Rolette-Bottin County ND Archives Biographies.....Jeannotte, Francois 1806 - 1905 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/nd/ndfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 July 17, 2008, 9:26 pm Author: Guy C. H. Corliss FRANCOIS JEANNOTTE. Francois Jeannotte was born in 1806 on the Mouse river, eight miles west of the present city of Bottineau, at a place called by the Indians Edge of the Woods. His mother was a Chippewa of the Turtle Mountain band and her Indian name was Assiwenotok. His father was a French Canadian named Jutras Jeannotte, from Montreal, and had been many years in the country west of the Red river both in Canada and the United States. He had many adventures with the war parties of tribes hostile to the Chippewas. On one occasion many years before his marriage to Assiwenotok he was descending the Qu'Appelle river with a load of furs, accompanied by his first wife and his son, when they were attacked by a party of Grosventres. His son was killed and his wife was scalped and left for dead. He himself fell into the water, badly wounded, and as he struggled to save himself from drowning a Grosventre warrior attacked him with his flint-lock musket clubbed. Jeannotte was able to pull himself out of the water by clinging to the musket, and then wrenching it from the Grosventre, he killed him with it. Francois at the age of seven lived on Beaver creek, a tributary of the Assiniboine, and here his twin sister was waylaid by a party of Grosventres and left lying where she was afterwards found later, still alive but scalped and having fourteen wounds. At this time the Grosventre Indians had a village at the junction of the South Antlers and the Mouse river, and the two sons of the war chief were White Cow Buffalo Robe and Four Bears. In 1818 he accompanied his mother to the Pembina river (his father having returned to Montreal), and during the next two winters they staid at the Big Salt and the Little Salt rivers, as the Hudson Bay Co. had a trading post near by with "Arrelles" as post trader and Burke as clerk. At this time also there were two trading posts at the mouth of the Pembina river, one established by the North-West Fur Co. in charge of McDonald with Grant as clerk and the other operated by the Hudson Bay Co. at about the same spot where Kittson's fort was afterwards built. He remembers distinctly the Selkirk settlement with the mixture of Swiss, German, Italian and Orkney Island men, and the Seven Oaks massacre. In 1820 he and his mother returned to the Mouse river and wintered at the big bend of that river. During the winter of 1820-21 it was reported that a Chippewa war party that went to the foothills of the Rockies found a few miles southeast of the present city of Minot an "American" trading post established by traders from the Little Missouri and in charge of "Gravelle" with the halfbreed Keplin (Kiplin) as interpreter. In 1822 he met a traveling civil engineer from Europe at the junction of the South Antlers and the Mouse in company with two halfbreeds. Jack Spence and Jack Anderson. At this time the Grosventres had abandoned the place for a good many years, but there were plenty of evidences of their occupation still to be seen there. The Grosventres had quarreled about the ownership of some horses that had fallen into their hands and their ancient enemies, the Chippewas, the Assiniboines and the Crees, had gradually driven them southward till they reached the shelter of the Missouri river. Francois was twenty-seven years old at the time of the great star shower of 1833 and remembered it very well. He resided on the Turtle Mountain reservation for a number of years and died in 1905. Additional Comments: Extracted from: COLLECTIONS OF THE State Historical Society OF NORTH DAKOTA VOL. I BEING FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OF THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF NORTH DAKOTA TO THE GOVERNOR OF NORTH DAKOTA FOR YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1906. BISMARCK, N. D. TRIBUNE, STATE PRINTERS AND BINDERS 1906 Photo: http://www.usgwarchives.net/nd/rolette/photos/bios/jeannott7nbs.jpg File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/nd/rolette/bios/jeannott7nbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/ndfiles/ File size: 4.4 Kb