"She Is Capable Of Doing A Good Deal Of Mischief": A Miami Woman's Threat To Empire In The Eighteenth-Century Ohio Valley

On September 18, 1774, Captain Richard Berringer Lernoult of the King’s Eighth Regiment and Commander of the Detroit post and its dependencies arbitrated a case that had the potential to upset a tenuous alliance between British imperial interests and Native American groups. Possessing ultimate military authority at a fort that served as the geographic, economic and political center of British hegemony in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes, Lernoult acted both as a representative of the King of England and as “father” to Native Americans in his jurisdiction. The entire mattered rested on the troubled marriage of a Miami woman named Tacumwah and her French husband Richardville. Her brother Pacanne and other family members had come to Detroit to argue her case and that of Beaubien, the man with whom she had taken up residence, against her husband. Richardville had broken ranks with his Miami in-laws and together with a new business partner, sought to oust the Miami from their position of economic dominance. The larger effort on the part of the family was to maintain control of both a vast amount of capital in the form of slaves, cattle, corn, and wampum, and of control of a pivotal portage that Tacumwah had inherited by virtue of her powerful Miami lineage. For the Miami, ancestral rights, economic gain, and political dominance into the foreseeable future were at stake. For the British, alliance with the Miami and control through them of the territory in question meant maintaining an imperial presence in an area becoming increasingly contested by settlers and Native American groups, and at a time of greatest threat to the integrity of British North America.

While Captain Lernoult heard the details of the case and considered whether he should decide in favor of either the wife and her family or her husband and his associates, it became clear that decisions and judgments rendered in the case of this woman’s marriage would determine the shape of already tenuous British and Miami relations. Imperial efforts at control of the activities of the Miami were contingent on navigating the complex and constantly shifting networks of kin, as well as recognizing and responding to cues for proper behavior in the highly ritualized world of Native American and British political negotiation. By examining concepts of family held by both the British and the Miami, it is possible to reconstruct an intercultural history that has not previously been examined by historians. Careful consideration of the complexity of multiple and competing claims to marital and familial legitimacy, and how these claims came up against British legal concepts provides a more thorough depiction of Native American and British relations. Evidence of differing sets of expectations for proper gendered behavior embedded within these issues of lineage provides yet another opportunity to reconsider the nature of these relations. The issue of this Miami woman’s status and activities, and the expectations of her behavior and treatment by men became the basis for a central organizing and complex trope around which her family and Lernoult structured their arguments and counter-arguments for British and Miami relations.

The following excerpt taken from the record of the proceedings illustrates the central position the woman occupied in this matter of intersecting and competing concepts of family roles, responsibilities, and ownership of goods and land. Her brother and husband use multiple and sometimes conflicting interpretations of her level of agency to make their case:

Pacanne:

What things did Mr. Beaubien take from you, besides your wife?

Richarville:

Mr. Beaubien has taken away my slaves, cattle, Indian corn, wampum, silver works and my children!

Pacanne:

But these things don’t belong to you. My Sister inherited the silver works and wampum from her Mother, and she bought the two slaves with rum and planted and cultivated the corn.

Lernoult:

Are you married to this squah?

Richarville:

No, and the slaves are mine . . . one was given to me by the Kickapoos as a present, and I purchased the other with goods. When I first took in the squah, she...