René Bourassa dit La Ronde

René Bourassa dit La Ronde was baptized at La Prairie on 21 December 1688, a son of François Bourassa and Marie Le Ber. He married Agnès Gagné in 1710. After her death in 1719, he married Marie-Catherine Leriger de La Plante in 1721. The accounts cited in the project record three children from the first marriage and five from the second.

In autumn 1721, René travelled without permission to Orange, now Albany. A Marine Council deliberation preserved in the New France Archives names him among residents fined 500 livres. By 1726, he was sending canoes into the western fur trade with Nicolas Sarrazin and François Lefebvre Duplessis Faber. The next year places him at Green Bay.

A different Albany journey survives in close detail. In March 1729, Governor Charles Le Moyne de Longueuil issued René, L’Ange Guérin dit Lafontaine, and René’s cousin François Le Ber a passport to carry letters. Trade was forbidden. They left Montréal on 29 March; inspections followed at La Prairie and Fort Chambly. The Chambly–Albany–Chambly portion took thirty-seven days. René made his final declaration in Montréal on 11 May. The paperwork establishes the letter mission; it does not prove smuggling on that journey.

In 1735, René hired men for Fort Saint-Charles and Fort Maurepas and wintered with La Vérendrye at Lake of the Woods. The following June, a Prairie Sioux/Dakota party captured him and four companions, accusing the French of arming their enemies. An enslaved Sioux woman travelling with René intervened and pleaded for his life. The group was released without its goods. A later French party led by Jean-Baptiste de La Vérendrye was ambushed; all twenty-one men were killed.

Later in 1736, René and Laurent-Eustache Gamelin dit Châteauvieux built a post at Vermilion, contrary to La Vérendrye’s instruction to return to Fort Saint-Charles. They wintered with Ojibwas. René moved to Michilimackinac in spring 1737. His business there supplied French military and diplomatic ventures, including wine for Céloron de Blainville’s force in 1739 and goods used in negotiations.

During the 1740s, his family joined him. He acquired a house, lots, and meadowland; the scholarship cited in the dossier records more than eight land concessions by 1763. Sons René and Ignace increasingly handled the trade. Marriages joined the household to the Chevalier and Langlade families. The son René born to Agnès Gagné in 1718 married Anne-Charlotte-Véronique Chevalier in 1744; their son Daniel was born in 1752. This son René is distinct from the half-brother René-Clément.

Enslavement formed part of the household’s wealth and its trading world. A notarial sale dated 28 September 1717 records René’s purchase of an enslaved Indigenous girl for 400 livres. Christina Dickerson’s scholarship, using Michilimackinac records, concludes that René and Catherine Leriger de La Plante owned at least five enslaved people. Registers name Charles, about eighteen in 1750, and Ignace, about fourteen in 1754. The woman who secured René’s release in 1736 was herself enslaved.

After Ojibwa warriors captured Michilimackinac from the British in June 1763, René’s horses and cattle were killed. The British returned in September 1764. René later withdrew to Montréal; Ignace continued trading at Michilimackinac until 1775. René’s burial was recorded in Montréal on 7 September 1778.