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( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
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Athanase Y Clugny De Mezieres was born about 1715 in Paris, France. He was the son of Louis Christophe de Mezieres and Marie Antoinette Clugny. This was a distinguished family. One of his sisters, the Marchioness de Montessons, married the Duke of Orleans; two uncles were generals in the French army; a cousin, Minard de Clugny, was minister of state; a nephew, the Marquis de Genlis, was inspector of infantry; a niece was lady-inwaiting to the Duchess of Chartres.
De Mezieres came to Louisiana about 1733. Ten years later he was a soldier at Natchitoches, where most of his career was spent thereafter.
He rose through the ranks of ensign, lieutenant, and captain to that of lieutenant-colonel.
In 1756 he was appointed by Governor Kerlerec on a commission to determine the Texas-Louisiana boundary at the Gulf of Mexico.
Besides being a soldier he was a trader and a planter. He was prosperous, and in 1766 he possessed thirty-five slaves and ten thousand pounds of tobacco.
When Louisiana was transferred to Spain he entered the Spanish service, and for ten years he was ruler of Red River Valley.
The governor of Texas declared that he had “such knowledge of these provinces of Texas and Louisiana as is possessed by no one else, and likewise of the tribes which surround them. ” This reputation he sustained until his death.
His most signal service was to supervise the Indian trade, and to win to Spanish allegiance the tribes of Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.
To install the new system he held an assembly of chiefs at Natchitoches (April 21, 1770). He issued licenses to traders, cut off illicit traffic, and induced the Indians to deliver up vagabonds or intruding Englishmen.
To hold conferences with distant tribes he made extensive explorations, and his well-written diaries and reports give us our first definite information regarding a large part of northern Texas.
In 1770 he went to Cadodachos and held a council with several tribes, making eloquent speeches. The fruit of this meeting was a treaty made at Natchitoches in 1771.
In the next year he made a long tour to the northwest, visiting Quitseis, Yscanes, Tawakoni, and Wichita villages on the Trinity and Brazos rivers, and conducting seventy chiefs and headmen to San Antonio to see the governor of Texas.
On this expedition he had spent eighty-seven days. His report of the journey is a classic. By his persistent efforts of three years having won to Spanish allegiance the “Nations of the North, ” he now went to France and Spain, “to recuperate his health and settle various matters of private business which he had pending in those realms. ”
While abroad he was promoted by the King of Spain to the rank of lieutenant-colonel (November 8, 1772), and was made a knight of the Order of St. Louis.
Back at Natchitoches, he devoted the next five years to extending trade and influence among the new allies.
By his energetic fostering of the Louisiana trade he aroused opposition from ambitious San Antonio merchants, but he was vigorously defended by the Baron de Ripperda, governor of Texas. The reorganization of the northern provinces of New Spain by Teodoro de Croix after 1776 brought De Mezieres and his work into greater prominence. Croix made a tour of the frontier, and held councils at Monclova and San Antonio. After long deliberations it was decided to cement the alliance with the Nations of the North and lead them in a grand campaign against the Apaches, farther West. The advice of De Mezieres was needed and he was called to San Antonio.
The plan which he presented there is a most illuminating document. While Croix and others were considering the proposals, De Mezieres made a tour up the Brazos, and to the Taovayas on Red River (1778).
On the way he wrote sixteen reports which constitute another historical treasure. At the end of this tour he returned to Natchitoches, but in further preparation for the great war, at the request of Croix he was permanently released from his Louisiana post.
On his way to San Antonio he made still another tour among the northern tribes (1779). While en route he received from the King of Spain a letter of thanks for his distinguished services.
In September he reported at San Antonio for duty, only to be told, a few days later, that he had been appointed governor of Texas in the place of Cabello.
He never entered upon his new office, however, for he died on November 2 from the effects of an accident during his last journey. He was buried at the parish church, now the Cathedral of San Fernando, in San Antonio, where his remains still rest.
De Mezieres was cultured and versatile. He wrote letters in French, Spanish, and Latin, and we are told that he was a mathematician of ability.
In his day he was a prominent figure on the frontier, and with propriety he can be compared with his contemporaries, Juan Bautista de Anza, Bernardo de Galvez, and George Rogers Clark.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
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On April 18, 1746 Mezieres married Marie Petronille Feliciane de St. Denis, daughter of the famous Luis Juchereau de St. Denis. She died in 1748 and some time later he married Dame Pelagie Fazende.
