That Geoffrey Benteen witnessed the tragic ending of this strange
people I no longer question; for I have compared his narrative with all
we moderns have learned regarding them, as recorded in the pages of
Parkman, Charlevoix, Du Pratz, and Duponceau, discovering nothing to
awaken the slightest suspicion that he dealt with other than what he
saw. More, I have traced with exactitude the route these fugitives
followed in their flight northward, and, although the features of the
country are greatly altered by settlements of nearly two hundred years,
one may easily discern evidence of this man's honesty. For me it is
enough to feel that I have stood beside the massive tomb of this
mysterious people--a people once opulent and powerful, the warriors of
forgotten battle-fields, the builders of lost civilizations, the
masters of that imperial domain stretching from the Red River of the
North to the sea-coast of the Carolinas; a people swept backward as by
the wrath of the Infinite, scourged by famine, decimated by pestilence,
warred against by flame, stricken by storm, torn asunder by vengeful
enemies, until a weakened remnant, harassed by the French sword, fled
northward in the night to fulfil the fate ordained of God, and finally
perished amid the gloomy shadows of the grim Ozarks, bequeathing to the
curious future neither a language nor a name.

But this I leave with Geoffrey Benteen, and turn to my own simpler
task, a review of the peculiar circumstances leading up to this
narrative, involving a brief chapter from the records of our Southwest.

The early history of the Province of Louisiana is so complicated by
rapid changes in government as to confuse the student, rendering it
extremely difficult to comprehend correctly the varied and conflicting
interests--aristocratic, official, and commercial--actuating her
pioneer colonists. The written records, so far as translated and