History and present condition of New Orleans, Louisiana, and Report on the city of Austin, Texas / by George E. Waring and George W. Cable.

  • Waring, George E., Jr. (George Edwin), 1833-1898.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History and present condition of New Orleans, Louisiana, and Report on the city of Austin, Texas / by George E. Waring and George W. Cable. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    respect he had always inspired among the Indians may well have raised the hope that the colony and its capital were soon to be extricated from their embarrassments. But no such anticipation was realized. In 1735, the Chickasaw aggressions still continuing, Bienville demanded the surrender of the Natchez and Yazoo refugees, and was refused. Upon this he received instructions from France to make war, and the early spring of 1736 found 'Nev? Orleans again in the excitement and confusion of marshaling a small army, which by and by, in thirty barges and as many large canoes, embarked on the bayou St. John for a war of extermination against the Chickasaws. In the latter part of June of the same year, Bienville, re-entering the bayou St. John, disembarked the remnant of his forces, sick, wounded, and dispirited, after a short, inglorious, and disastrous campaigu. In September, 1739, another force, consisting of regulars, militia, three comjianies of marines lately arrived from Trance, and 1,600 Indians, left New Orleans for the Chickasaw country, this time taking their way up the Mississippi. At a point on the river, near the present site of the city of Memphis, they were joined, according to appointment, by levies from Canada and elsewhere, making a total force of white, red, and black men, numbering uj)ward of 3,600. Six months passed, the spring of 1740 was at hand, and once more Bienville landed at New Orleans with a sick and starving remnant of the force that had gone out, and with no better result than a discreditable peace. Later, perceiving by the tenor of the French minister's communications to him the severe disfavor with which he was regarded, he wrote to France in January, 1742, asking to be recalled. This was done, and on the arrival of the Marquis de Vaudreuil as his successor, he bade a last farewell to the city which he had founded, and to that Louisiana of which its people fondly called him the father. To one who will observe closely the etfects of these wars upon the city of New Orleans, in the light of after- events, two main results will come prominently forward, the one moral, the other commercial. As to the moral, it is enough here to iLote these two facts: one, that the first generation native to New Orleans sprang up and grew among the harsh influences of a frontier struggle against savage aggression, and for the maintenance of an arbitrary supremacy over two other races; the other, that this struggle was carried on under the deeply corrupted government of Louis XV of France. The commercial result was one that marked an era in the history of the city. The Company of the Indies, into which the Company of the Occident, or Mississippi Company, had been absorbed, discouraged by the expense and continuance of the Natchez war, and esteeming their privileges on the Guinea coast and in the East Indies more worthy of their attention, had, in January, 1731, tendered, and in April of the same year had effected, the surrender of its western charter to the French government. Thus New Orleans became, for the first time, free from private monopoly rights on its commerce. In response to the king's establishment, between Louisiana and his subjects elsew^here, of a viii:ual free trade, a fresh intercourse sprang up with the ports of France and of the West Indies, a moderate but valued immigration set in from these islands and, despite the Chickasaw campaigns and the emission of paper money, increased from year to year, while at the close of these campaigns business still further revived, and the town, as it never had done before, began spontaneously to develop from within outward, by the enterpiise of its own j^eople. THE FIRST CEEOLES. The term Creole is commonly apiilied in books to the native of a Spanish colony descended from European ancestors, while often the popular acceptation conveys the idea of an origin partly African. In fact, its meaning varies in different times and regions, and in Louisiana alone has, and has had, its broad and its close, its earlier and its later, significance. For instance, it did not here first belong to the descendants of Spanish, but of French settlers. But such a meaning implied a certain excellence of origin, and so came early to include any native of French or Spanish descent by either parent, whose pure non-mixture with the slave race entitled him to social rank. Much later the term was adopted by, not conceded to, the natives of European-African or Creole-African blood, and is still so used among thems<ilves. At length the spirit of commerce availed itself of the money value of so honored a title, and broadened its meaning to take in any creature or thing, of variety or manufacture peculiar to Louisiana, that might become an object of sale, as Creole ponies, chickens, cows, shoes, eggs, wagons, baskets, cabbages^ etc. And yet the word has its limitations. The Creoles proper \yill not share their distinction with the native descendants of those worthy Acadian exiles who, in 1756, and later, found refuge in Louisiana. These remain cadjiens or cajuns in the third person plural, though Creoles by courtesy in the second person singular; and while there are French, Spanish, and even, for convenience, colored Creoles, thei^e are no English, Scotch, Irish, Western, or Yankee Creoles, these all being included under the distinctive term Americans. Neither the subsequent Spanish nor the American domination has given the Creoles any other than the French tongue as a vernacular, and in fine, there seems to be no more serviceable definition of the Creoles of Louisiana or of New Orleans, than to say they are the French-speaking, native, ruling class. In noticing the origin and development of this people, it does not seem necessary to distinguish narrowly between the upper and lower social ranks of the settlers from whom they sprang. Many lines of descent, it is