So Potent an Empire: Chicagou, Louis XV, and the French Imperial Imaginary

Brett Rushforth uses the life of Chicagou, a Michigamea (Illinois) Indian warrior and diplomat, to explore how the Native peoples of the Mississippi Valley understood eighteenth-century French colonialism. Visiting the court of Louis XV in 1725, Chicagou explained that the extraordinary technology and military prowess of the French had drawn him across the Atlantic, “eager to see the Monarch of so potent an empire.” The potency of that empire – indeed the question of its very existence – has inspired vibrant debate over the past decade. Yet these discussions have privileged French perspectives over indigenous ones, sometimes asking how Native peoples fit into the French imperial imaginary but rarely exploring Indians’ own mental universe. This paper takes Chicagou’s perspective: using his own words, metaphors, ritual performances, and material culture to suggest how he, and by extension his people, imagined and came to terms with the early modern French empire.