La Salle recognized that establishing French claims to the territory would require physical occupation. Accordingly, in February 1684 he proposed the establishment of a colony 200 miles up the Mississippi to render it safe from Spanish attack. His request was granted and he set off in July 1684 with four ships, including a royal frigate, heading directly for the Gulf of Mexico with approximately 200 soldiers and 300 colonists. Hopes were high, but unbeknown to them, disaster awaited them, just as it had for earlier Spanish explorers of the region. La Salle's main problem was finding the mouth of the river. Unwittingly he thought his first sighting of the mainland was the coast of Apalachee, when in reality he was 300 miles west of his objective. A temporary refuge, Fort St. Louis, was built in Matagorda Bay, near the mouth of the San Antonio River, while further attempts were made to find the Mississippi amid the islands, bayous, and channels that dotted the area. Further setbacks were not long in coming. One of La Salle's ships went aground, while the naval officer in charge of the frigate, having failed to find the mouth of the Mississippi further east, returned to France. This left La Salle with no shipping, since his other two vessels had remained at Santo Domingo. He then made three attempts, from 1685 to 1687, to set off on foot to find the Mississippi and get help from New France. On the third such attempt, in January 1687, he was murdered by his own mutinous soldiers, most of whom, together with the settlers, died of starvation, disease, or death at the hands of the Indians. By the spring of 1689, when the Spanish finally succeeded in finding Fort St. Louis, it was an abandoned ruin.
The same concerns that had fueled support for La Salle resurfaced at the end of the century, though France was now less worried about Spanish attack, since the two nations were at peace. The 1697 Treaty of Ryswick had ceded to France the western portion of Hispaniola or the island of Santo Domingo (now Haiti), providing her with a convenient base from which to launch a new attempt at colonization. In addition, the French remained concerned that the English might try to establish themselves in the region. Accordingly, when a new proposal for a colony in the lower Mississippi Valley was submitted to Louis XIV by Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d'Iberville, and his younger brother, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, it was readily accepted and a force similar to that of La Salle's commissioned. This time, though, the brothers were more careful in their choice of subordinates. Iberville left France in October 1698 and, like La Salle, reached the Gulf coast via Santo Domingo towards the end of January 1699. He rediscovered the mouth of the Mississippi, and founded two settlements: one at Biloxi Bay in 1699, and the other at Mobile, not far from the recently established Spanish post at Pensacola, in 1702.
Trade with the Indians was one of the goals of this new French colony from the beginning. The area around Mobile and Biloxi was inhabited by people the French called the “petite” nations, a diverse set of small tribal groups who had been devastated by disease and who welcomed the French as traders and potential allies. The coastal peoples provided the French with food and deerskins in exchange for guns and other trade goods. As the French advanced into the interior, they came into contact with larger, more powerful nations. Among the more important were the Creeks who lived to the east of Mobile; the Natchez people on the Mississippi River above the future New Orleans; the Choctaws on the upper reaches of the Pearl River; the Chickasaws further north between the Yazoo and Tennessee rivers; the Cherokees, to the north in the Appalachian Mountains. In addition, the Caddo Indians lived west of the Mississippi, and the Quapaw and Osage Indians to the west of the Mississippi in the Arkansas Valley, north of modern-day Texas. Although the French government was eager to establish alliances with the Indians, they were rather less successful here than in the north.
Map 18 The lower Mississippi Valley in the 1730s. From Daniel H. Usner, Jr., Indians, Settlers and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley Before 1783 (Chapel Hill, 1992), 51. Copyright © 1992 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher.
One reason for the difficulty was that in this region many of the Indians had pre-existing trade ties, and in some cases rivalries, with the British in South Carolina. Contact was first made with the Creeks after the founding of Mobile in 1702, when an attempt was made to wean them from their trading alliance with the English. The same reasoning led to the building in 1717 of Fort Toulouse at the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers. Unfortunately the French, like the Spanish, did not always have sufficient goods of the right quality and price. The French attempted to overcome this want by sending various chiefs to France to impress them with the wealth and power of their nation. Greater attempts were also made to understand Indian culture. Many, like Bienville, learned Indian languages, while young French boys were sent to live with the natives so that they could become interpreters. Still, though the French made some headway with the Upper Creeks, their success was limited, since British traders could offer a better and more varied supply of goods.
The French had a different set of difficulties in establishing trading relationships with the Quapaw and Osage Indians north and west of Louisiana in the Arkansas Valley. The Indians here were willing to trade, having begun by this time to realize the utility of European trade goods. Yet because their lives had not been greatly disrupted by warfare caused by European intrusions in the east, they had less need for French friendship than the French had for an alliance with them. Therefore the Indians dictated the terms of the relationship and the French had to follow their diplomatic protocols, provide lavish gifts, and adapt to local customs in order to remain in the region.13 Further north, in the upper Mississippi Valley, the French exerted more influence, establishing new mission posts in the upper Mississippi Valley at Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Peoria. As a result, by the early 1700s the French fur trade had expanded its reach to the entire length of the Mississippi as well as far into the West.
The French were also able to establish successful relationships with the Natchez and Choctaw peoples, who provided deerskins rather than furs, a lucrative source of exports worth £50,000 each year, with the figure exceeding £100,000 on occasion. Around Louisiana, just as 100 years earlier in New France, the French and the Indians became deeply interdependent. The French population was small, and the Indians provided not only deerskins but often food as well.
Attempts to find an agricultural commodity in Louisiana initially met with little success. The lower Mississippi Valley was not suitable for European agriculture and, starved of resources, had nothing to stimulate its development. The only agriculturally productive parts of the new colony were those where more traditional styles of farming were possible. Many of the province's 400 settlers went northwards to the Illinois settlements, which now began to produce wheat to provision the rest of the colony. Even this modest success was seemingly put in jeopardy in 1712 when the French king granted a monopoly on Louisiana's trade to a leading French merchant Antoine Crozat, by way of repayment for helping finance the recent war in Europe. Crozat quickly organized a survey which defined more precisely the limits of Louisiana, and set about establishing trading posts on all the important rivers, notably on the Red River at Natchitoches, as the Spanish shortly discovered.
Crozat, too, found it hard to make a profit, and in 1717 handed over his patent to a subsidiary of the Company of the Indies. This was just before the 1721 South Sea Bubble, when speculative fever was rife in both Britain and France and there was plenty of money for investment schemes, especially in exotic faraway places. In many respects Louisiana now experienced a phase similar to that of Virginia under the lead of Sir Edwin Sandys after 1619. Like Sandys, the new directors believed that population growth was the key to success. During the next four years they sent some 7,000 white immigrants and 2,000 West African slaves, mainly from Senegal, to the colony. Just as at Jamestown, lands were granted to certain privileged individuals or concessionaires for the development of plantations. A well-sited levee along the Mississippi was chosen in 1718 for the capital, wh
ich was to be called New Orleans.
Louisiana experienced rapid growth in the years 1717–26, although, as at Jamestown, many of the new arrivals died or went back home. The census of 1726 indicated a total population of just under 4,000. Of the whites, 1,663 were habitants who were free to work for themselves and acquire land, another 245 were engagés or indentured servants who still had contractual obligations to complete, and 332 were military personnel. Slaves accounted for the rest, comprising 1,385 blacks and 159 Indians.14 But the most dramatic change, compared to the pre-1718 colony, was the emergence of tobacco plantations, which spurred the importation of most of the African slaves.
The shift to a plantation economy and the attendant growth of the settler population placed considerable new pressure on the relationship between the colony and local Indians. Unlike the harmonious relationship between Frenchmen and Indians in New France, Louisiana developed a relationship with the Natchez that resembled the relationship between Virginia and its neighbors 100 years earlier, when the Indies Company began to encourage tobacco planting near the Indians' principal settlements. French farming damaged the Natchez people's hunting grounds, while French livestock destroyed their crops. This pressure was added to an already difficult diplomatic situation; the French had managed to offend the Natchez, who were descendents of the Mississippi mound-building cultures, by treating them without proper respect. The Natchez were also now aware of the dangers of living too close to the white settlers and their diseases. From 1722 onwards they retaliated against the encroachments of the settlers by attacking their livestock and crops. The French in return took hostages and demanded compensation. The final straw came in 1729 when the French commander at Fort Rosalie ordered the Natchez to vacate one of their principal settlements so that he could establish a plantation for himself. The Natchez became determined to attempt what Opechancanough had tried to do at Jamestown: liquidate the entire white presence so as to preserve their culture and livelihood.
Despite rumors of the Indians' impending design, the French at Fort Rosalie were totally surprised when the plan was executed on November 28, 1729. Within hours some 235 French men, women, and children had been killed and nearly 300 African slaves taken. Indeed, some of the Africans were apparently involved in the uprising, along with the Natchez. However, African slaves at New Orleans did not rebel, though there was widespread fear that they might do so. Also many of the neighboring peoples, most importantly the Choctaws who were traditional rivals of the Natchez, now rallied to the French cause. The French were accordingly able to mobilize sufficient forces to hunt down the rebels, who were either killed or sold into slavery in Santo Domingo, though some managed to take refuge with the Chickasaws and Creeks.
Although the colony survived the Natchez war, the Indies Company's control did not. The members decided that Louisiana was too unprofitable a prospect to be worth keeping, and surrendered their charter to the king in January 1731. The day-to-day management of the colony was now delegated to a royal governor, the veteran Bienville. Yet the colony became no more profitable under royal control. The market for Louisiana tobacco failed to develop. Indigo, another cash crop, was equally disappointing, while sugar was not thought to be feasible because of the length of the growing season. Many planters accordingly had to turn to the more mundane occupation of providing France's Caribbean islands with timber, naval stores, cereals, and cattle. The one profitable enterprise remained the deerskin trade.
Continued French reliance on the deerskin trade ensured that interdependence between the French and the local people around Louisiana would remain strong. With the defeat of the Natchez, the Choctaws now became the principal allies of the French. The Choctaws, a Muskogean-speaking people, had at least 20,000 inhabitants, but had long been disadvantaged by the difficulty of securing arms to fight their traditional enemies, the Creeks and Chickasaws. In many ways they now formed a partnership similar to the one between the Iroquois and New York. Though their relations were not always harmonious, the advantages of the French alliance were ultimately too great for most Choctaws to ignore. The disastrous conflict between the French and the Natchez was not repeated with any other important nation, and the French alliance with the Choctaws remained secure.
By the 1740s Louisiana had proved only a partial success for France. Strategically, the French had achieved their main objective. They had built an alliance with a powerful local people that enabled them to control the mouth of the Mississippi and maintain a presence at a key location on the Gulf of Mexico. They had attracted planters and were building a plantation economy. However, the colony was nowhere near as profitable as the French colonies in the West Indies. And no progress had been made towards finding a route to the Pacific, or mineable ore. Some were beginning to ask whether this colony, expensive as it was to administer, was worth keeping.
6 Texas
Though Spain had eventually been forced to accept a French presence at Biloxi Bay in 1699, that did not mean that the Spanish had resigned themselves to losing the area. Rather it stimulated them to take preventive action to limit the damage. The principal fear was competition from French traders, which would loosen New Mexico's dependence on New Spain (and New Mexico's influence over the local Indians). A secondary concern was that the French might use their coastal bases in Louisiana to attack key Spanish possessions like Panama, or even to launch an invasion of Mexico. The result was renewed Spanish interest in the region, especially the area that came to be Texas, which until the end of the seventeenth century had been entirely neglected.
Spanish interest in Texas began in 1689 after Spain learned of La Salle's expedition down the Mississippi. Determined to stop France from claiming territory on the Gulf of Mexico, Spanish authorities decided to gain control of the region through their usual strategy of using Franciscan missions to win over the native inhabitants. Their main target this time was the Caddo peoples living between the Trinity, Sabine, and Red rivers. The Caddos were attractive because, like the Pueblo Indians in New Mexico, they were relatively sedentary and had a well-developed agriculture. The hope was that the Caddos, like the Pueblo peoples, would be open to Christian conversion.
The first plan, drawn up in 1690, was for a mission near the Trinity River, 500 miles north of the Rio Grande. The danger as always was that the post would be too remote to defend or to have any real effect. The likelihood of this was greatly increased when Father Mazanet, the mission leader, dismissed most of his escort, fearing that the soldiers would set the Caddos a bad example. In the event an outbreak of disease rather than the behavior of the military defeated the venture. The Caddos rightly blamed the Spanish for the arrival of smallpox and ordered the friars to leave, which they did. No immediate attempt was made to return. The problems in New Mexico and the failure of La Salle meant that for the moment Spain had neither the resources nor the need for such a venture.
However, by the turn of the eighteenth century a French presence on the Mississippi had become a reality and the Spanish recognized that, unless they reoccupied East Texas, French influence among the native tribes would grow, threatening Spanish claims to the Gulf. Accordingly, in 1716 an expedition was dispatched under Captain Domingo Ramón to make contact once more with the Caddo peoples. Ramón's force was small, just 75 persons, among whom were 20 soldiers and 10 friars. By the time Ramón reached the Natchitoches tribe on the Red River he found a French post already there. Since France and Spain were now at peace, Ramón had to accept this fait accompli and establish instead two mission posts nearby, called San Miguel de los Adaes and Dolores de los Ais, from which he hoped to contain any further French incursion. But to prevent East Texas from being totally isolated, the viceroy of New Spain simultaneously ordered the building of a mission on the San Antonio River to act as a way station between the two. The new town, begun in 1718, was to be called San Antonio.
Despite this peaceful progress the Spanish soon faced further challenges to their position in East Texas. In 1719 Spain went to war with Eng
land, France, and Austria over her territorial claims in Italy. This provided the French with an opportunity to attack the Spanish in the Gulf. First Pensacola and then the East Texas missions were overrun, leaving San Antonio as Spain's most advanced post. Not that the Spanish were prepared to accept such an outcome permanently. An army of 500 men was assembled on the Rio Grande by the Marquis de San Miguel de Aguayo, but by the time he was ready to attack, peace had already been signed in Europe. Aguayo, therefore, merely had to escort the French trespassers back to their former post at Natchitoches.
Before returning to New Spain, Aguayo arranged to leave a more formidable garrison of 250 men, 100 of whom were quartered at Los Adaes. This now became the provincial capital, despite its closeness to the French at Natchitoches. Militarily Spain was not to be threatened again in East Texas during the colonial period, though this was largely the result of Franco-Spanish friendship in Europe rather than of Aguayo's military arrangements.
Unfortunately, there was one major weakness in the Spanish position: the missions lacked economic viability. With the rigid trade restrictions in effect in New Spain, the Spanish could not get supplies of trade goods from Mexico. In turn this prevented them from establishing a viable relationship with the local Indians. The Caddo peoples expected high-prestige gifts such as guns, hatchets, and manufactured cloth if the Spanish were to retain their respect. Without generous distribution of presents the missions had little to offer the Indians. Meanwhile the French at nearby Natchitoches had trade goods in abundance. Without gifts or powerful magic to offer, the Spanish missions had little potency, and conversions were infrequent. Since the Franciscans could not get the Indians to settle at their missions and work on their farms, at times they could not even feed themselves, having to buy what they needed from their French neighbors. Three of the East Texas missions were accordingly abandoned in 1731 and their personnel withdrawn to Los Adaes or San Antonio. But even at the latter they were not safe. As the French expanded their own trading relationships further west, new groups of Indians acquired French guns and Spanish horses. Armed bands of Apaches now raided San Antonio so often in search of cattle and horses that the beleaguered settlers begged Spanish officials to sue for peace.15
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