Pierre-Charles Le Sueur: (1672-1704)
He was the son of Victor LeSueur & Anne
Honneur and married Marguerite Messier St.Michel (daughter of Michel
Messier & Marie-Anne Lemoine/LeMoyne) at Boucherville, Chambly,
Quebec in 1690. Their children were: Marie-Anne (b.1693, Montreal), Louise-Marguerite
(b.1694, Montreal), Marie (b.1796, Montreal), Jean-Paul & Marguerite
(b.1699, Montreal)(m.Nicolas Chauvin, sieur de La Freniere about 1724,
Mobile, Alabama).
Marguerite was familiar with the fur trade,
having a father (he had been with LaSalle and Tonty in 1680) & a brother
(Rene Messier Duchene) whom had been in the
far west and a sister, Jeanne who was married to an important man in the
business, Ignace Hebert. The success the family enjoyed, most likely, came
from Marguerite's uncle, Charles Le Moyne, sieur
de Longueuil, who was instrumental in developing the fur commerce in
New France and his sons who were instrumental in reducing the British threat
in North America and expanding the trade for New France.
Before 1681, Pierre was in the western Great
Lakes trading and at Sault Ste.Marie with Jesuit Father Pierre Bailloguet.
In 1681 he was released from jail in Montreal for his activities and charged
with trading illegally, but by 1683 he was with a convoy of 15 canoes from
Montreal to Green Bay and the Mississippi. He was assisting Nicolas
Perrot at Fort Antoine, (lower Lake Pepin on the Mississippi) when
Perrot ceremonially took possession of the Mississippi's headwaters for
France in May of 1689. In 1693 Pierre is sent west by Louis de Buade, Comte
de Frontenac (Gov.General of New France) to establish forts about Lake
Superior and peace between the native tribes. By 1695 he was commanding
a fort at Chequamegon (Lapointe) & had establish another on the Brule-St.Croix
Rivers route, the previous year. Now he was erecting another on an island
of the Mississippi, 200 leagues above the Illinois River. In mid-July of
1695, he returned to Montreal with Chiefs of two native tribes (Ojibwe
& Dakota) and five other Frenchmen.
The later years of the 1690's, Pierre spent
on at least two trips to France (on one trip he was captured at sea &
spent the summer of 1697 as a British prisoner). On his return trip from
France in 1699, he accompanied his wife's cousins (Pierre
LeMoyne sieur d'Iberville, Jean Bte.LeMoyne sieur
de Bienville & Antoine LeMoyne de Chateaugue)
on their mission to permanently establish the claim of LaSalle, for France
at the mouth of the Mississippi.
At the end of April of 1700, Pierre &
24 men leave the mouth of the Mississippi for the Upper Mississippi and
by September they arrived at Nicolas Perrot's island post of Isle Pelee,
above Lake Bon Secours or Lake Pepin. At this point, according to Andre
Penicaut's journal of the expedition (from "Fleur de Lys and Calumet",
translated & edited by Richebourg McWilliams), "...the French from
Canada set up their fort and trading center when they come to traffic in
pelts and other merchandise; here, too, they spend the winter because game
is very plentiful in the prairies on both sides of the river...When spring
comes, the savages come to this island bringing their merchandise,...Often
there are savages who rob the French-Canadian traders: particularly the
savages of one village made up of five different nations distinguished
by their names, namely, the Cioux, the people of the main village; the
Mententons; the Mencouacantons; the Ouytespouy; some other Cioux of the
soil;...Eight leagues upstream we found the Saut de St.Anthoine, which
one can hear two leagues away...". LeSueur built Fort L'Huillier &
mined what he thought was a copper ore, returning to the mouth of the Mississippi
in February of 1702 and taking his ore back to France. On his return journey
he caught the plague while in the Gulf of Mexico in the spring of 1704
and died.
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