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

volt spread to the Yazoo tribe, which, on the 11th of December, 1729, treacherously killed the holy and self-sacrificing missionary, Father John Souel, S. J. A few weeks later Father Doutreleau, S. J., who was on his way from the Illinois country to New Orleans, was attacked (while in the act of saying mass), by the savages at the mouth of the Yazoo River, and so badly wounded that he barely escaped with his life. In 1736, Father Anthony Senat, S. J., who as chaplain accompanied a French force sent out against the Chickasaws in what is now Lee County, Mississippi, was captured by the savages and burned at the stake.

Ordinary history has been charged with being a huge conspiracy against the truth. The reason is not hard to find. Nothing is easier than to give a twist to the truth in writing history, for although a history should be impartial, it very often reflects the thoughts and bias of the narrator. To give a striking example of the correctness of this statement I have only to instance the remarkably unfair way in which Mr. Gayarré has recorded the controversy, or, as he styles it, "The Religious Warfare" between the Capuchins and the Jesuits in colonial New Orleans, Lest I myself should fall under the fatal effects of bias I shall refrain from expressing an opinion and merely cite the words of an eminent jurist of the Louisiana Bar in this connection: "About 1755," says Judge McGloin, "arose the controversy between the Jesuits and the Capuchins upon the subject of their respective jurisdictions, which controversy a certain Louisiana historian designates as a religious warfare. The same historian takes up the cudgels strong for the Capuchins and lays upon the Jesuits imputations of dishonest ambition, duplicity, fraud and general malpractice. Strange that others may differ as to their rights and strive for the maintenance of respective privileges as they see them without it being charged that they are attempting robbery or fraud. It seems, however, with some, that if the difference be touching some right of ecclesiastical character, there arises an inexorable necessity that both contestants, or one at least, must be in bad faith and dishonest.

"The controversy in this case was a simple one and, to fair minds, does not suggest the presence of aught dishonorable to either of the parties. The Capuchins had been allotted, in the

year 1722, as a field for their labors, the city of New Orleans and a very large adjoining area. In 1726, as already mentioned, the Jesuits were assigned to the upper portion of what was then the Territory of Louisiana. As a necessary adjunct of their missionary establishment, they were allowed a house in the city of New Orleans, the port of entry, for the entire country over which their missions extended. True it is, it had been stipulated that the Jesuits were to exercise no religious functions within the limits occupied by the Capuchins without the assent of the Superior of the Capuchins. We have seen," adds this writer, "that in 1726 the Capuchin Superior, Father Bruno, was Vicar-General for the Bishop of Quebec, the Ordinary of the enormous diocese including Canada and the Territory of Louisiana."

"The convention of 1726," continues Mr. McGloin, "could not affect the authority of the Bishop of Quebec over the entire area of his diocese; nor did it impose upon him any restriction in the matter of selecting his Vicar-General. Father Bruno happened, in 1726, to be such a vicar, and the authority he exercised as such was not the authority resting in him as Superior of the Capuchins. As representative of the Ordinary (i. e., the Bishop of Quebec), the Jesuits themselves were to an extent subject to him (Fr. Bruno), in so far as they discharged pastoral duties within the limits covered by his appointment as vicar. There was no concession by the Bishop of Quebec holding him always to appoint a Capuchin as his vicar in Louisiana, consequently when the Bishop of Quebec appointed Very Rev. Father Baudoin, the Jesuit Superior (in 1757), to be his vicar, and vested him with the appurtenant power, there was no violation of the compact of 1726. That convention did not vest the Capuchins with aught more than what would now be known as parochial duties; it did not confide to them any episcopal jurisdiction or authority. The appointment of a Jesuit Vicar-General did not impair the parochial rights of the Capuchins, and such Jesuit vicar could be merely representative of episcopal authority, in that quarter, as Father Bruno had been before. When the Capuchins, in good faith, no doubt, on their side and in fair defense of their rights as they conceived them to be, objected to the exercise by Father Boudoin of his authority as Vicar-General, the latter.

advanced this very line of reasoning, and drew this very distinction. To the ordinary mind fairly well versed in ecclesiastical concerns, it would seem that the point was well taken, and we remain at a loss to see what justification there is for any historians pretending to read the minds of the parties involved in such controversy so as to see bad faith and basest duplicity in the conduct of the Jesuits in general and of Father Boudoin in particular."

As a matter of historical information it is well to state that the documents in the archives of the Ursuline Convent, New Orleans, put beyond all question of cavil that all the Jesuit superiors from 1726 to 1763 were legitimate vicars-general of the Bishop of Quebec and at the same time ecclesiastical superiors of the Ursulines. With regard to the particular controversy referred to above, the historian Shea points out that the Jesuits wished to yield the point to the Capuchins, but Bishop Pontbriand of Quebec insisted on their retaining the office. The matter was brought before the Superior Council of Louisiana, which, be it noted, recognized and registered the appointment of Father Baudoin, S. J., as Vicar-General.

Meanwhile in France great hostility was displayed against the Society of Jesus by the government. The enemies of the Jesuits had, with very few exceptions, won over all the provincial parliaments to their side and wheedled them into passing decrees having for their final object the destruction of the Society. On the 1st of April, 1762, the Parliament of Paris passed a law closing all the Jesuit colleges in its jurisdiction. All France followed the example set by Paris, and Louisiana, the sole remaining colony of France in North America, was not to be left behind in the race for the glory to be won in maligning, plundering and banishing her Jesuit benefactors. Some individuals in high places in the colony were hostile to the Jesuits, and this action on the part of the mother country appeared to them to be a favorable moment for attaining their end. The relations between the Capuchins and the Jesuits in New Orleans were still strained, but there was no desire on either side to renew the old dispute until Father Hilaire de Géneveaux became Superior of the Capuchins. This ecclesiastic, whom history attests