Domitilde Marie Kapeouapnokoue (c. 1692–1782, aka Ouikabe, LaFourche, Nepveu Villeneuve, Mouet) was an

Odawa The Odawa (also Ottawa or Odaawaa ) are an Indigenous North American people who primarily inhabit land in the Eastern Woodlands region, now in jurisdictions of the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada. Their territory long prec ...

woman of the Nassauakueton

doodem The Anishinaabe, like most Algonquian languages, Algonquian-speaking groups in North America, base their system of kinship on clans or totems. The Ojibwe language, Ojibwe word for clan () was borrowed into English as totem. The clans, based ma ...

. Her father was chief Returning Cloud Kewinaquot and her mother was Nesxesouexite Neskes Mi-Jak-Wa-Ta-Wa. Her brother was

Nissowaquet Nissowaquet (–1797, also known as La Fourche) was an Odawa leader of the Nassauakueton doodem. His father was chief Returning Cloud Kewinaquot and his mother was Nesxesouexite Neskes Mi-Jak-Wa-Ta-Wa. He grew up in Michilimackinac and moved to L ...

, also known as La Fourche. She lived near

Michilimackinac Michilimackinac ( ) is derived from an Ottawa Ojibwe name for present-day Mackinac Island and the region around the Straits of Mackinac between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.. Early settlers of North America applied the term to the entire region ...

, where the

Jesuits The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

had very few converts to

Catholicism The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

, Domitilde being one of the few. In 1712, she married Daniel Villeneuve, a French courer des bois with whom she had seven

Métis The Métis ( , , , ) are a mixed-race Indigenous people whose historical homelands include Canada's three Prairie Provinces extending into parts of Ontario, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and the northwest United States. They ha ...

children. Villeneuve died in 1724, and soon after Domitilde married Augustin Langlade, giving birth to

Charles Michel de Langlade Charles Michel Mouet de Langlade (9 May 1729 – after 26 July 1801)''Dictionnaire Généalogique Tanguay'' was a Great Lakes fur trader and war chief who was important in protecting French territory in North America. His mother was Ottawa and hi ...

in 1729. Domitilde went on to become the godmother of dozens of French, Métis, and Anishinaabe children and adults, a number of whom were enslaved, at least one to her. Domitilde's position within the

Anishinaabe The Anishinaabe (alternatively spelled Anishinabe, Anicinape, Nishnaabe, Neshnabé, Anishinaabeg, Anishinabek, Aanishnaabe) are a group of culturally related Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous peoples in the Great Lakes region of C ...

, Catholic, and

fur trading The fur trade is a worldwide industry dealing in the acquisition and sale of animal fur. Since the establishment of a world fur market in the early modern period, furs of boreal ecosystem, boreal, polar and cold temperate mammalian animals h ...

communities created powerful alliances for her brother Nissowaquet and her son Charles. Her marriages were especially important because there were relatively few Anishinaabe–French marriages at the time.

References

Odawa people 18th-century Native American women 18th-century American women 18th-century Native American people {{NorthAm-native-bio-stub 1690s births 1782 deaths