Mémoires historiques sur la Louisiane: contenant ce qui y est arrivé de plus mémorable depuis l'année 1687 jusqu'à présent (Historical memoirs on Louisiana, including the most interesting events from 1687 to the present) is based on a manuscript text by soldier Jean-François-Benjamin Dumont de Montigny (born 1696) that was completed in France in 1747. The work was compiled and edited by the Abbé Jean-Baptiste Le Mascrier and published in Paris in 1753. Dumont’s original manuscript is preserved in the Newberry Library in Chicago. It narrates the events of Dumont’s life between 1715 and 1747, including his experiences in Louisiana from 1719 to 1737. Dumont took part in the French attack on Pensacola, helped build forts in New Biloxi and Yazoo, explored the Arkansas River, and described in great detail the city of Natchez as it appeared before the massacre of 1729. He includes accounts of expeditions against the Natchez and the Chickasaws, and he offers his reasons for the misfortunes of the Company of the Indies and the retrocession of the colony to the king in 1731. The second section of the memoir, the printed text of which is presented here, describes Louisiana, settlements, and Indian practices and customs. Le Mascrier eliminated much of the sharpness and crudity of the original account, but the work remains a rich original source of ethnographic information about the Louisiana Indians, especially the Natchez.