University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.

Latour.

DECISION OF THE COUNCIL—ITS RECEPTION BY LAFITTE—HIS
DESTINATION—A STORM.

The decision of the council, convened by the Governor
of Louisiana, in the executive department of
the government house the following morning, for
the purpose of laying before it the letters of the
British officers, and consulting with them respecting
the offers of the outlaw, is recorded in the history
of that period.

After communicating the information contained
in the letters, and stating the manner in which they
had fallen into his hands, and his reasons for believing
them genuine, the governor submitted for their
consideration, two questions.

“Is it your opinion, gentlemen, that these letters
are genuine? and—is it proper, as governor of this
state, that I should hold intercourse, or enter into
any official correspondence with the Barritarian outlaw
and his associates?”

After a warm discussion, an answer was returned

in the negative, and with but one exception, unanimously.

Major General Villeré stood alone in the affirmative.

This gentleman, as well as Governor Claiborne,
who, president of the council, was disqualified from
giving his opinion, was not only convinced of the
authenticity of the papers brought by Lafitte, but believed
he and his adherents might be so employed
at the present crisis, as greatly to contribute to the
safety of the state, and the annoyance of the enemy.

With this impolitic decision, which time showed
to be unjust and premature, the council broke up.
So far indeed, were they from placing confidence
in Lafitte, that they suggested to a naval officer
forming one of the council, whom we have before
introduced to the reader, who had been for several
days fitting out a flotilla destined for the island
of Barritaria—a descent upon which, having been
some months in contemplation—the propriety of
hastening his preparations for the expedition.

Proceeding from the council chamber to his vessel,
the commodore found he could immediately get
under weigh. The same evening, therefore, taking
with him a detachment of infantry, he gave the signal
for sailing, and moved down the river towards
the destined point of attack.

About noon, the Barritarian chief, ignorant of the
proceedings in which he was so deeply interested,
sent Théodore to the city, for the purpose of receiving
the reply of the governor.

“Well, Théodore, what news?” inquired he,
standing in the door of one of the rude fishermen's
huts, as the boat, which had conveyed the youth, appeared
in sight from the concealment of the narrow
banks of the creek, lined with tall grass and cypresses
which, stretching across from either side nearly
met over the water;“Saw you the governor?”

“I did, monsieur, and a gentleman of noble presence
he is,” replied Théodore with animation; “he
spoke of you in such terms, that I could not but
like him.”

“But what said he?” interrogated the chief anxiously,
springing into the barge by the side of the
youth, “Heard you the decision of the council?”

“Here is a note for you, which he gave me.”

He seized it and read hurriedly—

“M. Lafitte must regret equally with myself, the
decision of the council. It is against your sincerity
and the genuineness of the letters. General Villeré
alone, was of my opinion, of which you are already
informed. Be patient, dear sir—take no rash steps.
I have unlimited confidence in you. I will consult
with the commanding general at the earliest convenience—remain
firm, and your wishes may yet
be achieved. You could not have shown your sincerity
better, than in apprehending the slave last
night. This seal of good faith shall be remembered,
and will materially advance your suit.”

“Is this the way my proffers are received?” said
Lafitte fiercely, with a deep execration, crushing the
note in his clenched hand, while his face grew livid
with passion and disappointment; “Is it thus I am
treated—my feelings trifled with—my word doubted—myself
scorned—despised! If they will not
have my aid, their invaders shall,” he shouted. “To
your oars, men—to your oars!” he said, turning to
his boat's crew. “We must see Barritaria to-night
—I have work for all of you.”

“And for me too, ugh?” said inquiringly, a tall, gray-headed
and dark-visaged Indian, arrayed in loose fisherman's
trowsers, his head and neck passed through
the aperture of a gaily-dyed Spanish ponto, coming

forth from the hut, and standing as he spoke, supported
by a boat-hook, on the verge of the bank.

“Yes, Chitalusa, but not with me. You are
better here. I will soon find you other fish to
catch. Mark me Chitalusa,” said the pirate, hoarsely,
in the ear of the Indian—“before New-Year's
eve, you will find a red snake, with scales of steel,
and more dangerous than the green serpent of your
tribe, with ten thousand human feet beneath his
belly, winding up this bayou, past your hut.”

“Ugh! me un'stan',” said the Indian, his eyes
sparkling with pleasure, but whether malignant, or
a mere expression of delight, it was difficult to determine.

“Then wait here, under cover, till you see it, and
I will then find work for you, chief,” said Lafitte,
springing into the boat and seating himself in silence.

As the men plied their oars, and moved swiftly
down the bayou, the Indian, who was the last of
his name and race—with whom would expire the
proud appellation, centuries before recognised among
other tribes, as the synonyme for intelligence, civilization,
and courage—The Natchez! The injured,
persecuted, slaughtered, and unavenged Natchez—the
Grecians of the aboriginal nations of North
America! The eloquent language of a native poet,
with truth and feeling, might have flowed from the
lips of the old exile—exile, on the very lands over
which his fathers reigned kings—now doomed to
seek a precarious existence, among the Spanish
fishermen of the lakes, wilder, ruder even than himself:

As the boat receded, he muttered, “Ugh! de
snake! Chitalusa know! me know to much.—
Him tink Indian bad as him. Me let he see me no
bad. Me let no red snake—Inglish snake, ugh!
come here! Me no will.”

At once a new thought flashed upon his mind,
and entering his hut, he armed himself with a rifle,
took his paddle from its beckets over the door,
launched his canoe, and jumping into it, paddled
rapidly in the direction opposite to that taken by
Lafitte, and towards the artificial outlet of the bayou,
into the Mississippi.

For several hours, the oarsmen rowed with that
heavy, regular movement of the sweeps, which is almost
mechanical to the thorough bred seamen.
No sound but the regular dipping of the four oars
and the low rattling as they played in the row-locks,
the occasional splash of an alligator, as he
sought concealment beneath the surface of the water,
or the heavy flapping of the wings, and shrill
cry, of some disturbed heron or other water bird,
broke the silence of the wild region through which
they moved. The barge all at once emerged from
the narrow and gloomy pass which it had been
threading during the afternoon, into a broader sheet
of water, and at the same moment, the setting sun
shone bright upon the summit of “The Temple,”
which stood on an angle at the intersection of three
bayous, two of which led by various routes into the
bay of Barritaria; the third, was that which they
had just descended.

Lafitte sat in the stern of the boat, with his
arms folded and his head dropped despondingly upon
his breast, an attitude he insensibly fell into
after the first burst of passion, elicited by the result
of his application, had passed away.

His better resolves held again their influence
over him; his anger and resentment, by degrees

subsided, and he had come to the determination to
exile himself, disband his followers, and depart
for ever from that country he was thought too base
to serve.

“I have won the confidence, and I believe the
respect, of one honourable man. This, at least,
will I endeavour to retain,” he said, abruptly addressing
Théodore. “He has said he will counsel with
the general in chief. I place my cause, then, in
the hands of a brave man. Suppose I see him myself?
Ha! that will do—I will! England,” he
cried, with energy, “thou hast not made me a renegade
yet! nor,” he added mentally, “will you,
Constanza, find me recreant to my pledged faith.
I will not let the prejudiced decisions of a few men,
thus turn me from the straight-forward path I have
chosen. Impulsive they call me.—Well, impulse
shall be bridled, and I will henceforward lead her
—not she, me.”

“Ship your oars, men!” he added aloud, as they
came to a little inlet, at the foot of a mound, just
large enough to contain the boat.

“The dripping oars rose simultaneously into the
air, and were then laid lengthways upon the thwarts.
Cudjoe sprang out, as the bows touched the bank,
and secured the boat to a tree. Lafitte, warning
his men not to go far away, accompanied by
Théodore, stepped on shore, and ascended one of
those mounds of shells thrown up by the Indians,
long before the earliest era of American history,
filled with human bones, and evidently designed,
either as religious, or funereal monuments. From
the prevalence of the former opinion, this congregation
of mounds where our party stopped, has
been denominated “The Temple.” On the highest
of them, according to the tradition of the country,
the idolatrous worshippers preserved burning, a
perpetual fire. Some attempts at one period, had

been made to fortify it, traces of which still existed.

“If I was superstitious,” said Théodore, as,
emerging from the trees near the margin of the bayou,
they came in full view of the largest mound,
“I should believe that the sun—which it is said the
Indians worshipped—in reproof of our unbelief of his
divinity, and detestation to the truth of their religion,
has kindled a flame upon the summit of the Temple.”

Lafitte looked up, and saw that an appearance
like fire rested upon its top—the reflection of a lingering,
light red sunbeam shot from the lurid sun,
then angrily disappearing in the west.

“There is poetry, if not truth, in your language,
Théodore!” replied the chief, his spirit soothed by
the mild influence of the hour. “How beautiful
the theory of their religion! Worshippers of that
element, which is the purifier of all things! Next
to the invisible God—whom they knew not—in
their child-like ignorance, and with the touching
poetry, which seems to have been the soul of the
simple Indian's nature, they sought out that, alone,
of all His works, which most gloriously manifested
Himself to his created intelligences. They bowed
their faces to the earth, at his rising and setting,
and worshipped the bright sun, as their Creator,
Preserver, and God! Author of light and heat, of
time and seasons—visible, yet unapproachable!—
What more appropriate object could they have chosen
as the corner stone upon which to raise a superstructure
of natural religion? For it is our nature,
Théodore, to be religious! All men, and all
races of men, have always been worshippers, either
of truth or falsehood! Does not this choice alone
prove, that, if heathens, they approached nearer to
true religion, in their worship, than all other nations
ignorant of divine revelation? Does it not show
the dignity and refinement of the Indian's mind—

the poetry of his heart—the purity of his imagination?
On their altars burned a perpetual fire!
What a beautiful representation of their divinity!
How infinitely is this pure emblem above the stocks
and stones of the civilized idolaters of old Greece
and Rome! How etherial and elevated the conceptions
of such a people! Yet we call them barbarians—savages—brutes!
If they are brutes, we
have made them so. The vices of the Europeans,
like a moral leprosy, have diseased their minds, and
blackened their hearts! If they are degraded, we
have debased them! If they are polluted, we have
laid our hand upon them!—Ha!” he said quickly,
“yonder sun-beam glows on that bush like fire. It
is a flame, indeed! Your idea, my Théodore, was
very beautiful! But were it not better and more
in unison with our fortunes, my boy! to regard it
as a beacon, lighting us to fame; a bright omen of
good!—Go up the mound, and see if you can discover
any thing moving in either bayou. I shall
give the men an hour's rest, and then start again.”

He stopped on a small mound they had just ascended,
and leaning against a cypress tree, crowning
its summit, he soon became wrapped in reflections
upon the presented crisis of his life and the probable
issue of his plans.

Presently, his eye was arrested by a white object,
dimly seen in the twilight, rolling along on the
ground near his feet. It was round, and at every
turn displayed the eyeless sockets and hideous grin
of a skull. He gazed upon it with surprise, but did
not move; and a fascination seemed to chain him to
the spot, and fasten his eyes upon the loathsome
object.

It came nearer and nearer, and now struck with
a hollow sound against his foot. He was about to
spring from the fearful contact, when the head and
claws of a crab were protruded from the cavities, as

if to ascertain and remove the obstacle to its advancement.

With a smile of derision at this humiliation of
his species, as he discovered the cause of this
strange locomotion, he raised the skull with its
inmate, and gazed on it for a moment, with a lip, in
which bitterness was mingled with contempt.

“And this is MAN! the image of God! the tenement
of immortal mind! Poor crab, thou knowest
not what kingly throne thou hast usurped! Well,
why not a crab as well as brain! The skull can walk
the earth full as well, and to as good a purpose!
And is this our end!” he added, “to become thus
at last!—a habitation for reptiles! And shall I too
come to this? Shall this head, which now throbs
with life,” and he raised his hand to his temples,
“which can think—plan—originate—at last be no
more than this?—so helpless as to be borne about
by such a creeping thing! Where is that conscious
something, which once supplied this crab's place?
Who has displaced it? Death! Death? and what
is death?—Methinks it were better to be like this
glaring ball, than to be as I am! Here,” he continued
placing his hand upon it, “here is no sense
of passing events; of joy or suffering; of treachery
or friendship; of despair or ambition; of praise or
insult. See—I can place my foot upon it, and it
rises not against me to avenge the insult! Happy,
happy nothingness! But is it nothingness? Although
the mind lives not in this glaring shell, which, without
tongue, discourses most eloquently to the living
—may it not exist somewhere? Here I see it not!
It is perceptible to no sense! Yet reason—hope—
fear, tell me it is not extinct. Heaven never made
man for such an end as this! There must be
deeper purpose than we can fathom—a cause remoter
than we can reach, why we were made!
Eternity! eternity!—thou art no bug-bear to frighten

children with. I feel—would to God I felt it not!
that thou art a stern and fearful reality.

“Well, my boy, saw you aught?” he inquired
hastily, resuming his usual tone and manner as the
youth appeared.

“No, Monsieur—the night thickens so fast, that
it is impossible to see far down the bayous—I think
we shall have a storm.”

“There is no doubt of it, if the heavens speak
truly,” said Lafitte, gazing upon masses of black
clouds drifting low above their heads, increasing in
density and blackness every moment, and gathering
to a head with that rapidity, characteristic of storms
in that climate.

“Théodore, tell the men to spread the tarpaulin
over the boat for a shelter from the rain.”

The youth communicated the order, and was returning,
when a flash of lightning, accompanied by
a peal of thunder, loud and abrupt, like the near
explosion of artillery, gleamed like flame through the
woods, and rove to the roots the cypress against
which the chief leaned, with the skull still extended
in his hand, upon which—resuming his reflections as
the youth left him to execute his order, he still
mused—and laid him prostrate and as senseless as
the shell he held, upon the ground. With an exclamation
of surprise and terror, Théodore sprung
forward, and kneeling by his side, called loudly upon
the crew to aid in resuscitating him. They bore
him to the boat, and the youth, at the moment recollecting
the hut of a fisherman, situated about a
mile below the Temple, ordered the men to resume
their oars and pull to that place.