Wyoming Myths. Jean Baptiste Charbonneau
Okay, we recently discussed Sacagawea and, in that context, discussed Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. Surely we have this covered?
Well, mostly. But to complete the story we really need to address Jean Baptiste as, just like his famous mother, he's the subject of a Wyoming myth. And indeed, it's the same myth.
And its illustrative as to both, as the later life of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau is very well known, and demonstrable with finality. We know where he went to school, what he did as a young man, a middle aged man, and in the context of his times, as an old man.
And what he did not do is to go to the Wind River Reservation with his very aged mother.
But that's the myth.
It's hard not to feel sad about the life of Jean Baptiste, even though he probably didn't see it as sad himself. He wasn't even one year old when he was packed by his mother, as slave to his father, across the western half of North America as his famous mother acted as a guide and interpreter for the Corps of Discovery. He was a young boy when his mother gave him up to William Clark to be educated, and Clark in fact enrolled him in two successive schools, the first a Jesuit school and the second another private school, at great expense. He was therefore well educated for this time and became even more so when met Duke Friedrich Paul Wihlem of Wurttenberg in 1823 while he was traveling in the United States. Jean Baptiste was working at a Kaw trading post on the Kansas River at the time. The Duke was being guided by Toussaint Charbonneau on a trip to the northern plains. He invited the younger Charbonneau to return to Europe with him, which he did. He apparently traveled with the Duke in Europe and Africa while his guest.
Upon returning to North American he resumed a Western life and worked as a trapper, hunter and guide. He was later a gold prospector. In 1866 he died in Oregon after some sort of accident which threw him into a frigid river and left him with pneumonia. He was 61 years old at the time.
He lived a rich and varied life, and a fairly well documented one. That he died in Oregon is something for which there is no doubt.
None the less, Grace Raymond Hebard placed his death in 1885 on the Wind River Reservation, and the work of Dr. Charles Eastman likewise places him there. And this all dates to the the stories associated with Porivo, and her adult son who entered the Reservation with her. As with his mother, who died in North Dakota, there is a grave marker for him on the Reservation.
His actual grave is known as to location, and is in Oregon.
As with his famous mother, his reconstructed myth does not serve him well, although unlike his mother he lived a fairly long life. He would have lived a longer one if the Wyoming myth was correct, but that would not do his life justice. It was remarkably adventuresome right up to the point of his death, and like his mothers it crossed back and forth between two worlds in a way that makes contemporary readers uncomfortable.
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