George Drouillards father was Pierre Drouillard of Detroit. Church records listPierre Drouillard having a child with an Asoundechris Flathead in 1773. The child was baptized George Pierre Drouillard. Born in 1773, the son of a of a French Canadian adventurer and Indian trader father and Shawnee Indian birth mother, George Drouillard (usually spelled and pronounced “Drewyer” in journals) was raised by his fathers wife Angelica des Compes Labadie and baptised in 1775 at the Church of the Assumption (now Windsor, Ontario) across the Detroit River from Detroit Michigan. As a boy George Drouillard, at the side of his father and at his Trading Post, learned frontier skills and became a hunter, trapper, and scout. He possessed the ability to interpret geographic information to create maps. He grew up speaking Shawnee, English and French. He was also proficient at sign language common among Native peoples of different language families. George was calm, confident, and level-headed. Physically he was tall and straight with black hair and dark eyes. Even when relaxed George stood straight. Like his birth mother he had been kept as a baby in a flat-backed cradleboard which shaped him with an erect posture. His father, Pierre Drouillard, was commissioned as a captain by the British army and credited with saving the life of colonist and explorer Simon Kenton in 1778 when he was captured and being held prisoner by the Shawnee. George grew up in the company of Simon Kenton, Daniel Boone, and George Rogers Clark. During the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803-1806 to find a water route to the Pacific Ocean, George was hired as a civilian at the age of 20 by Captain Meriwether Lewis, and paid five times more than the expedition’s enlisted men. His skills as an outdoorsman and an Indian diplomat proved to be as valuable as his proficiency at language. During the expedition he hunted game, tracked down lost horses and deserters, bartered for canoes and fought Indians. During the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803-1806 By the spring of 1807, after returning to the fur trade, George joined an expedition into the territory of the Blackfeet, who were not at all pleased to see trappers working their land. Drouillard was tried in 1808 for the murder of Antoine Bissonnet who had stolen blankets and other items and deserted their hunting party. Drouillard was sent to find the deserter and ordered to bring Bissonnet back “dead or alive. Even in an age when harsh corporal punishment was common, the execution of a deserter without benefit of trial came as a shock. Drouillard was miserable about what he had done. His lawyers argued convincingly that he was just following orders and a jury acquitted him after fifteen minutes. Drouillard had spent most of the money he had made on the Lewis and Clark expedition and his fur trapping ventures on legal fees. He embarked on another trip up the Missouri to try to make up for his losses. George always declared he was too much of a Indian to be killed by a Indian. In early May of 1810, Drouillard was setting traps with two Delaware Indians when they were attacked by a large party of mounted Blackfeet. According to a contemporary account, Drouillard put up a “most obstinate resistance” with rifle, pistol, knife, and tomahawk, but he and the two Delawares were overwhelmed. His body and his horse were found dead by his partners. His head was cut off, his entrails torn out, and his body hacked to pieces. His friends saw from the marks on the ground that he must have fought in a circle on horseback, and he took some of his attackers down with him, but being badly outnumbered his life came to a violent end. George Drouillard was buried in an unmarked grave. Thus ended the 28 year old life of a magnificent outdoorsman who was considered one of the most valuable men on the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 06:54:32 +0000
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