II. ARKANSAS POST AND THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR

C. Captain Colbert Intervenes

4. The Spanish Counterattack

c) Colonel Cruzat Intimidates the Chickasaws

Colonel Cruzat at St. Louis had moved against Colbert’s band from upriver even before he learned of his wife’s adventures. Advised that disaffected persons were planning to intercept and capture Labadie’s bateau, Cruzat on June 2, 1782, sent Diego Blanco and 25 men to meet and escort the craft upstream. This was too late, as the boat had been captured on May 2. Three days later, on June 5, a party of Loups reached Ste. Geneviève from the Chickasaw Nation with word of the capture of Labadie’s and Lafon’s vessels.

Cruzat reacted by ordering Captain Dubreuil who had reached St. Louis with the supply boat, to Ste. Geneviève to take steps to recover the boats and rescue the crews and passengers. After questioning the Loups, Dubreuil dispatched Lt. Carlos Salles, eight militiamen, and some Indians (Loups, Peorias, and Kaskaskias) downriver. Reinforced by Lieutenant Blanco’s detachment, they descended the Mississippi to Chickasaw Bluffs. Here they landed, and a patrol found and fired Colbert’s deserted camp.

The whites then returned upstream to Ox Island, near the mouth of the Ohio River, while the Indians advanced southeast into the Chickasaw Country, determined to recover the prisoners. When at the end of the planned 25 days the Indians failed to arrive at the Ox Island rendezvous, the Spaniards returned to Ste. Geneviève, where Dubreuil reported to Colonel Cruzat. [78]

Colonel Cruzat meanwhile was endeavoring to detach the Chickasaws from their support of the rebels. He exerted pressure to get the Chickasaws to renew the alliance made with the Spanish the previous year. To do so, he made use of “all the strategems and subterfuges” he had learned in his negotiations with the redmen. He knew the Chickasaws were “always at war with all those that dwell on the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, especially with the Kickapoos and Mascutens, who are the ones most feared by the Chickasaws.” As soon as he learned of the capture of the boats, he

secretly and underhandedly raised a large party of Kickapoo and Mascuten Indians and excited them to war against the Chickasaws and rebels, telling them that the latter, who were in the Chickasaw Nation, had captured the Boats bringing the presents for all the Indians in this region and that it was necessary to avenge themselves of a robbery that had been done on themselves. A proposition of that nature, which I accompanied with a present in proportion to the end in view, inflamed them to such an extent that they left immediately to attack the Chickasaws and rebels fired with the desire for vengeance which they always breathe.[79]

When the Indians sent by Dubreuil returned to Ste. Geneviève from their patrol into the Chickasaw Nation on July 25, they brought with them six Spaniards. Three of the men were soldiers of the Arkansas Post garrison captured by Colbert’s people on the St. Francis River on January 11, another was the post baker captured on the same craft, the fifth was from Lafon’s bateau, and the sixth was one of the soldiers Colbert and his sons had made prisoner at Mobile on June 5, 1780.

The Indians reported that six Chickasaw chiefs and 35 warriors, whom they had seen, “promised in the name of Panimatajá not to try to help the rebels and pirates, but to try to expel the bandits from their territory.” They wished Cruzat “to intervene with force and energy . . . to pacify the Indians of the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, who seem to want war,” and to put a stop to the hostilities being committed against their villages.

Writing Acting-Governor Miró on August 8, 1782, Colonel Cruzat proudly commented on the successful manner in which he had employed the big stick:

The end at which I aimed in intimidating the Chickasaws being obtained, I told them that all the Nations they had mentioned, seeing that on their lands and in their very sight, they had allowed aband of rascal brigands to capture the Boat in which came all the presents for them, had been so enraged against the rebels and the Chickasaws that had I not detained several large parties, multitudes of Indians would already have made forays against their Towns and put all to fire and Blood. But if they promised to do what I asked of them I would also work actively to obtain for them the peace they desired, and that I was sure I could secure it because all the Nations whose valor they feared obeyed what I ordered and Followed my desires, and in proof of this I promised to rescue the Chickasaws who were Prisoners in the Kickapoo and Mascuten Nations if they wanted to return to their Nation, provided the Chickasaws would do their part. I do not know how to express to Your Lordship the Satisfaction my reply gave them, the thanks they gave me, and the happiness they showed at knowing that the said Indians would be restored to their homes. [80]

Colonel Cruzat’s use of threats was rewarded by a promise on the part of some of the Chickasaw leaders to expel the “bandits” from their nation and “to clear the banks of the Mississippi of all malefactors . . . to show that the English no longer had their friendship, and to make evident their sincere affection for the Spaniards.” They were assured by Cruzat that if they lived up to their promises, Spain would be “reciprocal and generous.” He gave the Chickasaws a present “in keeping with the . . . circumstances and the imperious necessity . . . of keeping that Nation devoted by every means possible in order to reduce the rebels and Pirates” who dwelled there.[81]