Marie Rouensa Aco
Marie Rouensa Aco
One of the first settlers in Kaskaskia was
Michael Accault, or Aco, as it came to be
spelled. A coureur du bois, and adept at Indian languages, he came
to Illinois in 1679, with La Salle.
Rouensa, chief of the Kaskaskia Indians,
offered his daughter, Marie, to Aco, for
a wife. Aco accepted, but seventeen year
old Maria had other plans. Father Jacques
Fravier, in his journal of the mission, dated
Feb 15, 1694, tells her story:
"..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 who they wished to have for a son-in-law,
that she did not wish to marry, that she
had already given 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.
Rouensa stormed at her defiance. Marie was
driven naked from the cabin and threatened
with greater punishment. Finally she went
to the priest:
'...I have an idea, I know not whether it
is a good one. I think that, if I consent
to the marriage, he (Rouensa) will listen
to you in earnest, and will induce all to
do so. I wish to please God, and for that
reason, I intend to be always as I am in
order to please Jesus Christ alone. But I
have thought of consenting against my inclination
to the marriage, through love for him. Is
that right?...' These are all her own words,
and I merely translate her Illinois into
French.
So the couple were married by Father Gravier
at Pimitoui and..
'...the first conquest she made for God was
to win her husband, who was famous in this
Illinois country for all his debaucheries.
He is now quite changed, and he has admitted
to me that he no longer recognizes himself,
and can attribute his conversion soley to
his wifes' prayers and exhortations, and
to the example that she gives him...To make
him expiate his past offenses, God permitted
that he should displease some persons who
have stirred up ugly transactions of his,
and have made him odious to everyone. His
wife is all his consolation, through what
she says to him. "What matters it, if
all the world be against us?" she says.
"If we love God and he loves us, it
is an advantage to us to atone during our
lives for the evil that we have done on earth,
so that God may have mercy on us after we
die."...'
Their son, Pierre, was born while the mission
was still at Pimitoui, in March, 1695. Michael,
the second son, was baptized February 22,
1702, apparently at the mission on the Des
peres River. One of the boys, probably Pierre,
was sent to Canada by the Jesuits to be educated.
Michael, while still a youth, returned to
live in the wilderness with his mother's
tribe. In her will, made just before her
death on June 25, 1725, Marie disinherited
him unless he should come back to live again
among the French.
Not long after Michael Aco and Marie Rouensa
settled on the banks of the Kaskaskia River,
Aco died. His widow married Michael Philippe,
later captain of the militia and one of the
principal citizens of the town, but then
only another trader. Their firstborn, Jacques,
baptized in 1704, and their other five children
married into several families, so that in
later days, not a few of the habitants traced
their lineage to the daughter of the chief
of the Kaskaskias. Marie continued throughout
her life to help the Jesuits in their work,
and when she died, she was buried beneath
her pew in the parish church, the only woman
in Kaskaskia's history to be so honored.
KUFR pg.13-15
