ETIENNE PERIER
(Étienne Périer)
In 1729 the French colony of Louisiana was under attack by Indians resentful of the whites making plantations on their traditional land. The Governor armed 15 Negro slaves who were marvelous soldiers and were material in the defense of the colony—better than many of the whites. Ironically, the price of slaves was so high at the time otherwise the government would buy them for a professional militia. Later in Louisiana and throughs the South the intellectual box that the racism of Southern slavery produced would not allow the possibility that Negroes could be good soldiers, and even when the South was desperate for military manpower in the civil War, they would not accept a proposal from Robert E. Lee and others that slaves by armed and allowed to fight for the South in exchange for their freedom.
_0_thumbnail_400x500.webp "Etienne de Perier, governor of French Louisiana.")
Étienne de Perier was the fifth governor of the Louisiana colony. Born in 1687 in Dunkirk, he comes from the de Perier family. He became governor in 1727. His governorship was marked by the arrival of the first Ursuline nuns in New Orleans in 1727 to establish the first convent within the limits of what was to become the United States as well as a war against the Natchez Indians due to bad relations with the Sieur de Chépart, the commander at Fort Rosalie. After agitating the Indians by demanding that they give up either their village or their land, the Indians launched an attack on November 29, 1729, and killed nearly three hundred persons at Fort Rosalie. The French retaliated and by 1731 had killed or captured most of the Indians. The captured Indians were sent as slaves to Santo Domingo, and the few remaining free moved further westward and joined the Chickasaw Indians. This marked the end of the Natchez Indian nation. In the same year, the Company of the Indies petitioned the King of France to take back their charter, thus ending their control of the colony. Étienne de Perier remained governor for two years after Louisiana was returned to the Crown but became frustrated with deteriorating relations with the Chickasaws and lost interest in the colony. He resigned, and Jean-Baptiste le Moyne de Bienville was chosen to yet again serve as governor of the colony.
