Col. La Balme and The American Revolution on the Frontier—A Mysterious Fate

Fouier-Major Augustin de La Balme of the Gendarmerie de France, a personal Gaurd Regiment of the King was decorated and respected cavalry officer despite his low birth.

Col. Augustin de La Balme was a French cavalry officer who came to the American shores as an early volunteer with the Continental Army in 1777.  The veteran officer had dreams of glory and advancement that were not realized.  Three years later he died in a desperate fight after being ambushed and besieged in a makeshift mud fort on the banks of an obscure creek in what is now Indiana.  How he got there and just what the hell he thought he was going to accomplish are matters of some considerable mystery and dispute.

He was born as Augustin Mottin on August 28, 1733 in the shadows of the French Alps in the Saint-Antoine-l’Abbaye, which was also known as La-Motte-Saint-Didier.  His father was not a noble, but a tradesman a tanner.  His family was well enough off, however, to buy his admission as a trooper into the prestigious Scottish Company of the Gendarmerie de France, a personal regiment of the King and one of two Guards regiments.  Mottin was evidently a brave and competent soldier and despite his lowly birth rose to become an officer during the Seven Years War.  He was one of the few cavalry officers to survive the disastrous Battle of Minden in 1759.

Mottin subsequently became the Riding Master at the Gendarmerie Riding School in Lunéville.  He retired on pension with the rank of Fourrier-Major in 1773 and wrote two highly regarded manuals, one on horsemanship and the other on cavalry tactics under the nom de plume Augustin de La Balme.  The books made him well known in European military circles.

La Balme's tactical cavalry manual made him well known in European military circles.  He came to the Continental Army a far more experienced officer than the young Marquis de Lafayatte but failed to catch Washington's eye or affection.

In 1777 La Balme, as he was now known, became one of a small handful of French officers who without permission—but perhaps with a wink and a nod—came to the rebellious colonies the best known of whom was the younger, dashing, and noble-born Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.  Lafayette was rewarded with a commission as a Major General and quickly became an aide and favorite to Commanding General George Washington of the Continental Army.

The far more experienced La Balme was made a Colonel and appointed the Army’s Inspector of Cavalry, a post much more impressive in title than in reality.  The Americans had never really developed a cavalry tradition.  Outside of a few locally raised companies, widely scattered, and armed and trained to different drills and uses, there was no major Continental cavalry force.  La Balme hoped to create order out of chaos, consolidate training based on his own methods and eventually be placed in direct command of a regiment of mounted regulars.

Washington concluded that the creation of a regularized cavalry was needed, especially for operations in the South where mounted Tory units under Banastre Tarleton were proving devastatingly effective.  But the Polish officer Casmir Pulaski caught Washington’s ear and was commissioned to form the cavalry unit that came to be known a Pulaski’s Legion.  The Pole, not La Balme, became known as the Father of the American Cavalry and went on to glory and death leading an ill-conceived charge on English guns trying to re-take Savannah.

The French settlement of Kaskaskia on the Mississippi River in the Illinois country in the late 1700s.  The Jesuit compound in the foreground was latter transformed into a Fort with guard towers at the corners of a raised palisade.  It was that fort that George Roger Clark took for Virginia and where La Balme materialized with his scheme to take far distant Fort Detroit. 

Disgusted at the snub, La Balme resigned his Continental Army commission in 1780.  He next appeared in the frontier town of Kaskaskia on the Mississippi River in the Illinois country.  What he was doing there and under whose, if any, orders, is a bit of a mystery.  He showed up in the uniform and identity of a French officer, not a Continental one.  He brought with him a French Fleur de Lis flag, not a Continental banner.  

Apparently, he had a plan inspired by George Rogers Clark’s daring success in liberating the River settlements from the English and then marching overland to take Fort Vincennes.   La Balme planned to raise a force from among the French militia in the scattered settlements and make an even longer overland trek to seize the English western stronghold at far away Fort Detroit.  He expected the large French population in the region, including those in the fort, to join him.

Some say that he was operating under secret orders from Washington, but no evidence of this has ever been found.  Others think Washington gave tacit approval to the scheme.  Still others believe that La Balme was acting purely on his own and wonder if he planned to capture the fort for the Americans, the French, or perhaps to establish an independent French speaking country from what had been Lower Quebec.   Claiming it for France seemed to make little sense because the English were in firm control of Quebec and Upper and Lower Canada to the east and unlikely to lose that grip.  And he could not connect to the south with Louisiana which was then in Spanish hands.  

The sudden appearance of a French officer among them cheered the settlers of the Illinois Bottom.  They had chaffed at English rule and the disruption of their old fur trading patterns with the native tribes.  But they were also distrustful of their new masters, the Virginians.  La Balme collected the complaints and concerns of the local citizens and sent them by messenger to the French agent at Fort Pitt, presumably to be acted on by the Governor of Virginia, then Thomas Jefferson.

La Balme gathered his forces and began to execute his plan by ordering a diversionary attack on Fort St. Joseph at the mouth of the St. Joseph River on the shores of Lake Michigan.  That small force was consisted of settlers  from Cahokia led by militiaman Jean-Baptiste Hamelin and Lt. Thomas Brady, one of the few Virginia officers on the frontier.  After raiding and looting the supply depot for English allies the Miami and Potawatomi, the party was hunted down and defeated by a native force led by British Lt. Dagreaux Du Quindre at Petit Fort in the Dunes at the lower end of the Lake.  Instead of a diversion, the action alerted the English and their allies that military activity was picking up on the frontier.

The French officer was unaware and unprepared for the realities of campaigning on the frontier, including the grueling long marches over swampy ground, through thick forests, and across prairies where the tall grass waved high above men’s heads making navigation difficult.  There were only rudimentary Indian and deer trails, and sometimes none at all.  There were several streams and some good sized rivers to ford, luckily at low water, in the fall.  

He had also picked a time of year when the enemy tribes had hunting parties out preparing for the winter making an accidental encounter that would tip his hand more likely.  Fortunately his militiamen included not just bottom land farmers, but experienced voyagers and fur traders who knew the country.

La Balme left the country around Kaskaskia and Chahokia with about 60 men and expected to rally more at Vincennes.  After re-tracing Rogers’s march he arrived at Vincennes and indeed found eager recruits. From there he followed the Wabash and collected more men at the settlements of Ouiatenon (present day West Lafayette, Indiana) and Kekionga (now Fort Wayne). 

                                                            A French militiaman volunteer on La Balme's raid.

At Keionga he expected to capture the British agent Charles Beaubien, and a number of Miami known to be there—and perhaps even hoped to turn them into allies.  But the agent and most of the tribesmen were gone for the long hunt.  La Balme raised the French flag and paused three days to recruit locals and to loot the supplies of the trading post.  He sent out scouts to raise more volunteers, but none arrived.  

La Balme now had around one hundred men under his command and was still far from Detroit.  He decided to split his forces, leaving about twenty of his men to garrison Keionga while he marched on a quick side-raid on a trading post on the Eel River.  But the returning Miami hunting party had spotted the French flag over Kekionga.  The large hunting party easily overwhelmed the small garrison.

                                A probably unreliable but widely circulated portrait of Little Turtle as a young Miami war chief. 

Unaware that he had lost his base and his rear was exposed, La Balme pressed on.  Little Turtle, a local Miami chief from a village on the Eel River was alerted by runners from Kekionga who had easily gotten ahead of La Balme’s slow moving party.  Little Turtle gathered his warriors and laid an ambush at a key ford of the river.  La Balme marched right into the trap.

There was a sharp fight and both sides were, at first, evenly matched.  The surprised militiamen rallied and were able to dig mud fortifications along the river bank.  The battle settled into a siege with La Balme hoping for aid from Kekionga or from other French settlements.  Meanwhile more Miami gathered and his forces were picked off one by one.  

Accounts differ as to how long the French held out.  Some say days, some say a week or more.  It was unlikely at the longer range of the accounts.  On or about November 4 or 5 La Balme was killed.  Finally his men were overwhelmed and most of them killed.  Only a handful would live to return to their homes.

The mission was a failure and La Balme, far from winning glory, became all but forgotten.  This minor side show to the American Revolution had no strategic importance.  But it did accomplish one thing.  The English were so alarmed by the activity on the frontier that they decided they had to garrison Fort Detroit and a string of frontier forts with British Regulars and Major de Peyster subsequently deployed a detachment of British Rangers to protect Kekionga.  This diverted experienced troops from action on the frontier closer to the Allegany Mountains and American settlements.

The biggest beneficiary was Little Turtle whose prestige as a Miami war leader was enhanced.  By the end of the decade he would become the main war chief of the tribe and a key leader of the Western Indian Confederacy in its war with the United States.  He smashed an American army lead by General Josiah Harmar in 1790 and another led by General Arthur St. Clair a year later.  

The Confederacy, then under the command of Blue Jacket, was finally defeated by General Mad Anthony Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 after the wily Miami chief urged caution and making peace with the “soldier who does not sleep.”

The Indiana State Historical Marker near the site of La Balme's doomed stand against the Miami.

 La Balme may have fallen out of American history books, but he is remembered, a bit, in Indiana.  In 1930 the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) erected a small monument—a plaque on a boulder at the site of La Balme’s Defeat.  The Indiana Society of the Sons of the American Revolution commemorated the 225 anniversary of the battle in 2005 with decedents of both the French militia men and the Miami warriors present, a re-enactment and unveiling of a new, large state historical marker.

Nice, but not quite the glory the old cavalryman had in mind.

 

 

Getting Comfortable with Death on Día de Los Muertos

Catrina, a wealthy skeleton woman is a common Día de Los Muertos icon and often decorates Ofrenda altars along side scull, candles, marigolds, and treats for the dead.

Note—Another blog perennial.

Despite sharing some key common imagery—skulls and skeletons—and some cultural and religious DNA, Día de los Muertos, the two day festival from Mexico, is not just a Latino Halloween.  The two observations reflect two entirely different views of death—one reflecting terror and horror and the other welcoming acceptance.  That’s the shorthand for it anyway.  It is, of course, more complicated.  The Mexican holiday owes its unique vitality to the merging and mutual corruption of two cultures so alien to each other that at first the seemed totally incompatible.

The Aztecs were the new kids on the block.  Just the latest in a chain of high civilizations that had risen and fallen in Mesoamerica over a period of 4,000 years—the Olmec, Maya, and Toltec to name a few.  There were serious ethnic, cultural, and religious differences between these groups, but archeological evidence shows that they shared a view of the afterlife—a cyclical pattern of life and death that was continuous and in which the spirits of the dead were a protective presence to the living.  Under the right circumstances the living and the dead could communicate.  Death was not seen as something grim, but as a natural step in continuing existence.  

Aztec human sacrifice customs were unspeakably horrifying to the Spanish.  But the practices of the conquerors and their priests against the native population were hardly less brutal.

This belief manifested itself in many ways, including some that to European eyes seemed barbaric and brutal beyond imagination, especially the mass human sacrifices as practiced by the Aztec.  But, at least theoretically, those sacrificed were expected to undergo the knife in a state of religious ecstasy as they transitioned to the next life for the good of their people.  Of course, in practice, the Aztecs often used hundreds of their captured enemies for the rituals and they may not have been so sanguine to their fates. 

  Mictecacihuatl, Queen of the Aztec Underworld, eater of the dead.

But beyond the sacrifices, these beliefs meant that ordinary people could commune, even celebrate, with their lost loved ones.  The Aztecs expressed it in a month long festival honoring the goddess Mictecacihuatl, Queen of the Underworld, or Lady of the Dead. During the festival they first honored los angelitos, the deceased children and then those who passed away as adults. The Mictecacihuatl festival was held during the late summer period of the corn harvests, a natural time of bounty and celebration.

Enter the Spanish, their soldiers, and priests who conquered the mighty Aztec—with the significant assistance of other civilized vassal peoples who were tired of giving up their corn and sacrifants to the mighty rulers of Tenochtitlan—who had very different ideas.  The first order of the day, going hand-in-hand in making the conquered people slaves, was destroying all vestiges of the old religion and imposing Catholicism on them.  After all, saving souls of the savages whether they liked it or not was a central mission of the Conquest.

The Church, of course, had a lot of experience in this sort of thing.  Hundreds of years earlier it had encountered, squelched, and absorbed the pagan Celtic and Germanic peoples.  The Church had learned to adapt local customs that could not be obliterated and cloak them as Christian traditions by turning old gods into venerated saints.

The popular Celtic festival of Samhain, for instance, had been transformed into All Saints and All Souls Days.  Similarly in Mexico they re-purposed the Mictecacihuatl festival and squeezed it down from a month to the same two days coinciding with the end of the European harvest season on November 1 and 2.  

Indio peons were expected to attend masses to honor their dead—a least those who had died as good Catholics.  And this the people did dutifully.  Indeed, at first they had no choice, but eventually they internalized the changes and accepted them. While the people accepted the masses, they brought their own interpretations to them, and they continued to hold onto folk traditions that stretched back to Pre-Columbian times.  

A home ofrenda with images of the Dead and gifts of things they enjoyed in life.

Over generations those traditions blossomed into Día de los Muertos as we know it today—spilled out of the churches and into homes where ofrendas, welcoming altars to the dead, are gaily decorated with skeletons, skulls, orange marigold Flor de Muerto, candles, religious icons, photos and memorabilia of the dead and groan with gifts of sweets, favorite foods, and alcohol.  These altars welcome the spirits of the visiting dead.Then in many places families return the favor by visiting the cemeteries and picnicking on the graves of loved ones.  In some areas of Northern Mexico, the family might camp out there from the evening of All Saints Day, November 1.  There are many regional variations involving parades and special celebrations in the homes where someone has died within the year which are opened to all visitors who are fed with homemade tamales and other treats. 

                          A Dia de Los Muertos mural by Diego Rivera.

The frequent use of skeletons and skulls is meant as a reminder that we are all mortal and will someday join the dead.  The popular 19th Century artist José Guadalupe Posada who depicted calacas—skeletons—cavorting gaily is credited with popularizing that sort of imagery which is continually re-interpreted by folk and fine artists. Particularly popular is the image of Catrina, the lanky, skeletal female figure bedecked in sumptuous clothing and giant ornate hats, who serves as a reminder that death is a fate that even the rich can’t avoid.  Catrina is also seen as an embodiment of old Aztec goddess Mictecacihuatl.  

Artist Jose Guadalupe Posada popularized skeletons playfully cavorting in the 19th Century.  Chicano artist Carlos Cortes, a close friend and IWW Fellow Worker, commemorated Posada and his creation Catrina in this linocut poster for the Movement Artistico Chicano in Chicago.

Artist Jose Guadalupe Posada popularized skeletons playfully cavorting in the 19th Century.  Chicano artist Carlos Cortes, a close friend and IWW Fellow Worker, commemorated Posada and his creation Catrina in this linocut poster for the Movement Artistico Chicano in Chicago.

Other countries of Latin heritage have significant All Saints and All Souls celebrations, but outside of Mexico and adjacent countries with significant Mexican populations or cultural influence, none celebrate Día de los Muertos in this unique way.

The images were recently popularized in the United States by the 2017 Disney animated film Coco which unlike some previous productions from the Mouse House was sensitive and respectful of the culture it depicted.

A woman in costume at an American Day of the Dead street festival.

The U. S. with a large and growing population of Mexican descent or origin is one place where the festival is widely celebrated, particularly in the Southwest and border regions.  But with large population moving north into the old industrial cities of the Midwest and Northeast and into rural and small town communities, the custom has spread, adapting to new circumstances.  

Anglo children are introduced to the Festival, stripped of religious significance, as part of their cultural awareness curriculum now in many schools.  Street festivals featuring revelers painted to look like skeletons are popular in cities like San Diego and draw many non-Mexicans.

Members brought photos, memorabilia, and gifts to dead loved ones to a Día de los Muertos ofrenda at a Tree of Life UU Congregation's observation a few years ago.

The spirituality of Día de los Muertos and its unique view of death and the relationships between the living and the dead appeals to many in this country looking for new religious experiences.  Many non-Catholic churches now have Day of the Dead services or host family gatherings.  It is commonly observed in many Unitarian Universalist congregations which strive to navigate the tricky ground between respect and cultural misappropriation.  My church, the Tree of Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation in McHenry, Illinois had regular Day of the Dead services for well over a decade.