Robidoux Chronicles: French-Indian Ethnoculture of the Trans-Mississippi West

© Copyright 2004 Hugh M. Lewis.

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Contents

Travois Trails

LIST OF DIAGRAMS & PICTURES

FRENCH CREOLE TERMINOLOGY

PREFACE

Introduction

Part I THE NEW FRANCE PERIOD OF THE ST. LAWRENCE

Chapter I THE FIRST ROBIDOUX OF NEW FRANCE

Chapter II THE SOJOURNING ROBIDOUX

Chapter III JOSEPH ROBIDOUX III & OLD ST. LOUIS

Part II IN COMPANY WITH THE BROTHERS ROBIDOUX

Chapter IV JOSEPH ROBIDOUX IV & OL’ ST. JOE

Chapter V FRANCOIS LOUIS ROBIDOUX

Chapter VI PIERRE ISADORE ROBIDOUX

Chapter VII ANTOINE ROBIDOUX

Chapter VIII LOUIS ROBIDOUX & THE JURUPA

Chapter IX MICHEL ROBIDOUX, MOUNTAIN MAN

Part III ROBIDOUX ETHNO-CULTURE OF THE TRANS-MISSISSIPPI WEST

Chapter X EUGENE JOSEPH ROBIDOUX, THE INDIAN

Chapter XI ROUBIDEAU PASS AT SCOTT’S BLUFFS

Chapter XII LOUIS ROUBIDEAUX & THE LAKOTA

Chapter XIII THE OTHER ROUBIDOUX

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Tke Endless Journey

Travois Trails

After the poem The Travoy Trails by Susan Bourdeau Bettleyoun

Old Trails, Travois Trails, Wind like small rivers Beyond golden hills Stretching out forever Until daylight fails

Our Trails, Travois Trails Through forested bands And mountain-mist veils ‘Til hot desert sands Beyond plains and dales

Over Travois Trails Wind spirits whisper A strange echo hails This passing stranger Beneath cloud-blown sails

LIST OF DIAGRAMS & PICTURES

Diagram of the First Eight Generations of Robidoux Descendants

Diagram of the family of Pierre Isadore Robidoux’s

Original Profile of Michel Robidoux circa 1825

Michel Robidoux’s Second Daughter, Sophia Agnes

Michel Robidoux’s Third Daughter, Octavia

Michel Robidoux’s Wife, Suzanne Vaudry

FRENCH CREOLE TERMINOLOGY

The lingua franca of the North American Fur trade and the common parlance of many Native American tribes for two centuries before the coming of the Iron Horse was French Creole. Many documents of the fur trade era are written in an old style of French. Many words commonly used today, for instance camp or bayou or cache, illustrate some of the basic features of Creole ethnoculture as it developed in the old west. The many terms used to describe different features of forests, land, bodies of water, flora, fauna, boats, hides, food, cooking, tools, business and contracts, measure and exchange, classes and types of people, and Indian tribes provides clear ethnosemantic evidence of the strong focal orientation of the Creole French in the Indian trade. Today, these terms constitutes to a way of life now passed and a bygone era of our collective history—a way of life that was as important and meaningful as any today. Many of these terms have entered American English, and thus represent a basic part of our frontier heritage and the cultural derivatives thereof. The transformations of, and additions to, word-stock caused by the finding of new animals, new trees, new plants, new breeds of human beings, new occupations and ways of life account for a great part of the differences between Standard French and the vocabulary used in the Mississippi Valley. (McDermott, 1941: 7) Creole French constituted a curious admixture of words borrowed from the Spanish (cabresse [halter], marron [gone wild]), from Africa (congo [creole dialect], gumbo [okra based dish]), and from the Native America (kinikkinik [Indian tobacco], pirogue [dug-out canoe from Carib], parfleche [hide container]). Many words entered English either previously or subsequently to this period of time. The definitions of these terms have been borrowed mostly from John F. McDermott’s A Glossary of Mississippi Valley French: 1673-1850. 1941.

absinthe: wild sage brush, or wormwood.

alouette: the snipe.

argent: silver coins usually, generic silver generally. argenterie: trade trinkets of silver. armoire: a cupboard or wardrobe.

arpent: the standard unit of linear measure equal to 10 perches or 180 feet and is equivalent to 191.838 English Feet. One square arpent is equal to

.8449 English acre. An arpent de terre or arpent de face was a standard grant of land 1 X 40 arpents—a double grant was eighty arpents in depth. Commonly spelled arpen and found sometimes in old documents in English as arpend or even asperns.

au dit: ditto or the same, commonly found on inventories.

baptiser: to give a name to as naming a fort or boat, without reference to Christian baptism.

barque: a large ocean going vessel of about 45-50 tons capacity, found frequently on the Mississippi for trade and transport. Equipped with both sail rigging and oars for river transport.

bateau: any small or large boat, large or small, rigged with sails or oars, but generally larger than a piroguebayou: not exactly a swamp or slough, a river channel no longer flowing but not blocked off to form a marais.

berdache: homosexual, with current derogatory connotations of coward.

berge: A flat-bottomed barge.

biens immeubles: immovable real estate.

biens meubles: personal or movable property.

billet: promissory note.

bodette: a bed made of straps within a heavy wooden frame.

boeuf: Ox literally, often referred to buffalo on the plains (boeuf sauvage), but not wild cattle.

bois de vache: buffalo dung or prairie firewood.

boisseau: a measure equivalent to .37 American bushel.

boisson: hard drink or a drinking matchbon: a personal note used for exchange in lieu of real money, versus a billet that was a note made out to a specific person.

Bostonais: an American.

bourgeois: a fur trade company official in charge of a post or expedition.

brigade: a company of traders or trappers or boatmen sent to the country for trade.

brûlé: literally, a burnt forest, though figuratively, a half-breed, used commonly as "bois-brûlé."

butte: a hill or nob.

cabane: a camp or temporary house, a shack or shanty. cabinet: a clothes closet or a sleeping room.

cache: a temporary hiding place to bury stores or furs. verb cacher (to store or hide by burying or covering).

cadet: junior, or younger person.

caiman: crocodilecaissette: box or trunk, often for the storage of trade articles and money. cajeu (cage): a raft of logs used mostly for ferrying.

calumet: a pipe, frequently associated with peace pipe, and shaped as an axe head, a symbol for war.

camp: temporary shelter in the woods, or a group of cabins where workers lodged.

canot: canoecapitaine: an Indian chief, or capitaine des sauvages.

capot: a coat made from a trade blanket with a hood — mackinaw coat.

carotte: twisted or rolled leaves of tobacco — the main style of tobacco traded.

carpe: southern buffalo-fish.

caution: a guarantor or bondsman.

charette: a two-wheeled cart of all wood construction, often with sides of wickerwork.

charivari: A form of hazing for someone on their second marriage. "The cacophony did not cease until the groom invited the serenaders into the house for refreshments or gave them money to drink elsewhere.

chaudron: a caldron or large kettle or bucket of tin used for water or milk.

chichakois: or chessquoy, a rattle used for ceremonial music.

chicot: a sawyer or snag in the water.

commune: village commons or terre en commun.

congé: license to trade in Indian country.

contrat de mariage: a legal contract of marriage, that once signed becomes the practical equivalent of a civil marriage.

cordelle (cordeau): a towing line for a boats.

coulée: ravine or gully.

coup: a stroke or blow or a stroke upon an enemy.

coupe: a cut-off.

coupon: a piece of cloth, often calico.

coureur des bois: usually translated as runner of the woods or forest runner — considered a free or independent hunter-trapper of New France who would enter the forests to gain their livelihood by gathering furs. Precursor of the Mountain-man.

cousin: an intimate term of endearment for any relationship.

coutume de Paris: The edict of Louis XIV that all colonies were under the common law of Paris, which remained in effect during the Spanish period of Louisiana for local affairs, like marriage, mortgages, land transactions, contracts, etc. Women had equal status under this legal code in transactions, marriage, community property and inheritance.

Créole: native born whites of the Illinois country. A standard term referring to the French Creoles. Though this term is also used anthropologically to speak of new languages and ethnocultures that are the result of trade contact and amalgamation, in its original form it was never used to refer to a person of mixed blood or a "métis."

détour: a bend in a river that turns in almost a complete circle.

dit: particle used with proper names, figuratively meaning alias or otherwise known as.

divorce: a legal separation.

engagé: employee of a bourgeois—refers to men who were hired on a contractual basis for wintering and sojourning on trading/trapping expeditions.

guignolée: Traditional New Year’s eve festival celebration involving a group of singers wishing people Happy New Year and collecting tithes for the poor.

habitant: the standard term of a peasant in New France who rented land and was expected to be a farmer. Derived from the verb habiter (to live, to dwell) and habitation (house)

hivernant: one who winters derived from the verb hiverner (to winter). This term is found on standard contracts of engagement for fur-trading outfits. It is found even on the standard contract of the American Fur Company in the 1830’s.

hypothéque: a mortgage.

Jour de l’An: New Year’s Day.

journée: travel, work, a day’s journey.

kinikkinik (kanikanik): a kind of Indian tobacco prepared from admixtures of various kinds of bark.

lait des François: Brandy, whiskey.

livre: a unit of weight, equal to 1.079219 pounds, used also as a dollar or monetary unit equal to the French franc — though not the same as the English pound. Officially valued at about 20 cents, five livres made one piastre.

maison: a permanent village or town of the Indians. In reference to a trading mission a permanent log cabin or fortress for purpose of trading with the Indians.

métis: sometimes métif or métisse, refers specifically to the offspring of French and Indian intermarriage, or in common parlance half-breed or mixed blood of white and Indian parentage. but also, more generally, to the ethnocultures that developed around these people in the Trans-Mississippi west.

minot: a unit of dry measure equivalent to 39.36 liters, or about 1.10746 bushels.

nation (s): French reference to a tribe of Indians.

noyer: A noyer is a Mississippi French term for a Walnut tree (generally, a black walnut). Noyer also had a more general connotation of wood and for different kinds of nut Trees such as pecan (noyer amer) or hickory-nut (noyer dur, noyer blanc or white hickory, noyer rouge or red hickory).

Oyez, Oyez: literally, hear ye, hear ye, a call to meeting commonly heard on wagon trains and trade caravans, mistakenly translated as Oh yes, Oh yes.

parefléche: dressed buffalo hide; any object made from such hide.

pelleterie: Skins, furs or peltries, used as a common medium of exchange, particularly at St. Louis. Most commonly it was deer skins.

pémican: found more frequently as pemmican — dried, pounded buffalo meat mixed with fat. It was preferred for long trips because it did not require cooking.

perche: a unit of linear measure, or rod (also used for poles used in boating), equivalent of 18 French feet or 19.1838 English feet.

piastre: a dollar — in French the equivalent of a livre — found in use later on for reference to American dollars as well.

pirogue: a dug-out canoe, used commonly on the Missouri and brought to the Mississippi system, made mostly of cottonwood, poplar or cypress, though also sometimes with cedar, walnut or other woods. On the Missouri they averaged 15 to 20 feet in length, though some were quite large—larger ones even had masts and sails and could carry up to fifty tons of cargo. They had seats and were rowed—not paddled like a canoe. Sometimes two were planked together to form a kind of flat-boat.

plus: a standard unit of value for furs and goods in tread—often the largest sized beaver pelt.

point: a four inch black stripe woven into mackinaw blankets to indicate the weight—one point per pound.

pointe: a forested point of land.

portage: a strip of land between two navigable stretches of water—points of passage and carriage between water routes.

prairie: old usage, a commons or commune, more literally a meadow bounded by woods—the great prairies are more properly called the plains.

praline: a candy made with sugar and nuts, usually almonds and maple sugar in Canada, or alternatively, in Louisana, brown sugar and pecans.

saline: salt spring, a lick or salt works.

sault: a rapid or waterfall.

sauvagesse (savuage): an Indian, frequently found in records of baptisms to refer to the Indian spouse. Literally it translates as savage or wild.

seigneur (seigneurie): a royal title of land granted to an individual. The seigneurial system transplanted to New France was well developed, albeit fashioned to fit the frontier.

sol: or sou, the twentieth of a livre, in American equivalent of a nickel or 5 cents.

traite: from traiteur (to trade) refers to the trader.

voiture: a boat of non-specific reference.

voyageur: literally, it is a boat-man but figurative it has been used for sojourners.

PREFACE

I have taken the opportunity at this time to entirely rewrite my previous book Robidoux History that I had completed in the early summer of 1998. A year of China, a couple of years of jump-starting my own publishing business, another year’s sojourn to the arctic interior of Alaska, a teaching program, and now I am able to finally bring a refreshed view to a worn and complicated problem.

All Robidoux in North America have been the descendants of a single man and woman who married in Quebec in the year 1667. The Robidoux name has served as a clear indexical marker for historians and genealogists to follow. While the Robidoux surname as historical marker has made this research an interesting problem, the name itself, being of French origin, with three wobbly French vowels (Mattes) also created its own dilemma for research, as it has been altered in its pronunciation and spelling in so many different ways that the resulting record of coming and going by Robidoux descendants becomes at times very confusing. Rarely was the Robidoux name been spelled correctly on official documents or in journal accounts, and often the same name was spelled multiple ways on the same document! The result has been an historical evolution of the surname on the North American continent with many variations of a standard form. We find today in telephone books across the US names like Rubidoux, Roubidoux, Robedo, and Rabideau. Clyde Rabideau (1993) provided a fairly exhaustive list of variants of the Robidoux surname.

Noteworthy examples of the corruption of the name Robidoux occur for instance in the Lewis & Clark journals in which it is spelled Bobidoux. An official account to Congress of those killed in the far West spells it Nolidoux. Other mispronunciations that have made their way into the record books are Thibbadeau, Troubadore and even Palliday. The Grandfather of Bartlett Boder, a St. Joseph historian and biographer of the Robidoux, used to taunt everyday the aged patriarch Joseph Robidoux IV sitting out in front of a neighbor’s store with Wubidoux! Wubidoux.

The original name Robidou was a perjorative diminutive form of Robert, a common French surname, and meant something like little Robert, traced to the 13th Century in Tintiniac, France. (Rabideau, 1993:1) The original form was: ROBIDOU with or without the final (x). Any combination with the following alternative sequences of letters would be equivalent:

R (B, N, T, TH),(O,U,A, e, [r?]), B (p), (I, E, a, o) D_(O, U, e, a, u, [r, s? x]).

The phonological general form would be: R-(round long vowel)-B-(short flat vowel)-D-(round long vowel). (Lewis, 1988: 537)

There are several closely spelled surnames which appear not to be related to the Robidoux surname. The first of these is Robichaux or some equivalent, in which the final (d) consonant has been replaced with a ch. A Robichaux for instance, was a signer of the U. S. Constitution. Another spelling which indicates a different family line is that of Roberdeau or some equivalent thereof, in which a (r) has been inserted before the middle vowel. Though some Robidoux descendant may have had their names altered in this manner, the rule would indicate that the individual is most likely of a different lineage than that of the North American Robidoux. It is known, for instance, that one Isaac Roberdeau came to North America with Lafayette during the Revolutionary war, and appears to have remained here in the service of the government as a geography and map-maker. He had worked with Pierre Charles L’Enfant in laying out the city of Washington. As a Major in the first eight U. S. Topographical Engineers appointed in 1813 during the War of 1812, Roberdeau remained on duty after the group was disbanded. He died in 1829, but he was not directly related to the North American Robidoux. Furthermore, some of the Robidoux kept, bought and sold slaves, both Indian and Black, and some of these slaves acquired the Robidoux surname. A clear instance of this is the St. Louis census of 1840, in which there are three households listed with the surname Robidoux. The first is one of the Joseph circle, but there occur another listed under the category of Free colored composed of one male between 40 and 50 and four or five females.

A certain consistency in the alteration of the spelling of the name appeared in the genealogical record, tied to period and place, especially in relation to those branches of the lineage tree which are Latin or Native American. In general, certain documents or officials transcribed the name of the progenitor with a spelling modification, and this alteration remained transfixed for all subsequent descendants of this line, unless a further alteration occurred in subsequent records of descendants. The implicit linguistic rule in this regard is that once a name was changed and made fast in the record books, the spelling of the name will not reverse itself back to the original form. This makes seem futile and somewhat misplaced the lamentable criticism of O. M. Robidoux’s husband, Louis Robidoux: ‘I have only one criticism to make, and that is the way the name ‘Robidoux’ is spelled here. ‘Rubidoux’ is not the proper way. The correct way is Robidoux. An investigation of your records in the former county seat, San Bernardino, will show that the old gentleman himself signed the name ‘Robidoux.’"

The story of the Robidoux lineage in North America spans approximately 325 years, and all of 13 generations. It is simply an alternative history of North

America. Robidoux players and actors have figured prominently in the foreground and background of many major episodes of the history of the Old West—often unbeknownst by the historians who attempted to document and narrate these events after the fact of their occurrence. The Robidoux story continues to be told and to unfold today, albeit in different ways in times past. The story of the Robidoux does not belong to any one group of individuals. It is a part of a larger history of the United States and therefore belongs to all Americans who share in our rich cultural heritage.

The diagram on the following page traces the main lineage branch of this story, through the Joseph II and III line, down to the eighth generation descending. This diagram is largely conjectural, and it is not exhaustive, discounting many branches and lines.

The unfortunate legacy of Robidoux studies has served to obscure the story more than promote it, and to perpetuate misinformation in lieu of serious scholarship. Much has permanently been lost in the process. And yet there remains much more that can still be recovered with the proper work in the right places.

The Robidoux story has been berated as an historical sideline. This is largely due to the fact that the French role in our history has been consistently downplayed as an unfortunate legacy of the early French-Indian Wars, but also to the nature of the relationship the French played, as pariah capitalists, in the mediation of relations between Native America and the American government and people. Underestimated has been the true contribution of the Robidoux brothers in particular, of the Robidoux lineage, and, in general, of the French in North America. It is a story that remains intractably complicated, and still incomplete. What gradually emerges is a picture much more complex than previously known. There has been a sense of urgency about the publication of this work born of a long time of misinformation and misplaced values of scholarship. There has been an unsatisfied demand for a telling of the complete story of the Robidoux.

Complicating this picture is that records pertaining to the Robidoux are far-flung and few between. The Robidoux had their hey-day on the frontier of the early American West a good quarter century before the rest of the Americans caught up with them. Theirs was an era that belonged properly to North American ethnohistory, rather than history proper. Most history books found in the states began where the Robidoux had left off. They occupied a provenience of our collective chronologies that made them proto-historical in character and therefore prone to be easily forgotten. And yet the evidence is there, in its myriad detail scattered far-flung across the fields and valleys of the U.S., and can even be found still flowering and growing in remote and unseen corners.

Historian Merril Mattes, in his biography of Joseph Robidoux III, gave a clear encapsulization of the problems of Robidoux research: Anyone foolhardy enough to research Joseph Robidoux of St. Joseph has three formidable problems to contend with. First of all… none kept journals. At the same timeno full-scale scholarly effort has ever been made……so that knowledge……..is plagued with hiatuses and confusion of identity. Secondly, there were three other Joseph Robidouxs, a grandfather, a father and a son, who themselves played no small role in the history of the fur trade, so that it is sometimes difficult to tell which Joseph Robidoux is referred to even when sources give the full name. Thirdly, and most distressing of all, is the fact that the name Robidoux (or one of its many spelling variables) crops up in innumerable sources, usually with no first name whatever, so that the researcher is frequently thrown back on pure speculation, often compounded by misinterpretations which have been cheerfully volunteered by other writers. In any given case, is the Robidoux referred to the Joseph, or the father or the son or one of several brothers, or possibly even a nephew? (Mattes, 1969: 288)

The story of the Robidoux is not just a genealogical history. It is even more than just a biographical history. It is also an ethno-cultural history of a people and their changing identity through time. It begins with the French of New France, and extends to embrace the Spanish, the Americans, and many of the Native American tribes across the North American plains. As an anthropologist with an ear to history, I cannot but help frame the Robidoux story in terms of the ethnocultural realities of the people who lived the story. Tracing the genealogical spread of the Robidoux across the United States is a great opportunity for finding the more dynamic aspects of ethnocultural change through time, as the product of acculturative relations between different groupings of people in dynamic circumstances structured by power and money. But this text is a chronological history of people, places and events, rather than a genealogical construction. The purpose of this work is therefore to provide an encapsulated version of the Robidoux story in truncated form. Necessarily, much of the detail pertaining to archival records and genealogical reconstruction is lost, and what remains is a strange anecdotal narrative, a narrative that in classic and epic form represents a retelling of the entire history of North America. In closing, I hope that all people can find something of interest and value in these pages that have taken me so long to reproduce after the fact of the original book In spite of all the error of our best intentions, History belongs to all humanity and no one individual or group in particular.

I wish to thank the following people: my daughter, wife and mother; the people at Trafford Publishing for their patience and assistance; Edward Meisburger for his contribution of the Michel Robidoux family pictures; andeveryone else whose support and contributions over the years have helped to build the story of the Robidoux.

Introduction

THE ROBIDOUX LINEAGE IN RETROSPECTIVE

The last words written by Meriwether Lewis in October of 1809 before his tragic suicide were in vile reference to the Robidoux interests on the upper Missouri in a letter on Indian policy that he had been composing for Thomas Jefferson, and that later formed the formal basis for Indian-White relations by the Federal government.

On my way to St. Louis, last fall, I received satisfactory evidence that a Mr. Robideau, an inhabitant of St. Louis, had, the preceding winter, during the intercourse with the Ottoes and Missouris, been guilty of the most flagrant breaches of the first of those misdemeanors above mentioned… And Mr. Robidoux and sons still prosecute their trade." (Thwaites 1969: Vol. VII: 369-388)

It was fitting that Lewis should have taken his frustration and anger out on the Robidoux family. But at the time that Lewis had written his final last lines, the senior Joseph was already dead, blind and crippled by disease. It was also true that Meriwether Lewis had attempted to establish his own trading company two years previously on the upper Missouri in direct competition with the Robidoux, recruiting relatives and using his reputation, influence and power. In this venture he had failed within a couple of seasons. Robidoux trade connections preceded the Lewis and Clark expedition up the Missouri by at least a decade and at least as far as the Mandan villages where the Corps of Discovery found Sacagewea and her French husband Charbonnieu, a long time engagé of Robidoux interests.

Lewis singled the Robidoux out specifically in identifying culprits who were promoting bad trading policies among the Indian nations. Of course, the native tribes expected guns, black powder, and liquor in their transactions, and eagerly sought out these useful instruments in their dealings with all the white traders. The Robidoux had been trading first under the French flag, then under the Spanish flag. The American flag had only been flown for a handful of years over the new territory that stretched out endlessly upon the western frontier and that was the source of so much hope, adventure and mystery for a new nation. The Robidoux could not be expected to change their old habits, tried and true, over night. It was the same inherent inter-positional ambivalence of the Robidoux as pariah capitalists on the frontier that gained them an early advantage in trade but that led in a later period to their dramatic and sudden eclipse, along with the eclipse of the entire classical fur trade era.

The Robidoux represented neither good nor evil, but promoted business interests along the entire frontier of the Missouri-Mississippi Systems, as well as the major tributaries, that had up until the Louisiana Purchase been defined within a French and Spanish colonial context. Robidoux influence therefore passed all the way up and down the Mississippi River, including the Des Moines and the Illinois Rivers, and it reached as far north of the Missouri River system as the Mandan and lower Sioux tribes, as well as along many of its tributary streams along which Native tribes had settled. They had numerous land holdings in St. Louis, St. Charles, Florissant, along the Des Moines, and up the Mississippi System. The senior Joseph had become, especially in his later years, a land speculator and somewhat unscrupulous in his business dealings, borrowing money from creditors in New Orleans, and avoiding repayment of his debts until his death in 1809. This was a pattern carried on by his sons to some extent.

Five years earlier the same Lewis had encountered a large pirogue while on their descent of the Missouri, in the last leg of their now famous expedition. In the pirogue was probably an eighteen-year-old Francois Robidoux, the second son of the senior Joseph Robidoux, sent by his father to trade among the tribes. Lewis and Clark asked him for his trading licenses, but they did not recognize the seal and signature of the document that young Francois presented to them. In their two year absence, they could not have known that the governorship of the Louisiana territory had changed hands, and that things were rapidly changing in the world that surrounded them even as they spoke.

Sept. 16, 1806, Tuesday (Clark)

At 11 a.m. we met young Mr. Bobidoux with a large boat of six oars and two canoes. The license of this young man was to trade with the Pawnees, Omahas, and Otoes, rather an extraordinary license for so young a man and without the seal of territory annexed. As Gen. Wilkinson’s signature was not to this instrument, we were somewhat doubtful of it. Mr. Brown’s signature we were not acquainted with without the Territorial Seal. We made som inquiries of this young man and cautioned him against pursuing the steps of his brother in attempting to degrade the American character in the eyes of the Indians. We proceeded on to an island a little above our encampment of the 16th and 17th of June, 1804, having come 52 miles only today.

Just as this meeting of the explorers and fur-traders set the charter for the entire history of the Old West, the relationship that transpired between the Robidoux and Meriwether Lewis set the tone for the kind of relationship that the Robidoux, and by implication, the Creole French, would come to play in the unfolding history of the US in subsequent generations even up until very recent times. They were central mediators in many of the most important events affecting Native-White relations on the western frontier.

Very different was the relationship between the Robidoux and William Clark for instance, who had a much more open and tolerant attitude to the Native Americans, even adopting Sacagewea’s two sons as his own, and who became the territory’s first Indian agent. Clark knew the Robidoux first hand. Clark was mild-mannered, temperate and not unreasonable in spirit, whereas Lewis was melancholy, brooding and brilliant, and yet prone to acts of violence. Clark proved a much more stable and stabilizing influence on the course of things in the new territory and in the management of trading affairs with the native tribes than did the volatile but short-lived interests and policies of Lewis.

But that is the way of all history. It is not our place to pass judgment on the deeds and exploits of people long since passed. History is like a court system, and each case is a trial that we must objectively and blindly review without passing final judgment or rendering a conclusive verdict. As such history exonerates and grants a blanket pardon to all deeds past committed, whether they are deeds of pirates and privateers, or they are the work of great and honorable men like Meriwether Lewis.

Part I

THE NEW FRANCE PERIOD OF THE ST. LAWRENCE

The early days of New France before 1665 were marked by the violence of Indian wars, early death and disease, the promise of great freedom and possibility of an uncharted frontier that stretched from the banks of the St. Lawrence toward an entire North American continent beyond. At the time, the only real political boundaries were the shifting territories of major Native American tribes, and the small colonial farmsteads that hugged the growing cities of the Eastern seaboard. The St. Lawrence itself was nothing less than the new gateway leading into the heart of this vast wilderness. Some even hoped that the riches of the Orient lay somewhere on the other end, navigable by water. The French Canadians, harbored in their little outposts nested along the water’s edge upon the lower St. Lawrence, in small hamlets & farmsteads strung like pearls along the northern shore-line, were quick to take their oars in hand and seize the day, motivated as they were by the chase of fur-bearing animals and the insatiable appetites of Europeans for their prized furs.

The French Canadians had soon developed their unique frontier adaptation to the waterways that lead from the St. Lawrence, through the Great Lakes, and into the Trans-Mississippi West beyond. It was an adaptation that clung to the shoreline wherever it settled, depending upon the seasons and the flow of the river currents to carry them from place to place. The river systems of North America were the original inter-state highways that provided the infra-structure for the conquest of the west. The long, pencil-shaped parcels of land stretched from shore-line to the deep interior, giving the settlers not only a front door to the pioneer highways that were part of the colonial world system of the time, but a back door to the wilderness that stretched beyond. Neighbors were thus spaced within ear-shot of one another, and ground could be broken and cultivated in the most proximate location to the shoreline where products could be processed, loaded and shipped, whether just downstream, or to the major centers of world trade. By 1665, Montreal had become the principal center of the fur market in the St. Lawrence valley. It was at the nexus of the trading routes up the St. Lawrence with the western Indian tribes of the Great Lakes, down the trails to Lake Champlain and the New England nexus of the Iroquois, and up the Ottawa to the trade with the Northern Great Lakes. It was also the headwaters of the navigation for European sailing ships.

Two main preoccupations of the French Canadians emerged in this context: coureurs des bois, or forest runners who would penetrate deep into the forest hinterlands to trap and trade with Indian groups, and voyageurs, the water-borne counterpart of the forest runner, who could best be called a cross between a French sailor of the Great Lakes, and an adventurer with an eye to profit. Jesuit missionaries took to accompanying these parties of traders/ trappers into the remote hinterlands, and hence missionary activity among the Native tribes of the time was closely joined with the economic interests of the traders. Jesuit missions often accompanied early outposts at strategic centers, for instance establishments at Michilimackinac, the portage of Chicago, and Detroit. Young Canadians took to the trails as soon as they came of age. New France never therefore developed in population or in agricultural wealth, due in part to the poor rocky soils of the St. Lawrence, but it came to dominate and expand the dominion of control of the fur trade over the North American continent. So prized had North American peltries become in European markets that beaver, deer and other pelts were frequently used as currency in trading transactions in place of money, and this became an established practice of the North American fur trade up until the mid-19th Century.

The earliest days of Quebec and New France were plagued by the daily risk from the raiding Iroquois Indians who frequently attacked settlements along St. Lawrence River from the south who sought the destruction of the French and their allies and control of the fur and Indian trade. The Iroquois was what the French called the league of five native nations of the Northeast, often in league with the British and the Dutch. The fur-trade along the St. Lawrence became increasingly eclipsed by trade from out of the English and Dutch colonies in New England and New York. Always strong, Dutch and English competition for furs in the St. Lawrence became more aggressive in the course of the early history of New France, as their population bases increased more rapidly than the French, leading to a general depletion of peltries in the immediate St. Lawrence system. The Dutch and English perennially provided weapons and incentive to the Iroquois to go North on the warpath against the French colony. It was their greatest strategic weapon in the economic war being waged for the possession of fur bearing country. The French fur trade depended at this time upon supply by different Indian tribes and was monopolized and mediated mostly by the Algonquin along the Ottawa River who served as middle men for the tribes further west, like the Huron, the Chippewa and the Sioux.

All trade in New France had been for many years controlled by one monopoly, called the Company of New France, giving the entire franchise of the St. Lawrence trade to a handful of traders who set up small trading houses and received a third of all profits from all furs traded, whether obtained by Indians or by bourgeois and their coureurs des bois. They set their own prices and then shipped their furs to France.

Monopolization by the Company of New France of the fur trade of the St. Lawrence system fostered a large black market in peltries as petty trappers and traders smuggled goods back and forth with the British and Dutch and used beaver skins for payment of debts and goods. This company lacked both the capital and the commitment to compete with Dutch and English outfits to effectively develop the fur trade on any larger scale. Coureurs des bois carried on extensive trade with English and Dutch interests in a nefarious manner and therefore the Company of New France became insolvent by 1645.

The King of France granted permission to lease its monopoly of the St. Lawrence system to a group of eight traders of New France, known as the Company of Habitants. This new company made immediate profits from some of the largest shipments of beaver to Europe ever recorded, brought by Huron warriors down the St. Lawrence in huge quantities. By 1649 however, saturation of European markets of furs brought the price of down, and the principle suppliers, the Huron were all but destroyed in a winter campaign by the Iroquois, who were armed by the Dutch.

The war between the Iroquois and Huron interfered with trade in New France as the Iroquois sought to destroy all French-related Indian tribes in order to monopolize the trade in furs with the other Indian tribes of the interior. The aggressive Iroquois even attacked the French on the St. Lawrence, resulting in a temporary cessation of all trapping activities in this region. Due to a lack of hunting, beaver became replenished by the 1650’s in the immediate St. Lawrence system.

In 1662, Pierre Boucher represented New France to the court of the French King Louis XIV. Boucher supplicated the King to dissolve the control of New France by the trading companies, and to establish there a royal colony. Convinced, the King dissolved the trading companies the following year in 1663 and appointed a governor to control the Indian trade and rule the colony.

A royal edict established a new imperial monopoly by the Company of the West Indies. A new Intendant of New France named Talon was appointed there in 1665. Talon sought restrictions for the growing surplus of pelts by tempting some of the coureurs des bois away from life in the wilderness. He built a tannery to manufacture into leather the surplus deerskins, and he started a factory for the manufacture of shoes and hats. The projects received approval from the crown, but failed due to lack of suitable markets for these goods. France did not allow importation of manufactured goods from her colonies and they could not be exported elsewhere.

A second class of petty merchants developed between the main merchants and the everyday coureurs des bois, arising from among a mixed group of petty traders, poor seigneurs, petty traders, army officers and successful coureurs des bois. These were men of new-found achievement on a new frontier. They received permits to trade and were called fermiers or bourgeois. The numbers and activities of these petty traders were strictly controlled, but they frequently violated these restrictions in quest of greater profits. They could easily compete with the larger, legitimate merchants because they sought the Indian trade on its own terms, and went to Indian country to find it. They acquired furs from the Indians, coureurs des bois and from the habitants who supplemented their incomes by hunting and trapping. This class of fermier was the forerunner of those southern traders who eventually made their way to St. Louis at the end of the French and Indian wars.¹

The Company of the West resented Talon’s handing out the franchise of the fur trade to the bourgeois and their coureurs des bois, and sought an exclusive monopoly over the entire St. Lawrence system, which efforts began to hurt the trade and the petty traders. The monopoly of the company was soon revoked, at the urging of Talon, and in 1666 the fur trade was handed out to the habitants of New France, subject only to a tax of one quarter the beaver pelts and one tenth the deerskins as well as an annual stipend of a thousand beavers.

By the year 1665, the beginning of our story of the Robidoux, Quebec had only about 70 houses with a wooden Chateau. Trois-Rivieres had a small stockade trading post. Montreal had only about forty houses, a fort and a palisade stone windmill. (Hamilton, 1962: 23). The population of Montreal at this time was estimated at a little over a hundred—mostly men with some twenty or thirty families. Almost every house in New France could still be seen from a canoe on the St. Lawrence. (Hamilton, 1962: 24-5) and nine-tenths of the population lived within a mile of the shoreline of the St. Lawrence River. But things were poised for change, for the enlightened King Louis XIV sent not only regular soldiers to protect the colony of New France, and to enforce its laws, but also young women folk, emptied out of the orphanages of France, to settle the frontier with families and domestic concerns.²

Chapter I

THE FIRST ROBIDOUX OF NEW FRANCE

King Louis XIV assumed direct control of New France in 1663 and by 1665, new settlers were already being sent there under his direction. The Sun King’s hopes for the development of New France were manifold. He wanted to extend the reach and dominion of the crown over the colony, and to improve the situation for the colonists. He sought to increase the population there, which was miniscule compared to the surging populations of the Dutch and British colonies to the south. He also had to protect his new colonists from the raiding bands of the Iroquois. Mostly, he wanted the crown to take the lion’s share in the vast profits accruing from the trade in furs coming from his colonies. Thus by dispatching regular soldiers there and declaring it a Royal Colony the King deliberately wrested the control over the colony from the previous Catholic missionaries and fur trading factories.³

King Louis XIV’s New France was the historical background in the year 1665 when young André Robidoux arrived on the shores of Quebec. The exact date of his arrival is not known. He first appears in the Quebec Census of 1666. In 1665 André was just twenty-two years old—a typical age for a young French man to sojourn in the world and seek his competence. André soon gained a competence under the employment of Eustace Lambert, a prominent fur trader and interpreter.⁴

André served as a voyageur of the great inland waterways, earning the equivalent of 10 cents per day with room and board. He became part of a small company of men whose mission was to regularly ferry goods and supplies up and down the St. Lawrence during the spring and summer months and beyond to the distant tribes of Indians who demanded black powder, weapons, beads, blankets and other trinkets, in exchange for what was then plentiful and easily obtained—the hides of beaver and other North American fur bearing mammals.

André remained associated with Quebec a couple of years after his arrival. He married Jeanne Denote in Quebec City on May 16, 1667.⁵ Jeanne was the fifth daughter of Antoine Denote and Catherine Leduc, of St. Germain of Auxerre, diocese of Paris, France. According to Romme (1991) she may have been an orphan sent by the King of France (Filles du Roy, or daughters of the King) for marriage in New France.⁶ André Robidoux and Jeanne Denote had at least five children—three girls and two boys—who were in order Romaine, Marguerite, Jeanne, Guillame (William), and Joseph.⁷

In the year of 1665 King Louis XIV also sent a veteran regiment of Royal regulars to defend the frontier from the invading Iroquois and to uphold the authority of the Crown. These soldiers built forts along at strategic points on what was then the southern frontier: at Chambly, on the Richelieu and at Sorel. Soon afterwards French homesteaders settled in the shadows of these establishments, under the protection of the King. Young André may have participated in the conquest of the Iroquois and in the establishment of these early military forts.

Not long after the birth of their first child, André and Jeanne Denote Robidoux settled in St. Lambert, La Prairie, Quebec, in 1670, on the southern shore of the St. Lawrence. According to the Tanguay Records, as cited by the O. M. Robidoux text (1924), André and Jeanne settled on a farmstead in the concession of St. Lambert in the Parish of La Prairie de la Magdeleine, Quebec, on the 7th of June, 1670. No doubt this relocation was based upon ties of employment, consociation and allegiance within a vast and competitive fur-trade network. He was one of the earliest settlers of this district, possibly one of the first four families there on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence, which was by this time mostly unsettled forest. All settlement before this time was restricted to the northern shores of the St. Lawrence River, in part for protection from invading Iroquois.⁸

In 1672, Governorship of New France passed to the Comte de Frontenac. Frontenac made an effort both to aggrandize himself and to restrict the activities of the coureurs des bois by limiting the number of trading licenses each year to twenty-five, by engaging many free traders, and by issuing edicts forbidding persons to enter the woods without permission. This resulted in further disenfranchisement of the independent trader and to their circumvention of the restrictions by increased trading with the English. Since governmental control stopped at the fringes of the few cultivated fields of the St. Lawrence, it became impossible to control the trade or to prevent independent trappers from entering the surrounding wilderness. Corruption and graft flourished as permits were sold and bribes taken.⁹

During Frontenac’s reign as governor, the fur trade of New France flourished, in spite of the prohibitions. He had vigorously encouraged the westward expansion of the Colony, and the colony subsequently grew. It was during this period of New France that French explorer La Salle, in partnership with Frontenac, began to penetrate the regions south and west of the Great Lakes, to explore the Mississippi River system, and to make contacts with the different Indian tribes of the region.¹⁰

In the wake of French exploration, coureurs des bois and voyageurs fanned out far and wide outside of colonial control, settling in all the new outposts of the newly founded western French empire. French trappers freely married

Native women in these new settlements, sanctioned by the Jesuit Missionaries. Efforts by 1700 to bring these people back under the wing of government in New France, and to settle them to agricultural pursuits, served only to scatter them further to the wind. Thus, the power of the royal control over New France became chronically ineffective, and the illegal activities of the Canadian fur-trader increased the advantage of the English with whom they trafficked. The government of New France then closed its outposts at Chicago Portage, Michilimackinac, Green Bay and St. Joseph des Miamis, leaving the outposts open to outsiders. After this point, the fur trade at Montreal and Quebec sharply declined. Natives then preferred Albany where they could get better prices for their furs.¹¹

A vast illegal trade network developed out of French Canada between the New England Colonies via Lake Champlain, and the Indian tribes of the South and West. This shaped the character of the French Canadian people more than any other facet of their colonial history. Over the course of just a few generations, the offspring of typically large and relatively poor French catholic families, bound to small and unproductive parcels of land along limited avenues of the St. Lawrence, would quickly find life in such settlements crowded and restrictive.

Of André Robidoux’s five known children, the entire Robidoux lineage has been traced through the last two sons and their large families. The sons were young teenagers during the first phase of the French and Indian Wars. The French and Indian wars erupted during King William’s war when in 1689 a raiding party of Iroquois attacked the French settlement of La Chine near Montreal. French and Indian raiding parties then ruthlessly counterattacked along the frontier of the southern shores of Lake Ontario. For the next six years, a series of raids were organized against British fur-trading posts in the New England peninsula, leading to the capture of Fort Jean. Especially noteworthy were the raids organized by the Sieur d’Iberville on posts in Hudson’s Bay and Newfoundland.¹²

Young William and Joseph and their sisters would only have been young teenagers helping their mother at La Prairie when it was attacked by John Schuyler’s company who were attached to the English of New York who had ventured as far north as Lake Champlain in 1690.¹³

This attack was just a prelude to an attempted British invasion up the St. Lawrence to capture Quebec in the winter of that year. On the 16th of October some thirty-four sailing ships, large and small, entered the basin of Quebec, all thronged with men. The commander of the invading British Force, Sir William Phips, believed that the French, poorly equipped and undermanned at Quebec, would quickly surrender, but whenever he tried to land his forces they were fiercely attacked by the defenders along the shore who shot from the woods Indian still, using the trees for cover.¹⁴

At length, after a rejected proposal to surrender, the British led a poorly coordinated series of attacks by both land and the water, and were repulsed with heavy losses at almost every point. Canadian skirmishers, fighting Indian-style from behind trees and rocks, effectively harassed the British in their regular ranks, and caused a great many casualties among them. Finally, the British retreated to a safe distance behind some islands in the River channel to repair their vessels for the voyage home. The following spring of 1691, the British with their Iroquois allies returned to attack La Prairie again.¹⁵

Such was the climate of the times in which young William and Joseph found themselves at La Prairie. The options of the older brother’s branch were more clearly tied to the advancement of the fur trade, at least among the older sons of the descendants, and that the options of the younger brother’s descendants remained largely in farming in lower Canada.¹⁶

It is apparent that William first married Marie Francoise Guerin on June 11, 1697, and settled at La Prairie, and at nearby St. Lambert, until the birth of their fourth child in 1705, by which time they had resettled in Longueuil. ¹⁷

The family of the first son, William (Guillame), had thirteen children on record.¹⁸ Of these children, the patrilineage has been recounted through five of the sons, and of these sons, the Robidoux line leading to the famous six brothers of this work extend from the second oldest son, Joseph, who would be in recounting the lineage Joseph I. André’s youngest son, Joseph, also had a progeny of eleven children, one of whom died as an infant. Of these eleven children, the Robidoux patrilineage is recounted through three of the sons.¹⁹

The third and fourth generation of consequence to this story were the children of William’s second son, Joseph I. He married twice. He first married Anne Fonteneau in La Prairie, Quebec, on Jan. 7th, 1721. He was about twenty-years-old and Anne was twenty-two years of age, having been born on Dec. 1st, 1699. Together they had seven known children, the first of whom was Joseph II (born on September 13th, 1722 in St. Laurent). Anne died on February 16, 1735, at the age of thirty-six. Joseph I remarried within five months in La Prairie, on August 1st, 1735, to Louise Robert, who was twenty years old (born Oct. 17, 1715). Together they had ten more children, the first two of whom were born in Longueuil, and the subsequent being born in Recollect. Joseph I died on April 30th, 1778 in Yamaska, at the age of seventy-seven.

By the time of the birth of his third child by his second wife in 1743, Joseph I had settled with his second family at Recollet from Longueuil, and this is where his first son by his first marriage Joseph II raised his large family. Joseph II, married Marie Anne Leblanc in Recollet on February 3rd, 1749. He was 27-years-old. Anne Leblanc was born in 1726 and was twenty-three years old at the time of this marriage. Together they had seven known children, one boy and six girls. The oldest son was Joseph Marie Robidoux III and he was born on February 12th, 1750 in Recollet. It is known that Joseph M. Robidoux III migrated via Chicago portage with his father, Joseph II, in about 1770 to St. Louis. Several of Joseph III’s sisters and his mother eventually came to St. Louis with them, their dates of death being recorded there. One may have returned to Detroit where she remarried.²⁰

War between France and England resumed in the War of Jenkin’s Ear in 1739, during which France entered into alliance with Spain in 1744. The French had constructed the large fortress of Louisbourg at the entrance of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and from this bastion French ships raided New England shipping lines. They also constructed a fortress at Crown Point on Lake Champlain, from which they could launch raids southward to the New England and New York frontier. New England forces and a small squadron of the Royal Navy laid a seven week siege to Louisbourg before it surrendered in

June of 1745.

This era bore witness to an expansion of French colonial control over a vast region of North America (control if in name only, for beyond a few fur trading outposts and forts, the French never effectively managed to control this entire region.) Warfare resumed during King George’s War or the War of the Austrian Succession which lasted from 1744 to 1748, until a new treaty was signed at Aix-la-Chapelle, leading to a return of Louisbourg to New France.

Statistical analysis was conducted on all recorded members of the first five generations of the Robidoux lineage. The most outstanding feature of these families was the high rate of infant mortality, appearing to average about 30 percent of all children below sixteen years of age, continuing pretty much up until the mid 19th Century. Average household size was about 9 children, and thus the average number a young French woman would expect to have in the course of her life-time was about 12 or 13 kids.²¹

That French cultural patterns were clearly dominant through these first five generations is attested to by the fact that more than 99 percent of the surnames of the spouses are clearly French in origin. Thus marriage is exclusively within a growing French community. By the fourth generation (dating approximately from 1722 to 1764), there are 68 births and only 49 deaths (with 49 marriages). By the end of the fifth generation, there occurred a total of 223 births, 202 marriages and only a total of 171 deaths (dating approximately from 1743 to 1805 by dates of first and last born of the fifth generation). Marriage may have provided, evidently, screens of opportunity and networks for finding of spouses and probably employment/resources, for one’s kinfolk. Within this vast network structure, opportunity for networking would exist for women as well as for the men. Thus a wife’s consanguineal kin, or one’s in-laws, might be counted upon for finding employment or other spouses for one’s siblings, or even cousins. The extent of the diversity of surnames indicated that lineage exogamy of the women was almost absolute as a rule. Marriage was also influenced by the patterns of resettlement and movement of different family groups over a broader social landscape.²²

Analysis of the place names of recorded births, marriages and deaths revealed the following pattern. Initially, within the first two generations, marriages and births occurred in Quebec City (1 marriage, 1 birth), and mostly in La Prairie, up the St. Lawrence, (7 marriages, 25 births) among basically two families. There occurred 10 deaths in this province at this period, largely due to infant mortality. From there, among both families and their subsequent offspring (second and third generations), both the city of Montreal and Longueuil show the highest number of births, marriages and deaths (Montreal, 7 marriages and 6 deaths; Longueuil, 20 births, 14 marriages, and 15 deaths). There is some movement of first offspring adults of the third generation then to neighboring areas of the Montreal, with one birth each in St. Lambert and St. Laurent. Movement down the St. Lawrence to the area about Montreal was probably in the quest of opening new farmsteads in the relative security of an area already somewhat settled and with a French community rapidly growing. The next movement was that of Joseph I (third generation) who married in St. Laurent and had a family with births recorded in St. Laurent and then in Longueuil (1720-30’s). There was intermediate movement of this family to Recollet, where there were 3 marriages of his fourth generation offspring at Sault Au Recollet. There were 6 births recorded in Recollet, mostly of Joseph’s second family. There is subsequent relocation of Joseph’s second family to Yamaska, where another marriage and four deaths were recorded. Another family was part of the seven births recorded in Montreal, and one each in Aux Trembels and Bout-de-L’ille. Marriages began to spread out, with one each in Soulanges, Bout-de-L’ille and Riv des Prairies.²³

It is during this period that the first movement to the United States