Love's Tender Fury by Jennifer Wilde

Author:Jennifer Wilde
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497698147
Publisher: Open Road Media

XVI

As we neared Natchez the land became incredibly verdant, rich and green, and the trees were majestic, great oaks that spread their boughs as though luxuriating in the fresh air, the rich soil, the clear blue sky. It was still early morning. Jeff told me we would reach Natchez shortly after noon. I should have been relieved, should have been eager to reach the comfort of civilization at last, but I wasn’t. I was curiously sad, for it was over now, this long, hazardous, grueling journey, and the warm, satisfying intimacy must end, too. I would not be able to relax and reveal in Jeff’s nearness any longer. I had to steel myself against him. I had to escape at the first opportunity.

“Natchez really began way back in 1716,” Jeff informed me. “Chap named Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, built a fort high on the bluffs, Fort Rosalie, near the villages of the Natchez Indians. He and his men had a lot of trouble with the Natchez, but he managed to subdue ’em—forty-nine men against the whole Natchez Nation. A great settlement grew, Frenchies pouring in from all over. The land was cleared, plantations established, merchants and artisans arrived. Ten years or so passed, and then the Frenchies got greedy and tried to take even more land from the Indians.” He paused, shaking his head.

“What happened?”

“One of the bloodiest massacres in history. The Natchez came to the French with reports that the Choctaws were going to attack, claimed they wanted to help fight ’em off. The French were frightened and let the Natchez come pouring in with weapons—Indians entering every house to ‘help’ fight off the Choctaws. At four o’clock in the afternoon—this was November 28, 1729—their chief gave the signal. The killing began. The French were butchered, decapitated, their heads piled up in the public square. The women and children who weren’t butchered along with the men were taken captive. The whole settlement was razed to the ground.”

“How—dreadful,” I said with a shudder.

“There was retaliation, of course,” Jeff continued. “The Choctaws were old enemies of the Natchez, and the French got ’em to help. Soldiers and savages came pourin’ up from New Orleans, and the Natchez Nation was destroyed in a spree of bloodlettin’ that made the massacre seem pale by comparison. A few of the Natchez survived and fled through the wilderness to join up with the Chickasaws. The settlement of Natchez was reclaimed by the wilderness, swallowed up as though it had never existed. Then, at the close of the French and Indian Wars, it passed to the British.”

“I thought the French ceded this territory to the Spanish?”

“Most of it was—Natchez bein’ the exception. It’s the only English outpost in these parts. A few years back, settlers started pourin’ in, folks who couldn’t make a go at farmin’ back east, folks who were dissatisfied with the politics of the Colonies, others who simply wanted a taste of adventure. They’ve done wonders in the past five-six years.

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