Daniel Joseph AMYOT (AMIOT) dit VILLENEUVE
Biography



"... The Nassaukueton were one of the doodemag that adopted the new strategy of marrying out to French traders in the early eighteenth century. Relatively recent arrives at the straits, the Nassauakueton seemed uninterested in following the French to Detroit in 1701. Instead, they remained at Michilimackinac... The Nassaukueton struggled to provide for their families. They needed a new source of power and influence.

They initially found it in the union of Domitilde and Daniel Joseph Amiot Villeneuve. Daniel Villeneuve was born in Quebec in 1665. Though not much is known of his early life, he probably grew up along the banks of the St. Lawrence. There, he would have witnessed the convoys of fur traders and Native Americans who regularly plied those waters, and heard boastful tales of the riches of the west. If Villeneuve dreamed of trading himself, he was fortunate enough to have the connections to facilitate such ambitions. His uncle was Charles Amiot, a Quebec fur trader and merchant who was the son of one of the earliest migrants to New France. Amiot in turn had traveled extensively in the hinterlands of Quebec...

In the early 1700s, he found himself in Michilimackinac. Then, in the midst of renewed troubles in the pays d'en haut - as the French and Odawa stood poised for war with each other - he took refuge with Marie Kapiouapnokoue, an Odawa woman who hailed from the straits.

Little is know of their relationship, only that the two traveled together and married in Montreal in September 1709. Soon after, they had a child, possibly in Quebec, whom they named Marie. But by 1712, the elder Marie was dead. Villeneuve had firsthand knowledge of how crucial a local marriage was to his future in the Great Lakes, and after the death of Marie, he quickly remarried. By the end of 1712, he had a child with Domitilde. Domitilde was a Nassauakueton and the sister of a young boy who would become his doodem's primary ogimaag, Nissowaquet, or La Fourche. Marie and Domitlide may have been from the same family; it was not unusual in Algonquian societies for the families of deceased wives to find new partners for their widowed in-laws..."

Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America By Michael McDonnell

Learn more about the life of flag male ancestor  Daniel Joseph AMYOT (AMIOT) dit VILLENEUVE.

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