Dawn's Light Woman & Nicolas Franchomme

Native womens marital rights and roles in colonial Illinois society Kaskaskia, Illinois, once the states capital, torn from the state by flood waters, and now largely forgotten, was once the home to a couple who helped transform the region in the 1720s from a frontier village to a civil society. In the heart of Frances North American empire, the village was a community of French -Canadian fur traders and Kaskaskia Indians who not only lived together but often intermarried. These Indigenous and French intermarriages were central to colonial Illinois society, and the coupling of Marguerite 8assecam8c8e (Dawns Light Woman) and Nicolas Franchomme, in particular, was critical to expanding the jurisdiction of French law. While the story of Marguerite and Nicolas is unknown today, it is the story of how French customary law (Coutume de Paris) governed colonial marriage, how mixed Indian-French marriages stood at the very core of early colonial Illinois society, and how Illinois Indian women benefited, socially and legally, from being married to French men. All of this came about due to a lawsuit in which Nicolas successfully argued that his wife had legal claim to her first husbands estatea legal decision that created a precedent for society in the Illinois Country. Within this narrative of a married couple and their legal fightbased on original French manuscripts and supported by the comprehensively annotated 1726 Illinois censusis also the story of the village of Kaskaskia during the 1720s, of the war between Fox Indians and French settlers, with their Indian allies, in Illinois, and of how the spread of plow agriculture dramatically transformed the Illinois Countrys economy from largely fur tradebased to expansively agricultural.