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48 Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre Indian detachment, three-quarters of which was composed of allied Indians, was under the command of Charles Le Moyne, Baron de Longueuil, town major of Montreal. The detachment left Montreal in mid-June to reinforce the army of Louisiana governor Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, Longueuil's uncle, who was engaged in a costly war against the Chickasaws, allies and trading partners of the Carolina English. Having crushed two separate Louisiana French attacks against their villages in 1736, the Chickasaws remained solidly entrenched in their isolated and heavily fortified villages near the site of Tupelo, Mississippi. They had remained relatively unscathed by the French forces that were concentrated at Fort Assumption (now Memphis, Tennessee) about 100 miles west of the Chickasaw stronghold, and awaited the coming assault. Longueuil's force joined Bienville at Fort Assumption, as did a second strong detachment from Michilimackinac under that post's commander, Captain Pierre-Joseph Celoron de Blainville. On 22 February 1740, Celoron led a 600-man Canadian detachment, with Saint-Pierre among the officers, in a vigorous but nondecisive attack against the Chickasaw villages. Afterword, Celoron erected two forts and sought to negotiate preliminary terms for a peace treaty. Ensign Saint-Pierre, Celoron's emissary to the Chickasaw chiefs in a hazardous mission, succeeded in pursuading them to negotiate with Celoron, and to release the French prisoners that they had taken. (See document 43 in chap. 4 for SaintPierre 's own account of this harrowing embassy.) Bienville later ratified the treaty at Fort Assumption, then burned the fort and returned to New Orleans while the Canadians returned to Canada, where Saint-Pierre received his next assignment.16 THE MIAMI POST, 1741-1744 In 1741 Saint-Pierre was promoted to lieutenant and reappointed as commandant of the Miami post, where he had replaced the absent commandant eight years earlier for one year. He held the assignment among the Miami for three years, together with the lease on the post's fur trade. On 14 June 1741 Saint-Pierre and his partner, Louis Damour de Clignancour, signed powers of attorney to their respective wives on the eve of their departure for the Miami post. Two days earlier, Clignancour, acting for both his partner Saint-Pierre and himself, hired the voyageur Jean-Baptiste Besnard dit Carignan to transport merchandise to the Miami post.17 On 15 June the two partners signed an obligation to their supplier, Pierre Lestage, a Marriage and New Assignments, 1738-1745 49 wealthy and influential Montreal merchant. They purchased from him, on credit, nearly 24,000 livres of merchandise,almost four times the amount Saint-Pierre had purchased on credit from his brother-in-law for his Siouxpost trading seven years earlier. The obligation that Saint-Pierre and Clignancour signed for this substantial sum reads as follows: 18 15 June 1741 obligation by Sieurs De St. pierre And Clignancourt to Sieur Delestage Before The Royal notaries etc. were Present Jacques Ie Gardeur, Esquire, Sieur De St. Pierre, an officer of a Company of the troops Of the marine garrisoned In this country, in Command for the King at the Miami post And Louis Matthieu Damour, Esquire, Sieur De Clignancourt residing In this town on St. paul street, partners for the Trade to be done at the said Miami post And Its dependencies, who Are leaving to go up to the said post and have recognized and Declared that they owe very precisely And honestly to Sieur pierre Delestage, a merchant In this town, residing on the aforementioned St. paul street present at this proceeding And agreeing to The Amount of twenty three thousand nine Hundred Seventy livres thirteen Sols ten Deniers for the Loan of the same amount that the said Sieur Delestage has given them In merchandise And other things appropriate And useful for the Trading that they are going to do at the said miami post And its dependencies In accordance with the invoice Signed by the said Sieur Delestage that he has given them, with which And with everything the said debtors are Content And Satisfied. The aforesaid Amount of twenty three thousand Nine Hundred Seventy Livres thirteen Sols ten Deniers the said Debtors promise And obligate Themselves jointly and severally One for the Other, one of them Alone for all of it, Without Division or Discussion which they renounce, to pay back, give And pay the said Sieur Delestage At his residence In this town or to the bearer etc. [In...

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