Frontier Expeditions: Pedro de Villasur

Between the Spanish and French expeditions to the El Cuartelejo Apache, Antonio Valverde sent Pedro de Villasur east to investigate activities of the French in 1720. His troops were slaughtered in a dawn raid in August. Few lived to tell the tale.

These are the uncontested facts. Not even the date or location are definite. The last known date for the expedition was August 10 when Villasur sent an interpreter to tell the band they met that "they might confer with us in entire safety." The last documented view of the young man was when he "took off his clothing in order to swim across" what scholars believe was the Platte river.

Some have calculated the death date as August 13, others as August 14.

The identity of the enemy band isn’t known for sure. Valverde accepted the word of a Pawnee captive owned by Cristóbal de la Serna that they were Pawnee. The young man apparently volunteered, and may have been hoping to escape. His reliability as a source depends a great deal on how Serna, the man who led the attack on the Ute encampment at San Antonio mountain in 1716, had treated him.

The ambush occurred when men were dismounted to change saddles from one set of horses to another. Most who survived were with the horse herd. The man who may have been the expedition’s official scribe, Felipe de Tamaris, was sent by Valverde to report to the viceroy. Three years later he and Alonso Rael de Aguilar were among the six who testified at the governor’s trial for dereliction of duty.

The number of men in the expedition is unknown. Only the names of the dead soldiers, settlers and priest were recorded. It’s known at least two had servants with them, but servants almost never appeared in rosters. Nothing more is known about the auxiliaries than a total count. One has to guess the pueblo and speculate on any Apache who may have joined as escorts or guides.

The names of the Spanish who didn’t return were recorded, but the names of the survivors can only be gleaned from the diligencias matrimoniales. Remarriages for the widows were difficult because there were no bodies. Priests depended on testimony from witnesses that someone hadn’t deserted, forcing a woman into bigamy.

The observations of many of the survivors were not recorded at the time, and have not been perpetuated in family traditions. We know now many who experience traumatic military experiences only talk guardedly with comrades.

Native reports spread from group to group and generation to generation. Coureurs returning to Kaskaskia from a horse trading expedition to the Wichita told Pierre Dugué in October that the Kansa had a Spanish captive taken during the confrontation. Six months after the attack, Wisconsin Otchagras visiting Michilimackinac told Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix the foray was made by the Octotata. They themselves heard about the raid from the Iowa. As proof, they offered him a Catalonian pistol and a pair of Spanish shoes.

The Pawnee and Wichita were Caddo-speaking, the Octotata, Kansa, Iowa and Otchagras were Sioux. If the young interpreter, indeed, had communicated with them, they were probably Caddo speakers like himself.

Oral versions must have traveled south through Caddo groups and beyond into México. In 1758 Philipp von Segesser von Brunegg sent a painting of the raid to his brother in Switzerland. Many liked to believe the hide work was made by a group of artists working in Santa Fé who had talked to eye-witnesses.

More likely it was done in Sonora. Thomas E. Chávez said, this and another painting of another raid first may have been owned by Juan Bautista de Anza, the governor of Sonora. Segesser was a Jesuit priest there. Chávez noted their stylistic similarity to a group of documents produced in the Toluca Valley, west of Mexico City, between 1685 to 1703. Fernando Horcasitas thought that revival of an earlier codex tradition had been encouraged by Jesuits.

The only actual primary source surfaced in Paris in 1921. Natives scavenging the battle site found a page from Villasur’s expedition log. It had been sent to Dugué. The copy Marc de Villiers unearthed in the archives of the Hydrographic Service of the Marine and of the Minister of War had been translated into French. Addison Sheldon converted it into English in 1923.

The indios of the Spanish had become the sauvages of the French, who in turn became the savages of Anderson. The fruit eaten by the enemy was published as "des feuilles d'Oloues (?) fraiches." Anderson interpreted that as sand cherries, with the note "any one familiar with the Platte Valley in the month of August knows that sand cherries are the most abundant fruit to be found and most likely to be the one eaten by this band of Indians."

The captive’s name was given as François Sistaco. The last wasn’t a surname. Michael Shine believed it represented the Pawnee words Chahis and taka, meaning Pawnee and white, a "white Pawnee." Francisco may have been either a Pawnee or the son of a Pawnee woman and a Spaniard.

The record began with the sandcherries, presumably on August 5, and ends on the tenth when Francisco was swimming the Platte.

Notes: Serna’s attack was mentioned in the post for 9 July 2015. Pierre Dugué was the sieur de Boisbriand or Boisbriant. Ototacta are now known as Otoe, Otchagras as Ho-Chunk or Winnebago. Western sand cherries are Prunus pumila besseyi.

Charlevoix, Pierre-François-Xavier de. Letter, 5 April 1721, extract published in Nebraska History, January-March 1923.

Chávez, Thomas E. "The Segesser Hide Paintings: History, Discovery, Art," Great Plains Quarterly 10: 96-109:1990.

Horcasitas, Fernando. Cited by Stephanie Wood, "The Techialoyan Codices," University of Oregon Wired Humanities Project website.

Shine, Michael A. "In Favor of Loup Site," Nebraska History, July-September 1924

Villiers, Marc de. "Le Massacre de l’Expedition Espagnole du Missouri (11 Aoüt 1720)," Journal de la Société des Americanistes de Paris, 1921; translated and annotated by Addison E. Sheldon for Nebraska History, January-March, 1923; quotation on swimming the river.

Bourgmont and the Apache

Bourgmont followed the same mode when he finally reached the Apache. He had first sent a representative with two captives "he bought from the Kansas for the purpose of returning them to their tribe - to advise their kinsmen that they were going to make peace." Before they left, he gave each a blanket and shirt, and sent a "small packet of vermillion, some beads, a kettle, an axe, some awls and some knives" to the chief.

François Gaillard reported the Apache chief had "listened in amazement as slaves praised the French."

The chief and some of his advisors went with Gaillard to the Kansa village where the recovered Bourgmont was waiting. When men from all the bands he had invited arrived, "M. de Bourgmont welcomed them and then ordered a great fire to be made in a beautiful space in front of the entrance to his tent."

Following what must have been known protocols, "on his right, he seated the chief of the Padoucas, then the head chief of the Missouris, and the Oto chiefs, and next the Iowa chiefs and the Kansa chiefs." Each was accompanied by "several warriors." Bourgmont had only two of his men present.

Bourgmont spoke first of peace and trade. His listeners responded by offering "their calumet pipes of peace to each other and to make compliments to one another, according to their fashion."

When the meetings were concluded, the Kansa chief invited Bourgmont, some of his men, and five men from each band "to come and feast at his dwelling." This gave him an opportunity to commit his band to Bourgmont’s mission.

Two days later Bourgmont left with the five Apache to visit their camp. He took seven Missouri, five Kansa, four Oto, three Iowa, and his own half-Missouri son. When they were "about a pistol-shot away from their camp" Bourgmont "ordered his tent put up, and had his Frenchmen stack their arms, with a single sentinel to gaurd them, at the entrance to this tent."

The Apache chief spoke to the warriors who came to investigate. "They spread a bison robe on the ground and placed M. de Bourgmont on it, with his son" along with two of the Frenchmen to take them into the camp. "Then they had us feast with them, with great rejoicing, and as night fell we returned to our camp."

In the days that followed, Bourgmont offered trade goods. They reciprocated with horses. And, "each morning they took the son of M. de Bourgmont into their dwellings and kept him the whole day, and they decided among themselves who would have him on a given day. In the evening they would return him to his father in our camp."

The chief signaled he was ready to pledge his allegiance to the French by coming with the heads of the twelve villages and several warriors. "At once, he gave his hand to M. de Bourgmont and invited him to be seated on his right, and the others after him. Whereupon, M. de Bourgmont invited them all to smoke the great calumet of peace."

The next day, the chief invited him and his two aides "to my dwelling to have a feast." After they had eaten, men from the villages arrived with their women and children. The Apache leader gathered them together to inform them the French were now their allies.

Philippe de la Renaudiére noted, "In a word, one could hardly believe all the attention these people showered upon us during our stay with them." They gave his son the most precious of all gifts, "a dozen blue stones, strung together like a rosary."

They had arrived on October 18. The weather turned bad on the 21st with rain turning to sleet. The French left the next day.

Three years later, the agent of the viceroy concluded the French alliance with the plains Apache constituted no danger to New Spain, "since the purpose of the French have in appearing there is but to trade their goods, muskets and arms with the savages [...] as they are accustomed, especially living among the Pawnees at a distance of two hundred leagues from Santa Fé."

Notes: The French term for Apache was Padouca. A calumet pipe were shared to indicate men from two groups had no hostile intentions to each other. As Marquette learned, it only spanned the time of the meeting, and was no guarantee of permanent peace. The calumet had to be renewed at each meeting. Placing men on the right was made them counter-clockwise in the circle. The blue stones were turquoise.

Marquette, Jacques. Journal included in Claude Dablon’s "Le Premier Voÿage Qu’a Fait Le P. Marquette vers le Nouveau Mexique," translated by Reuben Gold Thwaites in The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, volume 59, 1899.

Norall, Frank. Bourgmont, 1988.

Renaudiére, Philippe de la. Journal of the Voyage of Monsieur de Bourgmont, translation in Norall.

Revolledo, Juan de Oliván. Report to the viceroy, Juan de Acuña, 21 November 1727; translation in Alfred B. Thomas, After Coronado, 1935.

Bourgmont among the Kansa

The most important distinction between Antonio Valverde and Etienne de Véniard, sieur de Bourgmont, didn’t arise from their characters. Both were resilient enough to survive disgraces following military catastrophes: the one by expanding his hacienda near El Paso, the other by producing a detailed description of the Missouri river.

The defining experiences occurred when they entered the New World as young men. Zacatecas and the other mining towns of northern New Spain were urban oasis surrounded by hostile natives. Even the largest landowners spent most of their time in towns where plaza life had been transferred from Spain.

France had not found wealth in the residium of geological history that supported large settlements. Their income came from the fur trade, which required men willing to go to ever-shifting frontiers to trade. Bourgmont was apprenticed in the ways of coureurs who lived with bands, and married their women.

While he was with the Mascouten and the Missouri, Valverde was in a garrison isolated among Christian pueblos hemmed in by combative Suma and Faraón Apache. At El Paso, he no doubt heard tales of the Pueblo Revolt retold by survivors who didn’t return, and reheard memorats from their descendants. It was likely the same miasma of fear that preconditioned Leonor Domínguez’s response to the San Juan.

The differences in their familiarity with other ways of living colored how the men and their soldiers behaved on bivouac. When Bourgmont’s party was traveling with the Kansa, it was the native leader, not Bourgmont, who "ordered his camp master to place the French camp on the right, with the Missouris next and their tribes in two lines, with the head of our camp facing west and the rear facing east."

When Bourgmont and his entourage of Missouri and Osage had first approached a small encampment of Kansa, "They welcomed him and the Frenchmen who were with him with calumet raised high and with great rejoicing. After inviting the Frenchmen to smoke, they spread out the warmat and offered a feast consisting of the food they had all prepared. They also invited to the feast the Osages and Missouris."

Bourgmont and his escort were taken to the main Kansa camp, where the supply convoy had not yet arrived. Bourgmont was placed in a difficult position. He did not expect to be treated by the Kansa, nor did he expect the Missouri and Osage to poach on their hunting grounds. He told his chronicler, "that he had 160 Indians to feed and that it was necessary to trade European goods every day for their subsistence."

He did not begin to discuss his mission to the Apache until the goods arrived. After he laid out the goods, "corresponding to the presents the Kansas had given him," he concluded: "For that, you have only to collect many peltries and to announce right away in your village to your people - men, women, and even children - that they may come to trade their peltries to the Frenchmen who are with me, whom I have instructed to trade with you. Bring whatever horses you have, I will trade for them and pay you well, for I need them for my voyage to the" Apache.

Negotiations were difficult. The Kansa claimed they had been paid twice what was being offered by other Frenchmen and by the Illinois. Bourgmont broke off trade. Then an Iowa stole one of his horses, and Bourgmont got angry. The Kansa chief made appeasing noises and trade resumed.

Apparently the trade had two purposes: provisioning the expedition and financing it. Philippe de la Renaudiére noted that just before the group resumed its journey west, "Our pirogues left at eight this morning to return to Fort d’Orléans with our sick, and the slaves and peltries that the Frenchmen had acquired by trading."

Notes: Bourgmont deserted his command after gunfire at Fort Ponchartrain killed the Jesuit priest dead. Valverde was governor when an expedition he sent to the Pawnee was destroyed by an ambush. Pirogue is a flat-bottomed boat. The history of Leonor Domínguez appeared between March 26 and April 21 of this year.

Norall, Frank. Bourgmont, 1988.

Renaudiére, Philippe de la. Journal of the Voyage of Monsieur de Bourgmont, translation in Norall.

Parallel Lives, Diverging Worlds (continued)

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.

Parallel Lives, Diverging Worlds

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.

Quinine

Malaria didn’t exist as a term until the late 1820s. Earlier it was simply described as a fever. In southeastern Spain around 50 AD, Columella noted that a marsh "always breeds animals armed with mischievous stings, which fly upon us in exceeding thick swarms." He added that, around marshes, "hidden diseases are often contracted, the causes of which, even the physicians themselves cannot thoroughly understand."

No one has speculated on the illnesses that affected Bourgmont’s camp, because his chronicler, Philippe de la Renaudiére, left no details. He did say on July 30 that Bourgmont was "very weak" with a "severe pain in the kidneys."

It usually takes ten to fifteen days for the disease to develop enough to show the first symptoms. This suggests Fort de Chartres was the epicenter. The men who came north from New Orleans weren’t ill until they’d been there some time. The only natives who were affected were the Missouri, who left there on July 3. If they lived near water, they may have carried local immunities. Renaudiére reported the first death on July 11. The Kansa and Osage apparently were not affected.

The local slaves probably came from Angola where many inherited a genetic mutation that protected them. The map below shows the modern distribution of the sickle cell genetic pattern. It would have developed where the pathogen was most common. The northern dark center is the Niger delta, the other the Congo basin. Gabon lies to the north, Angola to the south of the Congolese center of diffusion.

Renaudiére noted that on July 11, Bourgmont "has taken medicine and purged himself." On the 14th, he "bled five" Indians and on the 15th he "prepared medicine for them." The following day, he recorded "The medicines that M. de Bourgmont gave had a good effect, so that they are well satisfied."

The natives may have believed the quality of the medicine was commiserate with the power of the provider. Bourgmont was following contemporary conventions discussed in the post for 16 April 2015. When he had chills, he purged himself. When the natives had fevers, he bled them.

Renaudiére doesn’t indicate what medicine Bourgmont provided, or what he was given when he returned to Fort de Chartres. If it was efficacious, it would have been quinine bark in a liquid.

Cinchona officinalis was used by the Andean Quechua. With the viceroy’s wife in Lima was suffering from malaria in 1638, her physician took a chance and treated her with the native cure. They weren’t the same fever, but the theory of four humors posited what was good for one was good for all, because all fevers were caused by the same imbalance of fluids.

Ana Osorio Manrique recovered and carried bark back with her to Spain where she dispensed it to people living on her husband’s lowland estate southeast of Madrid. The doctor, Juan de Vega, took some back to Seville.

Jesuits responded to the demand they created by exercising their paternal control over the well being of the Quechua. They began exporting the powder to finance the order. In 1679, Louis XIV found a way to evade their monopoly, and the medicine became more available, at least to those with money or connections.

Notes: Although Frank Norall said Bourgmont had malaria, the comments on the illness at Fort de Chartres are my speculation, not established fact. Perú and México were under separate viceroys.

Columella, Lucius Junius Moderatus. De Re Rustica, anonymously translated in 1745 as L. Junius Moderatus Columella of Husbandry, book 1.

Hobhouse, Henry. Seeds of Change, 1986.

Markham, Clements Robert. A Memoir of the Lady Ana de Osorio, 1874. She was the widow of the Marqués de las Salinas when she married Jerónimo Luis de Cabrera and Bobadilla, the Conde de Cinchon. After she died, he married Francisca Enriquez de Rivera. The two wives have been confused by people writing about quinine and the tale of her cure may be more legend than fact.

Norall, Frank. Bourgmont, 1988.

Renaudiére, Philippe de la. Journal of the Voyage of Monsieur de Bourgmont, translation in Norall.

Graphics: Muntuwandi, "Sickle Cell Distribution," uploaded to Wikimedia Commons on 10 May 2007.

Malaria

Bourgmont’s attempt to expand French markets onto the plains by blunting the worst abuses of the captive trade was hobbled by the expansion of slavery in the sugar colonies. The 1725 census for Fort de Chartres indicated the company financing Louisiana owned 22 African slaves, while the nearby lead mines had 20. The community of 126 individuals, 68 soldiers and unenumerated natives and voyageurs held an additional 19 African and 17 Apache or Pawnee slaves. There was one free Black.

The Africans were a recent addition. Tradition says they were brought from Saint-Domingue in 1718.

France had entered the slave trade when the price for sugar began rising. There were few slaves among the 3,100 Europeans living in the Saint-Domingue colony in 1670, when it grew tobacco. The Compagnie de Sénégal was chartered in 1675 to supply labor to the developing sugar plantations. By 1685 when the Compagnie de Guinée was established and Jean l’Archevêque was living in Petit-Goâve, there were 2,939 African slaves and 4,6500 French on the western part of Hispañola. Fifteen years later, there were more slaves than whites: 9,082 to 4,560.

When Louis XIV granted the Spanish asiento for Caribbean trade to the Compagnie de Guinée in 1703, it was instructed to draw its slaves from Angola and Gabon. A decade or so later, in 1716, France eliminated the monopolies, and allowed any ship owner from one of five ports to sell slaves so long as he paid duty in Saint-Domingue. Fort de Chartres’ bondsmen came under the last regime.

The import of Black slaves introduced more virulent forms of malaria to the Caribbean. The disease is caused by a single-celled protozoa of the genus Plasmodium. The species found in Europe and the New World, malariae and vivax, are less dangerous than the falciparum found in sub-Saharan Africa. An individual infected with one develops an immunity to that particular strain, but when such a person is exposed to falciparum the protection transforms into a susceptibility. Infected people carry the parasite for life in their blood.

The map below shows the current distribution of malaria. The different colors represent strains that are resistant to different treatments. No connection was drawn between the resistence patterns and the underlying pathogen. One would guess the dark brown was Plasmodium falciparum, and the other colors other species.

Malaria is spread by mosquitos that transfer the parasite through their bites. They need stagnant water to lay its eggs. The first step in the colonial assimilation of falciparum was its genetic adaption to New World insects. According to Alvaro Molina-Cruz and Carolina Barillas-Mury, mosquitoes have internal mechanisms that protect them from the invaders. Each type is different. The modification made by Plasmodium to disable the barriers didn’t happen just once, but every time the protozoa were taken into a new environment.

The transformations happened quickly. The English seized Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655. They quickly stocked it with slaves, taking whoever was in the market. The first serious cases of malaria were reported in 1655 and 1656.

Notes: The asiento was mentioned in the post for 17 May 2015. The most active slave port was Nantes.

Boucher, Philip P. France and the American Tropics to 1700, 2010.

Brown, Margaret Kimball. History as They Lived It: A Social History of Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, 2010.

Molina-Cruz, Alvaro and Carolina Barillas-Mury. "The Remarkable Journey of Adaptation of the Plasmodium falciparum Malaria Parasite to New World Anopheline Mosquitoes," Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Memórias 109: 662-667:2014.

Morgan, M. J. Land of Big Rivers: French and Indian Illinois, 1699-1778, 2010. He said many of the company slaves were rented out, and that the mine slaves ended working in the wheat fields.

Renaudiére, Philippe de la. Journal of the Voyage of Monsieur de Bourgmont, translation in Frank Norall, Bourgmont, 1988.

Graphics: Percherie, "Pays Concernés par le Paludisme (Malaria)," uploaded to Wikimedia Commons on 8 October 2006 as "Map of Places Affected by Malaria by Type."