Jean-François Benjamin Dumont de Montigny (1696 - after 1753)

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Dumont de Montigny, Fort Rosalie and the French settlements at Natchez ca. 1728, detail of the Terre Blanche concession
Archives Nationales de France, Cartes et Plans, N III Louisiane 1/2

from Gilles-Antoine Langlois, French Louisiana 1682-2003

Dumont de Montigny: Historian and Memoirist of French Louisiana

Jean-François Benjamin Dumont de Montigny was born in Paris and educated in Jesuit grammar schools there. His father was a lawyer and the family was rising into the minor aristocracy. As a younger son, however, he was destined for a career in the military. He went to Quebec in 1715, and then after a brief spell in France got a commission as a sub-lieutenant and engineer in Louisiana. At this moment in 1719, investment and emigration in Louisiana, which was controlled by the financier John Law and his Company of the Indies, had reached a fever pitch, and it collapsed soon after in the infamous Mississippi Bubble. Many new colonists died before they could clear land, build shelter and grow food along the swampy, malarial bayous. Dumont, however, lived in Louisiana until 1737, shifting between New Orleans, Pascagoula, Natchez, and the Yazoo River area. He did not acquire a large plantation, and did not rise through the military ranks. In fact, his defiant behavior toward Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, the governor of Louisiana during much of this period, and Chépart, the commandant at Natchez during the cataclysmic revolt of that tribe in 1729, led to demotions and brief periods of incarceration.
Dumont is known for a two-volume history of the colony, Mémoires historiques sur la Louisiane contenant ce qui est arrivé de plus mémorable depuis l’année 1687 jusqu’à présent: avec l’établissment de la colonie françoise dans cette province de l’Amérique Septentrionale sous le direction de la Compagnie des Indes: le climat, la natur, & les productions de ce pays; l’origine et la religion des sauvages qui y habitent, leur mûrs et leurs coutumes (1753) a two-volume history of the colony which he co-wrote with the Abbé Le Mascrier. This book was more or less outdone by Le Page du Pratz's Histoire de la Louisiane five years later. The work is little-known to American historians, however, because no full translation has ever been published. The book is only loosely based on the manuscripts that Dumont composed and that survive today.

Dumont's real contribution has remained hidden until now. Only a few historians have been aware that three of Dumont's manuscript works are extant, and that these documents offer a much more personal and artistic account of his time in Louisiana. These include two versions of an epic poem about Louisiana which appears to have penned in the early 1740s. The poem's title translates as Verse poem on the establishment of the province of Louisiana or Mississippi, with all that occurred there from 1716 to 1741: The Massacre of the French at the post at Natchez, the Manners and Customs of the Indians, their dances, religions, etc.; and all that concerns that land in general. I have translated an excerpt from the first canto recounts the 1729 uprising of the Natchez Indians, in which more than 250 French were killed. The translation is based in part upon one by Henri Delville de Sinclair done as part of the WPA writers project in 1940.

The third manuscript is held at the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois, Ayer MS 257. It bears the title Mémoire de L___ D___ which presumably is a mask for "Lieuténant Dumont", but we have reason to believe that this title was not created by Dumont himself. Together with Carla Zecher, directof of the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry, and Shannon Dawdy of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, I have been working on the first published edition of this text. We received in 2004 an NEH grant to complete this edition. It will be published in 2008 by Septentrion of Québec.

The Louisiana Colony
The French colony of Louisiana was established under Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, who led three expeditions, beginning in 1699, that built small forts near modern Mobile, Alabama, and Biloxi, Mississippi. In 1718 the colonial capital was moved to a new site at New Orleans. [Click here for a map of the lower Mississippi area published in Le Page du Pratz's book, and here for the fold-out map of the entire Mississippi Valley.] The French recognized that the Mississippi River would become the corridor for trade and colonization in the center of North America, and by securing the mouth of this great river, they hoped to connect their settlments in Québec and Illinois with those on the Gulf of Mexico, and thus to outflank British settlements on the continent's east coast. History foiled this geopolitical scheme, however. The French surrendered their claim to Louisiana to Spain in 1763, at the same time that France's loss to England in the Seven Years War resulted in the surrender of Québec to the British. French "creole" colonists remained the dominant population around New Orleans, however, and in 1801 Spain returned Louisiana to French control, just before Thomas Jefferson negotiated the Louisiana Purchase.

Dumont's Watercolors

Dumont created maps and illustrations for his prose manuscript and for the manuscript of his poem that is held in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal in Paris. His skills as a figure artist were modest at best, and the result is a charming, child-like style.

Here are a few of the poem's illustrations which are posted on a website created by Gilles-Antoine Langlois, who also took the pictures. You can find more at French Louisiana 1682-2003.

Dumont's Maps

Dumont has at least twenty maps extant in the French archives, including the one at the top of the page, as well as about a dozen that he drew to accompany his three manuscripts. Check back to this page for my carto-bibliography of Dumont maps, which I hope to complete soon.For now, the best source for Dumont's and other maps of Louisiana is the site created by Vin Steponaitis of the University of North Carolina, a specialist in the archaeology of the Natchez, Mississippi area. Search for Dumont among the many cartographers and historians included there.

During a 2005 trip to Paris, I examined and photographed six manuscript maps by Dumont in the Delisle collection at the Archives Nationales de France. These are not available on Steponaitis's site, but were the basis for my presentation in Chicago listed below.

Prof. Sayre's publications and presentations on Dumont

In advance of the new edition of Dumont's prose manuscript, I have published a couple articles and made many presentations about his work.

Articles
“Natchez Ethnohistory Revisited: New Manuscript Sources from Le Page du Pratz and Dumont de Montigny” Louisiana History (Forthcoming)

[with Carla Zecher and Shannon Dawdy] “A French Soldier in Louisiana: The Memoir of Dumont de Montigny” The French Review 80:6 (May 2007), 1265-1277.

"Plotting the Natchez Massacre: Le Page du Pratz, Dumont de Montigny, Chateaubriand."   Early American Literature 37:3 (Fall 2002): 381-413. Awarded Richard Beale Davis Prize, 2003.

Presentations
“Dumont de Montigny: Son oeuvre cartographique, ethnographique, et autobiographique.” Oregon Association of Teachers of French, Confederation in Oregon for Language Teaching 2007 conference, Corvallis, OR, October 13, 2007.

“The Origins of New Orleans: French Colonials Struggle against Floods, Hurricanes, Bugs, and Silt.” Deschutes County Public Library, Bend, Oregon, February 25, 2007.

"The French Maps of North America from Lahontan and Delisle to Le Page and Buache." Chicago Map Society, Newberry Library, January 23, 2007.

“Shamanism, Providence, and the Picaresque in Dumont de Montigny's Memoires de L___ D___”
University of Louisiana, Lafayette, December 13, 2006.

“New Perspectives on the Natchez Massacre of 1729.” Grand Village of the Natchez Indians, Natchez, Mississippi, December 12, 2006.

"The French Maps of North America from Lahontan and Delisle to Le Page and Buache."  Early American Cartographies, Newberry Library, Chicago, March 2006, and Society for the History of Discoveries, Portland OR, September 2006.

“Dumont de Montigny’s Underbelly of Sovereign Authority in Louisiana.” Society of Early Americanists. Alexandria, VA,  April 2005.

gsayre@uoregon.edu