"The Happiest Consequences": Sexual Unions and Frontier Survival at Arkansas Post

FRANCIS PARKMAN ARGUED, civilization crushed Indian; English scorned and neglected him; French civilization embraced and cherished him.1 Unlike their competitors, Spanish and English, French often established excellent relations with native peoples during conquest of New World.2 Historians cite French diplomatic talent for this achievement, but Spaniards relied upon similar policies of trade and gift-giving while enjoying considerably less success.3 In fact, it was warm social relations between French settlers and Indians, rather than French political talent, that underlay diplomatic success. The friendly alliance that French settlers and Quapaw Indians forged at Arkansas Post is good example of cordial French-Indian relations. The considerable body of recent literature on lower Arkansas River Valley, notably works of Morris Arnold and Kathleen DuVal, has established beyond doubt strength and longevity of diplomatic, military, and economic ties that existed between French and Quapaw people.4 More controversial are intimate aspects of French-Quapaw relations. Sexual intimacy was one way French and Native American peoples created and maintained bonds that furthered political and diplomatic goals. The French understood that sexual relations from native perspective part of broader relationship. Habitants, voyageurs, and coureurs de bois spent much of their time Indian villages where they lived not as conquistadores but as consorts.5 This offered contrast to other Europeans' practice. During their first encounters with Indians, Spaniards enslaved hundreds of native women to serve as concubines.6 But Spanish would be shocked to learn that many Frenchmen had taken indias barbaras-Indian women who lived among their fellow tribe members-as brides, rather than sex slaves. For instance, Jacinto de Barrios y Jauregui was scandalized by Frenchmen among Caddos who regarded the Indians so highly that civilized persons marry Indian women without incurring blame. Although Spaniards did intermix with native women, as large mestizo populations demonstrated, they did not marry indias but instead only Indian women who brought to Spanish settlements and civilized, that is, Christianized and indoctrinated European ways.7 Isolated from their native world and completely immersed their new world, these women could not serve as mediators between two. In contrast to Indian women being Europeanized among Spaniards, Frenchmen might be Indianized and serve, along with their metis offspring, as bridge between two peoples. Priests Illinois country, seeking to legitimate intermarriages between Frenchmen and sauvagesses, noted that metis legitimes invariably became French culture and loyalty while illegitimate ones were invariably Indians, remaining among their mothers' people.8 Official policy on intermarriage oscillated, however. As need to fortify colony grew, French authorities eased marriage regulations and even encouraged metissage order to increase population. As early as 1714, Father Henri Roulleaux de La Vente argued that in order to populate colony [we need] to permit marriages between Frenchmen and Catholic Indian women.9 But same year, Louisiana's governor, Antoine Laumet de Lamothe Cadillac, complained of a mass of rapscallions from Canada, without subordination, with no respect for religion, and abandoned vice with Indian women, whom they prefer to French girls. He considered intolerable fact that all soldiers had Indian wives who cooked for them and waited upon them.10 Because this policy resulted 'Indianization' of Frenchmen, governor general of New France, Philippe de Rigaud de Vaudreuil, reversed course by 1715 and banned intermarriages. The same year, Louisiana administrator Jean-Baptiste du Bois Duclos de Montigny argued against intermarriage, complaining about half-breeds who are naturally idlers, libertines and even more rascals. …

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