René Bourassa dit La Ronde

Life in context.

RENÉ BOURASSA DIT LA RONDE — FULL RESEARCH DOSSIER

Identity and family:
René was baptized 21 December 1688 at Prairie-de-la-Madeleine (La Prairie), the son of François Bourassa dit La Ronde and Marie Le Ber. The exact birth day is not separately established in the present evidence. He married Agnès Gagné at La Prairie on 23 October 1710; DCB states that they had three children. After Agnès died in 1719, he married Marie-Catherine Leriger de La Plante at La Prairie on 28 September 1721; that marriage produced five children. Citizen Potawatomi Nation historical material names eight children across the two marriages. Madison’s accepted direct line continues through his son René Bourassa (1718–1792) and the first wife, Agnès Gagné.

Albany and illicit commerce:
The economic pull of the English colonies was powerful because English buyers commonly paid much more for beaver than the regulated French market. René participated in the illegal Montréal–Orange/Albany trade. A 1723 Marine Council deliberation, preserved through the New France Archives and sourced to ANOM COL C11A 124, names René among eleven residents who traveled to Orange in autumn 1721 without permission and were fined 500 livres. This is direct archival corroboration, not merely family tradition.

The 1729 passport:
On 27 March 1729 Montréal governor Charles Le Moyne de Longueuil granted René and two companions a two-month passport to carry letters to New England. The permit expressly forbade commerce. The surviving dossier reconstructed by the Société d’histoire de La Prairie identifies his companions as L’Ange Guérin dit Lafontaine and François Le Ber, René’s cousin. They departed Montréal 29 March; their three sledges and provisions were inspected at La Prairie on 31 March and at Fort Chambly on 1 April. Their destination was Orange/Albany. The return check occurred at Chambly 7 May; René completed his declaration in Montréal 11 May. The Chambly–Albany–Chambly portion lasted 37 days. The evidence establishes the official letter mission; it does not prove that René smuggled on this particular licensed journey.

Expansion west:
By 1726 René was in the western fur trade with Nicolas Sarrazin and François Lefebvre Duplessis Faber, sending canoes into the pays d’en haut. In 1727 he traded at Baie-des-Puants (Green Bay). In 1735 he became connected with the commercial associates of Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de La Vérendrye, hired engagés for Fort Saint-Charles and Fort Maurepas, was at Saint-Joseph (Niles, Michigan) in July, and wintered at Fort Saint-Charles on Lake of the Woods.

The 1736 crisis:
Early in June 1736 René and four companions set out toward Michilimackinac and were captured by a large Prairie Sioux/Dakota war party. The warriors accused the French of arming their enemies and prepared to kill René. An enslaved Sioux woman in his party intervened and pleaded for his life. René and his companions were released and escaped without their goods. A following French party led by Jean-Baptiste de La Vérendrye was later ambushed and all 21 men were killed. The episode must be understood within a violent system of French expansion, Indigenous diplomacy and warfare, and Indigenous enslavement—not as a simple frontier adventure.

Vermilion and Michilimackinac:
Later in 1736 René and Laurent-Eustache Gamelin dit Châteauvieux ignored La Vérendrye’s instruction to return to Fort Saint-Charles and constructed a post at Vermilion near the Vermilion River, wintering with Ojibwas. René moved east to Michilimackinac in spring 1737. Thereafter his trade increasingly centered on that post. In 1739 he sold 45 pots of wine to Céloron de Blainville for a French-Indigenous force going south against the Chickasaws and later sold goods used in diplomatic negotiations.

Resident trader and property holder:
During the 1740s René moved his family to Michilimackinac, a major upper Great Lakes transshipment center. DCB records that he owned one of roughly forty houses, another lot inside the fort, and a meadow outside. Jacqueline Peterson’s scholarship states that by 1763 he had received more than eight land concessions; the cited 1 June 1754 record calls a meadow or marsh along the road toward Grand Lac his eighth concession. By the late 1740s René was semi-retired and his sons René and Ignace increasingly conducted the business.

Family alliances:
The family became intertwined with other leading Great Lakes trading households. In 1744 René’s son René married Anne-Charlotte-Véronique Chevalier, daughter of Jean-Baptiste Chevalier. In 1754 René’s daughter Charlotte-Ambroisine married Charles-Michel Mouet de Langlade. These alliances mattered commercially and socially and helped root the Bourassa family in the western Great Lakes.

Slavery:
René’s slaveholding is strongly documented and must remain part of the biography. A 28 September 1717 notarial record documents his purchase for 400 livres of an enslaved Indigenous girl. Vanderbilt historian Christina Dickerson, using Michilimackinac records, concludes that René and Catherine Leriger de La Plante owned at least five enslaved people. The surviving registers identify people held in the Bourassa household, including Charles, about eighteen in 1750, and Ignace, about fourteen in 1754. The unnamed Sioux woman whose intervention saved René in 1736 was also enslaved. These records tie the Bourassa household directly to the Indigenous slave system that accompanied western warfare and commerce in New France.

1763 and return east:
Fort Michilimackinac passed from French to British control after the fall of New France. On 2 June 1763 Ojibwa warriors captured the fort from the British garrison. DCB reports that Indigenous opponents killed René’s horses and cattle before the British returned in September 1764. The new British commandant William Howard nevertheless called him a man of “good character.” René soon left Michilimackinac; his son Ignace continued trading there until 1775. René spent his remaining years in Montréal and was buried there 7 September 1778.

Connection to the modern family:
René is a direct ancestor, generation 10 from Madison Cameron Walker. The accepted descent continues through René Bourassa (1718–1792), Daniel Bourassa I, Leon Bourassa, Eugene “Ugane” Bourassa, Delilah Bourassa Nourie, Eugene Chester Nourie, Lorraine Madeline Nourie, Sandra “Sandi” Walker née Hequet, Jason Durant Walker, and Madison. René himself was French-Canadian, not Potawatomi; the direct Potawatomi kinship in this accepted line enters generations later. His historical importance is that his generation moved the Bourassa family deeply into the Great Lakes trade and kinship world that later descendants inhabited.