Biographie Malhiot Francois-Xavier-Ignace
Lettre du père conservé par la Wisconsin Historical Society. Pierre Ignace tenait un journal de son voyage au Wisconsin 1803-1804
La même signature se trouve sur l'acte de mariage de son fils 1823 à Contrecour
Voici une publication du Antigo Journal du 2 septembre 1931, compilé de la Wisconsin Historical Collection.
Malhiot
Francois
Victor Malhiot was born in 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence.
He was only fifteen years of age when he became an articled clerk to the
North West Fur Company. In 1796 he was appointed to the Upper Red River
Department where he remained about eight years. In the summer of 1804
he was sent to take charge of the post at Lac du Flambeau, where the complaints
with respect to the clerk in charge, Charles Gauthier, seemed to make
some change necessary.
The
journal published in the Wisconsin Historical Collections, recounts the
experiences of the succeeding winter. In 1807 he resigned. He married
an Indian woman on August 8, 1800, at the fort at the mouth of the Winnipeg
River. On leaving the interior he left her with her own people but took
with him his half-breed son, Francois Xavier Ignace. Settling at Contrecouer
he educated his son and lived there until his death in 1840. He was known
to his relatives and fiends as Erambert.
He
was a cousin of Jaques Porlier of Green Bay, great-grandfather of Mrs.
Gust. Kawalski of Antigo, and a short time after his return from the Northwest
he lived with the latter's maiden sisters at Vercheres. He is frequently
mentioned in family letters.
Route
Traders Followed
Malhiot's
Journal shows that two days were spent in canoe journey from Portage (Long)
Lake to Lac du Flambeau. The party first made its way by a network of
lakes and streams to Turtle Lake, in northwest Vilas County: thence by
short portages they reached the Manitowish River; they went eighteen miles
down-stream to the Flambeau River, and twenty-four miles to Lac du Flambeau.
Doty,
in a letter to Governor Cass, described the route as from the mouth of
the Montreal River to Turtle Lake, 'From where there is a portage one-fourth
of a mile to a small pond, thence up the outlet of a small lake one-fourth
of a mile, from which a portage of three miles is made to the Old Plantation
River. This is descended eighteen miles to the entrance of the Flambeau
River, which rises in the lake of the same name, and is twenty four miles
long."
In
Malhiot's day a comparatively small, insignificant village of Chippewa
dwelt at the mouth of the Ontonagon River, and was closely connected with
the Lac du Flambeau Band, so that the trade was usually conducted from
that point.
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