Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1882-07-09
The Lost Bourbon,
George William Curtis in Harper.l

Lave we BOURBON among uSt Inc
paper which bore the title was sent to
Mr.. Putnam by the Rev. Dr. Hawks, who
was at that time literary and historical
authority in the city, as well as an elo-
quent preacher. He stated that entire
confidence could be reposed in the Rev.
MIR. Hanson, who wrote the article, and
DR.. Hawks also said that he knew Mr..
Williams, the alleged lost Bourbon,
| and considered him to be a SIM
pie, truthful, amiable, and pious
man, of ordinary intellectual
power. The good doctor did not under
take to express an opinion upon the claim
of MIR. Williams, but he said that he
could speak with certainty to the fact
| that he was not an Indian, and that he
was not equal to the invention of com
| plicated evidence to support fabricated
story.
The editors of the new magazine saw at
once the advantage to their enterprise of
so unique an article, and it was published
in the second number. Public attention
was soon aroused, and for a long time
there was brisk controversy over the
probability Of the Williams claim. The
strongest argument for it was the appear
ance OF the claimant. Mr.. Williams
came one morning to Mr.. Putnam's
| office, and the editors descended
to see him. They beheld
man who might have sat for
the head upon louis dor He was
man OF large frame, of swarthy COM
| plexion, and of the lift of head and heav-
lily moulded face that marked the Bour-
| bons. There was something singular and
distinctive in his appearance, due partly
to the dark, un-American hue, and partly,
doubtless to the imagination stimulated
by the suggestion that he was the Dau-
phin. His manner was simple, and of
the placid dignity which befitted both his
heavy person and his alleged royalty.
But it was impossible not to feel that his
softness and rcpose might be also the
craft of the Indian, and that it was yet
quite too soon to recognize him as the
son of st. Louis.
The story has been long forgotten. But
brief series of papers in the Piattsburg
Republican,, written at Green Bay, in
Wisconsin, and signed E. S. NJ, recalls
it. The writer, when child, at home
on Lake Champlain, used to hear of the
missionary Williams, who had been
born in an Indian cabin in wild Caugh-
| nawaga. Leading great multitude of
the descendants of the Six Nations, he
| travelled westward to Green Bay, preach
ing with an eloquence and persuasive
pywer which were wholly new to the
Indians. At Green Bay he married the
beautiful half breed who still lives in the
house where Williams met her. Her
father was Canadian blacksmith. and
her mother half-caste Menominee. AT
thirteen years of age she was bethrothed
to gallant young trader from Detroit.
But the wonderful missionary came, saw
and loved. He knew the Indian customs
of courtship, and giving the indispeAsa-
BILE gifts to the girls mother, the dusky
maiden of fourteen was told one morning
that she need not go to school, as she was
to be married to Priest Williams in the
evening. Tradition, it seems, still fondly
describes the fashionable flutter over her
baptism and confirmation by Bishop Ho-
bart in old Trinity church in New York
sixty years ago, recalling that of Poca-
hontas in London.
But according to the tale now told from
Wisconsin, the simple, amiable, pious,
but mentally "slow' claimant of the
Bourbon heritage in 1853 was greater
schemer thirty years before, projecting
the consolidation of the remnants of the
Six Nations into a later Indian empire,
of which he was to be prophet and king.
But, as the story is told, false to the trust
committed to him by the church, false to
his pledges to the Indians, recreant to
| the national government, the emigration
scheme, the basis of his proposed grand
eur, failed, and with it Williams fell into
Obscurity and neglect.
The only singular fact in the narrative
nf a1oir fn hQ hn
| the undOubted acquaintance with the
Prince de Joinville, But the explana-
ton is simple. The prince left Albany,
with few friends, to follow the course
of his fathers western journey when he
was an exile and wanderer. Williams,
who was then at St. Regis, heard of the
plan, and fastened to place himself upon
the steamer that was to carry the prince
through the lakes to Green Bay.
| The prince asked the captain
of the steamer if he could direct
him to some one who might recall the
| journey of his father, and perhaps retain
some of its traditions, and the captain
naturally introduced Williams E. S. M.
was guest at the dinner given by the
prince at Green Bay, at which Williams
also was an invited guest, but there was
no mysterious interview between him and
the host. Williams had probably told,
with all his old. missionary eloqueuce, at
least all that he knew of Louis Philippe's
journey. and Louis Philippe's son may
very well have hidden him to the Tuileries
should he come to Paris, and the prince
did undoubtedly send him tokens of re-
membrance when he returned to France.
The writer we quote from was i'm
pressed wildly with the shrewd black
eyes and the well-bred. ESP risian" ease
and dignity of Williams manner when
he called upon her-for we think it is
woman-to arrange the sale of his library
TO her husband. Not less striking was
| the Library of the frontier missionary to
the Indians than the refined courtesy of
| his address. Some of the books were
black-letter on vellum III parchment
covers, some of the old English text,
some of the earliest dates of printing,
others were venerable ST. Chrysos-
toms, Aquinas, Thomas Kempis.
1t was the library that some noble
youth of the court, suddenly forsaking
the world, and seeking, like the early
Jesuit fathers in Canada, to bury him
self in the western wilderness, 'sthe
world forgetting, by the world forgot"
might have brought with him-costly
| editions of his uncle the cardinal, gifts