MVC-06. A Description of Louisiana

A Description of Louisiana comprises part of engraver and cartographer Thomas Jeffreys\u27 work Natural and Civil History of the French Dominions in North and South America which was published in London in 1760. Drawing on accounts by Father Pierre Francois Xavier de Charlevoix, Antoine Simon Le Page Du Pratz and M. Dumont de Montigny from earlier in the century, Jeffreys uses them to support his maps, which informed British opinion at a time when the future of British interests in North America was being debated. The volume includes an introduction by C. Edward Skeen, Professor of History, Memphis State University.https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/speccoll-ua-pub-mvcbul/1015/thumbnail.jp

The French and Indian Wars: New France\u27s Situational Indian Policies During the Fox and Natchez Conflicts, 1701-1732

This research examines the often-glorified relationship between New France and the American Indians with which that empire came into contact in North America, focusing primarily on the conflicting policies seen during the Fox Wars and the Natchez Wars. Many recent histories of New France, including Richard White\u27s seminal study The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics, 1650-1815, focus primarily on the lands surrounding the Great Lakes. These histories champion a French Indian policy that was dominated by the fur trade and illustrated by the outbreak of the Fox Wars in 1712. However, New France\u27s Indian policy was not always dictated by the vast and powerful fur trade. Once the French reached the Gulf of Mexico and began settling in the Deep South, priorities changed, and an often-overlooked chapter of colonial French history began. Much of the primary research on the Natchez Indians was performed by looking exhaustively though the letters, decrees and memoirs written in The Mississippi Provincial Archives: French Dominion Volumes II, III and IV. Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz\u27s L\u27Histoire de la Louisiane also proved to be an invaluable primary resource during the process. When dealing with the Upper Country, much of my research focused on the primary source smorgasbord presented online by the Wisconsin Historical Collections and the Michigan Pioneers and Historical Collections

Rising suns, fallen forts, and impudent immigrants: Race, power, and war in the Lower Mississippi Valley.

Their assumption became untenable when hundreds of Europeans and their African slaves moved into Natchez country. The resultant web of Indian, French, and African communities created a unique matrix for the production of a new racial category: red men. The plantation system of the 1720s gave the Natchez and neighboring groups opportunities to see the Europeans dominate Africans, a permanent underclass identifiable by skin color. The colonists also attempted to marginalize the Indians as "racial inferiors". In response, Natchez leaders appealed to a shared identity as red men to quell their internecine rivalries and forge an anti-French coalition among their villages.During the 1720s, colonial observers recorded Southeastern Indians using the term "red men" to distinguish themselves from the "whites" and "blacks" from overseas. The Natchez embraced this red identity, using it to unite factions within their nation and then employed the solidarity that it created to eject the French from their homeland. This dissertation reconstructs the ways that Native Americans in the Lower Mississippi Valley co-opted the European discourse of racial categories and shaped it to achieve their own ends.In 1729, the Natchez struck, destroying the newcomers' farms and forts. The Indians' success was transitory; the French counterattacked, killing or enslaving hundreds. Because of persistent attempts to exterminate the remaining Natchez, France alienated many of the Southeast's Indian nations. Weakened diplomatically, the French could no longer resist their British adversaries and lost their colonies in North America. The legacy of redness, however, survives to this day.This chain of events began when Indians and Europeans assumed that the other would fit handily into their respective social orders. To the French, the Natchez's temples and hereditary leadership resembled the ancient civilizations of the Old World, ripe for conversion. To the Natchez, the first Frenchmen who arrived in the 1680s often looked and acted like Native Americans. The handful of Europeans who followed frequently joined Natchez kinship networks and rendered service to native political leaders. The Europeans' willingness to adapt culturally lulled the Natchez into believing that the French were candidates for assimilation

These savages are called the Natchez: violence as exchange and expression in Natchez-French relations

Culture contact in colonial North America sometimes led to violent interactions. The continent during colonization contained two very different populations. Native Americans and Europeans occupied the same space and necessarily developed unique relationships. Each had to maneuver around the other to forge careful and productive bonds. When they could not, conflict arose; sometimes as war, sometimes as stealing or raiding. During their brief relationship, the Natchez Indians and French colonists in Louisiana engaged in several wars. Those wars revealed various elements of each culture. In 1716 Natchez warriors responded to a French diplomatic insult by killing French fur traders travelling upriver thus sparking the first war. In 1722-23, the French and Natchez fought again; this time over unpaid debts. Finally, in 1729, the Natchez executed a viciously well-planned attack on the French Fort Rosalie, which stood in their territory. Each war, while complicating their relationship, became a form of expression and exchange for the Natchez and the French. The Indians and Europeans clarified their outlooks and ideas with violence. The three wars escalated, growing increasingly more violent for both parties as their contact became considerably more intense and crowded. By the end of the third war the Natchez no longer existed as a cohesive nation. The French had brutally expressed their anger toward and fear of the Natchez; the Europeans all but decimated the Indians. Their chiefdom beaten, the remaining Natchez scattered throughout the southeast, some making it as north as the Carolinas. The French continued to maintain their presence in Louisiana for several more decades

Rumors, Runaways, Revolt!: an Overview of Slave Unrest in Colonial and Territorial Louisiana

A major problem in the historiography of slavery in Louisiana is the reliance of too many historians on the early narratives. Because they lack scholarly citations and often contain erroneous information, evaluations of slavery based on these early sources are often inaccurate. By examining four periods of slave unrest in colonial and territorial Louisiana — the 1829-1830 conspiracy known as Samba’s Revolt, the 1795 conspiracy at Pointe Coupee Parish, the incident of runaway slaves at Natchitoches in 1804, and the 1811 uprising in St. Charles Parish — one can determine how errors in fact, once they enter the history of an event, gain credence with repetition. And not only errors in fact, but also errors in interpretation, cloud the literature of slave unrest. Because of the complexity of the subject, it is necessary for the researcher to carefully examine the primary sources rather than rely on suspect secondary accounts. But even the primary sources are not always objective. Memoirs, letters, and travel accounts, too, may contain mistaken information, either by accident or design, or may be clouded by personal bias. A final problem, and one over which the historian has no control, is the lack of primary source material left by blacks themselves. All primary accounts of slave unrest during this period were written by the white master class, a fact which complicates the historiography even more

Summary Account of the Carolina Parakeet in Arkansas

The extinct Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis) once was part of the Arkansas avifauna. The first two reports of the species in what is now Arkansas were made in 1673 and 1718 by early French explorers. The remaining records are from the 1800s when parakeets were found in nearly all parts of the state, often in abundance. The last literature reference for the species still definitely occurring in Arkansas pertains to birds present in the summer of 1885 along the White River at Newpor

Transmission transatlantique de savoirs en sciences naturelles d’Amérique française au XVIIIe siècle; Étude comparative des écrits de Kalm (Canada), de Barrère (Guyane française), de Le Page du Pratz (Louisiane) et de Dumont de Montigny (Louisiane)

Dans la foulée de leur colonisation de l’Amérique aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, les Français ont dressé des inventaires des ressources du territoire occupé ou convoité. Apte à décrire toute cette richesse, l’histoire naturelle devint ainsi un savoir colonial par excellence et l’un des rouages centraux de la « machine coloniale » française. Aussi, le legs textuel de cette activité est-il considérable et diverses perspectives s’y expriment : un entreprenant colon, par exemple, ne verra pas les ressources de la Louisiane de la même façon qu’un officiel métropolitain de passage ou qu’un botaniste en mission. Mais le regard colonisateur est largement partagé et tous ces textes, ou presque, font acte d’appropriation des plantes, minéraux et animaux américains. La place ménagée aux indigènes et aux esclaves – qu’ils soient d’origine autochtone ou afro-américaine – comme acteurs dans le processus de création de savoir est variable selon le contexte et l’auteur. Ce mémoire se penche sur un petit nombre de textes éloquents tirés du corpus de l’histoire naturelle des colonies d’Amérique continentales françaises. Sont étudiés de près quatre auteurs qui ont œuvré ou qui ont été de passage au Canada (Kalm), en Guyane française (Barrère) et en Louisiane (Le Page du Pratz et Dumont de Montigny). Nous examinons dans un premier temps les différents contextes d’acquisition de savoirs. Par la suite, l’analyse portera sur leurs inventaires respectifs des ressources coloniales, puis leur façon de traiter leurs sources. Finalement, nous concluons cette recherche sur les manières dont ces naturalistes-écrivains transmettront à leurs lecteurs européens leurs connaissances nouvellement acquises et la portée de la diffusion que leurs écrits connaîtront.Following their colonization of America in the 17th and 18th centuries, the French drew up inventories for the resources of the occupied or coveted territory. Being able to describe all this wealth, natural history thus became the ultimate colonial knowledge and one of the central cogs of the French Colonial Machine. Also, the textual legacy of this activity is considerable and various points of view are taken into account: an enterprising settler, for example, will not see Louisiana’s resources in the same way as a travelling metropolitan official or a botanist on assignment. However, the colonial perspective is widely spread and all these texts, or almost all of them, are evidence of the appropriation of American plants, minerals and animals. The position of indigenous people and slaves – whether of indigenous or African-American origin – as actors in the process of knowledge creation depends on the context and the author’s stance. This thesis focuses on a small number of compelling texts from the natural history corpus of the French mainland colonies in America. Four authors who worked in or visited Canada (Kalm), French Guiana (Barrère) and Louisiana (Le Page du Pratz and Dumont de Montigny) are studied in depth. We first examine the different contexts of knowledge acquisition. Subsequently, we analyze the colonial resources inventories available at that time and how the sources are managed. Lastly, we conclude by looking at how these naturalist writers transmit to their European readers their newly acquired knowledge and the impact that their work will have