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12 The Promised Land [In the village] the most charming harmony of social and natural life prevailed. In a corner of a cypress grove, in what had once been the wilderness, new cultivation was coming to life. . . . Everywhere the forests were delivered to the flames and sending dense clouds of smoke up in the air, while the plow went its slow way among the remains of their roots. Surveyors with long chains went about measur­ ing the land. Arbitrators were establishing the first properties. The bird surrendered its nest, and the lair of the wild beast was changing to a cabin. Forges were heard rumbling. —Chateaubriand, Atala, 1803 After July 1817, one arrival followed another, so that by the beginning of the following year, according to Pénières, more than 150 colonists to whom Congress had granted land were clustered on the White Bluffs.1 Depending upon the conditions of their emi­ gra­ tion and their reasons for joining the Colonial Society, their presence in Alabama was either the fulfillment of a dream, the default choice of a new existence, or a reflection of the simple desire to get going. The composition and motivation of the Demopolis colonists differed from those of their predecessors in New Bordeaux, Gallipolis, and Vevay in that there was no true unity. Considering the difficulties those settlements had encountered, the task of these ill-­ assorted French people in a distant, barely stabilized frontier region would be even more arduous. But it was up to them to reflect on the circumstances of the failure of the Ohio group and the success of the Indiana settlers in order to try to carry their own project in Alabama to a successful conclusion. This they did not do. Taking Possession of the Land The French colonists’ first concern was to found a town. In this they already distinguished themselves from the Swiss colonists, who had not put the cart before the horse, but had made clearing the land their priority. While Vevay, after a long gestation, came into being at the exact location planned for it, Demopolis was long a name without a concrete existence. Furthermore, the name Demopolis was not The Promised Land • 221 immediately agreed upon. For a time it competed with Proscripolis and, when this possibility was abandoned, with the name White Bluff, designating its natural site, and finally that of Aigleville. From Demopolis to Aigleville White Bluff, majestic and favorably located a mile below the confluence of the Tombigbee and the Black Warrior, became the emblem of the French colony. On August 16, 1817, Nicolas Simon Parmantier and Benoît Poculot signed the first official letter from “Demopolis on the White Bluff.”2 Not a single colonist contested its choice:“There cannot exist in any part of the world a nicer, more pleasant site and a richer soil. We shall place our town near an immense prairie on a little peninsula formed by the Takalouze and Tombegbée, two beautiful rivers that with the Alabama form the Mobile,” wrote Jean Augustin Pénières in June 1818.3 “The site is so beautiful, so well placed for a town, that one cannot make a bad bargain, above all when one intends to be a merchant there,” added Lajonie in 1819.4 Lin Troy, a former French civil servant owning two 120-­ acre allotments, exclaimed in 1820 in a New Orleans newspaper: “This region is the most beautiful and healthy, not only of the United States, but of the entire World.”5 Demopolis and White Bluff soon had a rival. Just as there had been a drift from Proscripolis to Demopolis reminiscent of Gallipolis, there was one from De­ mopo­ lis to Aigleville reminiscent of Aiglelys, a name suggested by aristocrats for their own settlement next to the Gallipolis colony. The lys (“lily,” the emblem of French kings) paid homage to royalty; Aigleville (“Eagleville”) to the Empire and the United States. Demopolis, a place dedicated to the Emperor’s memory, with a street system celebrating his victories, from Marengo Square to Austerlitz, Wagram , and Friedland Streets, could instead be called Aigleville, referring to both the Napoleonic eagle and the Ameri­ can eagle, the nation’s emblem. The name Aigleville appears in the De­cem­ber 18,1817,issue of L’Abeille Améri­ caine.6 A month later, in a letter from Demopolis, Lajonie confirms it: “Pleasures are still too rare in Aigleville (the final name given to our town).”7 The name was subsequently...

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