MASSACRE AT FORT ROSALIE.

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proper action in the case.

Further forbearance

the was decided upon, and a tribute of a basket of corn and a hen for each cabin being promised, Chopart is bribed thereby to postpone the day of destruction until the young crops shall have been gathered in. But as the time for destroying the village approaches, the smothered flame of savage indignation burns, quietly still, but hotter and hotter. In secret council the chiefs of the Natchez resolve upon revenging their cruel wrongs, and securing themselves for the future, by exterminating the whole colony; killing men and enslaving women and children. The secret is confined to the chiefs and warriors. Runners sent out in every direction advise the confederate tribes; the indomitable and ferocious Chickasaws to the north, the northern affiliated bands of their Natchez kinsmen, the Creeks to the east, and to the west, the nearly related tribe of the Tensas, that the time is at hand for the execution of the design, which together they have so faithfully guarded from suspicion, and for whose opportunity they have waited with such untiring patience, for six long years. Bundles of reeds, equal in number, are distributed to all the villages. Beginning with the next new moon, a reed is daily to be withdrawn; and upon the day when the last is taken, the attack is to be made. Chopart and the garrison receive repeated intimations of the approaching danger, but the tyrant's heart is hard

ened he grows even more careless of defence or circumspection, and meets the messengers with violent threats for their pains.

By some error not sufficiently explained, the Natchez bundle of reeds was exhausted too soon. A day or two before the proper time, then, the Natchez having learned that a large supply of ammunition has just reached Fort Rosalie, conceal weapons within their dress, and gradually insinuating themselves in considerable numbers within the fort, they chaffer for powder and ball, which they say they need for a great hunting match about to come off; and they offer uncommonly good bargains in poultry and corn. Utterly unsuspicious, the French eagerly take the usual white man's advantage of the simple savage, and bargain hard. In the bustle of the sales, the number of red men who have distributed themselves dispersedly all about the buildings is unnoticed. But suddenly every frightened Frenchman sees the wild light of savfury flame out of the Indian's dark eyes. The Great Sun has given the appointed signal; and before he can grasp a weapon, almost before he can cry out, the wretched victim is struck down, brained, thrust through. Like banded fiends risen through the earth, the red devils strike all together; and where but one moment before the purlieus of the fort were scattered over with laughing or scolding couples, groaning, writhing men, lie in their gore here and there, and the wild

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men of the forest, drunk with the mad joy of assured success, chase hither and thither the screaming sur vivors, and pitilessly slay them in their hiding-places. Chopart himself, the scoundrel and tyrant who had caused the deed, was struck down among the first. Tradition says that he revived again, as if doomed by God to behold the fruits of his mad folly; and rising up wounded and bloody, amid the bloody corpses of his men, he looked round him upon the horrors of the massacre; and at last, probably still confused with his wounds and the dreadful surprise, instead of standing on his defence, fled out into the garden, and whistled to call his soldiers. They could not answer; he might have seen them lying dead all around him. The Indians come, however, at his signal, and gather about their helpless, hated oppressor with unutterable rage and exultation on their swarthy faces. They ring him in with weapons and exult about him. They say he is a" dog;" unworthy to be slain by a brave man: and so they send for a minister to some degrading heathen ceremony, whom the early writer, calls the "chief stinking-man." This base executioner kills him with a dog's blow; he knocks him in the head with a club; and thus did the wicked commandant, the first and the last of the slain, taste, in dreadful measure, the fullness of the bitterness of death.

During the massacre, the Great Sun, seating him

self in the Company's warehouse, quietly smoked his pipe; while his warriors heaped before him in a frightful pyramid the heads of the slain. The ghastly pile is crowned with the dead features of the officers, and surmounted with the bloody visage of Chopart himself. The garrison is dead, the women, children and slaves are secured, and now the chieftain bids his warriors go to plunder. The slaves are made to bring out the spoil for distribution; the military stores are reserved for public use; and the victorious Indians give themselves up to orgies of savage triumph.

In the beginning of the attack, the houses near the fort were fired, and the smoke signalled the assault throughout the neighboring settlements. All were alike successful. The massacre began about nine in the morning. Before noon, two hundred and fifty French, every male of the colony of seven hundred souls on the St. Catherine's, except a tailor and a carpenter, spared to use their handicrafts for the Indians, and two soldiers who were away in the woods, slept in death. The like fate fell upon the colonies in the Yazoo, on the Washita at Sicily Island, and near the site of the present town of Monroe.

This dreadful blow filled the province with fear and mourning. But the revenge of the Frenchmen only ended with the utter extermination of the tribe. An expedition was sent at once against them, their

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Fortress besieged, their prisoners and spoil wrested from them, and the nation only by a dexterous manœuvre, evacuated the stronghold by night, and fled away to the westward. A second expedition ended in the reduction of a second fortress, defended by enormous earthworks and embracing four hundred acres, which they had erected at the confluence of the Washita and Little Rivers, and in the captivity of their principal chiefs and more than four hundred of the nation-nearly half of it. Yet unsubdued, and as fierce as ever, the remnant of their warriors having unsuccessfully attacked the French post at Natchitoches, were in turn assaulted by St. Denis, the commander there, and again dispersed with very severe loss. The chiefs and others taken in the second expedition were sold into slavery in St. Domingo. The scattered relics now left, incorporated themselves with various Indian tribes; and the Natchez nation was utterly extinct; although some few individuals of it have been seen in the town of Natchez even within the memory of those now living, still distinguished by the commanding form, lofty stature, and high retreating forehead, of their race.

But the war, although entirely successful, had drawn heavily upon the strength of the colony. For three years every nerve had been strained to the utmost to furnish men and supplies for expedition after expedition. A small tribe, of kin to the Natchez