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 mooney] THE END OF THE NATCHEZ 51 I

miles eastward from the present New Orleans, which was founded in 1 717, and became the capital of the new province of Louisiana a few years later. In 1716 the French governor sent an officer with goods to the Natchez to establish a trading post among them, but found already on the ground some English traders from Carolina who were trying to form the Natchez, Yazoo, and Chickasaw into a syndicate for the purpose of making slave- hunting raids upon the neighboring tribes, a business which the Carolina people had found extremely profitable in their late wars with the Apalachi and Tuskarora. The Englishmen were ar- rested and sent to Mobile, whereupon the Natchez killed several Frenchmen and seized their property. A force was sent to demand satisfaction, and the Natchez were compelled to deliver up several of their men to death and to consent to the erection of a French fort in their principal village.

With a garrison thus forcibly established in their very midst, the Natchez were soon in a condition of smothered revolt, a feeling which the English traders resident among the Chickasaw strove by every means to nurse into active rebellion. The French were well aware of these intrigues, and Adair, himself a British trader, says, that as the Natchez had " always kept a friendly in- tercourse with the Chikkasah, who never had any good will to the French, these soon understood their heart-burnings, and by the advice of the old English traders carried them white pipes and tobacco, in their own name and that of South Carolina, persuad- ing them with earnestness and policy to cut off the French." He adds that the embassy succeeded in its purpose. 1 It is the old story of rival commercial nations using the native as a cat'spaw until he is finally crushed between the millstones.

In 1722 a quarrel occurred at the post, in which several were killed on both sides. The French commander attempted to pun- ish the Indians by levying a fine upon the whole population of three villages, with the result that they retaliated, when the

1 Adair, History of the American Indians, 1775, P- 353-

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