Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/120

88 Proprietary colony of Louisiana. [1712 qualities which made him an unsympathetic leader of French colonists, and unluckily, too, the prospect of successful raids on the Mexican mines served to divert his attention from the proper settlement of the colony. In 1687 La Salle was murdered by his own people, and the well-provided little colony was wholly lost. It served only to excite the watchfulness and cupidity of the more far-seeing of the English colonists. The proprietor of Carolina began to press his claims to the wider " Carolana," dating his claim from Charles T& patent of 1630 ; and in 1687 Dongan, the governor of New York, is found asking for a sloop to "discover La Salle's river," where, he notes, French possession will be an evil thing for both English and Spanish. In 1698 the Louisiana scheme was again taken up by the French government under the influence of the Canadian brothers dlberville and Bienville, the sons of a Norman emigrant, who had led French arms and enterprise wherever an opening offered. In 1700 a fort was planted fifty miles up the river, and another at Biloxi midway between the mouth and the nearest Spanish settlement eastward, Pensacola. The bulk of the population of some 200 settlers consisted of Canadian coureurs ; and when some Huguenots made application to join the colony, Louis XIV's reply was that he had not chased the heretics from his kingdom in order to found a republic for them in America. In 1708 the population was still not more than 280, with some 60 Canadian coureurs ; but its immediate strategic and possible commercial value was so far realised that Louis provided the forts with small garri- sons. The climate and the unfortunate choice of sites for the forts, which were driven to become more or less peripatetic, were a constant source of discouragement, and agriculture was neglected in the belief that the most probable source of wealth lay in mineral treasures. In the meanwhile the colonists were dependent on the Indians for food. Four years later Louisiana was converted into a proprietary colony, a form that had so far been left untried by France. Perhaps the success of some of the English proprietary colonies may have inclined the govern- ment to the experiment. Crozat, a member of the flourishing Company of St Domingo, obtained the exclusive commerce of the nascent colony for fifteen years, his rights extending from the sea-coast to the river Illinois. Beaver was excluded from his monopoly, in order that the Canadian trade might not be injured. The Custom of Paris was introduced, and the administration put in the hands of a council after the pattern of that in St Domingo. After nine years Crozat was to assume all the expenses of government, including military charges, but till then the king subscribed 50,000 livres towards the cost. Crozat agreed to send two ships annually, and hoped to refund himself out of mines, gold, silver and pearls, silk and indigo. The ideas which La Salle had put forward some thirty years before had as yet struck no root, and the Governor La Mothe Cadillac wholly despaired of the future of the colony. But the work of