Author Archives: gsayre

Professor of English and Folklore

Dumont de Montigny and Le Page du Pratz

by Gordon Sayre, Professor of English and Folklore, University of Oregon

This is the new version of my website about my research and publications on the two major writers and historians of 18th century Louisiana. Formerly it was located at <darkwing.uoregon.edu/~gsayre/DMandLPDP.html>

The three menu tabs above lead to translations of writings by Dumont and Le Page, and a little-known eye-witness account of the Natchez War in 1730-31. More of my research is found in these articles and book chapters:

“Le Page du Pratz’s Fabulous Journey of Discovery: Learning about Nature Writing from a Colonial Promotional Narrative” is included in a collection of essays edited by Steven Rosendale and entitled The Greening of Literary Scholarship: Literature, Theory, and the Environment (University of Iowa Press, 2002). It focuses on the first and fourth of the translated excerpts from Le Page du Pratz found here.

“A Native American Scoops Lewis and  Clark: The Voyage of Moncacht-apé.” Common-place 5:4 (June 2005)

“Plotting the Natchez Massacre: Le Page du Pratz, Dumont de Montigny, Chateaubriand” Early American Literature 37:3 (2002) 381-412, discusses the Natchez uprising recounted in the fifth excerpt below.

Chapter 5, “The Natchez” in my book The Indian Chief as Tragic Hero: Native Resistance and the Literatures of America, from Moctezuma to Tecumseh (Chapel Hill, 2005) is about the Natchez rebellion, and expands upon the article in Early American Literature.

“Natchez Ethnohistory Revisited: New Manuscript Sources by Le Page du Pratz and Dumont de Montigny” Louisiana History 50:4 (Fall 2009), 407-436.

“A Newly-discovered Manuscript Map by Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz: From Mississippi Bubble to “Fleuve St. Louis,” a new portrait of America’s greatest river” Common-place 9:4 (June 2009)

“A Newly-Discovered Manuscript Map by Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz” French Colonial History 11:1 (2010), 23-45.

“How to Succeed in Exploration without really Discovering Anything: Four case studies from Colonial Louisiana, 1714-1763” Atlantic Studies 10:1 (2013).

Jean-François-Benjamin Dumont de Montigny, The Memoir of Lieutenant Dumont, 1715-1747: A Sojourner in the French Atlantic. Translated by Gordon Sayre, edited by Gordon Sayre and Carla Zecher. Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture / University of North Carolina Press, 2012. Honorable Mention, Lois Roth Award for a Translation of a Literary Work, Modern Language Association, 2012.

“Creole Identity in French Louisiana: from the Memoir of Dumont de Montigny / Identité créole dans la Louisiane Française: d’après le Mémoire de Dumont de Montigny.” Creolization in the French Americas ed. Jordan Kellman, Jean-Marc Masseaut, and Michael Martin. University of Louisiana Press, Lafayette, 2015.