Marie rouensa biography

  • Aramepinchieue Rouensa (c.
  • Marie Rouensa died on June 25, 1725.
  • We do know that she was likely born around 1677.

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    Who was Marie Rouensa?

    Marie Rouensa, daughter of Rouensa, ledare of the Kaskaskia, was an important, even famous woman in the village of Kaskaskia. She was converted to Christianity as a young woman. Her faith nearly prevented her first marriage to Michel Accault. As Father Jacques Gravier related in his mission journal of February 15, 1694:
    "Many struggles were needed before she could be induced to consent to the marriage, for she had resolved never to marry, in order that she might belong wholly to Jesus Christ. She answered her father and mother, when they brought her to me in company with the Frenchman whom they wished to have for a son-in-law, that she did not wish to marry; that she had already given all her heart to God, and did not wish to share it. Such were her very words, which had never yet been heard in this barbarism."
    As quoted by Natalia Belting, Kaskaskia Under the French Regime, New Orleans: Polyanthos, 1975:14.
    Chief Rouensa threw Marie out of his home in

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    Marie Rouensa

    Written by Kate Suits, Mary Ann MacLean Educator 


    Not much fryst vatten known about the early life of Marie Rouesna. She was born Aramepinchieue around 1677 to Rouensa, the Chief of the Kaskaskia. In 1689, a French Jesuit priest by the name of Jaques Gravier came to her village. Aramepinchieue converted to Catholicism and took the name Marie Rouensa. 


    Rouesna was a pivotal figure in the assimilation of the Kaskaskia to European tro and ways of life. She strongly encouraged the members of her community to convert to Catholicism. She defied orders from her father to avoid the church and openly led other converts to Mass when doing so was expressly forbidden. 


    She long resisted her father’s attempts to arrange a marriage with a French man to secure an alliance with the traders. Rouesna wished to remain unmarried and committed to the Church. Finally, she married French fur trader Michel Accault (sometimes written Aco), and Rouesna became an important bridge between the

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    Aramepinchieue

    Aramepinchieue Rouensa (c. 1677 – 1725), also called Marie Rouensa, Marie Philippe, Marie Accault, Mary Aco, and Aramepinchone, was the daughter of a prominent Kaskaskia chief. She helped spread Catholicism and French-Indian cooperation in New France along the Mississippi River. She was particularly influential in the area near the former Fort St. Louis. She married a French trader; the children they had were among the earliest examples of the emerging Métis in New France.

    Life

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    Aramepinchieue was born in 1677 to a Kaskaskia chief called Mamenthouensa.[1] At a young age, she and other Kaskaskia women in her village felt drawn to Christianity, as preached by the Jesuit missionary Jacques Gravier.[2] Jesuit missionaries often stressed the Virgin Mary, while also emphasizing chastity and virginity.[3] Conversion and intermarriage varied greatly by community, but many young women like Aramepinchieue converted to Catho

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