Jean L’Archevêque, born in 1672 in Bayonne, France. Just fifteen-years-old at the time of the murder, he was living in the West Indies with his parents before becoming an indentured servant to Sieur Pierre Duhaut. This merchant would become the accused trigger-man in the escapade, while L’Archevêque played a key role in luring La Salle into the ambush. Duhaut paid for the crime with his life, but L’Archevêque escaped into exile among the Hasinai (Caddo) Indians, along with fellow survivor, Jacques Grolet.
Two years later, L’Archevêque convinced a Jumano Indian to carry a note and a drawing to the Spanish. “I do not know what sort of people you are. We are French[;] we are among the savages[;] we would like much to be Among the Christians such as we are[.] … we are solely grieved to be among beasts like these who believe neither in God nor in anything. Gentlemen, if you are willing to take us away, you have only to send a message. … We will deliver ourselves up to you.”
Tipped off by this note, the Spanish recovered L’Archevêque and in the summer of 1689 sent him and Grolet to Spain in irons. He languished for two years before Spanish authorities—wary of setting them free because of their knowledge of the frontera, instead made them swear an oath to Spain and then returned them to Mexico as soldiers.
L’Archevêque, now just twenty-two years old, joined the Diego de Vargas expedition to New Mexico in 1694. There he married Antonia Guitiérres and settled into a domestic life as a soldier, merchant, and landowner. He became a famous scout in the Santa Fe region and a man of political influence. In 1720, during the War of the Quadruple Alliance between Spain and France, the forty-eight-year-old L’Archevêque guided Lieutenant General Pedro de Villasur’s expedition into the heart of the Great Plains in order to push back the French influence along the Platte River. Pawnees and Otoes, aided by French trappers, surprised and crushed the Spanish-Pueblo column, killing nearly half and sending the rest scurrying back to Santa Fe. L’Archevêque and Villasur were among the slain.