most unremit-

ending

is

sibly terrible, often attended witli raving madness.

inexpres-

Amojig

the Creoles of the old French quarter, a smaller proportion

than one in each eleven suffered attack.

But in the Fourth where the nnacclimated were most numerous, there were whole wards where more than half the pojiulaDistrict,

tion

had

to take their

dreadful contagion.

chances of In the

and death from the town of Algiers, just

life

little

opposite the city, a thirty-sixth of

all

its

people died

in

one week.

On

the 22d day of August, the

reached.

climax was Death struck that day, from midnight

night, a fresh victim every live minutes,

at

to

last

mid-

and two hundred

and eighty-three deaths summed up an official record that was confessedly incomplete. The next day, there were twenty-five

less.

The

next,

thirty-six

Each day was better than the preceding.

less

than

The

this.

crisis liad

302

THE (IIKOLES OF LOUISTAXA. Hope

passed.

rose into rejoicing.

The

1st of

September

showed but one hundred and nineteen

deatlis,

10th but eighty.

dry weatlier set

in.

On

the

30tli,

still

]S'orth

winds and

cool,

and the

the 20th, there were but forty-nine deaths

only sixteen.

In some of the inland towns

on

;

it

was

raging, and so continued until the middle of October.

In the cemeteries of 2s'ew Orleans, between the 1st of

June and the sons were

1st of October, nearly eleven

To

buried.

buried without tlieir flight,

these

certificate,

the liundreds

and the multitudes who

which the pestilence was

thousand per-

nmst be added the many

carried.

who

fell in

the towns to

It lingered throucdi

autumn, and disappeared only in December. year 1853 nearly thirty thousand residents of

were

ill

perished in

Duriiiir the

Xew Orleans

of the yellow fever, and there died, from

all causes,

nearly sixteen thousand.

In the next two summers, 1854 and

'55,

the fever re-

turned and destroyed more than five thousand persons. Cholera added seventeen hundred and fifty. Tlie two years' death-rates

thousand.

were seventy-two and seventy-three per

That of 1853 was one hundred and eleven.

In three years, thirty-seven thousand people had died, and wherever, by ordinary rate of mortality, there should have been one grave or sepulchre, there were four.

One can

but draw a sigh of relief in the assurance that this liistory of the past,

tions

have made

it

not the present, and that

next to impossible that

be repeated in the future.

it

new

is

a

condi-

should ever

-^^mr--T-fcao«*<'-!^*"^'**'*

i!j^>»i- crr««ic\

-'V:.l'

XXXIX. BRIGHTER "

/^^^T

f'KIES.

of this nettle, danger," savs

pluck this flower, safety." of 1853 roused the people of

tlic

great bard,

"we

The dreadful scourge

Xew

Orleans, for the

first

time, to the necessity of

knowing the proven truth concerning themselves and the city in which they dwelt. In the midst of the ej^idemic, the city council had adjourned, and a

number of its members had fled. But, in response to popular demand, a board of health had appointed the foremost advocates of quarantine and muni-

cipal cleansing a

commission

to study

and report the mel-

Tin:

I^
KKOLKS OF LOriSIAXA.

(

aiK'holy lessons of the i»lagiic.

many months.

At

Grossman

leans,

tracted rule

whose

is

its

l>y

both sides lips of

head was that mayor of

name, whose fame for wise and pro-

i)hrase

— remains the

—

'•

a great deal to be said on

most frequent quotation on the

the connnon i)eople to-day.

McNeil, Symonds, and

son,

Or-

>*e\v

a pleasant tradition of the city, and

still

characteristic ''

Liboi'cd arduously for

It

the medical profession,

—

Doctors I»arton, Ax-

lliddell,

— men at the head of They were

completed the body.

bold and faithful, and they effected a revolution.

The thinking and unbiased nnist

first

convinced.

receive

The

who

few,

communities

in all

and fructify the germ of

truth,

giousness remained unsettled

;

but

its

transportability

fearfully proven in a multitude of interior towns, alacrity in seeking foul quarters

were plainly shown by sion

pronounced

were

technical question of the fever's conta-

its

and

its

and

its

malignancy there

history in the city.

in favor of r^uarantine,

was

and

The commisit

was perma-

nently established, and has ever since become, annually,

more and more also,

effective.

They

the purging of the city, and keeping

proper drainage and sewerage, of that were daily poisoning to this It

earnestly recommended,

was extremely

would seem

its

all

it

purged, by

those foul conditions

earth and

air.

Tlie response

feeble.

as if the commercial value both of (quar-

antine and cleanliness might have been seen bv the merchant, since the aggregate value of exports, imports, and

domestic receipts

fell off

twenty-two and a half millions,

IJUIOIITER SKIES?.

Ij,,,-;

and did not entirely recover for three

years. Ijut it waa and An.eriean, saw only the momentary inconveniences and looses of qnarantino and its defective beginnings; the not.

TJie niereliants, both Creole

daily press, in bonda.^o

to the

and

merchant througli

cavilled in

panded on the

its

advertising colunms, carped

two languages filthiness of

at the

other

innovation and ex-

cities,

while the general

public thought what they read.

Yet, in the face of all set-backs, the city that once was almost annually scourged, has, in the twentv-seven years since the Great Epidemic, wliieh

virtually lasted till 1855 but one mild and three severe epidemics. In' 1S78, occurred the last of these, and the only severe one fourteen years. Its fatality was but little over lialf as great as that of tlie Great Epidemic. In the five years ending with 1855, the average annual mortality had U^en seventy. In the next five, it fell to forty-five. In the five of the secession and war period, it was forty. In the

suffered

m

next,

it

was thirty-nine;

and a half;

in that

in the next, it sank to thirty-four

which

closed in 1880, notwithstanding the terrible epidemic of 1878, the rate was but thirtythree and a half, and in the five years since that affliction

It

was under twenty-seven.

Tlie popular idea that a sudden revolution in the sanitary affairs of the Creole city was effected by General F

Butler in 1SC2

the city's health the Civil

War

B

is

erroneous.

It has just

had already been set

in.

been shown that

greatly improved before

AVhen General Butler assumed

THE

306 control of

CIJEOLES OF LOUISIAK^A.

its affairs tliere liad

been no epidemic of yellow

The year

fever for four years.

of his domination was

actually less liealthy than the year

before, its death-rate

being thirty-^ix, against thirty-four for ISOl.

ond summer of Federal tliird

occiij^ation

;

Xo

that length, has failed thus far to

better mortality-rate than that live

with 1865

city fell.

the close of the war, dividing the time off

in regular periods of

show a

sec-

the rate was an entire

larger than in the sunnner before the

five years since

In the

which ended

and in ten of the eighteen years immediately

following that of Butler's notorious rule, the mortality has

been lighter than

it

was that

year.

The

mortality of 1ST9

was under twenty-four, and that of 18S0, twenty-six per thousand.

The events

Kew

of 1878 are fresh in the public mind.

In

Orleans they overwhelmed the people at large with

the convictions which 1853 had impressed upon the more

thoughtful few.

throughout the themselves.

To

the merchant, "shot-gun quarantines"

Southern Mississippi Valley explained

The commercial

necessity of quarantine

and

sanitation was established without a single scientific light,

and measures were taken

in

hand for perfecting both

measures which are growing and bearing fruit day by day.

They have already reduced the leans to a point where

it

with that of other great

make the

city, really

comfort, and safety.

insalubrity of

Xew

may be compared, though cities,

Or-

timidly,

and promise before long to

and emphatically, the home of health,

liltlGIITER SKIES.

In

tlie

from

tlie

study of

expanded

liis

contemplation of

307

to be said that, nnquestionably, as his

and improved, so has

we have wandered

city,

Creole liimself

tlie

town

.

It

remains

expanded

lias

As

he.

the improvements of the age draw the great world nearer and nearer to him,

he becomes more and more open to cosmopolitan feeling. The hostility to Americans, as such, is little felt. The French tongue is falling into comparative disuse, even in the family

He

lives

The

The

circle.

local

above Canal Street

social circles blend into

boundaries are overstepped.

now without each other.

Sometimes, with

the old Gallic intrepidity of conviction, of the American in progressive thought. In these matters of sanitary reform,

lie

he

or part of his

own

The

it.

feeling exiled.

lias his

old feeling of castellated

high-fenced

moves ahead

share-

immunity

in

home

often resents, in sentiment at house-to-house inspection and the disturbance

least, official

of a state of aifain under which his father and grandfather reached a good old age and left no

end of

the

movement

co-operation

;

in general has his assent

sometimes his subscription

take part in debates and experiments. all this

canals ;

healthful flushing

and his doctors

He

is in

favor of

deepening and curbing o'

and universal distribution of copAgainst one feature only he wages open war.

laughs, but he

lime, the carbolic

this

sometimes his

;

;

Yet

this gratuitous

peras, etc.

He

;

children.

same

;

acid-no

is

all !

in earnest

;

copperas, he tolerates

odorless disinfectants, indeed

but In Gallic fierceness, he hurls a nick;

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

308

name

at

^'acide

it

When

dlaholiqueP

gun and points

loads his

it

shall never sprinkle

him with

who knows

nearest to the right

On

but he

is

he smells

it,

that stuff

— never

he has grown broad and robust

figure

in neat,

And

!

?

his sugar plantations, in the parishes

saints,

he

You

through his shutters.

—

named

for the

a strong, manly

spurred boots, a refined blood flushing

through his bronzed but delicate skin, making him at tim^s even

them

They as

not so mortu-asred as he used to

eastern,

some from the western Xorth

by one generic term.

all

are preferable to " Cadians "

him.

him

in all about

they did in earlier days about his city cousins

some from the

late

is

Yankee neighbors have dropped

be.

lately, as

calls

He

florid.

He

is

— much.

likes

them.

They

stimu-

not so wedded to " open kettle " sugars

He

he once was.

But he

putting "

is

vacuum pans "

into his

sugar-house— nay, did not the Creole, Valcour-Aime, troduce the vacuum pan into Louisiana istry till tion.

he beats his breast

Yet he

is full, too,

?

from the

in the wholeness of his atten-

of the questions of the day.

War

Civil

is

worthy of imitation by

he never did believe heartily

now he knows

it

in

apt

it still

The

cruel senti-

survive, but they

They cannot easily perish, for down through generations. They

fierceness.

they have been handed

is

African slavery and

was a sad mistake.

ments of caste that sprang from burn with no

The

affairs re-

many an Anglo-American Southern community. He to say

in-

— and studies chem-

candor with which he grasps the new turn of sulting

;

—he

IJUIGHTKR SKIES.

309

are like those old bronze Aigands, once so highly prized, standing, rayles.<, on his in.intelj)iece lamps without

still

;

oil.

You

nuiy

still

see

Congo

ISi^uare,

where the slave

once danced his savage African songs in tattered half-

The Old Calabnza,

nakedness on 8al)bath afternoons;

l)nt the thunder of African drums rumbles there no more, and the Creole and

the freedman are alike well ])loas(Hl that "the jig

The Calaboza remains, but

is

up."

the irons that once burnt the

flower-de-luce into the recaptured runaway's shoulder,

and

310

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

the four whipping-posts to whicli

was once made Creole

is

fast

glad of

bondservant,

by liands and

He

it.

now

is

tlie

recalcitrant slave

feet, are gone,

and the

willing to be just to his former

and where he holds the

fellow-citizen,

old unjust attitudes does so with

little

The

consciousness.

old Gallic intrepidity of thought conies to his aid, and

is

helping him out of the fiercely extreme conservatism engendered by an institution that could not afford to entertain suggestions of change.

There

Louisiana where the slave has

is

no other part of

made

so much progress, as a mass, toward the full possession of freedom as he has in the " sugar parishes." The colored man's history in the land of the Creoles we cannot write here. It M-ould throw light

upon

our theme, but

some other

hung up n

too large to be

be more prepared for

will

time.

this. it.

It is a

theme by

itself,

Later, the Creole himself

Meantime he quotes the

Xew York papei-s, and tells you frankly that he only wishes lie

could be rid of Xorth Louisiana— where the

can

•'

planter reigns

AVheii he

bows is

his

is

not so he

head to

dangerous

;

supreme— it

fate.

is

;

the plastering

home

sickly with irrigation

man

is

damp

can

sell

;

a foot of his

name !— till

his levee ;

his

grove, M'eed-grown and

he has transferred his hopes to not

;

falling in his parlor

his sugar is dark, his thin linen coat

;

will

In such case he

His fences are broken

made and

so behind the times.

very different.

garden has become a wild,

untrodden

is

"Ameri-

rice

is

home-

and made his

he doesn't care who you

land— no,

are,

not for price that

the red flag hangs out for

him on

An Inner Court

— Royal

Street.

BKIGIITER SKIES. the courthouse square and

drums him out of In

Xew

liouse

man

tlie

3I3 with one drumstick

and liome.

Orleans, sad

shrinkages in the vahie of downtown property have phiyed havoc with the old Creole rentier. Court officers and lawyers are full of after-dinner stories illustrating

the pathetic romance of his fate. He keeps at home, on the front veranda. His wife and daughter take in sewing and make orange

marmalade and'tig

preserves on small private contracts. in the court-rooms. The young

man

His son

is

a lounger

buttons his worn coat

tightly about his small waist, walks with a brisk affectation of being pressed for time, stops you silently in lloyal Street or Pere Antoine's Alley, on the stairway of the old Cabildo,

to light his cigarette

ways lighting

you a

from your cigar-symbolic

cigarette

Iiis

silent, call-it-square sort

Bourbon

prince's,

fifth assistant to

action, al-

from somebody's cigar— gives

and hurries

some deputy

of

bow

on,

as full of grace^'as a

hoping soon

to

becoml

sherife or pnblic surveyor,

he have influential relatives, runner for a bank. " plays the lottery," that curse of his town. " Well, of co'se," he says, blowing the

or, if

He

tobacco smoke

through his nose, " thaz the way with evveybody, those time'-sinz ladely." Eeally he would ask you around to

"The Gem," but-his his "

memo'andum

poor, flat pocket

!

book," and not even a

nothing in

it

but

"memo'andum "

in that.

But he has kinsmen, in goodly number, who blush for him; he will tell you so with a strange n ^

xture of pride

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA.

314

and humility beloved

city.

in the great

;

and who are an lionor and a comfort to their

They

sit

on the most important committees

Cotton Plxchange, and

in

the Produce Ex-

»

Old Spanish Gateway and

Stair In the Cabildo.

\ change, and in reform movements.

and vice-presidents and presidents of

They

They

are cashiers

street railway

panies, of insurance companies, of banks.

the front ranks at the bar.

'

They

com-

stand in

gain fame and rever-

niilOIITEP. SKIKS.

enco t

he

i^ift

tho.r

the bench.

c,u

of the State.

ow„

;jj-

They have held every

And

they have boo,,

bo„„,hu-ios-o„t i„ the

Creole was o„ce, for a short Fra„oo, „„der the l)ireoto,-y. a,.a

j,.,eat

oflVe ,vi,hi„

j;,.eat

A

«o,-ld.

ti„,e, JIi„ister

Another

of

bey,„„l

l.„„W

War

i„

sat i„ tl,o

Spanish A„otl,or beea.ne a Spanish J.iontona„t.(io„o,-al Another was a general of pat,-iot fo.-ces when the Sonth' A,uer,can provinces tlu-ew oif tl,c yoke of Spain. ,Tc„, Jacqnes Audnbou was a Creole of Lonisiana. I.o„is (fottsehalk was a Xew Orleans Cortes.

IS

C-eolo. a Creole of an old Creole line. They are «o< "dying ont."


Why sho,dd thev ? -Jfe/e clnnade sood den," better than it s,n-ts any aliJn who has ever tnod the d.wsy snperabnndance of its snnnnor snn. light, and they a,-e becoming ever n.o,-e

to survive.

Their pride g,.ows

and n.ore worthv

less fie,-ce, their

eonrage

is

no weaker for it, their cou,.tesy is n.ore co.-dial, they a,« more willing to nnderstand and be understood, and their tastes for ,noi-al and intellectual refinen,onts

are g,-owin<. in their headlong gayeties-the spectacular pageants of the ca..nival-they have stricken hands with the

Even

Amencan,

bo.-,-owed his la,-genessof pretension

and the barbanc amb.t.on of the South's retarded artistic i,np„lse. The unorganised rout of masks peculiar to the old Latin c.t.es Las been turned into gorgeous, not to sav gaudy t bleaux drawn through the streets under the gLe blazing petroleum and frequent lime-lights, on tinselled ears, by draped teams, to the blare of brass music and the

316

THE CKEOLES OF LOUISIANA.

roar of popular acclamation, in representation of one or another of the world's great myths, epics, or episodes.

Many

thousands of people are drawn from contiguous or distant parts, M'ith the api^roach of each Mardi-gras, to see

—may

the good town forgive the

puerilities.

Some come

cles in p((j)lcr-?nac/ie

to gaze in

term— tliese

stridin--

wonder on these mira-

and plaster-of-Paris, and some,

feared, to smile behind their hats

at

frivolous taste, and short-sighted outlay.

of time, money, and labor on these

make-believe

it is

art,

The expenditure affairs

is

great-

worthy of more lasting achievements. One Carnival day and night some years ago the crowds were more enormous than ever, the displays were gorgeous, the whole city was revel. All through the hours of a glorious day

one wide

the long, dazzling procession passed with their jewelled king sparkling in their midst, in street-full after street-full of multitudes that made the warm air quiver with acclamations.

Xight

fell,

and Comus and his Krewe came forth and made everything seem tame that

in a blaze of torches

had gone before a

little bell, all

and when

;

at midnight, with the tinkle of

disappeared, the people said that there

had

never been such a carnival.

But when the sun rose again they prayed there might never be just such another. For on

his neglected conch, sought too tardily, the victim of overfatigue, the royal

Comus, lay dead.

as well as the Creole,

and the Creole, to deprecate

it.

The "American,"

owns an undivided half

as well as the "

American,"

of this folly, is

bejrinnins-

Already better aspirations are distinctly

BKIGIITEU Shown, and

SKIKjS.

3^7

tlie city's efforts

are reaching forth in n.any dn-ections to adorn lierself with attractions that do

net vanish at cockcrow, but, inviting the stranger to become a visitor, also tempt him to remain, a resident.

^Vo have said that the air which the Creole breathes with unvarying satisfaction and exhales in praises of its

superior merits cury.

never very hot or very cold, by the merEven in July and August the column is

lingers, for

the most part, under 95°, and in mid-winter seldom sinks more than four or five degrees below the freezing-point But since it is the evaporation from the surrounding

swamps, marshes, and other shallow waters that makes this moderation, the effects upon the person are those of decidedly greater extremes of lieat and cold. Yet the long and dazzlingly beautiful summers are generally salubrious, and

would be difficult to exaggerate the charms of the exuberant spring which sets in before January is gone, and rises gently in fervor until May ushers in the summer. As to the summer, it goes, unwillingly, It

in

Its languid airs

November.

have induced in the Creole's speech

great softness of utterance. The relaxed energies of a luxurious climate find publication, as it were, when lie turns final k into ^,. changes th, and t when not initial, to ^/; filial^, to b,

drops

often, also, the final

n

initial

d of

A, final le,

past tenses

;

and

t

after

yl^;

omits or distorts his

and makes a languorous z of

initials.

wire-edge

On

all «'s and soft o's except the other hand, the old Gallic alertness and

still

asserts itself in the confusing

and

inter-

318

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIAXA.

changing of long for

sheep— in

c

and

^--sheep for

sliort

the flattening of long

through cane-crushers,

in the

The African

all

as if

it

were coming

prolonging of long

intrusion of uncalled-for initial

narrowing of nearly

?,

and ship

sliip,

A's,

a,

the

and the shortenhig and

long and broad vowels.

slave in Louisiana

—

or,

it

may

be more

correct to say, in

St. Domingo, before coming to Louisiana—corrupted the French tongue as gi-ossly, or even more so, than he did the English in the rice plantations of

Ko knowledge of scholarly French is a guarantee that the stranger will understand the " Creole " negro's gomlo. To the Creole sang pur this dialect is South Carolina.

an

inexhaustible fountain of amusement. ishes the harsh archaisms of

same

office

Li the rural par-

the Acadian perform the

and divide the Creole's

attention.

But

in " the

City" they Acadian dialect

is hardl known, and for a century or more the melodious drollery and grotesqueness of the i\egvo2yatois has made it the favorite vehicle of humorous song and satirical prose and verse.' '

In Le Carillon, " Journal Hebdomadaire, organe des populations

Franco-Louisianaises, Bureaux, 125 series of witty political lampoons,

drawn by way of Miche

la

mo

in 1874 a

lines

mav be

illustration.

Carillon,

Y a queques jours mo te connin, y a rien

Rue Royale," appeared

from one of which u few

comme

ape fouille

mo champ

fouille pistaches

pistaclies, et

pour gagnin

zidees.

vous va

Et jour-

te plein zidees. Mo te lire bo matin la que nous te ap6 couri gagnin eine nouvelle Election, et mo coeur te batte si fort d nouvelle-E que mo te bo Man Cribiohe quatre fois et Man Magritte trois fois, en

BIIIGIITER SKIES. It

319

would make a long chapter to untangle

mass of abbreviations, suppressions of

•

its

confused

inflections, liaaons,

iiazalizations, omissions, inversions, startling redundancies,

and original idioms.

The Creole does not

in polite conversation,

pretty corruptions. say, "

am

but he

is

going

do

my

a

us take the liberty of in-

let

it

in his lips

lit'

:

my

uncle there,

and I do not think he

He would sav— my possib' fedge ma

" I goin' do

Vs

as the Creole himself

utmost to take

slightly paralyzed

like going."

'owevva,

to

is

For example, or

faw egzamp,"

venting a sentence and setting " I

tolerate its use

probably seldom aware English sparkles and crackles with the same

that his

would

and he

bit pa'a^y^-^ an' I

will feel

hunc' yond', bud,

thing

'e

don' goin'

till

ll(jueP

Examples need not be multiplied. One innocent assertion that found its way to a page of the present writer's scanty notes from the lips of a Creole country physician

will stand for a hundred.

The

doctor, like

many

would have known at once that the foregoing tion was bad English but he is not aware,

of his

race,

that therejvasjmyinaccuracy in his m'ecriant: petl'te

"

Olx

simple assertion

mes femm^7rme76p^;;ses7^^va

:

zetesl^t

********

pas capabe connin

le

own

!

Lietnantes-Gouverneuses.

Jour-la, y6 t6 oul6 fait saute Mechanic's av

h

illustra-

to this dav,

;

of.

Antouene

te attache apres so maillet et

Lietnaut-Gouvernair,

—"

etc.

te passe, li

te

ap6

>c

tous so mecaniques, ye te

ye trouve

dit

:

li. lendemaiu matin, " O reine Voudoux, sauvez

320

THE CIIKOLES OF LOUISIANA.

" I've juz been pulling

some

teeth to your neighbor."

There are reasons— who can deny be glad that the selioohnaster teaching English.

JJut the

the future lurks a day

is

danger

when

?— why we should abjoad in Louisiana, it

is,

that

somewhere

iii

the Creole will leave these

loveable drolleries behind him, and speak our tongue with the same dull correctness with which it is delivered in tlie Ihitish House of Lords. May he live long, and that time

be very, very far away

!

THE END.