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Indians, French, and Africans in Colonial Mississippi Valley Sonia Toudji University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

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Indians, French, and Africans in Colonial Mississippi Valley Sonia Toudji University of Arkansas, Fayetteville University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 5-2012 Intimate Frontiers: Indians, French, and Africans in Colonial Mississippi Valley Sonia Toudji University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the African American Studies Commons, Indigenous Studies Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Toudji, Sonia, "Intimate Frontiers: Indians, French, and Africans in Colonial Mississippi Valley" (2012). Theses and Dissertations. 344. http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/344 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. INTIMATE FRONTIERS: INDIANS, FRENCH, AND AFRICANS IN COLONIAL MISSISSIPPI VALLEY INTIMATE FRONTIERS: INDIANS, FRENCH, AND AFRICANS IN COLONIAL MISSISSIPPI VALLEY A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History By Sonia Toudji Université de Tizi Ouzou Licence of English Language, Literature, and Civilization, 2004 Université du Maine Master of English Language, Literature, and Civilization, 2006 May 2012 University of Arkansas ABSTRACT Historians have agreed that the French were more successful than their competitors in developing cordial relations with Native Americans during the conquest of North America. French diplomatic savoir faire and their skill at trading with Indians are usually cited to explain this success, but the Spaniards relied upon similar policies of trade and gift giving, while enjoying considerably less success with the Indians. Intimate Frontiers proposes an alternative model to understand the relative success of French Colonization in North America. Intimate Frontiers, an ethno-historical examination of the colonial encounters in the Lower French Louisiana, focuses on the social relations between Europeans, Indians and African in colonial Mississippi Valley. It examines the importance of the intimate bonds forged between settlers and natives in maintaining diplomatic alliances in the region even after the French left Louisiana in 1763. My work brings sexuality and intimacy into the political arena, challenging the prevailing view that power was defined solely by political and military alliances. There are three key components to my study. The first part shows how the French and Quapaws forged social ties in early Arkansas through adoption and sexual unions, allowing them to face their common enemies, the Chickasaws, as brothers. The second section examines the mutual commercial interests and intimate relations between the Osage Indians and the Chouteau family of St. Louis. Given his kinship connections with the Osage and his economic power in the region, Pierre Chouteau became the first U.S. Indian Agent for the Osage. The final section demonstrates that Africans (both free and runaway slaves) and Indians created economic and intimate ties that allowed them to negotiate life among Europeans. African men and Choctaw women entered into sexual unions, allowing their progenitors, the girfs, to claim their freedom, following the status of their Indian mothers. This dissertation is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council. Dissertation Director: _______________________________________ Prof. Beth Barton Schweiger Dissertation Committee: _______________________________________ Prof. Helene Aji _______________________________________ Judge Morris Arnold _______________________________________ Prof. Eliane Elmaleh _______________________________________ Prof. James Gigantino II _______________________________________ Prof. Elliott West ©2012 by Sonia Toudji All Rights Reserved DISSERTATION DUPLICATION RELEASE I hereby authorize the University of Arkansas Libraries to duplicate this dissertation when needed for research and/or scholarship. Agreed __________________________________________ Sonia Toudji ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Although less prestigious than a book, writing a dissertation carries at least as many debts. From my professors, family, friends, colleagues, archivists, and sponsors to strangers like Sam, the bus driver in New Orleans who waited for me whenever I was a few seconds late, and William, the security guard at a rest area who fixed my car at 1 o’clock in the morning as I made my way back from a research trip - all contributed to the finalization of Intimate Frontiers. I would like to express my gratitude to all individuals who have helped me accomplish this project. I would especially like to thank Prof. Beth Barton Schweiger, my advisor, who has seen it all throughout this project! She has been patient, generous, and supportive, and model to which I will aspire throughout my career. Many thanks to Judge Morris S. Arnold, my mentor, for his help and support from the very beginning of this adventure, as well as to Profs. Elliott West and James Gigantino for their comments and advice. Special thanks to my colleagues Ron Gordon and Kevin Jones, who read parts of my work and provided me with valuable feedback. I would also like to extend my appreciation to Profs. Helene Aji, Eliane Elmaleh and Jeffery Hopes, Universite du Maine, France, for their help and encouragements. They enabled me to take upon the task of work on the joint degree. I also grateful to Marie-France Dubos and Lucie Denoual who helped me negotiate my way through the paperwork. It would take a full page to list my family members and friends who supported me during these years of hard work and had to put up with my bad days and crankiness. Thank you! I love you! I also owe a debt of gratitude to many people who have assisted with this research, particularly Beth Juhl who stimulated my thinking towards the project, and Andrea Cantrell, Geoffrey who eased the research at the University of Arkansas campus. I am also grateful to other archivists at different institutions including Jaime Bourassa at the Missouri History Museum Library and Research Center, St. Louis, Greg Lambousy at the Louisiana State Museum Archives in New Orleans as well as Mathilde Debelle Musée du Quai de Branly Archives in Paris, to name few. Many thanks to the stuff of the Notarial Archives, New Orleans and Archivo General de Indias in Seville, for making my visits possible and productive. Special thanks to Starr Mitchell, Sylvia Frey who enabled me to access research material, and to Emily Clark for her advice and time. Thanks a bunch to you all, who supported me and/or helped me one way or the other to finish this project, friends, colleagues, scholars, librarians, and acquaintances whose names have not been mentioned above. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the institutions that helped financing the research, namely the University of Arkansas History Department and the Cushwa Center at the University of Notre Dame. Finally, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the private funding I received from the Mary D. Hudgins and Diane Blair Fellowships. DEDICATION I dedicate this modest achievement to my dear parents. TABLE OF CONTENTS MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS INTRODUCTION 1 PART I: Liaisons and Alliances: French settlers and Quapaw Indians 24 CHAPTER 1: The Encounter: Cohabitation and Kinship at Arkansas Post 36 I. The Spanish and Quapaw Conquest of the Mississippi Valley 39 II. Intimacy, Kinship, and Alliance at Arkansas Post 43 III. The Quapaw and French as Military Allies 46 IV. The French Needed the Quapaw 49 V. Brothers in Arms: The French and Quapaw Military Alliance 57 CHAPTER 2: Sexual & Marital Unions between the Quapaw Women & Frenchmen 63 I. Concubinage at Arkansas Post 66 II. French Policy on Intermarriage with Indians 68 III. Marriage at Arkansas Post 73 IV. Marriage a La Façon du Pays 83 PART II: Friends and Kin: French and Osage Indians in St. Louis Frontier 95 CHAPTER 3: The First Encounters with the Children of the Middle Waters 108 I. The Osage Women 110 II. Marriage among the Osage 114 III. Intimate Encounters with the Heavy Eyebrows 116 IV. An Indian-French Marriage in Paris 122 V. A New Era 129 CHAPTER 4: The Osage Indians in Sho’ to To-Wo’n 133 I. The Chouteau Family 135 II. The Building of St. Louis 138 III. The Chouteaus as Consorts among the Osage 141 IV. St. Louis under the Spanish Rule 145 V. Manipulating the Spaniards 151 VI. Resisting the American Manifest Destiny 162 PART III: Choctaws and Africans in the Louisiana Intimate Frontiers 172 CHAPTER 5: Bondage: Slavery and the Intimate Encounters 183 I. The Choctaw Indians 185 II. The Choctaws’ Encounter the Europeans 187 III. Africans in Louisiana 191 VI. Choctaw and African Resistance to Bondage 196 V. Choctaw-African Sexual Unions 200 CHAPTER 6: Bound: The Indian-African Struggle for Freedom 204 I. The Spanish Laws on African Slavery 206 II. Indian Slavery during the Spanish Era 211 III. Freedom in the Name of Indian Ancestry 215 IV. The Grifs’ Lawsuits and the Intimate Frontier 218 CONCLUSION 226 BIBLIOGRAPHY 231 MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1. Map of 1700’s Mississippi Valley Figure 2. Map of the Arkansas Indian Territory Figure 3. Map of the Quapaw, Osage, and Chickasaw Territories of Influence Figure 4. The Three Villages Robe Figure 5. Details of the Three Villages Robe Figure 6. Map of the Arkansas Post Location Figure 7. Map of the Osage Country Figure 8. The Peaux Rouges in Paris 1724 Figure 9. The Missouria Princess with her French Husband in Missouri Figure 10. Painting of the Osage and Spanish Treaty in New Orleans Figure 11. Map of the Choctaw Country INTRODUCTION “Spanish civilization crushed the Indian; English civilization scorned and neglected him; French civilization embraced and cherished him.” Francis Parkman “The [Arkansas] Indians live with the French who are near them more as brothers than as neighbors, and it is yet to happen that one has seen any misunderstanding between the two nations.” Antoine Simon Le Page du Pratz 1 Intimate Frontiers re-examines the patterns that characterized the early encounter between the French, Spaniards, Africans, and Native Americans in the Mississippi Valley.
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