SWANTON] INDIAN TRIBES OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 221

through whom peace was granted to the nation after every disturb-
ance. On the death of the great Sun, however, the power and office
passed to a young man unused to rule, while the chief of White Apple
seems to have been a man of experience and one enjoying the confi-
dence of the nation in a high degree. The chief of the Flour village,
which had been friendly to the French, was an old man at the time
of the Tattooed-serpent's death, and probably did not survive the
great Sun, while his successor was evidently the same whom the great
Sun, after his capture by Perrier, designated as a usurper.a Since
he figures in the later Natchez war as one of the principal hostiles, it
seems possible that he had obtained his position through the backing
of the anti-French element. In fact the only prominent person in
the French interest with any strength of character at the time of the
outbreak appears to have been the great chief's mother, Tattooed-
arm, of whom we shall hear more later. All things would therefore
seem to have been ripe for an upheaval; yet there is no certainty that
it would have taken place, and such was the belief of most of the
French in a position to know the events of that time, had it not been
for the appointment at that critical juncture of a commandant at
Fort Rosalie utterly unworthy of occupying a position of such im-
portance. History often misjudges, but in this case such is the unani-
mous verdict regarding the Sieur Ch6part or Chopart of all ac-
quainted with him.
 Says Dumont:
 He was no sooner established in this post than, instead of trying to obtain
the friendship of the people whom he came to govern, he only thought of making
himself a tyrant over them, ill-treating all those whom he suspected of not being
his friends, trampling on justice and equity, and always making the balance
incline toward those whom he wished to gratify, despising even the royal
ordinances, and neglecting the service so far as to let it be executed by mere
sergeants, who, not seeing themselves restrained by their officers, abused this
license with impunity.b
 Dumont proceeds with the relation of his misdemeanors as follows:
 There was then, as I have said, at the concession of White Earth which be-
longed then to MI. le Marechal Due de Belle-Isle, a company of soldiers which
were kept for the preservation of the property of this concession and for the
defense of the workmen who were employed there. The Sieur Chopart under-
took to drag them away by his authority, and left there but 8 soldiers com-
manded by a corporal. The Sieur Desnoyers, who was then manager of this
concession, opposed these pretensions at first; but the Sieur Chopart having
told him in a positive tone that he wished it, and this manager, who was an
officer of the company, being in that capacity subordinate to this commandant,
he was obliged to submit.
 It was not the same with a lieutenant of the garrison of the fort c who had
commanded in this post under the eyes of the Sieur Brontin, and who, a witness
 a Shea's Charlevoix, Hist. Louisiana, vi, 113.
 SDumont, M6m. Hist. sur La Louisiane, 1I, 125-126.
 It was the author himself to whom this adventure happened.-[DuMONT.]