The Natchez nation, mentioned in the letter to Pondiac, which he shewed me, and who were blamed by the rest of the Indian army for having fired too soon on the English who were sent to take possession of Fort Chartres by way of the Mississippi river, no doubt did it by design, that the troops might have an opportunity of retreating; for the French had formerly endeavoured to extirpate that nation, and had nearly succeeded in the undertaking, a small number only having escaped the massacre.[1] It is not probable such an action could ever be forgiven; especially by savages. This nation have a perpetual fire; and two men are appointed to watch it. It has been conjectured that their ancestors were deserters from the Mexicans who worship the sun.
The Miamis nation, of whom I have spoken so much, and into whose hands I fell after leaving Pondiac's army at the Uttawaw villages, are the very people who have lately defeated the Americans in three different battles; and when the last accounts from that country reached us, they were encamped on the banks of the Ohio, near the falls or cataracts of that river.[2]
- ↑ The Natchez War, with its sequel in the Chickasaw campaigns, was the most disastrous series of Indian troubles in the early history of French Louisiana. The Natchez secretly rose, and treacherously massacred the garrison of Fort Rosalie, November 29, 1729. During the two succeeding years Governor Périer twice invaded their territory, and inflicted so severe a chastisement that the nation as such ceased to exist, its remnant taking refuge among the Chickasaws.—Ed.
- ↑ This paragraph was obviously interpolated just before the publication of the journal (1791), for the three different battles to which Morris here refers were those of Harmar's campaign in 1790, when three several detachments of the latter's army were at different times overpowered in the Miami territory. The defeat of St. Clair (November 4, 1791), by the same tribesmen, doubtless was too recent an event for the information to have reached England, and been embodied in a publication of that year.—Ed.
