Book Description

The publication of these final two volumes of the Mississippi Provincial Archives brings to a close the important scholarly project initiated by Dunbar Rowland and A. G. Sanders in the 1920s, suspended at the time of the Great Depression, and then revived in 1979 under the editorship of Patricia Kay Galloway. The Mississippi Provincial Archives assembles and translates the documents in French archives relating to military, diplomatic, colonial, and economic activities in the lower Mississippi Valley from the founding of the original settlement at Ocean Springs, or “Old Biloxy,” in 1699 through the abandonment of the French Louisiana colony in 1763 at the close of the French and Indian War with England. The two present volumes focus on the years 1744 through 1763, but also contain material supplemental to the earlier volumes concerning the Natchez War (1730), the first Chickasaw campaign (1736), the second Chickasaw campaign (1739–1740), and additional documents that chart the rise of the Choctaw chief Red Shoe. The twenty-year period chronicled in-depth in Volumes IV and V was a time of intense rivalry with the English for Choctaw trade and allegiance. The documents chronicle the events of King George’s War (1744–1748) and of the concurrent struggle for control within the Choctaw nation that began with the revolt of a large faction led by Red Shoe and expanded into a civil war after the chief’s death at the hands of pro-French Choctaws. The settlement of this conflict was soon followed by the outbreak of the French and Indian War (1756–1763), at the end of which the French were forced to give up their colony—but not before concluding diplomatic arrangements with the Indians that would plague the victorious English for years to come. Mississippi Provincial Archives provides an invaluable source for understanding the history of French and English relations with the Indian nations of the South. But these collections also document many other aspects of the social history of the French colony, including the activities of merchants and other entrepreneurs, the development of the lumber industry along the coast, military justice and the founding of military outposts in the interior, and the relationships between the military governors and their civilian counterparts. Extensively annotated, these two volumes complete—after a delay of more than fifty years—a work of great significance for the study of the French Louisiana colony.