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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
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EXPEDITION OF 1720" (2012). Great Plains Quarterly. 2753.
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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
Gaultier de Varennes de La Verendrye met
an indigenous nation they called the Gens de
l'Arc somewhere along the middle Missouri
River near present-day Pierre, South Dakota'!
Louis-Joseph and Franc,:ois were searching for
the mythical Sea of the West, and the former
asked the chief of the Gens de l'Arc if he "knew
the white people of the seacoast." When the
chief replied that "'[tlhe French who are on
the seacoast are numerous'" and have "'many
chiefs for the soldiers, and also many chiefs
for prayer,'" Louis-Joseph believed he had at
last found evidence of the Mer de l'Ouest and
the people living on its shores. But his hopes
were quickly dashed when the chief proceeded
to speak a few words of the whites' language.
As Louis-Joseph explained to Charles de la
Boische Beauharnois, the governor of Canada,
"I recognized that he was speaking Spanish,
and what confirmed me in my opinion was the
account he gave of the massacre of the Spanish
who were going in search of the Missouri, a
matter I had heard mentioned." He concluded,
"All this considerably lessened my eagerness, concerning a sea already known" by the
Spaniards. 2
The chief was most likely describing an
event that had occurred over twenty years earlier: the destruction of the Villasur Expedition
on the banks of the Platte and Loup rivers in
present-day Nebraska. It was the last expedition of its kind until fears of Zebulon Pike
inspired another Spanish march to the northeast. In 1720 Pedro de Villasur led forty-five
Spaniards and sixty Pueblo auxiliaries out of
Santa Fe to win Indian allies and to gauge the
French presence in the Great Plains. Pawnee
Indians, perhaps with the help of a few French
Key Words: Bourgmont, Cuartelejo Apaches,
Illinois Country, Segesser, slavery
Christopher Steinke is a PhD candidate at the
University of New Mexico. His dissertation examines
the Missouri River trade in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. He thanks John Wunder and
Margaret Connell-Szasz for their comments on earlier
portions of this article, the anonymous reviewers for
their suggestions, and the Newberry Consortium in
American Indian Studies.
[GPQ 32 (Winter 2012): 43-62]
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 confluence of the Platte and Loup rivers, leaving
only fourteen survivors to report back to Santa
Fe (see Fig. 1).
The chief's memory of the Spanish-Pawnee
encounter suggests that it resonated as an
important event in the early eighteenthcentury history of the central Plains. Yet
the repercussions of the expedition remain
somewhat unclear. In general, historians have
viewed the Villasur Expedition as a brief extension of European imperial rivalry into the continent's interior and have not fully addressed
the indigenous politics surrounding it. 3 This
article attempts to reposition the Villasur
Expedition from the perspective of the Pawnee,
who likely would have seen the Spaniards more
as Cuartelejo and Paloma Apache allies than
French enemies. Drawing on French records
and more recent archaeological evidence, it
argues that changing economies in the early
eighteenth-century central Plains, which
experienced a growth in bison hunting and the
slave trade, contributed to Pawnee expansion
into the lands of northern Apaches in present-
day western Kansas and Nebraska. During a
pivotal five-year period of European activity
in the Plains, from 1719 until 1724, both the
Pawnee and their Apache enemies enlisted
Europeans in a decidedly indigenous struggle.
When Villasur and his men entered the
Platte Valley, they set foot in a region that
Pawnees had called home for hundreds of years.
Caddoan-speaking ancestors of the Pawnees
settled in present-day Nebraska as early as
AD 1000. In the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, however, new neighbors joined
Pawnees in the central Plains. Dakota attacks
forced the Omahas, Dhegiha Siouan speakers,
to abandon the Big Sioux River and cross to
the western bank of the Missouri River, near
Pawnee lands. Otoes also fled the Dakotas,
eventually establishing villages along the
Platte River, east of the Pawnees, by the late
seventeenth century.4 To the west, Comanches
would leave the Rocky Mountains to settle in
the western Plains, where they would vie with
Pawnees over control of hunting grounds and
river valleys.5 Finally, groups of Apaches left
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
and Alaska during the early part of the second
millennium to settle on the shortgrass prairies
of eastern Colorado and western Kansas and
Nebraska, directly west of the Wichitas and
Pawnees. Archaeologists have linked them to
settlement remains in the so-called Dismal
River Aspect. Known to the French as the
"Padoucas" in the first half of the eighteenth
century, these northern Apaches likely occupied Dismal River sites from around 1675 to
the mid-I720s. 6 Perhaps the most important
Apache settlement in the central Plains was
a place called EI Cuartelejo, a large rancherfa
that was probably located in present-day Scott
County, western Kansas.?
In response to these forced and voluntary
migrations to the central Plains, Pawnees collected in larger groups and moved to hilltops
along the Loup and Platte rivers for safety. 8
Archaeologists have designated sites from this
period of transition, which lasted from about
AD 1500 to 1750, the Lower Loup Focus.
During the 1600s, pressure from outsiders perhaps caused Pawnees to split from their linguistic relatives, the Arikaras, who settled farther
north, along the Big Bend of the Missouri in
present-day South Dakota.9 Before the arrival
of epidemics, these Pan ian groups occupied
a large swath of territory stretching from the
Loup River to the Cheyenne River.l°
Officials in New Mexico learned of the
sweeping changes taking place well north of
their border only in piecemeal rumors and
mainly through reports of Apaches. Not only
were Comanches raiding farther south with
greater abandon, they discovered, but Pawnees
seemed to be moving farther west and south
of their typical hunting territory, asserting
their control over Apache lands with the help
of French traders. As early as 1695, Diego de
Vargas, the governor of New Mexico, heard
a rumor that a "great number of Frenchmen
came toward the Buffalo Plains, driving the
Apaches to [Picuris Pueblo] because of the
many attacks they make against them."ll And
in 1706 Juan de Ulibarrf, a captain in the presidial militia, discovered during a mission to
the Cuartelejo Apaches in present-day south-
45
western Kansas that French traders were visiting "Pawnees" (possibly Wichitas) and trading
them guns. He had gone north to rescue twenty
Pueblo families who were reportedly slaves of
the Cuartelejo Apaches, but he also wanted to
enlist the Apaches as allies against the French.
They asked a favor in return: help them attack
"their enemies" the Pawnees, who had recently
raided them alongside French traders. They produced guns and iron axes of French manufacture
as evidence of Pawnee-French cooperation,12
Over the following decade, Comanche raids
on New Mexico with their allies, the Utes,
grew worse, so much so that the government at
Santa Fe convened a war council, which agreed
to carry out another expedition to the north.
Governor Antonio Valverde y Cosfo set out in
1719 to "punish" the "insolence" of the Utes
and Comanches and to reaffirm the Apache
alliance,u This expedition was in many ways
a replay of UlibarrI's: Valverde went north
to the Arkansas River, where he met a group
of Cuartelejo Apaches who reported PawneeFrench attacks. One of the Paloma Apaches,
who dwelled farther north of EI Cuartelejo, on
the "most remote borderlands of the Apaches,"
had been recently wounded by gunfire. The
injured man informed Valverde that the Palomas
had been attacked by the "French, united with
the Pawnees and the Jumanos." The Pawnees,
aided by the French, had seized the lands of
Paloma Apaches, forcing their retreat.14
While this Pawnee-French alliance was
not necessarily news in Santa Fe, the report
of French settlements in the Plains was. The
Apaches told Valverde that the French had
established "two large pueblos, each of which
is as large as that of Taos" among the Pawnees.
In a letter to Baltasar Zuniga Guzman, the
Marques de Valero, in Mexico City, Valverde
stated that these two French settlements were
located on a "very large river which here is
known as the Jesus Marfa," according to the
Pueblo scout Jose Naranjo.l5 Apache women
who had escaped slavery among the French
also reported that the whites had "three other
settlements on the other side of the large
river, and that from these they bring arms.,,16
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
46
GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, WINTER 2012
These settlements were most likely Kaskaskia,
Cahokia, and Fort de Chartres, which were
all established on the eastern side of the
Mississippi by October 1719, when Valverde
met the Cuartelejo and Paloma Apaches.
Armed with French weapons, Pawnees
could have very well attacked the Paloma
Apaches and pushed them out of their lands,
which might have extended as far north as the
South Platte RiverP Living farther north of the
Cuartelejos, on the "most remote borderlands of
the Apaches," Palomas would have lived approximately west of the large Pawnee settlements on
the Platte and Loup rivers. But Valverde himself
seemed unsure about who actually attacked the
Palomas. In his letter to Valero, he stated that
the gunshot wound came in fact from a Kansa
Indian, though he also described a French alliance with the Pawnees and Jumanos.l 8 By 1719
Apaches were also suffering raids by Wichitas,
distant relatives of the Pawnees. The commandant at Fort de Chartres in the Illinois Country,
Pierre Dugue de Boisbriant, reported in October
1720 that the Wichitas had recently raided the
"Padoucas" and captured one hundred slaves.
The Spanish might have mistaken the Wichitas
for Pawnees.l 9
PAWNEE LIFEWAYS ON THE CENTRAL
PLAINS
The secondhand reports by Apaches provided the Spanish officials with only faint
clues about the Pawnees. Where exactly they
resided in the Plains-let alone how they
traded or what crops they raised-remained
a mystery. The Skiri Pawnees, whom the
French called the Panimahas, were the largest band and lived on the Loup River. The
smaller South Bands-the Chawis (Grands),
Kitkahahkis (Republiques), and Pitahawiratas
(Tappages)-lived on the south bank of the
Platte River. The Skiris and South Bands spoke
a different dialect of Pawnee and did not always
cooperate. Even in the late eighteenth century,
the Spanish and French considered them to
be distinct "nations" that occasionally pursued
different economic and political agendas. 2O
It is difficult to estimate the Pawnee population in this period. Based on the number
of villages they occupied, the number was
close to ten thousand, and it was probably
much higher before the arrival of epidemics.2 1
Each village held 300 to 500 people, and the
Pawnees occupied over fifteen villages in the
early 1700s. The French explorer Etienne
Veniard, sieur de Bourgmont, who reached the
mouth of the Platte in 1714, stated that the
Skiri Pawnees alone occupied eight villages. 22
A 1722 copy of Guillaume Delisle's Carte de La
Louisiane shows twelve "Panis" (South Band)
villages along the "Riv. des Pan is" and twelve
"Panimaha" (Skiri) villages along a tributary to
this river, presumably the Loup.23 Delisle's numbers match Pawnee traditions. During the spring
equinox, Skiri Pawnees recited their creation
story twelve times to honor the establishment
of twelve original settlements; they also held
twelve sacred bundles, one for each village. The
South Bands also occupied multiple villages:
in the late 1800s the Chawis held three sacred
bundles for villages that had since disappeared,
while Pitahawiratas had two bundles. 24
These villages were part of a sacred landscape. Pawnees designed and arranged villages
to show their reverence for celestial bodies,
which guided their religious cosmology. They
situated earth lodges within villages to mirror
constellations, and the earth lodge itself functioned as a "microcosm of the universe": the
vaulted ceiling was the "dome of the universe,"
and the circular wall represented the horizon. 25
Priests looked through the smoke holes in
earth lodges to locate stars at certain points
in the sky. The star deities granted chiefs the
authority to make the sacred bundle for a village, and each village became associated with
the star that brought it into being. Individuals
also followed the guidance of specific stars.
Through the star gods, the Pawnees came to
know the power of the creator of the universe,
Tirawahut, the "supreme god and First Cause of
All." Pawnee ceremonies honored Tirawahut's
most important creations: Morning Star, the
god of light, fire, and war; and Evening Star,
the goddess of fertility.26
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
THE PAWNEE HOMELAND, COUREURS DE BOIS, AND THE VILLASUR EXPEDITION OF 1720
Pawnees appealed to the celestial beings
throughout the year, which began anew in
March with the spring equinox. Having
returned from their winter encampments,
Pawnees marked the arrival of spring by recreating the birth of the universe. In May they
performed the "groundbreaking ceremony" for
corn, one of the few ceremonies that involved
women. They tended the fields until mid-June,
when they left for the summer hunt. This hunt
brought them west to the High Plains bison
ranges, where they obtained most of their meat
and the hides that they used to make tipi covers
and moccasins. They returned to harvest the
corn in early September, when the South Star,
Canopus, appeared. Corn was a sacred object
for Pawnees, and they celebrated three different ceremonies during the harvest. Finally, in
late October, after gathering the corn, they set
out for another hunting season that lasted until
early spring. The heavier robes acquired during
winters served as clothing, and the winter
camps delivered timber and foraging opportunities for their expanding horse herds. During
this winter season, Skiri Pawnees moved
toward the forks of the Platte River, while the
Kitkahahkis, Chawis, and Pitahawiratas moved
south into present-day Kansas. These South
Bands traveled along a heavy north-south
trail that brought them past two sacred animal
lodges: Pa:hu:ru', a hill on the Republican
River that whites later called Guide Rock, and
Kicawi:caku, or "Spring Mound," the location
of a natural artesian spring where they made
offerings to Tirawahut. 27
Pawnees were self-sufficient, though they
did participate in an expansive indigenous
trading system in the Plains that predated
the eighteenth-century Missouri River trade.
Traditionally, groups that emphasized hunting
traded meat and hides for the agricultural products of farming societies. Pawnees had both
hunting and farming products at their disposal,
but they carried on "redundancy" trading with
their Arikara and Wichita relatives. By the
early 1700s, however, Pawnees were trading
for entirely new products: horses and guns.
Pawnees adopted horses relatively quickly: the
47
animals were likely "integrated into Pawnee
life ways" by the end of the seventeenth century, and horses probably led to an expansion of
bison hunting. 28 While the horse trade was an
"elaboration" of older exchange patterns, it did
increase the volume of trade in the Plains and
helped produce new indigenous trade centers:
those of the Mandan-Hidatsas and Arikaras on
the upper Missouri, the Shoshone Rendezvous
in southwestern Wyoming, and the Comanche
center at Big Timbers on the Arkansas. Pawnees
traveled to the Shoshone Rendezvous to buy
horses from Utes; they also journeyed south
along the north-south trail from the Republican
River to the Great Bend of the Arkansas to
trade for horses from Comanches. 29
Trade with distant allies like the Comanches,
enemies like the Sioux, and even members
of other Pawnee bands took the form of a
gift exchange within the calumet ceremony.
Other tribes have testified that this ceremony,
which spread throughout the midcontinent,
originated among the Pawnees. 30 For Pawnees,
smoking the calumet pipe played the crucial
role of establishing kinship relations between
trading parties. Pawnees approached interpersonal relations in terms of kin designations, and
those who fell outside kin structures were often
enemies or slaves. In the ceremony, the visiting
party "represented Fathers, while the ones they
visited were designated their Children."3l Only
the wealthiest members of Pawnee villages,
typically chiefs, participated in the ceremony.32
On the fourth day of the ritual performance,
the "fathers" unpacked gifts to the "children"
that usually consisted of robes and embroidered clothing. That night, the "children"
would reciprocate by delivering horses to the
visitors. 33 By performing the role of "children"
in this ceremony, Pawnees became middlemen
in the horse trade, distributing the animals
to neighbors to the east, including Omahas,
Otoes, and Poncas. 34 The ceremony was less
an alliance building mechanism, as the French
would come to see it, and more a "sign of peaceful intention and thus a safe-conduct through
enemy territory."35 Through the calumet ceremony, Pawnees could trade temporarily with
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
48
GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, WINTER 2012
those who would remain enemies. Once the
ceremony was over and the visitors had traveled a safe distance from the Pawnee village,
hostilities could resume. 36
When unlicensed French traders, or coureurs
de bois, began reaching their villages, Pawnees
simply treated these strangers as new "fathers."'?
They incorporated them into their kinship
structures and conducted gift exchanges.
Yet the French would attempt to assign new
political meanings to the calumet ceremony. In
October 1750 the eldest of three brothers who
led the Skiri band visited Monsieur de St. Clin,
the commandant at Fort de Chartres in the
Illinois Country. According to the governor
of New France, Pierre Jacques de Taffanel
La Jonquiere, this Pawnee leader, Stabaco,
proclaimed his loyalty to the French: "'My
father, if thou hast any rebellious Children who
lose their wits, let me know. Thou canst rely on
me and on my nation.''' La Jonquiere concluded
that this "alliance is a very advantageous one,
and, by maintaining that nation in our interest,
we shall be masters of the front and back of the
Missoury country.,,38 But he was too optimistic.
By calling St. Clin "father," Stabaco made
the kin designation of the calumet ceremony,
which did not necessarily guarantee political
cooperation. 39
COUREURS DE BOIS AND THE SLAVE
TRADE ON THE GRASSLANDS
After hearing the reports by the Palomas
and Cuartelejos in 1719, Governor Valverde
was reluctant to admit any Pawnee initiative in
the attacks on the Apaches. Instead, he blamed
enterprising French traders, who seemingly
could convince the Pawnees to invade New
Mexico. Valverde had other reasons to fear a
French invasion. France had seized Pensacola
and claimed part of Texas following the outbreak of the War of the Quadruple Alliance,
which started in 1718. In the same year, the
ambitious Compagnies des Indes gained control of French Louisiana. Although the company directors were much more interested in
trade with New Mexico than war, they sought
to open a trade route to New Mexico by lining
it with French allies, including the Apaches.40
Yet Indian nations in the eastern Plains
did not cooperate with this French scheme.
The Osages, Pawnees, and Wichitas tried to
monopolize the French trade and prevent traders from visiting the Apaches. In July or August
1719, around the time that Valverde visited the
Cuartelejos, a French officer named ClaudeCharles Dutisne left Kaskaskia heading west
on an overland trade and diplomatic mission
to the Osages, Wichitas, and Apaches. 41 The
Osages, once they discovered he was traveling toward the "Panis" [Wichitas], insisted he
trade them all but three of his guns, while the
Wichitas were "very strongly opposed" to his
plan of meeting the Apaches. 42 In a report to
the governor of Louisiana, Dutisne concluded
that French traders could reach New Mexico
only if Wichitas and Osages-who were in a
confederation-formed a "union" with their
Apache enemies, which would require the
exchange of slaves and gifts. 43
French officials shared Valverde's belief that
coureurs de bois were really the ones behind
the Pawnee, Osage, and Wichita attacks on
the Apaches. According to their theory, these
unregulated traders provoked endless wars in
the Plains by encouraging Pawnees to raid
Apaches for slaves. The slave trade, more than
anything else, sabotaged the larger commercial
ambitions of the Compagnie des Indes by earning the French the continued enmity of the
Apaches.
The company's preoccupation with the
slave trade raises questions about its size and
relative importance in the eighteenth-century
Great Plains. Markets in Louisiana and New
Mexico created a demand for slaves that Plains
Indians were attempting to satisfy as early
as 1706, when Ulibarri noted that Apaches
and "Pawnees" were raiding each other to sell
captives to the Spaniards and French, respectively. This trade continued in 1719, when
Valverde met the three Apache women who
had escaped slavery near the Mississippi, and
it may have escalated in the 1
when the
number of recorded baptisms of Pawnees in
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
nos,
THE PAWNEE HOMELAND, COUREURS DE BOIS, AND THE VILLASUR EXPEDITION OF 1720
New Mexico missions peaked. Nine Pawnees
were baptized at the Taos, San Juan, Nambe,
Pecos, and Zia pueblos-certainly not a large
number, but Spanish missions recorded the
baptisms of only two Pawnees total in the
1730s and 1740s. 44 This modest increase, which
may reflect larger numbers of undocumented
Pawnee captives, raises the possibility that the
Villasur Expedition occurred at a time when
Pawnees were suffering a new level of raiding
by Apaches.
Among Indian nations in the eastern Plains,
only the powerful Osages seemed immune from
the retaliatory cycles of slave raiding; practically no Osage captives appeared in French settlements in the Illinois Country. Pawnees were
less fortunate. Osages seized so many Pawnee
and Wichita captives that they may have
adopted a matrilocal household organization
from their Caddoan enemies. 45 And traders
delivered enough Pawnee slaves to French markets in the Illinois Country, the pays d'en haut,
and Canada that "Pan is" became the French
term for any Indian slave originating from west
of the Mississippi. Although many of these
slaves were not in fact Pawnees but Indians
from neighboring tribes, about 68 percent of
Indian slaves in French Canada who received
Indian names in the documentation-over two
thousand-appear as "Panis."46
Only six years after the Villasur Expedition,
in September 1726, a French trader provided
an unusually detailed portrait of the eastern
Plains slave trade. Concerned that traders were
fomenting dangerous Indian wars for their
own profit in the slave trade, officials at Fort
de Chartres solicited a deposition from JeanJacques Desmanets regarding a trip he had made
to the eastern Plains earlier that summer with
Jean-Baptiste Poudret, a trader in the Missouri
Country.47 According to Desmanets, the first
Indians they encountered were Little Osages,
who were returning from "an attack on the
Pawnees and had with them a young Pawnee
slave." Poudret was evidently on his way to the
Pawnees to trade for "horses and peltries," not
slaves, but he decided to purchase the captive
so he could return it to the Pawnees as a gesture
49
of good will. They continued another forty
leagues until they reached the "grand village of
the Osages," where they redeemed another captive. 48 Poudret then set out by himself to find
the Pawnees, who were away on their annual
summer hunt. Returning after three weeks, the
Pawnees were "contemptuous" of the remaining trade goods and Poudret's pleas for them
to end their attacks on Osages, boasting that
they had "eaten Osages and would continue to
eat them." They had returned from the western
Plains with a five-year-old Padouca, or Apache,
slave, for whom Poudret "paid dearly."49 After
foiling a plan by a few Pawnees to steal their
horses, Poudret and Desmanets finally made it
to Fort d'Orleans, a post on the Missouri River
that the explorer and diplomat Etienne Veniard,
sieur de Bourgmont, had established in 1724.50
Because he was under investigation for
involvement in the Indian slave trade, Desmanets
might have changed the story to make it seem as
though the Indians, not the French, were the real
slave traders. It is likely that Poudret, who would
remain active in the Missouri River trade into
the 1730s, was not such a reluctant trade partner.
Nevertheless, this testimony provides an important glimpse of Osage-Pawnee relations in the
1720s as well as the Plains slave trade. It suggests
that Pawnees had their own source for captives:
the Padoucas, or Apaches, living in present-day
western Kansas and southwestern Nebraska.
They were not the only ones acquiring Padouca
captives in this period. Wichitas, Kansas, and
Comanches also seized Apache captives, sometimes in large numbers. 51
Pawnees might have taken Apache captives for a number of reasons. Most basically,
Apaches fell outside Pawnee kinship relations.
Skiri Pawnees called Plains Apaches katahkaa',
which derives from katahkaa, "to be inside
out," a derivation that perhaps reflects their
view of Apaches as a strange and foreign people
who were potential captives. 52 Some captives
held religious significance. Occasionally in
the fall season, a Skiri warrior impersonated
Morning Star, the god of light, fire, and war,
on a journey to retrieve the god's daughter.
He led a party of experienced warriors to an
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
50
GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, WINTER 2012
enemy village, where they seized a thirteenyear-old girl, who was later sacrificed in the
spring during the five-day-long Morning Star
ceremony.53 Pawnee men raided for captives
that would "enhance family honor and solidify
... economic status" by increasing the wealth
of their families and villages. Captive women
might have also helped replace those lost to
disease and supplied the labor attached to an
emerging equestrian economy. 54
By selling women and children to traders
like Poudret, Pawnees could acquire weapons
and other items that they could trade to the
Comanches farther west for horses. Trading
slaves may have also had a political function.
As Brett Rushforth has noted, Indian peoples
in the pays d'en haut effectively limited the
scope of the French alliance system by involving traders in a slave economy that depended
on hostilities with their enemies. Rushforth
asserts that the Padouca slave trade may have
been one reason why the French never formed
an effective alliance with the Apaches. 55
The slave trade had evidently become
enough of a problem in the Plains by the late
171 Os that French officials identified it as their
primary obstacle to commercial and political
expansion. In 1717 Fran<;:ois le Maire, a priest
who had served for nearly a decade in the
settlement of Mobile, composed a memo ire on
Louisiana in which he recommended that the
French crown outlaw the Indian slave trade in
the Great Plains. He specifically condemned
those coureurs de bois, like Poudret, who
bought and sold slaves of "Padoucas and other
peoples of the Missouri.,,56 A ban on the slave
trade would, he concluded, "cut at the root the
wars that the Indians only continue between
themselves because of the advantageous sale
that they make of their captives to the traders, who then resell them in this colony to the
Spanish and to the vessels that come to our port,
for selling them a third time to the islands."57
The directors of the Compagnie des Indes,
monitoring their unprofitable colony from
Paris and hoping to open the New Mexico
trade through the Padoucas, eventually heeded
le Maire's call for a ban on the slave trade.
In late October 1710, they ordered Governor
Bienville to end the Indian slave trade along
the Missouri and Arkansas rivers because the
raiding for captives inhibited trade across the
Plains. They complained that voyageurs were
fomenting war between Indian nations in
order to "procure slaves." This was "not only
contrary to the orders of the King" but "very
harmful to the well-being of the company's
commerce," the directors concluded. 58 But officials in Louisiana largely opposed this plan. In
the Illinois Country, Boisbriant worried that a
ban on the Apache slave trade would alienate
Pawnees, Wichitas, and Osages, and that the
Pawnees would continue raiding and simply
sell their captives to Fox peoples, who could
destroy the Illinois Country. He concluded that
the French were stuck between two options: a
dangerous Pawnee-Fox alliance, or an alliance
with Pawnees against the Apaches, who would
then block trade with New Mexico. 59
While the directors of the Compagnie des
Indes believed that an end to the slave trade
would secure peace in the Plains, they overestimated the influence of slave-trading coureurs
de bois on Pawnee chiefs. Pawnees were not
raiding Cuartelejo and Paloma Apaches simply
to meet a demand for slaves. Instead, these
Apaches occupied lands that Pawnees wanted
to use for themselves: bison ranges and river
valleys in the western Plains.
The growth of a bison-hunting economy and
the introduction of horses, more than the slave
trade, intensified the conflict between Apaches
and Pawnees. Archaeological evidence suggests
that Pawnees began hunting bison in much
larger numbers beginning in the seventeenth
century. For the first time, they established specialized hunting camps to the west and north
of their villages: along the western Platte basin,
in the Nebraska panhandle, near the Sandhills,
and on the central Niobrara River. By the
mid-eighteenth century, Pawnees were importing lithic materials in much larger amounts to
produce end scrapers, which they used to work
bison hides. The reasons for this shift toward
bison are not entirely clear. It is possible that
bison populations rebounded after an extended
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
THE PAWNEE HOMELAND, COUREURS DE BOIS, AND THE VILLASUR EXPEDITION OF 1720
period of drought, which may have encouraged Pawnees to expand their hunting operations. The emergence of the French robe trade
could have also played a role. By the mid-1700s
Pawnees were acquiring French guns, iron axes,
brass bracelets, and glass beads, which together
could indicate a "thriving trade on a very large
scale."60
The only problem with this hunting expansion was that Apaches, pressured on the west
by the Comanches, claimed the same hunting ranges. The direct testimonies of those
involved suggest that hunting ranges were the
principal battlegrounds between Apaches and
Pawnees. The Cuartelejos informed Ulibarri
that the French had previously "come united
with the Pawnees to attack them at the time
when they were going out to hunt buffalo
meat."61 Almost twenty years later, in 1724, a
Skiri Pawnee leader cited the freedom to hunt
as a reason why he welcomed peace with the
Apaches: it was "good that we make peace with
the Padoucas for plenty of reasons: the first, for
our tranquility; the second, to carry out hunts
in peace; and third, to have horses."62
His testimony reveals additional reasons for
raids against Apaches. The Apaches portrayed
themselves as the victims of Pawnee raids
to Ulibarri and Valverde, but they evidently
disturbed the "tranquility" of Skiri Pawnees.
Pawnee raids against Apaches might have
been defensive or retaliatory. The Skiri leader
also cited a shortage of horses, which Apaches
could obtain more easily from the Southwest.
In order to feed these horses in the winter,
however, Pawnees needed the wooded river
valleys that Apaches used. A member of the
Ulibarri Expedition recalled that as soon as the
Apaches at El Cuartelejo had harvested their
crops, "they retire to other parts where they can
resist the rigor of the winter, because there is a
scarcity of wood in that spot.,,63 Instead of following coureurs de bois on slave raids, Pawnees
were more likely leading traders in a campaign
to remove Palomas (like the wounded man in
1719) from bison-hunting grounds and river
valleys in present-day western Kansas and
southwestern Nebraska. By raiding Apaches,
51
Pawnees could steal horses and take control of
natural resources essential to their survival in
a sometimes harsh Plains environment.
By the late 1710s and early 1720s, the
Republican River valley had emerged as a
particular focus of conflict between Apaches
and their Pawnee and Comanche enemies, all
of whom were eager to control the river valley
for its water, timber supply, and shelter during
harsh winters. 64 The valley was a probable site
of Apache displacement about the time of the
Villasur Expedition. Excavations at the White
Cat Village site, a former Apache settlement
on the Republican around seventy-five miles
southwest of the Pawnee villages on the Platte,
revealed at least six Athabascan residential
structures in a desirable area that would have
provided water, timber, and level ground suitable for limited agriculture. One of the homes
at this settlement was burned to the ground
around 1723. Archaeologist Waldo Wedel proposes that the reported attack on the Palomas
might have occurred near this Apache settlement. 65
Pawnee raids constituted only one of the
challenges facing the Apaches in the early
eighteenth century. Comanches were taking
advantage of their mobility on horseback
to strike against the farming villages of
semisedentary Apaches. The powerful Osages
controlled the major arteries of trade in the
midcontinent, and their trade embargoes with
the Wichitas isolated Apaches from traders,
who already had difficulty reaching Apaches
because of the shallowness of rivers on the
western Plains. By controlling most of the
French trade and then delivering surplus goods
to Comanches for horses, Wichitas, Pawnees,
and Osages could advance their own military
capabilities in the newly equestrian Plains at
the expense of the Apaches. 66 Cuartelejo and
Paloma Apaches sought Spanish aid in 1706
and once again in 1719 because they were in an
increasingly desperate position in the central
Plains. They used one thing they did haveSpanish fears of the French-to try to gain a
European ally against their Pawnee, Wichita,
and Comanche enemies.
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
52
GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, WINTER 2012
VILLASUR MARCHES NORTH, AND RUMORS
IN THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY
Spanish officials in New Mexico were accustomed to approaching the Apaches as enemies,
not potential allies. Raiding by Apaches and
military campaigns by the Spaniards punctuated their relationship throughout the late
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 67 On
the basis of Apache reports to Ulibarr( and
Valverde, however, these officials briefly came
to view the Apaches as a crucial ally against
the French and the Pawnees, and they sought
to bolster their northern defenses in Apache
lands. In early 1720 the Marques de Valero in
Mexico City commanded Valverde to establish a presidio at EI Cuartelejo; to convert the
Apaches and make them farmers, so they could
block French expansion; and to send a reconnaissance mission to the north to investigate
French activities in the central Plains. Valverde
convened a war council, which concluded that
the EI Cuartelejo presidio was too risky, and that
La Jicarilla-a village of Jicarilla Apaches about
one hundred miles northeast of Santa Fewould be a more suitable location. It also began
planning for Valero's reconnaissance mission. 68
When Pedro de Villasur, Valverde's lieutenant, led the requested expedition out of Santa
Fe in mid-June 1720, he knew little about the
Great Plains and would have to rely heavily on
Native guides. One of them was Jose Naranjo,
the "captain" of Villasur's sixty Pueblo auxiliaries and a veteran of the Ulibarr( and Valverde
Expeditions. 69 Apache allies also guided the
expedition. Leaving the Taos pueblo, Villasur
entered the lands of the Carlan a Apaches,
whom he gave some maize, tobacco, and a few
knives in return for their service as guides into
Pawnee lands'?o The expedition party then
probably followed a trail that ran from the
Great Bend of the Arkansas River to Grand
Island in the Platte River. It reached the Platte
by Tuesday, August 6,?1 On the Platte, Villasur
would depend on the services of a Pawnee slave
named Fran<,;ois Sistaca, who was the property
of Captain Crist6bal de la Serna, an expedition
member. Apaches might have originally captured
and sold Sistaca into New Mexico. His last
name clearly derives from their term for the
river of the Pawnees-the "Sitascahe"-and
he might have come from one of the Chawi
settlements on the Platte River. 72
After Naranjo and Sistaca spent a few days
scouting the Platte Valley, Villasur met about
twenty-five members of the Pawnee encampment. The Pawnees said that "they wanted
peace" but could "not confer that day," pointing to the sun-perhaps an indication that it
was too late in the day to initiate the calumet
ceremony,?3 Carrying some tobacco for use
in the ceremony, Sistaca went over to the
Pawnees. He would never return to his life in
slavery. The Pawnees sent back someone else,
who brought a white flag and spoke in a language that the Spaniards could not understand.
Juan L'Archeveque, a Frenchman and Spanish
loyalist accompanying the expedition, took
the flag from the Indian and gave him a letter
written in French, which most coureurs de bois
would not have been able to read even if they
were present in the Pawnee village. 74
After additional communication attempts
failed and the Pawnees captured a Pueblo or
Apache ally who had been bathing in a stream,
Villasur retreated back to the Platte-Loup
confluence, likely camping just southwest of
present-day Columbus, Nebraska,75 The clear
signs of Spanish-Apache cooperation, let alone
the violation of Pawnee sovereignty, probably
sealed Villasur's fate. The Pawnees must have
known that his party traveled safely from New
Mexico through the neighboring lands of the
Apaches with the help of the Carlana guides,
and Sistaca may have told them about meetings with the Cuartelejos and his slavery in
the Spanish colony. The Pawnees likely viewed
Villasur and the other Spaniards as the allies of
their Apache enemies.
The attack came suddenly on the morning of August 13. According to Valverde, the
Pawnees followed Sistaca's advice by remaining in "hiding until after the sun had come
up, giving time to our people to lessen their
precaution, some being engaged in catching
horses, others gathering the utensils, and all
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
THE PAWNEE HOMELAND, COUREURS DE BOIS, AND THE VILLASUR EXPEDITION OF 1720
busy."76 A surviving member of the horse guard
testified that the Pawnees' initial gun volley
sent the Spanish horse herd "into a stampede."
He and a few others broke through to the rest
of the Spaniards, rescuing seven of them, overtook the horse herd, and repulsed three different attacks by a "great number of enemies."77
After rescuing three more Spaniards, the
group of survivors retreated, accompanied by
the Pueblos. Among the dead were Villasur,
L'Archeveque, Naranjo, and eleven of the sixty
Pueblo auxiliaries. The fourteen Spanish survivors turned southwest and eventually reached
the Cuartelejo Apaches, who treated them
with "much kindness for two days" and insisted
on a reprisaps They arrived back at Santa Fe
on September 6, 1720.7 9
When news of the expedition's defeat
reached Santa Fe, Valverde, sensing his own
career on the line, was eager to blame the
French for the catastrophe. In a letter to
the Marques de Valero in Mexico City, he
claimed that the attacking force consisted of
"more than two hundred" French "soldiers
using arquebuses, with an endless number of
Pawnee Indians as their allies."so He was "persuaded," moreover, that the attackers included
"some ... heretical Huguenots whose insolent
audacity did not even spare the innocence of
the priest who went as chaplain."sl The stakes
were high for Valverde and New Mexico. The
destruction of the Villasur Expedition was a
sizable blow to the poorly equipped frontier
province. Thirty-one of the original forty-five
Spaniards on the expedition had perished, and
Valverde informed the Marques de Valero in
Mexico City that he required "thirty or forty
men to fill the vacancy" at the Santa Fe garrison. French participation in the attack would
have also constituted a violation of the Treaty
of The Hague, which had ended the War of the
Quadruple Alliance in February 1720. s2
It is possible that a few French traderscertainly not the 200 soldiers that Valverde
claimed-were among the 'Pawnees when
Villasur arrived, but the Spanish eyewitnesses
and survivors did not really identify any. One
of them testified ambiguously in 1724 that he
53
"does not know whether they [the attackers]
were French or some other nation."S3 Moreover,
French officials were in fact surprised by the
expedition and had to piece together what had
happened. The news traveled from Indians
or coureurs de bois in the Missouri Country
to Boisbriant at Fort de Chartres, down the
Mississippi to Governor Jean-Baptiste Le Moyen
de Bienville in New Orleans, and across the
Atlantic to the directors of the Compagnie
des Indes in Paris. In the weeks following the
skirmish, vague reports about the expedition
reached Boisbriant. On October 5, 1720, he
informed Governor Bienville that the Otoes
and Kansas had recently raided the "Padokas"
for 250 slaves and also killed twenty Spaniards. s4
Later, on November 22, 1720, he reported that
250 Spaniards, "accompanied by the Padoka
[Apache] nation," crossed the Plains to "make
an establishment on the Missouri" and confront the Otoes, who had recently raided the
Apaches. After defeating five nations and sending captives back to New Mexico, a smaller
party of sixty Spaniards and 150 Apaches met
the Otoes, who earned their trust before quickly
killing everyone except for two men and a chaplain, whom they held prisoner. S5
Based on Boisbriant's imaginative reports,
Bienville informed the directors of the Compagnie des Indes the following summer that 200
Spaniards and a large number of Apaches had
come from New Mexico to attack the French
in the Illinois Country. Like Boisbriant, he
never once claimed that any Frenchmen were
directly involved. Instead, he credited Otoes
and Pawnees, "our allies," for destroying the
Spanish plot. Bienville interpreted the attack
on Villasur as a demonstration of loyalty by
Pawnees and Otoes, not as a preemptive strike
against an Apache ally. Father Charlevoix, a
Jesuit who traveled through the Illinois Country
within a year of the Villasur Expedition, was
more skeptical of the intentions of the Indians
who reported the Spanish defeat. s6
Pawnees and their neighbors in the central Plains would continue to disrupt and
manipulate the military and political goals of
Europeans following the expedition by stoking
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
54
GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, WINTER 2012
fears of Spanish settlement. A few months after
the attack, Boisbriant heard that the Spaniards
reportedly brought along a large number of
cattle and sheep for an establishment on the
Missouri. Less than two years later, in April
1722, Bienville informed the French Crown
that according to "Indians of the Missouri,"
the Spaniards had plans of returning to punish
their enemies and establishing a post on the
Kansas River. He ordered Boisbriant to send
twenty soldiers to build a fort and establish a
garrison on the same river. 87 Yet the Pawnees
had proven to Spanish officials that they did not
have the resources to patrol the central Plains.
When Spain formed a new alliance with France
in 1721, regaining Pensacola and territory in
Texas, officials in Mexico City withdrew support for the planned presidio among the Jicarilla
Apaches. Following the Villasur Expedition,
they yielded the Plains to the Pawnees and the
Comanches, whose raids would punish New
Mexico in the ensuing decades. 88
Now fearing a Spanish invasion, the French
Crown commanded Bourgmont, the experienced explorer and husband of a Missouria
woman, to establish a post in the Missouri
Country to guard against Spanish advances. At
the same time, it still wanted him to effect an
alliance with the Apaches to open up the New
Mexico trade. In January 1722 the directors of
the Compagnies des Indes asked him to establish "peace with the Padoucas and the other
savage nations that make war with those allies
of the French."89
Before Bourgmont even reached the Missouri
Country, however, the directors would change
their minds about the Apaches. In a few years'
time the price of Indian slaves in New Orleans
had increased from 40 to more than 300 livres,
and the Apache slave trade ban stood in
the way of substantial profits for a struggling
colony.9o In 1723 Governor Bienville wrote
to Boisbriant, "The commissioners remark to
you in their last letter that however easy M.
de Bourgmont may believe it is to make peace
with the Padoucas, we should drop the idea and
push our tribes toward war with them and trade
in slaves for the account of the Company."91
Bienville himself believed that Bourgmont
should really be going to the Missouri Country
to "push all the Missouri tribes against the Fox,
to destroy that nation."92
Even some of Bourgmont's men opposed a
French alliance with the Apaches. While constructing Fort d'Orleans, the new post on the
Missouri, he had to quell an insurrection led by
two officers who disapproved of his '''despotic
authority'" and wanted to trade for Apache
slaves despite the Crown's prohibition.93 His
Apache peace proposal probably threatened
the commercial gain of still other expedition
members. One of the early casualties of the
expedition was a Canadian named Jean Rivet,
who died on September 1, 1724, in the Missouri
Country. An inventory of Rivet's papers compiled at Fort d'Orleans on December 14, 1724,
includes a bill of exchange for a "Padoca slave"
aged "six to seven years."94 Another French
casualty in the Missouri Country-Claude
Gouin, a native of Angers, France, and keeper
of the storehouse at Fort d'Orleans-awarded
some flour as well as "a small Padoca slave of
eight to nine years" to a man named Girard in
his will dated September 2, 1724.95 Bourgmont
would set out from the Missouri River to reach
the Apaches only a week later. This trade in
Apache slaves helped compromise the French
commitment to an Apache alliance, likely to
the benefit of the Pawnees.
Bourgmont finally discovered the company's
reversal on the Apaches in February 1724,
when he was hundreds of miles up the Missouri
River. Fearing a possible alliance between the
Apaches and the Fox, who had recently made
overtures to the Otoes and Iowas, he refused
to abandon the expedition.96 Apache slaves
would playa crucial role in his diplomacy. The
two Apache women he had brought along both
died of disease-likely cholera-within weeks
of their arrival at a Kansa village. Bourgmont
purchased two additional Apache slaves
from the Kansas and sent them ahead with a
Frenchman named Fran<;:ois Gaillard to look
for their Apache village.97 A few months later,
he met 200 Apache leaders and warriors, whom
he asked to accept peace with the French allies
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
THE PAWNEE HOMELAND, COUREURS DE BOIS, AND THE VILLASUR EXPEDITION OF 1720
55
FIG. 2. A contemporary of Villasur likely produced this hide painting, known as Segesser II. It depicts the
confrontation between the Spaniards and the Pawnees on the banks of the Platte and Loup rivers. Courtesy Palace
of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA), neg. no. 184800.
in attendance: the Kansas, Osages, Otoes,
Iowas, and Skiri Pawnees.98 The leader of the
Apaches replied that he would guarantee the
safe passage of French traders to the Spanish,
and that he was indebted to the French for
bringing much better trade goods-including "fusils, gunpowder and balls"-than the
Spanish did. According to the Apache chief's
enemy, the Skiri Pawnee leader, peace would
bring "tranquility," horses, and safer hunting. 99
The peace was likely fleeting. For Pawnees,
hunting bison and occupying their lands,
which the celestial gods had made for their
use, were religious prerogatives. The "differences among [Pawnees and Apaches] could not
be reconciled with temporal material objects
or haranguing speeches by white foreigners,"
as James Riding In has concluded. lOo The
Apaches would remain on the defensive. In
1726, two years after the Plains peace conference, the governor of Louisiana reported
that Wichitas were raiding the Padoucas, or
Apaches, their "irreconcilable enemy," and
"from whom they [Wichitas] capture many
slaves and take a large number of horses." In
the same year, the officials at Fort de Chartres
questioned Desmanets about his role in the
trade of Apache and Pawnee slaves. lOI
As much as French and Spanish officials
believed that coureurs de bois were to blame for
hostilities on the central Plains, the declaration of the Skiri Pawnee leader illustrates that
Europeans gave themselves too much credit
for these conflicts. Pawnees and Wichitas may
have raided Apaches to obtain captives for
trade with men like Desmanets and Poudret,
but they had more important reasons for conducting these raids: obtaining horses, securing
land for hunting, and gaining access to limited
sources of water and timber in the western
Plains. In a decade of conflict and transition
in the central Plains, Europeans effectively
became conscripts in indigenous campaigns
to control natural resources. Apaches capitalized on Spanish fears of a French invasion
to encourage Valverde to send an expedition
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska- Lincoln
56
GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, WINTER 2012
FIG. 3. This detail from Segesser II shows Villasur and his men surrounded by the Pawnees with their French
allies. The edge of the French firing line appears on the far left. Courtesy Palace of the Governors Photo Archives
(NMHMjDCA), neg. no. 158345.
into Pawnee lands. And Pawnees took advantage of the emerging Missouri River trade to
enlist French traders in attacks on Apaches.
Eventually, the combined pressure of Pawnees,
Wichitas, and Comanches forced the Apaches
to abandon their northern settlements on
the Republican and Smoky Hill rivers.1° 2 By
1750 Kitkahahki Pawnees lived in villages on
the Republican River, once the home of the
Apaches; the Pitahawiratas lived on the Smoky
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
THE PAWNEE HOMELAND, COUREURS DE BOIS, AND THE VILLASUR EXPEDITION OF 1720
Hill and Blue rivers, with the former also at one
point a Padouca, or Apache, territory; and the
Chawis occupied villages near Shell Creek and
on the south bank of the Platte River.I 03 The
Skiri Pawnees continued to live in the old villages on the Loup River. The hunting territory
of the South Bands expanded along with this
settlement into former Apache lands; these
bands now ranged as far south as the Arkansas
River on their hunting expeditions.I° 4
Valverde did not see the Pawnee attack on
the Villasur Expedition as a strategic move to
eliminate an Apache ally or assert control over
lands. Instead, he continued to insist that the
French were behind it. A few years after the
expedition, someone in New Mexico memorialized Villasur's final moments in an enormously
large and detailed hide painting called Segesser
II (Figs. 2 and 3), named after a Jesuit missionary to Sonora who shipped the painting back
to his family in Switzerland, where it remained
until 1986.105 If the artist was himself not an
expedition survivor, he must have based the
painting on eyewitness accounts. He depicted
the forks of the two rivers; the Pueblo Indians
who were guarding the Spanish horse herd;
the painted bodies, headbands, and traditional
weapons of the Pawnee attackers; and individual members of the expedition, including
a mortally wounded Villasur. But the artist
also included nineteen Frenchmen among the
Indians attacking the Spaniards. Awarding the
French this much attention may not have been
just chance; Valverde himself possibly commissioned this work as a visual corroboration of
his claims about French involvement.106 If this
was the case, then the hide painting illustrates
a story that some Spaniards told themselves
about why Villasur never made it back.
57
and one of his brothers to reach the Sea of the
West, addressed to M. the Marquis de Beauharnois,"
in G. Hubert Smith, The Explorations of the La
Wrendryes in the Northern Plains, 1738-43, ed. W.
Raymond Wood (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1980), 113; Antoine Champagne, Les La
Verendrye et Le Poste de l'Ouest (Quebec: Les Presses
des l'Universite Laval, 1968), 90; W. J. Eccles,
"French Exploration in North America, 17001800," in North American Exploration, vol. 2: A
Continent Defined, ed. John Logan Allen (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 183-84, 187;
and Doane Robinson, "Additional Verendrye
Material," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 3, no.
3 (December 1916): 370, 377.
2. "Journal of the Expedition," in Smith,
Explorations of the La Wrendryes, 108.
3. For early treatments of the expedition, see
Henry Folmer, Franco-Spanish Rivalry in North
America, 1523-1763 (Glendale, CA: Arthur H.
Clark Company, 1953); Marc de Villiers du Terrage,
"Le Massacre de l'expedition Espagnole du Missouri,"
Journal de la Societe des Americanistes de Paris, n.s.,
13 (1921); Addison E. Sheldon, "Nebraska Historical
Expedition," Nebraska History and Record of Pioneer
Days 7, no. 3 (1924): 89-91; and Alfred Barnaby
Thomas, ed., After Coronado: Spanish Exploration
Northeast of New Mexico, 1696-1727 (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1935) [hereafter ACj.
4. John M. O'Shea and John Ludwickson,
Archaeology and Ethnohistory of the Omaha Indians:
The Big Village Site (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1992), 75; David J. Wishart, An Unspeakable
Sadness: The Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994),5.
5. For the Comanche migration to the Plains,
see Pekka HiimiiJainen, The Comanche Empire (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 29-31.
6. Guillaume de Delisle's Carte de La Louisiane
(1718) also places the Apaches directly west of the
Pawnees. See Donna C. Roper, "Documentary
Evidence for Changes in Protohistoric and Early
Historic Pawnee Hunting Practices," Plains Anthropologist 37, no. 141 (1992): 359. On the archaeological record of central Plains Apaches, see James
H. Gunnerson, ''An Introduction to Plains Apache
Archeology-The Dismal River Aspect," Bureau of
American Ethnology Anthropological Papers Bulletin
NOTES
1. On their return journey, Louis-Joseph and
buried a lead tablet (since uncovered)
claiming the country for the French king near the
present-day town of Pierre, close to an Arikara
fortification. The Gens de l'Arc were possibly
Arikaras, relatives of the Pawnees. See "Journal of
the Expedition, of the Chevalier de la Verendrye
Fran~ois
173, no. 58 (1960): 170, 181, 183. The "Padoucas"
in French accounts from the 1710s and 1720s were
Plains Apaches, not Comanches. See Douglas Parks
qtd. in Carl J. Ekberg, Stealing Indian Women: Native
Slavery in the Illinois Country (Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 2007), 48-49; Waldo R. Wedel,
Prehistoric Man on the Great Plains (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1961), 113; Donald
J. Blakeslee, Robert K. Blasing, and Hector F.
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
58
GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, WINTER 2012
Garcia, Along the Pawnee Trail: Cultural Resource
Survey and Testing at Wilson Lake, Kansas (Kansas
City: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1986), 109;
George Bird Grinnell, "Who Were the Padouca?"
American Anthropologist, n.s., 22, no. 3 (1920): 258;
Frank R. Secoy, "The Identity of the 'Paduca': An
Ethnohistorical Analysis," American Anthropologist,
n.s., 53, no. 4 (1951): 533, 540; George E. Hyde,
Indians of the High Plains: From the Prehistoric Period
to the Coming of Europeans (Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1959), 86; and Frank Norall,
Bourgmont, Explorer of the Missouri, 1698-1725
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), 169n9.
7. On the placement ofEI Cuartelejo in western
Kansas, see Thomas A. Witty, "An Archaeological
Review of the Scott County Pueblo," Oklahoma
Anthropological Society Bulletin 32 (1983): 99, 101,
104; Gottfried Hotz, Indian Skin Paintings from the
American Southwest: Two Representations of Border
Conflicts between Mexico and the Missouri in the
Early Eighteenth Century (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1970), 185; and David J. Weber,
The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1992), 169.
8. Robert T. Grange Jr. Pawnee and Lower
Loup Pottery, Nebraska State Historical Society
Publications in Anthropology 3 (Lincoln: Nebraska
State Historical Society, 1968), 12; Donna C.
Roper, Historical Processes and the Development of
Social Identity: An Evaluation of Pawnee Ancestry
(report prepared for Repatriation Office, National
Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1993), 111.
9. Grange, Pawnee and Lower Loup Pottery,
12; Roper, An Evaluation of Pawnee Ancestry, 111;
Douglas R. Parks, "Bands and Villages of the Arikara
and Pawnee," Nebraska History 60 (1979): 237.
10. Parks, "Bands and Villages of the Arikara and
Pawnee," 237.
11. See "Luis Granillo to Diego de Vargas, Santa
Fe, 29 September 1695," in John L. Kessell, Rick
Hendricks, and Meredith D. Dodge, eds., Blood on
the Boulders: The Journals of Don Diego de Vargas,
New Mexico, 1694-97 (Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press), 652.
12. On the Ulibarri Expedition, see AC, 68-70,
173; Elizabeth A. H. John, Storms Brewed in Other
Men's Worlds: The Confrontation of Indians, Spanish,
and French in the Southwest, 1540-1795 (College
Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1975),
228-29; and Ned Blackhawk, Violence Over the
Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006),40.
13. "Council of War, Santa Fe, August 19, 1719,"
AC, 109. See also Hamalainen, Comanche Empire, 33.
14. "Diary of the Campaign of Governor Antonio
de Valverde," AC, 132.
15. "Valverde to Valero, Santa Fe, November 30,
1719," AC, 144; Juana Vazquez-G6mez, Dictionary
of Mexican Rulers, 1325-1997 (Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 1997), 37. See also "Testimony of
Tamariz, Santa Fe, July 2, 1726," AC, 228.
16. "Diary of the Campaign of Governor Antonio
de Valverde," AC, 132.
17. Alfred Barnaby Thomas, "The Jicarilla Apache
Indians: A History, 1598-1888," in Apache Indians
VIII (New York: Garland Publishing, 1974), 15.
18. "Valverde to Valero, Santa Fe, November 30,
1719," AC, 143.
19. Marc de Villiers, "Le Massacre de l'expedition
Espagnole du Missouri," 250. On the villages of the
Wichitas in the early eighteenth century, before
they moved south to the Red River, see F. Todd
Smith, The Wichita Indians: Traders of Texas and the
Southern Plains, 1540-1845 (College Station: Texas
A&M University Press, 2000), 15-17. On the larger
role of ignorance in European imperial policy in
North America, see Paul W. Mapp, The Elusive West
and the Contest for Empire, 1713-1763 (Chapel Hill:
Omohundro Institute of Early American History and
Culture, University of North Carolina Press, 2011).
20. Douglas R. Parks, introduction to Ceremonies
of the Pawnee by James R. Murie (Reprint, Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 4; Richard
White, The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence,
Environment, and Social Change among the Choctaws,
Pawnees, and Navajos (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1983), 149.
21. For an analysis of the impact of disease on
Pawnee communities, see James Riding In, "Keeper
of Tarawahut's Covenant: The Development
and Destruction of Pawnee Culture" (PhD diss.,
University of California-Los Angeles, 1991),30-31.
22. See "Exact Description of Louisiana," in
Norall, Bourgmont, 109.
23. Guillaume Delisle, Carte du Mexique et de
la Floride: des terres angloises et des Isles Antilles,
du cours et des environs de la riviere de Mississippi
(Amsterdam: Chez Jean Covens & Corneille
Mortier, 1722), Edward Ayer Map Collection,
Newberry Library.
24. Gene Weltfish, Lost Universe (New York:
Basic Books, 1965), 6, 19, 79; Parks, "Bands and
Villages of the Arikara and Pawnee," 234. George
Bird Grinnell states that the Pawnee population was
once as large as 20,000. See George Bird Grinnell,
Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1961),222.
25. Weltfish, Lost Universe, 63.
26. Weltfish, Lost Universe, 19, 64, 79; Murie,
Ceremonies of the Pawnee, 13, 38; Douglas R.
Parks and Waldo R. Wedel, "Pawnee Geography:
Historical and Sacred," Great Plains Quarterly
5, no. 3 (Summer 1985): 152; White, Roots of
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THE PAWNEE HOMELAND, COUREURS DE BOIS, AND THE VILLASUR EXPEDITION OF 1720
Dependency, 172; Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton,
Native American Architecture (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1990), 136.
27. On the Pawnee calendar, see Wishart, Unspeakable Sadness, 23, 25; Weldish, Lost Universe, 79, 95,
129-30,254-55; Waldo R. Wedel, An Introduction to
Pawnee Archeology, Bureau of American Ethnology
Bulletin ll2 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1936), 61; Roper, "Pawnee Hunting
Practices," 355-56; and White, Roots of Dependency,
162. Located underground or underwater, animal
lodges were home to animals that conferred powers
on deserving individuals. Animals themselves served
as messengers for the celestial gods. On Pawnee
trails and their proximity to the sacred sites, see
Donald J. Blakeslee and Robert Blasing, "Indian
Trails in the Central Plains," Plains Anthropologist
33, no. ll9 (1988): 24; and Donald J. Blakeslee,
Along Ancient Trails: The Mallet Expedition of 1739
(Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1995), 83.
On the sacred sites themselves, see Parks and Wedel,
"Pawnee Geography," 144, 152, 155, 160.
28. For the Pawnee adoption of horses, see
Roger Echo-Hawk, "At the Edge of the Desert of
Multicolored Turtles: Skidi Pawnee History on the
Loup River," in The Stabaco Site: A Mid-Eighteenth
Century Skidi Pawnee Town on the Loup River, ed.
Steven R. Holen and John K. Peterson (Grand
Island, NE: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Nebraska/
Kansas Projects Office, 1995), 22 (quote), 24; and
Riding In, "Keepers of Tirawahut's Covenant,"
82-83.
29. Wishart, Unspeakable Sadness, 30-31; Hamalainen, Comanche Empire, 71; W. Raymond Wood,
"Plains Trade in Prehistoric and Protohistoric
Intertribal Relations," in Anthropology on the Great
Plains, ed. W. Raymond Wood and Margot Liberty
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980), 103.
30. For the origins of the calumet ceremony, see
Weltfish, Lost Universe, 175.
31. Weltfish, Lost Universe, 31.
32. For the role of Pawnee chiefs in trade, see
Weltfish, Lost Universe, 7, 19; and White, Roots of
Dependency, 191.
33. Alice C. Fletcher, The Hako: Song, Pipe, and
Unity in a Pawnee Calumet Ceremony (1904; reprint,
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 182,256.
34. On the Pawnee horse trade, see Wishart,
Unspeakable Sadness, 31.
35. Weltfish, Lost Universe, 175.
36. Wood, "Plains Trade in Prehistoric and
Protohistoric Intertribal Relations," 105.
37. On the license system, see Carolyn Podruchny,
Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in
the North American Fur Trade (Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 2006), 22. For evidence of early
French-Pawnee trade, see Weltfish, Lost Universe, 368.
59
38. La Jonquiere to the French minister, September 25, 1751, in Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed.,
Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin,
vol. 18: The French Regime in Wisconsin (Madison:
Wisconsin Historical Society, 1908),93.
39. For an interpretation of this meeting, see
Echo-Hawk, "Skidi Pawnee History on the Loup
River," 27.
40. Valverde's fear of a French conspiracy and
corresponding denial of Indian initiative may
expose his own prejudices against Indians living
outside the Spanish sphere. For more on Spanish
perceptions of unconquered Indians, especially in
the late eighteenth century, see David J. Weber,
Barbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age
of Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2005), 14-16. On the War of the Quadruple
Alliance, see John, Storms Brewed in Other Men's
Worlds, 212. On the formation of the Compagnie
des Indes and its agenda during the war, see Marcel
Giraud, Histoire de La Louisiane Fran.;:aise, vol. 3:
~ epoque de John Law (Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France, 1966), 298-99, 303.
41. Mildred Mott Wedel, "Claude-Charles Dutisne:
A Review of His 1719 Journeys," pt. 2, Great Plains
Journal 12 (1973): 147.
42. Pierre Margry, ed., Decouvertes et etablissements des fran.;:ais dans l'ouest et dans Ie sud de
L'Amerique Septentrionale, 1614-1754, vol. 6 (Paris:
D. Jouast, 1888),313-14. In the same letter Dutisne
referred to the Wichitas as "Panioussa" and "Pants."
See Wedel, "Claude-Charles Dutisne," pt. 2, 152.
43. Margry, Decouvertes et etablissements, 6:314.
On the Osage and Wichita trade blockades, see
Hamalainen, Comanche Empire, 32.
44. David M. Brugge, "Some Plains Indians
in the Church Records of New Mexico," Plains
Anthropologist 10, no. 29 (1965): 186.
45. Robert P. Wiegers, "A Proposal for Indian
Slave Trading in the Mississippi Valley and Its
Impact on the Osage," Plains Anthropologist 33, no.
120 (1988): 196.
46. Ekberg, Stealing Indian Women, lO-ll, 13.
47. For the original deposition of Desmanets,
see Kaskaskia Manuscripts 26:9:2:1 (September
2, 1726), microfilm, originals at Randolph County
Courthouse, Chester, Illinois. For a full English
translation of the deposition, see Ekberg, Stealing
Indian Women, 21-22.
48. Qtd. in Ekberg, Stealing Indian Women, 19.
49. Qtd. in Ekberg, Stealing Indian Women, 20.
50. Ekberg, Stealing Indian Women, 21.
51. Bourgmont purchased Padoucas from the
Kansas during his expedition to the Plains in 1724.
See "Relation du voyage de Mr. de Bourgmont chevalier de l'ordre militaire de St. Louis, Commandant
de la Riviere du Missoury et sur Ie chant de celie du
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
60
GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, WINTER 2012
Arkansas. Du Missoury au Padoucas," Bourgmont
file, Chicago History Museum Archives. This
version, previously unnoted by historians including Bourgmont's biographer, is one of four extant
originals; the other three are located in French
archives. For translation, see Norall, Bourgmont,
140. Boisbriant reported in 1720 that the Wichitas
had taken one hundred Padouca captives. See
Villiers, "Le Massacre de ['expedition Espagnole du
Missouri," 250. On the Comanche trade in Apache
captives, see Hamalainen, Comanche Empire, 38-39.
52. See "Apache" and "katahkaa" in Douglas
R. Parks and Lula Nora Pratt, A Dictionary of Skiri
Pawnee (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
2008), 68, 428. On kinship rules, see Weltfish, Lost
Universe,31.
53. Weltfish, Lost Universe, 106-17. See also
James F. Brooks, Captives and Cousins: Slavery,
Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands
(Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute of Early
American History and Culture and the University
of North Carolina Press, 2002), 10-19.
54. For the role of captives in family wealth and
reputation in Pawnee villages, see Brooks, Captives
and Cousins, 16; for a comparable role of women
captives as laborers in Comanche communities, see
Hamalainen, Comanche Empire, 252.
55. Brett Rushforth, "Slavery, the Fox Wars, and
the Limits of Alliance," William and Mary Quarterly
63, no. 1 (January 2006): 65-66. For more on intertribal conflict defining the Fox Wars, see Richard
White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and
Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 154n19.
56. Franc;:ois Ie Maire, "Memoire inedit sur la
Louisiane, 1717," in Extrait des Comptes-Rendus de
l'Athenee Louisianais, Septembre et Novembre 1899
(New Orleans: s.n., 1899), 23. Copy at Newberry
Library, Chicago.
57. Le Maire, "Memoire inedit sur la Louisiane," 24.
58. Margry, Decouvertes et etablissements, 6:316.
59. October 5, 1720, letter by Boisbriant, qtd.
in Villiers, "Le Massacre de ['expedition Espagnole
du Missouri," 250. See also Giraud, Histoire de
La Louisiane Franc;aise, 3:382; A. P. Nasatir, ed.,
Before Lewis and Clark: Documents Illustrating the
History of the Missouri, 1785-1804, vol. 1 (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 17.
60. For Pawnee hunting camps and climate
changes, see John R. Bozell, "Culture, Environment,
and Bison Populations on the Late Prehistoric and
Early Historic Central Plains," Plains Anthropologist
40, no. 152 (1995): 155, 158-59. For the lithic
assemblages, see Steven R. Holen and Danial R.
Watson, "Skidi-French Interactions: Evidence from
the Stabaco Site," in Holen and Peterson, The
Stabaco Site, 213. For the evidence of French-Pawnee
trade, see Danial R. Watson, "Euroamerican Trade
Material and Related Items," in Holen and Peterson,
The Stabaco Site, 193 (quote).
61. "Diary of Juan de Ulibarri," AC, 70.
62. Journal of the Bourgmont expedition, in
Margry, Decouvertes et etablissements, 6:425.
63. See the testimony of Miguel Tenorio, a veteran of the UlibarrI Expedition, in AC, 157.
64. See Hamalainen, Comanche Empire, 31.
65. Waldo R. Wedel, Central Plains Prehistory:
Holocene Environments and Culture Change in the
Republican River Basin (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1986), 139. On the dating (through
dendrochronology) and identification of the village
site, see Gunnerson, "Introduction ro Plains Apache
Archeology," 146.
66. French guns remained unreliable, especially
compared to British ones, but the Osages wanted
them. On the Osages and the French gun trade,
see Willard Hughes Rollings, The Osage: An
Ethnohistorical Study of Hegemony on the PrairiePlains (Columbia: University of Missouri Press,
1995), 86-87, 118. See also Kathleen DuVal, '''A
Good Relationship, & Commerce': The Native
Political Economy of the Arkansas River Valley,"
Early American Studies (Spring 2003): 81. For
the Comanche expansion into Apache lands, see
Hamalainen, Comanche Empire, 32-33, 40.
67. For more on Apache-Spanish hostilities before
the Villasur Expedition, see Kessell, Hendricks, and
Dodge, eds., Journals of Don Diego de Vargas, New
Mexico, 6 vols., and specifically "Campaign Journal,
New Mexico, 27 March-2 April 1704," in vol. 6,
A Settling of Accounts (Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press, 2002), 219-27.
68. "Valverde to Valero, Santa Fe, May 27,1720,"
AC,155.
69. Thomas E. Chavez, "The Villasur Expedition
and the Segesser Hide Paintings," in Spain and the
Plains: Myths and Realities of Spanish Exploration and
Settlement on the Great Plains, ed. Ralph H. Vigil,
Frances W. Kaye, and John R. Wunder (Boulder:
University Press of Colorado, 1994), 94.
70. For the enlistment of the Carlana Apaches as
guides, see "Declaration of Tamariz, Santa Fe, April
21,1724," AC, 251; and "Declaration of Alva, Santa
Fe, April 23, 1724," AC, 255. See also Hotz, Indian
Skin Paintings, 185.
71. For a day-to-day account of the Villasur
Expedition, see Hotz, Indian Skin Paintings. For
the route of the expedition, see Blakeslee, Blasing,
and Garcia, Along the Pawnee Trail, 106, 109, 153;
M. A. Shine, "The Platte-Loup Site," in Nebraska
History and Record of Pioneer Days 7, no. 3 (1924):
85; Sheldon, "Nebraska Historical Expedition," 91;
and Villiers, "Le Massacre de l'expedition Espagnole
du Missouri," 246. For an opposing interpretation of
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
THE PAWNEE HOMELAND, COUREURS DE BOIS, AND THE VILLASUR EXPEDITION OF 1720
the expedition route, see Alfred Barnaby Thomas,
"Massacre of the Villasur Expedition," Nebraska
History and Record of Pioneer Days 7, no. 3 (1924):
75-76; AC, 270n79. Thomas, however, did not take
into account magnetic declination, as Blakeslee
notes. See Blakeslee, Blasing, and Garcia, Along the
Pawnee Trail, 106.
72. The Cuartelejo Apaches told Ulibarri that
the Indian tribes to the northeast lived on five
rivers, including the "Sitascahe, and on this live
the Pawnees in two large rancherias." This river
was possibly the Republican or the Platte. See "The
Diary of Juan de Ulibarri to EI Cuartelejo, 1706,"
AC, 73. Gottfried Hotz suggests that Sistaca's name
perhaps was derived from the Pawnee words Chais,
meaning "man," and taka, or "white," implying that
he himself was captured from Chawi Pawnees, who
painted their bodies white. Roger Echo-Hawk also
proposes that he may have been a Chawi Pawnee. See
Hotz, Indian Skin Paintings, 197n43; and Echo-Hawk,
"Skidi Pawnee History on the Loup River," 26.
73. Villiers, "Le Massacre de l'expedition Espagnole
du Missouri," 249.
74. "Testimony of Aguilar, Santa Fe, July 1,1726,"
AC, 227; "Martinez to Valero, Mexico 1720," AC,
184. On the illiteracy of most coureurs de bois and
the difficulty of finding written sources about them,
see Podruchny, Making the Voyageur World, 4-10.
75. Hotz, Indian Skin Paintings, 199. For Spanish
reports on contact with the Pawnees and the ensuing retreat, see "Valverde to Valero, Santa Fe,
October 8, 1720," AC, 163-64; "Martinez to Valero,
Mexico 1720," AC, 184; "Testimony of Aguilar,
Santa Fe, July 1, 1726," AC, 227; and the "Testimony
of Tamariz, Santa Fe, July 2,1726," AC, 229.
76. "Valverde to Valero, Santa Fe, October 8,
1720," AC, 164-65.
77. "Testimony of Tamariz, Santa Fe, July 2,
1726," AC, 230.
78. "Valverde to Valero, Santa Fe, October 8,
1720," AC, 165. Physical remains of the SpanishPawnee skirmish have proved difficult to find.
Excavations at the Eagle Ridge site in eastern
Nebraska revealed Spanish olive jar fragments that
may have come from the expedition. Students at
the Genoa Indian school reportedly found Spanish
artifacts near the Loup River, as did white farmers.
See Gayle F. Carlson and John R. Bozell, ed., "The
Eagle Ridge Site and Early Eighteenth Century
Indian-European Relations in Eastern Nebraska,"
Central Plains Archaeology 12, no. 1 (2010): 134, 188;
and Sheldon, "Nebraska Historical Expedition," 96.
79. Hotz, Indian Skin Paintings, 204.
80. "Valverde to Valero, Santa Fe, October 8,
1720," AC, 165. By emphasizing French involvement, Valverde refused to acknowledge the growing
military superiority of indigenous peoples in the
61
eighteenth century. For a broader discussion of the
military realities confronting Spain on its North
and South American frontiers by midcentury, see
Weber, Barbaros, 68-82.
81. The priest accompanying Villasur was named
Father Juan Minguez. Father Charlevoix would later
report erroneously that Minguez had escaped the
massacre but was captured by Indians; the Spanish,
however, knew he had died. See Dumont de
Montigny, Memoires historiques sur la Louisiana, vo!'
2 (Paris: n.p., 1753),287; AC, 39n105; "Valverde to
Valero, Santa Fe, October 8, 1720," AC, 164; Ralph
Emerson Twitchell, ed., The Spanish Archives of New
Mexico, vo!' 2 (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark
Company, 1914), 171.
82. "Valverde to Valero, Santa Fe, October 8,
1720," AC, 167; John, Storms Brewed in Other Men's
Worlds, 250.
83. "Declaration of Tamariz," AC, 251 (quote).
See also "Testimony of Aguilar," AC, 227
84. VilHers, "Le Massacre de l'expedition Espagnole
du Missouri," 250.
85. VilHers, "Le Massacre de l'expedition Espagnole
du Missouri," 250, 251, 252.
86. Margry, Decouvertes et etablissements, 6:387;
Father de Charlevoix, Journal d'un Voyage Fait par
Ordre du Roi, vo!' 3 (Paris: Rollin Fils, 1744), 293-94.
87. For Boisbriant, see VilHers, "Le Massacre de
l'expedition Espagnole du Missouri," 251, 252; for
Bienville, see Margry, Decouvertes et etablissements,
6:387.
88. Weber, Spanish Frontier in North America, 171;
John, Storms Brewed in Other Men's Worlds, 250. On
the consequences of abandoning the presidio at La
Jicarilla, see Hamalainen, Comanche Empire, 36-37.
89. For Bourgmont's instructions, see "Memoire
pour Ie sieur de Bourgmont approuve par S.A.
Royale," in Margry, Decouvertes et etablissements,
6:389; and "Instruction pour Ie dit Bourmont,"
January 17, 1722 (one of at least two extant originals),
Bourgmont file, Chicago History Museum Archives.
See also Waldo R. Wedel, An Introduction to Kansas
Archeology, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin
174 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution,
1959), 28; and Norall, Bourgmont, 20, 24.
90. Marc de Villiers du Terrage, La decouverte du
Missouri et l'histoire du Fort d'Orleans (1673-1728)
(Paris: Librarie Ancienne Honore Champion,
1925), 98n1; Giraud, Histoire de La Louisiane
Fran<;aise, 5:448.
91. Qtd. in Noral!, Bourgmont, 45; see also
Margry, Decouvertes et etablissements, 6:391-92.
92. Qtd. in Noral!, Bourgmont, 48.
93. Noral!, Bourgmont, 42, 43 (quote).
94. Kaskaskia Manuscripts 24:12:14:1 (December
14, 1724), microfilm, originals at Randolph County
Courthouse, Chester, Illinois.
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62
GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, WINTER 2012
95. Kaskaskia Manuscripts 24:9:2:1 (September
2, 1724).
96. Margry, Decouvertes et etablissements, 6:397,
trans. in Norall, Bourgmont, 49.
97. "Relation du voyage de Mr. de Bourgmont,"
Chicago History Museum Archives. For translation,
see Norall, Bourgmont, 140.
98. The Padoucas lived in large houses
("cabanes") and were semisedentary, spending
part of the year raising crops, suggesting they were
Apaches, not Comanches. See George Grinnell,
"Who Were the Padouca?" 253; Wedel, Introduction to Kansas Archeology, 73; Hyde, Indians of the
High Plains, 84.
99. "Relation du voyage de Mr. de Bourgmont,"
Chicago History Museum Archives; Journal of the
Bourgmont expedition, in Margry, Decouvertes et
etablissements, 6:425.
100. See Riding In, "Keepers of Tirawahut's
Covenant," 49 (quote), 83.
101. "Memoir on Louisiana, the Indians and the
Commerce that Can Be Carried on with Them,"
(1726) in Dunbar Rowland and A. G. Sanders, eds.,
MississiPPi Provincial Archives, French Dominion, vol.
3 (Jackson: Press of the Mississippi Department of
Archives and History, 1927), 532; Ekberg, Stealing
Indian Women, 21-22.
102. Roper, "Pawnee Hunting Practices," 359-60.
103. Wedel, Central Plains Prehistory, 139; Wedel,
Introduction to Pawnee Archeology, 4; White, Roots of
Dependency, 152; Wishart, Unspeakable Sadness, 4;
George A. Dorsey, The Pawnee Mythology (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1997),8.
104. Roper, "Pawnee Hunting Practices," 359-60.
105. For more on the provenance of Segesser I
and II, see Thomas E. Chavez, 'The Segesser Hide
Paintings: History, Discovery, Art," Great Plains
Quarterly 10, no. 2 (Spring 1990): 96-109.
106. For the distinct portrayal of the Pawnees
and Valverde's possible role, see Hotz, Indian Skin
Paintings, 81-150, 204, 228.
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln