... called himself Antoine de la Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac, although his real name was plain Antoine Laumet. The exact provenance of the titles is unclear.
He was born in 1658, in Saint–Nicolas–de–la–Grave – a small town between Agen and Montauban, in the Occitaine region of south–west France (about 40 miles from Toulouse, and 100 miles from Bordeaux). His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother came from a family of landowners.
Antoine Laumet was educated at a military school, and joined the army which took him to Port Royal in New France (now Annapolis, in Nova Scotia). In 1687 he married Marie Therese Guyon, the niece of his employer – a shipowner. It appears to be in the marriage register that we first see him named as Antoine de la Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac. The couple are said to have had 13 children.
Sieur is a French title equivalent to 'Lord of the Manor' in English. It's familiar enough in the word monsieur – the standard French title for a gentleman, equivalent to the English 'Mister'. It's not certain where 'Cadillac' comes from, but it may have been a family estate.
In 1688 (the year after his marriage), Cadillac was granted a parcel of land near Port Machias – now Machiasport, Maine. The following year he was called back to France, where he helped to prepare a plan for a sea attack against New England. He impressed King Louis XIV and his Minister of Marine, Louis de Ponchartrain, who would not forget his contributions to the war effort.
Cadillac was a favorite lieutenant of Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac, the Governor of New France. In 1694, Frontenac notified the French Court that he had put Cadillac in charge of Fort Michilimackinac – actually three distinct military posts on the Straits of Mackinac, between lakes Huron and Michigan. Cadillac held this post until 1697 (or 1698), when it was abandoned along with all other French posts in the west of New France as a result of undesirable dealings with the Native Americans – specifically the trading of brandy.
Cadillac saw that this amounted to an invitation to the British to take over the area. He spoke to Frontenac about founding a new settlement in the area south of Lake Huron known as le détroit, ('the straits'), where the land was fertile, the location on the river was felt to be easily defended against the British, and the climate was more hospitable than that in the more northern settlements like Michilimackinac.
Unfortunately, Frontenac died before agreeing to Cadillac's plan. His replacement, Hector Louis de Callieres, was not too fond of Cadillac and thus not likely to agree, so Cadillac returned to France in 1698 to persuade Louis XIV to allow him to found a new settlement lower in the Great Lakes.
This mission accomplished, Cadillac returned to Montreal where he gathered canoes, farmers, traders, artisans, soldiers, and Native Americans to accompany him on his quest. The men set sail on 4 June 1701, reaching the Detroit River on 23 July. The following day – 24 July 1701 – the group traveled north on the Detroit River and chose a place to build the settlement, which Cadillac named Fort Ponchartrain du Detroit in honor of King Louis's Minister of Marine.
In 1710, Cadillac was removed from duty at Fort Ponchartrain and made governor of the French Province of Louisiana (which covered most of what we now know as the mid–western United States, right up to the Canadian border and a little beyond). He may then have gone to France; Louisiana records indicate that he was aboard a French frigate on 17 May 1713, when it arrived in Mobile Bay on the Gulf of Mexico. Later that year, Cadillac caused the Louisiana headquarters to be moved from its site on Mobile Bay to a new location at the head of the bay – known today as Mobile, Alabama.
In 1717 Cadillac lost his position as Governor of Louisiana and returned to France. Not long after arriving, he was arrested and sent to the Bastille in Paris for speaking against John Law, a man who petitioned French investors for help in establishing settlements along the Mississippi River. Cadillac spent a few months in the prison, but was never tried. Within a couple of years his warnings against Law proved to be well–founded.
In 1722, Cadillac was appointed as governor of Castelsarrasin, near the town of his birth. He may have held that position until his death in 1730.
The above is an edited version of this page on the Detroit History website. Needless to say, there is more information on Wikipedia, including the following: "[Cadillac] was widely hailed as a hero until the 1950s and the rise of liberal scholarship, but more recent writers have criticized him." Wikipedia quotes Yves F. Zoltvany, Associate Professor of History at McGill University in Montreal, writing on the Dictionary of Canadian Biography website, who in turn quotes Agnes Laut (a Canadian journalist, 1871–1936) and W. J. Eccles (a Yorkshire–born Canadian historian, 1917–98). For Agnes Laut, Cadillac was among the "great early heroes in North American history", but Eccles described him as "one of the worst scoundrels ever to set foot in New France".
You can read Professor Zoltvany's biography of Antoine Laumet (a.k.a. Antoine de Lamothe Cadillac) here.
© Haydn Thompson 2020