A Straight Tail

 When my husband's daughter was young, she did a family history project at school.  She came home and proudly told us "I'm descended from an Indian princess!" To which we scoffed, because literally everyone born and raised in America is fed that tail.

Well, yesterday I was following my husbands line up from his mother, a Woolsey, to the Hendersons, and started working on the Reno side. 'That's interesting,' I thought, as I followed the trail, 'they're French.'  Then, when I got to my husband's 9th great grandfather, things got REALLY interesting.  He was a man named Martin Chartier, and I was not prepared for what I found!

Martin Chartier was born June 1, 1650 in Poitiers (St-Jean-de-Montierneuf), Poitou, France to Rene' Chartier and Madeleine Rangier. from France to Quebec in 1667 when he was 17, joining his paternal grandfather and uncle in Canada, but he wouldn't stay there long.  At age 22, in 1672 Martin and his brother Pierre joined Louis Jolliet's second expedition to find the mouth of the Mississippi River.  He again joined Jolliet in 1674, where he became acquainted with the Pekowi Shawnee, living along the Wabash River.  Martin returned to Canada after the expedition, but turned right back around to live among the Shawnee, marrying Sawatha Straight Tail, the chief's daughter.

Martin left again on expedition in 1679, where after doing some exploring up around the Great Lakes, he went back downriver to present day Peoria IL and helped construct Fort Crèvecoeur, which he helped burn to the ground just a year later. This classified Martin as an outlaw, so he returned to the Shawnee to gather his wife and daughter, where the Shawnee welcomed him with open arms and allowed him to live among them.

Mary Seaworth Chartier was born in Frederick co, Virginia in 1687, and her brother Peter arrived in 1689 in what is present day Nashville, Tennessee.  After Peter's birth, Martin and his Shawnee family established a fur trading post at the confluence of the Monongahela River and the Allegheny River, the present-day site of Pittsburgh, and resided here for two years.  In spring 1692, Chartier led a group of 192 Shawnee and an unknown number of Susquehannock (Conestoga) Indians east to Frederick County, Maryland on the Potomac River. In 1694 they moved again to Pennsylvania.  In 1701, Chartier and his Shawnee community invited the Conestoga to live with them, after they were decimated by war and a major infectious epidemic. Both the Conestoga and the Shawnee appeared before William Penn and on 23 April 1701 they were granted formal permission for this arrangement. They established the community of Conestoga Town near Manor Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. At a time of frontier violence, the descendants of these Indians were killed by the Paxton Boys in December 1763.

Martin is known to have acted as interpreter for the Shawnee at conferences held with the British at Conestoga in 1711 and 1717.  Martin Chartier died in April, 1718, on his farm in Dekanoagah, Pennsylvania, near the Susquehanna River and northwest of Conestoga. He was buried in the traditional Shawnee style, with the addition of his helmet, a cutlass, and several small cannonballs. His grave was rediscovered in 1873, and a marker was placed there in 1925.

Martin's son Peter married his first cousin, Blanceneige-Wapakonee Opessa, and later became a leader and a band chief among the Pekowi Shawnee. 

In June 1754 Peter, his Shawnee warriors, and his two sons, François and René were present when Captain Joseph Coulon de Jumonville was killed at the Battle of Jumonville Glen. In July 1754 he and his sons participated in the French victory over George Washington at the Battle of Fort Necessity. Both of Peter's sons fought against the British in numerous engagements during the French and Indian War. René may have been killed with Shawnee chief Cornstalk when he was detained at Fort Randolph in November 1777.  Peter died in 1774 in what is present day Shawneetown, IL. 

This family settled so many of the towns in the area that we lived in for over 15 years, and we had no idea we had any relation or relevance to the area.