Answer: Fur
Explanation:
French-speaking people in Oklahoma have included not only French natives, but also French Canadians, Acadians (or Cajuns), Belgians, Swiss, Caribbean French, and other refugees from one-time French colonies. In this article the French refers to those of direct French origin or nativity. French explorers arrived in the seventeenth century in a region that was then the domain of nomadic and seminomadic American Indians. In 1682 René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, exploring the Mississippi River, claimed for the French king all the lands drained by it. He is credited with naming the territory Louisiana, which included present Oklahoma. In 1719 Jean-Baptiste Bénard de la Harpe journeyed up the Red River, through eastern Oklahoma, and down the Arkansas in pursuit of trading prospects. At the same time, Claude-Charles du Tisné headed into Oklahoma from the north to explore Osage territory for a trade route with Spanish settlements on the Rio Grande. Posts set up by de la Harpe and du Tisné gave rise to a controversial claim that a post said to have existed at the site of a Pani (Caddo) Indian village was Oklahoma's first white settlement, Fernandina or Ferdinandina. After French Canadian brothers Paul and Pierre Mallet(t), ventured as far as Santa Fe in 1739 and returned to New Orleans along the Canadian and the Arkansas rivers, the Louisiana governor sent André Fabry (Fabre) de la Bruyere to follow the Canadian River westward to Santa Fe. Low water on the Canadian stalled his mission.
These French explorers and traders, also known as coureurs de bois, welcomed the freedom and challenges of their lifestyle. Possessing a strong loyalty to country and king, they were eager to expand France's influence. They exhibited personal traits not unlike those of later French immigrants—an independent spirit and individuality, a personal kind of religion, and a readiness to assimilate with the existing population. For the coureurs de bois this entailed adapting to Indian ways and languages, even taking Indian wives. This accounts for many French-Indian names in Oklahoma.
European political and military upheavals from the 1750s placed Louisiana under new ownership. By the Treaty of Paris (1763) part of Louisiana, including Oklahoma, was ceded by France to Spain. Despite Spanish efforts to gain trading supremacy, France under Napoleon regained Louisiana by the Treaty of San Ildefonso (1800). However, in 1803 a desperate Napoleon, beset by military and monetary problems in Europe and the Caribbean, sold Louisiana Territory to the fledgling United States.
Meanwhile, the Chouteau family of St. Louis extended trade into the new territory. Auguste and Jean Pierre, sons of Frenchman René Auguste Chouteau and Marie Therese Bougeois of New Orleans, had established a fur trade in St. Louis. Successful traders with the Osage along the Missouri, the brothers in 1802 moved into the Three Forks Area, north of present Muskogee. Based at St. Louis, Jean Pierre oversaw trading at the site known as Saline, and by 1817 his son, Auguste Pierre, ran the trading post on the Grand River. He settled in the new territory, revived the flagging fur trade, and built a keelboat business. Internationally acclaimed ballerina Yvonne Chouteau (Terekhov), is a descendant of Jean Pierre Chouteau. The town of Chouteau in Mayes County carries the family name and, with other French place-names, testifies to a lasting imprint of the French on Oklahoma's land.
Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville, a French-born graduate of the United States Military Academy, served as a first lieutenant at Fort Gibson and at Fort Smith in Arkansas. His abilities garnered important assignments, including command of a Rocky Mountain expedition. His careful notes and description of the Rockies earned him leadership of an exploration of Oklahoma's Cross Timbers, in preparation for the Indian removals under Pres. Andrew Jackson. Interestingly, in his report he determined that the prairie country was a barren waste that could not sustain human life.
Throughout the period of exploration and trade the French had been less interested in religious propagation than the Spanish or the French Canadians. Although there were Catholic clergy in the Louisiana province, Indian Territory was considered unfavorable to Catholic missionaries during the nineteenth century. This changed when Isidore Robot, a priest from Pierre-qui-Vire Abbey in France, arrived and began a mission in Atoka. He moved on to the Potawatomi Nation, in 1876 establishing Sacred Heart Mission and Academy north of the Canadian River. Out of this came the establishment of Shawnee's Sacred Heart College in 1883 and St. Gregory's University in 1915.
