Jean Baptiste Le Moyne Bienville was a Canadian-born governor of French Louisiana. He was founder of New Orleans.
Background
Jean Bienville was born on February 23, 1680, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He was the eighth son of Charles le Moyne, Canadian pioneer, ennobled by the King in 1676 for his great services, and granted the seigneury of Longueuil. His mother was Catherine Tierry, called Primot from an adoptive father. Both parents dying while the boy was young, his elder brother Charles, Baron de Longueuil, gave him a father's care. When in 1691 his brother François, Sieur de Bienville, was killed in the Iroquois wars, the title was bestowed upon Jean.
Career
Jean longed to follow in his elder's footsteps, and at the age of twelve became gardemarine in the royal navy, and entered service on his brother's vessel. In the naval battles in the North Atlantic and Hudson Bay from 1695 to 1698 Bienville took his part, and was seriously wounded, September 5, 1697, while serving a battery on the frigate Pélican. King William's War having closed with the peace of Ryswick in 1697, the French government sent Iberville to re-discover the mouth of the Mississippi, attempted formerly by La Salle, and there to form a French colony. Bienville accompanied the expedition which left Brest on October 24, 1698, in two small vessels, and six weeks later landed on an island in the Gulf of Mexico, off what is now Biloxi.
He was very useful to the exploring party, because of his aptitude for learning Indian languages, and his ability in conciliating the tribesmen. Exploring a great stream near their landfall, he secured from a chief a letter, written some years before by Henry de Tonty, La Salle's faithful friend, which assured the adventurers that they had found the Mississippi. The first settlement was made on the coast at Old Biloxi, where Iberville, May 24, 1699, left his infant colony to the care of Sauvole, with Bienville second in command. Twice in 1699 the latter explored the lower reaches of the Mississippi, and in October boarded and ordered off a British vessel, which had come to found a colony, saying that this river was appropriated to Louis XIV. Early in 1700 the colony of Biloxi was cheered by the arrival of Tonty, who came from Illinois to cast in his lot with the Canadians on this southern shore. This same year, March to May, Bienville explored the Red River as far as Natchitoches, making alliances with the Indians of that region. In 1701 Sauvole died, leaving Bienville in command; Iberville, visiting his colony, brought his young brother a commission as king's lieutenant.
The next year Bienville determined to remove headquarters to a better site, and on Mobile Bay built Fort Louis, which was in 1710 removed to the present site of Mobile. He was much engaged in Indian negotiations, when Queen Anne's War made it necessary to carry help to the Spanish settlements in the Gulf of Mexico. From them he imported into his colony the dread scourge of yellow fever, from which Tonty died in 1704 and Iberville in 1706. After Iberville's death the colony declined, and Bienville had to contend with enemies within and without. Supporting the Jesuits, he was attacked by the Seminary priests and by Nicolas de la Salle, the commissary, who made such serious charges against him that a new governor was sent to replace him. This successor having died en route, Bienville remained in office and was later exonerated and restored. The colony, however, lacked workers and Bienville suggested that Indian prisoners brought by his allies be exchanged in the West Indies for negro slaves.
In 1712 the King granted Louisiana to a company founded by Antoine Crozat, who displaced Bienville as governor and sent Cadillac to supplant him. The former governor was left as second in command, during Cadillac's administration (1713 - 1716). He at first contemplated marrying a daughter of the new governor. The relations of the two officials soon became strained, however, and Bienville never married. In 1716 Cadillac sent him against the Natchez Indians, whom he reduced to obedience by stratagems of doubtful utility. When Cadillac was recalled, Bienville hoped to succeed him, but was disappointed, for Crozat sent another governor, who remained but a year, when Crozat's company was dissolved.
Louisiana in 1717 passed into the hands of the colonization company founded by the financier, John Law, and became the object of wild speculation. Law restored Bienville to the command of the province, and secured for him the cross of the Order of St. Louis. Large accessions of colonists now began to be poured into Louisiana. Bienville had to furnish provisions for all of these, and to aid in the settlement of the great concessions granted to noblemen by the company. He saw the importance of changing the colony's base to the Mississippi, and in 1718 had New Orleans laid out; it did not, however, become the capital until 1722. In 1719 when Spain and France went to war, Bienville twice captured Pensacola. Soon after this Law's "Mississippi bubble" burst and its promoter fled from France. The Company of the Indies, however, continued to govern Louisiana until 1731.
After removing his capital to New Orleans, Bienville promulgated the "Black Code, " a series of regulations for the negroes, for which he has been blamed by a more humane age. Louisiana's difficulties with the Natchez, with whom a second war was fought in 1723, and the lack of support by the Company brought ruin upon Bienville. In 1724 he was accused before the court; and the next year was summoned to France, with his brother and nephew. For the first time since its inception Louisiana was without any of the Le Moyne family. In Paris Bienville made a notable defense of his administration, and in a state paper of great force exposed the difficulties of the colonial life. Nevertheless he was degraded and deprived of all his offices. He dwelt quietly in Paris until 1732 when, Louisiana having been brought to the verge of ruin by the inadequacy of the governor and the rebellion of the Natchez, Bienville was implored to return.
Upon his arrival in 1733 as royal governor he was received "with a joy and satisfaction without parallel. " The final decade of his governorship was disturbed by Indian wars. The Natchez had fled to the Chickasaw, who refused to give them up, and went to the English to trade. In 1736 Bienville ordered an expedition against these Indians, the Illinois contingent of which was overwhelmed by the tribesmen, and its commander, chaplain, and twenty other Frenchmen were burned at the stake. Bienville, then advancing from Mobile, was forced to retreat. To avenge this catastrophe another expedition took place in 1739-1740, when a Canadian contingent met Bienville's near Memphis, and forced a peace, which in the end proved undecisive. Worn with these and other troubles, the governor asked for release from his heavy responsibilities. His request was granted, and on May 10, 1743, he left Louisiana never to return. His declining years were spent in Paris, where he lived on his pension and maintained his interest in his former colony.