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in 1742, a few families of resident herdsmen gained
permission of the natives to pasture their beeves on the fertile fields above
Blanche River.
That
Louisiana extended to the head-spring of the
Alleghany, and included the
Laurel Ridge, the Great Meadows, and every brook that flowed to the
Ohio, was, on the eve of the treaty of
Utrecht, expressly asserted in the royal grant of the commerce of the
province.
Weary of fruitless efforts, Louis XIV.
had assigned the exclusive trade of the unbounded territory to
Anthony Crozat, a French merchant, who had
‘prospered in opulence to the astonishment of all the editor, world.’
La Motte Cadillac, now the royal governor of
Louisiana, became his partner; and the merchant proprietary and the founder of
Detroit sought fortune by discovering mines and encroaching on the colonial monopolies of
Spain.
The latter attempt met with no success whatever.
Hardly had the officers of the new administration land-
ed at Dauphine Island, when a vessel was sent to
Vera Cruz; but it was not allowed to dispose of its cargo.
The deep colonial bigotry of
Spain was strengthened by the political jealousy which soon disturbed the relations between the governments at
Madrid and
Paris,—
while the
French occupation of
Louisiana was itself esteemed an encroachment on Spanish territory.
Every Spanish harbor in the
Gulf of Mexico was closed against the vessels of
Crozat.
It was next attempted to institute commercial relations by land.
Had they been favored, they could not then have succeeded.
But when St. Denys, after renewing intercourse with the Natchitoches, again ascended the
Red River, and found his way from one Spanish post to another, till he reached a fortress in
