The next year, 1700, the Seminary
sent out Fathers Bergier, Bouteville and Saint Cosine, the latter a younger
brother of the missionary at the Tamarois, but not yet a regularly ordained
priest. The elder Saint Cosine went to the Natchez on the arrival of his
brethren. The Jesuit missionaries received the Quebec missionaries with
politeness, but showed much opposition to what they regarded as an intrusion
into their field of work.
Before long Father Montigny found his position
so unpleasant that he began to see failure in the mission on which he had
spent his means so generously. He returned to France with d’Iberville in
1700, hoping to regulate his mission affairs satisfactorily. When he left,
Father “Bergier became Superior of the secular missions on the Mississippi
Valley, and made Tamarois his residence, Rev. Mr. St. Cosine remaining
at Natchez. Father Montigny never returned to America. He went East
where his services in the cause of religion were signal.
In the fall of 1702, fathers Davion and De
Limoges, who lived among the Natchez, went to Mobile and informed Bienville
that the Coroas had killed their colleague, Father Foucault, and three
other Frenchmen above the Yazoo river. Nicholas Foucault had arrrived
in 1701, and in 1702 was laboring among the Tunicas and Yazoos. He
set out for the fort with three Frenchmen, and was attended by young Coroas.
These two savages effected the death of the entire party near the Tunica
villages.
On learning of the death of Foucault, Davion,
the missionary among the Tunicas, and De Limoges, from the Oumas (Humas),
considered it no longer wise to remain in such an exposed situation. They
went down to the French fort where they arrived on the first of October.
The governor determined to exact reparation for the murder. This made a
return for the priests still more perilous.
It was in 1703 that Father Saint Cosine with
three companions was descending the Mississippi, to make a visit to St.
Denis, who commanded a fort at or near the mouth of the river. Saint Cosine
passed Natchez in safety, but went further down to a place where there
had been a Bayogoula village. The Bayogoulas and the Chetiinachas were
then at enmity, and the latter masacred the entire party, except a little
slave.
Bienville heard of the crime, and St. Denis,
with ten Frenchmen and 200 Oumas, Ouachas, and Bayogoulas, set out to punish
the Indians. Fifteen Chetimachas were killed, and others were wounded and
captured. Among the captured was one of the murderers. Bienville had his
[the murderers] head broken. His scalp was afterward taken off and his
body thrown into the river. Bienville even went so far as to offer a fixed
price for each Chetimacha or Alibamon scalp or prisoner delivered to him.
Some Choctaws brought the scalps of five Alabamons.
From the Choctaws and some Chickasaws, Bienville was informed that a number
of Englishmen were busily endeavoring in their villages to draw off these
Indians from their alliance with the French.
Father Davion, who had recently come down the
river, was still at the fort, and it was deemed hazardous to allow him
to return; and, in November, 1704, two chiefs of the Tunicas came to escort
him back. Bienville told the chiefs that he could not consent to the return
of the priest to the Tunicas till they had avenged the death of Father
Foucault, murdered by the Coroas, at the instigation of the English; and
he expected them to seize the traders of that nation, and bring them and
their goods to Mobile. He proposed to furnish them with ammunition.
His offer was accepted, and St. Denis offered
to go with them, accompanied by twelve Canadians. The party was to be supported
by Lambert, another Canadian, who was going back to the Wabash with forty
of his neighbors. The Tunica chiefs left, having promised to meet St. Denis
at the Natchez. Bienville ordered some boats built, but before they were
completed, news came that the French settlements on the Wabash had been
entirely destroyed by the Indian allies of the British. Lambert gave up
the intended trip, and it was considered too dangerous for St. Denis to
go without the anticipated escort. So the project was abandoned.
Shea makes the following statement:
“At last, however, in December, 1704, the Tonicas sent their
deputies to Mobile to beg Davion to return and instruct them. Although
they had hitherto shown little regard to his teaching, he finally yielded
to their solicitations and returned, but resolved to adopt a different
course from that he had hitherto pursued. He spoke freely and boldly, denouncing
their vices and idolatry, and urging them to embrace Christianity. Finding
them deaf to his exhortations, he destroyed their temple and quenched their
sacred fire. Incensed at this, they drove him from their village, but were
so indifferent in reality that they took no steps to rebuild their sacred
edifice, and soon after invited Davion to return.”
Father Davion kept up his Tunica mission till
1708, when some Indians on the side of the English threatened it, and he
went to Mobile. He left Louisiana in 1725, and died among his relatives
in France in 1726.
The “Company of the West” obligated itself,
in an article in one of its contracts, to erect churches at the places
where settlements were formed and to maintain there the necessary quota
of approved ecclesiastics. The Company took up the matter in 1722. The
year before Father Charlevoix had passed through the North American French
provinces, and after his return to France had told of their religious destitution.
As a consequence, the Company took the following measures:
The Jesuit priests would leave the southern part of the Mississippi
Valley and labor north of the Ohio; the Bishop of Quebec would still be
the bishop of the whole French colony, but would be allowed a co-adjutor-bishop,
who, as vicar-general of the Quebec diocese, would superintend the very
southern missions. Rev. L. F. Duplessis de Marnay, a Capuchin, was
named Co-adjutor-Bishop of Quebec. He invited some Capuchin priests from
France to take charge of the Louisiana missions. They accepted, and some
Capuchin priests did arrive in Louisiana, but they soon saw that there
were not enough of their order to give proper care to the missions, and
the Company arranged that the Capuchin fathers should take charge of the
French settlements only, and the Indian missions should be given to Jesuits
from France. Rev. Philibert, Capuchin, was appointed to the Natchez; Rev.
Matturin be Petit, Jesuit, to the Choctaws; Rev. Souel, Jesuit, to the
Yazoos; Rev. Beaudouin, to the Chickasaws. Rev be Petit was afterwards
called to New Orleans, and Rev. Beaudouin went to the Choctaws, where he
worked eighteen years, aided by Rev. Lefevre for some time.
[Father Beaudouin’s mission appears to have been at Chickasawhay Town.
The Indians reported to Mr. H. S. Halbert, so the latter wrote the author,
that Chickasawhay Town was located about three miles north of the modern
town of Enterprise, Miss. {Possibly present day Amite County.}
[From Bossu it is learned that Nicolas be Febre was chaplain at Fort
Tombeckbe' about 1759. He was born in Belgium in 1705—a Jesuit. The
site of this fort was near the modern Epes Station on the A. C. S. R. R.
on the peninsular piece of land between the river and a brook running into
it—about 100 yards above the place where the A. G. S. R. R. crosses the
Tombigbee.
[When Rev. Guyenne went on the mission to the Alibamons in 1726, Rev.
Maturin Le Petit went among the Choctaws. Rev. Michael Beaudouin,
Canadian, came to Louisiana in 1726. In 1747 he was promoted to be
Vicar-General of the Bishop of Quebec.]
Shea says;
“The Choctaw mission, the fourth of those begun by the Jesuits
in Louisiana [what was then Louisiana], was the most exposed and difficult
of all. It was founded by Father le Petit, but he was replaced prior to
1730 by Father Baudouin. The Choctaws, though allies of the French, and
battling with them against the Natchez were a wild and lawless band, and
could not be relied upon. The missionary acquired no ascendency over
them; he could not even obtain from their bands the church plate and vestments
recovered from the Natchez and Yazoos. Desperate, however, as his
mission was, Baudouin persevered for eighteen years on the unproductive
field. Of his struggles during that period we have no record.
A letter of his from the Indian town of Tchicachee, dated November 23,
1732, is still preserved in Paris in the Archives of the Marine and Colonies,
and is said to be an interesting account of his mission, but it has never
been copied.”
The names of Fathers Souel and Doutreleau, the
former a martyr, richly deserve to be remembered in this sketch.
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