"Your story of Alabama was very interesting, I think, papa," said Elsie
Raymond, "and if you are not too tired, won't you now tell us about
Mississippi?"
"Yes," replied the captain. "I have told you about De Soto and his men
coming there in 1540. At that time what is now the territory of that
State was divided between the Chickasaw, Choctaw and Natchez Indians.
It was more than a hundred years afterward, in 1681, that La Salle
descended the Mississippi River from the Illinois country to the Gulf
of Mexico; and in 1700 Iberville, the French governor of Louisiana,
planted a colony on Ship Island, on the gulf coast. That settlement
was afterward removed to Biloxi, on the mainland. Bienville, another
governor of Louisiana, established a post on the Mississippi River,
and called it Fort Rosalie. That was in 1761, and now the city of
Natchez occupies that spot. A few years later, in 1729, the Natchez
Indians, growing alarmed at the increasing power of the French,
resolved to exterminate them. On the 28th of November of that year
they attacked the settlement of Fort Rosalie and killed the garrison
and settlers--seven hundred persons. When that terrible news reached
New Orleans, Bienville resolved to retaliate upon the murderers. The
Chickasaws were enemies of the Natchez; he applied to them for help,
and they furnished him with sixteen thousand warriors. With them and
his own troops Bienville besieged the Natchez in their fort, but they
escaped in the night and fled west of the Mississippi. The French
followed 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 small
nation, and very little was heard of them after that. The Chickasaws
were a large and powerful tribe living in the fertile region of the
upper Tombigbee; the French knew that they had incited the Natchez
against them, and now Bienville resolved to attack them. In 1736 he
sailed from New Orleans to Mobile with a strong force of French troops
and twelve hundred Choctaw warriors. From Mobile he ascended the
Tombigbee River in boats for five hundred miles, to the southeastern
border of the present county of Pontotoc. The Chickasaw fort was a
powerful stronghold about twenty-five miles from that point.
"Bienville took measures to secure his boats, then advanced against the
enemy. He made a determined assault on their fort, but was repulsed
with the loss of one hundred men, which so discouraged him that he
dismissed the Choctaws with presents, threw his cannon into the
Tombigbee, 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 and
Indians from Canada, commanded by D'Artaguette, the pride and flower
of the French at the North, and some Indians from Canada, assisted
by the Illinois chief Chicago, from the shore of Lake Michigan. All
these came down the river unobserved to the last Chickasaw bluff.
From there they penetrated into the heart of the country. They
encamped near the appointed place of rendezvous with the force of
Bienville, and there waited for some time for intelligence from him.
It did not come, and the Indian allies of D'Artaguette became so
impatient for war and plunder that they could not be restrained, and
at length he (D'Artaguette) consented to lead them to the attack. He
drove the Chickasaws from two of their fortified villages, but was
severely wounded in his attack on the third. Then the Indians fled
precipitately, leaving their wounded commander weltering in his blood.
Vincennes, his lieutenant, and their spiritual guide and friend, the
Jesuit Senate, refused to fly, and shared the captivity of their
gallant leader."
"And did the Indians kill them, papa?" asked Ned.
"No, not then; hoping to receive a great ransom for them from
Bienville, who was then advancing into their country, they treated them
with great care and attention; but when he retreated they gave up the
hope of getting anything for their prisoners, therefore put them to a
horrible death, burning them over a slow fire, leaving only one alive
to tell of the dreadful fate to their countrymen."
"Oh, how dreadful!" sighed Elsie Raymond. "I'm thankful we did not live
in those times and places."
"Yes, so am I," said her father. "God has been very good to us to give
us our lives in this good land, and these good times. It is years
now since the Indians were driven out of Alabama and Mississippi.
They and Florida passed into the hands of the English in 1763. In
1783 the country north of the thirty-first parallel was included
within the limits of the United States. According to the charter
of Georgia, its territory extended to the Mississippi, but in 1795
the legislature of that State sold to the general government that
part which now constitutes the States of Alabama and Mississippi. In
1798 the Territory of Mississippi was organized, and on the 10th of
December, 1817, it was admitted into the Union as a State. On the 9th
of January, 1861, the State seceded from the Union and joined the
Southern Confederacy. And some dreadful battles were fought there in
our Civil War--those of Iuka and Corinth, Jackson, Champion Hills and
other places. That war caused an immense destruction of property. The
State 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 of
the State of Mississippi completed; but Grandma Elsie presently asked:
"Isn't there something more of interest in the story of the Natchez
which you could tell us, captain?"
"Perhaps so, mother," he replied. "It was a remarkable tribe, more
civilized than any other of the original inhabitants of these States.
Their religion was something like that of the fire-worshippers of
Persia. They called their chiefs 'suns' and their king the 'Great Sun.'
A perpetual fire was kept burning by the ministering priest in the
principal temple, and he also offered sacrifices of the first fruits
of the chase; and in extreme cases, when they deemed their deity angry
with them, they offered sacrifices of their infant children to appease
his wrath. When Iberville was there, one of the temples was struck by
lightning and set on fire. The keeper of the fane begged the squaws to
throw their little ones into the fire to appease the angry god, and
four little ones were so sacrificed before the French could persuade
them to desist from the horrid rite. The 'Great Sun,' as they called
their king, had given Iberville a hearty welcome to his dominions,
paying him a visit in person. He was borne to Iberville's quarters
on the shoulders of some of his men, and attended by a great retinue
of his people. A treaty of friendship was made, and the French given
permission to build a fort and establish a trading-post among the
Indians--things that, however, were not done for many years. A few
stragglers at that time took up their abode among the Natchez, but it
was not until 1716 that any regular settlement was made; then Fort
Rosalie was erected at that spot on the bank of the Mississippi where
the city of Natchez now stands.
"Well, as I have told you, Grand or Great Sun, the chief of the
Natchez, was at first the friend of the whites; but one man, by his
overbearing behavior, brought destruction on the whole colony. The
home of the Great Sun was a beautiful village called the White Apple.
It was spread over a space of nearly three miles, and stood about
twelve miles south of the fort, near the mouth of Second Creek, and
three miles east of the Mississippi. M. D. Chopart, the commandant
of the fort, was so cruel and overbearing, so unjust to the Indians,
that he commanded the Great Sun to leave the village of his ancestors
because he, M. D. Chopart, wanted the grounds for his own purposes. Of
course the Great Sun was not willing, but Chopart was deaf to all his
entreaties, which led the Natchez to form a plot to rid their country
of these oppressors.
"Before the attempt to carry it out, a young Indian girl, who loved
the Sieur de Mace, ensign of the garrison, told him with tears that
her nation intended to massacre the French. He was astonished, and
questioned her closely. She gave him simple answers, shedding tears
as she spoke, and he was convinced that she was telling him only the
truth. So he at once repeated it to Chopart, but he immediately had
the young man arrested for giving a false alarm.
"But the fatal day came--November 29, 1729. Early in the morning Great
Sun, with a few chosen warriors, all well armed with knives and other
concealed weapons, went to Fort Rosalie. Only a short time before the
company had sent up a large supply of powder and lead, also provisions
for the fort. The Indians had brought corn and poultry to barter for
ammunition, saying they wanted it for a great hunt they were preparing
for, and the garrison, believing their story, were thrown off their
guard, 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 once
drew out their weapons and began a furious massacre of the garrison and
all who were in or near the warehouse. And the same bloody work was
carried 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--seven
hundred souls--were sleeping the sleep of death. The women and children
were kept as prisoners, and the slaves that they might be of use as
servants. Also two mechanics, a tailor and a carpenter, were permitted
to live, that they might be of use to their captors. Chopart was one
of the first killed--by a common Indian, as the chiefs so despised him
that they disdained to soil their hands with his blood.
"The Great Sun sat in the company's warehouse while the massacre was
going on, smoking his pipe unconcernedly while his warriors were
piling up the heads of the murdered Frenchmen in a pyramid at his
feet, Chopart's head at its top, above all those of his officers and
soldiers. As soon as the Great Sun had been told by his Indians that
all the Frenchmen were dead, he bade them begin their pillage. They
then made the negro slaves bring out the plunder for distribution,
except the powder and military stores, which were kept for public use
in 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 every
place where they had struck them down to death, dancing over their
mangled bodies with horrid yells in their drunken revelry; then they
left them there unburied, a prey for hungry dogs and vultures. And all
the 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," replied
the captain; "but two soldiers who happened to be then in the woods
escaped and carried the dreadful tidings to New Orleans."
"I'm glad they didn't go back to the fort and get caught by those
savage Indians," said Elsie Dinsmore. "But how did they know that the
Indians were there and doing such dreadful deeds?"
"By hearing the deafening yells of the savages and seeing the smoke
going up from the burning buildings. Those things told them what was
going on, and they hid themselves until they could get a boat or canoe
in which to go down the river to New Orleans, which they reached in a
few days; and there, as I have said, they told the sad story of the
awful happening at the colony on the St. Catherine."
"Were there any other colonies that the Indians destroyed in that part
of 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 sad
time for every settlement in the province."
"When the news of this terrible disaster reached New Orleans, the
French began a war of extermination against the Natchez. They drove
them 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 with
barbaric cruelty--four of the men and two of the women were publicly
burned to death at New Orleans. Some Tonica Indians brought down a
Natchez woman, whom they had found in the woods, and were allowed to
burn her to death on a platform erected near the levee, the whole
population looking on while she was consumed by the flames. She bore
all that torture with wonderful fortitude, not shedding a tear, but
upbraiding her torturers with their want of skill, flinging at them
every opprobrious epithet she could think of."
"How very brave and stoical she must have been, poor thing!" remarked
Grace. "But, papa, have not the Natchez always been considered
superior to other tribes in refinement, intelligence and bravery?"
"Yes," he replied; "it is said that no other tribe has left so proud a
memorial of their courage, independent spirit and contempt of death in
defence of their rights and liberties. The scattered remnants of the
tribe sought an asylum among the Chickasaws and other tribes who were
hostile to the French; but since that time the individuality of the
Natchez tribe has been swallowed up among others with whom they were
incorporated. In refinement and intelligence they were equal, if not
superior, to any other tribe north of Mexico. In courage and stratagem
they were inferior to none. Their form was noble and commanding, their
persons were straight and athletic, their stature seldom under six
feet. Their countenances indicated more intelligence than is commonly
found in savages. Some few individuals of the Natchez tribe were to be
found in the town of Natchez as late as the year 1782, more than half a
century after the Natchez massacre."