ANCESTOR SPOTLIGHT: MACH-E QUAY ZANCE

ANCESTOR SPOTLIGHT: MACH-E QUAY ZANCE

Mach-e was an indian woman. She was the mother of Charles Chartier, born 1811.
I have also seen her name listed as Margaret.

Here is a story I found on ancestry.com. originally posted by shoule119.

"It was the Charles Chartier born in 1784 who worked for Jean Baptiste and Michel Cadotte in Northern Minnesota, in an area that they called "Fond du Lac" (there was a town of sorts called Fond du Lac near present day Cloquet, but the name typically referred to a region that we usually call the "Arrow Head" today).  Charles Chartier was recorded on the books of the Cadotte's "XY Company" in 1805.  The XY Company, as it is usually called, had been split off of the North West Company in about 1802-03 when the Cadottes were forced out; they recruited among their friends and family back home (in and around L'Assomption) and created a small independent company that competed ferociously with the North West Company until the two were merged back together in about 1806-09.  The North West Company restructured, giving the Cadotte family shares, and having the Northern Minnesota wintering partner, Peter Grant, give up his territory in and around Fort Francis (present day International Falls) and rotate back to Montreal. 

Giving up his territory, Grant also gave up his Indian wife and her extended family.  Charles Chartier took over Peter Grant's marriage in about 1809.  "Mach-e", "Mahji" or "Maggie" quaw or quayzance; "Mahji" was usually "Magic" (though there were other translations and spins), and quayzance was "girl".  She was known as "Magic Girl" or "Bad Girl" or "Mr. Grant's Girl", depending on who was talking.  She was the youngest daughter of Waub-o-jeeb (various spellings), or White Fisher, an important Chief of the Ojibwe.  At one time her husband Peter Grant was the richest, most important trader in the Minnesota area, and she was very important and very well known.  But her father died, Grant left her, the trading company that she had formed the attachment with -- the North West Company -- fell on hard times; the beaver that everyone was dependent on got a pelt-damaging disease in about 1809, a fabulous flood in 1810 devastated Northern Minnesota, Great Britain had a financial crisis in 1811-1813, the War of 1812 stopped trade, and one of the North West Company principals died.  Their Company in ruins, unable to trade, probably starving to death, Charles Chartier abandoned Mach-e-quay-zance and her people in 1815, and went home to L'Assomption.

Mach-e-quay-zance had children with Peter Grant, and she had two sons with Charles Chartier.  Chartier took the two boys with him when he left.  The two sons were kidnapped from her point of view.  She was not a woman to give up two sons like that, and she apparently suffered badly.  Her brother, Red Bear (the elder), promised to kill Chartier if he ever saw him again; he never got the chance.  Many people died who relied on the Company for trade, people who she was responsible for.  Mach-e-quay-zance went through a naming ceremony for her grief.  She married Joseph Bottineau in about 1816-17 and the family went West, to the Turtle Mountains and the plains beyond, to hunt buffalo.  Over a hundred years later the extended family was still hurt and angry about the "kidnapping", and Chartier's name was omitted from some family documents, making the genealogy very difficult. 

In L'Assomption Charles Chartier gave the older boy -- Charles, born 1811, no middle name -- to be raised by his relatives.  In a couple of years he remarried, and took the boy back.  It is not known what happened to the younger boy; he may not have survived.

Charles Chartier, born 1811, apparently never reconnected with his mother in adulthood, although she did not live very far away at one time, and she apparently knew about him and asked after him.  A young man named Peter Picotte knew Charles Chartier when they both settled in Belle Prairie Township in the mid-1850's.  Picotte had a relative who traded with the mixed-blood buffalo hunters to the Northwest, and Picotte went to Pembina looking for work and adventure, and met Mach-e-quay-zance, Charles Chartier's mother, or Mrs. Joseph Bottineau as she was known by that time -- about 1856-57.  It is understandable that Picotte would have met "Mach-e", or "Maggie", or "Margaret", since she was the leader of a matriarchial society, the mother of a large extended family, and the most experienced and proably most intelligent trader for a group of mixed-blood people who were living by a precarious trade.  By 1856 her sons Pierre and Severe Bottineau and her sons-in-law Joseph Montreuille and Joseph Raiche were important citizens in Minnesota.  Oddly, Peter Picotte ended up marrying Charles Chartier and Marie Appollonia's daughter Marie Philomene.  So the old Indian woman that he talked to near Winnipeg, in an area that they called Pembina, in about 1856-57, was the Grandmother of his future wife."

Here is a story about her 3rd husband....Charles bottineau....

"Charles married Margaret Ahdik Songab about 1820 in Saint-Boniface, Quebec. Margaret was Lake-of-the-Woods Ojibwe. Her Indian name was Mah Je Gwoz Since or Son Gabo Ki Che Ta, which meant Margaret Clearing Sky or Clear Sky Woman. Margaret's mother was Ojibwe and her father was a captured Sioux warrior."