Pickett's History of Alabama -- Chapter 13 -- Jesuit Priests or Missionaries

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                 Albert James Pickett: HISTORY OF ALABAMA.
                  (Kindly contributed by William C. Bell)
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                               CHAPTER XIII. 
                                      
                      JESUIT PRIESTS OR MISSIONARIES. 
                                      
   1735: Since the revolt of the French garrison at Fort Toulose, upon
   the Coosa, things at that place had remained in rather an undisturbed
   condition. It is true that the English had given them much uneasiness,
   and had occasionally cut off some of the couriers de bois. In order to
   cultivate a better understanding with the Lower Creeks, a Jesuit
   priest, Father de Guyenne, went to Coweta, upon the Chattahoochie, and
   succeeded in building two cabins, one at that place, and the other at
   Cusseta. His object was to learn the language of the Indians, and to
   instruct them in the Christian religion; but the English of the
   province of Georgia prevailed upon the Indians to burn up these
   houses. The zealous father was therefore forced to retreat to Fort
   Toulouse. Father Moran had been stationed, some years, at Fort
   Toulouse, and used to live occasionally at Coosawda.
   
   "The impossibility, however, of exercising his ministry there, for the
   benefit of either the Indians or the French, has induced the superior
   to recall him, that he might be entrusted with the direction of the
   nuns, and of the royal hospital, which is now under our charge. The
   English trade, as well as the French, among the Alabama Indians. You
   can easily imagine what an obstacle this presents to the progress of
   religion, for the English are always ready to excite controversy." *
   Among the Choctaw there were several missionaries, besides those
   stationed at Mobile. "The reverend Father Baudouin, the actual
   superior-general of the mission, resided eighteen years among the
   Choctaws. When he was on the point of reaping some fruits from his
   labors, the troubles which the English excited in that nation, and the
   peril to which he was evidently exposed, obliged Father Vitri, then
   superior-general, in concert with the governor, to recall him to New
   Orleans."* *
   
   * Letter of Father Vivier, of the company of Jesus, to a father of the
   same company.
   ** Letter of Father Vivier, of the company of Jesus, to a father of
   the same company.
   
   While the English of Carolina and Georgia engaged in various schemes
   to rid the territory of the present States of Alabama and Mississippi
   of its French population, by unscrupulous intrigues with the natives,
   the French were but little behind them in similar enterprises. The
   Jesuits were adventurous and brave, and men of captivating address,
   and obtained much influence over the leading Chiefs, wherever they
   appeared. An account of the artful intrigues of a German Jesuit, named
   Christian Priber, as related , in his singular style, by James Adair,
   an old British trader, who lived forty years among the Cherokees and
   Chickasaws, will now be introduced.
   
     "In the year 1736, the French sent into South Carolina one Priber,
     a gentleman of a curious and speculative tempter. He was to
     transmit them a full account of that country, and proceed to the
     Cherokee nation, in order to seduce them from the British to the
     French interest. He went, and although he was adorned with every
     qualification that constitutes the gentleman, soon after he arrived
     at the upper towns of this mountainous country, he changed his
     clothes and everything he brought with him, and by that means made
     friends with the head warriors of the Big Tellico River. More
     effectually to answer the design of his commission, he ate, drank,
     slept, danced, dressed and painted himself with the Indians, so
     that it was not easy to distinguish him from the natives; he
     married, also, with them. Being endowed with a strong understanding
     and retentive memory, he soon learned their dialect, and by gradual
     advances, impressed them with a very ill opinion of the English,
     representing them as a fraudulent, avaricious and encroaching
     people. He, at the same time, inflated the artless savages with a
     prodigious high opinion of their own importance in the American
     scale of power, on account of the situation of their country, their
     martial disposition and the great number of their warriors, which
     would baffle all the efforts of the ambitious and ill-designing
     British colonists.
     
     1739: "Having thus infected them by his smooth, deluding art, he
     easily formed them into a nominal republican government. He crowned
     their old Archi-Magus, emperor, after a pleasing new savage form,
     and invented a variety of high sounding titles for all the members
     of his imperial majesty's red court and the great officers of
     state. He himself received the honorable title of his imperial
     majesty's principal secretary of state, and as such he subscribed
     himself, in all the letters he wrote to our government, and lived
     in open defiance of them. This seemed to be of so dangerous a
     tendency as to induce South Carolina to send up a commisioner,
     Colonel Fox, to demand him as an enemy to public repose. He took
     him into custody in the great square of their state house. When he
     had almost concluded his oration on the occasion, one of the
     warriors rode up and bade him forbear, as the man he intended to
     enslave was a great beloved man, and had become one of our people.
     Though it was reckoned our Agent's strength was far greater in his
     arms than in his head, he readily desisted, for, as it is too hard
     to struggle with the Pope in Rome, a stranger could not miss to
     find if equally difficult to enter abruptly into a new emperor's
     court and there seize his prime minister by a foreign authority,
     especailly when he could not support any charge of guilt against
     him. The warrior told him that the red people well knew the honesty
     of the secretary's heart would never allow him to tell a lie, and
     the secretary urged that he was a foreigner, without owing any
     allegiance to Great Britain. That he only travelled through some
     places of their country, in a peaceable manner, paying for
     everything he had of them. That in compliance with the request of
     the kind French, as well as from his own tender feelings for the
     poverty and insecure state of the Cherokees, he came a great way,
     and lived with them as a brother, only to preserve their liberties,
     by opening a water communication between them and New Orleans. That
     the distance of the two places from each other proved his motive to
     be the love of doing good, especially as he was to go there and
     bring up a sufficient number of Frenchmen, of proper skill, to
     instruct them in the art of making gunpowder, the materials of
     which, he affirmed, their hands abounded with. He concluded his
     artful speech by urging that the tyrannical design of the English
     commissioner owards him appaered plainly to be levelled against
     them, because, as he was not accused of having done any ill to the
     English, before he came to the Cherokees, his crime must consist in
     loving the Cherokees. ---- An old war-leader repeated to the
     commissioner the essenial part of the speech, and added more of his
     own similar thereto. ---- 1741: The English beloved man had the
     honor of receieving his leave of absence and a sufficiant passport
     of safe conduct, from the imperial red court, by a verbal order of
     the secretary of state, who was so polite as to wish him well home,
     and ordered a convoy of his own life-guards, who conducted him a
     considerable way, and he got home in safety.
     
     "From the above, it is evident that the monopolizing spirit of the
     French had planned their dangerous line of circumvallation,
     respecting our envied colonies, as early as the before mentioned
     period. The choice of the man, also, bespoke their judgment. Though
     the philosophic secretary was an utter stranger to the wild and
     mountainous Cherokee nation, yet his sagacity readily directed him
     to choose a proper place, an old favorite religious man, for the
     new red empire, which he formed by slow and sure degree, to the
     great danger of our Southern colonies. But the empire received a
     very great shock, in an accident that befell the secretary, when it
     was on the point of rising into a far greater state of puissance by
     the acquisition of the Muscogee, Choctaw and the Western
     Mississippi Indians.
     
     "In the fifth year of that red imperial era, Priber set off for
     Mobile, accompanied by a few Cherokees. He proceede by land as far
     as the navigable part of the Tallapoosa river, and arriving at
     Tookabatcha, lodged there all night. The traders of the neighboring
     towns soon went there, convinced the inhabitants of the dangerous
     tendency of his unwearied labors among the Cherokees, and of his
     present journey. They then took him into custody, with a large
     bundle of manuscripts, and sent him down to Frederica, in Georgia.
     The governor committed him to a place of confinement, though not
     with common felons, as he was a foreigner, and was said to have
     held a place of considerable rank in the army. Soon after, the
     magazine took fire, which was not far from where he was confined,
     and though the sentinels bade him make off to a place of safety, as
     all the people were running to avoid danger from explosion of the
     powder and shells, yet he squatted on his belly upon the floor, and
     continued in that position without the least hurt. Several blamed
     his rashness, but he told them that experience had convinced him it
     was the most probable means of avoiding danger. This incident
     displayed the philosopher and the soldier. After bearing his
     misfortunes a considerable time with great constancy, happily for
     us, he died in confinemnet, though he deserved a much better fate.
     In the fifth year of his secretaryship I maintained a
     correspondence with him. But the Indians, becoming very inquisitive
     to know the contents of our papers. ---- he told them that in the
     very same manner as he was their great secretary I was in the
     devil's clerk, or an accursed one, who marked on paper the bad
     speech of the evil ones of darkness. 1745 : Accordingly, they
     forbade him to write any more to such an accursed one. As he was
     learned, possessed of a very sagacious, penetrating judgment, and
     had every qualification that was requisite for his bold and
     difficult enterprise, it is not to be doubted that, as he wrote a
     Cherokee dictionary, designed to be published at Paris, he likewise
     set down a great deal that would have been very accessible to the
     curious, and serviceable to the representatives of South Carolina
     and Georgia, which may be readily found in Frederica, if the
     manuscripts have had the good fortune to escape the despoiling
     hands of military power." *
     
     *Adair's American Indians: London, 1775- pp. 240-243.
     
   William Bacon Stevens, formerly professor of belles letters and
   history in the Unversity of Georgia, and now an Episcopalian minister
   in Philadelphia, has published one volume of the History of Georgia,
   in which we find the following interesting account of Priber, which we
   copy at length in his own style, In alluding to the arrival of
   Oglethorpe at Frederica, Dr. Stevens says, "On the return of the
   general from Florida, he ordered his strange prisoner to be examined,
   and was not a little surprised to find, under his coarse dress of
   deer-skins and Indian moccasins, a man of polished address, great
   abilities and extensive learning. He was versed not only in the Indian
   laguage, of which he had composed a dictionary, but also spoke the
   Latin, French and Spanish fluently, and the English perfectly. Upon
   being interrogated as to his design, he acknowledged that it was 'to
   bring about a confederation of all Southern Indians, to inspoire them
   with industry, to instruct them in the arts necessary to the
   commodties of life, and, in short, to engage them to throw off the
   yoke of their European allies of all nations." He proposed to make a
   settlement in that part of Georgia which is within the limits of the
   Cherokee lands, at Cusseta, * and to settle a town there of fugitive
   English, French and Germans, and they were to take under their
   particualr care the runaway negroes of the English. All criminals were
   to be sheltered, as he propsed to make his place an asylum for all
   fugtives, and the cattle and effects they might bring with them. He
   expected a great resort of debtors, transprted felons, servants, and
   negor slaves from the two Carolinas, Georgia and Virginia, offering,
   as his scheme did, toleration to all crimes and licentiousness, except
   murder and idleness. Upon his per was found his private journal,
   revealing, in part, his designs, with various memoranda relating to
   his project. In it he speaks not only of individual Indians and
   negores, whose assistance had been proimised, and of a private
   treasurer in Charleston, for keeping the funds collected; but also,
   that he expected many things from the French, and from another nation,
   whose name he left blank. There were also found upon him letters for
   the Florida and Spanish governors, demanding their protection of him
   and countenance of his scheme. Among his papers was one containing
   articles of government for his new town, regularly and elaborately
   drawn out and digested. In this volume he enumerates many rights and
   privileges, as he calls them, to which the citizens of this colony are
   to be entitled, particularly dissolving marriages, allowing a
   community of women, and all kinds of licentiousness. It was drawn up
   with much art, method and learning, and was designed to be privately
   printed and circulated. When it was hinted to him that such a plan was
   attended with many dangers and difficulties, and must require many
   years to establish his government, he replied, 'Proceeding properly,
   many of these evils may be avoided; and as to length of time, we have
   a succession of agents to take up the work as fast as others leave it.
   
   * If Doctor Stevens means the "Cusseta," on the east side of the
   Chattahoochie and opposite old Fort Mitchell, it was within the limits
   of the Creek lands, and never belonged to the Cherokees. I am not
   aware of any town named "Cusseta" in any part of what formerly was the
   Cherokee nation although there may have been, for by reference to page
   162 of the History of Alabama it will be found that the Cherokees had
   towns named "Tallase" and "Tuskegee," and such towns vere also in the
   Creek nation.
   
   1745 : We never lose sight of a favorite point, nor are we bound by
   the strict rules of morality in the means, when the end we pursue is
   laudable. If we err, our general is to blame; and we have a merciful
   God to pardon us. But believe me,' he continued, 'before the century
   is passed, the Europeans will have a very small footing on this
   continent.'
   
   "Indeed, he often hinted that there were others of his brethren
   laboring among the Indians for the same purpose. Being confined in the
   barracks at Frederica, he exhibited a stoical inpoliteness, and
   attracted the notice and favorable attention of many of the gentlemen
   there. His death, in prison, put an end to all further proceedings,
   and his plans died with him. Such was the strange being whose
   Jesuitical intrigues well nigh eventuated in the destruction of
   Georgia. A thorough Jesuit, an accomplished linguist, a deep
   tactician, far-sighted in his plans and far-reaching in his
   expedients, he possessed every qualification for his design, and only
   failed of bringing down great evil upon the English, beacuse he was
   apprehended before his scheme had been matured." *
   
   * Stevens' History of Georgia, vol. i, pp 165-167
   
   There were many curious characters roving over the territory of
   Alabama and Mississippi at this period. Traders from South Carolina
   and Georgia, were found in almost every Indian village; while the
   French from Mobile and New Orleans and the Spaniards from the Floridas
   continued to swell the number of these singular merchants. They
   encountered all kinds of dangers and suffered all kinds of privations
   to become successful in their exciting traffic. Adair, one of these
   British traders, thus describes the mode by which difficult streams
   were passed:
   
   "When we expect high rivers, each company of traders carry a canoe,
   made of the tanned leather, the sides overlapped about three fingers'
   breadth, and well sewed with three seams. Around the gunnels, which
   are made of saplings, are strong loopholes, for large deerskin strings
   to hang down both the sides. With two of these is securely tied to the
   stem and stern, a well shaped sapling for a keel, and in like manner
   the ribs. Thus they usually rig out a canoe, fit to carry over ten
   horse-loads at once, in the space of half an hour. The apparatus is
   afterwards hidden with great care on the opposite shore. Few take the
   trouble to paddle the canoe, for, as they are commonly hardy, and also
   of an amphibious nature, they usually jump into the river with their
   leathern barge ahead of them, and thrust it through the deep part of
   the water to the opposite shore. When we ride with only a few luggage
   horses, we make a frame of dry pines, which we tie together with
   strong vines well twisted. When we have raised it to be sufficently
   buoyant, we load and paddle it across, and afterwards swim our horses,
   keeping at a liittle distance below them." *
   
   * Adair's American Indians, p. 272.
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