On the palisades around this edifice, which has been called a temple, the ghastly trophies of victories were arranged. Once, when during a storm the sacred edifice caught fire from the lightning, seven or eight mothers won the applause of the terror-stricken tribes by casting their babes into the flames, to appease the unknown power of evil.

The grand chief of the tribe was revered as of the family of the sun, and he could trace his descent with certainty from the nobles; for the inheritance of power was transmitted exclusively by the female line. Hard by the temple, on an artificial mound of earth, stood the hut of the Great Sun around it were grouped the cabins of the tribe. There, for untold years, the savage had won his bride by a purchase from her father; had placed his trust in his manitous; had turned at daybreak towards the east, to hail and worship the beams of morning; had listened to the revelations of dreams; had invoked the aid of the medicine men to dance the medicine dance; had achieved titles of honor by prowess in war; had tortured and burnt his prisoners. There were the fields which, in spring, the whole tribe had gone forth to cultivate; there the scenes of glad festivals at the gathering of the harvest; there the natural amphitheatres, where councils were convened, and embassies received, and the calumet of reconciliation passed in ceremony from lip to lip. There the dead had been arrayed in their proudest apparel; the baskets of food for the first month after death set apart for their nurture; the requiem chanted by the women in mournful strains over their bones; and there, when a great chief died, persons of the same age were strangled, that they might constitute his escort into the realm of shades.

Nowhere was the power of the grand chieftain so nearly despotic. The race of nobles was so distinct that usage had moulded language into forms of reverence. In other respects, there was among the Natchez no greater culture than among the Choctaws; and their manners hardly dif fered from those of northern tribes, except as they were modified by climate.

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coveted their soil; the commander, Chopart, swayed by a brutal avarice, demanded as a plantation the very site of their principal village. The tribe listened to the counsels of the Chickasaws; they gained in part the support of the Choctaws; and a general massacre of the intruders was concerted. On the morning of the twenty-eighth Nov. 28. of November, 1729, the work of blood began, and before noon nearly every Frenchman in the colony was murdered.

1729.

The Great Sun, taking his seat under the storehouse of the company, smoked the calumet in complacency, as the head of Chopart was laid at his feet. One after another, the heads of the principal officers at the post were ranged in order around it, while their bodies were left abroad to be a prey to dogs and buzzards. At that time, the Jesuit Du Poisson was the missionary among the Arkansas. Two years before, he had made his way up the Mississippi from New Orleans. On each of the nearest plantations which he saw in his progress, bands of sixty negroes had succeeded in cultivating maize, tobacco, indigo, and rice. His companions, as they advanced, now dragged the boat along shore, now stemmed the torrent by rowing. At night, they made a resting-place by spreading canvas over boughs of trees heaped together on the miry bank; or, making their boat fast to some raft that, covering many roods, had floated down the stream till it became entangled in the roots of trees overthrown but not wholly loosened from the soil, they would upon the raft itself kindle their evening fire and prepare their meal; or, toiling through the mud and forests and canes, they would intrude on the hospitality of some petty chief in the morasses; or would seek out, as at Point Coupee, some French settler, who, amidst the giant forests, had raised a cabin on piles. Thus the pilgrim had ascended the Mississippi, now drinking the turbid but wholesome waters with a reed; now tasting the wild and as yet unripe grapes, which grew by the banks of the river; now hiding from the clouds of mosquitoes beneath a stifling awning; now accompanied in the boat by one army of insects, and, as he passed near a coppice of willows or a canebrake, over

1729.

whelmed by another; till he reached the prairies that had been selected for the plantations of Law, and smoked the calumet with the southernmost tribes of the Dakotas. Nov. 26. Desiring to plan a settlement near the margin of the Mississippi, he had touched at Natchez in search of counsel, had preached on the first Sunday in advent, had visited the sick, and was returning with the host from the cabin of the dying man, when he, too, was struck to the ground, and beheaded. The Arkansas, hearing of his end, vowed that they would avenge him with a vengeance that should never be appeased. Du Codère, the commander of the post among the Yazoos, who had drawn his sword to defend the missionary, was himself killed by a musket-ball, and scalped because his hair was long and beautiful. The planter De Koli, a Swiss by birth, one of the most worthy members of the colony, had come with his son to take possession of a tract of land on St. Catharine's Creek; and both were shot. The Capuchin missionary among the Natchez, returning from an accidental absence, was shot near his cabin, and a negro slave by his side. Two white men, both mechanics, and two only, were saved. The number of victims was reckoned at two hundred. Women were spared for menial services; children, as captives. When the work of death was finished, pillage and carousals began.

Messengers

The news spread dismay in New Orleans. were sent with the tidings to the Illinois, by way of the Red River, and to the Choctaws and Cherokees. Each house was supplied with arms; the city fortified by a ditch. Danger appeared on every side. The negroes, of whom the number was about two thousand, half as many as the French, showed symptoms of revolt. But the brave, enterprising Le Sueur won the Choctaws to his aid, and was followed across the country by seven hundred of their warriors. On the river, the forces of the French were assembled, and placed under the command of Loubois.

1730.

Le Sueur was the first to arrive in the vicinity of the Natchez. On the evening of the twenty-eighth of January, they gave themselves up to sleep, after a day

of festivity. On the following morning at daybreak, the Choctaws broke upon their villages, liberated their captives, and, losing but two of their own men, brought off sixty scalps with eighteen prisoners.

1730.

Feb. 8.

1731.

On the eighth of February, Loubois arrived, and completed the victory. Of the Natchez, some fled to neighboring tribes for shelter; the remainder of the nation crossed the Mississippi to the vicinity of Natchitoches. They were pursued, and partly by stratagem, partly by force, their place of refuge was taken. Some fled still farther to the west. Of the scattered remnants, some remained with the Chickasaws; others found a shelter among the Muskohgees. The Great Sun and 1732. more than four hundred prisoners were shipped to Hispaniola, and sold as slaves.

Thus perished the nation of the Natchez. Their peculiar language, their worship, their division into nobles and plebeians, their bloody funereal rites, and with these differences their close resemblance in character to other tribes on the valley of the Mississippi, provoke conjecture; but the accounts which we have respecting them are so meagre, and so wanting in scientific exactness, that they do but irritate, without satisfying, curiosity.

The cost of defending Louisiana exceeding the returns from its commerce and from grants of land, the company of the Indies, seeking wealth by conquests or traffic on the coast of Guinea and Hindostan, solicited leave to surrender the Mississippi wilderness; and on the tenth of April, 1732, the jurisdiction and control over its commerce reverted to the crown of France. The company had held possession of Louisiana for fourteen years, which were its only years of comparative prosperity. The early extravagant hopes had not subsided till emigrants had reached its soil; and the emigrants, being once established, took care of themselves. In 1735, the Canadian Bienville reappeared to assume the command for the king.

It was the first object of the crown to establish its supremacy in Louisiana. The Chickasaws were the dreaded enemies of France; it was they who had hurried the Natchez to

bloodshed and destruction; it was they whose cedar barks, shooting boldly into the Mississippi, interrupted the connection between Kaskaskia and New Orleans. They maintained their savage independence, and weakened by dividing the French empire. They made all settlements on the eastern bank of the Mississippi unsafe from Natchez, or even from the vicinity of New Orleans, to Kaskaskia. The English traders from Carolina were moreover welcomed to their villages. Nay, more resolute in their hatred, they even endeavored to debauch the affections of the Illinois, and to extirpate French dominion from the west. But the tawny envoys from the north descended to New Orleans, and presented the pipe of friendship. "This," said Chicago to Perrier, as he concluded an offensive and defensive alliance, "this is the pipe of peace or war. You have but to speak, and our braves will strike the nations that are your foes."

1736.

To secure the eastern valley of the Mississippi, it was necessary to reduce the Chickasaws; and nearly two years were devoted to preparations for the enterprise. At last, in 1736, the whole force of the colony at the south, with D'Artaguette and troops from his command in Illinois, and probably from the Wabash, was directed to meet on the tenth of May in their land. The government of France had itself given directions for the invasion, and watched the issue of the strife.

March.

From New Orleans, the fleet of thirty boats and as many pirogues departed for Fort Condé at Mobile, which it did not leave till the fourth of April. In sixteen days, it ascended the river to Tombigbee, a fort which an advanced party had constructed on the west bank of the river, two hundred and fifty miles above the bay. Of the men employed in its construction, some attempted to escape and enjoy the liberty of the wilderness: in the wilds of Alabama, a court-martial sentenced them to death, and they were shot.

The Choctaws, lured by gifts of merchandise and high rewards for every scalp, gathered at Fort Tombigbee to aid Bienville. Of these red auxiliaries, the number was