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Subject: Charles Chap de Lain, died in French Village in August 1845.
Date: 2 Dec 2003 13:50:56 -0700

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Surnames: Chap de Lain, Harness, Hitchcock, Kane, Argyle, Singleton, Jones, Whipple
Classification: Biography

Message Board URL:

http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/ok.2ADE/3088

Message Board Post:

Jim of Mustang: I have the following notes on Charles Chap de Lain who must have been a resident of French Village in southern Fremont county and northwestern Atchison county, Missouri. Some of my mother's side of the family married into this group of Frenchmen, mixed bloods, Americans, fur traders, mountain men and others I have overlooked. Many of the Indians were from the Otoe and Sioux tribes, and had families who went to the Nemaha Indian Reservation in southeastern Nebraska in the 1850's where they had been offered large tracts of land. They had a cemetery just east of Hamburg, Iowa, which was destroyed early in the 1900's, and as far as I know, no record was ever made of those buried there.

1.--Book 464: House Document Number 38, Second Session, 28th Congress:--Charles Chapdelain was hired as assistant blacksmith on Sept. 10, 1844 at the Council Bluffs Indian agency.

N.B.: Don't confuse the Council Bluffs Indian agency located at Bellevue, Nebraska with the Council Bluffs Indian sub-agency located at various places on the eastern side of the Missouri river, depending on what date you want.--W.F.

2.--Council Bluffs Indian Agency Letters. September 10, 1844: Charles Chap de lain, Assistant smith to the Pawnees, is a Canadian of French descent, "his wife and two children is some mixed with Potawatomy Blood". Was selected by Mr. Harness for his assistant.

N.B.: Do you think this means he was the father of three children? You say one more appears in 1845, but does not live. I never have had reason for trying to determine this point.--W.F.

3.--Serial Set Book 483: First Session of the 29th Congress, House Document No. 91, page 52.--Charles Chap de Lain was paid September 30, 1845 for his services as assistant smith for the Pawnees during the third quarter of 1844 and the second quarter of 1845.........$147.89

N.B.: Notice that this infers that the Pawnee were not in their villages along the Platte during the 4th quarter of 1844 and during the first quarter of 1845. There seems to have been no reason for a blacksmith to be there during this time. It seems that Chap de Lain was sick during the third quarter of 1845.--W.F.


4.--Atchison county, Missouri, Probate Court 1845 "Administration of Letters and Wills". Page 1. August 12, 1845.--Charles Chap de Lain died intestate within this county, having no mansion house within the State, had no legal heirs, and Peter Harness having given bond according to law, etc., is given administration of the estate.

N.B.: Some points which need to be rationalized: (1). If Chap de Lain had not been living in Bluff township of Atchison county, Missouri at the time of his death, his estate could not have been probated there....(2). Indian children were not the only ones disenfranchised by U. S. laws, for Blacks had no legal rights, either. Was Hitchcock the only one to get anything from his estate?....(3) If your great great grandmother is on the 1845 Annuity rolls, wouldn't she have been required to have been living in Pottawatomie Indian Country?. Would she have quickly returned to Pottawatomie Indian Country after Chap de Lain's death?...(4) How much connection was there between Peter Harness and Charles Chap de Lain? One seems to have been wherever the other was!--W.F.

5.--Atchison county, Missouri, County Court, Nov. Term 1845.--Rufus Hitchcock presents an account against the estate of Charles ChapdeLain, dec'd., for expenses of last sickness and burial. The Court allows $32.

N.B.; Rufus Hitchcock lived just north of the Buckham cemetery where the Argyle's were buried in 1845. If he were the one who looked after Chap de Lain during his illness, maybe Chap de Lain was buried there. Hitchcock emigrated to California in time to be the landlord of the hotel at Sutter's Fort when gold was discovered at Sutter's mill in 1848....Fremont county historians are inclined to malign his character a bit more than necessary, and a bit more than what he alone deserves--and--this was on the frontier. Maybe, things weren't always according to Hoyle. The southern half of Fremont county was as far to the northwest as the vanguard of frontiersmen could emigrate until after the Pottawatomie left The Council Bluffs for Kansas.--W.F.

6.--(Unidentified source).St. Louis, September 5, 1846. "...During the last fall, the border tribes of Indians suffered severely from autumnal fevers, which prevailed to an unusual degree in the West; these fevers, in the hands of the physicians, readily yield to medical treatment; and, indeed, with the grand specific, quinine, at command, persons of ordinary intelligence, in the absence of the physician, manage them with a good deal of success; but in the absence of medical treatment, and with the poor and imprudent diet and irregular habits of the Indians,the fever often proves distressingly fatal, as was the case last fall with different tribes..."

Thomas L. Kane: In 1845, said the Indians lost 1/9 of their number in about two months that year.

N.B.: In the months of August, September and October, 1845, the Argyle family lost two members; Preserved Whipple, John Singleton, Jobe L. Jones--and of course Charles Chap de Lain--died (in Fremont county) during this time of these "fevers".

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