Post by Spirit of the Owl Woman on Jan 24, 2008 0:27:53 GMT -5
The Life and Times Of Theophile Bruguier
Married four times in the American West.
Quoted from the book SAMUEL KIPP (1753 - 1803) et ses descendants - Une etude biographique et genealogique, by Louis Richard, 1950
"The following sketch of the life of Theophile Bruguier, the pioneer settler of Sioux City, is principally the composition of J.C.C. Hoskins, one of the early residents of Sioux City, and a most noted scholar. It was prepared by request for the Sioux City Academy of Science and Letters. Mr. C.R. Marks had taken down written interviews with L.D. Letellier and Joseph Leonais who had been traders up the Missouri River with Bruguier, and with Mr. O.O. Tredway, who had been interested with him in later years in trading projects, and had a long intimate acquaintance with him. Mr. Marks furnished Mr. Hoskins with these interviews.
This biography is written by Mr. Hoskins as a relation by himself, and in the first person, and is practically given here, almost entire, as being the best account ever likely to be written. In order to give all the angle and episodes of Bruguier's life for record in print, additional information has been added, including an account of a trading trip to Fort Pierre, in 1860, written by Louis D. Letellier, an early French settler, and up river trader. This is in Mr. Letellier's French dialect and spelling.
These are inserted at intervals in the course of Mr. Hoskin's article and easily distinguished from it, as not being in the first person.
Other matter is also added. These insertions are mostly enclosed in brackets."
Sketch of Life of Theophile Bruguier by J.C.C. Hoskins, Edited by C.R. Marks.
"In May 1857, I first saw that remarkable man, Theophile Bruguier. He was living with his people around him, a veritable sultan with his harem and his subjects. His word was law with the Indians, who frequented his ranch, and through him much intercourse and business seemed to be carried on with the white people of the vicinity. He was then in the prime of life. He was of medium height, but of athletic build, and quick in motion as a "loup cervier" in his native forest. His head was well formed, his hair black and abundant, his beard was magnificent and "Oh, but he was handsome," was the exclamation of a lady who knew him well in those days, when I questioned her some years ago. Indeed he was a man of splendid physique with eyes of wonderful intensity, gently and fascinating in social intercourse with friends, but terrible in wrath in conflict with enemies. It was evident that among his people he must have been much loved and deeply feared. It was said that he never knew fear, and to me this seems likely true. The late O.C. Tredway, his lawyer for many years and associated in some business enterprises, had his confidence and knew him most intimately in his later years. He says of him in a recorded interview with our president, Mr. C.R. Marks: "He was very bright and would have made his mark in the world. ... Had it not been for his early loss it is hard to tell what he might have become ... bright and educated as he was in his youth. He really was a wonderful man." To me he appears to have been endowed with many qualities necessary to the great man - the man who leads armies, or controls and molds communities. Something however, must have been lacking in his mental makeup; or was it indeed the circumstances of his early life that consigned him to the society of savages - that made him virtually a savage himself during all the period of early manhood down to middle life, and so shackled him with habits and obligations that he could not re-enter civilization with full use of the powers given him by birth. He was born in the parish L'Assomption on the St. Lawrence River a little below Montreal, August 31, 1813, the son of Madrid and Elizabeth (Keep) <Her name was Kipp, but said with a French accent, it could sound like keep> Bruguier. His father was French, his mother English <Loyalists who fought on the side of the British in the American Revolutionary war were often referred to as English> and both were of Catholic faith. It is worth notice here that Mr. Tredway calls Bruguier really an Englishman, stating that his own mother and his paternal grandmother were of English blood, leaving for Bruguier at most only one quarter a Celt - his character, his courage, his bull dog persistence were altogether English. For myself I find him a pretty strong infursion of Mercurial French easily raised to fever heat, but rarely rising beyond control of his cooler English element. The parents were farmers of good family and connection, intelligent and well to do for that region, where all were poor as we now reckon poverty.
I can say little of them of or other members of the family, only I knew a brother-in-law sixty-five years ago. I was principal of a New England academy in those days and my old French tutor sent me from Canada three young men to be taught the English language and prepared for college. Two of them went from my school to Harvard college. Louis Leon Lesueuer Des Aulniers <Louis Leon Lesieur-Desaulniers> took the degree of M.D. and became noted in Canada professionally and politically, having held a prominent position in the provincial government as member of the cabinet. He married a sister of Bruguier <this is not correct, it was Laurent Lesieur-Desaulniers, a distant relative, who married Rosianne Bruguiere, Theophile's sister.> and a son once came to Sioux City and brought me a message from his father with whom I had carried on a correspondence for some years in the French language.
The young man was very prepossessing in appearance, and I think Bruguier found him employment as clerk at some trading post up the Missouri river. Another nephew, Mr. <Gustave> Derome has been for many years a respected citizen of Wood bury County and at one time a justice of peace at Salix, I think.
Mr. Brugier has told me that his parents desired he should be a lawyer, and with that in view gave him better opportunities for education than his fellows enjoyed, but that he was fond of hunting and adventure and tired of the dull prosy life of the country and the hard work he was called on to endure when out of school. Mr. Tredway says: "He has told me many things about his private life. He was educated in Canada and was early put into commercial life at St. John <most likely St. Paul de Lavaltrie> not far from his home at Joliet. He was engaged to marry a French lady there, and I have in my possession the last letter she ever wrote him. I got it from the estate of Mrs. Bruguier, which letter Bruguier had always treasured. This letter shows she was a lady of culture and refinement and a perfect lady. She speaks of their expected marriage in the fall of 1834 or 1835, I forget which. He has often told me of the occurrence, and the letter also speaks of it.
The cholera broke out in St. John <most likely St. Paul de Lavaltrie> while Mr. Bruguier was at his home in Joliet visiting for a short time and this letter was written to him at Joliet, and told of the death of a certain fried that had caused a great commotion and quite an excitement on account of the cholera, there were expressed great fears, and he told me that two or three days after receiving this letter he received intelligence of her death by cholera. On receipt of this said news he immediately left that country for the Missouri valley, and it was eighteen years before he ever returned again.
To me he never spke of this tragedy of life. An uncle <James Kipp> had migrated to St. Louis and was connected there with the great American Fur company, which employed large numbers of men as clerks, traders, trappers and bargemen throughout the Indian country which then extended the entire length of the Missouri river and across the Rocky Mountains. Most of these men were recruited in Canada and many from the Bruguier neighborhood. Probably young Bruguier was affected by the wonderful tales told of Indians, and buffalo and grizzle bears, and border fights - told by recruiting agents, or by returned veterans, much the same as boys in recent years have been by dime novels of adventure in the wild west.
At any rate, October 14, 1835, he left home and, travelling by boat and stage - there were no railroads then - via the lakes to Green Bay, Wis., thence to the Mississippi river, he reached St. Louis the 1st day of November, and November 19th entered the service of the fur company and started for fort Pierre to trade with the Indians. He was doubtless an effective trader, as he soon mastered the Dakota tongue and made extensive acquaintance with the various bands of Sioux who roamed over the northwest at that time.
Why his connection with the fur company was severed is not know to me with certainty, but after two years and a half constant service Bruguier left them and set up for himself. He may have been impatient of restraint, and fonder of independent action than suited the company's managers; or he may have been ambitious of building up an independent business for himself, or, as seems to me very likely there may have been a "woman in the case."
It must have been about this time that he formally assumed fellowship with the yankton band of the Dakotas, and married according to Indian custom a daughter of the Wah-me-da-wah-kee, an Isanti chief. (I find the name of this chief written Hu-yau-e-ka, elsewhere, but in both forms the interpretation is given as War Eagle).
I do not remember hearing Bruguier speak the name of War Eagle in the Indian tongue. The two names I have given have been given me by two Frenchmen who knew him and probably both are translatable into War Eagle, though the Chief himself would possibly have recognized neither. The Dakota language has many dialects and synonyms.
War Eagle was of Isanti family, who lived on the Mississippi river below St. Paul. In early life he gained some notoriety as a warrior and was recognized as a chief by the Indian agent, Maj. Pitcher. He was always a friend of the whites and sought peace with them, and associated freely with them so far as he was able. About 1830 he acted for some time as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi river. Indulgence in whiskey cost him his influence and his health and he came to live with his son-in-law, Bruguier, in whose house he died in 1851, aged about 65 years. He was buried on the point of a bluff opposite the mouth of the Big Sioux in a sitting posture with his eyes just above the surface of the ground commanding the Dakota bottom land as far north as the Vermillion plateau, some thirty miles, and looking south over Nebraska about forty miles to the Blackbird hills. Few points presnet a broader, richer or lovelier landscape, or one today better occupied and cultivated.
The Treadway interview says that "for a good many years Bruguier lived entirely to himself, not associating with the Indians in their life at all, before he gave way to the wild life they pursued. He then adopted the customs of the country, and commenced mingling with the Indian race and married two fo War Eagle's daughters and raised two families of children and always cared for them to the uttermost of his ability and spent thousands and thousands of dollars on their education. After adopting the Indian life he sank into the wildest barbarism for about twelve years to the extent of wearing Indian apparel just as a wild Indian. For the next ten years he lived with the Indians as one of them, sharing their fortunes, hunting with them, taking part in their forays and their privations, himself a member of their band. (His daughter, Mrs. Conger, says, in this periodhe dressed in garb of the French trappers' buckskin coats and pants, tanned by Indians and beaded, that he never went part naked as the Indians did.)
He attained large influence with them, not merely with Isantis and yanktons, but with all the affiliated Sioux and became in fact a trusted and honored chief, especially by reason of his superior knowledge of white man's ways and business habits. During these years he carried on an intermittent intercourse with the whites, collecting robes and furs, which were sold to the various posts of the fur company on the Missouri or Mississippi rivers.
Of the ten years he led this life Mr. Bruguier was never ready to talk. Like all brave men he was reticent as to his deeds of prowess. Sometimes he condescended to speak to some events of the period, and men are now living who testify to his reckless daring. He came to know his adopted people thoroughly, and by his strenth and prompt action he so lived and so acted as to lead them to believe him proof against ordinary weapons. To his enemies he also seemed to bear a charmed life. They thought him endowed with presence of mind and bodily strength and activity by some supernatural power that warded him from all their weapons and enabled him always to gain the victory. Two Frenchmen who knew him in those days have told me that his weapons were always in his hands and his use of them was like a thunderbolt for speed and execution. His strength was very marvelous. Once he told me of an escape from the Pawnees that so impressed the simple mind of that tribe that so far as he knew no Pawnee thereafter ever sought him with hostile intent. He was going up the Niobrara river with a covered wagon to bring down furs and robes from the stations some distance up that stream. He was alone and as he was passing along a somewhat steep hillside through a wooded trail extending far up the slope and declining below the trail into a dense thicket of brush and vines he thought he heard a deer or elk above him. So he tied his team and went carefully stalking up the hill for meat. When some distance from his wagon the Pawnees rose around him so near and in such numbers as to make resistance seem vain and escape impossible. the Pawnees thought so, at any rate, and so paused to taunt and jeer their victim before seizing him for torment and death. But Bruguier's thoughts and acts were like the electric spark, and he sprang down the hill toward the wagon with the whooping crowd in full pursuit and arrow thick as hail in the air around him. Nearing the wagon with with a desperate leap he cleared its top and landed safely in the weeds and brush below. The Indians struck with fear and wonder at his leap did not pusue and he, with broken ribs and many bruises, made his way crawling sometimes on hands and knees over frozen ground with four inches of snow, sixteen miles to a trading post on the Dakota side of the Missouri below Niobrara's mouth. After some days a party visited the scene of this adventure and found the wagon with its contents untouched and safe, though the horses had disappeared.
Long after, Bruguier was told by a Pawnee that they did not touch the wagon or its contents. They were so amazed at Bruguier's leap that all belonging to him was deemed "black medicine" and he himself too dangerous to approach in hostile manner.
(Bruguier's family sat <say> that he never killed any on in self defense or otherwise).
Continued on following posting.
