United States Federal Judge Morris S. Arnold of Little Rock continues in his long quest to resurrect Arkansas colonial history from neglect and stereotype. Arnold, who has a classical education and who can read 18th-century French (and Spanish), has dug deeply into archives in France, Spain, and the U.S., with the result being that he essentially created Arkansas colonial history almost from scratch.
One of his recent contributions is an article in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly recounting the life of Arkansas Post merchant Francois Menard.
Menard was born in 1745 or 1746--sources are unclear--in the central France farming village of Sagonne. We know little about Menard until he turned up at Arkansas Post in 1768. He was listed in records as the surgeon attached to the 50 French soldiers stationed at the Post. In addition to the soldiers, the Post was home to a mere 83 whites and 18 slaves (five being Indian captives).
Menard lost his medical position when the French ceded Louisiana to the Spanish in 1763 following the Seven Years' War. He then turned to business, ultimately becoming "the most visible and the richest civilian in all of 18th-century Arkansas," as Arnold put it. Menard's educational attainment is unknown, but as Arnold also noted, "he knew how to press his advantage."
One of Menard's advantages was his good command of the French language. This enabled him to work as an "attorney-in-fact," handling some of the many legal procedures required even on the colonial frontier. It was trade, however, which enabled Menard to quickly build his fortune.
Acquiring a merchant vessel, Menard began transporting flour from Ste. Genevieve, Mo., to feed the garrison at the Post. He used his large home situated close to the fort as collateral to obtain funding to buy trade goods in New Orleans. (Colonial Arkansas was without banks, and hard currency was practically nonexistent.)
"Most of [Menard's] business income," Arnold wrote, "came from equipping hunters and acquiring and selling products of the hunt, chiefly bear's oil, buffalo tallow, and buffalo meat." Hunters and trappers needed a large and diverse supply of goods before setting out for seven or eight months in the Arkansas wilderness.
While records from Arkansas Post are scanty, an example from Louisiana would be similar to the hunter trade in Arkansas. Joseph Gallien, a hunter working out of Natchitoches, contracted in 1764 for a musket, 25 pounds of gunpowder, 50 pounds of lead shot, 50 gunflints, 12 rods to load his gun, a barrel of salt, a copper cauldron, 12 butcher knives, two axes, an adze, and 12 mosquito bars (to ward off mosquitoes while sleeping).
Gallien's small hunting party--he and two slaves--needed a substantial amount of food: 50 pounds of flour, 12 pounds of sugar, 12 pounds of husked rice, three barrels of shelled corn, and eight pots of bear oil. Also included were about 8 gallons of cheap rum--although this might have been used for trading as well as consumption. In return for these supplies, Gallien and other hunters would produce bear oil, salted meats, buffalo tongues, and buffalo livers.
Occasionally, Menard received Spanish government contracts. In 1775, for example, he agreed to provide 10,000 pounds of buffalo tallow for use in Havana shipyards. (The tallow was used for caulking boats and for lubricants.) By 1783, Menard had established a regular Mississippi river trade, hauling supplies between St. Louis and New Orleans. He bought a house in New Orleans, indicating his growing wealth.
Not all of Menard's business enterprises were above board. Arnold noted that "he was a scrappy and troublesome entrepreneur, constantly on the lookout for a way to increase his cash flow, and he was not all that particular about where it came from." Menard's billiard room would be a prime example of this.
Established in the 1770s, the billiard room soon developed an unsavory reputation. According to a group of town leaders, Menard's billiards business had fleeced hunters by unfair gambling practices and "by causing the hunters to get drunk, making them gamble and by this means getting hold of their cargoes."
At about age 45 and at the height of his business success, Francois Menard died in 1791. He summoned the Post commandant and witnesses to his deathbed to dictate a new will. His substantial estate was left to his wife, Madelaine Enselmy Billiet. He also provided for his only child, a daughter born out of wedlock. He left nothing to his relatives in France, writing in his will that ". . . since I never had any help from my family, I cut them off entirely from what I possess."
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Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.
Editorial on 12/04/2016