- Dumont de Montigny
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Jean-François-Benjamin Dumont de Montigny Born 31 July 1696 in Paris, France Died ≥1753 Nationality French Other names Dumont de Montigny, François-Benjamin Dumont Occupation Military officer, farmer Known for Exploration of New France in the 1700s Jean-François-Benjamin Dumont de Montigny, or Dumont de Montigny, was born in Paris on July 31, 1696, and died sometime after 1753. His writings about the French colony of Louisiana include a two-volume history published in 1753, as well as an epic poem and a prose memoir preserved in manuscript and published long after his death.[1]
Contents
Early life
He was the youngest of six sons of Jacques François Dumont, an avocat au parlement de Paris, that is, a prominent magistrate.[1] In surviving documents, he often signed his name as François-Benjamin Dumont, but history works and library catalogs have preserved the "Jean."[2] The name "de Montigny" was not used by most other members of his family, and at least one scholar has asserted that he assumed it as a false title of nobility when he was living in Louisiana.[3] This was not true, however, as one niece did use the surname as he did.[4]
He was educated at a Jesuit collège, or grammar school, and went into the French military.[1] Through the influence of his family, he obtained a commission in the French colonial navy, and sailed to Quebec in 1715, where for two years he spent most of his time as a patient in the Hôtel-Dieu or hospital until he sailed back to France.[2]
An officer in colonial French Louisiana
Dumont's drawing of the Jesuit Convent in New Orleans
In 1719 Dumont sailed from La Rochelle, France to Louisiana, with a new commission as a lieutenant and engineering officer.[5] At this time interest and investment in the colony was strong, due to the financial schemes of John Law and the Mississippi Company. Dumont was assigned to a unit of soldiers sent to develop the land grants or concessions owned by a group of rich Frenchmen including Charles Louis Auguste Fouquet, duc de Belle-Isle, an important patron and protector of Dumont's throughout his life. But in 1720 Law's financial bubble collapsed and most investors stopped sending supplies to their concessions. As Dumont and hundreds of others lived in camps near Biloxi, Mississippi, they ran short of food and boats to transport them to concessions.[2]
For nearly eighteen years in the Louisiana colony, Dumont was assigned to forts at Yazoo and Natchez, participated in a 1722 exploration of the Arkansas River with Jean-Baptiste Bénard de la Harpe, and helped establish a concession at Pascagoula, Mississippi. He also quarreled with his superior officers, including the colonial governor, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, which led to brief periods of imprisonment.
The Natchez Rebellion of 1729
From 1726-28 Dumont was assigned to serve at Fort Rosalie, the French post at Natchez. The rich agricultural lands in this area, on elevated bluffs safe from the annual flooding of the Mississippi River, led to high hopes among the French for tobacco plantations and other development. The local Natchez people were generally welcoming of the French, although skirmishes in 1722 and 1723 showed the tensions of competition for land and food. Dumont wrote that the commandant appointed for the fort in 1727, de Chépart, was a tyrant who mistreated soldiers and claimed Natchez Indian lands for himself. Chépart's provocations led to a rebellion on November 29, 1729. The Natchez attacked Fort Rosalie and its surrounding settlements, killing 240 Frenchmen. The lives of women and children and most African slaves were spared, however. Among these prisoners of war was Marie Baron Roussin, whose husband Jean Roussin was killed in the revolt. Dumont had lived on their farm near the Tioux villages south of Natchez.[6]
A page from Mémoires historiques sur la LouisianeDumont wrote in Mémoires historiques sur la Louisiane that he left Natchez the day before the revolt.[6] However, in his 1747 memoir, preserved today at the Newberry Library in Chicago,[5] Dumont wrote that he actually left Natchez in January 1729, after escaping from a detention ordered by Chépart. Looking back at the rebellion from twenty years later, Dumont and others saw it as a turning point in the history of the French colony.[2]
The Chickasaw Wars
Main article: Chickasaw WarsFollowing his escape from Chépart at Natchez, Dumont resigned his commission and took up life on a small farm on the Mississippi downstream from New Orleans. He married the widow Roussin. There, and later on another property within New Orleans, he supported himself as a market gardener. But he returned to a soldier's life as a member of the civilian militia during the Chickasaw Campaign of 1736. The French wished to punish Natchez Indians who had sought refuge among the Chickasaw, and prevent them from allying with the English colonists in the Carolinas. The expedition was not a success, however, and in his writings Dumont criticized the leadership of Bienville in this war as well as in a subsequent expedition in 1739-40.[7]
Return to France
In 1738 Dumont returned to France,[5] along with his wife and two children, Marie Françoise, born November 28, 1731, and Jean-François, baptized in New Orleans on January 2, 1733.[8] He took up residence in Port-Louis, Morbihan, the port from which he had sailed to Louisiana. As captain of the gates in the citadel of Port-Louis, he again quarreled with his superior officers. In 1747 he wrote out a 443-page memoir of his life, dedicated to Belle-Isle.[2]
Port-Louis's citadelBy 1750 he was back in Paris, developing a reputation as an expert on Louisiana by drawing maps and publishing essays in learned journals. It appears that he may have collaborated with Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz, who published a series of articles on Louisiana in the Journal Œconomique, a periodical devoted to science and commercial topics. Dumont also published two brief pieces in the journal. Le Page du Pratz wrote the book Histoire de la Louisiane in 1758.[9]
References
- ^ a b c Sayre, Gordon. "Le Page du Pratz and Dumont de Montigny: Historians of French Lousiana, 1718-1758." University of Oregon. Retrieved August 13, 2010. This article incorporates text from this source, which is licensed CC-BY-SA-3.0.
- ^ a b c d e De Montigny, Dumont (1747). Regards sur le monde atlantique, 1715-1747. Sillery, Quebec: Septentrion (2008). Edited by Carla Zecher, Gordon Sayre, and Shannon Dawdy. pp. 23–26, 67–72, 145–147, 229, 287. ISBN 978-2-89448-530-9.
- ^ Delanglez, Jean. "A Louisiana Poet-Historian: Dumont de Montigny." Mid-America 19:1 (January 1937): 32.
- ^ Archives nationales de France, Minutier central, LX, 440 (8 mai 1782) : Inventaire après décès de Marie-Anne de Lutel, veuve de Jean-Baptiste Dumont, mère de Louise-Madeleine Dumont de Montigny.
- ^ a b c "Mapping the French empire in North America." The Newberry Library. Retrieved October 2, 2010.
- ^ a b De Montigny, Dumont; Abbé le Mascrier (1753). Mémoires historiques sur la Louisiane, Bouche, Paris. Vol. 2, pp. 141. ISBN 0-665-34643-3.
- ^ Foret, Michael J. (1995). "The failure of administration: The Chickasaw Campaign of 1739-1740" in Conrad, Glenn R., The French experience in Louisiana. Lafayette, Louisiana: University of Southern Louisiana, ISBN 0-940-98497-0.
- ^ Sacramental records of the Roman Catholic church of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Vol. 1, 1718-1750, La nouvelle- orléans, Archdiocese of New Orleans, 1987.
- ^ Sayre, Gordon M. "Natchez Ethnohistory Revisited: New Manuscript Sources by Le Page du Pratz and Dumont de Montigny." Louisiana History 50:4 (Fall 2009): 407-436.
Further reading
By Dumont de Montigny
- De Montigny, Dumont. Historical Memoirs of M. Dumont de Montigny in B. F. French, ed. Historical Collections of Louisiana; embracing many rare and valuable documents relating to the natural, civil, and political history of that state, Vol. 5. (New York, 1853). (This English translation includes only the second of the two volumes of the Mémoires historiques de la Louisiane.)
- De Montigny, Dumont (1752). "Maniere de passer, tanner, et teindre les peaux, utiliser par les peuples naturels de la Lousisane". Journal Œconomique (April 1752): 109–116.
- De Montigny, Dumont (1752). "Poterie des Peuples de la Louisiane". Journal Œconomique (November 1752): 133–135.
- De Montigny, Dumont. "Etablissement de la Province de la Louisiane. Poème composée de 1728 à 1742." Ed. Marc de Villiers. Journal de la Société des Américanistes de Paris Nouvelle serie vol. 23 (1931): 273-385.
About Dumont de Montigny
- Sayre, Gordon M. "Plotting the Natchez Massacre: Le Page du Pratz, Dumont de Montigny, Chateaubriand." Early American Literature 37:3 (Fall 2002): 381-413.
- Zecher, Carla; Sayre, Gordon; Dawdy, Shannon. "A French soldier in Louisiana: The memoir of Dumont de Montigny = Un soldat français en Louisiane : les mémoires de Dumont de Montigny" French Review 80:6 (2007): 1265-1277.
External links
Categories:- French writers
- French poets
- French historians
- French explorers
- French autobiographers
- 1696 births
- French colonial empire
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