XX. FRENCH COLONIES IN THE WEST

The French settlements in the Gulf region, unlike those in the northern part of the Mississippi Valley, left an impress sufficiently permanent and important to make them worthy of special attention.

A colony was established at Mobile in 1701 and New Orleans was founded in 1718. From the outset there was a constant appeal to the mother country for wives. The Canadians of standing that were married brought their families to Louisiana. Many had grown daughters and these married young Canadians of good position. The French officers, younger sons of the nobility, could not condescend to lower grade so they lived in gay and careless bachelorhood. Some of them perhaps were relieved rather than distressed by the lack of wives. But the crude pioneers of the wilderness needed wives. "With wives," wrote Iberville, "I will anchor the sorry coureurs de bois into sturdy colonists." "Send me wives for my Canadians," write Bienville; "they are running in the woods after Indian girls."

In the summer of 1703 twenty-three young women of good character and appearance arrived. In 1706 Louis XIV. sent a number of girls to Louisiana. They were to have good homes and to be well married. It was thought that they would soon teach the squaws many useful domestic employments. But the girls rebelled against Indian corn, threatened to run away, and stirred up an imbroglio known as the Petticoat Rebellion, bringing much ridicule on the governor.

In 1713 the commissary-general wrote to the minister that twelve girls had lately arrived from France who were too ugly and badly formed to win the affections of the men and that only two of them had found husbands. He feared that the other ten would remain in stock for a long time. He thought fit to suggest that in future those that sent girls should attach more importance to beauty than to virtue as the Canadians were not particular about what sort of lives their spouses had formerly led whereas if they were supplied only with such ugly girls they would prefer to take up with Indian women, especially in the Illinois country where the Jesuits sanctioned such alliances by the marriage ceremony.

The same year Governor Cadillac wrote that the inhabitants were "a mass of rapscallions from Canada, a cut-throat set, without subordination, with no respect for religion and abandoned in vice with Indian women whom they prefer to French girls" and that the soldiers all had Indian wives who cooked for them and waited on them. With regard to a consignment of girls from Europe the sea-captain had seduced more than half the girls on the passage and this was why they had not found respectable husbands. It seemed to him best under the circumstances that the soldiers should be allowed to marry them lest their poverty should drive them to prostitution.

In 1714 the Curate La Vente suggested to the minister that Louisiana be colonized with Christian families or else that the French be allowed to marry the Indian women with religious rites; or if these ideas were not feasible that a large number of girls "better chosen than the last, and especially some who will be sufficiently pleasing and well-formed to suit the officers

of the garrisons and the principal inhabitants" should be sent over from France as a partial remedy.

From time to time the paternal government responded to such requests with cargoes of women. In 1721 twenty-five prostitutes came from Salpetrière, a house of correction at Paris, sent as wives for the colonists. In 1726 the Company of the Indies contracted with the Ursuline sisters to teach girls and to serve as the means of transporting girls of good character and training to supply the need of suitable wives for the officers and for the farmers and artisans of "the better sort." The degraded women first sent over had often been not only unfit but unwilling for marriage and domesticity. Even the policy of granting discharges to the soldiers and offering them land and exemption from taxation as an inducement to marry these women had failed to solve the problem. The colony needed mothers.

The strength of the demand is illustrated in a passage by Dumont in reference to one cargo of women:

When landed all were lodged in the same house, with a sentinel at the door. They were permitted to be seen during the day in order that a choice might be made, but as soon as night fell, all access to them was guarded. . . It was not long before they were married and provided for.

Indeed the supply never went round. The last one left on one occasion became the object of dispute between two bachelors that wanted to fight for her tho she was somewhat of an Amazon. The commandant required them to draw lots for the prize. Once a girl refused to marry tho "many good partis had been offered her."

The year after the Ursulines a cargo of girls came who had been chosen for character and skill in housewifery. They came of their own accord. Each was dowered with a chest of clothing. They came with the

understanding that their vocation was to be wifehood and motherhood but the choice of husbands was to be voluntary from among such suitors as the sisters, under whose care the girls were, should approve.

Louisiana must have been indeed a region of loose morals. Sieur Charle, merchant, admitted that he had a child in 1709 by an Indian slave. Hervé mentions one, Jean Baptiste, child of an Indian woman of Sieur d'Arbanne, "whose son it is held to be, not only by public rumor, but by the voluntary account of the mother." The church did not sanction marriages with Indians but such unions occurred and were classed in the church records as mariages naturels. We find record also in Hervé's writings of one Capinan's forsaking a slave woman with whom he had lived in a marriage of this irregular species. The man had found a more desirable partner.

Cadillac refers to women of irregular life. Mere transplanting of the refuse of hospital and prison to the New World could not metamorphose them into good wives and mothers. In spite of great influx of people to Louisiana in the boom days, population does not seem to have grown fast. Gradually, however, there grew up an American generation of women ready for matrimony. Girls were often married at twelve or fourteen, some of them "not even knowing how many gods there are and you can imagine the rest." 151 Girls of bad conduct were "severely punished by putting them upon wooden horses and having them whipped by the regiment of soldiers that guard the town.' A house for

the detention and reform of immoral women was built and intrusted to the sisters. Gradually the imported dregs of vice were submerged by the natural conse151 Phelps. Louisiana, 83.

quences of degeneracy. Many officials had their wives and families with them and kept clear of inferior mixture. On the Mississippi the Germans had German homes. Only a few Louisiana settlers had been persons of rank. Many of the population descended from the "casket girls" and from stock that society considers

no account.

Family life was subject to pioneer exigencies. In the first half of the eighteenth century two hundred fifty women and children taken by the Natchez, and retaken, were brought to New Orleans. The orphan girls were adopted by the Ursulines. The boys found homes in well-to-do families. All the refugees were absorbed, many of the widows finding new husbands. In 1734 occurred the marriage of one Baudran with the publication of only one ban. The reason for this abridgment of the preliminaries was doubtless that the priest came so seldom. In 1720 provision was made (Mobile) for registration of baptisms, marriages, and deaths.

A side-light on the desire for growth in numbers in the colony is seen in the fact that during the Spanish régime the governor arrested the grand inquisitor and packed him off to Spain in order not to scare off population.

A Spanish precontract of marriage in 1786 is interesting for comparison with English usage. The instrument provides for a Catholic marriage, to take place as soon as either person requests it. Neither is to be liable for the ante-nuptial debts of the other; but they shall hold in common all property, movable and immovable, according to the custom of Spain, all other customs being renounced. In case of death of either without issue the survivor is to receive the whole property.