Raids on the German Coast: Conflict in Colonial Louisiana 1749-1750

The impoverished Germans sought new lives in Louisiana, but in doing so began occupying land on which Native Americans had lived for centuries. For the Germans, who were already coping with disease and the hardships of clearing the swamps and making a home in a challenging climate and difficult land, the threat of attack from Native Americans proved especially daunting. Meanwhile Native Americans, who had a history of cooperating with the French and assisting them in surviving in the new colony, felt angered and betrayed. They had lived, worked, hunted, and wandered freely along the banks of the Mississippi long before any Europeans had even thought of settling there. This was not a New World to them, but an ancient and old one.

Choctaw Village near the Chefuncte, by Francois Bernard, 1869, Peabody Museum – Harvard University.

French colonial Louisiana also suffered pushback from the British, who were penetrating deeper into the frontier and threatening French territory. The two superpowers were almost constantly at war with each other. They involved Native Americans in their rivalries and incited violence against each other through nearby tribes. Ultimately this dynamic would lead to the French and Indian War. Though we think of this as being primarily a New England event, it actually had lasting implications for Louisiana. After England defeated France, the French would cede Louisiana to the Spanish, preferring to have an ally take the colony rather than their enemies.

Native Americans were crucial to the survival of the early colony and contributed many unique elements to the cultural heritage we now call Creole. Their cane basketry, dugout canoes that were precursors to pirogues, use of filé were all adopted by the French. Their foodways contributed to some of the defining parts of Creole cuisines, including alligator, shellfish, crawfish, frog legs, and waterfowl. Their language is forever present in our geography: place names, waterways, parishes, and towns all bear names with Native American roots. Even Louisiana’s unique moniker, The Bayou State, is derived from the Choctaw word bayuk (bayou).

What follows are excerpts from letters written by the Marquis de Vaudreuil, colonial governor of Louisiana from 1743 to 1753, to Antoine Louis Rouillé, French minister of Marine and Colonies. They reflect conditions along the German Coast (Côte des Allemands) when Christophe Heidel (Haydel) was coming of age. Just two years after these letters were written, he married and started a family. His daughter Magdelaine, born at a time when the French flag flew over Louisiana and the Heidels feared conflict with neighboring Native Americans, gave birth to her children when Spain controlled Louisiana. At the time of her death, the stars and stripes had been raised over the land, Louisiana was officially a state in a country that had not existed at the time of her birth, and the frontier atmosphere of early Louisiana was a distant memory.

Governor Pierre Rigaud Cavagnol Marquis de Vaudreuil. Molinary, Andres (Painter). COURTESY OF THE LOUISIANA STATE MUSEUM.

March 3, 1749

[M. de Vaudreuil, the governor] also states that the English do not cease, in peace as in war, to work at setting the nations against the French, and that some traders who had armed the Choctaw party that attacked the village of the Germans, having bought the daughter of one of the inhabitants [who had been] carried off by this party, took her to Carolina, where it has been learned that the governor was doing everything in his power to induce other parties to make raids upon Louisiana.

July 27, 1749

I have the honor to send you by the first vessel that departs for France the map of the German coast, on which will be marked the places by which the enemies may come to make their raids there and the one where I think it would be advisable to establish a post.  I am having this map made by Sieur Saucier, whom I have brought with me from Mobile, since he is the man who is best fitted to travel through this almost impassable country and since he has already several times examined the swamps, streams, and ravines by which the Indians may make their way to the settlement of the Germans.  

All that I can assure you, my lord, is that I will neglect nothing to assure this colony of a perfect tranquility as well as that I will strive for its increase.  

February 1, 1750

The new recruits who are to come on this vessel would be of great assistance in the circumstances.  We have so few people here that M. de Vaudreuil cannot without impairing the service or disturbing the posts form a detachment that would be necessary and even indispensable to protect the German quarter against the incursions of the Choctaws.  The minor attacks that this nation has made in that quarter have struck terror into it and obliged part of those settlers to withdraw to town with their families. Their lands are abandoned, and in addition to the delay in their settlement and in that of the colony that that causes, the town is deprived of the comforts that those settlers provided for it by their industry and their thrift.

From Mississippi Provincial Archives Vol. V., French Dominion, 1749-1763, Collected, Edited, and Translated by Dunbar Rowland and A.G. Sanders, LSU Press, 1984.

A German's Perspective of Louisiana's Côte des Allemands in 1802

The Heidels (Haydels), founders of Evergreen Plantation, were among the first settlers of Louisiana’s German Coast. Located upriver from New Orleans, the Côte des Allemands, as the French called it, was home to Germans attracted to Louisiana by John Law’s campaign to help settle the struggling colony in 1721. John Law was the head of the Company of the Indies, which was overseeing colonial Louisiana. In an effort to help settle the colony and make it economically viable, Law sought agricultural workers to farm his landholdings, known as concessions. Law distributed pamphlets that described Louisiana as a paradise, a land of opportunity where newcomers could thrive. This appealed to a struggling population in areas of Germany, Switzerland, and Alsace-Lorraine, an area that had both German and French influences. They had been demoralized by war and their land forcibly taken from them. They looked to Louisiana to start a new life.

Unfortunately Law’s idyllic portrait of Louisiana proved false. From the start, the Germans faced serious hardship. Disease and death characterized their journey aboard the “Pest Ships” that transported them to Louisiana. Six thousand Germans left French ports for Louisiana. Only two thousand survived the voyage. Upon arrival, they discovered that Louisiana possessed a brutal climate, was disease-ridden, and lacked basic food and supplies. Law was a fraud, and the Company of the Indies a failure.

Yet the Germans made the best of things and set to work establishing small farms that would ultimately be successful. They soon began bringing their produce to market in New Orleans. Many believe that the Germans’ food supply prevented residents of the city from starving. Without their hard work, the colony would not have survived.

A letter written by a German immigrant in 1802 provides a glimpse of life on the German Coast just prior to the Louisiana Purchase. It is unique in that it was written by a German drawn to the colony long after the initial wave of Germans had arrived. Johann Joachim Lagemann, born in Germany in 1757, emigrated to America in 1785. His brother Heinrich Peter Lagemann had been charged with paying for Johann’s university studies, but the money did not arrive regularly. This made it impossible for him to continue his studies and probably led to his decision to travel to Louisiana to seek other opportunities. He found an already well-established community on the German Coast, where the early settlers had intermarried with French and later Acadians.

Several years after he arrived in Louisiana, he wrote to his brother of his marriage, his new home, and his impressions of Louisiana. What follows is a transcription of his letter.

From Mathew Carey's "General Atlas;" one of the first maps of Louisiana after statehood in 1812, Louisiana State Museum Historical Map Collection.

Beloved Brother, and remaining relatives and friends;

One other thing I must let you know: that I am still alive, where I live and that (thank God!) My present circumstances are very bearable.  I live on the Mississippi, 13 hours over New Orleans. (Lat: 30N, Long: 2.16 E).  Northside of the river, Cote des Allemans [German Coast], paroisse St. Jean Baptiste [St. John the Baptist parish].

February 28, 1800 I was married to Catharina Vickner, widow Marchand, with two children: Johann Baptist, age 7 and Catharina age 4 and a wealth of 15000, and what’s more, we live in unity and happiness together.  Nov. 28 my daughter Magdalene Celeste was born.

My wife’s father Adam Vickner, her mother Margareta Tracgern, both are out of two of the first and most numerous families here.

As I write this, we are subject to Spain, free from all taxes and tributes, and are bothered by nothing, since all are a member in the militia for our own safety, because of the blacks, for there is degradation of the human soul here: slavery-----we have only 5 black slaves, who work the fields, and 4 little ones, some have hundreds.

The fields yield: rice, Indian corn, Indigo, sugar, cotton, fruits, as you know it in Germany there is none, only oranges, peaches and figs.  Garden-produce is available year-round.  Caterpillars and other damaging insects are great inconveniences.  The great heat in summer, the quick change of the weather are dangerous to health and life, especially to foreigners.

All tradesmen are free, everybody does what he can.

The only salvation providing religion is only a shadowplay here of the true Roman Catholic.  No other church has public service; but freedom of conscience goes into the widths, even into the crazy.

The true spirit of commerciality reigns supreme!  The right and moral value of a person is measured by the size of his moneybag—the scoundrel who can deceive and cheat most is called a “Homme bien poli” that is, a man, who knows hot to live.

What is called rightfully pressing poverty, does not exist, thank God!  Everyone can make enough to get by,—slavery is barbarical enough, but not as tyrannical as the unfortunate serfdom in the civilized Holstein by far.  For the nights and the Sundays are for them, and necessary clothing and board have to be given them, yet happy is the land that knows no slavery, for it is a pest for morals, insolence, stealing, and all shame and vice are rampant among the people—they are slaves and make their masters into slaves too, or relentless, unmerciful barbarians and avengers.

The main language is French, English, Spanish, German, Cathalone is spoken too.

I never did write, and I suppose I have been forgotten long ago, but I still mean to take a trip to Germany, but I am and will never be well at sea—so I fear my illness more than the sea, and my wife shows much reluctance—the otherworld will reunite us. . . .

Aux Allemans

March 1, 1802

Johann Joachim Lagemann

***Johann Joachim Lagemann’s letter can be found in the Manuscripts holdings of the Louisiana Division at the main branch of the New Orleans Public Library.

Tomb of Anastasie Lagemann Rodrigue, Johann Lagemann’s daughter, St. John the Baptist Catholic Church cemetery, Edgard, Louisiana.

The Arrival of the First Africans in Louisiana

The first slave ships from Africa arrived in Louisiana in 1719, only a year after the founding of New Orleans.  Twenty-three ships brought slaves to Louisiana in the French period alone, almost all embarking prior to 1730. The need for labor on the large concessions proved so great that officials found themselves unable to satisfy the colonists’ demand for slaves. Thus, the large number of slaves brought over to supply colonists with free labor soon resulted in enslaved Africans outnumbering free whites.  In 1741, four African slaves lived in the colony for every 1.2 free white.  Although by the end of French rule, the ratio had balanced out to 4.6 slaves for every 3.7 free people, slaves still existed as the majority and would continue to make up a large percentage of Louisiana’s population for the next century.

This imbalanced population combined with high mortality, the threat of conflict with Native Americans, shortages of food and goods, and isolation produced a colony in which African, French, and Spanish cultures blended to create a unique culture known as Creole.  Because most of the Africans who first arrived in Louisiana were of one nation, the Bambara, they succeeded in preserving their language and culture and, through their solidarity, ultimately acted as an Africanizing influence on Louisiana.  European colonists, aware of their precarious position in the colony, were inclined to work together with slaves and afford them some rights under the Code Noir.

While the system was certainly brutal for African slaves, the harsh conditions of life in Louisiana resulted in difficulties for all settlers.  Since many of the colonists were themselves rejected by French society and forced into exile in Louisiana as criminals or debtors, historian Gwendolyn Midlo Hall states, “Africans arrived in an extremely fluid society where a socio-racial hierarchy was ill defined and hard to enforce.” Hall expertly sums up the situation in colonial Louisiana, writing, “Desperation transcended race and even, to some extent, status, leading to cooperation among diverse peoples.” Though the arrival of Anglo-Americans with the Louisiana Purchase resulted in stricter laws governing slavery and narrower views in terms of race, Louisiana society would remain more diverse, fluid, and racially ambiguous than the other Southern slave states.

NOTES:

Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo.  Africans in Colonial Louisiana.  Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, LA: 1992, 57, 59, 64, 10, 131.

The Code Noir was established in 1724 to regulate slavery in colonial Louisiana.  The Code Noir stated that slaves were to be instructed in the Catholic faith, given food and clothing allowances, and allowed to rest on Sundays and the right to petition a public prosecutor if they were mistreated.  Also, young children had to be sold with their mothers.  The Code Noir prohibited slaves from owning property or testify against whites.  For more on the Code Noir see Schafer, Judith Kelleher.  Slavery, the Civil Law, and the Supreme Court of Louisiana.  Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, LA: 1994, 1-2.

Other historians, such as Peter M. Caron and Gilbert C. Din challenge Hall’s assertion that the Bambara tribe from the Senegambia region made up the majority of slaves sent to colonial Louisiana.  Instead, Caron and Din state that bambara was a term used throughout Africa and that often Africans in colonial Louisiana were imprecisely labeled with the generic term bambara.  However, even if the origin of slaves was more diverse, the profound influence of Africans on Creole culture cannot be denied.  See Din, Gilbert C.  Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in  Louisiana, 1763-1803.  Texas A&M University Press, College Station, TX: 1999, 5-6.