CHAPTER VI.

CARONDELET'S ADMINISTRATION.

1792 to 1797.

FRANÇOIS LOUIS HECTOR, Baron de Carondelet, a colonel of the royal armies of Spain, succeeded Mirò, on the 30th of December, 1791, as governor and intendant of the provinces of Louisiana and West Florida. When he received this appointment, he was governor of San Salvador in the province of Guatimala. He was a native of Flanders, and had, by his acknowledged ability and unremitting exertions and zeal, risen to rank and importance in the service of Spain.

According to Spanish usage, the Baron, shortly after entering upon the duties of his office, published his "Bando de Buen Gobierno," on the 22d of January, 1792. "Among the new regulations which it introduced," says Judge Martin in his History of Louisiana, "it provided for the division of the city of New Orleans into four wards, in each of which an Alcalde de Barrio, or commissary of police, was to be appointed. In order to procure to government a knowledge of all the inhabitants, and every stranger among them or in the city, it was made the duty of all persons renting houses or apartments, to give the names of their new tenants to the Alcalde of the district, on the first day of their occupation, or, at farthest, on the succeeding one. The Alcaldes de Barrio were directed to take charge of fire engines and their implements, and to command the fire

and axemen companies, in case of conflagration. They were also empowered to preserve the peace, and to take cognizance of small debts.

"In one of his first communications to the Cabildo, the Baron recommended to them to make provision for lighting the city and employing watchmen. The revenue of the corporation did not amount, at this period, to seven thousand dollars. To meet the charges for the purchase of lamps and oil, and the wages of watchmen, a tax of one dollar and twelve and a half cents was to be laid on every chimney.

"In a letter to the minister, the Baron, this year, mentioned that the population of New Orleans was under six thousand.

"Having received instructions from the King to attend to the humane treatment of slaves in the province, he issued his proclamation, establishing the following regulations:

"1°-That each slave should receive, monthly, for his food, one barrel of corn, at least.

"2°-That every Sunday should be exclusively his own, without his being compelled to work for his master, except in urgent cases, when he must be paid for or indemnified.

"3°-That, on other days, they should not begin to work before daybreak, nor continue their labors after dark; one half hour to be allowed for breakfast, and two hours for dinner.

"4°-Two brown shirts, a woollen coat and pantaloons, and a pair of linen pantaloons and two handkerchiefs, to be allowed, yearly, to each male slave, and suitable dresses to every female.

"5°-None to be punished with more than thirty lashes, within twenty-four hours.

"6°-Delinquents to be fined in the sum of one hun

dred dollars, and, in grave cases, the slave to be sold away to another."

On the 27th of April, Carondelet wrote to his government: "When I arrived at New Orleans, I found it divided into two factions-the one headed by Governor Mirò and backed by the Bishop, the assessor of the Intendancy, Don Manuel Serrano, &c.; and the other, composed of the Contador, or royal comptroller Don Jose Orue, the vicar Felix Portillo, who is a capuchin, Don Jose Ortega, &c. The most influential among the French had sided with one or the other party, according to the promptings of their own private interest, so that this capital was full of discord and animosities. Having shown myself indifferent to both parties, and quite resolved to punish those who should prove intractable, I succeeded in effecting a reconciliation, at least ostensibly, with the exception of the comptroller and the assessor, who could not be brought to be on friendly terms with each other." He therefore recommended that both be sent out of the colony with their advisers. A summary manner of reëstablishing harmony! He further said that the comptroller accused Mirò of having embezzled the funds of the King, but that this accusation had so far remained without proof.

On the 23d of July, he also informed his government of the reasons which had induced him to prohibit the introduction of negroes from Jamaica and the French Islands, leaving to the traders in that kind of commodity the faculty of providing themselves with it on the coasts of Africa. The Governor had adopted this measure at the solicitation of the members of the Cabildo, who were afraid of the importation of slaves infected with a spirit of insurrection.

Louisiana had always carried on a brisk trade with that portion of the island of St. Domingo which belonged

to the French, and she therefore suffered considerably in consequence of the revolution operated by the blacks in that hitherto prosperous colony. In the month of August, she found herself threatened almost with famine, and she was relieved only by the arrival of one thousand barrels of flour, for which the Baron de Carondelet had sent in haste to Philadelphia.

On the 15th of September, he communicated to the court of Madrid the details of an important capture which he had made some months previous, in the person of William Augustus Bowles. This individual was a native of Maryland, and the manner in which he began life shadowed forth what he would be in riper years. Thus, instead of assisting his countrymen, who were struggling for their independence, he, at the age of fourteen, entered the British army as a foot soldier. His first steps in the military career seem to have been marked with signal success; for, a year after, in 1777, notwithstanding his extreme youth, we find him in Jamaica with the grade of ensign, and, as such, having the honor of bearing the proud banner of England. This was luck indeed for an American boy of fifteen! Shortly after, he went with his regiment to Pensacola, and there the scene changes. William Bowles became guilty of such an act of insubordination, that he was deprived of his rank. In a fit of disgust, it is said that the young man stript himself of his English uniform, contemptuously flung it into the sea, and fled to the Indians, among whom he lived several years, and whose language he acquired to perfection. He married the daughter of a chief of the Creek nation, was naturalized among them, and became himself a chief, a great warrior, and therefore an influential man. In 1781, when Galvez besieged Pensacola, Bowles* the deserter secured his pardon, and

*Pickett's History of Alabama, vol. ii., p. 115.

regained the good graces and favor of the English, by leading a party of Creeks to the assistance of General Campbell. But Bowles got tired at last of his Indian wife, of his Indian popularity, and of his Indian life, which, probably, did not afford him sufficiently ample scope for the versatility of his genius. Now he bids a long and glad farewell to the hospitable wilderness which had sheltered him, and he is next seen in New York. What is he doing there? Why-forsooth, he has joined a company of actors, and is amusing himself with eliciting the applause of enraptured audiences, or perhaps is swearing oaths of deadly hatred at those spectators, whose evidences of disapprobation remind him of the hisses of those snakes which he left far away in the shady woods of Alabama. He followed that company of players to New Providence, where he continued to exercise the same profession, and, occasionally, tried his hand at painting portraits. Whether as a comedian, a painter, an American Tory, an ex-British officer, an Indian chief, or something else, it is certain that he won the confidence of Lord Dunmore, Governor of the Bahamas, who appointed him an English agent, to establish on the Chattahouchie a commercial house, with the view of entering into competition with the celebrated one of Panton in Pensacola, which was under the patronage of the Spanish authorities. True to his mission, Bowles soon began to deal and intrigue among the Indians with his characteristic daring and address. counteracted the influence of Panton, he undermined the power of McGillivray, and gave great annoyance to the Georgians, who resorted, however, with their customary decision, to a summary mode of redress, and sent him word, on a certain day when they had lost patience, that, if he did not depart within twenty-four hours, they would cut off his ears. Not wishing to incur this penalty,

He