It's O.K. Cicottes, You're Still #7 in My Book (Côte-des-Argoulets Part III)

I've been lying about the Cicotte family for a while now,
though like most lies about history I simply didn't have all the facts, and felt content to go with the most comfortable version of events to fill in the gaps.  Our best approximation of the facts makes up what we call History, and a series of lies told to make life bearable makes up what we call Families, so Family History as an academic pursuit has naturally competing interests. While my family never taught me to avoid a confrontation, they did teach me to always avoid an error, so here goes.

On February 4th, 1665 seven men of New France accepted the offer of a lifetime from then Governor of Ville-Marie (Montreal, QC), Paul Chomeday Sieur de Maisonneuve.  They were given fiefdoms of land along the St. Peter River to be owned and inherited, just outside the small village's fort.  In exchange these men were given the task to serve as the early warning and first line of defense against the frequent Iroquois attacks. Not a task to be trifled with; two of the men died within the first year, but they all swore an oath and signed a contract to help and protect each other through the ordeal and their accomplishments live on as the village near-to-destruction that they protected blossomed into a bustling metropolis and Canada's largest city for the next three centuries (see Part I).

Who were these men?  All commoners, their names do not often appear in introductory histories of Quebec, though their lives intertwined with those whose do.  The undisputed names of six: Jean-Baptiste Gadois and his brother Pierre Gadois, Jean LeRoy, Simon Cardinal, Michel Guibert, Pierre Raguideau, and Etienne Campeau.  As for the seventh, accounts vary.  Some say Jean Chicot[i], my ancestor and namesake, others say Michel dit-Neveu-Chicot[ii], that is to say a man named Michel was commonly referred to as Chicot's Nephew (as in Jean Chicot's nephew; there were no other Chicots in the area at the time).

As I tried to sort out the matter I became a little crestfallen to conclude that of the two candidates for the seventh Argoulet, Michel seemed the most likely. Original sources list only Michel and say nothing about Jean Chicot (Déziel, 40; Roy, 266).  This discovery -besides being a little disappointing- made me wonder how Jean ended up replacing Michel in the commonly accepted versions of history (see note 1). After all, I had done all the work to discover that I was not descended from an original Argoulet and I wanted to know why I descended from a fake one. 

We know little about Jean Chicot’s origins, and less about Michel’s.  What we do have comes only from Quebec, as no known records exist of them in their native France.  In fact, Michel’s only known relative was Jean, and the only proof of it is that Michel’s nickname was Chicot’s Nephew.  Furthermore, Michel had no children because the Iroquois killed him within a few months of his receiving a land grant along the Côte-des-Argoulets (Roy, 267). 

Though not providing any clear answers, the fact of Michel’s obscurity itself provides the most logical explanation.  Jean Chicot joined the Argoulets around the time of Michel’s death (probably even being given his plot as next-of-kin[iii]), and even though Jean did not participate in the contract of mutual support signed by the original seven (Roy, 267) he had his own close scrape or two defending Ville-Marie (if you don’t get that pun you really need to go back and read Part I). As a man who went on to have a large progeny in Canada and the U.S. he therefore provides a convenient surrogate for the honor and veneration of modern generations that might have otherwise gone to Michel dit-Neveu-Chicot.

Was Jean Chicot really an Argoulet, then?  Far be it from me to honor Jean Chicot at the expense of Michel dit-Neveu-Chicot, a man who deserves due attention as much as any of the other settlers of Montreal, more so even.  But the name was a nickname given to the settlers by their community as a term of respect, and regardless of the specific circumstances of Jean’s life along the Côte-des-Argoulets, those who lived there afterward respected him well enough to include his name among the others, so who am I to argue?

If you thought that was the end of it, you need to read Part IV.

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[i] The sources which give Jean Chicot’s name do not convey any particular authority: an uncited Wikipedia article, the inscription from a statue commemorating the Côte d’Argoulets, various family histories and web sites.  Though these sources have the least credibility they have the widest publicity, which led me to believe that the Verdunois promoted Jean Chicot as the seventh Argoulet sometime quite after the fact, and as conscious effort to rewrite history.

[ii] In initially researching this topic, I had only intended to find the most original source relating the events of February 4^th, 1665 and had no idea that any such discrepancy existed.  I wanted to find whatever original contract or transcript had been used as the basis for various versions of events that I came across, none of which mentioned Michel dit Neveu Chicot (see note i).  Only in researching the original land grants given to these men did I discover that Jean Chicot received his parcel of land in May of 1665, three months after the other Argoulets, and that the only reliable sources on the topic list Michel, not Jean, as the seventh man present on February 4^th, 1665.

[iii] Whenever a civil act occurred on the frontier, it happened in stages.  Typically a verbal or tentative agreement occurred first,  later the parties would sign a written agreement whenever witnesses became available, and eventually a notary would aggregate such contracts and seal them on a periodic basis.  The verbal agreement between the Governor and the seven men, as well as their agreement amongst themselves occurred on 4 February 1665, but their grants were not issued in writing until 2 May 1665.  

I don’t have a specific date for Michel’s death, but it occurred shortly after the men first occupied their settlements (Déziel, 41).  Furthermore, Jean Chicot received his land grant on 3 May 1665, one day after the others.  If Michel died before the contracts were written, then anyone who did not explicitly know about Michel might have looked at the land grants written on that date and seen seven contracts, presuming that these were the same seven that had contracted with each other in February of that same year.  Alternatively if Michel was still alive on May 2nd than anyone relying on the written contracts as their source without a separate account of the verbal agreement would see eight contracts written at the same time, and knowing that there were only seven men present at the verbal agreement would have to draw their own guess as to who was the odd man out. Presumably Michel's obscurity works against him here because Jean and the other six men with living relatives were already known colloquially by their descendants as the Argoulets.

Sources:

Déziel, Julien. Médaillons d'Ancêtres. Vol. 1. Montreal: Éditions Pauline, 1973. Book.

Roy, Pierre George. Ordonnances, Commissions, etc., etc., des Gouverneurs et Intendants de la Nouvelle-France, 1639-1706. Beauceville: L'"Eclaireur", 1924. Book.