Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz (1695?-1775)[1] was an ethnographer, historian, and naturalist who is best known for his Histoire de la Louisiane. It was first published in installments from 1751-1753 in the Journal Economique, then completely in three volumes in Paris in 1758. After their victory in the Seven Years' War, the English published it in translation in 1763. The memoir was based on Le Page's years in Louisiana from 1718 to 1734, when he learned the Natchez language and befriended native leaders. It included an account by Moncacht-apé, a Yazoo explorer who had completed travel to the Pacific Coast and back, a century before the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He had learned of oral traditions of a land bridge to Asia, by which the Native Americans had come to North America.
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Le Page Du Pratz was born either in the Netherlands or France, and was raised in the latter country. Serving with Louis XIV’s dragoons in the French Army, he saw service in Germany in 1713 during the War of the Spanish Succession.
On May 25, 1718, he left La Rochelle, France, with 800 men on one of three ships bound for Louisiana. He arrived on August 25, 1718. Le Page lived in Louisiana from 1718 to 1734, and from 1720 to 1728 at Natchez, Mississippi. His companion was a Chitimacha woman (and likely had children with her), learned the Natchez language, and befriended local native leaders.
When he finally wrote his memoir, Le Page directly used the words of many of his Native informants, rather than describing the "manners and customs of the Indians" in the detached fashion of so many colonial authors. Because of his own interest in the origins of Native Americas, Le Page was especially attentive to the account by the Yazoo explorer Moncacht-apé. He had traveled to the Pacific coast and back, a century before the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Le Page devoted three entire chapters to the Yazoo man's account of his travels. Moncacht-apé was curious about the origins of his people and traveled to learn more. When he reached the Pacific Coast, Moncacht-apé heard Native accounts with references to an ancient land bridge from Asia.[2]
Le Page lived at Natchez from 1720 to 1728 under the colonization scheme organized by John Law and the Company of the West. His familiarity with the local Natchez, and knowledge of their language and customs, is the basis for some of the unique aspects of his writings. Because he returned to New Orleans to take an appointment as manager of the Company's plantation, he avoided being killed in the so-called Natchez Rebellion or Natchez Massacre of 1729. Tensions and retaliatory attacks had escalated as settlers encroached on Indian territory.
During the uprising by the Natchez, Chickasaw and Yazoo, which Le Page described in detail, the Natives destroyed the Fort Rosalie and killed nearly all of the male French colonists there. The Native Americans did not kill enslaved Africans or French women.[3] After the massacre, the French king ended the concession of the Company of the West and seized control of the plantation which Le Page was managing. French troops put down the Natchez Rebellion by 1731. They sold several hundred captive Indians into slavery and transported them to Saint-Domingue in the Caribbean.[4]
Le Page du Pratz waited more than fifteen years after his return to France before he wrote and published his memoir of Louisiana. The Memoire sur la Louisiane was published by installments between September 1751 and February 1753 in the Journal Oeconomique (Economic Journal), a Paris periodical devoted to scientific and commercial topics, . In 1758 the three octavo volumes of the Histoire de la Louisiane were published. Part of the book was devoted to ethnographic descriptions of the Native peoples of Louisiana, particularly the Natchez. Other sections described the history of the colony, from the Spanish and French explorers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through establishment of the French settlements along the Mississippi.[5]
In 1763 after the British had defeated France in the Seven Years' War, an English translation of part of Le Page du Pratz's work was published in London. The publishers changed the title, releasing it as The History of Louisiana, or of the Western Parts of Virginia and Carolina. This effectively put the former French colony under its English neighbors to the east. The preface asserted that the English "nation may now reap some advantages from those countries...by learning from the experience of others, what they do or are likely to produce, that may turn to account." [5] The Lewis and Clark Expedition believed Le Page's work important enough to include among the guides which they took on their long journey.[6]
Shannon Lee Dawdy, Enlightenment from the Ground: Le Page du Pratz's Histoire de la Louisiane. French Colonial History - Volume 3, 2003, pp. 17–34