A page wherein the adventure eclipses the genealogy
There's a certain cachet in being part-Native American. It's easy to find online sources which intend to expose famous people for making false claims about their Native American ancestry. What's not so easy to find is a credible explanation for why it seems so cool to have Indian roots. Nevertheless, it is cool.
Into the many families that claim at least one Indian ancestor fall the AuBuchons. For many years now I've heard family rumors that we were part Native American. And, considering that our French ancestors landed here in the 1600's, the possibility seems not only plausible but, indeed, inevitable: how could those French trappers have avoided intimate contact with the indigenous people?
Still, saying's one thing, proving's another. In 2014 or so, this is what I set out to do.
On this page I document my research into this claim, focusing less on the final result than on the process itself. Hopefully the page will give a sense of the experience of doing genealogical research, how it is endlessly frustrating, yet rewarding when, after much effort—and after following many leads into a dead-end—something that is possibly close to the truth emerges.
Our Indian Roots, Version One
The first account of our Indian ancestry that I remember ever hearing goes something like this. My grandmother, Catherine AuBuchon, née Knoppe, once told the story of having a conversation with her husband's paternal grandmother. In this conversation, the elderly woman remembered aloud her youth spent on and Indian reservation in Oklahoma.
Here's a snippet of the family tree showing the major players in this story, with my own mother, Corinne AuBuchon Kurlandski, as a point of reference.
As you can see, the woman my grandmother spoke to was Pelagie Mary David. The family tree has her birthplace as St. Genevieve, Missouri. If this was truly her birthplace, then the story is probably mistaken in some way. Ascertaining her birthplace and childhood would be the direction to go if we were to follow this lead.
Version Two, Having More Detail
The second account of our Indian ancestry comes from a recent email (dated January 2015) from my Aunt Virginia, my mom's sister.
Our Indian ancestor was right here in Missouri. When François Vallé was Governor of the Louisiana Territory, living in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, he fathered a daughter by an Indian woman and raised the girl, Marguerite, as a daughter of the family. She was given dowry, and when she was a young teenager he gave her a very large parcel of land, being afraid that when he died, her half siblings would not honor his wishes of what he wanted her to inherit. He chose a husband for her—Louis Caron, who was part French, part Spanish and maybe part Indian. They had a daughter, Pelagie, who married Louis Aubuchon. Louis and Pelagie had a son, Antoine, who I believe carried on the name until a couple of more generations when a George Aubuchon married a Bertha Franke, who were my grandparents and grandparents of your mom, Corinne.
At the end of the email, Aunt Ginny makes it clear she's remembering all this off the top of her head. She promises to write again with more information. This probably explains why the names and relations she gives don't exactly match what is in the family tree. My copy of the tree, a large, rolled-up piece of paper whose connecting lines have not entirely withstood the test of time, has—if I am reading it right—the following for the connection from my mother going back to Marguerite Vallé and her father.
So, if we were to follow the scent of this lead, the focus of our investigation should be François Vallé and his daughter, Marguerite.
Internet Search on 'François Vallé'
A quick internet search has produced the following items of interest.
Mike Barteit on François Vallé
Descendents of Marguerite Vallé
Webpage identifying Marguerite as half-Indian and illegitimate
And, finally, here's a source that cites another source. This is the best lead so far, and worth quoting. But note that Marguerite is mentioned simply as "illegitimate," not Indian.
VALLE, François, I, habitant, merchant, political leader in Upper Louisiana. Born, Beauport, Quebec, January 2, 1716; son of Charles La Vallée and Geneviève Marcou. Removed to Illinois country. Married, Kaskaskia, January 7, 1748, Marianne Billeron, daughter of Léonard Billeron, royal notary, and Maire-Claire Catoise. Children: Marie-Louise (b. ca. 1750), Charles (b. ca. 1752), Joseph (b. ca. 1756), François II (q.v.), Jean-Baptiste (q.v.), Marguerite (illegitimate). Removed to Ste. Geneviève, ca. 1754; captain of the militia and civil judge at Ste. Geneviève, ca. 1759-1783; one of wealthiest and most powerful men in Upper Louisiana. Died, September 29, 1783; interred Ste. Geneviève. C.J.E. Sources: Mary L. Dalton, "Notes on the Genealogy of the Vallé Family," Missouri Historical Society Collections, II (1906); Carl J. Ekberg, Colonial Ste. Geneviève (1957) (Dictionary of Louisiana Biography: "VALLE, François")
The next step would be to get our hands on one or both of the works cited above, and see if either contains any additional information on Marguerite.
Some Corroborating Evidence
My Aunt Virginia also forwarded me an email from her grandson, Dan—my first cousin once removed, I believe. (See Cousin Chart note below.) In that email, Dan says:
So we received grandma's full ancestry report today and it confirms she is 0.4% Native American. That is precisely how much we would expect based on the number of generations ago the genealogy says. They don't have any additional info on what tribe at this time, but they might add that ability in the future.
About 99% of grandma's DNA is Northern European. Mainly French and German but also Scandinavian and British Isles. Not really any Eastern European, but the big surprise to me was the 0.5% Sardinian. This would mean there is a relative from roughly 6 generations prior was 100% Sardinian. I don't see anything in the genealogy with this so we have a bit of a mystery to investigate!
(I assume that the "grandma" mentioned above is my Aunt Ginny.) I don't know much at all about DNA, and apart from the contents of the email quoted above I know nothing about how Ginny's ancestry was tested. But I'm pretty sure that the process is a little iffy, and the results not entirely reliable. To quote an article in Slate:
But it’s impossible to come up with a meaningful rate of Native American heritage using DNA tests, at least for the moment. Using genetic material from the mitochondria (which is passed from mother to child) and from the Y-chromosome (passed from father to son), it's possible to trace ancestral origins along the male and female lines that run down each side of a person's family tree—his mother's mother's mother, his father's father's father, and so on. But progenitors anywhere in the middle, which constitute the overwhelming majority of a person's ancestry, are harder to trace, especially as the tree broadens. Geneticists are constantly improving their odds by identifying more telltale sequences that might survive the reshuffling across multiple generations, but the science is still young. (Article by Brian Palmer)
If I read this right, the DNA test Aunt Ginny had falls into the "harder to trace" category, because the line going back to Marguerite Vallé's American Indian mother follows neither an all-male nor an all-female route.
Also, if I count the generations right, the percentage of Native American DNA in Ginny (as well as my own mom), would be about 0.75%, which is pretty close to 0.4%. (Follow the tree above to check my math, which goes: Marguerite was 50% American Indian; her daughter, Carolyn, 25%; her daughter, Melanie, 12.5%; her son, Theodore, 6.25%; his son, George, 3.1 %; my grandfather, Frank, 1.5%; and his daughters, Virginia and Corinne, 0.75%.
As I said above, though, I am familiar with little about all this, and maybe my calculations have nothing to do with the number 0.4% which Dan reports.
A New Lead
In March, 2016, I received an email from, as he put it, "a very distant cousin" named Dan Heise. He writes:
I too am from the same line of Louis Caron and Marguerite Vallé. [...] The "Caron" (it changed to Carrow at some point or another) stuck around for a while, and it was only after my grandmother (maiden name Carrow) married my grandfather (last name Heise, like you see in my email/signature) that it kind of stopped in my line.
He expressed some frustration with the dearth of information from the days of Marguerite Vallé in that part of the world, a frustration that I share. It stands to reason, though: remember that we're talking about a time not only before Missouri became a state, and not only before that side of the Mississippi was a part of the United States, but a time before there even was a United States at all.
Dan's email prompted me to do a little more digging.
I started with Carolyn Caron on the family tree and tried to find Caron, Carron, or Carrow in the same Dictionary of Louisiana Biography quoted above. Nothing.
So I googled (or actually yahood) "melanie celeste pepin". This led me to her page in the Geni website (www.geni.com); precisely two clicks later I was on Marguerite Vallé's page.
Birthdate: March 6, 1760
Birthplace: Ste. Genevieve, Missouri
Death: Died 1804
Place of Burial: Ste. Genevieve, MO, USA
Immediate Family: Daughter of François Charles Vallé, Sr. and NN Amerindienne. Wife of Louis Carron. Mother of Joseph Carron, Julie Caron and Caroline Pepin. Half sister of Marie Louise Vallé, Charles Vallé, Joseph Vallé, François Charles Vallé, Jr. and Jean-Baptiste Vallé.
Eureka! ... Well, maybe not. A careful reader will have noticed that I had already been to this web page months before. I actually have a link to it above. But that's the way genealogy works. At least for me. In fits and starts. Panning for gold in a stream I've already panned and missed the nuggets that were there.
The skeptic in me would like to see some documentation of the source(s) of this information. If it comes from the same source as the Dictionary quoted above, it's not corroborating evidence. However, if Geni's source was different, well, that could be very interesting. Against my skeptical nature, I do have to admit that all the additional information (Marguerite's birthplace, birth date and so on) strongly suggest that we have found a separate piece of evidence which lends credence to the proposition that we are part Native American after all. That would make four pieces of evidence, by my count: family lore (if you care to trust that), the Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, Aunt Ginny's DNA, and the Geni website.
But, giving voice to the other side of my brain, we have to admit that the "NN Amerindienne" claim above could be nothing more than another piece of family lore—maybe some user who joined Geni just typed that in without any good, objective justification. In which case there are only three pieces of evidence.
Maybe so, says the other half, but isn't it interesting the way they spelled "Indian"? Odd, you must admit. It's French, and it's so very French that the person who entered the word even used the feminine form of the noun. Which is very different from the all-English family lore I've heard over the years, and very different from the all-English Dictionary quoted above. Ergo, maybe we do have a fourth piece of evidence after all.
I've come tantalizingly close to getting details on the Geni page for Marguerite. I joined Geni as a "basic" member and contacted the managers of the web page for her, practically begging for more information. One of the managers, a certain M. Anderson, has yet to provide details on the source of her information, but she did tell me that the "NN" is short for the Latin Nomen Nescio, used by genealogists to signify and unknown or partially unknown name.
François Vallé
In 2021, six years after beginning this particular genealogical adventure, it became clear to me that it was time to devote a separate page to François Vallé.
Notes
Cousin Chart
(referenced in Some Corroborating Evidence on this page)
If like me you don't know your second cousin once removed from a hole in the ground, see the excellent cousin chart offered by the folks at FamilySearch.org.
New Information
The original version of this webpage was revised in 2021. The revision included a new way of recording and sharing my notes and to-do lists. That is why items in the "My To-Do List" section of the original webpage have been moved to Old Indian Ancestry Notes.
A distant relation contacted me in 2019 with some interesting information. You'll find the full text at Brenda Weeks' Email. Here are some take-aways:
- Brenda surely knows a lot more than I do about genealogy (she's an officer of the Blair Society for Genealogical Research).
- She has no doubts at all about the usefulness and accuracy of DNA testing, though she does say that the percentages given by the results are sometimes averages and so should not be taken literally.
- She is also a descendant of Marguerite Vallé, and can identify the exact lineage from Marguerite to herself.
Another relation, named Regina Rigdon, also contacted me in 2019. Her email is much more succinct:
Our family also is traced back to Marguerite and Francoise Valle' on ancestry.com. Her mother is listed as Gabriel Ouessa of Pawnee tribe. Most of our relatives do come from St. Genevieve but who knows if someone just added all of this. We trace with Carron, Beck and Rigdon.
My brother's DNA results show 2% Indian.
Regina puts her finger on the problem when she writes "who knows if someone just added all of this." It's tempting to accept what you see online as the truth, especially when it conforms with what you want to believe. The less a claim is vetted, the less we should be willing to believe it—and when it comes to most of the Internet, there's really very little vetting going on at all.