On the Eve of Conquest: The Chevalier de Raymond's Critique of New France in 1754

D. Topical Outline of Raymond’s Enumeration Notes

Introduction 25 boiling and eating La Demoiselle. The late but sudden and decisive use of force on the part of the French and their allies convinced most of the Miamis to return to them, while a handful took refuge at Lower Shawnee Town at the mouth of the Scioto River (near Portsmouth, Ohio). With this action, it was clear that the French and English North American colonies were once again approaching a state ofwar.39 In 1752, Governor General Ange de Menneville Duquesne arrived in Quebec, replacing La Jonquiere, who had died in office earlier that year. Duquesne found the colony in bad shape fiscally and strategically, and had received strict orders from Minister of Marine (colonial affairs) AntoineLouis Rouille to reduce expenditures for all the posts, and for the colony in general. Strategically, Duquesne, sensitive to the increasing English presence in the Ohio Valley and the lack of French forces there to enforce France's restated claim to the region, had to take action. By 1753, the governor had ordered that the cost of all presents given to the posts' Indians must be borne by the merchant proprietors of the posts' trade. This procedure eliminated the system whereby the post commanders signed reimbursement certificates which were then presented by the merchants to the Marine Treasury in Quebec for payment. The minister correctly called the certificates "one of the most common and abusive excesses" among the colony's expenses, and wrote Duquesne that this was "the only way to avoid the abuse which was such a heavy burden to the king's treasury." In addition to abolishing the certificates, Duquesne eliminated the posts at Laprairie, the Lake of the Two Mountains, and the St. Louis Falls (Caughnawaka), all near Montreal. He also reduced expenditures at Detroit, Chambly, and Fort St. Jean, the last two on the Richelieu River east ofMontreal.40 The minister had instructed Duquesne upon his appointment as governor to work with Fran<;:ois Bigot, the intendant (top financial officer) of New France, to reduce the rapidly increasing expenses everywhere in the colony. This proved to be an elusive goal in view of Bigot's hidden largescale corruption in league with many of the colony's officers. In the face of the English threat in the Ohio Valley, however, Duquesne was more successful; he took firm action to remove the English presence from the disputed territory, but the success came at tremendous cost.41 In the summer of 1753, despite marked opposition from the officers, Duquesne, following the court's instructions, sent a large force of two thousand troops and militiamen and several hundred allied Indians under Captain Paul Marin de La Malgue to occupy the Ohio Valley south of 26 On The Eve ifthe Conquest Lake Erie as far as the Ohio River. Under incredibly difficult conditions, the detachment cleared a road from the south shore of Lake Erie-where they built Fort Presqu'lle (Erie, Pennsylvania)-through the wilderness to the Riviere au Boeuf (Riviere aux boeufs; French Creek), a tributary of the Allegheny River. At the Riviere au Boeuf the French erected a fort that they named Fort de la riviere au BoeuJ, often referred to as Fort Le Boeuf (Waterford, Pennsylvania). They were able to proceed down the Riviere au Boeuf to its mouth at the Allegheny River, where they occupied Venango, the site of an old Indian town and an English trading post (later to be named Fort Machault after the new minister of Marine, Jean-Baptiste Machault d'Arnouville, appointed in 1754; now Franklin, Pennsylvania). Marin's exhausted men were too weakened, however, to complete their mission down the Allegheny another 80 miles to the forks of the Ohio where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers join to form the Ohio. The French had suffered the loss offour hundred men to poor food, disease, and exhaustion, with hundreds of others too debilitated to proceed. The commander of the French forces, sick himself, died on 29 October 1753 at Fort Le Boeuf.42 Nevertheless this force had pushed most of the English traders out of the area and intimidated the Iroquois. Marin's replacement as commandant of the French forces in the Ohio Valley, Captain Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, arrived at Fort Le Boeuf on 3 December. On 12 December he received a young militia major named George Washington who presented Saint-Pierre with Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie's demand that the French depart from "the king of Great Britain's territories ." Saint-Pierre carefully composed his response to Dinwiddie and gave it to Washington on the evening of 14 December. In the politest of terms, the French commander in chiefwrote: As for the demand that you are making for me to withdraw, I do not believe that I am under any obligation to comply with it. Whatever your instructions might be, I am here in accordance with the orders of my general, and I pray you not to doubt for one instant that I am steadfasdy determined to conform to them with all the exactitude and firmness that can be expected of the best officer. . . .43 Two months later, in February 1754, Duquesne sent eight hundred men under Captain Claude-Pierre Pecaudy de Contrecoeur to reinforce the The Ohio River from its source to the Wabash, 1755. This map, probably drawn by Nicolas Bellin, shows the Forts of Presqu'De and the Riviere aux BoeufS, both built in 1753. Fort Necessity (1754) is shown, as is Fort Duquesne (also 1754). Cours de l'Ohio Depuis sa Source jusqu'a sa Jonction avec la Riviere d'Ouabache Et les Pais Voisins, 1755, reproduced by pennission oj the Service historique de la Marine, Recueil 67, nO 90; photograph courtesy oj the National Archives oj Canada, Ph 19031 1755. g- <:; ;:,.. :: ~ c·;:: N -...) 28 On The Eve of the Conquest troops at Forts Presqu'lle and Le Boeuf. Soon after Contrecoeur replaced the ailing Saint-Pierre as commandant, he moved down the Allegheny to the forks of the Ohio, where a unit of Virginia militiamen was beginning to erect a fort. Contrecoeur ordered the Virginians to leave, and he proceeded to construct Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) as his headquarters at that strategic location. The French now appeared to be well on the way to controlling the entire region west of the Alleghenies.44 Governor Dinwiddie meanwhile had sent a militia force of several hundred men under George Washington to reinforce the men at the forks of the Ohio. Contrecoeur reacted by sending a party of 33 men commanded by Ensign Joseph Coulon de Jumonville to hand Washington a summons to withdraw or be responsible for any subsequent hostilities. Washington led a group of about 40 militiamen and a number of Iroquois that proceeded to ambush the French party on 27 May, killing Jumonville and 9 men and capturing all but one of the rest, an act of murder according to the French. [n response, Contrecoeur sent a detachment of 500 French soldiers and a contingent of allied Indians under the slain ensign's brother, Captain Louis Coulon de Villiers, to attack Washington's forces in the hastily constructed defenses that he called Fort Necessity (near Farmington, Pennsylvania). After a short but bloody siege of the fort on 3 July 1754 (Washington's men suffered at least 100 casualties, including 30 dead; the French lost 3 dead and 17 wounded, including several Indians), Washington surrendered . Villiers permitted Washington and all but two of the other survivors to return to Virginia, and their fort and other buildings in the area were destroyed. Although France and England were technically at peace, the first shots of the French and Indian War, the North American phase of the Seven Years' War, had been fired. Both countries now began preparations on a grand scale for the coming conflict.45 On 31 May 1754, four days after Jumonville's patrol had been ambushed in Pennsylvania, the minister of Marine in Versailles had written to Duquesne concerning the great expenses being generated by its colony in North America. He wrote, "All resources are so depleted, that if things cannot be put back into the condition they were in before the advent of these immense fiscal excesses which we have been experiencing for some years, we shall be strongly compelled to abandon the colony. You will see what I am writing you jointly with M. Bigot [the intendant of New France] on that matter." The drain on the king's treasury was to increase, however, with Bigot and his officer cronies' accelerating corruption and Introduction 29 Fort Necessity (Farmington, Pennsylvania), on-site reconstruction of the 1754 fort. Reproduced with permission of the National Park Service, Fort Necessity National Battltifield. rampant inflation compounded by the need to provision the French forces in the distant Ohio country.46 It was to a troubled colony that Raymond, with his new Cross of Saint Louis and his hopes high, returned in the fall of 1754. In Quebec his hopes were dashed by Duquesne, sorely pressed himself by highly placed critics for his costly campaign in the Ohio Valley and for his overall strategy. In the same set of dispatches to the minister containing his vicious 7 October 1754 rejection of Raymond's bid for advancement, Duquesne requested his own recall. It was at this time of crisis that the Chevalier de Raymond sent his revealing denombrement to Colonel Surlaville, thereby making available to the minister a wealth ofdetail on the problems and ethos of New FranceY TOPICAL OUTLINE OF RAYMOND'S ENUMERATION The structure of Raymond's report is outlined here, providing the reader with a table of contents. In Part IV of this book, an analysis is made of what Surlaville deleted, retained, and rephrased in his memoire. In the analysis, 30 On The Eve ofthe Conquest several translated excerpts from Surlaville's report provide examples of the modifications in the document he presented to the minister. A topical outline ofSurlaville's memoire follows the comparative analysis, in appendix 1. In the outline of Raymond's denombrement presented here, the uppercase Roman numerals are Raymond's; the uppercase letters are mine. Boldface type is used for Raymond's bold heads and Roman numerals. The numbers in square brackets identify the National Archives of Canada transcript page numbers for reference purposes. The wording of the summarized content is mine. Structure ofRaymond's Denombrement I. Introduction stating the contents as the enumeration of all the Canadian posts; their locations; those that are king's posts; those that are trading posts; the present upkeep of the garrisons, the posts, and the commandants; the way to retain the Indian allies and prevent them from going to the English [NAC 2895] A. Northern posts [NAC 2896-97] B. Southern posts [NAC 2897-99] Remarks on the choice of commandants, expose of corruption and favoritism [NAC 2899-901]; remarks on the Indians' nature [NAC 2901-5] C. Detroit [NAC 2905-7] Criticism of governor generals, poor appointments of commandants and poor decisions in Acadia by the French command [NAC 2907-9] D. Michilimackinac [NAC 2909-18] Michilimackinac is on the Indians' route for trading at Oswego and Albany [NAC 2910-11]; Complaint about perceived injustices to himself and the other officers [NAC 2911-13]; plan to fortify three key passages, including Michilimackinac, to force Indians to stop trading with the English and to trade only with the French; importance of the Petit Rapide [NAC 2914-20] II. A. The Petit Rapide The importance of the Petit Rapide in Raymond's proposed water transportation system for freight and trade Introduction 31 between Montreal and the upper country and Ohio River posts [NAC 2920-25]; Discussion of English encroachment on French territory from Oswego to Acadia [NAC 292528 ] B. Long, detailed description-underlined-of favored officers and families and the posts granted them, inadequate pay to officers [NAC 2928-31]; short description-underlined-of Raymond's proposed system to correct inequities [NAC 2931-33] C. Rationale for the commandants' supplementary pay and its funding through conges [NAC 2933-37] D. The Merchants: Conges, water transportation of freight, competitive bidding for supplying the king's needs, quality control [NAC 2937-42] E. Determination of garrison strength and employees for La Presentation, Fort Frontenac, Niagara, Le Petit Rapide [NAC 2942-45]; Recommendation to rectity the disparity in the posts' officers' pay by standardizing all the posts' salaries [NAC 2945-46] F. Regulation of freightage allowances for commandants and officers; annual costs and savings for the king for the garrisons ' rations, supplies, and boats [NAC 2946-49] III. A. Garrison strengths at the posts of the Belle Riviere, Detroit, Fort Duquesne, Riviere au Boeuf, Presqu'Ile, Miami, Ouiatanon; headquarters staffing at Detroit, Trois-Rivieres, Michilimackinac [NAC 2949-51] B. Regulation and number of conges for each post and income from the conges; recommendations for farming out the Acadian fur trade and sealing industry [NAC 2951-54] C. Long digression-underlined-recommending opening the brandy trade to all, rather than granting it only to the favored few, who are named here [NAC 2954-58] D. Supplementary pay recommended for the posts' officers, chaplains , surgeons, missionaries, and post employees, and amounts and cost ofhay and firewood; tabulation [NAC 2962] showing 32 On The Eve !ifthe Conquest an expected "profit" for the king of 40,425# after all expenses [NAC 2958-64] E. Diatribe-underlined-on Abbe Fran<;:ois Picquet and his post ofLa Presentation [NAC 2964-67] F. Discussion of Indian customs, including gift-giving by the king to the Indians and the severe abuse by commandants of this practice [NAC 2967-70]; recommendations-underlined -for preventing the commandants' illegal trading of the king's presents [NAC 2970-72] G. Present daily cost of rations and of supplementary pay for the garrisons that would be saved under the proposed plan [NAC 2972-79] H. Short digression-underlined-on the irresponsibility and thievery that occur with the king's goods [NAC 2980-81] I. Request for Surlaville's support of the proposal and for Raymond's elevation to inspector general, and plea for Surlaville's protection [NAC 2981-83] NOTES 1. Pierre-Georges Roy, "Charles, Chevalier de Raymond," Bulletin des recherches historiques (hereafter cited as BRH), Levis, Quebec, 1948, 54:165-66; Aegidius Fauteux, "Le chevalier de Raymond," Rapport de l'archiviste de la province de Quebec (hereafter cited as RAPQ) 1927-1928, 319-20. Fauteux's article (317-22) immediately precedes his transcript of the denombrement (323-54) in the same issue, which he titled "Memoire sur les postes du Canada adresse aM. de Surlaville, en 1754, par Ie Chevalier de Raymond." Appendix 2 of this work consists of an annotated translation of Fauteux's complete article on Raymond. Although Fauteux (319) stated that Raymond was relieved from the Miami command in 1751, the latter's successor, Louis Coulon de Villiers, was sent by La Jonquiere to command the Miami post in 1750, remaining in command there for three years (La Jonquiere to Villiers, Montreal, 10 July 1750, Archives nationales, Colonies, Paris [hereafter cited as AN Col.], CllE:194; Villiers to the minister, Montreal, 9 October 1754, AN Col., Cl1E 13:221-22). Raymond fought alongside Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre at the Battle of Lake George in 1755, in which Saint-Pierre died in action (see Joseph L. Peyser, Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre: Officer, Gentleman, Entrepreneur [East Lansing and Mackinac Island: Michigan State University Press and Mackinac State Historic Introduction 33 Parks, 1996], 222-24). He distinguished himselfin the Battle of Ticonderoga (Fort Carillon) in 1758, and was at the siege of Quebec in 1759. According to Fauteux's 1927-28 article (320), he was received as a chevalier in the Royal and Military Order of Saint-Louis in 1754; Pierre-Georges Roy set the date as 1753 (BRR, 54:166); Theodore Calvin Pease gave the date as 1759 (Theodore Calvin Pease and Ernestine Jenison, eds., Collections ifthe Illinois State Historical Library, [hereafter cited as IHC] 38 vols. [Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1903-40], French Series voL 3: Illinois on the Eve ifthe Seven Years' War, 1747-1755, 29:xxv). In 1940, Fauteux provided additional evidence, fixing the date as 18 January 1754 in Les Chevaliers de Saint-Louis en Canada (Montreal: Les Editions des Dix, 1940), 155. Raymond returned to France after the conquest, and died there in 1774. 2. Minister to Duquesne, Versailles, 18 April 1754, AN CoL, B 99:180. Unless otherwise noted, all translations in this work are mine. 3. II veut etablir une haute, moyenne et basse justice chez les sauvages du Nord. These terms "have no exact equivalent in English" and are left in French in the Englishlanguage edition of volume 2 of the Dictionary oj Canadian Biography (hereafter cited as DCB), 12 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966-91), 2:xiii. Lo haute, moyenne, et basse justice were the three levels of French seignorial jurisdiction , adapted to New France, where the seigneur did not have the same rights as the feudal seigneurs in France. In his The Seignorial System in Canada: A Study in French Colonial Policy (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907), William Bennett Munro stated that "[T]he grant of the right of high jurisdiction (haute justice) gave the seignior [sic] power to deal with all criminal cases, including those punishable by death, mutilation , or other corporal penalty, with the exception only of such crimes as were deemed to be perpetrated directly against the royal person or property.... In civil cases the authority of the seignior possessing this degree ofjurisdiction was without limit" (148). The seigneur with rights of middle jurisdiction (moyenne justice) had authority to adjudicate civil actions in which no more than the sum of 60 sols was in dispute (see note 4, following, for an explanation of the monetary units in New France), and criminal cases "in which the awardable penalty did not exceed the same sum" (150). The judicial authority of those seigneurs having the rights of low jurisdiction (basse justice) was limited to petty civil cases amounting to no more than 60 sols and criminal cases in which a penalty could not exceed 10 sols (150). Analyzing the seigneurs' infrequent use of their judicial power, Munro speculated that one of the reasons was that their decisions were all subject to appeal to the colony's royal courts (153). See also John A. Dickinson, "La Justice seigneuriale en Nouvelle-France: Ie cas de Notre-Dame-des-Anges," Revue d'histoire de l'Amerique jran(aise 28, no. 3 (decembre 1974): 323-46, and Andre Lachance, La Justice criminelle du roi au Canada au XVIII' siecle: Tribunaux et officiers, Les Cahiers d'histoire de l'Universite Laval no. 22 (Quebec: Les Presses de l'Universite Laval, 1978), 11-12. 34 On The Eve ofthe Conquest 4. The official monetary unit in New France was the livre, worth 20 sols, each of which in turn was worth 12 deniers. An ecu was worth 3 livres; a pistole was worth 10 livres. 10,000 ecus (30,000 livres) was a substantial sum, equal in 1754 to almost 30 years of a captain's base pay, or 10 years of supplementary pay for commanding a post. The precise value of the livre in today's currency is virtually impossible to determine due to the many variables that affected it. On the basis of comparing prices in New France at different times with current U.S. prices, I would very roughly estimate the livre's value at 7 to 13 1995 U.S. dollars. The symbol for the livre was similar to our pound sign (#), but it had only one horizontal bar. In this book, # is used for the livre abbreviation, 5 for sols, and d for deniers. The amount of 10 livres, 17 sols, and 7 deniers would be abbreviated as 10# 17s 7d. See note 79 in Part III for the distinction between the monetary unit and the unit ofweight which was also called the livre. 5. Duquesne to Minister, Quebec, 7 October 1754, AN Col., CllA 99:257, translated by the present author. A transcript (with one minor error) and translation of this letter can be found in IHC 29:902-3. 6. Obligations de Pierre Leduc dit Souligny aCharles de Raymond, Montreal, Ie 21 juin 1751 et Ie 20 juin 1752, Archives nationales du Quebec aMontreal (hereafter cited as ANQ-M), Greffe de J.-Bte Adhemar dit St.-Martin. If Raymond did succeed in enriching himself during his one year at the Miami post, his profits could have come from illegally trading brandy at his post, although there is no evidence that he engaged in this practice. Raymond signed a June 1750 voucher for 5,000# of merchandise delivered to him during the course of the year, "on the king's account and for the king's service," including 83 pots (half-gallons) of brandy at 20 livres per pot. He wrote that the prices he entered on the voucher were "according to the prices at which merchandise is sold at this post, particularly brandy which sells for twenty livres in furs per pot" (Etat des fournitures faites pour Ie compte et service du Roy par ordre de M. Raymond, fort des Miamis, 25 juin 1750, AN Col., CllA, 119:145 recto-147 verso). The price of a pot of brandy at the Miami post in 1750 was 20 livres, whereas the intendant and governor approved the purchase of brandy in Montreal for the king's service that same year for 2 112 livres per pot (Etat de la Depense que Ie Sr. Lechelle Negociant aMontreal a faite ... , Montreal, Ie 16 juin 1750, AN Col., CIIA 96:327). Allowing for transport costs, the profit from brandy traded in the upper country was still very substantial. Just how much of a profit Raymond made at the Miami post is conjectural, as is the manner in which he made his profit. It is relevant to examine the financial experience of a Miami post commandant a few years before Raymond's assignment there. Jacques Legardeur de Saint- Introduction 35 Pierre, who commanded the Miami post from 1741 to 1744, purchased in June 1741 with his partner 24,000 livres ofmerchandise on credit, pledging all their possessions as security to the merchant who sold them the goods Gust as Souligny pledged his possessions to Raymond). By December 1742, Saint-Pierre was in arrears to his creditor for about 30,000 livres, counting heavily on a third-year profit to "protect me from owing for the rest of my days a sum that would be impossible for me ever to pay" (Obligation de Saint-Pierre et Clignancourt, associes, aPierre Lestage, negociant, Montreal, Ie 15 juin 1741, ANQ-M, Greffe de Danre de Blanzy; Saint-Pierre a Beauhamois, Ie poste des Miamis, Ie 6 decembre 1742, Archives du Seminaire de Quebec, Fonds Verreau, Carton 5, no. 7); for the translation and discussion of these and other pertinent documents, see Peyser, Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, chap. 2, passim. Niagara was one of three king's posts, the other two being Detroit and Fort Frontenac, where the king retained the trading privilege in order to keep the cost of trade goods low enough to compete with the English post of Oswego rw· J. Eccles, The Canadian Frontier, 1534-1760, rev. ed. [Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983], 146). 7. Duquesne was apparently unhappy as well with Louis Coulon de Villiers, Raymond's successor among the Miamis, failing to pay Villiers his supplementary pay as commandant for his last two years there and recalling him in 1753 (Villiers to the minister, Montreal, 9 October 1754, AN Col., C11E 13:221-22). 8. For an explanation of the staff rank of major in New France, see Rene Chartrand, Canadian Military Heritage, 3 vols. (Montreal: Art Global, 1993-), 1:107-8. 9. T. A. Crowley, "Le Courtois de Surlaville (Le Courtois de Blais de Surlaville), Michel," DCB, 4:443-44; Fauteux, "Le chevalier de Raymond," 319-20. Surlaville continued his illustrious military career during the Seven Years' War, first with an appointment in 1757 as assistant chief of the army staff under Marshal d'Estrees in the 99,000-man Army of the Lower Rhine. (It was in Germany that France committed the vast bulk of its regular land forces against the allied army composed of elements from Hanover, Hesse, BrunswickLiineburg , and England.) In 1761, still in Germany, he was promoted to brigadier general, and then to major general in 1762. Finally, in 1781, he was promoted to the highest military rank in France, that of lieutenant general. He died in Paris in 1796. (Crowley, "Surlaville," 444; Lee Kennett, The French Annies in the Seven Years' War [Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1967], xiv.) Gaston Du Boscq de Beaumont (Les derniers jours de I'Acadie 1748-1758: co"espondances et memoires [Paris: 1899; reprint, Geneva: Slatkine-Megaroitis Reprints, 1975], 3) wrote that Surlaville was promoted to major general of the Army of the Lower Rhine in 1754. (The Archives du Seminaire de Quebec has a collection of Surlaville papers in Poiygraphie, nos. 55, 56, 57, and 58.) 36 On The Eve ifthe Conquest The Crosses of Saint-Louis won by Surlaville and Raymond accompanied their being received into the Royal and Military Order of Saint-Louis. To be admitted to the order it was necessary that one be an officer in the regular troops, thereby excluding militia officers and enlisted men, and that one serve only the king of France (Marcel Trudel, Initiation ala Nouvelle-France [Montreal: Les editionsHRWltee , 1971], 181). 10. See page 143 in Part IV of this work for the specific page references and details of Raymond's attempts within this document to improve his lot. 11. See Part IV for a comparative analysis of Raymond's original report and Surlaville's edited version. 12. The handwriting in Piece n° 35 differs from examples ofRaymond's complete signature on several actes notaries examined by the present author. See notes 2, 3, and 4 in appendix 2 for further details on the manuscripts. 13. Letter to the present author from Roanne Mokhtar, reference archivist of the National Archives of Canada, 16 March 1993. 14. Cited in Yves F. Zoltvany, The French Tradition in America (Columbia: University ofSouth Carolina Press, 1969), 127-30. 15. While France was required to give up Acadia, "with its ancient boundaries," those boundaries were ill-defined and construed differently by the British and the French. All or part ofAcadia had changed hands many times between France and England since early in the seventeenth century. The political position taken by the French in 1713 was that Acadia consisted of only the peninsula of Nova Scotia, excluding the French-dominated mainland areas lying in what is now New Brunswick, the northern coast of Maine, and the southern coast of the Gaspe Peninsula. The British, however, never gave up their claim to the disputed Acadian territory beyond Nova Scotia. By the 1750s, prior to the Seven Years' War, they had strengthened their presence, both civil and military, on the peninsula and along the disputed borders. For an interesting discussion of the boundaries and geography of Acadia, see Andrew Hill Clark, Acadia: The Geography ifEarly Nova Scotia to 1760 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), 71-74. See Eccles, The Canadian Frontier, 142, 172-73 for synopses of the role of the French-allied Abenaki and Micmac Indians who fought against the encroaching English settlers up to the Seven Years' War and the subsequent deportation of the French Acadian population in 1755. R. Cole Harris, ed., Historical Atlas ifCanada, 3 vols. "From the Beginning to 1800" (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), l:plate 30, provides a clear graphic and written account of the Acadian deportation. 16. The Louisiana colony was founded by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville and his younger brother, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, in 1699. At first entirely dependent upon the Crown, Louisiana became a proprietary colony in 1712. By 1731 it was .necessary for the desperately struggling colony to revert to Crown status for survival. In theory, the governor of Louisiana reported to the governor Introduction 37 general of New France in Quebec, but in reality the fonner reported to the minister ofMarine, and through him to the king, as did his counterpart in Quebec. The Carolina English, allied with and trading partners of the formidable Chickasaw nation, built a road from Charles Town to the latter's villages only some 100 miles east of the Mississippi where English traders flew their own flag when under fire from attacking French forces during the Chickasaw Wars. For the history of French Louisiana from 1698 to 1731, see Marcel Giraud, Histoire de la Louisiane franfaise, 5 vols., (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1953-87). English translations of volumes 1, 2, and 5 have been published by the Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, 1974, 1993, 1991). W.]. Eccles concisely treats the history of French Louisiana in his France in America, rev. ed. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1990), 157-87, and is a good source of information on the colony. Daniel H. Usner Jr.'s award-winning Indians, Settlers, & Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley bifore 1783 ([Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992], 6) examines "the economic context in which different peoples continuously interacted with each other." The book's two parts analyze in fascinating detail the evolution of the region, and the social and commercial components ofthe "frontier exchange." 17. See Co-Intendant Antoine-Denis Raudot's detailed and farsighted recommendations of 1706 to Minister of Marine Jerome PheIypeaux de Pontchartrain for the settlement and fortifYing of Cape Breton Island, translated by Zoltvany, The French Tradition in America, 131-35; See also Eccles, France in America, 115. For fifteen highly informative essays on Louisbourg from 1713 to today, see Eric Krause, Carol Corbin, and William O'shea, eds., Aspects of Louisbourg (Sydney, Nova Scotia: University College of Cape Breton Press, 1995). 18. For an overview of the development and westward expansion of New France, see Eccles, The Canadian Frontier. Dale Miquelon's New France 1701-1744: A Supplement to Europe (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1987) provides a perceptive analysis of the colony's history with valuable detail on economic and social development . For the development of French Louisiana, see chapter 6, "The Slave Colonies," in Eccles's France in America, 157-87. For a synopsis of the explorations for the Western Sea and the establishment ofthe French posts in the region, see the Introduction to Lawrence]. Burpee, ed., Journals and Letters of Pierre Gaultier de Varennes de La Verendrye and His Sons (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1927), 1-40. 19. Minutes of the Council of Marine, Paris,S January 1718, AN Col., Cl1A 124: renumbered item no. 4, 9-10. For a concise treatment of the mixed success of the Catholic missions among the Indians of New France, see Cornelius J. Jaenen, The Role ofthe Church in New France, Historical Booklet No. 40 (Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1985), 9-11. See also chapter 2 of Jaenen's Friend and Foe: Aspects of FrenchAmerindian Cultural Contact in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976),41-83. 38 On The Eve