Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont

He is believed to have left for New France settlements in North America that year to escape imprisonment for failing to pay the fine.

[1] From 1706 to 1709, Bourgmont and other deserters lived as coureurs des bois (illegal traders, literally, "wood runners") around the Grand River and Lake Erie.

[1] In 1712 Bourgmont returned to Fort Pontchartrain, where he helped the Algonquian, Missouria, and Osage peoples in their fight against the Fox.

[4] In May 1721, after returning to Paris and gaining honors for his explorations and reports, Bourgmont married Jacqueline Bouvet des Bordeaux in his home village of Cérisy Belle-Étoile, Normandy.

The Pawnee learned that Bourgmont had lied to them when he told them that France had no relations with the Sioux, and responded by attacking the fur trading post.

The methods of torture included their fingernails being ripped out, three of whom were skinned alive and another had been forced to eat parts of his own flesh.

After a few days into this part of the journey Bourgmont made camp and sent a group of 16 French troops ahead of the rest as a reconnaissance mission.

[5][failed verification] In 1725, he accompanied a delegation of four leaders from the Illinois, Missouria, Osage, and Oto tribes on a visit to France.

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

On September 25, 1718, he recommended that Bourgmont receive the Cross of Saint Louis for service to France, for the value of his explorations and documentation of river travel.

In September 1719, the Council of the Colony of Louisiana also recognized Bourgmont's work with Native Americans with a resolution of praise.

[9] Officials sent Bourgmont to bring the chiefs of several tribes to Dauphin Island, a French base in present-day Alabama, for a meeting.

News had arrived that Native American tribes friendly to Bourgmont had defeated the Spanish Villasur expedition.

In exchange for letters of nobility, he was commissioned to build a fort on the Missouri River and negotiate with the tribes to allow peaceful French commerce.

From Fort Orleans, near the mouth of the Grand River, he planned to visit the Padouca on the southern High Plains and open a trade route to reach the Spanish territory of Santa Fe de Nuevo México.

The primary source of this expedition is the travel journal kept of the mission;[11] the writer was likely the party's mining engineer Philippe de La Renaudière.

[12] Bourgmont sent 22 Frenchmen and Canadians by boat from Fort Orleans to main Kaw village on the Missouri near Doniphan, Kansas with supplies and gifts.

Some of the Kaw had also likely journeyed to trade in Kaskaskia, a French colonial village then on the east side of the Mississippi in present-day Illinois.

After days of travel, he became too ill to ride and on July 31 was carried on stretcher by Indians for return to Fort d'Orleans.

[18] Bourgmont's emissary found the Padouca in western Kansas, most likely in the region of the El Cuartelejo in Scott County.

With enough horses to carry the baggage, his party was much smaller and more nimble: 15 French and Métis, including Bourgmont's half-Missouria son; the five Padoucas, seven Missouria, five Kaw, four Otoe, and three Iowa.

The party proceeded southwest and on October 11 at the crossing of the Kansas River, near present-day Rossville,[19] Bourgmont recorded seeing buffalo.

With his son and two other French explorers, he was seated on a buffalo robe; they were carried to the dwelling of the Padouca chief for a great feast.

The following is the list: one pile of fusils [guns], one of sabers, one of pickaxes, one of axes, one of gunpowder, one of balls, one of red Limbourg cloth, another of blue Limbourg cloth, one of mirrors, one of Flemish knives, two other piles of another kind of knives, one of shirts, one of scissors, one of combs, one of gunflints, one of wadding extractors, six portions of vermillion, one lot of awls, one of large hawk beads, one of beads of mixed sizes, one of small beans, one of fine brass wire, another of heavier brass wire for making necklaces, another of rings, and another of vermillion cases.

[26][27] Attended by leaders of Iowas, Otos, Missouris, Kaws, and Skiri Pawnees, Bourgmont addressed an assembly of 200 of the Padouca chiefs, proposing the avdantages of peace among all tribes under their French King.

[28]Bourgmont implored them to allow the French traders to pass through their lands en route to the Spanish settlements in New Mexico.

The explorer noticed that the Apache living furthest from the Spanish settlements still used flint knives for skinning buffalo and felling trees, an indicator that not much European trade had reached them.

The Apache were hospitable; they feasted and fêted Bourgmont and his group for three days before the French party turned toward home on October 22.

Traveling down the Missouri in circular bullboats, made of buffalo hides stretched over a framework of saplings, the party reached Fort Orleans on November 5.

The chiefs were to be shown the wonders and power of France, including a visit to Versailles, Château de Marly and Fontainebleau, hunting in the royal forest with Louis XV, and seeing an opera.