Summary

Upon his departure for the Illinois, enslaver Baldit sold an enslaved man of the Poulard nation named Amadit to sieur Pierre Delille Dupard, shoemaker in the city. Baldit claimed that Amadit was not healthy enough to make the journey.

Transcription (French, diplomatic)

[feuille 1 recto] [digital 2] [Marginalia:] Inventore cotte 284 [Signé:] fleuriau [Corps:] je reconnois avoir vendu et livre au S^r Dupard un negre piece d’inde nommé amadit poular de nation¹, lorsque estant sur mon depart pour les illinois², ledit negre estant hor detat de pouvoir faire,³ le voyage ayant plusieurs incommodités, a l’. n^[ouv]elle orleans ce 10^e aout 1736 [Signé:] Balditiv (6556.) [feuille 1 verso] [digital 3] jay cedé Le Naigre de nommé cy de lautre part sans aucun prejudise

Notes.

region where Illinois, Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Peoria, Tamaroa, and other Algonquin people lived during the eighteenth century centered near today’s Saint Louis, Missouri. At Cahokia, one of the most powerful Mississippian polities connected a society of forty thousand people at its height. Elizabeth Ellis, The Great Power of Small Nations: Indigenous Diplomacy in the Gulf South (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023), 172-178. In the Illinois country, the French established missions and trading activity, especially in fur, with their Native allies. French census takers recorded 334 people living in the Illinois country in 1726, over eighty of whom were African. By 1752, census takers recorded the population of the Illinois country to be 1,360 people, at least four hundred and forty-five of whom were enslaved Africans. See Sophite White, Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana (Williamsburg, VA. and Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 106-112.

Translation (English, modern).

[page # 1] [digital 2] [Marginal note:] Inventory side 284 [Signed:] [François] Fleuriau [Body:] I acknowledge having sold and delivered to the Sir Dupard a negre, piece d’inde, named Amadit, of the Poular nation¹, while on my way to the Illinois²; the aforementioned nègre being no longer fit for the trip, having several physical limitations. At New Orleans August 10, 1736.

[Signed:] Baldit³ (6556.)

[p. # 2] [dig. 3] I ceded the naigre named here on the other side [of this document], without any prejudice.

Notes.

region where Illinois, Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Peoria, Tamaroa, and other Algonquin people lived during the eighteenth century centered near today’s Saint Louis, Missouri. At Cahokia, one of the most powerful Mississippian polities connected a society of forty thousand people at its height. Elizabeth Ellis, The Great Power of Small Nations: Indigenous Diplomacy in the Gulf South (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023), 172-178. In the Illinois country, the French established missions and trading activity, especially in fur, with their Native allies. French census takers recorded 334 people living in the Illinois country in 1726, over eighty of whom were African. By 1752, census takers recorded the population of the Illinois country to be 1,360 people, at least four hundred and forty-five of whom were enslaved Africans. See Sophite White, Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana (Williamsburg, VA. and Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 106-112.

1737/02/11/01 https://www.lacolonialdocs.org/document/2905.