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Toussaint Charbonneau, a Most Durable Man

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Copyright © 1976 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved. Toussaint Charbonneau, A Most Durable Man DENNIS R. OTTOSON Toussaint Charbonneau is known today, when recognized at all, only as the husband of Sacagawea of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. And because of the overly romanticized image of Sacagawea, Charbonneau is badly downgraded even in that role. As Annie H. Abel summarized, "There was nothing particularly worthy about Charbonneau. For the most part he shines by reflected glory, the glory that is Sacajawea's halo." ^ In 1893 Elliott Coues called him a wife-beating French coward who could have served Lewis and Clark best by drowning in the Missouri. ^ This article is intended to help fill in the gaps of what is known about Charbonneau's Ufe and also to reevaluate the reputation given him by the majority of historians. To his contemporaries Charbonneau was renowned (other than for his connection with Lewis and Clark) only for his longevity, his women, and his cooking. Yet, his life is worth studying for the simple fact that for over forty years, he participated in nearly every major enterprise on the upper Missouri. Toussaint Charbonneau was born about 1759, supposedly *I would like to thank the following people tor their aid and cooperation: Walter Leapley, libraxy director at the South Dakota State Penitentiary; Dr. John Bylsma of Augustana College, Sioux Falls; and Janice T'leming, librarian at the South Dakota State Historical Society in Pierre. I must also thank the library staffs of Augustana and Sioux Falls colleges in Sioux Falls and of the South Dakota Library Commission in Pierre. Finally, many thanks to Dr. John Bylsma and to Dr. Harvey L. Carter of Colorado Springs, Colorado, for their suggestions in the preparation of the final manuscript. 1. F.A. Chardon, Journal at Fort Clark, 1834-1839, ed. Annie H. Abel (Pierre, S.Dak.: South Dakota Department of History, 1932), p.270n. 258. 2. Elliott Coues, ed., History of the Expedition Under the Command of Lewis and Clark, 4 vols. (New York: Francis P. Harper, 1893), l:190n, 31 ln, 2:497n. Copyright © 1976 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved. Toussaint Charbonneau 153 in the vicinity of Montreal, Canada. ^ Nothing is presently known about his life before 1793, except that sometime prior to that year he became an employee of the North West Company, a Montreal-based fur trading firm established in 1783 as the major rival of the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1793 Charbonneau appears in the journal of John Macdonell, a North West Company clerk at Fort Esperance on the Qu'appelle River. This fort was one of a string of posts built along the Assiniboine River by the Hudson's Bay, North West, and XY companies. These companies traded with the Saulteurs (Chippewas), Crees, Assiniboines, and, occasionally, the Sioux. In November 1793 Charbonneau was one of five men who left Fort Esperance for a nearby post called Pine Fort. '' In the spring of 1794 he may have gone with Cuthbert Grant, a North West Company bourgeois, and the annual brigade to deliver the winter's trade to Grand Portage on Lake Superior, or he may have helped Peter Grant build a new post forty miles up the Assiniboine on the la Coquille River. On 10 November Charbonneau arrived at Fort Esperance from la Coquille, only to return two days later. In December he was back at Fort Esperance, where he ran errands between the fort and the Indian camps. In the spring of 1795 he and two men went to the North West Company post at Montagne a la Bosse for trade goods, but Charbonneau found something more interesting than supplies at the post. After returning the trade goods to Fort Esperance on 3 March, he and two others started to return to the North West Company post "to court the Foutreau's daughter a great beauty." ^ The Indian girl apparently had more than enough suitors, and nothing is known about Charbonneau's success with this romance. On 18 May Charbonneau left Fort Esperance with Macdonell and the summer brigade for Grand Portage.* 3. John C. Luttig, Journal of a Fur-Trading Expedition to the Upper Missouri, 1812-1813, ed. Stella M. Diumm (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1920), p. 136. Three different sources state that Charbonneau was eighty-years-old between March 1838 and August 1839. 4. Oiarles M. Gates, ed., Five Fur Traders of the Northwest (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1965), pp. 96n.6O. 5. Chíiáon, Journal, p. 271. 6. Louis R. Masson, Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest, 2 vols. (Quebec: A. Conte et cie., 1889-90), 1:294. Copyright © 1976 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved. 154 South Dakota History Charbonneau was sent across the twelve-mile Portage la Prairie to Lac Manitou-a-Banc, probably to pick up the winter's trade at William McKay's post. On 30 May, while he was still at the lake end of the portage, "an old Saultier woman" caught him "in the act of committing a Rape upon her Daughter.'"' To be fair to Charbonneau, who never told his version of this incident, it should be pointed out that Macdonell, who recorded this from hearsay, was so strait-laced that his voyageurs nicknamed him "the Priest." * It is possible that Charbonneau had seduced the daughter with words or goods; but whether rape or seduction, it made little difference to the mother. She stopped his sexual activity with a canoe awl. Charbonneau was hurt badly enough so that "it was with difficulty he could walk back over the portage." ' The brigade reached Lake Winnipeg on 4 June. Shortly thereafter Macdonell's journal ends, and so do all references to Toussaint Charbonneau as a regular employee of the North West Company. '° However, Charbonneau did not immediately leave the company; he must have traveled back to the Assiniboine area with the fall brigade. Then, during 1796, he quit the company and moved to that part of the Missouri River now in North Dakota. He was not the first Frenchman who had rejected the lowly status of engage., or common laborer, and gone to the Missouri. A man named Menard had lived with the Mandans since 1778. About 1791 Rene Jusseaume had become a free trader on the upper Missouri with goods he regularly obtained from the Assiniboine posts. By 1796 the trade on the Missouri as far up as the Minitari villages had been well established, and even a Saint Louis company under the field command of John Evans had gone as far as the Mandans. ' ^ 7. ChSiiáon, Journal, p. 271. 8. Gates, Five Fur Traders of the Northwest, pp. 63-64. 9. Chardon, Journal, p. 271. Actual rape was very rare among traders at this time. Women were readily available, and traders did not want to offend theii customers. See Walter O'Meara, Daughters of the Country (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968) for an excellent survey of the relations between traders and Indian women. 10. Masson, Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest, 1:295. 11. Alexander P. Maximilian, Prince of Wied, "Travels in the Interior of North Ameriea. ¡832-1834" in Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed.. Earlv Western Travels 1748-1846, 3 vols. (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1904-7), 2:222-23; A.P. Nasatir, si.. Before Lewis and Clark: Documents Illustrating the History of the Missouri, Copyright © 1976 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved. Toussaint Charbonneau 155 Charbonneau established himself at the Minitari village of Metaharta, which was on the right (southwest) bank of the Knife River about a half mile from its mouth. This village remained his home for most of his Ufe. A second and larger village was located about one and one-half miles up the Knife. The Minitaris were a sedentary people who traditionally never hved anywhere else than at the earth-lodge villages on the Knife. They were a large-bodied, proud people who were generally at peace with their Amahami, Mandan, and Cheyenne neighbors and with their Crow relatives; but they fought nearly every other tribe in the upper Missouri area. Their women raised corn, squash, and other plants; the men periodically made organized hunts on the plains for buffalo, deer, and antelope. '^ There is very Uttle information about Charbonneau's relations with the Minitaris. Apparently, they accepted him, liked him, and gave him nicknames such as "the chief of the little village; the man who possesses many gourds; the great horse from abroad; the forest bear; and [a] fifth, which, as often happens among these Indians, is not very refined." He learned to speak at least the commercial and domestic parts of their language, a Siouan tongue that, he admitted years later, he had never learned to pronounce properly. '^ As an interpreter, though, he was just as valuable to the Minitaris as he was to the white traders. When he was not needed for interpreting, he apparently involved himself in the social life of the Minitaris. It was a Minitari war party that brought him the girl who, long after both their deaths, became far more famous than he did. In 1800 or 1801 the raiders struck a Shoshoni camp at the Three Forks of the Missouri in present western Montana and 1785-1804, 2 vols. (St. Louis: St. Louis Historical Documents Foundation, 1952), 1:161, 331; Luttig, Journal of a Fur-Trading Expedition to the Upper Missouri, p. 79; Nasatir, "John Thomas Evans," in L.R. Hafen, ed.. The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, 10 vols.
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