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Indiana Magazine of History
Frenchmen and French Ways in the Mississippi Valley. Edited by
John Francis McDermott. (Urbana : University of Illinois Press,
1969. Pp. xvi, 304. Notes, illustrations, index. $10.95.)
Professor McDermott is specially qualified to edit this volume on
the French in the Mississippi Valley. As a cultural historian he has
made himself thoroughly familiar with the history of this region,
especially his native city of St. Louis.
This compilation of papers comes from the 1967 Conference on
the French in the Mississippi Valley. The papers present an overview of what life was like in this region during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Existence was difficult and luxuries
were few. Uncertainty was a constant companion. Even the sovereignty of the Valley was unsettled. Throughout this period of political change French culture remained dominant.
The conditions in France that influenced French colonial policy
and the men who made that policy are subjects for discussion in two
of the essays. John Rule’s paper concerning the administration of
Jerome de Pontchartrain as French minister of marine from 1696-1715
is especially enlightening. Seven of the essays discuss the development of the French settlements in the Mississippi Valley through the
medium of biographies of individual French or French Creole colonists such as Auguste Choteau, prominent citizen of St. Louis; Joseph
Nicollet, astronomer who explored and accurately mapped much of
the Mississippi River basin ; Bishop DuBourg, religious administrator
responsible for bringing many religious educators to the Mississippi
Valley; James Pitot, businessman and second American mayor of
New Orleans ; Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville, explorer who discovered
and entered the mouth of the Mississippi River from the Gulf; Francois Saucier, engineer-surveyor of the Illinois country who constructed
Fort de Chartres ; and Ignace Broutin, engineer-architect who designed
many buildings in early New Orleans. Reconstruction of French
colonial sites is the subject of two essays. John Fortier writes of the
history of Fort Massac and its reconstruction a s an Illinois state park.
On a grander scale, Neil Porterfield tells of a proposed plan for reconstruction and/or restoration of St. Genevieve, Missouri, as an
eighteenth and nineteenth century French village. James Hardy discusses the legal functions of the Superior Council in colonial Louisiana and how its decisions affected the everyday lives of the colonists.
Finally, Jack Holmes examines the military interaction of the French
and Spanish from their respective bases at Dauphin Island and Pensacola as they sought to control the Gulf Coast.
The thirteen essays are carefully researched, as is evident from
a perusal of the multitudinous footnotes. There are few errors and
Book Reviews
79
most of these are of a minor typographical nature. A footnote is
omitted on page 208, and there is some confusion of dates on pages 2
(footnote 3) and 139. Anyone interested in the Mississippi Valley or
in the French colonization of it should find much of interest here.
Washington, D. C .
Marcia F. Wackerhagen
Town Planning in Frontiey America. By John W. Reps. (Princeton :
Princeton University Press, 1969. Pp. 473. Illustrations, notes,
selected bibliography, index. $13.50.)
Reps’ purpose in writing this book is twofold. First, he is filling
a gap in the general body of information about early town planning in
America ; and, secondly, he is publishing heretofore unpublished maps,
charts, and schemes, some of which are extremely rare, from his own
private collection. Most early settlements in America had in common
the need for instant fortifications, instant shelter, instant storage of
supplies against the departure of the mother ship, and a small house
of worship-meetinghouse-infirmary-armory building. Some sort of
stockade or enclosure was provided very early for the nightly protection of domestic animals from marauding wild animals and theft by
Indians.
Reps divides frontier American town plans very sensibly into ten
different classifications according to European origin and American
geographical location. Beginning with the earliest Spanish planning
in America, he discusses the origin of the pueblo and presidio types
of towns. The Spanish thought Columbus had discovered part of the
Indies and were totally unprepared to colonize a whole new continent.
In fact, the first planning legislation, promulgated by Philip I1 of
Spain in 1573, is titled “The Laws of the Indies.” When the Spanish
finally became aware of their task, they set about utilizing these
“Laws of the Indies” anyway and did a very good job.
The author follows this beginning with a detailed study of each
of the nine remaining classifications. “The Cities of New France” includes the origins of many Canadian cities, as well as Detroit, Mobile,
St. Louis, New Orleans, and others. “The Tidewater Colonies” deals
with triangular Jamestown and includes much of Virginia and Maryland. The detailed discussion of Annapolis and Williamsburg are
especially interesting. “The New Towns of New England” explains
some of the oddities of Boston, Hartford, and New Haven. The chapter covering New Amsterdam, Philadelphia, and the towns of the
middle colonies helps the reader to understand the miles and miles of
dreariness in some of our large industrial cities and traces Manhattan
from the very beginning. “The Colonial Town Planning in Carolina