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> 2 > > > Chapter Two EUROPEAN RECONNAISSANCE, 1682–171 BY THE END OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, the native peoples of the Lower Mississippi Valley (Figure 3) had become unknowing subjects of an overlapping patchwork of competing political, economic, and religious empires. Europe’s superpowers weren’t timid when they staked their claims to North America: France’s Louisiana colony encompassed the Mississippi River Valley from the Illinois country down to the Gulf of Mexico, and England’s vast Carolina Province cross-cut Louisiana as it stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific between 36 degrees and 3 degrees longitude. Superimposed upon these two opposing interests lay the spiritual jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Church. Spain remained on the periphery of the French-English struggle for the Mississippi region in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, maintaining mission settlements in Florida and the Rio Grande Valley.2 Of course, the Natchez Indians and other Mississippi tribes were not privy to the plans being made for them in the schemes that were bandied about in the palaces of London and Paris and in the halls of the Vatican. One of the schemers was René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle, who naively assured the French Crown in 677 that the Indians of the Mississippi Valley would “readily adapt themselves to us and imitate our way of life as soon as they taste the advantages of our friendship and of the commodities we bring them, insomuch that these countries will infallibly furnish, within a few years, a great many new subjects to the Church and the King.”3 Five years later, La Salle put his ambitious plan into action. His historic expedition down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico was an inevitable outgrowth of France’s seventeenth-century colonial activities in Canada, known as “New France.” In 673, the Jolliet-Marquette expedition had descended the Mississippi as far south as the Acansa villages near the mouth of the Arkansas River, and it was only a matter of time before someone would follow through > 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 3 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 4 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 5 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 6 62 < EUROPEAN RECONNAISSANCE, 1682–171 with very great scorn to the shame of the French to the extent of threatening to kill some of them.233 The governor not only failed to give the customary presents to tribal leaders , he also made the diplomatic blunder of refusing to smoke the calumet with the tribes along the Mississippi, including the Natchez.234 Given La Mothe’s long experience with Indians in the Great Lakes area, it is hard to imagine why he would have behaved so imprudently. According to Bienville, La Mothe claimed to have been in too much of a hurry to accept the Natchez’s hospitality .235 Perhaps the governor made the mistake of believing that earlier calumet ceremonies involving Iberville and Bienville rendered the ritual unnecessary. Or maybe La Mothe, like Iberville, simply found smoking to be disgusting. As we will see, La Mothe’s behavior would have serious repercussions for the La Loires, Bienville, and the Natchez Indians. ...

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