Note III'-22 — Chapter III · ITINERARY, CONCLUDED: THROUGH TEXAS TO NATCHITOCHES ON THE RED RIVER OF LOUISIANA, JUNE 1ST-JULY 1ST, 1807.

Natchitoches, or some other form of this word, was originally the name of a certain tribe of Indians of the Southern Caddoan family, and of the island on which they dwelt in Red r., at the site of the town which later arose there and is still so called. We hear of these people and their place very early in French colonial history. In Sept., 1688, Henri de Tonti was visited at his Fort St. Louis on the Illinois, by Couture, one of his men whom he had left at Arkansas Post in 1686, who apprized him of La Salle's tragic death. He set off (he says, in Oct., 1689—probably a wrong date from memory) in Dec., 1688, descended the Illinois and Miss. rivers to Red r., and went up this, reaching the Natchitoches Feb. 17th and the Caddodaquis Mar. 28th, 1689: so Parkman's La Salle, etc., p. 439. He was told that some of the assassins or those in the plot to murder their leader were at a village of the Naouadiches, some 85 leagues S. W., whither he went, but found no trace of Hiens and his confederates. After much suffering, including an illness at his Arkansas Post, he regained Fort St. Louis Sept., 1689: Wallace, Hist. Ill. and La., 1893, p. 188 seq. According to this authority the present town dates from Jan., 1717, when Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, governor of Louisiana under Crozat, sent a sergeant and some soldiers to establish a post on the island, which was commanded ca. 1721-28 by Louis Juchereau de St. Denis (b. Quebec, Sept. 18th, 1676, d. post 1731). This notable character, uncle of D'Iberville's wife, Chevalier, etc., is the "Mons. St. Dennie" of Sibley's notice of the Natchitoches, p. 49, where it is said he was still in command after the Natchez massacre of 1728; "the Indians called him the Big Foot, were fond of him, for he was a brave man." According to Gayarré, Hist. La., II. p. 355, the foreign population of Natchitoches was 811 by a census made under Gov. O'Reilly, ca. 1769, or when the French had been in Louisiana 70 years. Sibley, writing at Natchitoches Apr. 5th, 1805, says that an elderly French gentleman then living had shortly before informed him that the informant remembered when the Natchitoches were 600 men strong: this should represent ca. 3,000 total souls.