But the need for laborers was to be supplied in the French colonies by the black, instead of the white race. Although the home government grew to fear the result of the rapid increase of the negro element, yet, at first, it favored the importation of blacks to the American colonies. In 1688, Louis XIV issued an edict authorizing the importation of negroes from Africa into America.[332] Article XIV of the letters patent granted by the king to Crozat, September 30, 1712, gave the latter permission, if he found it advisable to have the blacks in Louisiana, to send a ship every year to the coast of Guinea to obtain them, and to sell them to the inhabitants of the colony.[333] So, from the first, negro slaves were present in the French colonies, though during the earlier part of the eighteenth century, they were outnumbered by the Indian slaves.[334] In 1713, there were but twenty negro slaves in Louisiana,[335] but with the granting of the charter of the Western Company in 1717, their increased importation began. A provision of the charter required that during the lifetime of the charter (twenty-five years,) not less than three thousand negroes be carried to the colony. The first large importation was made by the Company in June, 1719, when five hundred negroes were brought from the coast of Guinea.[336] For several years, the importation of negroes into Louisiana was one of the most profitable monopolies of the Western Company.[337] One authority states that, during the period from 1717 to 1723, one thousand, four hundred and forty-one negroes were brought in.[338] Another states that from 1717 to 1728 eighteen were introduced.[339] The “Code Noir” of 1724 shows that the negro slaves had become the majority by that time, for no direct mention is made in it to Indian slaves.[340] In 1727, it was reported that on each of the “concessions,” or leading grants, there were, at least, sixty negroes cultivating corn, rice, indigo and tobacco.[341] To open up and work the mineral resources of Louisiana, Philip François Renault was sent out by the Company of the West in 1719. On his way, he bought at San Domingo, in the name of his Company, five hundred negroes for working the mines. These negroes were taken into the Illinois country.[342] The number of negroes in the Illinois country never equaled that of the country farther south, yet in 1750, a Jesuit missionary found one thousand, one hundred whites, three hundred blacks, and sixty Indian slaves in five villages of the Illinois country,[343] and by 1763, the black population numbered over nine hundred.[344] From the foregoing account it will be seen that the steadily increasing number of negro slaves, resulting from a promotion of the commercial interests of the home government and from the more satisfactory labor performed by the blacks, must have been the leading cause that produced the steady decrease in the number of Indian slaves among the French. PART II