George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 3, 15th edition.

[364] peculiar language,—which has been still preserved by

Chap. XXIII.}

the descendants of the fugitives, and is, perhaps, now on the point of expiring,—their worship, their division into nobles and plebeians, their bloody funereal rites, —invite conjecture, and yet so nearly resemble in charracter the distinctions of other tribes, that they do but irritate, without satisfying, curiosity.

The cost of defending Louisiana exceeding the returns from its commerce and from grants of land, the company of the Indies, seeking wealth by conquests or traffic on the coast of Guinea and Hindostan, solicited

1732

leave to surrender the Mississippi wilderness; and, on the tenth of April, 1732, the jurisdiction and control over its commerce reverted to the crown of France. The company had held possession of Louisiana for fourteen years, which were its only years of comparative prosperity. The early extravagant hopes had not subsided till emigrants had reached its soil; and the emigrants, being once established, took care of themselves. In 1735, the Canadian Bienville reappeared to assume the command for the king.

It was the first object of the crown to establish its supremacy throughout the borders of Louisiana. The Chickasas were the dreaded enemies of France; it was they who had hurried the Natchez to bloodshed and destruction; it was they whose cedar barks, shooting boldly into the Mississippi, interrupted the connection between Kaskaskia and New Orleans. Thus they maintained their savage independence, and weakened by dividing the French empire. No settlements on the eastern bank of the Mississippi were safe; and from Natchez, or even from the vicinity of New Orleans, to Kaskaskia, none existed. The English traders from Carolina were; moreover, welcomed to