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Madame Montour (1667 or c. 1685 – c. 1753) was an influential interpreter, diplomat, and local leader of Algonkin and French Canadian ancestry. Although she was well known, her contemporaries usually referred to her only as "Madame" or "Mrs." Montour. She may have been Isabelle (or Elizabeth) Couc, a Métis born in 1667, or perhaps Isabelle Couc's niece, who was born around 1685 and whose given name is uncertain. In 1711, Madame Montour began working as an interpreter and diplomatic consultant for the province of New York. Around 1727, she and her husband Carondawana, an Oneida, moved to the province of Pennsylvania. Her village, known as Otstawonkin, was at the mouth of Loyalsock Creek on the West Branch Susquehanna River. The modern borough of Montoursville, named for her, developed on the east bank after the American Revolutionary War. Montour's son Andrew Montour also became an important interpreter in Pennsylvania and Virginia, as did his son John Montour. Some of Madame Montour's female relatives were prominent local leaders in New York and Pennsylvania, and have often been confused with her by historians. ==Identity debate== There has been confusion about details of Madame Montour's life. She has often been confounded with her female relatives, particularly Catharine Montour, who was prominent in western New York. Historians have long attempted to separate fact from fiction and piece together her life from a few records and conflicting names. Much is uncertain about Madame Montour's early life. In 1744, Witham Marshe met the "celebrated Mrs. Montour" at an important treaty conference held in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.〔Parmenter, 141.〕 When asked about her background, Montour told Marshe that she had been born in Canada to a French father. She said that she had been captured by the Iroquois about fifty years earlier (i.e. around 1694), when she was about ten years old, and that she did not remember much about her parents. She had been adopted and raised by the Iroquois, she said. She eventually married an Carondawana, an Oneida war chief, with whom she had several children before his death in battle in 1729.〔Parmenter, 141–42; Sivertsen, 94. See (Witham Marshe's Journal ), ''Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society'' (Boston, 1801), 1st series, 7:189–91.〕 In 1974, historian William A. Hunter tentatively identified Madame Montour as Elizabeth Couc, a métis born in 1667 near Trois-Rivières, New France, in what is now Quebec, Canada. Elizabeth (also known as Isabelle, which was used interchangeably in French at the time) Couc was one of five children recorded for Pierre Couc ''dit'' Lafleur (1627–1690), a French-born fur trader and interpreter, and Marie Miteoamegoukoué (1631–1699), a Christian Algonquin woman.〔Hirsch, 84; Sivertsen, 96.〕 Hunter conceded that some of the evidence connecting Madame Montour with Elizabeth Couc was "vague and contradictory". He accepted that Madame Montour had been captured by an Iroquois war party around 1695, but if she was Elizabeth Couc, she was much older than ten at the time. Hirsch and Silvertsen have explained the discrepancies by suggesting that Madame Montour was deliberately vague about her past; this allowed her to present a different account of herself in Pennsylvania as a genteel French woman, albeit one in Indian dress.〔Hirsch, 96; Sivertsen, 95–96.〕 Elizabeth (or Élisabeth) Couc apparently also used the name of Isabelle, the French form of Elizabeth; the two names were then interchangeable.〔Hirsch, 85n11.〕 Historian Alison Duncan Hirsch uncovered a record from 1711 that lists payments to "Eysabelle Montour interpretress", the only known reference to Montour's first name in an English document.〔Hirsch, 93.〕 Isabelle Couc presumably had an Algonquin name too, but it is unknown.〔Hirsch, 84.〕 Parmenter and Hagedorn are among contemporary historian who have argued that Madame Montour was not Isabelle Couc, but rather her niece.〔Charles A. Hanna, ''The Wilderness Trail'' (New York, 1911), 1:200, was perhaps the first to argue that Madame Montour was the daughter of Louis Couc, and thus Isabelle Couc's niece. Hagedorn (p. 44) and Parmenter (p. 143) support that view.〕 According to this interpretation, Montour was born in an Indian village near modern Sorel, Quebec, around 1685, a year consistent with the story that she told Marshe. Her parents were Louis Couc Montour, who was the brother of Isabelle Couc, and Madeleine, a Sokoki (Western Abenaki) woman.〔Parmenter, 143–45; Hagedorn, 308n1.〕 If Madame Montour was born in 1685, her birth apparently went unrecorded, and her first name is uncertain.〔Parmenter, 147. Although Parmenter's article is entitled "Isabel Montour", in the text he says that her given name in unclear, and refers to her only as "Madame Montour".〕 Her given name has also been represented as Catherine, Elisabeth/Isabelle, and Madeleine.〔Hirsch, 83.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Madame Montour」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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