CHAPTER X
"Your story of Alabama was very interesting, I think, papa," said ElsieRaymond, "and if you are not too tired, won't you now tell us aboutMississippi?"
"Yes," replied the captain. "I have told you about De Soto and his mencoming there in 1540. At that time what is now the territory of thatState was divided between the Chickasaw, Choctaw and Natchez Indians.It was more than a hundred years afterward, in 1681, that La Salledescended the Mississippi River from the Illinois country to the Gulfof Mexico; and in 1700 Iberville, the French governor of Louisiana,planted a colony on Ship Island, on the gulf coast. That settlementwas afterward removed to Biloxi, on the mainland. Bienville, anothergovernor of Louisiana, established a post on the Mississippi River,and called it Fort Rosalie. That was in 1761, and now the city ofNatchez occupies that spot. A few years later, in 1729, the NatchezIndians, growing alarmed at the increasing power of the French,resolved to exterminate them. On the 28th of November of that yearthey attacked the settlement of Fort Rosalie and killed the garrisonand settlers--seven hundred persons. When that terrible news reachedNew Orleans, Bienville resolved to retaliate upon the murderers. TheChickasaws were enemies of the Natchez; he applied to them for help,and they furnished him with sixteen thousand warriors. With them andhis own troops Bienville besieged the Natchez in their fort, but theyescaped in the night and fled west of the Mississippi. The Frenchfollowed and forced them to surrender, then took them to New Orleans,sent them to the island of St. Domingo, and sold them as slaves."
"All of them, papa?" asked Ned.
"Nearly all, I believe," replied his father; "they were but a smallnation, and very little was heard of them after that. The Chickasawswere a large and powerful tribe living in the fertile region of theupper Tombigbee; the French knew that they had incited the Natchezagainst them, and now Bienville resolved to attack them. In 1736 hesailed from New Orleans to Mobile with a strong force of French troopsand twelve hundred Choctaw warriors. From Mobile he ascended theTombigbee River in boats for five hundred miles, to the southeasternborder of the present county of Pontotoc. The Chickasaw fort was apowerful stronghold about twenty-five miles from that point.
"Bienville took measures to secure his boats, then advanced against theenemy. He made a determined assault on their fort, but was repulsedwith the loss of one hundred men, which so discouraged him that hedismissed the Choctaws with presents, threw his cannon into theTombigbee, re-embarked in his boats, floated down the river to Mobile,and from there returned to New Orleans.
"He had expected to have the co-operation of a force of French andIndians from Canada, commanded by D'Artaguette, the pride and flowerof the French at the North, and some Indians from Canada, assistedby the Illinois chief Chicago, from the shore of Lake Michigan. Allthese came down the river unobserved to the last Chickasaw bluff.From there they penetrated into the heart of the country. Theyencamped near the appointed place of rendezvous with the force ofBienville, and there waited for some time for intelligence from him.It did not come, and the Indian allies of D'Artaguette became soimpatient for war and plunder that they could not be restrained, andat length he (D'Artaguette) consented to lead them to the attack. Hedrove the Chickasaws from two of their fortified villages, but wasseverely wounded in his attack on the third. Then the Indians fledprecipitately, leaving their wounded commander weltering in his blood.Vincennes, his lieutenant, and their spiritual guide and friend, theJesuit Senate, refused to fly, and shared the captivity of theirgallant leader."
"And did the Indians kill them, papa?" asked Ned.
"No, not then; hoping to receive a great ransom for them fromBienville, who was then advancing into their country, they treated themwith great care and attention; but when he retreated they gave up thehope of getting anything for their prisoners, therefore put them to ahorrible death, burning them over a slow fire, leaving only one aliveto tell of the dreadful fate to their countrymen."
"Oh, how dreadful!" sighed Elsie Raymond. "I'm thankful we did not livein those times and places."
"Yes, so am I," said her father. "God has been very good to us to giveus our lives in this good land, and these good times. It is yearsnow since the Indians were driven out of Alabama and Mississippi.They and Florida passed into the hands of the English in 1763. In1783 the country north of the thirty-first parallel was includedwithin the limits of the United States. According to the charterof Georgia, its territory extended to the Mississippi, but in 1795the legislature of that State sold to the general government thatpart which now constitutes the States of Alabama and Mississippi. In1798 the Territory of Mississippi was organized, and on the 10th ofDecember, 1817, it was admitted into the Union as a State. On the 9thof January, 1861, the State seceded from the Union and joined theSouthern Confederacy. And some dreadful battles were fought there inour Civil War--those of Iuka and Corinth, Jackson, Champion Hills andother places. That war caused an immense destruction of property. TheState was subject to military rule until the close of the year 1869,when it was readmitted into the Union."
The captain paused, seeming to consider his story of the settlement ofthe State of Mississippi completed; but Grandma Elsie presently asked:"Isn't there something more of interest in the story of the Natchezwhich you could tell us, captain?"
"Perhaps so, mother," he replied. "It was a remarkable tribe, morecivilized than any other of the original inhabitants of these States.Their religion was something like that of the fire-worshippers ofPersia. They called their chiefs 'suns' and their king the 'Great Sun.'A perpetual fire was kept burning by the ministering priest in theprincipal temple, and he also offered sacrifices of the first fruitsof the chase; and in extreme cases, when they deemed their deity angrywith them, they offered sacrifices of their infant children to appeasehis wrath. When Iberville was there, one of the temples was struck bylightning and set on fire. The keeper of the fane begged the squaws tothrow their little ones into the fire to appease the angry god, andfour little ones were so sacrificed before the French could persuadethem to desist from the horrid rite. The 'Great Sun,' as they calledtheir king, had given Iberville a hearty welcome to his dominions,paying him a visit in person. He was borne to Iberville's quarterson the shoulders of some of his men, and attended by a great retinueof his people. A treaty of friendship was made, and the French givenpermission to build a fort and establish a trading-post among theIndians--things that, however, were not done for many years. A fewstragglers at that time took up their abode among the Natchez, but itwas not until 1716 that any regular settlement was made; then FortRosalie was erected at that spot on the bank of the Mississippi wherethe city of Natchez now stands.
"Well, as I have told you, Grand or Great Sun, the chief of theNatchez, was at first the friend of the whites; but one man, by hisoverbearing behavior, brought destruction on the whole colony. Thehome of the Great Sun was a beautiful village called the White Apple.It was spread over a space of nearly three miles, and stood abouttwelve miles south of the fort, near the mouth of Second Creek, andthree miles east of the Mississippi. M. D. Chopart, the commandantof the fort, was so cruel and overbearing, so unjust to the Indians,that he commanded the Great Sun to leave the village of his ancestorsbecause he, M. D. Chopart, wanted the grounds for his own purposes. Ofcourse the Great Sun was not willing, but Chopart was deaf to all hisentreaties, which led the Natchez to form a plot to rid their countryof these oppressors.
"Before the attempt to carry it out, a young Indian girl, who lovedthe Sieur de Mace, ensign of the garrison, told him with tears thather nation intended to massacre the French. He was astonished, andquestioned her closely. She gave him simple answers, shedding tearsas she spoke, and he was convinced that she was telling him only thetruth. So he at once repeated it to Chopart, but he immediately hadthe young man arrested for giving a false alarm.
"But the fatal day came--November 29, 1729. Early in the morning GreatSun, with a few chosen warriors, all well armed with knives and otherconcealed weapons, went to Fort Rosalie. Only a short time before thecom
pany had sent up a large supply of powder and lead, also provisionsfor the fort. The Indians had brought corn and poultry to barter forammunition, saying they wanted it for a great hunt they were preparingfor, and the garrison, believing their story, were thrown off theirguard, and allowed a number of the Indians to come into their fort,while others were distributed about the company's warehouse. Then,after a little, the Great Sun gave a signal, and the Indians at oncedrew out their weapons and began a furious massacre of the garrison andall who were in or near the warehouse. And the same bloody work wascarried on in the houses of the settlers outside of the fort.
"It was at nine o'clock in the morning the dreadful slaughter began,and before noon the whole male population of that French colony--sevenhundred souls--were sleeping the sleep of death. The women and childrenwere kept as prisoners, and the slaves that they might be of use asservants. Also two mechanics, a tailor and a carpenter, were permittedto live, that they might be of use to their captors. Chopart was oneof the first killed--by a common Indian, as the chiefs so despised himthat they disdained to soil their hands with his blood.
"The Great Sun sat in the company's warehouse while the massacre wasgoing on, smoking his pipe unconcernedly while his warriors werepiling up the heads of the murdered Frenchmen in a pyramid at hisfeet, Chopart's head at its top, above all those of his officers andsoldiers. As soon as the Great Sun had been told by his Indians thatall the Frenchmen were dead, he bade them begin their pillage. Theythen made the negro slaves bring out the plunder for distribution,except the powder and military stores, which were kept for public usein future emergencies."
"And did they bury all those seven hundred folks that they killed,papa?" asked Ned.
"No," replied his father; "they left them lying strewed about in everyplace where they had struck them down to death, dancing over theirmangled bodies with horrid yells in their drunken revelry; then theyleft them there unburied, a prey for hungry dogs and vultures. And allthe dwellings in all the settlements they burned to ashes."
"Didn't anybody at all get away from them, uncle?" asked Alie Leland.
"Nobody who was in the buildings at the time of the massacre," repliedthe captain; "but two soldiers who happened to be then in the woodsescaped and carried the dreadful tidings to New Orleans."
"I'm glad they didn't go back to the fort and get caught by thosesavage Indians," said Elsie Dinsmore. "But how did they know that theIndians were there and doing such dreadful deeds?"
"By hearing the deafening yells of the savages and seeing the smokegoing up from the burning buildings. Those things told them what wasgoing on, and they hid themselves until they could get a boat or canoein which to go down the river to New Orleans, which they reached in afew days; and there, as I have said, they told the sad story of theawful happening at the colony on the St. Catherine."
"Were there any other colonies that the Indians destroyed in that partof our country, papa?" asked his daughter Elsie.
"Yes; one on the Yazoo, near Fort St. Peter, and those on the Washita,at Sicily Island, and near the present town of Monroe. It was a sadtime for every settlement in the province."
"When the news of this terrible disaster reached New Orleans, theFrench began a war of extermination against the Natchez. They drovethem across the Mississippi, and finally scattered and extirpated them.The Great Sun and his principal war chiefs were taken, shipped to St.Domingo and sold as slaves. Some of the poor wretches were treated withbarbaric cruelty--four of the men and two of the women were publiclyburned to death at New Orleans. Some Tonica Indians brought down aNatchez woman, whom they had found in the woods, and were allowed toburn her to death on a platform erected near the levee, the wholepopulation looking on while she was consumed by the flames. She boreall that torture with wonderful fortitude, not shedding a tear, butupbraiding her torturers with their want of skill, flinging at themevery opprobrious epithet she could think of."
"How very brave and stoical she must have been, poor thing!" remarkedGrace. "But, papa, have not the Natchez always been consideredsuperior to other tribes in refinement, intelligence and bravery?"
"Yes," he replied; "it is said that no other tribe has left so proud amemorial of their courage, independent spirit and contempt of death indefence of their rights and liberties. The scattered remnants of thetribe sought an asylum among the Chickasaws and other tribes who werehostile to the French; but since that time the individuality of theNatchez tribe has been swallowed up among others with whom they wereincorporated. In refinement and intelligence they were equal, if notsuperior, to any other tribe north of Mexico. In courage and stratagemthey were inferior to none. Their form was noble and commanding, theirpersons were straight and athletic, their stature seldom under sixfeet. Their countenances indicated more intelligence than is commonlyfound in savages. Some few individuals of the Natchez tribe were to befound in the town of Natchez as late as the year 1782, more than half acentury after the Natchez massacre."
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