“We Should Be Obligated to Destroy Them”: Changing Intercultural Diplomacy of the Lower Mississippi Valley, 1699–1775

In April of 1730, the French Governor of Louisiana, Etienne Perrier, considered plans to exterminate the Bayagoula, Acolapissa, and Houma Indian nations. At least formally, these little polities, or “petites nations” as the French called them, were allies of the Louisiana colony. The Bayagoulas, Acolapissas, and Houmas resided in small communities just outside of New Orleans and provided the colonists with crucial food, firewood, and bear grease. Yet despite these trade connections, Perrier was wary of these nations’ close proximity. He knew that Indian polities in this region sometimes attacked their neighbors when inter-tribal relations soured, and just the previous November Natchez Indians had massacred 300 French settlers at Pointe Coupee. Thus to prevent more French bloodshed, Perrier reasoned that be might be “obligated to destroy” these adjacent Indian peoples.

If Perrier’s extermination tactics seem unusually brutal, they were certainly not atypical of contemporary inter-ethnic relationships in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Although scholars have largely avoided critically examining these early bloody exchanges, with the notable exception of the Natchez Massacre, my work suggests that the key to understanding these interactions is to evaluate them these within the context of contemporary Indigenous conflicts, diplomacy, and economic exchanges. My paper relies on an ethnohistorical methodology and focuses on the experiences of the petites nations that lived in the contested lands between Chickasaw, Choctaw and European territories. To protect their communities from eastern slave traders, these polities forged numerous ties to their Indian and European neighbors and thus provide ideal examples of Lower Mississippi Valley diplomacy. This paper analyzes these evolving relationships and conflicts. Although the Southeastern Indian captive trade began to diminish by the 1720s, my paper shows how the regional destabilization brought by this captive exchange critically shaped the interactions of both Europeans and Indians throughout the eighteenth century.