The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 1, July 1897 - April, 1898 Page: 281
334 p. : ill., ports., maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The Real Saint-Denis.
BROWN.
St. Denis hastily sent messen-
gers to his friendly Indians, and
with twenty men from the fort at
once made a furious attack upon
the Natchez. At the first on-
slaught all his men but eightwere
killed. For two hours he fought
against desperate odds, hoping
that reinforcements would arrive.
"He was seen," says an historian
of the time, "springing like a lion
among the crowd of warriors,
forcing them back. He looked
like an angel of vengeance ac-
complishing his work of destruc-
tion, invincible himself in the
terrible fray. He fell at last hit
by three bullets in his head and
two arrows in his breast." There
were but two survivors. The
Natchez ceased firing and retir-
ed. tDUMONT.
They [the friendly Natch-
itoches who came to aid St.
Denis] reached the fort, and
were brought in by night, and
the commandant [Saint-Denis]
having armed them, sallied out
at the head of his troops the next
morning at daybreak, entered the
Natchez intrenchment and fell
upon them sword in hand. Many
were killed; the rest awakened by
the noise, fled, but were pursued
with muskets, and after killing
about sixty of the savages, the
commandant returned to his fort
in triumph, without having had
a single man wounded, giving
the survivors liberty to return to
their village and tell what recep-
tion they got at Natchitoches.** History of Louisiana, translated from the Historical Memoirs of M.
Dumont, in B. F. French's Historical Collections of Louisiana, vol. V,
pp. 97, 98.
f John Henry Brown, History of Texas, vol. I, pp. 18, 19. Who was
the "historian of the time" referred to by Brown? Certainly it was not
one of the contemporary writers whose journals have been published in
French's Historical Collections of Louisiana, or in Margry's D6couvertes
et 6tablissements. Le Page du Pratz gives substantially the same ver-
sion as Dumont. Bancroft, who was familiar with the Spanish sources,
evidently knew nothing of the version given by Brown, or else regarded
it as untrue. It is not found in Gayarr6 or Yoakum. Rev. Edmond J.
P. Schmitt (Who was Juchereau de Saint Denis? the Quarterly, Jan-
uary, 1898, p. 206) calls attention to this error of Brown's, and mentions
a letter that was written by Saint-Denis in 1735, some six years after
the above described attack on Natchitoches.281
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Texas State Historical Association. The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 1, July 1897 - April, 1898, periodical, 1897/1898; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101009/m1/307/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.