University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Winter 2012 LEADING THE "FATHER" THE PAWNEE HOMELAND, COUREURS DE BOIS, AND THE VILLASUR EXPEDITION OF 1720 Christopher Steinke University of New Mexico Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the American Studies Commons, Cultural History Commons, and the United States History Commons Steinke, Christopher, "LEADING THE "FATHER" THE PAWNEE HOMELAND, COUREURS DE BOIS, AND THE VILLASUR EXPEDITION OF 1720" (2012). Great Plains Quarterly. 2753. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2753 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. LEADING THE "FATHER" THE PAWNEE HOMELAND, COUREURS DE BOIS, AND THE VILLASUR EXPEDITION OF 1720 CHRISTOPHER STEINKE In 1742 two sons of the explorer Pierre for prayer,'" Louis-Joseph believed he had at Gaultier de Varennes de La Verendrye met last found evidence of the Mer de l'Ouest and an indigenous nation they called the Gens de the people living on its shores. But his hopes l'Arc somewhere along the middle Missouri were quickly dashed when the chief proceeded River near present-day Pierre, South Dakota'! to speak a few words of the whites' language. Louis-Joseph and Franc,:ois were searching for As Louis-Joseph explained to Charles de la the mythical Sea of the West, and the former Boische Beauharnois, the governor of Canada, asked the chief of the Gens de l'Arc if he "knew "I recognized that he was speaking Spanish, the white people of the seacoast." When the and what confirmed me in my opinion was the chief replied that "'[tlhe French who are on account he gave of the massacre of the Spanish the seacoast are numerous'" and have "'many who were going in search of the Missouri, a chiefs for the soldiers, and also many chiefs matter I had heard mentioned." He concluded, "All this considerably lessened my eager­ ness, concerning a sea already known" by the Spaniards.2 Key Words: Bourgmont, Cuartelejo Apaches, The chief was most likely describing an Illinois Country, Segesser, slavery event that had occurred over twenty years ear­ lier: the destruction of the Villasur Expedition Christopher Steinke is a PhD candidate at the on the banks of the Platte and Loup rivers in University of New Mexico. His dissertation examines the Missouri River trade in the eighteenth and early present-day Nebraska. It was the last expedi­ nineteenth centuries. He thanks John Wunder and tion of its kind until fears of Zebulon Pike Margaret Connell-Szasz for their comments on earlier inspired another Spanish march to the north­ portions of this article, the anonymous reviewers for east. In 1720 Pedro de Villasur led forty-five their suggestions, and the Newberry Consortium in Spaniards and sixty Pueblo auxiliaries out of American Indian Studies. Santa Fe to win Indian allies and to gauge the French presence in the Great Plains. Pawnee [GPQ 32 (Winter 2012): 43-62] Indians, perhaps with the help of a few French 43 44 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, WINTER 2012 COLORADO Cuartelejo ApaF 8---':::..-- .......- ................:....- / EI Cuartelejo TEXAS OKLAHOMA NEW MEXICO FIG. 1. Probable route of the Villasur Expedition, 1720. Fort d'Orleans was founded in 1724. Expedition route adapted from Gottfried Hotz, Indian Skin Paintings from the American Southwest, and Donald J. Blakeslee, Holy Ground, Healing Water. Map produced by Laura Vennard, Map and Geographic Information Center, University of New Mexico. traders, destroyed the expedition near the con­ day western Kansas and Nebraska. During a fluence of the Platte and Loup rivers, leaving pivotal five-year period of European activity only fourteen survivors to report back to Santa in the Plains, from 1719 until 1724, both the Fe (see Fig. 1). Pawnee and their Apache enemies enlisted The chief's memory of the Spanish-Pawnee Europeans in a decidedly indigenous struggle. encounter suggests that it resonated as an When Villasur and his men entered the important event in the early eighteenth­ Platte Valley, they set foot in a region that century history of the central Plains. Yet Pawnees had called home for hundreds of years. the repercussions of the expedition remain Caddoan-speaking ancestors of the Pawnees somewhat unclear. In general, historians have settled in present-day Nebraska as early as viewed the Villasur Expedition as a brief exten­ AD 1000. In the sixteenth and seventeenth sion of European imperial rivalry into the con­ centuries, however, new neighbors joined tinent's interior and have not fully addressed Pawnees in the central Plains. Dakota attacks the indigenous politics surrounding it.3 This forced the Omahas, Dhegiha Siouan speakers, article attempts to reposition the Villasur to abandon the Big Sioux River and cross to Expedition from the perspective of the Pawnee, the western bank of the Missouri River, near who likely would have seen the Spaniards more Pawnee lands. Otoes also fled the Dakotas, as Cuartelejo and Paloma Apache allies than eventually establishing villages along the French enemies. Drawing on French records Platte River, east of the Pawnees, by the late and more recent archaeological evidence, it seventeenth century.4 To the west, Comanches argues that changing economies in the early would leave the Rocky Mountains to settle in eighteenth-century central Plains, which the western Plains, where they would vie with experienced a growth in bison hunting and the Pawnees over control of hunting grounds and slave trade, contributed to Pawnee expansion river valleys.5 Finally, groups of Apaches left into the lands of northern Apaches in present- the Athabascan migration south from Canada © 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln THE PAWNEE HOMELAND, COUREURS DE BOIS, AND THE VILLASUR EXPEDITION OF 1720 45 and Alaska during the early part of the second western Kansas that French traders were visit­ millennium to settle on the shortgrass prairies ing "Pawnees" (possibly Wichitas) and trading of eastern Colorado and western Kansas and them guns. He had gone north to rescue twenty Nebraska, directly west of the Wichitas and Pueblo families who were reportedly slaves of Pawnees. Archaeologists have linked them to the Cuartelejo Apaches, but he also wanted to settlement remains in the so-called Dismal enlist the Apaches as allies against the French. River Aspect. Known to the French as the They asked a favor in return: help them attack "Padoucas" in the first half of the eighteenth "their enemies" the Pawnees, who had recently century, these northern Apaches likely occu­ raided them alongside French traders. They pro­ pied Dismal River sites from around 1675 to duced guns and iron axes of French manufacture the mid-I720s.6 Perhaps the most important as evidence of Pawnee-French cooperation,12 Apache settlement in the central Plains was Over the following decade, Comanche raids a place called EI Cuartelejo, a large rancherfa on New Mexico with their allies, the Utes, that was probably located in present-day Scott grew worse, so much so that the government at County, western Kansas.? Santa Fe convened a war council, which agreed In response to these forced and voluntary to carry out another expedition to the north. migrations to the central Plains, Pawnees col­ Governor Antonio Valverde y Cosfo set out in lected in larger groups and moved to hilltops 1719 to "punish" the "insolence" of the Utes along the Loup and Platte rivers for safety.8 and Comanches and to reaffirm the Apache Archaeologists have designated sites from this alliance,u This expedition was in many ways period of transition, which lasted from about a replay of UlibarrI's: Valverde went north AD 1500 to 1750, the Lower Loup Focus. to the Arkansas River, where he met a group During the 1600s, pressure from outsiders per­ of Cuartelejo Apaches who reported Pawnee­ haps caused Pawnees to split from their linguis­ French attacks. One of the Paloma Apaches, tic relatives, the Arikaras, who settled farther who dwelled farther north of EI Cuartelejo, on north, along the Big Bend of the Missouri in the "most remote borderlands of the Apaches," present-day South Dakota.9 Before the arrival had been recently wounded by gunfire. The of epidemics, these Pan ian groups occupied injured man informed Valverde that the Palomas a large swath of territory stretching from the had been attacked by the "French, united with Loup River to the Cheyenne River.l° the Pawnees and the Jumanos." The Pawnees, Officials in New Mexico learned of the aided by the French, had seized the lands of sweeping changes taking place well north of Paloma Apaches, forcing their retreat.14 their border only in piecemeal rumors and While this Pawnee-French alliance was mainly through reports of Apaches. Not only not necessarily news in Santa Fe, the report were Comanches raiding farther south with of French settlements in the Plains was. The greater abandon, they discovered, but Pawnees Apaches told Valverde that the French had seemed to be moving farther west and south established "two large pueblos, each of which of their typical hunting territory, asserting is as large as that of Taos" among the Pawnees. their control over Apache lands with the help In a letter to Baltasar