Hughes

tribes, and developed a grandiose scheme for
supplanting the French in the lower Mississippi
Valley. He was intoxicated by his first view of
the West and its resources. "There's no land in
America now left yt's worth anything," he
wrote, "but what's on the Mesisipi" (Crane,
post, pp. loo-oi). Accordingly he transformed
his colonization scheme into a project for a new
British province of Annarea, on the Mississippi,
with its center apparently at Natchez or on the
Yazoo. He sought the favor of his friend the
Duchess of Powis, and of the Duchess of Or-
monde; and he petitioned Queen Anne for aid
in transporting poor families thither from Wales.
French opposition he anticipated, but he stoutly
asserted the prior English claim, based upon the
Carolinian Indian trade. Meanwhile, Hughes led
a new English trading offensive, which, be-
tween 1713 and 1715, threatened to undermine
French control in Louisiana. As a result, new
trading factories were established; a firmer
league was formed with the Chickasaw; and
even the Choctaw, with the exception of two
loyal villages, were persuaded to desert the
French. On the Mississippi his intrigues em-
braced the tribes from the Illinois country to the
Red River and the Gulf. He even dispatched
two renegade coiireurs de bois as English emis-
saries to the remote Missouri River Indians. In
Canada, as in Louisiana, it was realized that
"master You" had precipitated a serious crisis
in the West. The winter of 1714-15 saw the cli-
max of Hughes's enterprise, and the debacle.
After visiting all the old centers of trade he was
making his way down the Mississippi from
Natchez when, at Manchac, he was seized by
the French. In the absence of Cadillac, Bien-
ville had already taken measures to check
Hughes's schemes, realizing that "without a
prompt remedy the colony would fall into the
power of the English." A prisoner at Mobile,
Hughes debated with Bienville the claims of
their sovereigns to an imperial region, and boast-
ed of his intended colony. On his release he
visited Pensacola, and then set out, alone, through
the woods to the Alabamas. Not far from the
mouth of the Alabama River he was waylaid and
slain by a band of Tohome Indians. Already the
wilderness from Port Royal to the Mississippi
was aflame with the great Indian rising of 1715.

[See V. W. Crane, The Southern Frontier, 1670-
113* (1928), pp. $9-107, and references therein.]

V,W.C.

HUGHES, ROBERT BALL (Jan. 19, 1806-
Mar» 5, 1868), sculptor, was born in London,
England, and came to New York with his bride
m 1828 or 1829. It is said that he early showed

Hughes

talent by making from candle-ends a wax bas-
relief from a picture, "The Judgment of Solo-
mon." At sixteen or seventeen, he was placed in
the studio of the sculptor Edward Hodges Baily,
R. A. Here he remained several years, mean-
while studying in the Royal Academy school,
where in 1823 he won a gold medal for an original
bas-relief, "Pandora brought by Mercury to
Epimetheus." Many other school prizes and
honors were his. In 1822, he exhibited a bust of
his father; in 1824, the aforesaid "Pandora"; in
1825, an "Achilles"; and in 1828, "A Shepherd
Boy." When he arrived in New York City, a
young man in his early twenties, he had a con-
siderable facility in his art, gained under Baily
as well as in the school and through independent
work. He at once found occupation. According
to the New York Mirror on Feb. 13, 1830, "The
directors of Clinton-hall association, some time
since, applied to Mr. [Ball] Hughes, the sculptor,
for the model of a projected statue of our late
Governor, intended for the front of Clinton-hall
This model has been completed, and the exquisite
accuracy of its execution has so fully satisfied
the directors that they have ordered one of mar-
ble, larger than life." In 1831 Hughes finished
his model for the large high-relief marble me-
morial to Bishop John H. Hobart, for Trinity
Church, New York. His marble statue of Alex-
ander Hamilton, placed in the rotunda of the
Merchants' Exchange, New York City, and de-
stroyed by fire eight months later (Dec. 16,
1835), is believed by many to have been the first
marble portrait statue carved in the United
States; Hughes imported English carvers for
the work, refusing to employ Frazee and Launitz
[gg:z>.]. Moreover, his bronze memorial statue
of Nathaniel Bowditch [#.^.], the mathematician,
was the first bronze statue to be cast in this
country (1847). Unfortunately the original
bronze, doubtless because of obvious defects, was
removed in 1886 from its site in Mount Auburn
Cemetery, and there replaced by a better cast
from the foundry of Gruet Jeune in Paris. In
the vestibule of the Boston Athenaeum is a plaster
cast of this monument. The mathematician,
draped and seated, holds upright on his knee a
book, his English translation of Laplace's Me-
canique Celeste; other books, with a globe and
a sextant, round out a capable composition. The
Athenaeum's storeroom shelters the small model
of Hughes's "Hamilton," and, presumably, a
copy of his oft-mentioned "Uncle Toby and
Widow Wadman." His "Little Nell" (1858), a
seated figure, under life size, of sentimental in-
terest and mediocre modeling, is still on view in
plaster in one of the Athenaeum halls. The Pena-

356