The pen is mightier than the sword: eliminating Indians in the Mississippi Valley

This study examines how Europeans excluded Indians from travel accounts, effectively writing them out of Louisianas history. Prior to European arrival, Indians flourished in the Lower Mississippi Valley, but by the end of Louisianas colonial period, Indians were largely absent from travel accounts. Europeans used three main tactics to exclude Indians: leaving Indians out of accounts, changing the goals of colonization to dismiss Indians, and transforming Indians into resources. Accounts like those from Pere Jacques Marquette, Robert Cavalier De La Salle, brothers Pierre le Moyne, Sieur dIberville and Jean Baptise le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, Daniel Coxe, Le Page du Pratz, Jean-Jaques-Blaise dAbbadie, Philip Pittman, Jean-Bernard Bossu, Francisco Bouligny and James Pitot cover the period from 1673 to 1803 and show that the Indians vanished from European travel accounts though they remained in the land.