Entrepreneurs in the North

Spain never had effective Protestant movements like those in England, Scandinavia, and parts of Germany and France. Ferdinand established the Spanish Inquisition in 1478 to unify the peninsula and deflect interference from the pope.

When he expelled the Jews in 1492 and the Moors in 1502, he exiled much of his educated class including his bankers and progressive farmers. Members of the nobility did not rush to fill the void, although men who entered trade in the far north were less likely to be denounced as conversos or convertos.

In Nuevo México, the men who developed the wool trade had ties either to the Protestants of France or to recent immigrants from the north of Spain. Santiago de Roybal, mentioned in the post for 9 March 2016 as the man most interested in opening trade through Pierre Mallet in 1740, was the son of an immigrant from Caldas de Reyes in Galicia near Compostela who enlisted with Diego de Vargas.

His father, Ignacio Roybal, had married Francisca Gómez Robledo. Her uncle, Francisco Gómez Robledo, was the encomendero and trader tried as a Jewish converso in the 1660s. One of their daughters married Jean l’Archevêque and another married his son, Miguel. As mentioned in the post for 7 July 2015, Jean was descended from Huguenots.

Jean groomed his son to be a trader. It’s likely the young man continued the business after his father died in 1720. When Miguel died, his widow, María, married a Cantabrian-born merchant. José de Reaño de Tagle’s parents were José de Reaño and Teresa de Tagle Bustamante.

When he died in 1743, Reaño’s inventory of trade goods included 90 fanegas of piñon, 300 buckskins, dressed buffalo hides, Navajo baskets, Mexican pack saddles, and bundles of carpet. He left 1,300 wethers and 1,000 pregnant ewes worth 4,300 pesos. His ranch was south of Santa Fé, but he also owned a league of pasture land in the Piedra Lumbre where he built corrals and a wooden shelter.

His employees included a foreman, Antonio de Sandoval, who had claim to some wethers, a mulato slave from México named Pedro, and "7 little Indian herders." Gerónimo Martín owed him fifty pesos "which he agreed to give the year of ‘forty’ 200 lambs with the assurance of herding them at his expense until the year forty-three."

Reaño had been using his livestock as venture capital since at least 1739, when he gave 600 ewes to Francisco Sáez on the understanding he would be given back 114 lambs every year for five years. He probably expected Sáez to graze them on his land at Piedra Lumbre, or perhaps farther south at Ojo Caliente.

The partidario was the son of Augustín Sáez of Parral and Antonia Márquez. His mother’s stepfather was Diego Arias de Quirós, a soldier from Asturias who enlisted with de Vargas. In 1714, while Francisco was still a child, he married María Gómez de Robledo. She was the great-aunt of Reaño’s wife through her mother, Francisca Gómez Robledo.

Another of Francisca’s sisters, Margarita, married Jacinto Peláez. Like Ignacio de Roybal, he came as a soldier with de Vargas. After the native of Asturias was granted land at Jacona, east of San Ildefonso, Ignacio requested the adjoining tract. Margarita’s daughter, María, was raised by Francisca and Ignacio. It was her daughter, María Francisca Fernández de la Pedrerea, who married the member of Mallet’s party who stayed in Santa Fé, Juan Bautista Alarí. Her father had come from Galicia.

Francisca’s third sister, Lucía, married a man from Ciudad de México. Their son, Felipe, married his second cousin, who was the sister of the woman who married Alarí. He died young, and Santiago took over rearing their son, Blas. In 1753, he donated a flour mill located on the river above the city to him.

The web of relationships built on kinship, shared cultural backgrounds, and military experience brought Santiago and his family into contact with the governors. In 1740, Gaspar de Mendoza let Pierre Mallet leave the kingdom. In 1744, Joaquín Codallos lifted the embargo on wool exports and intervened to protect the estate of Santiago’s sister María when Reaño died.

He returned the favors in 1745 when Mendoza’s fourteen-year-old daughter married Codallos. As the only secular clergyman in the kingdom, Santiago was able to shield the politicians from scrutiny by the Franciscans by performing the marriage himself.

Gómez de Robledo Family
Francisco Gómez de Robledo
	Francisco Gómez de Robledo, tried by Inquisition
		Antonio Gómez de Robledo - [Juana Luján]
	Andrés Gómez de Robledo
		Margarita Gómez de Robledo marry Jacinto Peláez (Asturias)
			María Peláez marry Juan Fernández de la Pedrera (Galicia)
				Francisca Fernández de la Pedrera marry Juan Bautista Alarí (Québec)
				Teresa Fernández de la Pedrera marry son of Lucía Gómez Robledo
		María Gómez de Robledo marry Diego Arias de Quirós (Asturias)
			Stepdaugher Antonia Márquez marry Augustín Sáez
				Francisco Sáez contract with José de Reaño de Tagle
		Francesca Gómez de Robledo marry Ignacio de Roybal (Galicia)
			Manuela Roybal marry Jean l’Archevêque (France)
			María Roybal marry Miguel l’Archevêque
				Marry José de Reaño de Tagle (Cantabria)
			Santiago de Roybal
		Lucía Gómez Robledo marry Miguel de Dios Sandoval Martínez
			Felipe de Dios Sandoval Martínez marry Teresa Fernández de la Pedrera
				Blas Felipe de Sandoval Fernández de la Pedrera

Notes: Most of the details on the growth of the wool industry came from Baxter; most about the families came from Chávez. Francisco Gómez Robledo was discussed in 2014 posts for March 22, March 23 and March 24. A friar, Francisco de la Concepción González, in fact did try to prevent the Mendoza-Codallos wedding, according to Norris.

Baxter, John O. Las Carneradas, 1987.

Chávez, Angélico. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.

Center for Land Grant Studies. "The Piedra Lumbre Grant," available online.

Christmas, Henrietta Martinez. 1598 New Mexico, blog.

Codallos y Rabal, Joachin. Estate proceedings, José Reaño, 17 April 1744, Santa Fé; translated by Christmas, entry for 23 April 2014.

Hendricks, Rick. "Gaspar Domingo de Mendoza," Office of State Historian New Mexico History website.

Norris, Jim. After "The Year Eighty," 2000.

Reaño de Tagle, José de. Will and inventory, 1743, in Twitchell.

_____. Will and inventory, 1743; published by Christmas, entry for 21 April 2014.

Twitchell, Ralph Emerson Twitchell. Spanish Archives of New Mexico, volume 1, 1914; on flour mill.

Santa Cruz Daily Life

Jean l’Archevêque’s effects were inventoried in 1721. The list came to 98 pages. Henrietta Martinez Christmas has published a portion on her website, 1598 New Mexico. While he was living among the well-to-do in Santa Fé, some items reveal daily life anywhere in the province within the agricultural economy.

He had three cornfields to support a household of at least six: himself, his wife, his personal servant, his younger illegitimate son and his mother, and the woman who raised his children. There may have been more dependents, but these are all I’ve seen mentioned. Perhaps the mother of his son still did the cooking and cleaning, perhaps there was another woman.

As mentioned in the post for 11 March 2015, if a field was a fanega that barely fed three people, three fields were enough to support his household and leave a reserve for seed and insurance against a bad year.

To raise that corn, he had a ploughshare and three wooden points. Christmas didn’t mentioned livestock, but presumably there were some kind of work animals. The inventory also listed three iron shovels.

Archevêque probably didn’t plant or harvest his own land. The only time he might have had to work in the fields was when he was a captive living with the Hasinai. In jail and as a soldier, he probably bought his meals. He had the income to hire help, and they may have supplied their own draft animals.

His account books indicated he hired Hambrosio de Balbause in July of 1719 for some service. Given how a Frenchman would transcribe Spanish names, this might have been Ambrosio Villapando. His father, Juan de Villa el Pando, had come north as a soldier. He was dead by 1718, when Ambrosio married María Romero. He was probably a soldier, and Archevêque may have hired him over another as a posthumous favor.

Archevêque owned an ax, a necessity when wood needed to be chopped to heat the residential area and cook the meals. Everyone in the household might have used it, but more than likely this was another chore he hired done or delegated to a servant. He probably bought fire wood cut to length.

The kitchen had a copper kettle and an iron griddle. The first would have been used to boil beans or corn, the second to make tortillas. In his record of his campaign to the east, Antonio Valverde mentioned eating boiled mutton and corn gruel. He also mentioned dispensing pinole and tea. All would have required a large, metal pot.

Archevêque would have been able to purchase other foods like wheat and beef, when they were available. Indeed, in the absence of a functioning cabildo, he may have acted as a middle man letting contracts for the city’s food. One account book "listed the major and minor cattle, which Antonio Montoya shall deliver in the year 1720 by halves." Montoya was the son of Diego Montoya and María Josefa de Hinojos, who returned with the Reconquest and settled in Bernalillo.

The primary utensils in Archevêque’s household were six spoons and six forks made from silver, and two lead candlesticks. Kitchen tools included a "chocolate pitcher of copper," a silver salt cellar, "a brass mortar with its pestle," and "a large knife to pound meat."

The inventory was consistent with the trade goods Bourgmont sent to the Apache: a kettle, an axe, some awls, and some knives. It also was similar to the utensils taken by Pedro de Villasur on his military campaign: silver platters, cups, spoons, and a candlestick.

Silver probably was less dear than metals like tin used to produce pewter and military alloys. The modern inexpensive metals - stainless steel and aluminum - didn’t exist. Servants and common folk may have used wooden spoons or eaten foods wrapped in corn husks or tortillas that didn’t require tools to eat. Valverde mentioned his men ate tamales and fruit, while the Apache offered ears of corn.

Martinez didn’t mention crockery or baskets, which may have been obtained from one of the pueblos or at one of the trade fairs. China was being imported through the Philippines at Acapulco, and being manufactured in Pueblo. It may not have survived the trip north, or it may not have been in the reprinted list.

Archevêque was a merchant trader, working with his two older sons. One was in Sonora, probably buying goods, when his father was killed. The men probating the estate inventoried boxes of goods that may just have been received. They suggest some necessities still had to be imported.

These included blankets from Campeche. While some of the early settlers from Mexico City had been weavers, they may not have brought their tools with them. Bourgmont believed red Limbourge blankets were appreciated by natives on the plains.

Archevêque also supplied silk, English linen and silver buttons for clothing, and women’s shoes. Among the gifts Francisco Cuervo gave pueblo representatives were "ribbons, hats, needles, beads." While tailors came north from Mexico City, women, servants or hired help probably did much of the sewing. Archevêque’s account books indicated he’d sold finished socks to Pancho.

Among the luxury goods in the storage boxes were tobacco, two loaves of sugar, and loose chocolate. The executors paid the men opening the boxes with a plug of tobacco. The children’s caretaker, Francisca de Velasco, oversaw their work. She was given six pounds of chocolate "as a gift, with its sugar for her consumption, because she asked for it, she is old and infirm."

The executors found ingots of gold in an elk skin bag in one box. It would have been more useful buying goods in Sonora than in Santa Fé. However, Archevêque or his son, probably also took local goods down to sell, like the inventoried elk skins. I don’t know if the half pack of saddle girths was for the local market, the south, or the journey between.

Notes: Jean l’Archevêque was perhaps the most atypical man living in Nueva España, but he is the one who has been the most researched. By default, he had become the template used to understand the lives of the less conspicuous. His family unit was described in the post for 14 October 2915. Hambrosio de Balbause was hired 9 July 1719; Hambrosio de Palbanoy was hired 18 July 1719. I assume they were the same man.

Salt was collected at the salt lakes near Salinas. Juan Bustamante organized a military escort for collectors that left from Galisteo in June of 1730, and Gervasio Cruzat y Góngora announced one in August of 1732. In earlier years, when the trip was less safe, salt may have been a trade good.

According to Wikipedia, a cost-efficient manufacturing processes for aluminum didn’t exist until 1888; one for stainless steal was introduced in 1915. The diet of Valverde and his men was discussed in the post for 19 August 2015. Bourgmont’s gifts were mentioned on 20 September 2015, Villasur’s on 26 September 2015.

Chávez, Angélico. New Mexico Roots, Ltd, 1982.

_____. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.

Christmas, Henrietta Martinez. "Jean L'Archibeque - 1720 Estate," 1598 New Mexico website, 4 April 2013.

Rael de Aguilar, Alonso. Certification, 10 January 1706, collected by Adolph F. A. Bandelier and Fanny R. Bandelier and included in Historical Documents Relating to New Mexico, Nueva Vizcaya, and Approaches Thereto, to 1773, volume 3, 1937, translated and edited by Charles Wilson Hackett; Cuervo’s list.

Twitchell, Ralph Emerson. Spanish Archives of New Mexico, two volumes, 1914; Twitchell, Archives volume 1 has notice of l’Archevêque estate; volume 2 has the announcements for salt trips.

Regulating the Captive Trade

The entrepreneurial role in the captive trade was assumed by Apache bands who desired horses. They set the terms of trade, but families of captives enforced the norms that regulated it. Utes and Shoshone disciplined the Penxaye Apache in July of 1706.

The markets for horses and captives weren’t saturated. According to Hubert Bancroft, Francisco Cuervo was forced to abandon attempts to subdue the Moqui in April of 1707, because troops were needed in Santa Fé to recover horses stolen while he was in the west. No sooner were they recovered, than they disappeared again. In August, José Chacón issued orders prohibiting the sale of presidio horses, and repeated them in 1708.

The trade in captives continued. In 1712, Juan Flores Mogollón again prohibited settlers from visiting "ranches of the wild Indians for the purposes of barter and trade." Two years later, he surrendered authority. Instead of bans, he ordered captives be baptized as if they were African slaves.

The attempted transformation of captives into slaves accelerated under Félix Martínez. In 1716, he ordered an attack on Utes and their allies. Cristóbal de la Serna descended upon a peaceful encampment near Antonio mountain. Martínez sent the captives to Nueva Viscaya where they were sold. He divided the profits with his brother.

Sebastían Martín’s descendants told Ralph Twitchell in the early twentieth century, that he had been the one responsible, and that the raid had been led by two of this sons-in-laws, Juan Antonio de Padilla and Carlos Fernandéz. The latter wasn’t involved; he didn’t marry into the family until much later. However, Serna’s daughter had married Martín’s nephew, Nicolás Jacinto Martín, in 1712.

The sale of captives into slavery violated one of the unwritten rules of the captive trade. As long as captives were kept in Nuevo México, it was possible to see them, or at least hear about them. They, no doubt, were sources of information about colonial life, and maltreatment would have been known. It was even possible for captives to escape. Exile to distant lands was a death sentence.

Regulatory enforcement of Martínez’s misbehavior took awhile, but relatives of the 1716 victims raided Serna’s ranch at Embudo in 1719. They took four hoses and a captive boy. The same night they shot arrows at Diego Romero in Arroyo Hondo. He was able to flee to safety.

Something had changed. When not enough horses were available for trade, they were stolen. José López Naranjo noticed an increase in thefts around 1718. Perhaps there were, indeed, fewer horses available, perhaps there were more natives. Not only did native sons come of age, but more Shoshone may have been filtering south.

Shoshone attitudes toward the Apache, who were selling captives, hardened. Miguel de la Vega y Coca, alcalde of Taos and Picurís said they came "for the purpose of interfering with the little barter which this kingdom has with the nations which come in to ransom."

Santa Fé merchant Jean l'Archevêque added, "that for more than seven or eight years they have come to steal horses and rob herds and run away with the goods in the trade which this kingdom has with the Apaches of El Cuartelejo." He called the proposed expedition against the Utes a "just war." In fact, to him, it was a just trade war.

Diego Romero was described as a coyote by the local alcalde, Miguel Tenorio de Alba. What he was doing so far north and west of Taos pueblo isn’t known. He may have used captive labor, he may have been a middleman, he may have been an unexpected witness.

Angélico Chávez said he was the great-grandson of Francisco Cadimo, who came as a soldier with Oñate. Francisco had two daughters. One must have had an illegitimate child, Alonso Cadimo, who lived with Felipe Romero in the Río Abajo before the revolt and took his last name. Chávez identified Alonso as a criado.

Diego had some ties to La Cañada. In 1661, Felipe Romero had been associated with Bartolomé Gómez Robledo. There was another Alonso Romero, who was the son of Miguel Romero de la Cruz. The Inquisition prosecuted him for bigamy after he married Bartolomé’s niece, María. Diego’s mother later married Mateo Trujillo. He himself "acquired considerable land at Taos," according to Chávez.

The attack on Romero frightened the pueblo priest into writing the governor. Juan de la Cruz said, "all the valley of Taos is harassed by a growing number of Utes" and "it is feared that they might attack the pueblo or do some injury."

Coincidentally, the priest at Cochití pueblo, Manuel de la Peña, said a Queres had been killed by Utes. When they went searching for them, they found evidence a great many had been in the area.

Antonio Valverde called a council of war in August. Each man repeated the same words, that they came as friends, but stole their horses. Serna added, with the murders, they "have declared themselves enemies, let war be made." Those who testified after him repeated his words.

The council authorized an expedition led by the governor. On the plains they were joined by warriors from Sierra Blanca under Carlana. Whenever they met Apache families, they were told of depredations. However, they never saw more than remains of camp sites.

The alliance between the Ute and the Shoshone frayed. Around 1719, the Ute began grouping them with the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Kiowa as Komántica. Marvin Opler was told, that meant "anyone who wants to fight with me all the time." Ernest Wallace said, they narrowed the term to refer only to Comanche around 1726.

The captives for horses trade continued, with little official interference. The identities of the captives and the sellers changed. In 1732, the governor, Gervasio Cruzat y Góngora, tried to assert some Apache were under the protection of the government, and weren’t to be sold. Five years later, the next governor condoned trades that were treated as ransoms. Enrique de Olavide only asked to be notified.

Notes: Mooney believed the first document to use Cumanche was the 1719 dairy of Valverde. It referred to "naciones Yutas y Cumanches." The meetings of the council of war held a month earlier used the term "los Yndios Yutas." I am using Shoshone until 1719. I suspect most translations of earlier documents used the common term, and not the historic one, especially when some of the historic terms were confusing.

Bancroft, Hubert Howe. History of Arizona and New Mexico, 1530-1888, 1889.

Chacón Medina Salazar y Villaseñor, José. Order, prohibiting the sale of horses from the horse herd, 11 August 1707; order, prohibiting the taking of horses or mules from the caballada. 6 May 1708; in Twitchell, Archives.

Chávez, Angélico. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.

Cruz, Juan de la. Letter to the governor, Antonio Valverde Cosio, 12 August 1719; in Thomas.

Cruzat y Góngora, Gervasio. Bando, prohibiting the sale of Apache captives to the Pueblo Indians, 6 December 1732; in Twitchell, Archives.

Flores Magollón, Juan Ignacio. Order, prohibiting the settlers visiting the ranches of the wild Indians, 16 December 1712; bando, ordering the baptism of Apache captives in the same manner as Negro slaves, 26 September 1714; in Twitchell, Archives.

L'Archevêque, Jean. Opinion on proposed expedition, 19 August 1719; in Thomas.

Mooney, James. The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, 1896.

Naranjo, José López. Opinion on proposed expedition, 19 August 1719; in Thomas.

Olavide y Michelena, Enrique. Bando, in relation to trade with the wild tribes, 7 January 1737; cited by Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire, 2008.

Opler, Marvin K. "The Origins of Comanche and Ute," American Anthropologist 45:155-158:1943.

Peña, Manuel de la. Letter to Antonio Valverde quoted by Thomas.

Serna, Cristobal de la. Opinion on proposed expedition, 19 August 1719; in Thomas.

Thomas, Alfred B. After Coronado, 1935.

Twitchell, Ralph Emerson. The Leading Facts of New Mexico History, volume 1, 1911; on Martínez family legend.

_____. Spanish Archives of New Mexico: Compiled and Chronologically Arranged, volume 2, 1914.

Ulibarrí, Juan de. Diary of expedition to El Cuartelejo, 1706; in Thomas; on Penxaye Apache.

Valverde y Cosío, Antonio. Diary of the campaign against the Ute and Comanche Indians, 1719; in Thomas.

Wallace, Ernest and E. Adamson Hoebel. The Comanches, 1986 edition.

Captives for Horses

Slavery is an economic transaction. It requires at least one merchant, some customers, and rules for doing business.

Españoles had relied on native and captive labor before the Pueblo Revolt of 1690. Diego de Vargas legitimized its reintroduction in 1694 when he gave 342 captive Cochití women and children to settlers and soldiers.

The business relationship between buyers and the providers of captives became asymmetric. Sellers had an unlimited supply of valuable captives, but Nuevo México had little of value to offer in return. In the east, English and French traders imported metal tools and utensils, but Spanish goods were scarce and deemed inferior.

When the French ran short of inventory, the more ingenious began fabricating desirable items. To encourage native conversions, northern Jesuits had given away brass finger-rings embossed with symbolic letters or the Mexican bleeding heart. After they became valued, the rings were taken over as trade goods by the coureurs. Judith Hauser hasn’t found references to where they were manufactured, but thinks the cruder ones used in the fur trade after 1700 must have been made in home workshops.

Charles Town merchants converted guns into currency. In 1700, a native near Mobile Bay told Charles Levasseur, an aide to Henri Tonti, "men take the women and children away and sell them to the English, each person being traded for a gun." Thomas Nairne discovered a higher exchange rate in 1708: Chickasaw and Talapoosie claimed they received "‘a Gun, ammunition, horse, hatchet, and suit of Cloathes’ for just one slave - a whole year’s worth of deerskins."

Nuevo México refused to trade weapons, partly for religious reasons, partly from memories of the Revolt. In 1696, Plains Apaches came to San Juan to sell Ute women and children. No notice was made if other Shoshone speakers were among the captives. Gerald Betty didn’t report what they took in exchange, but in July of that year de Vargas acted to stop colonists from selling arms to natives in July. In October, he gave 84 women and children to soldiers.

De Vargas unintentionally created the substitute exchange medium when he confiscated horses from the pueblos. To regain their livestock, natives raided and traded. Settlers from Taos began visiting Apache villages to trade "two or three horses for a captive boy or girl." In 1703 he prohibited such activities, but two years later his successor, Francisco Cuervo, issued a new set of bans.

The complaints to de Vargas and Cuervo didn’t come from the friars, but from the cabildo in Santa Fé. This implied they were more concerned with the potential development of a competing trade center, than with the ethics of the business. Unlike, the English and the French, Nuevo México didn’t develop a true merchant class that could have organized the trade to the benefit of all.

The closest the city had was a captive reared in the same northern trading culture as many of the coureurs. Jean l’Archevêque was born in Bayonne, France, in 1672 to a Huguenot family that had moved there when his grandfather converted to Roman Catholicism in the 1650s. Jean’s parents subsequently moved to Saint Dominique on the western side of Hispañola.

A French pirate, Jean le Vasseur, had established a Huguenot colony on Tortuga, a small island off Hispañola’s northwest coast in 1640. The Spanish ousted them, but Bertrand d’Ogeron retook control and moved onto the main island where he encouraged tobacco plantations. Saint-Dominique was just converting to sugarcane when La Salle’s flotilla of colonists landed at the port of Petit-Goâve.

At some time, l’Archevêque was apprenticed to Pierre Duhaut. Sources disagree if the merchant was already on the island, or arrived with La Salle. The boy, just shy of twelve years of age, joined the expedition. When disaster follower disaster, Duhaut murdered La Salle in 1687 by using the lad as a decoy.

After he was allowed to retire from the presidio, probably in 1714 when he joined the council of war, l’Archevêque became a merchant banker importing goods from México.

Notes:
Axtell, James. The Indians’ New South, 1997.

Betty, Gerald. Comanche Society, 2002; quotation on Taos transaction.

Cabildo de Santa Fé. Petition, complaining about sale of horses, 26 November 1703; petition, relative to bartering with the Apache, 1 June 1705; in Twitchell.

Cuervo y Valdés, Francisco. Decree, relative to bartering with the Apaches, 1 June 1705; in Twitchell.

De Vargas, Diego. Bando, prohibiting sale of arms, 31 May 1696; bando, prohibiting soldiers from gambling for their horses, 3 November 1703; decree, regarding sale of horses, 26 November 1703; in Twitchell.

Hauser, Judith Ann. Jesuit Rings from Fort Michimackinac and Other European Contact Sites, 1982.

Lafleur, Gérard and Lucien Abénon. "The Protestants and the Colonization of the French West Indies," in Bertrand Van Ruymbeke and Randy J. Sparks, Memory and Identity: The Huguenots in France and the Atlantic Diaspora, 2003.

Levasseur, Charles. Voyage de M. de Sauvole, 1701, translated by Vernon J. Knight, Junior, and Sherée L. Adams in "A Voyage to the Mobile and Tomeh in 1700, with Notes on the Interior of Alabama," Ethnohistory 28:179-194:1981; quote by Axtell.

Nairne, Thomas. Nairne’s Muskhogean Journals, edited by Alexander Moore, 1988; quoted by Axtell.

Páez Hurtado, Juan. Letter, relative to bartering with Apache, 1 June 1705; in Twitchell.

Twitchell, Ralph Emerson. Spanish Archives of New Mexico: Compiled and Chronologically Arranged, volume 2, 1914.

Weddle, Robert S. The Wreck of the Belle, the Ruin of La Salle, 2001; thinks Duhaut was with La Salle.

Wikipedia. "Jean l'Archevêque;" thinks Duhaut was in Saint-Dominique.

French and Indian Wars

René-Robert Cavelier, the Sieur de La Salle, heard the reports of Louis Joliet. He had migrated to Montréal from Rouen in 1666 and established himself as a fur trader. In 1680, he expanded his operations into Illinois country where he and Henri de Tonti built Fort Crèvceœur at the Peoria village Joliet had visited with Jacques Marquette. When Tonti left to build another fort near the Kaskaskia village, the men he left burned Crèvceœur after taking the food stores and ammunition. The Iroquois destroyed Starved Rock. The bands of the Illinois confederacy retreated west of the Mississippi.

The explorer returned in 1682 to rebuild Fort Crèvceœur at the head of navigation on the Illinois river. This time he brought guns and metal tools to trade for furs. Then he and Tonti left to complete the work of Joliet by following the Mississippi to its mouth. As they went, they built posts and made land grants to some of the Frenchmen who went with them, including Michael Accault.

La Salle left Tonti in Illinois while he returned to Paris to secure financing for a Mississippi colonization scheme. He and 300 settlers set sail for the Gulf in 1684. While they were floundering on the Texas coast, Tonti started down the Mississippi. When he failed to meet La Salle, he established a post with the Arkansas in 1686 and left Jean Couture in command.

By 1687, when La Salle was assassinated, many had died. Six straggled north to Tonti’s post and six took shelter with the Caddo-speaking Hasinai in what is now east Texas. Two of those, Jean l'Archevêque and Jacques Grollet, were ransomed by the Spanish in 1688. Two more, Pierre Meunier and Pierre Talon, were captured the next year.

L’Archevêque and Grollet were interrogated in Mexico City, then shipped to a Madrid jail in 1690. In 1692, during a lull in hostilities with France, l’Archevêque asked to be released. The Junta De Guerra de Indias took oaths of loyalty from him and Grollet, then dispatched them back to New Spain. Their enlistment with Diego de Vargas probably was not voluntary.

Meunier was used as an interpreter for Spanish missionaries to the Hasinai, before being sent north with de Vargas. He remained with the presidio at El Paso.

Jean Couture explored eastern tributaries of the Mississippi, went down to Florida, and visited in Charles Town where he made himself available to slave traders interested in adding furs to their export lists. In 1699, he took William Bond west, and the next year he led a group authorized by the governor, Joseph Blake. They made new alliances for slaves and deer skins with the Arkansas, renamed the Quapaw.

Tonti remained in Illinois country. In 1691 he built Fort Pimitéoui near Fort Crèvceœur and the Kaskaskia. Accault returned to the Pimitéoui area in 1693. He married the daughter of the Kaskaskia chief, Marie Rouensa the following year.

Notes: The gouverneur général of Nouvelle-France was Louis de Baude, Comte de Frontenac et de Palluau. Crèvecoeur means broken heart. The Frenchmen were known by Spanish names in Nuevo Mexico: Juan de Archibeque, Pedro Meusnier, and Santiago Grole. The last evolved into Gurulé.

Morrissey, Robert Michael. Empire by Collaboration, 2015.

Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade, 1997.

Weddle, Robert S. "Meunier, Pierre," Texas State Historical Association website, posted 15 June 2010, revised 25 November 2013.