May 17, 2012

Delongueuil Expedition

Located at the Municipal Boatlanding

Charles LeMoyne, the second Baron de Longueuil, was town major of Montreal in 1739 when Governor Beauharnois ordered him to lead an expedition of 123 French and 319 Indians by way of the Niagara and Chautauqua portages to aid the governor of Louisiana, his uncle, Bienville, in a bitter war against the Chickasaws in northern Mississippi. Pierre-Joseph Celoron meanwhile led 200 Canadians and 300 Indians from Michigan down the Chicago portage to join with de Longueuil and others in the 4,000 man army.

Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Lery, eighteen years old in contrast to his commander’s fifty-two, was the first to volunteer for the expedition. He took compass readings throughout the voyage but his distances were inferred from time and pace rather than taken by direct measure. His map, actually drawn by a draftsman named de Mandeville in 1740, is the earliest of the entire region based on direct survey.

Nicholas Samson’s maps of 1650 and 1656 may reflect garbled knowledge of Chautauqua Lake, probably derived from the Neutral Indians by Etienne Brule in the 1620’s and passed on to the earliest Jesuit missionaries to the Hurons. La Salle was told about the Chautauqua portage by the Senecas in 1669 when he came to them with hopes of exploring the Ohio. Certainly the Shawnee, Nica whom La Salle acquired as a servant and guide at that time, must have been familiar with the portage from personal use. Several French and English maps from the early 18th century may have intended Chautauqua Lake when they depicted a Lake Onniasant.

De Lery’s map is the first historical document to include the site that has become the City of Jamestown. It also demonstrated the area’s strategic importance and usefulness and foreshadowed both the role it would play in the French-English imperial struggles and the careers of the cast that would enact the French portion of that struggle prior to the Treaty of Paris in 1763.

DE LONGUEUIL EXPEDITION
BARON DE LONGUEUIL IN 1739 LED A FORCE OF SOLDIERS AND INDIANS FROM MONTREAL DOWN THE CHADAKOIN TO THE MISSISSIPPI. EXPEDITION ENGINEER CHAUSSEGROS DE LERY MADE THE FIRST PROFESSIONAL MAP OF CHAUTAUQUA LAKE. THE FIRST USE OF THE WORD CHAUTAUQUA.