Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans Read online

  From Baton Rouge, they took him south on the Mississippi River as far as Pass Manchac (which means “back door”), then by way of the bayou to the Amite River, and then through two lakes and a bay before returning him to his fleet at Ship Island. Iberville named the larger lake Pontchartrain, for his benefactor; the smaller one Maurepas, for Pontchartrain’s son; and the Bay St. Louis, for the patron saint of the king.

  Sailing on to Biloxi Bay, Iberville established colonies at Ocean Springs and Biloxi in March 1699. Then, having sewn the seed of his Louisiana colony, Iberville made a trip back to France, leaving command in the hands of Sieur de Sauvole, a brave and capable young French officer.

  English Turn

  In his brother’s absence, Bienville often left the fort at Biloxi to explore the Mississippi. On September 15, 1699, on returning from such an exploration with a small band of friends, he was surprised to encounter the English corvette, Carolina Galley, towering over him. The ship loaded with settlers and bent on colonization had dropped anchor some twenty-seven leagues (approximately seventy-five miles) from the mouth of the river. The British officer in charge asked Bienville for directions to the Mississippi River. Bienville told the officer that the Mississippi was much farther west, that he was in French territory heavily guarded by forts, and that he was in danger in those waters.

  The British vessel weighed anchor and, turning around, sailed to the Gulf. The bluff had worked. To this day, the point in the river where the meeting took place is called English Turn. It is about ten miles below New Orleans. It was an unlucky day for the British that they chanced to meet Bienville in that place. Had they not, it might have been the English who headed up the river and founded a city at the site of New Orleans instead of the French. A century later, not far from English Turn, the Battle of New Orleans was fought, and once again the British were turned back.

  By 1700, Bienville’s colonists had built Fort Boulaye as a protection below English Turn. On Biloxi Bay, they built Fort Maurepas, one of the few forts in North America that was stoutly built, according to the European style. It has out-lasted all of the others in the area. For twenty-four years, from 1699 to 1723, the capital of Louisiana remained on the Gulf Coast.

  Settlers came from France and Canada, some disembarking at Ship Island, Cat Island, and Dauphin Island, where they were to remain until a more permanent settlement had been established. The land was hard on newcomers. Sandy soil made farming difficult, and fresh water was in short supply. An account by Sauvole himself tells of the beauty of the white beaches on the Mississippi Sound, the magnolia and oak trees, and the infertility of the soil, explaining that the colonists relied on provisions sent from France.

  It was not as difficult for the Canadian fur traders and trappers who were used to an outdoor life, but those who came from France were often debtors and vagrants, unaccustomed to the wilderness and to farming. In France, if a citizen was out of work for three days, he was given a free trip to Louisiana. Women of the streets, thieves, smugglers, dealers in contraband, vagabonds, and even prisoners were sent to populate the colony. Some had been imprisoned for little or no reason, but they still preferred Louisiana to the Bastille. Passengers on those first ships to arrive were not revered by their descendants, in the way of those who revered their Mayflower ancestors.

  Advice coming from France wasn’t much help, either, since it was “to search for mines and pearl fisheries, to domesticate the buffalo for their wool, and to raise silkworms.” Tormented by mosquitoes, suffering from the heat, and itching from the sandy soil, the settlers profited little from such advice.

  Members of the French court didn’t like the exotic names of the colonies: Biloxi, Natchez, and Massacre Island. They thought Mobile suggested instability. It is written that Bienville even considered changing the name to Inmobile.

  Iberville returned to the colony in 1700, accompanied by the Jesuit priest, Father Paul du Ru, who was to found missions among the Indians on the Mississippi River. Iberville ordered a fort built in the Natchez country, which he could call Fort Rosalie (for the beautiful Duchess de Pontchartrain). He gave command of Fort Maurepas and the Ocean Springs settlement to Bienville, who stayed there until the death of Sauvole in 1701, when Bienville became commander of the Louisiana Territory at the age of twenty-two. The seat of government was changed from Biloxi to Fort Louis de la Mobile, which was established in 1702.

  Iberville, the Father of Louisiana, died of yellow fever in 1706 in Havana, leaving Bienville the acting governor of Louisiana.

  Very little help was forthcoming from France, and Bienville was often obliged to scatter his men among the Indians, who took good care of them. Penicaut, Bienville’s young friend, who was a carpenter and an Indian interpreter, took a few colonists and went to live with the Acolapissa Indians on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain for a year. He leaves a description of dining on buffalo, bear, geese, ducks, fruits of the season, and dishes prepared with corn. At evening parties, his friend played violin and the French danced with each other, while the Indians tried to imitate the minuet. Penicaut dined with the Chief on sumptuous meals and repaid the hospitality by giving the Chief’s daughter French lessons.

  In 1705, the first commercial cargo came down the Mississippi, passing the site of the future city of New Orleans. It was a load of fifteen thousand bear and deer hides, which came from around the Wabash River in the upper Mississippi through the lake passages: the Amite River; Pass Manchac; Lakes Maurepas, Pontchartrain, and Borgne; the Mississippi Sound; and the settlement at Ocean Springs before moving on to France.

  In 1707, word reached France that the limited supplies on Dauphin Island, which had been sent from France to support the garrison, were being sold for six times their worth. Martin d’Artaguette d’Iron was sent from France as Commissary General of Louisiana to investigate, and Bienville lost his position as commandant and acting governor. His replacement, Nicholas Daneau, Sieur de Muy, died en route, however, and Bienville was reinstated, but d’Artaguette stayed on to supervise the affairs of the colony.

  In November 1708, the first concessions of land in what was later to be the city of New Orleans were made on the west bank of Bayou St. John. Bienville granted this tract to Louis Juchereau de St. Denys, a friend from Canada and an outstanding figure in Louisiana history. He was one of the first settlers in Louisiana, arriving on his second visit with Iberville in 1699 at the age of twenty-three. He later founded the city of Natchitoches, the oldest city in Louisiana. The St. Denys Concession is shown on a map drawn by Allou d’Hemecourt, which can be found in the Louisiana State Museum Library.

  Other concessions along the Bayou were granted to Antoine Rivard de La Vigne, two and a half arpents; Nicholas “Alias Delon,” two and a half arpents; and Baptiste Portier, three arpents; three others were granted the same day, but were not recorded. “These concessions had narrow water frontages two and a half to three arpents each. They were long, narrow ribbons of land extending from Bayou St. John to Bayou Gentilly, granted by the French Colonial Government at Mobile” (Freiberg 1980, 30-31).

  The village of Bayou St. Jean, as the French called it, and the suburb of Gentilly, which was built up on the natural levees of the Metairie-Gentilly distributary, were the earliest habitations and plantations in the region. Bayou St. John, in its present form, came into being four hundred to six hundred years ago, when all flow activity in the Metairie and Gentilly distributaries ceased.

  By the year 1712, the Louisiana colony as a whole had not prospered. The sites were not self-supporting and war between France and Spain made it difficult for France to maintain a colony so far away, scattered over such an immense territory and protected by five forts. Therefore, Louis XIV, in 1712, transferred control of Louisiana to a wealthy banker named Antoine Crozat for a period of fifteen years.

  In 1713, Crozat replaced Bienville with Antoine de La Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac, the founder of Detroit, who was to be the governor of Louisiana. In his new position, Cadillac failed misera
bly. He lacked tact in dealing with the Indians, and the first Natchez War broke out in 1716.

  The Natchez were a brilliant tribe of Indians. They worshipped the sun and kept a fire burning perpetually in their temple. The story of Noah’s ark was part of their culture. In 1716, they rose against the French, and Bienville was sent to fight them. With only a few men in his detachment, he put two of them to death and made terms with the others. In the same year, Bienville built Fort Rosalie on the site that had been selected by his brother years before.

  In 1717, just five years after Crozat was granted his charter, he gave it up. Trade with the Spanish in Mexico had not materialized and trade with the Indians was not profitable. He declared that he had spent four times his original investment and had seen no profit.

  Louisiana, then a colony of seven hundred people, was transferred to the Company of the West (called the Company of the Indies after 1719), which was to have authority in the colony for twenty-four years, to enjoy a monopoly of trade, to name the governor and other officers, and would in turn be obliged to send to Louisiana six thousand white colonists and three thousand blacks within ten years. The president of the Company was the famous John Law, private advisor to Philippe, the Duc d’Orléans.

  John Law, Impresario of High Pressure

  John Law was a Scotsman, a professional gambler, and a financial genius. He had escaped Great Britain fifteen years earlier after killing a man in a duel and had spent the intervening years traveling all over Europe, trying to develop his great plan.

  Law was a well known manipulator. It is therefore easy to understand that he sought and secured good will and confidence of Philippe of Orléans, regent of France after the death of Louis XIV. Like Law, Philippe was a gambler and a womanizer, and the friendship of the two rogues was inevitable. In time, Law became the advisor to the regent, and with his aid and encouragement, started his campaign to populate the Louisiana colony in record time and to make himself a fortune in the bargain.

  His fraudulent scheme called for the combining of the Bank of France and the Company of the West, an arrangement that he successfully managed. The Mississippi Bubble, a name later given his plan, still incites the envy of high-pressure salesmen everywhere. The plan was 1) to induce noblemen and rich middle class businessmen to buy shares of stock in Louisiana land and also to purchase land for them and 2) to entice (or to force) the poor of Europe to become engagés, hired field hands for the Company or for the concessionaires. Shareholders would prosper, Law promised, when the gold, silver, diamonds, and pearls were found in the New World. With nothing but gaudy promises to back his “shares,” Law found himself inundated by the demands of speculators. He could not print the shares fast enough.

  In 1716, Law had signed a contract with the government of France, (with the blessing of Philippe), allowing him to establish a private bank, which would provide him with all the credit he needed. Then, in 1717, he replaced the governor at the age of thirty-seven.

  A brilliant, ruthless sales campaign followed, unprecedented in Europe. Posters and handbills flooded France, Germany, and Switzerland, offering free land, provisions, and transportation to those who would volunteer to immigrate to the New World. They were told that the soil of Louisiana bore two crops a year without cultivation and that the Indians so adored the white man that they would not let him labor, but took the burden from him. In addition, they were promised the imaginary gold mines, the pearl fisheries, as well as a delightful climate where there was no disease or old age.

  Many paupers who strayed into Paris or prisoners who would not volunteer were kidnapped and shipped under guard to fill the emptiness of Louisiana. Prostitutes and the inmates of jails and hospitals were all sent to populate the colony and to start the flow of wealth to the stockholders.

  Alexander Franz, in his Die Kolonisation des Mississippitales Bis Zum Ausgange Der Französischen Herrschaft: Eine Kolonialhistorische Studie” (1906), wrote:

  The company even kept a whole regiment of archers which cleaned Paris of its rabble and adventurers, and received for this a fixed salary and 100 livres a head . . . Five thousand people are said to have disappeared from Paris in April, 1721, alone.

  Prisoners were set free in Paris in September, 1721 . . . under the condition that they would marry the prostitutes and go with them to Louisiana. The newly married couples were chained together and thus dragged to the port of embarkation.

  Meanwhile, Bienville set his men to work clearing forests and erecting sheds and barracks at the site of the Indian portage, which he had selected back in 1699 on his first visit to Louisiana with Iberville. The portage was roughly where Esplanade Avenue is today. It is a trail from the river to Bayou St. John (Bienville had named the bayou in honor of his patron saint). The trail led through cypress swamps teeming with snakes and alligators near a fortified Indian village called Tchoutchouma. It was at this point, where the river comes closest to the lake, that Bienville had decided to build his city. This “beautiful crescent in the river” would be the site of his new trading post.

  He wanted the spot for two reasons. First, it was the half-way point by water between Natchez (Fort Rosalie) and Mobile (Fort Louis de la Mobile). Secondly, it was a spot “safe from Hurricanes and Tidal Waves,” according to an easy account of the city.

  Bienville had to argue for the site with Pierre Le Blond de La Tour, the royal engineer; with Adrian de Pauger, assistant engineer; and with John Law, president of the Company. They all thought it was absurd to select a site in the middle of a swamp, but Bienville persevered, and the “beautiful crescent” became the city of La Nouvelle Orléans.

  In June, 1718, Bienville wrote in his diary:

  We are working at Nouvelle Orleans with as much zeal as the shortage of men will permit. I myself conveyed over the spot to select the place where it will be the best to locate the settlement . . . I am grieved to see so few people engaged in a task which requires at least a hundred times the number. All the ground of the site, except the borders, which are drowned by floods, are very good and everything will grow there. (Kendall 1922, 5).

  John Law ordered a garrison, a director’s building and lodging, for the director’s staff to be built to establish the beginnings of trade.

  Some inhabitants of the city in 1718 were Bienville, his Intendant (the head of civil affairs), surveyors (the Lassus brothers from Mobile), carpenters, troops, and a few concessionaires. There was de La Tour, the Royal engineer; Pauger, second engineer; Ignace Broutin, who built the Ursuline Convent; doctors; priests; and soldiers. French soldiers usually had a secondary trade. Some were wigmakers, rope makers, weavers, gardeners, shoemakers, laborers, brewers, locksmiths, bakers, papermakers, and cabinet makers.

  Costumes of French soldiery in the early eighteenth century. (Courtesy Leonard V. Huber Collection)

  In June 1718, the first wave of European immigrants began to arrive in response to John Law’s campaign at the same time that Bienville was supervising the work in New Orleans. Three hundred came in three ships, accompanied by five hundred soldiers and convicts to make a total of eight hundred coming into a colony where only seven hundred lived, thus doubling, in one day, the population of Louisiana (Delier 1909, 18).

  They were held, for lack of a better place, on Dauphin Island. They were crowded, unsheltered, hungry, and wretched. Many starved and died, but there was no place else to go until Governor Bienville could come for them with his few boats and his few men to distribute them around the countryside. Some he sent to Natchez, some to the valley of the Yazoo River, and some to New Orleans, where they were crowded into tents and rough sheds.

  John Law’s career ended with his flight from Paris as a bankrupt and a fugitive on December 10, 1720. He fled to the Belgian frontier in a coach lent to him by Madame Brié with escorts provided to him by the Duc d’Orléans.

  The German Law People

  During the years of the John Law promotion, ten thousand Germans left their homelands to come to Louisiana. Father Pierre-
François Xavier de Charlevoix, the Jesuit priest who came from Canada to Louisiana in 1721, wrote passing by the “mournful wretches” who had settled on John Law’s grant on the Arkansas River. These Germans were originally from the Rhine region, which had been devastated in the Thirty Years’ War between France and Germany from 1618 to 1648. After the war, Louis XIV had seized Alsace and Lorraine. Both Germans and French in the area suffered the consequences of war: pestilence, famine, and religious persecution. There is little wonder that the glorious picture painted of the New World enticed them to immigrate.

  Only a small percentage of the German Law People, as they were called, ever reached Louisiana. Of the ten thousand, only about six thousand actually left Europe. They lay crowded in French ports for months, awaiting the departure of vessels. They starved, fell ill with disease, and died in the ports. Many survivors died on the “pest ships” from lack of food and water or diseases contracted when the ships stopped in Santo Domingo. Only about two thousand reached the New World. They disembarked in Biloxi and on Dauphin Island and still more perished.

  One important group of Germans was led by Karl Freidrich D’Arensbourg. They arrived in Biloxi in June 1721, where they met the survivors of some of the “pest ships.” D’Arensbourg organized the survivors, and they settled on the banks of the Mississippi, about twenty-five miles upriver of New Orleans.

  Map of the settlement of the German Coast around Louisiana. By Hanno Delier, 1909. (Courtesy the University of Pennsylvania)

  Meanwhile, an earlier group of Germans who had settled on the Arkansas River in 1720 had been too ill and too busy providing shelter to have produced a crop by 1721. No financial help came from bankrupt John Law. So, in January 1722, they abandoned their concession and descended upon New Orleans, where they demanded passage to Europe. Bienville tried to induce them to remain. They were given rich lands near the “D’Arensbourg Germans” in the area that is today called the German Coast (the parishes of St. Charles and St. John the Baptist).