part iii.; and in the new series (p. 35 of vol. vi.) of the same

_Collections_ is a translation of Penicaut’s _Annals of Louisiana from 1698 to 1722_. The translation was made from a manuscript in the National Library at Paris. Kaskaskia in Illinois is looked upon as the earliest European settlement in the Mississippi Valley; it was founded by Jacques Gravier in 1700. Cf. _Magazine of American History_, March, 1881. There had been an Indian town on the spot previously, and Father Marquette made it his farthest point in 1675.—ED.]

[103] [On these books see Vol. IV. pp. 294, 316, where Dr. Shea gives reasons for supposing the earliest publication of the _Lettres_ to have been in 1702. Cf. Sabin’s _American Bibliopolist_ (1871), p. 3; H. H. Bancroft’s _Mexico_, ii. 191; and the _Nouvelles des missions, extraites des lettres édifiantes et curieuses: Missions de l’Amérique, 1702-1743_ (Paris, 1827).—ED.]

[104] [It was first printed in London in 1775, and afterward appeared in 1782 at Breslau, in a German translation. Cf. Field, _Indian Bibliography_, no. 11. The _Mémoire de M. de Richebourg sur la première guerre des Natchez_ is given in French’s _Collections_, vol. iii. A paper on the massacre of St. André is in the _Magazine of American History_ (April, 1884), p. 355. Dr. Shea printed in 1859, from a manuscript in the possession of Mr. J. Carson Brevoort (as no. 9 of his series, one hundred copies), a _Journal de la guerre du Micissippi contre les Chicachas, en 1739 et finie en 1740, le 1er d’avril_. _Par un officier de l’armée de M. de Nouaille._ Cf. Field, _Indian Bibliography_, no. 807.—ED.]

[105] [The original was published at Paris in 1829; in 1830 it was printed in English at Philadelphia as _The History of Louisiana, particularly of the Cession of that Colony to the United States of America_. It is said to be translated by the publicist, William Beach Lawrence.—ED.]

[106] [It was reprinted in 1726, again in 1727, and with a lengthened title in 1741 (Carter-Brown, vol. iii. nos. 315, 372, 376, 679; Sabin, vol. v. nos. 17, 276, etc.). The edition of 1741 made part of _A Collection of Voyages and Travels_, edited by Coxe, which contained: “1. The dangerous voyage of Capt. Thomas James in his intended discovery of a northwest passage into the South sea (in 1631-1632). 2. An authentick and particular account of the taking of Carthagena by the French in 1697 by Sieur Pointis. 3. A description of the English province of Carolana; by the Spaniards call’d Florida, and by the French La Louisiane. By Daniel Coxe.” Coxe’s narrative of explorations is also included in French’s _Historical Collections of Louisiana_, vol. ii. Coxe’s map, which is repeated in the various editions, is called: “Map of Carolana and the River Meschacebe.” A section of it is given on the next page.—ED.]

[107] Coxe’s _Carolana_, p. 118. The writer of an article in the _North American Review_, January, 1839, entitled “Early French Travellers,” says: “An examination of contemporary writers and the town records has failed to lend a single fact in support of the Doctor’s tale.” Cf. H. H. Bancroft, _Northwest Coast_, i. 122, 123. [The French as traders and missionaries easily gained a familiarity with the Valley of the Mississippi, before agricultural settlers like the English had passed the Alleghanies. There had, however, been some individual enterprises on the part of the English. Coxe claims that under the grant to Sir Robert Heath, in 1630, of the region across the continent between 31° and 36°, Colonel Wood and a Mr. Needham explored the Mississippi Valley between 1654 and 1664, and that during the later years of that century other explorers had thridded the country.—ED.].

[108] [See Vol. II. p. 462.—ED.]

[109] His account of Fort Chartres is quoted in the appendix of Mills’s _Boundaries of Ontario_, p. 198. His plan of Mobile Bay (p. 55), may be compared with one in Roberts’s _Account of the First Discovery and Natural History of Florida_ (London, 1763), p. 95.

[110] [_The Early History of Illinois, from its Discovery by the French, in 1673, until its Cession to Great Britain in 1763, including the Narrative of Marquette’s Discovery of the Mississippi. With a Biographical Memoir by Melville W. Fuller._ Edited by Thomas Hoyne (Chicago, 1884). It has three folded maps.—ED.]

[111] [Cf., for these and other titles, Vol. IV. pp. 198, 199. The routes of Marquette by Green Bay, and of La Salle by the St. Joseph River, had been the established method of communication of the French in Canada with Louisiana in the seventeenth century; but as they felt securer in the Ohio Valley, in 1716, they opened a route by the Miami and Wabash, and later from Presqu’ Isle on Lake Erie to French Creek, thence by the Alleghany and Ohio.—ED.]

[112] Bossu, ii. 151.

[113] French (part iii. p. 12, _note_) says: “The two brothers met in deep mourning, and after mutual embraces the brave D’Iberville sought the tomb of his brother Sauvolle, where he knelt for hours in silent grief.” All this is purely imaginary; and in French’s second series (vol. ii. p. 111, _note_) he concludes that Sauvolle would appear from the text not to have been Iberville’s brother. This doubt whether Sauvolle was a brother of Iberville penetrates even such a work as _Nos gloires nationales_. The author not finding such a seigniory, says of François Le Moyne, “We do not know if he followed his brother to Louisiana, and is the same to whom the name Sieur de Sauvole was given,”—all this in face of the record in the previous paragraph of his burial in 1687 (_Nos gloires_, i. 53). To the account of the massacre at Natchez, in his translation of Dumont, French appends a note (vol. v. p. 76), in which he identifies a ship-carpenter, whose life was spared by the Indians, as “Perricault, who, after his escape, wrote a journal of all that passed in Louisiana from 1700 to 1729.” Penicaut, the spelling of whose name puzzled writers and printers, left the colony in 1721. There was no foundation whatever for the note.

[114] The reader might easily be misled by the title given to the translation of a portion of the second volume of Dumont into the belief that the whole work was before him. There is no mention in French of the preface, or of the appendix to Coxe’s Carolana. Both preface and appendix are full of interesting material.

[115] In this translation French (iii. 83) says: “But notwithstanding these reports, they now create him [Bienville] brigadier-general of the troops, and knight of the military order of St. Louis,” etc. Compare this with the faithful rendering of Martin (i. 229),—“The Regent ... so far from keeping the promise he had made of promoting him to the rank of brigadier-general, and sending him the broad ribbon of the order of St. Louis, would have proceeded against him with severity if he had not been informed that the Company’s agents in the colony had thwarted his views.”

[116] It has all the substantial portions of the copy given in Margry, but there are occasional abridgments and occasional additions. The story of the Margry relation is continuous and uninterrupted; but in the copy given by French items of colonial news are interspersed, and sometimes repeated with variations. It would seem as if the copyist had been unable properly to separate the manuscript from that of some other Relation of colonial affairs, and in the exercise of his discretion had made these mistakes. A comparison of the two accounts will readily disclose their differences. A single example will explain what is meant by repetitions which may have been occasioned by confusion of manuscripts. On p. 145 of vol. vi., or second series vol. i. of French’s _Historical Collections of Louisiana_ occurs the following: On the 17th of March, 1719, “the ship of war ‘Le Comte de Toulouse’ arrived at Dauphin Island.” On p. 146 we find, “On the 19th of April the ships ‘Maréchal de Villars,’ ‘Count de Toulouse,’ and the ‘Phillip,’ under the command of M. de Sérigny, the brother of M. de Bienville, arrived at Dauphin Island.” These two paragraphs, with their contradictory statements about the “Comte de Toulouse,” do not occur in Margry. They are evidently interpolated from some outside source. Thomassy (1860) quotes _Annales véritables des 22 premières années de la colonisation de la Louisiane par Pénicaut_, as from the “MSS. Boismare, dans la Bibliothèque de l’État à Bâton-Rouge.”

The camp-fire yarn of Jalot, with its marvellous details about Saint-Denys’ romantic love-affair, the gorgeous establishment of the Mexican viceroy, and the foolhardy trip of Saint-Denys to see his wife, are omitted in French’s translation. They are worthless as history, but they reveal the simplicity of Penicaut, who yielded faith to his fellow-voyagers, in the belief that it was his good fortune to be chosen to tell the story to the world.

[117] [_Historical Collections of Louisiana, ... compiled with Historical and Biographical Notes and an Introduction by B. F. French.