George Pabis

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.Sometimes soldiers rebelled against their officers, butsuch insubordination was never tolerated.Nonetheless, mutinies occurredin 1716, 1717, 1719, and 1723.About 15 percent of the troops in French colonial Louisiana were Swissmercenaries, who maintained their own administrative structure andsupply lines.To encourage the Swiss soldiers to stay in the colony aftertheir enlistment, French colonial administrators promised them land con-cessions and three years worth of supplies.Unfortunately for the Frenchcolony, the vast majority of the Swiss soldiers chose to leave the colonywhen the opportunity arose.In February 1718, Bienville had selected the site for New Orleans, whichwas a hundred miles upstream from the mouth of the Mississippi andnext to Lake Pontchartrain.The strategic importance of the area was self-evident, so the colonial leaders of Louisiana moved the capital from Biloxito New Orleans in 1722.Unfortunately, the city experienced problems thathaunt it to this day.Natural levees protected the low lying area, but theycould not stop a major flood.The first plans for the city called for artificiallevees, but flooding in 1719 and 1724 forced the administration to buildlarger and longer levees.Levee building would remain a prominent fea-ture of New Orleans history.In 1722 a hurricane devastated the region.New settlers flocked to the higher ground at Natchez.But the immensevalue of the New Orleans site precluded its abandonment, so buildingcontinued.In 1721 the population of the fledgling town was only 250, butby 1727 it had grown to 938.To increase migration to the city, boosters pro-moted the site as healthful and the location as one sure to bring prosperityto all migrants.Pierre F.X.de Charelvoix visited New Orleans in 1722,and he believed in its future:Your Grace will, perhaps, ask me upon what these hopes are founded? They arefounded on the situation of this city on the banks of a navigable river, at the dis-tance of thirty-three leagues from the sea, from which a vessel may come up intwenty-four hours; on the fertility of its soil; and the mildness and wholesomenessof the climate, in thirty degrees north latitude; on the industry of the inhabitants;54 Daily Life along the Mississippion its neighborhood to Mexico, the Havanna, the finest islands of America, andlastly, to the English colonies.4Thirty years later, Jean-Bernard Bossu made a trip to New Orleans andwrote:Negroes are brought over from Africa to clear the land, which is excellent for grow-ing indigo, tobacco, rice, corn, and sugar cane; there are sugar plantations whichare already doing very well.This country offers a delightful life to the merchant,artisan, and foreigners who inhabit it because of its healthful climate, its fertilesoil, and its beautiful site.The city is situated on the banks of the Mississippi,one of biggest rivers in the world, which flows through eight hundred leagues ofexplored country.Its pure and delicious waters flow forty leagues among numer-ous plantations, which offer a delightful scene on both banks of the river, wherethere is a great deal of hunting, fishing, and other pleasures of life.This wateralso has the power to increase fertility in women.5Despite this optimism, the harsh reality was that New Orleans wasa hot, humid, smelly, flood-prone, and disease-ridden city, and most ofthe colonists realized this quickly upon arrival.Several floods and hur-ricanes in the eighteenth century sent water into the streets.As late as1802, a smallpox epidemic killed 1,500 children when the city s popu-lation numbered only ten thousand.Hurricanes and overflows of theMississippi River destroyed crops in 1732, 1734, and 1740.The city waschronically short of coal, salt, clothing, candles for lighting, nails for build-ing, and glass for windows.Meat supplies ran low in the summer, andwheat, which would not grow in lower Louisiana, had to be replacedwith corn flour.Generally, the French back home stayed away.Merchantstried to make enough money to move out of the city and become plant-ers [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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