JEAN RIBAUT
THE FRENCH AT PORT ROYAL, IN SOUTH CAROLINA
The Expedition of Captain Jean Ribaut.--Landing on the St. John's
River.--Friendly Natives.--The "Seven Cities of Cibola" again!--The
Coast of Georgia.--Port Royal reached and named.--A Fort built and a
Garrison left.--Discontent and Return to France.
No doubt the severe winters of Canada determined Admiral Coligny, the
leader of the Huguenots, or French Protestants, to plant the settlement
which he designed as a haven of refuge from persecution, in the
southern part of the New World.
Accordingly, on the first day of May, 1562, two little vessels under
the command of Captain Jean Ribaut found themselves off the mouth of a
great river which, because of the date, they called the River of May,
now known as the St. John's.
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When they landed, it seemed to the sea-worn Frenchmen as if they had
set foot in an enchanted world. Stalwart natives, whom Laudonnière,
one of the officers, describes as "mighty and as well shapen and
proportioned of body as any people in the world," greeted them
hospitably.[1] Overhead was the luxuriant semi-tropical vegetation,
giant oaks festooned with gray moss trailing to the ground and towering
magnolias opening their great white, fragrant cups. No wonder they
thought this newly discovered land the "fairest, fruitfullest, and
pleasantest of all the world." One of the Indians wore around his neck
a pearl "as great as an acorne at the least" and gladly exchanged it
for a bauble. This set the explorers to inquiring for gold and gems,
{69} and they soon gathered, as they imagined, from the Indians' signs
that the "Seven Cities of Cibola" [2]--again the myth that had led
Coronado and his Spaniards to bitter disappointment!--were distant only
twenty days' journey. Of course, the natives had never heard of Cibola
and did not mean anything of the kind. The explorers soon embarked and
sailed northward, exploring the coast of Georgia and giving to the
rivers or inlets the names of rivers of France, such as the Loire and
the Gironde.
On May 27 they entered a wide and deep harbor, spacious enough, it
seemed to them, "to hold the argosies of the world." A royal haven it
seemed. Port Royal they named it, and Port Royal it is called to this
day. They sailed up this noble estuary and entered Broad River. When
they landed the frightened Indians fled. Good reason they had to dread
the sight of white men, for this was the country of Chicora (South
Carolina), the scene of one of those acts of brutal treachery of which
the Spaniards, of European nations, were the most frequently all guilty.
Forty-two years before, Lucas Vasquez de {70} Ayllon, a high official
of San Domingo, had visited this coast with two vessels. The simple
and kindly natives lavished hospitality on the strangers. In return,
the Spaniards invited them on board. Full of wondering curiosity, the
Indians without suspicion explored every part of the vessels. When the
holds were full of sight-seers, their hosts suddenly closed the hatches
and sailed away with two ship-loads of wretched captives doomed to toil
as slaves in the mines of San Domingo. But Ayllon's treachery was well
punished. One of his vessels was lost, and on board the other the
captives refused food and mostly died before the end of the voyage. On
his revisiting the coast, six years later, nearly his entire following
was massacred by the natives, who lured them to a feast, then fell upon
them in the dead of night. Treachery for treachery!
The Frenchmen, however, won the confidence of the Indians with gifts of
knives, beads, and looking-glasses, coaxed two on board the ships, and
loaded them with presents, in the hope of reconciling them to going to
France. But they moaned incessantly and finally fled.
These Europeans, however, had not done {71} anything to alarm the
natives, and soon the latter were on easy terms with them. Therefore,
when it was decided to leave a number of men to hold this beautiful
country for the King, Ribaut felt sure of the Indians' friendly
disposition. He detailed thirty men, under the command of Albert de
Pierria, as the garrison of a fort which he armed with guns from the
ship.
It would delight us to know the exact site of this earliest lodgment of
Europeans on the Atlantic coast north of Mexico. All that can be said
with certainty is that it was not many miles from the picturesque site
of Beaufort.
Having executed his commission by finding a spot suitable for a colony,
Ribaut sailed away, leaving the little band to hold the place until he
should return with a party of colonists. Those whom he left had
nothing to do but to roam the country in search of gold, haunted, as
they were, by that dream which was fatal to so many of the early
ventures in America. They did not find any, but they visited the
villages of several chiefs and were always hospitably entertained.
When supplies in the neighborhood ran low, they made a journey by boat
through inland water-ways to two chiefs on the Savannah River, who
furnished {72} them generously with corn and beans; and when their
storehouse burned down, with the provisions which they had just
received, they went again to the same generous friends, received a
second supply, and were bidden to come back without hesitation, if they
needed more. There seemed to be no limit to the good-will of the
kindly natives.[3]
Their monotonous existence soon began to pall on the Frenchmen, eager
for conquest and gold. They had only a few pearls, given them by the
Indians. Of these the natives undoubtedly possessed a considerable
quantity, but not baskets heaped with them, as the Spaniards said.
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Roaming the woods or paddling up the creeks, the Frenchmen encountered
always the same rude fare, hominy, beans, and fish. Before them was
always the same glassy river, shimmering in the fierce midsummer heat;
around them the same silent pine forests.
The rough soldiers and sailors, accustomed to spend their leisure in
taverns, found the dull routine of existence in Chicora insupportable.
Besides, their commander irritated them by undue severity. The crisis
came when he hanged a man with his own hands for a slight offence. The
men rose in a body, murdered him, and chose Nicholas Barré to succeed
him.
Shortly afterward they formed a desperate resolve: they would build a
ship and sail home. Nothing could have seemed wilder. Not one of them
had any experience of ship-building. But they went to work with a
will. They had a forge, tools, and some iron. Soon the forest rang
with the sound of the axe and with the crash of falling trees. They
laid the keel and pushed the work with amazing energy and ingenuity,
caulked the seams with long moss gathered from the neighboring trees
and smeared the bottoms and sides with pitch from the pines. The {74}
Indians showed them how to make a kind of cordage, and their shirts and
bedding were sewn together into sails. At last their crazy little
craft was afloat, undoubtedly the first vessel built on the Atlantic
seaboard of America.
They laid in such stores as they could secure by bartering their goods,
to the Indians, deserted their post, and sailed away from a land where
they could have found an easy and comfortable living, if they had put
into the task half the thought and labor which they exerted to escape
from it.
Few voyages, even in the thrilling annals of exploration, have ever
been so full of hardship and suffering as this mad one. Alternate
calms and storms baffled, famine and thirst assailed the unfortunate
crew. Some died outright; others went crazy with thirst, leaped
overboard, and drank their fill once and forever. The wretched
survivors drew lots, killed the man whom fortune designated, and
satisfied their cravings with his flesh and blood. At last, as they
were drifting helpless, with land in sight, an English vessel bore down
on them, took them all on board, landed the feeblest, and carried the
rest as prisoners to Queen Elizabeth.
[1] These people were of the Timucua tribe, one that has since become
entirely extinct, and that was succeeded in the occupation of Florida
by the warlike Seminoles, an off-shoot of the Creeks. They belonged to
the Muskoki group, which Included some of the most advanced tribes on
our continent. These Southern Indians had progressed further in the
arts of life than the Algonquins and the Iroquois, and were
distinguished from these by a milder disposition. Gentle and kind
toward strangers, they were capable of great bravery when defending
their homes or punishing treachery, as the Spanish invaders had already
learned to their cost. They dwelt in permanent villages, raised
abundant crops of corn, pumpkins, and other vegetables, and, amid
forests full of game and rivers teeming with fish, lived in ease and
plenty.
[2] See "Pioneer Spaniards in North America."
[3] These were Edistoes and Kiowas. The fierce Yemassees came into the
country later. The kindness of the Southern Indians, when not provoked
by wanton outrage, is strikingly illustrated in the letter of the
famous navigator, Giovanni Verrazzano (See "The World's Discoverers"),
who visited the Atlantic seaboard nearly about the same time as the
kidnapper Ayllon. Once, as he was coasting along near the site of
Wilmington, N. C., on account of the high surf a boat could not land,
but a bold young sailor swam to the shore and tossed a gift of trinkets
to some Indians gathered on the beach. A moment later the sea threw
him helpless and bruised at their feet. In an instant he was seized by
the arms and legs and, crying lustily for help, was borne off to a
great fire--to be roasted on the spot, his shipmates did not doubt. On
the contrary, the natives warmed and rubbed him, then took him down to
the shore and watched him swim back to his friends.
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