14: Pecan-Growing 



This was in 1541. ^^ After leaving the land of the Chickasas, 

 DeSoto and his party ascended the Mississippi * * * until at 

 length they came, as it would seem, upon the district of Little 

 Prairie. * * * The wild fruits of that region were abundant ; 

 the pecan nut, the mulberry, and two kinds of wild plums, 

 furnished the natives with articles of food. ' ' ^ 



Following the above, there seems to be no reference to the 

 pecan again until 1704, when Jean Penicaut made note of it 

 in his ^^ Annals of Louisiana'' which covered the first twenty- 

 eight years of the settlement of that province, namely from 

 1694 to 1722. Penicaut accompanied the first expedition of 

 d 'Iberville, famous in early French-Canadian history, to the 

 wilderness of the lower Mississippi as a ship's carpenter. He 

 was employed in various capacities in the colony and was 

 one of the few Frenchmen who escaped at the time of the 

 Natchez massacre in 1729. ^ Penicaut in his description of 

 Natchez, an Indian village on the Mississippi, said, ^^The 

 natives have three kinds of walnut trees; some whose nuts 

 are as big as the fist from which bread for their soup is 

 made; the best ones, however, are scarcely bigger than the 

 thumb and are called 'Pacane.' "^ 



In a history of New France, published in 1744, Xavier 

 Charlevoix, a French missionary and traveler, who first 

 descended the Mississippi to New Orleans in 1722, gave one 

 of the best early descriptions of the pecan. 



'^The pecan is a nut of the length and of the form of an 



^ Bancroft— History of U. S., Vol. 1. p. 47. 



^Dunbar Rowland's Mississippi, Vol. 2 p. 348. 



^**Ils ont de trois sortes de noyers; il y en a dont les noix sout 

 grosses comme le poing, et qui servent a faire du pain pour leur 

 soupe, mais les meilleures ne sont guere plus grosses que le pouce, ils 

 les appellent pacanes." — Margray, Memoires et Documents, Vol. 5, 

 p. 445, Description du village de Natchez. 



