Billy Hathorn
Louis Juchereau de St. Denis (duh-KNEE) was one of Louisiana’s most colorful characters. A French Canadian who explored much of Louisiana, he was an in-law of the Sieur de Iberville, who established the colony in 1699, and his younger brother Sieur de Bienville, who was our longest serving governor.
Like his more famous relatives, St. Denis was a nobleman who easily crossed cultural lines and was just as comfortable in the deep woods with the Indians as he was in a New Orleans ballroom. A large, muscular man, he was about six feet tall, or nearly a foot taller than the average Louisianian.
In 1714, Governor Cadillac chose St. Denis to establish an outpost on Louisiana’s western frontier to protect the border against Spanish intrusion and to open trade with the Caddo Indians. With twenty-five men, St. Denis made his way up the Red River and built a trading post at the Natchitoches Indian village in November 1714. Today, Natchitoches holds the distinction of being the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase territory.
The site of the outpost was not randomly chosen. Over the years, St. Denis had become friends with the Natchitoches Indians, a Caddo tribe, and knew they would be allies and good trading partners. The Natchitoches village was also about as far as one could go up the Red River by boat because it was near the head of an impenetrable log jam known as the Great River Raft.
After establishing the Natchitoches outpost, St. Denis illegally entered Mexico in an attempt to open trade with the Spanish, but authorities arrested him as a spy and held him in custody for several years.
During that time, St. Denis fell in love with and married the granddaughter of a Spanish official. The Spanish eventually released him, but he stayed in contact with his in-laws. Largely because of their familial ties, St. Denis and the Spanish remained largely on friendly terms even after the Spanish built a fort named Los Adaes just twenty miles west of Natchitoches.
While St. Denis was in Spanish custody, French marines were dispatched to Natchitoches to construct Fort St. Jean Baptiste in 1715. When St. Denis returned to Louisiana, he served as the fort’s commandant from 1722-1744.
During his tenure as commandant, St. Denis got along well with most of the Indian tribes because he spoke several indigenous languages and treated his trading partners fairly.
In turn, the Indians respected the Canadian and often honored him by tattooing his body. St. Denis’ legs were large and muscular and were favored by the Indians for tattoos (the Caddo referred to him as “Big Legs”). After serving in Louisiana for years, St. Denis’ legs became covered in colorful snake tattoos that wrapped around his stout limbs. It was said that the tattoos could even be seen through his leggings.
St. Denis made sure that the Caddo Indians were treated well because the fur trade depended on them. Once, a Frenchman killed a Caddo, and St. Denis had the marines track him down. Found guilty of murder, the man was publicly executed with a garrote. The French garrote was a metal collar, much like a dog collar, that hinged in the back with a large, pointed screw. The garrote was placed around the victim’s neck, and the screw was slowly tightened. The victim either strangled or the screw pierced his spinal column. The man’s head was then chopped off and placed on a pike at the fort’s front entrance as a warning to other settlers not to mistreat the Indians.
In the early 1980s, I worked with the Louisiana Office of State Parks as the first manager of Fort St. Jean Baptiste State Commemorative Area, a replica of St. Denis’ fort. My staff and I conducted living history programs to illustrate what life was like at the frontier outpost.
During that time, I became connected to St. Denis in a small way. As park manager, I got to wear the elaborate commandant’s uniform, which sported more than one hundred brass buttons.
When the city of Natchitoches decided to erect a statue of the town’s founder, the sculptor asked me to wear the uniform and serve as a model. I posed for a number of photographs, excited that I would stand forever on Front Street.
Alas, financial concerns limited the project to a bust, and I later discovered the sculptor was only interested in the uniform, not my likeness. Nonetheless, whenever I’m in Natchitoches with friends I proudly point out St. Denis’ bust and recall my modeling days.
Dr. Terry L. Jones is professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisiana at Monroe who has received numerous awards for his books and outdoor articles.
