Identifying Joseph Dufaut, Part 1: Collecting Information

I’ve already told you how I crossed the border and connected my Great-Grandfather Joseph Chosa to his family in Quebec. Today I’d like to begin to tell you how I did the same with the paternal grandfather of my Great-Grandfather Vincent Dufauld.

Long before I started genealogical research, I knew that Vincent himself was a member of what is now known as the Bois Forte Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, because his daughters, including my grandmother, were members of that band. So were my grandmother’s children, including my mother, and her grandchildren, including me. Therefore I knew where to look for his adult records: in northern Minnesota, on the Vermillion reservation of the Bois Forte Band. (Our primary reservation now is the one at Nett Lake, with Vermillion as the secondary; in earlier years these two were treated as entirely separate entities.) From his French-Canadian surname (variously spelled as DeFoe, Dufau, Defaux, Dufaut, Default, and numerous other variations) I also knew that Vincent must have had French-Canadian ancestry.

Thanks to information from my cousin and from Vincent’s probate, I was able to verify the identities of Vincent’s parents (Michel Dufauld and Josette Roy), grandparents (paternal: Joseph Dufaut and Julie Cadotte, Maternal: Vincent Roy fils and Lizzie/Elizabeth Lacombe) and even a set of great-grandparents (Michel Cadot/Cadotte and Madeleine/Equay-say-way), all of whom who were fairly well documented once you knew where to look. I got a lot of help from other members on Rootsweb’s NISHNAWBE mailing list, several of whom were distant cousins. What I needed was documentation that would enable me to connect Vincent’s grandfather, Joseph Dufaut/Dufaux to his parents, whose names had not been established.

I began by reviewing what I already knew or could collect online about Joseph Dufaut aka Dufault aka Dufauld.

I knew that he had been at La Pointe by about 1829, since their son Michel, baptized the first day the St. Joseph Mission opened on Sunday, 2 August 1835, was stated to be 5 years old at the time (therefore born about 1830) and born at La Pointe. That same day, Joseph himself was baptized and was stated to be 45 years old (therefore born about 1790) and born at Lac du Flambeau. (Julie Cadotte, his bride, also was formally baptized the same day.) After that, Joseph and Julie had their marriage blessed by the Church—the only marriage ceremony Father Baraga had time for on what must have been an incredibly long and hectic day, which doubtless included hearing many confessions as well as officiating at 25 baptisms, saying Mass and fulfilling his own daily prayer obligations.

Since Joseph was baptized at La Pointe, I knew that he had not been baptized either in Quebec or at any of the missions at Mackinac. (His baptism was probably handled at birth by his father or whoever else was available and knew the procedure. But there was no record of it, so Baraga’s baptism of Joseph, as well as of Julia and most of the others, was almost certainly a conditional one. Unfortunately, not being French, he didn’t specify that.)

Joseph’s only child, my GG grandfather Michel Dufauld, died in December 1916 at the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. His obituary, published in the Minnesota History Bulletin, Vol. II (1917-18), states that Michel’s father Joseph “was for many years a boss carpenter; between the years 1820 and 1830 he supervised the construction of the stores and warehouses of the American fur Company on Madeline Island in Lake Superior, eighteen miles from Bayfield, Wisconsin. He built the mission churches on the island, one of which, the Presbyterian church, is still [1916] standing.” When my mother and I visited Madeline Island (which is actually only about 3 miles from Bayfield), the people at the museum told us that one of its rooms was originally a building erected by Joseph and his crew.

I learned that Joseph and Julie were married twice, once by the Protestant missionary at La Pointe in 1834 (as registered by Chippewa County, which at that time included much of what is now Wisconsin), then by Father Baraga in the Catholic church Joseph and his crew had just finished building. (I believe the Protestant ceremony took place because the couple wanted to insure that their son was regarded as legitimate in case either parent died. The moment the opportunity came, they had the Catholic rites.)

The Catholic marriage information came from Linda E. Bristol’s transcription of the St. Joseph Mission and Holy Family Catholic Church Marriage Records 1835-1880. From her transcription of the Liber Defunctorum (Death Registry) 1835-1900 for the St. Joseph Mission and Holy Family Catholic Church, I learned that Joseph died in March 1873 at La Pointe at age 83 (consistent with his other records giving his birth year as 1790), while Julie lived until February 1876. My 2G grandfather Michel was their only recorded child.

I knew that Joseph and several other contemporary Dufaults in the fur trade in the early 1800s were “half-breeds” and repeatedly reported as being exactly 1/2 Indian in the field notes of various trieaties. And since he lived at La Pointe, which in 1835 was a company town run by the American Fur Company, I looked for Dufauts (however spelled) in available American Fur Company records and other American sources.

The American Fur Company roster of employees 1818-1819, now online at the Mackinac County, Michigan GenWeb site, shows that a Jos. Dufauet was engaged at St. Mary’s (Sault Ste Marie) for 1 year beginning 29 July 1819 as a boatman. His wages were 1500 (currency type not stated); “Where Employed” is not stated, but under Remarks is “Lac du Flambeau”. There is also one Louis Dufaust engaged at Mackinac on 9 July 1818 for one year as Interpreter at Fond du Lac for “$2,400” per year.

Bruce White’s roster of fur traders in The Fur Trade in Minnesota cites the American Fur Company’s list of employees for 1819 as showing a Joseph Dufault/Dufauet, an interpreter in the Lac du Flambeau department, at $250 and as a boatman for 1822 at $200. In 1819 my Joseph would have been age 29, in 1822 age 32. Since he was born at Lac du Flambeau, the Joseph who worked at Lac du Flambeau is pretty likely to be my ancestor.

Notary Samuel Abbott at Mackinac kept a list of the legal transactions he handled between 1806 and 1818. The actual contracts have not survived, but the inventory, commonly known as Abbott’s List (online) includes the following entries for Dufaut (with the usual variations in spelling):

1808, 29 July: Joseph Defaut, for the Mackinac Co., wintering at St. Joseph

1809, 8 July: Joseph Dufond, for the Mackinac Co., wintering at St. Joseph

1817, 14 July: Louis Dufault, for Ramsay Crooks (American Fur Co.), wintering at Fond du Lac

But who was Joseph’s father, who was presumably at Lac du Flambeau about 1789-90? Jean-Baptiste Perrault, in his Narrative of the Travels and Adventures of a Merchant Voyageur in the Savage Territories of Northern America Leaving Montreal the 28th of May 1783 (20 1820), online at Google Books, in pages 508-619 of the volume Historical Collections and Researches Made by the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, Vol XXXVII, wrote about one (or possibly two) traders surnamed Dufaut.

On page 519-20 he writes about a catastrophic expedition he was involved with in November 1781, where his party, led by a heavy-drinking Mr. Kay who was, as he puts it, “Hare-brained”, was wrecked attempting to enter the “riviere du fond du Lac”. They were able to repair the canoes and recover most of their trade goods but were all soaked and unable to dry anything out. Worse, they were almost entirely out of provisions. Two days after the wreck the party came to a wintering house at Fond du Lac used by “mr. Dufaut, come from grand portage [Note: Perrault refers to a portage on the St. Louis River, not the Grand Portage which is now a reservation in Minnesota], clerk for the N.Wt. (Company) [=The North West Company]. As m.Kay had perhaps taken only one drink he now took the second which made him ill-tempered so that Instead of receiving politely mr. Dufaut, who came down to meet him on the beach, he treated him rudely. But as the mr. perceived his [drunken] condition he kept silence and gave him no information.” Kay insisted the exhausted and hungry party immediately start out for the grand portage. “M. Dufaut, fearing that he would stop near him, offered him provisions for several days”, an offer which was refused since Kay hoped that they would meet up with an agent of his who was supposed to have obtained more provisions. (The rest of the expedition was equally disastrous.)

On pages 558-559 Perrault writes about meeting a Dufault in 1791 whose winter quarters were at Lac du Flambeau:

“I returned to makinac at the 1791 beginning of July, 1791 . . . I re-equipped with mr. todd, with 7 pieces of Cloth and an assorted stock, to return to fond du Lac.. . . On arriving at the Sault, I had my canoe taken up, and I Slept at the end of the portage. I set out the next day and slept at the riviere tak-quwaminan [Tacquimenon]. The 4th. day, I reached les grandes ilsles [sic]. I camped there. The next day I met opposite la riviere au poisson qui rit [Laughing Fish River] Defund Dufault, who was returning from his winter quarters at Lac du flambeau. I addressed him. He asked me How furs were selling at makinac. I told him that they were low. I gave him a drink. After he had taken it, he Said to me. “I find that the season is well advanced, so that it will be too late to enter Lac de flambeau.” “Very well,” I said to him, “Do you wish to trade with me? How many packs have you?” ”I have 35,” he replied; “I have one pack of Otter, 5 packs of Beaver, 2 packs of marten, 3 of bear, 1 of polecat, Lynx and rats. The remainder is Deer. And you! what is your canoe-load?” “I have here 7 bales assorted, 12 Kegs of Liquor, 2 kegs of powder, 5 sacks of lead and balls, 1 case of hatchets and scalping knives, 6 guns for the trade, 1 bale tinned iron kettles, 2 sacks of flour, 4 sacks of Corn, 1 keg of tallow, and one of sugar.” He took a little while to consider, and said to me, “Come ashore. It is done.” Before going to land, I said, “I will take provisions to carry me to mackinac.” “Yes,” he replied. We went ashore in the river, and I had my tent put up. While I was Unloading the canoe, he put up his shelter. He said to me, “It is unnecessary to open the goods; let me see The condition of your Bales, that will be enough.’ I did so, and he was satisfied. Similarly I took his packs, under Cord. We slept there. Early the next morning I started out . . .”

Now, “Defund” is not a personal name. It’s a French word meaning “deceased.” At the time he wrote about this encounter (about 1830, during his retirement at Sault Ste Marie), Perreault is saying that the man who wintered at Lac du Flambeau in 1791 had since died. Unfortunately Perrault does not say whether the Mr. Dufaut he met in 1791 was the same man he had met in 1781.

Dead end? No.

A fellow member of the NISHNAWBE Mailing List researching Dufaut lines shared a transcription of a letter written in 1889 to Judge Joseph J. Steere by John McDougal Johnston (son of the famous Sault Ste Marie fur trader John Johnston, and a lifelong inhabitant of that community). Johnston was about 73 by then, and what he writes is stated to be “from reliable information, and most of the persons named within, I was personally acquainted with.”) This is part of it:

“A few years before 1790, Louison Default came up from Montreal in the employ of the N.W.F. Co. [=North West Fur Company], after serving his time out with the Co., he married an Indian woman from the country of Lac du Flambeau after the custom of those days, before witnesses. He got his goods and outfit from the late Mr. Johnston, and after a few years successful trading, took his family and went down to Montreal, there getting his marriage confirmed by the priest, remaining there several years, he returned and settled in this place, turning his attention to tilling the soil and raising stock. His family consisted of three sons, Louison, Joseph, and Francis and two daughters, Jenvieve [sic] and Angelique. The old man, before coming to this part of the country, apparently had served in its army, having with him his military uniform and sword—probably had been a non-commissioned officer—consequently owing to his regimentals, they gave him the name of Ghe-Sma gah-nisk, or Soldier, he was known by that name throughout the Lake Superior country, up to his death. I was personally acquainted with all his children.”

Now, clearly the information as to the father, Louison, is hearsay, since Johnston (born in 1816), could not possibly have any memory of Louison Dufaut, although he does say he knew the children. However, it is extremely likely that he got his information about Louison from those children living at "this place", Sault Ste Marie. And clearly, Johnston did not know just when Louison Dufault entered the fur trade, when he took his Indian wife and children to Montreal, or when he returned. He was almost certainly correct in connecting Dufault to the North West Fur Company, since his own father had been an early employee of that company and, as Johnston says, supplied Louison with trade goods after Louison married his Lac du Flambeau Indian wife "before witnesses".

Perrault places a fur-trade Dufault wintering at Lac du Flambeau in 1789, within a year of the the time when my 3G Grandfather Joseph was born there; it is reasonable to conclude that “Defund” Dufault is Joseph’s father. Note also that both Perrault and Louison Dufault retired to Sault Ste Marie. Johnston tells us that Louison Dufaut, like the man Perrault met in 1781 at Fond du Lac, was employed by the North West Company before he took his Ojibwe wife and children back to the Montreal area “a few years before 1790”; equally importantly, he gives the names of the children he knew, which included a Joseph, who now appeared extremely likely to be my GGG Grandfather.

Riddle solved? Not quite. The North West Company did not exist under that name until 1783; it was the result of a merger between several other fur-trade companies. The man Perrault met in 1781 “probably” worked for one of those companies, but he may not have been the same man he met ten years later. Quebec families in those days had lots of children; “Louison” was certainly not the only Dufaut who worked in the fur trade.

Support for Johnston's account is found in the Mackinac Register: on 27 July 1786 a Louis Dufau had had a 16-month-old “plus” daughter Genevieve “née du legitimate marriage de Louis Dufau et de Marie Louise de la nation Sauteuse” baptized at St-Ignace (therefore born about April 1785). On 26 July 1787, Louis Dufaux brought in for baptism a “légitime” 7-month-old son named Pierre (therefore born about December 1786-January 1787), at the same mission; the mother identified as “une mère sauvagesse nommée Marie Louise de la nation des sauteurs.” There is a cross in the margin indicating that the child had died.

It’s pretty clear that Louison Default in the Johnston letter and Louis Dufau of the Mackinac Registers are the same person, legally married to Marie-Louise by 1786, particularly since there is no marriage record at Mackinac but the marriage was accepted as legitimate in the eyes of the missionaries at Mackinac. Moreover, the nickname “Louison” was commonly used for a boy named Louis whose father was also a Louis, meaning that Marie-Louise’s husband was likely the son of a Louis Dufaut and suggesting that the Louis Dufaut “senior”, who is found in the La Pointe registers from day one is the “Louison” mentioned by Johnston as the son of Louis and Marie-Louise, and therefore Joseph’s brother. And a Louis Dufaut and his adult son, also named Louis, appear early on in the La Pointe registers, getting their wives and children baptized and their marriages blessed.

Now then, I received yet another bit of solid gold information from the same NISHNAWBE list member who had found the Johnston letter: in 1825, “land records” at Sault Ste Marie involved two of his sons, Francis and Joseph. At the time, the information I had was that Francis testified that he had always lived with his father at Sault Ste Marie, and that his brother Joseph “lived there only occasionally”. (I’ll give more detail in my next post.)

So all the evidence i had, considered together, brought me to the conclusion that GGG Grandfather Joseph was the son of a fur trader named Louis Dufaut (however spelled) and of a woman from Lac du Flambeau who had converted to the Catholic faith, taking the name of Marie-Louise, and that Louis and Marie-Louise had been married somewhere in Quebec, probably in the Montréal area. Furthermore, the family had finally settled at Sault Ste Marie. But where was that missing, crucial Quebec marriage record that would tell me who Louis' parents were?

Today all I’d have to do would be to go online to Ancestry.com and search in the Drouin collection of Quebec parish records for that marriage. Alternatively, I could go to the PRDH website and pay the PRDH to locate that marriage record for me. But neither of those options was available at the time I was doing this particular research. I had to fall back on parish records on microfilm.

But I didn’t have to order dozens of microfilms of parish records, as I’d had to do to find the birth record of Great-Grandfather Joseph Chosa. Since I was looking for the marriage of a man who was in the fur trade, there were two shortcuts available. I’ll tell you about those next time.

There's Nothing Like A Good, Juicy Probate

At the very beginning of my genealogical research of my Ojibwe/French-Canadian ancestry, one of the most important documents for my search was what we all called the Heirs List: the list of relatives of Joseph Chosa (Jr.), my Grandpa Henry’s brother, who had died a childless bachelor in 1938. He died poor, but he did have an allotment situated on a hilltop overlooking Keweenaw Bay in Michigan. (An allotment, for those of you who don't know, is a parcel of land on a Reservation allotted to an individual member of that tribe, with the idea that he or she should farm it and so support self and family.)

Joseph’s heirs were his siblings (most of whom had died) or their surviving legal heirs—the first people on the Heirs List. Their names and locations were all listed along with birth and death information and names of spouses. This particular document was issued in the 1950s and has been updated on several occasions through the decades afterwards, as various heirs died and their shares passed on to their legal heirs—dozens of them, now hundreds and growing every year. There was a distribution of timber income a few years ago, but that's all. 

Real estate always requires a probate unless the decedent has made a will, which few Native Americans do. Probates for Native Americans are handled by the federal government and can take years, even decades to settle, when an allotment on a reservation is at stake—as Joseph's probate shows. (The government’s preferred solution for an allottee with no heirs by blood has generally been to sell the land, usually to some deserving white person or company at a bargain rate. Perhaps the bureaucrats think that without land, Native Americans will finally submit to being completely swallowed up by white society, white culture, and white values. Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen anytime soon.)

My mother had a copy of the Heirs List, so did my aunts and several cousins, and all of them were happy to share their copies (with annotations) so that I could do what I’m doing now: tracing as many members of our extended clan as possible, living or otherwise.

Since Great-Grandfather Vincent Dufauld and his daughters were enrolled at Bois Forte, my mother was also enrolled there and eventually, so was I. This means that when the Bois Forte Band began publishing a newsletter for its members, I received a copy of every issue. In the issue for March 2003, J. Kay Davis, the then official Band Historian, wrote about one of several Bois Forte Inheritance Files she had found during a research trip to the National Archives in Washington, DC. (The term “Inheritance File” was used rather than probate, possibly because the term “probate” was what they used for white folks and the government didn’t want to imply that Native Americans had the same rights . . . or perhaps that they were really fully human.)

The file in question involved the estate of Alex Vivier, who died in December 1914. At issue was the land allotted before the turn of the century to Alex’s young daughter Mary, whose death was recorded in May 1903. Under the law, Mary’s allotment went to her father (her mother had died in 1899). After Alex’s death, his property, by law, was divided equally between his widow (who was not the mother of any of his living children) and his two surviving children by his first wife. One of those children, Edith, protested on the grounds that she and Mary were in fact the same person; that the Indian agent had gotten the records mixed up by failing to register Edith’s birth at the correct time, then (to make up for the annuity payments she should have received), created a fictitious child “Mary” who was then “killed off” once the shortage had been made up. During her “lifetime,” “Mary” was given an allotment, which should have been registered to Edith. (If this sounds complicated, that’s because it really is complicated.) Not surprisingly, the decision went against Edith despite the testimony of many people who swore that Edith was the first-born child of her parents.

What got me excited was that Alex’s widow happened to be my own great-grandmother, Saag-i-ji-way-ga-bo-wiik, who had had two daughters by her earlier relationship with Vincent Dufauld. My great-grandmother gave testimony during the proceedings.

I immediately contacted Kay about where, precisely, this file was located and explained the reason for my excitement. My husband and I were already scheduled to fly to Washington about two weeks later, where he was to receive an award, and if I could access probate files for family members I could answer a great many questions. Kay immediately sent me the information I needed, and when in Washington I was able to spend about 6 hours at the National Archives looking for records involving my great-grandparents and other kin.

Talk about pay dirt!! I found not only Alex Vivier’s “Inheritance File”, but one for my great-grandmother’s son—whose very existence was news to us—a young man named Mush-kah-wa-nance (whose father, like my great-grandmother, was from Lac La Croix in Canada, where the father had died). Mush-kah-wah-nance died unmarried and childless in January 1901, but he had crossed the border, been enrolled at Bois Forte and had an allotment. It took ten years to settle the case, by which time my Great-Grandfather Vincent Dufauld had also died. Someone in the bureaucracy got the idea (NOT from Vincent’s widow or her daughter) that the young man’s father “must be” Vincent since Vincent had fathered two of Saag-i-ji-way-ga-bo-wiik’s other daughters (Annie and Clara Dufauld). Since Vincent had outlived Mush-kah-wah-nance, under Minnesota law in 1901 he, as the father, would have been the sole legal heir and Mush-kah-wah-nance's allotment should have been part of Vincent's estate after Vincent's death in 1910. (A relatively speedy settlement: this one took only 9 years.)

At the hearing, my great-grandmother explained Mush-kah-wah-nance’s actual parentage, and no one disagreed with her. Vincent’s widow and their daughter were clearly both decent, honest people: they both swore that Mush-kah-wa-nance was not Vincent’s child even though they would otherwise have inherited the young man’s allotment. My great-grandmother inherited the allotment, or rather the proceeds from its sale. (I’m sure she would have preferred for her son to be still alive and preferably producing grandchildren.)

But the most exciting information came from the inheritance file of Vincent himself, who died in September 1910, although the heirship process didn’t begin until 1912 and the estate wasn’t settled until early 1915. As you may have gathered already, Vincent had something of a reputation for straying from the marital relationship, and there were rumors that he had a son about 45-46 years old as of 1913 living somewhere in Wisconsin, possibly near La Pointe.

Vincent’s brother Peter and a lifelong friend named Baptiste Artischoe testified before the Indian Agent for that area that Vincent had never been married to anyone except to May-min-waun-da-gosh-eake of Bois Forte. Apparently no one ever noticed that since (according to the 1880 census) Vincent was born about 1857, this alleged 45- or 46-year-old son would have been born somewhere about 1868, when Vincent was about 10 or 11 years old—clearly impossible no matter how precocious he was.

Peter also stated that Vincent had lived at Bayfield with his parents until about 1882, then went to his uncle in Superior, Wisconsin; about September of that year, Peter testified, “Vincent Dufauld went to work for their uncle in his trading post near Tower, Minn. In a year or so after his arrival at Tower he married the woman with whom he was living at the time of his death.”

The file also gave the names of his parents (Micheal [sic] Dufauld and Josette Dufauld, and his four surviving siblings: Peter (age 51 in 1912), and sisters Julia, Mary, and Lizzie. Vincent’s grandparents were listed as “Joe Dufauld and ?” and “Vincen [sic] and Lizzie Roy”.

I now had documentary confirmation of my cousin’s information as to Vincent’s parents and grandparents.

Vincent’s probate also revealed a major dispute over whether my grandmother Clara was Vincent’s daughter or not. Vincent’s wife May-min-waun-da-gosh-eake and his daughter Mary (Kay-ge-gay-ah-bun-du-moke), by then married to a white man named Joseph Cook) both testified that while Vincent had always acknowledged being the father of Annie, he “asserted time and again that he was not the father” of Clara—and I believe they were telling the exact truth. However, if Vincent denied paternity “time and again”, this means that his wife and daughter must have kept asking about it! I suspect that Vincent fibbed to them for the sake of domestic tranquility: he simply didn’t want to get beaned with a skillet (or worse) over a second “indiscretion” with my great-grandmother.

It’s interesting that Alex Vivier, now married to my great-grandmother Saag-i-ji-way-ga-bo-wiik, acted as interpreter for all the proceedings. You might think someone would object on the grounds of a conflict of interest, but nobody did. He must have been well known and trusted as a person of sterling probity who wouldn’t twist anyone’s testimony even to benefit his wife or her children.

Alex Vivier himself testified that he had asked Vincent whether he should have both Annie and Clara enrolled in the Bois Forte band under the surname Dufauld; that Vincent had acknowledged paternity of both girls; and that Vincent specifically told him to enroll them both with the surname Dufauld. Several other people testified that Vincent had freely acknowledged paternity of Clara to them. There was testimony that Vincent gave money, clothing, and other gifts equally to both girls (but not to Saag-i-ji-way-ga-bo-wiik’s other children).

In the end, the authorities seem to have decided that actions speak louder than words; they ruled that Clara was indeed Vincent’s daughter and divided Vincent’s estate according to the law: 1/3 to the wife, and the remaining 2/3 in equal shares to the three daughters.

To their very great credit, Vincent’s widow and legitimate daughter held no grudge over this affair. They accepted that Vincent had been untruthful to them and indeed, my mother remembers that whenever she came to town, Clara always called on Mary and her mother and was warmly welcomed; in fact, Mary and Clara were “best buds”.

You may think all of this as proof that I am descended from truly awful, sinful people, but you’re wrong. Among the Anishinaabe, as with most other Native American groups, when a couple married (often without ceremony of any kind) the intention was to remain together so long as the relationship remained pleasing and supportive to both parties—and there are many thousands of documented instances where the couple stayed together for life.

Splitting up and moving on to another relationship was no disgrace, only good sense when circumstances became bad. Women were not considered possessions, but equal companions who had the right to move on if they wished. Vincent, his wife, and my great-grandmother were simply abiding by their culture’s tradition and customs. And that, I maintain, was their right as human beings.

There are not a whole lot of probates (“Inheritance Files”) for Native Americans, but the National Archives in Washington has 5 boxes of them for Minnesota Chippewas. (I intend to go back there one of these days and look for other family probates.) Others are to be found in Regional branches of the National Archives. (I found some for relatives in Wisconsin in the Chicago branch not too long ago.) If you have Native American ancestors, it’s very much worth your while to look for them in the inheritance files for their tribe or band. You never know what juicy tidbits of information you might find; heck, you might just find a really big and tender steak—or maybe even a whole steer.

Meanwhile, Back In The Fur Trade . . .

All the while I was trying to backtrack Great-Grandfather Joseph Chosa to his birthplace in Quebec, I was also working on the family of my other maternal great-grandfather, Vincent Dufauld. Vincent was Anishinaabe, a member of what is now called the Bois Forte Band of Minnesota Chippewa. He lived on the reservation at Nett Lake, but there was never any doubt that he had French-Canadian ancestry since his surname was of French-Canadian origin. But who were his parents?

Remember what my Great-Grandfather Joseph said when someone in Michigan asked how his surname was spelled? The family story is that he answered, “You spell it like it sounds.” The trouble was that there are many, many ways to spell a surname like Chaussé. Well, the same is true for the surname Dufauld, in spades.

Great-Grandfather Vincent’s surname was “usually” spelled Dufauld or DeFoe in the records for him and his immediate family. For his kinfolk, the surname was most commonly spelled Dufault in American records, but it also turns up as Default, Dufeu, Dufau, Dufeaux, Dufaut, Dufaux, Defoe, Dafoe, and probably a few other variations. (I eventually learned that Dufaut and Dufaux were the most common spellings in Quebec.) The worst American spelling is Default: you can’t run an effective Google search on Default because it’s a term which shows up in computer technology all the time, so you get thousands of hits, and you can go through 100 or more screens without turning up a single person surnamed Default. But that’s how the surname is sometimes spelled in Amercian vital records.

I found Vincent in the US censuses only because I already knew where he had lived much of his adult life, namely on the Bois Forte Reservation in northern Minnesota. I did, however, have one advantage with him: his first name of Vincent was relatively uncommon (compared to, say, Joseph). In the 1900 and 1910 federal censuses (his surname was spelled Default on both) he was on the Indian Schedules at Bois Forte with his wife and two of his daughters. Those censuses said he was born in Minnesota. However, the census taker recorded that ALL the Indians he enumerated were born in Minnesota, of Minnesota-born parents. (This just goes to show you can’t put blind faith in the censuses.)

When I first set out to trace my mother’s ancestry, I had assumed that Great-Grandfather Joseph had come to the US as a voyageur; that was because I knew very little about the actual patterns of French-Canadian immigration.

However, a little poking around taught me that a very large number of French-Canadian immigrants were farmers like Joseph or skilled workmen (blacksmiths, carpenters etc.). Many without such trades crossed the border, especially from about 1870 onwards, to find work in the industrial mills of New England. Great-Grandfather Joseph had, according to the censuses, supported himself at first by fishing, but as soon as he could, he acquired farmland and from then on was always described as a farmer: clearly it was most likely that he had crossed the border not as a voyageur but to find some good farmland. This in turn suggested that Joseph came from a family of habitants, peasant farmers.

Great-Grandfather Vincent, however, was definitely not a farmer (although he may have had a garden). Like most Bois Forte men at the turn of the century, he made his living by fur trapping, hunting, guiding, and fishing, and he and his family surely harvested and processed wild rice. Nett Lake wild rice is the best in the world (the stuff grown in paddies doesn’t even come close in terms of flavor and nutritional value) and you can buy it online (and no, I won’t personally make a cent off of anyone else’s purchase).

Since Great-Grandfather Vincent lived as he did, he was most likely descended from voyageurs. Knowing this, I joined the NISHNAWBE Mailing List at Rootsweb early on. This was, and still is, a very active list for “anyone researching Native Americans in Michigan and Wisconsin, and the fur traders connected with them.”

This was one of the best decisions I ever made: I learned where fur-trade records were to be found, I learned about numerous valuable sources of information for fur-trade ancestors, and even connected with several other people who had fur-trade ancestors surnamed some variation of Dufault or, in the female lines, Roy and Cadot/Cadotte.

Early on in my research I had made a habit of checking the message boards, mailing lists, and family trees online for names of my known ancestors, hoping to connect with relatives who knew more than I did. And this was one time that habit led to a huge payoff: a cousin of mine (whom I had never met), posted his family tree online. He didn’t know any more about the Chosa-Forcier side of the family than I did, but he had a great deal of information about the Dufaulds passed down to him from his grandmother Annie Dufauld (Vincent’s daughter, and the full sister of my grandmother Clara Dufauld). I never knew Grandmother Clara; she had died long before I was born.

My cousin knew the names of Vincent’s parents (Michel Dufauld and Josette Roy) and of several of his siblings and where they had lived. He even knew the names of Michel’s father (Joseph Dufauld) and Josette’s parents (Vincent and Lizzie). We began a lively correspondence and a good friendship, although we never met in person until last year.

Meanwhile, I was still working with others on the NISHNAWBE list and learned that GGG Grandfather Joseph Dufauld/Dufaut's wife was Julie Cadotte, daughter of the famous Michel Cadotte and his Anishinaabe wife Marie-Madeleine (Equaysayway), and that Michel was the son of the equally famous Jean-Baptiste Cadot and his redoubtable wife Marie-Athanasie (Equawaice).

With this much information as my starting point, I began to collect census and other records on Vincent and his known ancestors. I needed to confirm and document the relationship—not that I didn’t believe my cousin or the people on the NISHNAWBE list, mind you, but careful examination of the documentary evidence could turn up further clues so that I could prove the connections and take the lines back into Quebec.

Ancestry.com’s search engine, although it has its faults, was able to find Vincent in the 1880 census for Bayfield, Wisconsin, living with his parents (names given as Michel and Julia) and six siblings: Julia age 24, John age 20, Louis age 10, Michel age 8, Peter age 4, and a male age 6 whose name looks like “Vassau” or “Vassim” (neither name seems likely, and it doesn’t look like “Vincent” either). All were—as I expected—stated to be indians. The children had all been born in Wisconsin. Mother “Julia” (an obvious mistake for “Josette”), age 44, had been born in Canada of Canadian-born parents; father Michel, age 54, had been born in Wisconsin, like his mother, and his father had been born in Canada. Michel was a carpenter by profession.

I already knew from family information that Great-Grandfather Vincent had a brother named Peter who was about the same age. Vincent was age 22 in the 1880 census—18 years older than the Peter in the household. However, I had early on realized that census takers did not always list the relationship to the head of the household (as they were directed); in households with 3 or more generations, grandchildren were often listed as “son” or “daughter” when a parent’s name appeared above theirs. In other words, little Peter was “probably” a grandson of Michel and Josette, and his mother was most likely the eldest daughter Julia, age 24. But where was the Peter who was Vincent’s brother and near to him in age?

I found him in Superior, Wisconsin, for the same 1880 census, born in Wisconsin like both parents, age 18. Peter was in the household of Vincent Roy, age 55, a merchant from Canada. Vincent Roy had a wife, Lizzie, age 50, born in Minnesota of Canadian-born parents, and several children (including a Vincent). All were listed as white. However, since my cousin’s information was that Vincent Roy and his wife Lizzie were Vincent’s maternal grandparents, I was reasonably sure that this Peter was Vincent’s brother and that the household members were listed as white because they were living in a town in essentially the same manner as their white neighbors.

So I searched for the Vincent Roy and Michel Dufauld families farther back in the censuses: the trail for both led, as expected, to La Pointe, on Madeline Island, in what is now Bayfield County, Wisconsin, as far back as the 1850 census.

And that’s when some of my fur-trade and Anishinaabe ancestors decided to help me out.