Andre Penicaut, a carpenter, sailed with Iberville to the French province of Louisiana in 1699 and did not return to France until 1721. The book he began in the province and finished upon his return to France is an eyewitness account of the first years of the French colony, which stretched along the Gulf Coast from Florida to Texas and in the Mississippi Valley from the Balize to the Illinois country. As a ship carpenter, Penicaut was chosen as a member of several important expeditions: he accompanied Le Sueur up the Mississippi River in 1700 to present-day Minnesota, and he went with Juchereau de St. Denis on the first journey from Mobile to the Red River and overland to the Rio Grande, to open trade with the Spaniards in Mexico. Penicaut helped to build the first post in Louisiana, at Old Biloxi, and the second post on the Mobile River. Penicaut was at his best when describing the lives and social customs of the Indians of the region. He saw them in realistic terms, showing no prejudice toward their native habits. Neither were his French colleagues cast in heroic or villainous molds—though their accomplishments must strike modern readers as truly epic. When first published, Fleur de Lys and Calumet was a major stimulus to scholarship in the field. This new edition will be welcomed by a new generation of scholars and readers interested in the colonial history of the Deep South and the Mississippi Valley.

Eyewitness accounts intended to introduce readers to a wide variety of primary literary sources for studying the Old South.

"Despite increased research interest in the interaction of native North American peoples and Europeans, little attention has been directed toward Indian-French interactions--even though for more than a century the French controlled an area of the interior more than twice the size of the combined North American territories of Britain and Spain." "Calumet and Fleur-de-Lys focuses on historic Native American sites and archaeological evidence of native interaction with the French from the landing of Jean Nicollet in Green Bay in 1634 to the surrender of French America to the British in 1765. It integrates, for the first time, historical documents of the French politicians, explorers, priests, and traders with the archaeological record of numerous midcontinental native and French colonial sites. The essays cover the full range of French America--from the mouth of the Mississippi to the Great Lakes region--and examine topics as diverse as the protohistoric native cultures of the Midwest, French traders among the Sioux of northern Minnesota, Indian-French military relations in Louisiana and on the Wabash, the Indian deerskin trade of the Southeast, Huron refugees in Michigan, and Illini hunting camps and villages in Illinois." "Most previous research into French America, including Francis Parkman's classic histories, has centered on "great men"--LaSalle, Marquette, Joliet, and Nicollet. Calumet and Fleur-de-Lys demonstrates the potential of the archaeological record to expand the history of native cultures and Indian-French relations in the contact era."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

"The author contends that each of the three groups involved - the first people, the invading people, and the enslaved people - possessed a particular worldview that they had to adapt to each other to face the challenges brought about by contact."--BOOK JACKET.

Colonial Mississippi: A Borrowed Land offers the first composite of histories from the entire colonial period in the land now called Mississippi. Christian Pinnen and Charles Weeks reveal stories spanning over three hundred years and featuring a diverse array of individuals and peoples from America, Europe, and Africa. The authors focus on the encounters among these peoples, good and bad, and the lasting impacts on the region. The eighteenth century receives much-deserved attention from Pinnen and Weeks as they focus on the trials and tribulations of Mississippi as a colony, especially along the Gulf Coast and in the Natchez country. The authors tell the story of a land borrowed from its original inhabitants and never returned. They make clear how a remarkable diversity characterized the state throughout its early history. Early encounters and initial contacts involved primarily Native Americans and Spaniards in the first half of the sixteenth century following the expeditions of Columbus and others to the large region of the Gulf of Mexico. More sustained interaction began with the arrival of the French to the region and the establishment of a French post on Biloxi Bay at the end of the seventeenth century. Such exchanges continued through the eighteenth century with the British, and then again the Spanish until the creation of the territory of Mississippi in 1798 and then two states, Mississippi in 1817 and Alabama in 1819. Though readers may know the bare bones of this history, the dates, and names, this is the first book to reveal the complexity of the story in full, to dig deep into a varied and complicated tale.