p153  Chapter XI
Hector, Baron de Carondelet​a

A man of action

In the meanwhile, events were taking place in Louisiana and West Florida that exercised a powerful influence over the course of the diplomatic negotiation. On December 30, 1791, Hector, Baron de Carondelet, took over the government and intendancy of those provinces from Esteban Miró, who had completed the normal five-year term and who, on account of his age, was permitted to return to Spain. The appointment of Carondelet was, to put it mildly, deplorable. A wise government would have promoted either Arturo O'Neill, governor of Pensacola, or Manuel Gayoso, governor of Natchez, both of whom were of sufficient age and rank and possessed two indispensable qualifications in which Carondelet was absolutely lacking: a thorough knowledge of the English language and an intimate acquaintance with the state of affairs in the Mississippi Valley. Carondelet knew not a word of English, so far as the records show, and was dependent for his translations upon his secretary, Armesto, who, although he was the local schoolmaster, could boast but a mediocre knowledge of the language.​1 Coming to Louisiana from San Salvador, Carondelet was utterly ignorant of the situation in his new provinces. Without the necessary background, without competent advisers at New Orleans, without the temperament that can take advice, and yet at the same time a man of immediate and strong convictions and a lover of direct action, he was probably the worst man that could have been found in the whole colonial service of Spain for the  p154 command of these border provinces at such a crisis. He probably owed his appointment to the influence of his wife's family, the Las Casas, who bore a name familiar in colonial affairs since the sixteenth century.​2 Carondelet's brother-in‑law, Luis de las Casas, was governor of Havana and captain-general of Louisiana and the Floridas from 1791 to 1796. It may be that the Baron's knowledge of French — he was a Fleming — was considered an important asset, since most of the inhabitants of Louisiana were of French origin.

The man was dominated by a veritable passion for direct action, a passion that may perhaps be explained by consciousness of his mental limitations. Realizing his inability to deal with a complex situation, he would seek to resolve the most obvious of his perplexities by the use of physical force. Even his handwriting is not that of one who is by nature masterful, a compelling man of action, but rather of a warden of some tranquil college. What has this man to do with war? we ask, as we turn over page after page of yellow paper covered with the prim traces of his pen. And yet violence, war, conquest he would have.

We could hardly find a better case to illustrate the man's temperament than his conduct when he heard in 1794 that Elijah Clarke of Georgia was planning an invasion of the Floridas. Forgetting — or was it perhaps remembering? — that a dozen important and complex questions required his presence at the seat of government in New Orleans, he urged the captain-general to let him lead an expedition in person by way of St. Mark's up the Appalachicola River to attack this freebooter in the desert wilds on the border of the Floridas and Georgia.​3 We suspect that he was fleeing from civil complexity to the simplicity of the battlefield,  p155 and that in this as in many other cases a sense of weakness lay at the root of his belligerency.

The result was what might have been expected from the appointment of such a man to such a post. Misinformation that was sometimes merely ludicrous, sometimes dangerously misleading, was sent by Carondelet to the home government. In decoding Wilkinson's important cipher despatches the most amazing errors were made. Sometimes Carondelet's blunders were corrected by his secretary, Armesto, before the despatch was mailed, as for example when wrote the secretary of state in regard to the state of "Belmont," obviously confusing Belmont, Kentucky, with the state of Vermont. On one occasion he was thrown into a panic by a report that fifteen thousand men were going to invade West Florida by marching overland from Georgia, and begged the captain-general for reinforcements to resist the invaders. As Miró pointed out, when this letter was referred to him in Madrid, it would have been next to impossible for such a body of troops to pass through the intervening country of the hostile Creek Indians or to support itself even if not attacked by Indians. On another occasion Carondelet solemnly assured the ministry that a body of hostile troops could march from St. Louis to Santa Fé in twenty-two days. Upon examination it appeared that he based this assertion upon the experience of single Spanish official who, traveling under the most favorable circumstances, had made the down-stream part of the journey from Santa Fé to St. Louis in that length of time.4

Far more serious than such misinformation were his errors of judgment, which seem to have been generally due to his rudimentary powers of discrimination. Instances  p156 of these faults will appear in the following pages. For the present it will suffice to call attention to his failure to perceive the wide gulf that separated the freebooters of the American frontier from the federal government, George Rogers Clark from George Washington. Gayoso and Gardoqui were more perspicacious than he, but Gayoso was merely one of Carondelet's subordinates and Gardoqui was appointed secretary of the treasury just after Carondelet's arrival in Louisiana and was consequently not in a position to make his influence felt in the political administration of the province. Some of the consequences of Carondelet's blindness to this distinction will appear in connection with the development of his Indian policy.

The Baron's dilemma

When he arrived in Louisiana he found the situation serious and represented it to his government as most alarming. Reliance had been placed in four measures for the defence of this province and West Florida: the maintenance of military posts, the Kentucky intrigue, immigration, and Indian alliances. The posts, as Carondelet warned, repeating what Miró had so often said before him to an unheedful government, were in a ruinous state. Most of the forts consisted merely of earthworks which were washing away and a wooden palisade so rotten as hardly to be proof against a musketball. The one regiment assigned Louisiana was far from complete, and was utterly inadequate in the face of the rapidly growing American settlements and an impending war in Europe and America.5

The Kentucky intrigue, which had been designed to weaken the United States by dividing it into two rival republics, was almost dead of pernicious anaemia when  p157 Carondelet arrived in Louisiana. The collapse of the first attempt at secession had left Wilkinson nothing to do but play the spy and immigration agent. The rôles were not only unromantic but unprofitable as well, for Spain had not yet granted him a pension, and the return of the seven thousand dollars advanced him as a loan by Miró might be demanded. Under these circumstances and under the pressure of financial difficulties he accepted a lieutenant colonel's commission in the United States Army in October, 1791, and his correspondence with his dear friends Gayoso and Miró languished.​6 A few weeks after Carondelet took over the government of Louisiana he received the court's order granting Wilkinson a pension of two thousand dollars a year dating from January 1, 1789. He hastened to write "our brigadier" the good tidings, and thereafter the exchange of letters became more frequent.​7 Conditions were not yet favorable, however, for a renewal of the attempt at secession, for admission to statehood and the campaign against the Northern Indians placated the Kentuckians for the moment and absorbed their surplus energy and farm products. It was not until 1794 that it was possible to renew the intrigue in earnest, and in the meanwhile Carondelet must seek safety in some other measure.

The Goths refuse to emigrate

Despite an initial success that alarmed land-owners in the American West, the immigration policy had failed as completely as the frontier intrigue. We have seen how in 1787 the court's resolution on the proposals of d'Argès foreshadowed a profound change in Spain's colonial immigration policy, and how this change was effected in the royal order of December 1, 1788. A post  p158 was established at New Madrid in country that George Morgan planned to colonize, and Natchez was raised from a post to a government with the diplomatic Gayoso at its head. Nogales also was thrown open to settlement (1791). Free grants of land were made, the importation of slaves was not only permitted but encouraged, and Protestants were admitted, tolerated and granted all the rights of Spanish subjects on taking the usual oath of allegiance. These measures were designed to depopulate Kentucky, Cumberland and Holston and fill Louisiana and West Florida with settlers.8

This remarkable effort at adaptation failed, and the reasons for its failure are not far to seek. In the first place, the political and religious privileges offered the Americans were less than those they already enjoyed, although far greater than Spain was accustomed to grant. As one traveler, Colonel John Pope, remarked, a Spanish subject could not even post a notice of a stray horse without the consent of the military commander of his district.​9 Another observer warned the Americans that Spain was ruled by an absolute monarch and if they settled in Spanish territory they might be compelled to become Roman Catholics within twenty-four hours on pain of banishment.

By the beginning of Carondelet's administration it was clear that no compensatory advantages over those offered by the communities of the American West could be hoped for under Spanish rule. Spanish subjects enjoyed no considerable advantage over the Americans on the Mississippi, for, as Wilkinson told Miró, they preferred paying the duty imposed on their river traffic — from six to fifteen per cent — to the trouble and expense of moving to Spanish territory.10  p159 Still more discouraging to immigration was the government's reduction in 1790 of the amount of tobacco purchased on the royal account for the factory at Seville. One of the chief attractions of Louisiana and West Florida in the 1780's was the fact that the heavy purchases of tobacco on the government's account — two million pounds a year at a price of first ten and then eight dollars a hundred pounds — assured the planters a ready market for their tobacco and hard cash in payment for it.​11 A letter written by Joseph Martin to Patrick Henry shows the interest aroused in the American West by this policy, which inclined Martin to establish a colony on the Tombigbee River not far above Mobile.12

In December, 1790, a royal order was issued reducing the amount to be purchased annually to the insignificant figure of forty thousand pounds, or, at the maximum price of ten dollars per hundredweight, four thousand dollars' worth of tobacco a year. There were excellent reasons for this reduction. The factory at Seville was overstocked, and the tobacco of Louisiana was said to be of inferior quality. Politically, however, the measure was very unwise, for it was a striking instance of the insecurity of property under the Spanish government. The planters of Natchez presented a petition complaining loudly of the reduction, declaring that it was only the prospect of a ready market that had induced them to settle there, and to contract debts in order to buy slaves and clear lands for cultivation, and that unless two million pounds of tobacco a year were purchased or free trade with foreign countries permitted certain ruin would overtake them.​13 Ezekiel Forman, who came from New Jersey with his family and fifty slaves to settle at  p160 Natchez, found the planters despondent and the situation discouraging when he arrived there in 1790.​14 Wilkinson assigned the change in the tobacco policy as one of the principal reasons for the cessation of immigration from Kentucky; and Gayoso assured the government that with the resumption of its tobacco purchases or the grant of free trade the development of strong barrier-colony within ten years was a certainty, but that without some such encouragement its growth would be extremely low.​15 Nevertheless, the government did not resume its liberal purchases, and, as we shall see, the measure of "free trade" that it accorded these frontier provinces in 1793 was narrowly limited.

At the same time that the attraction of a ready market was lost by the people of Louisiana it was gained by the Kentuckians. The United States Army operating against the Northern Indians and the thousands of immigrants that entered the state every year consumed the surplus food-stuffs produced by the Kentucky farmers.​16 Hard times at Natchez attracted few settlers from prosperous Kentucky.

Another of the putative advantages of Spanish subjects soon proved illusory, for the Indians took scalps in Natchez district as well as in Cumberland and Kentucky. Despite all that the Spanish officials could do or say, their Creek allies would not distinguish between Americans who had taken the oath of allegiance to Spain and those who had not. Journeying from the Alabama River through the Choctaw towns they murdered an inoffensive Natchez settler and his family, threw the whole country into a panic, brought immigration to a pause and frightened away some who had already made their homes in Spanish territory. When one of these recent immigrants, Robert Stark,  p161 a man of some means and influence who had settled at Natchez in 1790, asked permission in 1793 to return to the United States, he encountered another of the peculiarities of the Spanish system. He was informed that the land granted him in 1790 could not be sold but must revert to the crown, since it had been granted for settlement and not for speculation.17

Finally, in considering the reasons for the failure of the immigration policy, it must be remembered that the Spanish system forbade three forms of activity common among the American frontiersmen: local self-government in its various manifestations, such as elections, conventions and associations; public Protestant worship, to which many frontiersmen, especially the Presbyterians and Baptists of the Holston region, were devotedly attached; and land speculation, in which almost every frontiersman of any consequence was engaged and which was consistently opposed by the Spanish government.​18 Land grants were made to none but bona-fide settlers, were not always transferable, and varied in size according to the number of adult males, free or slave, in the grantee's family. Some of the American frontiersmen said that Sunday had not yet crossed the mountains, and no doubt many of them could have got on quite comfortably without a Sunday sermon; but one can hardly conceive of an American frontier community, even under the Spanish government, without its political conventions and its land speculators.

Under these conditions it is not surprising that the Spanish experiment failed. The extent of the failure was brought out strikingly by Spain's experience at New Madrid and Nogales (Walnut Hills). In both cases the projects had originated with Americans, the former  p162 with George Morgan and the latter with the South Carolina Yazoo Company, and both had given fair promise of success until Spain intervened. As soon as Spanish authority was extended over the settlements by the establishment of garrisons, immigration came to a standstill and the colonies languished with a handful of apathetic inhabitants.

Even had the policy been successful it was opposed by so many influential Spaniards — Carondelet himself; his superior, the captain-general, Luis de las Casas; the viceroy of Mexico, the Marqués de Revillagigedo; and the secretary of war — that it would probably have been modified in any case. As it turned out, the policy was not merely modified but abandoned during the conservative reaction in Spain following the excesses of the French Reign of Terror, and its abandonment coincided with the surrender of the diplomatic controversy with the United States. In November, 1795, two weeks after the signing of the treaty of San Lorenzo, the Council of State had under consideration a colonization plan proposed by a certain Louis de Villemont of Louisiana, and based on the liberalism that had inspired Floridablanca's immigration policy. Times had changed since 1788. Godoy observed severely that "a Catholic king cannot be indulgent in the observance of the law of God," and the Council disapproved of the plan because of "the absolute impossibility of securing a large number of suitable colonists from other nations on the proper terms," and because of its "many highly objectionable features, notably the freedom of religion and sects." In other words, Spain at last confessed her inability to colonize the Mississippi Valley.19

 p163  Carondelet's sepoys

Since, for the time being at any rate, Carondelet could place little or no reliance in the Kentucky intrigue, immigration or the fortified posts of Louisiana, there remained by elimination only one of the traditional means of defence against Spain's turbulent American neighbors, namely, the Indian alliances. During this first year of his administration (1792) several events occurred which, given the general situation, convinced him that the United States government was planning the immediate invasion of Louisiana and West Florida and that the Southern tribes of Indians would be an effective weapon with which to repel the invaders.

During the early months of this year, the usual rumors of hostile demonstrations on the American frontier reached Carondelet, together with the news that the United States government was gathering a large force on the Ohio River. Obsessed by fear and unable to distinguish between irresponsible frontiersmen and the American government, he disregarded Gayoso's assurances that the force was destined for service against the Northern Indians, declared that the rape of Louisiana was at hand and frantically besought his brother-in‑law, the captain-general, to rush troops and munitions to his defence.20

At this juncture (March, 1792) the Baron had an interview that was most unfortunate for him. William Augustus Bowles, the rival of Panton and McGillivray, had just been captured in the Creek nation. Brought to New Orleans, he was questioned by Carondelet about the state of affairs on the frontier. His attractive personality and his plausible manner made the governor  p164 an easy victim to his brazen lies to the effect that the Creek Indians were overwhelmingly opposed to the recent treaty of their chiefs with the United States (New York, 1790), that they were ready to join in a war against the United States, and that thousands of troops were being raised by the state and federal governments in Georgia and the Carolinas to invade the Spanish provinces. Bowles was simply the tool of rival mercantile interests in the Bahamas who hoped to supplant Panton and McGillivray; and even had he been most veracious he had got most of his information by hearsay. Carondelet, however, was deeply impressed, for his temperament inclined him to accept Bowles's transparent fabrications as the truth. The situation was little improved by the adventurer's departure, for Carondelet then fell under the influence of Panton, whose voice was always for war.21

Another event that moved Carondelet profoundly was St. Clair's defeat by the Northern Indians, news of which was received in New Orleans just after he took over the government from Miró.​22 It was probably this event which betrayed him into the capital error of assuming that the Indians were better fighters than the Americans, that they would form an effective defence against invasion by the Mississippi and that they could even intimidate the American frontiersmen into accepting a Spanish protectorate or drive them back over the mountains. A worse blunder could hardly have been made, and there was abundant evidence to set him right had Carondelet only been capable of weighing it. Persistent attacks by the warlike Creek had not destroyed even Cumberland, the smallest and most exposed of the frontier settlements. The Indians' fickleness was proverbial, as the Spaniards  p165 had found to their advantage at the siege of Pensacola and to their sorrow in the treaty of New York. The Indians were prone to take the winning side or the side of their latest benefactor. Their mental processes were totally different from those of the white man. Even had they been faithful and docile, they could not have been used as veteran troops as Carondelet planned to use them, hurling them into the fray and withdrawing them at will. They remembered bloodshed longer than a gift, and war once begun could not be terminated at his behest, as he assumed it could.

Even had conditions been as favorable as Carondelet painted them, the Indian alliances would have been of little military value; and conditions were much less favorable. He over­estimated the number of Southern Indian warriors and assumed that unity of action was possible among these tribes. In reality their bickerings were incessant, not only between tribes, as for instance between the Creek and the Chickasaw, but within tribes also, as between the upper and lower Creek and between the various factions of the Choctaw.

The Baron was far less judicious than his predecessor in the handling of Indian affairs. On one occasion when an invasion from the Ohio seemed imminent, Miró declared that the Indians were expensive and worthless allies. He very wisely confined his efforts to securing a monopoly of the Indian trade and to forestalling any attempt on the part of the Americans to stir the Indians up against Spain. At the most, he thought them useful for breaking up settlements of land speculators, such as the colony projected by the South Carolina Yazoo Company at Walnut Hills. His policy was defensive and pacific, in accordance with the royal orders on the subject. Carondelet's attempt to convert  p166 the India tribes into sepoys and the Indian treaties into a military alliance of offence and defence constituted an abrupt departure from Miró's policy, was a direct violation of the express orders of the court, and produced the most deplorable consequences.

The Indian Confederation

Mistaken as his Indian policy was, it cannot be denied that he executed it with vigor and with the ability that he usually manifested in dealing with simple problems. The situation in the Indian country was most unfavorable to Spain at the beginning of his administration. The treaty concluded at New York in 1790 between the United States and the Creek chiefs led by McGillivray conflicted at several points with the treaty of Pensacola (1784). In the other Southern tribes, American trade and influence were making rapid advances through the efforts of Governor Blount of the Southwest Territory, who was also superintendent of Indian affairs for the Southern department, and of James Seagrove, United States agent among the Creek Indians. Carondelet's first step was to restore order in the distracted Creek Confederacy. This he did by sending out an expedition from New Orleans in February, 1792, to capture the interloper Bowles, who, discarded by Pitt after the Nootka crisis, had returned to the Creek country in December, 1791.​23 Posing as the defender of Muscogean liberties against American aggression and against the exploitation of the Indians by Panton and McGillivray and their Spanish masters, he was in reality the agent of British mercantile interests in the Island of Providence headed by the governor, Lord Dunmore, Virginia's last colonial governor, and by the wealthy merchant, John Miller.  p167 Succeeding where McGillivray, Panton and their henchman Milfort had failed, the governor's expedition captured Bowles by an unscrupulous stratagem devised by Carondelet himself. The adventurer was first sent to New Orleans, where he had the interview with the governor of which we have already spoken, and thence by way of Havana and Spain to a long captivity in the Philippines.

Carondelet then reduced McGillivray to obedience by intimidation, by the influence of Panton, and by the grant of a larger pension than the one paid him by the United States. A Spanish officer of French origin, Pedro Olivier, was sent as the governor's agent to reside in the Creek nation and keep watch on McGillivray. The latter's reduction was merely a part of Carondelet's design of preventing the execution of the treaty of New York, whose consequences would, he thought, be fatal to Spanish influence in that tribe and to the integrity of the Spanish defensive system. McGillivray was induced to sign a new convention (1792) abrogating the obnoxious treaty, and Olivier was instructed to incite the Creek to drive the Georgians out of the territory ceded to the United States. This last measure was too much for even family affection to condone, and the captain-general forced his bellicose brother-in‑law to countermand the order.​24 Carondelet complied for the moment, but appealed over Las Casas' head to the secretary of war and continued to stir up trouble between the Indians and the American frontiersmen.

Other measures to strengthen Spanish influence in the Indian country were the appointment of an agent, Juan de la Villebeuvre, to reside among the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians, and the establishment of a connection, through Panton and one of his traders,  p168 John McDonald, with the Chickamauga towns of the Cherokee, a tribe hitherto beyond the Spanish pale.25

Having prepared the ground, Carondelet proceeded to summon the Southern Indians to an assembly at Nogales under Gayoso's presidency for the purpose of forming an alliance against the United States. Had his instructions to Gayoso been carried out at this congress, a war between Spain and the United States would almost certainly have resulted, for it was his plan to form a permanent confederation of the four Indian tribes, to conclude an alliance with this confederation on behalf of Spain, and although the alliance was to be styled defensive, to have the confederation send a delegation of chiefs to the United States government and demand the reëstablishment of the frontier line of 1772, with war as the alternative.​26 Panton had written Carondelet in 1792 that he had things in readiness so that he could let loose "as bloody a war as ever the Southern states have experienced."​27 Carondelet believed him and was ready for war. Gayoso, however, knowing that the Indians were deceitful and intractable and that Carondelet's plan was foolhardy, virtually ignored the instructions. Proceeding with the ostentation and ceremoniousness proper to such occasions, he negotiated a treaty which, while it was merely defensive and failed to provide for the sending of a delegation of chiefs with an ultimatum to the United States, created a confederation of the four Southern tribes under Spanish protection, established a mutual territorial guarantee, and stipulated that henceforth the annual present given each tribe should be delivered to it in a lump in its own territory. This last clause was designed among other things to furnish Spain with a pretext for sending its troops into the Indian country and thus pave the way  p169 for the establishment of additional posts. The erection of such a post in the Choctaw country was authorized in the treaty, and consequently in 1794 a Spanish fort was built and garrisoned on the Tombigbee River near the site of the old French fort Tombecbé. It was called Fort Confederation in honor of the newly formed union of Indian tribes.28

It has been said that Carondelet's Indian policy produced deplorable consequences. In the first place, it interfered with the development of the intrigue with the American frontiersmen. As Gayoso pointed out, Carondelet was pursuing mutually contradictory policies. Indian attacks on the American frontier had been moderated in the last three years of Miró's administration (1789‑91), but were renewed with redoubled fury when Carondelet took over the government in 1792. The frontiersmen rightly attributed this change to Carondelet's advent; and the intrigue with the frontiersmen suffered in consequence, the intrigue in its second phase being confined to Kentucky, which was more remote than Cumberland and Holston from Spain's Indian allies.​29 Even with the Indians themselves Spain's interests suffered from Carondelet's belligerency, for many of them resented the effort of any white man, regardless of his nationality, to involve them in war with other white men.

In the second place, Carondelet's Indian policy had a most unfortunate effect on Spain's negotiation with the United States. The Spanish agents in Philadelphia, Jáudenes and Viar, were at first on very friendly terms with the administration, but in the course of 1792 Carondelet's pernicious misrepresentations led them to charge the United States with pursuing an Indian policy deliberately hostile towards Spain. One of the  p170 principal proofs adduced in support of this assertion was that Governor Blount had distributed among the Indians medals bearing on one side an effigy of Washington and the inscription "Friendship forever," and on the other side, "Peace and trade without end." Such a frivolous charge gave an air of absurdity to their representation, but they pressed their case with the utmost gravity and with the most objectionable vehemence. As Carondelet's policy was unfolded, they saw that it would bring a protest from the United States government; and, on the principle that the offensive is the best defence, they redoubled their vehemence and warned Jefferson that, unless the United States altered its Indian policy, the continuance of peace was highly problematical. Equivalent to a threat of war, which Jefferson wrote Monroe at this juncture was almost certain,​30 their note led the administration to transfer the discussion to Spain and to refuse to receive any further communication on the subject from the Spanish agents.​31 In Spain, as we shall see, this controversy over Indian affairs enabled Short and Carmichael to score the only diplomatic triumph won by the United States in the whole course of this twelve years' negotiation with Spain, and the American envoys owed their success to Carondelet.

---

The Author's Notes:

 p238  1 AI, 86‑6‑8, Miró to Valdés, Oct. 8, 1788, No. 121; cf. D. K. Bjork, ed., "Documents relating to the Establishment of Schools in Louisiana, 1771," in MVHR, XI, 562.

2 AHN, E, l. 3899, Carondelet to the Duke de la Alcudia (Godoy), Aug. 20, 1795, personal.

3 AI, PC, l. 2354, Carondelet to Las Casas, Sept. 17, 1794, No. 124 res.; Las Casas' reply, Oct. 17, 1794, draft, is in ib., l. 1447.

4 AHN, E, ACE, May 2, 1794; AI, PC, l. 1447, Carondelet to Las Casas, Dec. 30, 1793, No. 99 res.; ib. 86‑7‑25, Miró to –––––, Aug. 7, 1792, copy.

5 AI, PC, l. 1446, Carondelet to Las Casas, Jan. 13, 1792, No. 1 res.

6 Heitman, Historical Register, I, 1037; Washington, Writings, XII, 158, Washington to Knox, Aug. 13, 1792, commending Wilkinson highly. For Wilkinson's financial difficulties at this time, see Green, op. cit., 326.

7 AI, PC, l. 2374 (Carondelet) to (Wilkinson), Feb. 1, 1792, draft, in the handwriting of Gayoso and Armesto; AHN, E, l. 3898, Carondelet to Floridablanca, Feb. 16, 1792, No. 7 res.

8 Though the Spanish sources are abundant, I have not discussed Morgan's project in detail, since it was not executed as he  p239 conceived it, and led to no important results. Those who are interested will find further information in L. Houck, Missouri under the Spanish Régime, and in Roosevelt.

9 J. Pope, A Tour through the Southern and Western Territories, 28, 33.

10 See references in note 10, ch. VIII.

11 AI, PC, l. 41, (Miró) to (post commanders), Feb. 3, 1790, circular; AI, PC, l. 177, Miró to Lerena, Jan. 17, 1791, No. 32, draft.

12 W. W. Henry, Patrick Henry, III, 384‑85.

13 AI, 86‑7‑25, Miró to –––––, Aug. 7, 1792, copy; ib., PC, l. 177, (Miró) to Lerena, Sept. 24, 1791, No. 76, draft; ib., l. 204, petition of the inhabitants of Natchez district to his Catholic Majesty, copy, unsigned, and undated; AHN, E, l. 3901, (Floridablanca) to Miró, Dec. 25, 1790; ib., AJE, Dec. 20, 1790; Am. Hist. Assn., Report, 1896, I, 979.

14 Samuel S. Forman Correspondence (MSS., N. Y. Public Library), 1790‑1823, Ezekiel Forman to Samuel Forman, Natchez, April 18, 1790.

15 AI, PC, l. 177, (Gayoso) to Floridablanca, Sept. 10, 1790, draft; ib., l. 2374, Wilkinson to Miró, Dec. 17, 1790, two letters.

16 Ib., Wilkinson to Carondelet, Dec. 15, 1792; l. 2371, M. Lacassagne to Carondelet, Oct. 1, 1794.

17 Ib., l. 2353, Gayoso to Carondelet, Oct. 26, 1792, No. 184; l. 2374, Wilkinson to Miró, Dec. 17, 1790; l. 42, Gayoso to Carondelet, Aug. 6, 1793, No. 338, and Robert Stark to (Carondelet) Jan. 31, 1795.

18 AI, PC, l. 4, Miró to Grand-Pré, Oct. 8, 1787, No. 277; C. M. Brevard, A History of Florida, 267‑70, Appendix VI: and letter of Robert Stark cited in note 17, above.

19 AHN, E, l. 3890, exp. 34, Luis de Vilemont (sic) to Alcudia (Godoy), no date or place, ib., ACE, Nov. 13, 1795.

20 AI, PC, l. 146, Carondelet to Las Casas, Jan. 13, 1792, No. 1 res., and May 16, 1792, No. 28 res., and enclosures.

21 Ib., l. 2363, Panton to Carondelet, Aug. 4, 1793.

22 Ib., l. 1441, Carondelet to Las Casas, Jan. 18, 1792, No. 11.

23 Ib., l. 1446, same to same, March 13, 1792, No. 6 res., and enclosures; and same to same, Sept. 10, 1792, No. 47 res. Grenville denied that the British government had any connection with Bowles: Campo to Aranda, July 20, 1792, AHN, E, l. 3889 bis, exp. 10.

 p240  24 Ib., l. 3898, Carondelet to Floridablanca, April 4, 1792, No. 19 res., enclosing copy of Carondelet to Olivier, March 30, 1792; Carondelet to Aranda, June 10, 1792 No. 1 res.; AI, PC, l. 1446, Carondelet to Las Casas, July 31, 1792, No. 37 res., enclosing a copy of the convention, dated at New Orleans, July 6, 1792; ib., l. 152‑1, Las Casas to Carondelet, July 5 and July 7, 1792.

25 See my article, "Spain and the Cherokee Indians, 1783‑1795," in North Carolina Hist. Rev., July, 1927.

26 AI, PC, l. 2353, "Puntos sobre los quales se deve tratar en el Congreso de los indios," Feb. 26, 1793, signed by Carondelet; discussed by Jane M. Berry, loc. cit.

27 AI, PC, l. 203, Panton to Carondelet, Nov. 6, 1792.

28 Ib., l. 2353, (Gayoso) to Carondelet, Dec. 6, 1793, No. 12, "Oficio ulto. de la Asamblea."

29 Gayoso freely criticized Carondelet for stirring up the Indians against the Americans: AHN, E, l. 3902, Gayoso to Alcudia, Sept. 19, 1794, No. 1 res., and Alcudia to the governor of New Orleans, Jan. 24, 1795. Cf. Roosevelt, IV, 185.

30 Jefferson, Writings, VI, 321‑24, 315‑16.

31 AHN, E, l. 3894 bis, Jáudenes and Viar to Aranda, Oct. 29, 1792, No. 125; l. 3895, same to Alcudia, May 29, 1793, No. 156, and enclosures; and same to same, July 14, 1793, No. 168, enclosing copy of their letter to Jefferson of June 18, 1793; Jefferson, Writings, 99, 118, 269‑71, 271‑73, 314‑15, 330‑38, 344; A. S. P., F. R., I, 267.

---

Thayer's Note:

a For a more favorable view of Carondelet, and frankly a more balanced one, see Gayarré, History of Louisiana, Vol. III, Chapter 6: Carondelet's Administration, 1792 to 1797.

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