SKETCH OF THE EXPULSION OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS FROM COLONIAL LOUISIANA Paper read before the Louisiana Historical Society, July 21, 1915 Before coming to the subject of this paper it will be necessary to make a brief survey of the work of the Jesuits in the ancient colony of Louisiana. Some historians take for granted that the Jesuits came to the southern portion of the colony only in 1726. This is far from correct, as it is an incontrovertible fact that in 1700 the Jesuit priest, Father Paul du Rhu, accompanied Iberville on the latter's second voyage to the colony and that this same priest labored first at Biloxi (Ocean Springs), and afterward at Mobile. In 1702 Father Peter Donge, S. J., was sent to Mobile to assist Father du Rhu; and Father Joseph de Limoges, S. J., was at this period doing missionary work among the Houmas Indians, who dwelt on the east bank of the Mississippi about seven leagues above the Red River. At the end of the year 1703 the work of these three Jesuit fathers in lower Louisiana came to an abrupt close. This was brought about by the injudicious desire of the priests of the Seminary of Quebec to have an establishment at the small settlement of Mobile. In order to prevent any friction arising from the presence of two sets of missionaries in the same district, the Jesuit superiors decided to vacate the lower Louisiana field and, accordingly, recalled their subjects to France. Three years after the founding of New Orleans (1718), the Jesuit Father, Pierre François X. Charlevoix was sent by royal authority to investigate and report on the general condition, temporal and spiritual, of the Colony of Louisiana. On his return to France and, apparently because of his report, the civil government of Louisiana was cut off from that of Canada, with which it had hitherto been united. The Company of the West, by an ordinance of May 16, 1722 (professedly approved by Bishop St. Vallier of Quebec, under whose spiritual jurisdiction Louisiana was), divided the Colony of Louisiana into three districts. New Orleans and west of the Mississippi went to the Capuchians; the Illinois country, or upper Louisiana, to the Jesuits, and the Mobile district to the Carmelites. Each religious order was given parish rights only within its own district; nor could the priests of one order perform any ecclesiastical functions within the territory allotted to the others without their sanction. The headquarters of the Capuchin territory were to be at New Orleans, those of the Carmelites at Mobile, and the Jesuits at Kaskaskia, where Father Joseph Kereben, S. J., was superior. This arrangement of districts did not last long, for the Carmelites were unable to supply subjects for the Mobile territory, which was accordingly handed over to the Capuchins, while the care of all the Indian missions in Louisiana was given over to the Jesuits. On the 20th of February, 1726, a new agreement, by which that of 1722 was annulled, was made between the Society of Jesus and the Company of the West, and received the King's approbation on the 17th of August of that year. In 1725 Father Kereben, S. J., was succeeded as Superior of the Jesuits of Louisiana Territory by Father Nicolas Ignatius de Beaubois, S. J., who very soon after his appointment to office visited New Orleans and, toward the close of the year 1725, sailed for France. Before leaving for Europe he selected a temporary residence in New Orleans, for he was already made aware that the Company of the West wished the Jesuits to take up a permanent abode in New Orleans. The site of the temporary residence was on the southeast corner of Bienville and Chartres streets and is so marked in a reliable map dated 1728. The new agreement between the Company of the West and the Society of Jesus, to which Father de Beaubois was a party, had many features, of which the following, according to Martin, are the chief. The Company of the West agreed to bring Jesuit priests and lay brothers on the following conditions: Each priest was to receive a salary of 600 livres ($133.35), with an additional 200 livres for each of the first five years, and 450 livres for his outfit. A chapel or church was to be erected at the expense of the Company for the Jesuits at each mission station attended to by them in the colony. Lay brothers were to have their passage paid, receive a bounty of 150 livres ($33.35), but no salary. By another clause it was agreed that the Jesuits on their arrival at New Orleans were to receive a grant of land of 3600 feet frontage on the river and with a depth of 9600 feet; they were, moreover, to enjoy the privilege of purchasing slaves on the same terms as the colonists. The Jesuits on their side bound themselves to keep constantly at least fourteen members of their Order in the colony, namely, a pastor and missionary at Kaskaskia (Illinois); a missionary in the village of the Brochigomas [?]; a chaplain and missionary at the Wabash Fort; a missionary at the Arkansas Post; a chaplain and missionary at Fort St. Peter among the Yazoos (Mississippi); another missionary at the same place, whose duty it would be to penetrate into the country of the Chicasaws so as to convert them to the true faith and promote union and friendship between them and the French; two missionaries were to be sent to the Alibamon Post, one of whom was to devote himself especially to the conversion of the Choctaws. The Superior of the Jesuits in the Colony of Louisiana was to reside in New Orleans, but was not to perform any parish duties there without the sanction of the Capuchin superior, who, with the priests of his Order, alone possessed parish rights there. The Company agreed to furnish the Jesuit superior with a chapel, vestry room, etc., a house and lot for his accommodation, that of a companion priest, and the temporary use of such priests of the Order as might arrive in the colony through the port of New Orleans. Besides the successful arrangement of the contract between the Western Company and the Society of Jesus, Father de Beaubois' visit to France had two other successful results, namely, that of securing six Jesuit priests as an earnest of more in the near future, and a colony of Ursuline Nuns for the foundation of a Monastery of Ursulines in Louisiana. In the spring of 1727, Father de Beaubois, accompanied by his six fellow priests, was back in New Orleans and, with the spirit of zeal that characterized him, immediately set about establishing the plantation. The grant of land given in the contract with the Western Company was situated on the west bank of the Mississippi about four and a half miles above the town limits (opposite the present Audubon Park) [?]. This situation was undesirable, as it was too remote from the town and would necessitate extra expense in the management. Father de Beaubois saw this at a glance and hence took steps while in France to secure a more suitable location for the plantation. For this reason, by an act of sale passed on the 11th of April 1726, before Andre Chavre, notary, at Chatellet, Paris, Bienville transferred to the Jesuits, represented by Fathers de Beaubois and d'Avaugour, a large tract of land on the east side of the river. In the Tenth U. S. Census (Social Statistics of Cities, Vol. II, page 216), this tract is described as comprising an area of 20 arpents (2600 feet) front by 50 arpents (9000 feet) depth, within straight lines, and lying within boundaries now indicated by Common, Tchoupitoulas, Annunciation and Terpsichore streets and the Bayou St. John. On the 22d of January, 1728, another tract, lying beside the first, and measuring five arpents by fifty, was sold to the Jesuits by M. deNoyan, a relative of Bienville, and in the latter's name. A third purchase was made by the Fathers on the 3d of December, 1745, of M. Breton (Comptroller of the Navy), consisting of seven by fifty arpents, adjoining the preceding. In a word, the Jesuit plantation in New Orleans in its last development reached from the river to the present Broad street and from the upper side of Common street to Orange street. After securing slaves, as promised in the contract with the Western Company, and after erecting the requisite buildings [in reliable maps of New Orleans after 1728 the Jesuit residence, chapel and slave apartments are located at what is now the northwest corner of Gravier and Magazine streets], the land was fenced in and was at once made to answer the purpose which it had to serve. In order to comply with the public statute, a small portion of the property was turned over to the use of a colonist, who, in consideration thereof, took charge of the levee and public or royal road [the one that figured so conspicuously in the famous batture case afterward] along the river end of the plantation. Gradually, under the prudent direction of the Fathers, the plantation assumed shape and became a source of countless advantages and blessings to the colony at large. In the course of time it increased and its usefulness was multiplied a hundred fold, so that this establishment at New Orleans was not only a cause of wonder to all but a source of inspiration to the colonists; and at the same time a storehouse from which all the outlying missions derived subsistence and prosperity. Though the peculiar purpose of the plantation was to provide in various ways for other Jesuit stations, so that the missionaries could carry on their apostolic work among the Indians without having to busy themselves with temporal concerns, it was also itself an apostolic center on a smaller scale. Father Mathurin Le Petit, S. J., the successor as Superior of the Louisiana Missions to Father de Beaubois, writing to the General, Rev. Father Francis Retz, in June, 1738, says: "Here in New Orleans, the chief, or rather the only, city of this vast region, we number two priests and two lay brothers. My companion is the missionary to the hospital and to the soldiers, and likewise confessor to the Nuns of St. Ursula. I instruct in Christian morals the negro slaves of our residents and as many as I can from other quarters. I direct the sodality of workingmen, which I established not long ago, hear confessions in our chapel and preach during Advent and Lent as often as I am invited to do so by the Reverend Capuchin Fathers, who minister to the neighboring parishes of the French people." The immediate and most far-reaching result of the Jesuit plantation at New Orleans was to do what the French government should have done but did not do. It relieved the poverty of the struggling churches in the colony; it provided the missions with means to carry on the divine service; it enabled them to answer in some way at least the thousand wants of their wretched flocks. It was also a center to which the Jesuit missionaries had recourse to build up their broken health or renew their own spiritual life. Things went on well in the various missions of the colony until November, 1729, when the tyranny and rapacity of Chepart, the French officer in command of Fort Rosalie, Natchez, caused the Indians of the Natchez and other tribes to rise in revolt against the French, and a frightful massacre of the latter was the result. Father Du Poisson, S. J., who was on his way from the Arkansas Post to New Orleans, happened to be at the moment in Natchez and was brutally murdered on the 27th of November. The re |