Noel's Odyssey

This is Noel LaVasseur, one of the pioneers of the land of Kankakee County. He respected the customs of the Potawatomi and traded fur and supplies with them.

When I turn my head to him, sitting in his rocking chair, out on the porch, I heave a raspy old breath and I begin to doubt.  I doubt all of the stories he told myself and our children.  Nevertheless, this town is still one he claims to have founded, looking into each of the children’s eyes as if they can see the glorious adventures painted in his gaze.  The rest of the evening, he sits on our large porch and we look at the growing town together.  Bourbonnais Grove is treated like a child with a brand new name, though as old as every other land, inhabited once by thriving Indians.  But now it is a town and he continues to dream of more adventures like some kind of time-worn Odysseus.  Yet I, his Penelope, hardly having earned the name, do not have many years left on this earth.

      He used to be a seafarer from Canada turned Indian trader.  Kankakee County greeted him as the first white settler.  Born on Christmas, hence his name, Noel.  He tells our eight children of his first voyages and his fur trade, and the people he met, some that are still close to our family.  Like Mr. Hubbard. 

      Noel was not always married to me, however.  In order to trade and still have a good relationship to the Indians, more specifically, the Potawatomi, girls like Wat-chee-kee were married to traders.  Hubbard married her first before moving to Chicago and then Noel married her after Hubbard peacefully divorced her. Their marriage didn’t last long, but it did work well while it lasted.   Meanwhile, Hubbard saw Noel’s talent in fur trading and he was constantly receiving accolades for his work and he and the Indians respected each other, and Noel had not even learned how to read or write yet.  He instead used his own form of hieroglyphics or symbols perhaps, as he’s shown us in his yellowing journals, in order to communicate with fellow traders.  Throughout his fur trade, Noel made sure he was well versed in the various customs and gossip of the Indians, and there is one story he likes to tell the children that particularly interests us.  If I am not mistaken, I believe some of the children have told their friends this story at their school.

      One of the Indian chiefs he met in one of the villages of Bourbonnais told Noel of a dream he had the night before in which he was given Noel’s horse, a sturdy black beast that rode fast and rarely tarried, as my husband describes it.   According to the Potawatomi custom, dreams are a pivotal part of trading since the Great Spirit is said to bestow such messages.  Therefore, Noel had no choice but to give away his steed.  Noel decided that he wanted a fair trade for his horse and he looked to the chief’s land of sugar maples.  He told the Potawatomi chief his dream and he eagerly gave it to him, but ended their spiritual trades, saying they should no longer have dreams. 

      This plot of land turned into our civilization and around this time of preparation, he divorced Wat-chee-kee, providing her and her family with finances and transportation as many of the Indians were being sent to reserves in Iowa and being driven from their land, the last of the Indians, the Potawatomi’s were to leave their home.  It still puzzles me that my husband gave up his wife and children for his next journey and it in turn makes me worry about our marriage and if he will one day decide to go on a journey and leave our eight children and I to fend for ourselves, even if suddenly started and ended marriages were a part of the fur trade business and custom of Potawatomi.

      Anyhow, he returned to his childhood town with news and good tidings.  None of his old friends recognized him, not even his own mother. After his journeys and stories, he persuaded his friends and family to come to Bourbonnais.  

      He and I were married in 1838 after I had come from the states in the east.  Our town became Bourbonnais Grove and from the porch, we watch it grow into a civilization.  French-Canadians kept moving in as news spread.  Towns were growing all around us as well, with Bourbonnais as the main and first town.  Our house grew as well with children.  But now I turn sickly and I hope I will live to see my children grown as well as my husband’s town.  But no more adventures.  Not for him, because he is certainly not Odysseus by any means.  He is simply Noel LaVasseur, the fur trader.  But he will continue to dream from our porch.