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Dawn's Light Woman & Nicolas Franchomme: Marriage and Law in the Illinois Country: Shawnee Books

Autor Carl J. Ekberg, Sharon K. Person
en Limba Engleză Paperback – 25 sep 2022
WINNER, 2023 Illinois State Historical Society Superior Achievement Award in “Books, Scholarly”!

Native women’s marital rights and roles in colonial Illinois society

Kaskaskia, Illinois, once the state’s capital, torn from the state by flood waters, and now largely forgotten, was once the home to a couple who helped transform the region in the 1720s from a frontier village to a civil society. In the heart of France’s North American empire, the village was a community of French-Canadian fur traders and Kaskaskia Indians who not only lived together but often intermarried. These Indigenous and French intermarriages were central to colonial Illinois society, and the coupling of Marguerite 8assecam8c8e (Dawn’s Light Woman) and Nicolas Franchomme, in particular, was critical to expanding the jurisdiction of French law.
 
While the story of Marguerite and Nicolas is unknown today, it is the story of how French customary law (Coutume de Paris) governed colonial marriage, how mixed Indian-French marriages stood at the very core of early colonial Illinois society, and how Illinois Indian women benefited, socially and legally, from being married to French men. All of this came about due to a lawsuit in which Nicolas successfully argued that his wife had legal claim to her first husband’s estate—a legal decision that created a precedent for society in the Illinois Country.
 
Within this narrative of a married couple and their legal fight—based on original French manuscripts and supported by the comprehensively annotated 1726 Illinois census—is also the story of the village of Kaskaskia during the 1720s, of the war between Fox Indians and French settlers, with their Indian allies, in Illinois, and of how the spread of plow agriculture dramatically transformed the Illinois Country’s economy from largely fur trade–based to expansively agricultural.
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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780809338863
ISBN-10: 0809338866
Pagini: 264
Ilustrații: 24
Dimensiuni: 165 x 235 x 20 mm
Greutate: 0.54 kg
Ediția:First Edition
Editura: Southern Illinois University Press
Colecția Southern Illinois University Press
Seria Shawnee Books


Notă biografică

Carl J. Ekberg is emeritus professor of history at Illinois State University. He has published many books and articles including Stealing Indian Women: Native Slavery in the Illinois CountrySharon K. Person, emerita professor of English at St. Louis Community College, is the author of Standing Up for Indians: Baptism Registers as an Untapped Source for Multicultural Relations in St. Louis, 1766–1821. Together, they are the authors of St. Louis Rising: The French Regime of Louis St. Ange de Bellerive.
 

Extras

Chapter 1

By 1726, the compact French villages of the Illinois Country (Kaskaskia, Cahokia and Chartres) could boast a population of more than 500 souls, roughly one-third of them enslaved humans, Africans and Native Americans. The Kaskaskia and Michigamea Indian villages formed other nuclei of substantial populations, and adding to these more or less permanent residents, itinerant traders and sojourning Indians added size and diversity to the villages. At the same time, the drawn-out war between Fox Indians and their principal adversaries, Illinois Indians and French colonists, was reaching a new and bitter stage.

Into this fluid, dynamic but fragile, racially mixed frontier society came Nicolas Peltier de Franchomme, a royal marine ensign, only twenty years old, a provincial but highly intelligent and literate subject of King Louis XV. Franchomme’s brief, tumultuous life in the Illinois Country thrust him into the very midst of the region’s most importunate issues: the rule of law, government, Indian-White relations, and the existential question of whether French village life in the region could withstand the desperate push of Fox Indians, who themselves thought that their very existence as a nation depended on crushing French settlements in what is now the American Midwest. Franchomme’s life in Kaskaskia properly began with his marriage to an Illinois Indian woman. Such Indian-French marriages were the essential foundations of society when Franchomme arrived in the Illinois Country in early 1723; the village of Kaskaskia was veritably erected upon them.
  Marguerite 8assecam8c8e and Nicolas Franchomme were married at Kaskaskia in September 1723. This marriage, which commands the center of our narrative, was remarkable but not extraordinary, or even unusual, for it occurred in an Illinois Country environment where Indian-French marriages were utterly routine. Jesuits who accompanied the Kaskaskia Indians on their 1691-1703 migration from the Grand Village on the upper Illinois River to their final settlement on the lower Kaskaskia River encouraged Christian marriages between couples who were romantically involved, and most of the early marriages at Kaskaskia were between Indian women and French-Canadian men. In 1712, Father Marest noted that “the Illinois are much less barbarous than other Savages; Christianity and intercourse with the French have by degrees civilized them. This is to be noticed in our Village, of which nearly all the inhabitants are Christians; it is this also which has brought many Frenchmen to settle here, and very recently we married three of them to Illinois women.” Marest claimed that Illinois women had become thoroughly Frenchified before they married French men, but it is not clear if this was always the case.

Illinois Indian women are ubiquitous as brides, mothers and godmothers in the early Kaskaskia parish registers, and their exotic (to our eyes) Indian names leap off the manuscript pages where Jesuit priests faithfully inscribed them. Indian women whose names appear in sacramental records had of necessity been baptized and bore Christian names along with their original Indian names, as in the case of this book’s leading character—Marguerite 8assecam8c8e. Many of these Indian women had participated in the downstream migration that led to the settlement of Kaskaskia in the spring of 1703, all were baptized Roman Catholics, all were close to the Jesuit missionaries, all had, in varying degrees, adopted French cultural norms, and many were married to prominent Frenchmen.

[end of excerpt]

Cuprins

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations and Maps
Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction
Principal Characters
Part I
1. The Illinois Country
2. Native American Wives and French Husbands 
3. Jacques Bourdon in Life and in Death
4. Marguerite 8assecam8c8e is Attacked
5. Franchomme Prevails
6. Textures of Life
7. The Marriage Contract: Center of Life
8. The Fox Scourge
9. Aubains and Régnicoles: Blood and Culture
10. Marguerite 8assecam8c8e’s Last Dance
Conclusion. The Critical Decade
Part II. Illinois Country Generations: The 1726 Census

Glossary of French Terms 
Essential Illinois Country Reading
Index

Recenzii

“Ekberg and Person have done it again, training their tenacious research and creative analysis on the complex social world of early Illinois families. Foregrounding marriage, kinship, property, and law, the authors explore day-to-day dramas that also reveal the workings of empire and power in an early American community.”—Robert Michael Morrissey, author of Empire by Collaboration: Indians, Colonists, and Governments in Colonial Illinois Country

“A superbly researched and beautifully written book on a neglected part of US history. As a deep investigation into the lives of French and Illinois peoples in the heart of America from the 1720s, filled with colorful vignettes, it is a must-read for anyone interested in colonial American history.”—Gilles Havard, author of Histoire des coureurs de bois: Amérique du Nord, 1600–1840

"Ekberg and Person’s ambitious excursion into the rich civil and ecclesiastical archives of the Illinois country and elsewhere has produced a convincing account of the centrality of French-Indian marriages to the founding and continued stability of the French village of Kaskaskia. Focusing on the life of an Illinois Indian named Dawn’s Light Woman, the authors tell a complex socio-legal story in which French customary law, primarily the Coutume de Paris, shaped the bonds of marriage and family that sustained Kaskaskia’s life and underlay its prosperity. The book’s forthright engagement with interpretive constructs like race, racism, and settler colonialism, prominent features in the recent historiography of colonial North America, will enhance the appeal of this most welcome volume.”—Morris S. Arnold, author of Unequal Laws unto a Savage Race: European Legal Traditions in Arkansas, 1686–1836
“A superb example of the historian’s craft and of the power and pleasure of the archive, with all its attendant challenges. This book reveals more than I even thought possible about daily life and the role of Native women in this eighteenth-century community.”—Tracy Neal Leavelle, author of The Catholic Calumet: Colonial Conversions in French and Indian North America.

“Ekberg and Person have presented a meticulously researched and enlightening reading of the complexities of marriage and inheritance in the early Illinois Country. Their editing of the 1726 Census will prove useful for scholars of the region for generations.”—Mark F. Fernandez, author of From Chaos to Continuity: Evolution of Louisiana’s Judicial System, 1712–1862

“Historians have investigated marriages between French men and Indian women mainly from the perspectives of the husbands and of the clerics who disapproved of such unions and those who continued to sanctify them. Ekberg and Person approach the subject differently, centering on Indian women who entered these relationships and on the Coutume de Paris, the civil law code throughout New France and other French colonies. The authors particularly focus on Marguerite 8assecam8c8e, (Dawn’s Light Woman), who married successively three French husbands, all prominent men, and for whom the Coutume de Paris proved of greater importance than clerical quarrels. Ekberg and Person reveal a much richer and more nuanced view of society in le pays des Illinois and the factors that shaped that society.”—David MacDonald, author of Lives of Fort de Chartres, Kaskaskia: The Lost Capital of Illinois

“This text provides important stories about Kaskaskian women married to Frenchmen and, in particular, highlights just how these women benefited from French law, the Coutume de Paris. Digging through Kaskaskia manuscripts, wills, baptismal records, court documents, and so on, these gumshoes have built incredible stories that paint a rather egalitarian picture of French Kaskaskia during the early to mid-eighteenth century.”—Linda C. Jones, Missouri Historical Review

“This carefully documented study gives credit to earlier researchers while introducing a thorough examination of one of Illinois’ least-studied subjects, Native American women, one of whom is named Dawn’s Light Woman, more formally Marguerite 8assecam8c8e. Married to three French men in the early days of the Illinois country, her story will be of interest to French scholars and linguists, and is intelligible to those not trained in French ways of pre-statehood Illinois. Dawn’s Light Woman married thrice—and married wisely and well.”—Illinois State Historical Society Awards Selection Committee

Descriere

In the heart of France’s North American empire, the village of Kaskaskia was a community of French -Canadian fur traders and Kaskaskia Indians who not only lived together but often intermarried. These Indigenous and French intermarriages were central to colonial Illinois society, and the coupling of Marguerite 8assecam8c8e (Dawn’s Light Woman) and Nicolas Franchomme, in particular, was critical to expanding the jurisdiction of French law.