THE OHIO VALLEY-GREAT LAKES ETHNOHISTORY
ARCHIVES: THE MIAMI COLLECTION
It is noted that the following work from the Miami Archives should be read and
considered within the historical context in which it was composed and printed.
The opinions expressed and the language used do not reflect the opinions or
standards of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, but are, rather,
indicative of thought in that historical moment during which the document was
published.
Instructions to Bienville
(February 2, 1732)
Marly in: Mississippi Provincial
Archives, vol. III, pp. 540-556.
. . . As Sieur de Bienville is informed of everything that has happened since the last attack that was made upon this nation by Sieur Prier both with the forces of the colony and with the assistance that his Majesty had had sent there under the command of Sieur Prier de Salvert he will not enter into a more detailed account. He will only explain to him that Sieur Prier continues to appear convinced that this nation is reduced to a small number of warriors against whom the Natchitoches and the Tunicas were to have marched. They can be formidable only to the extent to which they may be supported by the Chickasaws against whom Sieur Prier has had war (page 552) declared by the Choctaws after having had the latter burn three Chickasaws who had been detached to induce the nations to declare war on the French and who had been sent to Sieur Prier by the Illinois whom they had solicited to enter this war. Since that time he has rendered an account to the effect that the Choctaws are keeping the Chickasaws continually blockaded by more than thirty parties who are preventing them from leaving their forts; that forty families of this latter nation had departed, however, to withdraw and go and settle with the Shawnees; that on the other hand the Tunicas determined not to leave a single Natches alive went scouting, and that having learned that within three days' journey from them there were twenty families of this nation who were working at planting their crops they had gone to reconnoiter (p. 804) the place exactly in order not to miss them. After the Chickasaws had induced the Chakchiumas to lead them to the Choctaws to treat for peace they had given them one of their men to conduct them to the great chief of the eastern faction who had replied to them that he could not treat for peace without having talked to Sieur Prier who, having been informed of this step wrote to Father Beaudoin,1 a missionary to the Choctaws, and to Sieur Rgis2 who resides there to make that nation understand that it must not enter into any agreement unless the Chickasaws surrender the Natches. They attribute this disposition on the part of the Chickasaws, which had appeared suspicious to him, to the information that the Marquis de Beauharnois gave him and which he received on the first of the month of last May, that he had given orders to the nations of the upper country who were nearest to the Chickasaws to make an attack upon that nation, and also to the information that Sieur de Vincennes3 gave him at the beginning of the month of last April that a party of Miamis to the number of four hundred men was going to join another of sixty to eighty Hurons to harass this same nation. He adds that the Choctaws always have seven or eight par- (page 553) ties in the field to prevent them from leaving and from planting their fields, and that they are killing some of their people every day. The Tohomes and the Panibas defeated a party of twenty-six Chickasaws of whom only two men escaped, the others having been killed.
Such was in the month of last May the situation of things in regard to the war with the Indians. The Natches were not yet destroyed. They even saw themselves fortified by the Chickasaws but all the nations appeared to be armed against those two; and there was (p. 804 v.) reason to hope that both were going to experience blows that would make it impossible for them to trouble the colony any longer. It is not to be doubted that the Chickasaws seeing themselves hard pressed on every side had in view in the step that they have taken for peace nothing but temporizing. One can not even doubt that the English have prompted them and that they have made every effort to cause the Choctaws to make that decision.
Sieur de Bienville who is well informed of the intentions that the English have to establish themselves at the Choctaws and of how great importance it is for the preservation of the colony to prevent it must adopt the most fitting measures to frustrate that of the English and to prevent their trade among the nations of Louisiana.
. . . Sieur Prier by his letter of the fourteenth of the month of last May has rendered an account to the effect that Mtachim, a chief of the Peoria Indians, one of the (page 556) Illinois Indians, had a request made to him to grant him some Frenchmen to go and settle with his people at Pimitoui from which they had been driven by the Foxes. He wrote that without waiting for orders he will grant him his request inasmuch as this settlement will facilitate communication between Canada and the Illinois but that he will not grant any troops until he has received orders form his Majesty or from the Marquis de Beauharnais and heads that it is to be wished that the other Illinois villages should decide to withdraw from the settlements of the French in order to avoid disputes, that it might be harmful for them to be too near and that it would be better that they be two or three days' journey distant because they respect the French more when they are completely separated from them..
Sieur de Bienville will inform himself on his
arrival about what has been done with reference to the Peorias and he will
investigate the proposal of Sieur Prier for the removal of the Illinois
villages in which his Majesty trusts him to make use of whatever he thinks most
advantageous. . .
______________________________
1 For Father Beaudouin see M.P.A., Vol. I, p. 155 et passim, and the note on the letter to Bienville and Salmon to Maurepas, Sept. 16, 1735.
2 For Rgis du Roullet see M.P.A., Vol. I, p. 17, n. 4.
3 For Vincennes see M.P.A., Vol. I, p. 199, n. 3.
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