1795 Pointe Coupee Conspiracy

1d. Pointe Coupee: "Cut-Off Point"

The Mississippi River stretches as far up as Canada and ends in the Gulf of Mexico. 2,320 miles in length “the river changed its course and left behind a branch” and it is here that this part of the river is called “False River, and the post there was named Pointe Coupee, meaning cut-off point” (238). “Like most French rural settlements in Louisiana, the Pointe Coupee post was born in an Indian village: the Tunica village located five leagues north of the post” (242). Here white, black and Indian people “met under crisis conditions” (238). And it was here that “African and Indian slaves often lived on the same estates” (240).

Furthermore, the Tunica village was “a source of information, material, and police and military support for the Pointe Coupee post throughout the eighteenth century” (244). Problems arouse due to frequent attacks by other Native tribal groups and as such, the Pointe Coupee “settlement grew independently of the Tunica village” (244). Yet, “the Tunica Indians were said to be very attached to the French” (245).

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