Louis LeFleur, Frontiersman

Surprisingly little has been written about Louis LeFleur, who gave his name to Jackson’s Pearl River bluff, and became the father of the last chief of the Choctaw Nation (Greenwood LeFlore). Much of that written is inaccurate, the most glaring error being that he was a French-Canadian when in fact he was born in the tiny French colony of “Mobille” surrounding Fort Condé on the Gulf of Mexico.

Louis LeFleur was born Louis LeFlau; since by custom Louis eventually came to be known as LeFleur, we’ll use that name throughout to refer to him as LeFlore will be used in reference to his son Greenwood. Louis’ father, Jean Baptiste LeFlau came from France in the early 18th century as a soldier in the Fort Condé garrison. In 1735, he married Jeanne Boissinot, a native of Mobile, who bore him three children before her death in 1752. Jean Baptiste then married Jeanne Girard in 1753 and Louis, their third child, was born on June 29, 1762. There are no records of Louis LeFlau after his baptismal entry of 1762 until around 1790, but it’s certain that during this time he began trading with Native Americans, primarily the Choctaws, and likely operated flat-boats on the Amite and Pearl Rivers as well as in the Mississippi Sound.

LeFleur epitomizes those men of the American frontier who plied their trade along the navigable rivers in a wilderness before, during, and even after the advent of steamboats and the eventual dominance of rail. In Antebellum Natchez James D. Clayton writes that “L. LeFleur (sic), father of a celebrated Choctaw Chieftain of a later era, operated with handsome profits the main boat shuttle to Pensacola, carrying produce and commodities.” He brought luxury items to the prosperous city of Natchez, including “fine apparel” which “had been ordered from Panton, Leslie, and Company of St. Marks in east Florida.” The boats LeFleur and those like him used were flatboats or keelboats that were manned by a crew of up to twenty-five people. The goods LeFleur routinely carried were much less luxurious, used in his trade with the Choctaw, and the pelts he secured were sold in the trading houses at St. Marks and Pensacola. Corn and other farm products were sold in in Florida and Natchez.

Sometime around 1790, LeFleur cheerfully adopted the Choctaw system of polygamy and married both Nancy and Rebecca Cravat, the half-French nieces of the Choctaw Chief Pushmataha. LeFleur moved his growing family—three children were born by 1798—to Pass Christian, but with the establishment of the Choctaw Agency near present-day Jackson, he chose as a location for the new home a bluff on the west side of the Pearl River, rising some twenty-five feet above the crest of the floods and extending along the river for several hundred feet. With the opening on the Natchez Trace under the treaty of Fort Adams in 1801, LeFleur opened a way station in the same location where traders, travelers and mail carriers could secure fresh horses. This station rapidly became an inn providing bed and board as well as entertainment. The actual site of this trading post is disputed. Greenwood was the first of the “LeFlau” sons to be born at LeFleur’s Bluff on June 2, 1800, named for the Greenwood in the firm of Greenwood and Higginson, the London correspondents of Panton and Leslie.

LeFleur still operated his profitable boating trade, securing commissions from General William C.C. Claiborne, Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the newly organized (1798) Mississippi Territory to carry “certain goods sent by the United States as presents to the Choctaw Nation of Indians.” He also carried messages to the Governor of the Province of Louisiana. In addition to being entrusted with the delivery of merchandise making up the government annuity payments to the Choctaw Nation, Louis was asked to be present at the occasions when terms of treaties were negotiated. Louis “Leflow” is listed as one of the witnesses to the Treaty of Mount Dexter on November 16, 1805, which conveyed large amounts of land in what is now southeastern Mississippi and southwestern Alabama, including much of the western portion of Clarke County, Alabama, to the United States.

By 1810, operation of the inn and raising cattle had become LeFleur’s main enterprises, and he, along with Louis Durant, was said to have introduced cattle into Mississippi. Travelers from the east and from foreign lands have mentioned the accommodations at the Bluff and at the inn he established in 1812 at the place now known as French Camp. At French Camp, LeFleur had a number of buildings erected and it was here in 1812 that Major John Donly, who held the U.S. Government contract for transporting the mail on the Nashville-Natchez route, suggested to Louis that he be allowed to take young Greenwood home to Nashville with him in order that the boy might receive an “American education”, and LeFleur consented. Louis served with Pushmataha under Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812 and was promoted to the rank of major (brevet). He also served three months in 1814 in command of a company on Russell’s expedition to Alabama. He later served in the campaign to Pensacola in 1814-15.

With the introduction of the steamboat on the Mississippi River—the New Orleans was the first steamboat down the Mississippi in 1811—commerce along the Trace fell, but LeFleur expanded his agricultural interests and in a decade tripled their acreage in cultivation and heads of cattle. Greenwood was elected Chief of the Northwestern Division of the Choctaws, but when Jackson was elected president in 1828 he pursued a policy of negating the treaties between the U.S. and the Choctaws, and with the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek (1830) the Choctaws were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands. In a survey of freeholds within the Choctaw lands is a record for “Louis LeFlau, 300 acres in cultivation in the Yazoo Valley; five in family with four males over 16”. Major LeFlau was to receive two sections of land according to the Supplement to the Dancing Rabbit Creek Treaty.

The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was a coup de grâce for the Choctaws and it caused deep rifts in the LeFlau/LeFleur/LeFlore family. Details are sketchy, but Greenwood is in the fifth and last level of behests in Louis’ will, which was signed April 16, 1833. Louis LeFleur died that same year, and while his gravesite is unknown, family tradition states that he was buried in Hot Springs, Arkansas, not very far from LeFlore County, Oklahoma.

(Note: This article is a brief summation of preliminary research towards a more thorough examination of Louis LeFleur and should not be considered definitive.)

Image by Randy Steele

27 Replies to “Louis LeFleur, Frontiersman”

  1. Louis LeFleur is my 4th great grandfather on my mom’s side. Interesting article. Where did the picture come from. Is it a depiction of what he would have looked like.

    1. Yes, Jack. The image is “Frontiersman Portrait Hannastown” by Randy Steele. This is what I imagine LeFleur might have looked like. I do have a photograph which is claimed to be of Louis LeFleur, but its authenticity is disputed.

        1. The son of Louis LaFlore, Chief Greenwood LaFlore, had a plantation and owned about 400 slaves. At the time of emancipation, these blacks took the surname LaFlore. Ergo, many blacks in the South have that name. Some people get confused…

    2. I am also a fifth generation of Louis LeFlau – LeFlore. In tracing these things for years I found some good things and I found some very sad things. Being a CDBI actually realizing that my for father chief Greenwood LeFlore was more French than he ever was Indian. I come down through Rebecca Cravatt the niece of chief Pushmataha. Who had a sister by the name of Nancy, who had both married Louis LeFlore. Their names were Nahomtima and Nehomtima one meaning she who seeks and gives, and the other one meaning she who seeks and gives things. My grandfather Louis was the son of Louie LeFlau. In all the years of trying to trace my lineage things change back and forth, and gets very confusing. Definitely a lot of it because of the inner managing. Anyways, back in 2005 I chose to take my fifth generation grandmother‘s name.Nahomtima Leflau and I am truly proud to know that my bloodline came from chief Pushamataha .

  2. Mr. Yancy, did you finish your research on LeFleur? I’m interested in the alliance through marriage of the LeFleurs and the McGillivrays, of the Creek nation, and the interplay of French and English (Highlander) during that time period. (I’m a descendant of Josiah Hamilton Dillard).

    1. Ms. Binkley, my interest in LeFleur concentrated on historical documentation of his life. I really didn’t get into his genealogy. And it was a short piece.

      1. I was referring to your more advanced writing, as you mentioned above. The trading partnerships formed at that time were instrumental in the formation of the South. The traders Lachlan McGillivray and Louis LaFlore had families that eventually were related through marriage, as well as through their companies, Brown and Rae; and Panton and Leslie.
        The history here is fascinating.

    1. Mr. Moore, Absolutely no evidence whatsoever exists that LeFleur is either black, Jewish, or Moorish. Your claim is utterly spurious.

      1. Absolutely agree. This man was French, alone. Pre-Revolutionary French, in fact. The Negroes want to have people think they were and are more influential than possible. He probably spoke a very sophisticated French, in fact, as he was born just as the French and Indian War ended, and the Mississippi became part of “The Mississippi Territory” of the British North American Colonies. Actually, this photo looks more like a mountain man type of Frenchman, the type the Poudre River in Colorado was named after: Cache La Poudre, where the Frenchman hid his powder.

  3. Just for your own info, Mr Yancy, I came across a thesis written in 1963 by a young woman at East Central State College, Ada, Oklahoma, concerning “The LeFlore Family and Choctaw Indian Removal”. Her knowledge of Louis is as you said most likely incorrect as she says he was French Canadian. I tend to agree with you. But her facts of Indian Removal and Chief Greenwood’s participation in it is well documented, and shows it was not entirely ‘forced’ nor brutal. She uses Senate Document 512 of 1833-1834 for her facts, which includes the correspondence between various Indian agents and tribal leaders, with emphasis on monetary grants.

    1. I agree, when the removal started for the trail of tears, the ones that chose to take the trails did so so that they could stay one nation, the other others were told if they stayed in Mississippi with their chief Greenwood LeFlore then they would have to become US citizens. Though he would be one of my many uncles if you look in history because it is in history, books and papers known that Greenwood told Andrew Jackson that he was a liar, cheat, and skunk and had destroyed not only his name, but his people. He did not claim French. He claimed Native American.

  4. Thanks for this amazing article. Louis LeFleur was my 4th great-grandfather. I am descended from his daughter Clarissa, issue from his marriage to Nancy. (Louis/Clarissa/Perninah/Emily Louis/Edna/Allen/moi.)

  5. So happy to find your site! Louis Le Fleur was my husband’s 5th great grandfather and his story is even more amazing than we realized.
    I am happy to see you correct the French Canadian connection. A retired Methodist minister gave us our first information about him. He claimed that as a youth in Mobile so many of his family and others were dying of Yellow Fever that Louis headed north, go toCanada, perhaps for the fur trade in order to escape the epidemic. He did not settle there. Does this fit?
    And is it certain that the Cravatt sisters were nieces of Pushmataha? I knew that some sisters may have been raised by him
    or his clan. Thank you for your research and Louis’ possible likeness. Fascinating
    study! My husband’s line: Nancy LeFleur, Harkins, Harkins, Harkins, Thompson, Thompson

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