thus to the present city; for _Maubila_, or “paddling” Indians, long
occupied what is now South Alabama, and their language was in later
days the trade jargon from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. Their
primitive manner of living was interrupted about three centuries and
a half ago. The West Indies then became Spanish, and the mainland was
explored in all directions for colonization. A map of 1513, attributed
to Columbus, shows many indentations on the north coast of the Mexican
Gulf, then without a name, and the only one of them with a river (Rio
de la Palma) resembles Mobile Bay. From time to time afterwards a
score of other maps, with gradually increasing distinctness, develop
the true outline. On them the principal feature of the north coast
is a pear-shaped bay within the shore-line, into which empty one or
more rivers called Rio del Espiritu Santo, or some variation of that
name. It is first distinct on the map which Governor Garay of Jamaica
sent home, as showing Piñeda’s exploration of Florida in 1519. Some
have thought this the Mississippi River, with a total disregard of the
fact that the delta of that great river projects out into the Gulf,
while this bay is within the coast. We have to wait a century and a
half before there is any account of the exploration of the Mississippi
mouth; and meantime, dozens of maps show the bay or river of the Holy
Spirit. It is, on the map, the most prominent object on the north coast
of the Gulf, corresponding to Panuco (Tampico) on the west. Spanish
ships visited it, and some explorers have left descriptions. Narvaez
possibly wintered in it on his disastrous voyage of 1528, and a French
tradition was that piles of bones on Dauphine Island were remains of
his men. Here, or in Pensacola Bay, De Soto’s admiral, Maldonado,
waited for De Soto, and here he certainly touched later in search of
his lost master.
The famous expedition of De Soto crossed the Mobile River basin at
right angles, but the itinerary is uncertain. The Spaniards did not
care enough to map it intelligently, and the Indians, according to the
proverb, could tell no tales.
It is doubtful, indeed, if De Soto came much within a hundred miles of
the present site of Mobile, although early French tradition makes him
to have crossed somewhere near the later settlement of Mobile Indians,
about Mount Vernon landing.
In 1558 was made the careful exploration by Bazares, who proceeded from
Mexico eastward towards peninsular Florida. Two bays he named Bas Fonde
and Filipina. One was Mobile, and it was probably that called Filipina.
The object was settlement, and the next year Tristan de Luna occupied
the country with fifteen hundred colonists and explored the interior by
Nanipacna and Cosa, up to the gold region of Georgia. But it all ended
only in mutiny and misfortune. There was more gold and less fighting in
Mexico and South America. The Spaniards claimed regions further north
more to keep others from the Gulf than to colonize what is now the
United States.
Soon Hawkins, Drake, and the buccaneers on the Gulf gave Spain enough
to do. The French occupied the St. Lawrence, and even part of Florida.
Raleigh and others led out unsuccessful English colonies. After the
wreck of the Armada had destroyed Spanish prestige, the advance of the
French in Canada, and of the English farther south, was more rapid.
Jamestown and Plymouth were the beginning of colonies which gradually
lined the Atlantic. The French took possession of the Great Lakes, and,
under Marquette, Joliet, and La Salle, explored the Mississippi to its
mouth.
The grand plan gradually took shape in the French mind of colonizing
the mouth of the great river, bringing the native tribes under control,
opening trade with them, discovering mines, and uniting Louisiana,
as La Salle called it, with Canada by a chain of forts at strategic
points. La Salle did not live to accomplish this. He was assassinated
in modern Texas, after missing the mouth of the Mississippi. But a
worthy successor was found after a few years in the elder Lemoyne,
better known as Iberville. In 1699, he was successful in finding the
mouth of the great river, but realized that its swamps offered no site
for a colony. He and his brother, Bienville, explored the tributaries
and the adjacent coasts, and a fort was temporarily thrown up on what
is now the east side of the Back Bay of Biloxi. On Iberville’s return
from France, in 1702, the permanent seat of the colony was placed at 27
Mile Bluff, on Mobile River, amid the friendly and industrious Indians.
The Spaniards, who had themselves lately occupied Pensacola, vigorously
remonstrated at this occupation of Florida, as they had at the building
of Fort Maurepas at Biloxi. But Iberville was acting for Louis XIV.,
and soon had everything of value moved _via_ Massacre (now Dauphine)
Island and Mobile Bay to Fort Louis de la Mobile. A town was laid out
and settled. Conferences with Choctaws and Chickasaws followed, and
alliances were made. The establishment of what was even then popularly
called Mobile was the entrance of a new power into the Gulf country.
Tonty, the old companion of La Salle, came to stay, and colonists from
France were brought to the port at Dauphine Island by every ship. The
shadowy Spanish claim became forgotten west of Pensacola, and the
English traders from the Atlantic colonies found active competitors.
French influence became dominant in all the great Mississippi Valley.
It showed itself in exploration, religion, trade, and war, and was all
directed from Mobile.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE PAGE OF BAPTISMAL RECORD (1704) WITH THE
AUTOGRAPH OF BIENVILLE.]
Exploration and religion went together. The Jesuits had not as strong a
hold as in Canada, and the _Relations_ throw little light on Louisiana.
But the Seminary of Quebec had missionaries like Davion on the
Mississippi and at Mobile, and Jesuits were found among the Creeks and
Choctaws. The Illinois region was already known, and portages there and
eastward became important, where canoes and supplies were carried from
the Lakes to head waters of rivers emptying into the Gulf. Their value
continued until our own century, and has pointed the way for systems of
canals. Le Sueur, who, with his influential family, lived at Mobile,
explored the upper Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers, whence he carried
green earth to France. The Ohio River was occupied to keep back the
English, whose traders penetrated even to the Chickasaws and Arkansas,
near modern Memphis, and Juchereau established a fort and tannery not
far from our Cairo. The Red River was explored in order to bar out the
Spaniards and to seize their mines. St. Denis penetrated Texas, and, as
a prisoner, visited Mexico. Even the Missouri was ascended in the hopes
of finding a way to the Pacific and to the Chinese trading there. Of
course, the Mobile waters were well known, and fringed with industrious
plantations. In 1714, Bienville took advantage of a war between the
Creeks and English colonists to found Fort Toulouse among the Alibamon
Indians, below Wetumpka, a move of great importance, and Fort Tombecbé
high up on the Tombigbee was one good result of the unfortunate 1736
war with the Chickasaws.
Trade was at the bottom of everything. The Spaniards of Pensacola and
Vera Cruz refused all commercial intercourse, and there was little
more success with Havana. There was some smuggling, however, and a
good deal was accomplished through the buccaneers and freebooters who
roved the Gulf. But the Indians needed blankets, guns and ammunition,
beads and gewgaws, and could supply furs, skins and provisions. Much
could have been done in the way of agriculture, but, beyond introducing
figs and raising some vegetables for local use and indigo for export,
the colonists accomplished little. They were not of the right kind.
At first they were from too high a rank in society to do much manual
labor, and after John Law and his Mississippi Bubble exploited the
province they were often jail-birds and prostitutes. Starvation faced
them every now and then; mutiny was not unknown; and quarrels of priest
and commandant, governor and intendant, were going on almost all the
time.
And yet in war and diplomacy they did much. It was mainly with the
Indians, although once Pensacola was captured from the Spanish, and
Dauphine Island suffered from both Spanish and English attacks. The
Choctaws and Creeks were held in alliance by congresses at Mobile; the
Cherokees and Chickasaws were sometimes friendly, and the Mississippi
River was kept open for free intercourse with Canada and the
Illinois. Toulouse, Tombecbé, Biloxi, Natchez, Natchitoches, and,
later, New Orleans and Fort Chartres and other Mississippi outposts,
show the extent of French influence from the capital at Mobile.
[Illustration: PLAN OF MOBILE AND OF FORT LOUIS IN 1711.]
In 1710, the site of this town had been moved from 27 Mile Bluff to
where the river joins the bay. There the new Fort Louis was built, at
first of logs, as shown on the plan of next year, and afterwards of
brick, as Fort Condé. Its foundations still exist below the soil of the
block bounded by Church, Theatre, Royal and St. Emanuel Streets, with
bastions projecting across Royal and Church. Around it was laid out the
town, with Royal, Conti, Dauphin and other streets just as to-day; and
lots were assigned to Bienville, the sailor Chateaugué, the soldier
Blondel, the explorer St. Denis, the engineer La Tour, to the priests
and others. For several years affairs were generally prosperous.
The shoaling of the port on Dauphine Island in 1717 led to the removal
somewhat later of the capital from Mobile, at first to Biloxi, and then
to the daughter-town, New Orleans; and this made a great difference.
But the fort was not abandoned and the place remained important. The
Indian congresses were always held here, probably at the Indian house
of posts and bark, once standing on the site of the German Relief
Hall. There was the annual distribution of presents, too, with talks
and solemn smoking, and Mobile was the centre of French influence for
all Indian affairs. Choctaws and Creeks were always on the streets.
The trade road northwestwardly to Yowanne and other Choctaw towns has
become Spring Hill Avenue, connecting Dauphin Street with the suburban
homes of Spring Hill, and its portage at Three-Mile Creek was long the
boundary of the modern city.
The little town had its society, its church and homes, its public and
private history. There are two executions of peculiar horror which are
said to have occurred on the esplanade of the fort, possibly where now
stands the Court-House. One was when Beaudrot, who under compulsion
had guided to safety the men who killed the cruel governor of Cat
Island, was placed in a coffin and sawn asunder. The other was when
a similar punishment even earlier fell upon the mutineers of Fort
Toulouse who murdered their commandant, Marchand, through an Indian
princess, ancestor of the Creek chief McGillivray, of Washington’s
time. A pleasanter remembrance of Toulouse, perhaps also in Marchand’s
time, was the romance of Madame D’Aubant. Tradition makes her to have
been that wife of Alexis Petrovich, the son of Peter the Great, who
was thought to have died suddenly in Russia. She only feigned death,
however, and escaped to America. At Mobile she met D’Aubant, an old or
new lover, and, when he was stationed at the fort among the Alibamons,
went there with him, taking their little girl. After his death she
returned to Europe.
Mutiny was confined to the outposts, but Mobile had its own troubles.
After Bienville finally left the colony in 1740, French influence over
the Indians declined. Even he had been unable to restore the confidence
and prestige lost through Perier’s harsh treatment of the Natchez. By
the Tennessee valley and a land trail above Fort Toulouse passing not
far from modern Birmingham, the English from Carolina increased their
hold on the Chickasaws, and by Adair’s address had even provoked a
civil war among the Choctaws.
Mobile became unsafe, and Vaudreuil connected the three squares north
with Fort Condé by palisades, having gates at the esplanade, Dauphin
Street, and by the present post office. So reduced was the city that a
grant was made to Madame de Lusser of the south and west parts of the
old town for a plantation, to be cultivated by her slaves.
This was one of many grants, but the others were not so near. The
earliest known was that of a part of Dauphine Island, another of Mon
Louis Island (really a part of the mainland), and the St. Louis tract
between Three-Mile creek and Chickasabogue, above the city. This was
where the Christian Apalaches lived, whom Bienville had colonized on
their flight from Florida, as he did the Tensaws, whom he rescued from
extinction on the Mississippi. These two tribes became civilized, and
were moved to the east side of the Mobile delta, where they gave names
to large rivers. French farmers settled all through the country, as
far up as the Tombigbee, possibly as Bladon Springs, and along Mobile
Bay and Mississippi Sound. French names still abound, and some have
been only translated. Dog River, Deer River, Fowl River, Fish River,
Red Bluff, are translations, and Bayou Chateaugué (or Three-Mile
Creek) still recalls Bienville’s sailor brother, as does Pont Chatooga
on Dauphine Island, and Grand Bay; Isle aux Oies, Bayou Coden (Coq
d’Inde), Bayou la Batré (batterie), Bon Secours and others are French
to this day. Of French families, Grondel, Favre, Lusser, Narbonne,
Chastang, Dubroca, and Rochon were important.
But the French development was now to cease. The Seven Years’ War had
come, with the world for its stage. In that war America and India
saw less fighting than Europe, but their maps were more changed.
The English colonies had hitherto fringed the Atlantic, the French
inhabited the banks of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi, with posts
between; but Wolfe’s victory on the Plains of Abraham caused the
transfer to England of all America east of the Mississippi, except
New Orleans. On October 20, 1763, Colonel Robertson, with a company
of Highlanders, took possession of Mobile. Fort Condé became Fort
Charlotte, named for the young queen of George III., and seventeen
years of British rule began.
[Illustration: THE BAY SHELL ROAD AT LOVERS’ LANE.]
This was not a long time, and yet in it was much change. It has been
only recently made clear how thoroughly British everything became.
Mather, Ancrum, Stuart, McGillivray, McCurtin, in Mobile; Walker,
Carson, McGrew, Sunflower, Lizard, Campbell, and McIntosh up the river,
were well-known merchants or settlers, and some of these families or
sites still survive. Attorney-General Edmund Rush Wegg had a home
on Mobile Bay near Battle’s, and Governor Durnford, to whom when
provincial surveyor we owe the first chart of the bay (1771), lived
near Montrose. The machinery of government was fully developed. The
governor, council and assembly sat at Pensacola, the capital, and
Mobile delegates were leaders there in what Governor Chester calls
the “cantankerous” lower house. Mobile was the largest town in the
vast province of West Florida, which extended from the Mississippi
to the Chattahoochee River, and had her own common law courts. A
British custom-house was in full operation. We learn much from the
military exploration of the Bigbee by Romans’s and Bartram’s botanical
expedition, but most from the papers of General Haldimand, who was long
in West Florida. They are preserved in the British Museum, and have
been copied for the Canadian government. The collection is a mine for
American history in the late sixties and early seventies. He pronounced
Mobile that part of the province best fitted for development.
The British established on the Mississippi two forts that were the
origin of Natchez and Baton Rouge, and also the one where the Iberville
River (Bayou Manchac) left the Mississippi to take off its surplus
waters to Lake Pontchartrain and the Sound. Thence the communication
with Mobile was covered by a chain of islands, of which Dauphine is the
easternmost. This Bayou Lake Sound passage the British endeavored to
clear out and utilize, it being shorter than the ascent from the river
mouth, which also they had a treaty right to use. In this way Mobile
became a depot and starting-point for expeditions up the Mississippi
River to the Illinois and other parts of the great West. Major Loftus
started thence on his disastrous attempt to take possession, and the
famous Major Robert Farmer successfully ascended from Mobile, and
in conjunction with a force from the east occupied Fort Chartres.
Locally the most important feature of British times was the Choctaw
congress of 1765, which began for this part of America the process
of “extinguishing the Indian title.” The French had acted as if the
natives were subjects of their king and all territory was French. The
English theory was that the savages were under a protectorate, but,
while they could not treat with other nations, their lands remained
their own until bought by the Crown. This is the modern doctrine of
civilized nations as to all savage countries, and the United States
have regularly acted on it.
The French had found no trouble with the climate or the marshes of
the Mobile delta, but the British troops were less careful, and for
several years suffered greatly. Summer camps were provided, one year
on historic Dauphine Island, and longer at “Croftown,” on the high
red bluff below Montrose, where the eye commands the full expanse of
the beautiful upper bay, and where the British ships could lie at
anchor within musket-shot of the sandy beach. The troops one year were
practically withdrawn from all Florida on account of the expense of
the establishments; but, as New Orleans was in Spanish hands, prudence
compelled their early restoration. A popular revolution broke out in
New Orleans, followed by a strong Spanish occupation, and the British
at Mobile found it expedient to watch their neighbors closely.
When war began in Europe between these two powers, the American
colonies on the Atlantic were in revolt against Great Britain. West
Florida, under the overcautious General Campbell, was weak in military
force. Louisiana, on the other hand, with Mexico and Cuba at her back,
and ruled by the young, able, and ambitious Galvez, was strong. The
result was what might have been expected.
Galvez reduced the Mississippi forts in the fall of 1779, and the next
spring attacked Mobile by land, after an adventurous voyage. Durnford
was in command, but he had only two hundred and seventy-five men with
which to oppose two thousand. A cannonade, and Campbell’s slowness in
sending aid, compelled a capitulation on March 14th, and the district
became Spanish. Next year, Pensacola also succumbed. The treaty of 1783
confirmed the Floridas to Spain, and gave the English but a few months
to sell their property and leave.
During the intervening years, Mobile was under military rule, but
affairs gradually settled down to a peace basis. Many British abandoned
their houses or farms, and left them as the property of his Catholic
Majesty. The King, after an inquest showing their vacancy, regranted
them, in different sizes, to his own subjects, and even to British
who had taken an oath of allegiance. In this way, the grants still
existing are generally new, and can seldom be traced back to English
owners. Courts were held by alcaldes, and the commandant, as civil
(political) and military governor, also exercised judicial power. Many
proclamations, grants, suits, wills and inventories of this time are
still preserved in the Probate Court. They are in thin books of rough
paper, the size of legal cap, with curious old watermarks showing
through the Spanish text.
The Spaniards renamed many of the streets. St. Joseph survives instead
of St. Charles, and St. Emanuel, Conception, Joachim, St. Anthony
and St. Michael also superseded French names. On the other hand, St.
Francis, St. Louis, Conti, Dauphin and Royal have outlasted the Spanish
changes. The population remained essentially French. Negro slavery
had existed since the importations in the time of John Law, and there
were many negroes and mulattoes, themselves owning land and slaves.
But the commandant, the keeper of the royal hospital, in what is now
Bienville Square, the royal physician, the commissary,--for a long time
Don Miguel Eslava,--officers of the garrison and other officials were
Spanish, and with their families and the priest made up an important
part of the population.
For the first eight or ten years even official papers were often in
French; but after the out-break of the great Revolution, everything
French fell into disfavor. Proclamations posted on the gate of Fort
Charlotte, not far from Royal and Government of our day, expressed
the horror of the Spanish King at the crimes of that great upheaval,
and called his children to a holy war. But Spain had her hands full in
Europe, and the progress of her half-French post at Mobile was checked.
No large public buildings were erected, and most of the private
dwellings were small. They have been almost swept away by fires, but
the type is preserved in old American homes. It was generally of frame,
filled in between with mortar. In front was a wide porch, or gallery,
as it is invariably called, often extending around the house, and a
long hall, going all the way through, opened into rooms on each side.
The chimneys were generally of native brick, and house and surrounding
picket fence were whitewashed. The many shells furnished lime, the clay
by Montrose and west of the city was utilized for brickyards, while on
Dog River, on creeks above the town and on bayous across Tensaw River,
were sawmills. These industries have all continued. In agriculture
cotton was important, but freshets made indigo unprofitable.
[Illustration: MOBILE IN 1765.]
Most of the cotton came from up the rivers, as around Fort St. Stephen,
where are the first shoals of the Tombigbee. But the delimitation, so
long demanded by the new country called the United States was finally
run at 31°, and cut Mobile off from her river system. The treaty was
made in 1795, and four years later Andrew Ellicott, of the joint
commission, erected near the Creole settlement of Chastang’s, twenty
miles from Mobile, the stone which marked the boundary. The result was
a rapid influx of Americans north of the line, and the formation of the
Mississippi Territory.
[Illustration: THE ELLICOTT STONE.]
The hoisting of the American flag at Fort St. Stephen began the
marvellous development and expansion of the United States. Kentucky
and Tennessee became States, and Louisiana was purchased, by which the
Union crossed the Mississippi. Finally, during the War of 1812, General
James Wilkinson took possession of Mobile on April 15, 1813. This was
on the theory, consistently adhered to by our Government, that Mobile
was still a part of Louisiana. Whether the theory would have been
carried out if Spain had been a strong power at the time is a different
question.
So Mobile became American, the seaport of Mississippi Territory, whose
extent was much that of the old British province of West Florida. The
chief difference was that, as its south line was at 31°, there was no
seacoast except about Mobile, and that this was compensated by giving
a greater extent to the north. When the territory was divided in two,
the west half made Mississippi and the east became Alabama, embracing
roughly the basins draining to Mobile Bay.
Most of Wilkinson’s soldiers came _via_ New Orleans, but Mobile was
really Americanized from the up-country. Washington County, that vast
district of the territory on both sides of the Tombigbee, had been
rapidly settled after the Spaniards withdrew. The Methodist, Lorenzo
Dow, repeatedly ministered there on his meteor circuits. St. Stephen’s,
Tensaw and Fort Stoddert became centres of influence. American courts
were regularly held at Wakefield, and American civilization was firmly
established in the first few years of this century. The Government was
strong enough, in 1807, even to capture the popular Aaron Burr, near
the Court-House on his flight from Natchez to the Spanish lines, and to
send him on to Richmond for trial.