Coastal Encounters: The Transformation of the Gulf South in the Eighteenth Century

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Author: Richmond F. Brown | Richmond F. Brown

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Coastal encounters: the transformation of the Gulf South in the eighteenth century / edited and with an introduction by Richmond F. Brown. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8032-6267-6 (pbk: alk. paper) 1. Gulf Coast (U.S.)—History—18th century. 2. Gulf States—History— 18th century. 3. Gulf Coast (U.S.)— Economic conditions—18th century. 4. Gulf Coast (U.S.)—Social conditions—18th century. 5. Gulf Coast (U.S.)—Ethnic relations—History —18th century. 6. Social change— Gulf Coast (U.S.)—History—18th century. 7. Intercultural communication— Gulf Coast (U.S.)—History —18th century. 8. Indians of North America— Gulf Coast (U.S.)—History—18th century. 9. African Americans— Gulf Coast (U.S.)—History —18th century. 10. European Americans— Gulf Coast (U.S.)—History —18th century. I. Brown, Richmond F. (Richmond Forrest), 1961– f372.c62 2007 976—dc22 2007020211 Set in Minion by Kim Essman. Designed by R. W. Boeche. Title page illustration: Felix Achille de Beaupoil Saint-Aulaire and P. Langlume, Vue d’une Rue du Faubourg Marigny, Nelle Orleans, ca. 1821. Lithograph with watercolor. Reproduced by permission of the Historic New Orleans Collection, accession no. 1937.2.2.

9edj[dji List of Illustrations Preface ix

vii

1. Introduction 1 G>8=BDC9; 7GDLC

2. The Signiﬁcance of the Gulf South in Early American History 13 96C>:A= JHC:G?G

3. Escape of the Nickaleers European-Indian Relations on the Wild Coast of Florida in 1696, from Jonathan Dickinson’s Journal 31 6BNIJGC:G7JH=C:AA

4. Supplying Our Wants Choctaws and Chickasaws Reassess the Trade Relationship with Britain, 1771–72 :C

5. The Founding of Tensaw Kinship, Community, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Creek Nation 81 @6GA96K>H

6. A Nation Divided? Blood Seminoles and Black Seminoles on the Florida Frontier 99 ?6C:< A6C9:GH

7. My Friend Nicolas Mongoula Africans, Indians, and Cultural Exchange in Eighteenth-Century Mobile 117 96K>9L=:6I

59

8. Scoundrels, Whores, and Gentlemen Defamation and Society in French Colonial Louisiana 132 H=6CCDCA::96L9N

9. Afro-Creole Women, Freedom, and Property-Holding in Early New Orleans 151 K>G<>C>6B:68=6B

10. Spanish Bourbons and Louisiana Tobacco The Case of Natchitoches, 1763–1803 167 = HDE=>:7JGIDC

11. A History of Ranching in Nuevo Santander’s Villas del Norte, 1730s–1848 187 6GB6C9D8 6ADCOD

12. Maintaining Loyalty in the West Florida Borderlands Land as Cause and Effect in the West Florida Revolution of 1810 210 6C9G:LB8B>8=6:A

13. Afterword 231 >966AIB6C Notes 241 Bibliography 281 Contributors 303 Index 307

?bbkijhWj_edi Maps 1. European settlements, 1564–1721 3 2. European settlements, 1721–1821 9 3. Atlantic Florida, ca. 1696 33 4. Seminole Florida, late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries 101 5. Nuevo Santander’s Villas del Norte 189 6. Spanish West Florida, ca. 1803 211 Tables 1. The colonial population of New Orleans 156 2. Property owners from the 1795 New Orleans census 160 3. Landlords by race and gender, 1795 161 4. Slave ownership in New Orleans, 1795 163 5. Average value of inventoried property, 1810–60 165 6. Planters producing tobacco in Natchitoches and pounds produced, 1765–91 169 7. Tobacco produced per planter in Natchitoches, 1765–91 170 8. Slaveholding households in Natchitoches, 1765–95 177 9. Successions and inventories in Natchitoches, 1766–1803 179 10. Black slave population in Natchitoches, 1765–1803 181 11. Slave baptisms in Natchitoches, 1766–1803 182 12. Slaves living together in Natchitoches households, 1765–95 183 13. Races of godparents of slaves, 1766–84 184 14. Races of godparents of slaves, 1785–1803 185 15. Denuncios de Tierras in Camargo, 1800–1810 198 16. Denuncios and land grants in Reynosa, 1777–1836 199 17. Livestock herds of Reynosa and Matamoros vecinos, 1798–1812 201 Figures 1. Average price of land in West Florida, 1785–1810 224 2. Average price of land in West Florida, by region, 1785–1810

225

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On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into coastal Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, giving rise to the greatest natural disaster in the history of the United States and bringing unprecedented — if unwanted — attention to the Gulf Coast region. A little more than three months later, on December 11, 2005, the New York Times fretted that the slow pace of the recovery efforts threatened the very existence of New Orleans and expressed alarm at the prospects of the “Death of an American City.” The anguish derived not only from a humane concern for those whose lives were so brutally disrupted by the storm and its aftermath (a group that includes many of the authors whose work appears in this book) but also from a recognition of the unique contributions that New Orleans and the Gulf Coast have made to the history and culture of the United States (and to the world for that matter). This book explores the origins of this great city and its surrounding region. The chapters herein open a window onto the extraordinary world of the eighteenth-century Gulf South, a signiﬁcant but heretofore relatively neglected subject. The neglect is unfortunate for many reasons. In the realm of international politics, the imperial rivalries of the Spanish, British, and French in the Gulf South (stretching from Florida to Texas) reached their peak in the eighteenth century, creating new challenges and opportunities for the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and other native peoples of the region. Throughout the century the Gulf South’s diverse inhabitants (Native American, European, and African) contested or collaborated with one another in myriad diplomatic and military arrangements.

M

Preface

The eighteenth century saw determined efforts to incorporate the area into the expanding Atlantic economy based on the exchange of European manufactures, African peoples, and Caribbean products for animal hides, tobacco, and other Gulf South commodities, all with varying degrees of state support or, in some instances, in deﬁance of ofﬁcial dictates. The century also saw the expansion of chattel slavery, ﬁrst indigenous and then African, and the beginning of plantation agriculture in a region that would come to be profoundly identiﬁed with them. This book accordingly sheds light on the origins of the Old South. Finally, the eighteenth-century Gulf South offers rich opportunities for the study of social and cultural change. Willingly or not, many of the Gulf South’s inhabitants learned to live together and came to depend on one another, forging new arrangements and defying laws, expectations, and stereotypes. The limited attention directed to the region has therefore deprived scholars of opportunities to study the encounter of European, African, and Native American peoples and the mixing and mingling of their ways and to make useful comparisons with the Atlantic Seaboard, with the American Southwest, and with Latin America and the Caribbean. At the inaugural Howard Mahan Symposium, held at Mobile, Alabama, March 2003, Amy Turner Bushnell compared writings on the colonial Southeast to the tale of Sleeping Beauty, a woman who awoke only when kissed by a European man. When Spanish, French, British, or American adventurers—Ponce de León, Hernando de Soto, Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh, Andrew Jackson—happened by, the region would come to life, or at least stray brieﬂy into the view of European and North American authors, once more returning to slumber when the white men moved on or met their fates. This book addresses the intriguing question, “what happened while Sleeping Beauty was sleeping?” As the following essays make clear, the Gulf South region remained constantly astir even when out of sight and out of the European mind. Buffeted by “storms brewed in other men’s worlds” (to borrow the title of Elizabeth A. H. John’s work), the eighteenth-century Gulf South experienced a profound transformation. It

Preface

xi

was the kind of place David Weber had in mind when he wrote in his Spanish Frontier in North America, “at those edges where cultures come into contact, friction and cross-fertilization transform local peoples and institutions, giving rise to transfrontier regions with distinctive cultures, politics and economic arrangements, and social networks that set them apart from their respective metropoli” (p. 13). The essays presented here deepen our understanding of the Gulf South transfrontier and its transformation in the eighteenth century. Collectively, they treat from a wide array of angles and approaches a complex region and its diverse inhabitants over more than a century. The great majority of the essays are revised versions of papers ﬁrst presented at the 2003 Howard F. Mahan Symposium, hosted by the University of South Alabama’s Department of History and generously funded by the University of South Alabama Foundation. The symposium featured a stimulating mix of junior and senior scholars and was enriched by the participation of several authorities on European colonialism in North America, including Philip Boucher, Robin Fabel, and Jack P. Greene, as well as the noted archeologist Greg Waselkov. In addition to those whose work appears in this volume, the conference included insightful presentations by Ariana Hannum Moore and Kevin D. Roberts. The symposium was meant to enliven the scholarly conversation on the colonial Gulf South, to assess the state of the ﬁeld, and to explore new avenues for future scholarship. This volume now looks to expand the conversation to include a broader audience of scholars, students, and the interested public, and it invites others to add their own thoughts and voices to the discussion. It is dedicated to the memory of William Coker, who was a major ﬁgure in the historical study of the Gulf South and who passed away just before the 2003 Symposium began. The collection begins with Daniel Usner’s masterful essay that traces the evolution of scholarship on the colonial Gulf South. Usner argues that the region was central, not marginal, to the history of early America. As he points out, the early Gulf South provides excellent opportunities for—and perhaps even demands—interdisciplinary strategies.

xii

Preface

The essays that follow carry out many of Professor Usner’s recommendations. Amy Turner Bushnell conducts a careful exegesis of a wellknown but little used journal of an Englishman marooned in Florida at the end of the seventeenth century. She teases out the journal’s insights into colonial life, especially the situation of Indians who lived on the Atlantic coast and who were caught between the expanding English and the traditional demands of the Spanish authorities. Greg O’Brien offers, from the indigenous point of view, a close reading of the 1771–72 Mobile Conference between the new British overlords and the Chickasaw and Choctaw, long accustomed to dealing with the French. Karl Davis places the founding of the mixed-race Creek Tensaw community north of Mobile in the years after the American Revolution in the context of Creek survival strategies that employed traditional marriage and kinship practices. Jane Landers furnishes an extraordinary account of the interrelations of black and blood Seminoles in late colonial Florida, exploring questions that persist into our own time and in our courts. Employing sparse colonial records, David Wheat pursues a fascinating transcultural individual in eighteenth-century Mobile. Shannon Lee Dawdy explores manners and mobility in early Louisiana through the investigation of insults in a society struggling to establish itself. Virginia Gould presents a detailed inquiry into property holding and cultural transference among free women of color in late colonial and early American New Orleans. Sophie Burton investigates the interplay of Spanish government policy and economic and social change in late colonial Natchitoches. Armando Alonzo traces the eighteenth-century development of livestock raising in the predominantly ranchero economy of neighboring Nuevo Santander (part of which became present-day Texas), a colony whose rapid expansion belies the notion of inevitable Spanish decline. Finally, Andrew McMichael probes land tenure and competing loyalties in a Baton Rouge on the verge of American rule. In this volume’s concluding essay, the distinguished colonial scholar Ida Altman reﬂects on the meaning of these chapters and comments on the current and possible future directions of the scholarly conversation on the eighteenth-century Gulf South, ruminating poignantly about possible alternative historical developments and roads not taken.

Preface

xiii

As organizer of the Mahan Symposium and editor of this book, I am eager to acknowledge numerous professional debts. Clarence Mohr, chair of the Department of History at the University of South Alabama and a distinguished scholar of the Gulf South in his own right, has been wonderfully supportive throughout. Michael Thomason, former director of the University of South Alabama Archives, provided vital assistance during the symposium itself and sound advice on this book, as well as having long been an inspiration to me and to many in the ﬁeld of Gulf Coast history. Editors Ann Baker, Elizabeth Demers, Heather Lundine, and Christopher Steinke of the University of Nebraska Press provided valuable guidance in the process of making this book happen. The anonymous external readers provided very helpful constructive criticism. James Corrick served as copyeditor. Sylvia Ash carefully read the manuscript and assisted with preparing the bibliography. Keith Manuel prepared the index. Eugene Wilson, emeritus professor of geography at the University of South Alabama, crafted the maps. Above all, I am profoundly grateful for the loving support and wise counsel of my wife, Ida Altman.

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As of 1685, according to Peter H. Wood, the native population of the South (from Virginia to Texas) numbered about two hundred thousand, a far cry from the approximately two million Native Americans who lived in North America east of the Mississippi River at the time of Columbus. Indigenous numbers declined further to about ninety thousand in 1715 before stabilizing at around ﬁfty-ﬁve thousand from 1750 to 1790.1 The horriﬁc decline in native numbers—due largely to disease, slavery, and war—was only the most obvious of the extraordinary challenges presented to native peoples of the Southeast in the eighteenth century. “Making do,” as James Axtell phrases it, they sought to defend themselves or were otherwise forced to ﬁnd their way in the new age and if possible to advance their own causes within the dynamic framework of the European imperial contests, imported plants and animals, and a consumer revolution that made available new goods—guns, tools, and clothing—that profoundly altered material life in the Gulf South. Deerskins and Indian slaves became the ﬁrst exports of the future cotton kingdom, and Indian alliances became the key to European success in the lands between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. In turn, European rivalries provided unique opportunities for Indian leaders to exploit. Whereas Spain tried to get by with missions and presidios (frontier military outposts) in Texas and Florida, the French established diplomatic relations with the larger nations of the Gulf South, especially the Choctaw, based on gifts, the exchange of European goods and weapons for deerskins, and modest

Introduction

missionary activity. The British, principally concerned with commerce, countered with their own alliances and trading ventures, particularly among the Creeks and Chickasaws. The latter in turn sought to use British arms and goods to further their own ends and to expand their power, wealth, and numbers vis-à-vis their rivals.2 In this book Amy Turner Bushnell addresses some of these issues by investigating a notable turn-of-the-century encounter between Florida Indians and shipwrecked British subjects, while Greg O’Brien looks closely at the expectations that Chickasaw and Choctaw leaders held of the British rulers of West Florida in the early 1770s. Karl Davis explores the role of the Creek Tensaw community north of Mobile in native efforts to safeguard their future, and Jane Landers analyzes Black Seminole participation in the conﬂicts of late eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury Florida. The ﬁrst known European encounters with the native peoples of the Southeast occurred in the early 1500s. A parade of Spanish explorers had mapped out the Gulf Coast by the mid-sixteenth century, sometimes wreaking havoc on the native peoples, as in the case of Hernando de Soto’s entrada (frontier exploration) from 1539 to 1542. In 1565, after ruthlessly evicting French Huguenots from the area of the present-day border of Florida and Georgia and establishing St. Augustine, Pedro Menéndez staked Spain’s claim to La Florida, which theoretically encompassed North America but in practice was conﬁned to the Atlantic coast from Florida to South Carolina. After the demise in 1576 of short-lived Santa Elena on present-day Parris Island, South Carolina, St. Augustine remained the only signiﬁcant Hispanic settlement in Florida until the founding of Pensacola in 1698. Notwithstanding the scarcity of Spanish settlers, La Florida witnessed determined efforts by Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries to convert the region’s native peoples. At their height Florida’s missions were organized into four districts with more than forty villages and perhaps twenty-ﬁve thousand native proselytes. The missions, however, abruptly collapsed between 1680 and 1706, largely due to British trading and raiding from Carolina. “Whatever their spiritual successes,” David Weber tells us,

. European settlements, including brieﬂy occupied military posts, missions, and towns, established between and

Introduction

Spanish “missionaries failed to advance permanently, defend effectively, or Hispanize deeply North American frontiers in the seventeenth century.”3 As Paul Hoffman writes, “Spain normally stood on the defensive in La Florida,” frequently failing to protect and respect friendly Indians, to resolve friction between settlers and priests, or to regularize royal support through subsidies (situados) directed from Mexico and Cuba. Ultimately Spanish Florida was not prepared for the challenge raised by the founding of Charleston in 1670 and the relentless, and sometimes violent, expansion of Anglo-American settlers into Carolina and Georgia thereafter. St. Augustine and its hinterland quickly became dependent on the neighboring Anglo-Americans. With just over three thousand inhabitants in 1760, Spanish Florida’s Hispanized population remained an enclave in a vast and increasingly dangerous land.4 Unlike the faltering Spanish outposts in Florida, the British presence on the Atlantic Coast grew “stunningly” (in Weber’s phrase) from seventy-two thousand in 1660 to more than one million by 1760. In South Carolina alone the white population rose from twenty thousand in 1745 to more than thirty-eight thousand (plus nearly sixty thousand black slaves) by 1760. Georgia, founded in 1733, reached six thousand whites and thirty-six hundred black slaves in less than three decades.5 The British began to push outward from the Atlantic Coast in pursuit of trading, hunting, and slaving opportunities and to conduct damaging raids during times of war with France or Spain, as in the case of the bloody Florida excursions of James Moore between 1702 and 1704. British expansionism inexorably challenged Indian lands and rival European claims to the west and south of the Appalachians. Meanwhile, in 1682 France’s Louis XIV (reigned 1660–1715) dispatched René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle from Canada down the Mississippi River to the Gulf Coast in order to establish French claims to the Mississippi Valley. Following La Salle’s death in Texas in 1687, the French Canadian Pierre LeMoyne d’Iberville established Biloxi in 1699 and Mobile in 1702. As the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–13) wound down, the French monarchy awarded Louisiana to French ﬁnancier Antoine Crozat in 1712. Crozat oversaw the founding of Natchez, Natchitoches, and Fort Toulouse

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(near modern-day Montgomery, Alabama). Unable to gain legal access to trade with New Spain (Mexico), however, he despaired of Louisiana’s economic prospects. Direction of the colony then passed to the Company of the West (later chartered as the Company of the Indies) from 1717 until 1730. In 1718, working under company auspices, Jean Baptiste LeMoyne Sieur de Bienville, Iberville’s younger brother, founded New Orleans, a city that became the colony’s capital shortly thereafter. In the 1720s the company sent seven thousand whites and a similar number of West Africans to Louisiana. As of 1746, however, Louisiana held only forty-one hundred slaves, thirty-three hundred settlers, and six hundred soldiers.6 Bienville reported an annual trade of ﬁfty thousand pelts in the 1730s, about half that carried out by South Carolina.7 The colony was slow to prosper for several reasons. First, French Caribbean holdings were more lucrative and strategically more signiﬁcant than Louisiana. Second, the 1729 Natchez War, provoked by French efforts to introduce tobacco plantations in Louisiana, proved disastrous both for the Natchez, many of whom were killed or sent to the West Indies as slaves, and the French colonial enterprise. The conﬂict induced the Company of the Indies to return Louisiana to the French Crown. Finally, British trading dominance further complicated French and Indian relations.8 France’s Louisiana adventure did spur Spain to launch new efforts to secure Texas and also to establish Pensacola on the Florida Gulf Coast in 1698. Following a brief ﬂurry of missionary activity in the 1690s, Los Adaes was founded in 1716 (and reestablished in 1721) in order to keep an eye on the new French outpost of Natchitoches, founded in 1714. Dolores was also founded in 1716, and San Antonio had its modest beginnings two years later. Nonetheless, Texas attracted few colonists or mission Indians, and Spain’s lonely colonial outposts depended to a large extent on the Caddo Indians and nearby French settlers. The arrival of Canary Islanders in San Antonio in 1731 brought the Texas Hispanic population to about ﬁve hundred. A 1749 truce with Apaches allowed expansion along the San Antonio River in the 1750s. Subsistence-oriented ranching remained the norm until the 1770s when the expansion of silver mining in northern

Introduction

Mexico and Spain’s acquisition of Louisiana provided viable markets for Texas beef. The predominance of Franciscans and the military, however, continued to impede economic development. The population of Hispanic Texas grew slowly, from ﬁve hundred in 1731 to less than twelve hundred in 1760.9 By contrast, neighboring Nuevo Santander experienced remarkable growth in the eighteenth century. Unlike in Texas, New Mexico, or Florida, New Spain sent colonists instead of soldiers and missionaries to settle the new colony. Under the direction of the able ofﬁcer José Escandón, colonization commenced in 1749; by 1755 more than six thousand colonists occupied Nuevo Santander, establishing twenty-three towns and ﬁfteen missions. The towns of Laredo and Dolores, as well as many ranchos belonging to the vecinos (householders) of such places as Camargo and Reynosa, stood on the north side of the Rio Grande in present Texas.10 In his contribution to this book Armando Alonzo charts the growth and attempts to explain the vitality of Nuevo Santander in its ﬁrst century. In addition to Indians, Europeans, Mexicans, and Canadians, Africans and their descendants also played a signiﬁcant role in the early Gulf South. For the most part forcibly transported to the region, enslaved and free people of color furnished much of the labor on plantations, in towns, and along waterways. They brought with them (and attempted to preserve) much of their culture, food, language, religion, and, as Virginia Gould informs us, traditional gender practices and strategies. Africans in Louisiana were mostly Bambara, Malinke-speaking captives from the interior, but they also included coastal groups such as the Wolof and the Sereer.11 Anglo settlers brought English-speaking slaves with them to the Gulf South after 1763. The African-descended population was further diversiﬁed by the arrival of groups from the Caribbean in the second half of the century and the growth of the Creole or American-born slave population. People of African heritage played an important part in the not-infrequent military conﬂicts of the eighteenth century. In turn, especially in the cities, many enjoyed a surprising range of opportunities for individual advancement. In this book David Wheat, Virginia Gould, Sophie Burton, and Jane Landers treat the challenges, aspirations, and

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achievements of people of African descent in the eighteenth-century Gulf South. The arrival of Europeans and Africans posed new challenges and opportunities for Native Americans and gave rise to new social and economic arrangements. Daniel Usner has described much of what operated in the lower Mississippi Valley in the eighteenth century as a frontier exchange economy. Although disruptive to traditional Indian life, the exchange of deerskin and corn for European manufactures could be accommodated without devastating cultural change. As long as the settlers remained conﬁned to the coastal towns and scattered trading posts in the interior, Indian ways could survive, despite Indian dependence on European goods. Petites nations (small communities) took advantage of provisioning opportunities and European protection, while larger nations such as the Choctaw furnished corn and deerskins in exchange for trade goods. Settlers and slaves depended on Indians and each other for sustenance. Poor whites, free people of color, and slaves engaged in petty trade with one another and with Indian inhabitants—whether petites nations or larger tribes. The emerging urban network facilitated the transfer of European ways and institutions to the Gulf South and linked the region to the Atlantic economy. Gulf Coast towns, however, diverged from the European models and from the American cities they were soon to join by remaining more African, more Caribbean, and more Catholic. European immigrants, at least in the early years, could redeﬁne themselves in a frontier environment that offered, as Shannon Lee Dawdy puts it in this volume, unique opportunities for “self-fashioning.” Indian and African-American women peddlers predominated in urban markets. African slaves sold the goods of their owners and their own surpluses in an urban atmosphere that allowed substantial liberties. African-Americans both free and enslaved could sometimes carve out surprising niches for themselves and even acquire substantial property and position, accomplishments secured despite the legal restrictions governing their behavior. The diverse denizens of the Gulf Coast borrowed food and food ways from one another. Indian uses of corn, persimmon, fruits and nuts; African knowledge of rice culture;

The Gulf South in Early American History

contained the Spanish Borderlands within the nationalist narrative of American westward expansion. In his 1932 presidential address before the American Historical Association, he looked forward to “The Epic of Greater America” in which hemispheric comparisons and connections among all European colonial endeavors would be explored.7 Yet his own treatment of the Spanish empire’s northern fringe tended to isolate the Borderlands from the rest of Latin America’s colonial history and to hinge their importance on American national development. Blame for this seeming contradiction, however, should not be placed too heavily upon Herbert Eugene Bolton. After all, he was boldly confronting some deep biases in American culture and history. The belief that Spain and France failed to colonize America—as represented through images of conquistadors and coureurs de bois—was widespread in the United States. Rooted early in the rivalry between European empires and cultivated later by New England-centered writers, the diminution of non-English colonies was built into national histories of the United States. Spanish and French adventurers usually appeared brieﬂy at the beginning of the story, before attention focused on English settlers along the Atlantic seaboard. Florida, Louisiana, and the Southwest reappeared only when they were being incorporated into the expanding nation. Derogatory glances at the colonial background of these places were used to minimize the extent of non-English settlement north of the Gulf of Mexico and to display the righteousness of United States expansion across North America. Herbert Bolton and his students worked hard at disproving these fundamental notions, delving into the colonial archives of Spain’s North American provinces to uncover two centuries of colonization that predated the birth of the United States. Spanish Borderlands historians, though, also had to wrestle with the rising inclination in American culture to imagine that the Southwest and Southeast under Spain had been a romantic world, whose cultural legacy now served tourism and escapism. Anthropological and archaeological work already played an instrumental role in representing Hispanic and Indian cultures as enchanting features on the American landscape. Now

Introduction

and European preferences for beef, pork, and fowl blended in a culinary and cultural gumbo.12 After 1763 several major geopolitical developments jolted the Gulf South. The Seven Years War (1756–63), the American Revolution (1775–83), the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars (1789–1815), the Haitian Revolution (1789–1804), and the movements for Latin American independence (1808–1820s) had enormous repercussions for the region. Following the Seven Years War, the British acquired Florida and Louisiana east of the Mississippi, an area that they made part of West Florida, bounded on the east by the Apalachicola and Chattahoochee Rivers. Meanwhile, the French were evicted from Louisiana and Canada, and the Spanish were compensated for the loss of Florida with the transfer of most of Louisiana. Between 1763 and 1783 the colonial population in Louisiana more than tripled. There, the formerly French subjects were joined from Nova Scotia by perhaps three thousand Acadian refugees, the future Cajuns, and two thousand Canary Islanders. The African slave trade also picked up steam. British West Florida experienced substantial population growth in the years preceding the American Revolution, perhaps reaching seven thousand colonials as British loyalists ﬂocked to the colony with servants and slaves and began to set up plantations, especially in the fertile Natchez region. By 1785 the colonial population of Louisiana and West Florida reached thirty thousand, with thirteen thousand whites, eleven hundred free people of color, and sixteen thousand slaves. East Florida, following the evacuation of its Hispanic population in 1763, boasted a population of some seven thousand British subjects and ten thousand black slaves by the end of the American Revolution. Some two thousand Seminoles repopulated much of Florida from Georgia. The native population of the Gulf South included an estimated twenty-two hundred Chickasaws, ﬁfteen thousand Choctaws, and another ﬁfteen thousand Upper and Lower Creeks.13 Texas, on the other hand, despite the expansion of ranching, remained sparsely populated. By 1790 the Hispanic population of Texas stood at a little over twenty-ﬁve hundred, while neighboring Nuevo Santander had over ten times as many Hispanics. With populations of ﬁfteen hun-

European settlements established between 1721 and 1821

Introduction

dred, six hundred, and four hundred, respectively, the Texas towns of San Antonio, La Bahia, and Nacogdoches resembled the small presidial Florida outposts of St. Augustine and Pensacola. In Florida and Texas both, the small civilian populations continued to depend on the military for their livelihood.14 During the American Revolution Bernardo de Gálvez, the energetic young Spanish governor of Louisiana, captured Baton Rouge, Natchez, Mobile, and Pensacola between 1779 and 1781. The Floridas were ceded to Spain in the Treaty of Paris in 1783, giving Spain title to a region stretching from St. Augustine to San Francisco (founded in 1776). Nevertheless, Spain’s hold on the Gulf South proved tenuous. Spanish immigration consisted principally of bureaucrats, soldiers, and a few merchants. Instead of Spaniards came large numbers of Americans, who ﬂocked to a region loosely held by Spain and whose present and future loyalties were suspect (although, as Andrew McMichael argues here, they were not predetermined). Spain attempted to use the large Indian nations as a diplomatic and demographic barrier to Anglo-American expansion. The natives looked to Spain for similar ends. The strategy, however, was undermined by the waves of Anglo-American immigrants streaming into Spanish territory and by the southeastern trading dominance of the Panton and Leslie Company, a Florida-based outﬁt of expatriate Scottish merchants and British loyalists with trading posts as far west as Natchez and as far north as present-day Memphis.15 The dramatic imperial and demographic changes of the late eighteenth century challenged not only Spanish dominion and Indian diplomacy but also the frontier economy and society. Particularly after 1763, new people with new uses for the land strained the status quo. The modus vivendi was increasingly threatened by ofﬁcial efforts to expand plantation agriculture, illicit Anglo-American trade and hunting, and perhaps more ominously, Anglo-American farms and plantations. Slave-based plantation agriculture and the spread of cattle culture began to overwhelm much of the earlier way of life. With the French removed after the Seven Years War and with the British evicted after the American Revolution,

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Spain and its native allies stood alone against the aggressively expanding United States and its pioneers. For the Spanish Empire the death of Charles III in 1788 and the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789 set off two decades of crisis that ultimately led to the loss of Spain’s American colonies, with the exception of Cuba and Puerto Rico, and that accelerated Spain’s demise in the Gulf South. The United States took advantage of Spain’s difﬁculties. The Pinckney Treaty of 1795, also known as the Treaty of San Lorenzo, conﬁrmed American ownership of lands above the thirty-ﬁrst parallel, thus destroying the traditional European diplomacy based on Indian trade as the great bulk of the indigenous populations thereafter resided in U.S. territory. Louisiana returned brieﬂy to French hands in 1802, only to be transferred to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The controversial deal gravely threatened Spanish rule in the Floridas. The Haitian Revolution (1789–1804), which at least in part prompted the Louisiana Purchase, shocked the slaveholding world and sent a ﬂood of motley emigrants to Cuba and Louisiana. In 1808 Napoleon invaded the Iberian Peninsula and removed the Spanish Bourbons, thereby setting off the movements for Spanish American independence and plunging the Spanish Empire into disarray. Baton Rouge fell into U.S. hands in the “revolution” of 1810 (roughly contemporaneous with Hidalgo’s more famous Mexican revolt). Mobile succumbed in 1813 during the War of 1812 (1812–15). The concurrent Creek War (1813–14) and Andrew Jackson’s subsequent maneuvers in Florida, including the so-called First Seminole War (1817–18), ﬂouted Spain’s increasingly ineffectual control. The Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819, ratiﬁed by Spain in October of the following year, formally ended Spanish ownership of Florida, bringing de jure, and soon de facto, Americanization of the Southeast.16 The three-way European struggle for the Southeast, and the creative indigenous responses to that struggle, yielded to U.S. hegemony and prepared the way for confrontation with Mexico once it asserted its independence from Spain in 1821. Deprived of the European and U.S. rivalries that allowed them to exercise de facto sovereignty and to play

Introduction

off their adversaries against one another and faced with the decline of the deerskin trade, the southeastern Indians were no longer a vital asset but, rather, an obstacle to be removed. With the expansion of plantation economy in the nineteenth century, Gulf South race relations were redeﬁned and seemingly hardened, and a relatively ﬂuid, if by no means idyllic, community of whites, African slaves, free people of color, and Native Americans increasingly gave way to the biracial southern apartheid of King Cotton.

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There is some good news in the ﬁeld of Early American History. The assumption that New England was the most important region in colonial America is receding, while other colonial regions of North America are gaining importance. For some time the populous English colony of Virginia has shared center stage with Massachusetts—hardly an unexpected development given its role in shaping both freedom and slavery in early modern history. But for too long the other English colonies as well as neighboring Spanish, Dutch, and French colonies remained marginal to the history of colonial America. At the ﬁrst Gulf Coast History and Humanities Conference, Alfred B. Thomas declared that this region has a colonial history but not the conventional one.1 Thirty-ﬁve years later, scholars of the so-called conventional one can no longer afford to ignore what historians of the colonial Gulf South are doing. But given everything that took place across the Gulf South from Florida to Texas between 1513 and 1819, a lingering indifference shown by many early American historians toward this region is still a source of disappointment. The central role of religion in colonialism, the contest among empires for Indian trade and territory, African American struggles for freedom, and the origins of U.S. diplomacy toward Latin America are just a few of the major themes in early American history that are richly documented for colonies along the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf South is therefore an essential area of study for understanding colonial and native

The Gulf South in Early American History

societies before the 1820s. Human experiences and historical processes occurring in this region were central, not peripheral, to this study, while comparisons and connections with other colonial regions warrant fuller consideration. Serving mostly as a progress report on recent scholarship, this essay traces the historiography of the early Gulf South and asserts why this is an opportune time to explore that region’s signiﬁcance in early American history. Although the overall study of non-English colonial societies in North America and their relations with Native American societies has improved signiﬁcantly over the past thirty years, heavy burdens from the past have not been easy to unload. For most of the last two centuries histories of Gulf Coastal colonization were written in the shadow of a nationalist history of the United States that privileged its founding English colonies. Representation of life in places like seventeenth-century Florida and eighteenth-century Louisiana was selectively shaped to contrast with that along the Atlantic seaboard of North America. Cultural differences between European nations were essentialized in order to explain why England’s colonies purportedly grew and expanded more successfully than others. This construction of otherness for non-English colonial regions can be traced back to European imperial conﬂict itself but should also be understood as an evolving discourse on American identity. Different stories of empire across North America were scripted into another imperial story, that of American territorial expansion.2 Of course, no discussion of the Gulf South’s colonial history can bypass Herbert Eugene Bolton and his lasting inﬂuence on the study of those North American colonies called Spanish Borderlands. Published in 1921, The Spanish Borderlands was an impressive and important synthesis, and for a long time Bolton shaped Borderlands historiography through his more specialized studies and the many students that he directed. The fundamental dilemmas and issues faced by the ﬁeld’s founder persisted long after his lifetime. Deﬁning the Spanish Borderlands as the “southern fringe of the United States . . . once . . . lightly sprinkled with Spanish outposts and crisscrossed with Spanish trails,” Bolton wanted to capture the important as well as the picturesque history of this vast region.3

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This potential dissonance between historical signiﬁcance and historical romance was, however, only one of several incongruent objectives that affected subsequent work of Borderlands scholars. Bolton worried that fellow citizens in the United States were deriving false inferences about Spanish America from their narrow exposure to the Borderlands: “With a vision limited by the Rio Grande, and noting that Spain’s outposts within the area now embraced in the United States were slender, and that these fringes eventually fell into the hands of the Anglo-Americans, writers concluded that Spain did not really colonize, and that, after all, she failed.”4 In a 1929 address at the Boulder Conference on the History of the Trans-Mississippi West, Bolton captured this fallacy in the metaphor of “mistaking the tail for the dog, and then leaving the dog out of the picture.” So he advocated the need for Americans to learn more about the dog, that is, Spanish America that lay south of the Rio Grande. Given Bolton’s concern over American ignorance about the core areas of Spain’s American empire, it is somewhat ironic that he devoted his own highly productive career to studying the dog’s tail. But he also believed that Spanish America’s northern frontier had been an important international borderland, “the meeting place of two streams of European civilization.”5 For Bolton this meeting ground held vital lessons about Anglo-American expansionism that might beneﬁt United States relations with Latin America in the twentieth century. The eventual conquest of the Spanish Borderlands by Anglo-America did not reﬂect the superiority of one civilization over another but rather revealed “the advantage of an expanding economic frontier working from an immediate base, over a defensive frontier operating a long distance from the centers of resources and population.”6 Understanding this geographical circumstance, Bolton hoped, would help Americans realize and respect historical bonds with their Latin American neighbors. Lasting traces of Spanish colonization in the American Southwest—language, architecture, customs, laws, and folklore—also served as contemporary reminders of a shared past in Bolton’s view of the Borderlands. While wishing to rescue Spanish America from the Anglocentric treatment it suffered in U.S. textbooks and classrooms, Bolton unnecessarily

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Borderlands historians began to participate in conﬂicted ways, with some of their work contesting the romance and others contributing to it. Much of the scholarship practiced by the Bolton School tended to make all of the Spanish Borderlands seem marginal and anomalous in ways that actually undermined fruitful comparison and connection with British North America, while also detaching them from the rest of Spanish America. Emphasis on political and diplomatic forces, along with neglect of social and economic conditions, exaggerated the contrast between Spanish and English colonies. “Instead of promoting the integration of the Spanish Borderlands into United States history,” observed Gerald Poyo and Gilberto Hinojosa, “the comparative framework apparently led most historians to believe that the Spanish era was a failure and could thus be dismissed as an integral part of this nation’s history.”8 Meanwhile, the Borderlands scholars’ preoccupation with the defensive character of New Spain’s northern provinces—particularly directed toward AngloAmerican imperialism—also marginalized the region in the developing ﬁeld of Latin American history. Perceived as “an exotic subset of United States history that has risen to treat the pre-Anglo, yet European, past of the United States Southwest and Southeast,” in the words of José Cuello, borderlands history remained “peculiar and mystifying to Latin Americanists.”9 So essential questions about the role of Spanish Borderlands studies in early American history lingered for most of the twentieth century. How should Florida, Louisiana, and Texas, as well as New Mexico, Arizona, and California, be related to other colonies in North America? Are there comparisons and connections worth pursuing that would result in a wider, even a deeper, understanding of American colonial history? Can the history of French and Spanish colonization be raised from their subordinate role in United States national narratives and be understood on their own terms while still providing grist for the comparative mill? The compromising position of Borderlands scholarship, caught as it was between Latin American and Early American historiographies, left these and other questions largely unanswered. But in no way did it deter

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the production of abundant studies by outstanding historians. Mainly under Bolton’s direct inﬂuence, early scholars explored in great detail missions, presidios, administration, law, and Indian relations from California to Florida. In 1966 the eminent Latin Americanist Charles Gibson apologized for merely skimming in his ﬁnal chapter of Spain in America the many known facts about the Spanish Borderlands, “for it is probable that no other part of colonial Spanish America has stimulated so extensive a program of research.”10 The historiography on Spain’s colonial possessions in the present-day United States did indeed grow into a vibrant ﬁeld of study over the middle decades of the twentieth century. Historical scholarship on the Gulf Coastal Plain—the focus of this volume—followed Bolton’s lead on a number of methodological fronts. Spanish exploration of the coast and interior of the Southeast was naturally an important area of study. Early attention focused on the military and clerical agents of Spanish expansion, but eventually the American Indian populace would be considered for impacts suffered and interactions engendered from the expeditions. Although this scholarship received minimal notice from historians of English America, it did eventually force them to recognize that North America experienced a long period of European contact and conﬂict before the founding of Jamestown and Plymouth. Other Gulf Coast historians concentrated their research on colonial institutions created by the Spanish, ﬁrst in Florida and later in Texas and Louisiana. Missions and presidios were targeted for much of the scholarship, while biographies of provincial ofﬁcials and histories of colonial administration also appeared. Trade, diplomacy, and war developed into signiﬁcant themes as Borderlands scholars in general closely examined Spanish relations with Indian nations and other European powers. The historians pursuing these lines of inquiry comprised a diverse group, and the label “Borderlands” can too easily conceal the various paths that they followed to reach different points of expertise across such a vast region. Some contemporaries of Herbert Bolton launched parallel and intersecting projects on their own. Isaac Cox and Arthur Whitaker,

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for example, were distinguished Latin Americanists who concentrated on diplomatic relations between Spain and the United States in the Gulf South region.11 During the 1960s the ﬁeld was entered by a new generation of scholars, including Helen Hornbeck Tanner, Jack Holmes, Eugene Lyon, William Coker, and Gilbert Din. Mainly through political biographies, administrative studies, and economic histories, they signiﬁcantly advanced research on Spanish Florida and Louisiana over the ensuing decades.12 The inauguration of annual Gulf Coast History and Humanities conferences in 1969 contributed to a strong sense of association and collaboration. Some Latin Americanists specializing in other regions of Spanish America also turned to this region at different phases of their careers. Important works by John TePaske, John Preston Moore, and Paul E. Hoffman represent this path.13 Other scholars, such as Charles Hudson, Elizabeth A. H. John, and Joel Martin, approached the Gulf Coastal Plain with a primary interest in American Indians.14 The ﬁeld of ethnohistory quickly became the busiest bridge between Spanish Borderlands and Anglo-American colonies. A landmark synthesis of three generations of scholarship on the Borderlands appeared in 1970 with the publication of John Francis Bannon’s The Spanish Borderlands Frontier. Bannon offered his comprehensive overview of the Spanish frontier in North America to “show that the AngloAmerican experience, magniﬁcent and thrilling though it was, actually was not quite as unique as it is sometimes pictured and chauvinistically thought to be.” The Anglo-American frontier, he argued, was not the only “advance of civilization into the wilderness” and ought to be compared with the northward movement of Spanish pioneers.15 Unfortunately applying Frederick Jackson Turner’s narrow deﬁnition of frontier to his subject, Bannon then proceeded to amplify what he thought was distinctive about the Spanish Borderlands in a way that undermined the comparative value of his project. Missions, ranching and mining, absolutism, regimentation, and a mestizo population were listed as major features that sharply distinguished Spanish North America from English North America. Bannon’s Spanish Borderlands Frontier nonetheless proved to

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be a valuable contribution to the historiography of the American West, although, not surprisingly, it made little impression on students of early American history. Since the 1970s scholarship on the Borderlands has become less insulated because of changes both inside and outside the ﬁeld. First of all, new students of Spanish and French colonization in North America have diversiﬁed their methods and approaches, and a previously felt common purpose of Borderlands scholars weakened with growth and specialization. The label itself began to lose its clear meaning as a subﬁeld of either United States or Latin American colonial history. Now it is likely that Borderlands, as a particular space on maps of North America, will become more commonly applied to the cultural and geographical area that strictly spans the present-day boundary between Mexico and the United States. Social scientists, historians, cultural critics, and artists have already appropriated the uppercase spelling of “Borderlands” in order to address postcolonial identity and experience along the international border.16 Meanwhile, a less geographically speciﬁc usage by early American historians of the lowercase term “borderlands” —referring here to all zones contested by rival empires—is actually facilitating stronger interest in Spanish and French colonies of North America. As connections and comparisons across imperial boundaries are explored more systematically, North American places once viewed with indifference by most colonial scholars will receive greater attention. A convenient way to survey recent advances inside the colonial history of the Gulf South is to summarize the literature colony by colony. Because of its proximity to English colonies along the Atlantic seaboard, we might expect Spanish Florida to have received plenty of attention all along from early American historians. But such was not the case until the 1970s when archaeologists and historians began to bring the full scale of Spanish colonization in that province into sharper view. Among the Borderlands scholars themselves, Florida was relatively neglected, especially for the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. For a long time Bolton’s own The Debatable Land, co-authored with his student Mary Ross, and John Lanning’s Spanish Missions of Georgia stood as the only reminders that

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even the coast of Georgia had once been occupied by Spanish missionaries and soldiers. The long-held view of Florida in American colonial history was captured in ﬂeeting references to Juan Ponce de León, Hernando de Soto, and other Spanish explorers and in the obligatory observation that St. Augustine was founded in 1565 to become the oldest continuous town in European America. The sense that not much happened, except for the maintenance of a Spanish garrison, conveniently catered to the premise that Spain was a feeble competitor with England for the settlement of North America. A long but forgotten period of missionary activity among Florida’s large Indian population, who engaged in some of Native America’s earliest and most dramatic rebellions against colonialism, has ﬁnally been recovered. In the middle of the seventeenth century, while New Englanders were attempting their own reorganization of American Indian communities into praying towns, Spanish Florida included nearly forty missions inhabited by some twenty-ﬁve thousand Indians—mostly Timucuans and Apalachees. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, most of the mission towns were abandoned because of disease and rebelliousness among the proselytes or because of English-led attacks from Carolina. Unlike New Mexico and California, the Florida landscape held no architectural signs of the mostly wooden buildings that constituted so many Indian missions. Some evidence of this forgotten past began to surface with the 1951 publication of Here They Once Stood by Mark F. Boyd, Hale G. Smith, and John W. Grifﬁn. Not until archaeologists began systematic excavation, in conjunction with archival research by historians, did Indian missions and colonial settlements in Florida become visible again. Fieldwork by Kathleen Deagan, David Hurst Thomas, Bonnie McEwan, Jerald Milanich, and other archaeologists has uncovered increasing evidence of Indian adaptation and agency as well as of colonial plans and policies.17 Analysis of written records by historians like Eugene Lyon, Amy Turner Bushnell, and John Hann has captured the crucial role that Indian labor played in early Florida while also demonstrating how the missions were integrally related to the lives of colonial settlers and soldiers.18 For the Gulf Coastal Plain

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of Florida the sizable and dynamic mission communities among the Apalachee Indians were especially important. Although relatively sparse in its non-Indian population throughout the colonial period, society in Spanish Florida was no less diverse and dynamic than that in the English provinces to the north. Hann and McEwan’s overview of Mission San Luis, Jane Landers’ work on African Americans, and Claudio Saunt’s study of Creek Indians have recently added much to our understanding of this complexity.19 Louisiana began as a French colony in 1699 and did not become a Spanish province until 1763. Yet the history of both French and Spanish Louisiana shared an unusually long lapse between romantic narratives written during the nineteenth century and scholarship produced after World War II. Historians of French North America familiar to the United States audience—particularly Francis Parkman and Reuben Thwaites—had paid much greater attention to Canada and the Great Lakes than to Lower Louisiana. Important works produced over the early twentieth century by Jean Delanglez, Nancy Miller Surrey, Verner Crane, and others examined archival sources from the Mississippi Valley much more closely but were too few and far between to accelerate professional scholarship on colonial Louisiana. Substantial improvement in the study of French Louisiana occurred only with the ﬁve volumes published by French historian Marcel Giraud between 1953 and 1974. Meanwhile, in the United States specialized studies by Charles O’Neill on early churchgovernment relations, Jay Higginbotham on early Mobile, and John Clark on New Orleans commerce began to reveal what French Louisiana held in store for future scholars.20 Largely because of Herbert Eugene Bolton’s inﬂuence, the Spanish regime in the Mississippi Valley received more sustained attention over much of the twentieth century than did the French. Bolton himself contributed only a single important work on Spanish Louisiana, a compilation of documents with a long introduction centering on the border town of Natchitoches, but several of his students, including John Caughey, Lawrence Kinnaird, and Abraham Nasatir, chose to concentrate on Louisiana’s Spanish era.21 A larger number of works on Louisiana and West Florida

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came from subsequent generations of Spanish Borderlands historians, especially Jack Holmes, John Preston Moore, Gilbert Din, William Coker, Thomas Watson, and Light Cummins.22 They were accompanied by historians of West Florida during the English regime and the American Revolution, most notably Robin Fabel, J. Leitch Wright, Robert Haynes, J. Barton Starr, and Robert Rea.23 The study of colonial Louisiana still lagged behind the new social history and ethnohistory that were being applied by the early 1970s to other regions of colonial North America. Work on the eighteenth-century Lower Mississippi Valley focused instead on such areas as exploration, immigration policy, commercial organization, provincial leadership, European diplomacy, and imperial conﬂict. Very little attention was paid to the general population of colonists, slaves, and Indians or to long-term patterns of social and economic change. While historians of English North America began to examine closely community life, slavery, Indian relations, and other neglected dimensions of colonial society, students of French and Spanish Louisiana as well as English and Spanish West Florida made up for lost time by producing basic biographical and institutional histories. The most signiﬁcant impetus behind an eventual interest in ordinary inhabitants of the Lower Mississippi Valley came from Acadian-descended historians, whose ethnic and linguistic identity went through a revitalization during the 1960s. Based at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette, a small but devoted group of scholars began to promote the importance of learning about the origins and evolution of French Louisiana. In 1968 Glenn Conrad launched a project to microﬁlm archival materials in France in order to assemble a comprehensive collection of colonial records. This Colonial Records Collection steadily expanded to include microﬁlmed documents from Spanish archives, and the Center for Louisiana Studies was created in order to publish essential primary sources and to encourage new historical research. The past quarter century has witnessed a signiﬁcant growth in the number of historians becoming interested in the eighteenth-century Mississippi Valley. Many of the scholars venturing into this relatively unex-

The Gulf South in Early American History

plored region were strongly inﬂuenced by studies of migration, slavery, and intercultural relations in other colonial settings. They attempted to apply social history, anthropology, and other approaches to groups of people usually left out of studies that had conﬁned their coverage of early America to Great Britain’s Atlantic seaboard colonies. Works by Morris Arnold, Carl Brasseaux, James Carson, Patricia Galloway, Gwendolyn Hall, Kimberly Hanger, Thomas Ingersoll, Reinhart Kondert, Greg O’Brien, Daniel Usner, Gregory Waselkov, and Charles Weeks helped underscore the fact that the Lower Mississippi Valley is fertile ground for innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to eighteenth-century life.24 Current research on settlement patterns and population growth, economic and environmental change, Indian-colonial relations, the African slave trade and slavery, religion, gender, and family life will uncover a complexity in colonial Louisiana that resembles what historians of other North American colonial regions have recently found. The history of early Texas has lagged even farther behind than Florida and Louisiana in scholarship, but current work is rapidly expanding our knowledge of its colonial origins and evolution. Although one of Bolton’s most important monographs was Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century, this 1915 publication did little to spread interest in that part of the Borderlands. With presidios and missions portrayed mainly as Spanish institutions scattered in a vast wilderness, it took a long time for historians to examine how a provincial society developed across southern and eastern Texas. True, Odie Faulk brought attention to the closing years of Spain’s rule over Texas.25 However, neglected mission buildings in the San Antonio area have been better known for the role that just one—the Alamo—played in the Americanization of Texas than for the generations of Coahuiltecan Indians who prayed, worked, and lived in them beginning in the early eighteenth century. Following an initial advance and retreat of Spanish activity in response to French possession of Louisiana, a steady process of Spanish colonization ﬁnally got underway in Texas by 1716. Studies by Jack Jackson, Donald Chipman, and Armando Alonzo have begun to capture the extent of colonial settlement and military occupation in Spanish Texas between San

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Antonio and Los Adaes.26 Elizabeth John, Todd Smith, and David La Vere have also contributed signiﬁcantly to a fuller understanding of Caddo relations with both Texas and Louisiana.27 Meanwhile, Gilberto Hinojosa, Gerald Poyo, and Jesús de la Teja have brought community formation among settlers into sharper focus.28 As in all of the Spanish Borderlands from Florida to California, relations between Indian communities and neighboring colonial towns in Texas involved complicated patterns of socioeconomic exchange and jurisdictional conﬂict. In addition, the ethnic composition of colonial society there was heterogeneous. General studies of the Spanish Borderlands also are now becoming more common. Between 1989 and 1991 David Hurst Thomas edited a threevolume collection of essays, Colombian Consequences, which provides a valuable overview of ongoing analysis of the Spanish Borderlands.29 Work by social scientists overshadowed that of historians in this survey, but as Light Cummins observed in his review of the book, “a quiet revolution in borderlands scholarship outside the discipline of history has been occurring during the last several decades.”30 The historiographical foundation of Borderlands study will consequently take a new shape. In 1992 David J. Weber produced a timely and prize-winning synthesis of Spanish Borderlands history, The Spanish Frontier in North America. Weber brought to his own survey a keen awareness of how Borderlands history had been marginalized. Excluded from an early American historiography that concentrated on English colonies, ignored by Latin Americanists who focus on more central places in the Spanish empire, and treated as background to a Chicano history more interested in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Spanish Borderlands warranted scrutiny on its own terms more than ever. And this is exactly what Weber provided. He pulled together all of the latest scholarship on the individual colonies from Florida to California by featuring current ﬁndings and approaches. Moreover, he steered the ﬁeld into a new comparative direction by emphasizing the agency of American Indians in their relations with Spanish colonists.31 The historical study of the early Gulf South now stands at an exciting threshold. Scholars are paying closer attention to social and economic con-

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ditions inside the provinces of Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. Preliminary works demonstrate how much will be learned by examining local communities and intercultural relations more intensively. As long-neglected topics move to the forefront of discussion, it will no longer be possible for historians to downplay the extent of French and Spanish colonization. Migration and settlement patterns, labor and land systems, and gender and race—deeply mined subjects in the history of English North America—are also important themes in Spanish and French colonies of North America, and their comparative value crosses imperial boundaries and transcends national categories. As Poyo and Hinojosa declared about current literature on Texas, “paradoxically, it is the regional and local framework, and the consequent focus on socioeconomic development, that will prompt scholars to reconsider the colonial Borderlands’ signiﬁcance to the United States.”32 Another advance in scholarship is the stronger consideration being given to the wider oceanic and continental contexts of Gulf Coastal colonization, perhaps the most promising way to integrate the study of Spain’s northernmost American colonies more centrally into the larger ﬁelds of Latin American and Early American history. Robert Weddle’s three-volume study of the Spanish Sea connects the Gulf Coast to the larger story of exploration and navigation.33 Bushnell has contributed signiﬁcantly to a new understanding of Florida by explaining much of its development in terms of Spain’s more extensive colonial designs and networks. Proposing that a model of maritime peripheries replace Bolton’s borderlands paradigm, Bushnell ﬁxes Spanish Florida within a Caribbean web of administrative and commercial interaction.34 Kenneth Banks, meanwhile, has explored important characteristics of Atlantic World communication among France’s colonies by comparing Louisiana with Canada and the Lesser Antilles.35 In addition to these larger maritime frameworks of analysis, attention to interior networks of trade and diplomacy is likewise highlighting the signiﬁcance of the colonial Gulf South. A pivotal group of Indian nations in the imperial contest across the Southeast, the Creek Confederacy

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developed dynamic connections with Gulf coastal as well as Atlantic coastal colonies. Several recent and diverse approaches to Creek history have contributed signiﬁcantly to our knowledge of how people and goods circulated between Indian and non-Indian communities. In this discussion Joshua Piker explores major themes at the local level, focusing on a particularly important Creek town. Steven Oatis’s study of the Yamasee War and Steven Hahn’s work on Creek diplomacy trace important migrations and relationships with a Gulf Coast orientation. In a historical geography of Creek country at the end of the eighteenth century, Robbie Ethridge also sheds new light on the Creek people’s southwardly facing activities and interests.36 Following parties of traders, emissaries, warriors, and migrants along trails from Florida to Creek country to South Carolina is bound to make the Gulf South more integral to early American history. While specialists of the early Gulf South scrutinize colonial and native societies more closely and survey their external linkages more thoroughly, a general shift in thinking among early American historians promises to have a great inﬂuence on the changing role of Spanish Borderlands studies in general. Scholars of English North America have begun to use the term borderlands in a more comparative and generic way to explore any region where two or more European empires faced each other amidst autonomous Indian societies. As this new direction in scholarship has been delineated by Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “contested boundaries between colonial domains” might serve as a more durable and versatile deﬁnition of borderlands. Conﬂict over imperial boundaries shaped “the peculiar and contingent character of frontier relations.” But as colonial borderlands gave way to national borders, “ﬂuid and ‘inclusive’ intercultural frontiers yielded to hardened and more ‘exclusive’ hierarchies.” Partly inﬂuenced by Herbert Bolton’s understanding of interethnic and international relations, Adelman and Aron advocate a new line of inquiry that just might advance his dream of a more comparative and common early American history.37 Other students of colonial America have called for greater inclusion of non-English provinces in the ﬁeld, while the Wil-

The Gulf South in Early American History

liam and Mary Quarterly and the Journal of the Early Republic are beginning to include—perhaps still too slowly—essays on the Gulf South as well as the Southwest.38 As boundaries and borders of all kinds receive closer attention, vaguely deﬁned national characteristics will carry less weight in a comparative analysis of North American colonies. Different types of development resulted as much from what happened to colonial policies on the ground as from what colonial rulers intended. Whether comparing provinces within a single empire or comparing provinces from different empires, historians need to consider an array of factors: the scale, composition, and timing of migration; the means of adaptation and resistance deployed by Indians; local environmental and economic circumstances; and even a colony’s location in its particular empire and its proximity to a rival empire. As we learn more about Spanish and French colonies in North America, similarities as well as differences across the divide with British America will become apparent. It is time to pick up at the local level where John TePaske left off more than three decades ago when he demonstrated how the Gulf Coast itself provides colonial historians with a special opportunity for comparative analysis of Spanish, English, and French policies.39 Jaime E. Rodríguez O. has recently underscored the wider importance of considering parallel and rival paths of empire, arguing that autonomy and self-governance practiced by colonists differed in degrees and that all monarchies lacked power to control development in their New World provinces. Negotiation between metropolis and colony occurred in French, Spanish, and English America but played out in different ways because of different demographic, environmental, and economic circumstances. Struggles for independence also varied in complex ways.40 As a result of widening and deepening interest in colonial regions like ours, historians are asking new questions about how they were actually incorporated into the United States. The old assumption that feeble Latin provinces inevitably gave way to a vigorous Anglo-American nation cannot prevail against systematic analysis of United States territorial expansion. Contemporary students of Spanish Borderlands are ﬁnding much variation and nuance in the ways that their diverse inhabitants faced processes

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of conquest or annexation over the early nineteenth century.41 Class and ethnic divisions within territories being annexed, as well as economic alliances crossing international and intercultural boundaries, presented countervailing and complicating challenges to the construction of nationalist borders and narratives. The diplomatic and military history of the early nineteenth-century Gulf Coast is strong, thanks in particular to studies by Frank Owsley and Gene Smith.42 We are, however, just beginning to realize through works by Peter Kastor, Adam Rothman, and others the full importance of this region for understanding resistance by American Indians and African Americans to U.S. expansionism across the Deep South.43 With scholarship on the Borderlands accelerating and early American history widening its gaze, we now face an opportunity to reconceptualize our understanding of boundaries in Early America. The historians represented in this volume are among those leading this endeavor. Lines putatively dividing English, French, and Spanish empires on maps of the continent no longer separate the different regional historiographies from each other. The borders between colonial regions were ﬂexible and permeable, although earlier historians were slow in attending to important movement and interaction across them. Nevertheless, now that we are more closely examining Indian societies’ multifaceted relations with two or more different European empires, networks of interaction that transgressed or spanned imperial boundaries are coming into sharper focus. This form of border crossing therefore is now a serious subject for students willing to read sources in more than a single national and linguistic category. As historians also read more widely across the international boundaries of early American historiography, we will enhance our ability to compare different colonial regions in innovative ways. How diverse peoples within these distinct colonial regions demarcated borders between themselves and how groups and individuals attempted to cross them might become a major comparative theme in the colonial history of North America. The differentiation of early North America into England’s robust settlements along the Atlantic coast, France’s extended string of trading posts from

The Gulf South in Early American History

the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, and Spain’s weakly held borderlands north of Mexico is ﬁnally breaking down. Accordingly, we should no longer be discouraged from exploring similarities as well as differences across imperial lines. Therein lies the signiﬁcance of the Gulf South in Early American History.

)$;iYWf[e\j^[D_YaWb[[hi ;khef[Wd#?dZ_WdH[bWj_ediedj^[M_bZ9eWij e\
God’s Protecting Providence by Jonathan Dickinson, a Quaker merchant born and raised in Jamaica, is unique in early American literature. Part travel account, part sufferings relation of the sort that circulated within the Dissenter world, it recounts the adventures of a group of mariners and passengers, free and unfree, who sailed from Port Royal on September 2, 1696.1 They were shipwrecked on the wild coast of Florida on the third of October and made their way, ﬁrst to St. Augustine, then under military escort to Charles Town, which they reached just after New Year’s Day 1697.2 Dickinson’s journal is valuable for many reasons. It supplies rare ethnographic information about the Indian groups who inhabited Florida’s long Atlantic coast. It reveals late seventeenth-century Quaker beliefs and practices. It is a travel narrative of extraordinary complexity, tracing the interactions of Anglo-Jamaican slave owners, Afro-Jamaican slaves, cosmopolitan mariners, wild Indians, mission Indians, and the Spaniards and creoles of St. Augustine, a 130-year-old presidio. The journal deals with castaway survival stratagems, Indian postures of friendship and ferocity, Spanish relations with mission-resistant and mission-reduced natives, and the transnational code of elite conduct. It also offers a rare glimpse into Indian perceptions of non-Indians. The hunter-gatherers of the wild coast made careful distinctions among nations of Europeans. Africans, they coveted.

Escape of the Nickaleers

At the center of the journal is the hardship, as the anonymous author of the preface puts it, of the castaways “being forced to mask themselves under the name of Spaniards though few of them could speak any Spanish.”3 The stratagem was contrary to English pride and Quaker principles, and it would have tragic consequences. The mystery of the journal is why the English felt compelled to wear this mask. Could nothing hold the Indians of the wild coast in check except the fear of Spanish retaliation or the expectation of ransom? Was no stranger safe in their hands, or did they have a particular reason to be incensed against the English? The author of the preface considered the possibilities, writing that Whether their cruelty against the English, proceeds from their being under no apprehension of danger from them, and so may think themselves lawless, in what they do against our nation; or whether it proceeds, from any particular disgust offered them by some English, I shall not determine. However it would do well, for those that are not under their power, to avoid giving them any just cause of offense, lest their neighbors suffer for their faults.4 This essay proposes a solution to the mystery of the Native response to these hapless English interlopers. Although Dickinson’s publisher did not require him to answer the question of whether the people of the wild coast had just cause to hate the English, the answer is clear. Yes, they did. Jonathan Dickinson was thirty-three years old when he embarked from Port Royal, Jamaica, on the barkentine Reformation with a cargo of goods for sale in Philadelphia.5 With him were his wife, the former Mary Gale of Jamaica, and their six-month-old son Jonathan as well as eleven slaves: Peter, London, Jack, Sarah, Bella, Susanna, Hagar and her small son Cajoe, the boy Caesar, the girl Quenza, and the Indian girl Venus. Traveling with them were Dickinson’s kinsman Benjamin Allen and the Quaker missionary Robert Barrow. Joseph Kirle, the master, was attended by his boy John Hilliard and his Negro Ben. The mate was Richard Limpeny, and the mariners, Joseph Buckley, Thomas Fownes,

Atlantic Florida, ca. 1696

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Thomas Jemmet, Nathaniel Randall, and Solomon Cresson. Like any good traveler of the period, Dickinson began a journal. The ship was waiting to sail in convoy with a ﬂeet of merchantmen, with a frigate for protection against French corsairs, when the Reformation lost an anchor and drifted out of sight of the rest of the ﬂeet. Four weeks later, she was off “the Havana,” possibly at a rendezvous point, when a sudden gust of wind jibed the boom across the quarterdeck and broke Kirle’s leg. Dickinson, whose uncle Edmund was physician to the Stuart king Charles II, set the bone. Four of his own party were seriously ill, including his kinsman and the Indian girl, Venus, who went into convulsions and died. Waiting no longer, the Reformation stood over for Florida. A storm arose. Hencoops on the deck blew open and ﬁlled with sea birds; sheep and hogs washed overboard. Early in the morning of October 3, the vessel ran aground. At daybreak, when the tide was out, Dickinson got his sick and injured people and the baggage ashore and out of the rain under a makeshift tent of spars and sails. The mate’s quadrant reading of 27 degrees, 8 minutes north latitude reveals that they were just north of Jupiter Island, 230 miles below St. Augustine, seat of Spanish Florida, the southernmost European colony on the North Atlantic coast. However, all the castaways knew was that the sea had cast them beyond bounds. The landscape looked uninhabited. Back of the dunes stretched a seemingly impenetrable scrub of palmettos. If the group thought their presence would go unnoticed, they soon learned otherwise. About eight in the morning two Indian men in breechclouts of woven grass ran up, snatched the tobacco and pipes that Dickinson extended to them and, “making a snufﬁng noise,” ran back the way they had come. The group “communed together” about the stance they should take “amongst a barbarous people such as were generally accounted man-eaters.”6 They did not know it, but they had fallen into the hands of the Jeaga. In 1675 Gabriel Díaz Vara Calderón, Bishop of Cuba, had listed for the Crown south Florida’s unconverted, coastal Indians, beginning at Ponce de Leon Inlet and moving down and around the peninsula as far as Tampa Bay on the Gulf of Mexico. He found that,

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On all this coast, from the . . . Bar of Mosquitos, which they call of Surruque, to the river of the Tocopacas, both on the islets that they call cayos and on the mainland dwell thirteen nations of savage heathen Caribs in groups of huts without having a permanent settlement, sustaining themselves solely on ﬁsh and roots of trees. They are Surruquêses, Ayˆses, Santalûces, Jegas, Jobêses, Viscaynos, Matacumbêses, Baya Jondos, Cuchiagâros, Pojoyes, Pineros, Tocopâcas, and those of Carlos, who are great ﬁshermen and divers.7 Before their adventure was over, the castaways would be the unwelcome guests of ﬁve of these nations. Coming ashore in Jeaga territory, they would be conducted south across Jupiter Inlet into Jobé territory, then change directions and head back north.8 At St. Lucie Inlet they would cross into the territory of the Santaluces, and at Fort Pierce Inlet, into Ais territory. Threading their way through the creeks and marshy islands behind modern-day Cape Kennedy, they would reach Surruque, whose territory extended north to Ponce de Leon Inlet. Only there would they begin to see signs of Spaniards in the built environment: a series of sentinels’ houses guarding the southern approach to St. Augustine. All this lay ahead. At the moment, with two of the Indians hurrying to give the alarm, the castaways believed that they might very well be killed unless God chose to deliver them. According to Dickinson, As we were under a deep exercise and concernment, a motion arose from one of us that if we should put ourselves under the denomination of the Spaniards (it being known that that nation had some inﬂuence on them) and one of us named Solomon Cresson speaking the Spanish language well, it was hoped this might be a means for our delivery, to which the most of the company assented. (29) It was a stratagem of astounding assumptions. For it to work, none of the wild natives could know enough Spanish to penetrate the clumsy disguise. Yet they must collectively know enough about Spanish reprisals

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to refrain from harming Spaniards in their power and enough about Spanish rewards to render them assistance. No one in the strategy session wanted to think what might happen to non-Spaniards. Within two or three hours the beach was covered with native salvors, relieving the Reformation of her cargo. Led by a “Casseekey,”9 about thirty warriors ran up to the tent. Foaming at the mouth and brandishing large Spanish knives, they rushed upon the castaways, shouting, “Nickaleer, Nickaleer,” as though it were a name to which the strangers should answer.10 “At last they cried Epainia or Spaniard, by which we understood them that at ﬁrst they meant English.” But when someone ventured to answer “sí,” the Indians retorted, “No Spainia No,” and resumed the cry of Nickaleer. The warriors positioned themselves behind the castaways, knives in hand, “some taking hold of some of us by the heads with their knees set against our shoulders,” but no scalping followed. After an argument “high in words which we understood not,” the warriors stood as though “struck dumb” for a quarter of an hour, then “quitted their places” and ordered the castaways to unlock their chests, trunks, and boxes. The cacique claimed the money, while the warriors divided the men’s clothing, leaving some of them in breeches, some in coats. To the repeated question of “Nickaleer, Nickaleer?” the English tried a new answer, “Pennsylvania,” to no avail (29–30). By afternoon hundreds of men and women were busy about the wreck, opening boxes of drygoods and spreading the cloth on the palmetto scrub to dry. For the time being, the Indians showed no interest in the barrels of rum, sugar, molasses, beef, or pork. That evening, after a loud, exciting hunt, they brought a freshly killed hog and threw it down in front of the tent, but the castaways were too apprehensive to build a ﬁre and feed themselves. Their resolve to conceal their nationality was reinforced the next morning when the mariner Thomas Fownes, venturing too near the wreck and about to be skewered on one of the long Spanish knives, saved himself by falling to his knees and “using a Spanish ceremony,” perhaps the sign of the cross. Once more, the Indians demanded, “Nickaleer, Nickaleer?”

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When one of the party “in simplicity” answered “yes,” the cacique said accusingly, “Totus Nickaleer” (32–33).11 Once the cargo had been salvaged, most of the natives left the scene. Loaded with burdens and clad in makeshift breeches of sailcloth, the castaways, black and white, were marched ﬁve miles south to Jupiter Inlet and ferried across the sound to the town of Jobé (Dickinson’s Hoe-bay). The only articles that they had managed to save from the wreck were things for which the Indians had no use: a Bible, a book by Robert Barclay, a seaman’s calendar, a quadrant, and, thanks to one of Dickinson’s male slaves, a tinder-box and ﬂint. There was, however, no journal. Dickinson’s day-by-day account of the ﬁrst eleven weeks of their odyssey is a reconstruction in journal form. In the councilhouse at Jobé the cacique’s wife took Dickinson’s infant son from his mother’s arms and nursed him, examining his skin and feeling him from head to toe. The next day, after a meal of ﬁsh, the Jobés directed the castaways to put the salvaged goods in order by repairing locks, stringing beds, and mending tears. Not all of them were willing to do this manual labor; one who refused was startled to hear an Indian call him, distinctly, an “English Son of a Bitch.” In the distance, the castaways saw the smoke of a great ﬁre, the Reformation burning like a Viking funeral pyre. The cacique commandeered three male slaves and went back to the wreck site to bury his hoard of money. They returned with the Reformation’s leaky boat, and the English group began making plans to depart. The cacique, however, wanted to keep the boy Caesar. Solomon, too, was importuned to stay. He “was mightily in one Indian’s favor, who would hardly stir from his wigwam, but Solomon must be with him, and go arm in arm,” dressed in a morning gown (37, 39). Despite these demands, provisioned as insubstantially as the Owl and the Pussycat with some sugar, a glass jar of butter, several balls of chocolate, a rundlet of wine, two knives, and a bowl for bailing, on October 8 the entire party started out, seven in the open boat and the rest on foot. When night fell the two groups met and built a ﬁre on the beach. The sand ﬂies and mosquitoes were so thick that even those who buried

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themselves in the sand were unable to sleep.12 Thus when the moon rose, they started walking again. The cacique of Jobé had told them, through signs, that to be reunited with Spaniards they should head southward into Calusa territory. The powerful Calusa Indians of southwest Florida and the Keys, to whom most of south Florida was tributary, had frequent contacts with ﬁshermen from Cuba. The latter could carry word of the castaways to “the Havana.”13 If the group traveled northward, the cacique warned, they would never reach “Augustine” because the people of Santa Lucia would kill them.14 (One of the two Jeaga Indians who guided the land party across Jeaga territory while tormenting them with petty thievery knew enough Spanish to taunt them with the cruel deaths that lay in store.) The cacique had further warned them that, if they were determined to head northward, they should take the intracoastal waterway. Dickinson, imagining that the waterway was a river and that the boat people would become separated from those walking up the beach, rejected this advice. He realized his mistake the next day. The drinking water ran out and the rowers were exhausted, but they could not take the boat ashore because the waves broke a mile from land and the seas were too high to cross. It was after dark when they ﬁnally crossed the surf, rejoined the land party, and made camp on the south side of St. Lucie Inlet. At daybreak an excited group of Indians with bows and arrows appeared on the other side of the inlet and began to cross it in canoes or by swimming. Crying “Nickaleer, Nickaleer,” the Santaluces fell upon the strangers, tearing at their remaining clothes. Those in breeches were shaken out of them. Mary Dickinson’s clothes were torn from her body and her hair-lace yanked from her head. Even the baby was roughly treated, “as though they would have shaken and torn it, limb from limb.” The Santaluces took up their weapons and, drawing their arrows, continued the Nickaleer chant. “And being all stripped as naked as we were born, and endeavoring to hide our nakedness; these cannibals took the books, and tearing out the leaves would give each of us a leaf to cover us; which we took from them: at which time they would deride and smite us” (43–44). The scene evoked the mocking of Christ in the Passion, but

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Robert Barrow, describing it, focused on practicalities. The ﬁrst people, he wrote, left them with “some Torne linen and some hats and shoes,” but the people of “another coast striped every one young and old as naked as when we came into the World,” so that “when we were killed the Cloathes should not be blooded” (112). If the Santaluces were working themselves up for a massacre, they changed their minds; more likely, their performance was a ferocity display meant to cow the strangers into submission. On the north side of the inlet other Indians joined the group and took up the chant. The walk to the town of Santa Lucia was a gauntlet of stones, blows, and menacing arrows and knives. One woman ran up and thrust a handful of sand into baby Jonathan’s mouth. This, perhaps, went too far; another woman, who turned out to be the cacique’s wife, helped Mary Dickinson remove it. At the Santa Lucia councilhouse the strangers were ordered to lie down on mats laid on the ﬂoor, nasty with palm berry stones and other garbage and swarming with small bugs, scorpions, and large black hairy spiders with crab-like claws. The Santaluces debated among themselves for about an hour, while their visitors listened apprehensively. Then the Santaluz cacique, who knew a little Spanish, called Solomon up to his seat and spent another hour trying to talk to him. The other Indians sat around watching, then began to brew and drink cassina tea,15 smoke, sing, and dance to drums and rattles. Someone brought Mary Dickinson and the other women stiff, raw deerskins to cover themselves. The men were issued breechclouts of woven grass, with a bunch of silk-grass hanging behind them like a horsetail. Dressed like Indians, the castaways would, as Barrow put it, go “naked without hat Cap Shirt or Coate stockings or shoes 7 weeks Time” (112). By the next day the visitors had begun to feel a little easier in their minds. The Santaluz cacique gave them some clams, ﬁsh, and palm berries, which tasted to them like a mixture of rotten cheese and tobacco. The nursing mothers passed around little Jonathan, and he, who had been a sickly baby, “began now to be cheerful, and have an appetite to

Escape of the Nickaleers

food” (48). Some visitors arrived with gifts of tobacco, cassina, and mats for the cacique, and again, says Dickinson, some of the Indians asked us, if we were Spaniards. Solomon answered them, yes. Then some of the Indians would point to those whose hair was black, or of a deep brown, and say such a one was a Spaniard of the Havana, and such of Augustine; but those whose hair was of a light color they were doubtful of; some would say they were no Spaniards. (49) The Santaluces told them that a messenger was coming to conduct them to the next town, where six men and a woman from what sounded like a “Nickaleer off Bristol” were going to be put to death. Late that night the messenger arrived and the castaways were hurried away without four of their number: Solomon, Caesar, the boy John, and Negro Ben. A troop of men and boys followed them in the darkness for about four miles, pelting them with stones. Two of the youngsters stuck with them until morning, “singling them out, and asking if they were not Nickaleer or English? If they said, nay, then they would hit them a blow or more with a truncheon, which they had; and said, they were” (50). Around sunrise the weary travelers came upon the wreck of the Nantwich, amid a litter of sugar hogsheads, ginger bags, and logwood. Fort Pierce Inlet remained to be crossed, and not one of them, black or white, could swim. Their disbelieving guide ferried them across the inlet in a canoe, and they entered the territory of Ais on October 12. Four or ﬁve miles north of the inlet, the cacique of the town of Ais (Dickinson’s Jece) came out to greet them. An old man with a gray beard, he “could speak Spanish better than any we had met with yet; but not so well as to discourse,” which was just as well. The Old Cacique, as Dickinson called him, embraced Joseph Kirle and told the group that they “were his comerradoes,” and in a few days he would carry them to “Augustine.” Dickinson asked him whether the seven “English” people would be coming along, but the Old Cacique shook his head, pointed southward, and said ominously, “Nickaleer, no comerradoe” (50–51). At the councilhouse the Old Cacique tended to them personally, bringing them crocus ginger

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bags and pieces of sail-canvas and washing Mary Dickinson’s and Robert Barrow’s feet, injured by sunburn and the hot sand. As Dickinson and Kirle had suspected, the Nantwich had left Jamaica in the same ﬂeet and been lost on the same day. The vessel carried two passengers: the merchant Andrew Murray and the woman Penelope, tellingly without a surname. John Smith was master; Andrew Barnes, mate; Hugh Allen and John Osler, mariners; and John Shears and Cornelius Toker, ship’s boys. They reported that the Ais had asked in Spanish what nation they were. If Spaniards, English, or French. But the Indians made signs to give them their clothing; which they readily did. But still they inquired of what nation. At ﬁrst they answered, Spaniards; but the natives looked so furiously that they soon answered them, Englishmen. Thereupon every one had it, Nickaleer, Nickaleer. And then they very eagerly stripped them of all that they had on them. (52) Barnes, wasted with the ﬂux, had been left at the shipwreck site, stripped naked. Yet the Ais had offered no real violence to the English castaways but had fed and clothed them just as the Santaluces had fed and clothed those who claimed to be Spanish. The Old Cacique had told Smith, Murray, and Penelope to turn out of the councilhouse “and make room for the Spaniards,” but only Penelope heeded him (52). If the people from the Nantwich were under a sentence of death, they did not know it. To everyone’s relief, Solomon arrived from Santa Lucia about midnight. He said that Kirle’s two servants had been overlooked in the hasty departure but that he himself had been detained for questioning, “for the Indians of St. Lucie would say Solomon that he was a Spaniard, and some others; but the most of us were not Spaniards; and that we had stolen Solomon: but Solomon denied it” (53). The interrogation continued at Ais. After questioning Solomon closely about the cargo of the Reformation, the Old Cacique resolved to go down to Jobé to collect his share of it. He promised to take his Spanish comrades to St. Augustine when he returned.

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The day after the Old Cacique left, a northeaster arrived, heavy with rain. Water rose knee-deep inside the councilhouse, and the Indians loaded their stores of dried berries into canoes to depart for higher ground, urging the castaways to join them. When the ever-suspicious Dickinson refused to let any of his people go with them for fear that the Ais might try to steal his slaves, the Indians lost patience and went off, leaving one damaged canoe. As the water continued to rise, Dickinson took the canoe and moved his wife, child, and Robert Barrow to a house on an oyster shell mound, then to a higher mound and another house, which the wind threatened to carry away. The Indians in the second house offered them some of their berries, which the Jamaicans tried to eat despite the disagreeable taste. There was no fresh water, and Mary Dickinson had no milk; an Indian woman suckled her baby. Meanwhile, in the councilhouse Dickinson’s people climbed onto the tops of the sleeping compartments and watched the water rise to within inches of them. It was six long days before the ﬂood receded, the springs ran fresh, and the natives brought food. On October 21 the Old Cacique returned from Jobé in state, freshly painted red and sitting crosslegged on a money chest that rested on a platform between two canoes lashed together catamaran style. He made a formal entrance, holding out his hand to be kissed. His demeanor toward the castaways was distant and stern. That evening he conferred with the town elders for several hours, frequently using the word Nickaleer, which made his castaway hearers uneasy. After the smoking and cassina-drinking, the Old Casseekey looking very unpleasantly, showed unto us several things which he had got; as a hatchet, a knife, the chest and many other things, asking us, if they were not ours. Which we owned; whereupon he would say, they were Nickaleer. . . . We signiﬁed that we had them of the English, but our money was Spanish. (56–57) When Dickinson and the others inquired when he would take them to St. Augustine, the Old Cacique ﬁrst responded evasively, then, “he setting

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an angry countenance upon us, told us that at Hoe-Bay he was informed that we should say, we were all Englishmen” (57). The fact that the castaways had refused to head southward from Jobé, the usual course for Spanish survivors on the lower coast, had put their identity in doubt. A week passed, with the Ais becoming increasingly hostile: “for they would now daily be asking us, if we were not Nickaleer? or English? And would not be satisﬁed with a denial” (57). The Old Cacique now said that only one of them could go with him to St. Augustine. The consensus among the group was to send Dickinson, but Kirle and Dickinson overruled the others and appointed Solomon because he could speak the Spanish language well, and no other of us could: and should any other of us have gone and come amongst those Indians to the northward, who we supposed could speak the Spanish language well, we should be discovered to be what these people did suppose we were. . . . These reasons did not satisfy our people so that some of them grew choleric: of which the Old Casseekey took notice, and told Solomon, that if they made such a stir, he would not carry one. (57) On October 28 the Old Cacique set out by canoe for St. Augustine with six Indians, Solomon, and a money chest with a hundred pieces-of-eight. He expected to be gone for a month. The weather was turning cold, and the castaways feared for Solomon without warm clothes. The Ais were in their lean time of the year. According to the disapproving Dickinson, they “neither sow nor plant any manner of thing whatsoever, nor care for anything but what the barren sand produce” (58). The disapprobation ran both ways. In a hunting and gathering environment, Europeans were worse than useless, and provisions were short for men who could not spear ﬁsh with a striking staff and women who would not gather palm berries, coco plums, and sea-grapes in season. Although Mary Dickinson was able to earn a few meals of ﬁsh by suckling an Indian newborn, it was becoming clear that the castaways had overstayed their welcome in Ais:

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Sometimes they would look upon us as though they had some ill intent towards the whole of us: at other times they would tell us (who were nominally Spaniards) how and in what manner those of Smith’s company should be put to death. . . . Sometimes doubts would arise amongst us concerning what would be the end of us, and what manner of death we should pass through. (59) What the Dickinsons found more painful than the thought of their own deaths was the fear that their child would live and be brought up as a savage: “when this thought did arise it wounded us deep” (59). Evidence that others of their “nation” had fallen into Indian hands appeared in the form of two canoes, one of cedar and the other of wood from the Jamaican cotton tree, blocks of lignum vitae, tools, knives, and a razor with the name Thomas Foster on its haft. They suspected that they were being shown these things deliberately. One Indian who knew a little English would give them something to eat, then ask them their name for it, hoping to catch them using an English word. This man, Dickinson related, was someone who, some years past, had been taken off by some of our English sloops, for a diver on the wreck to the eastward of Cuba, where he was sometime; but the vessel putting into Cuba, for water, this Indian swam on shore and got to the Havana, thence to St. Augustine, and so to his native town. (61–62) The enormity of this act of impressment was lost upon Dickinson, who had long since reconciled his principles to his economic interests. “The greatest charge this man had against the English was for taking him and their people away; not but that he was well used amongst them” (62). On November 12 two sweaty runners brought the news that the Old Cacique was on his way back to town with a squad of Spanish coast guard. An hour later, the English heard four muskets discharged and noted that the Indians reacted to gunﬁre with terror. A piragua came in sight and out of it stepped Captain Sebastian López with ten soldiers and an Indian

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interpreter. They had started their journey at about the same time as the Old Cacique, going in the opposite direction. Dickinson writes that The Spaniards embraced us very cheerfully, and expressed their being glad to ﬁnd us alive. But we were not able to discourse each other, though we had so much Spanish as to ask questions, and answer some part of what they asked us. One of the Spaniards said they could not speak English, nor could we speak Spanish enough to understand each other sufﬁciently. (63) No longer could the Jamaicans and mariners pretend to be Spaniards. The Ais “immediately cried out, Nickaleer, Nickaleer, and looked enviously on us, so that, could they have had their wills, we believed they would not have suffered us to have lived many hours” (63). The Old Cacique looked discouraged. Not only had the castaways deceived him, but the coast guard had seized his money chest and other spoils. Captain López brought them a letter from Solomon telling them that the captain had assured him of “the government of Augustine’s great care for our preservation, of what nation soever we were.” The captain had sent Solomon on to the governor with two Surruque canoemen, although this act left him without an English interpreter. As Solomon told it two weeks later, the Old Cacique and the other Ais were “very kind unto him” until they reached the town in Surruque “where the Dutchmen were killed,” where they learned that he was not a Spaniard. They “said nothing to him thereof, but were very dogged to him, giving him no food, and causing him to lie on the ground amongst vermin.” The next morning, they “were grown so extremely bitter and envious to him that when they did but look upon him, they were ready to smite him” (81). At this critical juncture they heard a boat, and around the bend came the piragua full of Spaniards. Dickinson interpreted Solomon’s deliverance as another providence.16 In two weeks Solomon would also clarify how news of the shipwrecks, one English and the other supposedly Spanish, had reached St. Augustine. The report ran “from Indian town to Indian town” to the northernmost town in Surruque, and from there via Christian Indians to the

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southernmost sentinel’s house (82). The news caused grave concern as the presidio was expecting two supply ships from Havana. Supply ships had been lost at sea in 1691 and 1693, and payments of the situado, the presidio’s annual subvention from the royal treasury in Mexico City, were always irregular in a time of war. The 1690 situado had not arrived until 1695. In a presidial port with a population of fewer than ﬁfteen hundred, shortages were felt keenly.17 On the same day that the governor had news of the shipwrecks, said Dickinson, he also received word of a revolt and some killings in the “new” mission province of Mayaca and Jororo. The people of this province, ﬁfty miles inland from present-day Cape Kennedy, spoke a language related to that of the Ais and were allied to them by marriage.18 The governor responded to this second crisis by sending out another squad of soldiers, this time to Mayaca. They found the missions deserted and turned back, having accomplished little more than the recovery of sacred treasure.19 Spaniards were as unable to maintain conversions at the headwaters of the St. Johns River as on the wild coast. The boundaries of Spanish hegemony drew themselves naturally, stopping where agriculture did. No matter how often nonagriculturalists were exhorted and given iron hoes, they would not settle in pueblos formados and remain in them year round, within reach of the sacraments.20 After nearly six weeks in Indian hands, wondering whether their deaths were to be by violence, high water, or starvation, the castaways were alarmed to see the coast guard search the Indians’ houses and take “all from them that ever they could ﬁnd, even to the stub of a nail: which aggravated them, and increased their disaffection to us-ward; so that we dared not to stir from a Spaniard” (63). Yet there were signs that the normal method for recovering salvaged goods from coastal Indians was barter and that the normal relationship between coastal Indians and Spaniards was one of trade: The Spanish were continually searching for what they could ﬁnd of such things as the Indians had gotten from us or others; and when they could ﬁnd no more, they would offer to buy

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with tobacco. . . . A leaf or half a leaf of tobacco would purchase a yard of linen or woollen, or silk from the Indians. (65) The chunks of ambergris that washed up on its beaches were Florida’s most valuable natural commodity. An Indian with a piece weighing about ﬁve pounds boasted that in St. Augustine he could exchange it for “a looking-glass, an ax, a knife or two, and three or four mannocoes (which is about ﬁve or six pounds) of tobacco” (65).21 Captain López questioned the castaways closely about the wreck sites and was satisﬁed that neither ship was one of the presidio’s. He asked what had been salvaged from the cargo of the Reformation and promised to recover all of it for them if they would go with him to Jobé in the Nantwich’s boat. But the castaways wanted to head for St. Augustine without delay, “since it had pleased God to open a way for our deliverance.” And once they had explained to Captain López the danger that they would face if he should leave them “amongst these people who were so bitterly incensed against us,” he agreed to see them as far as the Ais border (64). Proving that a degree of Spanish inﬂuence did extend into Ais, he requisitioned two canoes and helped the English reclaim the boy Caesar from the Jobés, Negro Ben and the boat of the Reformation from the Old Cacique’s wife (who was in Jobé exercising her own claims), and the leaky boat of the Nantwich from where it had been sunk to swell the wood. The captain was not, however, in a position to solve their most critical problem. According to Dickinson, The Spaniards had brought little provision with them, so that there was not much to spare for us; having not above a rove22 of corn, and a little Nova Spain bread, which was so bad that it was more dust and dead weevils than bread: an handful of it was an acceptable present to us. We would mix it with a little water, making it to a paste, which would eat pleasantly; but hunger was no stranger unto us; and we knew not when we should have any victuals on our journey. (65–66) Joseph Kirle and twelve others made their escape on the evening of November 12, the day the coast guard arrived. They lashed their canoes

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together for greater stability. For escort they had four resentful canoemen, and for food, only a few berries. Meanwhile, working through the night of the 13th, Dickinson and the remaining castaways managed to ﬁt the two ships’ boats with oars made of sticks and the cantle-pieces of sugar hogsheads from the drift of the Nantwich. Before daybreak on the 14th they cast off, fourteen in all, not counting their Spanish escort. To feed themselves for two weeks they had nothing but a bagful of the disagreeable berries, perhaps a bushel, stolen from the cacique’s stores. The weather was turning cold, and they were without blankets or warm clothes. The journey would be a hard one, but remaining in Ais was out of the question. Three hours after dark, Dickinson’s party reached an Indian town, where they caught up with Kirle’s party and spent the night. Proving the truth of the Spanish proverb that, “in times of hunger, all men quarrel and all have reason,” Kirle related three incidents of ﬂaring tempers. The Irish boy Cornelius had been ﬁlching berries from the common store, but when Kirle struck him with a paddle, an Indian threatened to send an arrow through him. Again, Dickinson’s Negro woman named Sarah, having beaten and abused a girl named Quenza, being reproved often by him and Robert Barrow, she therefore abused them in an extraordinary manner; whereupon Joseph struck her with his paddle; at which one of the Indians in the other canoe took his striking staff and darted at him, narrowly missing him. (67) Tired, and with an aching leg to make him testy, Kirle had once laid down his paddle and demanded that someone spell him, and when the Indians commanded him to continue, he exposed his chest and invited them to kill him. This act produced “great threatening” (67). Obviously, the Ais were no more disposed to recognize Kirle’s authority over the others than he was to recognize a slave woman’s. The reunion of the castaways was followed by another long day of rowing that ended at another town, at which they got no food. The next day Captain López urged the party forward through a marsh so that

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they could reach a haulover before dark. When they neared a town, the Spanish hallooed for a pilot, and the men of the place waded out to haul the boats the quarter of a mile from sound to sound. The captain paid for their services with a leaf or two of tobacco, and the cacique of the town reciprocated with “a stately parcel of ﬁsh,” which the soldiers shared with Mary Dickinson and Penelope (68). The castaways spent a cold night in the open, forbidden to take shelter under the boats, whereas the soldiers slept under a shelter of mats. The next day, they had just ﬁnished pushing their boats through several miles of shallow water to a place where the channel grew deeper when they heard shots signaling the approach of another piragua. In it was a second squad of soldiers with orders to inspect the wreck sites and recover what they could from the Indians. They brought rations of “bread, corn and strung beef” to the ﬁrst squad but no food for the castaways other than a piece of jerky the size of “a stick of sealing-wax,” given to Mary Dickinson (69). About an hour before sunset the group came upon a pumpkin ﬁeld and cleared it to the ground. The soldiers claimed the larger pumpkins, but the castaways secured some the size of a ﬁst, which they ate roasted with a side dish of boiled leaves. Captain López, who was to leave them in the morning, produced a document for Dickinson and Kirle to sign. Unable to read it, they suspected that he had designs on their slaves, and Dickinson “answered him short; that I reckoned myself and Negroes at the Governor of Augustine’s disposal; and we would sign no writing” (69–70). That night was even colder than the previous ones. About two in the morning, Hagar’s son Cajoe went into convulsions. Dickinson writes that The Spanish captain came to see the child, and supposing that it would die, asked if the child was a Christian? He was answered, as good a one as he could make it; but he called for some water, putting some of it on the crown of the child’s head, and crossing it, called him Francisco. This action paciﬁed its father and mother. (70)

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But for this incident, the fact that three of Dickinson’s people formed a family unit like his own would have gone unrecorded. Cajoe’s father was probably London, Dickinson’s manservant.23 In the morning, November 19, the Spanish turned around and headed south, leaving the English with the larger piragua and a six-man escort. The passage was intricate, and a northwesterly wind drove the water out of the sound, grounding them on an oyster shoal. While waiting for the tide to change, they went to a deserted Indian town and picked palm berries until it began to rain. Their Indian guide directed them to another town two leagues (about six miles) away, where they stayed the night and “got plenty of berries” (71). The next day a group of young men threateningly followed them along the bay for several miles but stopped when they were shown a rusty musket. Towns being closer together in Surruque, where there was some cultivation, the castaways spent the next night quartered in two large towns a mile apart, in one of which the people kindly gave them “plenty of ﬁsh and berries.” The soldiers showed them a raft and told them—how, we do not know—that in this very town, “about a twelvemonth since[,] a parcel of Dutchmen were killed who, having been cast away on the Bohemia [Bahama] shoals, in a ﬂat which they built escaped hither, and were here devoured by these cannibals” (71). The Surruques and Ais shared the distinction of being the only Florida Indians whose history included slavery to Spaniards. In 1596 the Surruques had killed an emissary from Governor Gonzalo Méndez de Canzo who was on his way to Ais. The governor retaliated with a night raid on Surruque, then seized two caciques and their followers who came from Ais to negotiate ransoms. The captives were distributed to the soldiers as slaves (the women and children to those who were married, and the men to the bachelors) and labored in St. Augustine until early 1600, when a royal cédula (decree) arrived reminding the governor that Indian slavery was illegal and setting them free.24 Since then the Surruques, too close to St. Augustine for comfort, had behaved guardedly, speeding strangers on their way. At “the place where Solomon met the Spaniards,” probably Ponce de Leon Inlet, Dickinson took stock of their situation. The castaways

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had two boats and two canoes, four Indian canoemen, a Spanish guide, and a guide named Juan Antonio from the “town where the Dutchmen were killed.” The weather was growing colder. That night the Dickinsons accidentally burned their last two quarts of berries. “All was lost, and nothing to be had until we could get to the Spaniards, which was two days’ march at least” (72). The same night, the four Indians absconded with the canoes in a shower of rain, which meant that twelve of the party would have no choice but to walk up the beach. Those in the boats rowed all day out of sight of the pedestrians and put in for the night at “a high bleak hill where had been a large Indian house” in whose ruins they took shelter from the northwest wind. The Spanish guide went down to the shore to intercept the walkers, but footprints in the sand showed him that they had already gone past and with nowhere to take shelter would have to travel all night. The wind increased, and the cold was severe. Raised in Jamaica, the castaways had “never felt the like,” but Dickinson noted that the Spaniard, clothed, “was as bad to bear it as we that were naked” (73). The next day, his group came to the haulover where they would have to leave the boats and travel by land. Solomon would later tell them that at this haulover his Surruque canoemen deserted, leaving him to ﬁnd his way up the beach alone. The seashore was a mile away across a marsh, and from there it was ﬁve or six leagues to the ﬁrst sentinel’s house. The worst part of the journey was now upon them. Dickinson explains that The northwest wind was violent, and the cold such that the strongest of us thought we should not out-live that day. Having got through the boggy marsh and on the seashore, our people, black and white, made all speed, one not staying for another that could not travel so fast. (73–74) Dickinson, his wife, Benjamin Allen, and Robert Barrow tried to keep together. Allen’s limbs, however, began to stiffen, and even with both of the Dickinsons supporting him, he could not walk. With London to help carry their baby, the Dickinsons passed Quenza, who could no longer

Escape of the Nickaleers

move, and Hagar, with Cajoe on her back. On that terrible day, November 23, ﬁve persons died of exposure: Allen, Jack, Caesar, Quenza, and little Cajoe. Kirle’s Negro Ben, sent back to assist Allen, would have died too, had a soldier not found him and built a ﬁre. Reaching the ﬁrst Spanish sentinel’s house, the survivors ﬁnally found some relief from their suffering. The four soldiers on duty made room by the ﬁre as the survivors straggled in. The ofﬁcer in charge lent Mary Dickinson a kersey coat and gave each of them a piece of cornbread and plenty of hot cassina, but their sufferings were not over. After a night of hard frost, which most of the party spent outdoors, the soldiers sent the castaways on to the second sentinel’s house and lookout a league away, on the other side of a small inlet. One of the soldiers from that outpost ferried them across but did not ask them indoors. Instead, after letting the castaways rest for half an hour in the lee of the building and then giving them a drink of cassina and two quarts of maize, the soldiers sent the party on to the third sentinel’s house. This next destination was a league farther on, across an inlet so wide that a ﬁre had to be lit to signal the ferry. This was Matanzas Inlet at the lower end of Anastasia Island. Arriving at the third sentinel’s house, Dickinson and the others ate a good meal, the ﬁrst in many days. In the morning, most of the group left with Joseph Kirle and a guide to walk the last ﬁve or six leagues to St. Augustine. Kirle and his companions had to wade through icy water and climb high dunes, becoming so numb with cold that Kirle feared they would die within sight of the city as they waited for the pilot boat to carry them across the harbor. The Dickinsons, Barrow, and Penelope stayed another day at the third sentinel’s house and would have stayed longer, nursing their frostbite, but there was no food for them. Dickinson was trying to arrange for the women and Barrow to be taken to the city by canoe at the changing of the guard when four soldiers arrived in a piragua, sent by the governor at Kirle’s request. In the piragua, with blankets for the two women, the last of the castaways set out for the city on one of the coldest days of the year: The wind still continued at northwest and blowed very ﬁercely; and extreme cold it was. We had such a continual shivering

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and pain in our bones that we were in violent anguish. Our poor child was quiet, but so black with cold and shaking that it was admirable how it lived. (79–80) The remaining castaways reached St. Augustine late on the afternoon of November 25 and the Dickinsons were taken straight to the governor’s house. Had Dickinson been more knowing about protocol, he might have noticed where the governor received him—not at the landing, as an honored guest, nor at the entrance to Government House as an equal, but rather standing formally at the top of the stairs. Once he had established his space, don Laureano de Torres y Ayala was gracious.25 In the long list of Spanish Florida’s royal governors, he was the ﬁrst American appointee: a creole from Cuba rather than a peninsular from Spain. After seeing Mary Dickinson conducted to his wife’s apartment, he began to interview Dickinson and John Smith, but seeing how cold they were, he gave them a cup of wine and sent them to the kitchen to get warm. A half hour later, he sent for them, gave them “a shirt and sliders, a hat and a pair of silk stockings” apiece, and promised them woolen garments as soon as they could be made (80). Dressed as beﬁtted people of quality, Kirle, Smith, and the Dickinsons stayed at the governor’s house. When Mary Dickinson came down with a fever and chills that lasted for three days, the governor sent his own physician to treat her. If the addition of twenty-four castaways to the number of mouths in St. Augustine disturbed don Laureano, he did not show it. Indeed, according to Dickinson, “the governor’s kindness to us all was extraordinary, for he would daily inquire of us if we wanted anything which he had, of which he gave us an account, and we eat no worse than he did daily” (84). The ofﬁcial English interpreter at the presidio was William Carr, who had met with shipwreck thirty years earlier on his way to Carolina. Detained in St. Augustine, he had turned Roman Catholic, married, and become an ofﬁcer in the garrison. Through Carr, Governor Torres “stated the poverty of the country.” For nearly three years they had not “had a vessel from any place whatsoever, which makes their wants very great: all

Escape of the Nickaleers

things being expended except ammunition and salt” (83). The members of the garrison had seen their ration reduced to three arrobas of maize a month, and the situation was worsening. The soldiers who had shared their food with the castaways had been on a ration of two arrobas since May and were about to have that reduced to one. The worst was yet to come. In the spring of 1697 the Spanish would be reduced to digging for roots out in the marshes, like the hunters and gatherers whose ways they deplored.26 The famine had multiple causes. Maize imports from Guale Province had come to an end in the 1680s when pirate attacks and Westo Indian slave raids drove the Guales off the sea islands of present Georgia. And the friars, soldiers, and chiefs of Apalache Province, with a port on the Gulf, preferred to ship their agricultural products to Havana rather than send them overland to the presidio for a low price and a late payment. The governor was candid about his supply problems because for the moment England and Spain were allies, opposing the expansionist policies of Louis XIV in the War of the League of Augsburg (1689–97), known in America as King William’s War. Peace between the mother countries, however, did not necessarily mean peace between the colonies, and knowing that the people of St. Augustine regarded both Port Royal and Charles Town as nests of pirates, the governor warned his houseguests “to be careful in going abroad, especially of some persons that did not affect our nation.” Yet when the others, quartered in private houses, came to pay their respects at Government House, “all well clothed from head to foot,” they reported that “they had been all over the town and in many houses where they were kindly received” (83). Barrow later wrote that the townspeople “pull’d off the Raw buckskins, and gave us such cloathes as they could spare, and there was one of the Fathers a Confessor with his shaven Pate he sent me a linnin shirt, so these Spanish Papists were kind to us” (113). And, although strangers were not allowed inside the recently completed Castillo de San Marcos, Kirle, who was not a Quaker, walked the perimeter and counted the cannon. With Carr as interpreter, the governor and his advisory council, the two royal ofﬁcials of the treasury, Thomás Menéndez Marquez and Joachín

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de Florencia, questioned the men of property (Dickinson’s “us”) closely about the shipwrecks, the goods and monies lost, and their treatment at the hands of the Indians.27 The debrieﬁng and depositions occupied them for two or three days and the ﬁnal report, which everyone signed, clariﬁed the sequence of events for Dickinson’s journal. After a week in St. Augustine the castaways were ready to move on, but they had no means to outﬁt themselves for the journey to Carolina. To raise money Dickinson and Kirle offered the governor his pick of their slaves, only to be told that in Florida private persons could not purchase slaves and that the government did not require any. The governor referred them instead to the treasury ofﬁcials, who arranged for them to buy clothing and provisions on credit by signing a note to be satisﬁed by the governor of Carolina. In his element as a purchasing agent Dickinson bought ammunition, weevily bread, dried beef, and salt. Blankets, he found, were expensive, and cloth was not to be had. The travelers would pick up their maize, peas, waterjars, and earthenware cooking pots at the mission of Santa María on the northern Florida border. The woman Penelope, “being big with child”—Dickinson’s ﬁrst mention of her condition—elected to stay in St. Augustine (90). So did the boy John, who was nowhere to be found. Kirle suspected the Spaniards of hiding him: expressing a desire for baptism was the route to freedom for indentured servants as well as for fugitive slaves.28 Governor Torres wanted Dickinson and Kirle to stay for the return of Captain López, in case he had recovered some of their money and goods. The two men demurred: But we said we desired not to be detained on that account, for we had given that already over for gone from us. And as it had pleased God to make them the instruments of our preservation, so we did freely give any thing of that which was or may be deemed ours to the governor and those persons that were sent for us. (86) The governor declared that he would accept nothing, that what he had done was out of charity. As men of property with access to a line of credit,

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Dickinson and Kirle were ready to uphold the English side in a match of magnanimity, and the governor agreed to let them reward “Capt. Sebastian Lopez and his men an hundred pieces of eight for bringing us up from amongst the Indians,” adding the sum to their total obligation. On December 9, laying aside his earlier formality, Governor Torres “walked down to see us embark, and taking our farewell he embraced some of us and wished us well. . . . Thus, in a courteous manner we parted” (86–87). The code of elite conduct had remained in place to the end. If during their sojourn in St. Augustine the castaways questioned the wisdom of their decision to pass as Spaniards or asked themselves what the coastal Indians had against their nation, Dickinson does not mention it. It is unclear that pretending to be Spanish saved the castaways’ lives in the early weeks of their odyssey; certainly the pose did nothing to protect their cargo, their baggage, or the clothes on their bodies. Yet the frequent displays of ferocity and harassment never developed into serious violence. Surely, if the natives of the ﬁve societies through which the castaways passed were afraid to harm them or if they expected to be rewarded for preserving them, they would have reported their presence to the Spanish sooner instead of concentrating on salvage. If for their part the castaways found it uncomfortable to wear native dress, eat Indian foods, and live in native houses, such discomfort was not abuse but rather culture shock. What is certain is that the longer the castaways stayed among the coastal Indians, the clearer it became that Spanish inﬂuence extended only so far. Once their identity was revealed, the English were so sure that the Ais would kill them after the Spanish were out of sight that they set out on a desperate seventy-mile journey in wintertime without adequate food, clothing, shelter, or boats. Native hatred of the English ran deep, and the Spanish were not behind it. The real cause was that the English treated the wild coast like a labor pool, seizing the natives at will and taking them to distant places where they were forced to labor under dangerous conditions that few would survive.

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In the late seventeenth century man-stealing was especially common in coastal Florida. As early as 1668, when the corsair Robert Searles out of Jamaica raided St. Augustine, parish priest Francisco de Sotolongo charged him to his face with enslaving free people: negros, mulatos, and other persons of mixed race, “even those with Spanish fathers,” and Indians, who were the king of Spain’s “free subjects” and enjoyed his particular regard.29 In 1682 when buccaneers brieﬂy occupied San Marcos de Apalache on the Gulf, a treasure salvor and turtle-hunter named Samuel Johns brought his two frigates into port, along with four Apalache divers “given” him by the governor of Providence Island in the Bahamas.30 The ﬂurry of salvage that followed William Phips’s discovery of the wreck of the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción in 1687 depended on the labor of Indian divers; more than a hundred of them were seen at the site in the ﬁrst year alone.31 The one Indian who had made his way to Havana and back home to confront Jonathan Dickinson could testify that the Nickaleers were kidnappers. The rapprochement of the 1690s between England and Spain that allowed the people of St. Augustine to treat the Dickinson party with civility and charity would not endure. The will of the last of the Spanish Habsburgs, Charles II, put a Bourbon prince on the throne of Spain and made England his instant enemy. The War of Spanish Succession (1701–14), known as Queen Anne’s War in America, unleashed a series of invasions and slave raids by Carolinians and their Creek or Yamasee allies against, ﬁrst, the mission provinces, then the whole peninsula. Thomas Nairne of Charles Town wrote in 1705 that “we the Indians and colonists have these past two years been entirely kniﬁng all the Indian towns in Florida.” He left a rare description of such a raid in the form of a map with a legend that shows how he and thirty-three Yamasees took the inland waterway down to Florida, entered the St. Johns River, and followed it into the lake district, where they left their canoes and took a path “to go a Slave Catching.” They fought two engagements, killed thirty-three men, and returned with thirty-ﬁve slaves.32

Escape of the Nickaleers

Nairne may have called himself the Yamasees’ leader, but he was mainly along for the sport. He had a larger purpose than proﬁt. As he explained in 1708, the garrison of St. Augustine is by this warr Reduced to the bare walls their Casle and Indian towns all consumed Either by us In our Invasion of that place or by our Indian subjects, . . . who in quest of Booty . . . have brought in and sold many Hundreds of them. . . . The good prices The English Traders gives them for slaves Encourages them to this trade Extremely and some men think it both serves to Lessen their number before the French can arm them and it is a more Effectual way of Civilizing and Instructing, Then all the Efforts used by the French Missionaries.33 Florida Governor Francisco de Córcoles y Martínez estimated in the same year that the number of Indians the slave-catchers had taken in Florida was no fewer than ten thousand and might well have been twice that many.34 By then, the ancient nations of Jobé, Jeaga, the Santaluces, Ais, and Surruque had been reduced to a handful of Costa refugees living in faux missions under the guns of the fort. Thus the wild coast Indians, whose hostility to Nickaleers is the leitmotif of Jonathan Dickinson’s journal, had good reason to hate the English, for they knew them to be man-stealers. What they did not know was that in just ﬁve years the English would be at war with France and Spain and would use that war, which meant nothing to them, as an excuse to enslave them all.

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In late December 1771 2,312 Choctaw and Chickasaw men, women, and children descended on the small town of Mobile in the British colony of West Florida at the invitation of British Southern Indian Superintendent John Stuart. Between December 31, 1771, and January 23, 1772, they camped on the outskirts of Mobile; enjoyed British-supplied food, beverages, and gifts; performed diplomatic rituals; and, most importantly, pleaded with British ofﬁcials to “supply our wants.” The primary Chickasaw speaker and four of the ﬁrst ﬁve Choctaw speakers used that very phrase at the start of ofﬁcial negotiations.1 By wants the Choctaws and Chickasaws meant not just manufactured goods like guns—which they certainly did want—but also repair to damage caused by British occupation of the Gulf South after 1763. Diplomatic proceedings provide a rare opportunity to view the symbolic expressions of Indians, and the minutes of this diplomatic meeting enable us to see several agendas at work simultaneously. The Choctaws, Chickasaws, and the British expressed a variety of reasons for wanting this conference in 1771, and they all felt that the meeting only partially met those various needs. The Choctaws and Chickasaws made their appeal to the British on a variety of levels. Nearly every Indian speaker spoke of the fur trade and European-made products in some fashion, but they employed different entreaties for British cooperation. Rather than being disingenuous attempts to obtain more trade items from the British, these

Supplying Our Wants

diverse appeals exposed very real concerns, even crises, within Choctaw and Chickasaw society that chiefs and other leaders sought to address through this conference. This congress was only the second such large-scale meeting between the British and these Indian groups since the end of the Seven Years War in 1763, the ﬁrst one occurring over six years earlier in 1765, also in Mobile. Securing the allegiance of the southern Indians, especially the Choctaws who had maintained relations with France over the decades, and dissuading them from joining multitribal resistance movements against the British, as had occurred in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes area in the conﬂict known popularly as Pontiac’s Rebellion, provided one of the main purposes of the earlier congress from the British perspective. Britain had maintained an amicable relationship with the Chickasaws since the late seventeenth-century founding of Charles Town and the Carolina colony, and the 1765 meeting with them served to further cement that relationship. For the Indians who met with British ofﬁcials at Mobile in 1765, the main objective was to establish reliable and honest trade based upon the exchange of deerskins and other animal products for a variety of manufactured goods. Problems and disputes, however, arose almost immediately; in the interim between the 1765 and the 1771 conferences the Choctaws and Chickasaws confronted a changed and more dangerous world that differed dramatically from the one they lived in before 1765.2 A war between the Choctaws and the Creek Indians erupted in 1766 and lasted until 1777, with hundreds killed on both sides. That war stemmed from a new confrontational British trade system that relied on unregulated, and often depraved, British fur traders journeying into Indian villages to exchange rum and other products for deerskins. As these traders used rum as the primary trade item, assaulted Indian women, and cheated Indians out of promised goods, social strife developed among the Choctaws and Creeks as young men increasingly sought revenge and disobeyed established chiefs. Choctaw and Creek chiefs took advantage of a series of murders in the mid-1760s to declare war on each other, thus directing the energies of their young men away from the British and toward a

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traditional native enemy and thereby preserving the trade relationship with Britain. This war partially solved a short-term problem in nominally controlling young men’s behavior, but it ended a peace that Choctaw and Creek chiefs spent years establishing during the Seven Years War. The Choctaw-Creek war also pulled in the Chickasaws at times also, as Creek war parties attacked them without provocation.3 All three groups appealed constantly to the British to provide more guns and ammunition in order to ﬁght the war, not just through trade but through congresses. British ofﬁcials started paying more attention to this Choctaw request in 1770 and 1771, as Creek warriors repeatedly killed British settlers in the Georgia backcountry. As early as January 1771 British ofﬁcials, such as Lieutenant General Thomas Gage, had decided that a congress with the Choctaws was necessary in order to arm them better and to counter the Creek threat. Every Choctaw and Chickasaw speaker at the 1771–72 Congress asked for more guns, ammunition, and gunpowder, as well as sundry other items, to aid them in their ﬁght against the Creeks and in hunting deer whose skins served as currency in trade. Supplying these needs was only fair, they could argue, given that in early November 1771 at Mobile the British had just concluded a large meeting with the Creeks at which ﬁrearms and ammunition were disbursed to the sworn enemy of the Choctaws and Chickasaws.4 The Choctaw-Creek War also caused a signiﬁcant portion of the Choctaw delegation to arrive late at the congress since “their warriors had gone in pursuit of a Party of their Creeks Enimies which prevented their coming down [to Mobile] Sooner.” This group of over four hundred Choctaw warriors and chiefs hailed from the Choctaw Confederacy’s Western Division (Okla Falaya, or “people who are widely dispersed”), the division with villages located along the upper Pearl River watershed that most consistently sustained relations with Britain throughout the eighteenth century. The Eastern Division (Okla Tannap, or “people from the other side”) counted villages along the upper Tombigbee and Chickasawhay Rivers, and the Southern, or Six Towns Division (Okla Hannali, or “people of six towns”) maintained settlements on the upper Leaf and mid-Chickasawhay Rivers. Although many Western Division chiefs had

Supplying Our Wants

attended the main congress, British ofﬁcials met with the tardy Western representatives from January 21–23, 1772, and heard their familiar complaints of unfair trading practices.5 In addition to requesting weapons, the Choctaws and Chickasaws also beseeched British ofﬁcials to live up to their obligations as occupiers of Indian land along the Gulf Coast and the Mississippi River. Governor Peter Chester reported in September 1771 that “it seems agreed on all hands [that] Congresses have been promised [the Choctaws],” and “if they are deceived [they] will tell us we are liars, and never put conﬁdence in us.” “I am informed,” he continued, “that they have already said they had given us their Lands upon a promise of having congresses, and now [that] we are in possession of them, we think no more of performing our agreements.”6 Chester and Superintendent Stuart claimed not to know who had told the Choctaws and Chickasaws that they would be granted annual congresses after 1765. Stuart suggested to his superiors that previous governors of West Florida, especially George Johnstone, had promised the Indians annual congresses, while Chester hinted that French citizens, many of whom continued to reside in West Florida and Spanish New Orleans, had taught the Indians to believe that congresses would occur annually.7 The West Florida governing council inquired into this matter further in 1771 and insisted that Stuart explain how the Choctaws and Chickasaws had come to expect frequent congresses. Stuart answered that he never made such a promise but that perhaps the ﬁrst British ofﬁcers in West Florida after the Seven Years War, Colonel Robertson and Major Farmar, had done so.8 Despite the assertions of Chester and Stuart, the Choctaws had reason to expect such regular meetings. Prior to the end of the Seven Years War, France, as the Choctaws’ primary European ally, held annual congresses with them in Mobile and distributed gifts to chiefs and their families, except when the promised trade goods had not yet arrived from France. The Choctaws expected such generosity from any Europeans who occupied land in and around Mobile, and they warned Superintendent Stuart and other British ofﬁcials at the 1765 Mobile Conference that they

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should “be as generous as the [F]rench were.”9 At that earlier congress the esteemed chief Alibamon Mingo reiterated the Choctaw view of land use: “I am not of opinion that in giving Land to the English, we deprive ourselves of the use of it, on the Contrary, I think we shall share it with them.” “Therefore,” he insisted, “we need not be uneasy that the English Settle upon our Lands as by that means they can more easily Supply our wants.”10 During the 1771–72 congress a Choctaw chief named Cholko Oulachta returned to this theme by chiding Stuart for never ﬁxing “any time for meeting or calling them to a Congress neither Two years, Four Years, or Seven years,” yet ﬁnally remembering that “he had Children” who needed his generosity.11 Stuart responded to this charge in his opening remarks at the congress by misstating the French purpose behind annual gift-giving meetings: “you Complained That you were neglected and not called to Congresses as when the French were Masters of this Country. The French employed you as Soldiers, and as Such paid you annually with presents. We never have had occasion for your assistance in that Way.”12 On the other hand, France had recognized that their success in the Lower Mississippi Valley depended in large measure upon keeping the Choctaws as allies, in times of both peace and war, and yearly gift-giving congresses provided the key to keeping the Choctaws satisﬁed with the French presence. British surveyor Bernard Romans acknowledged that, though the French kept the Choctaws “very poor” with their “yearly small gifts,” such a diplomatic strategy was “more proper to leave an idea of gratitude on the mind of a savage, than our septennial great [congresses].”13 The Chickasaws, who had been an ally of Britain for nearly a century, also expressed displeasure with the infrequency of British congresses. Word of their grumbling reached Stuart, and he chided one of the principal Chickasaw representatives, Paya Mattaha (the Hopaii Imataha, or war prophet) at the start of the Mobile congress. Paya Mattaha promptly denied ever voicing such criticism of the British, but it is reasonable to assume that other Chickasaws had so expressed themselves even if the venerable old chief had not.14 The inability of Britain to hold annual congresses with the Choctaws

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and Chickasaws encouraged some chiefs to accept Spain’s offer to visit New Orleans in order to receive gifts. The potential threat of an IndianSpanish alliance, especially one between the numerous Choctaws and the Spanish, was not lost on Governor Chester, and he argued that this possibility was a primary reason to hold another conference with these Indians in 1771. He pointed out that Choctaw allegiance could only be bought with presents or maintained with force. In this sentiment Chester echoed his predecessor in West Florida, George Johnstone, who warned in 1765 that the “French have accustomed both the Upper Creeks and the Chactaws to such large Presents, that it will be difﬁcult to break that Custom, until they are convinced of Our Superiority and their Dependence, which can only be done by Time, and a well regulated Trade . . . Or, by an immediate War.”15 Since Britain had no desire or resources to ﬁght the Choctaws, whose population numbered over ﬁfteen thousand with approximately four thousand warriors, Chester insisted that they must pay the Choctaws with a meeting in Mobile, “lest our neighbours [the Spanish] should take the advantage of our neglect, and draw them over to their Interests, the consequences of which should their desires be refused them . . . may prove fatal to this Province.” Chester also warned that the Choctaws “still retain a great regard” for the French agents employed by Spain. British military commander Gage agreed in May 1771 that a congress must be held with the Choctaws as soon as possible in order to answer their demands for a meeting and to counter the Spanish threat. Thus in September 1771 Superintendent Stuart ordered his agent John McIntosh to visit the Choctaw and Chickasaw villages and escort their representatives to Mobile later that autumn.16 Despite demands by Choctaw and Chickasaw chiefs for more frequent congresses and the potential threat of Spanish intrusion into West Florida’s Indian affairs, Britain’s failure to hold annual congresses did not mean that Choctaws and Chickasaws lost access to British goods; traders ﬂooded Choctaw territory after 1763. What changed was the nature of trade and the circulation of manufactured goods. In the French period

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before 1763 not only did chiefs receive gifts at the annual congresses, but French fur traders visiting Choctaw villages conducted business only through the chiefs, thus preserving chieﬂy authority. British traders, on the other hand, bartered with any Indian who could give them deerskins. This development threatened the power and prestige of the chiefs who maintained inﬂuence within their villages, in part, by being able to redistribute European commodities to their family and followers and thus building reciprocal obligations. Choctaw women and young men who could acquire trade goods on their own found less reason to listen to chiefs and to abide by their orders. This disruption of social cohesion supplied one of the principal motivations for war against the Creeks because chieﬂy power on a war party was unchallenged. So if chiefs could convince Britain to resume gift-giving congresses, they would be able to reestablish their redistributive function and at least some of their authority and high status.17 During the congress a Choctaw chief named Mingo Emmitta emphasized this need for chiefs to restore their traditional roles as providers. “When I return to my Nation,” he advised, “it will be asked what have you seen? I will answer That I Saw my Father[,] the Chief of the Red men[,] the Great Governor and Chief of the white men in this Country[,] and the Chief Leader and General of the Great King’s Warriors who received me kindly and as a proof I will Show them what I shall receive from my Father.” Other chiefs also underscored the importance of status preservation, one saying that “my Warriors Reproach me and ask me why I who am their Chief do not obtain Justice for them? This makes me ashamed and Diminishes my Consequence in the Nation.”18 Another chief named Appapaye pleaded with Superintendent Stuart to “Consider our Situation and not Send us home with Tears in our Eyes and destitute of all necessaries—I speak for my people, Send them home Sattisﬁed.”19 At the congress Superintendent Stuart showed little appreciation for the chiefs’ concerns about the new British trade system. He opened the Mobile meeting on December 31 by admonishing the assembled Choctaws and Chickasaws for failing to take advantage of the entrepreneurial trade that developed after 1763 with Britain’s takeover of the lower South:

Supplying Our Wants

English traders resorted to your Nation, and Carried Such a Supply of Goods amongst you, as you had been accustomed to under the French Government, and if you have not been happy and easy it has been your own fault, for had you been Industrious Good Hunters you could not have been so poor and destitute of all necessaries as I see you are, but instead of being Imployed in getting Skins, your Peoples time was taken up in Insulting and plundering our out Inhabitants and wantonly killing their Cattle, while the very Traders Imployed in Carrying Goods to relieve your Necessities have been Robbed and Plundered not only upon the High Way but also in your very Towns.20 The Indians at Mobile must have been astonished at Stuart’s claim that they simply needed to work harder in order to succeed in a market economy based on the deerskin trade. For in addition to threatening the position of chiefs, the new style of trade under Britain produced abuses that adversely affected social cohesion and caused conﬂicts between Indians and Europeans. British traders ignored some Choctaw villages entirely or traded more items to one village than another, occasioning both jealousies and extreme shortages of certain goods in some villages. Chiefs in the poorly provisioned villages witnessed their authority plummet as their people did without items that had become basic necessities.21 A leading Choctaw chief named Mingo Houma called for a congress in March 1771 for just these reasons. He told visiting British ofﬁcial Edward Mease that he was “exceedingly anxious . . . for some Trader to reside in his Village, that his people were naked for want of one and that he wou’d engage for the good Behaviour of his Tribe towards one.” Mingo Houma did admit that his warriors scared the traders away by stealing their horses, but he astutely noted that, if other Europeans did not pay Choctaws for stolen horses, then the Indians would not steal them. He added “that he had never received any Presents since the Congress at Mobile in 1765,” thus driving home the additional message that a congress at which all villages would receive merchandise could alleviate these pressures.22

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Even for villages that saw regular trading visits, the new British trade system came with a mixed blessing. One persistent problem was that many British traders, though not all, used loaded weights and other means to defraud Choctaws and Chickasaws out of their deerskins. White hunters also intruded on Indian lands in the South after 1763 and killed the deer and other animals with which Indians conducted trade.23 Non-elite Indians also increased the pressure for renewed congresses by committing acts of banditry and by upsetting social cohesion. Chickasaw warriors killed cattle belonging to British traders in the summer of 1771 because the cattle ate and trampled their corn crops. Since 1765 Choctaw warriors and young men had attacked the property of certain traders and of British settlers throughout West Florida. In 1770, along the Mississippi River at Natchez, a riot broke out when Choctaws traded all of their deerskins to a Mr. Bradley for alcohol, realized their mistake, and plundered Bradley’s store in a drunken rage. A posse of Natchez residents joined Bradley in tracking down the offending Choctaws, who ﬁred their guns in an attempt to scare the pursuers away. One Choctaw man suffered a broken arm, but the rest ﬂed rather than ﬁght for the booty. A year later, Indian agent John Thomas reported that Choctaws living around Natchez remained “great enemies to the English” by acting insolent toward English settlers.24 In another incident Elias Durnford, the lieutenant governor of West Florida, complained in July 1771 that Choctaws were killing cattle and other livestock belonging to settlers along the Mobile River north of the town of Mobile. Once such settler was Scotsman Dugald Campbell, who although he suffered at the hands of a Choctaw party, was not to blame for starting the fracas. A man from Virginia named Lum was hired by a man in Mobile to buy horses from the Choctaws with rum. Lum carried his rum to Campbell’s farm and then set off to the nearest Choctaw village. Here, the Virginian tricked the Indians into bringing horses down to Campbell’s farm in order to carry off all of the supposed trade goods stored there. Once at Campbell’s, Lum plied his victims with alcohol until they had mistakenly sold their horses and deerskins to him for the rum. “The Indians found themselves cheated, and were much enraged,”

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reported Stuart, and they “broke open Mr. Campbell’s house & made reprisal upon the remaining Rum, which was all the Misschief they did,” besides apparently killing some cattle.25 These incidents comprised some of the most serious and better known confrontations between Choctaws and British citizens over trade abuses at this time. Clearly, as acknowledged by Stuart, British traders were to blame for causing the clashes, though the superintendent and Governor Chester made a point of condemning Indian banditry during the congress.26 As these episodes demonstrate, alcohol and traders’ dependence on alcohol as an item of exchange caused much of the friction between the Indians and the British. Even as they called on Choctaw and Chickasaw chiefs to prevent warriors from overindulging, while recognizing that there was little that chiefs could do, Governor Chester and Stuart acknowledged that traders peddling rum were the single most disruptive force in the fur trade. As Chester put it: “I think that the people and traders who supply them with rum are more to blame than the ignorant Savages” for conﬂicts arising from the trade. He called such rum trafﬁckers “crackers and stragglers . . . who are generally of the lowest class of People and very licentious.” Chester suggested that these rum peddlers came from the colonies of Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia. John Stuart’s cousin, Deputy Indian Superintendent Charles Stuart, estimated in August 1770 that rum comprised eighty percent of the goods traded to the Indians in West Florida. He argued that the traders made the Indians commit mischief by dealing in rum, and he feared a war against the Choctaws and Chickasaws if Britain did not “put a stop to the proceedings of the white people among the Indians and . . . prevent the vast importation of rum into the nations.” Bernard Romans visited West Florida from 1770 to 1772 and claimed that Choctaws so desired alcohol that they would sell one of their valuable horses for only a four-gallon keg of watered down rum. Romans also described British fur traders as abandoned wretches, who gave the Indians cause to constantly complain against the British and to attack “the poor settlers in the remote colonies.” If the situation was not soon corrected, he contended, Indian attacks would force the

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British to extirpate all Indians who “dare to remain on the East of the Mississippi River.”27 The prevalence of alcohol in Indian villages at this time is further revealed in numerous green glass shards recovered by archeologists at former Choctaw sites. These shards, dating from the middle to late eighteenth century, are the remains of liquor bottles, with some exhibiting evidence of pressure ﬂaking for later use as scrapers.28 At the 1771–72 congress several of the Choctaw chiefs highlighted rum as the main problem with British trade. In a frequently cited passage, Mingo Emmitta complained that “the vast Quantities of Rum carried into our Towns . . . is what distracts our Nation[;] we wish to see a Stop put to this pernicious practice. With much dismay the chief described his people’s addiction: “When the Clattering of the Packhorse Bells are heard at a Distance, our Town is Immediately deserted young and old run out to meet them Joyfully crying Rum Rum; they get Drunk, Distraction[,] Mischief[,] Confusion[,] and Disorder are the Consequences and this the Ruin of our Nation.”29 Similarly, a chief named Captain Ouma said, “I am now to tell you the Cause of all disorder and Quarreling between us and our white men. It is rum. It pours in upon our nation Like a great Sea from Mobille and from all the Plantations and Settlements round about.” He further asserted that drinking rum caused him to get angry on occasion, and he requested that “some regulation may be made to prevent the profuse Importation of Rum amongst us and I will engage That our white People and us will live in Harmony like Brothers.”30 British ofﬁcials in West Florida agreed with Captain Ouma that the fur trade, especially its use of alcohol, needed regulation. Well before the Mobile congress, British ofﬁcials called on their government to regulate trade with the Indians. As early as 1755 John Stuart’s predecessor, Edmond Atkin, called for the southern colonies to regulate their traders, whose “dissolute lives and manners” had caused the Indians to disrespect the British. Stuart concurred, telling his superiors in London in 1770 that “without the internal Police of the Provinces” in North America it was impossible to prevent rum being traded to the Indians.31

Supplying Our Wants

Earlier that year, Lieutenant Governor Elias Durnford issued his thoughts on how the fur trade should be regulated in West Florida. First, British traders should be assigned to a particular Indian town in order to prevent illicit trade with other villages or with individual Indians. Second, uniform tariffs (exchange rates) needed to be established to prevent price gouging. Third, the rum trade should be reduced and limited, and ﬁnally, a commissary, interpreter, and armorer should be established in each Indian province to oversee the traders residing within the Indian nations and to prevent Indians from coming to towns like Mobile to receive goods.32 Governor Chester also wished to see commissaries established in all the Indian nations to regulate traders, as he was “of opinion that most of the disputes and misunderstandings between the white People and the Savages are owing to the irregularities of the Traders.” Long-time trader to the Chickasaws James Adair agreed in the 1770s that “lewd, idle white savages,” other than himself, corrupted Indian morals with alcohol and too easily acquired trading licenses granted by the colonial governments. Adair echoed a concern expressed by Chickasaw and Choctaw chiefs at the congress that these unscrupulous rum peddlers threatened the economic viability of the honest traders who followed the rules. Resident traders like Adair had established a permanent home among the Indians and assembled an intricate set of relationships based on trust and kinship through marriage to an Indian woman, usually an elite woman related to established chiefs.33 In order to put a stop to what Chester called a “too general and unrestricted freedom of trade” that “occasioned great abuses and impositions to be practiced on the [Indians] by the Traders,” Superintendent Stuart issued new regulations in October 1771.34 Intending the new regulations to be a “temporary expedient” to correct some of the worst abuses, Stuart ordered all traders to the Choctaws and Chickasaws to report to the British commissary in each nation. Stuart’s proclamation ordered that as of January 1, 1772, all non-Indian persons living among those two nations must have a trading license granted by a governor of one of the colonies.

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Stuart based his authority to take this action on the October 1763 royal proclamation of the British government that forbid settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains and called on all persons trading with Indians to abide by the trade rules.35 As was true for the proclamation, however, neither Stuart nor other government ofﬁcials possessed an effective method of enforcing the new regulations; no police or military force patrolled the backcountry to rein in transgressors. Deputy Superintendent Charles Stuart complained bitterly in late 1770 that a “great obstacle to the proper management of Indians is the difﬁculty in bringing [white] offenders to justice for want of positive proof.” His radical solution was to seize and jail on board one of His Majesty’s ships all unlicensed traders as they visited towns like Mobile.36 John Stuart surely realized his predicament, but it was his job as Indian superintendent to maintain peaceful relations between the British and the Indians in the southern colonies. Accordingly, he appealed to the traders on moral grounds and warned that the Indians would soon take matters into their own hands: Whereas great Complaints have been made to me by the Chiefs & principal Warriors of the Chactaw and Chickasaw Nations of many grievous frauds Impositions & abuses daily Committed by His Majesty’s Subjects frequenting & residing in said Nations as Traders & Servants to Traders, as well as other Loose & disorderly persons known by the name of Cadets, without any regard to Justice or the Laws & regulations provided & Established . . . & in Violation of the Natural & Just rights of the said Indian Nations, I have therefore Considered it to be absolutely necessary for the Reestablishment of order & Regularity & to prevent as far as possible the dangerous & evil Consequences, which may reasonably be apprehended from the Continuation of such Injurious & Lawless proceedings . . . to appoint a Commissary to Inspect the proceedings of said Traders and others . . . residing in said nations.37

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Despite clear recognition among British ofﬁcials that the Indian trade needed regulation, and perhaps because they realized that effective enforcement of the new regulations remained difﬁcult, Superintendent Stuart instead admonished Choctaw and Chickasaw chiefs at the congress two months after issuing his new regulations. Stuart called on the chiefs to restore social order and cautioned them “That the bad behaviour of your young men disgraces you their chiefs.” “[W]hy are you Honoured with Medals?” he asked. “Why are you dressed Like great men? Why are you distinguished above your Countrymen and Sett at Table with Governors and great Ofﬁcers?” Stuart insisted that the chiefs restrain and punish their unruly townsmen, choosing to ignore the consensual nature of Indian politics and the chiefs’ lack of coercive power.38 In the end every attempt by British ofﬁcials to regulate the trade failed. So Choctaw and Chickasaw chiefs took it upon themselves to demand trade reform and used the Mobile congress to state their case. Paya Mattaha of the Chickasaws broached the issue by citing numerous incidences of trade abuses (“were I to enumerate all our Grievances I should never Finish”) and called on British ofﬁcials, traders (many of whom were in attendance at the congress), and assembled Indians to abide by the trade rules.39 Illepotapo was the ﬁrst Choctaw speaker at the Mobile congress to address the trade abuse issue, and he offered a way for the Indians to monitor the trade themselves, with or without a commissary living in their nation to oversee commerce. He asked for “a Copy of the Tarriff to carry into my Town, That I may Show it to the Traders” because “the measure by which the Traders sell their Goods is Shortned and the weights by which they take our Skins are grown hevier.” “I hope therefore,” he continued, “to have Standard weights and measures which cannot be altered given me to carry into my Town which may prevent Quarrels between us and our Traders.” Illepotapo then named names: “When Mr. Smith (who stands here) First came into my Town he acted honestly and Traded Fairly, but he afterwards fell off his measure, Shortned[,] and his weights grew hevier; then Mr. Sims (who I see here also) Settled in my Town also and Traded Justly and Fairly[.] I reasoned with Mr. Smith and recommended

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to him to follow Mr. Sym’s Example but he rejected my Council which occasioned such a Quarrel That we had almost gone to blows.”40 Other chiefs also spoke. Captain Ouma liked the trader in his village, but he also wished “to be furnished with Standard weights and measures, and a Copy of the Tarriff to carry with me which will greatly Contribute to the maintenance of Peace.”41 A third chief, Cholko Oulachta, also desired “That Good Traders under proper regulations may be sent amongst them.”42 Choctaw and Chickasaw chiefs had tired of the ineffective British efforts to regulate the trade, and they intended to manage it themselves. Associated with fraud was the perceived low quality of certain British trade goods. Mingo Emmitta wanted to know what the British “think of us by giving us such narrow Flaps [or loincloths], they don’t cover our Secret parts, and we are in danger of being deprived of our Manhood, by every Hungry dog That approaches us, these Flaps are too narrow. I hope this will be altered.”43 Another chief agreed, saying that the “Flaps [are] so Scanty that they are Insufﬁcient to cover our Nakedness.”44 Paralleling the Choctaw concern over ill-ﬁtting ﬂaps was the chiefs’ determination to maintain a masculine persona that the disruptive British fur trade threatened. By the mid-eighteenth century elite Choctaw notions of masculinity depended, in large measure, on regular access to European-made products.45 Thus Choctaw and Chickasaw elite families, which chiefs represented, considered clothing made of manufactured cloth to be a mark of high status and for men a symbol of manhood and masculine respect. Appapaye asked the assembled British ofﬁcials, “Are we men and not beasts[?]” He added, “You Certainly can tame us and make us look like men by Cloathing us[,] a poor Chactaw miserably wrapped up in a Bear Skin for Cloathes is despicable[,] but Cloath us and Let the great King be told that his Children the Chactaws look like men.”46 Although somewhat humorous, these complaints were attempts to shame British ofﬁcials into supplying higher quality products as well as revealing the utter dependence of Choctaws and Chickasaws on a regular, well-managed trade for basic necessities. All of the Indian speakers at the Mobile congress remained cognizant of their material dependence on the British, and they urged their countrymen to abide by the trade

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regulations, limit their consumption of rum, and respect the British as the sole suppliers of much-needed merchandise. The Chickasaws and Choctaws also employed symbols and ceremonies that cemented their trade relationship with Britain from their cultural perspective. Paya Mattaha, whom the British considered to be the principal Chickasaw chief, held up a bow and quiver of arrows at the end of his talk on the ﬁrst day of the congress and reminded the assembled Indians that before Europeans arrived they depended on these weapons to acquire food and clothing and to defend their villages. “Think of your Former Situation,” he urged them, “and be gratefull for the beneﬁts you have received from your white Brethern, who have armed you with Guns[,] Cloathed you and Supplied all your wants.” Paya Mattaha then presented the bow and arrows to Superintendent Stuart as a “Testimony of [his] Gratitude” for British trade. Such displays of humility are a common feature of American Indian diplomacy and served to ease intercultural communication and trade.47 Paya Mattaha, however, was not the highest ranking Chickasaw at the conference. Mingo Ouma (Red King) of the Chickasaws spoke after Paya Mattaha but reminded everyone that he was the “King of my Nation and Paya Mattaha is my Warrior.” Mingo Ouma traced his ancestry back to the original Chickasaw chiefs who gained their high status through supernatural connections that they utilized to protect their people. Such hereditary elites apparently performed the duties of a peace chief, who settled disputes within his society and who never engaged in war after assuming this role. Mingo Ouma suggested as much when he corrected one of the translators at the congress who mistakenly called him Mingo Oumastabe; the “abe” sufﬁx denoted a warrior or someone who had killed an enemy in battle.48 Individuals, like Mingo Ouma, with kinship ties to prior cultural heroes are mentioned with some frequency in southeastern Indian folk traditions, and their duties stemmed from Mississippian times (ca. 1000–ca. 1700) when southeastern Indians built temple and burial mounds and lived in hierarchically-structured chiefdoms.49 Mingo Ouma offered a brief history lesson:

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I am the last of a Long Race of Kings and am now come to meet you great Chiefs. I never Saw my Ancestors but Tradition has acquainted me that they held the English fast by the hand, I have endeavored and Shall Continue to Tread in their Footsteps, this the First time of my being present at a meeting of white Chiefs[.] I rejoyce at Seeing them and having an opportunity of renewing antient Friendship.50 Mingo Ouma’s admission that this was the ﬁrst time he had attended a diplomatic meeting with Europeans suggests that he had either only recently assumed his role as king or that such chiefs normally oversaw domestic matters and left foreign travel to war leaders like Paya Mattaha. Along with Mingo Ouma appeared a Chickasaw chief with the title Fannimingo (squirrel king), who further invoked traditional Chickasaw understandings of cosmology. Fannimingos could be found among many southeastern Indian groups in the eighteenth century and before, and their primary responsibility seems to have been acting as a sort of ambassador who preserved open relations with foreigners. This Chickasaw Fannimingo, seeming more like a Mississippian-era priest, performed rituals at the congress with antecedents deep in the Mississippian past. At the start of the second day of talks he used a wooden apparatus for making ﬁre to ignite a smoking pipe that Paya Mattaha passed around to the major participants at the congress. Because the intent was to connect the fortunes of two different peoples with a vivid symbol of renewal and sincerity, only individuals with great spiritual power lit ﬁres used in diplomacy. Traditionally among southeastern Indians, certain priests kept temple mound ﬁres—ﬁrst ignited when the mound was constructed— burning and relit new hearth ﬁres for villagers during the annual Green Corn renewal ceremony. Paya Mattha emphasized the sacredness of the act by noting that the pipe was fueled by “pure Virgin Fire,” untainted by bad thoughts or occurrences. He also held a calumet, or eagle’s tail (often attached to a smoking pipe), which was given to him by a chief of the Quapaw Indians and which he in turn gave to Superintendent Stuart as a token of good will and reverence.51

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The Choctaws also utilized common diplomatic devices, such as strewing shewmach (sumac or perhaps tobacco) before the assembled British dignitaries and passing around their own tobacco pipe to be smoked before talks began. Calumets and pipes helped to establish an air of honesty. The smoke from the pipe, for example, carried each speaker’s word up to the sun that oversaw all things and remembered every promise.52 At the end of Chickasaw talks on the second day the Fannimingo, again performing priestly duties, held a small earthen pot and the ﬁre maker and further explained the importance of Mingo Ouma, whose ancestors apparently discovered, or otherwise brought to the Chickasaws, the means to make pottery. The Fannimingo also demonstrated the seriousness with which the Chickasaws valued the British trade partnership by giving John Stuart a mnemonic artifact understood by southeastern Indians to represent links to their sacred past. The Fannimingo declared: I hold in my hand the Apperatus of Wood with which our Forefathers used to Collect the Fire which was First found in the Air, The Red King’s [Mingo Ouma’s] Ancestors were the First That found the Earth of which such Utensils as this pot were made of[.] [T]hese and Such Sticks for Gathering Fire Consisted all our Riches, afterwards the white People Supplied us with other Fire and great number of Valuable Conveniences. I Present this Pot to the Superintendent to be Sent to the great King as a Testimony of the Sence we entertain of our former poverty and the great beneﬁts we receive under his protection.53 The invocation of spiritual power was also evident in the names that the Chickasaws bestowed on the principal British participants at the congress. They called Superintendent Stuart Nanhoulou y Mattaha (supporter of the Europeans); Governor Chester, Nanhoulou Mingo (king, or leader, among the Europeans); and General Haldimand, Opaye O Mattaha (supporter of the war prophet). Nanhoulou, or na hullo, was the Chickasaw and Choctaw term for Europeans that recognized the European ability to make large quantities of manufactured goods. Na hullo designated “a

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supernatural being, one that creates fear and reverence, [and] an inhabitant of the invisible world,” and “hullo” appears in all sorts of terms in which spiritual power is intended, such as the word for rattlesnake, sinhullo; a person with great spiritual power, Ishtahullo; or the plant used by rainmakers to cause rain, esta hullo. The ability to create life, peace, and merchandise was central to Choctaw and Chickasaw understandings of where power derived, and with nanhoulou they recognized the creative ability of Europeans as well as the potential danger that they posed.54 Like the Chickasaws, at the earlier 1765 Mobile congress, the Choctaws had conferred titles on the British ofﬁcials in attendance in order to create metaphoric kinship ties that allowed for trade to take place. Such terms connected two disparate peoples by conferring responsibilities on the recipient.55 British ofﬁcials did not bestow names on prominent Indian leaders, but they did grant new great and small medals engraved with an image of the king of England to certain Indian men in an analogous reverent ceremony. On January 6 four Choctaws received great medals, while four more accepted a small medal hung around their necks. The highly soughtafter medals entitled the wearer to extra gifts when he visited a British post, served as a visible marker of his status, and ensured that the chief would receive goods to redistribute to his family and fellow villagers.56 British ofﬁcials naturally sought to promote prominent men who supported British interests, but the Choctaws seem to have largely controlled who among them was eligible for such honors. One warrior, Chocoulacta, had his small medal revoked in 1767 by Choctaw elders because he mistakenly killed a British traveler, thinking him to be a Creek warrior. At the 1771–72 Mobile congress Chocoulacta covered himself in white clay and, accompanied by four great medal chiefs and about one thousand other Choctaws, beseeched Superintendent Stuart to restore his medal. Covering oneself in white clay—white was the color of peaceful intentions and honesty—was typical of Choctaw diplomats when they sought to establish a peaceful relationship with a new group of people; in Chocoulacta’s case he was attempting to restore a prior relationship that he had forfeited. The Choctaw chiefs passed around a pipe ﬁlled with tobacco,

Supplying Our Wants

lighted by “virgin ﬁre,” to establish an air of integrity and openness, while proclaiming that they sincerely believed that Chocoulacta never intended to harm a white man and that they would have executed him if he had meant to kill the man. Impressed by the ceremony, Lieutenant Governor Durnford pardoned Chocoulacta, and Stuart reinstated his medal after giving him a white shirt.57 In other ways the Chickasaws and Choctaws also experienced some success at this congress. They appealed to British honor and obligations and played off of British insecurity over the actions of the Creek Indians, and of British anxiety over the Indians forming relationships with the Spanish in New Orleans. They called for a well-regulated trade, for the maintenance of their masculinity and high status, for better quality manufactured goods, and for a reduction of the rum trade. Superintendent Stuart admitted at this Mobile conference that British traders supplying rum to the Indians were the primary cause of violence between the two peoples. He called for greater regulation of the trade, and he agreed that Choctaw and Chickasaw chiefs had a right to defy fraudulent traders by seizing shipments of rum and reporting dishonest traders to the British commissary. The Indians could also seize the deer and other animal skins of any white hunters who trespassed on their lands. Stuart also addressed the issue of chieﬂy authority by granting new great and small medals to certain chiefs. After doling out over eleven thousand pounds in funds to provide food, housing, and gifts and to mend guns and saddles for the Indians, Stuart felt that he had successfully maintained peace and that the residents of West Florida were not in any danger from Indian attacks. Thus, by appealing on a variety of levels to the British, the Choctaws and Chickasaws in Mobile for the 1771–1772 congress made their complaints known, restored some of their authority, and redressed some of their concerns.58 Stuart also thought that he had countered the Spanish efforts to form an alliance with the Choctaws, but in this he was wrong. During the conference Stuart met privately with many of the chiefs who told him that the Spanish had repeatedly invited them to New Orleans and other Spanish posts. Spanish ofﬁcials had apparently promised the Choctaws

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two years’ worth of goods that France owed them from the time of the Seven Years War. In March 1772 Indian agent John Thomas reported that the Spanish commandant of Point Coupeé, on the west side of the Mississippi River across from present-day St. Francisville, was aggressively encouraging the Choctaws to establish relations with Spain.59 The Choctaws, as they had throughout their history, formed relationships with as many different European powers as possible and saw little contradiction in doing so. The decentralized nature of Indian politics, with three divisions, dozens of villages, and thousands of individuals among the Choctaws and several villages and numerous chiefs among the Chickasaws each able to pursue foreign relations as they saw best, meant that no coercive power existed to compel adherence to a single foreign policy. With the outbreak of the American Revolution a few years after this congress, factions among both the Choctaws and Chickasaws split over supporting Spain or Britain, as neither country could hope to control any southern Indian group.60 John Thomas had also reported that the rum trade proceeded unabated after the congress. He and his French interpreter feared attacks on British citizens along the Mississippi if the rum trade did not cease. Thomas described a group of ﬁve Choctaw men along the Mississippi River who traded rare bear’s oil for sixteen gallons of rum and subsequently got drunk. (Bear’s oil, or fat, was in high demand throughout the lower South among all peoples for frying food.) Choctaws also supposedly ﬂocked to British Fort Bute, on the east bank of the Mississippi below Baton Rouge, in order to get rum. Governor Chester noted that Stuart’s new trade regulations expired in May 1772 and that traders carried rum into the Indian nations directly. The continued use of rum as a primary trade item despite Stuart’s nominal efforts at regulation disrupted Indian-British and intra-Indian relations for years. The deerskin trade as well was threatened by the trespass of white immigrants from the east headed to the Mississippi River settlements, white hunters pursuing game on Indian land, and frequent British requests for land cessions from the southern Indians.61 Despite these problems, Superintendent Stuart still felt that a congress

Supplying Our Wants

with the Chickasaws and Choctaws need only be held every seven years, but the beginning of the American Revolution changed that policy. When the Revolution began four years later, the British resumed annual meetings with the Choctaws and Chickasaws and helped mediate a peace between the two groups and the Creek Indians in an attempt to retain them all as allies. Despite this seemingly positive development, the Revolution brought still greater challenges for Choctaw and Chickasaw chiefs, warriors, women, and other townspeople, and, with Britain’s defeat, left them seeking some new partner or method to “supply our wants.”62

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As of 1799 Creek women in the Tensaw community, which was founded just after the American Revolution, farmed a string of about forty homesteads along the rich alluvial ﬂoodplain of present-day southwest Alabama. They grew corn, beans, and pumpkins, and soon they added cotton to their list of exported crops. Even though metal cooking and storage vessels were available, they made ceramic pots in the same way their mothers had, and they often incised the clay with distinct designs that reﬂected the manufacture of speciﬁc women. Tensaw men hunted, as Creeks had for generations, but they also raised cattle and hogs in the nearby swamps and forests. Some men maintained cow pens while others bred horses, many of which were used for racing. Even though the community had a distinctly Native American appearance, the European ancestry of many of Tensaw’s fathers was reﬂected in their clothes and in the markets sought for their goods. Creeks from Tensaw transported their exports on foot and by canoe, but they also used ﬂatboats, horses, and two ocean-going schooners. Apart from its ethnic and economic complexity and its curious mix of tradition and innovation, the new town of Tensaw served a strategic purpose. It furthered the mutual needs of Spain (recently granted control of East and West Florida) and southeastern Native Americans, both of whom were concerned by the rapidly expanding United States.1 At the end of the American Revolution economic and political challenges threatened the survival of the Creek Nation. The defeat of the

Founding of Tensaw

Creek’s primary trading partner, Great Britain, virtually cut off British trade with southeastern Native Americans. The new United States government was willing to trade with the Creeks but only on terms that required the economic and political subordination of the Creek Nation. Many Creek leaders, formerly having had a close relationship with the British, resented the Patriot victory and were unwilling to support the enemy of their long-standing trading partner and ally. Thus the Creeks needed alternative markets and perhaps even a new diplomatic strategy. Recalling their earlier practice of playing off the French and British against one another in the Southeast, some Creek leaders and heads of extended families began looking to another European power, Spain, to supply goods and to serve as a military counterweight against the increasingly powerful United States.2 The idea therefore was to establish a link to British goods through the Florida-based Spanish, who were amenable to such an arrangement. This strategy meant that the Creek Nation needed to secure its southwestern borders and to shift trade away from the east to the south. Alexander McGillivray, the maternal nephew of a prominent headman, Red Shoes, and consequently in line for a leadership position according to Creek rules of succession, took the lead in negotiating an alternative trade. McGillivray was the son of Scottish trader Lachlan McGillivray and Sehoy, a Creek woman from the powerful Wind clan. The mostly uninhabited area at Tensaw north of the Spanish outpost at Mobile was under McGillivray’s control, and a new town there would protect Creek borders, link the Creeks economically and politically to the Spanish, and simultaneously give the Creeks leverage with the Americans. The Spanish accepted McGillivray’s proposal of a mutually beneﬁcial relationship. In addition to providing a reliable food supply for Spanish Florida, a strong Creek Nation promised to be a valuable buffer against American expansion. The founding of the mixed community at Tensaw after 1783 thus reﬂected a dynamic survival strategy that encompassed both ﬂexibility and adherence to tradition. By the early eighteenth century the Creeks had established a kin-based coalition of about sixty villages made up of several ethnicities and language

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groups situated along the rivers of present-day Georgia and Alabama. They were in all likelihood descended distantly from the Mississippian chiefdoms of Coosa and Maubila that encountered de Soto in the sixteenth century and more immediately from Muscogean-speaking peoples centered in the core towns of Abihka, Tukabatchee, Tallasi, Okfuskee, Coweta, and Cusseta. Linked in a loose defensive alliance within a nascent political order, the Creeks conducted a vigorous trade with the English by exchanging deerskins and war captives for European manufactured goods. Creek cultural assumptions proved useful in capitalizing on opportunities and in adjusting to changes, even in their approach to outsiders. Creek clans and matrilineages, kin groups based on female descent lines, formed towns based on established kinship relations. New towns supported the existing political system, maintained reciprocal relations within the social structure, and enriched the Creek Nation.3 Because southern Indians interpreted trade as the exchange of gifts among friends, trade always had both a social and political as well as an economic dimension. Friends extended kinship obligations to one another through actual or ﬁctive adoption that created alliances and mutual aid agreements between groups. Europeans who entered exchange relations with Native Americans generally misunderstood how the rules of kinship worked, but they had clear ideas about how trade ties could lead to military alliance. As a result, both sides of the commercial relationship understood and expected that it could, and should, be politicized, but for the Creeks politics were linked to clan and lineage. One observer noted that Creek leaders “exhort[ed] their young women to cohabitation with white men,” presumably to bind them to their Creek in-laws.4 By connecting Europeans to matrilineages, the Creeks expected them to satisfy family obligations, whether economic or political, and these obligations included military responsibilities.5 Thus as the struggle for empire intensiﬁed in the eighteenth century, European traders, especially those who married Indians, became important links between European coastal political and military posts and interior Indian allies. Towns acted autonomously, their actions being based on the connections of traders to speciﬁc lineages or on familial connections and on

Founding of Tensaw

obligations between towns. In this way women had a role in controlling the trade. Through the military might of their sons, brothers, and uncles, women asserted a noticeable inﬂuence on the deerskin trade by insisting on compliance with Creek rules of kinship. Having a familial connection to a Creek lineage, whether by adoption or birth, obligated one to all members of the lineage. In turn each member of the lineage had reciprocal obligations to individual members. In-laws also had obligations to the clans and lineages into which they married. To control their Creek husbands, women traveled on hunts rather than staying at home in order to make certain deals progressed fairly and to ensure that Creek men honored kinship obligations. Clan law was inviolate, even for those unfamiliar with Creek rules. Traders who intermarried with Creeks were expected to demonstrate generosity to their wives’ kin, and they had little option but to comply when confronted by a contingent of armed male relatives or in-laws bent on enforcing reciprocity. The Creeks expected intermarried traders to live by their rules. They regarded marriages between Creek women and European men as representative of broader kin links between themselves and the English, whom they also expected to live by Creek rules of kinship reﬂected in diplomacy and commerce.6 Kin connections to several towns expanded a family’s pool of relatives who could then be called on for military and economic as well as social support.7 Throughout the eighteenth century several developments challenged Creek autonomy and national stability. Threats to their society included dependence on trade goods, mounting debt, young hunters defying town control, and competition with neighbors.8 In every instance the Creeks adjusted, asserted their will at conferences with European ofﬁcials, displayed their military prowess, courted other sources for trade, reigned in their young men, and negotiated for a more equitable accounting. Amid their difﬁculties the Creeks expanded their territory, and their population grew steadily. After a decline because of disease and warfare to a low point of about forty-ﬁve hundred in 1750, the Creek population rose to twelve thousand by 1775 and more than eighteen thousand by 1813.9 Trade was the key to prosperity, and deerskins provided the Creeks with a way to maintain a market relationship with European traders

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and to obtain valuable manufactured goods. European goods, including guns, cloth, copper kettles, and other metal goods, enhanced the lives of both Creek men and women. Creek men hunted, as they had in the past, while women processed the skins, but as the century progressed, women and children joined their men on the hunt to assure a continuation of their long-standing economic partnership.10 Creek men and women both gained from the sale of dressed hides while complementing the other’s role in the economy. Creek consumers favored English manufactured goods and as a result nurtured a close relationship with English and Scottish traders. The deerskin trade increased the supply of European products in the Creek Nation, but it also brought new stresses. The trade replaced so much of the Creek traditional material culture with goods manufactured in Europe that by the middle of the eighteenth century they relied on many products they could not manufacture themselves. At the same time, Creeks began buying European products on credit because increased friction with neighbors over hunting land increased and often left them unable to pay the requisite amount of deerskins in return. Therefore Creek debt grew, especially in the interior. Additionally, unscrupulous traders roamed through Creek territory, trading rum to hunters for deerskins, undermining the trade for goods on which the Creeks had come to rely. Many Creeks began seeking changes, both economic and political. As deer herds declined, the Creeks found alternatives, both as a supply of food and for products to sell for European goods. By the American Revolution they had learned to grow new crops, to raise livestock, and to trade and use African slaves.11 Meanwhile, all around the Creeks European powers struggled to create their own empires, often in alliance with Native Americans. Creek leaders favored European alliances based on kinship connections as well as on economic advantage, and in negotiations they expected Europeans to adhere to their expectations. Brims, who may have been of the Wind clan and who negotiated with the early Georgia colony, favored neutrality ﬁrst. However, since his maternal niece and sister had married English traders, he looked to Carolina for support, recognized his obligation to the colony, and listened to his English kin. Similarly, when Malatchi

Founding of Tensaw

took over as headman of Coweta, he continued his uncle’s tradition of an association with the English. The Mortar, also known as the Wolf of Okchai or Yaha Tustunuggee, had kinship ties to the French through his mother’s family, so he maintained a strong connection to the French. Nevertheless, conﬂicting loyalties compelled him to listen to relatives in Coweta, which was allied to the English and consequently led to behavior that appeared ﬁckle to outsiders.12 Alliances arose also because losses to warfare concerned Creek leaders, and they took steps toward reducing casualties. Forming alliances with old enemies meant that both lineages and diplomats needed to function effectively. The Creeks’ western boundary was particularly volatile. Here, Creek hunters disputed territory with both the Choctaws and Chickasaws, with a single death among any group promising a series of retaliatory strikes. At some point in the eighteenth century, Creek lineages, perhaps at the urging of leading diplomats, had invited marriages between men and women from prestigious Choctaw and Chickasaw lineages. Men named Brashiers from the Choctaws and Colbert from the Chickasaws had married into Creek lineages by the time of the Revolution. To guarantee the peace, Choctaws and Creeks played a widely attended ball game in which leaders agreed that the winner would receive the disputed land between the Tombigbee and Alabama Rivers. The Choctaws won, and the case was settled. Later the Choctaw headman Pushmataha pledged to avenge the deaths of Creeks killed by a rival lineage, thereby implying that Creek people had strong kinship connections with the Choctaw. To meet reciprocal obligations, Creeks shared their hospitality with Choctaw relatives who traveled to Pensacola.13 During the late eighteenth century as Indian slave raiding abated, Creek settlement patterns became dispersed in order to improve agriculture, external trade, and hunting success, but family connections between towns intensiﬁed with a consequent growth of collective Creek identity. Spanish observers noticed numerous town afﬁliations of Creek matrilineages when Creek traders came to Pensacola and used the name of their prominent relatives in other towns in order to open trade relations. One Spanish ofﬁcial observed that the Creeks formed a new community

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on the Escambia River through numerous alliances. Marriages between towns increased as lineage heads attempted to cement inter-town relations. Creek towns naturally became more diverse and the Creek Nation grew more cohesive.14 Soon after their acquisition of West Florida in 1783, the Spanish encouraged interior settlements above Mobile Bay and up the Tensaw, Escambia, and Tombigbee rivers. As early as 1772 Creeks had run cattle in the area and claimed much of the land as their own. But the Creeks were not the only occupants. British Major Robert Farmar, along with several other Tories, a few so-called poor French tenant farmers, and some Spanish plantation owners had settled in the area just above Mobile Bay on what observers remarked was “very fertile” soil. Farmar, the dominant settler, rented out land to European expatriates and used his wealth and inﬂuence to form a community of former Tories in the area. After his death in 1778 his family abandoned his plantation on the Tensaw River, but other travelers to the region saw “excellent soil,” abundant forage for cattle, “uncultivated ﬁelds,” and “old deserted plantations,” overall “a spacious prospect.”15 Some of the new settlers were Spanish nationals; others came from an assortment of European nations, including Ireland, Germany, and France. Spain welcomed the newcomers as long as they took oaths to the crown, agreed to abide by Spanish law, and promised to provide agricultural goods to the Gulf ports. As they moved farther inland to capitalize on better farm and forage land, however, the immigrants encroached on Creek territory. Wanting to keep the Creeks as allies, Spanish authorities arranged with the Creek National Council that Europeans settle below Farmar’s plantation.16 Europeans who wished to move above the line at Farmar’s old plantation had to make special arrangements with the Creeks. The Creeks agreed to the arrangement because they saw it as helping to secure their economic future. In 1783 a party of Creeks in need of European goods traveled to St. Augustine in order to afﬁrm their commercial alliance with the British, who had moved their trading posts to Spanish Florida. Alexander

Founding of Tensaw

McGillivray, whose unique upbringing and clan ties made him particularly suited to leadership, led the group. His Scottish-American father Lachlan McGillivray insisted on educating his son. Alexander’s Creek mother concurred, and the young McGillivray spent much of his childhood in Charleston under the tutelage of his father’s associates. There he learned to read and write English and to master European accounting methods. Perhaps most important was the knowledge he gained of European culture. After his loyalist father ﬂed the country during the Revolution, he then fell under the sole inﬂuence of his mother’s kin. He came to prominence in the Creek Nation in the 1780s, and through his charisma, education, and speaking skills, he achieved the status of Beloved Man, isti atcagagi, and eventually Great Beloved Man, isti atcagagi thlucco.17 Although educated in Anglo-American ways, McGillivray’s allegiance was always to the Creeks, and he devoted his public career to ensuring their political sovereignty and economic autonomy. After the American Revolution McGillivray knew that the Creeks needed a trade partner to replace the British. American traders were eager to enter into relations with the Creeks, but McGillivray was reluctant to give them such economic power over his nation. The Americans, he believed, were more interested in the Creeks’ land than in purchasing Indian products. Accordingly, McGillivray sought to avoid trade deals with a U.S. monopoly, to ﬁnd an outlet for Creek products, and to obtain high-quality British manufactured goods. Fortunately for McGillivray and the Creeks, the Spanish ports of Mobile and Pensacola had little arable land and thus had to rely on other locales for food.18 In 1784 McGillivray led pro-British Creeks to meet with Spanish ofﬁcials at Pensacola, and they negotiated a treaty that guaranteed trade with British ﬁrms located in Mobile and Pensacola. McGillivray accepted a commission from the Spanish as proof of his resolve to promote a Spanish political alliance as well as a British commercial one. The treaty he negotiated guaranteed “permanent and unalterable” commerce with “the most equitable prices . . . inviolably observed” and strictly controlled licensing and trade regulations. The Spanish also promised to respect

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Creek sovereignty, particularly land rights. In exchange, Creek leaders agreed to promote peace with their neighbors, including the United States, prevent stock thefts, and apprehend fugitives from Spanish justice.19 At the same time, another group of Creeks who had a growing fondness for the United States went to Augusta. The Augusta party negotiated a treaty that surrendered land between the Oconee and Ocmulgee Rivers to compensate the Georgians who had suffered from Creek attacks during the war and to reinstate the Augusta trade.20 The two treaties served a long-time policy of the Creeks, that of play-off diplomacy, which the Creeks had pursued for most of the eighteenth century. McGillivray understood the need to have an alternative to trade with the United States, a situation that had worked so well for the Creeks over the last century. Thus by going to the Spanish when other Creeks were bargaining with the Georgians, he continued the old Creek strategy. For the Creeks, the Spanish stood ready to ﬁll the void left by the British; they were even willing to offer a furtive connection to English trading ﬁrms. Several Creek towns had already established relations with Mobile and Pensacola during the two-decade British occupation, and both ports lay south of the Creek Nation, the ﬁrst connected directly by water, the latter by a well-established road. For its part, Spain intended to do whatever it could to inﬂuence the development of the Southeast. Spanish ofﬁcials made deals with Native American groups and negotiated with backcountry Americans in order to ensure its hold on the Crown’s colonies in the Southeast. To this end the Spanish wanted to continue a trading relationship with Indians. They promised Creek diplomats that they would do all they could to satisfy Creek needs since Spain feared the Creeks would turn to the United States if Spain disappointed them. As an overextended colonial power, Spain recognized its limited options and worked to maintain an alliance with the Creeks. Spanish ofﬁcials hoped their scheme would thus secure their northern border and provide a ready and competent ally. They were consequently willing to adjust their policies to appease their Native American allies and with their help maintain a hold on their Gulf Coast

Founding of Tensaw

colonies. Therefore to cement relations with the Creeks, the Spanish offered a supply of weapons so that Creek leaders could keep order and defend their towns.21 Although many Creeks remained ambivalent over whether to seek trade with the Americans or the Spanish, they found that the reinvigorated Spanish provided the Creeks an alternative to an Anglo-American alliance. The consistency in the quality of trade goods inﬂuenced some. Others like McGillivray favored the Spanish for political reasons. McGillivray further encouraged connections with the Spanish in order to continue the trade with the British ﬁrm of Panton, Leslie, and Company, whose principal, William Panton, was both his friend and business associate. Panton had operated out of Pensacola and Mobile on a limited basis before the Revolution, but he had based his business in St. Augustine. At the urging of Creek leaders, particularly McGillivray, Panton relocated the bulk of his ﬁrm to Pensacola, from which he was able to supply goods to the Creek Nation in the quantities they demanded. His desire to continue the trade in deerskins with the Creeks convinced him to take an oath of allegiance to the Spanish.22 In return, Panton offered the Creeks high-quality British manufactured goods, especially guns and cloth, products the Spanish could not easily supply without the help of British merchants. In the past several Creek towns and lineages had given scant attention to the southwestern corner of Creek territory. Now that their highly successful and important eastern trade had been diminished despite the treaty with Georgia, many leaders sided with McGillivray and encouraged a shift to the southwest. Several towns had had a limited relationship with British West Florida and before that with the French. With many groups—Choctaw, Creek, Spanish, French, and English—competing for the region, Creek leaders believed that securing the area for their own nation was essential to their economic and political survival. One Creek tactic was to incorporate foreign nationals into the Creek confederacy. Before the Revolution the Koasati leader Red Shoes, McGillivray’s maternal uncle and thus political predecessor based on Creek kinship rules, had established this precedent by allowing Spanish nationals to settle on the

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Escambia River in southern Alabama above Pensacola Bay.23 The Creek Confederacy was already a mix of tribes, so this sort of political maneuver was new only to the extent that the newcomers were European. To many Creek leaders Euro-Americans were little different from tribes whose assimilation in the past had enhanced Creek power. The practice of Red Shoes encouraged rising Creek headmen to expand the incorporation of Euro-Americans. There was nothing novel about the establishment of new towns in the Creek Nation, and lineages clearly played an important role since they provided familial ties that connected each ﬂedgling settlement to the Creek interior.24 For example, in the middle of the eighteenth century Mary Musgrove, a high-ranking woman from a powerful Coweta lineage, and husband John cultivated a close association with James Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia, in order to balance their trading relationship with Carolina. A rare Beloved Woman, in 1732 she moved her community from Yamacraw Bluff (present-day Savannah) to Pipemaker’s Bluff so as to minimize Oglethorpe’s inﬂuence. She was able to use the location for the beneﬁt of her extended family and those connected to it. Unfortunately, the innovative community was overrun in the wake of Georgia’s rapid expansion.25 Later, the matriarch Sehoy, a woman from a prestigious lineage living in Tallasi, relocated to a new town a few miles down the Alabama River named Little Tallasi. She married French ofﬁcer Captain Marchand, thus linking her people and her lineage to what she and her male relatives probably perceived as a powerful outside group based in Mobile. Her daughter Sehoy II, a Creek according to matrilineal reckoning, married Lachlan McGillivray and helped establish the town of Hickory Ground on the Alabama River, where her son Alexander was born.26 Other lineages joined in the movement because families who wished to participate in trade with outsiders needed to form kinship links. Both the formation of new towns and the moves by Sehoy’s lineage helped secure valuable hunting and cropland and to ensure market connections for the Creek Nation to the Spanish in West Florida. The new towns also enhanced the prestige of the lineage.

Founding of Tensaw

The Escambia settlements, established under the guidance of Red Shoes prior to the Seven Years War, lay north of Pensacola and existed under the sanction of Creek and Spanish ofﬁcials. The land in this region was poor, and transport of goods was overland. Moving a few miles west to the Tensaw area, within Creek territory, offered residents more fertile land, better forage, and ready access to Mobile Bay. The Escambia settlers, dubbed mestizos by the Spanish because they had intermarried with Creeks, were already providing fresh meat to Pensacola but could do so even more easily on better land with river access. The Tensaw River area was thus exactly right for this purpose. Several of the Escambia families had close ties to powerful Creek lineages, particularly that of Sehoy II through two of her daughters Sophia and Sehoy III and their children, and their move served to strengthen Creek inﬂuence in Tensaw. The Spanish welcomed the move and expected the growing settlement to beneﬁt their imperial aims.27 Tensaw as a Creek settlement now had all of the Creek social components necessary for survival. The British trader Willliam Panton appreciated the value of Tensaw. Since Panton was a staunch Tory, the victory of the Americans in the war effectively had ended his business relationships in the former colonies. His intimate knowledge of trade with the Native American groups of the Southeast, however, made him a powerful ally of the Spanish. Alexander McGillivray, who was convinced that Panton would “furnish Goods as cheap as the Georgians,” wrote to one trader that he preferred “the idea of trading at Pensacola to anywhere else,” making the move of the trading ﬁrm particularly beneﬁcial to Tensaw.28 Additionally, McGillivray’s stronghold in the Creek Nation was closer to Pensacola than it was to any other port on the continent. Trade through Pensacola also meant that McGillivray could avoid giving the Georgians a monopoly, no doubt a personally satisfying situation since Georgia revolutionaries had expelled his loyalist father during the war and conﬁscated his valuable estate. All of these factors boded well for the new connection.29 Europeans usually approached alliance-building differently than did the Creeks. By requiring non-Spanish immigrants to take oaths of allegiance

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to the Crown, Spanish ofﬁcials attempted to ensure a barrier of loyalty against U.S. expansion in the region between the Pearl and Escambia Rivers. A buffer was crucial to their designs because with control of this area they could dominate the two main waterways leading into Mobile Bay and Pensacola and accordingly enhance their hold on New Orleans, Louisiana, and the Mississippi River. They especially courted the loyalist British-Americans and Tories who lived there already while encouraging others to move to the region and to take loyalty oaths.30 Since relatively few Spaniards immigrated to the Western Hemisphere and those who did usually went to specie-rich colonies, the Spanish had few alternatives to populate their Gulf Coast provinces. Panton took an oath to ensure his trade with the Creeks, as did his associates. Agents of the Spanish governor asked new immigrants from the United States to make similar statements of allegiance, although out of the eighty to one hundred so-called Protestant families who had moved to the region after the war, only about eight took oaths. These families had settled in the Tombigbee region, an area across the delta from Tensaw and Farmar’s plantation and north of Mobile Bay, beyond the accepted boundary of the Creek Nation. Despite the resistance of some settlers to swearing allegiance to Spain, Spanish ofﬁcials were sure that the new settlers would be good for the province, so they provided a garrison on the Tombigbee River and assigned a civilian authority in an attempt to control the colony’s development.31 They also wanted to keep Anglo-Americans out of Creek land since the Spanish were convinced that fostering a Creek alliance through trade promised greater protection for their recently acquired territory than non-Spanish settlers. Creek leaders likewise emphasized their distrust of Americans and urged the Spanish to control American immigration. Still some headmen, including McGillivray, saw certain advantages in having AngloAmericans nearby because they made the Spanish more receptive to Creek demands. However, McGillivray made it clear that he preferred British loyalists to U.S. citizens. McGillivray believed that the Georgians, as he termed them, were jealous of the Indians’ relationship with the Spanish, and he offered to drive out those that did not comply with Spanish

Founding of Tensaw

and Creek designs and reasserted his goal of a trading alliance with the Spanish. Thus McGillivray endorsed Anglo-American settlement in the Tombigbee region but opposed immigration east of the rivers, arguing that there were “settlers enough already” there. He accused several settlers of being “fugitive banditti of Americans” and warned that encroachments on Creek land risked serious consequences and suggested the possibility of military action.32 McGillivray lobbied others to support his plans on the Gulf Coast and even asserted an inﬂuence over the Spanish province of Tombigbee. The Spanish took McGillivray’s admonitions seriously and insisted that no Euro-Americans “establish themselves above the homestead of Farmar” in the Tensaw area. They reiterated that incoming Americans must stay off Creek land so that the Spanish could maintain trade with Indians and keep them as allies.33 By 1787 Spanish authorities had recognized the value of Creek settlement patterns in stabilizing their northern border. Governor Arturo O’Neill of Pensacola took credit for the idea of Indian occupation of the land between the Escambia and Tensaw Rivers above the thirty-ﬁrst parallel and recommended the land there “be immediately cultivated by friendly Indians and mestizos.” O’Neill recognized that McGillivray had “been most useful thus far in gaining . . . the friendship of the Creeks” for Spain. The Spanish knew him as “a mestizo . . . chief of a town” who lived “at an extremity” of the Creek Nation and who could help maintain the ever-fragile Creek alliance with the Spanish. Spanish ofﬁcials, however, mistakenly assumed that, since McGillivray had a European father, he could be drawn away from his loyalty to the Creeks. McGillivray asserted his authority repeatedly and made it clear that all of the residents in Tensaw moved there with his permission and lived there under Creek control.34 O’Neill acknowledged McGillivray’s authority in Tensaw, although the Spanish never completely trusted or respected the “unfortunate mestizo and hide merchant.”35 O’Neill and others soon realized that McGillivray’s ﬁrst allegiance was to his Creek lineage, one of growing authority.

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Further, McGillivray and the Creeks insisted that kinship—not race— was the way to organize and deﬁne their community. All of the potential settlers to whom the Spanish commander referred—Indians, mestizos, and even whites—were already closely connected to at least one Creek town by marriage or birth, and each held a place in a Creek matrilineage. Intermarried Euro-American men moved to Tensaw, but to Creeks such marriages only gave these settlers the right to use Creek land and required them to observe reciprocal obligations to their wives’ lineages. Because having relatives in more towns meant greater respect and power, prestigious lineages had settled in Tensaw to capitalize on economic opportunities and to assert their inﬂuence over a wider area of Creek territory. The ﬁrst lineage, that of Sehoy II, included a son, Alexander McGillivray, and two daughters who appear prominently in Euro-American records. The daughters married traders, bore children by them, and asserted familial dominance of the community. By 1789 other less visible lineages had appeared in Tensaw, but many of these ultimately connected themselves to Sehoy’s lineage. Genealogical evidence points to at least seven distinct lineages in which a prominent woman’s name appears at least two times in subsequent generations, suggesting that Creeks recognized signiﬁcant women from their lineage’s past and thus chose to honor them. Along with Sehoy’s lineage, other important families included those of Polly Francis Moniac, Levitia Cornells McGirt, Peggy Bailey, Mary Randon Tate, and Susan Marlow Moniac, as well as several whose personal names have yet to be found in the records but who are known through the activities of their male kin. Their confusing surnames, the result of serial monogamy and the changes in surnames among male leaders in Tensaw from one generation to the next, suggest that Creeks in Tensaw continued to reckon descent through the female line despite the adoption of Euro-American last names. Lineage was rarely a factor for non-Creeks who recognized the economic value of the region. For almost a decade after the end of the Revolutionary War, several nations continued to compete for control of Tensaw and Tombigbee. Each immigrant group had its own agenda for development

Founding of Tensaw

based on long-held cultural assumptions and was often at odds with the others. Non-Creek interest in the region caused concern but also provided an opportunity to entrepreneurial Creeks like McGillivray. He based his plan on the previous arrangements of Red Shoes, who had allowed Spanish nationals to settle on the Escambia River in south Alabama as long as they connected themselves to Creek matrilineages.36 The Creek Confederacy, already a mix of tribes, provided a precedent for such incorporation of foreigners. To McGillivray Euro-Americans could be understood as little different from tribes whose assimilation in the past had enhanced Creek power. But McGillivray had more ambitious plans. He wanted to create a community that would serve the economic purposes of the entire Creek Nation while enhancing the status of his lineage.37 Therefore, in order to secure a hold on the region, Creek leaders encouraged Euro-American men who moved there to select Creek wives in order to give the community a familial anchor. The Euro-American men married Creeks in order to gain access to land and to live legally in the Creek Nation. Families regulated behavior in Creek society, and Creek wives and children brought European men under Creek control much more completely than otherwise would have been the case if these men had no family ties to the nation. Therefore in these marriages Creek women retained considerable power by marrying Euro-American men “in the Indian way,” that is, without sanction of a Christian church or European law. In this fashion they both created the nucleus for the community and ensured its connection to the market economy.38 Creek wives controlled domestic production and along with their brothers made decisions about the upbringing of the Creek children of European men. Since women were the primary farmers and ﬁelds were vested in matrilineages, access to improved real estate came through wives. Consequently, European settlers of Tensaw had no valid claim to residence or agricultural production except through their wives. Failure to meet the expectations of Creek wives and in-laws was grounds for expulsion and forfeiture of both plantations and children.

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The men who married Tensaw women, however, brought an economic value—connections to valuable outside markets for one—to these relationships that perhaps was commensurate to their wives’ contribution. Peter Durant, for example, raised cattle on the Escambia River above Pensacola for the Spanish market until his marriage to Sophia McGillivray, sister to Alexander. The marriage allowed Durant to move his cow pens to Tensaw where the forage was better and the soil more fertile. Relocation, therefore, enhanced rather than interrupted his participation in the market, and his proﬁts beneﬁted the Creeks. English trader Charles Weatherford married McGillivray’s other sister, Sehoy III, and they established a similar homestead near Little River. The marriages of McGillivray’s sisters to non-Indians strengthened his personal position in Tensaw, but they also enhanced the power and prestige of his lineage. His sisters’ husbands brought capital as well as commercial acumen to the marriages and to Tensaw, and since these men had no clan kin among the Creeks, the wealth they accumulated fell under the control of their wives and their wives’ lineage, who offered both legitimacy and protection to Non-Indians. Richard Bailey, who moved to Tensaw, observed that his property was “safe, but was the property of his wife and children.”39 Although the security of the Creek Nation was far from guaranteed, Creek diplomats, especially McGillivray, had negotiated with outside powers to good effect. The economic goal of maintaining the trade goods succeeded with the relocation of Panton, Leslie, and Company and from trade agreements with Spanish authorities. Pensacola was closer to the Creek towns on the Alabama and Coosa Rivers than were Savannah or Charleston, and goods could be shipped by water rather than carried overland. With their Spanish allies Creek diplomats also formed a political relationship that had the potential to counter the increasing power of the United States. Spanish ofﬁcials in turn saw the Creeks as valuable associates in preventing U.S. expansion into the old Southwest. Not only did the Creeks in general prosper but so did individual lineages. Several key Creek lineages, including that of McGillivray’s maternal grandmother, Sehoy, joined the Tensaw community to the Creek inte-

Founding of Tensaw

rior through kinship ties. In fact, Tensaw would serve as a springboard to power for these lineages affecting the power structure of the Creek nation through the removal era and well into the settlement of Indian Territory in the west. In the late eighteenth century therefore leading Creek families using Native American social rules developed an innovative community for economic and political reasons. The founding of Tensaw illustrated the dynamic nature of the eighteenth-century Gulf South region and also revealed much continuity with the Creek past. The Creek Nation experienced profound economic and political challenges at the end of the Revolutionary War, but by relying on the successful historical precedent of incorporating foreigners, by insisting that these foreigners honor Creek conventions, and by embracing change within the broad contours of ancient cultural traditions, the Creeks at Tensaw appeared to have protected their economic future well into the nineteenth century.

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Daniel K. Richter concludes his book Facing East from Indian Country with Andrew Jackson’s bloody victories over the Red Stick Creeks and Seminoles of Florida and the triumph of the White Man’s republic. With the ensuing “removal” Richter writes, “the east at last ceased to be Indian country.”1 This essay similarly explores Florida’s transition from Indian Country to U.S. dominion but with a particular interest in the participation of persons of African descent, who were also of particular interest to Jackson. It is based largely on Spanish archival sources that accord real personhood to indigenous and African-descended peoples and that thus record their histories in more detail than do most English-language sources. This essay is also informed by recent archaeological investigations of African history in Florida. The new perspectives are particularly relevant today because the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma is bitterly divided over its membership, with the so-called blood Seminoles attempting to expel the so-called black Seminoles, although both groups entered Florida at approximately the same time and were connected even before removal westward. Much of the history used to support the exclusionary effort is drawn from incomplete, and arguably biased, English-language sources. In 1991 the federal Indian Claims Commission ordered compensation of more than ﬁfty-six million dollars to the “Seminole Nation as it existed in Florida” when the U.S. government seized Seminole lands in 1823. The

A Nation Divided?

Bureau of Indian Affairs acknowledged the freedom enjoyed by blacks living with the Seminoles as well as the close relations between these groups but concluded in the report on which the Claims Commission based its rulings, that former slaves owned none of the lands seized by the federal government in 1823. In fact, a variety of Spanish records, later English-language traveler’s accounts, and even some military reports, attest to the fact that both blood and black Seminoles had established towns and developed agricultural and pastoral economies in Florida prior to removal. As racial attitudes hardened in the South and in Oklahoma, the history of black agency and industry in Florida was largely forgotten or erased, but two bands of black Freedmen or Estelusti, as they are also known, had long participated in tribal governance, along with twelve Seminole bands. In 2000, however, in anticipation of a possible payout, the blood Seminoles amended the tribe’s constitution to require one-eighth Seminole Indian blood for full tribal membership. The Freedmen ﬁled suit to ﬁght their expulsion and the bitter legal battles that followed divided the Seminole Nation. After a contested election, distinct tribal factions and the government recognized opposing chiefs. When the Seminole Nation began to lobby for additional compensation of ninety-ﬁve million dollars for improperly seized oil and gas leases, the issue of tribal membership became even more divisive.2 As the ﬁnancial stakes continued to rise, disunion seemed complete. As this essay reveals, however, the bloods and the blacks once stood together against the very government that will eventually decide if they are one. The people who would become the Seminoles moved into Florida from Georgia and Alabama in the eighteenth century to ﬁll the vacuum created by the exodus or extinction of Florida’s indigenous nations during Spain’s ﬁrst tenure in the peninsula (1565–1763). Having accompanied James Oglethorpe during his invasion of Spanish Florida in 1740, these so-called Lower Creeks knew the terrain well, and eventually some of them created permanent settlements around the rich grasslands of east central Florida variously known as La Chua, Lochoway, or Latchaway.3

. Seminole Florida in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

A Nation Divided?

Leaders of the Creek nation asked British ofﬁcials to issue a trade embargo on the detached groups in order to force them back into the nation, but Chief Cowkeeper, his brother Long Warrior, and about one hundred and thirty Creek families resisted reincorporation and retained their autonomy.4 The Creek immigrants to Florida, who came to be known as the Seminoles (a corruption of the Spanish word cimarrón, or runaway), established ﬂourishing villages in the interior savannas near present-day Gainesville.5 Pennsylvania naturalist William Bartram visited the Seminole capital of Cuscowilla in 1774 and described a prosperous settlement, based upon agriculture, “innumerable droves of cattle,” and “squadrons of the beautiful ﬂeet Seminole horse.” The Seminoles were also slave owners of their defeated enemy, the Yamasees. At Cuscowilla Bartram found a population already “tinctured with Spanish civilization.” Some of the Seminoles wore “little silver cruciﬁxes, afﬁxed to a wampum collar around their necks, or suspended by a small chain upon their breast.” Although Bartram claimed most spoke and understood Spanish, Seminole loyalties lay with the English who held Florida from 1763 to 1784. Under Chief Cowkeeper’s rule the Seminoles were, according to Bartram, “the most bitter and formidable Indian enemies the Spaniards ever had.”6 Despite this hostility, over the next decades Cowkeeper’s successor Chief Payne and Payne’s successors, his nephews Micanopy and Bowlegs, reshaped Seminole foreign policy and became allies of the Spanish government. Under their leadership the Seminoles accepted into their lands many runaway slaves or cimarrones, who unlike the Yamasee slaves who preceded them, lived in a sort of feudal arrangement with their masters and intermarried with them. The Seminoles prospered at Cuscowilla, and by the 1790s Chief Payne was reported to have some twenty black slaves along with large herds of cattle, horses, sheep, and goats.7 Archaeological investigations at this site also attest to Payne’s wealth, and archaeologist Brent R. Weisman argues that it was the additional labor provided by the incoming blacks that enabled the Seminole hosts to prosper.8 While some blacks lived in Seminole villages like Payne’s Town and Bowlegs Town, many resided in autonomous villages such as Peliklakaha,

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Mulatto Girl’s Town, King Heijah’s Town, Bucker Woman’s Town, Boggy Island, and Big Swamp.9 The village Negroes, as they were sometimes called in English sources, provided the chiefs with whom they were associated annual tribute and military service.10 Blacks like Abraham, who governed the village of Peliklikaha and who became the trusted interpreter and war council advisor to Chief Micanopy, recognized that Anglo rule would return them to slavery, so they, too, became ﬁerce enemies of the Americans and allies of the Spaniards. For approximately a half century black and blood Seminoles struggled to maintain their collaborative autonomy on the volatile Southern frontier, independent of either the Spaniards or the new American government—one nation—apart. Such an interstitial position was difﬁcult and eventually untenable, but it was not yielded without ﬁerce resistance.11 After 1783 the St. Marys River demarcated the international border separating Spanish East Florida from the United States, just as the St. Johns River separated Spanish settlements from Seminole lands.12 Although Spain attempted to enforce its borders with military patrols and to control trade and immigration with passport and customs regulations, the province was almost impossible to police and raiding Upper Creek Indians and Anglos crossed the Georgia border into Florida almost at will. Both groups were attracted by slaves, cattle, and horses and found the settlements along the St. Marys and St. Johns Rivers easy targets.13 A Spanish commander observed that, although the Indians from Georgia were “uncivilized in their actions,” they showed a sophisticated understanding of their own geopolitical interests.14 As noted above, the Spaniards enjoyed better relations with the Seminoles whose settlements lay west of the St. Johns River. Spain stood to lose its colony, the fugitive blacks their freedom, and the Seminoles their rich lands and cattle herds, and so Spanish ofﬁcials capitalized on this convergence of interests often during their second tenure in Florida (1784–1821).15 Thus viewing the Seminoles as a buffer against Anglo encroachment, the Spanish government attempted to ensure their friendship by regularly hosting and gifting them in St. Augustine. The Crown allotted six thousand pesos annually for their gifts, which included items such as

A Nation Divided?

cloth and clothing, hats, thread and needles, thimbles, scissors, beads, pipes, knives, axes, razors, mirrors, tin pots, spurs, munitions, tobacco, aguardiente (rum), and food. Women and children received gingham and chintz cloth and red paper, respectively, while luxury items such as saddles went to head men like Long Warrior, Filatuche, Tupane and the mestizo chief Perryman. On at least four occasions groups identiﬁed speciﬁcally as cimarrones traveled to St. Augustine, usually in the company of Seminoles, and they too were presented with gifts.16 The Spanish/Seminole/black alliance unraveled brieﬂy in 1800 when the Seminole and Lower Creek nations elected William Augustus Bowles director of their new state of Muskogee that promptly declared war against Spain. Formerly a soldier with the Loyalist army in Pensacola, Bowles married the daughter of the mestizo chief Perryman and was adopted by the Creeks.17 From the 1780s onward he used those family connections, along with the backing of British governmental and commercial agents, to agitate against Spanish interests in the Southeast. Bowles eventually won support from Quebec, London, and the Bahamas for recognition of a separate Indian state with which the British would establish trade alliances.18 Director Bowles raised an army and navy of ambitious and land-hungry Anglos, southeastern Indians, and blacks—both fugitive slaves and slaves of the Seminoles—and from 1800 to 1803 his polyglot forces wreaked havoc on Florida. One party composed of “from twenty-ﬁve to thirty Indians, Negroes, and infamous whites all of them direct from Bowles headquarters” had orders to “plunder and break up all the settlements in Florida.”19 The Nassau Gazette reported that the Muskogee Army has marched to plunder, pillage & lay waste Augustine, from whence they have already brought a number of Prime Slaves & some considerable share of very valuable property, & will entirely lay waste & ravage that Country ere they withdraw from thence nor can Spain send any Troops to act against them unless she wishes to sacriﬁce them which would be the case with any Troops who would enter their

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Country as they must bush ﬁght it with them, which no Troops are equal to the doing with success.20 The only troops apparently “equal to the doing” were St. Augustine’s free black militiamen. These men, some of whom had acquired their military training in the American and Saint Domingue revolutions, proved among Spain’s most valuable troops. They regularly patrolled the Indian hinterland surrounding St. Augustine and served guard duty at small outlying forts or fortiﬁed houses at Picolata, Pellicer, San Juan, San Nicolas, San Vicente Ferrer, and Amelia. The black units also constructed a new fort, Buena Vista, at a high point on the St. Johns River to better patrol the Indian frontier. Some members of the black militia, like Sergeant Felipe Edimboro and his son Sandy, were posted at allied Seminole villages, where they had direct contact with former slaves like themselves who had chosen an alternate route to freedom. While twenty-two free black militia helped garrison Fort Picolata on the western frontier, the Black General Jorge Biassou, formerly of the Black Auxiliaries of Carlos IV in Saint Domingue, and the rest of St. Augustine’s free black troops guarded the southern frontier near the Matanzas River. Biassou had orders to detain all Indians seeking to come to the city and to allow to pass only those who were friendly—such as those who brought hogs and cattle to sell. His orders called on him to treat the Indians with “humanity and kindness” and to use force only when required, but in other matters to employ his own judgment.21 Although some Seminoles joined in these hostilities, the Spaniards’ most ﬁerce enemies in the Creek confederacy were the Mikasukis, who periodically raided Spanish plantations near St. Augustine for slaves and horses, occasionally killing residents, both black and white. Wealthy East Florida planters such as John McQueen and Francis Phelipe Fatio were among those who lost slaves and property to Bowles and his raiders. Fatio hired agents who tried unsuccessfully to ransom his stolen or absconded slaves, some of whom later appeared on lists of U.S. military captives at the conclusion of the Second Seminole War. During the three-year Muskogee war black homesteaders also lost slaves and property to Indian raiders. At dawn on June 24, 1800, three of

A Nation Divided?

Bowles’s raiders attacked the homestead of free black militiaman Sergeant Felipe Edimboro and stole his slave Jack, who was at work in the ﬁelds. Edimboro saw the Indians take Jack away in their canoe, and he quickly loaded his own family and that of his free black neighbor Juan Moore into another canoe in order to take them to safety. After unloading the group upriver at Fatio’s Nueva Suisa estate, Edimboro hurried back to his homestead, only to ﬁnd the Indians had taken more captives—the wife and seven children of free black militiaman Tony. Edimboro’s slave Jack eventually escaped from his captors, as did Tony’s eldest son, but other blacks stolen that day were never recovered. Some made new lives among the Seminoles and later became captives of the U.S. military.22 In January 1802 the Seminoles staged a particularly violent attack on Josiah Dupont’s plantation at Matanzas, abducting a white woman and her ﬁve young children, killing the oldest boy, and stealing ten slaves. The governor’s war council feared Spain might lose the province and futilely appealed to the captain-general of Cuba for more regular troops. When these were not forthcoming, the hapless settlement called once again upon the black militia.23 Throughout the summer of 1802 Spanish militias roamed the countryside in search of Mikasuki raiders, but the latter proved an elusive enemy who left behind deserted villages as they melted into the surrounding swamps. When encountered, they proved ﬁerce ﬁghters. Black militiaman Tomas Herrera, an escaped slave from Carolina, was badly wounded and had to be hospitalized after one ﬁght.24 Another black militiaman named Sparkman was granted permission to return home to care for his mother after the Indians killed his father.25 By mid-summer nearby Creek and Seminole leaders began to denounce the Mikasukis and to respond to Spanish peace overtures. John Kinard, the so-called king of the Creeks wrote Dear Sir, I take your talks and think them good we don’t wish any disturbance with us and you we want the path kepe open that frids may pass and repass to se each other we don’t want any war at all it is the mackasukey people that is at war we have

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nothing to do with them nor the Spanyards the ﬂoridy people kild one ingan and tha went and kild one white man for it and says tha are don tha are all gon hunting and wants nomore of it all says tha are your frinds I am Dear Sir yours.26 Chief Payne, leader of the Alachua Seminoles, was also ready to end the ﬁghting. He warned Spanish ofﬁcials when raiders from the Mikasuki nation approached, and he also began sending parties of his own people into St. Augustine to sell furs.27 The Creeks and Seminoles ﬁnally signed a peace treaty with Spain in August 1802.28 But not until his former Creek allies seized Bowles in May 1803 and turned him over to the Spaniards did an unstable peace actually return to East Florida.29 In peacetime free black militiamen like Juan Bautista Collins traveled regularly to the Seminole villages as meat contractors for the Spanish government. In 1808 Collins made several trips to establish relations with Chief Bowlegs at La Chua. During one trip the black militiaman distributed gifts of cloth, handkerchiefs, belts, beads, sugar, tobacco, aguardiente, knives, and powder and shot among his Seminole hosts. Only after several of these visits did the black trader actually conduct successful business with Bowlegs. Collins was also able to purchase a herd of one hundred and twenty-ﬁve cattle at the Seminole village of Chiscochate, eighteen of which were sold to him by a black woman named Molly. Finally, after a difﬁcult journey of ﬁve to eight months, during which he traded independently and tactfully among his Indian suppliers, Collins and black translator and fellow militiaman Benjamín Wiggins brought back herds of several hundred head of cattle for the sustenance of St. Augustine. Through these visits and business negotiations, more connections were established between blacks and Seminoles, and when Collins was forced to sue the Spanish government for payment, Chief Bowlegs’s sister Simency came to St. Augustine to testify on Collins’s behalf. She threatened again that the tribe would sell their cattle to the United States if Collins were not paid. Despite that threat, the case dragged on until 1816 when Collins ﬁnally received payment for the Seminole cattle he had herded to St. Augustine.30

A Nation Divided?

As Collins’ case dragged through the courts, in 1812 land-hungry Georgians, styling themselves Patriots, attempted to seize Florida and hand it to the United States. Once again the Seminoles and their black vassals came to the assistance of Spain.31 Once again the Spanish governor, Sebastián Kindelán, posted members of his black militia at Seminole villages, and chiefs Payne and Bowlegs reciprocated by sending some of their own black warriors to ﬁght alongside the Spaniards as a gesture of good faith.32 Governor Kindelán was pleased when Chief Bowlegs brought two hundred men to ﬁght for the Spaniards on the St. Johns River. Still he complained that anytime the Seminoles captured a slave, a horse, or any other valuable they left the ﬁeld to secure it in their towns, and so their advantage was only momentary.33 Like his predecessors, Governor Kindelán employed black translators, such as the free mulatto militiaman Benjamín Wiggins and the slave Tony Proctor—“the best translator of the Indian languages in the province”—to promote the Spanish-black-Indian alliance.34 In July 1812 Tony Proctor traveled to address Chief Payne at the Seminole village of La Chua and recruited several hundred Seminole warriors for the Spanish side.35 The turning point of the Patriot siege came in September 1812 when Lieutenant Juan Bautista Witten, a former runaway from South Carolina, led a band of twenty-ﬁve black militia men, thirty-two of Chief Payne’s blacks, and a handful of Seminoles in a well executed ambush of twenty United States Marines and approximately sixty to seventy Patriots escorting a supply convoy through Twelve Mile Swamp at night. Witten’s forces took down Marine Captain John Williams, his sergeant, and the wagon horses in the ﬁrst volley. For two hours afterward they battled the more numerous invading forces, killing many but suffering several casualties as well. That night Witten’s men destroyed one wagon, and the next morning they used the second to transport their wounded back to St. Augustine. This action lifted the Patriot siege and allowed badly needed supplies to reach St. Augustine. The Patriot accounts (and therefore, most historical treatments based on the English-language sources) reported that the ambush at Twelve Mile Swamp was the work of the Indians, but the Spanish governor wrote that the Indians were actually “our parties

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of blacks, whom they [the rebels] think are Indians because they wear the same clothing and go painted.”36 Bereft of supplies, the demoralized Patriot and United States forces began to pull back. When later that month a force led by Georgia volunteer Colonel Daniel Newnan failed to break up the Indian and black towns near La Chua and was mauled by Payne’s polyglot warriors, the invasion was spent.37 Disease, the ferocity of the black and Indian militias, and weakening United States enthusiasm for the land grab when war with England threatened eventually ruined the Patriots. In May 1813 all foreign forces were withdrawn from Florida.38 Spain’s black guerrillas and their Seminole allies undid the half-hearted Patriot rebellion, but the United States remained ﬁrmly committed to an expansionist foreign policy in the Southeast. Its interventions were motivated by territorial ambition, by the lingering fear that Britain would displace the weakened Spanish regimes in the Southeast, and by racial politics. The very success of the Spanish/Indian/black alliance in effect ensured further intervention by Americans who could not tolerate such dangerous collaboration on their frontier. The War of 1812 and the simultaneous Creek War of 1813–14 evolved into a long-term effort to push the Creeks, Seminoles, and blacks out of their settlements in western and central Florida and eventually to drive out the Spaniards as well.39 During the War of 1812, as during the American Revolution, the British deliberately encouraged slaves of the enemy to desert plantations, enlist in royal military service, and be recognized as free (a strategy the Spaniards had used so successfully against the English since the founding of Charles Town in 1670). The British also promised that after war’s end the blacks would receive land, and in the summer of 1814 Colonel Edward Nicolls and his aide Captain George Woodbine established a large number of fugitive slaves from Mobile, Pensacola, Georgia, and St. Augustine, as well as beleaguered Red Stick Indian allies, at a small but well-armed fort at Prospect Bluff on the Apalachicola River within Spanish territory and about twenty-ﬁve miles north of the Gulf of Mexico. Nicolls and Woodbine gave the escaped slaves uniforms and arms, drilled them, and formed the men into three companies of Negro Colonial Marines. The provocation

A Nation Divided?

was too much, and Americans, Lower Creeks, Spaniards, and the powerful West Florida trading ﬁrm of John Forbes and Company all considered the elimination of the fort to be a necessary objective.40 In 1814 General Andrew Jackson routed the nativist Upper Creeks, or Red Sticks, at Horseshoe Bend, Alabama, and shortly after the Treaty of Ghent ended the war in 1815, he also defeated the British forces at New Orleans. But Prospect Bluff was still attracting escaped slaves and refugee Indians. By the summer of 1815 an estimated force of eleven hundred warriors, including several hundred blacks, garrisoned the so-called Negro Fort behind which planted corn ﬁelds were said to stretch along the river for more than forty-ﬁve miles.41 Nearby, advancing Georgians were also establishing settlements, and as commander of the Southern Military Division of the United States, Jackson demanded the “immediate and prompt interference of the Spanish authority to destroy or remove from our frontier this banditti.”42 Pensacola governor Mauricio de Zúñiga was in no position to actually send any troops against the fort, but he sent Captain Vicente Sebastián Pintado to investigate the matter and to retrieve any runaway slaves belonging to Spanish owners in East and West Florida.43 The Pensacola merchant house John Forbes and Company claimed that sixty-three of its slaves had escaped to the settlement at Prospect Bluff.44 Among the most highly valued of these runaways were Ambrosio, a shoemaker valued at nine hundred pesos, and Harry, a caulker and navigator who knew how to read and write and who was valued at two thousand pesos.45 Others seduced away from the Spaniards were Fernando, who belonged to St. Augustine’s auditor of war, and the later, more famous, Abraham, who once belonged to a physician in Pensacola. The runaways also included sailors, master carpenters, coopers, ironsmiths, bakers, servants, laundresses, cooks, sawyers, masons, cartwrights, and ﬁeld hands. While they may not have been black Robin Hoods, as historian Herbert Aptheker called them, neither were they the parasitical villains described by contemporary Americans.46 Forbes agent Edmund Doyle believed the English sponsors of the fort to be motivated by self-interest. He charged that Woodbine seduced away

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“not more than ten” slaves belonging to the Americans, whose retaliation he feared, but that instead with the “help of their [Nicolls and Woodbine’s] agents and black spies, corrupted the negroes of their friends and Spanish allies.”47 As a self-appointed British agent to the Creek Nation, Nicolls directed letters of remonstrance to U.S. Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins for attacks he said Americans had committed against Creek and Seminole towns. Nicolls complained that Americans attacked Seminole Chief Bowlegs’ town on two separate occasions in March and May of 1815, killing warriors and stealing cattle. Hawkins responded that the Indians could appeal for redress to either legitimate Spanish or American ofﬁcials, but he charged that Nicolls had no authority to speak for the Indians and likened him to William Augustus Bowles, “that Prince of Liars.”48 The charges that Americans (more speciﬁcally, Georgians) burned Seminole villages, stole cattle, and killed Indians in the process were repeated often by Nicolls, who received some of his information from the Bahamian Indian trader Alexander Arbuthnot.49 When Captain Pintado ﬁnally arrived at Prospect Bluff, his escort, Royal Navy captain R. C. Spencer, would not allow the slaves to be forcibly returned to the Spanish representative. In Pintado’s presence Spencer disarmed the men, paid them for their service, and gave each a discharge from the British service. He told them that new orders precluded him from transporting them to British possessions as promised earlier by Admiral Cochrane, and he warned them (correctly) that, when the English departed, the blacks would be preyed upon by the Americans and their Indian allies.50 Pintado estimated the total number of runaways at the fort at about two hundred and ﬁfty of whom he was able to convince only ten, all of them women, to return voluntarily. He reported that many of the fort occupants were leaving for the black Seminole settlements at Tampa Bay.51 Andrew Jackson had already ordered the destruction of the fort that was “stealing and enticing away our negroes” and that had “been established by some villain for the purpose of murder, rapine, and plunder.” Lieutenant Colonel Duncan L. Clinch led the attack, reinforced by the

A Nation Divided?

Coweta Creeks under Chief William McIntosh, son of a British Indian agent. Two U.S. Navy gunboats sailed upriver to join in the attack. The fort’s black commander, Garçon, deﬁantly informed a Creek delegation that “he had been left in command of the fort by the British government and that he would sink any American vessels that should attempt to pass it.”52 He also vowed to blow up the fort rather than surrender. Given that Garçon and the Choctaw chief who jointly commanded the fort had at their disposal ten cannon, several thousand muskets and sidearms, and ammunition and military stores, in addition to their well-trained and determined warriors, it portended to be a costly siege. When the battle actually began on July 27, 1816, the blacks in the fort hoisted a red ﬂag under the Union Jack and hurled insults as well as cannon shots at the Americans. One of the attacking ofﬁcers noted with some admiration the “spirited opposition” of the blacks, who made it clear that they would neither ask for, nor give, quarter and that they would ﬁght to the death. The blacks led several sorties against McIntosh’s warriors but were driven back into the fort. On the second day a “miraculous” American shot hit the powder magazine, blowing up the fort with a blast that shook Pensacola, sixty miles away.53 Only forty individuals survived the explosion, and few of those lived long. The Americans handed Garçon and the Choctaw chief over to the Creeks who “passed sentence of death” and promptly executed them. The victors returned the few live captives to owners, who claimed them and paid the costs of their retrieval. With the “banditti” exterminated, the American naval forces set ﬁre to the fort and sailed away with approximately two hundred thousand dollars worth of arms and supplies.54 The following year, in November 1817, Andrew Jackson led more than three thousand troops in a preemptive strike on the Mikasuki village of Fowl Town, and then with the western threats eradicated, in April 1818 he led a three-week campaign against the Seminole heartland. Jackson’s military operation came to be known as the First Seminole War. In a last letter to his son, the doomed Indian trader Alexander Arbuthnot alleged that “[t}he main drift of the Americans is to destroy the black population of Suwany.”55 General Gaines conﬁrmed this claim when he

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wrote the Seminoles that “[y]ou harbor a great many of my black people among you, at Sahwahnee. If you give me leave to go by you against them, I shall not hurt anything belonging to you.” King Heijah responded that some blacks may have taken refuge among the English during their war with the Americans, but “it is for you, white people, to settle those things among yourselves. . . . I shall use force to stop any armed Americans from passing my towns or my lands.”56 Jackson would not be deterred by such threats. Moving eastward, he forced the surrender of the Spanish garrison at San Marcos de Apalachee where he arrested and executed the Red Stick prophet Francis (Hillis Hadjo). He also arrested the trader Arbuthnot and Colonel Nicolls’ Bahamian surrogate, Robert Ambrister. Jackson’s hastily convened military ﬁeld court convicted Arbuthnot and Ambrister of inciting and arming the Indians and blacks and executed them both, triggering outraged protests by the English government. Evidence at Ambrister’s trial included a letter he had written Nicolls from the Suwannee stating that the three hundred blacks there “beg me to say, they depend on your promises, and expect you are the way out. They have stuck to the cause, and will always believe in the faith of you.”57 Joined by the Coweta Creek leader William McIntosh, who had besieged the Negro Fort, on April 16, 1818, Jackson’s troops burned almost four hundred Seminole and black homes at Bowlegs Town on the Suwannee River, destroyed large quantities of food supplies, and spirited away herds of cattle and horses.58 Blacks and Seminoles, who had been forewarned by Arbuthnot, put up a desperate ﬁght, with three hundred black warriors holding back a greatly superior force at the Suwannee in order to give the women and children time to cross over the river to safety. Among the last defenders on the Suwannee were blacks like Nero and Fernando, who had already fought American troops at Prospect Bluff. Andrew Jackson caught Fernando with weapon in hand and could have executed him on the spot but instead claimed him as his own slave, renamed him Polidore, and took him back to Tennessee. When his Spanish owner discovered Fernando’s fate, she wrote Jackson to try and recover her slave, and she wrote Fernando (in Spanish) to chastise him for dis-

A Nation Divided?

loyalty. It would seem Fernando, like other blacks who lived among the Seminoles, was a literate man.59 From the Suwannee Jackson marched westward and seized Spanish Pensacola, concluding the First Seminole War. Although the Seminole’s northern settlements were ruined, their desperate resistance continued. Black and Indian refugees dispersed to the west and south of Florida, joining others who had anticipated the attacks at Prospect Bluff and at the Suwannee and had already resettled in traditional hunting villages near Tampa Bay.60 The American Captain James Gadsden described Tampa Bay as “the last rallying spot of the disaffected negroes and Indians and the only favorable point from whence a communication can be had with Spanish and European emissaries.”61 From Tampa the desperate Seminoles and their black allies sent repeated diplomatic missions to the British in the Bahamas and the Spaniards in Cuba and St. Augustine. Although the Spaniards in St. Augustine gave them substantial food supplies and muskets, the British sent only nominal gifts, not wanting to alienate the Americans who by the Adams-Onís Treaty were soon to take possession of Florida.62 In 1821 General Andrew Jackson became governor of the new United States territorial government of Florida and recommended removing the fugitive Creeks, Seminoles, and free blacks from the peninsula. As he awaited a response to his proposal, several hundred Coweta warriors sponsored by Georgia speculators raided the Tampa Bay and Sarasota Bay settlements and carried northward a number of blacks, cattle, and horses. Once again, escaping Seminoles and blacks were forced to ﬂee—this time to the tip of the peninsula at Cape Florida. There, Cuban ﬁshermen and Bahamian wreckers with whom they had long conducted trade carried hundreds “in a famishing state” to safety in Cuba and to Andros Island and Bimini Island in the Bahamas.63 Other blacks and Seminoles stayed on in Florida and attempted to rebuild their lives in new locales. When the former slave trader turned settler Horatio Dexter visited Peliklikaha in that decisive year of 1823, he reported that “about 100 Negroes belonging to Micanope [sic] and his family of different ages and sexes” had planted approximately 120 acres

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in corn, peanuts, and rice there. Peliklikaha was, in fact, a free black village ruled by Abraham, an ally to and advisor of the Seminole chief Micanopy. Abraham had fought at Prospect Bluff and probably at most of the main battles of the First Seminole War and was married to Chief Bowlegs’ widow. It is doubtful any blood or black Seminole considered him property, although a former slave trader would have. Archaeologist Terry Weik has uncovered evidence of the material life at Peliklikaha, including a variety of glass beads, metal earbobs, iron stone China pottery, spirit bottles, and other tools—items resembling the assemblage Weisman found at Boggy Island, which Dexter also visited. Dexter reported that at the latter site blacks allied to Seminole leader Sitarky had planted corn, rice, and sugar cane—the latter from plants Dexter had provided during an earlier visit to the village.64 Abraham and his men probably participated in the attack on a U.S. army command (the so-called Dade Massacre) less than ten miles from Peliklikaha that triggered the Second Seminole War in 1835. This bloody war was costly to all involved, and in 1838 Abraham bowed to the inevitable and turned himself in to U.S. forces. He wrote commanding general Thomas Jessup We will go with the Indians to our new home, and wish to know how we are to be protected, and who is to have the care of us on the road. We do not live for ourselves only, but for our wives and children who are as dear to us as those of any other men. When we reach our new home we hope we shall be permitted to remain while the woods remain green and the water runs. I have charge of all the red people coming out to Pease’s Creek, and all are satisﬁed to go to Arkansaw.65 After one ﬁnal war other remnant groups of Seminoles and blacks were ﬁnally removed westward to join the black and blood Seminoles who had preceded them there.66 As this brief history makes clear, the Seminole Nation since almost its earliest days has incorporated the histories of blacks and Indians. Black Seminoles in Florida assumed roles of equality with their blood Seminole

A Nation Divided?

allies and provided them with invaluable military service and intelligence against their enemies. Although some blacks chose to live in the traditional Seminole villages at La Chua, Bowlegs Town, and Chiscochate, others expanded into areas beyond to create their own villages—Peliklikaha, Mulatto Girl’s Town, and King Heijah’s Town—where they broke in new homesteads, husbanded animals, and produced agricultural surplus sufﬁcient to enable the Seminoles to enter a larger world market. If the United States recognizes the property rights of Seminoles, whose tenure in the state dates only to the middle to late eighteenth century, then it must also recognize those of the blacks who laid claims to and improved vacant lands in Florida at the same time. If the Seminole Nation is to be deﬁned as it was in 1823, when Florida was “still an Indian country,” one must ask who is doing or who did the deﬁning. The country that had just fought two long wars against the mixed Seminole Nation and was determined to take the latter’s land deliberately and with full knowledge lied and categorized blacks as chattel, thus denying them any property rights—even in themselves. The present government sustains the lie by relying on dated histories that do not recognize black humanity, freedom, and agency.

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In the eighteenth century European and African immigrants to what is now Alabama found themselves living in close proximity not only to one another but also to the region’s substantial and heterogeneous Amerindian populations.1 Like other colonial ports along the Gulf of Mexico, the social interactions in and around colonial Mobile often defy the clear-cut notions of racial identity commonly held in more recent times.2 An understanding of the ways in which Africans and their descendants encountered Amerindians, and vice versa, is particularly relevant to the history of Mobile.3 Amerindians and Africans there came into contact with one another to a great extent through the shared experiences of slavery, and a variety of cross-cultural, interpersonal relationships testify to their abilities to negotiate this encounter. With these daily interactions in mind, this chapter examines the life of Nicolas Mongoula (1720–98), a free black man whose last name meant “my friend” in the Amerindian pidgin language known to scholars as Mobilian Jargon. Given the social context in which he lived, Nicolas Mongoula’s identiﬁcation with Mobilian Jargon ﬁts well into larger patterns of cultural exchange between Africans and Amerindians in colonial Mobile. Among the many Choctaw villages found upriver from the settlement of Mobile, two were known as Mongoulacha—a place name translated by one contemporaneous French ofﬁcial as “our friends who are there” (nos amis qui sont la).4 As shown by both James Crawford and Emanuel Drechsel, the word mongoula itself meant “my friend” in Mobilian Jargon.5

My Friend Nicolas Mongoula

Mobilian Jargon was a lingua franca used by southeastern Indian groups whose ﬁrst languages were often mutually unintelligible. In many ways similar to (and often confused with) other Muskogean-based languages, such as Choctaw and Chickasaw, Mobilian Jargon has also been known as the Mobilian Trade Language, or the Chickasaw-Choctaw Trade Language. Although it had probably been in use long before Europeans settled along the Gulf of Mexico, during the colonial period Mobilian Jargon also became an important means of communication between Indians and non-Indians all along the northern rim of the Gulf, eventually spreading up the Mississippi River as far north as the Ohio River, as far west as present-day Texas, and perhaps as far eastward as the Atlantic.6 For people who spoke or understood Mobilian Jargon, the name Nicolas Mongoula would signify “Nicolas my friend” or “my friend Nicolas.” While an explanation of the term mongoula may be helpful in understanding Nicolas Mongoula’s name, it also raises questions that are difﬁcult to answer, such as why did a free black man take a name from a language predominantly associated with Amerindians? Much about Nicolas Mongoula’s life remains unknown, and it is doubtful that any historical records exist that might explain exactly how or why Mongoula obtained his name, much less what meaning the name actually held for him. An examination of the society in which he lived, however, suggests ways in which this identity—“my friend Nicolas”—may have been useful. Many of early colonial Louisiana’s inhabitants in Mobile and elsewhere participated in a regional economy geared toward subsistence and exchange, despite the efforts of planters and ofﬁcials to encourage the production of export crops for overseas markets. In addition to meeting basic needs, local systems of agriculture, hunting, livestock raising, and food marketing often tended to outweigh racial and cultural differences among Indian groups, free and enslaved blacks, and non-elite whites.7 Within this context of intercultural communication and exchange, Mobilian Jargon played an important role. Drechsel has described the language as “the medium of regional exchange among Indians of greater Louisiana and their neighbors, Indians and non-Indians alike.” Thus Mobilian Jargon served not only indigenous groups, but it soon began

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to be used by many non-Indians as well, notably in their contacts with local Amerindians.8 Like other non-Indians in colonial Louisiana, both free and enslaved blacks learned to use Mobilian Jargon in their communications with indigenous peoples. Historical accounts regularly mention women and men of African descent who were employed as interpreters on behalf of both colonial white populations and Indian groups; these individuals were to some degree proﬁcient in at least one European language in addition to Mobilian Jargon or other indigenous languages.9 Africans and their descendants also participated in less specialized, quotidian interactions with Amerindians. Many Africans and Indians in colonial Mobile encountered one another through the shared experience of slavery, for Indian and African slavery overlapped in Mobile for most of the eighteenth century.10 The material and cultural exchanges that characterized colonial Louisiana often took place on signiﬁcantly unequal terms, as demonstrated by the prevalence of Indian slavery in early Mobile. Enslaved Chitimachas, Alibamons, Tensaws, Chickasaws, and Natchez, among others, were for the most part captured in raids or warfare by Indian groups allied to the French, then traded or sold to French colonists and Canadian coureurs de bois.11 Some sixty-six slave owners who lived in or visited Mobile during the ten-year span between 1702 and 1711 owned a combined total of 194 slaves: 103 Indian males, 80 Indian females, 8 black males, and 3 black females.12 During these years the colony’s free adult male population—soldiers, sailors, ofﬁcers, artisans, and religious ofﬁcials—often outnumbered free adult females by more than six to one. Many non-Indian men found sexual partners, willing or unwilling, from among the indigenous population. Of the slave owners mentioned above, eighteen, all men, owned one or more female Indian slaves but no others. Indian slavery was still widespread in French Louisiana during the 1720s, the peak years of the colony’s transatlantic slave trade, but thereafter the institution gradually declined. In part Mobile’s enslaved indigenous population dwindled as the result of disease and ﬂight. At the same time, while ofﬁcial French policies toward the region’s Indian groups began

My Friend Nicolas Mongoula

to emphasize diplomacy and trade, enslaved African laborers became relatively easier to obtain.13 Even in late 1769, however, when Spanish Louisiana’s governor Alejandro O’Reilly issued a law forbidding the further enslavement, sale, or purchase of enslaved Indians, a few colonists continued to hold a small number of Indian slaves. Changing deﬁnitions and perceptions of race in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries further contributed to the eventual disappearance of Indian slavery in the region.14 Nonetheless, Indian slavery endured for much of the eighteenth century—and for most of Nicolas Mongoula’s life. Of the approximately six thousand Africans brought to French Louisiana before 1763, the great majority arrived between 1719 and 1729.15 The ﬁrst slave ships to reach the colony landed at Pensacola in the summer of 1719. By July 1721 at least seven ships had already brought to French Louisiana more than two thousand enslaved Africans, mostly from the Bight of Benin (the coastal regions of present-day Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria). Most slave ships arrived before 1730, although one came as late as 1743.16 Ultimately about two-thirds of the enslaved Africans who survived the voyage to French Louisiana were brought from the West African region of Senegambia (for example, present-day Senegal, Guinea, Mali, and Mauritania).17 The numbers and origins of Africans transported to the region from across the Atlantic or from the Caribbean in the late eighteenth century are still unknown.18 During the French occupation of Louisiana, however, most of the colony’s African population came from Senegambia and the Bight of Benin during the 1720s. At that time several hundred African men, women, and children were brought to Mobile, a settlement already accustomed to Indian slavery. Nicolas Mongoula was born around 1720.19 Little is known of his early life; he appears as a free black man living in Mobile under the name Nicolas Mongoula beginning in the 1760s. While he may have been born in the Caribbean or in Africa, it seems likely that Mongoula grew to adulthood in French Louisiana, given the extent to which he identiﬁed himself, literally, in terms of Mobilian Jargon.20 Furthermore, he may have spent his early years—or even his early adulthood—in one or more of the region’s Amerindian communities. Without ruling out these possibilities, it seems

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pertinent to look also within the settlement of Mobile where Mongoula would live for most of his adult years. Mobile’s baptismal registers mention two infants named Nicolas born in the year 1720. Both children are listed as black slaves owned by the French surgeon Pierre Manadé. Perhaps one of them later took the name Mongoula, “my friend.” Judging from baptismal records for the year 1720 alone, the surgeon Manadé was familiar with both black and Indian slavery. He held at least two other slaves at this time: a black woman, whose name is not given, and her newborn son André Claud, born within days of one of the children named Nicolas.21 Perhaps she was charged with taking care of the three enslaved children in addition to other duties. In the same year an enslaved Indian woman owned by an ofﬁcer named De Lusser told the settlement’s midwife that Pierre Manadé had fathered her own newborn son, Pierre Ignace.22 Although the child received his ﬁrst name, Manadé evidently did not claim paternity and was not present at the baptism. It seems that Pierre Ignace inherited his enslaved mother’s legal status; a census taken seven months later, in mid-1721, shows that De Lusser and his family owned two Indian slaves—presumably Pierre Ignace and his mother—and one black slave. The 1721 census shows the surgeon Manadé and his wife in possession of six slaves: three blacks and three Indians.23 Regardless of whether Nicolas Mongoula was actually one of the two Nicolases identiﬁed in the 1721 census, he may have grown up in circumstances much like theirs. Enslaved Africans and Indians in Mobile often worked side by side or at least under the same masters. Census records suggest that this shared experience of slavery was a signiﬁcant arena of intercultural contact. Of the 128 households listed in the 1721 census of Mobile, 52 (about 40 percent) owned slaves. Of these households the majority, 30, employed both Indian and African slave labor.24 On average these 30 households owned slightly more than two black slaves for every Indian slave. Not every enslaved person in Mobile would have lived (or slept) within an owner’s household. Nonetheless, the casual proximity required by various types of labor, in addition to household arrangements, ensured that many enslaved Africans and Indians would

My Friend Nicolas Mongoula

come into daily contact with one another, as well as with their owners, perhaps members of their owners’ families, and the occasional engagé (indentured servant). Black and indigenous slaves in Mobile were both employed by blacksmiths, carpenters, caulkers, and joiners. Both groups were engaged in pine tar manufacture, agricultural labor, and domestic service. Of the 241 black slaves listed in the 1721 census of Mobile, 206 (85 percent) belonged to a household owning at least one Indian slave. Of the 110 Indian slaves listed in the same Mobile census, 92 (or 84 percent) belonged to a household owning at least one black slave.25 The household of pine tar maker Dominique Belsagui, for example, was exceptionally large in 1721. In addition to Belsagui, his wife, and their two children, his household counted sixteen enslaved blacks, four enslaved Indians, and one indentured servant. Most artisans in early Mobile, however, had considerably fewer, if any, slaves. The blacksmith Pierre Allain’s household consisted of himself, his wife, three children, ﬁve black slaves, and one Indian slave. Caulker Jacques le Comte lived with his wife, ﬁve black slaves, and two Indian slaves. Gunsmith François Allevin employed one black slave and one Indian slave. In the nearby Indian village of the Tohomés carpenter La Carie Drapeau lived with his wife, two children, two black slaves and ﬁve Indian slaves.26 Given that many slaveowning artisans had families, the labor of their slaves and servants was probably divided between artisanal and domestic tasks, including small-scale subsistence gardening. Several of Mobile’s wealthier colonists and ofﬁcials owned a larger number of slaves whose labor would be used in the production of profitable export crops, or so the would-be planters hoped, in addition to domestic chores. For some ofﬁcials property in slaves, or bonded labor in the form of indentured servants, might have served as a symbol of elevated prestige. In 1721 the household of Commandant Latour and his wife included ﬁve indentured servants, fourteen black slaves, and four Indian slaves. A notary named Raguet and his wife owned ten black and eight Indian slaves. A man named André Carriere and his family appear in the same census with eighteen black slaves, six Indian slaves, and one indentured servant. A few large slaveowning households could be found

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in neighboring Indian villages as well. In the Apalache village of St. Louis a French man named Trepanier lived with his wife and seven children and owned sixteen black and three Indian slaves.27 If born a black slave in Mobile, Nicolas Mongoula probably spent his early years in close proximity to enslaved Amerindians—a circumstance that would explain his familiarity with Mobilian Jargon. Indeed, within the settlement of Mobile Mobilian Jargon may have been predominantly a language of slaves: One of Mobilian Jargon’s many names, yoka anõpa “slave/ servant language,” indicates that it functioned as a lingua franca in bondage—that is between masters and vassals or servants and probably among the latter if they spoke different languages.28 For practical reasons, some slave owners learned to use the pidgin language as well. And as households began to incorporate enslaved African laborers of diverse origins, many of the newly arrived Africans must also have learned the language. For all groups linguistic facility was a useful, perhaps essential, survival tool in early Louisiana. A similar, later adaptation was the use of Louisiana Creole, employed in addition to (or instead of) Mobilian Jargon, to fulﬁll a similar “lingua franca in bondage” function.29 Mobile’s population was considerably smaller in 1726 than it was in 1721, in large part due to the founding and growth of New Orleans after 1718.30 A number of the settlement’s wealthier slave owners had moved with their enslaved laborers to the new settlement, acquiring plantations along the Mississippi River. The surgeon Manadé, like other habitants in French Louisiana during this time, sought to purchase land and more African laborers in hopes of establishing a proﬁtable plantation.31 A letter dated October 18, 1723, mentions that Manadé had traded two Indian slaves for one black slave.32 By 1726 he and his wife owned a home in New Orleans and, north of the new capital, forty arpents along the Mississippi River. By this time, according to census records, the Manadés had acquired nine black slaves and no longer owned any Indian slaves.33

My Friend Nicolas Mongoula

Like Manadé, most slave owners in French Louisiana began to rely more and more heavily on enslaved African laborers. Interactions between free and enslaved Amerindians, Africans, and people of color continued throughout the colonial period, however, as documented in sacramental records. Mixed-race sexual unions were one important manifestation of the abilities of enslaved Africans and Indians to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers and to negotiate different systems of value and meaning. A number of black and indigenous women and men who shared the same owners and lived and worked together in close proximity developed shortor long-term unions. A little girl named Marie Françoise, for example, was born in Mobile in 1752. Her mother was an enslaved black woman named Marie Jeanne, her father an Indian slave named Martin. Both parents were owned by a Mr. Bernoudy.34 In eighteenth-century Mobile children born of black-indigenous sexual partnerships were most often described in written sources as mûlatres and griffes, or mulatos and grifos. In 1715, for example, Mobile’s baptismal registry records the birth of Antoine, the son of Jeanne and Laurent. Jeanne, Antoine’s mother, was an enslaved Indian woman owned by Claude Parent. Antoine’s father Laurent is described as a black slave owned by Mr. de Bienville and was possibly Bienville’s “black slave residing among the Choctaw” mentioned earlier in the baptismal records. There is some evidence that the relationship between Laurent and Jeanne continued because three years later an unnamed Indian slave owned by Mr. Parent gave birth to twins, Marie Anne and Marie Therese. The father was believed to be Laurent, the black slave of Mr. de Bienville.35 The baptismal register also mentions the birth in 1742 of a mulatresse to an unnamed enslaved Indian woman; the infant girl died shortly afterward. Seven-month-old Louis, also described as mulatre, was baptized in 1746. His parents, an Indian man and a black woman, were both slaves owned by a captain named Perier. As late as 1786 French-language sacramental records mention the baptism of Ursin, the son of an enslaved griffen woman named Angelique Lorette. The one-year-old Ursin himself, however, was described as mulâtre.36

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Generally the racial designation grifo or grifa appears with more frequency in Mobile’s Spanish records. During the Spanish period, however, people of mixed black and Indian parentage were sometimes identiﬁed as black or mulato rather than as grifo in order to avoid the legal difﬁculties that might arise in buying or selling slaves with some degree of Indian parentage. Several historians have addressed the infrequent, yet signiﬁcant, occasions during the late eighteenth century in which Indians and people of mixed black and indigenous ancestry brought their owners to court, protesting their illegal enslavement.37 The free-born children of free black and Indian parents also were sometimes described as negro or mulato. Constancia and Nicolas, the daughter and son of a Choctaw Indian woman and Santiago Coco (apparently a free African man), were described as mulatos at their baptism in 1795.38 Five years later, in June 1800 several people were baptized in Pasa Cristiana (Pass Christian), a small settlement not far from Mobile, on the coast of present-day Mississippi. Alexis, son of the free black man Francisco Azemar and an Indian woman, was described as a negro libre, a free black, like his father. Alexis was baptized alongside three other children described as grifos. The ﬁrst, Luis Grifo, was born to an enslaved woman of unspeciﬁed race named Elizabeth. Luis and his mother were both owned by Madame Azemar, the Indian woman married to Francisco Azemar. Also baptized on the same occasion were two grifas named Juliana and Isabel. Six-year-old Juliana, a free grifa, was the daughter of the free mulata Emerita Fabre. Isabel, four months old, was the grifa daughter of an enslaved mulata woman named Francisca. Isabel and her mother were both owned by a woman named Labatte, in whose house all four baptisms were performed.39 Despite his name and despite the apparently widespread practice of interethnic unions, Nicolas Mongoula appears to have operated primarily in the sphere of Mobile’s African and African American communities, at least in his later years. Little is known of Nicolas Mongoula’s life prior to the 1760s, by which time he was in his forties. Thereafter, Mongoula—always described as a free black man—appears in church records as the spouse of a free black woman named Francisca Mimi. While their marriage record

My Friend Nicolas Mongoula

has not been located, Nicolas Mongoula and Francisca Mimi’s marriage was clearly recognized as legitimate by Spanish Mobile’s clergy.40 Additional records provide further hints about the later years of Mongoula’s life. He appears at least once in Spanish pay records as a master mason. Further, in 1792 “Nicholas Mangulla” sold a house on Royal Street to Hugh Krebs for thirty-six dollars.41 On April 1, 1798, one month before his death, Nicolas Mongoula dictated his last will and testament. In addition to listing his property, this document brieﬂy mentions his wife Mimi and their two children, Santiago and Luisa. The seventy-eight year old Mongoula owned a plot of land and a cabin in Mobile, ten or twelve head of cattle, and a concession of land by St. Stephens Creek, where he and his family grew rice, corn, and beans. In his will Mongoula left these earthly possessions in the care of his wife Mimy (Francisca Mimi). Their son Santiago is described as a carpenter employed in New Orleans; he also appears to have been enrolled as a noncommissioned ofﬁcer in the New Orleans free black militia under the name Santiago Nicolas. Their daughter Luisa, described simply as unmarried, was present in Mobile at the time Mongoula dictated his last wishes.42 Several people in Spanish Mobile, in addition to his family, had depended to some extent on Nicolas Mongoula, namely his godchildren and their parents. As in other Latin American societies Africans, Indians, and people of color in eighteenth-century Mobile forged important relationships through the Catholic godparentage system. Enslaved people ostensibly received a Catholic baptism for spiritual purposes. Yet for many, membership in the Catholic Church constituted an important social resource as well. Whether free or enslaved, people used this system to form ﬁctive kinship networks in which godchildren and biological parents possibly could turn to godparents for ﬁnancial and material support as well as for spiritual guidance. Parents might choose godparents of higher social and legal status for their children. Godparents in turn often enjoyed prestige among the general community.43 It was customary to name newborns (or the newly baptized) after one or both godparents.

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Many non-elite parents chose white men of high status for their children’s godfathers, while parents often selected godmothers with backgrounds similar to their own.44 Yet the godparenthood system was ﬂexible and variegated. During Nicolas Mongoula’s lifetime it was not uncommon for Africans and their descendants in Mobile to serve as godparents for Amerindians. Black godparents would play the role of spiritual advisor to their Indian godchildren as they grew older and would provide practical material assistance when possible for both their godchildren and the children’s biological Indian parents. As early as 1711 Governor Bienville had one of his slaves, a little Chitimacha girl, baptized. She was named Marie after her godmother Marie Negresse, who was also owned by Bienville. One-month-old François, baptized in April 1732, was the son of an enslaved Indian couple owned by an ofﬁcer named Beauchamps. François was named after his godfather François, an enslaved black man owned by Deslandes; his godmother was Marie, a black woman owned by Mr. Diron. Similarly, in March 1734 an Indian girl named Louise Françoise was born to an Indian couple named La Borde and Therese, also owned by Beauchamps (perhaps the same couple). At her baptism two weeks later Louise Françoise was given the names of both of her godparents. Her godfather was François Pompée, a black slave belonging to Mr. Diron; her godmother was Marie Louise, an enslaved woman of unspeciﬁed race, owned by Mr. Olivier.45 Mobile’s baptismal records demonstrate similar relationships in which Amerindians served as godparents for Africans and people of African descent. Jean Baptiste was born in May of 1714 to an enslaved black couple owned by a man named Chauvin. Jean Baptiste was named after his godfather, an Indian slave also owned by Chauvin; his godmother was Marie Grissot, the midwife. The godmother of an enslaved black boy named Jacques who was born in April 1720 and who was owned by André Carriere was Therêse sauvagesse ouachita, while Jacques’s godfather was a lieutenant named Croustillere. An enslaved black girl named Margueritte, owned by Mr. Durand, was baptized in July 1743. Her godfather was a Frenchman named François Hierles, but she was given the name of her

My Friend Nicolas Mongoula

godmother, Margueritte Paniouassa, who signed her own name in the baptismal register.46 Mongoula himself appears in sacramental records kept in both French and Spanish, serving as godfather and coparent at three baptisms between 1764 and 1781. While most of the godchildren and biological parents he sponsored, along with the godmothers who shared these responsibilities, were enslaved, all were described as black or mulato. In March 1764 a black girl named Marie was born into slavery. Her mother was a black slave; her godfather was the forty-four-year-old Nicolas Mongoula. In July 1770 Mongoula again served as godfather at the baptism of the enslaved black adult Nicolas Pantaléon, possibly a newly arrived African bozal, who took the name of his godfather. And eleven years later, in August 1781, Nicolas Ungula negro libre was present as godfather at the baptism of an enslaved mulato boy named Vicente, born to an enslaved woman described as black.47 These baptismal records show Mongoula linked to three enslaved individuals as their godfather and to two enslaved mothers as coparent. Mongoula would be expected to offer aid, protection, and guidance to these spiritually adopted dependents. He would share these duties with three different godmothers, two of whom were black slaves and one a free mulata. Through social networks facilitated by the Catholic godparentage system, Mongoula held a position of considerable importance and responsibility among people of color in Spanish Mobile. To various degrees he was connected to six enslaved blacks (two godchildren, two mothers, and two godmothers), one enslaved mulato godchild, and one free mulata godmother. By the last decades of the eighteenth century Mongoula’s stature among Mobile’s black population was evidently recognized and encouraged by Spanish ofﬁcials. In Mobile, as in much of the Spanish Gulf Coast and Caribbean, Spain won the loyalty of many nonwhites by paying them wages for valuable services or awarding them military positions. Spain beneﬁted by incorporating inﬂuential free blacks and people of color into government payrolls and military rosters; these individuals in turn would gain increasingly higher social and legal status. Though by no means

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color-blind, the Spanish government was more than willing to employ the skills and talents of its nonwhite citizens, both free and enslaved, even at a time when news and repercussions of the Haitian Revolution echoed throughout the region.48 Like many other free people of color in Spanish Florida and Spanish Louisiana, Mongoula clearly beneﬁted from this policy.49 By the time his will was composed in 1798, Mongoula was serving as captain of Mobile’s Pardo Militia.50 In addition to bolstering Spain’s defenses along the Gulf Coast and the Floridas, black and pardo militias such as Mongoula’s played major roles in strengthening networks of friends and family, as well as providing support and mutual aid among militia members. As Kimberly Hanger writes about New Orleans, “[f]ree black militiamen, most notably ofﬁcers, married each other’s daughters and sisters, acted as godparents for each other’s children, stood as witnesses at each other’s weddings, and loaned money, guaranteed loans, and provided other types of ﬁnancial assistance to each other.” Free black militia ofﬁcers such as Mongoula were often connected to fellow ofﬁcers and other militia members in numerous ways, reinforcing their positions as community leaders.51 Nicolas Mongoula may well have spent his early childhood among enslaved Indians in Mobile during the 1720s, and he probably interacted with Amerindians in various ways before he surfaces in colonial records in the 1760s. Nonetheless, his use of the name “Mongoula” offers a fascinating mystery. Available documents indicate that Nicolas Mongoula lived up to his name (“my friend”) primarily for people of African descent in late eighteenth-century Mobile. Both French and Spanish records suggest that Mongoula interacted mostly with people described as “black” and “mulato.” So why, one wonders, did Mongoula draw on Mobilian Jargon, an indigenous pidgin language, rather than Spanish or French, Wolof, or Yoruba? Why did he take on this identity, and who made up his audience? Whose friend or ally was he? Mongoula identiﬁed himself with, and clearly had some knowledge of, the Amerindian pidgin language Mobilian Jargon. It is possible that the Mobilian language was in common use among Mobile’s early African as

My Friend Nicolas Mongoula

well as indigenous population, although Drechsel cautions that only rarely did non-Indians use Mobilian Jargon in speaking to one another.52 A second possibility involves a close questioning of Nicolas Mongoula’s relations with people described as black and mulato, or even his own origins. Given the intimate interactions between blacks and Indians in places like eighteenth-century Mobile, racial labels ascribed to people of color (or to anyone else) in colonial written records cannot always be assumed to accurately reﬂect an individual’s speciﬁc cultural and ethnic background. While the term “mulato,” for example, often is associated with people of both African and European ancestry, French and Spanish ofﬁcials in colonial Mobile applied this term frequently to people of mixed Amerindian and African or Amerindian and European ancestry. In eighteenth-century Mobile it was not uncommon for people described as black, whether born locally or in Africa, to be closely linked to Indian women and men as godparents or sexual partners. Many people of partial Amerindian descent were classiﬁed as mulatos, in both French and Spanish records. On the one hand, it was to the advantage of slave owners in the Spanish era to classify their mixed-race slaves as negro or mulato rather than indio or grifo, since Indian slavery was illegal.53 On the other hand, as shown earlier in the case of Alexis Azemar, even a free child with an Indian mother could be described as black (negro) in sacramental records. It remains a possibility then that Mongoula—always described in available records as a free black man—might have had an Indian parent himself. Present-day historians, more than two centuries removed from the life and times of Nicolas Mongoula, will probably never understand the meanings his name held for himself, his family, or his allies because a number of basic facts about his life remain unknown. Available historical records—generated, it should be noted, by European military and religious ofﬁcials inside the settlement of Mobile—provide little insight into Mongoula’s possible interactions with autonomous Amerindian groups or individuals. Furthermore, it remains unclear to what extent Mongoula’s social circles included people described in French and Spanish records as black or mulato who may well have had an Amerindian

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parent or who may have been familiar with indigenous practices in other ways. While the fragmentary evidence available does not lend itself to deﬁnitive interpretations, Nicolas Mongoula’s name and identity should be seen in a larger context of Indian and African slavery, social relationships that brought together Africans, Indians, and people of color and the ambiguities of terms such as griffe and mulato. In colonial Mobile Africans and Indians encountered one another through shared labor and household arrangements, often building personal relationships through sexual unions and through the ﬁctive kinship networks fostered by the Catholic godparentage system. These constructive interactions, fusions, and confusions of racial and cultural boundaries, perhaps were empowering for both groups. Mary Louise Pratt writes that, “while subjugated peoples cannot readily control what emanates from the dominant culture, they do determine to varying extents what they absorb into their own, and what they use it for.”54 What, for example, did enslaved African men and women choose to absorb from their owners and what did they choose to absorb from the enslaved Chitimachas and Tensaws who worked beside them? We can only wonder how enslaved Indian godparents conveyed European worldviews, such as those embodied in Catholic teachings, to their enslaved black godchildren, and vice-versa. Enslaved Africans and Indians in eighteenth-century Mobile must have learned a great deal as they worked and lived with one another. Mongoula’s use of Mobilian Jargon—and perhaps more importantly his self-identiﬁcation expressed in terms of Mobilian Jargon—may be seen as one cultural manifestation of this historical process.

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These hideous calumnies . . . interest the colony in general; if one suffers defamation as soon as one arrives, this is not the way to convince people to come here in the hope of establishing themselves. Charlotte Milon, New Orleans, I have enjoyed a good reputation and would not now pass for a thief, knave or forger. Jonathas Darby, New Orleans, Between 1722 and 1753 at least sixty-one civil suits for insult or slander were recorded in Louisiana’s Superior Council Records.1 These include the French legal categories injures (insults), injures et voies de fait (physical assaults), and libelle (libel). At least twelve additional cases are documented in the colony’s ofﬁcial correspondence and private memoirs. What do these cases tell us about early Louisiana society? In addressing this question, this chapter builds on the work of a number of historians and anthropologists who have analyzed verbal offenses and the related phenomena of gossip, scandal, and honor/shame complexes, and the nature of reputation and respectability. The legal records of insult and slander allow scholars to eavesdrop on various social processes. In a colonial setting, moreover, they are particularly revealing of the bickersome process of constructing a new social structure out of a diverse population of natives and newcomers.2

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Several historians of France and Canada have approached verbal offenses as a form of evidence about a society’s mentalité and internal tensions—what Peter Moogk calls “an expression of common anxieties.”3 An examination of Louisiana’s cases of verbal offenses similarly illustrates how colonial courts “operated as arenas of mediation in which a broad array of social conﬂicts beyond the crime itself could be fought out.”4 If these suits are taken at face value as evidence of conﬂict, then early Louisiana seems to have been an anxious, contentious place with evidence both of privileges imported from the Old World and a spirit of independence fostered by conditions in the new. Historians of the British colonies have also noted the prevalence of slander and libel cases among ﬁrst-generation settlers. Their studies have concentrated on the religious communities of New England and sought explanations in the experimental nature of these communities and their open debates about morality. During the ﬁrst generation of settlement, or charter phase, French Louisiana also was an experimental colony but of a highly secular type. Its experimentation involved reengineering ancien régime society and reinventing the individual along the lines of wealth and race rather than that of the old inherited estate system of clergy, nobility, and commoner. Other recent work on slander and libel in the U.S. South focuses on how insults were used to reinforce categories of race and gender.5 Insults and slander occasionally marked gender in early Louisiana, but the colony’s racial vocabulary in the ﬁrst generation appears to have been too undeveloped to generate widespread racial slurs, at least according to extant records. By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, racial epithets began to be heard from Frenchmen and creoles alike. Whereas historians have equated slander and insults with conﬂict and anxieties, anthropologists studying both historical and contemporary cultures have tended, even in recent years, toward functionalist explanations. In other words, verbal conﬂict and its related social facts work toward maintaining the social status quo. Other anthropologists, however, have approached verbal offenses as evidence of evolutionary psychology involving competition for mates and scarce resources, as ritual, as a release valve for ethnic tensions, as a speciﬁc linguistic genre, and

Scoundrels, Whores, and Gentlemen

as limited political protest.6 Most of the anthropological case studies of verbal offenses have focused on insults, ritualized or spontaneous. Few anthropologists who have studied insults and invectives have followed these phenomena into the courtroom to consider the cultural meanings or social functions of the legal ritual known as a defamation suit. Indeed, anthropologists have tended to go the other way—to search for the origins of scandal within gossip networks. Particularly inﬂuential in this regard has been Max Gluckman’s 1963 “Gossip and Scandal.” Gluckman argued that gossip helps glue society together by restating the moral code, deﬁning the ingroup (those not privy to gossip are out), sanctioning deviant individuals, identifying leaders and noncontenders without overt conﬂict, and providing a mechanism for competing social factions to exchange information and mediate differences. In essence, Gluckman argues that, although individuals may come into direct conﬂict through gossip and scandals, society as a whole is served by such “idle talk.”7 By contrast, historians have tended to focus on the legal consequences of slander, insult, and libel suits to the neglect of their origins in gossip and its social milieu. Gossip is an oral form available to the ethnographic listener in day-to-day existence in the ﬁeld. No doubt much of the everyday murmuring that ﬁlls the anthropologist’s ﬁeld notebook might be classiﬁed as gossip—many have noted that the ethnographer is liable to create new chains of gossip with nosey questions. Historians, on the other hand, have little or no access to oral forms, and especially not to idle chatter (even the subdiscipline of oral history tends to be conducted through highly structured interviews). Legal documents of one kind or another are the building blocks of the conventional historian’s narrative. By extension one suspects that the tendency of historians to explain verbal abuse and slander in terms of conﬂict, anxiety, and change and the anthropologist’s tendency to explain the same in terms of social function and equilibrium arise from their respective evidentiary biases. One sees neighbors coming together over a juicy bit of gossip, another reads about one petty ﬁght after another.

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A more accurate, though more complex, explanation of verbal offenses would see both factors at play. Such an approach, advocated here, would bring the study of slander and insult into the realm of a poststructuralist historical anthropology inﬂuenced by theorists such as Marshall Sahlins, Anthony Giddens, and Pierre Bourdieu. In their distinct idioms each of these writers has shown how social structures change (sometimes at a slow evolutionary rate, sometimes through rupture and revolution), while at the same time historical change is directed, mediated, and interpreted through inherited cultural frames. Theirs is a double vision focused on both the microevents that constitute always momentary structures and the imposing structures that constrain events.8 Another relevant body of literature that has successfully focused on the simultaneity of conﬂict and social structure deals with what has been called the Mediterranean honor/shame complex. Historians and anthropologists both have been active in articulating this cultural phenomenon. Christian Giordano in a review of this literature sums up the basic interpretation associated with Julian Pitt-Rivers, Jane Schneider, and Pierre Bourdieu.9 Giordano writes that [i]n the eyes of those involved, society is sharply divided into two groups, the “honourable” and the “shameless” and organized in a corresponding hierarchy. . . . Honour as “aspiration and validation of status” . . . is redeﬁned daily in Mediterranean societies, so that the reputation of a person and/or a group does not represent a constant. Consequently, honour can grow and can also be lost. Such a “market quotation” of one’s own honour, always subject to change, in extreme cases every day, produces ﬁerce feelings of rivalry, with respect to status, between groups and persons. . . . Mediterranean societies are shaped by their conﬂictual character. In other words, such social formations can be deﬁned as systems of social relations between competing individuals and groups in the public sphere.10

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One of the most obvious ways in which competing individuals could defend their honor and reputation would be to challenge detractors in court with a defamation suit. One might argue that Louisiana’s French immigrants were participants in the Mediterranean honor/shame complex. But even if this is not the case, the Mediterranean example shows how conﬂict could be a constant in a relatively stable social setting—a situation that may have important parallels with the social dynamics of colonialism.11 A third body of literature has a kinship with the Mediterranean work on honor/shame through the related ideas of reputation and respectability and through the related cultural area of Latin America and the Caribbean (if one sees the region largely as a colony of the Mediterranean cultures of Spain, Portugal, and France). In 1969, drawing on the work of Raymond T. Smith and Sidney Mintz, among others, Peter Wilson articulated a duality between reputation and respectability that has become a staple of Caribbean studies.12 Reputation is a moral commodity associated with machismo, intimate face-to-face relations within a relatively homogenous social sector (usually a local group bounded by class and/or ethnicity), and direct competition among equals (economic, sexual, and so on). Respectability refers to a more female-associated set of values representing virtue, politeness, cooperation, social aspirations, and the face presented by an individual, family, or small community to the larger society through economic, religious, and legal institutions. The interpretive value of this framing, although it has been modiﬁed and critiqued over the years, has endured and spread, as seen in a recent volume on Latin America, The Faces of Honor. Some contributors draw a direct genealogy between the Mediterranean honor/shame complex and the Caribbean reputation/ respectability complex, as well as the consequences for the legal system in the form of defamation and insult suits.13 The Louisiana Case Defamation cases are important to consider not only because they were an established component of French society that found fertile soil in colonial Louisiana, but also because the details of these cases reﬂect the peculiar

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social realities of combatants caught up in a new colonial world.14 The ambiguous pasts of immigrants and a propensity among Louisianans of both high and low rank toward self-fashioning contributed to open conﬂicts over status and reputation. French cultural currents at the time of New Orleans’ founding in 1718 profoundly affected the colonial population. Particularly important was the spasm of social cleansing in France called the Great Conﬁnement. The Bandouliers du Mississippi, mercenary gendarmes under John Law, rounded up people perceived to be beggars, vagabonds, petty criminals, loose women, and blasphemous youth and loaded them onto boats for exile to the colonies. Although forced exiles, called forçats, may have ofﬁcially contributed only 20 percent of the emigrant population destined for Louisiana, they represented a much greater percentage than had been sent to any other French colony at the time.15 Consequently, the public image of Louisiana was tainted for generations by its reputation as a society of outcasts. Unfair or not, Louisianans struggled to overcome this reputation, individually and collectively.16 Once immigrants reached Louisiana, a struggle for position ensued. Most had little more than their reputation on which to stake a claim. Canadians such as the Chauvin brothers somehow picked up seigneurial titles (Delery, de la Frénière, de Beaulieu) on their journey down the Mississippi River. Although arriving Frenchmen of the petty nobility and members of the aspiring bourgeoisie looked down on Canadians and challenged their pretensions, they had their own aspirations. Many French concessionaires and military ofﬁcers were younger sons of the old nobility or of venal ofﬁce-holders. Many of them saw plantation agriculture as an opportunity to adopt the lifestyle of a feudal lord, a possibility their birth-order or bourgeois origins made unlikely in France. Some immigrants had a past to escape. In ancien régime France social esteem was not a ﬁxed quality, even among the nobility. A stain on a family’s honor could grievously harm an individual’s position and vice versa. Indiscreet affairs, a rebellious youth, or serious crimes could mean exile to the colonies through a lettre de cachet. Families hoped that their sons and daughters would welcome Louisiana as an alternative to the Bastille and do better in a new society than their infamy allowed in the old.

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French reformers hoped that the colonial experience also would reform the lowest ranks of French immigrants—those condemned to the galleys for desertion, vagabondage, salt and tobacco smuggling, prostitution, and other petty crimes. These forçats had strong motivations for obscuring their past and reinventing themselves in the New World. They were also individuals prone to challenge authority. Although historians have debated the actual demographic impact of forçats on Louisiana, they generally agree upon the impact of these unwilling exiles on the colony’s reputation.17 When knowledge of an immigrant’s origins was hazy, a shadow of suspicion could hang over his or her new life. As a result, Louisianans might have reacted more defensively to the casual remark than their French or Canadian counterparts. Someone might actually believe they really were a former thief, bugger, or slut. Whether simply trying to nudge their way up into the ranks of the petty nobility or to cover up a dark secret, many Louisianans had both motive and opportunity to improve their lot by fashioning themselves anew. It is no coincidence that the same order that prohibited the ﬁling of noble titles in the colony also banned colonists from seeking pardons for crimes without special permission of the king.18 Slander provided a less formal check-and-balance system against feigned identity and exaggerated claims. The concessionaire Sieur de Chavannes, for example, succeeded for some time in concealing the fact that he had murdered a friend “in self-defense” (apparently in a drunken fracas). Once in Louisiana, he wooed local administrators and got himself nominated to the post of secretary to the Louisiana Superior Council, a job he enjoyed for several years until his earlier misdeed came to light.19 Defamation cases from Louisiana can shed light on the developing social landscape. Most importantly, a signiﬁcant number of slander cases involved false accusations of a crime. Further, verbal offenses often reﬂected challenges to status within and across class lines; race did not begin to be important until the 1740s. In terms of frequency, insult and slander cases peaked in 1728–29 and then tapered off until the end of the French period, when they rose again.20

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The Lexicon of Insults and the Tactics of Defamation Before describing trends in Louisiana defamation, it may be helpful to explain the different forms such offenses could take. In the eighteenth century as today, the legal system drew distinctions between slander, libel, and simple insult. Insults were considered “minor acts of violence.”21 They often drew on a common vocabulary of obscenity, such as rogue or scoundrel (coquin), bugger (bougre), beggar or wretch (gueux), cheat (fripon), thief (voleur), and their feminine forms. Putain, or whore, stands out as a favorite verbal weapon against women. Insults were a vague, if potent, slur against a person’s character, intended to express general disrespect or disdain rather than provide an accurate description of the target’s shortcomings. Among the elite a too-familiar form of address, inappropriate challenges, and even body posture could constitute insult. Insults were usually exchanged directly between parties, sometimes leading to physical assault (injures et voies de fait).22 Slander, on the other hand, in some way gave credence to the characterization of an insult (insinuations of a speciﬁc moral weakness or a criminal nature). Slander could also be a form of calumny, a speciﬁc (and allegedly false) accusation of criminal wrongdoing. It could be delivered indirectly through gossip or proclaimed to the target in a public setting, in both cases constituting an attack on a person’s public reputation. Libel was slander in written form or, in the case of poetry and song, slander turned into public art, ensuring rapid dissemination and amused repetition.23 Defamation cases appear throughout the French era in Louisiana. Slander cases seem to have peaked particularly in the period between 1726 and 1731. As slander became less common, cases of insult and verbal abuse grew in frequency. This trend relates to other patterns that appear to be relatively unique to Louisiana. Whereas in Canada and France most defamation cases involved the exchange of such colorful epithets as bugger, thief, and slut as well as more imaginative insults like “grasshopper from hell,” Louisiana cases were more likely to involve calumny, or the false accusation of a speciﬁc crime, particularly among members of the charter generation.24 Calumny comprised the majority of slander cases from 1726 to 1731, usually involving an accusation of theft or fraud. The

Scoundrels, Whores, and Gentlemen

allegations were just as likely to be conﬁned within the ranks of the elite as to cross class lines, but those of the lower orders rarely accused one another of property crime, or at least rarely made a public case out of such accusations. In another trend, insult cases more and more often led to or involved physical abuse and battery, suggesting that the overall level of violence in New Orleans and Louisiana rose in the creole generations. After the mid-1730s fewer colonials sought redress for slander in court, but more were taking justice into their own hands. As a result, they ended up being tried for more serious crimes. In general, records do not specify the precise insults and slurs that litigants exchanged, a lack that frustrates efforts to recreate colonial Louisiana’s colorful vocabulary. Most of the entries and declarations make reference only to “invectives” and “atrocious insults,” as if it would be adding injury to insult to commit the words to paper.25 One well-documented case from Pointe Coupee, however, is an exception. The testimony of several witnesses in the 1751 case of Pierre Germain v. François Allain repeats a string of abuse that the two men hurled at one another before coming to blows. Allain accused Germain of having his Indian slave or hired man kill an ox of Allain’s and hide the evidence. Germain denied it angrily in front of a crowd dispersing after Mass, calling Allain “the greatest Jean Foutre [John Fucker] in the world.”26 Allain responded that Germain was a “worthless wretch.” Warming up, Allain called Germain “the ass of a clown,” described him as “screaming like a pig,” and declared that “there was no honor in ﬁghting with a rogue.”27 The men scufﬂed on the ground, and Germain reached for his knife before neighbors broke it up. In Louisiana cases where the testimony is detailed, the favored insults were, in order of popularity: Jean Foutre (and conjugations of foutre), coquin, bougre, and fripon.28 Putain and cocu (cuckold) surface in a few instances as well.29 Although only a small number of prostitutes and condemned adulteresses were counted among Louisiana forçats, they were enough to cloud the image of colonial women back in France. However, in Louisiana calumny cases involving accusations of a sexual or moral character were

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surprisingly infrequent, even compared to French Canada. Only seven cases have come to light that dealt solely with sexual conduct or moral character.30 Five questioned the sexual morality of women, while two involved accusations against men, one for sodomy and the other for bestiality. In the latter case a soldier named Pierre Baron in Mobile was accused by a black slave named François Xavier of “relations” with a horse. The case occupied ofﬁcials in the colony for months; the roan mare was even brought to court as evidence. Authorities transferred the case to New Orleans where they had the appropriate equipment for “ordinary and extraordinary torture.” Baron’s principal defense in his repeated interrogations consisted of a string of insults that were directed at Xavier and that were intended to cast doubt on the latter’s veracity. Baron called Xavier a wretch, a rogue, a beggar, and a miserable scoundrel. The council decided that the case amounted to a verbal standoff and returned Baron to his post and to be placed under a watchful eye.31 Sexual morality did not seem to be as signiﬁcant an issue in verbal offenses against women as might be expected. Women were litigants in 28 percent of the cases but were twice as likely to be defendants (that is, accused of slander or insult) as plaintiffs. This pattern presents a striking contrast to the situation in both Canada and France, where women were much more likely to be plaintiffs complaining of attacks on their honor.32 Free Frenchwomen in New Orleans seem to have acted with a degree of conﬁdence, publicly criticizing others and even challenging authority. They may have done their part to contribute to the colony’s reputed “spirit of insubordination.” The engineer Adrien de Pauger commented that “[t]he devil is often in the malice of certain women” while describing how Madame Bonnaud had threatened to slap him in the face in a dispute over her property alignment. He blocked her hand, and she called him coquin (scoundrel) and fapin (mean cad). Pauger said, “I responded to this attack on my character in kind, that she was a beggar and a loose woman and that she was not among the persons I esteemed or honored.” Pauger and Bonnaud’s husband, a Company of the Indies storekeeper, nearly came to a duel over this exchange of insults.33

Scoundrels, Whores, and Gentlemen

Other Louisiana women also had quick tempers and sharp tongues. Marie Vabelle Coupard, a joiner’s wife, was enjoined by the Council in February 1728 to stop “vexing” and “insulting” the wife of a clerk for the Company of the Indies. Several months later, tension exploded between these unfriendly neighbors once again when Coupard thought she had been cheated in a purchase of sugar. She reacted violently, attacking Madame Goublaye “like a fury,” pulling her hair and hitting her. Her defense in court was that Madame Goublaye had been the ﬁrst to offer insults. The councilors being unswayed, Madame Coupard was ordered to make restitution by a public statement that ritually restored Madame Goublaye’s reputation. Coupard also remained in prison until she could pay a ﬁne of forty francs.34 Madame Coupard’s punishment exempliﬁes the typical range of sentences for slander and insult convictions, with the ritual of restitution being the most common feature, followed by a ﬁne and, more rarely, a prison term. Louisiana ofﬁcials ordered elite offenders to prison only when they insulted those of even higher status (such as the case of a military ofﬁcer insulting the governor). In other cases they charged elite defendants a ﬁne according to their ability to pay.35 Overall, the trend in New Orleans’ verbal offenses suggests that the charter generation engaged in slander and its legal recourses more frequently than subsequent generations. The peak of calumny cases between 1726 and 1731 may reﬂect the entrance of engagés (indentured servants) and forçats into the ranks of the town’s free populace as they neared the end of their ﬁve to seven year terms. At the same time, a reshufﬂing of noble and bourgeois concessionaires, planters, ofﬁcials, and military ofﬁcers occurred following an exodus during the hard years from 1722 to 1724. The social order in the late 1720s was thus in great ﬂux; as colonists scrambled for position, a new hierarchy took shape. The soundtrack for this transition was replete with loud and frequent invectives of outrage, ambition, embarrassment, and disappointment. A complaint of insult and slander can provide “a mirror of the social aspirations of the individual,”36 as does mudslinging. Some used slander to associate a rival with the ranks of former forçats, while others took

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advantage of changeovers in administrative personnel to refashion and reposition themselves. In the 1720s both Dumont dit Montigny and Sieur de Chavannes used the arrival of Ordonnateur Delachaise in this way.37 The Superior Council took slander and calumny cases against the nominal elite particularly seriously. Although these cases were not numerous, they counted among the longest and most involved trials, requiring dozens of witnesses, interrogations, and declarations, sometimes drawn out over months. One such case was one of the few that involved a female plaintiff. Demoiselle Charlotte Corentine Milon came to the Superior Council when Joseph Carrière, son of a prominent Canadian planter, had broken off their marriage engagement. She charged that he had changed his mind due to malicious slander spread about town that she had had an out-of-wedlock child in France. The attack on her respectability (apparently perpetrated by Carrière’s mother, who for some reason opposed the union) was so odious that she demanded restitution to the sum of ten thousand livres, a considerable sum. The council awarded Milon three thousand livres, the highest recorded amount for civil damages in French Louisiana that did not involve loss of property. This case underscores the tenuous nature of colonial reputations and the social dangers of slander, as well as the hope of reinvention in the New World. In her defense Milon did not spend much time refuting the alleged facts. Rather, she (or her shadow lawyer) set out to prove the ill intentions of her attackers and that “these hideous calumnies . . . interest the colony in general; if one suffers defamation as soon as one arrives, this is not the way to convince people to come here in the hope of establishing themselves. Monsieur Périer [the governor] must pursue this case in the interest of the public.”38 When the Carrières committed their allegations to print during their defense, they became guilty of libel as well, according to at least one of the councilors. Showing their own divisions, the council members fought among themselves over procedures in the case, and they even took the dramatic step of ordering the elite Carrières to prison for a brief time. The case dragged on for months as Milon attempted to collect damages against their assets.

Scoundrels, Whores, and Gentlemen

Class, Race, and Honor Honor and reputation counted as very serious matters to France’s nobility, particularly among men committed to a military career. Increasingly in the eighteenth century honor and a good reputation were no longer guaranteed by birthright.39 Honor had to be demonstrated by deportment and if necessary defended by the sword. Maintaining membership in the ranks of honnêtes hommes required constant vigilance. The records of colonial Louisiana and Canada show that ofﬁcers were sensitive to slights and were quick to act in defense of their reputations. Privates in the colonial army, even though they ranked among the lowest of free people, shared these propensities. They tended, however, to exchange insults more freely and creatively than their superiors before resorting to violence. For them such exchanges could be a joking matter, at least to a point. For noblemen reputation was never a laughing matter. The large military presence in colonial Louisiana and the documented tensions between Canadian and French ofﬁcers contributed to numerous defamation cases in Louisiana.40 The attitudes of French ofﬁcers toward Canadians in positions of power in New Orleans was colored by the belief that they had been “brought up, so to speak, among savages, and know little of the customs and mode of government of the kingdom.”41 The history between French sublieutenant Jean-François Benjamin Dumont dit Montigny and the Governor Bienville, a Canadian, illustrates this sort of tension. As Dumont tells it in his original mémoire, Bienville ﬁrst offended him when the governor undertook a review of the troops after Dumont’s ship disembarked in Louisiana. Bienville went from soldier to soldier and demanded a brief genealogy from each man. Dumont, who himself attempted to tag the noble estate title “de Montigny” to his name upon arrival in Louisiana, did not think that a Canadian should question the backgrounds of French-born ofﬁcers. Although Bienville, Iberville, and the other LeMoyne brothers had legitimately acquired seigneurial titles in Canada through the machinations of their father, their claims to noble status were recent, colonial, and insecure. Dumont answered disingenuously that his father was a farmer, much to Bienville’s surprise.

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Whether Bienville initially took a dislike to him because of his supposed low birth or because he later found out that Dumont had played with him (Dumont was actually the son of a well-connected Parisian lawyer) is unknown. But in a later interaction their enmity solidiﬁed when Bienville inquired as to whether Dumont had met a man named LeMaire during his recent visit to Quebec. Dumont said that he had indeed met a LeMaire whom he described as a drunkard and “a person unworthy of the company of honest men.”42 Bienville then stood up and toasted Dumont before a table of ofﬁcers, thanking him sarcastically for attributing such good qualities to his uncle. Thus escalated a lengthy personal feud in which Bienville and Dumont exchanged insults and slandered and libeled one another in letters to the French ministry. On his second voyage to Louisiana Dumont attempted to make amends, but when Bienville refused to look him in the eye or speak to him, Dumont picked up a piece of charcoal and marked a black “X” on the door of Bienville’s chambers. Dumont then proclaimed that only when the X turned white would he come again to pay his respects to Bienville, who did not “know how to live [among], nor merit the honor of honest men.”43 Although such rebukes may sound mild compared to the invectives of Jean Foutre and coquin, these sorts of insults landed Dumont in the New Orleans jail on more than one occasion. Overall cases of slander and insult where both litigants came from the elite military or the slave-holding class comprised a slight majority (54 percent) of all defamation cases in French colonial Louisiana. Slander cases among planters or concession employees tended to involve accusations of fraudulent business deals or the shirking of debts. Among planters and merchants, public image (or respectability) was perhaps even more important than it was for military ofﬁcers because ﬁnancial credit depended not only on a reputation for reliable payment but on overall social status. In 1726 when dozens of Louisiana settlers submitted a request for credit to purchase slaves, the Company of the Indies awarded credit only to “respectable” habitants whose identity could be veriﬁed. Louisiana’s defamation cases lend credence to the view that its colonial culture fostered “insubordination.” Whereas elite plaintiffs were more

Scoundrels, Whores, and Gentlemen

likely to ﬁle cases against elite defendants, tradesmen, slaves, regular soldiers, and sailors were more likely to ﬁle defamation cases that involved accusations that crossed class lines in Louisiana. Members of Louisiana’s lower classes hurled insults against their supposed superiors and in other cases obstinately defended their respectability against abuses from above. In Louisiana cross-class cases were much more likely to involve lowerstatus plaintiffs against higher-status defendants.44 Colonials of different stations used the court to ﬁght for a place in the social hierarchy on a relatively even footing. Examples of this type of Louisiana litigation include the 1727 case of a joiner who sued a Company clerk for falsely accusing him of theft. In 1730 a carpenter and ship caulker took his case to court against a ship captain who falsely accused him of robbery.45 Although they felt emboldened to take action against superiors who slandered them, tradesmen could not always escape the circular logic of class. A carpenter named Philippe Vellart complained that Le Page du Pratz (the well-known Louisiana historian who at that time ran the king’s plantation across the river from New Orleans) had falsely accused him of robbery. But the attorney general decided the case against Vellart based on his already tainted reputation as a man “known for disorder.” Thus Vellart, rather than Le Page, was imprisoned and ﬁned.46 Cases brought by elites against their inferiors tended to add insubordination to the charges of injurious insult or slander.47 Cases of cross-class insults and slander occurred more frequently in the ﬁrst few decades of the colony. These numbers were indicative of a social landscape characterized by mobility, conﬂict, and insubordination. By the 1740s accusations overall died down and tended to keep within rank, suggesting that by this time a new colonial hierarchy had begun to stabilize. Lower-status individuals had less to gain and perhaps more to lose by challenging those who were now more securely established in positions of political and economic power. Although cases of lower-class litigants challenging their superiors dwindled during the second generation of settlement, the number of cases in which insults marked racial differences grew. These tended to be of two types. In the ﬁrst slaves or free people of color came into con-

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ﬂict with poor whites as individuals on their own terms. Most of these cases involved white soldiers whom people of color had treated as social equals or even inferiors. The second group of cases arose out of incidents in which a free man (of any rank) offended a slave owner through the verbal or physical abuse of his slave. In these cases the master appeared in court as either a plaintiff or as a representative of his victimized slave. The physical injuries suffered by slaves constituted an additional offense to the honor of the owner. With the exception of civil authorities, the slave owner was the only true master of a slave with a license to abuse and the power to discipline. In one of the most detailed records of an exchange of insults in French New Orleans, racial overtones in the vernacular are subtle. In 1745 a white ship carpenter named Le Moine complained to the Superior Council that Raphael, a nègre libre, and his wife Fanchon had attacked and insulted him over a borrowed adze. Raphael and Le Moine scufﬂed in the road by Bayou St. John. Later, Fanchon entered Le Moine’s house to search for the adze, and the carpenter fended her off with his sword, causing her to let out invectives to which he responded by calling her a coquine (beggar woman, or female scoundrel). In the street their clash continued. She called out, “Damn, come over here if you’re brave enough!” He responded, “You’re [tu] nothing but a whore!” She replied cleverly, “Oh, I promise you’ll pay me, that you will, why you’re nothing but Le Seigneur Monberaud’s indentured servant!” In his version of the events Le Moine seems unnecessarily repetitive in describing Raphael and Fanchon as nègres, implying their status made their behavior toward him especially inappropriate. For her part Fanchon insulted Le Moine by saying he was virtually a white slave.48 The only known case in which an explicitly racial term was used as an insult involved a free mulatto sailor from Senegal named Etienne LaRue. In May 1747 LaRue got into an altercation with some soldiers on the streets of New Orleans after they called out to him sarcastically, “Bonsoir, Seigneur Négritte [feminine form diminutive],” the sense of which might be captured by “Good Evening, Mi’lady Pickaninny.” He responded with “Bonsoir, Seigneur Jean Foutre,” or “Good Evening, Mi’lord Bugger [lit. sodomite].”49 The combination of sexual and racial slurs ignited a ﬁght

Scoundrels, Whores, and Gentlemen

in which LaRue’s gun went off. This exchange represents one of the ﬁrst moves toward racial insults in the Louisiana. It also carried a heavy dose of sexual innuendo with a challenge to each man’s masculinity. Free Frenchmen of all classes sometimes abused slaves verbally and even physically in order to express exasperation with their masters. In 1737, in an argument over a bill, the butcher Pairoc nicked with his knife Scipion, an enslaved cook of DeMorand. The butcher said, “Get out of here, go fuck him [DeMorand]!”50 Another debt dispute caused the planter Chaperon to fall upon La Fleur, a slave man belonging to the surgeon Brosset, while he walked on the levee one day. Chaperon beat Le Fleur with a cane while saying, “You go tell Brosset you are as much a scoundrel as he.”51 Unfortunately, slaves could become unwilling proxies in conﬂicts among elites involving slander, insults, and physical abuse. In French colonial Louisiana the paper trail of slander and insult cases marks an initial period of strife over class position, giving way to a period of racialization. Those pushed to the bottom through these processes, however, did not go quietly. Although this study does not extend into the Spanish colonial or antebellum period, one might predict, based on the precedents examined here, that as a racial classiﬁcation began to stick to both the slave and the free in the late eighteenth century, there would be far fewer insult and slander cases crossing the color line. Defamation is only possible in a climate of uncertainty and intimate competition in which the actors still have some room to fashion themselves through reputation and respectability. What then do insult and slander cases reveal about the social realities of French colonial Louisiana? Colonists imported habits of defamation from France and Canada, but certain tendencies in the cases express the peculiar anxieties of Louisianans. In ancien régime France honor and reputation were serious matters, particularly among members of the nobility. In ancien régime Louisiana the social experiment of colonial life meant that reputations were contested across all the classes and increasingly across the races. Socially ambitious settlers from both France and Canada struggled to defend their recent claims to nobility. Social

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mobility and ambiguous pedigrees among the free spurred defamation litigation in the charter generation, which was characterized by a high proportion of calumny cases. Some free colonials were anxious to escape their criminal pasts. The rest feared an assumption of guilt by association with former forçats. By the 1740s struggles over an emerging social hierarchy based more ﬁrmly on wealth helped create a local culture of insult and violence in the creole generation in which epithets came to be used to attack and defend socioeconomic reputation rather than moral respectability. More than petty squabbles, these cases of name-calling reveal (and echo) the shifting social fault lines of the colonial world. What can Louisiana’s record of verbal violence reveal about colonialism writ large? And what does it say about the Mediterranean honor/shame complex and the Caribbean duality between reputation and respectability? The foregoing raises at least three points for discussion. Colonies, particularly those in their early charter phase, present an interesting sociological conundrum. Although many of them, like Louisiana, were comprised of small face-to-face communities, they were diverse groupings of natives and newcomers who barely knew one another. Although in other ethnographic settings gossip and scandal have been analyzed as forms of social control based on shared knowledge and values, they probably could not function in the same way in a young colonial society. There may have been gossip, but there was little consensus. Second, as noted earlier, a gap exists between the anthropological literature on gossip and the historical literature on defamation and the legality of insults. As a result, the relationship between gossip and defamation has remained implied but unelaborated. What the Louisiana case makes clear is that defamation suits represent the limits of gossip. Common sense cautions against imbuing gossip with too much moral authority or assuming that it is an instrument wielded by a cohesive social body. Gossip could just as likely be an instrument of individuals vying for position within a contentious system deﬁned by reputation and respectability. Society is rarely put on trial for overstepping its own bounds, but individuals as purveyors of unacceptable gossip, that is, slander, may be. In

Scoundrels, Whores, and Gentlemen

a community of strangers gossip is more likely to be seen as a weapon of the individual than as an instrument of the group. Thus it is more likely to be deemed slanderous. Conversely, insults deserve more sociological treatment than they have usually received. Rather than representing simply the breakdown of civility or the anxiety of individuals, they may be a mechanism for forging a new social structure. Exchanges of insults and the joking relationship of men are among the main activities involved in constructing a reputation among one’s peers. Insults appear to have been worthy of legal treatment when they were hurled across social boundaries and into the world previously deﬁned by respectability. Although perpetrated by individuals acting alone, insults signal speciﬁc sites of conﬂict on the social map. Insults and invectives become legal cases when the plaintiff and the accused do not agree about the boundaries of their ingroups. When deploying insults, perpetrators are caught in the act of drawing new lines. The frequency, form, and content of insult cases in Louisiana, although undoubtedly owing something to the particulars of the French legal system and perhaps to Mediterranean honor, also suggests the punctuated equilibrium of colonial society. The trend from slander to insults presents evidence of an initial liminality and then a radical restructuring of the social hierarchy from a period in which both reputation and respectability are open for refashioning to a period in which the membership of new classes and racial/ethnic groups becomes more ﬁxed. Reputation may then be fought out all the louder through insults exchanged within the ranks of a more intimate and bounded face-to-face community in which combatants ﬁght not so much for a place on the social ladder as for resources along the same rung. Perhaps this pattern will be found in other times and places that witness a transition from charter colonies to creole oligarchies. As we progress in making critical comparisons across the colonial landscape, we may ﬁnd that creoles gossiped and exchanged insults more than their forebears but had little reason to ﬁle slander suits. Such would be the sign that colonial society had developed a temporary equilibrium of structured conﬂict and consensual inequality.

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At eleven o’clock in the morning of March 29, 1841, L. T. Caire, a wellknown New Orleans notary, arrived at the home of Cecile Bonille. Gravely ill, the thirty-four-year-old Bonille had summoned Caire to her house on St. Claude Street to record her last will and testament. Caire encountered the young woman lying in bed, “sick in body but not in mind.” Bonille identiﬁed herself as a Creole of color, the “natural” (out-of-wedlock) daughter of Jean Bonille, a former resident of New Orleans, now living in Havana, and Marie Josephe Dias, a New Orleans free Creole woman of African descent.1 Bonille thus situated herself among the ancienne population in Louisiana. French-speaking Catholics of African descent depended upon their Creole heritage to separate them from the poorer, less educated English-speaking Protestants of African descent, and they hoped by doing so to escape the harsher forms of racism ushered into Louisiana after it was ceded to the Americans in 1803.2 Cecile’s mother’s legal status as a free woman was especially important, for in Louisiana the condition of the child followed that of the mother. The resulting will was a short, uncomplicated document, less than two pages long. Like most others recorded in nineteenth-century New Orleans, it was devoid of sentimentality or religious fervor. Despite its brevity, it served its purpose: it properly identiﬁed Bonille’s heirs and dictated the way in which her property would be distributed among them.3 When Caire inventoried Bonille’s estate some months later after her death in August 1841, he found the family papers Bonille kept in her

Afro-Creole Women in Early New Orleans

armoire. Some of the papers were deeds. Others, the older ones, were the manumission papers of her female ancestors. These no doubt were her most valued possessions; they established her right to freedom and guaranteed it for her children.4 The inventory of Bonille’s estate counted tables, chairs, beds, armoires, and a piano among her goods. She also owned two slaves. Fanny was described as a negress about twenty-six and sickly, and valued at three hundred piastres. Pauline was described as a thirty-ﬁve-year-old griffonne (someone who was racially mixed and more black than white), who was a blanchisseuse (laundress) and cuisinere (cook) and who was appraised at six hundred piastres. Cecile may have hired out one or both of the two women for additional income, but it appears that they labored primarily as her domestics. Finally, Cecile’s worldly possessions included substantial real estate. She owned a house on Villeré Street that was valued at nine hundred piastres and another on St. Claude Street valued at forty-ﬁve hundred piastres. At approximately thirty-one thousand piastres, her estate placed her among the elite, property-holding class of free people of African descent. Indeed, Cecile Bonille was one of the wealthiest women in New Orleans in the 1840s. Bonille derived her assets from a variety of sources. She inherited property from her female ancestors and received a settlement from the estate of her white cohabitant, Samuel Hart.5 Further, she held slaves who may have been income producing and rented out a house as well as probably appartements in the house in which she lived. Bonille thus exploited the resources and opportunities available to her, and in doing so, she followed a well-established tradition among free women of African descent and their enslaved predecessors. Her story opens a portal into the world of property holding in New Orleans and illuminates the distinctive patterns of acquisition and accumulation established by free women of African descent. Bonille descended from several generations of New Orleans women who achieved remarkable autonomy and substantial control over their lives in the face of daunting social and economic obstacles. The acts of

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manumission found by Caire in 1841 documented a process that began in 1763, nearly a half century before Cecile’s birth, when her great–great grandmother Nanette secured her freedom from the son of one of Louisiana’s most notorious slave holders, Claude Josephe Dubreuil (designer and builder of Louisiana’s ﬁrst levee and canal systems).6 Nanette was most likely a Wolof woman from Senegambia who arrived in New Orleans in 1720, early in the French era. She was only one of the hundreds of slaves owned by the Dubreuil family, which would suggest that her chances at freedom were remote. Her opportunities were improved, however, by her status as a Dubreuil domestic. Presumably under the supervision of Dubreuil’s wife, Marie Payen Dubreuil (a niece of New Orleans founder Jean Baptiste Sieur de Bienville), Nanette’s duties clearly went beyond cooking and cleaning. She bore ﬁve children by Dubreuil, all of whom were described as living within his household—still enslaved—at his death in 1754.7 Dubreuil, it appears, constructed parallel black and white families within his own household. Such an arrangement would have been quite compatible with Nanette’s Wolof traditions. In the polygamous society of the Wolof, women and their children grouped themselves within a household, and the mother defended the interests of her offspring against the other “families” within the extended family. Moreover, the double unilineal or bilineal lineage pattern of the Wolof favored different functions for the mother and father within a family: property and the education of sons passed from the father, while the education of daughters fell to the mother. Daughters only left their mother’s side when they married and joined the families of their husbands or when they became concubines.8 Regardless of whether a dual family structure actually existed, Dubreuil failed to free Nanette and their children. Whatever his preferences in the matter, Dubreuil may have felt constrained by French law. Slaveholders and slaves in Louisiana were subject to the Code Noir, designed for the French Caribbean in 1685 and revised for Louisiana in 1724. Louisiana slaveholders over the age of twenty could manumit their slaves for any reason they deemed appropriate. However, an ordinance enacted before the Code in 1713 and then reenacted in 1736 that speciﬁcally referred to

Afro-Creole Women in Early New Orleans

Louisiana stated that slaves could only be manumitted by owners at least twenty-ﬁve years of age and only when the Superior Council found the master’s motives legitimate. Liaisons between masters and their enslaved women were strictly forbidden, and masters found guilty of cohabiting with enslaved women were to be punished and their racially mixed offspring sold. The harsh restrictions of the Code may explain why Dubreuil failed to petition the Superior Council, fearing that its members would know that Nanette’s children were in fact his children. Whatever the reasons, it was only in 1763, nine years after Dubreuil’s death, when Nanette managed to purchase her freedom from his son Claude Josephe Dubreuil ﬁls.9 Although the perception persists that a signiﬁcant number of slaves were freed during the French colonial period (1718–69) and therefore that the French were more generous toward enslaved Africans than either the Spanish or the British, in fact only a few of the enslaved were able to move from slavery to freedom under French rule.10 Indeed, the 1732 census identiﬁed only six, while the census taken in 1771, just after the French ceded the colony to the Spanish, counted ninety-seven. Sacramental records from the period include only a handful of freed people. Those who argue for a much larger freed population in French Louisiana may in fact be misconstruing enslaved people who were going free with neither ofﬁcial recognition nor the approval of the Superior Council.11 It is plausible, and even likely, that Nanette and at least some of her children experienced slavery as a semifree state with income-producing opportunities, especially after the senior Dubreuil’s death. How else did she accumulate enough capital to free herself? Nanette’s struggle for freedom did not end in 1763. Six years later, in 1769, after the Spanish took control of the colony and implemented more favorable policies, Nanette found the opportunity to free her daughter Cecile and Cecile’s two children, Henriette and Narcisse. The Spanish system of coartación allowed the enslaved the right to purchase themselves and to demand freedom from their master or mistress, even if the latter opposed it.12 In a private transaction of August 17, 1769, by the simple act of a notary, Nanette acquired the deeds to Cecile and her children

v irgi n i a m e ach a m g ou l d

from Claude Dubreuil ﬁls for the sum of 2,800 livres.13 Nannette freed her enslaved descendants the same day she purchased them, though the transaction was not ofﬁcially recorded until almost ﬁve months later on January 10, 1770.14 Nanette’s appearance at the notary’s door so soon after the Spanish took control of Louisiana suggests that she was poised to act as soon as the opportunity presented itself. When Nanette freed her daughter and grandchildren, she was among the ﬁrst of hundreds of people of African descent who would eventually accumulate the purchase price of their kin. During the years the Spanish controlled the colony (1769–1803), approximately 2,565 enslaved people were freed in Louisiana. Most of these, 2,140, were emancipated in New Orleans.15 The scale of emancipations granted during the ﬁrst few years of Spanish rule was especially striking. Between 1771 and 1777 the freed population more than tripled and between 1777 and 1788 the numbers more than doubled to 820. By 1805 they had nearly doubled again to 1,566. As can be seen in table 1, the increasing numbers of freed people are particularly impressive when placed in the context of the overall population. In 1771 slightly less than 2,000 whites lived in New Orleans. By 1791 their number had grown to 2,386 and by 1805 to 3,551. Although the number of whites in the city exceeded the number of free people of African descent, by 1805 the latter comprised a signiﬁcant minority of 1,566, slightly more than 30 percent of the free population. The structure of the population in New Orleans was more like that in the Caribbean than colonial North America. The large numbers of free people of African descent complicated the structure of slavery, blurring the line between slavery and freedom. Throughout the colonial period in New Orleans (1718–1803), women of African descent were more apt to gain their freedom than their male counterparts.16 This discrepancy poses something of a paradox since women’s work was valued considerably less than men’s work and since they were paid less for laundering, cooking, and sewing than men were paid for driving drays, constructing buildings, digging ditches and building levees. Presumably then, women should have found it more difﬁcult to accumulate the funds to free themselves. Women also had another

Table 1. The colonial population of New Orleans Year 1771

Whites

fpc

Slaves

Males Females Total

Males Females Total

Males Females Total

—

—

1,803

—

—

97

—

—

315

518

632

1,151

1,227

1777

1,104

632

1,736

101

214

1788

1,310

1,060

2,370

233

587

820

956

1,175

2,131

1791

1,474

912

2,386

324

538

862

871

918

1,789

1795

—

—

1,705

—

—

84

—

—

1,677

—

—

1,566

—

—

3,105

1805

—

—

3,551

Source: Census information for 1771 is taken from Kinnaird, Spain in the Mississippi Valley, 2:196; for 1777 and for 1788 from agi/ppc, legajo 2351, 12 May 1777, and legajo 1425, 1788; for 1791 from Census of New Orleans, 6 November 1791, Louisiana Collections, New Orleans Public Library; for 1795 from Census of New Orleans, 1795, Louisiana Collection, New Orleans Public Library; and for 1805 from Flannery, New Orleans in 1805. Note: fpc stands for free person of color.

ﬁnancial handicap: they held primary responsibility for their children. Because slavery robbed men of any rights to their children and because urban circumstances almost always prevented them from living in conjugal unions, enslaved men left the care of children to their mothers. Yet even as women were paid less and bore the brunt of responsibility for their children, they were almost always the ones who arranged for their (and their children’s) freedom. Women of African descent in fact may have had options for advancement unavailable to black men. Still they faced a daunting struggle, usually entailing backbreaking work or the conspicuous devotion to or even the sexual satisfaction of a master or mistress. Ultimately a sizable number of enslaved women managed to free themselves. Less often they managed to free their children. Nanette did both, although she was not able to accumulate enough capital to free all of her children and grandchildren. Yet at least some, and perhaps all, of her other children managed to maneuver themselves out of servitude. Two of her daughters disappear from the records. Her other two children, Marianne and Etienne, were sold to people in New Orleans. It is not clear who purchased Etienne, just that he was eventually freed. Marianne and her four children were sold to the white French-

v irgi n i a m e ach a m g ou l d

woman Marianne Piquery and her husband Rene Brion. Ten years later, Madame Piquery freed Marianne and her children “because of the loyalty & constancy [with which] they have served me and my husband.”17 Nanette and her daughters were only a few of the hundreds of women who obtained freedom for themselves and their children in a slave society. This, however, was only a ﬁrst step. Free women of color secured their freedom through the acquisition of wealth. For Nanette such opportunities were limited. After she worked to accumulate the funds to free herself and then her daughter and grandchildren, she had too few years left to accumulate other assets. Her daughters, though, were in a much better position. They had the time to turn their earning power into property holding.18 Cecile Dubreuil, Nanette’s daughter and Cecile Bonille’s great grandmother, began to accumulate property soon after she was freed in 1769. She purchased a lot and buildings on Rue Royal, between Rue Burgundy and Rue Dauphine. After her death in 1805 her property passed on to her mixed-race children, Henriette and Narcisse Laveau and Raphael and Florentine Roche. Cecile’s daughter Henriette Laveau followed the example of her mother and aunt and also purchased a lot with buildings on Rue Royal, between Rue Burgundy and Rue Dauphine. Henriette died in 1815, and her property was passed down to her children, Marie Josephe Dias and Arsene and Judith Roche. Marie Josephe Dias in turn passed her property to her children, Cecile Bonille and Jean and Henriette Delille.19 Five successive generations of women in this family worked, scrimped, and saved their hard-won earnings in order to advance their status. Like manumission, the accrual of wealth by people of African descent—in terms of private property holding—was more notable during the Spanish than the French period. The few women who secured their freedom under French rule found little opportunity to accumulate enough capital in order to acquire property. The feeble economy of New Orleans in the early and mid-eighteenth century offered free women few opportunities to increase their assets. They consequently performed duties besides the ones that they understood to be a fundamental condition of their bondage. They took in extra laundry and sewing. They walked

Afro-Creole Women in Early New Orleans

the streets hawking their goods. They hired out their free time, hoping to save enough to allow them to make that leap into a future without a master or mistress. As the colony matured, they came to dominate the petty marketing, laundering, and seamstress trades. Free women of color also frequently cohabited with white men in New Orleans. Whatever the nature of these relationships, individually and collectively they served as a means for free women to increase their wealth. White men controlled the city’s wealth, and they held the political and legal power. Further, the transition from French to Spanish law practically encouraged women of African descent to participate in concubine relations with white men. Under the French the Code Noir forbade inter vivos (while living) or mortis causa (after death) donations from whites.20 Those limitations, however, were lifted with the implementation of Spanish law, which awarded free people the right to receive both inter vivos and mortis causa donations from whites. Women who advanced their and their children’s status as a consequence of devotion to masters or mistresses or by prearranged agreements with white men were therefore suddenly eligible to receive ﬁnancial support and property from them.21 The growing inclination of free women of African descent to participate in extralegal liaisons with white men added to their growing economic power. They struck bargains with white men who could provide the assets they needed in order to purchase their freedom and that of their children. Some of the women who won their freedom and that of their children by cohabiting with white men continued their liaisons, pushing the men to donate property to them. As reﬂected in the 1795 census, the mixed race offspring of the unions of white men and women of color enjoyed advantages in accumulating property. Of the 20 percent of the city’s free men of African descent who owned houses, 50 percent were described as racially mixed. Of the 22 percent of free women of African descent who owned houses in the city, 61 percent were classiﬁed as racially mixed. Of the free men of African descent who owned slaves, 77 percent were classiﬁed as racially mixed. More than 90 percent of these men owned the houses in which they lived. Of women described as slaveholders, 88 percent were portrayed as racially mixed, while 95 percent of the women of African descent who were listed

v irgi n i a m e ach a m g ou l d

as owning slaves but not owning houses were described as racially mixed. These percentages all represent people who were the offspring of white men and women of African descent and do not account for the women themselves. When women are taken into account, the number, of course, increases. It is impossible to ignore the signiﬁcance of the numbers. Free women of African descent and their children beneﬁted ﬁnancially from their ties to the white community.22 Despite the real and perceived burdens of race and gender, many free women of African descent were able to exploit the advantages afforded by Spanish rule and to accumulate property. The New Orleans Census of 1795 furnishes valuable data that allows us to place the success of Cecile Bonille and her forebears in context. Besides demonstrating the existence of a robust community of free people of African descent, the census outlines the structure of the population and the distribution of property. According to the census, 4,222 people lived in New Orleans in 1795. About 40 percent were described as white, 40 percent were enslaved, and 20 percent were described as free people of African descent. Thus 60 percent of the New Orleans population was of African descent. Moreover, a majority of the inhabitants of the colonial port were female. Of the 4,222 inhabitants in 1795 New Orleans, 2,219 (53 percent) were women.23 There was a signiﬁcant difference, however, in the gender ratios of the black and white populations. Most of the whites (58 percent) were men, while most of the people of African descent (57 percent) were women. Of adult slaves only 43 percent were men. Most strikingly, only 32 percent of free people of African descent were men, while women made up 68 percent of this group.24 New Orleans was the governmental, economic, and military capital of Louisiana, and many of the white men associated with the port and its commercial activities were transients; so, too, for the most part, were the military personnel sent to stabilize and protect the colony. This lack of permanence among so many whites helps to account for the predominance of white men and the relative lack of white women. Other factors resulted in there being more free black women than free black men. Women were less feared than men and thus were not prevented from securing their own freedom. Additionally, women were far more

Table 2. Property owners from the 1795 New Orleans census No. of owners

% same sex/race

No. of houses

Houses owned

% of total houses per person(total=781)

wm

193

29.7

471

2.44

60.3

ww

60

12.9

127

2.12

16.3

fmc

32

20.3

40

1.25

5.1

fwc

74

22.0

143

1.93

18.3

Owners

Source: Recencement du 1795, microﬁlm, hnoc; original, agi/ppc, legajo 216. Note: wm stands for white men, ww for white women, fmc for free men of color, and fwc for free women of color.

likely to form intimate ties to their masters and mistresses and thus be able to secure their freedom. The urban occupation structure also yielded opportunities for women that were not open to men: enslaved and free black females especially predominated among domestics and marketers. Prostitution furnished other, if less appealing, income possibilities.25 The varying economic opportunities according to race and gender expressed themselves in property ownership. As seen in table 2, the 1795 census is especially revealing in this regard. As of 1795 whites owned more houses than did free people of African descent.26 White men owned the most houses, although only 30 percent of them were homeowners. Among white house holders, only 13 percent were women, of which 75 percent were widows. The legal structure as well as the dominant social conventions that subjugated women to men constrained the ability of women to own houses. The conventional exclusion of white women from proﬁtable enterprises outside the home (with the limited exception of the seamstress trade) also limited their ability to accumulate wealth. Indeed, as a whole, people of African descent were more likely to own property than white women. By 1795 they had either purchased or received via donation a signiﬁcant amount of real estate. Of the nearly eight hundred free people of African descent living in the city in that year, 21 percent owned houses. Among those people who were identiﬁed as free people of African descent, women were slightly more likely to own real estate than were men. Whereas 20 percent of the city’s free men owned real estate, 22 percent of the women did (see table 2).27

Table 3. Landlords by race and gender, 1795 No. of houses rented

% rented

% of rental pool (total=427)

wm

278

59

66

ww

67

53

16

fmc

8

20

2

fwc

74

52

16

Total

427

—

100

Owners

Source: Recencement du 1795, microﬁlm, hnoc; original, agi/ppc, legajo 216. Note: wm stands for white men, ww for white women, fmc for free men of color, and fwc for free women of color.

The 1795 census did not record property values, but it does allow for the calculation of the average number of houses owned by each group. As seen in table 2, homeowners on average owned more than one house each, with whites owning more than free people of African descent. The 30 percent of the city’s white men who owned houses averaged 2.44 houses each. The 13 percent of the city’s white women who owned houses owned, on average, 2.12 houses each. House-holding free men of color averaged 1.25 houses each. Free women who owned houses averaged 1.93 houses each. Free women were thus not only more likely to own houses than were free men, but they were more likely to own more houses. Given the number of transient business, government, and military people, predominantly men, in New Orleans, rental property accordingly was in great demand. Table 3 reveals that 59 percent of property-holding white men rented out their property, while 53 percent of white women and 52 percent of free women of color rented out the houses they owned. By contrast, free men of African descent only rented out 20 percent of their houses. Racist attitudes toward men of African descent may have prevented people from renting from them. It may also be the case that free men of African descent rented to enslaved women but did not report their illegitimate activity to the census taker. A survey of property records in the notarial acts and information given in testaments suggests that most women purchased their property outright. Since only a few purchased property by obtaining a mortgage,

Afro-Creole Women in Early New Orleans

which was common for whites but uncommon for free people of color, free people of African descent were almost always forced to accumulate the entire worth of a piece of property before making a purchase. The women who were the most likely to own property were either listed as being without an occupation, suggesting that they derived all or most of their income from rental properties and slaves, or as marketers and seamstresses. Women who were described as laundresses or domestics— the majority—were much less likely to accumulate property, although clearly it was not impossible. The census record suggests that a signiﬁcant number of free women in the port worked diligently to purchase houses for rental purposes. Some rented out entire houses, others just rooms.28 Another form of property ownership, slaveholding, was even more common in New Orleans than the ownership of houses. In 1795 359 people owned houses while 407 owned slaves. The pattern of distribution between whites and blacks was somewhat similar.29 As one would expect, whites were more likely to own slaves than were free people of African descent. Of the white adult population 30 percent owned slaves, and of those 82 percent were men. In fact, men were more likely to own slaves than they were to own real estate. Only 30 percent of white men in the city owned houses but approximately 42 percent appear to have owned slaves. White women were much less likely to own slaves than white men, but they were not less likely to own slaves than houses: 13 percent of them owned slaves, the same percentage as owned houses. As it turns out, the women who owned houses were the same women who owned slaves. Again, the majority of white women who owned slaves were widows.30 Free people of African descent were less likely to own slaves than real estate. Only 15 percent of free blacks owned enslaved people. As table 4 shows, among those who did, the overwhelming majority—70 percent— were women. The pattern of slave holding for free people of African descent therefore was the opposite of that of whites as free women of color were far more likely to own slaves and to proportionately own more than free men. Table 4 also reveals that only three free people of African descent appear to have owned more than ﬁve slaves, and they were all women.

Table 4. Slave ownership in New Orleans, 1795 Slaves per household

Slave owners

No. of slaves (total=407)

% owned

1–2

3–4

5–10

>10

White males

274

67

120

61

73

20

White females

59

14

17

21

17

4

fpc males

22

5

14

4

4

0

fpc females

52

13

36

13

3

0

Source: Recencement du 1795, microﬁlm, hnoc; original, agi/ppc, legajo 216. Note: fpc stands for free person of color.

One of these was Marianne Dubreuil dite Brion, who was the daughter of Nanette and the great aunt of Cecile Bonille and who owned seven slaves. Suzanne Forneret, another free women of African descent, also owned seven slaves, while Louison Depres owned ﬁve. Except for those three women, however, most free people of African descent (96 percent) owned four or fewer slaves, and most of the bondpeople they owned (69 percent) were women. In general, the majority of slaveholding households in the city included only one or two slaves. Of these households 24 percent were headed by free people of color, and of these 84 percent were headed by women. A summary of the data for all real estate and slaves in the city in 1795 demonstrates that white men owned 63 percent of the property in the city in that year, white women owned 16 percent, free men of African descent owned 5 percent, and free women of color owned 16 percent.31 By 1795 the population of free people of African descent had accumulated an astounding 21 percent of the property in the port.32 When Cecile Bonille dictated her last will and testament to L. T. Caire in 1841, she did so as a woman who had followed the strategies devised by her female ancestors, accumulating considerable means as she did so. The continuity of these strategies under French, Spanish, and American rule is remarkable. She began a lengthy relationship with Samuel Hart, who was from Austria-Hungary, when she was about nineteen years old. The couple lived together, had four children, and even married in the Catholic Church, although their union was not recognized in law. Hart

Afro-Creole Women in Early New Orleans

left her an inter vivos donation and also provided for her in his second will. When Hart’s relatives challenged her right to inherit, she successfully defended the property rights of her children through the lower Louisiana courts and into the state Supreme Court before she ﬁnally settled with her antagonists.33 Data gathered by Paul Lachance in his database of inventories of estates generally demonstrates that free people of African descent, especially women, continued to experience remarkable economic progress during the early decades of the nineteenth century. By 1840 the numbers of wills and inventories these people left had grown proportionately equal to those left by the white population. This occurrence, Lachance argues, demonstrates a maturing of that segment of the population that had become viable during the Spanish period and conﬁrms Ira Berlin’s argument that discriminatory laws passed during Louisiana’s territorial period did not completely obstruct the economic advancement of this segment of the city’s population. Although the proportion of wills and inventories recorded by notaries and captured by Lachance fell again in proportion to their numbers between 1840 and 1860, it did not return to the low recorded in 1810.34 Any calculation of wealth held by free people of African descent, however, must also consider the relative decline in their numbers as well as their proportionate wealth. Their absolute numbers increased from a low of 4,950 in 1810 to a high of 19,226 in 1840. After 1840 their numbers began to decline, and by 1860 there were only just over 10,000 free people of African descent left in the city. Their percentage of the total population declined from 44 percent in 1810 to 7 percent in 1860.35 The pattern of the wealth of free people of African descent reﬂects the patterns evident in their numerical growth. Their assets increased from an average of $22,131 in 1810 to $115,437 in 1830 and then declined in 1860 to $53,562, a sum that still represented an overall increase of more than 50 percent throughout the period. The proportion of the assets, however, went from 3 percent of the value of estates recorded in 1810 to a high of approximately 5 percent in 1830. By 1860 the increase amounted to less than 1 percent of the total wealth captured in inventories.

Table 5. Average value of inventoried property, by race and gender, 1810–60 fpc

Whites Year

Males

Females

Males

Females

1810

15,275

6,124

3,075

2,581

1820

16,848

24,405

599

2,385

1830

11,223

7,393

1,496

2,818

1840

33,875

24,918

2,416

3,554

1850

23,682

9,491

1,835

2,377

1860

18,605

18,490

2,003

2,077

Source: Lachance, “Limits of Privilege.” Note: fpc stands for free person of color. Piastres and dollars were used interchangeably in New Orleans during this period; their values were the same.

Taken together, these ﬁgures clearly demonstrate that both the population and inventoried wealth of free people of African descent more than doubled during the period. The numbers also demonstrate that this segment of the population lost ground both numerically and economically in comparison to the white population. Other data gathered by Lachance reveal that free women of African descent were far more likely to have enough property to be inventoried than were the men in their group. In fact, the data demonstrate that on average between 1810 and 1860 two-thirds of the inventories were for women of African descent while one-third was for the men of the group. Taking into account the unbalanced sex ratio of the population, free women of African descent then accounted for anywhere from 5 to 13 percent more inventories than their proportion in the population of free people of African descent. These women not only had more inventories, but the average value of inventoried assets was higher for them than it was for free men, except for 1810. Cecile Bonille serves as an example of one woman who challenged the boundaries of race and class in New Orleans. As the Lachance database demonstrates, her actions and successes were not out of the ordinary. In her case the pattern of accumulation—of freedom, status, and property— evolved generations earlier as her feminine forbears advanced their posi-

Afro-Creole Women in Early New Orleans

tions and the possibilities of their descendants as Louisiana was transferred from France to Spain. Other women found other opportunities to gain freedom and accumulate property. Many worked in tandem, woman to woman, mother to child, in order to advance their economic and social positions. No matter their methods, all of these women resculpted the social and economic landscape of nineteenth-century New Orleans.

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Half a century after its founding in 1714, the French colonial settlement of Natchitoches, located on the Red River near the Louisiana-Texas frontier, was a moderately prosperous and stable town. French men, women, and children, most of whom were Creoles, or people born in Louisiana, made up a majority of the Natchitoches population. Because France had done little to promote Louisiana’s commerce, the free community of Natchitoches was relatively egalitarian in terms of wealth as most of the people lived on small farms and grew foodstuffs and raised livestock for domestic consumption. Over half of the town’s free households owned slaves, nearly all of whom were the Creole descendants of Africans brought to the colony prior to 1740. Most of the slaves lived in close proximity to their masters, the overwhelming majority of whom held fewer than ﬁve bondsmen. Only a few members of the town’s small elite engaged with the region’s Native Americans in proﬁtable commerce, in which imported goods from France were traded for animal skins that were shipped back across the Atlantic Ocean. The demographic and economic proﬁle of Natchitoches, however, changed dramatically during the four decades in which Spain controlled Louisiana following the colony’s transfer in the 1760s. By 1803, when the United States obtained Louisiana, over half of the Natchitoches population consisted of black slaves, many imported directly from Africa. The slaves had established their own separate, but subordinate, community, as most of the bondsmen lived on huge plantations containing more than

Spanish Bourbons and Louisiana Tobacco

twenty blacks. In a related development Natchitoches’s free French sector became highly stratiﬁed economically, with a small wealthy slaveowning elite emerging at the same time the numbers of people with few assets increased dramatically. Although livestock raising became a commercially viable enterprise by the end of the eighteenth century, the Indian trade had diminished to such an extent that only a few people at the bottom of the economic ladder bothered to engage in the negligible exchange. Spanish Bourbon attempts to promote the economic development of Louisiana provide the main explanation for the transformation of Natchitoches in the late 1700s. In addition to other plans, in the 1770s Spanish administrators of Louisiana began promoting the cultivation of tobacco as the colony’s chief export crop. Through price supports, the granting of monopolies, and increased imports of African slaves to Louisiana, Spanish ofﬁcials successfully expanded tobacco production in the colony from a high of only four hundred thousand pounds during the French period to just under three million pounds in 1790. Spanish tobacco policy affected Natchitoches more than any other settlement in Louisiana since the town developed the cash crop plantation economy, dependent upon African slave labor, that most of the rest of the colony had already established during the French era. The examination of the Bourbon economic program’s far-reaching effects demonstrates how seemingly minor decisions made by high-ranking ofﬁcials in one part of a European empire could have major consequences throughout the Atlantic World, even in areas as isolated as Natchitoches. Bourbon Tobacco Policy in Natchitoches In their efforts to promote the economic growth of the recently acquired colony of Louisiana, Spanish Bourbon administrators targeted tobacco cultivation as a promising cash crop because it had already been grown successfully in smaller quantities during the French period. Although Natchitoches residents had begun raising tobacco soon after the town’s establishment, not until the early 1760s, when the leaf’s price jumped to unprecedented levels in France, did planters raise the crop for export. By 1765, the year before Spanish ofﬁcials took effective control of Loui-

Table 6. Number of planters producing tobacco in Natchitoches and the pounds of tobacco produced, 1765–91 Year

No. of households

No. of planters

% of planter households

1765

Lbs. tobacco

Lbs. per planter

77

49

63.6

84,360

1,722

1790

175

62

35.4

713,900

11,515

1791

175

83

47.4

731,935

8,818

Source: 1766 French Census of Natchitoches, in Mills, Natchitoches Colonials, 9–14; List of number of pounds of tobacco . . . Natchitoches, 18 January, 1791, legajo 203; List of inhabitants and merchants of this post of Natchitoches who . . . have given note of the . . . pounds of tobacco, 15 March 1791, agi/ppc, legajo 203, and Statement of the quantity of andullos and pounds of tobacco . . . Natchitoches, 15 December 1791, agi/ppc, legajo 17.

siana, Natchitoches planters raised more than eighty thousand pounds of tobacco (see table 6). While only a few settlers had engaged in tobacco culture prior to the 1760s, over half of the town’s households (49 of 77, or 63.6 percent) grew the crop at the end of the French period. Most people, however, only raised a small amount of tobacco; over three-fourths (39 of 49, or 79.6 percent) of those engaged in cultivation harvested less than twenty-ﬁve hundred pounds (see table 7). Mainly this small amount was due to the relative lack of large numbers of slaves in town. Only a little more than half of the settlers who raised tobacco (28 of 49, or 57.1 percent) owned slaves. Fourteen of the sixteen Natchitoches residents who grew less than one thousand pounds of tobacco were not slave owners; the other two held only one slave apiece. On the other hand, all ten planters who raised twenty-ﬁve hundred pounds or more of tobacco owned slaves. Eight owned more than ten slaves, while the largest tobacco producer in town, Athanase de Mézières, held thirty-six slaves, the largest number held by anyone in Natchitoches. While Natchitoches was still relatively egalitarian at the end of the French period, the expansion of tobacco, combined with a concomitant increase in the number of slaves in town, would foster greater inequality among the town’s free population during the Spanish era.1 In September 1770, hoping to expand tobacco cultivation in Louisiana following the Spanish acquisition of the colony, the viceroy of New Spain

Table 7. Amounts of tobacco produced by planters in Natchitoches, 1765–91 Year

No. of planters

1–2,499

Tobacco produced (in lbs.) 2,500–4,999 5,000–9,999 10,000–24,999

25,000+

1765 49 (100%) 39 (79.6%)

7 (14.3%)

2 (4.1%)

1 (2.0%)

—

4 (6.5%)

7 (11.3%)

27 (43.5%)

17 (27.4%)

7 (11.3%)

1791 83 (100%) 21 (25.3%) 22 (26.5%)

21 (25.3%)

13 (15.7%)

6 (7.2%)

1790 62 (100%)

Source: 1766 French Census of Natchitoches, in Mills, Natchitoches Colonials, 9–14; List of number of pounds of tobacco . . . Natchitoches, 18 January, 1791, agi/ppc, legajo 203; List of inhabitants and merchants of this post of Natchitoches who . . . have given note of theo . . . pounds of tobacco, 15 March 1791, agi/ppc, legajo 203, and Statement of the quantity of andullos and pounds of tobacco . . . Natchitoches, 15 December 1791, agi/ ppc, legajo 17.

instructed Governor Luis de Unzaga y Amezaga to collect all available tobacco for shipment to Veracruz for use in the newly formed Renta de Tobacco, a royal monopoly operating various factories in Mexico. As a result, ofﬁcials collected nearly one hundred thousand pounds of tobacco—mostly from Natchitoches—for shipment to Mexico. Although Mexican experts judged the Louisiana leaf to be of excellent quality, no further action was taken to promote tobacco cultivation, and production in Natchitoches languished. This lack of ofﬁcial support caused Jean Piseros, a local Natchitoches merchant, to complain that “the plantations of tobacco, so common in this province . . . have fallen considerably since [Spain] took possession of it.”2 Not until 1776 did Mexican authorities manifest renewed interest in purchasing Louisiana tobacco. A royal order in May requested that Governor Unzaga develop and encourage tobacco cultivation wherever possible in Louisiana in order to supply the Renta of New Spain. The following year, Spanish ofﬁcials took even ﬁrmer steps to promote Louisiana tobacco. In April 1777 the Crown decreed that Louisiana was the only province with permission to export tobacco to Mexico. They furthermore prohibited tobacco-raising in several Mexican provinces “for the express purpose of promoting its cultivation in Louisiana.” After receiving the news on May 2, de Mézières, who had been appointed lieutenant governor of the district following the Spanish accession, reported that he and the inhabitants of

h. sophie bu rton

Natchitoches were “encouraged to raise as much as possible.” De Mézières immediately sent four bundles of tobacco to Governor Unzaga, “which would seem to be sufﬁcient to show how they cultivate it here.”3 In June 1777 the Crown promulgated ofﬁcial regulations governing the Louisiana tobacco trade. The commandant of each district was ordered to grant planters passports to take their tobacco to New Orleans only after inspecting the crop and marking the approximate quantity and the name of the grower. Although Louisiana planters were commanded to send all their tobacco to the capital in tercios, or bundles, and then pay for special barrels for shipment to Veracruz, raisers of the crop in the colony’s outlying areas were granted exemptions. Natchitoches planters (along with those at Attakapas and Opelousas) received special permission to package their tobacco in andullos, or rolls, to avoid higher transportation costs. These residents were also exempt from paying for the specially constructed barrels, and they could sell their tobacco in New Orleans for ten sous a pound instead of the seven sous that all other Louisiana planters received. In addition, all Louisiana planters were to wrap their tobacco in the Natchitoches manner, using a thin strip of bark that weighed half of an ounce and coiled around the tobacco six times.4 The Bourbons encouraged more free people to engage in tobacco production in Natchitoches by having Governor Unzaga sign a lucrative contract with the merchant Piseros on August 12, 1777. In the ﬁve-year contract Piseros agreed to supply the Crown with the post’s annual tobacco crop and ship it to New Orleans with the ultimate destination of Veracruz. The Spaniard also agreed to have Natchitoches residents raise enough tobacco to produce sixty thousand andullos (or three hundred thousand pounds) the ﬁrst year with the expectation of increasing the amount each following year. The contract guaranteed that Piseros would receive ﬁfteen sous per pound of tobacco, considerably more than Havana tobacco that only brought twelve sous a pound, because he had to overcome the high shipping costs of transporting the crop from distant Natchitoches. Piseros’ lucrative contract encouraged many other Natchitoches residents to engage in tobacco production. For example, Jean Louis Matthias Lecour de Prelle broke with his family’s traditional

Spanish Bourbons and Louisiana Tobacco

involvement in the Indian trade when he built a shed forty-eight feet long for the tobacco that his family grew on their plantation, located a few miles downstream from the post. Another Indian trader, Jean Baptiste Laberry, bought land containing twenty arpents frontage from the chief of the Natchitoches Indians to raise ﬁelds of tobacco.5 Despite the enthusiastic response to the policy on the part of Natchitoches residents, the harvests for the late 1770s disappointed Spanish ofﬁcials. In September 1777 Lieutenant Governor de Mézières was forced to inform the colony’s new governor, Bernardo de Gálvez, that, since the Crown’s regulations governing the tobacco trade in Louisiana had arrived late, Natchitoches planters had not been able to follow the guidelines. As a result, Piseros fell far short of his targeted quota of 300,000 pounds of tobacco for Natchitoches alone because all Louisiana planters together were able to ship only 138,808 pounds to Veracruz in 1779.6 The following year, due to Gálvez’s involvement in directing the war against the English settlements of West Florida, the governor handed over the Louisiana tobacco project to Intendant Martín Navarro in Santo Domingo. In June 1781 the Crown showed its support of the decision by assigning Navarro the special commission of encouraging tobacco cultivation in Louisiana. In his ﬁrst year on the job Navarro increased only slightly the amount of tobacco sent to Mexico from Louisiana (189,296 pounds), much of it coming from the recently conquered region of Natchez. The viceroy of New Spain wrote Navarro in April 1781 to complain about the small amount of tobacco and suggested that the latter undertake more dedicated efforts to increase the harvest. Navarro’s endeavors met with some success, with Louisiana planters sending 333,168 pounds of tobacco to Mexico by the end of the year.7 Convinced that tobacco offered the greatest hope for the future development of Louisiana, Navarro increased his efforts, especially in the promising Natchitoches district, to promote its production in 1782. On September 12 Navarro addressed a letter to Spanish ofﬁcials in which he analyzed each of the colony’s principal tobacco-raising areas. He portrayed Natchitoches as a town that produced a leaf of excellent quality, but he thought that the shortage of laborers was the major obstacle to

h. sophie bu rton

expanding production in the area. Therefore he proposed that the Crown supply Natchitoches planters with four hundred or so African slaves. The tobacco raisers would have two years to repay the Crown for the slaves; they would thus be compelled to devote all their energies to tobacco. This need would lead to the rapid development of the district in the shortest possible time.8 Although no records exist of the plan’s implementation, the number of slaves in Natchitoches rose from 521 in 1781 to 734 in 1787, an increase of 40 percent in six years. This rise in the numbers of slaves suggests that many free people understood the Crown’s intentions to develop tobacco cultivation and embraced the plan by choosing to become planters rather than remaining involved in the Indian trade. The rapid decline in the volume of Indian skins and bear’s oil in these decades, due in part to the decreasing numbers of allied Indian tribes (a devastating epidemic had swept through the region in the late 1770s), further contrived to facilitate Navarro’s plans, and many Natchitoches-born men and women began investing in slaves for tobacco production rather than ﬁnancing trade operations.9 Although the slave labor force and production of tobacco increased, the problem of packing and shipping techniques continued to hamper the development of the crop. To overcome the problem, Navarro sent instructors to various Louisiana posts with orders to teach planters the Mexican process for preparing a crop for shipment, with the leaves of the tobacco in manojos, or small bunches, and enterciado, or bundled. In March 1783 José Antonio de Castillo arrived in the Natchitoches District and demonstrated to prospective planters the proper packaging method. Soon after Castillo’s arrival, however, Natchitoches inhabitants, as well as those of other posts, complained to Navarro that they lacked the buildings and storehouses to convert tobacco into manojos and asked for permission to continue shipping in andullos. Navarro proposed a compromise in which Louisiana planters be allowed to “fabricate half in andullos and half in manojos.” Soon thereafter Navarro came to realize that the undeveloped frontier nature of the colony precluded the use of Mexican methods, and in April 1785 the authorities in New Spain agreed that Loui-

Spanish Bourbons and Louisiana Tobacco

siana tobacco could be shipped in andullos to be bundled into tercios in Veracruz. With the question of the mode of shipping settled, Louisiana planters sent more than one million pounds of tobacco to Mexico for the ﬁrst time in 1786.10 In July of that year, Spanish ofﬁcials also permitted Louisiana planters to send tobacco directly to Spain for the production of snuff at the royal factory in Seville. Navarro gathered all of the best tobacco from Natchitoches and other Louisiana locations and shipped it directly to Seville with transportation costs paid by the viceroy of New Spain. Nine hundred barrels of tobacco arrived at Seville, where workers prepared eighty-four bottles of snuff from the large and small andullos sent from Natchitoches and Natchez. The superintendent of the factory declared the Natchitoches tobacco in large andullos to be superior to others, putting in an order for more tobacco to be sent from Louisiana, and from Natchitoches in particular.11 The Sevillian superintendent of the factory was not alone in lauding Natchitoches tobacco, for a number of visitors and ofﬁcials in the late colonial era agreed that the town’s tobacco was of an exceptional quality. One Frenchman noted that the tobacco raised there was the “best in North America,” while another stated that it was “famed for its good taste.” An observer from the United States believed that the post produced “as ﬁne a tobacco” as he had ever seen. Another American traveler stated that tobacco raised along the Red River in the ﬁelds near Natchitoches was “in greater perfection than in any other quarter of the union.”12 With Spain and New Spain both requesting Louisiana tobacco, planters raised over 1.5 million pounds in 1787, with production in the following year surpassing 2 million pounds. While a drought in 1788 reduced the Natchitoches tobacco harvest to only a third of the expected amount, planters at the post produced 400,000 pounds in 1789. The following year Louisiana planters cultivated almost 3 million pounds of tobacco; the yields of Natchitoches residents made up one-fourth (713,900 pounds, or 25.4 percent) of the total, while Natchez planters raised over half the colony’s tobacco (1,537,750 pounds, or 54.8 percent). In 1791 Natchitoches planters produced 731,935 pounds of tobacco, their largest harvest of the colonial era (see table 6).13

h. sophie bu rton

Unfortunately, Bourbon policymakers abruptly ended the Louisiana tobacco boom that they had just fostered. As early as 1784 authorities in New Spain, who had repeatedly demanded increases in Louisiana tobacco, had alarming intimations that the colony’s supplies were exceeding demand. Mexican ofﬁcials responded in a measured manner by requesting that shipments of tobacco from Louisiana ought not exceed 520,000 pounds. Nonetheless, by 1788 a surplus of more than 1,260,154 pounds of tobacco sat in Mexican storehouses. Therefore in October 1789 the viceroy of New Spain issued an outright prohibition on further shipments of tobacco from Louisiana. Although for a few months tobacco shipments to Spain made up for the decline in demand from Mexico, by December 1790 Sevillian storehouses reported a surplus of more than 3,709,764 pounds. As a result, at the end of 1790 Spanish ofﬁcials decided to accept only 40,000 pounds from the following year’s crop.14 Shrewd planters in Louisiana quickly determined that it was only a question of time until Spain would follow Mexico’s example and curtail their demand for Louisiana tobacco, but Natchitoches planters were at a great disadvantage because they had recently invested heavily in slaves and land in order to increase production. Although ofﬁcials in Spain intended to peddle excess Louisiana tobacco in Holland, the decisions of 1789 and 1790 had disastrous results for the majority of Natchitoches planters. By February 1792 Louis de Blanc, commandant of the post, reported that most Natchitoches inhabitants “are very much in debt and almost on the point of ﬁnancial ruin on account of the unfortunate fact that His Majesty will not accept any more tobacco in the future, and more certainly because they have never experimented with any other branch of agriculture than tobacco, which they know in the highest grade of perfection.”15 In the next few years residents raised only about 20,000 pounds per annum, while other Louisiana planters abandoned the crop altogether. In 1795 when the Crown increased the colony’s tobacco quota to 200,000 pounds, Natchitoches planters, who had raised 148,823 pounds, were the only ones in Louisiana able to respond. The following year, when the Seville snuff factory requested a new shipment of Louisiana tobacco, colonial ofﬁcials announced that the only quantity available had been sent

Spanish Bourbons and Louisiana Tobacco

from Kentucky. By that point Natchitoches planters were disillusioned with the actions of the Spanish Crown. A few reported to James Pitot, a French traveler, that “the government bought [tobacco] from them under contract…[and] with the sudden discontinuance had put them in the position of having to sell to others at low price, and even brought them to the threshold of poverty.”16 In hope of eluding ﬁnancial ruin, most Natchitoches planters, already heavily invested in land and slaves, turned to other cash crops. Some planters began to raise indigo, a plant that Natchitoches residents had experimented with in the early Spanish period. The indigo plant, however, was much more labor intensive than tobacco, and only a few of the town’s largest slave owners had the manpower to raise it. Most Natchitoches residents turned, instead, to the crop that would dominate the area’s agriculture for most of the nineteenth century—cotton. In 1796 the cotton gin and a large number of American planters and slaves simultaneously reached Louisiana. Soon thereafter Natchitoches residents took up its cultivation; by 1802 inhabitants had built twenty-ﬁve cotton gins along the Red River and sent nine hundred thousand pounds of the crop to New Orleans. One observer noted that Natchitoches cotton was of “the ﬁrst quality” and commanded the highest prices in the market. Marie Anne Daublin, widow of Jean Baptiste Trichel, was among the ﬁrst Natchitoches planters to make the transition from tobacco to cotton. In 1791 Veuve Trichel, with the assistance of her twenty-three slaves, had shipped ninety-ﬁve hundred pounds of tobacco to New Orleans. Eleven years later, her plantation, now consisting of twenty-six slaves, successfully raised thirty-six thousand pounds of cotton. On the eve of the United States’ purchase of Louisiana, most Natchitoches planters had joined Veuve Trichel in raising cotton, using the slaves they had accumulated to work the ﬁelds that had been developed as a result of Spanish policy makers’ decision to promote tobacco production in the colony.17 Impact of Bourbon Tobacco Policy on Free Society The rise in the importance of cash crop agriculture in Spanish Natchitoches led to the development of signiﬁcant social stratiﬁcation that had been almost entirely lacking in the French period. As time passed during the

Table 8. Slaveholding households in Natchitoches, 1765–95 No. of Year households 1765

77 100%

1781

168 100%

1795

179 100%

No. of slaves 0

1

2–4

5–9

35

8

17

7

10–19 20–29 30–39 40–49 50–59 8

1

45.4% 10.4% 22.1% 9.1% 10.4% 1.3% 97

18

17

20

76

21

37

16

0

0

1.3%

0.0%

0.0%

5

1

1

0

2.9%

0.6%

0.6%

0.0%

12

11

5

0

1

6.7%

6.1%

9

57.7% 10.7% 10.1% 11.9% 5.4% 42.5% 11.7% 20.7% 8.9%

1

2.8% 0.0%

0.6%

Source: 1766 French Census of Natchitoches, in Mills, Natchitoches Colonials, 9–14; Statement of Whites, Slaves, Mulattos, and Free Blacks . . . of Natchitoches, 26 November 1781, agi/ppc, legajo 212a; and 1795 Census of Slave owners at Natchitoches, 15 October 1795, agi/ppc, legajo 201.

late eighteenth century, fewer Natchitoches families were slaveholders, and these few owned more slaves and raised more tobacco. Meanwhile, an increasing percentage of free people found themselves unable to afford the initial investment necessary for commercial agriculture. Whereas the percentage of households without slaves decreased only slightly during the ﬁrst three decades of Spanish rule (45.4 percent in 1765 to 42.5 percent in 1795), the numbers of plantations with twenty or more bondsmen increased dramatically (see table 8). At the end of the French era only two families (2.6 percent of the total) had held more than twenty slaves; however, by 1795 seventeen households (9.5 percent of the total) owned that many slaves. In 1765 only one man, Athanase de Mézières, held more than thirty bondsmen; near the end of the eighteenth century six Natchitoches residents possessed more than thirty slaves. One planter alone, Pierre Metoyer, owned ﬁfty slaves in 1795.18 In contrast to the French era, planter families during the Spanish period increasingly devoted their time and their slaves’ labor to tobacco production rather than planting foodstuffs, caring for livestock, or participation in the Indian trade. Thus involvement in tobacco production became the activity of an increasingly exclusive elite class in Natchitoches. By 1790 only about one-third of the households in the district (62 of 175, or 35.4 percent) engaged in tobacco production (see table 6). Even among these few planters a little more than one-third (24 of 62, or 38.7 percent) produced just under three-fourths of the total amount of tobacco raised

Spanish Bourbons and Louisiana Tobacco

in town (513,900 of 713,900 pounds, or 72 percent; see table 7). More speciﬁcally, the seven planters (11.3 percent) who produced 25,000 or more pounds of tobacco accounted for more than one-third (38.7 percent) of the entire harvest. Although a few more Natchitoches inhabitants engaged in tobacco production the following year, most were small-scale planters, as forty-three of eighty-three cultivators (51.8 percent) raised less than 5,000 pounds apiece (see table 7). At the same time, just over one-ﬁfth of the planters (19 of 83, or 22.9 percent) produced about two-thirds of the post’s tobacco (475,250 of 731,935 pounds, or 64.9 percent). The six planters (7.2 percent) who raised 25,000 or more pounds of tobacco once again accounted for more than one-third (38.4 percent) of the annual crop.19 Whereas only a slight majority of the tobacco raisers at the end of the French period possessed slaves, slave owners were almost the only households to cultivate the crop in the 1790s. Of the seventy-four planters who raised tobacco in 1790–91 and who are also included in a 1790 tax roll, sixty-seven (90.5 percent) owned slaves. More than half Natchitoches’ tobacco came from the few plantations with ten or more slaves (20 of 74, or 27 percent).20 As is often the case in an era of increased economic opportunity, the Natchitoches rich got richer during the Spanish era, while the lot of the town’s poor worsened. At the end of the French period most households had some assets available, and only four of seventy-seven households (5.2 percent) were destitute, as deﬁned by not owning any slaves, livestock, or tobacco. By 1790, however, more than one-fourth of Natchitoches households (48 of 175, or 27.4 percent) had become so poor that they lacked cattle, horses, or slaves as well as the necessary resources to engage in agriculture.21 A survey of some Spanish-era successions and inventories in Natchitoches shows the emergence of a small group of elites from among the ranks of the free people. During the ﬁrst third of the Spanish era, though two-thirds of successions were worth less than 1,000 piastres (21 of 31, or 67.8 percent), the distribution of wealth was less unequal than it would become in the later Spanish era (see table 9). The wealthiest succession

Table 9. Number, percentage, and value in piastres of Natchitoches successions and inventories, 1766–1803 Years 1766–1778 1779–1791 1792–1803

0–99

Value in piastres 100–999 1,000–2,499 2,500–4,999 5,000–9,999 10,000+

7

14

6

3

1

0

22.6%

45.2%

19.4%

9.7%

3.2%

0.0%

6

15

2

4

6

3

16.7%

41.7%

5.6%

11.1%

16.7%

8.3%

7

5

13

5

8

6

15.9%

11.4%

29.5%

11.4%

18.2%

13.6%

Source: Data based on 111 sucession records in npcr.

was that of Alexis Grappe, an Indian trader, who with slaves, livestock, land, and goods valued at 5,095 piastres in 1775. At the other extreme François Langlois, the town’s erstwhile jailer, only had 11 piastres at the time of his death. While there appears to be a great disparity between the wealthiest and poorest residents, few others had comparable amounts in their inventories. Only six other Natchitoches residents like Langlois were worth less than 100 piastres, while only two townspeople aside from Grappe had more than 4,000 piastres at the time of their deaths.22 During the middle of the Spanish era the successions began to reﬂect the growing divide between social classes as townspeople became involved in tobacco production. Whereas about one-tenth of inventories (4 of 31, or 12.9 percent) in the beginning of the Spanish era had been worth over 2,500 piastres, by the middle of the period over one-third (13 of 36, or 36.1 percent) had accumulated this much wealth (see table 9). More importantly, exactly one-fourth of the people’s wills (9 of 36, or 25 percent) held 5,000 piastres or more, reﬂecting the growing gap between rich and poor. The wealthiest inventory during the period was that of Jaques Lambre, who died in December 1782 with four lots of land, cattle, tobacco, and slaves valued together at 26,882 piastres. Remy Poissot, whose estimated estate was 17,632 piastres in 1785, was the second richest man in town. As in the previous period 21 successions (58.4 percent) held less than 1,000 piastres each, the poorest being that of Monsieur Chenevaux, who died in 1779 and owned a mere 38 piastres worth of goods.23

Spanish Bourbons and Louisiana Tobacco

Despite the crash in tobacco prices that Bourbon policy precipitated, the disparity in wealth in Natchitoches continued to increase during the ﬁnal third of the Spanish era. Just under one-third of successions (14 of 44, or 31.8 percent) came to more than 5,000 piastres, while just over one-fourth (12 of 44, or 27.3 percent) were worth less than 1,000 piastres (see table 9). Six inhabitants (13.6 percent) had more than 10,000 piastres’ worth of goods at the time of their death, the wealthiest being Pierre Derbanne, whose estate that included indigo, slaves, livestock, and land totaled 19,317 piastres. The second richest man was Jean Baptiste Laberry, who possessed an inventory worth 16,635 piastres when he died in 1794. Seven (15.9 percent) of the town’s most unfortunate people had inventories that totaled less than 100 piastres each, suggesting a bare hand-to-mouth existence (see table 9). Most of these poor were men who worked as rowers and crewmen in the Indian trade; one, a boatman named Blanchard, only had 4 piastres to his name when he drowned in 1793. The successions also reveal a notable increase at the middling level during the ﬁnal third of the Spanish period. The percentage of inventories worth between 1,000 and 4,999 piastres rose from just under one-third of inventories (9 of 31, or 29 percent) at the beginning of the era to less than half (18 of 44, or 41 percent) at the end (see table 9).24 Still throughout the period the range between rich and poor, as measured in slaves, cash crop production, or successions, increased during the last quarter of the colonial era. One consequence of the growing disparity in wealth, formation of classes, and economic upheaval of the late Spanish era was the so-called Natchitoches Revolt of 1795 in which the free society divided into factions, and a number of violent incidents occurred at various times before abruptly halting at the end of the year.25 Impact of Bourbon Tobacco Policy on Slave Society Black slaves, who had begun forming a Creole society of their own in Natchitoches during the French era, increased their numbers fourfold during the Spanish period, in part as a result of the Bourbon effort to increase tobacco production in Louisiana. While the numbers of slaves rose steadily due to childbirth, Spanish economic policies also led to a

Table 10. Black slave population in Natchitoches, 1765–1803 Year

Black slaves

% increase

% of total population

1765 1770 1776 1781 1787 1795 1798 1803

239 311 378 521 734 904 921 948

– 30.1 21.5 37.8 40.9 23.2 1.9 2.9

40.4 40.7 37.0 — 53.3 54.3 53.1 51.3

Source: 1766 French Census of Natchitoches, in Mills, Natchitoches Colonials, 9–14; Statement showing the number of inhabitants of the fort and town of Natchitoches, 14 January 1770, in Bjork, “Documents Relating to Alexandro O’Reilly,” 33; Census of Natchitoches, 16 February 1776, in Bolton, Athanase de Mézières, 2:120–21; General Statement of Whites, Slaves, Mulattos, and Free Blacks, 26 November 1781, agi/ppc, legajo 212a; General Census of the Residents . . . at the Post of Natchitoches, 17 August 1787, agi/ppc, legajo 201; Census of the inhabitants of the parish of Natchitoches, 1795, 1798, and 24 February 1803, Records of the Diocese of Louisiana and the Floridas, hnoc, Williams Center, roll 5.

new wave of imports from Africa. These newcomers meant an increase in slave numbers in Natchitoches to the point that during the ﬁnal decade and a half of the colonial period enslaved people came to form a majority of the town’s population. During the ﬁrst ten years of the Spanish era, the black slave population grew from 239 to 378, a 58.2 percent increase (see table 10). Over the next two decades, however, the slave population in Natchitoches experienced a 139.2 percent growth, due in part to arrivals from Africa, for a total of 904 people in 1795. Slave imports slowed substantially soon afterward, causing slave numbers to stabilize for the remainder of the Spanish era.26 The continuous growth of the slave population of Natchitoches resulted mainly from natural reproduction. According to baptismal records, slave women gave birth to ﬁve times as many babies, 696 as opposed to 139, during the thirty-eight year Spanish era than in the thirty-seven year period in which a priest recorded baptisms during the French period. This larger number was due in part to the fact that Creole slave mothers—who made up the great majority of the town’s bondswomen by 176—began reproducing at a much earlier age than Africans and were healthy enough to have

Table 11. Slave baptisms, infant and non-infant, black and mulatto, in Natchitoches, 1766–1803 Year 1766–1784 1785–1803 Total

Infants

% of infants

Non-infants

% of non-infants

Total

193 503 696

78.1 85.3 83.2

54 87 141

21.9 14.7 16.8

247 590 837

Source: Data compiled from Mills, Natchitoches: Abstracts.

children much more frequently. For instance, Anne and Marie Josephe, slaves of Louis Monet, each had her ﬁrst child before her sixteenth birthday. Françoise, another Monet slave, gave birth to ﬁve infants between 1795 and 1801. The large number of slave children born in Natchitoches ensured a relatively equal sex ratio throughout the Spanish period, thus encouraging further population growth.27 Although the creolization of the Natchitoches slave population continued during the Spanish era, a signiﬁcant minority of slaves were Africans. Non-infant baptisms, which suggest African rather than Creole origins, made up 141 of the 837 (16.8 percent) of slaves baptized in Spanish Natchitoches (see table 11). In an effort to improve the economic situation of Louisiana, Spanish Bourbon policy makers gradually removed all barriers to the importation of African slaves to the colony. Accordingly in January 1777, Louisiana governor Gálvez issued a proclamation authorizing trade between Spanish Louisiana and France and its Caribbean islands. As result of the decree, a large number of ships loaded with African slaves arrived in New Orleans in the next two years, just before Spain’s entry into the war with Great Britain in 1779 caused a reduction in the trade. As the ﬁghting wound down in 1782, the Spanish Crown lifted the import duty altogether on slaves in cargoes coming from neutral or friendly ports. In the next year, following the end of the war, larger shipments of slaves began to arrive in Louisiana. Slave importation continued unabated until the 1790s when the outbreak of the Haitian Revolution led planters and royal authorities to restrict the trade again in 1795, only to shut it down completely the following year. Although the slave trade resumed in 1800, authorities only

Table 12. Number and percentage of slaves living together in Natchitoches households, 1765–95 No. of slaves per household Year No. of slaves 1765

269

1 8 2.9%

1781

521

18 3.5%

1795

893

21

2–4

5–9

45

41

10–19 20–29 30–39 40–49 50–59 114

16.7% 15.2% 42.4% 51

126

134

26

35

0

0

9.7%

13.0%

0.0%

0.0%

112

80

0

0

0.0%

0.0%

9.8% 24.2% 25.7% 21.5% 15.4% 116

109

171

254

172

2.4% 12.9% 12.2% 19.1% 28.4% 19.3%

0

50

0.0%

5.6%

Source: 1766 French Census of Natchitoches, in Mills, Natchitoches Colonials, 9–14; General Statement of Whites, Slaves, Mulattos, and Free Blacks . . . of Natchitoches, 26 November 1781, agi/ppc, legajo 212a; and Census of Slave owners at Natchitoches, 15 October 1795, agi/ppc, legajo 201.

permitted slaves coming directly from Africa into Louisiana. Overall, liberal trade policies allowed nearly thirteen thousand slaves to be sent to Louisiana throughout the Spanish era, most of whom arrived in the decade between the mid-1780s and mid-1790s.28 The increase in the number of African imports combined with the explosion in the number of Creole births to make black slaves the majority of the Natchitoches population by the late 1780s. The numerical dominance of blacks during the Spanish era allowed the Creoles and Africans to consolidate their own slave community through separate living arrangements and by socializing mostly with other slaves, as well as by establishing control over sacraments such as baptisms. During the Spanish era an increasing number of Natchitoches slaves were concentrated on large plantations in which they outnumbered their free owners. Over the ﬁnal third of the eighteenth century, the percentage of slaves living on plantations with twenty or more bondsmen grew at a rapid rate from more than a ﬁfth (22.7 percent) of the slaves in 1765, to more than a third (36.9 percent) in 1781, and ﬁnally to a majority (53.3 percent) by 1795 (see table 12). During the last decade of the colonial era, almost three-fourths of the slaves in Natchitoches lived on plantations in which they outnumbered the free inhabitants.29

Table 13. Races of godparents of slaves, 1766–84 Godfather No. of slaves infants: 193

white libre 128

9

slave unknown 49

66.3% 4.7% 25.4% non-infants: 54

44

0

10

81.5% 0.0% 18.5% total: 247

172

9

Godmother

59

69.6% 3.6% 23.9%

7 3.6% 0 0.0% 7 2.8%

white

libre

125

5

slave unknown 56

64.8% 2.6% 29.0% 42

0

12

77.8% 0.0% 22.2% 167

5

68

67.6% 2.0% 27.5%

7 3.6% 0 0.0% 7 2.8%

Source: Data compiled from Mills, Natchitoches: Abstracts.

The planters’ houses and the black slave quarters were distant from one another. Whenever possible, slaves established quarters located on a part of the property that was adjacent to the huts of slaves belonging to other owners, forming large communities of slaves that dotted the landscape at various intervals throughout Natchitoches. These areas came to form a valuable part of the owner’s property in sales and inheritances, for the structures the slaves built legally belonged to their owners. In general, about ﬁve slaves, an average family size, lived in each cabin. For instance, the sixteen slaves owned by Jean Baptiste Dupré shared four cabins, while Manuel Trichel’s ﬁfteen bondsmen lived in three cabins. On Nicholas LeCour’s plantation six cabins housed thirty-seven slaves. In the Spanish era separate residence in the slave quarters meant that they socialized for the most part with other slaves and only rarely with whites.30 The Bourbon reforms of the Spanish era strengthened the black community’s sense of themselves as a separate cultural and economic group because the Creole majority was able to incorporate the less numerous African slaves and so gain a sense of independence vis-à-vis the master class. One of the cultural practices that most clearly reﬂected the strength of the slave community was compadrazgo, or godparenthood. Whereas free people acted as godparents for all but two slaves baptized in Natchitoches during the French period, slaves increasingly chose other bondsmen or libres (free people of color) to be the godparents of their children during the Spanish era (see tables 13 and 14). During the ﬁrst half of the Spanish period, slaves or libres acted as godparents for slave infants in

Table 14. Races of godparents of slaves, 1785–1803 Godfather No. of slaves infants: 499 non-infants: 87 total: 586

white libre 158

29

Godmother

slave unknown 309

3

31.7% 5.8% 61.9%

0.6%

0

1

27

59

31.0% 0.0% 67.8%

1.1%

29

4

185

368

31.6% 4.6% 63.8%

0.7%

white

libre

152

26

slave unknown 317

30.5% 5.2% 63.5% 26

0

60

29.9% 0.0% 69.9% 178

26

362

30.4% 4.4% 61.8%

4 0.8% 1 1.1% 5 0.9%

Source: Data compiled from Mills, Natchitoches: Abstracts.

less than one-third of the cases (119 of 386 godparents, or 30.1 percent). In the period between 1785 and 1803, however, bondsmen or free people of color acted as godparents in more than two-thirds of all slave infant baptisms (681 of 998, or 68.2 percent). Pierre Derbanne’s slave Thérèze and her family followed the pattern of godparenthood during the Spanish era. All of Thérèze’s children, born in the late 1770s and early 1780s, had white godparents, but these children elected slave or libre godparents for her grandchildren.31 In addition, by the end of the colonial period a majority of the noninfants—most likely African imports—who were baptized in Natchitoches also chose slaves as godparents, thus easing their entrance into the slave community. Whereas slaves acted as godparents in only about one-ﬁfth (22 of 108, or 20.2 percent) of non-infant baptisms during the ﬁrst half of the Spanish period, they made up more than two-thirds of the godparents of adults (119 of 174, or 68.4 percent) between 1785 and 1803. Slaves’ domination of compadrazgo during the second half of the Spanish era demonstrates the degree to which the African and Creole bondsmen of Natchitoches had formed their own, relatively independent community by the eve of the United States’ purchase of Louisiana.32 Spanish Bourbon economic measures, designed to promote tobacco as a cash crop in Louisiana, deeply affected the demographic and economic proﬁle of the relatively isolated town of Natchitoches. In addition to widening the gap between the free and enslaved segments of the town,

Spanish Bourbons and Louisiana Tobacco

the Spanish policies also caused the free society to splinter into class divisions. In part, Bourbon measures led to the strengthening of black society; the slave population increased fourfold, and most blacks lived in separate slave quarters from their free masters throughout the Spanish era. The minority of African-born slaves lived interspersed among Creoles on many plantations rather than concentrated in large groups, facilitating their incorporation into a revitalized Creole slave community. Black people’s use of godparenthood, in which Creoles gained ascendancy over African-born slaves, reﬂects the great extent to which slaves were able to challenge the cultural controls that the free population had held over slaves in the French era. The Bourbon tobacco policy also inﬂuenced free society in a more straightforward manner by creating class divisions. Those free people who participated in tobacco cultivation earned more money and had more wealth to distribute to children through inheritance, thus creating and perpetuating a class system in what had been a relatively egalitarian town. This system relegated the poor who could not afford credit for an initial investment on slaves, land, and tools for tobacco growing to less proﬁtable pursuits such as livestock raising or the declining Indian trade. The promotion of tobacco in Louisiana by Spanish ofﬁcials consequently transformed Natchitoches into a town dominated by planters and slaves. This policy thus ensured the spread of cotton as a cash crop following the colony’s purchase by the United States.

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Situated along the Seno Mexicano (the northern Gulf of Mexico), La Colonia del Nuevo Santander rapidly gained importance in the eighteenth century because of New Spain’s need to defend its silver mines from French and English interlopers and the development of its vast lands. Organized in 1748–49, the gobierno of Nuevo Santander included present-day south Texas (the Trans-Nueces region) and the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Nuevo Santander had a military government subject to the viceroy, except when it was placed in the Provincias Internas during the years 1788 to 1792 and 1813 to 1821. The historical origins of a Spanish society and ranching economy in south Texas were intertwined with the settlement of the Seno Mexicano and the earlier colonial heritage of the primeros pobladores (ﬁrst settlers) of northern New Spain.1 Nuevo Santander’s early history is relatively well known because of the long tenure of its ﬁrst governor, Colonel José de Escandón, who served for eighteen years, and the distinctive pattern of colonization that emphasized the civilian endeavor over missions and presidios (frontier military establishments).2 Still Nuevo Santander offers a vantage point for observing Hispanic colonial life in the eighteenth century when considerable change occurred within the context of the geopolitical struggle among France, Spain, Great Britain, and later the United States as well as the local crucible in which settlers shaped their lives. This study emphasizes land tenure in the Lower Rio Grande district, known as the Villas del Norte, with special

Ranching in Nuevo Santander’s Villas del Norte

interest in the social and economic dynamics that made ranching a viable endeavor for much of the population. Notwithstanding the view of Mexican historian Patricia Osante, who posits that rancheros were a poor, downtrodden people, evidence from wills, testaments, and other archival materials presents a more varied and complex picture. While some men of great wealth participated in the colonization of Nuevo Santander, the majority of the settlers were of limited means. Some of the latter succeeded materially in various economic undertakings, though most were small and moderate livestock producers. This view of the economic development of Nuevo Santander explains the persistence of a ranchero culture. To a great degree the provinces of the Northeast were bound together socially, culturally, and economically, producing a common norteño culture that is viable to this day on both sides of the Rio Grande.3 Inhabited mostly by bands of Coahuiltecans, Pisones and Pames, remnants of Chichimecs, and Huastecans in the vicinity of Tampico, Nuevo Santander stretched in an arc from the Pánuco River to the border with Texas. Its lands consist largely of plains, although there are mountains in the center, south, and the southwestern districts. Outside of higher elevations, the climate is generally hot and semiarid, except for lands near the Tropic of Cancer that are tropical and humid. Rainfall diminishes from south to north, with the Rio Grande Valley region receiving only ﬁve hundred millimeters of rainfall annually. There are several important river systems that were tapped for irrigated farming in the colonial era, but most of the colony consisted of vast grasslands adapted for raising livestock.4 Nuevo Santander grew more quickly and prospered more than other provinces in the northern frontier such as Spanish Texas and New Mexico. By 1810 it had become an important colony with 56,937 settlers, in contrast to Texas’s 3,000–4,000 and New Mexico’s 35,000. Whereas settlers in Texas and New Mexico survived as small-scale farmers, ranchers, artisans, and laborers, Nuevo Santander’s population engaged in farming, large-scale ranching, hunting, mining, ﬁshing, and trade. Obviously, variations in climate, geography, population, and other natural resources affected the

5. Nuevo Santander’s Villas del Norte

Ranching in Nuevo Santander’s Villas del Norte

development of the vast northern frontier of New Spain. Moreover, Bourbon reforms played a signiﬁcant role in much of the economic growth that occurred in the second half of the eighteenth century.5 Ultimately, however, development of frontier colonies was strongly dependent on the quality and number of settlers who ventured into new lands, adequate security from Native Americans and foreign interlopers, and accessibility to markets. History of Colonial Settlement In 1746 José de Escandón, an experienced military ofﬁcer based at Querétaro, was commissioned to pacify and colonize the unsettled lands of the Seno Mexicano. A textile manufacturer as well as an ofﬁcer, Escandón organized and successfully implemented the settlement of the new colony. By the time of his recall to Mexico City in 1766, Spanish pobladores had founded twenty-one towns, one lugar (community smaller than a town or village), and four reales, or silver mining towns in the new colony. In the Lower Rio Grande the towns of Camargo, Reynosa, Mier, Revilla, and Laredo were all founded by 1755. A sixth town, Matamoros, developed from a ranching community in 1770 to become the hub of social, economic, and political life for the region in the 1820s.6 At ﬁrst Spanish towns grew slowly, but the rate of population growth quickened around the 1770s. The factors that inﬂuenced this rise were probably economic, but no clear explanation has been offered. By 1821 the Lower Valley towns had increased their share of the colony’s population to nearly 21 percent, or 13,956 persons out of a total of 67,434.7 The colonists were an experienced and heterogeneous mix of people (Spanish, mestizo, and other castas) who traced their origins to adjacent frontier districts of New Spain that had been occupied in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A resilient people, Spanish vecinos (citizens) tended to work together in spite of class differences and despite conﬂicts that arose among themselves and with the Church and the State. Gradually a sense of community emerged that hinged on a common Hispanic identity.8 The new colony attracted settlers who sought to improve their lives. Occupying new lands in the frontier meant more opportunities, greater

a r m a n do c . a l onz o

security, and even freedom from taxes. Above all, the availability of extensive grasslands attracted ranchers and hacendados. The exhaustion of land and water resources, the displacement by more powerful landholders, and the lack of protection in isolated districts were all factors that propelled a steady migration of new settlers into the colony. Staking their claim to the land, the settlers, aided by the military, became dominant over the natives. At times the colonial government waged ﬁerce warfare against natives who raided settlements. Along with the settlers some ofﬁcials, military men, and missionaries also arrived in the new frontier to advance Spanish imperial objectives.9 Of special value to the Spanish settlers of Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Nuevo Santander were the salinas (salt deposits) on the coast. The principal locations for the production of salt were at Altamira, Presas (now Aldama), Tampico, San Fernando, and Soto la Marina. Colonists also exploited La Sal Vieja and Sal del Rey, two lakes of salt rock located near Reynosa that had been mined by settlers of the older provinces since the 1680s. Vecinos collected the salt in the summer after the waters in the lagoons receded. They used the salt for their livestock, to salt ﬁsh and meat, to clean silver ores, and as a commodity to trade with muleteers and traders. Canoes, boats, and mule teams transported salt for storage and sale within and outside of the colony.10 Though a valuable resource for the settlers, the salinas were not always a reliable source of income. The salt harvests were subject to the vagaries of colonial administrators, the disposition of surrounding Indians, and changes in the weather. When the salinas were ﬁrst discovered, the Spanish authorities appropriated them from the natives, but the vecinos were still permitted to gather as much salt as they needed for themselves and for sale. In December 1770 the Spanish government placed the production of salt under the direction of the royal tobacco monopoly, whose administrators hired workers and guards, paid salaries, and arranged for transportation and storage of the salt supply. Eventually, the salinas belonging to Tampico were returned to the vecinos with the stipulation that the salt could still be sold to the crown, but the most productive salinas—Soto la Marina and Reynosa—remained under royal control.

Ranching in Nuevo Santander’s Villas del Norte

Administered by Melchor de Noriega, Escandón’s trusted friend and later his son-in-law, the exploitation of the salinas demanded considerable attention because of the weather and the costs of transportation. A sudden rainstorm could ruin the entire harvest or delay its collection. Vecinos remedied this problem by building estacadas (special covers) and almacenes (storehouses). Indian attacks and thefts forced the administrator to hire more guards for the salinas, delayed the harvests, and made transportation dangerous and slow. Paid a daily wage, however, the Indians also contributed greatly to the production of salt, performing the most difﬁcult labor in its collection and extraction. They also willingly or under coercion relocated to new settlements in Nuevo Santander in order to help with the harvest at other salinas and to teach the vecinos new methods in agriculture. In turn the settlers gave the Indians clothing and religious instruction. Despite initial conﬂicts, the Indians played a positive role in salt production. The Beginnings of the Ranching Economy, 1730–1848 Under Spain and Mexico, citizens who settled in the frontier received land grants for stock raising. In 1766–67 town settlers in Nuevo Santander received 1,000 land grants. Beyond the town settlements, mercedes de tierras usually contained at least two or more sitios (leagues) of land. Some settlers obtained large land grants intended to support hacienda-type ranching enterprises involving ganado mayor (cattle, horses, and mules), but few genuine haciendas developed during the Spanish-Mexican period. Spain and Mexico awarded 365 land grants in the district between the Río Grande and the Nueces River.11 Beyond the towns, rancheros were dominant. In 1795 Félix de Calleja, an important Spanish military ofﬁcer commissioned to reorganize local militias in the northeastern provinces, enumerated only seventeen haciendas, as compared to 437 ranches, in Nuevo Santander. Whereas haciendas represent large estates consisting of multiple land units that included farmlands and pasturelands and that relied on a large resident labor force, ranchos (ranches) were usually smaller landholdings in which the owner, his sons, and occasionally dependents produced livestock.

a r m a n do c . a l onz o

Only very large ranchos had administrators, wages workers, and servants. Thus the rancho, or ranch settlement, represented the basic unit of social organization in the countryside where several families would build their houses in the same general vicinity in order to maintain a sense of community and to provide mutual protection. The predominance of ranchos restricted the rise of a rigidly class-oriented society, although settlers founded a limited number of haciendas, a few of which predated Escandón’s colony.12 The foundation for a ranching industry rested on the introduction of large herds during the initial settlement of Nuevo Santander. A few hacendados and rancheros from the nearby provinces had established stock raising enterprises as early as 1734 in the vicinity of Mier and in the mid1740s at Revilla. By 1757 Nuevo Santander contained more than 85,000 head of large livestock and nearly 300,000 head of sheep and goats. The vecinos of the Villas del Norte, the wealthiest district in Nuevo Santander, owned 25 percent of the ganado mayor and 40 percent of the sheep and goats (ganado menor). In addition stockmen from central New Spain seasonally pastured 914,000 sheep on the southern plains of Nuevo Santander nine months out of the year, a transhumant practice introduced into Nuevo Léon in the second decade of the seventeenth century. By 1795 the number of all kinds of livestock (excluding migratory ﬂocks) totaled 799,874—a remarkable 210 percent increase since 1768. As Calleja noted, the land was “suitable for all types of planting,” but it was “even better suited to the production of all species of livestock.”13 Whereas at ﬁrst Nuevo Santander’s ranchers traded mainly with New Spain’s more populous and older provinces as far to the south as Mexico City, the trade in livestock shifted to the northeastern provinces in the ﬁnal decades of the eighteenth century. The proﬁtable livestock trade included cattle, horses, beef, mutton, tallow, and hides. These products were the basis of the barter commerce through which the settlers obtained consumer goods from merchants. While the evidence is incomplete, sales of livestock and other “products of the country” also involved currency transactions. With the founding of the diocese of Monterrey in Nuevo Leon, its cabildo (governing body consisting of the bishop and other clergy)

Ranching in Nuevo Santander’s Villas del Norte

fostered the growth of ranching by facilitating loans to stock raisers from the various funds that it controlled. Cowboys, shepherds, and muleteers conducted trade over well-worn routes to the neighboring provinces.14 Livestock from Nuevo Santander sometimes made its way to distant places. When a drought in 1775 afﬂicted New Mexico and the horse stock was badly decimated, the governor of that province requested from the Crown a gift of 1,500 horses to save the province. The viceroy approved the request and ordered the commandant inspector of the presidios, Hugo O’Conor, to buy and ship the horses to Santa Fe as quickly as possible. A year passed before the horses were purchased in Nuevo León and Nuevo Santander and driven to New Mexico. In 1801 two Louisiana merchants collected 915 mules and horses in Camargo to satisfy a debt and drove the stock across Nuevo Santander and Texas to New Orleans.15 Livestock and its byproducts, as well as other commodities produced in Nuevo Santander, also reached markets by coastal routes. Colonel Escandón opened a port at Soto La Marina from which he exported large numbers of mules and sheep to Veracruz. Political pressure from merchants in Mexico City, however, forced the port’s closing in 1757. There was also considerable coastal trade between Tampico and smaller ports in its vicinity, and the war of independence (1810–21) led to the unofﬁcial opening of ports at Altamira, Soto La Marina, and Matamoros. U.S. consular records for Matamoros indicate that, in addition to silver coin and bullion, cattle, mules, and wool were exported mostly to the United States on a regular basis beginning in the 1820s.16 It is difﬁcult to measure the value and proﬁtability of stock raising, but ranching was the primary economic activity in Nuevo Santander as well as the other provinces of the northeast. In 1795 Calleja estimated that agricultural production based on livestock and the hunting of wild animals accounted for slightly more than 250,000 pesos, considerably more than the 64,000 pesos produced from silver, copper and lead mining.17 As reﬂected in the diezmo (tithe) accounts for the years 1774–1800, the livestock industry and other agricultural activities expanded considerably throughout the diocese of Linares (later relocated to Monterrey, the bishopric consisted of Nuevo León, Coahuila, Texas, and Nuevo Santander).

a r m a n do c . a l onz o

The exception was Texas, which saw very little improvement in its incipient ranching economy. The ﬁrst complete totals indicate that the diezmos rose from 38,595 pesos in 1779 to 153,723 pesos in 1800, with collections reaching 100,000 pesos for the ﬁrst time in 1782. The reports give a total collection for Nuevo Santander of 8,054 pesos for 1774. In 1800 Nuevo Santander’s districts collected 60,253 pesos in diezmos, representing 39.2 percent of the total for the diocese. By the end of the eighteenth century, the Villas del Norte nearly equaled the production of the haciendas and ranchos of Saltillo, the most important urban-rural complex of the four provinces.18 During the ﬁrst decade of the nineteenth century, the ranching economy continued to expand throughout the diocese of Monterrey, particularly in the Lower Valley district,. Between 1800 and 1810 the Monterrey bishopric’s diezmos ranged from a low of 137,268 pesos in 1802 to a high of 175,726 pesos in 1809 with most years averaging slightly over 150,000 pesos. In 1810 the three districts making up the Lower Valley towns collected 31,968 pesos out of a total of 158,292, representing about one-ﬁfth of the entire collection for the four provinces. Obviously, the Villas del Norte experienced dynamic economic expansion until the impact of the wars of independence was felt in the years after 1811.19 During the colonial period some settlers raised vast herds of livestock. Escandón’s Hacienda de San Juan, located near Soto la Marina, covered seventy square leagues of land. In 1757 its labor force cared for nearly seven hundred horses, eighteen hundred cattle and twenty thousand sheep. Escandón had at least two other haciendas, and during his residencia, or formal review of his tenure as governor, the auditor said that ﬁfty to sixty thousand head of livestock were produced annually. In 1750 Captain José Vásquez Borrego, a wealthy hacendado in Coahuila, founded a hacienda complex a few miles downriver from Laredo on the north bank of the Rio Grande. He named the site Dolores and stocked it with ten thousand horses and cattle. In 1767 the interim governor, Juan Fernando de Palacio, reported to the viceroy that the yearly production of mules at Dolores averaged ﬁve to seven hundred, whose number and quality “no other stockman of New Spain could match.” In 1800 Manuel de Escandón, who

Ranching in Nuevo Santander’s Villas del Norte

continued his father’s livestock business, listed ten haciendas and several other parcels of land but did not enumerate his livestock.20 Economic opportunities in the new colony fostered the rise of selfmade men who engaged in mining, commerce, and ranching. One such person was don Nicolás de los Santos Coy. A native of Coahuila, where he still had a home, he ﬁrst migrated to Cerralvo on the edge of the Nuevo León frontier near the Río Grande. With the organization of Nuevo Santander he moved to the Lower Valley and enrolled as an “original settler” at Camargo, where he engaged in ranching on the north bank of the Río Grande. Neither he nor his wife had brought any capital to their marriage. Yet in 1762 he owned seven thousand sheep and goats, nearly seven hundred horses and mules, some cattle, and four teams of oxen. His mixed ranching activities were representative of the tradition that had arrived by way of the older frontier settlements.21 A native of the Pilón Valley in Nuevo León, José Narciso Cavazos migrated to Reynosa after its founding and achieved considerable economic success. He married twice and had eleven children and a foster child. At the time of his ﬁrst marriage he owned a small herd augmented by his wife’s twenty-ﬁve mares, a stallion, and two cows with their calves. Combining these two herds, Cavazos raised considerable ganado mayor. Upon the death of his ﬁrst wife he gave to each of his ﬁve children three hundred cattle and an unspeciﬁed number of horses as their share of the maternal inheritance. Cavazos then introduced nine hundred head of stock when he ﬁrst occupied the Carricitos grant, for which he received title in 1792. In his 1807 will Cavazos claimed ownership of sixty-four hundred sheep, two hundred mares and their stallions, thirteen jackasses, and four donkeys as well as “all of this species which may be found in my camp outﬁts.” Of his cattle he noted that “it is impossible to ascertain the exact number as they are running on the range in abundant numbers something like ﬁve thousand and for this reason they are not branded or marked.” He claimed another ﬁfty or more mules and an unknown number of sheep and cattle that were also branded. The old ranchero also owned some other mules, which he said were in use by muleteers. Within a few years, the cattle had increased to ten thousand, but it was impossible to brand the stock because of Indian attacks in the area.22

a r m a n do c . a l onz o

A few surviving wills and testaments attest to the success of the larger rancheros in the Villas del Norte. Captain José María Ballí and his wife operated Rancho de la Soledad de la Feria on the north side of the river in present-day Hidalgo County, Texas. The captain’s 1788 will enumerated one thousand mares and stallions, and “other animals,” including two thousand sheep. The ranch itself consisted of three jacales (huts), four corrals, a fenced irrigated ﬁeld, and pasturelands. Ten years later, his wife’s will listed similar numbers of livestock as well as over two hundred mules. She also claimed ownership of a stock farm on Padre Island. It is likely that its livestock was part of the seminal herd owned by her son, Padre Nicolás Ballí. In 1800 he placed one thousand branded cattle on the island, for which he had ﬁled a land-grant claim.23 Stock raisers could not have produced large numbers of livestock in Nuevo Santander without the acquisition and utilization of extensive agostaderos, or pasturelands. After the initial awards of town grants, pobladores initiated new land claims, a process that in the Spanish period could prove to be lengthy. In most cases, however, claimants moved herds and workers and constructed dwellings, corrals, and water ponds (tanques) and wells at the new sites shortly after ﬁling a denuncio (claim) in the town that had jurisdiction over the vacant lands.24 Data from Camargo and Reynosa, two of the most important towns in the Lower Rio Grande, allow us to examine the process by which ranchero landholding accelerated. In Camargo the ﬁrst decade of the 1800s was an active period for making denuncios and acquiring land. Table 15 shows that individual requests were generally for four sitios, whereas multimember family claims called for larger amounts. Based on the limited biographical data currently available, applicants at Camargo were local settlers, except for one who came from Castille. The larger requests of the López de Herreras and José Pérez Rey are interesting to note because both had economic and political status as diezmeros, or tithe collectors, for various districts. In effect, these stock raisers pushed their operations to unclaimed lands that bordered on the Nueces River and the bay of Corpus Christi. The tall grasses found in those lands were particularly favorable for raising horses and cattle.25

a

12 sitios, 1808

4 sitios, 1807

Franquita, Rincón de la Boveda

Noriacitas

Source: Index to the Protocolos of Camargo, Special Collections, University of Texas at Pan American. a There is no data in the Texas General Land Ofﬁce regarding these claims. b Vicente Lopez de Herrera and his three sons received 12 sitios in 1806, but the site is known as Diezmero.

Pedro Ignacio Garcia

Manuel de la Garza

Arroyo de Peñitas Lagarto/Rincón S. Pedro

12 sitios, 1807

A. de la Garza

a

Palo Blanco

Los Leñadores y Sta. Teresa

4 sitios, 1807

12 sitios, 1807

El Coyote

Norberto Peñaa

J. L. and J. M. López de Herrera

Juan de la Cruz Estrada

12 sitios, 1807

San Antonio de Agua Dulce

4 sitios, 1806

Benito López de Jaén b

Sta. Gertrudis

a

Agua Dulce

J. Lorenzo de la Garza 12 sitios, 1805

Palo Blanco

10 sitios, 1805 44 sitios, 1805

a

J. Lorenzo de la Garza

Santiago Peña

Las Animas

20 sitios, 1805

Laureles

41 sitios, 1805

José Pérez Rey

José Ignacio Treviño

Casa Blanca, Rio de las Nueces

1804

Juan de la Garza Montemayor

a

S. Román

12 sitios, 1804

Alejandro, Julian, and Francisco Farias

Location

Amount requested and year

Applicant

Table 15. Denuncios de Tierras in Camargo, 1800–1810

—

—

—

—

—

—

4 sitios, 1808

12 sitios, 1808

—

6.5 sitios

—

16 sitios, 1807

16 sitios, 1807

12 sitios, 1806

Amount granted and year

Table 16. Denuncios and land grants in Reynosa, 1777–1836 Amount requested and year

Applicant

Location

Year granted

E. Fernández

11.5 sitios, 1777

Carricitos

J. F. De la Garza

1777

La Caja Pinta

F. Canoa

1779

J. J. D Hinojosa and J. Ma. Ballí

25.5 sitios, 1790

Llano Grande

1790

Narciso Cavazos

106 sitios, 1790

S. J. de. Carricitos

1792

Vincente de Hinojosa

35 sitios, 1792

Las Mesteñas

1794

J. De la Garza

1821

—

4 sitios, 1825

J. A. Longoria J. Ma. and Miguel Flores

—

a

—

Los Sauces Realitos

J. Doroteo and J. A. Zamora

about 12 sitios, 1833 Finados

Plácido Benavidesa

1833

Alvino and Domingo de la Garza 15 sitios, 1833

Corral de Laureles

1789 — —

— 1831 — 1834 —

La Parra

1833

Ignacio Flores

2 sitios

Panal

1836

Nicolasa Salinas

2.5 sitios

Magueyes

1836

J. Ma. Flores Villarreal

4.5 sitios

Peñascal

1836

Felipe Salinas

2 sitios

Comecrudo

1836

Source: Ynventorio del Archivo y los Jueces Locales de la Villa de Reynosa, Tamaulipas desde el año de 1761 en que principio hasta 1913, Special Collections, University of Texas at Pan American. See also Mauro, Guide to Spanish and Mexican Land Grants, n.p. a There is no data in the Texas General Land Office regarding these claims.

Along with making new claims for pasturelands away from the town, settlers bought and sold to one another. In fact, evidence suggests an increase in the pace of land sales in Camargo from 1790 to the 1810s.26 The signiﬁcance of this is twofold. First, some settlers could not acquire land through denuncios, and because a number of large grants were already claimed, they were forced to buy land from the ﬁrst grantees. Second, the timing of these purchases coincides with both the increasing prosperity of stock raising and the general peaceful conditions prior to the outbreak of the war of independence. In Reynosa the pattern of land acquisition varied from that of Camargo only by degree. A handful of prominent pobladores moved into new districts

Ranching in Nuevo Santander’s Villas del Norte

north of the Rio Grande, while thirteen families purchased, subdivided, and developed a large expanse of land east of the town toward the Gulf Coast. As Table 16 shows, by the 1770s ﬁve large grants were claimed and subsequently granted by the authorities. The key vecinos involved in the acquisition and development of large-scale stock raising in this district were Juan José de Hinojosa, the local chief justice; his son-in-law, José María Ballí; and the early poblador Narciso Cavazos. A fourth important stock raiser was Don José Salvador de la Garza of Camargo, son-in-law of that town’s founder. The Hinojosa-Ballí family played a major role in monopolizing land in this district because Ballí’s wife, Rosa María Hinojosa de Ballí, also petitioned for lands for herself, her two sons, and a brother. The family’s four grants totaled 144 sitios of land, excluding the town grants awarded to Hinojosa and Ballí.27 In 1774 Captain Ignacio Anastacio de Ayala of Camargo, representing thirteen families, arranged the purchase of a huge tract consisting of 133 sitios that was part of a much larger grant belonging to the estate of Don Antonio de Urizar, a Mexico City merchant. The buyers immediately occupied and stocked their land, although its legal division into thirteen separate ranches did not take place until late 1784. The site selected by Captain de Ayala lay at the easternmost part of the tract, near the mouth of the Río Grande, and with his permission and for mutual protection, the thirteen families made their home at his ranch San Juan de los Esteros. Within a short time the site became known as Congregación de Refugio, growing rapidly to the status of a town. Because of these large landholdings, the men and women developed multiple ranchos and raised extensive herds.28 The majority of rancheros were small and moderate producers who did not reach the level of production of Francois Chevalier’s “powerful men of the North.”29 In 1790 Manuel de Escandón, the colonizer’s son, wrote that settlers were poor and that they raised but a few cows and a small horse herd.30 The data from Reynosa and Matamoros shows that this assertion must be qualiﬁed. Table 17 looks at ranchero livestock holdings in roughly the ﬁrst twelve years of the nineteenth century. Some settlers raised ﬁve, six, or seven manadas of mares, each manada normally

Table 17. Livestock herds of Reynosa and Matamoros vecinos, 1798–1812 Owner and date of will

Mares

Horses

Mules

Cattle

Oxena

Sheep and goats

Pedro Rabelo, 1803

50

10

—

—

—

—

Santiago Ballí, ca. 1800

—

—

—

—

—

Small herd

J. Antonio Ballí, 1798

40

Some

—

Some

—

—

Domingo Guerra, 1808

325

120

90

49

—

4,000

Martin de la Garza, 1807

—

—

50

—

—

1,900

J. Antonio Madrazo, 1806

22

33

70

—

2

2,000

100

Some

—

Some

50

14

25

—

Juana Giron, 1810 Antonio Gutierrez, 1810

2.5 5

100 1,300

Ma. Rita Girón, 1812

175

10

—

Some

5.5

1,900

J. J. García, 1808

—

Some

—

Some

—

2,832

Lorenzo de la Serna, 1808

30

25

13

Some

—

—

J. Bernardo Capistran, 1803

—

70

—

Some

1

Ma. F. Ramirez, 1804

—

20

—

26

2

José T. Moya, 1803

70

5

2

30

—

Antonio Capistran, 1806

75

20

—

100

2

2,000

300

15

25

Some

3

400

Jose Nic. González, 1806

77

24

4

90

—

1,900

Juan López, 1807

22

8

1

25

2

650

José Antonio García, 1809

—

—

—

—

1,275

Blas de la Garza, 1806?

Some

1,300 500 —

Source: Caja Colonial, Matamoros Historical Archives, and Protocolos, Reynosa Historical Archives. a The number cited for oxen represents a team consisting of two animals per team.

consisted of twenty-ﬁve mares and one or two stallions; they also raised goats and sheep. A few rancheros had more than three hundred mares, and some small livestock herds numbered from just under two thousand to over three thousand head. While these wills represent only a sampling of all producers, the evidence suggests that at least some rancheros were moderate stock raisers. In a sense they constituted the elite of their agrarian society. A ﬁnal observation should be made regarding the insigniﬁcant numbers of cattle. Lacking a readily available market, rancheros did not bother even to count numbers

Ranching in Nuevo Santander’s Villas del Norte

of cattle, making statements such as “any animals of that kind found in my pastures with my brand and mark are my property.” However, the presence of cattle points to the ﬂexibility that stock raisers had to shift from one kind of livestock production to another, a strategy that afforded some measure of security to men and women whose main livelihood was dependent on marketing livestock. Some rancheros also acquired livestock and land under lease. Leases are recorded in the protocolos (notarial documents) of Monterrey for the entire colonial period. Over time, speciﬁc uses and customs arose that were in turn maintained in the new colony. Most wills and testaments mention livestock and occasionally land rentals. For Camargo, records show that leases of livestock generally entailed small numbers, such as one hundred ewes in a protocolo in 1781, one hundred sheep and eight rams for another in 1787, and three hundred sheep in still another lease. Some records do not specify the number of livestock, but in general they were relatively small, with the lessee expected to return a certain percentage of the increase after a period of time.31 These arrangements were useful to individuals with little or no capital but plenty of time to invest in caring for the livestock. In Reynosa J. Francisco Ballí, the town captain, leased six hundred sheep belonging to the mission to two brothers in 1806. Some leases involved large herds of sheep and goats, such as José María Ballí’s lease of two thousand sheep, but such large leases were not common. Father Nicolás Ballí had a lease arrangement with his nephew for the one thousand head of cattle placed on Padre Island on halves, but this was an atypical lease in terms of number of cattle and the percentage that the owner required to be returned to him as rent.32 The Matamoros wills cited above reﬂect similar arrangements for leases of livestock, except that the number in some cases is four to ﬁve hundred head of goats and sheep. Perhaps these numbers reﬂect a greater demand for their meat, skins, and wool. There were few leases of agostaderos because so much land was available for exploitation, and custom dictated that family members could use the land in common or as separate property. Some leases specify one or two leagues of land because one sitio was sufﬁcient to introduce several

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hundred horses or cattle. In Matamoros wills, only one ranchero, Blas de la Garza, noted that stockmen had leased sections of his agostadero.33 The acquisition of new land grants and the practice of partible inheritance that promoted the subdivision of land grants either informally or through a judicial proceeding limited the number of future land sales. The Reynosa records, for example, do not reﬂect any particular pattern with regard to sales of land, with forty-ﬁve recorded in the short period from 1795 to 1811 and sixty-four sales for the longer period of 1812 to 1850. The huge San Juan de Carricitos Grant in 1852 consisted of fourteen major ranchos, eight of which belonged to Cavazos heirs and six to nonfamily purchasers. The latter had acquired 20.5 leagues of land out of a total of 132.34 Awarded to José Francisco Ballí of Reynosa in 1804, La Barreta, a Spanish grant of twenty-four sitios, involved only two transactions in a twenty-year period. The grantee’s son José Pedro Ballí made one conveyance of four sitios to his cousin Doña Guadalupe Cavazos; the second involved a sale to a priest, Juan Bautista Cantú of Nuevo León, for the remaining land. For many years only three or four ranchers used its lands until the 1860s when Mifﬂin Kenedy began to consolidate control of ranching lands, including the La Barreta grant.35 After 1821 ranching continued to grow with some districts experiencing a sizeable increase in the number of ranches. For example, in 1814 Matamoros had twenty-eight ranchos, a ﬁgure twice the number of those in existence shortly after its founding in 1770. In 1826 the population for Matamoros was reported as 3,933, excluding “the families of the troops, the considerable number of foreigners that are residents, those that reside to conduct business but are present three or four years, those that come to this place only to conduct business.” The villa claimed 386 sitios of agostaderos and 122 labores, or farmlands. Its livestock included 25,379 horses, 7,623 cattle, and 27,000 sheep and goats.36 These numbers reﬂect the continuing predominance of breeding horses and mules, though some sheep raising took place. Livestock brands registered in Reynosa for 1828 show that there were 253 individuals, including a few women, each of whom had his or her own brand, reﬂecting a rapid rise in the number of stock raisers. Among

Ranching in Nuevo Santander’s Villas del Norte

the largest stockowners were Julian Chapa with 626 head of livestock, Antonio Chapa with 400, Ygnacio Chapa with 407, Ramón Chapa with 470, Rafael Uresti and Manuel Garza y Vega with 400. The two largest producers were Antonio Dominguez with 790 head and Doña Francisca Cavazos with 720 head. Doña Guadalupe Cavazos claimed to own only 150 head of stock, a number incongruent with her status as the largest individual landholder in the jurisdiction; early in the century she had enumerated her cattle herds in the thousands. Perhaps her claim referred to a herd that was near the town and not in her principal ranchos in the San Juan de Carricitos grant. Still most owners owned cattle herds of fewer than 100 head.37 In short, there was not a great push to increase production as had existed at other times, and certainly not after the 1790s when Calleja made his statistical report. The diezmos for Monterrey reﬂect the poor condition of livestock raising.38 Indeed, the effects of the war of independence on the overall economy were still being felt by rancheros of Tamaulipas as well as other places in the northeast into the 1820s. As elsewhere in New Spain, livestock production in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was affected by numerous factors, including changes in the marketplace, the impact of imported fabrics in the case of wool producers, environmental calamities, and warfare. For Nuevo Santander two key negative factors were abrupt climatic changes and the outbreak of the 1810 war of independence. Periodic reports note the effects of drought (seca) on the condition of the herds and the consequent impact on increasing freight charges. Excessive rains sometimes produced havoc for stock raisers. Such was the case with the ﬂood of July 1802, caused by a temporal, or rainstorm, that affected livestock and foodstuff production in much of the Monterrey diocese, though its impact varied from place to place. Concerned with the impact that losses would have on the diezmos, the Church requested reports from the district collectors, who at this time were nearly all priests. These reports furnished the greatest detail on the ﬂood’s effects, although the losses are quantiﬁed in general numbers or in comparison with expected production based on previous years for each district.39

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San Carlos suffered few losses, estimated at only 120 pesos in ganados, while the rains actually helped crops. At Burgos the local militia captain noted that there were “much losses in livestock . . . and [in] some horses because of the drought [of 1801] and the hurricane and wind and rain.” The temporal of 1802, however, did not cause any damage but beneﬁted the soils and aguajes (watering sources for livestock). José Pariente Estrada, the collector for Real de Borbón and Hoyos, also reported no losses from the rainstorm. At Hoyos, on the other hand, the drought affected all breeding herds, including sheep. At the real, the effects of the seca were more noticeable on the sheep haciendas. The district of Tula, Ynfantes, Palmillas, and Jaumave reported crop losses due to the drought. The poor weather conditions led to an epidemic of insects, and the drought was followed by frosts. Some corn and other crops were harvested, but they were “ﬂavorless and impossible to store because the crops had to be constantly turned to keep them from decaying.” At Aguayo José Antonio de la Garza reported large declines in livestock production. He said that a stock raiser who raised eighty potrillos (colts) had only eight when the diezmo was collected. He asserted that this also was the case with calves and small mules, perhaps not as great a loss in the latter because of their strength. The drought and an epidemic of ﬂeas, lice, and ticks debilitated the surviving ganado menor, which did not breed because of the poor conditions.40 The effects of the war of independence on livestock raising were probably more signiﬁcant than previously acknowledged. This effect is documented in surviving records for Reynosa. Responding to a bando (edict) of 1813 that called for stock raisers to report their income, including the proﬁts and costs of their enterprises, twenty-six individuals in Reynosa ﬁled their statements. Don Felipe Antonio Abarca, a merchant who owned 750 head of horses and mules, said that horses, mares, donkeys, and small livestock were all abandoned due to Indian incursions that occurred at the same time that insurgents in the Lower Rio Grande had challenged Spanish authority. Don Ramón de Hinojosa abandoned his jacal and 150 breeding mares in the Llano Grande grant on the north side of the river due to “Indian hostilities.” Don Francisco Guerra said that, because of

Ranching in Nuevo Santander’s Villas del Norte

the “indios barbaros and the insurgents,” he had abandoned 150 head of breeding horse stock. José Julian Chapa owned 200 horses, 15 mules, 1200 sheep, and other small stock that he had leased. He had paid 156 pesos to his servants but said “in the present year [1814] the herds had not given me any beneﬁts because the encargado is in Our Army and part of the servants are to be found in the military service since [18]13.” Don Pedro José de la Garza, the guard at the salinas, noted the problems that stemmed from the destruction and sacking caused by the Indians and insurgents. In response to these calamities he moved his goats and sheep to Burgos and 200 mares to Santander.41 The years following Mexico’s independence witnessed both continuity and change in Nuevo Santander’s ranching economy. The most important change reoriented trade in livestock and other products toward Texas and New Orleans. This development resulted from the opening of the port of Matamoros in 1820 as well as the Anglo settlement of Mexican Texas. As a result, Matamoros consolidated its position as the most important town in the Lower Rio Grande. Its population had risen to 16,372 by 1837, and there were seventy-three ranchos in its district. According to one report, in 1835 the Villas del Norte had three million head of livestock. In three generations ranching had spread from the lower reaches of the Río Grande to the Nueces River, where Spanish and Mexican Texans were similarly engaged in stock raising although on a much smaller scale.42 Conﬂict between Anglos and Mexicans was the most disruptive factor that adversely affected ranching during the Mexican era, but drought, disease, Indian raids, and thefts of stock also hampered livestock production and trade. After Texas’s independence (1835) military threats and sporadic skirmishes intensiﬁed the conﬂict between the two groups, an omen that did not bode well for future Mexicano-Anglo relationships in the U.S. Southwest after 1848. Beset by these problems, some aspects of livestock production dropped by the late 1830s. In 1837 Tamaulipas had 107,506 horses, 218,438 cattle, 3,604 donkeys, and only 180,170 head of sheep and goats.43 Sheep and goats had declined considerably from the colonial and early Mexican period, while horses had declined about 25 percent since 1795. The number of cattle doubled, however, reﬂecting

a r m a n do c . a l onz o

changes in market demands, probably as a result of population growth in northern Mexico. In the colonization of the western Gulf of Mexico, Spanish imperial motives and Hispanic settlers’ desires to improve their lives merged. Despite its limited ability to affect English and French domination in North America, defensive buffers were a necessity for Spain because the bulk of its mineral wealth was in the mines of northern New Spain. This need for buffers forced Spain to settle both Texas and Nuevo Santander. In effect, the eighteenth century witnessed a race for control of territory or lands that were accessible to all three colonizers. This rivalry, of course, shaped and reshaped the human landscape for much of the lands along the Gulf of Mexico and has left a legacy of ethnic and racial diversity for the United States. For the settlers themselves the attraction of basically free, virgin lands fueled the occupation and development of Nuevo Santander, a frontera that like much of northern New Spain presented both human and natural challenges. Those who utilized the most important resources of the region—its people and its vast grasslands and salinas—beneﬁted materially. Some religious orders and a few powerful individuals from the core of New Spain had long exploited the grasslands in selected districts. More importantly, a much larger contingent of men and women arrived under Escandón’s administration, and others came to the new colony after he departed from the governorship. Some of the livestock operations prior to the new colonization in the mid-eighteenth century were veritable hacienda enterprises that supplied distant markets, particularly mining centers. The latter’s silver wealth was of course directly connected to the Atlantic trade. Thus, on the one hand, these early stock raisers in Nuevo Santander provided livestock and livestock byproducts essential to the tremendous expansion of the silver economy. On the other hand, the bulk of the new settler population consisted of small and modest stock raisers. Still some of the latter rancheros owned or acquired signiﬁcant landholdings and herds did well in the pastoral economy. As proposed by Pedro Pérez Herrero, Nuevo

Ranching in Nuevo Santander’s Villas del Norte

Santander was part and parcel of the regional trade network dominated by San Luis Potosí. But the wars of independence and subsequent ofﬁcial opening of new ports such as Matagorda in Texas, and Matamoros, Soto La Marina, and Tampico in Nuevo Santander quickly reoriented trade in livestock, livestock byproducts, and silver to New Orleans and other American and European commercial centers. This development directly connected the distant northern region of the Gulf of Mexico to a thriving Atlantic trade, a trade that remained in place for much of the nineteenth century, until railroads changed the patterns of transportation in Texas and northern Mexico in the 1880s.44 Local elites emerged as signiﬁcant producers as the economy expanded in conjunction with changes in internal market demands and population growth. Closer study of marketing arrangements should bear out this point. The signiﬁcance of holding power locally as a chief justice, as in the case of J. J. Hinojosa and the Ballís, should not be lost because this ofﬁce demonstrates how some families could and did monopolize landholding. By 1800 the towns of the Lower Río Grande district equaled Saltillo, the most important urban-rural center in the northeast, in tithe contributions, indicating the importance of the ranching economy. In fact, the Villas del Norte experienced expansion of their ranching enterprises until the destructive wars of independence wrecked New Spain’s mining and agricultural sectors. Stock raising was dependent on a large labor force of ancillary workers whose expertise ranged from managerial and artisanal skills to unskilled labor. From the very beginning of settlement, some men and women, as elsewhere in the northeast, made their living by working as servants, day laborers, and farmers. What is most important about the composition of this labor force is that it was basically free and mobile; it did not, by and large, constitute a subservient class of peons. The ranching economy in the Villas del Norte and in much of the northeast did not promote peonage but wage labor. These distinctions made the northeast different from the core but similar to districts such as the Altos of Jalisco, where independent farmers and stock raisers dominated the land. In sum, the pobladores’ historical experience grew out of a long tradition of adapta-

a r m a n do c . a l onz o

tion to frontier conditions as earlier generations of settlers migrated from central New Spain to the fringes of the empire in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In spite of signiﬁcant differences in terms of geography, climate, and Native American development between the core regions of New Spain and the periphery, settlers in the northern frontier gradually created a society dominated by rancheros, who shaped and reshaped their world in response to the dominant inﬂuences of the wider world. At the ground level rancheros and settlers succeeded in fashioning a land tenure and labor system that was different from central Mexico. In the wider sphere colonial rivalries and subsequent changes in sovereignty shaped colonization and development in Nuevo Santander similarly to English and French possessions in the Gulf South. For all of these peoples adaptation to their environments served them well as political change swept the Gulf of Mexico region from Florida to Texas and Nuevo Santander.

'($CW_djW_d_d]BeoWbjo_dj^[ M[ij8=6:A In 1810 French and Anglo subjects in the Spanish colony of West Florida carried out what contemporary Bostonians called a “little mimick revolution.”1 Historians have been similarly dismissive of the conﬂict that brought the area into the United States. Latin Americanists have tended to ignore the region altogether. When U.S. historians treat the movement and its background, they seem bafﬂed by the 1783–1810 period and what it means to the development of the United States South. In large part this confusion arises because in the United States the historiography of West Florida, when it is not ignored entirely, has built on the mistaken assumptions of outdated works largely informed by the biases of the “Black Legend.”2 U.S. historians, while mostly ignoring Britons and French in West Florida, have long argued that American residents were unhappy with Spanish rule.3 In their view Spain maintained a largely ineffective presence in the New World in general and in West Florida speciﬁcally.4 Thus, unlike the vigorous and complex scholarly debates about the nature of the American Revolution, considerations of the West Florida revolution remain staunchly one-dimensional. Seemingly little has changed since the Washington Federalist in 1804 weighed in on the so-called West Florida “question” amidst the bitter debate over Thomas Jefferson’s conduct in the Louisiana Purchase. The paper celebrated ﬁlibustering in West Florida and played up the supposed pro-American sentiments of West Floridians, arguing against those who believed that “we ought never to own an inch of ground beyond the Mis-

6. Spanish West Florida, ca. 1803

Loyalty in the West Florida Borderlands

sissippi” and that “the annexing of Louisiana to the United States” would “produce the inevitable destruction of our Union.”5 The paper then went on to catalog the alleged abuses of the inhabitants at the hands of the Spanish. These allegations ignored the fact that not only did local residents not support the efforts of ﬁlibusters to “liberate” the unhappy “SpanoAmericans,” they actively supported en masse the Spanish government’s efforts to track down, arrest, and punish the raiders. In particular two issues, neither of which was related to political loyalty, drove West Floridians to rebellion in 1810: the desire for honest, stable government and for access to land. When the Revolutionary Convention gathered that year, it was with the stated purpose of gaining some local control over the government in the wake of Napoleon’s jailing of the Bourbon King Ferdinand VII in March 1808. The installation of Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne brought war in Spain, and sovereignty was held to revert to the towns and their juntas. Spanish Americans asserted the same rights. The 1810 Convention that met on July 26 and 27 did not declare West Florida’s independence from Spain. Nor did it in the minutes and declarations have any stated intention of doing so. The representatives did put forward a list of grievances, pointing out, among other things, “[that] men of character are prohibited from settling among us.”6 This seemingly simple protest strikes at the heart of many of the social and economic problems in the district between 1803 and 1810. The next day, the convention elaborated on the issue of settlement, complaining of residents’ inability to obtain titles for new land, an indication that the Spanish government had ceased survey work. It is useful to consider the issue of land in Spanish West Florida in light of the arguments put forth by Woody Holton in Forced Founders and Leslie Hall in Land and Allegiance in Revolutionary Georgia. Both have described the relationship between land ownership and revolutionary sentiment in the period prior to and during the American Revolution. Hall in particular notes that the ability of the Rebel or the British governments to trade land for allegiance in frontier Georgia was critical to success or failure in that region. The Georgia described in Hall’s study is one in which the ability

a n dr ew mcmich a el

to purchase or retain land holdings trumped political loyalty. Was this also the case for Spanish West Florida? This chapter inquires into the issue of land and landownership in the area that comprises the present Louisiana parishes of Baton Rouge and East and West Feliciana and this issue’s connection to the West Florida Revolution of 1810.7 Along with Pensacola, Mobile, and St Augustine, Baton Rouge was one of the major settled regions of Spanish Florida. From the 1770s through 1810 it saw a huge inﬂux of a wide variety of settlers with mixed political loyalties. Britons came in large numbers, ﬂeeing the American Revolution and seeking the stability of a monarchical government.8 After 1783 Americans followed, looking for land and opportunity on an open frontier. They joined French and Spanish residents already living under Spanish rule. The Louisiana Purchase created a surrounded borderlands and with that a degree of instability for West Floridians that would test the ability of the Spanish government to retain residents’ loyalty. The area contained both frontier and nonfrontier areas, with the town of Baton Rouge being relatively settled and the Feliciana area to the north remaining a borderland in many senses. The latter was in the process of settlement during the 1783–1810 period and abutted American-held Mississippi at longitude thirty-one degrees. The Spanish government in West Florida actively pursued a policy between 1783 and around 1807 that used land as an inducement for settlement and loyalty.9 Thus though loyalty after the American Revolution lay by default with the Spanish, Spain reinforced the allegiance by providing a government willing to act in residents’ interests as long as those residents displayed a reciprocal allegiance. This allegiance was further cemented by the Spaniards’ willingness to accommodate the Anglo-Americans’ quest for obtaining and cultivating land. In August 1787 Spain formally allowed Americans to obtain grants of land and settle in West Florida in order to establish a buffer between the two countries.10 Americans were required to take a loyalty oath, but it was also hoped that considerations of honor would prevent them from taking action against their new king. The oaths were quite common; even Andrew Jackson took an oath of loyalty to the Spanish monarch in order to obtain land.11 Like Jackson, however, most

Loyalty in the West Florida Borderlands

immigrants probably saw the oaths as little more than a formality, and this attitude meant that the protonationalism Eric Hobsbawm described as a “consciousness of belonging or having belonged to a lasting political entity” would have to be engendered through a longer-term stability and furtherance of economic opportunity.12 Settlers in the Baton Rouge area could acquire land in two ways: through land grants and private sales. Spain’s policy of land grants in West Florida, as in the rest of its empire, remained simple in the early nineteenth century. Any person who swore loyalty to the Crown could apply for a grant. Spanish policy operated under the principle that every person deserved enough land to sustain a family and that the way to govern and hold territory was to populate it. In theory Spanish law required petitioners to profess the Catholic faith, although in the Baton Rouge area during the early nineteenth century there is no record of the Spaniards enforcing this requirement.13 Those receiving land grants had to inhabit and cultivate part of the land for four years, after which period they would receive title to the property. Legally, failure to fulﬁll these terms would result in a loss of the title, but there is no record of any person forced to return unused land to the Spanish Crown in West Florida from 1785 through 1810. The size of the family usually determined the amount of land granted, as long as the grant did not exceed eight hundred arpents.14 Detail maps commissioned in 1799 represent the best source for determining patterns of land ownership in the Bayou Sara section of Feliciana prior to 1810 and help demonstrate the effectiveness of Spain’s land grant policies in preventing the formation of large landholdings. While maps exist for other areas in and around Baton Rouge, the Feliciana records present the best picture of Spanish land grant policies in West Florida because the area had not been extensively settled under the British or the French, under whose rule land distribution had already occurred in almost every other part of the Baton Rouge district. In West Florida, where lands had been granted over the years by the French, British, and Spanish and were also subject to secondary sales, any systematic analysis of the process is impossible.

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Although incomplete, the Feliciana maps detail 182 plots of land in the district, beginning at the northern border of Baton Rouge district and running north to the line separating West Florida from Mississippi. Of the listed plots in the district, 21 did not indicate size. The 161 remaining plots ranged in size from 31 to 2,000 arpents. More speciﬁcally, 39, or just under 25 percent, were larger than 800 arpents, and 104, or 65 percent, measured less than 800 arpents, with 18 being exactly 800 arpents.15 Women held title to at least 12 of the 161 plots of land. Eight hundred arpents was the limit on initial grants imposed by Spanish law, but regulations did not prohibit a person or family from accumulating more than 800 arpents of land through private purchases. Thus of the 39 plots larger than 800 arpents, 22, or 56 percent, measured exactly 1,000 arpents. The largest single landowner who appears on the maps in Feliciana prior to 1803 (when speculators began selling off land following the Louisiana Purchase) was John Turnbull, who held two separate plots of 2,000 arpents each. While several landholders owned more than one plot of land, only a few managed to accumulate more than 1,000 total arpents before 1799. The average plot measured 644 arpents, or about 515 acres. We see from these numbers that in the Feliciana district Spain was fairly rigorous in enforcing their policy of not creating a class of large estate owners. Most residents of the district could expect to amass enough land to engage in proﬁtable plantation agriculture. The nature of the Spanish land grant system ensured this outcome. Still Spanish policy held ﬁrm to the notion that settlers should only receive as much land as they could realistically use, but by cultivating and improving the land an owner could petition the Crown for an increase in the size of the holding by obtaining extra grants.16 For example, Daniel Clark used this rule to his beneﬁt in January 1799 when he wrote to inform the Spanish governor of a bridge that he had built one league from Fort Baton Rouge.17 The construction of the bridge allowed him to petition for extra land either adjoining the already-existing grant or in some other place where Clark might want to begin a new farm. Squatters

Loyalty in the West Florida Borderlands

who occupied and cultivated a portion of land for at least ten years could make an outright purchase of the property after a government assessment, although liberal land grant policies meant that squatting occurred only infrequently in the Baton Rouge district. Some improvements were required of a landholder. Thus if the grant bordered a river, Spanish law required the owner to construct levees, canals, or bridges as needed. The key to understanding Spanish land policy, however, is that the system of land acquisition worked in favor of small claimants, as long as the settler could prove the ability to cultivate the land and improve it. This promoted three results. First, the policy discouraged rampant land speculation of the type seen in the Virginia and Kentucky portions of the British and later American territories.18 Second, the four-year lag between obtaining the initial claim and securing rights to the title actively encouraged settlement, as the landholder had to work the land in some fashion. Finally, the policy worked to establish a framework for loyalty to the Spanish empire among residents prior to 1803. The effect of the Louisiana Purchase and its impact on people on both sides of the Mississippi river may seem obvious–the United States got the land and the people that came with it. Yet the problem is more complicated. Unfortunately, Latin Americanists have been reluctant to address the topic, as if Spanish American history in Louisiana ended with the Louisiana Purchase. When Americanists talk about the Louisiana Purchase, they generally do so in a Jeffersonian political context or in terms of the initiation of westward expansion.19 What is important to note, geographically as well as politically, is that the Louisiana Purchase created a “surrounded borderland”: American territory to the north in Mississippi and west and south in Louisiana, while to the east lay a mostly unsettled frontier with Mobile as the nearest outpost. That surrounded borderland in turn created a degree of instability for West Floridians that would test the ability of the Spanish government to retain residents’ carefully nurtured loyalty. Ofﬁcial Spanish and U.S. actions in the reconﬁgured borderland could hardly have been more different. President Jefferson dispatched surveyors to cross and recross Louisiana and West Florida in order to check and

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recheck boundaries.20 Finally convinced that the Purchase did not include any part of the Floridas, Jefferson and his Secretary of State James Madison asked the new American governor of Louisiana, William Claiborne, to assess the region’s loyalty and appoint new district commissioners. Claiborne’s assessment of the Louisianans’ loyalty toward the United States government was not negative, but neither was it particularly favorable. Most local ofﬁcials took loyalty oaths without question, while a few Spanish ofﬁcials “graciously” declined to serve the new government and were replaced without trouble. Claiborne believed that most elites probably transferred their national loyalty to the United States, especially after the United States assured them of retaining their local power.21 Claiborne also noted that Louisianans retained what he called a “great partiality for France as their Mother Country” and for the Spanish system as well.22 More ominously for the United States, Claiborne could not guarantee that Louisiana Creoles—those people of French descent born in Louisiana— would side with the United States in the event of a war. The continuing presence in New Orleans of several high-ranking Spanish ofﬁcials, despite persistent U.S. requests for them to leave, reinforced American fears.23 More troubling for the U.S. assessment of residents’ loyalty was the situation of free blacks and the free black militia.24 While the United States initially agreed to honor land surveys conducted by France and Spain and thereby signaled some stability in the main currency of frontier fortunes, locals in 1804 began to survey land on their own, hoping to be able to make claims before the United States could gain bureaucratic control over the region.25 Claiborne partially reversed course, however, stating that he had no intention of honoring land surveys made by the Spanish after the cession date and that he considered the land therefore vacant.26 No method now exists for measuring how many surveys were affected by this policy, but the notion that the United States might disregard existing land claims must have given some residents pause. In Spanish Florida, on the eastern side of the Mississippi, rumors to the effect that the purchase had also included West Florida crossed the countryside, echoed by talk that the United States was trying to negotiate

Loyalty in the West Florida Borderlands

with Spain for the purchase of East and West Florida.27 In 1803 residents began a furious transfer of tens of thousands of acres of land.28 While the territory was still under French/Spanish control, Daniel Clark bought a 208,000–acre tract on the Ouachita River in present-day north central Louisiana. That same year, Clark purchased nine separate plots in and around the Baton Rouge/Feliciana area that totaled more than ninety-six thousand arpents. He probably capitalized on fears of possible chaos following the change of government and acquired as much local land as he could. In doing so, he turned himself into one of the largest landholders in the Mississippi Valley and was therefore in a position to capitalize on future American settlement in West Florida.29 A ﬂight of the landed elites could have had serious consequences for the social order had settlement not already taken place on such a large scale that it created a new landed elite (albeit with less land but a great deal of wealth) in the area. Also susceptible to rumors, the Spanish government itself conceded royal land in Matanzas, Cuba, to residents of Florida who did not wish to remain in the area.30 In Matanzas they could join the already-settled evacuees from East Florida who had arrived in 1763. Some who remained in Spanish West Florida hedged their bets, continuing to make new claims under the Spanish system while at the same time registering those and older claims in Spanish Florida with the United States Land Ofﬁce in New Orleans.31 While the question of what was included in the Purchase remained in doubt, rumors to the effect that the United State might trade Louisiana for West Florida also spread through the latter. In late 1803 William Dunbar, a surveyor for the Spanish government who had determined the thirty-one degree latitude boundary between Spanish West Florida and the United States in 1798, wrote to his long-time correspondent Thomas Jefferson regarding the need to establish the boundary line between Louisiana and Spanish territory.32 While the Spanish had an interest in Dunbar’s surveying the Louisiana/Texas border, Dunbar noted that ofﬁcials had not made any ﬁrm plans because of the widespread belief that the two Floridas would be given to the United States by Spain in exchange for the western side of the Mississippi.33 Two years later, in June 1805, the

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prospect was still strong enough that Spanish agents in Natchitoches, near the Texas border, used the possibility and prevalence of the rumors to weaken residents’ loyalty toward the U.S. government.34 That Indian chiefs and Spanish Catholic priests were also spreading this information, according to Claiborne’s informants, suggested that the rumor had enough currency to resonate widely and that a multitude of groups had become involved in what Claiborne in another letter called “the sport of foreign and domestic intrigues.”35 Yet those intrigues seemed to receive conﬁrmation in the person of Juan Ventura Morales, who held the title of paymaster general and intendant pro tempore of West Florida. Claiborne described him as a man with “more information, but less principle than any Spanish ofﬁcer.” Claiming to act under the authority of the Spanish Crown, Morales had apparently set up a land ofﬁce in New Orleans and begun selling Crown land in June 1805.36 A suspicious Claiborne asked for clariﬁcation from Spanish ofﬁcials, who initially confessed to not knowing anything about the matter.37 Along with the offer of refuge in Cuba, Morales actions hinted that Spain intended to abandon claims to West Florida and rumors to this effect swirled throughout Louisiana and West Florida. In fact, Spain had no intention of abandoning anything. Morales, it turned out, was acting without authority, misinterpreting—whether deliberately cannot be known—a royal order regarding the survey of Crown lands in West Florida for new immigrants.38 His actions reinforced the existing stereotype regarding Spanish corruption in the minds of American ofﬁcials. Under pressure from Spanish and American ofﬁcials, Morales agreed to stop selling Crown lands, though he had already sold off more than one million acres to New Orleans and West Florida elites, who had then turned around and sold their holdings to a newly landed elite.39 Confusion reigned in the ﬁrst few years after the Louisiana Purchase. The Purchase itself placed Spanish West Florida in a precarious geographic position, with residents surrounded by a single foreign power and required to move their goods through a foreign port subject to closure at any time. Immediately after the Purchase, few residents could state with any kind of certainty the national banner under which they would be

Loyalty in the West Florida Borderlands

living as boundaries remained unclear and residents could not know if the terms of the Purchase included the Floridas, or indeed if Louisiana would be traded for the Floridas. Meanwhile, U.S. land policy was not at all certain and Louisianans faced the possibility that they might see local vacant land go the way of Kentucky in the 1790s. In the years between 1803 and 1810 a number of events challenged the loyalty of West Floridians. The earliest and potentially the most devastating test came during a ﬁlibustering raid in 1804 when as many as a dozen Spanish subjects from the Feliciana district north of Baton Rouge joined a band of Mississippians led by Reuben, Samuel, and Nathan Kemper in a series of raids on residents and local plantations. The immediate cause of the incident was an attempt to expel the Kempers from a local plantation after a property dispute.40 Claiming to want to relieve locals from what they called “the galling yoke of tyranny and become freemen,” the Kempers were in reality nothing more than land pirates.41 Deciding to ﬁght the eviction notice, the Kempers and “four other well-armed companions” took refuge in a local house.42 During the latter half of 1804 the Kempers’ actions ranged from petty thievery that included stealing cows, horses, slaves, and various household items to serious assault. Finally in late 1804 the Kempers attempted to initiate rebellion against the Spanish government through a declaration of independence, unfurling a new ﬂag for the so-called West Florida Republic. Documents identifying some of the Kemper gang contain the names of eight property owners and their family members, all from the Feliciana district, a fact that suggests that this was no petit bourgeois rebellion led by landless residents, although Kemper’s gang may certainly have attracted such. Instead, the band of men was drawn from all levels of society, from the landowner Reuben Kemper, who led the raids, to small and middling landowners. There was also a strong family component to the gang, with at least twelve and perhaps thirteen of the thirty-eight men related to others in the gang.43 What do the Kemper raids reveal about loyalty in West Florida? Undeniably the Kempers tapped into a vein of discontent that existed in West Florida, and some rallied to the Kempers’ “cause” for whatever personal

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grievances they might have harbored against local ofﬁcials or residents. The overwhelming majority of West Floridians, however, did not join the Kempers and instead actively worked to capture the banditti. Most residents, it seems, retained enough loyalty to the Spanish Crown that they did not see the raids as a necessary outlet for their grievances. Spanish ofﬁcials clearly saw this loyalty and entrusted Anglo-American planters to lead militia patrols to capture the Kemper gang. That Spain also relied on other lower-class Anglo-Americans for militia patrols, instead of leaving the problem to Spanish troops, demonstrated profound conﬁdence in the Anglo-Americans under Spanish jurisdiction.44 A counter argument could be made that in fact disloyalty was pervasive but that the Spanish were too strong to ﬁght. Further, within this argument, Anglo-Americans saw the Kemper gang—who after all acted more like a band of cattle thieves than revolutionaries—simply an inappropriate vehicle for rebellion. If such disloyalty had been as pervasive as past historians have suggested, the Kempers could easily have been the spark if not the intellectual vanguard of a wider rebellion. So while the Kempers roamed the countryside waving a ﬂag and reciting their declarations, other disaffected residents could easily have seized the moment and organized themselves into an effective force able to surprise the Baton Rouge fort’s defenders and take control from the Spanish Crown, but only if they were numerous enough and had the will. No such support, however, emerged. Even when the raids became an open political rebellion, residents united to suppress the invaders, turning out for militia patrols in such numbers that Spanish ofﬁcials had to turn them away. Although the Kempers did not bring about the revolution that they had hoped for in 1804, they inadvertently set in motion a series of events that would end with the independence of West Florida in 1810. Records from the period between 1806 and 1810 speak of a growing unhappiness among some residents, and a few of the more recent, although anonymous, arrivals from the United States began to talk of revolution. After 1804 the Spanish government tightened land policies with regard to foreigners, making it more difﬁcult for American immigrants to obtain land. Ofﬁcials also began to delay new surveys for local residents. The failed Kemper raids

Loyalty in the West Florida Borderlands

and subsequent rebellion thus brought about a shift in relations between Spanish ofﬁcials and Feliciana residents because of subsequent changes in land policy that moved the region closer to independence. What was before the raid a system of fairly relaxed grants and surveying became a policy designed to slow down the distribution of land. In November 1804 Governor Vicente Folch decreed that Americans could not sell their land holdings in West Florida unless they had settled and cultivated the land for ten years. This represented a six-year extension of the normal waiting period imposed by Spanish law and symbolically placed landowners in the same class as squatters.45 A notice of land transfer dated December 19, 1804, is the earliest mention in West Florida records of a total suspension of land grants for Anglo-American immigrants.46 In March 1805 the chief surveyor in West Florida forbade one of his surveyors from completing any surveys without express written consent.47 It appears the Spanish government had begun to enforce what was already a trend in Spanish land policy since the 1790s—a deliberate attempt to slow and regulate more closely, although not halt, Anglo-American settlement in the disputed area of West Florida. The formerly permissive system that had allowed immigrants to take a loyalty oath had apparently been shut down and remained so through 1810. Modifying its earlier belief that populating West Florida with Americans citizens cum Spanish subjects would help stem United States expansion into the Borderlands, the Spanish government seems to have decided that Americans brought more trouble than they prevented. The new policy seemed to cover existing American subjects in West Florida as well. Prior to 1805 established landowners could identify a plot they wished to obtain, mark a survey on their own, and then present the survey to the local surveyor general for veriﬁcation. At some point, as his schedule would permit, the surveyor general would send an assistant to verify the boundaries. Meanwhile, the claimant could begin to clear the land and work it. That privilege ended in 1805. By removing this prerogative, Spain reduced the privileges and status of long-established residents.48

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This shift in policy, however, still did not prevent Americans either inside or outside Spanish West Florida from purchasing land through secondary sales. An examination of these sales reveals several patterns that speak to the changing nature of land value and its relationship to loyalty in the West Florida borderlands. Land sale records generally included the residence of both the buyer and the seller, reﬂecting the Spanish need to establish community and to deﬁne the parameters of that community. Beginning in 1800, land sales to outsiders began to increase, and individuals and land companies located outside of Spanish West Florida purchased more than 10 percent of all land between 1800 and 1810.49 The land companies no doubt hoped to proﬁt in the same way that land companies had profited in Kentucky, Tennessee, and other parts of the U.S. frontier. At the same time, these groups may have anticipated a change in government. Or perhaps they believed that, barring land grants (which the Spanish government would not give to speculators), they could still make a proﬁt from buying parcels from already-established residents. The largest of the companies was the ﬁrm of Cochran and Rhea. Although based in New Orleans, the pair occasionally appears in the records as “residents” of Baton Rouge. Between 1803 and 1806 the men purchased twenty different plots of land that ranged in size from 240 to 1,200 arpents, for a total of 10,140 arpents—about 7 percent of land sold during that period.50 On the individual level landowners could sometimes realize huge proﬁts through petty speculation. On May 23, 1800, John Ross sold a 1,000–arpent parcel of land located on Bayou Sara to John Mink for one thousand pesos, almost exactly the average price for land on the Baton Rouge frontier for that year. That same day, Mink resold the land to John O’Connor for the same price plus twenty cows. Again on that same day, O’Connor sold the land for two thousand pesos to William Cobb and Elijah Adams, two Mississippians probably engaged in land speculation.51 In that sale O’Connor doubled his investment in a single day. In other cases men broke up the land that they had purchased in order to make a proﬁt while remaining landowners. For example, in 1803 John

1. Average price of land in West Florida, 1785–1810

Note: Land prices taken from wfp, vols. 1–18. Total number of land sales equals 379. To obtain an average for each year, the sales were sorted by price, removing the highest and lowest prices in each category and averaging the remainder. The years 1787–91, 1792–95, 1796–99, and 1809–10 were combined in order to obtain a large enough sample from which to draw conclusions. In each year several sales could not be included in the calculations because of missing information such as price or arpentage. Also not included were land sales at state auctions, sales of plots within the towns of Baton Rouge or St. Francisville, and sales of plantations that included among items farm implements, slaves, and crops. The above-average spikes in Baton Rouge for 1802 and 1807 were due to the sale of several well-improved plantations in those years.

Buck purchased 320 arpents for 930 pesos and then resold 300 arpents from that parcel for 1,200 pesos.52 He retained 20 arpents, enough to support his family and to engage in small-scale agricultural production. Secondary sales in West Florida, however, represented a double-edged sword, and the rise in prices reﬂects this fact. On the one hand, West Florida had become a sellers market, especially in the years after 1805 when the Spanish government tightened up its land grant policies. On the other hand, as the land became more densely settled and West Floridians improved their plots by clearing the land, planting crops, and constructing buildings and fences, the land gained in value (see ﬁgure 1). As seen in ﬁgure 2, when broken down by region, however, two exceptions to the rise in prices emerge; they may go a long way toward helping

2. Average price of land in West Florida, by region, 1785–1810

Note: Land prices taken from wfp, vols. 1–18. Total number of land sales equals 379. To obtain an average for each year, the sales were sorted by price, removing the highest and lowest prices in each category and averaging the remainder. The years 1787–91, 1792–95, 1796–99, and 1809–10 were combined in order to obtain a large enough sample from which to draw conclusions. In each year several sales could not be included in the calculations because of missing information such as price or arpentage. Also not included were land sales at state auctions, sales of plots within the towns of Baton Rouge or St. Francisville, and sales of plantations that included among items farm implements, slaves, and crops. The above-average spikes in Baton Rouge for 1802 and 1807 were due to the sale of several well-improved plantations in those years.

to explain discontent among residents over the issue of land. The Feliciana land sales account for nearly one-third of the total sales in West Florida from 1797 through 1810 and so permit an analysis of the relationship between land and land sales on the frontier and the burgeoning revolutionary sentiment in West Florida. For the most part, prices in Feliciana rose in proportion to those in West Florida as a whole. As settlers in Feliciana improved their land, prices in the district increased. But while the average price of land in Feliciana rose from 1796 through 1802, it experienced a drop of more than 50 percent in 1803 and 1804.53 Figure 2 reveals that land prices in Feliciana then rose again from 1805 through 1807, but after 1807 they experienced a three-year drop that again equaled an almost 50 percent decline in price. During the same period

Loyalty in the West Florida Borderlands

land prices elsewhere in West Florida rose steadily, dropped slightly in 1803, and then continued their previous rise with little reduction through 1807. Landowners suffered a small drop in prices in 1808 and then experienced a sharp spike in 1809–1810 (see ﬁgure 2).54 The pattern of land prices thus shows two periods of price decline in Feliciana, a decline that becomes even more pronounced when placed in the context of prices elsewhere in West Florida. While residents in most of Baton Rouge enjoyed an increase in the value of their landholdings, those in Feliciana saw their fortunes decrease. Not coincidentally, the same periods of low ebb in the price of land saw the Kemper rebellion in 1804 and then the West Florida Revolution itself in 1810. Of the fourteen men sent to the West Florida Revolutionary Convention in 1810, four were from Feliciana and ﬁve from the Baton Rouge area, while the remainder came from eastern districts of West Florida; all acknowledged the Feliciana area as the center of the greatest revolutionary sentiment.55 The problem for West Floridians, then, was that the Spanish government began to enforce a restrictive policy that prohibited United States citizens from coming into West Florida, taking a loyalty oath, becoming subjects of the Spanish Crown, and then obtaining land. These restrictions meant that the relatives of those Americans who had already migrated could not join their families in Spanish West Florida without purchasing land at what might be inﬂated prices. They also meant that Americans living in the Mississippi and Louisiana territories could not obtain land grants but would instead have to buy land from already-established residents. For landowners in most of the Baton Rouge district these requirements presented an opportunity for land speculation—and the property values for the most part showed that residents could expect to double the value of their land every few years. This, however, was not the case in Feliciana where land values were only slightly higher in 1810 than they had been in 1805 and lower than they had been in 1802. Residents of Feliciana seemed to be losing money when those all around them proﬁted by their holdings. Meanwhile, landowners in the rest of Baton Rouge could proﬁt through minor speculation in the land they already owned or from what they might purchase from their

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neighbors. Access to the readily available, cheap land that could bring a true proﬁt had been closed off. Thus it seems clear that Spanish land policies in the Feliciana district between 1783 and 1803, and then from 1804 to 1810, had direct implications for intracommunity relations in West Florida at the beginning of the 1810 Revolution and the process by which Anglo-Americans in the area decided to agitate for U.S. intervention. In 1803 West Florida residents enjoyed good rapport with Spanish ofﬁcials. Land distribution worked against the creation of a large planter class, although some planters clearly enjoyed greater status than others. On the whole, however, average distribution seems to indicate relative equity of ownership. A network of lending and assistance existed among Spanish ofﬁcials and local landowners. The initial Kemper raids, rather than pitting Anglo-Americans against the Spaniards, drew most of the inhabitants together in an effort to defend the region. It was only after the raid and the resulting shift in Spanish land policies that discontent grew in Feliciana. What had been the normal Spanish system of allowing settlers to obtain land quickly and easily slowed down for established planters and stopped altogether for immigrants. A government that had heretofore operated so efﬁciently in facilitating Americans’ quest for “the main chance” prior to the Kemper rebellion no longer met the needs of the Anglo-American residents of Feliciana and Baton Rouge. Land of course was not the only issue for West Florida’s reluctant revolutionaries. By 1810 the Spanish monarchy had collapsed under the weight of the Napoleonic invasion. The somewhat effective 1807 American embargo of West Florida brought the potential for another kind of economic chaos, and the death of the beloved local Spanish governor Carlos de Grand Prè, who was then succeeded by a corrupt placeman, had contributed to a local sense of instability. Rising crime after 1803 also became an issue, in particular the acts committed by people who came from, or went to, American territory. Nonetheless, it is argued here, the problem of land prices in West Florida signiﬁcantly affected national loyalty and revolutionary ideology in the southern borderlands. In this sense the revolutionaries were not unlike their counterparts in Virginia and Georgia who rebelled in part over land

Loyalty in the West Florida Borderlands

issues during the American Revolution.56 West Floridian loyalty had always been one of default, bolstered by a Spanish policy of liberal land grants and the promise of proﬁts on that land. When Spanish policies changed, it should not be surprising that allegiance to Spain evaporated. When Bostonians labeled the Revolution of 1810 a “mimick” revolution, they relegated it to a secondary position vis-à-vis the “real” revolution of 1776. But the 1810 movement has every right to claim the revolutionary mantle. The residents of West Florida exchanged one government (the Spanish monarchy) for another (independence, to be followed shortly by American occupation and political assimilation). For more than twentyﬁve years West Florida residents had lived under the aegis of the Spanish Crown, with no sign of dissatisfaction. When their social, economic, and political networks began to dissolve, they revolted. Still was it a “mimick” revolution? In some senses it was. It followed a pattern similar to contemporary revolutions all across Spanish America. Its main similarity to those, and one for which it should be given more credit, is that it did not occur as a part of some patriotic plan to become American. Rather, it began as a reaction against what the residents saw as potential for political chaos after the collapse of the Spanish monarchy and was spurred by overly strict land policies. At its base this uprising was a pragmatic revolution on the part of some locals: when the government no longer served their immediate economic needs, they shrugged it off. Yet by 1810 West Floridians had more to risk than they had in 1804. Baton Rouge had changed from a small frontier post into a town with streets and small plots of land with houses for sale. Land prices had risen steeply, and even St. Francisville on the frontier of Feliciana had evolved into a place with town lots and a general store. More accurately then, this revolution was one of “default” rather than ideology. The West Florida declaration contained none of the rhetoric of liberty found in numerous other declarations of independence in the western hemisphere during this time period. West Floridians, having no other recourse, chose independence and eventual incorporation into the United States over the uncertainty brought on by falling land prices; the absence of a strong, honest governor; and the fall of their mother country.

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Because of anti-French sentiments in West Florida and because the British had virtually withdrawn from the North American colonies, West Floridians indeed had little choice. For the British, all but removed from the Americas save for Canada and a few Caribbean colonies, the main concern was to prevent the province from becoming captive to French interests, although some Baton Rouge residents in 1809 had explored the possibility of a British invasion of Mobile and West Florida.57 Napoleon, who had exhorted Spanish colonies in the New World to independence, had neither the political or economic capital, nor the military might, to take control of the area. And as for complete independence, the Baton Rouge district probably did not contain enough land and resources to make the area a viable independent political and economic unit. In the long run, the region’s proximity to the United States meant that once the revolution began, intervention of American troops in 1811 became inevitable. The United States had claimed West Florida as American territory since 1803 and could not in good conscience return the area to Spanish rule, even had the U.S. government had the means to do so. The residents of Baton Rouge and West Florida, then, became American because they had nowhere else to turn. This outcome speaks to the place of loyalty and nationalism in West Florida, the lower Mississippi Valley, and perhaps the South itself. Eric Hobsbawm described protonationalism as “the consciousness of belonging or having belonged to a lasting political entity.”58 In some sense the French, British, and Spanish Crowns provided that sense of belonging up through 1810. For West Floridians the Spanish Crown received the loyalty due it as a guarantor of their ability to obtain land and move up the ladder of wealth by using the opportunities available to settlers on the Borderlands. At the same time, many of the original West Florida settlers had moved to the province in order to ﬂee either the American Revolution or religious persecution. With regard to the former, that they should remain loyal to a king should come as no surprise—they ﬂed a movement in the 1770s and 1780s designed to replace one. Many West Floridians were comfortable with the idea of a sovereign, even a Catholic one. Once, however, the stability of the region began to suffer after 1803, particularly following the Kemper raids, and after the

Loyalty in the West Florida Borderlands

Spanish Crown restricted the ability of residents to prosper by amassing land, West Floridians became restless and uncertain. Yet any dissent present between 1804 and 1809 clearly reﬂected a minority opinion. By 1809, however, given the conﬂuence of international events, rising local crime, and a drop in land prices in a district already known for disloyalty, virtually every prop that might assure the loyalty of a people had disappeared. The bases of West Floridian loyalty to Spain that had existed at the levels of community, region, province, and country had been eliminated one by one until only loyalty to the local community remained. West Floridians chose their community, as they had to, because it was the source of their prosperity, happiness, and independence. The revolution allowed them to replace the now-absent higher levels of political authority with the most convenient substitute available, the United States. In 1810 West Floridians underwent their third change of government (the ﬁfth for those with property on the west side of the Mississippi) in a process familiar to any who had lived in the area since 1763.

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By the early 1700s the Gulf South encompassed strikingly diverse societies that had experienced complex changes since Europeans ﬁrst ventured there nearly two hundred years before. Yet even as economic, political, and social forces transformed the region once again during the turbulent eighteenth century, the Gulf South was poised on the brink of another major transition. Its distinctive societies for the most part had developed not only at great distance from the centers of the empires (French, Spanish, and British) that claimed them but in relative isolation from one another as well. In the nineteenth century they would be brought within the expanding borders of the United States. This outcome was as unpredictable in the early eighteenth century as it had begun to appear inevitable by the end of that eventful period. The impact of Americanization on the region can hardly be overstated. The remarkable variation in colonial Gulf South societies deﬁes easy generalization. What they nearly all shared, however, was eventual submersion in the expansionistic United States or partial or even complete elimination—as in the case of Indian groups that were relocated elsewhere—when they were incorporated within U.S. borders. Not only were their histories and particularities in large measure submerged within the national culture and mainstream historical narrative of the United States, as Daniel Usner suggests, but over time even state and local histories were constructed in such ways that what are often taken for local memory and historical knowledge may be largely the product of invention.

Afterword

This mythologization of the Gulf South past in turn has created what sometimes actually are new, hybrid, or imported traditions. Although these traditions may be connected in some fashion to historical experience, they also appear in forms that cannot necessarily be interpreted in straightforward historical terms.1 An example that comes to mind is that of the Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans. The Afro-Creoles of New Orleans who organized themselves into separate and rival “tribes” did not look to Louisiana’s own indigenous past but instead modeled their tribal costumes on those of the Plains Indians. The story is that, although initially the Lakota Indians were offended by this adoption of their dress, they later came to view the practice as positive.2 This unhistorical adoption of cultural patterns from an area and people far removed from the Gulf South perhaps represents an echo of the formation of Indian-African bonds that characterized parts of the region from Florida to Texas. Those bonds were forged in the context of European pressure, domination, and exploitation that affected individuals and groups in varying ways and at different levels of intensity. The Black Seminoles of Florida, the subject of Jane Landers’s chapter, emerged as a quasi-separate group when fugitive Africans and Creek Indians attempting to maintain their independence and viability in the face of increasing pressure from the British and later the United States made common cause and found strength in unity. David Wheat’s study of Nicolas Mongoula and early Mobile suggests that members of the African and Indian servile groups learned from one another through work experiences and above all through the bonds of marriage and family, in which couples shared their skills, languages, and beliefs and imparted this rich mix to their children. If the history of the Mardi Gras Indians has nothing to do with the developments in the Gulf South during the period that it was settled and colonized by Europeans, nonetheless their brilliant costumes, music, and dance competitions symbolize and evoke a complex past in which Africans and Indians, as well as Europeans, collaborated to form dynamic, culturally and socially pluralistic, if unequal, societies. The chapters in this volume both remind us how relatively little we yet know about these societies and how complex and particular their histories

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were. Apart from their eventual incorporation into the United States and the overwhelming challenge to their locally distinctive socioeconomic and cultural arrangements that Americanization represented, certain forces affected nearly all these societies during the eighteenth century. Probably foremost among these forces were the rapidity of events and of developments in the eighteenth century and the ﬂuidity that characterized socioeconomic and ethnic groups. The degree to which all these groups seem to have been involved in a near-constant effort of reinvention and reassessment of their situations vis- à-vis others is striking indeed. The Indian groups of Florida’s wild Atlantic coast discussed by Amy Bushnell seem to have attempted to maintain an uncertain balance between their relations with the familiar, if grudgingly accepted, Spaniards and the complications and potential new threat represented by the arrival of British castaways in their territory. For their part the castaways hoped to convince the Indians whom they encountered that they were Spanish, a ruse that from the outset was less than convincing. Bushnell concludes that Florida’s coastal Indians probably did not accept the pretense for long, if at all. Rather, their hesitancy to inﬂict any serious injury on the castaways might have hinged less on the fear that the castaways were Spaniards, and thus that by harming the English they would risk jeopardizing their relations with the established European power in St. Augustine, than on the Indians’ continued uncertainty as to just who these strangers were. In Greg O’Brien’s essay Choctaws and Chickasaws had no doubts with whom they were dealing, as their relations with the British in West Florida had for some time been governed by mutually accepted accords. Additionally, they already had had long experience with British ofﬁcials and traders. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, however, these relations were affected not only by the strengthening Spanish presence in New Orleans but by internal developments within the tribes themselves. Again, Indian groups found themselves involved in a continuing process of negotiation and reassessment of relative strength and advantage. Internal changes and adjustments to some degree represented a response to the tensions that resulted from the seeming breakdown of earlier understandings

Afterword

forged with British ofﬁcials and traders. O’Brien notes the challenges that the freelancing activities of non-elite Indians posed, not only to the continuation of advantageous relations with the British but also to the strength of traditional tribal leadership. Just as chiefs had difﬁculty in controlling the actions of their people, especially the young warriors, so did British ofﬁcials experience problems in restraining the activities of traders who lived among the Indians and were all too ready to supply them with the alcohol that many demanded. This process of reinvention and the need to revamp alliances for protection and survival likewise structured the Seminoles’ shifting relationships with the British (and later the Americans) and Spanish. It additionally fostered the emergence of the partly distinct but closely allied group of Black Seminoles. The semifeudal relationship that the Seminoles forged with fugitive slaves who sought to settle in their territory provided advantages for both groups as blacks settled both among the Seminoles and in villages of their own. These blacks became key allies of the Seminoles, at times acting as intermediaries between them and the Spaniards. The Spaniards for their part generally recognized the beneﬁts of maintaining friendly relations and military alliances with Creeks and Seminoles (with free blacks playing a key role on both sides) as a hedge against Anglo expansion. They also continued to recognize the independence of former Anglo-owned slaves who had settled among the Indians. Refashioning followed a rather different course among the Creeks whom Karl Davis discusses. Notwithstanding severe population decline, the strength of the lineage and clan-based Creek social organization was such that they were able to incorporate European, mainly British, traders into their system of kinship and family obligations through marriage to Creek women. Intermarried European men found themselves functioning within the Creek context of alliance, kinship obligation, and trade in which the Creeks largely set the terms, while the Creeks viewed these connections as part of their larger effort to pursue diplomatic strategies that would ensure them favorable trade relations and continued political and economic autonomy. The kinship connections that they formed with Europeans not only fostered useful links to sources of manufactured goods

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but also produced outstanding leaders. One such was Alexander McGillivray, whose British and Creek background and upbringing equipped him well to exercise leadership among the Creeks and successfully to forge relations with the Spaniards based in Pensacola so as to ﬁll the vacuum left by the British retreat after the American Revolution and as a hedge against American expansionism. For their part the Spaniards were eager to make an alliance with the Creeks and protected the latter’s territory from the encroachment of new settlers, as well as offering them arms for defense. The Creeks did not refashion themselves so much as they expanded and elaborated on long-established strategies by extending them to include their relationships with the British, Americans, and Spaniards, as Davis so convincingly argues. Although in quite different circumstances and with a very different outcome, the residents of Natchitoches also refashioned themselves in this era, in their case as tobacco planters, as they responded to the opportunities afforded by the economic ambitions of the new Spanish Bourbon regime in Louisiana. The socioeconomic and demographic transformation of Natchitoches that Sophie Burton traces was as rapid as it was profound. The result was the emergence of a “highly stratiﬁed,” slave-owning free French society. The formerly signiﬁcant Indian trade virtually disappeared as a locally important economic activity, disparities of wealth and status within the free group were greatly enhanced, and a black, mainly enslaved, community developed as a quasi-separate group within local society—all within the approximately forty-year period of Spanish rule in Louisiana. Similarly the rapid establishment of a ranching economy in Nuevo Santander in what was southeastern Texas, documented by Armando Alonzo, fostered burgeoning population growth in an area that had been only minimally populated by Spaniards. It also was responsible for the appearance of a new port, Matamoros, that would play an important role in the economy of the Gulf South region in the nineteenth century. Like the planters of Natchitoches, the settlers of Nuevo Santander beneﬁted from the policies and economic initiatives of the Spanish Bourbon regime as well as from growth in markets and shipping that made it feasible and

Afterword

even proﬁtable to invest in the development of areas once too remote to participate on a large scale in the active commerce of the Spanish empire. In contrast to the results of the rapid commercialization of agriculture in Natchitoches, however, Alonzo argues that the development of the ranching economy of Nuevo Santander did not lead to the growth of a dominant landed elite. There were large landholdings to be sure, but the great majority of ranches remained small to middling in size. The testing and reassessment of loyalties manifested themselves in yet another variant in West Florida, as Andrew McMichael has shown. Countering the common assumption that British and American settlers of West Florida chafed under Spanish rule, McMichael concludes that in the latter decades of the eighteenth century West Florida’s residents generally were content with the Spanish regime, which had readily provided them with grants of land at reasonable prices and did little to enforce the stipulation that residents must be practitioners of Roman Catholicism. The raids staged by the Kempers failed to spark rebellion among most of West Florida’s residents, and Spanish authorities reciprocated the loyalty of their Anglo-American subjects by relying on them to form patrols to capture the renegade gang. It was only from 1804 onward when Spanish ofﬁcials adopted tactics designed to slow the rate of Anglo-American settlement—and concomitantly potential settlers’ acquisition of land— that discontent with Spanish rule began to increase. In far more individualized ways the motley residents of French New Orleans took advantage of the opportunities offered by life in a remote colonial outpost to loosen and challenge the social structures of France that were only partially replicated in the colony. Shannon Dawdy argues that the verbal violence she has studied reﬂected deﬁance of the old social hierarchy on the part of individuals of the lower classes, as they attempted to disguise sometimes questionable origins and lay claim to respectability that members of the elite would deny them. In face of the notable demographic, economic, and political ﬂux that affected nearly all the peoples and societies of the Gulf South in the eighteenth century, what were the sources of stability? One answer seems to lie in the realm of family and the roles that women in particular played

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in securing and maintaining family survival and success. Virginia Gould offers a fascinating portrait of four generations of Afro-Creole women in New Orleans who not only escaped the bonds of slavery and achieved a measure of ﬁnancial security but who by the nineteenth century had amassed substantial wealth, chieﬂy in the form of urban real estate. While their white consorts or husbands fathered their children and provided some ﬁnancial assistance, in Gould’s perspective these men remained secondary ﬁgures in the unfolding drama of the lives of these hard-working and capable women. Signiﬁcantly she also suggests that in antebellum New Orleans free men of African descent were not nearly as successful economically as their female counterparts, underscoring the crucial role that Afro-Creole women played in achieving stability and security for their families. Women contributed to continuity in slave communities as well, as Burton shows in Natchitoches, where the slave population experienced a natural increase and Afro-Creole women constituted the majority of the town’s female slaves by 1765. The strength of slave family life centered on Afro-Creole women, and the size of Natchitoches’s enslaved group encouraged the growth of slave communities that encompassed slaves from adjoining plantations as slaves owned by different masters opted to construct their cabins in proximity to one another. Choices of godparents among both slave and free blacks, together with the strength and continuity of the Afro-Creole majority, further reinforced the quasi-autonomy and vigor of the black community in Natchitoches. In Mobile the system of godparenthood served to reinforce and enhance social ties, which in this case often were those that had formed between Africans and Indians, both slave and free. Wheat’s intriguing study suggests another and perhaps surprising source for the integration of Mobile’s diverse inhabitants, namely language. Not only Indians but considerable numbers of Africans and whites apparently used the indigenous-based pidgin Mobilian Jargon, which also was spoken well beyond Mobile. Mobile’s rather sizeable indigenous enslaved group included representatives of a number of tribes, and these Indian slaves worked and lived in close association with slaves of African descent. Furthermore the town’s

Afterword

preponderantly male free population not surprisingly often turned to Indian women for sexual partners, the result being a notably mixed group of residents who might have relied primarily on an indigenous pidgin language for interethnic communication. Among the Creeks, as Davis explains, kinship relations and matrilineages provided the basic structure for a nation that managed to preserve a notable degree of autonomy and ﬂexibility in a context of considerable demographic and political change and external pressure. The crucial role that women played in ensuring the fulﬁllment of reciprocal kinship obligations as well as in the economy and ceremonial life was important in ensuring the viability and survival of the Creek nation. Beyond their detailed, suggestive portrayals of remarkably diverse societies and individuals that faced the multiple challenges of frequently unequal socioeconomic, military, and political relations, what lessons do these ﬁne studies teach us? In the ordeal of the Nickaleers on Florida’s Atlantic coast, the common ground established by blacks and Seminoles in Florida and by Indian and African slaves in Mobile, the jockeying for advantage by Choctaws and Chickasaws in their dealings with the British in Mobile, the economic transformation of French planters under Spanish rule in Natchitoches, and the mutual loyalty manifested by Anglo planters and Spanish ofﬁcials in West Florida, we see the complicated and shifting alliances and rivalries that emerged as members of all groups sought security, advantage, or simply survival. These studies remind us that there were not just three or four powers—France, Spain, Britain, and later the United States—contending in the colonial Gulf South but a host of others as well. These latter included Africans and Afro-Creoles, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Natchez, and Chitimachas, to name but some. The histories of these ﬂuid, vital societies provide a kaleidoscopic picture of shifting interethnic relations and suggest the multiplicity of models of social, economic, and political relations that took hold in the colonial Gulf South. The majority of the studies in this volume also point to a signiﬁcant change that affected much of the Gulf South and all the groups that inhabited it in the eighteenth century in a way that may seem so obvious as

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often to be ignored: the expanding Spanish presence and the new vitality that the Spanish Bourbon regime brought to commercial and colonization schemes in the region. Essentially a remote backwater of the French empire during the ﬁrst two-thirds of the eighteenth century, under Spanish rule New Orleans and Louisiana grew rapidly, both in population and in economic terms, with important consequences for new and existing settlements and relations among ethnic and national groups. The African population in Louisiana soared, and the increasing presence of settlers of European origin—Anglos in West Florida and the Upper Mississippi Valley, Mexicans in Nuevo Santander, Acadians (Cajuns), and Canary Islanders in the Lower Mississippi Valley and Texas—further pressured native American groups. The results of Spanish ambitions in the Gulf South were in some ways paradoxical, particularly the decision to allow settlement by Anglo settlers in the Upper Mississippi Valley, West Florida, and Texas. This policy is usually seen as paving the way for the Americanization that began in earnest after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, but as seen in McMichael’s article, the mainly British settlers of West Florida were not necessarily eager for annexation to the United States, even when they decided to break ties with Spain. The success of Escandón’s settlement of Nuevo Santander ironically suggests that, rather than relying on expensive colonization schemes (such as the effort to bring Canary Islanders to Louisiana and Texas) or turning to Anglo settlers, Bourbon planners who hoped to strengthen Spain’s presence in the Gulf South might have done better to look south to New Spain for potential settlers eager for land and economic opportunity. Often seen as the weakest and most ineffectual of the powers active in the Gulf South in the eighteenth century, Spain’s representatives in the region recognized the limitations of their ability to impose their will and attempted instead to strike a balance in their dealings with the diverse inhabitants of the Gulf South. They thus made pragmatic adjustments to the complex reality of the region that beneﬁted many groups. Gould points out that Spanish laws regulating manumission afforded slaves in Louisiana more possibilities for gaining their freedom than had existed

Afterword

under the French regime, and the Spanish system of compadrazgo (godparenthood) offered members of all socioeconomic groups and races a means of creating new kinship ties and perhaps extending their social safety net. The Spanish presence in Louisiana may have given Choctaws and Creeks greater bargaining power in dealing with the British and later the Americans. Spanish economic and land policies beneﬁted French planters in Natchitoches, French merchants in New Orleans, Anglo settlers in several areas, and Creeks in West Florida. Spain established an effective municipal government in New Orleans that would be largely dominated by French merchants and planters, and the Spanish system of alliances afforded some protection to Seminoles and Black Seminoles in Florida. However monarchism is viewed today as a political system and whatever Spaniards might have done elsewhere in their extensive empire, in the eighteenth century the Spanish regime in the Gulf South developed successful approaches to the challenges of dealing with a highly diverse multiethnic and multinational population spread out over a vast region. Spanish policies and authorities offered some legal protections and guarantees to slaves, sought to maintain balanced relations with independent Indian groups, and did not discriminate against French residents and Anglo newcomers. Once the United States acquired this territory, American authorities introduced new forms of discrimination against nonwhites and greater restrictions on manumission, reduced protections for slave families, and carried out the forcible removal of Indian groups. We cannot know what might have happened had this region not been engulfed by the United States and had Spanish power in the Americas not been tested beyond its limits by the crises and revolutions of the Napoleonic era. Nonetheless, the pluralistic model of accommodation and balance that Spain fostered in the Gulf South is one that is well worth considering and that resonates for us today as society in the United States becomes ever more diverse.

Dej[i

Abbreviations 66B Archives of the Archdiocese of Mobile, Alabama 66CD Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans 6<> H9 Records of the Audiencia de Santo Domingo, Archivo General de Indias, Seville 6<> EE8 Records of the Papeles Procedentes de Cuba, Archivo General de Indias, Seville 6

Notes to Pages 4–19

. Weber, Spanish Frontier, –. Hoffman, Florida’s Frontiers; the quotation appears on . Part of this material is taken from Brown, review of Hoffman’s book, –. . Weber, Spanish Frontier, and . Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves, . . Braund, Deerskins and Duffels, –. . Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves, –. . Weber, Spanish Frontier, –. Weber, Spanish Frontier, –. . Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves, . See also Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana; Fabel, Economy of British West Florida; and Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida. . See Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves. This paragraph is taken from Brown, “Colonial Mobile,” esp. and . . Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves, – . Weber, Spanish Frontier, . . See Coker and Watson, Indian Traders. . See Owsley and Smith, Filibusters and Expansionists.

. Gulf South in Early American History 1. Dibble and Newton, In Search of Gulf Coast Colonial History, 1. 2. For a discussion of how colonial Louisiana was written into United States national history over the nineteenth century, see Usner, “Between Creoles and Yankees.” For biographical sketches of regional writers who contributed to this nationalist narrative, see Lang, “Nineteenth-Century Historians.” 3. Bolton, Wider Horizons, 55. 4. Bolton, Wider Horizons, 57. For details about Bolton’s career and scholarship, see Bannon, Herbert Eugene Bolton. 5. Bolton, Wider Horizons, 55. 6. Bolton, Wider Horizons, 87. 7. Bolton, Wider Horizons, 1–54. 8. Poyo and Hinojosa, “Spanish Texas,” 397. 9. Weber, Idea of the Spanish Borderlands, 279. 10. Gibson, Spain in America, 189–90. 11. See Cox, West Florida Controversy; Whitaker, Spanish-American Frontier; and Whitaker, Mississippi Question. 12. Major books published by these scholars include Tanner, Zéspedes; Holmes, Gayoso; Lyon, Enterprise of Florida; Coker and Watson, Indian Traders; Din, Francisco Bouligny; and Din, Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves. 13. See TePaske, Governorship of Spanish Florida; Moore, Revolt in Louisiana; Hoffman, New Andalucia; and Hoffman, Florida’s Frontiers. 14. See Hudson, Juan Pardo (with documents relating to the Pardo expeditions, tran-

Notes to Pages 19–25

scribed, translated, and annotated by Paul E. Hoffman); Hudson, Knights of Spain; John, Storms Brewed; and Martin, Sacred Revolt. 15. Bannon, Spanish Borderlands Frontier, 3. 16. See Saldívar, Border Matters. 17. See Deagan, America’s Ancient City; Thomas, “Archaeology of Mission Santa Catalina de Guale”; McEwan, Archaeology of the Apalachee Village; Weisman, Excavations on the Franciscan Frontier; Milanich and Hudson, Hernando De Soto; Milanich, Florida Indians; and Milanich, Laboring in the Fields. 18. See Lyon, Enterprise of Florida; Bushnell, King’s Coffer; Bushnell, Situado and Sabana; Hann, Apalachee; Hann, History of the Timucua Indians; and Hann and McEwan, Apalachee Indians. 19. See Hann and McEwan, Apalachee Indians; Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida; and Saunt, New Order of Things. 20. See O’Neill, Church and State; Clark, New Orleans; and Higginbotham, Old Mobile. 21. See Bolton, Athanase de Mézières; Caughey, Bernardo de Gálvez; Caughey, McGillivray; Kinnaird, Spain in the Mississippi Valley; and Nasatir, Borderland in Retreat. 22. The major books include Holmes, Gayoso; Moore, Revolt in Louisiana; Din and Nasatir, Imperial Osages; Din, Francisco Bouligny; Din and Harkins, New Orleans Cabildo; Din, Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves; Coker and Watson, Indian Traders; and Cummins, Spanish Observers. 23. See Fabel, Bombast and Broadsides; Fabel, Economy of British West Florida; Fabel, Colonial Challenges; Wright, William Augustus Bowles; Wright, Anglo-Spanish Rivalry; Wright, Creeks and Seminoles; Haynes, Natchez District; Starr, Tories, Dons, and Rebels; and Rea, Robert Farmar. 24. See Arnold, Unequal Laws; Arnold, Colonial Arkansas; Arnold, Rumble of a Distant Drum; Brasseaux, Founding of New Acadia; Carson, Searching for the Bright Path; Galloway, La Salle; Galloway, Choctaw Genesis; Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana; Hanger, Bounded Lives; Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon; Kondert, Germans of Colonial Louisiana; O’Brien, Choctaws in a Revolutionary Age; Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves; Usner, American Indians; Waselkov, Old Mobile Archaeology; Waselkov and Gums, Plantation Archaeology (with contributions by Kristen J. Gremillion and Diane E. Silvia); and Weeks, Paths to a Middle Ground. 25. See Faulk, Last Years of Spanish Texas. 26. See Jackson, Los Mesteños; Chipman, Spanish Texas; and Alonzo, Tejano Legacy. 27. See John, Storms Brewed; Smith, Caddo Indians; Smith, Wichita Indians; Smith, From Disappearance to Dominance; and La Vere, Caddo Chiefdoms. 28. See Hinojosa, Borderlands Town; Poyo and Hinojosa, Tejano Origins; and de la Teja, San Antonio. 29. Volume 2, Archeological and Historical Perspectives on the Spanish Borderlands East, most directly covers the Gulf Coastal South. 30. Cummins, “Getting Beyond Bolton,” 205.

Notes to Pages 25–32

31. Weber, Spanish Frontier. See also Sando, “From ‘Boltonlands’ to ‘Weberlands.’” 32. Poyo and Hinojosa, “Spanish Texas,” 415. 33. Weddle, Spanish Sea; Weddle, French Thorn; and Weddle, Changing Tides. 34. See Bushnell, Situado and Sabana. 35. See Banks, Chasing Empire. 36. See Piker, Okfuskee; Oatis, Colonial Complex; Hahn, Invention of the Creek Nation; and Ethridge, Creek Country. 37. Adelman and Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders,” 816. 38. See Hijiya, “Why the West Is Lost”; Wall, “Confessions of a British North Americanist”; and Cayton and Teute, Contact Points. 39. See TePaske, “French, Spanish, and English Indian Policy.” 40. See Rodríguez O., “The Emancipation of America.” 41. See Hinojosa, Borderlands Town; Reséndez, “National Identity”; Landers, Colonial Plantations; and Brooks, Captives and Cousins. 42. See Owsley, Struggle for the Gulf Borderlands; Smith, “For the Purposes of Defense”; and Owsley and Smith, Filibusters and Expansionists. 43. See Kastor, Nation’s Crucible; and Rothman, Slave Country. 3. Escape of the Nickaleers 1. The journal actually says that they sailed on the “twenty-third day of the sixth month called August 1696.” Dickinson’s month numbers have been adjusted and ten days added to his dates in order to reconcile them with the Gregorian calendar that the Spanish used and the English would adopt in 1752. 2. A postscript to the journal recounts the Dickinson family’s arrival in Philadelphia on April 11 and the death of their companion, the missionary Robert Barrow, ﬁve days later. In 1698 a secondhand press arrived in Philadelphia, and the Yearly Meeting engaged Dutch Quaker Renier Jansen to operate it. The ﬁrst book he printed was Dickinson’s journal, which came out in August 1699 under the short title of God’s Protecting Providence and with an anonymous preface featuring Barrow’s last words. The long title of this ﬁrst edition is “God’s Protecting Providence Man’s Surest Help and Defence in the times of the greatest difﬁculty and most Imminent danger; Evidenced in the Remarkable Deliverance of divers Persons, from the devouring Waves of the Sea, amongst which they Suffered Shipwrack, and also from the more cruelly devouring jawes of the inhumane Canibals of Florida. Faithfully related by one of the persons concerned therein; Jonathan Dickenson.” The journal has been reprinted twenty-ﬁve times, in English, Dutch, and German. The one scholarly edition is that edited by Evangeline Walker Andrews and Charles McLean Andrews; it has 22 pages of introduction, 10 pages of index, and 142 pages of appendices but no notes. Series editor Leonard Woods Labaree published a trimmer version of the journal in 1961 for Yale University Press. 3. Andrews and Andrews, Journal, 207; the author of the preface to the ﬁrst edition was probably Samuel Carpenter, leader of the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting. 4. Andrews and Andrews, Journal, 104.

Notes to Pages 32–46

5. Jonathan Dickinson’s father, Francis Dickinson, was a planter with some ten thousand acres who served as a member of the Jamaica Assembly until 1672 when he became a Quaker. Jonathan was active in the family’s mercantile business in Port Royal. He went on to become a wealthy Philadelphia importer with close ties to Jamaica and Barbados (Andrews and Andrews, Journal, 124–32). 6. Quotations are from the 1945 edition of the journal. 7. Bishop Gabriel Días Vara Calderón to the Crown, 1675, agi/sd, legajo 151, as translated in part and cited in Hann, Missions to the Calusa, 21–23. The only complete translation is by Lucy L. Wenhold, “A 17th Century Letter of Gabriel Díaz Vara Calderón,” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collection, 95:16 (1936). Carib was the generic Spanish term for all of the hostile, seafaring Indians of the Caribbean. 8. Dickinson does not mention the Jeaga by name. For tribal names and territories along the Dickinson route see Wheeler and Pepe, “The Jobé and Jeaga of the Palm Beach County Area”; and Hann, Indians of Central and South Florida. 9. Cacique is Arawak for “chief.” The Spanish used the term in and around the Caribbean. 10. Found only in this account, “Nickaleer” seems to be Dickinson’s attempt to reproduce the Indian pronunciation of Inglaterra or Angleterre. 11. The preface to the ﬁrst edition identiﬁes the speaker as the “honest-hearted” Robert Barrow (Andrews and Andrews, Journal, 106). 12. Barrow complained of being “punished with Muskeato Flyes; . . . mostly lyeing on the Ground either in the Wigwams, or in the Woods, and the earth is all full of Flyes and creeping things, in soe much that I gote no sleep nor had no appetite.” Barrow’s quoted comments are taken from “Letter from Barrow to His Wife, Ashley River in South Carolina the 23rd 12 mo. 1697,” in Andrews and Andrews, Journal, 111–14; the quotation appears on 112. 13. The Calusa were resistant to missions and to farming. The Cuban sloop captain who transported ﬁve Franciscans there with hoes in 1697, reported that the Indians who were knowing (ladinos) asked them “why they had not brought blacks who might dig with the hoes, because the Indians did not know how to hoe” (Hann, Missions to the Calusa, 184–85). 14. Dickinson, a dissenter from the Church of England, purposely leaves out the “Saint” in “St. Augustine.” 15. This tea was brewed from the Ilex emeticus or vomitoria, famous in southeastern Indian ceremonies as the “black drink.” 16. Of Huguenot extraction, Solomon Cresson was twenty-two years old in 1696. He went on to establish himself in Philadelphia as a chairmaker and became a Quaker in 1702, having formerly been a Labadist (Andrews and Andrews, Journal, 115–16). 17. Hoffman, Florida’s Frontiers, 168–71. 18. Hann, “The Mayaca and Jororo,” 111, 118. 19. “The Florida Governor’s Report on the Revolt of the Mayaca-Jororo Missions, February 1697,” in Hann, Missions to the Calusa, 142–55; Hann, “Mayaca and Jororo,” 111–40.

Notes to Pages 46–62

20. Bushnell, “The Sacramental Imperative,” 475–90; and Bushnell, “Wandering Nations,” 142–68. 21. The Indian word probably came from the Spanish manojo, used for a twist of tobacco. 22. An arroba was about twenty-ﬁve pounds. 23. None of Dickinson’s people would have been ﬁeld hands. In the household of a merchant the women and girls would have been domestics, the men mostly stevedores, and the boys running errands. 24. Hoffman, Florida’s Frontiers, 87. 25. Dickinson does not identify the governor. See Bushnell, Situado and Sabana, 212–13. 26. Hoffman, Florida’s Frontiers, 169–71. For some of the causes and social consequences of food shortages in the provinces and the presidio in the 1680s and 1690s, see Bushnell, Situado and Sabana, 148–60, 174–77, 184–86. 27. Dickinson does not identify these royal ofﬁcials. See Bushnell, King’s Coffer, 143–48. 28. Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 23–60. 29. Licentiate Francisco de Sotolongo to the Crown, 4 July 1668, agi/sd, legajo 235. 30. Weddle, Spanish Sea, 401–2. 31. Earle, Wreck of the Almiranta, 181–87, 208–9. 32. Gallay, Indian Slave Trade, 127–28. 33. Nairne, “Report to the Lord [Palatine],” 10 July 1708, Salley, Records in the British Public Records Ofﬁce, 5:196–97. 34. Matter, Pre-Seminole Florida, 163. 4. Supplying Our Wants 1. At least that is how the French interpreters, John Favre, Orbanne Demouy, and Louis Forneret, translated the Indian phrase into English. Rowland, “Papers Relating to Congress with the Chickasaws and Choctaws” (hereafter cited as “Congress”); and Rowland, “Peter Chester,” 134–59. The proceedings are also found in co5/73. 2. On the 1765 congress see Rowland, Mississippi Provincial Archives: English Dominion (hereafter cited as mpaed); and Galloway, “‘So Many Little Republics.’” 3. For the Choctaw-Creek War, see O’Brien, “Protecting Trade.” 4. For the Creek-British congress, see Rowland, “Peter Chester,” 108–34. For British recognition of the need for a conference with the Choctaws, see Lieutenant General Thomas Gage to Lord Hillsborough, 16 January 1771, in Davies, Documents of the American Revolution (hereafter cited as dar), 3:30. 5. Quotation is from Peter Chester to Hillsborough, 9 March 1771, in Rowland, “Peter Chester,” 39. See also “Congress,” 159; and O’Brien, Choctaws in a Revolutionary Age, 13–14. 6. Chester to John Stuart, 10 September 1771, in Rowland, “Peter Chester,” 102. 7. John Stuart to Hillsborough, 24 September 1771, co5/72; and Chester to Hillsborough, 9 March 1771, in Rowland, “Peter Chester,” 38.

Notes to Pages 62–69

8. Declaration of John Stuart to the Council of West Florida [1771], co5/73. 9. Papers Relating to Congress with the Chickasaws and Choctaws in Mobile, 1765, in Rowland, mpaed, 238. 10. Papers Relating to Congress with the Chickasaws and Choctaws in Mobile, 1765, in Rowland, mpaed, 241; emphasis added. 11. “Congress,” 149. 12. “Congress,” 139. 13. Romans, Natural History, 74. 14. “Congress,” 141. 15. Johnstone and John Stuart on the 1765 Congress June 12, 1765, in Rowland, mpaed, 187. 16. Quotation is from Rowland, “Peter Chester,” 103. See also John Thomas to John Stuart, 5 October 1771, in Davies, dar, 3:208; René Roi to John Stuart, 4 September 1771, in Davies, dar, 1:402; Roi to John Stuart, 8 September 1771, co5/72; Charles Stuart to Chester, 15 April 1771; Chester to Hillsborough, 29 September 1771; extract of a letter from Alexander McIntosh, 12 September 1771; Chester to John Stuart, 10 September 1771, all in Rowland, “Peter Chester,” 48, 100, 103, 105; Gage to Hillsborough, 7 May 1771, in Carter, Correspondence of General Thomas Gage, 1:297; instructions to John McIntosh from John Stuart, 4 September 1771, co5/72; and John Stuart to Hillsborough, 24 September 1771, co5/72. 17. O’Brien, Choctaws in a Revolutionary Age, 80–85. 18. “Congress,” 150. 19. “Congress,” 151. 20. “Congress,” 139. 21. Charles Stuart to John Stuart, 26 December 1770, in Davies, dar, 2:303. 22. Rowland, “Peter Chester.” 23. Charles Stuart to John Stuart, 26 December 1770, in Davies, dar, 2:303. 24. René Roi to John Stuart, 8 September 1771, co5/72; Elias Durnford to Alexandro O’Reilly, 1770, in Kinnaird, Spain in the Mississippi Valley, 1:179–80; and John Thomas to John Stuart 5 October 1771, in Davies, dar, 3:208. 25. “Extracts from Governor Durnford’s Letter to the Earl of Hillsborough respecting Indian Affairs,” in John Stuart to Hillsborough, 24 September 1771, co5/72. 26. “Congress,” 136–41. 27. Charles Stuart to Chester, 15 April 1771; Chester to John Stuart, 10 September 1771; Chester to Hillsborough, 9 March 1771, all in Rowland, “Peter Chester,” 38–41, 48, 104; Charles Stuart to John Stuart, 26 August 1770, in Davies, dar, 2:174–75; Charles Stuart to John Stuart, 26 December 1770, in Davies, dar, 2:303; and Romans, Natural History, 74–75, 83–84. 28. Voss and Blitz, “Archeological Investigations,” 133, 137; and Mooney, “Choctaw Culture,” 172–73. 29. “Congress,” 148. 30. “Congress,” 150–51.

Notes to Pages 69–78

31. Jacobs, Appalachian Indian Frontier, 13; and John Stuart to Hillsborough, 2 December 1770, co5/72. 32. “Some Thoughts on the Indian Trade by Lieutenant-Governor Elias Durnford,” 18 February 1770, in Davies, dar, 2:44–45. 33. Chester to John Stuart, 10 September 1771, in Rowland, “Peter Chester,” 104; Adair, History of the American Indians, 444–45; Romans, Natural History, 74–75; and O’Brien, Choctaws in a Revolutionary Age, 89–90. 34. Chester to Hillsborough, 9 March 1771, in Rowland, “Peter Chester,” 38; and John Stuart to Hillsborough, 2 November 1771, co5/73. 35. John Stuart to Hillsborough, 2 November 1771, co5/73. 36. Charles Stuart to John Stuart, 26 December 1770, in Davies, dar, 2:304. 37. John Stuart to Traders, 9 October 1771, co5/73, and in Davies, dar, 1:422. 38. “Congress,” 141. 39. “Congress,” 144. 40. “Congress,” 149–50. 41. “Congress,” 151. 42. “Congress,” 149. 43. “Congress,” 148. 44. “Congress,” 149. 45. O’Brien, “Trying to Look Like Men,” 49–70. 46. “Congress,” 151. 47. “Congress,” 145–46. 48. Ouma means “red,” a color usually associated with war, but Mingo Ouma seems to be saying that he has not killed anyone and does not want to be thought of as a war chief. Compare this explanation with Calloway, American Revolution in Indian Country, 220. 49. For a modern, though partly ﬁctional account, of these hereditary chiefs, see Hudson, Conversations with the High Priest. 50. “Congress,” 146. 51. “Congress,” 142, 147; Adair, History, 32, 176–77; and Hall, “Calumet Ceremonialism.” 52. “Congress,” 147; Adair, History, 32, 176–77; and Hall, “Calumet Ceremonialism.” 53. “Congress,” 146–47. 54. “Congress,” 142; and O’Brien, Choctaws in a Revolutionary Age, 76–77. 55. O’Brien, Choctaws in a Revolutionary Age, 16–17. 56. “Congress,” 157–58; and John Stuart to Hillsborough, 7 February 1772, in Davies, dar, 5:38. 57. O’Brien, Choctaws in a Revolutionary Age, 45. 58. “Congress,” 154–57; John Stuart to Hillsborough, 7 February 1772, in Davies, dar, 5:36–39; Chester to Hillsborough, 20 February 1772, in Davies, dar, 4:39–40; and Expenses incurred as result of 1771–1772 Congresses, co5/73.

Notes to Pages 79–85

59. John Stuart to Hillsborough, 7 February 1772, in Davies, dar, 5:36–39; John Thomas to John Stuart, 12 March 1772, in Davies, dar, 5:49; and Gage to Hillsborough, 3 June 1772, in Carter, Correspondence of Gage, 1:326. 60. Calloway, American Revolution in Indian Country, 213–33; and O’Brien, Choctaws in a Revolutionary Age, 85. 61. John Thomas to John Stuart, 12 March 1772, in Davies, dar, 5:50; Chester to Hillsborough, 8 July 1772, in Davies, dar, 5:138–40; and John Stuart to Hillsborough, 23 September 1772, co5/73. 62. John Stuart to Hillsborough, 12 June 1772, in Davies, dar, 5:118. 5. Founding of Tensaw 1. On Tensaw around 1800, see Davis, “‘Much of the Indian Appears,’” 88–124. 2. Green, The Politics of Indian Removal, 33–36. 3. For an introduction to and overview of Creek origins, see the following: Hudson, Southeastern Indians; Hudson and Tesser, Forgotten Centuries; Smith, Coosa; McEwan, Indians of the Greater Southeast; Crane, Southern Frontier; and Corkran, Creek Frontier. 4. Swanton, Source Material, 295, 302–4; Hawkins, Sketch of the Creek Country, 1:318; Bartram, “Observations,” 1, 24, 40, 62–64; and Romans, Natural History, 97. The Spanish suspected that some Creeks married for political reasons. See Arturo O’Neill to Martin Navarre, 5 April 1784, agi/ppc, legajo 613a, reel 208, frame 73; and O’Neill to Esteban Miró, 29 December 1788, agi/ppc, legajo 38, reel 191, doc. 675. 5. For discussions of Native Americans and the politics of gifts, see Weatherford, Indian Givers; and Mauss, Gift. 6. Corkran, Creek Frontier, 30–31, 55; Braund, “Guardians of Tradition”; and Crane, Southern Frontier, 42–44, 46, 71–75. 7. Braund, Deerskins and Duffels; Gallay, Formation of a Planter Elite; and Cashin, Lachlan McGillivray. 8. Braund, Deerskins and Duffels, 57, 69, 104–6, 116, 136–38. Braund argues that these threats put the Creeks at a disadvantage throughout much of this period and that at times the “Creeks were powerless.” As evidence she cites the use of rum by traders to ply young hunters for undressed skins, mounting Creek debt, and Creek claims that they were poor. However, each of these factors can be shown to be more complicated. Little information exists on the amount of rum entering Creek country, and while headmen did complain, they also took action to prevent loss of goods because of the rum trade. Women acted to prevent such loss as well, as Braund shows. Similarly, Euro-American traders shouldered most of the debt since they acknowledged their own dependence on the Creeks. Finally, claims made by Creeks that they had little wealth may have been a ploy to gain the favor of trading partners rather than actual truth. 9. Wood, “Changing Population,” 38. In “Reexamination of Creek Indian Population Trends,” Paredes and Plante argue that Creek population rebounded signiﬁcantly after 1750. See pages 5, 19–21. 10. Braund, Deerskins and Duffels, 86.

Notes to Pages 85–91

11. Braund, Deerskins and Duffels, 41–43, 61–65, 78–80. For a recent treatment of economic and social adaptation among Native Americans, see Murphy, Gathering of Rivers. 12. Corkran, Creek Frontier, 107, 121, 124–25, 165; Hawkins, Sketch of the Creek Country, 45. 13. Conversation with George S. Gaines in “Notes Upon the History of Alabama,” section 14, pt. 1; and “Notes taken from the lips of Hiram Mounger,” section 19, no. 1, Albert J. Pickett Papers, Alabama Department of Archives and History. The Choctaw and Chickasaw names entered the Creek Nation through the marriage of former traders’ children to Creek women. 14. Alexander McGillivray to Charles McLatchy, 4 October 1784, Caughey, McGillivray of the Creeks, 83; O’Neill to the Marquis de Sonora, 11 July 1787; O’Neill to Sonora, 157; O’Neill to Miró, 23 July, 1788, all in agi/ppc, legajo 38, reel 191, frame 234; and O’Neill to Miró, 29 December 1788, agi/ppc, legajo 38, reel 191, doc. 675. 15. Romans, Natural History, 322; Bartram, “Observations,” 323–28. 16. Miró to Pedro Favrot, 18 July 1785, agi/ppc, legajo 38, reel 154, doc. 784. Miró emphasized the point by insisting that slaves and dependants were included in his prohibition. For a biography of Farmar see Rea, Robert Farmar. 17. Green, “Alexander McGillivray.” 18. Even the optimistic Bernard Romans, who traveled through the area in 1777 to survey the area for British interests, complained about the lack of good soil on the Gulf Coast. See Romans, Natural History, 115. 19. Creek Treaty with the Spanish, May 31–June 1, 1784, American State Papers, Foreign Relations, 1:278–79. 20. Treaty of Augusta, 11 November 1783, American State Papers, Indian Affairs, 1:23. 21. Miró to McGillivray, 7 August 1788, in Caughey, McGillivray of the Creeks, 188; and Francisco Cruzat to Miró, 6 June 1789, plp, reel 5. 22. Coker and Watson, Indian Traders, 81–82. 23. O’Neill to José de Ezpeleta, 19 October 1783, in Caughey, McGillivray of the Creeks, 62–63. At this time de Ezpeleta was Spanish governor of Mobile. 24. See Waselkov and Smith, “Upper Creek Archaeology”; and Worth, “Lower Creeks.” 25. Brims, Malatchi, and Mary Musgrove were probably Wind Clan. Spalding, Oglethorpe in America, 18, 23. For accumulation of property, see “Memoir pour Louisiane,” anf/ ac, b33, c13a, fols. 26–39, 1746, in loc transcripts, cited in Corkran, Creek Frontier, 114. For the most recent treatment of Mary Musgrove’s life, see Green, “Mary Musgrove,” 30, 32, 35. Green argues that Musgrove’s “mediated identity” led her to remake what it was to be a Creek woman and that her negotiating skill allowed her to become “Oglethorpe’s Indian agent.” Her position as an intermediary between the Creeks and Georgia made her powerful, but it also put her in a difﬁcult situation since both sides demanded adherence to their laws.

Notes to Pages 91–100

26. Caughey, McGillivray of the Creeks, 10–12. 27. Ezpeleta to Galvez, 8 February 1784, agi/ppc, legajo 2351, reel 436, doc. 13; O’Neill to Navarre, 5 April 1784, agi/ppc, legajo 613a, reel 208, frame 73; and Miró to O’Neill, 23 December 1787, agi/ppc, legajo 3b, reel 154, doc. 1187. 28. McGillivray to McLatchey, Oct. 4, 1784, in Caughey, McGillivray of the Creeks, 82; McGillivray to O’Neill, 20 November 1784, plp, reel 1; and McGillivray to Miró, 12 June 1788, in Caughey, McGillivray of the Creeks, 184. 29. For a biography of Alexander McGillivray’s father and a discussion of Tory efforts in the Indian trade, see Cashin, Lachlan McGillivray. 30. McGillivray to O’Neill, 5 February 1784, in Caughey, McGillivray of the Creeks, 69. 31. McGillivray to O’Neill, 5 February 1784, in Caughey, McGillivray of the Creeks, 69. 32. McGillivray to O’Neill, 1 January 1784, plp, reel 1; McGillivray to O’Neill, 8 November 1785, in Caughey, McGillivray of the Creeks, 99; and Miró to Favrot, 31 December 1785, agi/ppc, legajo 3b, reel 155, doc. 1145. 33. Miró to Favrot, 18 July 1785, agi/ppc, legajo 3b, reel 154, doc. 784 (nose estableran mas arriba de la hacienda de Farmar ni esclavos o dependentes); Miró to Conde de Galvez, 2 March 1786, agi/ppc, legajo 3b, reel 155, doc. 1150; and O’Neill to Miró, 11 January 1786, agi/ppc, legajo 37, reel 169, doc. 58, band 2. 34. McGillivray to Miró, 28 August 1788, plp, reel 4. 35. O’Neill to Sonora, 11 July 1787, in Caughey, McGillivray of the Creeks, 157; and O’Neill to Sonora, 20 February 1787, in McGillivray of the Creeks, 144. 36. O’Neill to Ezpeleta, 1783, in Caughey, McGillivray of the Creeks, 62–63. 37. McGillivray to O’Neill, 1785, in Caughey, McGillivray of the Creeks, 99. 38. O’Neill to Miró, 17 February 1787, agi/ppc, legajo 37, reel 169, doc. 148, band 5; and Hawkins, Sketch of Creek Country, 73. 39. Grant, Letters, Journals and Writings of Benjamin Hawkins, 21–22, 28. 6. A Nation Divided? 1. Richter, Facing East, 236. A number of important works that also explore the grim, centuries-long efforts of southeastern Indians to hold their lands include Claudio Saunt, New Order of Things; Braund, Deerskins and Duffels; Dowd, Spirited Resistance; and Martin, Sacred Revolt. 2. Sam Lewin, “Black Seminoles See Case Dismissed,” Native American Times, July 7, 2004; Johnston, “Resisting a Genetic Identity,” 262; Brent Staples, “The Black Seminole Indians Keep Fighting for Equality in the American West,” The New York Times, November 18, 2003; William Glaberson, “Who Is a Seminole, and Who Gets to Decide?” New York Times, January 29, 2001; Scott McCabe, “Black Seminoles ‘Back in the Fight’ for Indian Beneﬁts, Payout Money”; and McCabe, “Lawsuit Against U.S. Seeks Eligibility for Indian Beneﬁts,” Palm Beach Post, July 25, 1999. 3. Muskogee/Muscogee/Mucogulges is the self-designation for many groups who

Notes to Pages 102–104

lived in what is now modern-day Georgia and Alabama, and many, though not all, of the southeastern indigenous groups spoke languages of the Muskogean linguistic family. English traders designated the peoples living along the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers as Creeks. The people discussed here came to be known as Lower Creeks, as opposed to the Upper Creeks living on the Alabama, Coosa, and Tallapoosa rivers. See Martin, Sacred Revolt, 6–13. A detailed ethnohistorical genealogy of the various groups is found in Wright, Creeks and Seminoles, 1–40. 4. Schafer, St. Augustine’s British Years, 76–77. Schafer argues that, by tightly controlling Indian traders, Governor Grant avoided disastrous wars such as his fellow Englishmen had experienced in Carolina and Georgia. 5. Mahon and Weisman, “Florida’s Seminole and Miccosukee Peoples”; and Weisman, Like Beads on a String. 6. Bartram, Southeastern Indians, 52. 7. Covington, Seminoles of Florida, 29. 8. Weisman, “Plantation System.” 9. Cline, Florida Indians. Cline worked from lists created by the Mikasuki chief Neamathla and by Captain John Bell at an Indian conference convened by Andrew Jackson on September 18, 1821. 10. Weisman argues that the agricultural labor of blacks and their expansion into previously unexploited ecological zones enabled the creation of a surplus and thus Seminole entry into a true plantation economy. See “Plantation System.” 11. Giddings, Exiles of Florida; Porter, Negro on the American Frontier; Amos and Senter, Black Seminoles; Klos, “Blacks and the Seminole Indian Removal”; and Landers, Black Society, 235–37. 12. Parker, “Men Without God”; and report of Nicolás Grenier, 10 November 1784, cited in Lockey, East Florida, 307. 13. Residents of St. Marys to Vicente Manuel de Zéspedes, 24 October 1787, efp, reel 45; and residents of the St. Johns River, 8 October 1789, efp, reel 46, cited in Parker, “Men Without God,” 151. 14. Carlos Howard to Luis de Las Casas, 2 July 1791, agi/ppc, legajo 1439. 15. Giddings, Exiles of Florida; and Porter, Negro on the American Frontier. See also Klos, “Blacks and the Seminole Indian Removal.” 16. Cimarrones visited St. Augustine on January 4, 1786, February 28 and July 31, 1787, and August 31, 1788. See Caleb Finegan, “Notes and Commentary on the East Florida Papers: Lists of Gifts to Indians, 1785–1788,” unpublished research notes, efp, reel 160. 17. Wright, William Augustus Bowles, 13. Claudio Saunt argues persuasively that Creek mestizos who had European fathers and adopted European ideas about the market economy, gender relations, and race had a “profound and disruptive impact on Creek society.” Saunt, New Order of Things, 2. 18. One of Bowles’s Bahamian supporters was Lord Dunmore, who had also effectively used black troops in the Southeast during the American Revolution. Wright, William Augustus Bowles; McAlister, “William Augustus Bowles”; White, “Spaniards

Notes to Pages 104–108

and William Augustus Bowles”; and James Seagrove to Juan [John] McQueen, 24 June 1800, efp, reel 41. 19. The raiders did not respect international borders and also raided into Georgia. Seagrove to McQueen, 24 June 1800, efp, reel 24. 20. Cited in McAlister, “Marine Forces,” 10–11. 21. Enrique White, War Orders for Picolata, 1 July 1800; Instructions for General Biassou, Matanzas, 1 July 1800, both in efp, reel 55; and Petition of Jorge Jacobo, 9 February 1802, agi/ppc, legajo 357. 22. Francis Fatio to Enrique White, 25 June 1800; and Fernando de la Puente to White, June 24, 1800, both in efp, reel 55. 23. Junta de Guerra, 29 January 1802, agi/ppc, legajo 357. 24. Report of Sergeant Martin Oderiz, 19 February 1802; and Report of John McQueen, 7 April 1802, both in efp, reel, 56; bundle 137g11, container 207, loc. 25. efp, reel 56. 26. John Kinard to the Spanish governor, 8 May 1802, efp. reel 56. 27. Order of Governor Enrique White to various army posts, 11 June 1802, efp, reel 56. 28. Expenses of the Free Black Militias, 4 August and 24 September 1802, agi/ppc, legajo 433. 29. The Spaniards had arrested Bowles once before in 1788, but at that time he managed to escape while en route from the Philippines to Madrid to resume his southeastern intrigues. This time Bowles was not so lucky, and he died in the Morro Castle in Cuba. Wright, William Augustus Bowles, 16. 30. Suit by Juan Bautista Collins against Don José Antonio Yguíniz, notarized instruments, 16 January 1810, efp, reel 167. 31. Landers, Black Society, 220–28. 32. Sergeant Felipe Edimboro and fourteen men served among the Seminoles. Among Edimboro’s troops were his son-in-law Corporal Second Class Benjamín Wiggins (the mulatto son of English planter Job Wiggins and the Senegalese Ana Gallum), who served as an interpreter. Review Lists of the Free Black Militia of St. Augustine, 12 October 1812, agi/ppc, legajo 357. The Spanish/Seminole alliance held despite the fact that Kindelán had not been able to present them gifts in over three years. Sebastián Kindelán to Juan Ruíz de Apodaca, 29 July 1812, agi/ppc, legajo 1789. 33. Kindelán to Apodaca, 12 August 1812, agi/ppc, legajo 1789; Porter, “Negroes and the East Florida Annexation Plot.” 34. On the important role of black linguists in the Seminole Wars see Klos, “Blacks and the Seminole Removal.” Even after the Spaniards left Florida, Seminoles and blacks among them maintained trade and contacts with Spanish Cuba. 35. Edward Wanton to Kindelán, 3 July 1812, Correspondence Between the Governor and Subordinates on the St. Johns and St. Marys Rivers, efp, reel 61; The grateful Kindelán felt “obligated to reward the service and loyalty of this miserable slave.” In the name of the government he paid Proctor’s owner 350 pesos and granted the translator

Notes to Pages 109–110

his liberty. Kindelán to Apodaca, 13 August 1812, agi/ppc, legajo 1789. Four years later, on March 8, 1816, Governor José Coppinger also awarded Tony Proctor a military service grant of 185 acres. Spanish Land Grants in Florida, Works Progress Administration, State Library Board, 4 (1941): 226–27. 36. Kindelán to Apodaca, 2 August 1812, agi/ppc, legajo 1789; Although mortally wounded by eight bullets, Marine captain John Williams lived long enough to describe the night battle and the death and scalping of his sergeant (Captain John Williams to Lieutenant Samuel Miller, 15 September 1812, letters received, no. 44, Marine Corps 1812 Archives, nara). The Patriot accounts (and therefore, most historical treatments based on the English-language sources) reported that the ambush at Twelve Mile Swamp was the work of the Indians, but Kindelán wrote that the “Indians” were actually “our parties of blacks, whom they [the rebels] think are Indians because they wear the same clothing and go painted.” 37. Alexander, “Ambush of Captain John Williams.” 38. In the name of the captive king Fernando VII, the Spanish Junta offered the insurgents a general amnesty. Looking for a graceful out, the United States asked Kindelán to honor the offer, and he did, granting rebels three months within which to register for pardon. Major General Thomas Pinckney to Kindelán, 20 March 1813, and Kindelán to Pinckney, 31 March 1813, cited in Davis, “United States Troops.” 39. During the Creek War (1813–14) Americans under the command of Andrew Jackson waged a series of pitched battles against the nativist Creeks, or Red Sticks. On March 27, 1814, at Horseshoe Bend, the already decimated Red Sticks lost approximately eight hundred warriors, or half their remaining force. Survivors, including the Prophet Francis, ﬂed to Spanish Florida, where some made a ﬁnal stand at Prospect Bluff. Dowd, Spirited Resistance, 185–90. 40. Covington, “ Negro Fort,” 79; Coker and Watson, Indian Traders, 309. 41. Covington, “ Negro Fort”; Milligan, “Slave Rebelliousness.” 42. To protect Georgia settlers, Jackson ordered Fort Scott built at the juncture of the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers. Vessels supplying the fort from New Orleans had to pass by the Negro Fort. Milligan, “Slave Rebelliousness,” 11. 43. Spaniards living in Pensacola gave Pintado lists of 136 runaways. These lists gave the names, age, color (black or mulatto), and family status of the runaways and in some cases the circumstances by which they arrived at Prospect Bluff, their occupations, and their stated value. Don Antonio Montero claimed to be the owner of the black commander at the fort, Garçon (Garson), who was a thirty-year-old carpenter, as well as of four other men and three women. Pensacola’s former governor, Vicente Folch, also claimed two of the runaways—the thirty-year-old carpenter Tom, valued at seven hundred pesos, and twenty-three-year-old Agustín, valued at ﬁve hundred pesos. List of the Slaves Belonging to Owners in Pensacola, 30 December 1814 and 4 March and 6 May 1815, agi/sd, legajo 2580. 44. John Innerarity to Commander Gonzalo Manrique, 16 May 1814, cited in “Documents Relating to Colonel Edward Nicholls and Captain George Woodbine in Pensacola,

Notes to Pages 110–112

1814,” Florida Historical Quarterly 10 (July 1931): 51–54; List of the Slaves Belonging to Owners in Pensacola, 30 Dec., 1814 and 4 Mar. and 6 May, 1815, agi/sd, legajo 2580; Edmund Doyle to John Innerarity, April 6, 1815, cited in “The Panton, Leslie Papers, Letters of Edmund Doyle,” Florida Historical Quarterly 17 (Jan. 1939): 237–42. 45. List of the Slaves Belonging to Owners in Pensacola, 4 March and 6 May 1815, agi/ sd, legajo 2580. 46. List of the Slaves Belonging to Owners in Pensacola, 4 March and 6 May 1815, agi/ sd, legajo 2580; Aptheker, “Maroons.” 47. Doyle signed his letter “In hopes that you may yet hang the Scoundrel.” Edmund Doyle to Captain R. C. Spencer [of the Royal Navy], undated, cited in “Panton, Leslie Papers,” 242. Despite Doyle’s negative assessment, which was shared by the United States Indian agent, Benjamin Hawkins, Nicolls demonstrated concern for the black and Indian allies on a number of occasions. He offered to pay the remaining two hundred pesos that the mulatto Carlos owed his owner for his freedom, but Pintado felt he had no authority to accept it. List of the Slaves Belonging to Owners in Pensacola, 30 December 1814, and 4 March and 6 May 1815, agi/sd, legajo 2580. 48. Colonel Edward Nicolls to Colonel Benjamin Hawkins, 28 April and 12 May 1815; Hawkins to Nicolls, 28 May 1815; Niles Weekly Register, June 10, 1815. 49. Alexander Arbuthnot to Nicolls, 26 August 1817, in Parton, Andrew Jackson, 1:414–16. 50. Admiral Alexander Cochrane’s offer of freedom was issued in Bermuda on April 2, 1814. Vicente Sebastián Pintado to José de Soto, 29 April 1815; and List of the Slaves Belonging to Owners in Pensacola, 6 May 1815, both in agi/sd, legajo 2580. 51. Pintado confronted Captain Woodbine about the slaves he allegedly lured from East Florida, and Woodbine stated that seventy-eight slaves belonging to the Indians accompanied him to Prospect Bluff but that none came directly from St. Augustine. Pintado to de Soto, 29 April 1815, agi/sd, legajo 2580. 52. Colonel D. L. Clinch to Colonel R. Butler, 2 August 1816, cited in Forbes, Sketches Historical and Topographical, 202. 53. “Report by a Gentleman from New Orleans,” Niles Weekly Register, September 14, 1816; “Report of the Attack of Major M’Intosh,” Niles Weekly Register, August 31, 1816. Colonel Clinch described the action in graphic, yet exculpatory, terms: “The explosion was awful, and the scene horrible beyond description. Our ﬁrst care, on arriving at the scene of the destruction, was to rescue and relieve the unfortunate beings who survived the explosion. The war yells of the Indians, the cries and lamentations of the wounded, compelled the soldier to pause in the midst of victory, to drop a tear for the sufferings of his fellow beings, and to acknowledge that the great Ruler of the Universe must have used us as his instruments in chastising the blood-thirsty and murderous wretches that defended the fort.” Clinch to Butler, 2 August 1816, record group 45, U.S. Navy, 1775–1910, subject ﬁle J, box 181, nara. 54. Clinch to Butler, 2 August 1816, record group 45, U.S. Navy 1775–1910, subject ﬁle J, box 181, nara. Colonel Clinch’s letter describing the events at the Negro Fort was

Notes to Pages 112–115

reprinted in the National Intelligencer, November 15, 1819. The author thanks Stephanie Cole for this reference. Covington, “Negro Fort,” 87. 55. Alexander Arbuthnot to John Arbuthnot, 2 April 1818, cited in Narrative of a Voyage, 216–18. 56. Heijah, also known as Hachy, in fact did have blacks among his people. General Edmund P. Gaines to the Seminoly Chief, and King Hachy to Gaines, August 1818, cited in Narrative of a Voyage, 221–22. 57. Robert Ambrister to Edward Nicolls, 1818, cited in Narrative of a Voyage, 260. 58. Wright, “A Note on the First Seminole War”; Coker and Watson, Indian Traders, 310–29. From Bowlegs Town Jackson exulted prematurely, “I have reached and destroyed this and the other town in its vicinity, and having captured the principal exciters of the war I think I may safely say, that the Indian war, for the present, is terminated.” Jackson to Governor Rabun of Georgia, 20 April 1818, cited in Niles Weekly Register, May 23, 1818. 59. Renamed Polidore, Fernando married one of Jackson’s slaves at the Hermitage, and when his Spanish owner sought his recovery, Jackson paid ﬁve hundred dollars to retain him in Tennessee. Catalina Satorios to Jackson, 16 April, 7 and 14 June 7 and 8 July 1822; Jackson to Satorios, 16 and 22 May 1822. The author thanks Dr. Larry McKee, former archaeologist at the Hermitage, and Sharon Macpherson of the Andrew Jackson Papers Project at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, for this reference. An account of Polidore can also be found in Parton, Andrew Jackson, 1: 483–84. 60. Brown, Florida’s Peace River Frontier, 9–10; and Brown, “‘Sarrazota.’” Arbuthnot had written, “Tell my friend Bowlegs, that it is throwing away his people to attempt to resist such a powerful force as will be down on Sahwahnee.” Alexander Arbuthnot to John Arbuthnot, 2 April 1818, cited in Narrative of a Voyage, 217. 61. “Defences of the Floridas.” Creeks and Seminoles traditionally migrated to hunting grounds in southern Florida from November to March of each year, and because the Seminole hunters traveled with their families, they established permanent villages around Tampa Bay, Brown, Florida’s Peace River Frontier, 4–5. 62. Brown, “‘Sarrazota,’” 16. 63. United States secretary of war John C. Calhoun denounced the raid and blamed it on the Creek nation (Nassau’s Royal Gazette and Bahama Advertiser, March 20, 1822), cited in Brown, “‘Sarrazota,’” 16. 64. In 1823 Horatio Dexter visited a number of Seminole villages, including Peliklikaha. Horatio Dexter’s Report on South Florida, 20 August 1823, James David Glunt Papers, P. K. Yonge Library, University of Florida. Peliklikaha is currently being excavated by Terry Weik, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of South Carolina. Scott McCabe, “Searching for Peliklikaha, Land of the Forgotten Seminoles,” Palm Beach Post, August 20, 2001. 65. Abraham to General Thomas Jessup, 28 April 1838, manuscript box 5, Miscellaneous Manuscript Collection, P. K. Yonge Library, University of Florida, Gainesville. For a detailed discussion of the sad removals westward of both blacks and Seminoles, see Littleﬁeld, Africans and Seminoles. While useful, this work depends almost wholly

Notes to Pages 115–119

upon English-language sources and thus makes some serious errors about early black/ Seminole alliances. 66. Mahon, History of the Second Seminole War; Mulroy, Freedom on the Border; and Porter, Black Seminoles. 7. My Friend Nicolas Mongoula 1. The author thanks Richard Chastang for his invaluable assistance in the Archives of the Archdiocese of Mobile. He also thanks Ginger Gould, Jennie LaMonte, and Ariana Hannum Moore for helpful references and Emanuel Drechsel for helpful comments and suggestions. In addition to small Indian villages settled nearby, Mobile was only a short distance away from much larger Amerindian populations, notably the Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Upper and Lower Creeks. For a broad overview of large colonial Indian populations in the region, see Wood, “Changing Population,” 66–72. On the smaller Indian groups located next to Mobile, the 1721 census of Mobile, for example, lists neighboring villages of Alibamons, Apalaches, Mobilians, Muniaba, Taensas, and Tomes. See Maduell, Census Tables, 25–27. See also Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves, 60–65. 2. Important general works for the study of colonial Mobile include Brown, “Colonial Mobile”; Hamilton, Colonial Mobile; and Higginbotham, Old Mobile. 3. Several recent works have focused speciﬁcally on interactions between Africans and Amerindians in and around the colonial Gulf of Mexico; a number of references to this topic may be found in older works as well. Some examples include Landers, “Black-Indian Interaction”; Usner, “Indian-Black Relations”; and Littleﬁeld, Africans and Creeks. See also Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 97–100, 115–18, 171; Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 88–89; and Wright, Early History of Cuba, 174–75, 192–94, 347. 4. “Voyage de la Louisiane dans l’intérieur des terres [1732],” in Documents on French Colonial Louisiana, Acadia, the Antilles, and the Yucatan [manuscript], [ca. 1760], ed. Chrétien Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes. Rudy Lamont Ruggles Collection, Newberry Library, 140–42. Place names in the census were transcribed phonetically by a French ofﬁcial; it seems probable that the names of these ﬁfty-three Choctaw villages were given to the census taker in Mobilian Jargon rather than in Choctaw. See also Rowland and Sanders, Mississippi Provincial Archives: French Dominion (hereafter cited as mpafd) 1:136–54; and Swanton, Source Material, 58–75. 5. Crawford, Mobilian Trade Language, 85; Drechsel, “Towards an Ethnohistory of Speaking,” 170–71; and Drechsel, “An Integrated Vocabulary,” 284. 6. Drechsel, Mobilian Jargon, xix, 5–14, 250–324. See also Crawford, Mobilian Trade Language, ii–iii, 3–8, 16–62. 7. Usner, Indians, Settlers, & Slaves. 8. Drechsel, Mobilian Jargon, 255, 257–60. “The community of non-Indian speakers of Mobilian Jargon,” Drechsel writes, “included explorers, interpreters, traders, settlers, missionaries, Indian agents, plantation owners, store clerks, and others who regularly interacted with Native Americans of the area” (255). See also Drechsel, “Towards an Ethnohistory of Speaking,” 168; and Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves, 258–59.

Notes to Pages 119–120

9. A number of examples can be found in Landers, Black Society; Littleﬁeld, Africans and Creeks; and Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves. See also Drechsel, Mobilian Jargon, 261. 10. Some enslaved Africans and Indians in early colonial Mobile labored alongside European indentured servants as well. However, the engagés were relatively few in number. The 1721 Mobile census lists twenty-two indentured servants (compared to over three hundred and ﬁfty black and indigenous slaves). See Maduell, Census Tables, 16. 11. For example, see Gallay, Indian Slave Trade, 29, 296–98, 308–11; Higginbotham, Old Mobile, 93, 288–92, 301–02, 335, 350, 382, 444–45, 460; Hamilton, Colonial Mobile, 63–64, 78–79; and Usner, “Indian-Black Relations,” 146, 150–51. 12. See Higginbotham, Old Mobile, 538–41, for a list of sixty-six slave owners in Old Mobile from 1702 to 1711, and the number of slaves they owned listed by race and sex. Also listed are yearly population ﬁgures for Mobile from 1702 to 1711. 13. Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves, 59. 14. Webre, “Problem of Indian Slavery”; and Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves, 132. 15. See Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 35. 16. Dart, “First Cargo”; Mettas, Répertoire des expéditions, 1:59–60 ; 2:240, 403, 553–54, 684–85, 687. Mettas documents twenty-ﬁve transatlantic slave trade voyages destined for French Louisiana between the years 1718 and 1743. An excellent analysis of these voyages can be found in Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 35, 56–95, 381–97. See also La Harpe, Journal historique, 223–24. La Harpe writes of the ship l’Hercule landing at Dauphin Island in July 1720 with one hundred and twenty Africans from “Guinea.” 17. On Senegambia and the ethnic composition of French Louisiana’s African population, see Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 28–55, 382–97; Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade, xxii–xxiii, 55–125; Caron, “‘Of a nation which the others do not Understand,’” and Wright, “‘What Do You Mean?’” 18. Beginning in the 1770s, the Spanish brought in signiﬁcantly larger numbers of Africans to provide labor for sugar and tobacco plantations in Spanish Louisiana and the Floridas; a good deal of research remains to be done on this topic. On the introduction of Africans to Spanish Louisiana, see Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 277–86. Also helpful are Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves, 108–15; Hanger, Bounded Lives, 10–11, 77; and Landers, Black Society, 276–77. 19. Mongoula’s burial record and last will testify that he died in 1798 at the age of seventy-eight. His burial record can be found in Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Movila, Funeral Records for People of Color, 1790–1828, fol. 8, entry no. 42, aam. See also the “Last Will & Testament of Nicholas Mangula,” Original Spanish, French and English Documents, 1788–1798, no. 62, Mobile Probate Court. The author thanks Christopher Nordmann for directing him to the latter source. 20. There are instances of people born in Africa becoming adept in Mobilian Jargon. For example, runaway slave advertisements in the New Orleans newspaper Le Moniteur de la Louisiane, nos. 308 (September 11, 1802) and 309 (September 18, 1802), describe

Notes to Pages 121–123

Pierre-Marc, a thirty-year-old sawyer and carpenter from Senegal who spoke Mobilian (Jargon?), Spanish, French, and English. 21. Baptismal Records, aam, bk. 1 (1704–1778). One child named Nicolas was baptized on April 28, 1720, at approximately six months old. Another infant named Nicolas, born November 23, 1720, was baptized one month later on December 22, 1720. The baptismal entries provide no information regarding the parents of either child. André Claud was born to “une esclave negresse,” an enslaved black woman, on November 28, 1720. 22. Baptismal Records, aam, bk. 1 (1704–1778), 19 octobre 1720. 23. “Recencement des habitants du fort Louis de la Mobile et ses villages,” 1721, g1 Series Censuses, Passenger Lists of Ships ca. 1706–1736, reel 464, pt. 1, hnoc. Thanks to Sue A. Marasco for providing a copy of this census and also of the 1726 census listed below. See also Maduell, Census Tables, 24. Maduell mistakenly records that in 1721 Manadé owned three black slaves and thirty-seven Indian slaves. While Maduell’s work remains a helpful guide, it should be noted that the names and numbers listed by Maduell do not always correspond with the 1721 census. 24. These ﬁgures were computed using the 1721 census “Recencement des habitants,” 1721, g1 Series Censuses, Passenger Lists of Ships ca. 1706–1736, reel 464, pt. 1, hnoc; and Maduell, Census Tables, 23–27. 25. Maduell, Census Tables, 23–27. For examples of various household living arrangements involving indigenous and black slaves in New Orleans in 1726, see Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves, 57, 161. 26. “Recencement des habitants,” 1721, g1 Series Censuses, reel 464, pt. 1, hnoc; and Maduell, Census Tables, 23–27. 27. Maduell, Census Tables, 23–27. 28. Drechsel, Mobilian Jargon, 260. 29. On Louisiana Creole, see Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 192–93. 30. The 1726 census of Mobile lists 260 French inhabitants, 144 enslaved Africans, 50 enslaved Indians, and 7 indentured servants. See “Rencensement general des habitants de la Colonnie de La Loüisianne” [January 1, 1726] (hereafter cited as “Recensement general 1726”), Passenger Lists of Ships ca. 1706–1736, g1 Series Censuses, reel 464, pt. 1, Censuses, hnoc; and Maduell, Census Tables, 61–65. Mobile was also home to 85 soldiers at the time. See Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves, 46–50. 31. See Maduell, Census Tables, 77–80; Le Page du Pratz, Histoire de la Louisiane, 1:333–52; Usner, “From African Captivity to American Slavery; and Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 97–98. 32. Rowland and Sanders, mpafd 2:368. 33. “Rencensement general 1726”; and Maduell, Census Tables, 55. See also Rowland and Sanders, mpafd 2:345, in which it is said of Manadé, “[h]e has obtained a piece of land of one hundred arpents to make a plantation. That is hardly proper in a surgeon who ought to have his residence near the patients.” On the surgeon Manadé, see also Rowland and Sanders, mpafd 2:303, 312–13, 325; 3:353, 430, 435–36, 466, 642; Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 145, 150–52; Giraud, History of French Louisiana, 23, 181, 218–22, 322; and Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon, 51–52, 82, 375.

Notes to Pages 124–129

34. Baptismal Records, aam, bk. 1 (1704–1778), 7 novembre 1752. 35. Baptismal Records, aam, bk. 1 (1704–1778), 21 septembre 1715 and 28 juin 1718. 36. Baptismal Records, bk. 1 (1704–1778), 17 octobre 1742 and 26 mars 1746; Baptisma Nigrorum 1, 25 juin 1786, both in aam. 37. Webre, “Problem of Indian Slavery,” 118, 248, 262–63, 335–41. See also Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves, 59. 38. Baptisma Nigrorum 1, aam, 26 abril 1795. 39. Baptisma Nigrorum 1, aam, 16 marzo 1785, 30 junio 1800, and 4 junio 1801. On Pasa Cristiana, see Hamilton, Colonial Mobile, 518. 40. Mongoula’s last will and burial records describe him as married to Francisca Mimi, a free black woman; their children are described as legitimate. Both Mongoula and Mimi are also listed (separately) in a fairly detailed 1786 census of Mobile, entitled “Noticia, y Nombres de los Habitantes en General, de la Plaza y Jurisdiccion de la Mobila, en 1o. de Enero de 1786,” agi/ppc, legajo 2360, fol. 50. Thanks to Greg Waselkov for providing a copy of this census. 41. See Holmes, “Blacks in Spanish Alabama,” 15. For pay records identifying Nicolas Mongoula as a master mason, Holmes cites agi/ppc, legajo 538a. See also Brown, “Colonial Mobile,” 58. Mongoula’s sale of a house to Mr. Krebs may be found in Alabama Translated Land Claim Records, Mobile Probate Court, 1:110–11; the author thanks Christopher Nordmann for directing him to this source. The house also appears on an 1803 map of Mobile, a copy of which may be found in the Colonial Map collection of the Mobile Municipal Archives. The map’s inscription reads, “of the City of Mobile From 1802 to 1813, Copy half reduced of a Map preserved by Mr. Dan Geary, Springhill College, Jan. 20, 1867; A. Cornette.” See also Hamilton, Colonial Mobile, 368, 490–519. 42. “Last Will & Testament of Nicholas Mangula.” The “rivera de San Esteban” (St. Stephen’s Creek) was presumably a creek or stream not too far from St. Stephens Road. On the free black noncommissioned ofﬁcer Santiago Nicolas, mentioned in a New Orleans militia roster of 1792, see Holmes, Honor and Fidelity, 251. 43. Landers, Black Society, 121–23; Hanger, Bounded Lives, 89–90, 104–6. See also Clark and Gould, “Feminine Face of Afro-Catholicism.” 44. See Schwartz’s discussion of this practice in his Sugar Plantations, 62–65. 45. Baptismal Records, aam, bk. 1 (1704–1778), 17 juillet 1711, 6 avril 1732, and 4 avril 1734. 46. Baptismal Records, bk. 1 (1704–1778), 15 mai 1714, 30 avril 1720, and 28 juillet 1743; and Baptisma Nigrorum 1, both in aam. On the signiﬁcance of baptism for bozales, newly arrived African adults, see Landers, Black Society, 121. 47. See 25 mars 1764, 18 juillet 1770, and 26 agosto 1781 in Baptismal Records, bk. 1 (1704–1778), and in Baptisma Nigrorum 1, both in aam. On the signiﬁcance of baptism for bozales, newly arrived African adults, see Landers, Black Society, 121. 48. Landers, “Rebellion and Royalism,” 161. On the repercussions of the Haitian Revolution in Spanish Louisiana and Florida, see also Webre, “Problem of Indian Slavery,” 125–35; Scott, “Common Wind”; and articles by Hanger, “Conﬂicting Loyalties,” and Paquette, “Revolutionary Saint Domingue.”

Notes to Pages 129–135

49. Hanger, Bounded Lives, 109–35; Landers, Black Society, 202–28; and Holmes, “Role of Blacks in Spanish Alabama.” 50. In Spanish Florida and Louisiana, as in Cuba, the terms pardo or mulato were used to signify lighter-skinned people of color, while the terms moreno or negro referred to darker-skinned people of color. Interestingly, Nicolas Mongoula, captain of Mobile’s Pardo militia, is always described as negre or negro. For discussion of such honoriﬁc “whitening” accorded to free black militia ofﬁcials, see Rout, African Experience. On the terms pardo, moreno, mulato, and negro, see Hanger, Bounded Lives, 15–16; Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 238–42, 258–59; and Landers, Black Society, 5–6. 51. Holmes, Honor and Fidelity, 54–59; Hanger, Bounded Lives, quotation from 109; and Landers, Black Society, 127–28, 219. 52. Drechsel, Mobilian Jargon, 255. 53. Webre, “Problem of Indian Slavery,” 121–35; Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 262–63, 335–41; Usner, Indians, Settlers and Slaves, 132; and Hanger, Bounded Lives, 15. 54. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 6. 8. Scoundrels, Whores, and Gentlemen 1. The author is particularly grateful for helpful suggestions by Philip Boucher, Richmond Brown, Rebecca J. Scott, and Michael Silverstein at various stages of this manuscript’s evolution. 2. Defamation cases, like assault cases, occupied a gray area between civil and criminal law. Most defamation cases began as civil cases with a plaintiff bringing a complaint to court. If the offense were serious enough, the case could become a criminal one with an investigation led by the attorney general. Most of the original records used here come from a microﬁlm set at Tulane University Law Library; the reels are organized chronologically. 3. LaChance, “Étude de Mentalité”; LeCharny, “L’injure à Paris”; and Moogk, “‘Thieving Buggers,’” 526. Julius Ruff uses the term “verbal violence” to encompass acts of insult, slander, libel, and verbal threats. There is a need for a general category, but here the preferred term is “verbal offenses” because the characterization of violence may lead to prematurely judging the seriousness of these acts, which need to be evaluated case by case, both in terms of the cultural context and the speciﬁc instance. Ruff, Crime, Justice and Public Order. 4. Uninsky, “Violence, Honor, and Litigation,” 872. 5. King, “Law of Slander”; Thompson, “‘Hold Watchfulness’”; Spindel, “Law of Words”; Nelson, “Seditious Libel”; and Norton, “Gender and Defamation.” 6. Barkow, “Beneath New Culture”; Blake, “Grafﬁti and Racial Insults”; Brenneis, “Grog and Gossip”; Haviland, Gossip; Irvine, “Insult and Responsibility”; Engle, “Rethinking Gossip and Scandal”; and Thornton, “Insinuation, Insult, and Invective.” 7. Gluckman, “Gossip and Scandal.” See also Wilson, “Filcher of Good Names.” 8. One could cite a half dozen works for each of these authors, but the following are representative: Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice; Giddens, Constitution of Society; and Sahlins, Apologies to Thucydides.

Notes to Pages 135–137

9. Pitt-Rivers, People of the Sierra; Schneider, “Of Vigilance and Virgins”; and Bourdieu, “Sentiment of Honour.” 10. Giordano, “Mediterranean Honour Reconsidered,” 45–46. 11. Michael Herzfeld has offered several criticisms of the Mediterranean honor/shame literature, most importantly that it tends to lump diverse Mediterranean cultures together while exotifying them as “hot” and premodern in contrast to Northern Europeans. While his critique is convincing, the concern here is not to deﬁne the Mediterranean but to explore the striking parallels with French Colonial Louisiana. There is strong ethnographic evidence for an obsession with honor and status and a stasis of constant conﬂict. Herzfeld, “Horns of the Mediterraneanist Dilemma.” 12. Wilson, “Reputation and Respectability”; Smith, Negro Family; and Mintz, “Caribbean Social Organization.” For a summaries and an update, see Abrahams, “Negotiating Respect”; Scott, “Through the Diameter of Respectability.” 13. Johnson and Lipsett-Rivera, Faces of Honor. See especially the chapters by Burkholder and Johnson. 14. Due to the vagaries of record preservation and incomparable juridical levels, any statistical comparison of slander and insult rates derived from court records would be tenuous. Impressionistically, however, they can be helpful. In Rouen in the 1750s, verbal offenses accounted for 41 percent of all cases brought before the minor courts, while in Paris in 1765 they accounted for only 12 percent. In southwestern France Ruff found these cases grew over the course of the ﬁrst half of the eighteenth century, stabilizing around 19 percent for the remainder. In Canada LaChance found they accounted for 20 percent of the ﬁrst-circuit cases between 1712 and 1748, identical to the percentage of cases found in the Superior Council Records of Louisiana between 1720 and 1753. Translating these ﬁgures into annual prosecutions per ten thousand habitants, Louisiana’s rate of verbal offences averaged about 4. There were 4 incidents a year at midcentury, second only to contentious Rouen at 4.8 incidents per year. Uninsky, “Violence, Honor, and Litigation,” 881; LeCharny, “L’injure à Paris,” 566; LaChance, “Étude de Mentalité,” 230; and Ruff, Crime, Justice and Public Order, ix, table 1.01. See also Garrioch, “Verbal Insults.” 15. The oft-cited source for these statistics is a mémoire that states that 1,278 out a total of 7,020 Europeans destined for Louisiana were convicts, or forçats. Anonymous Mémoire, [after 1721], anf/ac, c13c1, fol. 329. Moogk is right to say that memoirs such as these probably inﬂate the ﬁgures, but the proportion of forçats within the French immigrant population (18.2 to 20 percent) is supported by the author’s study of the biographies of three hundred individuals who owned property in New Orleans between 1728 and 1731. Moogk is probably wrong, however, to say that the negative reputation of the French colonies as convict settlements was shared equally. Certainly a general (and slanderous) association of colonials with convicts took hold in the French imagination during Canada’s early settlement, but this reputation did not become overriding or crippling as it did in the case of Louisiana. The timing of French Louisiana’s primary settlement effort (1717–21) associated it with the draconian sweeps of the Great Conﬁnement. Further, the proportion of the latter’s French population that came from the ranks

Notes to Pages 137–140

of the forced colonists was far greater, by Moogk’s own estimate (18.2 percent), than that of New France (2.7 percent). Moogk, “Manon Lescaut’s Countrymen,” esp. 25. For a proﬁle of New Orleans property owners, see Dawdy, “La Ville Sauvage.” 16. On Louisiana’s early immigration history and public image problems, see Conrad, “Emigration Forcée”; Brasseaux, “Image of Louisiana”; Hardy “Transportation of Convicts”; Allain, “Manon Lescaut”; Allain, “L’immigration française en Louisiane; and Boulle, “Some Eighteenth-Century French Views on Louisiana.” 17. Some historians have been too quick to assume that these immigrants suffered a disproportionately high mortality rate. Between 1728 and 1731 among New Orleans property owners whose origin could be traced, 20 percent were identiﬁed on passenger lists among the forced exiles. These individuals were alive seven to fourteen years after their arrival, even though forçats tended to be older than the average immigrant. See Dawdy, “La Ville Sauvage.” Also see Moogk, La Nouvelle France, 87–91. On the presumed high mortality of Louisiana forçats, see Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana; Hardy, “Transportation of Convicts”; and Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves. 18. Rules against registering titles of nobility, pardon, or concession without special permission, 5 October 1748, from Louisiana Superior Council Abstracts, Louisiana Historical Quarterly (hereafter cited as sca-lhq), 20, no. 1: 233. 19. Delachaise to Directors, 6 September 1723, in Rowland and Sanders, Mississippi Provincial Archives: French Dominion (hereafter cited as mpafd), 2:348. 20. There also exist a small number of libel cases from the period. As colorful and amusing as these are, however, their small number and their diversity (involving a song in verse, a pornographic cartoon, and two widely published colonial mémoires) make them a more complicated case that likely resonates on a different cultural register as a recognized form of public entertainment and political instrument. The ribald sexual content and open challenge to political authority is marked in these cases in comparison to the insult and slander suits. 21. Uninsky, “Violence, Honor, and Litigation,” 876. 22. As in France such assault could range from hair-pulling, shoving, and spitting to ﬁst-ﬁghts, sword-slaps (with the ﬂat of the blade), and severe canings. See Uninsky, “Violence, Honor, and Litigation,” 877–79. 23. See LeCharny, “L’injure à Paris,” for an overview on eighteenth-century French legal theories and treatises on verbal offences. 24. Of this defamation sample 56 percent of the cases were a form of calumny, compared to about 39 percent of the cases in French Canada. Moogk, “‘Thieving Buggers,’” 538–39. 25. For example, see the case of Bourbeau à Conseil, 13 September 1725, scr, which says merely that, as they fought on the levee over a fence, the accused Chaperon “vomited (or poured forth) much abusive language against him” (vomittant contre le Suplicant Baucoup de parolle iniureuze). See also Goublais (Dame Francoise Martin) v. Marie Vabelle Coupard, 1 February 1728, scr; and Rene Galbee v. Mme. Rivard, 16 August 1729, scr.

Notes to Pages 140–142

26. The etymology of Jean Foutre is not well documented. Like “bugger” in English, however, it has gone through a transformation from a strong insult in the early modern era, meaning “sodomite” (literally “John Fucker”) to a vaguer, less literal insult meaning something like “jackass” in contemporary speech. See entries in “Alternative Dictionaries: international slang–an internet collaborative project,” http://www.notam02. no/~hcholm/altlang/, and Dictionnaire L’Argot, (http://leboucher.com). 27. Well translated in Germain v. Allain, 24–26 June 1751, sca-lhq, 20, no. 4: 1131– 40. 28. For example, see the case of Landerneau v. Lacour, 29 and 31 March 1749; Chancelier Déclaration, 2 March 1747; LeMoine Déclaration, 28 January 1745; Balcourt Déclaration, 6 October 1736; and Baldit à Conseil, 17 August 1729, all in scr. As in Louisiana, French insulteurs preferred bougre and Jean-Foutre. See Uninsky, “Violence, Honor, and Litigation,” 890; and LeCharny, “L’injure à Paris,” 572–73. Both Moogk and LaChance found a relatively distinctive Canadian lexicon of insult and obscenity, at least in terms of favored terms, with fripon, voleur, and bougre being far more common than Jean-Foutre. Moogk, “‘Thieving Buggers’”; and LaChance, “Étude de Mentalité.” 29. Information a la Regarde de Rousseau Contre La Court, 13 June 1725; Louis Brouet Déclaration, 10 June 1737; and LeMoine Déclaration, 28 January 1745, all in scr. 30. By contrast, a large number of both Canadian and French cases seem to be of this nature. Putain was almost as common a litigated term as bugger and thief. Moogk, “‘Thieving Buggers’”; and LeCharny, “L’injure à Paris.” See also Ruff, Crime, Justice and Public Order. On the reputation of Louisiana’s female immigrants, see Allain, “Manon Lescaut.” Louisiana libel, however, ﬁt better with the norm; in published accounts sexual immorality was a favorite topic. 31. Although the Code Noir technically prohibited the testimony of slaves against free people except in unusual circumstances, councilors seemed to have had little hesitation to use slave testimony in Louisiana. Criminal Case of André Baron, 12 August–6 October 1753, sca-lhq, 22, no. 3: 861–87. 32. LaChance, “Étude de Mentalité;” and Moogk, “‘Thieving Buggers.’” 33. “Le Démon est souvent dans la malice de certaines femmes. Elle se mit a crier que je la frappois et . . . que j’estois un Coquain et un faquain . . . je luy repondis quelle estoit une gueuse de traitter un troc de mon carracterre aynsi et quelle n’appartenoit pas a un mary et a des Personnes que j’estimois et honorois.” Pauger to Le Blond de la Tour, 19 August 1721, anf/ac, c13a6, fols. 140–140v. 34. Coupard’s name is sometimes incorrectly transcribed as “Valette Coupart.” She objected to two other women brought forward as witnesses because they were “prejudiced parties” that she was “also at odds with.” Fleuriau [untitled brief notes], 14 August 1728, scr. See also Notice to Keep the Peace, 1 February 1728, sca-lhq, 3, no. 4: 243; Goublaye v. Coupart, 5–16 August 1728, sca-lhq, 4, no. 4: 493–96. 35. In France the most common punishment was a ﬁne and less often a ritual of restitution. The most serious cases of slander, however, were theoretically punishable by death if the king or church were the target. Ruff, Crime, Justice and Public Order; and Uninsky, “Violence, Honor, and Litigation,” 892–95.

Notes to Pages 142–146

36. LeCharny, “L’injure à Paris,” 568. 37. Delachaise to the Directors of the Company of the Indies, 6 March 1723, in Rowland and Sanders, mpafd 2:337–38; Périer to Raguet, 15 February 1729, anf/ac, c13a12, fol. 354v. 38. “[C]es calomnies affreuses et que l’on [unreadable] dire interesser la Colonnie en general, si l’on souffroit noircir [unreadable] à mesure qu’elles arrivent ce ne seroit pas le Moyen d’engager d’hommes à venir icy dans l’esperance de sy etablir. Monsieur le Perier doit suivre cette affair pour l’interest public.” Milon à Conseil, 16 September 1730, scr. See also Fleuriau à Conseil, 16 September 1730; Carrière Malese à Conseil; Deposition de Carrière, 13 September 1730; Deposition de Sr. Lemoyne, 12 September 1730; and Milon à Conseil, 5 September 1730, all in scr. 39. As one eighteenth-century jurist wrote, “[une] bonne reputation sans contredit, de tous les biens, le plus précieux à soigner.” Dareau, Traité des injures. For more on this important aspect of eighteenth-century French culture, see Castan, Honnêteté et relations sociales en Languedoc; LeCharny, “L’injure à Paris”; and Uninsky, “Violence, Honor, and Litigation.” 40. In New France LaChance observed that the higher the rank, the more sensitive individuals seemed to be about their reputation, with real and faux nobles holding military titles as prone to instigate litigation as a duel. LaChance, “Étude de Mentalité.” 41. Letter of Raphael, 12 March 1726, anf/ac, c13a10, fol. 41. The changing and contested nature of the code of honor in Louisiana shares much with Latin American examples in which not only class claims but boundaries of masculinity and femininity were fought out. The struggle to assign social position among creoles and immigrants seems to often invite a language of insult. See Putnam, Company They Kept; Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey; and Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets. 42. “C’est que c’est un ivrogne et une personne indigne de la societé de toutes les honnestes gens.” Jean-François Benjamin Dumont dit Montigny, “Mémoire De Lxx Dxx Ofﬁcier Ingénieur, Contenant Les Evenemens qui se sont passés à la Louisiane depuis 1715 jusqu’a present. Ainsi que les temoignes sur les moeurs, usages et forces des divereses nations de L’Amerique Septentrionale et de ses productions,” 1747 MS, Ayer Collection, Newberry Library, 63. 43. “[Q]uand elle sera devenüe blanche, j’entreray icy, je le priay de dire a son general, que si j’etois venus pour le voir, je croyois que je faisois Mon devoir, mais que je voyois bien que je m’etois trompé, vu qu’il ne le meritoit pas, scachant bien qu’il ne savoit pas vivre, et qu’il ne meritoit aucun honneur d’honestes gens. Sur ce je n’attendis pas la reponce, et je me rembarquay dans le moment.” Dumont dit Montigny, “Mémoire De Lxx Dxx Ofﬁcier,” 101. 44. In Louisiana these comprised about half, or 47 percent, of all cross-class cases. Uninsky reports that in Rouen lower-status plaintiffs comprised only 28 percent of the cross-class cases. LaChance’s analysis of 105 cases from eighteenth-century New France suggests an opposite pattern, in which a signiﬁcant plurality (36 percent) of the accused were gens de métier, or tradesmen, while a disproportionate number of victims

Notes to Pages 146–151

came from the ranks of public ofﬁcials, military ofﬁcers, prominent merchants, and landowners. LaChance, “Étude de Mentalité,” 237; Uninsky, “Violence, Honor, and Litigation,” 898. 45. Bouet v. Sieur and Dame LaGoublaye, 16 July 1727, sca-lhq, 3, no. 4: 223; Milon v. Marchand, 13 March 1730, sca-lhq, 4, no. 4: 516. 46. Petition to Prosecute, 18 May 1729, sca-lhq, 4, no. 3: 333. 47. For example see Dalcour v. Dupuy Planchard, 22 February 1727 and 7–8 March 1727, sca-lhq, 3, no. 3: 435–38; De Verteuil v. Semson, 12–13 October 1726, sca-lhq, 3, no. 3: 418–19. 48. This translation seems the best one could make out of an unpunctuated stream of excited narrative: “Dieu jusquicy sy tu eu assé hardy tu nest qu’un poutan [putain] et je te promete que tu me la payer tu fais la le Seigneur [unreadable] monberaud pendant que tu nest que son engage et plusieurs autres invectives de quelle nature” One assumes that Le Moine was the one who called Fanchon a whore. It is possible she used it on him in a gender inversion, seen elsewhere. After the exchange of insults Fanchon’s ﬁve or six children then followed Le Moine down the street, pelting him with sticks. As he had to pass by their house on the way to his work site, he requested the Superior Council to intervene. We have no record of the council’s response. LeMoine Déclaration, 28 January 1745, scr. 49. Cruzat, “Documents Covering the Criminal Trial of Etienne La Rue.” The translations here differ from Cruzat’s in an effort to translate them both for the meaning and intensity of the term. Foutre is a very strong term, equivalent to “fuck/fucking” in English. “Seigneur” had the meaning of “Lord” in the feudal sense, whereas “Sieur” was a polite, but more general form of address. 50. “[E]t repondit au dit Negre Vite faites f*re luy.” As seen elsewhere, foutre is so offensive that it is not spelled completely. DeMorand Déclaration, 3 June 1737, scr. 51. “[T]u dit a Brosset tu es aussy Coquin que luy,” Brosset Déclaration, 23 August 1746, scr. 9. Afro-Creole Women in Early New Orleans 1. The last will and testament of Cecile Bonille can be found in the Acts of L. T. Caire, 24 March 1841, Notarial Acts, Archives of the Notarial Records, New Orleans Civil Court Building (hereafter cited as Acts). It was the custom in New Orleans for religious as well as secular record keepers to describe the children of unmarried slave women or free women of color and white men as natural. Children of white men and women who were not married were described as illegitimate. Cecile Bonille’s baptism record is in Baptisms of Slaves and Free Persons of Color, aano, vol. 3, 1807–1809. She was baptized in 1807. 2. Racism was a fundamental part of the social systems of slavery in both the French and Spanish periods. It did not suddenly or even slowly appear with the arrival of the Americans, but laws meant to rob people of African descent grew ever more harsh after Louisiana was ceded to the United States in 1803. That is not to say that the Ameri-

Notes to Pages 151–154

cans were more racist; rather, they appeared on the scene at the same time Louisiana’s economy improved and a more harsh form of slavery emerged. And as southern states edged toward the Civil War, they implemented harsher laws in order to govern more closely free people of African descent. Louisiana followed suit. For a fuller version of this argument, see Gould, “In Full Enjoyment of Their Liberty.” 3. Acts of Caire, 24 March 1841. 4. Acts of Caire, 17 August 1841. The inventory of the estate of Cecile Bonille states that there were many worthless papers that had been thrown away but that some more valuable papers had been saved. Caire did not describe all of the papers, but he did describe the acts of emancipation and other deeds of property. 5. Cecile Bonille obtained seventeen billets from Samuel Hart worth the sum of 123,451 piastres. She cashed the billets but was sued by Hart’s legal heirs. Bonille hired the famous John Slidell to defend her and ﬁnally reached a monetary settlement out of court with Hart’s heirs. See Acts of Felix Grima, 13 May 1834. 6. Act of Caire, 24 March 1841 and 17 August 1841. Nanette was also known as Ana and Annette. Her emancipation was noted in the acts of Almonester y Roxas, 10 January 1770. The actual manumission has so far not been found in either the notarial records or the judicial records. The 10 January 1770 act of Almonester y Roxas is that of the sale and emancipation of Cecile Dubreuil and her children. 7. The record of the estate of Claude Josephe Dubreuil can be found at the Louisiana History Center, Old Mint, New Orleans. Nanette and her children are listed separately from the other Dubreuil slaves and are listed as enslaved members of the household. 8. Diop, Famille Wolof, 19–20, 27, 44–45, 51–52. For a detailed description of Nanette’s family and its Wolof heritage, see Clark and Gould, “Feminine Face of Afro-Catholicism in New Orleans.” 9. Acts of Roxas, 10 January 1770. 10. For instance, see Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 239. The records for the French period do not reliably enumerate the population. Those statistics that are available, however, suggest that there were a minimal number of legitimately freed people of African descent in the colony when the Spanish took control in 1769. 11. The property records for the city of New Orleans are housed in the Archives of the Civil Court Building. Most of the records for the French period are no longer extant; the records only begin to be virtually uninterrupted after 1765. Since most of the records for the French period are absent, a comparison between the French and the Spanish systems is extremely difﬁcult. However, other records are useful: for instance, the judicial, ecclesiastical, and governmental records all contain information about property holding. These latter records are not as useful as the notarial accounts, which almost always contain the line of succession of each piece of property. Transcripts of the census of New Orleans, January 1732, anf/ac. The 1771 Census can be found in Lawrence Kinnaird, Spain in the Mississippi Valley, 2:196. Hall’s Database for the Study of AfroLouisiana History and Genealogy includes descriptions of slaves in Louisiana from 1723 to 1820 as well as approximately ninety-three thousand records.

Notes to Pages 154–158

12. For a discussion the differences between French and Spanish law and custom, see Baade, “Law of Slavery.” 13. It was in that act that Claude Josephe Dubreuil ﬁls afﬁrmed that Nannette’s children were his half brothers and sisters. For the emancipation, see the Acts of Juan Garic, vol. 3, January-December 1772. For the will of Marianne Dubreuil dite Brion, see Acts of Broutin, vol. 40, May-July 1807. Nanette was also known as Ana and Annette; her baptismal name was Marie Anne. 14. Acts of Roxas, 10 January 1770. The judicial records for the Dubreuil debts are located at the Louisiana History Center, Old Mint, New Orleans. The case begins in 1767. 15. A simple analysis of census data gathered in different years during the Spanish period, which began in 1769 and ended in 1803, conﬁrms the growth of the freed population and their descendants. 16. Information for the Spanish period is much more consistent than that of the French period, which probably accounts for some of the increase. Despite that difference, however, the trends in the early Spanish period suggest that many people who had probably gone free illegally during the French period sought ofﬁcial freedom after the Spanish implemented their laws. The trend can be tracked in the notarial records of the New Orleans Civil Court from 1770 to 1780. 17. Acts of Juan Garic, 23 September 1772. This act states that Debreuil ﬁls sold Marianne to Marianne Piquery about ten years before, or in 1762. Marianne would have been about twenty-eight when she was sold. She was approximately thirty-eight when she was freed; she was the mother of four children who were freed with her. 18. A search of the notarial records for the period following Nanette’s emancipation as well as the census records for the entire Spanish period failed to ﬁnd Nanette as the head of a household or as a property owner. Evidently, after she secured her freedom and the freedom of her daughter and two grandchildren, she was too elderly and without further resources and thus became a dependent within the household of her daughter Cecile. 19. Acts of Pedesclaux, 27 June 1815 and 23 July 1817; Court of Probate, 20 August 1817; Acts of Pedesclaux, 20 October 1817; Acts of Broutin, 20 July 1815; Acts of Garic, 17 July 1779; Acts of Broutin, 16 May 1807; Acts of Laﬁtte, 5 November 1819; Acts of Almonester, 21 December 1781; Acts of Garic, 26 December 1774; Acts of Broutin, 23 January 1819; Acts of de Armas, 18 September 1817; Acts of de Armas, 14 and 15 September 1810; Acts of Pedesclaux, 21 January 1783; Acts of de Armas, 3 August 1810; Acts of Pedesclaux, 17 June 1805. 20. Civil government was established in Louisiana in 1712 when Louis XIV ceded the colony to Antoine Crozat. The charter of transfer established the Coutume de Paris and the edicts of the King as the fundamental law of Louisiana. Baker, Simpson, and Allain summarize the fundamental rights of women in French Louisiana under the Coutume de Paris in an excellent essay “Mari Est Seigneur.” The prototype for the 1724 Louisiana Code Noir was the 1685 edict on slave labor and race relations for the French possessions in the Caribbean. Records of the States of the United States of America: Louisiana, 1678–1810, loc microﬁlm, includes a copy of the Code Noir, March 1724. The Code was

Notes to Pages 158–162

also recorded by Laussat on December 17, 1803, just before Louisiana was ceded to the Americans. Baade, “ Law of Slavery.” 21. For a discussion the differences between French and Spanish law and custom, see Baade, “Law of Slavery.” 22. A copy of the Recencement du 1795 can be found on microﬁlm in the hnoc. The original is found in agi/ppc, legajo 216. 23. Scholars dispute whether the 1795 Census enumerates the entire population of the parish or just the ﬁrst three Quartiers and the new Quartier. Still those quarters of the city included the overwhelming majority of the population, and the value of the census lies in its inclusiveness. The count includes the names of heads of households, describes whether they rented or owned the property in which they lived, and provides their occupations, age categories, and racial and color classiﬁcation. It also contains information about each slave included in a household, giving sex and age as well as color classiﬁcation. The census is thus a useful tool for social historians as it is a snapshot of the people living in Spanish New Orleans. One other difﬁculty with the census is that the Spanish census taker recorded the census in his version of French, which makes deciphering the names extremely difﬁcult. 24. The percentages for this study are rounded to the closest integer. 25. For a more thorough account of the feminine nature of the enslaved population in New Orleans, see Gould, “House That Was Never a Home.” 26. There were 781 houses in New Orleans in 1795 (see table 2). Most houses were owned by the people who inhabited them, although some were rented. The Census of 1795 makes the distinction. 27. The study of real estate holding in this paper is limited to property, and more speciﬁcally houses, that are located within the city. Some of these people more than likely owned property elsewhere, but data from the census are limited by necessity to what is in the census, which demonstrates trends instead of actual holdings. There were 788 households, or buildings listed, but 7 were simply described as government buildings and are not counted in the conclusions of this paper. Furthermore, 18 of the houses were owned but described as unoccupied at the time of the census, leaving 763 as occupied. The other unoccupied ones have been added back in when calculating for wealth since they were of some value and since, if nothing else, they indicate property ownership. When ﬁguring for property ownership, I have only calculated numbers for adults since in only one case were minor children noted as owning property. The percentages calculated in this paper are rounded off to the closest number. 28. The 1795 Spanish census of New Orleans also includes lists of the occupations of the property holders and renters who were heads of households. 29. The census taker also recorded each slave living within a household. It appears from comparing data in 1795 to that of other documentation, such as notarial records, sacramental records, and wills and inventories, that almost all the slaves in a household were owned by the head of the household. In only one case does it appear that children

Notes to Pages 162–164

owned property, which was held in trust for them. Thus, with this one exception, the properties were owned by adults. Data in this study by their very nature are designed to exhibit inhabitants and conditions of habitation and not to exhibit property holding. Therefore one can only draw general conclusions. The patterns revealed, however, reﬂect the author’s survey of purchases of property in the extant notarial records for the later years of the French period as well as those of the Spanish period. 30. Slaves were enumerated within households, which were headed either by men or women who owned the house or rented it. Therefore it is impossible to determine from this data if the slaves listed in the household were owned by the head of the household or by someone else in the household. Furthermore, a few of the slaves could have been rented and simply enumerated within the household. Data then are not nearly as speciﬁc for slave ownership as for real estate. Two of the households only had the owners’ slaves listed in the household and not the owners. Five other households that were enumerated with slaves and without owners were listed under a list of households owned by the Capuchins. In another listing les dames des religieuse au Roy owned a household with twenty-four slaves and no owner or master listed as living there. 31. This summary does not take into account value but offers rather a simple numerical count. 32. This calculation is made solely on number of properties owned. A study of the distribution of true wealth must be done from the notarial records and is underway. 33. Marie Antoinette Hart was born June 12, 1825, and baptized July 14, 1825; Baptisms of Slaves and Free Persons of Color, aano, 1824–1825. The point in time when Cecile began her liaison with Hart has been surmised from these dates. The marriage is not recorded, but on the side of the marriage record of her and Hart’s son, Samuel Hart, the priest noted that the young Hart was legitimate; see page 112 of the Marriage Book, 1842–1853, aano. The illegality of interracial marriages prompted local priests who were more worried about salvation than legal tradition to perform clandestine marriages. Some of the marriages are recorded in the marriage book of slaves and free people of African descent; yet others are slipped onto the pages that record the marriages of whites. Even though Bonille and Hart were married in the eyes of the church, they were not married in the eyes of the law. 34. The database for inventories was accumulated by Paul LaChance and includes the total number of inventories recorded in every tenth year from 1810 through 1860; data for this segment of the paper are derived from LaChance, “Limits of Privilege.” Much has been written about the exceptional opportunities that free men of color had in nineteenth-century New Orleans and the way in which they used their income to accumulate property. See Berlin, Slaves Without Masters; Schweninger, Black Property Owners; Curry, Free Black in Urban America; Rankin, “Forgotten People.” These studies, however, assume the wealth for men and generalize the distribution of wealth as well as the amount of wealth they held. 35. See LaChance, “Limits of Privilege.” The numbers for the population are taken from the U.S. Census Records for Louisiana, City of New Orleans, 1810.

Notes to Pages 169–176

10. Spanish Bourbons and Louisiana Tobacco 1. 1766 French Census of Natchitoches, in Mills, Natchitoches Colonials, 9–14. The 1766 French census, taken in January, actually reﬂects the previous year. 2. Coutts, “Boom and Bust,” 289–90; Frederick, “Luis de Unzaga,” 80; and Contract, Jean Piseros and Luis de Unzaga y Amezaga, 12 August 1777, agi/ppc, legajo 112. 3. Coutts, “Boom and Bust,” 290; Bernardo de Gálvez to Unzaga, 7 April 1777, agi/ ppc, legajo 1232; and Athanase de Mézières to Unzaga, 2 May 1777, in Bolton, Athanase de Mézières, 2:130–31. 4. Regulations Governing the Tobacco Trade in Louisiana: Price Fixed for Louisiana Tobacco, and the Conditions to be Observed By the Inhabitants, 15 June 1777, in Kinnaird, Spain in the Mississippi Valley, 2:237–38. 5. Contract, Piseros and Unzaga, 12 August 1777, agi/ppc, legajo 112; Inventory of Jeanne Le Roy, wife of Jean Louis Matthias Lecour de Prelle, 13 April 1778, npcr, bk. 12; and Land Sale, Hyamoc to Jean Baptiste Laberry, 13 June 1780, npcr, bk. 16. 6. Bernardo de Gálvez to de Mézières, 28 October 1777, in Bolton, Athanase de Mézières, 2:139; Coutts, “Boom and Bust,” 291. 7. Coutts, “Boom and Bust,” 291–93. 8. Informe, Martin Navarro to José de Gálvez, 12 September 1782, agi/sd, legajo 2633; and Coutts, “Boom and Bust,” 293–94 9. General Statement of Whites, Slaves, Mulattos, and Free Blacks . . . of Natchitoches, 26 November 1781, agi/ppc, legajo 212a; and General Census of the Residents . . . at the Post of Natchitoches, 17 August 1787, agi/ppc, legajo 201. 10. Navarro to José Antonio de Castillo, 20 March 1783, agi/sd, legajo 2633; Navarro to José de Gálvez, 29 July 1783, agi/sd, legajo 2609; Coutts, “Boom and Bust,” 293, 296–98. 11. Coutts, “Boom and Bust,” 300–5. 12. Perrin du Lac, Voyage dans les deux Louisianes, 375–76; Alliot, “Historical and Political Reﬂections on Louisiana,” 125; John Sibley to Governor William C. C. Claiborne, 10 October 1803, in Carter Territory of Orleans, 74; and Stoddard, Sketches, 188. 13. Coutts, “Boom and Bust,” 306; Louis de Blanc to Esteban Miró, 15 September 1788, agi/ppc, legajo 201; de Blanc to Miró, 30 September 1789, agi/ppc, legajo 15b; List of number of pounds of tobacco . . . Natchitoches, 18 January 1791, agi/ppc, legajo 203; List of inhabitants and merchants of this post of Natchitoches who . . . have given note of the . . . pounds of tobacco, 15 March 1791, agi/ppc, legajo 203; and Statement of the quantity of andullos and pounds of tobacco . . . Natchitoches, 15 December 1791, agi/ ppc, legajo 17. 14. Coutts, “Boom and Bust,” 299, 306–7. 15. De Blanc to Baron de Carondelet, 18 February 1792, in Kinnaird, Spain in the Mississippi Valley, 3:9 16. De Blanc to Carondolet, 30 September 1794, agi/ppc, legajo 29; Francisco Rendón to Diego de Gardoqui, 30 November 1795, agi/sd, legajo 2612; Coutts, “Boom and Bust,” 309; and Pitot, Observations on the Colony of Louisiana, 136–37.

Notes to Pages 176–182

17. Clark, New Orleans, 187–88, 217; Sibley to Claiborne, 10 October 1803, in Carter, Territory of Orleans, 74; Stoddard, Sketches, 188, 397; Church Tax Roll of Natchitoches, 1 March 1790, in Mills, Natchitoches Colonials, 68–75; Statement of the quantity of andullos and pounds of tobacco, 15 December 1791, agi/ppc, legajo 17; and Succession of Marie Anne Daublin, 7 March 1803, npcr, bk. 30. 18. 1766 French Census of Natchitoches and Church Tax Roll of Natchitoches, 1 March 1790, in Mills, Natchitoches Colonials, 9–14, 68–75; General Statement of Whites, Slaves, Mulattos, and Free Blacks, 26 November 1781, agi/ppc, legajo 212a; General Census of the Residents . . . at the Post of Natchitoches, 17 August 1787, agi/ppc, legajo 201; General census of the slaves . . . at the post of Natchitoches, 15 October 1795, agi/ppc, legajo 201. 19. Church Tax Roll of Natchitoches, 1 March 1790, in Mills, Natchitoches Colonials, 68–75; List of number of pounds of tobacco, 18 January 1791, agi/ppc, legajo 203; List of inhabitants and merchants, 15 March 1791, agi/ppc, legajo 203; Statement of the quantity of andullos and pounds of tobacco, 15 December 1791, agi/ppc, legajo 17. 20. Church Tax Roll of Natchitoches, 1 March 1790, in Mills, Natchitoches Colonials, 68–75; List of number of pounds of tobacco, 18 January 1791, agi/ppc, legajo 203; List of inhabitants and merchants, 15 March 1791, agi/ppc, legajo 203; Statement of the quantity of andullos and pounds of tobacco, 15 December 1791, agi/ppc, legajo 17. 21. 1766 French Census of Natchitoches and Church Tax Roll of Natchitoches, 1 March 1790, in Mills, Natchitoches Colonials, 9–14, 68–75; General Census of the Residents . . . at the Post of Natchitoches, 17 August 1787, agi/ppc, legajo 201; List of number of pounds of tobacco, 18 January 1791, agi/ppc, legajo 203; List of inhabitants and merchants, 15 March 1791, agi/ppc, legajo 203. 22. Data based on thirty-one successions between 1766 and 1778 in npcr. 23. Data based on thirty-six successions between 1779 and 1791 in npcr. 24. Data based on thirty-six successions between 1779 and 1791 in npcr. 25. Data based on forty-four successions between 1792 and 1803 in npcr; Liljegren, “Jacobinism in Spanish Louisiana,” 47–97, believes that the colonists revolted out of a sense of allegiance to French revolutionary ideals; Ocariz, “Natchitoches Revolt,” 117–32, attributes the upheaval to Gallic opposition to Spanish rule; and Din, “Father Jean Delvaux,” 5–33, argues that the revolt stemmed from economic disturbances and factional disputes. 26. 1766 French Census of Natchitoches, in Mills, Natchitoches Colonials, 9–14; Statement showing the number of inhabitants of the fort and town of Natchitoches, 14 January 1770, in Bjork, “Documents Relating to Alexandro O’Reilly,” 33; Census of Natchitoches, 16 February 1776, in Bolton, Athanase de Mézières, 2:120–21; General Statement of Whites, Slaves, Mulattos, and Free Blacks, 26 November 1781, agi/ppc, legajo 212a; General Census of the Residents . . . at the Post of Natchitoches, 17 August 1787, agi/ppc, legajo 201; Census of the inhabitants of the parish of Natchitoches, 1795, 1798, and 24 February 1803, Records of the Diocese of Louisiana and the Floridas, hnoc, Williams Center, roll 5. 27. Data compiled from Mills, Natchitoches: Abstracts.

Notes to Pages 183–194

28. Din, Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves, 50, 72–73, 122–24, 130; Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon, 181–85; and Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 276–80. 29. 1766 French Census of Natchitoches, in Mills, Natchitoches Colonials, 9–14; General Statement of Whites, Slaves, Mulattos, and Free Blacks, 26 November 1781, agi/ ppc, legajo 212a; and 1795 Census of Slave owners at Natchitoches, 15 October 1795, agi/ ppc, legajo 201. 30.”Notes and Documents”; Inventory of Baptiste Dupré, 1 September 1781, Melrose Collection, Cammie G. Henry Research Center, folder 582; Inventory of Marie Louise Grappe, Widow of Manuel Trichel, 9 December 1795; and Inventory of Nicolas LeCour, 22 November 1796, both in npcr, bk. 27. 31. Data compiled from Mills, Natchitoches: Abstracts. 32. Data compiled from Mills, Natchitoches: Abstracts. 11 . Ranching in Nuevo Santander’s Villas del Norte 1. Scholarly and public interest in the study of the Spanish Borderlands owes much to the pioneering work of Jones in his Los Paisanos, which shifted research from institutional histories to the settler population and their relationship to the Native Americans as well as the Church and State. Gerhard, North Frontier of New Spain, 362–63; and Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 1, 3, 5. 2. Osante, Orígenes. 3. Osante, Orígenes, 40–42. As used here, rancheros are landowners and not tenants. For a study that takes a similar approach to understanding the economic history of Alta California, see Hackel, “Land, Labor, and Production.” 4. Gerhard, Northern Frontier, 358; and Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 17–20. The Coahuiltecans who lived along the Rio Grande were assimilated into the Spanish communities by the end of the eighteenth century; Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 24. 5. Population ﬁgures are from Carrasco, El Nuevo Santander, 1:120, table 24. Jones Los Paisanos, 240, table 14; Gerhard, North Frontier, 358; and Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 29–33, 40–42. 6. On Escandón’s recall from ofﬁce, see Osante, Testimonio. On founding of towns, see Gerhard, North Frontier, 358. 7. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 41–42. 8. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 32–34, 43–44. 9. Alonzo Tejano Legacy, 22–23, 29–32, 46–48, 52–53. 10. All of the discussion of salinas is derived from the following: Salinas, agn, vol. 22, exp. 3; vol. 16, exps. 4, 6, and 11; and vol. 2, exp. 11; vol. 11, exp. 6. 11. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 35–40, 60–61. 12. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 44. 13. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 74. 14. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 75. For a brief survey of the kinds of credit available in Monterrey, see Garza, “Crédito y Transacciones.” In one transaction in 1796 Rosa María Ballí de Hinojosa of Reynosa borrowed from the same 4,000 pesos that she and her

Notes to Pages 194–203

husband had used to establish a capellanía for their son, Father Nicolás Ballí, Garza, “Crédito y Transacciones,” 560. For a study of the Church as lender, see Allen, “Capital Formation and Lending.” 15. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 76–77. 16. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 69–73; also see Osante, Orígenes, 198–206. Part of the fear for the opening of ports in Nuevo Santander was that contraband trade would ﬂourish. At present the evidence of such trade is very sketchy; Osante, Orígenes, 204–5. 17. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 76. 18. Diezmos Reports for the Diocese of Nuevo León, 17 January 1803, ms. in Eberstadt Collection, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. Also, Diezmos, agn, vol. 5, fols. 27–40, 1773–1783. 19. Libro de Gobierno, 1a, 1774–1824, Archives of the Archdiocese of Monterrey. 20. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 81–82; Osante, Testimonio, 71; and Will of Manuel de Escandón, 15 April 1800, Edmundo O’Gorman Papers, Benson Library, University of Texas at Austin. 21. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 81. 22. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 81–82. For the difﬁculties facing Narciso Cavazos’s widow, Doña Guadalupe Cavazos, with regard to branding cattle at San Juan de Carricitos and the size of the herd, see Petition to Governor Manuel de Iturbe e Iraeta, ciudades vecinas, caja 3, Reynosa Historical Archives, 1809. Also, Power of Attorney to Antonio Silverio de Verridy from Doña Guadalupe Cavazos, protocolos, Reynosa Historical Archives, January 11, 1809; de Verridy was a merchant and trusted vecino who was employed by the citizenry as agent for legal and business purposes. 23. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 83. 24. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 59–60. 25. Libro de Cabildo, caja 3, Archives of the Archdiocese of Monterrey. 26. Index to the Protocolos of Camargo, Special Collections, University of Texas at Pan American, n.p. 27. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 58. 28. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 55, 58. 29. Chevalier, Land and Society. 30. Manuel de Escandón’s view of the poverty of the settlers is noted in Osante, Orígenes, 70. 31. Index to the Protocolos of Camargo, Special Collection, University of Texas at Pan American, n.p. There are literally hundreds of leases of livestock in Nuevo León, where the vast majority of the Lower Valley pobladores originated. For example, see Garza, Catálogo. 32. Inventory of Reynosa Archives, Special Collections, University of Texas at Pan American, 34. 33. Will and Testament of Blas de la Garza, Matamoros, 1806(?); Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 78–79. 34. Supplement Report of the Commissioner [J. J. Cocke, County Surveyor], R. King

Notes to Pages 203–210

vs. Heirs of Narciso Cavazos, Decd., no. 1227, District Court, Cameron County, April Term, 1886, n.p., Francis William Seabury Papers, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, box 2g175. 35. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 47–48; Tax Rolls, Cameron County, 1848–1865, Texas State Library; Mauro, Guide to Spanish and Mexican Land Grants, entry no. 3, n.p. 36. Estado que manifesta el numero de havitantes que contiene la Villa del Refugio, caja 1, exp. 6, Colonial, Borrador de Estadística, Matamoros Historical Archives, June 1, 1826. 37. Manifestacion de los ﬁerros que usan los Vecinos de esta Villa de N. S. de Guadalupe de Reynosa, Reynosa Historical Archives, 1828. 38. Libro de Gobierno, 1a, 1774–1824, Archives of the Archdiocese of Monterrey. 39. Libro de Cabildo, caja 3, Archives of the Archdiocese of Monterrey. 40. Libro de Cabildo, caja 3, Archives of the Archdiocese of Monterry. 41. Relación hecha por varios individos de esta [jurisdicción] conforme al bando de 15 de Diciembre de 1813, Reynosa Historical Archives. 42. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 78. 43. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 78–79. 44. Pérez Herrero, “Regional Conformation in Mexico,” 130–31. 12. Loyalty in the West Florida Borderlands 1. “More of the little mimick Revolution of Florida,” The Repertory (Boston), December 7, 1810, 1. “Anglo” is used throughout this essay to refer to people having come from Britain and the United States. In more speciﬁc cases, “Anglo-American” is used. Acquired by Spain in 1783, the Spanish West Florida district ran from the Mississippi River in the west out to the Apalachicola River to the east. The most settled region west of Pensacola was the Baton Rouge district, which ran east to the Pearl River and contained four divisions—Feliciana, Baton Rouge proper, St. Helena, and St. Tammany. Thirty-one degrees longitude deﬁned the northern boundary, while Bayous Manchac and Iberville deﬁned the southern land boundaries. 2. The term “Black Legend,” coined by Julián Juderías in 1914, generally refers to historical depictions of Spain’s empire as bloodthirsty, cruel, inefﬁcient, corrupt, fanatical, and ultimately doomed to failure because of its excesses. Juderías, La Leyenda Negra. 3. The terms “American” and “Anglo-American” can encompass a number of different meanings. Following the contemporary standard, “American” means any person from the United States. Where national origin is not clear for whites, “Anglo-American” designates any white person from either Great Britain (including Ireland and Scotland) or the United States. When possible and whenever the records permit or an explanation requires more precision, nationality is speciﬁed. However, in this chapter the deﬁnitions are as found in the majority of records from the period. When it becomes necessary to identify Anglo-Americans living in West Florida, they will be referred to as “resident Anglo-Americans.” 4. David Weber, “Spanish Frontier.” For the most part, books that deal with West

Notes to Pages 212–213

Florida begin after the 1810 Revolution and use older works to provide background information on Spanish rule. The chronology of West Florida revolution historiography began in 1810 after the successful overthrow of Spanish rule when the pro-U.S. faction published its version of the takeover in U.S. newspapers. Monette took up the stirring anti-Spanish rhetoric at the beginning of the war with Mexico in Valley of the Mississippi, vol. 2. Monette’s work informed later authors such as Cox, West Florida Controversy, which is still one of the most cited studies on the politics of the West Florida revolution, despite its one-dimensional portrait of the inevitability of American expansion. An unapologetically hagiographic yet frequently cited author, Stanley Clisby Arthur was a journalist in St. Francisville, Louisiana—a town in what is now West Feliciana Parish—when he published a series of newspaper articles, such as “Pictures of the Past: The Story of the Kemper Brothers, Three Fighting Sons of a Baptist Preacher Who Fought For Freedom When Louisiana Was Young,” St. Francisville Democrat (la), July 8, 1933, and a book Story of the West Florida Rebellion. Along with Cox’s work, Arthur’s Story has deﬁned West Florida historiography for more than sixty years. In the 1990s Malone’s Sweet Chariot cites Arthur as the main source of information on West Florida’s revolution, while Hyde’s Pistols and Politics and Owsley and Smith’s Filibusters and Expansionists both cite Arthur as their main source for the Black Legend-inspired argument that local residents regarded the Spanish government as weak and corrupt and that residents wanted a more responsive local administration. 5. Washington Federalist, September 15, 1804, 3. Emphasis in the original. The most recent work to examine the Federalist-Republican debate over the Louisiana Purchase is Kukla, Wilderness So Immense, especially chapters thirteen through sixteen. 6. Padgett, “Ofﬁcial Records of the West Florida Revolution and Republic,” 5–6. The ﬁnal three issues listed on the ﬁrst day involved, ﬁrst, the need for a standard system of weights and measures to facilitate business in the province—a problem stemming from the mixture of French, Spanish, and Anglo-American systems of measurement. Second, there was a protest that government ofﬁcials had billed residents for services without presenting records of charges. Finally, there was the complaint that the area had become a haven for French families exiled from Cuba and for refugees from St. Domingue, who brought possible revolutionary instability to the region from both the slave owners and slaves. Interestingly, though, the complaint was about the French families, not their slaves. 7. Other works have described in general the political situation in the Floridas, most recently Hoffman’s excellent Florida’s Frontiers. Hoffman’s work passes over the 1810 West Florida Revolution entirely in favor of a discussion of the Patriot War (1812) and then refocuses on East Florida. However, he does note that American efforts to stir up anti-Spanish and pro-American sentiment north of Mobile in that period mostly failed. Likewise, Patrick in Florida Fiasco and Smith in The Plot to Steal Florida brush by the 1810 Revolution with a nod to the supposed anti-Spanish sentiments of the locals. 8. For instance, see Starr, Tories, Dons, and Rebels. For a more complete discussion of West Florida during the British period, see also Fabel, Economy of British West Florida. On

Notes to Pages 213–217

the transition from British to Spanish rule, see Haarmann, “Spanish Conquest of British West Florida.” West Florida during the Spanish period has received less attention—most of it found in disparate articles—and I am in the process of completing a monograph on the period from 1785–1810. 9. This policy was well-known across the northeastern Spanish Borderlands. For an excellent analysis of Spanish land policy on the northern borderlands, see Cummins, “Spanish Louisiana Land Policy.” 10. Din, “Proposals and Plans,” 197. 11. Remini, “Andrew Jackson Takes an Oath.” 12. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 73. 13. For a discussion of Spanish efforts to convert residents to Catholicism, see Din, “Irish Mission to West Florida,” 315–34. 14. The local unit of measurement was an arpent. One acre equaled roughly 1.24 arpents (variously spelled arpent or arpen), wfp 16:340; Spanish Land Grants in Florida, Works Progress Administration, State Library Board, May 1941, vol. 29. 15. pvp, loc, containers 19 and 25, reel 6, map 3. 16. Brevard, History of Florida, 1:269. 17. Governor Carlos de Grand-Pré inspects a Bridge Built by Thomas Lilley, wfp 3:4. 18. See especially Christopher Waldrep, “Opportunity on the Frontier South of the Green”; and Aron, How the West Was Lost. 19. See Kukla, Wilderness So Immense. 20. Daniel Clark, an American living in New Orleans who had deep ties with the Spanish government, proved especially valuable to Madison in determining the boundaries. For example, see Madison’s continuing requests for information in James Madison to Daniel Clark, 16 September 1803, Consular Instructions of the Department of State, nara, vol. 1 (October 12, 1801–February 26, 1817), microﬁlm 78, roll 1; and Cox, West Florida Controversy, 88. 21. Among the many letters outlining the transfer of power and its effects on elite loyalty, see John Mathias to William Claiborne, 2 February 1804, enclosed in Claiborne to Madison, 1 March 1804, Letters Received by the Secretary of State, nara. 22. Claiborne to Madison, 29 April 1806, Letters Received by the Secretary of State, nara. 23. This was a serious problem for U.S. ofﬁcials, who suspected the Spaniards of plotting to return New Orleans and Louisiana to Spanish control. Among others, see Claiborne to Madison, 7 January and 9 January 1806; and Claiborne to Major Porter, 12 January 1806, all in State Department Territorial Papers, Orleans, nara. 24. See particularly Hanger, Bounded Lives. Hanger’s “Conﬂicting Loyalties” provides an excellent analysis of how Spain dealt with the problem of loyalty among free blacks. 25. Among others, see Claiborne to Clark and Madison, 7 September 1803, State Department Territorial Papers, Orleans, nara.

Notes to Pages 217–220

26. Claiborne to Major H. L. Claiborne, 7 February 1804, State Department Territorial Papers, Orleans, nara. 27. The idea that the Purchase included West Florida was more than just a local rumor. Newspapers across the United States reported the story, as in the August 30, 1803 (vol. 1, no. 44), issue of the New Haven Visitor, which corrected an earlier rumor by saying “West Florida is included in the Louisiana purchase, and not East Florida, as erroneously inserted in our last.” 28. Realengos, anc, legajo 43, no. 20. 29. Realengos, anc, legajo 43, no. 26. 30. Realengos, anc, legajo 70, no. 47. 31. For instance, see the Bayou Sara land grant of John Ellis, registered with the United States in September 1805, “West of the Pearl River, Mississippi, Abstracts of Certiﬁcates A, B, C, D, and E, 1805–1807,” Records of the Bureau of Land Management, nara, entry 333, vol. 1. 32. For more on William Dunbar, see Rowland, Life, Letters, and Papers of William Dunbar. See especially his survey of the West Florida frontier, “Report of William Dunbar to the Spanish Government . . . in Locating and Surveying the Thirty-First Degree of Latitude,” 82, a valuable glimpse of a land as-yet untamed by Europeans. In 1804 he undertook a survey of the Louisiana-Texas frontier to establish the exact boundaries of that area for Jefferson. That “Red River Expedition” is recounted in his diary, Rowland, Life, Letters, and Papers of William Dunbar, 216–320. 33. Dunbar to Jefferson, 30 September 1803, State Department Territorial Papers, Orleans, nara. 34. See Claiborne to Madison, 5 June 1805, State Department Territorial Papers, Orleans, nara. 35. Claiborne to [unknown, probably Madison] 19 January 1805, State Department Territorial Papers, Orleans, nara. 36. Claiborne to Madison, 6 August 1805, State Department Territorial Papers, Orleans, nara. 37. Claiborne to the Marquis de Casa Calvo, 3 August 1805; and Claiborne to James Madison, 5 August 1805 State Department Territorial Papers, Orleans, nara. 38. Marquis de Casa Calvo to Claiborne 8 August 1805, State Department Territorial Papers, Orleans, nara. 39. For a list of the amount of land sold and to whom it went, see the enclosure in Claiborne to Madison, 15 August 1805, State Department Territorial Papers, Orleans, nara. Much of that acreage seems to have gone to Daniel Clark, that elusive New Orleans merchant about whom not enough has been written. At the time of the French transfer Clark served as the U.S. consular agent in New Orleans and maintained commercial and political connections throughout the United States. See Whitaker, “Reed and Forde,” 251. 40. See McMichael “The Kemper ‘Rebellion.’” Deposition of John Smith Concerning Some Merchandise, wfp 4:170; Deposition of John Smith to Governor Grand-Pré,

Notes to Pages 220–224

wfp 4:169; and John Moore et al., to Vicente Pintado” 11 June 1804 in pvp, container 2, reel 2. 41. Cox, West Florida Controversy, 155–56. The strident language of the proclamation is not all that unusual when placed in the context of the Revolutionary period of 1776 through the early 1800s. 42. Cox, West Florida Controversy, 152. 43. Carlos de Grand Pré to Pintado, 13 July 1804; de Grand Pré to Vicente Folch, 21 July 1804; and Quadrillo de Nathan Kemper, all in agi/ppc, legajo 185. 44. de Grand Pré to Pintado, 13 July 1804; Carlos de Grand Pré to Folch, 21 July 1804; and Quadrillo de Nathan Kemper, all in agi/ppc, legajo 185. 45. Mississippi Herald and Natchez Gazette, vol. 3, no. 20, November 16, 1804, 2. 46. Petition of Catherine Rucker, Widow of John Turnbull, wfp 8:404. 47. Pintado to Christopher Bolling, 5 March 1805 and 11 March 1805, pvp, container 4, reel 5. 48. Ira Kneeland to Pintado, 27 March, May, 19 May, 29 May, June, 2 July, and 25 August 1805, pvp, container 4, reel 5; Ira Kneeland to Nicholas Highland, 15 August 1807, Natchez Trace Collection, Provincial and Territorial Documents, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, 2e991. 49. Taken from database of land sales, wfp, vols. 1–18. Total number of land sales equals 379. The average for each year was calculated by sorting the sales for each year by price, by removing the highest and lowest prices in each category, and averaging the remainder. To obtain a large enough sample for comparisons, years were combined as follows: 1787–91, 1792–95, 1796–99, and 1809–10. In each year several sales could not be included in the calculations because of missing information such as price or arpentage. Also excluded were sales of plots within the towns of Baton Rouge or St. Francisville and sales of plantations that included, among other things, farm implements, slaves, and crops. Finally, land sales at estate auctions were not included. This process results in the following total number of usable land sales: 1797–91 = 19, 1792–1795 = 43, 1796–99 = 19, 1800 = 16, 1801 = 19, 1802 = 24, 1803 = 45, 1804 = 34, 1805 = 15, 1806 = 25, 1807 = 16, 1808 = 20, 1809–10 = 30. The large spikes in Baton Rouge for 1802 and 1807 were due to the sale of several well-improved plantations in those years. 50. Alternately written as Rhea and Cochran and Cochran and Rhea in the records. Data taken from land database, wfp, vols. 1–18. 51. Land sales found in Land Sale from Alexander Ross to John Mink, wfp 4:256; Land Sale from Mink to John O’Connor, wfp 4:259; and Land Sale from O’Connor to William Cobb and Elijah Adams,” wfp 4:261. Unfortunately no data exists on the price of cattle in West Florida during this period. 52. Sale of Land from Johnathan Longstreath to John Buck,wfp 6:182; and Sale of Land from Buck to John Murdock,wfp 6:186 53. N (1796–99) = 5 Feliciana, 14 all other; N (1800) = 8 Feliciana, 8 all other; N (1801) = 3 Feliciana, 16 all other; N (1802) = 5 Feliciana, 19 all other; N (1803) = 21 Feliciana, 24 all other; N (1804) = 16 Feliciana, 18 all other; N (1805) = 7 Feliciana, 8 all other; N (1806)

Notes to Pages 225–232

= 17 Feliciana, 8 all other; N (1807) = 9 Feliciana, 7 all other; N (1808) = 13 Feliciana, 7 all other; N (1809–10) = 13 Feliciana, 17 all other. N is the number of plots of land. 54. This rise in land prices seems to be genuine rather than an anomaly. 55. Padgett, “Ofﬁcial Records of the West Florida Revolution,” 8. That most revolutionary sentiment came out of Feliciana is widely accepted. As well as Padgett, see Cox, West Florida Controversy; McMichael, “The Kemper ‘Rebellion’”; Monette, Valley of the Mississippi; Arthur, Story of the West Florida Rebellion; Malone, Sweet Charity; Hyde, Pistols and Politics; Filibusters and Expansionists; and others. 56. The relationship between land and political loyalty has begun to receive more attention in the British colonies. See Holton, Forced Founders; and Hall, Land and Allegiance. 57. Extract of a letter of a Gentleman of respectability in the District of Baton Rouge April 22 1805, enclosed in a letter from Claiborne to Madison, 10 May 1805 State Department Territorial Papers, Orleans, nara. 58. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 73. Afterword 1. For an excellent, suggestive exploration of this topic in the New Mexico context, see Wilson, Myth of Santa Fe. 2. The Mardi Gras Indians probably had their modern origins in the 1880s, although there is evidence that a century earlier during the Spanish period, blacks in New Orleans wore elements of Indian dress during Carnival. The author thanks Dr. Connie Atkinson of the University of New Orleans for her insights on this history.

8_Xb_e]hWf^o

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———. The Spanish-American Frontier, 1783–1795: The Westward Movement and the Spanish retreat in the Mississippi Valley. Boston: Houghton Mifﬂin, 1927. White, David H. “The Spaniards and William Augustus Bowles in Florida, 1799–1803.” Florida Historical Quarterly 54, no. 2 (October 1975): 145–55. Wilson, Chris. The Myth of Santa Fe: Tourism, Ethnic Identity, and the Creation of a Modern Regional Tradition. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996. Wilson, Peter J. “Filcher of Good Names: An Enquiry into Anthropology and Gossip.” Man 9 (March 1974): 93–102. ———. “Reputation and Respectability: A Suggestion for Caribbean Ethnology.” Man 4 (March 1969): 70–84. Wood, Peter H. “The Changing Population of the Colonial South: An Overview by Race and Region, 1685–1790.” In Powhatan’s Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast, edited by Peter H. Wood, Gregory A. Waselkov, and M. Thomas Hatley, 35–103. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. Worth, John E. “The Lower Creeks: Origins and Early History.” In Indians of the Greater Southeast: Historical Archaeology and Ethnohistory, edited by Bonnie McEwan, 265–98. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000. Wright, Donald R. “‘What Do You Mean There Were No Tribes in Africa?’: Thoughts on Boundaries and Related Matters in Precolonial Africa.” History in Africa 26 (1999): 409–26. Wright, Irene A. The Early History of Cuba, 1492–1586. New York: McMillan, 1916. Wright, J. Leitch, Jr. Anglo-Spanish Rivalry in North America. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1971. ———. Creeks and Seminoles: The Destruction and Regeneration of the Muscogulge People. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986. ———. “A Note on the First Seminole War As Seen by the Indians, Negroes, and Their British Advisor.” Journal of Southern History 34 (November 1968): 565–75. ———. William Augustus Bowles: Director General of the Creek Nation. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1967.

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Armando Cantú Alonzo is an associate professor of history at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Tejano Legacy: Rancheros and Settlers in South Texas, 1734–1900 (). Ida Altman is a professor of history at the University of Florida. She is the author of Emigrants and Society (), Transatlantic Ties in the Spanish Empire (), and numerous works on early modern Spain, Mexico, and early contacts in the Americas. Richmond F. Brown is an associate professor and associate director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida. He is the author of Juan Fermín de Aycinena, Central American Colonial Entrepreneur (1997) and “Colonial Mobile, 1712–1813” (2001). H. Sophie Burton received her doctoral degree in history from Texas Christian University in 2002. Her book Colonial Natchitoches is to be published by Texas A&M University Press. Amy Turner Bushnell is an Invited Research Scholar at the John Carter Brown Library and adjunct associate professor of history at Brown University. Her books include The King’s Coffer: Proprietors of the Spanish Florida Treasury, 1565–1702 (1981) and Situado and Sabana: Spain’s Support System for the Presidio and Mission Provinces of Florida (1994). Karl Davis is an assistant professor of history at the State University of

Contributors

New York, Oswego. He is the author of “‘Remember Ft. Mims’: Reinterpreting the Origins of the Creek War” (2002). Shannon Lee Dawdy is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago. She received her doctoral degree in anthropology and history from the University of Michigan in 2003. She took a leave from Chicago to assist the state of Louisiana in the aftermath of Katrina. Virginia Meacham Gould is an adjunct professor of history at Tulane University. She received her doctoral degree from Emory University in 1991 and is the author of Chained to the Rock of Adversity (1998) and coauthor of No Cross, No Crown: Black Nuns in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans (2001). She has written numerous works on free women of African descent, women and Catholicism in New Orleans, and Creoles of color. Jane G. Landers is an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of Black Society in Spanish Florida (1999). She is also the editor of Against the Odds: Free Blacks in the Slave Societies of the Americas (1996) and coeditor of Slaves, Subjects, and Subversives: Blacks in Colonial Latin America (2006), Colonial Plantations and Economy in Florida (2000), and The African American Heritage of Florida (1995). Andrew McMichael is an associate professor of history at Western Kentucky University. His book Reluctant Revolutionaries: The West Florida Borderlands, 1785–1810 is to be published by the University of Georgia Press in 2007. Greg O’Brien is an associate professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi. His book Choctaws in a Revolutionary Age, 1750–1830 (2002) won the 2003 McLemore Prize from the Mississippi Historical Society. Daniel H. Usner Jr. is a professor of history at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783 (1992) and American Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley: Social and Economic Histories (1998).

Contributors

David Wheat is a doctoral candidate at Vanderbilt University, from which he received his master’s degree in 2003. He has presented papers at the Gulf South Historical Association Meeting and the World History Association, among others. Following completion of a Fulbright grant to conduct research in Spain, he is writing a dissertation about Africans in Havana and Cartagena de Indias during the early colonial period.

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Page numbers in italics denote illustrations Abraham (Peliklikaha), 103, 110, 115. See also Seminoles Ais, 35, 40, 41, 43, 47, 48, 50, 56. See also Florida Indians Alibamon Mingo (Choctaw): on access to land given to English, 63. See also Choctaw Allen, Benjamin, 32, 51; dies of exposure, 52. See also Reformation Allen, Hugh, 41. See also Reformation ambergris, 47 Axtell, James, 1 Ballí, José María, 197, 200, 202; and relationship between political and economic power, 208. See also Nuevo Santander Bannon, John Francis, 19–20. See also Bolton, Herbert Eugene; Gulf Coast; Weber, David J. Barnes, Andrew, 41; afﬂicted with dysentery (ﬂux), 41. See also Reformation Barrow, Robert, 32, 39, 41, 42, 48, 51, 52. See also Reformation Bartram, William: and description of Seminole settlements in central Florida (1774), 102. See also Cowkeeper (Seminole); Seminoles; slavery, Indian Biassou, Jorge, 105. See also free people of color

Bolton, Herbert Eugene: the Bolton School and its critics, 16–17, 18; concern over American ignorance about Latin America, 15–16; on Gulf South colonial history, 14, 20, 22, 26; The Spanish Borderlands, 14. See also Bannon, John Francis; Gulf South; Weber, David J. Bonille, Cecile: relationship with Samuel Hart, 152, 163–64, 267n5, 270n33; and wealth in New Orleans, 165–66; will and estate, 151–52, 163, 266n1. See also free people of color; Lachance, Paul; Louisiana Bowles, William Augustus, 104–5, 106, 252n18, 253n29. See also Edimboro, Felipe; The Negro Fort Buckley, Joseph, 32, 48. See also Reformation Caesar, 32, 37, 40, 47; dies of exposure, 52. See also Reformation Cajoe (son of Hagar), 32; baptized by Capt. Sebastian López, 49; dies of exposure, 52. See also Hagar; London; López, Sebastian; Reformation Calusa, 38, 245n13. See also Florida Indians Carr, William, 53, 54. See also Reformation Cavazos, José Narciso, 196, 200. See also Nuevo Santander cassina tea, 39, 40, 52, 245n15

Charles Town (Charleston sc), 31; founding of, 60; ill feeling of St. Augustinians for, 54. See also Reformation Chickasaws, 2, 8, 59–60; and Choctaws visit Spanish governor in New Orleans, 64; complain of infrequent congresses, 63; and Paya Mattaha’s response to John Stuart’s reaction to Chickasaw complaints, 63. See also Choctaw Choctaw, 1, 8, 59–60; British attempts to regulate the fur trade, 69–72; and Chickasaw attend 1771 congress at Mobile, 59–60; chiefs express indigenous understanding of symbols, history, and cosmology, 74–77; chiefs voice concerns over prices and quality of British goods, 72–74; Choctaw-Chickasaw War of 1766–77, 60–61; Choctaw-Creek War, 61; Cholko Oulachta on John Stuart’s policy towards congresses, 63; conﬂict with Indian traders and white settlers over livestock, land, and alcohol, 67–68, 69, 78; disruptive effect of British traders among the Choctaw and Chickasaw on indigenous social structure, 64–65; divisions within the Choctaw Confederacy, 61–62, 79; importance of congresses in maintaining chieﬂy authority, 65; Lt. Gen. Thomas Gage on need for Indian congresses with, 61, 64; John McIntosh sent as escort of representatives to 1771 Mobile congress, 64; Peter Chester on Choctaw desire for annual congresses, 62, 64; relations with the Creek Nation, 86; signiﬁcance of British medals to chiefs receiving them, 77–78; and supplying basic necessities, 66; surveyor Bernard Romans comments on frequent congresses, 63. See also Alibamon Mingo (Choctaw); Chickasaw; Creeks; Stuart, John; Thomas, John

Index Claiborne, William, 217, 219; on Louisianans’ loyalty for Spain and France, 217. See also Jefferson, Thomas; West Florida Collins, Juan Bautista, 107–8. See also free people of color Cowkeeper (Seminole), 102. See also Creeks; Seminoles Creeks, 2, 8; gender roles, trade, kinship, and politics, 81, 82–86, 87, 91, 96–97; pro-American Creeks visit Augusta ga, 89; raids on Florida, 57; reaction to Patriot victory in American Revolution, 81–82; as recent topic of historical study, 26–27; Spanish policy towards, 89–90, 92–93. See also Farmar, Robert; Florida Indians; McGillivray, Alexander; Panton, Leslie, and Company; Tensaw; Sehoy II; Seminoles Cresson, Solomon, 34, 37, 40, 41; able to speak Spanish, 35; goes to St. Augustine with the Old Cacique, 43; later life in Philadelphia and religious conversion, 245n16. See also Dickinson, John; Reformation de Meziérès, Athanase, 169, 170, 171, 177; reports on tobacco production in Natchitoches, 172. See also Natchitoches; Navarro, Martín; Unzaga y Amezaga, Luis de Díaz Vara Calderón, Gabriel (bishop of Cuba), 34 Dickinson, Jonathan (father), 31–32, 34, 38, 40–43, 45–52; gives deposition in St. Augustine on the shipwreck of the Reformation, 55; God’s Protecting Providence, 31, 244n2; meets Laureano de Torres y Ayala, 53; picks up provisions at mission of Santa María, 55; and possible derivation of “Nickaleer,” 245n10; and Quaker beliefs, 31–32, 245n5; set out for Carolina, 55. See also Dickinson, Jonathan; Dickinson, Mary Gale;

Index Reformation; Torres y Ayala, Laureano de Dickinson, Jonathan (son), 32, 38, 42, 44; nursed by Native American women, 39, 42. See also Reformation Dickinson, Mary Gale, 32, 38, 39, 42, 49, 51, 52, 53; afﬂicted with sunburn, 41; earns food from the Ais, 43. See also Reformation Dubreuil, Claude Josephe, 153–55, 267n7, 268n13. See also Bonille, Cecile Dunbar, William, 218–19, 278n32. See also West Florida Edimboro, Felipe, 105, 253n32; homestead attacked by Bowles’s raiders, 106. See also Bowles, William Augustus; free people of color; Seminoles Escandón, José de, 190, 192, 195, 207. See also Nuevo Santander Farmar, Robert, 87. See also Creeks; Tensaw Fatio, Francis Phelipe, 105, 106 Feliciana (West Florida): American settlement in, 224–25; rising land prices in and political discontent, 226–27, 228. See also West Florida Florencia, Joachín de, 54–55 Florida Indians: in colonial American historiography, 21–22; destroyed by English raids, 4, 58. See also Ais; Creek; Jeaga; Jobé; Reformation; Santaluces; Serruque; Seminoles Folch, Vicente: and Spanish land policy, 222. See also West Florida Fownes, Thomas, 32, 36. See also Reformation free people of color: militia composed of, 105, 106, 108–9; in New Orleans, 152–53, 154–63, 164, 266–67n2, 268n16. See also Biassou, Jorge; Bonille, Cecile; Edimboro, Felipe; Mongoula, Nicolas; Mobile al; Lachance, Paul; Seminoles

Gálvez, Bernardo de, 10, 172, 182. See also de Meziérès, Athanase; Natchitoches; Navarro, Martín; Unzaga y Amezaga, Luis de Gibson, Charles: on the Spanish Borderlands, 18 Gulf South: and the Gulf Coast History and Humanities conference, 19; as topic for historical study, ix–x, 13–14, 18, 20, 25–27, 231, 242n2. See also Bannon, John Francis; Bolton, Herbert Eugene; Louisiana; New England; Virginia; Weber, David J.; West Florida Hagar, 32, 49; carries son on her back, 52. See also Cajoe (son of Hagar); London; Reformation Havana, 34, 40; St. Augustine awaits supplies from, in 1697, 46; trade with Apalache, 54 Hilliard, John, 32, 40; stays in St. Augustine, 55. See also Reformation Hoffman, Paul, 4 honor: class aspects of 145–46; historians and anthropologists on, 133–36, 261n3, 262n11; notions of in Caribbean and Latin American Studies, 136, 265n41; racial aspects of, 146–48. See also insults; men; women insults: comparisons made between French Louisiana, Canada, and France, 133, 141, 149, 262n14, 262n15, 264n30, 264n35, 265n40; and defamation lawsuits and immigrant self-fashioning, 136–38, 142–43, 145–46, 148–49, 265–66n44; examples of in French Louisiana, 139, 264n26; legal distinctions made in French law, 139–40; and social integration, 150. See also honor; men; women Jackson, Andrew, 11, 99, 254n39, 254n42, 256n59; campaigns against the Seminoles on the Suwannee (First

Jackson, Andrew (cont.) Seminole War), 112–13, 256n58, 256n60; determined to destroy the Negro Fort, 110–12; becomes ﬁrst American governor of Florida, 114; takes Spanish oath of loyalty in West Florida, 213–14. See also The Negro Fort; Richter, Daniel K. Jeaga, 34, 35–37, 38, 58. See also Florida Indians Jefferson, Thomas, 210, 216–17. See also Claiborne, William; Louisiana; West Florida Jemmet, Thomas, 34. See also Reformation Jobé, 35, 37, 38, 41, 43, 47. See also Florida Indians Joroco. See Mayaca and Joroco Kemper brothers 220–22, 225, 226, 227, 229, 236, 275–76n4. See also West Florida Kirle, Joseph, 32, 34, 40, 41, 43, 47–48, 49, 52, 53; exploration of the perimeter of the Castillo de San Marcos, 54; See also Dickinson, John; Reformation Lachance, Paul, 164, 165. See also Bonille, Cecile; free people of color Limpeny, Richard, 32. See also Reformation London, 32, 50, 51. See also Cajoe (son of Hagar); Reformation López, Sebastian, 44, 47, 48–49; rewarded for rescuing John Dickinson and Joseph Kirle, 55–56. See also Dickinson, John; Reformation Louisiana: in colonial American historiography, 22–24; LeMoyne brothers establish colony for France in, 4–5; the Louisiana Purchase and, 11. See also Bonille, Cecile; Claiborne, William; honor; insults; Jefferson, Thomas; Lachance, Paul; Mobile al; slavery, African; West Florida

Index Mardi Gras Indians: and Gulf South cultural pluralism, 231. See also Gulf South Matanzas (Cuba): Florida residents granted land in, 218 Mayaca and Joroco, 46. See also Florida Indians men: and honor, 144–45, 150. See also honor; insults; women McGillivray, Alexander, 82, 87–89, 90, 91, 92, 97; reaction to Anglo-American settlement in Florida, 93–94, 95, 96. See also Creeks; Sehoy II; Tensaw Méndez de Canzo, Gonzalo, 50. Menéndez Marquez, Thomas, 54–55. Mikasukis: and raids on East Florida plantations, 105, 106–7. See also Seminoles Mobile al: arrival of African slaves in, 120; composition of households in, 122–23, 258n12; godparentage in, 126–28, 129, 237; growing importance of African slaves to the economy of, 123–24; occupations of slaves and indentured servants in, 121–22, 258n10; proximity to Native American villages, 257n1; racial identity in, 117, 130–31. See also Mobilian Jargon; slavery, African; slavery, Indian Mobilian Jargon: importance of as a lingua franca, 123, 124, 258–59n20; studied by James Crawford and Emanuel Drechsel, 117, 118–19, 257n4, 257n8. See also Mongoula, Nicolas Mongoula, Nicolas: early life and slavery in Mobile, 120–21, 259n21; as godparent to slaves, 128; later life as a free man of color, 125–26, 258n19, 260n40, 260n41; and Mobilian Jargon name, 117, 118, 129–30; as Spanish militia ofﬁcer, 128–29. See also free people of color; Mobile al; Mobilian Jargon; slavery, African Morales, Juan Ventura, 219. See also West Florida

Index Murray, Andrew, 41. See also Reformation Nantwich, 40, 41, 47, 48. See also Reformation Natchitoches: distribution of wealth in, 178–80; founding of (1714), 167; godparentage (compadrazgo) in African slave community in, 184–85, 186; growth of enslaved population of African descent in, 177–78, 180–85; growth of tobacco production in under Spanish rule, 167–78; transition to cotton production, 176. See also de Meziérès, Athanase; Gálvez, Bernardo de; Navarro, Martín; slavery, African; Unzaga y Amezaga, Luis de Native Americans: dramatic demographic collapse of, 1. See also Florida Indians; slavery, Indian Navarro, Martín: charged with increasing tobacco production in Louisiana, 172–73, 174. See also Natchitoches; Unzaga y Amezaga, Luis de Negro Ben, 32, 40, 47; nearly dies of exposure, 52. See also Reformation The Negro Fort: established by British agents at Prospect Bluff ﬂ, 109–10; last stand of surviving Red Stick Creeks, 254n39; runaways living in, 254n43, 255n47; siege of, 112, 113, 255n53, 255–56n54. See also Jackson, Andrew New England: as topic for historical study, 13. See also Gulf South; Virginia Nuevo Santander: coastal salt mining in, 191–92; diezmos (tithes) in, 194–95; early history and description of, 6, 187–90; economic importance of ranching in, 192–95, 197, 202, 207; effect of War for Independence and climate change on ranching, 204–6; livestock brands, 196, 203. See also Escandón, José de

Old Cacique, 40, 41, 42, 43, 47; returns from St. Augustine, 44. See also Cresson, Solomon; Dickinson, John; Reformation O’Neill, Arturo, 94. See also McGillivray, Alexander; Creeks Osler, John, 41. See also Reformation Panton, Leslie, and Company, 90, 92, 97. See also Creeks; McGillivray, Alexander Patriot War (1812), 108–9, 254n36; Spain grants insurgents amnesty, 254n38 Penelope, 41, 49, 52, 55 Philadelphia, 32 Port Royal (Jamaica), 31, 32; ill feeling of St. Augustinians for, 54 Quenza, 32, 48, 51; dies of exposure, 52. See also Reformation Randall, Nathaniel, 34. See also Reformation Reformation: date of departure from Jamaica, 244n1; shipwrecked on the Florida coast, 32, 36, 37, 41, 47; ultimate fate of survivors, 244n2. See also Allen, Benjamin; Allen, Hugh; Barnes, Andrew; Barrow, Robert; Buckley, Joseph; Caesar; Cajoe (son of Hagar); Carr, William; Charles Town (Charleston sc); Cresson, Solomon; Dickinson, John; Dickinson, Jonathan; Dickinson, Mary Gale; Fownes, Thomas; Hagar; Hilliard, John; Jemmet, Thomas; Kirle, Joseph; Limpeny, Richard; London; Murray, Andrew; Negro Ben; Osler, John; Penelope; Quenza; Randall, Nathaniel; Shears, John; Smith, John; Toker, Cornelius; Torres y Ayala, Laureano de Richter, Daniel K., 99. See also Jackson, Andrew Santaluces, 35, 38, 39, 41. See also Florida Indians

Sehoy II, 82, 91–92, 95. See also Creeks; McGillivray, Alexander; Tensaw Seminoles, 8; Chief Cowkeeper and his successors welcome runaway slaves, 102; contemporary dispute over tribal membership, 99–100, 115–16; continue trade with Cuba after United States annexes Florida, 253n34; freedman villages tributary to Seminoles, 102–3; First Seminole War, 113–14; historical importance of free persons of color, to, 100; Horatio Dexter describes Peliklikaha (1823), 114–15, 256n64; hunting grounds in southern Florida, 256n61; origins discussed, 100, 102, 252–53n3; seek peace with Spain, 106–7; seek refuge at Cape Florida, Cuba, and the Bahamas, 114; used by Spain as buffer against Anglo encroachment on East Florida, 103–4. See also Abraham (Peliklikaha); Bartram, William; Bowles, William Augustus; Cowkeeper (Seminole); Jackson, Andrew; Patriot War (1812); slavery, Indian; Weik, Terry; Weisman, Brent R. Shears, John, 41. See also Reformation Shipwrecks on the Florida coast: of British vessels, 44, 46; of Dutch ships, 50; trade of recovered goods, 46–47. See also Reformation Situado, 46. See also Havana; St. Augustine (Florida) slavery, African: in eighteenth-century Mobile, 117, 119; in eighteenth-century Natchitoches, 167–68, 173, 175, 180–85, 181; female role of manumission in New Orleans, 153–58; importance of to course of Gulf South history, 6; importation of enslaved Africans into French Louisiana, 120, 258n18. See also Mobile al; Mongoula, Nicolas; Natchitoches slavery, Indian: English slave raiding cause of Indian hatred of Englishmen, 56; enslavement of

Index Ais and Serruque by Spaniards in Florida, 50; Francisco de Córcoles y Martínez reports on English slave raids, 58; Indian divers enslaved by English, 57; Jamaican corsair Robert Searles’s 1668 slave raid in Florida, 57; in Louisiana and Mobile, 119–20; man captured by the English in Florida returned to Ais, 44; raids on Florida missions described by Thomas Nairne, 57, 58; Seminole enslavement of Yamasees, 102;. See also Mobilian Jargon; slavery, African Smith, John, 41; meets Laureano de Torres y Ayala, governor of Florida, 53; plans of the Ais to execute him, 44. See also Reformation; Torres y Ayala, Laureano de sodomy: in French Louisiana, 141. See also honor; insults; men St. Augustine (Florida), 31, 34, 40, 41, 42, 43, 47, 53; and American colonial historians, 20–21; famine conditions in 1697, 53–54. See also Gulf South Stuart, John, 62; admonishes Indian leaders, 65–66; becomes concerned over alliance between Spain and Choctaw and Chickasaw, 78–79; hosts Choctaw and Chickasaw congress at Mobile (1771), 59–60. See also Chickasaws; Choctaw; Florida Indians Serruque, 35, 50, 51. See also Florida Indians Tensaw: Euro-Americans settle at, 95, 96; importance of to Creek interests, 97–98; settlement of, 87. See also Creeks; Farmar, Robert; McGillivray, Alexander; Sehoy II Texas, 5–6; and colonial American historiography, 24–25 Thomas, John: reports on rum trade among the Choctaw, 79. See also Choctaw tobacco: production of, 169, 170; as trade item, 46–47

Index Toker, Cornelius, 41, 48. See also Reformation Torres y Ayala, Laureano de, 53, 55–56. See also Reformation Unzaga y Amezaga, Luis de, 170; encourages tobacco production in Natchitoches, 171. See also Natchitoches; Navarro, Martín Virginia: as topic for historical study, 13. See also Gulf South; New England Villas del Norte, 187, 189, 193, 195, 197, 206, 208. See also Nuevo Santander War of the Spanish Succession (Queen Anne’s War), 57 Weber, David J., 2, 4, 25. See also Bolton, Herbert Eugene; Gulf South

Weik, Terry, 115. See also Seminoles Weisman, Brent R., 102 West Florida: in American historiography, 210, 211, 275–76n4; American settlement in before 1807, 213–16, 221–27; boundaries of, 275n1; causes of 1810 rebellion in, 212–13, 228; the Louisiana Purchase and, 216–17, 218–19; and nationalism, 229; price of land in, 224, 225. See also Claiborne, William; Feliciana (West Florida); Folch, Vicente; Jackson, Andrew; Kemper, Reuben; Matanzas (Cuba) Wood, Peter, 1 women: image of, 140; involvement in Louisiana defamation lawsuits, 141–42; role of in maintaining family survival and success, 235–36, 237. See also honor; insults; men