Indians, French and Africans in the Mississippi Valley Sonia Toudji
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Intimate Frontiers : Indians, French and Africans in the Mississippi Valley Sonia Toudji To cite this version: Sonia Toudji. Intimate Frontiers : Indians, French and Africans in the Mississippi Valley. History. Université du Maine, 2011. English. NNT : 2011LEMA3008. tel-00675452 HAL Id: tel-00675452 https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00675452 Submitted on 1 Mar 2012 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Université du Maine – Le Mans École doctorale SCE Laboratoire de recherche 3L.AM (E.A. 4335) Frontières Intimes: Indiens, Français, et Africains dans la Vallée du Mississippi Thèse de doctorat en civilisation américaine en cotutelle avec University of Arkansas soutenue le 9 décembre 2011 par Sonia Toudji Sous la direction de Mme le professeur Hélène AJI Co-direction de Mme le professeur Eline Elmaleh Membres du jury M. Morris S. Arnold, Judge M. James Gigantino II, professeur à University of Arkansas Mme. Beth Barton Schweiger, professeur à University of Arkansas M. Elliott West, professeur à University of Arkansas Contents Maps & Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Liaisons & Alliances: French settlers and Quapaw Indians Chapter 1: The Encounter: Cohabitation and Kinship at Arkansas Post I. The Spanish and Quapaw Conquest of the Mississippi Valley II. Intimacy, Kinship and Alliance at Arkansas Post III. The Quapaw and French as Military Allies IV. The French Needed the Quapaw V. Brothers in Arms: The French and Quapaw Military Alliance Chapter 2: Sexual & Marital Unions between the Quapaw Women & Frenchmen I. Concubinage at Arkansas Post II. French Policy on Intermarriage with Indians III. Marriage at Arkansas Post IV. Marriage a La Façon du Pays Part II: Friends & Kin: French & Osage Indians in St. Louis Frontier Chapter 3: The First Encounters with the Children of the Middle Waters I. The Osage Women II. Marriage among the Osage 2 III. Intimate Encounters with the Heavy Eyebrows IV. An Indian-French Marriage in Paris V. A New Era Chapter 4: The Osage Indians in the Sho’ to To-Wo’n I. The Chouteau Family II. The Building of St. Louis III. The Chouteaus as Consorts among the Osage IV. Business in St. Louis V. Manipulating the Spaniards VI. Resisting the American Manifest Destiny Part III. Choctaws and Africans in the Louisiana Intimate Frontiers Chapter 5: Bondage: Slavery and the Intimate Encounter I. The Choctaw Indians II. The Choctaws‘ Encounter the Europeans III. Africans in Louisiana IV. Choctaw and African Resistance to Bondage V. Choctaw-African Sexual Unions Chapter 6: Bound: The Indian-African Struggle for Freedom I. The Spanish Laws on African Slavery II. Indian Slavery during the Spanish Era III. Freedom in the Name of Indian Ancestry IV. The Grifs‘ Lawsuits and the Intimate Frontier Conclusion Bibliography 3 Maps and Illustrations Figure 1. Map of the Area of Study and Location of the French Posts Figure 2. Map of the Quapaw, Osage, and Chickasaw Territories of Influence Figure 3. The Three Villages Robe Figure 4. Details of the Three Villages Robe Figure 5. Map of the Osage Country Figure 6. The Peaux Rouges in Paris 1724 Figure 7. The Missouria Princess with her French Husband in Missouri Figure 8. Map of the Choctaw Country 4 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, and to Profs. Elliott West and James Gigantino for their comments and advice. 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 Jule who stimulated my thinking towards the project, and Andrea Canteral, Goeffrey who eased the research at the University of Arkansas campus. I am also grateful to other archivist 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. 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 Hydgins and Diane Blair Fellowships. 5 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 6 Intimate Frontiers re-examines the patterns that characterized the early encounter between the French, Spaniards, Africans, and Native Americans in the Mississippi Valley. It looks at the cultural, economic, and political exchange between them on an every-day basis. It brings sexuality and intimacy into the political arena, challenging the prevailing view that power was defined solely by political and military alliances. Intimate Frontiers describes how people exchanged goods, developed friendships, and formed sexual and marital unions. It shows how settlers, slaves, and Natives used sexuality, marriage, and kinship as a political instrument. It also examines the ways in which formal diplomatic and trade treaties have been driven by informal social and cultural concerns in the frontiers. Unlike their competitors, the Spanish and English, the French generally established excellent relations with the Natives in the New World. In New France and in the colony of Louisiana, the French secured military alliances and established commercial relations that earned the loyalty of the majority of the Native American tribes they encountered.1 The French often used their influence on the Indians to defend their interest in North America. They counted on their Indian allies during the several ―French and Indian Wars,‖ to resist or attack both European enemies and hostile Indians. 1 During the Natchez Massacrethe Natchez, Chickasaws, Yazous, and other tribes conducted a joint attack on the French Post at Natchez in 1729. Natchez warriors killed 145 men, 36 women and 56 children and took numerous captives. A French-Indian expedition on December of the same year wiped the Natchez from the geopolitical map. Daniel Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley Before 1783, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 72-73. 7 Historians have agreed that the French were more successful than their competitors in developing cordial relations with the Native Americans during the conquest of North America.2 Scholars have argued that the French interest in trade and economic exchange made them the least dangerous of the European powers present in North America for the Natives.3 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. The focus on economics and diplomacy of the empires in these borderlands ignores a crucial aspect of the encounter: the intimate day to day relationships created between the individuals on the frontiers. Intimate Frontiers proposes an alternative model to understand the relative