Dauphin Island Celebrates Landing
by Jim Hall, DICN Editor
On an
overcast and rainy
day in early
February, 1699,
Pierre Le Moyne
Sieur d'Iberville
anchored off shore of
what later became
know as French
Louisiana. Today,
we know the area as
Mobile Bay. Earlier
in his voyage,
d'Iberville, had found
the territory we call
Pensacola to be
occupied by the
Spanish. Without
specific instructions
from the crown, he
had sailed westward
to find a place to
establish the first
French settlement
along the Gulf coast.
As his ships
approached the
mouth of the large
bay (Mobile Bay), an
island was visible to
the northwest, but
did it have a suitable
harbor? He
dispatched two long
boats, one under the
command of his
younger brother,
Bienville, a brash 21
year old lieutenant.
The boats returned
to the ships the next
day, but rain, wind,
and fog had made
soundings difficult
and Bienville had
failed to find a
harbor.
On the following day,
a break in the
weather led
d'Iberbille to search
for a harbor himself.
At about two o'clock
in the afternoon, his
party was met with a
hard rain, a brisk
gale, and such dense
fog that they could
not see their ships.
By evening the men
were to exhausted to
row back to their
ships, so d'Iberbille
elected to spend the
night on the island.
The next morning,
d'Iberville began to
explore. In his
journal he recorded
finding on the
"southwest end" of
the island a "spot
where more than
sixty men or women
had been slain."
Along with the
skeletal remains were
"some of their
household
belongings." Thus,
the name Massacre
Island.
Due, probably, to the
bad weather,
d'Iberville failed to
find the narrow pass
into the harbor on the
north side of Spanish
Island.
Again moving
westward, he
established Fort
Maurepas, at the site
of present-day
Ocean Springs,
Mississippi.
Within a short time of
establishing Fort
Maurepas, d'Iberville
realized that access
to the vast river
systems which led
northward from that
large bay where he
had first landed, was
key in forging military and
trading alliances with the
large local Indian societies
which lived in the interior.
So in late December
1701, he issued the order
to move the colony back
to Mobile Bay.
Only a few years later,
the growing population in
the island disliked the
name Massacre finding it
"harsh" and perhaps
Bienville, then governor,
thought a new name
would bring a new image.
He decided to change the
name of the island to Isle
Dauphine and the port to
Port Dauphin.
In French,
dauphin refers to the male
heir to the throne and his
wife is the dauphine. King
Louis XIV approved the
name change in 1712.
Dauphin Island can claim
an important and colorful
place in the history of
French Louisiane as the
oldest permanently
occupied settlement in the
region. Since those days
of the early 1700s, the
Island has also been
occupied by the British,
the Spanish, the United
States, the Confederate
States, and following the
end of the Civil War, the
United States - six flags!
Editor's note: credit for the details of the Island's early history to Mr. George Shorter, Center for Archaeological Studies, University of South Alabama. Longer version written and published in the DICN, Vol 1, No.3, Spring of 1997.
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