Colonial Natchitoches: A Creole Community on the Louisiana-Texas Frontier

Abstract

This book is about the founding and development of the first French settlement west of the Mississippi. The bulk of the book is given over to a study of the demographic, economic, and social development of this colonial town. Only the first chapter gives a summary historical narrative. Other chapters include numerous tables, the result of meticulous research, elaborating the demographics of the people as well as their economic and social evolution.Natchitoches began as a community organized primarily to trade with the Indians of the western frontier. Traders went up the rivers to the Indian villages and towns and returned with pelts and other forms of wealth that they shipped downriver to New Orleans. At the height of its trading career, French traders ranged over areas of Texas and Arkansas and as far west as Santa Fe, New Mexico, even though this encroached upon Spanish territory in Texas and New Mexico.The careful reader cannot help but note the contrast between the far-ranging French colonial society and the challenging Spanish system which was developing alongside it. While the French traveled the rivers and visited the Indian towns and villages, the Spaniards journeyed on horseback and on foot to establish mission towns and presidios. The Spanish cajoled seminomadic Indians into becoming sedentary inhabitants of the missions, where they could be converted into civilized inhabitants. Neither the Spanish missionaries nor the French traders were kind to the natives, who were exploited by both systems. It is obvious, however, that the French system took from the land and produced revenue, while the Spanish system was a continual economic drain on the mother country.The frontier trading town evolved from a trading post into an agricultural center as the governing power changed from French to Spanish hands after the French and Indian War. While the new Spanish government of Louisiana did not discourage Indian trading, it also encouraged and subsidized the culture of tobacco. It is interesting to note that even though governing control rested with the Spaniards, they kept the former French colony under separate regulations and even used former French officials in positions of authority. Ironically, while such economic and political changes were taking place in Natchitoches, Spanish governing officials continued to maintain the cumbersome mission system in Texas.Since plantation agriculture needed a labor supply, the colonists of Natchitoches began to import African slaves and thus to change the demographic makeup of the society. From the relatively egalitarian society of the frontier trading post, Natchitoches soon became more stratified with a small group of relatively wealthy families and the large, poorer majority that either continued to engage in Indian trade or worked for the plantation owners.During the closing years of Spanish control, the tobacco subsidies disappeared. Abruptly, facing economic chaos, some colonists in Natchitoches began to grow cotton. Because of this agricultural transition, the area began to resemble economically the southern part of the United States, to which it would soon be joined.The transition from tobacco to cotton required a substantial capital investment, and not all of the Natchitoches colonists had the land and other resources to follow their more wealthy neighbors. Those who could not manage the move into cotton chose to go into cattle ranching. Raising cattle did not require the large capital investment in land and labor that cotton culture did. It was also not as labor intensive. Many colonists received grants to hitherto unused land that was unsuitable for agriculture. Many of them prospered at this new occupation.The chapters on slavery reveal the manner in which this institution so quickly invaded this frontier area. Indian slavery as well as African slavery was practiced. Africans were used on the tobacco and later the cotton plantations while Indians were utilized in the trading occupations. The tables that fill the bulk of the book represent a large amount of detailed and exhausting research. The authors must have examined every will filed, every baptismal record, and every court case recorded in Natchitoches during the colonial period. Among other interesting information, these tables tend to demonstrate the amount of intermarriage and cohabitation between the settlers, the Indians, and the slaves. Unfortunately this did not transmit into the egalitarianism suggested by the frontier thesis. Rather it produced a more stratified society similar to that of the southern part of the United States.This slim volume should be on the shelf of every researcher looking into colonial and frontier development.