Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (55 page)

Perier had refused to treat with this man, but had demanded that the Great Sun himself come out, saying that his failure to do so would mean that every man, woman, and child inside the fort would be killed at sword point when the French took it. Finally the Great Sun had emerged with St. Cosme and Path Bear, leaving his war chief in command. They had spoken with the French general in a drizzling rain. As the rain turned into a downpour, Perier had suggested that the Natchez leaders take refuge in a nearby cabin built for the protection of the French officers. Once the Indians were inside, guards had been posted, making the men prisoners.

With the Great Sun as a hostage, Perier then demanded the surrender of the fort. Night had fallen before an answer was received. During the hours of darkness, Path Bear had escaped confinement. With the dawn, the first wife of the Great Sun, with her family, had come out to be with the Great Sun. She had served as emissary to the others, relaying to them Perier’s threat to burn at the stake all the Natchez he now held unless the war chief surrendered himself and the fort. In the end, Reynaud had emerged with many of the woman and children and the oldest warriors. On his instructions some seventy of the fiercest fighters had remained in the fort, a force that might have been intended, should the French not keep their word, to serve as a death squad to avenge those who were killed. Two days later, after the French had greeted the Natchez and fed them as brothers, the seventy warriors had escaped in the night along a ravine and were seen no more.

In all, more than four hundred Natchez had been taken. “I know not what the commandant-general means to do with them,” said the soldier, “but he sends them to New Orleans. They do say, among the battalions, that the commandant-general, with his brother the governor, will sell them as slaves to St. Domingo for the profit of the company. In this way, they hope to remove the leaders forever so that those still in the woods and those among the other tribes have no purpose. Without a descendant of the sun to rally them, they will be no better, no different from the other tribes.”

Because of the inclement weather, Pierre and Little Quail had not left on a trading trip, but were spending these worst weeks of the fairly short winter at Pierre’s cabin some distance down the river. Within an hour after listening to the soldier’s tale, Elise was pounding on their door.

It was Pierre who let her into the cabin. She wasted no time on greetings. “I must get to New Orleans,” she said, reaching out to catch his arm. “Will you take me?”

They left the following morning. The Red and the Mississippi rivers were high from the recent rains, with a seven-knot current flowing, winding down to New Orleans. The skies were overcast and muddy gray with the promise of more rain and the wind across the water cut to the bone in its chill dampness. Pierre had hired a Natchitoches warrior to help with the paddling; still, Elise and Little Quail did their share during the journey, mainly in an attempt to stay warm.

In New Orleans there was little sign that the Indian trouble was finally over. Elise had braced herself unconsciously to endure the jubilation of the townspeople, to bear with fortitude the expected diatribes against the bloody savages and particularly against their renegade war chief who had caused the war to drag on for so many months. Instead, life seemed to be going on as usual. Flatboats were unloading along the low levee that had been built before the city. Indians were displaying their bead work and baskets near the Place d’Armes, joined by Germans and Swiss, who came from along the section of the river above New Orleans becoming known as
La Côte des Allemands,
with their milk, butter, cheese, and winter vegetables. Men and women picked their way through the muddy streets on clogs, their miens preoccupied, faintly bored, certainly without excitement or anger.

The town had changed since Elise last saw it. In preparation for trouble, Governor Perier had caused a stockade to be constructed between the four forts that marked the corners of the town — Forts St. Jean, St. Charles, St. Louis, and Bourgogne — and ordered a moatlike ditch dug along the exterior of this wall. A church of brick, stucco, and wood had been constructed opposite the Place d’Armes. A hospital had been donated to the city by a dying seaman and it stood just outside the wall. The streets, always straight and wide, had been edged with ditches for drainage so that each block had its own moat around it like a small island. Footpaths had been laid out in many places, with the wooden bridges of hewn planks, which spanned the ditches filled with muddy water in which slops floated, continuing for many feet to provide dry, clean walking areas. These unique walkways looked so much like benches that they were not called sidewalks but
banquettes
.

Beyond the outskirts of the town was the gleam of water where a canal was being dug to help carry away some of the overflow. Behind that was the thick, encroaching forest with its gray streamers of Capuchin’s beard.

The town was comprised of perhaps two hundred houses built of upright logs and plaster in the usual style, though there were a few of more than one story, most notably that occupied by the governor. The house of St. Amant and Helene was also of two stories. It was plastered and wainscoted on the inside and furnished with a certain agreeable luxury.

St. Amant, deciding to remain in New Orleans instead of trying to return to his concession at Fort Rosalie, had used his influence to obtain a minor post in the government. He was quite willing to work and had a great facility for settling disputes and getting along with people. Helene confidently expected that he would advance with all haste in his chosen career and might even look with some confidence toward the post of governor.

Elise had gone directly to visit the couple. She had hoped that they might offer her the hospitality of their home since she had no other place to stay in New Orleans. Having heard of St. Amant’s recent appointment she also thought to learn from him the truth concerning what was being done with the Natchez prisoners instead of depending on hearsay.

She was not mistaken on either count. Helene greeted her with all the joy and affection of a sister. Rooms were offered at once, not only to her but to Pierre and Little Quail. The baby, little Jeanne, now just over a year old, was brought out by a serving woman to be admired and to show off her latest accomplishment of toddling about.

Afterward, over cups of chocolate, they spoke of Reynaud. Elise had been right to come to New Orleans with all speed. In three days’ time the women and children of the Natchez would be put up for auction. Thereafter as soon as a ship dropped anchor in the river, the warriors, including the Great Sun and his brother, would be put on board in chains and sent to St. Domingo where they would serve as slave laborers in the cane and indigo fields on that island. The rumors had not lied.

“But Reynaud isn’t of Natchez blood alone; he’s half French!” Elise cried. “Can’t something be done?”

St. Amant shook his head. “He must be treated as one or the other, as French or Natchez. If he is not to suffer the same fate as the Indians, then he must be tried as a Frenchman. His crime is still indefensible, that of being a traitor. The punishment, if he is convicted, might be hanging or even drawing and quartering. It is better to leave it alone.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You have no choice, I fear, Elise,” St. Amant answered, his voice soft.

“Could I … Is there any way I could speak to him?”

“I think not. The Indians are being held without communication for fear of an attempt at escape. That’s something they are very good at, you know.”

“Then could I write to him, let him know I am here?”

“It would not be wise.”

She sent him a defiant stare. “What do I care about being wise?”

“Oh, but, Elise,” Helene said, “you will have to live here when he is gone.”

“Do you think that matters?”

“Reynaud would think so,” St. Amant said. “Your best chance of seeing him, I expect, will be at the auction. The Natchez warriors will be there; it is required, as a part of their punishment, that they witness the selling of their-wives, their mothers, their children. Perhaps Reynaud will also see you.”

Elise made sure of it. She stood on the edge of the crowd wearing the gown of yellow-striped silk that she had worn the day they had made love in the woods, part of the wardrobe of gowns Madeleine had sent home with her, all those chosen for her by Reynaud. With her head high, she watched him being led out, his wrists bound with chains that were connected to those on his ankles so that, like all the others, he had to shuffle into the line drawn up between ranks of soldiers. His brothers, the Great Sun and St. Cosme, stood with him, with all the others in ranks to the side and behind them.

He looked tired, she thought, and there were new lines in his face, about his eyes. There was a scar she had never seen before on his jaw and powder burns on his arms. His leather cloak, hanging from a cord about his throat, was waterstained and his leggings caked with mud. And yet his eyes were clear, his bearing straight and proud. No shadow of defeat or fear could be seen on the copper-bronze mask of his features.

In that moment, his gaze, moving with indifference over the crowd, came to rest on her. Brightness leaped into his gray eyes, warming them, reflecting a sudden and deep hunger. He looked at the gown she was wearing and a faint smile touched his mouth. He made a slight movement, as if he would step toward her, but was stopped by the weight of his chains. Down the line, a soldier carrying a musket spoke. The light in Reynaud’s face was extinguished, swiftly, firmly, as if with an extreme effort of will.

Elise drew in her breath, her chest swelling even as she felt the dissolving of tightly held distress. She had been so afraid that she would find him changed, altered in some way by the hard choice he had made, by his life away from her and the tragedy of what had come upon his mother’s people. It had not happened. She should have known it would not.

Now the Indian women and their children were being led out. The women walked with their heads high, though here and there a child cried in fright. Buyers crowded around near them. Elise found herself staring at Tattooed Arm. The face of Reynaud’s mother was flushed with anger and outrage glittered in her eyes. One man stopped in front of her and lifted his hands to her face as if he would pry open her mouth to inspect her teeth. Tattooed Arm gave him such a virulent stare that he retreated. A laugh ran through the crowd. Some of the buyers stepped back, but others walked around the women, ostentatiously holding handkerchiefs dampened with perfume to their noses since the living quarters given to the Natchez had not included facilities for bathing. That miasma was probably one of the most difficult things for the Natchez to bear.

It was degrading, a deliberate attempt to lower the mind and spirit of an enemy, to make them feel their captivity. It was not the equal of the tortures inflicted by the Natchez on their male prisoners, but it was exactly the same as that shown to women captives. Regardless, for people who pretended to be so much more civilized, such a display should not be necessary. It was, in fact, Elise thought, unworthy.

Still, it went on. Bids were made and money changed hands. Some of the women were sent to labor on the king’s plantations, among them Tattooed Arm; some went to other large concessions and some to individuals. One by one, with their children close around them, they were taken away. There were no outcries, no pleas, but there were tears streaming down, glistening on the copper faces, and many a backward look toward where the warriors of the Natchez stood in stoic grief, watching, fiercely watching.

So Elise watched. It came to her that the destruction of the Natchez as a people had not occurred in the swamp country of the Black River. It was happening here, in this place, at this moment, as men and women, fathers and children, were severed from each other, never to be seen again.

They had such pride, such dignity, so much kindness in them, these Natchez. Yes, they could kill; they had killed. But had they not also died? When they had first come in contact with the white man, they had been seven thousand strong. When years later the white man had come again, their numbers had been reduced to only five thousand through the diseases transmitted by the first explorers. More had succumbed, and still more, until there was hardly two thousand left to fight back. Now how many were there? A few hundred, no more? Soon the word Natchez would be nothing except a name. Who would ever know then how they had laughed and danced, how they had made love under the moon and sung their songs of the corn, the deer, and the turkey? Who would ever know of the sweetness of the passion that flowed in their veins, of the exultation they had felt in rendering service to the one they believed came from the sun, of the joy they had felt in being alive?

Such thoughts were an escape. They were a way to deny the fact that the auction was over, the crowd dispersing. Reynaud was being led away. She would never see him again in this life, never touch him, never feel the warmth of his body against her own. She wanted to cry out loud, to scream her anger and despair, to rail against the unfairness — anything to relieve the rending, tearing pain inside her. She could not speak, could not move; so great was the press of tears that she could not breath.

“Elise,” Little Quail said, shaking her arm. “Elise, don’t look so.”

She caught her breath with a gasp, then the wet, salty wars began to slide down her cheeks, turning cold before they touched her lips and dripped onto the front of her dress.