Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont (April 1679-1734) was a French explorer who made the first maps and documentation of the Missouri and Platte rivers. He also established the first fort on the Missouri River.

[edit] Enemy of the State

He was born in Cerisy-Belle-Étoile in central Normandy. At the age of 19, he was found guilty of poaching in 1698 on the land of the Monastery of Belle-Etoile. He did not pay the 100 livre fine and is believed to have left for New France settlements in North America that year.

In 1702 he was reported to be with Charles Juchereau de St. Denys and the Troupes de la marine setting up a tannery for buffalo hides at the mouth of the Ouabache River (Ohio River). The tannery closed in 1703 and Bourgmont moved to Quebec.

In 1705 on orders from Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac he moved to Fort Pontchartrain at Detroit, Michigan assuming command of the fort in 1706. In March 1706 a group of Ottawa attacked a group of Miami outside the fort. A priest and French sergeant outside the walls were killed along with 30 Ottawas from gunfire inside the fort. Bourgmont was criticized for his handling of the incident and when Cadillac visited the fort in August Bourgmont and other members of the were reported as having deserted their post.^[1]

From 1706 to 1709 Bourgmont and other deserters lived as coureur de bois (illegal traders) around the Grand River and Lake Erie. In 1709 one of the deserters Betellemy Pichon, known as La Roze was captured. He testified that two of the deserters had drown and that one had been shot and eaten by the starving party. La Roze was sentenced to have his "head broken" until he died.^[2]

In 1712 Bourgmont surfaced again at Fort Pontchartrain helping the Algonquin along with the Missouri and Osage in the fight against the Fox. He was seen with the daughter of the chief of the Missouri tribe who he has settled with at the mouth of the Grand River. He and two other traders also traveling with Native-American women were seen in 1713 in Illinois. The priests complained and an order was sent out to arrest Bourgmont the next time he visited Fort Louis in Mobile, Alabama.

[edit] Hero of the State

In 1713 Bourgemont began writing Exact Description of Louisiana, of Its Harbors, Lands and Rivers, and Names of the Indian Tribes That Occupy It, and the Commerce and Advantages to Be Derived Therefrom for the Establishment of a Colony.

In March 1714 Bourgemont traveled to the mouth of the Platte River (which he named the Nebraskier River for the Otoe tribe name for "flat water"). He wrote The Route to Be Taken to Ascend the Missouri River The account reached the cartographer Guillaume Delisle who noted that it was the first documented report of travels that far north on the Missouri.^[3]

Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville replaced Cadillac and September 25, 1718, recommended that Bourgmont receive the Cross of Saint Louis for service to France.

In September 1719 the Council of the Colony of Louisiana passed an ordinance that Bourgemont had in fact been working for the company creating alliances with the Native Americans.

Bourgemont described his knack for dealing with the tribes:

For me with the Indians nothing is impossible. I make them do what they have never done.^[4]

Tribes were said to have valued the products he offered as traded gunpowder, guns, kettles and blankets while the Spanish traded few horses, knives, and "inferior axes." ^[5]

Bourgemont was then sent to bring the chiefs to Dauphin Island. All of the chiefs except one died enroute. Bourgemont escorted the chief back and then returned to New Orleans, Louisiana where he was paid 4,279 livres. In June 1720 he and his Native-American son traveled to Paris where they were greeted as heroes after news arrived that Native American tribes friendly to Bourgemont had defeated the Spanish Villasur expedition.

In July he was commissioned as a captain in the French army. In August 1720 he was named "Commandant of the Missouri River." In exchanged for Letters of Nobility he was commissioned to build a fort on the Missouri River and negotiate with the tribes to allow peaceful French commerce.

In May 1721 he married Jacqueline Bouvet des Bordeaux in his home village of Cerisy Belle-Etoile and then left for New Orleans in June.

After an illness and loss of support for the new Missouri colony, Bourgemont left New Orleans in February 1723 and established Fort Orleans near the mouth of the Grand River as the military headquarters for the Missouri River.

He proceeded up the Missouri River to Kansas River where he traveled to the southern plains to gain peace pledges from the Oto, Kansa and Osage, and Commanche tribes.

As part of the plan he was to take reprentatives of the tribes to Paris where they the chiefs were to be shown the wonders and power of France including a visit to Versailles, Château de Marly and Fontainebleau and hunting in the royal forest with Louis XV. He took his Native American wife (officially declared to be a servant) and his son.

In late 1725 the tribes members returned to North America but Bourgemont stayed in Normandy where he had been elevated to écuyer (squire).

The French were not to fund the Fort Orleans and it was abandoned and Bourgemont died in 1734.

[edit] References