Cadotte family

Cadotte family
Current regionNorth America
Place of originFrance
FounderMathurin Cadot
Members
Properties
  • Cadotte Trading Post
  • Cadotte Site

The Cadotte family is a North American family of European and Indigenous american ancestry that became prominent during the North American Fur Trade.

The founder of the Cadottes originated from mainland France and came to the new world in the 17th century and later married a Métis woman as an adult. Members of the family such as Jean-Baptiste Cadot and Michel Cadotte would go on to marry children of tribal chiefs.

Many Cadottes appear many times in popular culture and numerous places in both Canada and the United States are named after them.

Surname

The surname Cadotte is a Canadian spelling of the French surname Cadot (meaning little dog).[1] Over time the surname Cadot became Cadotte. The surname for Mathurin Cadot was sometimes spelled as Cadeau.[2]

It is unclear when the transition from Cadot to Cadotte occurred. A ledger from the Cadotte family indicates when this shift may have happened, the book first spelled the surname as Cadotte in 1798. A 1803 contract with North West Company, spells it as Cadotte. A brother of Michel uses the surname in a 1795 contract. It is very likely the family adopted the name Cadotte before the 1800s. (To keep the article constant and to avoid confusion all family members born before the 1750s will go by the surname Cadot.)[3]

First generations

Mathurin Cadot

According to journalist Robert Silbernagel, the first Cadotte family member to settle around Lake Superior was Mathurin Cadot.[4][a]

Mathurin was born to René Cadot and Renée Rusgande[5] in 1649 in mainland France, he later moved to the Americas in his youth.[6] It is unknown when he arrived in New France.[7] According to author Walter O'Meara, he came to Sault Ste. Marie in 1671.[8]

Mathurin Cadot possibly started a fur business illegally as a coureur des bois sometime during the 1670s and early 1680s.[9] In 1686 he gained an official license to legally trade with the natives (mainly with the Odawa).[7]

In 1688, records say he married a woman named Marie-Catherine Durand in Montreal.[7] Catherine was a métis of Wendat ancestry.[10] Mathurin and Catherine would produce many children, the children include:[5]

  • Marie Joseph Cadot (1689-1746)
  • Marie Louise Cadot (1690-1708) died in childhood.
  • Jean-Francois Cadot (1693-1743)
  • Charles Cadot (1695-1763)
  • Marie Jeanne Cadot (1697-1759)
  • René Cadot (1699-1749)
  • Mathurin Cadot Jr (1701-1777)

He later on retired in 1690 and moved to a farm near Montreal.[6] He turned his business over to the half-brother of his wife.[7] Mathurin Sr would die in 1729 at the age 80 in Batiscan, Québec.[11]

Second generation

Mathurin Cadot Sr's sons would also engage in the fur trader. Jean-Francois only did one trip to Michilimackinac in 1712. René and Charles on the other hand did numerous trips to Michilimackinac in the early 1700s. The brothers would use the money they earned from the fur trade to buy homes in St. Lawrence Lowlands and settle families.[12] René would go on to marry Marie Louise Proteau and Charles would go on to marry Denise Thouin.

Jean-Francois would go on to marry Marie-Josephe Proteau and later on Marie Françoise Rivard, Jean-Francois and Marie-Josephe Proteau would give birth to the following:[5]

  • Joseph Louis Cadot (1722-1730) died in childhood.
  • Jean-Baptiste Cadot
  • Alex Cadot (1725-1757)
  • Charles Cadot (1727-1779)
  • August Cadot (1728-1772)
  • Michel Cadot (1729-1784)
  • Marie Joseph Cadot (1730-1737) died in childhood.

Jean Baptiste Cadot Sr.

This section is an excerpt from Jean-Baptiste Cadot.[edit]

Jean-Baptiste Cadot[b](December 5, 1723 – November 1, 1800), also referred to as Ke-che-sub-ud-ese, was a Métis voyageur and fur trader.

He joined in on the North American Fur Trade when he was 18. After the birth of his daughter he married Athanasie Cadot under catholic tradition.

During Pontiac's War, he convinced the Ojibwe around Lake Superior not to join in the war. During the American revolution he worked for the British as an interpreter and helped recruit Ojibwe to fight in the battle of St. Louis.

His death would ignite the Ownership of Sault Ste. Marie controversy. His descendants would go on to be influential in the North American Fur Trade around Lake Superior. He would appear many times in popular culture in both Canada and the United States.

Catherine Cadot

Catherine[c] was a Ojibwa woman (her Ojibwa name isn’t known), she was a relative to Biauswah (II) and possibly part of the Loon clan (Maang Dodem). She was the second wife of Jean-Baptiste Cadot.[13]

After Jean-Baptiste Cadot’s death she married a voyager named Louis Ducharme dit Nez Rouge. She had a daughter with Louis named Thérèse Ducharme. Catherine would die after 19 May 1819.[13]

She had the following children with Jean-Baptiste Cadot:[14]

  • Augustin Cadotte (ca. 1770-1825)
  • Charlotte Cadotte (ca. 1779-1851)
  • Joseph Cadotte (ca. 1778- ca 1836)
  • Marie Cadotte (ca. 1791-1851)

Athanasie Cadot

This section is an excerpt from Athanasie Cadot.[edit]

Athanasie Cadot[d] (1736–1776) was a Nipissing Ojibwe trader,[15] diplomat, and the first wife of fur trader Jean-Baptiste Cadot.

She began living with Cadot after he entered the wilderness.[15] Following the birth of their daughter, the two were married. During Pontiac's War, she saved the life of Alexander Henry the elder while pregnant with her son Michel Cadotte. She later accompanied her children to Montreal, where they attended school, until her death in 1776.

Historians have noted her character and energy, considering her an important contributor to her husband's success and a significant figure in the North American fur trade.

Madeline Cadotte

This section is an excerpt from Madeline Cadotte.[edit]

Madeline Cadotte (c. 1760 or 1770- between 1852 to 1860) was an Ojibwe woman of the ajijaak dodem.

She was the eldest daughter of chief Waubujejack. After her marriage to fur trader Michel Cadotte according to Ojibwe tradition, she went along with her husband's expeditions and used her lineage to help form vital partnerships with the indigenous peoples in the area. Around the start of the 19th century she and her husband would build a permanent home on Madeline Island, where she would become a powerful figure in the area.

Michel and Madeline were married a second time under the customs of the Catholic Church, she was baptized on the same day and given her European name. Close to the end of her life she was interviewed by her grandson William Whipple Warren when he was writing about the history of the Ojibwe.

She has been regarded as a prominent figure to the history of the Apostle Islands. Madeline island, among other places in Wisconsin, is named after her.

Jean Baptiste Cadotte Jr

This section is an excerpt from Jean-Baptiste Cadotte Jr..[edit]

Jean Baptiste Cadotte Jr (October 25, 1761 – 1818) was a Métis fur trader.

Michel Cadotte

This section is an excerpt from Michel Cadotte.[edit]
Historical marker commemorating Cadotte at Winston-Cadotte Site, Old Fort, Wisconsin

Michel Cadotte[e] (July 22, 1764 – July 8, 1837), Kechemeshane in Ojibwe,[f] was a Métis fur trader of Ojibwe, Wendat and French-Canadian descent. He dominated the business in the area of the south shore of Lake Superior.

He gained a strategic alliance through marriage to Ikwesewe (also spelled Equawasay), the daughter of the head of the White Crane clan; men from this clan were the hereditary chiefs of the Lake Superior Ojibwe. Cadotte's trading post at La Pointe on Madeline Island was a critical center for the trade between the Lake Superior band and the British and United States trading companies.


William Whipple Warren

This section is an excerpt from William Whipple Warren.[edit]
William Whipple Warren (c. 1851)

William Whipple Warren (May 27, 1825 – June 1, 1853)[16][17] was a historian, interpreter, and legislator in the Minnesota Territory.[18] The son of Lyman Marcus Warren, an American fur trader and Mary Cadotte, the mixed ancestry daughter of fur trader Michel Cadotte, he was of Ojibwe and French descent.[19] William lived in two cultures, because his father was white, he was not considered Ojibwe, but an Ojibwe "relative", because in the Ojibwe patrilineal culture, inheritance and property were passed through the paternal line. His mother was Ojibwe and he learned her culture from her family. He is the first historian of the Ojibwe people in the European tradition.[20]

In the fall of 1845, Warren moved at the age of 20 from Wisconsin to Crow Wing in present-day Minnesota. He worked as an interpreter for the fur trader Henry Mower Rice.[21]

Bilingual and educated in the United States style, Warren started collecting stories from the oral tradition of the Ojibwe to tell their history. He drew from oral history to tell about the people prior to their encounter with Europeans, and combined it with documentation in the European style. After suffering from tuberculosis for many years, he died as a young man of 28 from a hemorrhage on June 1, 1853 and was buried in Saint Paul, Minnesota.[17] His history was published posthumously in 1885 by the Minnesota Historical Society.[21] A revised, annotated edition was published in 2009.[20]



Notes

  1. ^ His surname is also spelled Cadeau, For further information about his surname click here.
  2. ^ The surname becomes Cadotte overtime. For more information about this click here.
  3. ^ Most records refer to her as “sauvagesse de saulteaux”
  4. ^ The surname becomes Cadotte later on, for further information about this click here.
  5. ^ also spelled Michael, and the surname as Cadott, Cadeau, and other variations
  6. ^ Gichi-miishen in the contemporary spelling, meaning "Great Michel"

References

  1. ^ Hanks, Patrick (2003-05-08). Dictionary of American Family Names: 3-Volume Set. Oxford University Press, USA. p. 267. ISBN 978-0-19-508137-4.
  2. ^ Silbernagel 2020, p. xxii-xiv, 28.
  3. ^ Silbernagel 2020, p. 128.
  4. ^ Silbernagel 2020, p. xxii-xiv,28-29.
  5. ^ a b c Silbernagel 2020, p. viii-ix.
  6. ^ a b Silbernagel 2020, p. xxii-xiv.
  7. ^ a b c d Silbernagel 2020, p. 29.
  8. ^ O'Meara 1968, p. 276.
  9. ^ Silbernagel 2020, p. xxii-xiv, 28-29.
  10. ^ Silbernagel 2020, p. viii-ix, 35.
  11. ^ Silbernagel 2020, p. 29, viii-ix.
  12. ^ Silbernagel 2020, p. 34.
  13. ^ a b DuLong 2020, p. 202.
  14. ^ Silbernagel 2020, p. 57, viii-ix.
  15. ^ a b "CADOT (Cadotte), JEAN-BAPTISTE". Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Retrieved 26 July 2025.
  16. ^ Thrapp, Dan (1991). Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography: In Three Volumes. U of Nebraska Press. p. 1515. ISBN 0-8032-9420-4.
  17. ^ a b "Monument to Warren". Warren Sheaf. March 15, 1906. p. 15. Retrieved October 11, 2015 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  18. ^ "Legislators Past & Present". Minnesota Legislative Reference Library. Retrieved 2008-03-30.
  19. ^ Barkwell, Lawrence.https://www.scribd.com/document/55622890/Warren-William-W-b-1825
  20. ^ a b Warren, William Whipple (2009). Schenck, Theresa M. (ed.). History of the Ojibway People (2nd ed.). St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press. ISBN 9780873516433.
  21. ^ a b Lehman and Krotzman (2003) Manuscript Project: Transcription and Works Cited for Research of Letters 14 and 15, Charles Francis Xavier Goldsmith’s Collected Papers Archived 2011-01-25 at the Wayback Machine, University of Wisconsin

Bibliography

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.