MDDM Ch. 41 Presque Isle

[jbor]

Presque also means "nearly". I think the list of names are some of the
Frenchmen, on the run since the fall of Quebec, who Catholics in Maryland,
under some sufferance, agree to shelter. So, yes, perhaps French renegades
from Presqueisle.

I suspect a pun in "2-A Lagoo": "tu es l'ague" or "tu as l'ague", or
something along those lines (cf. 420.5), but can't be certain.

best

> 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.