II. ARKANSAS POST AND THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR

C. Captain Colbert Intervenes

4. The Spanish Counterattack

d) Lieutenant de Villars Sends a Patrol to Chickasaw Bluffs

Lieutenant de Villars, on taking command at Arkansas Post, had also moved against Colbert’s band. A Quapaw war party was sent to Chickasaw Bluffs and found on the riverbank eight casks of rum.[82]

e) Governor Gálvez Releases the Natchez Rebels

The activities of Captain Colbert and his partisans brought down on the Natchez prisoners harsher treatment rather than their release. Heretofore they had been treated leniently, being permitted to live in more comfortable quarters than those provided in the New Orleans calabozo.[83]

Captain Blommart’s daughter, learning of the proposal to send the prisoners to Cuba or Mexico, petitioned Acting-Governor Miró:

... in the hour of taking leave perhaps forever, of my fond, tender and affectionate Father, The unfortunate Mr. Blomart--I dare not (however much I wish it) petition for Pardon, but let me at least intercede with Your Excellency for Your Compassion in so far as to Order his Irons to be taken off. This will be an act of great pity, and give much Relief and Ease to him, and my consolation will be extreme.

If Miró replied, his answer has been lost. The Spaniards soon changed their plans, however, and determined that the situation no longer required the transfer of the prisoners. They were retained in New Orleans until April l783.[84]

By January 1783, when Spain, Great Britain, and France agreed on preliminary articles for a treaty concluding the war, the imprisonment of the leaders of the Natchez rebellion had acquired a different prospective. The Consejo de Indias had already sanctioned Gálvez’s policy, whereby he had refrained from inflicting the death penalty, the usual punishment for treason.[85]

The arrival in April in Jamaica of Prince William, Duke of Lancaster, offered Governor Gálvez another opportunity to demonstrate his leniency. Writing Prince William on the 6th, he reported that imprisoned at New Orleans were the leader of the Natchez uprising and some of his accomplices, “who, having broken their word and their oath of fealty, are condemned to death by a council of war on the basis of just and equitable laws; the execution of the sentence waits only the approval that I am empowered to give.”

Would Prince William, he inquired, “accept the thanks and the lives of these men?” If so, Governor Gálvez was prepared to hand them “over at once to whatever vessel your highness may send to Louisiana.”[86]

Prince William was delighted with Governor Gálvez’s gesture, which he described as “truly characteristic of such a Brave and Gallant Nation as the Spanish.” A ship would be dispatched “to Louisiana to fetch the prisoners, who I trust will ever remember with gratitude your clemency.”[87]

The day before he made his gesture, Governor Gálvez had forwarded orders to New Orleans to release the Natchez prisoners “on the single condition that under no excuse shall they return to the territory of that colony.” On April 28 the six prisoners (Blommart, Winfree, Eason, Alston, Williams, and Benjamin) signed a parole not to leave New Orleans until authorized by the governor. Colonel Miró then gave them liberty of the city. A British ship soon arrived to carry them to Jamaica, and the incident was closed except for approval by the Spanish court of the release and the way it was effected.[88]