MDMD Ch. 40 Presque Isle

[Doug Millison]

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9712&msg=22397&keywords=Presque%20Is
le

Date:	Mon, 22 Dec 1997 10:03:22 -0800
To:	andrew@[omitted], pynchon-l@[omitted]
From:	millison@[omitted] (Doug Millison)
Subject: Re: MDMD(14) 420.15 Names


At 6:55 AM 12/19/97, andrew@[omitted] wrote:
>420.15 `Pepe d'Escaubitte and 2-A Lagoo, Iron Mask Marthioly and the
>boys from Presque Isle, too.' The first two sound like characters from
>an Ishmael Reed novel. Actually, so do the last two. Any ideas on the
>names?

There's a town in Mained called Presque Isle
(http://www.mainerec.com/pihistry.html), but P may have in mind
Presqueisle, according to Francis Parkman (_France and England in North
America_) was
on the southeastern shore of Lake Erie, where the town of Erie now stands
("now" at the time of his writing, mid-19th century), an important site in
the French effort to control the sources of the Ohio in the war against the
British. The French, under the command of Duquesne, occupied Presquisle in
1753.

Parkman reports that George Washington, then Adjutant-General of the
Virginia militia, engaged in a reconnaissance trip to discover the French
designs on the area, accompanied by a guide, translators (to speak with the
French and Indians he would meet), and, perhaps not least, a trader to
scout business opportunities. Washington's report helped raise the alert
against French designs in the region.

P's "boys from Presque Isle" may have been among the "mixed bands of white
men and red, bushrangers and savages" Parkman describes as gathered at
Presqueisle "under command of Aubry, Ligneris, Marin" who aided the French
forces at Niagara besieged by British troops in 1759.

Parkman goes on to say that some of the Frenchmen of that group "were mere
white Indians, imbued with the ideas and morals of the wigwam, wearing
hunting-shirts of smoked deer-skin embroidered with quills of the Canada
porcupine, painting their faces black and red, tying eagle feathers in
their long hair, or plastering it on their temples with a compound of
vermillion and glue. They were excellent woodsmen, skilful hunters, and
perhaps the best bushfighters in all Canada."

A colorful crew.

The French burned the fort at Presquisle when they abandoned the region to
the British.