Iberville (1694-1703)

Margry, Pierre (1818-1894). Découvertes et établissements des Français dans l'ouest et dans le sud de l'Amérique septentrionale [...]. Paris: D. Jouaust, 1876-1886 [vol. 4, 1880].

Born in Montreal in 1661, Pierre Lemoyne d'Iberville was simultaneously and in succession an adventurer, soldier, ship's captain, explorer, pirate, smuggler, and the first governor of Louisiana (1704-1706).

Iberville began his military career fighting the English with Chevalier Pierre de Troyes's expedition, which captured three English forts on Hudson Bay in 1686. During the following years, Iberville distinguished himself in many battles in the Hudson Bay area, capturing several English ships, as well as Fort New Severn (1690) and Fort York twice (in 1694 and 1697). He also took part in a victorious raid against Corlaer (Schenectady, New York) in 1690 and then against Fort William Henry (Pemaquid) in Acadia (1696). Finally, in 1696-1697, he succeeded in dislodging the English almost entirely from Newfoundland.

After these military feats, Iberville was chosen to continue La Salle's interrupted work. After leaving Brest, France in October 1698 with four vessels, he sailed along the north coast of the Gulf of Mexico in search of the Mississippi; in March 1699 he finally managed to find the river after meeting some Indians of North America who showed him tangible proof of La Salle's passage. He built Fort Maurepas (today Ocean Springs) in Biloxi Bay, left a garrison at the fort, and returned to France. The following year Iberville came back to consolidate the Louisiana settlement. He put up a second fort, named Fort Mississippi (near Phoenix, Louisiana), and then a third one in Mobile in 1701, which he named Fort Saint Louis. He returned to France in 1702, his mission accomplished: the French were now settled in Louisiana for good.

At the beginning of 1706, Iberville set sail again from France for America on a new mission: to conduct a campaign of harassment against the English settlements in the West Indies. After capturing the islands of Nevis and Saint Christopher (Saint Kitts), Iberville died in Havana in July, probably of yellow fever.

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