Madame Montour

Madame Montour was an influential interpreter, diplomat, and local leader of Algonquin 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 Couc, a Mtis born in 1667, or perhaps Isabelle Coucs niece, who was born around 1685 and whose given name is uncertain.

Much is uncertain about Madame Montours early life. In 1744, Witham Marshe met the celebrated Mrs. Montour at an important treaty conference held in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. 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 , 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 Carondawana, an Oneida war chief, with whom she had several children before his death in battle in 1729.

Source: Wikipedia