Louisiana History Collection - Part 1

by Jennifer Blake

  The depiction of the Natchez Indians, their matrilineal society, their practices, beliefs, and living conditions closely follows Du Pratz, though with an assist now and then from other sources. Where some important point that needed to be illustrated was obscure, I chose to use the known practices and traditions of other mound-building Indians of the Mississippi River valley or other matrilineal Indian societies, such as the Algonquin, Sioux, Seneca, Pawnee, Seminole, Kiowa, and Cree. The social customs of the Natchez were of great interest to the French and several sources seek to explain the structure of their society, including the practice of matrilineal descent, female ownership, marriage ceremonies, rights of divorce, female control of abortion, the lasciviousness of the women compared to the habitual virtue of the men, and, in contrast to the general impression of Indian women working alone in the fields, the practice of the Natchez men aiding them in the heavy labor of preparing the ground for planting. The Natchez men, in fact, had complete control of planting and harvesting corn, including their own feast and dancing at harvest time.

  A number of Natchez depicted in Fierce Eden actually lived, including the Great Sun, who was indeed half Natchez, half French; his mother who was called by the French Bras Pique, which has been translated as Tattooed Arm; his brother, St. Cosme; and the chief of the Flour Village whose given name is not known. Historical personages among the French who played their appointed parts were Governor Perier; his brother, Alexis, Sieur le Perier de Salvert; the king’s lieutenant, the Chevalier de Loubois; Louis Antoine Juchereau de St. Denis and his wife, Doña Manuela. All other characters are purely imaginary.

  Those who are puzzled by the mention of the Bayou Duc du Maine, a name that does not appear on any modern map of Louisiana, should refer instead to the Dugdemona Bayou, the modern, Anglicized version of the same. This stream, called variously a river, a creek, and finally a bayou, meanders through the middle of the north and central sections of the state.

  The Natchez as a tribe were destroyed after the events described in this book. The survivors were adopted into many other tribes, among them the Ouachita, Tunica, Tensas, Cherokee, Creek, and Chickasaw. Descendants of these survivors accompanied the Creeks and Cherokees over the Trail of Tears in the 1830s to the Oklahoma Indian Territory. Today there is a Natchez community at Gore, Oklahoma, where many live who can claim Cherokee-Natchez or Creek-Natchez ancestry. There are no full-blood Natchez living today.

  For readers interested in further study of the Natchez Indians, I recommend a visit to the Grand Village of the Natchez, near Natchez, Mississippi. In the museum, there is an excellent diorama of the Grand Village, plus displays of pottery, bones, tools, trade goods, and other items found in excavations of the mounds from 1931-1972. There can also be seen the remnants of the mounds that once held the Temple of the Sun of the Natchez and the house of the Great Sun. The ancient plaza has been carefully reconstructed, rescued from beneath the silt of two centuries and more, and a replica of a Natchez hut, complete with cane thatch, has been built to one side. Beyond the edge of the bluff that holds the village site runs St. Catherine Creek where once the Natchez bathed and played. It flows quietly over its gravel bed and sandbars, beneath the tall trees hung with vines, beside the willows and rustling cane, clear and pure and timeless.

  Jennifer Blake

  Sweet Brier

  Quitman, Louisiana

  1

  THE MISSISSIPPI FLOWED wide and deep, rippling gently with its current, reflecting the pale light of the quarter moon with a dancing silver sheen. The water gurgled around the edges of the flatboat that rode high on its flood. It tugged at the heavy craft so that it strained against its mooring ropes, nudging the levee with a slow and regular rhythm. The motion lulled Cyrene Marie Estelle Nolté where she sat on a low stool with her back to the unpeeled logs of the flatboat’s cabin. She yawned and settled deeper into the quilt she had wrapped around her against the damp chill of the night.

  A low laugh sounded from somewhere on her right. The moonlight caught a faint golden gleam from the thick braid trailing over her shoulder as she turned her head. A quick grin tilted one corner of her mouth. Gaston was at it again. What a satyr he was becoming, forever chasing after women. Not that the one he was talking to there in the tree shadows minded being caught, for the right price. The question was, did Gaston have the fee? Livres were not particularly plentiful just now.

  It appeared that he had struck a bargain of some kind; he was leading his light-o’-love toward the rear of the pothouse where the woman had her accommodations, just down the muddy track beyond the levee. It was not unknown, of course, for Gaston to trade on ready compliments, his engaging smile, and the promise in his brawny shoulders to win a woman’s favors. He was a charming rascal.

  But he would be lucky indeed if he was able to charm his way out of the trouble he would be in if his father and his uncle were to catch him away from his post. It was Gaston’s turn as her guard, and Pierre and Jean Breton did not brook dereliction or excuses. Not that the two older men were so far away themselves, any more than they ever were. They had gone to the pothouse for a drink or two and a few hands of faro.

  From the flatboat, which was riding on the flood behind the embankment of the levee as if it were on a high road, Cyrene could just see the pothouse with the track of the river road like a pale ribbon before it. The bulk of the building was dark except for the stray gleams around the shuttered windows and the occasional long yellow shaft that was flung into the darkness as the door opened and closed with the coming and going of customers. Beyond it, through the trees to the left, the rooftops of New Orleans made a jumbled pattern of moonlit and shadowed squares and angles. To the right and behind the pothouse lay the swamp, a dark, far-reaching stretch of uncleared land with trees so big that it took four men to reach around them, strange and too-luxuriant plants, green-scummed water, and a singing silence in which lived vicious insects and slithering creatures.

  The night was black, the hour late. Cyrene was alone, a fact she realized with dawning amazement. She was not afraid, any more than she feared the river or the swampland beyond. What she felt was sudden joy. Alone. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, savoring the rare experience. She was alone.

  It was not that Cyrene didn’t appreciate the reasons for the close watch kept over her; she knew well enough the dangers of the riverfront, especially for an unattached female. Still, there were times when the constant surveillance kept on her made her want to do something desperate, to slip away and go sauntering through the streets in her lowest-cut bodice, to take the pirogue tied to the flatboat and paddle away down the river—anything to gain some sense of freedom. How long had it been since she had felt truly free, when she had been without one of the Bretons at her elbow? It must have been years. The best part of three years.

  They had done their best, Pierre and Jean Breton and Jean’s son Gaston. It had not been easy, having a young woman thrown among them. No one had thought, when the Bretons had taken Cyrene and her parents in after they had stumbled off the vessel from France shaking with ship’s fever, that it would be so long. But first her mother had died of the illness, then her father had sought to lose his sorrow and shame for their exile because of his debts in drink and gambling. There never seemed to be enough money for other lodgings, or else the time was never right to shift their place of abode. Her father’s evening hours were spent staggering from one gambling den to another with friends, if such they could be called; friends who were as indigent as he and as full of wild schemes for easy riches and a glorious return to France. His daylight hours were devoted to sleeping off the excesses of the night before.

  Cyrene had seen little of him, hardly more than she had as a child in France when her days had been spent in the company of her nursemaid and governess. It mattered little; she and her father had never been close. She had hardly mourned at all when he had disappeared one night nearly a month before. It was assumed that he had missed his step and fallen overboard
on his return to the flatboat, since his friends had seen him winding that way. His body had not been recovered, though that was not unusual. Few men were found once they vanished beneath the rippling surface of the river. The Mississippi had a habit of keeping its dead.

  Cyrene had remained with the Bretons. She earned her way by helping with the cooking and laundry and by keeping the account books in which the trading transactions of the two brothers were set down. The latter was something she was good at, something she enjoyed nearly as much as the trading itself: the give and take of bargaining, the challenge of turning a profit. Her father had said that she had a bourgeois soul like her grandfather, her mother’s father who had been a respected and wealthy merchant from Le Havre. She could not deny it.

  Life on the river suited her also. She liked dressing as she pleased: going without a coif, or cap; wearing her hair braided down the back of her head; and rolling the sleeves of her chemise to her elbows like an Indian woman or a peasant. She loved the smell and the movement and the ever-changing face of the great waterway. She did not think she could sleep, now, without the rocking of the flatboat to lull her. Nor could she envision living without the convenience of a constant source of water flowing past the doorway, water that did not have to be drawn laboriously from a well, water that swiftly bore away even the worst accumulation of slop and garbage.

  Cyrene allowed her gaze to drift over the river and along the levee toward the wide crescent bend that swept around the town. She stiffened, sitting erect. There was movement in that direction, in the shadows just beyond the pothouse. Two men were emerging from the trees. Though indistinct in the pale moonlight and distance, they appeared to be carrying a cumbersome burden. Portions of it flopped and dragged as they struggled up the slope of the levee. There could be little doubt that it was the body of a man, and even less of what the two men meant to do with it.

  Cyrene got to her feet, shrugging the quilt from her shoulders so that it crumpled to the stool. She flung her long braid back over her shoulder and, with her hands on her hips, stepped to the front of the flatboat. The night wind caught the fullness of her rough skirt, flapping it about her bare ankles, and molded the sleeves of her chemise to her arms. She ignored the chill, narrowing her eyes as she stared into the glimmering darkness.

  The pair wrestled the dead man over the top of the levee, slipping in the mud, then gave the body a slow swing back and forth. At the top of the final swing, they heaved. The body arched out over the water, turning slowly. There was a glint of silver, then it struck the surface with a great splash. Water rose in a sparkling fountain, cascading, faintly splattering, closing over the long, lean shape. There was a quiet moment, then the body rose, gently bobbing to the top as it began to move downstream toward the flatboat. The two men swung away from the river, then strode away, leaping back down the levee in the direction from which they had come.

  Cyrene did not hesitate. Her face alight with purpose, she whirled and ran toward the pirogue at the flatboat’s stern. The flash of silver she had caught meant one of two things. It had come either from a piece of jewelry or else from silver lace, the ornamental braiding on a man’s coat, probably a gentleman’s justaucorps. It was unusual in the extreme for a body to be disposed of without having had the valuables and clothing removed. She did not actually hope for jewels, but she would be glad of the coat. Garments of any kind were costly since they had to be imported from France—there was a royal edict against spinning and weaving in the colonies of New France and Louisiane—but anything with gold or silver lace was dear indeed. A man’s coat with such decoration was worth well above a hundred livres even secondhand.

  It would not be Cyrene’s first experience with a “floater,” as the bodies disposed of in the river were called. Pierre and Jean Breton, as well as being traders, were good voyageurs bred and trained in New France, which was located far to the north. They hated waste and dearly loved to get something for nothing. They were forever pulling things from the river, from logs and broken crates for use as firewood to kegs of sour wine and wads of tangled rope. There had been at least five bodies in the past three years that they had hauled aboard the flatboat to strip, throwing Cyrene the clothing to launder and also to mend where violence had been done to it in dispatching the victim. But even they had never retrieved a coat with silver lace.

  Cyrene kept her eye on the floating body as she stepped into the pirogue and pushed away from the flatboat. Taking up the paddle that lay in the bottom, she pulled toward the long dark shape on the shining river’s surface. The current was faster than she had thought it would be in its winter flood stage; the body was racing down toward her, rolling slightly in the swift current.

  She dug in her paddle, sending the pirogue shooting forward to intercept that black form. Wavelets slapped against the sides of the small craft made from a hollowed-out tree trunk. It wallowed in the water with every dip of her strong young arms. Her paddle rose and fell, flinging a handful of water droplets forward like glittering jewels with every stroke, though the entry of the paddle into the water’s surface made scarcely a sound.

  The body was upon her. She dropped the paddle into the bottom of the boat and leaned forward, going to her knees. She stretched, reaching, straining. Her fingertips touched cloth, fine brocade. She grasped, pulled. The body shifted toward her. She saw the limp, wet spread of hair in the water. She released her uncertain grasp of the coat and sank her fingers into the thick strands, dragging the waterlogged shape of the dead man. He was surprisingly heavy; he must have been tall and broad or else his pockets were weighted with gold.

  The body turned slowly. The pale angles and hollows of a face appeared. An arm came up with the fingers of the hand spread, reaching. It flailed toward the pirogue, striking the side, clutching, grasping.

  The floater was alive!

  Cyrene made a strangled, gasping sound. She released her hold, pulling her hand back. The man gave a soft groan. His head sank beneath the water. His fingers slipped from the rounded side of the pirogue.

  Alive!

  Cyrene dived forward once more, plunging her hand and arm into the river up to her shoulder. Her fingers touched hair. She twisted them into it, clenching tight as she surged back on her heels. Once more the pale, strained face, streaming with water, came into view. The arm floated in the water, without strength.

  She could not let go of his hair or she might lose him under the water. She lacked the strength to haul him by main force into the pirogue, nor could she manage to paddle back to the flatboat with her one free hand, and her left one at that. For the first time she thought of Gaston and was incensed at his amorous tendencies. If he had been where he should, he would be out here in the pirogue instead of her. For him this rescue would have been simple.

  But it was not, after all, so difficult. The line that had tied the pirogue to the flatboat was lying in the prow. She reached for it with her free hand and, leaning forward as far as possible, passed it around the man under his arms, then tied a slipknot near where the rope was fastened. The extra weight threatened to swamp the unstable craft; still, his face was more out of water than in it. With the man secured to the front of the pirogue like the war trophy of some ancient goddess, she paddled back toward the flatboat.

  Gaston was still nowhere to be seen. Cyrene stepped from the pirogue as it glided alongside the bigger boat, then dropped at once to her knees to hold the smaller craft against the logs of the flatboat’s deck. She reached to loosen the slipknot of the rope securing the man, making a grab for his cravat as he began to slip away. She made the pirogue fast by the simple expedient of wrapping the rope around the small post set in the deck for that purpose, then towed the man toward her until he was against the log decking.

  He was going to be too heavy for her to lift on board; she knew that well enough, though for the moment the water buoyed his weight. The flatboat rose and fell with a gentle motion as she considered the problem. She thought of calling out for Gaston but had no fait
h in her ability to make him hear her, even if he would spare her the attention to recognize her need of him. There was only one thing to be done, though it would likely cause the man she had rescued a few bruises and aggravate whatever injuries he might have. He certainly could not stay where he was. His skin was already icy from the cold water, and she herself was beginning to shiver in spite of her exertions.

  Cyrene grasped one of the man’s arms, bringing it out of the water, then, releasing his cravat, took hold of the other, drawing both up and resting them on the big log of the flat-boat’s side. Holding on to one hand, she got to her feet, then took his wrists in a firm hold. Once, twice, she pressed him down into the river to his chin, testing his weight and her own strength, feeling the surge of the water thrusting him upward again. Then she caught a hard breath, set her teeth, and pulled with all her might.

  The flatboat dipped. The man came out of the water to his armpits. Swiftly she bent and grasped him there, pulling with her muscles, heaving herself backward with straining arms and deep, panting breaths.

  He was caught on something, a button or perhaps the bulge of a timepiece in his pocket. She made another tremendous effort. He was dragged forward over the end log. Again. He slid upward as slowly, grudgingly the river gave him up. She had him. His chest was free of the water. Quickly, before he could slide back again, she went to her knees once more and reached for one of his legs, dragging his knee up and onto the boat. Now it was easier. She stood, took his hands, and hauled backward. Her bare feet slipped on the logs made slippery by their splashing and his dripping clothes. She stumbled and fell.

  The man was more on the deck than not. Cyrene let go and lay back. Her chest rose and fell with the rocking of the flatboat as she tried to catch her breath. She stared up at the stars swinging crazily above her. They danced, then slowed. Stopped. At last the boat was steady once more.