More on the Elusive Andre Massé, Early Settler of the Attakapas District

In his books Athanase de Mézières and the Louisiana-Texas Frontier, 1768-1780 (1914, as editor) and Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century: Studies in Spanish Colonial History and Administration (1915, as author), historian Herbert Eugene Bolton provided valuable information about Andre Massé, the earliest known European settler in the Attakapas District of south Louisiana.

One of Bolton’s sources about Massé was a 1756 petition that Massé wrote to the Viceroy of New Spain in Mexico City, per the governor of the province of Texas at Los Adaes (near Natchitoches in present-day Louisiana), to ask permission to move from the Attakapas to the presidio of San Agustín de Ahumada in southeast Texas.

No images of Andre Massé are known to exist,
but I like to think he looked something like this.
(Source: Frederic Remington, 1880 [public domain])

What was Massé's reason for wanting to move from French to Spanish territory?

Intriguingly, he wanted to free his slaves (more difficult to do in French territory than Spanish) and to leave them part of his estate.

Massé did eventually free his slaves, not in Texas, but in Louisiana, because the Viceroy of Mexico — no doubt suspicious of a Frenchman wanting to reside in the Spanish Empire — rejected his petition.

Last year I decided to track down Massé’s original petition to see if it contained historical information not mentioned by Bolton.  According to Bolton, the original document sat in the Archivo General de la Nación, the Mexican national archives in Mexico City. Bolton even gave very specific locations for this document, noting that it lay in the Correspondencia de los Virreyes, vol. 1, Amarillas, 1, 1755-1756, or, more specifically, in Correspondencia de los Virreyes II, serie i, folio 264.

I know one person in all of Mexico and she happens to be a professor of history in Mexico City, fluent in Spanish and well familiar with the Archivo General. At my request she went to the Archivo to search for Massé’s petition — and could not find it! The collection, she stated, was a terrible mess.  Nothing was where it was supposed to be.

It had been a hundred years since Bolton had examined Massé’s petition in the Archivo General. Who knows what could have happened to the document in the meantime?

Instead of giving up the search, I checked to see if Bolton did not leave behind his research notes. As it turned out, he left his notes to UC-Berkeley, which had compiled an extremely detailed finding aid for the collection. After studying the finding aid, I hired a graduate student at Berkeley to go to Bancroft Library and look in one particular box.

Title page of one of Bolton's books (1914).

According to the finding aid, that box contained documents pertaining to the incursion of Frenchmen onto Spanish soil.

Sure enough, there was Bolton’s typewritten transcript of Massé’s 1756 petition to the Viceroy of New Spain.

Below I post a translation of Massé’s original document, or, rather, of Bolton’s transcript of Massé’s original document.  The original was written to the Spanish in French, and not by Massé, but by his friend, the troubled French cleric Abbé Didier. (I’ll explain later why I say “troubled.”) The translation is by my acquaintance, Dr. Judith Rygiel of Carelton University in Ottawa, and myself.  (That is, I tweaked her translation.)

I might eventually post a transcript (per Bolton) of the original French document and, for comparison, a transcript (again per Bolton) of the official Spanish translation prepared in 1756. Indeed, in a couple of instances Bolton’s transcript of the original French document appears to contain typographical errors, and the only way I could figure out a misspelled or missing word was to consult the Spanish translation.

Here is the translation (which I consider a work in progress):

Monsieur Massé, settler, distinguished and by his birth and merit, presently on his cattle ranch in the Attakapas, a dependent of New Orleans, arriving finally at an advanced age without having effected the intention of giving liberty to his slaves, and at the same time to leave them his goods after his death, is forced and obliged to turn to his Excellency, the Illustrious Monseigneur, Viceroy of Mexico, to put him and his dependents under his strong protection. This is directed, by the intervention of Monsieur the Abbé Didier, secular priest, his partner in his cattle, to Monsieur le Gouverneur of the post of Adays, to take the action most suitable to the matter so that the affair does not transpire until after its entire execution. The said Sieur Massé reserving the right to deduce from His Excellency the legitimate reasons that commit him to this change. 

The said Monsieur le Gouverneur of Adays, to whom the said Sieur Massé is not unknown, knows well the advantages which will result from the retreat of the said Sieur Massé and of the establishment, which he can form, by himself, in the St. Augustin post, without it being necessary of the said Sieur Didier to actually describe them. That which he can truly assure is that His Majesty will find in one and the other as much and affection as in his most loyal subjects. 

1st. The said Massé possesses in common with the said Abbé Didier a considerable number of cattle, cows and horses, which can be easily transported to the citadel of St. Augustin, which will be a great benefit for the inhabitants of the post.  

2nd. The large and the small Attakapas, entirely devoted to the said M. Massé and who have their village on the other side of the River, are sure to follow him, by means of which no one will have to fear any enemy of that side. 

3rd. His male Negroes, which are for the most part already married to his female Negroes, and who have children, are one seed, these same all transported to the place, having [no] need to take them further. 

4th. The said M. Massé knows the strength and the foibles of the [Indian] Nations of the North, such as the Tavayages, the Laitas, Patoca, Icara, and Panis, because he has visited them. He is able to give a most faithful account and also the means to secure them. 

5th. The said M. Massé does not demand any recompense except the protection of his Excellency, Monsieur le Viceroy, and to be able to enjoy, he and his dependents, the same advantages as the other subjects of his Majesty, the King of Spain. 

Le Sieur Abbé Didier, who asks for the same grace for himself, is able to prove his perfect submission and indefatigable zeal for the growth of God’s domain and of the State of Spain. He will offer every day vows to God all-powerful for the prosperity of his most serene Monseigneur le Viceroy of Mexico, for whom he has the most profound respect. 

At Adayes 19th July

1756 

The most faithful, the most humble

and the most obedient servant, 

Didier, Secular Priest

Note: It is interesting to note that Didier — if Bolton’s transcript is true to the original — renders Massé’s name as I do here with an accent aigu over the “e”.  A friend of Massé, Didier presumably would have known how Massé pronounced his name and how to properly render that name in French. In short, Massé apparently did not pronounce his name as MASS or (as I’ve been pronouncing it) MAS-SUH, but MAS-SAY.

The Grevembergs, Early Cattle Ranchers of the Attakapas

Eighteenth-century colonists in south Louisiana’s Attakapas region commonly raised cattle, not only to feed themselves, but to feed the lower Louisiana colony in general and New Orleans in particular. An important source of information about this early cattle industry is the historical document known as The Brand Book for the Opelousas and Attakapas Districts. The original is located in the Jefferson Caffery Louisiana Room of Dupré Library at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. 


Nineteenth-century engraving of a south Louisiana cattle rancher.
(Source: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline
[NY:  John B. Alden, 1892].)

Researchers are fond of citing The Brand Book’s earliest entry as proof that cattle ranching in Louisiana extended back as early as the 1730s. The entry in question is the brand registration for Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg, colonists of Flemish ancestry who settled around present-day New Iberia. 



As Maurine Bergerie writes in They Tasted Bayou Water: A Brief History of Iberia Parish (1962), “Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg registered their brand in 1739. . . .” Likewise, William Faulkner Rushton observes in The Cajuns: From Acadia to Louisiana (1979), “Louisiana’s cattle industry goes back at least to 1739, the date the first cattle brand was recorded in the state’s French ‘brand book.’”

However, I think 1739 is incorrect. 



I have no doubt that The Brand Book reads “1739,” but I think this date is a mistake — perhaps a simple careless error made by an anonymous scribe in the course of copying and recopying The Brand Book.

Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg's cattle brand entries
in The Brand Book, dated "1739." (Click to enlarge.) 
(Source: Jefferson Caffery Louisiana Room, Dupré Library,
University of Louisiana at Lafayette.)

I am not the first to suspect an error. As folklorist Lauren C. Post noted in The McNeese Review academic journal (1958):

As might be expected, with a long succession of brand recorders working over a period of sixty-four years and for a period which extended over 128 years, the work had many inconsistencies. At least, there appear to be inconsistencies. One page . . . shows that Louis Grevemberg registered his 5F brand in 1737. In another place the same book shows that he registered the same brand in 1739. The book for 1760-1888 listed Louis Grevemberg as registering the 5F brand on October 14, 1793. 

Besides these inconsistencies noted by Post, I believe the 1739 (and 1737) date to be incorrect for the following reasons:

First, a glance at other early entries in The Brand Book reveals no others from the 1730s. Indeed, except for a couple of entries from the late 1740s (which I also find suspect), the mass of registered brands date from the 1760s and later, when settlement of the Attakapas District finally began in earnest.

Detail of a sample page from The Brand Book. (Source: Photo of
facsimile in The African American Museum, St. Martinville, La.)

Second, there is no evidence that the brothers Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg were in the Attakapas District before 1770, when Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg (presumably their father) received a Spanish land grant in the region. (France gave Louisiana to Spain in 1762, explaining why Jean-Baptiste received not a French but a Spanish land grant in 1770.) Indeed, Louis and Barthélémy only received land grants for themselves in the region in 1774 and 1781, respectively. (Correction: In 1765 Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg wrote the French caretaker government of Spanish Louisiana that he had been in possession of his Attakapas land "for fourteen years past" and noted that he purchased this land "to form a vacherie. . . ." In short, Grevemberg established a cattle ranch in the Attakapas District in 1751. Regardless, the founding of this vacherie still post-dates the 1737 and 1739 dates so often cited and does not preclude Grevemberg from first registering his brand decades later, when the region's increasing population demanded the creation of cattle brands. Note that Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg still did not receive a formal Spanish land grant until 1770. [Source: Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg memorial, Pintado Papers, typewritten translation on microfilm, St. Martin Parish Library, St. Martinville, La. — thanks to Don Arceneaux for informing me of this document.])

Finally (and most convincingly), Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg were born, respectively, in 1731 and 1753 — which means that Louis would have been only six to eight years old when his brands were allegedly registered; and that Barthélémy’s brands would have been registered fourteen to sixteen years before his own birth!

For these reasons I do not believe that Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg registered cattle brands in the Attakapas District in 1737 and 1739. Rather, I think it most likely that Louis and Barthélémy registered their brands some time after their father received his Attakapas land grant in 1770, or after they received their own land grants in the region a few years later. Indeed, as Post observed, The Brand Book does refer to Louis Grevemberg registering a brand in 1793, even while it also refers to him doing so allegedly in 1737 and 1739.

Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg's cattle brand entries
in The Brand Book, dated "1793" (Click to enlarge.)
(Source: Jefferson Caffery Louisiana Room, Dupré Library, University of Louisiana at Lafayette)

However, there is one (I think minor) flaw in my assertion — that is, Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg had a grandfather named Barthélémy (born ca. 1685 in Flanders, Belgium). One could therefore argue that it was this earlier Barthélémy Grevemberg who registered his brand in the 1730s. This seems unlikely, however, because, again, there is no other evidence that the Grevembergs — or any other colonists, not even the intrepid André Masse — had settled in the Attakapas region so early. Moreover, such a counterargument would still not account for the alleged registering of Louis Grevemberg's brand in 1737/1739.

An addendum concerning the identity of Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg: In 1779 a colonist by this name rendered enormous assistance to the founders of Nueva Iberia (present-day New Iberia). I believe that this Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg was a brother of Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg, but have yet to prove this link. He clearly was not Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg, father of Louis and Barthélémy Grevemberg, for colonial records indicate that their father had died by 19 June 1772.

Signature of Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg,
who assisted the Nueva Iberia colony, 1779.
(Source: Center for Louisiana Studies, 
University of Louisiana at Lafayette.)

A related note: In his book Changing Tides: Twilight and Dawn in the Spanish Sea, 1763-1803 (1995), historian Robert S. Weddle identifies this same Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg as “Jean Baptiste Grevemberg dit Gonsoulin” — that is, Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg nicknamed Gonsoulin. But this is incorrect: Jean-Baptiste Grevemberg actually bore the same nickname as the other males of his family, which was “dit Flammand,” a reference to the family’s Flemish roots.

Gonsoulin, on the other hand, was an entirely different colonist. His full name was François Gonsoulin and he often worked as a surveyor in the Attakapas region.

Signature of François Gonsoulin, 1779. (Source: Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Louisiana at Lafayette.)

Sources:

Maurine Bergerie, They Tasted Bayou Water: A Brief History of Iberia Parish (New Orleans, La.: Pelican, 1962).

Rev. Donald J. Hebert, Southwest Lousiana Records, Vols. 1 and 2, s.v. "Grevemberg."

Lauren C. Post, "Cattle Branding in Southwest Louisiana," The McNeese Review X (1958): 101-117.

William Faulkner Rushton, The Cajuns: From Acadia to Louisiana (New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1979).