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c h a p t e r 5 The Passing of the Torch 110 BISHOP CRETIN described him as “one of our most respected citizens and an edifying member of our Catholic congregation,” and Auguste Larpenteur no doubt deserved such accolades. But he represented as well a melding together within the Catholic community in St. Paul of the old French Canadian strain, the recent Irish and German immigrants, and a newer, more native element. For, though his surname and paternal ancestry were French, Larpenteur was born in America of a woman herself American-born, and he married an American wife. Not that the process of amalgamation was all that abrupt: as a young man Auguste had been a fur trader, and when he settled in Minnesota in the mid-1840s he could speak the language of his neighbors Benjamin Gervais and Vital Guerin. Nevertheless, he was perfectly comfortable within the larger society, and notably among the commercial élite of the town, largely Anglo and Protestant. Larpenteur was not without romantic antecedents. His paternal grandparents operated an inn at Thomery, a village forty-five miles from Paris and near the royal palace of Fontainebleau. While in residence there, Napoleon Bonaparte had occasion to sample Madame Larpenteur’s cooking, of which he grew exceedingly fond. One day, while munching foie gras truffé and boeuf bourguignon in the inn’s public room, he encountered the glamorous and fascinating Josephine Beauharnais, a recent refugee from the slave uprising in Santo Domingo. For the rest of his life Monsieur Larpenteur boasted that, in the best tradition of l’amour à la français, he had conducted to the table of the world’s greatest general his beautiful future consort. The marriage of course did not last, nor, after awhile, did Napoleonic grandeur, and after Waterloo Auguste’s grandfather, his loyalty to the fallen emperor undiminished, decided it prudent to emigrate. He came first to New York and then to BaltiI The Passing of the Torch 111 more, where his wife and children joined him. The eldest son among these married a local girl, and from this union Auguste was born. His parents died young, and the boy was raised by the somewhat rascally old Monsieur Larpenteur, who told him endless stories about his beloved Napoleon . In 1840, when he was eighteen, Auguste struck out for St. Louis, where two of his father’s brothers operated a fur-trading post. The business, however , did not fare well, and Auguste fell in with two Anglo entrepreneurs, William Hartshorn and Henry Jackson. These men scented opportunity in the upper Mississippi valley, and they recruited young Larpenteur to join them, mostly because of his fluency in French. The party reached St. Paul (or Pig’s Eye Landing) in mid-September 1843. From the beginning Auguste felt at home, and the Jacksons were particularly kind to him—Mrs. Jackson, he said, became the mother he did not remember. “The white population at that date,” he recalled, “in the territory out of which [emerged the states] of Minnesota and the two Dakotas, . . . did not exceed three hundred.” He got along very well with the Dakota with whom Hartshorn and Jackson were eager to trade, learned their language, and earned for the firm not a few advantageous bargains . Henry Sibley’s American Fur Company was fiercely competitive, particularly as the availability of profitable furs dwindled, and, as a result of more than one tumult, Hartshorn decided to withdraw from the enterprise. But Jackson remained in St. Paul, and, as the frontier milieu receded and more conventional business practice came to the fore, established himself as the foremost merchant in the Territory. Meanwhile, his young colleague, Larpenteur , played as zestfully as he worked. “The country abounded in game, and soon I became expert in the chase.” He remembered fondly one outing with “old Scott Campbell,” who had befriended Loras and Galtier1 and who was a man “very fond of his nips.” On one occasion, when on a trading expedition with Larpenteur, Campbell, hopelessly drunk, had fallen into a snow bank where, had he not been swiftly extricated, he might well have smothered to death. In 1845 Larpenteur wooed and won a girl he had met in St. Louis. The wedding had to be held in St. Paul, because the groom had not enough money to take him down river to the bride’s parish church. Ten years later, however, thanks to his Jackson connections, Auguste Larpenteur had prospered and could justifiably be called, as...

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