enjoy the privileges of the native born subjects of our kingdom, lands, and countries within our sovereignty, although they be born in foreign lands. We nevertheless declare the aforesaid affranchised persons, together with the free negroes, incapable of receiving from the whites any gift, as between the living, causa mortis, or otherwise: decreeing that if any should be made, they are void, and they may be appropriated to the nearest hospital. ART. LIII.-We command affranchised persons to act with the greatest respect toward their former masters, toward their widows, and toward their children; insomuch that any injury they may do them shall be punished more severely than if committed against any other persons; the directors being always free and clear as regards them of all other charges, duties, and profitable services to which their former masters would have laid claim, as well upon their persons as upon their goods and inheritances, in the relation of masters. ART. LIV.-We grant to persons affranchised the same rights, privileges, and immunities, enjoyed by those born free: decreeing that the blessings of liberty thus purchased, shall effect for them, as well with respect to their persons as their property, the same objects that result from the advantage of natural freedom to our other subjects: and all this, notwithstanding the exceptions specified in article fifty-second of these presents. ART. LV.-We declare those confiscations and fines of which no particular appropriation has been made by these presents, to belong to the said Indies Company-to be paid over to those who superintend the receipt of the taxes and revenues: decreeing, nevertheless, that one-third part of said confiscations and fines be set apart for the benefit of the hospital nearest to the place where they shall have been decreed. So we proclaim as a mandate to our well-beloved and trusty servants composing our Superior Council in Louisiana, that they cause these presents to be read, published, and registered, to guard what is contained therein, and observe them according to their form and tenor-all ordinances, declarations, decrees, regulations, and usages to the contrary notwithstanding, which we have repealed, and do hereby repeal by these presents. For such is our pleasure. And in order that this may be made firm and binding, we have caused our seal to be affixed thereto. Given at Versailles, in the month of March, in the year of Grace one thousand seven hundred and twenty-four. The pacific relations which were maintained between England and France, from 1713 to 1744, were favorable to the growth of the French and English colonies in North America; but the grasping policy of the Company of the Indies was steadily opposed, and in some instances defeated, by the Spaniards of Florida, and by the tribes of Indians who inhabited. the country lying on the borders of the Mississippi river south of the 36th degree of north latitude. In the year 1729, the French settlements about the post of Natchez, and those on the Yazoo and Washita rivers, were destroyed by the Natchez Indians. These settlements, collectively, contained within their limits about seven hundred colonists, of whom "scarcely enough survived to carry the tidings of destruction" to New Orleans. In the course of the next year, 1730, the Natchez Indians, as a nation, were exterminated by the French. Hundreds were massacred; a few sought refuge among the Chickasaws, and were adopted into that tribe; and some were taken by their conquerors, and reduced to a condition of slavery. These acts of injustice and oppression were the last memorable events that signalized the administration of the Company of the Indies in North America. *Le Code Noir ou Recueil de Reglemens, p. 281. +Flint. WHEN the Company of the Indies gave up their charter, où the 10th of April, 1732, the government of France resumed the administration of affairs in the province of Louisiana. The governor-general, and the intendant of the province, jointly, were authorized to grant lands to settlers; and all grants of lands which were made to white persons by Indians, or others, without the sanction of these officers, were void. M. D'Artuguiette was appointed "commandant-general for the king, for the district of Illinois,” and a small military force was stationed at Fort Chartres. A code of laws, entitled the common law of Paris, was nominally, but never effectively, extended over the district of Illinois. Many parts of that code were not adapted to the unsettled state of the colony; and even those general laws which were suitable to the condition and pursuits of the people, were not enforced with strictness, nor with uniformity. The commandants of the different posts, severally, exercised an arbitrary authority over the French population within their respective jurisdictions; but the government that was administered by this class of officers, was neither oppressive nor complex. The Company of the Indies had engaged, in the prosecution of its designs, the services of several men of education, talents, and enterprise. After the failure of the projects of the company, some of this class of adventurers returned to France; others settled in Canada; and a very small number remained in the district of Illinois. The more numerous class of colonists who had been attracted to this district, were poor and illiterate persons. Few of them were qualified to engage, successfully, either in agricultural, mechanical, or commercial pursuits; "and when the dreams of sudden wealth, with which they had been deluded, faded from before them, they were not disposed to engage in the ordinary employments of enlightened industry. The few who were engaged in mercantile pursuits, turned their attention almost exclusively to the traffic with the Indians, while a large number became hunters and boatmen." * The missionary Du Poisson, who, in 1727, wrote an account of the French settlements in the Mississippi valley, said:"They call a grant a certain extent of territory granted by the India Company to one person alone, or to many who have formed together a partnership to clear the lands, and make them valuable. These were the persons who, in the days of the great Mississippi bubble, were called the counts and the marquisses of Mississippi. Thus the grantees are the aristocracy of this country. The greater part have never left France, but have equipped ships filled with directors, stewards, storekeepers, clerks, workmen of different trades, provisions, and goods of all kinds. Their business was to penetrate into the woods, to build their cabins there, to make choice of lands, and to burn the canes and trees. These beginnings seemed too hard to people not accustomed to such kind of labor. The directors and their subalterns, for the most part, amused themselves in places where there were some French already settled; there they consumed their provisions; and the work was scarcely commenced before the grant was entirely ruined. The workman, badly paid, or badly fed, refused to labor, or else seized on his own pay, and the stores were plundered. Was not all this perfectly French? But this was in part the obstacle which has prevented the country from being settled, as it should have been, after the prodigious expense which has been lavished upon it. They call a plantation a small portion of land granted by the company. A man, with his wife, or his associate, clears a small section, builds him a house with four forked sticks, which he covers with bark, plants some corn and rice for his food; another year he raises more provisions, and begins a plantation of tobacco; and if finally he attains to the possession of three or four negroes, behold the extent to which he can reach. This is what they call a plantation and a planter. But how many are as wretched as when they commenced? They call a settlement a section in which there are many plantations not far distant from each other, forming a kind of village. Beside these grantees and planters, there are also * Hall. in this country, people who have no other business than that of vagabondizing."* The Chickasaws had, for a long time, obstinately opposed the advancement of the French settlements on the borders of the river Mississippi, between New Orleans and the mouth of the river Ohio; and the steady hostility of this tribe of Indians, was one of the principal obstacles which prevented a regular and safe communication between Canada and the southern French settlements in Louisiana. The civil and military authorities of these provinces, therefore, determined to concentrate a strong force in the country of the Chickasaws, in order to subdue the power of that hostile tribe. In the year 1736, about two hundred French recruits and four hundred Indians, moved from the place of rendezvous in the Illinois district, and, under the command of M. D'Artuguiette, passed down the river Mississippi, to form a junction with another military force which had been recruited, under Bienville, at the south. Francis Morgan de Vincennes, an officer of the king's troops, who was about that time, according to some authorities, the commandant of a small post on the river Wabash, was among those who went with D'Artuguiette, on his expedition against the Chickasaws. The French and Indian forces which had been recruited at the south, under Bienville, did not reach the appointed place of rendezvous, at the time which had been fixed, to form a junction with the Illinois forces; and D'Artuguiette and Vincennes, without waiting for the arrival of the expected reinforcements, commenced active hostilities by attacking and destroying some small villages which were inhabited by a few of the hostile Indians. The Chickasaw warriors soon assembled in considerable numbers, and defeated their assailants. About forty Frenchmen, and eight of their Indian allies, were killed in the conflict; and several of the invading party were captured, and afterward burnt at the stake. Among those who perished in this expedition, was M. de Vincennes, who "ceased not until his last breath to exhort the men to behave worthy of their religion and their country."† The expedition which marched from the south, under Bien *Kip's Early Jesuit Missions, p. 233, + Charlevoix. |