Bourgmont reappeared in the historic record when Cadillac was appointed governor of La Louisiane in 1712. He’d left Ohio to spend the intervening years in the west where he’d married a Missouri woman. When he, his wife and son began their trip down river with furs, Jesuits asked Montréal to arrest him for his unsettling influence among the natives.
Valverde never married, but fathered three daughters and a son. Descendants have determined the mother of his children was María Esparza. Since she was not acknowledged, we can assume he followed the Spanish form of clandestine liaisons with natives or servants.
Frank Norall believed the fugitive Bourgmont must have had some private agreement with Cadillac, because, when he returned north he took accurate notes on the course of the Missouri river, at least as far north as the Platte. His log was forwarded to Paris where Guillaume Delise turned it into the first accurate map of the river.
Cadillac moved back to France in 1717. A few years later, Bourgmont was in Paris soliciting support for his mission to the Apache. The utility of his map apparently overrode objections from the Augustinians, who were still trying to collect the fine in Normandy, and the Jesuits, who still wanted him arrested in Nouvelle France.
Needless to say, Bourgmont took no missionaries with him on his expedition to the Apache. Philippe de la Renaudiére noted there were two groups among the French: soldiers and his own employees. He was described as a mining engineer, which means the expedition included some pretensions of scientific exploration.
Renaudiére apparently wasn’t well trained, but was available. In 1718, he was listed at Kaskaskia as "Clerk of the Company and Conductor of Mines." His comments about geological formations were more perfunctory than knowledgeable.
On October 10 he wrote: "Several hills with rocks on their surface. Along the streams we find also pieces of slate, and on the prairie some reddish, marbled stones that protrude one, two and three feet out of the ground. Some are more than six feet in diameter."
Valverde was more observant when he noted "a small lake with water, and opposite at a distance of a league, there are some red hills with many outcroppings of ore, apparently mineralized."
What was extraordinary in Renaudiére’s account were the earlier sentences in the log. "We crossed two small rivers and three streams. We traveled eight leagues on a compass bearing of west-south-west."
He was carrying a compass and a time piece. It was no longer necessary to give detailed descriptions of the terrane. With a reasonably accurate measure of distance and a compass, anyone could repeat their journey.
The application of scientific instruments to the land replaced religious names as a way to assert sovereignty. This was equivalent to the change in surveying from the metes and bounds still used in Santa Cruz to the grid used by William Penn in his 1683 plan for Philadelphia. That in turn utilized geometric coordinates introduced by René Descartes in 1637.
The only mention of religion in Renaudiére’s log came after they completed their journey. A Te Deum Laudamus was sung at Fort de Chartres. The hymn can be detached from the mass to give thanks "to God for some special blessing" like "the publication of a treaty of peace."
Bourgmont retired to Normandy where he had married Jacqueline Bouvet des Bordeaux, daughter of François Bouvet, sieur des Bordeaux, when he was there in 1721. They lived on Bourgmont’s family land, which he expanded several times. None of their children survived infancy. However, an Apache slave he took with him, Marie Angélique, had a six-year-old son when she married a local man in 1732.
Valverde never returned to Spain. He lived his final years at San Antonio de Padua, his hacienda near El Paso. According to Wikipedia, it included "large wheat fields, a flour mill, a vineyard, a farm (comprising sheep and cattle, hundreds of horses and mules, hogs and goats), 9 black and mulato slaves, and more of 30 Apache and farm laborers, etc."
Notes: Cadillac was the one who found and developed the lead mine near Fort de Chartres and Kaskaskia. The settlement name was Mine La Motte.
Chávez, Angélico. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.
Descartes, René. La Géométrie, 1637.
Herbermann, Charles George, et alia. "The Te Deum," The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913.
LoLyn. "Bustamante - Promising Lead," New Mexico Bustamante Family website, 3 May 2009; on María Esparza.
Mills, Elizabeth Shown. "Parallel Lives: Philippe de La Renaudière and Philippe (de) Renault Directors of the Mines, Company of the Indies," The Natchitoches Genealogist, April 1998.
Norall, Frank. Bourgmont, 1988.
Penn, William. City plan prepared by Thomas Holmes for Portraiture of the City of Philadelphia, an 1683 prospectus for investors.
Renaudiére, Philippe de la. Journal of the Voyage of Monsieur de Bourgmont, translation in Norall.
Valverde, Antonio. Diary of the campaign against the Ute and Comanche, 1719, reproduced in Alfred B. Thomas, After Coronado, 1935.
Wikipedia. "Antonio Valverde y Cosío;" its source for the description of Valverde’s holdings could not be verified.
No comments:
Post a Comment