Life on the Mississippi | Page 6

of the savages, La Salle set up a cross
with the arms of France on it, and took possession of the whole country
for the king--the cool fashion of the time--while the priest piously
consecrated the robbery with a hymn. The priest explained the
mysteries of the faith 'by signs,' for the saving of the savages; thus
compensating them with possible possessions in Heaven for the certain
ones on earth which they had just been robbed of. And also, by signs,
La Salle drew from these simple children of the forest
acknowledgments of fealty to Louis the Putrid, over the water. Nobody
smiled at these colossal ironies.
These performances took place on the site of the future town of
Napoleon, Arkansas, and there the first confiscation-cross was raised
on the banks of the great river. Marquette's and Joliet's voyage of
discovery ended at the same spot--the site of the future town of
Napoleon. When De Soto took his fleeting glimpse of the river, away
back in the dim early days, he took it from that same spot--the site of

the future town of Napoleon, Arkansas. Therefore, three out of the four
memorable events connected with the discovery and exploration of the
mighty river, occurred, by accident, in one and the same place. It is a
most curious distinction, when one comes to look at it and think about
it. France stole that vast country on that spot, the future Napoleon; and
by and by Napoleon himself was to give the country back again!--make
restitution, not to the owners, but to their white American heirs.
The voyagers journeyed on, touching here and there; 'passed the sites,
since become historic, of Vicksburg and Grand Gulf,' and visited an
imposing Indian monarch in the Teche country, whose capital city was
a substantial one of sun-baked bricks mixed with straw--better houses
than many that exist there now. The chiefs house contained an audience
room forty feet square; and there he received Tonty in State,
surrounded by sixty old men clothed in white cloaks. There was a
temple in the town, with a mud wall about it ornamented with skulls of
enemies sacrificed to the sun.
The voyagers visited the Natchez Indians, near the site of the present
city of that name, where they found a 'religious and political despotism,
a privileged class descended from the sun, a temple and a sacred fire.' It
must have been like getting home again; it was home with an advantage,
in fact, for it lacked Louis XIV.
A few more days swept swiftly by, and La Salle stood in the shadow of
his confiscating cross, at the meeting of the waters from Delaware, and
from Itaska, and from the mountain ranges close upon the Pacific, with
the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, his task finished, his prodigy
achieved. Mr. Parkman, in closing his fascinating narrative, thus sums
up:
'On that day, the realm of France received on parchment a stupendous
accession. The fertile plains of Texas; the vast basin of the Mississippi,
from its frozen northern springs to the sultry borders of the Gulf; from
the woody ridges of the Alleghanies to the bare peaks of the Rocky
Mountains--a region of savannas and forests, sun-cracked deserts and
grassy prairies, watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a thousand
warlike tribes, passed beneath the scepter of the Sultan of Versailles;
and all by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible at half a mile.'

Chapter 3
Frescoes from the Past
APPARENTLY the river was ready for business, now. But no, the
distribution of a population along its banks was as calm and deliberate
and time-devouring a process as the discovery and exploration had
been.
Seventy years elapsed, after the exploration, before the river's borders
had a white population worth considering; and nearly fifty more before
the river had a commerce. Between La Salle's opening of the river and
the time when it may be said to have become the vehicle of anything
like a regular and active commerce, seven sovereigns had occupied the
throne of England, America had become an independent nation, Louis
XIV. and Louis XV. had rotted and died, the French monarchy had
gone down in the red tempest of the revolution, and Napoleon was a
name that was beginning to be talked about. Truly, there were snails in
those days.
The river's earliest commerce was in great barges--keelboats,
broadhorns. They floated and sailed from the upper rivers to New
Orleans, changed cargoes there, and were tediously warped and poled
back by hand. A voyage down and back sometimes occupied nine
months. In time this commerce increased until it gave employment to
hordes of rough and hardy men; rude, uneducated, brave, suffering
terrific hardships with sailor-like stoicism; heavy drinkers, coarse
frolickers in moral sties like the Natchez-under-the-hill of