The Life and Murder of Étienne Brûlé

(upbeat music) - Hi, and welcome back to Maple History. I'm Christina Austin, and I have my friend Jessica here again. - Hello. - If you would like to support the show, please consider subscribing to the Patreon, patreon.com/mapplehistory, where you can get bonus episodes, participate in chat groups, or you can subscribe to my social media channels. I'm also starting a sub-stack, and new content will be on there soon. So today, we are talking about something that I have been waiting and wanting to do since I started this podcast. It is the life and murder of Eche Broule. Broule is a difficult historical figure to get a really good handle on, and a biographical picture of, because there is a real posity of sources out there, despite him being a pretty famous person in Canadian history. Do you remember, way back, would be elementary school history, 'cause that's like the pre-confederation stuff? - Yeah. - Did you ever hear of him? - He was probably in with a mix of different stuff, 'cause that would be grade seven. - Yeah, it was a long time ago, but I remember that name in particular. Well, anyway, so Broule left no writing of his own, and the majority of our information comes from hostile sources, Samuel de Champlain, and the Recollet priest Gabriel Sagard. But in the 1970s, a Jesuit historian unearthed some records that showed Broule had been back to France after moving to Quebec, and another historian, Eric Broussard, later found some more records relating to finances, et cetera, that filled out the picture a little bit more of his time back in France. There had been a biography published in the 19th century by a man fantastically named Consul Wilshire Butterfield. (laughs) - That's the sort of person who has to write historical biographies. - In the 19th century. - Yes, yeah. - Like it's like nominative determinism kind of level. So Butterfield, he wrote this book, and I didn't read it. (laughs) I wasn't really confident in the research, so I just let it go. Maybe it was great. You really wanna read it, it's online. One of the great things about this book is that he anglicized Broule's first name to Stephen in the title. (laughs) So Stephen Grilled is like the Stephen, so just the first name, so like you said there, I think he should have gone farther. And anglicized his last name, so it would be Stephen Burns. - Nice. (laughs) - 'Cause Steve Burns, he does sound like a really great guy, but he doesn't sound like a famous Canadian adventurer. I think he's more like your brother-in-law's financial planner. - Oh, I mean, like Steve Burns goes to like cottage country. Does definitely sound like something that could happen, but yeah, it's, yeah. (laughs) No, the Steve's I know are all great guys, but Etienne is a much sexier version of that name, you gotta admit. (laughs) So what we can piece together of his early life was that he was born to spire brucelet. They changed his spelling as it happens. And Marguerite Guerin, sometime around 1692, sorry, 1592, that wouldn't, that math wouldn't track. (laughs) It is generally believed that he was about 18 and 1610, and that's when he went to live with the Wendat, but his baptismal record is missing, so we don't really know when he was born. We know that he had at least two older brothers and one sister, and they were all born in Champagne Surmart. At some point in his young life, he connected up with Champlain, and the grand colonial adventure that Champlain had planned. He went with Champlain to go back in 1608 and experience the hellish winter, where nearly everyone died of scurvy. Like eight guys lived. - Wow, so he's one of the eight. - Yeah, I can't remember the exact number, it was low, but I think it was single digits. (laughs) It was really bad. I could then see his motive for being like, you know what guys, why don't I go live with them for a while for like reasons? - Yeah, they seem to know how to live here, yeah. So Broule survived another winter after that at Quebec, hopefully with all his teeth. Broule very likely accompanied Champlain on the trip to raid the Haudenosaunee, where Champlain had his dramatic introduction to the Mohawk people, where he wore his full shiny armor and like the plumed hat thingies that they were. And he fired his archbus at three Mohawk head men and killed them all. He had triple loaded shot into his archbus, which was very dangerous. - Yeah, but effective. - I was gonna say, and like, those are hard to aim at the best of times to have made enough to take out. - Well, they were all lined up to be fair 'cause they had never seen that before. Like, ooh, he's pointing a stick at me. - Oh. - So this was a few episodes back. It was one of the Champlain episodes. Forget the title I gave it. The Wendat and the Algonquin people they had planned it out so that they would all kind of step back and he would come forward and fire. And it was very dramatic. So it was a great way to start. After this battle, both sides, the French and the Algonquins were eager to solidify their friendship. So Chief Erakett, that was one of the guys that he started a trading relationship with, he proposed one of Champlain's men could come and live with him over the winter. So Brule had been wanting to live with the indigenous people for a while now. So he volunteered for, you know, food reasons. So there was some controversy among Erakett's men because they were worried that if something happened to young Brule that Champlain would want to take a bloodvention set on them for his loss because they were responsible for him. If he died, they're responsible for his death essentially. - Yeah. - Champlain offered to take one of their men with him back to France as an exchange. So the person who was chosen for that was a young Wendat man named Savignon. So Savignon went back to France with Champlain. He had an interesting time. So meanwhile Brule went with Erakett and he didn't go to his territory, using Algonquin, but they went to a Wendat territory of the Arendah Ronan village. They're the rock nation for future. Instead, to stay with Erakett's friend Ashosta Gwyn. So when Champlain came back to go back the next year and met up with Brule once again, Brule was decked out in all Wendat clothing, head to toe and could competently speak Wendat and Algonquin. So he had had a full language and cultural intensive that winter and was all in. Although Brule began living with the rock nation, he had soon been moved to live with the Atonat wantons, the bear nation. I'm just going to do bear nation now because it's hard to say. So the bear nation was the largest in the Wendat Confederacy and Brule's importance to the trade relationship with the French warranted that the entire Wendat Confederacy be responsible for this relationship rather than one head man in his family, which is how the more traditional trade routes or relationships were handled. Typically what would happen if someone found a new route through somewhere for trade, he kind of owned, it's the wrong word, but it was-- - There's to manage. - They would almost be tolls. Again, that's not quite the right word, but that kind of thing. Like you would know that that's his territory. You can kind of travel through with his say so, but that was kind of typical. But this was way too much to handle because the items that were being traded were so valuable. It couldn't just be one family, we just disrupt the whole Confederacy. And since the bear nation were the biggest and the oldest in the Confederacy, their head men would take it over as a representative of the whole group. So Brule went to live in the village of Tawanshe, I hope that I'm saying that right, which was under the leadership of A-NON. It's A-E-N-O-N. - Wait, I would have said yeah, A-NON, yeah. Let's go A-NON. - So Tawanshe would be Brule's home in Canada until his death. It is here that he would build his reputation and career as an effective trader and liaison between the French and Wendat. Because of his skills, the trading company would pay Brule 100 pistols annually, which was much higher than the average company employee and getting close to Champlain's base salary. So how much is a pistol? Like, what does that means, nothing, right? So this was really hard to figure out using those online real money calculators because they usually are, 'cause I mean, they can sort of go like, well, inflation goes up by X percent per year, but usually for those you have to be like, okay, a pistol would buy me like 600 jugs of beer and like a farm. And then you say, okay, well, how much would 600 jugs of beer in a farm be worth today? - Yeah. - It's really difficult. So some of the calculators do their best to factor in living expenses. But the trouble with that is it's a currency converter. So this isn't quite a currency. - Okay. - It is, but it's a coin. And the value of the coin is based on the value of silver. - Okay. - And the value of silver is more volatile than a currency typically. - So it makes it really difficult. - Well, in the 1600s, the value of silver's dropping significantly in Europe at the time because of the Spanish conquering downsides. - Yep, they just wrecked their own economy. - Cool, wouldn't fall for a while, but the seeds were sown there. So I was trying to figure it out. A pistol is like a doubloon. So in some books, they call them doubloons. - Sure. - So I think with the concept of the value of the wage, it could be interpreted that Roule was on the Sunshine List because he is way above the typical worker and he's getting close to management. If that makes sense. So I think it is like $100,000. - Yep. - Yeah, 'cause the currency converters were saying, "Oh, it's worth $46,000." I'm like, "Well, that's not a lot of money, but it's not a lot of money." When you're looking at him coming back to France and being considered wealthy. - I mean, the way inflation calculators usually work for more modern times is you have a basket of goods. And then even with that, you have to adjust the basket of goods because no one in the 1950s was paying for internet and today, the cost of a house relative to the cost of an international phone call. Like all of that sort of goes wacky. - Yep. - But yeah, if you go that far back, well, no one was buying a car, you might buy a horse, but a horse isn't the same thing. - It's tricky. So you can't quite do that, but just to give a sense of what kind of money this guy was making in a place where money mattered, of course, but not in the same way that it does today. If people have a better idea, or if someone happens to listen, it happens to be like an expert on 17th century european currency, give her. So for the next few years, Brule was happily living with the Wendat. When Champlain, the Wendat, and the Elgonquin teamed up in 1615 to go attack a village in Haudenosaunee territory. Brule was sent with a dozen Wendat warrior down to Susquehannock territory. So down kind of East Coast-ish. - Okay. - Down in the States. So I was like, just kind of scooting around under. - Okay. So like more New York state or like, and maybe a little more south, to recruit them to join the raid since they were also enemies of the Haudenosaunee. So pretty much everyone was enemies with the Haudenosaunee except the neutral, 'cause they were like neutral until they weren't, but that's the story for another day. So Brule says they got to Susquehannock territory and then they spent too long feasting and dancing, which is why they arrived two days late after the siege had ended and Champlain and everybody had buggered up home. He explored the area with the Wendat for a while and some believe that he may have gone down to what is now Pennsylvania. So he probably saw Lake Erie and things like that, but there's no real evidence that he did, 'cause again, we don't have like a travel journal or anything with that. - Yeah. - It's possible, but we just can't be sure. - Is it, we don't think he bothered to write a travel journal because he's a teenager and he can't be bothered to write a travel journal? I mean, I guess at this point, he would have been 18 at the start of the story, but he's in his early twenties or is it he may not have been literate? - Probably that. It's unlikely that he would have been. Maybe he was literate enough to keep track of things like in trade, but not like Champlain who wrote books. - Yeah. - You're not getting the dearest diary on this third day of the 12th of May, I have endeavored to. - Yeah. - So on the way back to Wendat territory, he got separated from his comrades and was wandering alone in the woods, nearly starving. And according to the story, anyways, he told Champlain. And he was captured by the Seneca. So Brulee was brought before the head man of the Seneca village and was questioned. And I can only assume that the Haudenosaunee language had enough similarities to Wendat and Algonquins. - Yeah. - 'Cause it would have been a different dialect, of course, 'cause even within the Haudenosaunee five nations, they had different dialects, like Onondaga and Seneca and Mohawk were different languages. - Well, and I'm gonna be digging very much in the back of my brain, but was there any form of lingua franca across North America for trade purposes? - Wendat actually. - Wendat was the lingua franca for at least the upper territory. So the innu would have spoken some Wendat and the Algonquins would have spoken Wendat because they were kind of the middlemen in the whole area because of where they controlled. - Yeah. - And they were the most populous of the nations and they also used the corn they grew to trade. So they were kind of this hub of food and they also had villages. - I mean, it's also possible that like the Seneca would have then had someone who spoke Wendat and could like translate across. - Yeah, that's possible. - And they were both Iroquoian languages and the Iroquoian language family. - But it'd be like, you could speak Spanish and I could speak French. And some of those words were brought over enough that we could probably be hand-waving figured out. - Yeah. - So the Seneca chief demanded to know who he was and demanded, are you one of those French guys who are making war with us? And he was like, kind of. (laughing) What? - No, poor quiet, I mean, no, definitely. - Yep. - Yep. He's like, no, I'm here to make friends. I'm just here to be friends. It's, wait, it didn't work. (laughing) At least according to Brule's story here. So Brule said that they began torturing him by plucking out his beard, ripping his fingernails off and burning him with brands. He says that the warriors torturing him grabbed for the Agnes Day medal on a chain around his neck and then a violent storm sprung up and lightning struck nearby, frightening the warriors so much that they stopped. So great story. Brule was able to convince them that this act of God was proof that they should let him live and welcome him as a friend. So they did. So he stayed with the Seneca for a while, feasting, dancing, all that good stuff. And then they escorted him back to Lake Ontario and then he went back to Wanchay. Oh, I'm not gay. A hard word too. So this part of the story probably isn't true. The whole torture and act of God thing. - Yeah. - 'Cause it makes for a good story to tell your boss. - Yeah. Where were you and why didn't you show up for the past like two years? Yes, you've been gone a long time. Might have been a year or two. Like he was gone a long time. So before he left, he did make promises to the Seneca that he would build friendship between the French and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which would undermine the relationship with the Wendat. Not great. Though this time spent with the Seneca and the promises made can be considered Rulé's youthful arrogance and his fuck around phase. And I think we know what the other half of that idiom entails. - Yes, it does. (laughs) - So a few years later in 1620, Rulé joined with Jean-Nicole de Belborn who was living with the nipissing as an interpreter to accompany upwards of 400 Irakettes of Angquins to Haudenosaunee territory to attempt to make peace in a trade deal. Didn't really work. And things were tense for a while. Leading to more attempts and finally failure around 1627. I cover a little bit of this era in another Champlain episode. So you really want to learn about trade deals that go sour. Like they went bad. - Yeah. (laughs) - 'Cause anyways, there's tariffs and then there's, you know, torture. - Yeah. - A little bit. - Yeah. - A little bit. So as Rulé grew in prominence with the New France world, he was also gaining enemies amongst his countrymen. In particular, the Rekalet priests. (laughs) When the Rekalets arrived, part of their mission was to reform the way New France was being run, which in their view was full of debauchery, led by wicked interpreters like Rulé. They were appalled by their lustful ways, now they had fully embraced the sexual liberality of the indigenous youth. Rulé was singled out by Sagard for his behavior. And it is certainly possible that Rulé was acting as a real horn dog when he was with the Wendat. Of course he was. (laughs) He was 18. - Yeah, oh yeah. (laughs) - Like he was the only French guy there for years. - Yeah. - 18, single. - He got the accent. - Yeah. - Yeah. - They're like, he could grow a beard. Nobody else can grow a beard, like it's fine. And the other thing is that part of the Wendat culture is women had sexual freedom and it was very bad manners to show jealousy in that way. So she could go with her wherever she wanted. And if some guy didn't like it, well, you just have to swallow it. Your is just total poor form. - Yeah. - So yeah, I'm sure he was having a great time. We don't know the details, whether he had like a long relationship or a wife, probably had children, but we don't know. So the reclets, they were losing their shit with the traders' behavior all over the place. With the traders who were living with the Wendat, the ones with the Inew, the ones with the Elgonquin, nip-a-sing, they were all doing the same thing. - Everyone get back into your darn boxes. - Yep. - Yep. - Yeah, they were not okay. They were frantic. They also had the ear of Champlain, who was becoming more and more poisoned in his thoughts about the traders, traders and Brule in particular. Because Champlain was kind of growing in his religiosity. So he was like, those boys are being bad. And the other thing is Champlain brought them over as quite young men. - Yeah. - So he had a paternal fatherly attitude for them and now they're in their mid-twenties. And they're not doing as they're told anymore. He's not 14. - Yeah. - So he doesn't handle that transitional well, to say the least. So Seguard was contemptuous of Brule and wrote that he only knew one prayer and that was the grace spoken before a meal. But I really doubt that, that's true. Because when Brule went back to France in 1622, he became a godfather to a child named Etienne Quaffier. And he may not have been the most religious person around, but it's not as if he was ignorant of his Catholic faith as Seguard believed. So I'm just going to take that with a grain of salt. And honestly, I'm not Catholic, but I could probably recite the Hail Mary. - You don't really forget those things that easily. - I suspect it wasn't meant literally that that was the only prayer he knew. - Oh, he did a story. He told a story when Brule was in mortal danger. The only prayer that he remembered was how to say grace. Dinner. (laughing) - And like dude, 'cause they had a real hate on for him. So I don't think they had a good sense of humor. (laughing) - No, you do sort of get the impression that in a lot of ways they didn't have a good sense of humor. - No, no, they weren't much for the jokes in their writings. - I think maybe not the calling you went into in those days if you had a great sense of humor. - No, you took yourself real seriously. And you kind of had to, 'cause you're a missionary over there, especially when later episodes, we get into Breboof, oh, he was a lot. A guy who took himself seriously, that is Breboof, for sure. When Brule was back in New France, the year after his visit back to France, he began working more earnestly at developing the trade relationships between the French and the other indigenous nations, including the Nipissing and the Neutral. So this would not have endeared him to his Wendat friends as this was circumventing the dominance of the Wendat trading relationship. But they wanted to continue to enjoy with the French. As much as he loved the Wendat people and culture, he was a company man and he was working to further the business interests of who he worked for over the personal relationships with the Wendat. So it isn't clear if the Wendat were really vocal about these objections, if they had arguments, we don't know. 'Cause again, there's no writings of this, 'cause we only have Champlain and Sagard for contemporary sources. So Brule traveled to Lake Superior with the neutrals in an attempt to forge a connection with the Ojibwe people up there. So this is the area where a lot of the furs were being trapped. So going there was skipping the middleman, i.e. the Wendat. In the Wendat territory, a lot of the beaver were already being hunted out, like they were already gone. And even down into the Haudenosaunee territory, they were really going fast. They had to keep going north and west to get more beaver skins. So that's partly how the, in later episodes, we'll talk about the fur trade and the Anten Bay Company and all that, 'cause they go west. - There's a joke in there somewhere about the priests and Champlain not being happy about how Etchyn was going about getting beaver, but I-- (laughing) - And the other time the Inu had been talking about how the French and the Basque, they're always making war with their beaver. (laughing) Oh my god, you just set it up right there, man. I mean, they really, they just, it's right there, beaver wars. That the beaver wars are coming up, actually, in these episodes. And if I get my sister-in-law Vanessa, I don't know how she's gonna contain herself. (laughing) It's gonna be ridiculous. Or if his Simon, he's gonna be ridiculous too. (laughing) It's fine. So, if Brule thought the Recolettes didn't like him, then he was going to need to brace himself. Or the disdain that the Jesuits were bringing for him and the other traders. His main antagonist would be Jonda Breboof. When Breboof arrived in 1625, he immediately recalled Brule and Nicola Marcellay. He's the guy that was with the Inu. Montagnier is what they call him in the books, but Inu is the name they get himself. - Yeah. - He ordered them back to France. So, they were like, like, get. Horned dogs, out of here. I discussed this incident in an episode called The Jesuits Are Coming, but it is worth repeating here. So, Breboof wanted them gone because of their lascivious behavior was undermining the priest's effort to improve the morality of the indigenous people. Marcellay talked his way into being allowed to stay for the time being because he offered to teach the Jesuits the Algonquin language. Brule refused to teach the Wendat language and was set to be shipped off when he came down with an illness and had to stay back in Quebec for another year. But that reprieve only lasted a year. And then he and Marcellay were sent back to France, along with a young Wendat man named Amantacha, who was to be baptized in France. But Brule had a really close relationship with Amantacha, and it is said that Amantacha loved Bruleay like a father. So, off they go. But Amantacha wanted to go. So, that's the differing of the treaties. Bruleay was quite productive in France, even though he hadn't wanted to go back. He married Elison Quaffier in 1626 or 27. He bought a house in Paris and in Champagne-sur-Marin, doing pretty well. And he became a godfather again, so that's why we know have some more of the records. There is no record of children that I know of, but Elison was an older woman. And she was nearly 40. That could have played a part in why there were no record of children. And also, he didn't stick around very long to be fair. (laughing) Hey, you're 40. Would you like to get married? I'll give you two houses, and then I'm going back across the ocean. She's like, yeah, sure. I can make that work. Don't worry, we won't tell the Jesuits. (laughing) Yeah, she's great. Yeah, so Quaffier, he had become a godfather. Obviously, there's some connection with this family. We probably knew her for a long time. 'Cause they're about the same age too, so he's getting close to 40 by now. Yeah. So, in 1628, it was time to go back to New France. So, Bruleay got on a ship with Ementacha and Marcellé and headed back. If you've listened to the episode, when the English privateer's conquered Quebec, then you might know that they don't get back right away. Their ship was captured by the Kirk brothers, and they were sent to England. So, it was all this whole thing. So, when they were brought to get back by the Kirk's the next year, Champlain was furious with Bruleay and Marcellé, accusing them of colluding with the Kirk's. Bruleay argued that they had no choice but to work with them, because they had been captured. Whether they were forced to work for the Kirk's up to that point is unclear. Probably were, they were under their control. Whether they volunteered a little bit too much to be cooperative, maybe. Who knows? They were there to make money, but what we do know is that they chose to stay in Quebec and work for the English while the English occupied it over the next few years. Bruleay believed that he went back to France, he would be executed, and he is likely right, because if Champlain laid charges of treason, because that's what Champlain believed he had committed by working with them, he would have been done in, because Champlain was the superior and the king would have believed him. So Bruleay stuck it out in New France and headed back to his home in Canada, the Wendell village of Tawanche. So we aren't really sure what Bruleay was up to the next couple of years, but the historian and ethnologist Bruce Trigger, my boy Bruce, believes that Bruleay was working on some old contacts with the Seneca to get them to form a trade relationship with the French in order to repair his reputation with the French. So if you could figure out if you can make the French more money and get that, forgive everything, yeah. Exactly, that's exactly right, because the Haudenosaunee were attacking. So if we can solve this problem, but that was a big mistake. So the headman of that village, Anon, either murdered Bruleay himself or had someone else do it in either 1632 or 33, because working with a sworn enemy was an utter betrayal, especially because he was living in his village, as far as the exactate. We can't truly be sure. Most sources say 1633. A more modern source says 1632, because of a baptismal record dated 1633, where Bruleay's wife was a godmother and she's listed as a widow. So for the news to have traveled there in time for her to be listed as a widow, it probably happened the year before. According to this, according to Danielle Kalo's article. It's an interesting article. It's on the Champlain Society website, if you want to look that up. I mean, I don't think you will, but I mean, listeners, because I'm telling you this, it's fine. (laughing) I managed to read the Wikipedia article before today. And it wasn't, the Wikipedia is not hot bad, because there really isn't much information out there. It is like, I'm like, wrapping up every little bit I can. It doesn't really matter. 1632, 1633. Basically, by the time Champlain got back to reclaim new France, he was dead. With Champlain's return, the Wendat, the Algonquin, and Inu began to make a long journey to Quebec to re-establish trade relations. So from Wendat territory, it was probably three or four weeks to travel. To give you a sense of where Wendat territory is, is berry. Okay, to Quebec. That's gonna take you a while. Yeah. Hoanche is where Penitanguixin is, Penitanguixin in Midland. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's a long haul. Yeah. So Anon was very worried that Champlain would want blood vengeance for Broule's murder, or the very least compensation. Despite this concern, he started making his way back to Quebec. Amantaca had gone on ahead and was sounding out the mood of the French before telling them that Broule was dead. Anon got to Morrison Island, where the kitschus borini chief, Hessouat, was being a real shit-disturber, and told Anon that Champlain wanted him dead. (laughing) He's, this guy's awesome. I was gonna say, 'cause didn't Champlain also want Broule dead, and so really Anon's just saved him some effort. He didn't really, Champlain just washed his hands of him, but Champlain didn't know he was dead yet. So, I guess he did. He probably heard, but he was like, oh, no, no, no, no. When the Wendat finally arrived at Quebec, they did not show remorse for Broule's murder because they weren't sorry. They believed that they did it, and they were right to do it. That's what they believe. And to be fair, yeah, I mean, to be fair, the French also wanted him dead because they felt he'd done the same thing with the English. So, they were just gonna take him home and get him executed. Yes, as part of their justice system, but the Wendat justice system is like, we got it. We don't have to take him anywhere. We're already here. We can just kill him now. Yeah. He'd very much run out of places he could go. Like somebody was gonna decide he was a dead man at some point. Yeah. I mean, it's possible he could have gone to the nip-a-saying or maybe go live with the Inu with Marcellé, but they all know each other. His better chance would have been, at the point where he's switched loyalties to the English and the Haudenosaunee, his better bet would have been to go just lean into that direction. Yeah, like he probably didn't realize his mortal danger. He should have just gone to the Seneca and gone to the Dutch if he wanted to live. He probably could have found a way, honestly. I don't know, but it's not like the Dutch were nice guys. They were pretty brutal. They were mercenary and the Haudenosaunee probably didn't trust him either. Well, no, but mercenaries are willing to cut you some slack so long as you're bringing the money in. Yep. And if he's willing to bring the money in, that would have been his safest bet. Yeah, or he could have gone with the Turks. The Turks were living in Newfoundland. Well, he could have done that. Yeah. Well, hindsight is 20/20. (laughs) Yeah. Sorry, Burleigh. Not there to give you good advice. So they weren't remorseful, but what they did do is they offered a whole wack of beef or pelts to Champlain. They're going to do that anyways, to reignite the trade relationship. Yeah. It wasn't quite as compensation for the murder, but it wasn't not. Sorry about your dude, but we're still good, right? That's basically it. And Champlain stood up and gave a speech, and I'm going to paraphrase the thing, how much he loves the Wendat, and the murder of Burleigh would not diminish that love because Burleigh was a traitor and had it coming. He's like, we're cool. That was settled for the time being, but the fallout from Burleigh's murder would continue for years. Or the Wendats of Tawanche, there was such discord between two factions, that one faction in favor, Burleigh's murder, and there was the other faction that were against it. Because he had friends there. He's lived there for, oh gosh, it'll be 20 years. Maybe he had a family, I don't know. Maybe he'd been trying to make the case, like you don't need the French as much, if we like, side with the Haudenosaunee, or go to English, or like-- Or work more with the nip of saying, or something. But he did not have the Rome in the bones, understanding of the culture and the history between the two nations. So he couldn't possibly fully understand it. He had the French arrogance. I'm like, no, well, it just make a deal. The French make a deal with English all the time, 'cause at this time, I think the king had a French wife. So, you know, it's fine, we can make it work. - 100 years war is like a century backwards. - It's cool, it's fine. Anyhow, didn't work. So yeah, there were two factions, one for and one against. And because things were so terrible, they were, I guess, arguing so much. It is all of the village altogether. And then they made two towns. They made Wenrillo and Aihana Teria, something like that. And Aihana Teria is where Rebeuf would go and live. He would live there quite a while. But there continue to be fears that Champlain and the French were gonna seek reprisal in the future because of their view of justice, was that there had to be some sort of rebalancing the relationship with gifts or a death when the diseases of smallpox in influenza started killing vast numbers of their people. Some Wenrillo believed that the French had sent the Jesuits as sorcerers to destroy them. So Tessouette was also still on his shit and warned some Wenrillo traders who came to his territory in 1634 that Champlain wanted at least four Huron heads for revenge for Boulay. I love that he still stir in the pot. (laughing) And he's been doing this for ages. If listeners recognize that name Tessouette, that's the same guy who was stirring shit with the Vino incident where this guy said this French trader interpreter said that he'd made it all the way to Hudson's Bay. And Tessouette was like, "The fuck you did?" (laughing) Anyways, and that was got at the end of Vino. And he had been part of the tension that had led to some of the Algonquin helping the Turks. That's how they were able to so easily take Quebec. So it's all part of like he's just, he's so messy. (laughing) And I get going real head men of Turtle Island kind of energy from him. He's just like, "Yeah." He's just like. (laughing) Just loves the drama. (laughing) So this went on and on. Some Wenrillo believed that Boulay's sister or an uncle were cursing them because these illnesses were just not letting up. So the Ottawa were also hit with these diseases and went to Brebrough to make amends because they believe that because one of their people had stolen a belt of 2,400 wampum beads from Boulay, that Boulay was cursing them for that. (laughing) So anyways, Brebrough did not take their offerings because he was not the aggrieved party. But he's told them, he's like, "No, it's fine, you tried." And that's what counts basically. And they're like, "Okay, sure." So on the French side, Seghard wrote that Boulay had been murdered because he had been sleeping around too much. But that's ridiculous because the Wendell didn't care. That's not a reason that they would kill someone for. So what likely happened is that the betrayal of Boulay for seeking the trade relationship with the Wendell enemy of the Haudenosaunee, and that had started all the way back in 1616 when he was with the Seneca and it was coming back to haunt him. So he was in the find out era where he could not escape the consequences anymore. Seghard had also said that Boulay was eaten by the Wendell. That's also unlikely as Boulay was given a proper burial and that would not have happened if he'd been cannibalized. But after Champlain died in 1635, Anon's anxieties did not abate. Rebeouf was still living in one of the towns that had been to watch a haunteria. Anon told Rebeouf that Tessuat had said that Champlain had been determined to see the heroines expunged from the earth because of Boulay. So he's still going. Of course Champlain had no feelings like this at all when he died, but the continued trauma of the epidemic sweeping through the Wendell territory were seeing some wild theories. I think we all know how that works when there's epidemic sweeping the nation and there's wild theories coming up but why they're happening. So very relatable. There was finally some closure for Anon and the other Wendell who were concerned that Boulay's ghost was terrorizing them when they held the last great feast of the dead of this era. The feast of the dead, it happened every 10 to 12 years. Kind of when they're moving at village 'cause they had to move because the land was depleted 'cause they didn't have fertilizer. So when they're moving town, they gotta get all their dead together and they basically have this big ceremony and any body that still had flesh on it would be defleshed and anyone, they would be dug up and the bones would be all put together in something called a kettle and they would be all together and they'd all be buried together and is this co-mingling of people and is a very beautiful ceremony and very respectful treatment of the dead. That was what they were planning. So Anon went to Brayboof and asked if Boulay could be dug up and included in the kettle. Brayboof did not want this to happen for a couple of reasons. One was that he did not want a Christian to be mixed with non-Christians 'cause uncrossacrate a ground was still a very big deal. So even one that he said could only remember the prayer before eating, you know? Yeah, he's not Christian enough to be like on the good guys team, but he still can't like mingle with you guys because he's still Christian. So that was kind of the public reason, like the main reason that he wasn't really allowed it. But he also said, so Mark Bory, he wrote a book called "Crosses in the Sky" and that's about John De Brayboof. He quotes that Brayboof didn't want him in there because this infamous wretch did not deserve to have this honor shown him. That sounds more accurate. I know. I think we're getting their real story here. So in the end, Boulay was not dug up and included with "The Feast of the Dead" and worries over Boulay's vengeance eventually subsided. There were greater threats on the horizon for the Wendat than the specter of a dead man. Back in France, Boulay's wife, Ellie Zont, eventually remarried, she's doing great. His estate was managed by his brother. Like it was all fine or some legal records and whatnot. But Boulay's legacy in Canadian history is an interesting one though. He is the archetype for the Kuro Dubois and is seen as an exciting character in early French-Canadian history. Because Champlain ended up hating him by the time he was killed, he ended up with a bit of a mystique of a rebel. This is enigmatic, sexy adventurer kind of struck down. The badass Steve Burns. Yeah, it's so bad. So he was one of the first Europeans to see much of the Great Lakes region and he may have been the first European sea Niagara Falls. We don't know the extent of his travels because if he told Champlain about them, which he very likely did, especially in his younger years, Champlain did not see fit to share that with the world. I think there was some, I think he did write about it a bit, but later he removed it. So he's like, nope. He wanted Boulay's legacy to be that of a murdered, lascivious traitor rather than a respected explorer in cultural liaison. That is at Chamboulay. Coming up, we'll be getting into the terribly sad story of the epidemics mentioned briefly there that raged among the Wendat, Inu and Algonquin people and the Haudenosaunee, of course, but they got it later, which is part of the reason why they ended up doing better. Wendat were decimated, well, more than decimated. They were halved. So we will take a closer look at the Feast of the Dead than the Beaver Wars, get all the jokes, get in there. And there's gonna be a spiritual civil war among the Wendat. All related to the deaths, the Jesuits. Yeah, I can see that coming with that much grief and loss and sudden change that you're gonna have a, well, the way we used to explain why all of this worked the way it did doesn't seem to apply any more. And some are becoming Christians and some want the old ways, but the problem with having the old ways is a lot of the elders are gone and they haven't been able to teach. And then also I'll expand on it when I get to the episode. There's gonna be a lot of conflict because before there were kind of a civil head man and a war chief and the two weren't the same people. They didn't mix, but now you didn't have enough head men to have the two, so now you have a lot of war chiefs. Yeah, that's gonna shift things a lot. Yeah, so that just ramps up the conflict. It's gonna get interesting on that front. And yeah, so thanks very much, Jessica. Thanks for having me. I'm sure you'll be on again. We'll figure out which one you really wanna dive into. And thanks for listening, everyone. Bye. (upbeat music)