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Interconnectedness and Diversity in “French Louisiana”
- University of Nebraska Press
- Chapter
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In 1750, after more than half a century of colonization, the French governor of Louisiana declared in exasperation, “we can do nothing by ourselves .”1 While the French called Louisiana their colony, in reality, as Governor Vaudreuil knew, officials, explorers, priests, merchants, traders, and slaves became small parts of the large, complex neighborhood of the Mississippi valley. One narrative of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries stars French colonial officials such as Vaudreuil forging (and losing) Louisiana, where they sought to profit and to challenge France’s European rivals. But countless other intertwined narratives run through this place and time, centering on Choctaws, Natchez, Chickasaws, Tunicas, Osages, Quapaws, Bambaras, Mobilians, Caddoans, Britons, Spaniards, and other groups and individuals within them. This is not to say that the French had no effect on Louisiana. On the contrary , European diseases and goods changed the region’s history. Indians became entangled in the world economies that colonialism created, and ultimately the arrival of the French proved one of the most important events of the late seventeenth-century Mississippi valley. But emphasizing change that occurred after Europeans arrived can create the impression that Europeans directed change. In reality, the French had little power, and the Mississippi valley remained largely an Indian-defined and Indian-controlled place through the end of the eighteenth century.2 Native peoples chose how to deal with and interpret the new dangers and opportunities that resulted from foreign incursions. Most Mississippi valley people’s priorities did not center on Europeans. To Indians, who constituted the vast majority of Louisiana’s population, Indian rivalries, alliances , military strategies, trade networks, and ways of conducting foreign relations generally bore more relevance than Europeans. Indians sought European alliances and trade in order to gain an advantage in their rivalInterconnectedness and Diversity in “French Louisiana” kathleen duval interconnectedness and diversity ries with other Indians or to draw Indians into alliance by offering desired goods. Even most of the colonial population operated with little regard for French colonial interests. Seeking converts and trading partners, priests and traders focused on Indians. Runaway slaves and deserting soldiers by definition worked against the colonial establishment. All people living in the place that Europeans called colonial Louisiana found themselves entangled in foreign relations. Any of them could have complained of their inability to do anything “by ourselves.” But the ambitions of the colonial project made the French particularly dependent on others . Because they wanted a colony to rival the Spanish and English and because they sought to rule Louisiana despite lacking a large army, they had to pay attention to Indian priorities. Of the scores of diverse and intertwined peoples who populated Louisiana, the French proved one of the least independent and least successful in manipulating others. The roots of eighteenth-century alliances and rivalries lie in the Mississippi period. Beginning around ad 800, independent groups built ceremonial centers, where they conducted planting and harvest rituals and festivals. Some provided a place for mutual defense or storing and protecting food. Eventually thousands of people settled in or near towns that rose and fell in the Mississippi valley and the Southeast, including (in the names used today ) Moundville in northwestern Alabama, Etowah in the foothills of the Appalachians, Cahokia across the Mississippi from present St. Louis, and Spiro on the Arkansas River near the state border of Oklahoma and Arkansas . While centralized societies had existed previously in North America, the Mississippian chiefdoms were unprecedented in number and density. Over the centuries some chiefdoms fell and others took their places. Until the American Revolution no population centers north of Mexico would approach these towns in size or centralization.3 Between the mid-1500s and the mid-1600s centralized Mississippian towns ceased to exist, probably because of some combination of factors—climate change, depleted fields, drought, floods, warfare, and European diseases. Before 1492 smallpox, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, whooping cough, chicken pox, influenza, malaria, typhoid fever, cholera, pneumonia, yellow fever, and scarlet fever were unknown in the Americas, and American Indians had not developed resistance to them.4 Beginning with Spanish ex- [3.236.18.23] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 07:35 GMT) kathleen duval ploration and settlement, waves of epidemics spread across North America, directly from Europeans and through native trading networks.5 In response some Mississippian peoples disbanded entirely. Others adapted their social and political structures to new circumstances, many moving or combining with other peoples.6 Choctaw origin histories suggest that some of their ancestors lived in the Mississippian...