1. Logan Fontenelle, known as Shon-ga-ska, was a trader of Omaha and French ancestry, who served for years as an interpreter to the US Indian agent at the Bellevue Agency in Nebraska.
21 Facts About Logan Fontenelle
1. 2.
Logan Fontenelle's mother was a daughter of Big Elk, the principal chief, and his father was a respected French-American fur trader.
3.
European Americans thought Fontenelle was a chief but, because of his white father, he was not considered part of the tribe.
4.
Later that year, Logan Fontenelle accompanied a delegation of seven gente chiefs of the Omaha who traveled overland to Washington, DC, for further talks.
5.
Logan Fontenelle was one of the signatories of the treaty, perhaps because he was the only Omaha speaker at the meeting who was literate in English.
6.
Logan Fontenelle was born at Fort Atkinson, Nebraska Territory on May 6,1825.
7.
Logan Fontenelle was the oldest son of four born to Me-um-bane, a daughter of the Omaha principal chief Big Elk, and her husband Lucien Fontenelle, a French-American fur trader from New Orleans.
8.
The senior Logan Fontenelle sent his sons to St Louis, Missouri, for European-American schooling.
9.
In 1828, Lucien Logan Fontenelle purchased the former Pilcher's Post, becoming the agent at what became known as Logan Fontenelle's Post.
10.
Logan Fontenelle represented the American Fur Company on the Missouri River in what developed as Bellevue, Sarpy County, Nebraska.
11.
In 1832, with the fur trade declining sharply, Logan Fontenelle sold the post to the US government.
12.
Logan Fontenelle had a house built near his father's for him and Gixpeaha.
13.
Logan Fontenelle allied with the future Omaha chief Joseph La Flesche, a Metis fur trader who had been adopted as a son of the principal Omaha chief Big Elk.
14.
About this time, LaFlesche and Logan Fontenelle established a ferry across the Platte River near the present-day site of Columbus, Nebraska, to accommodate the increasing migrant traffic.
15.
Logan Fontenelle took them to a location overlooking the Elkhorn River about forty miles northwest of Bellevue.
16.
The men asked Logan Fontenelle the price for twenty square miles of land for their township and his reply was a hundred dollars; however, he lowered the price when the promoters decided to name the town and a nearby creek in honor of him.
17.
Logan Fontenelle's first shot missed, but with the second he killed a Sioux.
18.
Logan Fontenelle had reloaded his gun, and as they came up he turned and killed two of them.
19.
Some historians contend that Logan Fontenelle was made a chief of the Omaha in 1853 after the death of Big Elk.
20.
Logan Fontenelle was the only one of the group of Omaha speakers who was literate in English and could read what was on the treaty.
21.
Logan Fontenelle is honored in the names of several places, and with a monument:.