Antonio Velarde and Etienne de Véniard came from similar social backgrounds. Both were literate, which implied their families had some resources. Frank Norall said the Frenchman came from " a family of ancient lineage, the males tending to marry daughters of noble families" in central Normandy. Sons of noble families did not marry downward. Each man was so aware of such fine distinctions in his hierarchical society that the one used the name Antonio Valverde y Cosío and the other sieur de Bourgmont.
Bourgmont’s father was a surgeon who died when he was young. His mother remarried and he grew into a headstrong youth. When he was 19 he was fined for poaching the grounds of the local monastery. Rather than pay, he emigrated to Québec where a great uncle was in the church. Although nothing is known about Valverde, it is suspected he too may have had connections with the church in Zacatecas.
Both men enlisted, Valverde with Diego de Vargas 1693, Bourgmont with the Troupes de la Marine in 1698. The miliary in both colonial outposts was paid poorly. Men joined for the opportunities to make money on the side. Vargas was plagued by men selling ammunition, horses and other supplies. Bourgmont cashiered two men for trading slaves and horses.
Bourgmont’s first known assignment was with Charles Juchereau’s expedition to the Ohio river. He apparently spent time with the Mascouten trading furs and hides in Illinois country. Valverde was assigned to the presidio at El Paso where he began acquiring land.
One of the mysteries concerning Bourgmont’s life was the identity of the patron who continually eased his way with authorities. The Jesuits in the north had come to wield the same kind of power as the Franciscans before the Pueblo Revolt. One reason La Salle had proposed a colony in the south was to elude their oversight.
Antoine de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, had similar motives when he suggested Nouvelle France take advantage of the Iroquois retreat east to exploit the Great Lakes route to the Saint Lawrence that had been blocked by Iroquois aggression. Jesuit missionaries protested when their Ottawa moved south to the new Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit, at the narrows between Lakes Huron and Erie. Merchants and others in Montréal feared a competing economic and political center.
Cadillac was summoned to Montréal to defend himself against accusations he traded in furs and alcohol. He left Alphonse de Tonty in command. The younger brother of Henri, first mentioned in the post for 12 May 2015 as an ally of La Salle, was chronically in debt. He underpaid his soldiers, charged exorbitant fees to commercial visitors to the fort, and sold supplies, including ammunition, to the highest bidder.
When Bourgmont was sent to relieve him, he found only 14 soldiers left of the 100 man contingent. The rest had deserted, taking supplies with them. The Ottawa were feuding with the Miami, whose territory Cadillac had encroached. When that culminated in gunfire, everyone fled. The Ottawa went back north, Bourgmont disappeared into the wilds south of Lake Erie that he’d explored earlier for Juchereau’s tannery.
Valverde, it will be remembered from the post for 20 June 2015, became governor when Félix Martínez de Torrelaguna was removed over petty chiseling. The soldiers in the Santa Fé presidio complained over the way they were paid.
Pecos pueblo demanded restitution for "two thousand boards he ordered them to cut, dress and haul to ‘his palace or houses he built’." They also reported he hadn’t delivered the "two horses, the agreed-upon price, owed to Chistoe for an Indian boy acquired from heathens and sold to Martínez."
Notes: Détroit means strait in French. When the lower Great Lakes were blocked, furs were taken across the Ottawa river from the northern end of Lake Huron. Juchereau was first mentioned in the post for 17 May 2015. Mascouten were Algonquin speakers living along the Mississippi near the modern Illinois-Wisconsin border.
Kessell, John L. Kiva, Cross and Crown, 1995; quotation from Pecos residencia, the review that followed after a governor's left office.
Norall, Frank. Bourgmont, 1988.
Renaudiére, Philippe de la. Journal of the Voyage of Monsieur de Bourgmont, translation in Norall.
Russ, C. J. "Tonty, Alphonse (de)," Dictionary of Canadian Biography, volume 2, 1969.
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