Desperate in Saint Martin Notes on Guillaume Coppier

By Gerard M. Hunt

This book on Guillaume Coppier (1606 1674), the early 17th-century French traveler, indentured servant, colonist, mariner, moralist, baroque chronicler, antiquarian, humanist, sometime pirate and slaver of sorts, is essentially a reading of Coppier, the man and his chronicle.
Coppiers Histoire et voyage des Indes Occidentales, et de plusieurs autres rgions maritimes, & esloignes (History and Voyage to the West Indies and to Several Other Maritime and Faraway Regions) was published in Lyon in 1645.
Given its objective and context, this effortpart amateur historiography and translation and part novice commentary and interpretationis also a survey of past appraisals of Coppiers chronicle. Like all such endeavors, this essay informs on the essayist; it is a sort of voyage, and a long one at that.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781426900440

Gerard M. Hunt

Gérard M. Hunt, a native St. Martiner, is a former High School Teacher. He was schooled in public school in Saint-Martin. He continued his education in the U.S.A. and in Quebec, Canada. He taught French at Western Laval High School, and at Chomedey Polyvalent High School in Laval, Quebec. He also taught at Macdonald High School in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec, at Milton Peters College in Sint Maarten, at the Lycée des Iles du Nord and at the Collège du Mont des Accords in Saint-Martin. He is the author of Rambling on Saint Martin - A Witnessing.

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Desperate in Saint Martin

Notes on Guillaume Coppier

Gérard M. Hunt

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I Desperate in Saint Martin Notes on Guillaume Coppier

1 A Frail Vessel on an Ocean of Difficulties and Dangers

2 Guillaume Coppier: An Early Modern French Author

3 In Captivity: The Spanish in San Martín (1633–1648)

4 Claim and Counter Claim: The Partitioning of San Martín

5 History and Voyage: Inventory and Adventure

6 Jacques de Dampierre’s Essay in Context

7 JACQUES DE Dampierre on Coppier’s Chronicle

8 On French Colonialism: From Montaigne to Leroy-Beaulieu and Dampierre

9 Seamarks: Propaganda, Praise and Cruel Irony

10 Coppier’s Literary Reception, From Dampierre to Sainton

11 Coppier’s Introductory Discourse: To Sea with Sail and Compass

12 Jacques de Solleysel’s Preface on Prefaces

13 Coppier’s Epistle to [François] de Solleysel: Your Mind has Enraptured Mine.

14 Coppier’s Second Foreword: Time is the most precious thing in the world.

15 Coppier’s Third Foreword: We believe the eye more than the imagination.

16 Coppier’s Fourth and Final Foreword: I came, I saw, I tied it all together.

17 Strange Encounters and Exceptional Witnessing

18 Coppier on the Recovery of

St. Christopher by the Spanish in 1629

19 In Saint Martin, Coppier Broke-down and Wept

20 Coppier’s History and Voyage to the West Indies: A Colonial Travel Narrative

PART II Essay in Translating Selected Chapters of Coppier’s History and Voyage to the West Indies…

Preliminary remarks

Book I—Chapter IV: Of America in General (De l’Amérique en general)

Chapter V: Of the West Indies, Land of the Savages (Des Isles Indoises, pays des Sauvages)

Chapter VI: Of the Aforesaid Islands in General (Des susdites Iles en general)

Chapter VII: Of the Woods and Trees of these Islands in General (Des bois et des arbres d’icelles Isles en general)

Chapter VIII: Of the Savage West Indians (Des Sauvages Indois Occidentaux)

Chapter IX: Of Their Way of Navigating and of Waging War (De leur maniere de nauiger et de guerroyer)

Chapter X: Of Their Caramémo (De leur Caramémo)

Chapter XI: Of their Ajouppas, Cases and Carbeils (De leurs Ajouppas, Cases et Carbeils)

Chapter XII: Of their Bread (De leur Pain)

Chapter XIII: Of their Wine (De leur vin)

Chapter XIV: Of Hunting and of the Birds of these Islands (De la chasse et des oyseaux d’icelles Isles)

CHAPTER XV: Of Fruits and Roots (Des Fruits & Racines)

Chapter XVI: Of Sea Fish (Des Poissons Marins)

Chapter XVII: Of the Nature of Pearls, & of the Way they are Fished (De la nature des Perles, & de leur pesche)

Chapter XVIII: How they Fish for Pearls (Comment l’on faict la pesche des Perles.)

Book II—Chapter IV: Of Bird Island (De l’Isle aux Oyseaux)

Bibliography: List of Publications Consulted and/or Cited

« Mon beau navire ô ma mémoire

Avons-nous assez navigué

Dans une onde mauvaise à boire

Avons-nous assez divagué

De la belle aube au triste soir… [?] »

G. Apollinaire, Alcools: 1913

"My handsome vessel O my memory

Have we sailed enough

In waters unfit to drink

Have we rambled enough

From the bright sunrise into the sad night… [?]"

"History is not a burden on the memory

but an illumination of the soul."

* * *

"If the past has been an obstacle and a burden,

knowledge of the past is the safest and surest emancipation."

Lord J. Acton

« (Dieu graces) Veni, Vidi, Vinxi. »

Guillaume Coppier

1645

(By the Grace of God) I Came, I Saw, I Tied it All Together.

For Mary Francine Aurandt

In Memory of Anne de Sales Aurandt

1943–1986

« Celui qui a été ne peut plus désormais ne pas avoir été : désormais ce fait mystérieux et profondément obscur d’avoir été est son viatique pour l’éternité. »

Vladimir Jankélévitch as quoted by Paul Ricœur in La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli (2000)

One who has been can no longer, henceforth not have been: henceforth this mysterious and profoundly obscure event of having been is one’s travel allowance for eternity.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book on Guillaume Coppier (1606–1674), the early 17th-century French traveler, indentured servant, colonist, mariner, moralist, baroque chronicler, antiquarian, humanist, sometime pirate and slaver of sorts, is essentially a reading of Coppier the man and his chronicle. Given its context and objective, this effort is also a survey of past appraisals of Coppier’s chronicle. Like all such endeavors, this essay informs on the essayist; it is a sort of voyage, and a long one at that.

I recall the day in 1985 when I received a microfilmed printout of Coppier’s chronicle. Earlier that year, I had written to the Rare Books Section at the Library of Congress requesting information on the book. To my surprise, I was informed that for 150 dollars, the equivalent of about 500 dollars today, I could purchase a printout copy of the volume.

Only readers of a certain age might fully appreciate this anecdote. Today, on the Internet, with a few clicks, one can peruse and download a number of rare books from websites all over the world. Jacques de Dampierre’s essay, referenced throughout this survey, and reviewed in several of its chapters is now readily accessible on the Internet; as is Guillaume Coppier’s chronicle.

Looking back at the long road I have traveled, it is tempting to view that fateful day in 1985 as the beginning of my adventure. In fact, it was only the indispensable leg of a journey I had envisaged some ten years earlier when I discovered Guillaume Coppier and his chronicle in Professor Régis Antoine’s study of French Authors and the Antilles. Antoine’s assessment of Coppier’s book stirred my curiosity in the traveler from Lyon who, in 1629, visited Saint Martin—my home island—and left us with some impressions of his sojourn there.

Régis Antoine’s appraisal of Guillaume Coppier’s contribution set wheels in motion that prompted me to embark on my journey of inquiry, thirty-four years ago, in 1978. His review pointed me to early 17th-century French literature, to the writings of the French moralists and to other authors of that period. This research led me to Jean Rousset, to other scholars of the baroque and to Jacques de Dampierre’s 1904 essay on the sources of the History of the French Antilles. In turn, Dampierre’s authoritative, but rather negative appraisal of Coppier, the man and his chronicle, further fueled emotions that kept me—on and off—at the rudder all these years.

I researched and wrote this book in Quebec, Canada. Some research and writing were also done in Saint Martin. Over the years, while on visits back home, I also did some teaching; first at Milton Peters College, later at the Lycée des Iles du Nord and at the Collège du Mont des Accords. Colleagues and friends on the island who were aware of my ongoing-never-ending project were all very supportive. I thank them all, especially my cousin and former colleague, Evelyne Fleming as well as her sister Sonia Fleming; my friends Roger, Michel, François and Léo Petit; Max, Alex, Julo and Aline Choisy; Daniella and Louis Jeffry; Robert Romney; Pastor John (Johnny) Gibbons; and Raymond and Gérard Vialenc.

Other friends and acquaintance in Saint Martin encouraged me to stay the course. I am almost certain to have overlooked several of them in the list that follows: Mary J. Hellmund, Jan Beaujon, Maria Van Enckevort, Henry Brookson, Gerda Van der Kolk, Gracita Arrindell, Lasana Sekou, Omer Arrondell, Marjolein Roos and Lisa Davis-Burnett. Lisa read the book in manuscript form and made several helpful suggestions. I thank each and every one of them.

My special gratitude goes to Dr. François Petit and Dr. Frantz Anaïs. François lent me Jacques de Dampierre’s Essay on the Sources of the History of the French Antilles (1492–1664) when this book was still quite rare, before there was a virtual copy accessible on the Internet; and Frantz supplied me with a number of books and articles, including Jean-Pierre Sainton’s important article on Guillaume Coppier. I thank Professor Dale Thomas Mathews for granting me permission to paraphrase and to quote rather extensively from The Spanish Domination of Saint Martin (1633–1648) authored by his father, the late historian Dr. Thomas G. Mathews.

In Québec, first and foremost, I thank my friend Jacques Delsemme and his sister, my friend and former colleague Martine Delsemme. Martine researched several items for me in Lyon, France. Jacques assisted with all computer-related matters. He scanned all of the images and did the cover design of my book. I am indebted to Martine and to Jacques. Without their precious assistance this craft would still be out at sea.

In the USA and vacationing in Saint Martin, Professor Theodore J. Lowi, his wife Angèle, her sister Jacqueline, their brother, my friend Joseph Daniel and his wife Janet, were solid in their support; they were the kind of timber that rendered my rig unassailable. Dr. Lowi’s interest in my venture, his encouragement, sound advice and boundless generosity kept me on course, enabling me to resist the sweet songs of sea nymphs and, eventually, to find a way back home.

Along with Jacques de Dampierre, Jean Rousset and Régis Antoine, the sources that informed my commentary are: Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre, Frank Lestringant, Johan Hartog, Thomas G. Mathews, Harold Bloom, Tzvetan Todorov, Normand Doiron, Roland Le Huenen, Yann Lignereux, Jean-Paul Masson, François Hartog, V.S. Naipaul, Pim Den Boer, Hayden White, William Keylor, Georg Iggers, Philip Hoffman, Thomas Worcester, Jean-Pierre Moreau, Jacques Petitjean-Roget, Jean-Pierre Sainton, Jacques Attali and three of my former teachers at McGill University: Marc Angenot, Jean Terrasse and Louis Van Delft.

I have taken so much from my sources, from those listed above, and from others I have cited in my text and entered in its bibliography that I cannot point to anything novel on my part. To paraphrase Montaigne, I could not count the items I have borrowed from others; I would have to weight them.

Indeed, there is nothing truly original in my Notes on Guillaume Coppier. The complex nature of my subject, limited research resources and even more so, my lack of experience, leave me no alternative than to hope that I have, at least, succeeded in taking a fresh look at Coppier—the man and his chronicle. Of course, any errors, omissions or inconsistencies in this book are solely my own.

Researching and writing are solitary activities. Time spent alone with books, striking a keyboard and staring at a screen, is time forever spent away from precious others. I thank my wife Mary Francine Aurandt for putting up with my obsession with Guillaume Coppier throughout the years. Without Francine, there would be none of this, nothing!

INTRODUCTION

In his passionate and edifying Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, Harold Bloom reminds us of the constant strain in Samuel Johnson’s periodical essays The Rambler (1750–1752), the theme that concerns the sorrows and hazards of writing. Bloom recommends Johnson’s comic realism to all who write:

( . . .) though it should happen that an author is capable of excelling, yet his merit may pass without notice, huddled in the variety of things, and thrown into the general miscellany of life. He that endeavors after fame by writing, solicits the regard of a multitude fluctuating in pleasures, or immersed in business, without time for intellectual amusements; he appeals to judges prepossessed by passions, or corrupted by prejudices, which preclude their approbation of any new performance. ( . . .) (Bloom, 2004: 182)

Whether or not Guillaume Coppier endeavored after fame, it seems that circumstances, faith or, as Coppier himself might have termed it, Fortune, or Divine Providence has placed him among those who failed miserably to obtain any approbation for their performance.

Coppier’s baroque style of writing and a laudable, but seemingly challenging intent to chronicle and instruct, to describe and prescribe, are combined with a disparaging representation of certain groups, namely of the Carib and of the Negro. Coppier’s modest origins, coupled with these salient elements of his Histoire et Voyages des Indes Occidentales . . . , (History and Voyage to the West Indies…) may go far in accounting for the ill-fortune and neglect which have attended the book from its publication in 1645 to the very end of the 19th century.

In the early 20th century (1904), the chartiste Jacques de Dampierre’s authoritative and influential Essai sur les sources de l’histoire des Antilles Françaises (1492–1664), (Essay on the Sources of the History of the French Antilles (1492–1664)), in which Guillaume Coppier figures as a singular, but obscure minor chronicler, rescued Coppier and his book from total oblivion. It is our contention, however, that this essay; and Dampierre’s survey of Coppier’s chronicle in particular, were also detrimental to Coppier’s literary reception and to his literary fortune throughout the 20th century and beyond.

The central argument in our investigation is that Dampierre’s historical approach or methodology made little or no allowance for the distinctive character of Coppier’s chronicle; that late nineteenth and early 20th-century French history, historiography and literary norms, their conventions and practices combined with Dampierre’s idiosyncrasies, led to a partial misreading of Coppier’s chronicle. The key element of our premise is that Coppier’s book is a baroque text; and because of its distinctive characteristics, it was substantially dismissed as being neither history nor literature.

It was precisely the artistic, stylistic literary reality that later came to be known as baroque; those distinct features of Coppier’s chronicle that led Dampierre to observe that it is a most singular book as much in itself as in the extravagant personality of the author; and to opine that it informs on a pretentious and confused author incapable of order and method, full of the most idle-rhetoric (Dampierre, 1904: 86).

Unlike Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Holland and a few other European countries, for almost two centuries, France was considered impervious to the baroque. A rationalist, positivist and bourgeois French 19th century reinforced the opinion of a nation too steeped in Cartesian logic; too infused in French classicism to have had a baroque period (Tapié, 1997: 61–81).

Baroque was a notion first used to describe certain works in the visual or fine arts. The term was later transposed to include works of literature. German scholars were the first to study the baroque. In the 19th century, there was no such research in France. Heinrich Wölfflin published his groundwork masterpiece on the baroque in art in 1888. Sixty-five years later, in 1953, came the publication of the Swiss scholar Jean Rousset’s seminal book La Littérature de l’âge baroque en France. Circé et le Paon, (The Literature of the Baroque Age in France: Circe and the Peacock).

Dampierre’s scientific method of history, anchored in events, in certain documents and in great personalities was also steeped in a distrust of rhetoric and philosophy, of moral philosophy particularly. These salient features of the méthode historique were coupled with Dampierre’s idealization of 17th-century French classicism; with its rationalism and with the essayist colonialist bent.

Dampierre identified Guillaume Coppier as one of the earliest French chroniclers of the period he studied, but he erred by not recognizing Coppier’s chronicle as the first narrative source with respect to French settlement in the West Indies and the earliest known witnessing of the 1629 Spanish attack on the French and English settlements on Saint Christopher. This oversight, coupled with a lack of knowledge of French baroque literature appear to have led Dampierre to overlook much of the merit of Coppier’s accounting, much of the chronicler’s earnest baroque enterprise.

In these Notes on Guillaume Coppier, an effort that is part amateur historiography and translation and part novice commentary and interpretation, we have endeavored to cast some new light on Coppier’s chronicle, aiming to gain a fuller appreciation of the man and his book.

While our focus was on Guillaume Coppier and his chronicle, in our chapters three, four and nineteen, in what we hope is some context, we have also reviewed elements of the early history of Saint Martin.

In our reading, we have tried to guard against evaluating the past through the sensibilities of the present. Coppier was an early to mid 17th-century Frenchman from Lyon; he held the sentiments of his day. It would be abnormal for him to have done otherwise, to have been outside of his historical context. We tried to understand why he held certain views and to identify some of the values he sought to defend.

PART I

Desperate in Saint Martin

Notes on Guillaume Coppier

1 "A Frail Vessel on an Ocean

of Difficulties and Dangers"

Man’s life is warfare against the

malice of men (Baltasar Gracián).

The baroque is an aesthetics of life;

of life made into art (Jean Rousset).

Three hundred and sixty-eight years ago, on September 15, 1644, three Doctors of Theology of the Faculty of Paris (the Sorbonne), the highest ecclesiastical tribunal or religious authority in the Christian world after the Pope, signed Approbations. This document and the Privilege du Roi granted on March 24, 1645, enabled Guillaume Coppier to publish his Histoire et voyage des Indes Occidentales, et de plusieurs autres regions maritimes, & esloignées, (History and Voyage to the West Indies and to Several Other Maritime and Faraway Regions)*, hereafter referred to as History and Voyage to the West Indies or as History and Voyage. The book was printed in Lyon, in April 1645. (*Unless otherwise stated, all translations from French and Spanish are ours.)

Guillaume Coppier, to date the first known author to have written about Saint Martin, was born in Lyon, on May 6, 1606. He was the son of a petit notaire of the rue de Flandres, an ecclesiastical notary of modest means; a man weighed down by a family of seven children: three boys and four girls. Judging from his book, the young Coppier must have received a rather good education for that period. He could not, however, aspire to taking over from his father as an ecclesiastical notary, since his older brother (Mathieu) stood to inherit the modest office (Dampierre, 1904: 86). This, in part, might explain why the young man from Lyon signed up and traveled to the West Indies as an alloué in 1628.

Seemingly, alloués is the proper term by which to designate the early white indentured servants, those very first colonists; companions of D’Esnambuc and De Roissey who agreed to travel to the burgeoning colonies at the expense of another party and to serve for a term of three years. At the end of the thirty-six months, unlike the African slaves of a later period, the alloués*, and later the engagés, became free people who were generally granted some land and money (Anthiaume: 1916; Petitjean Roget: 1978). *According to A. Anthiaume, some alloués were independent colonists who financed their own passage to the West Indies.

Title Page of Coppier’s Chronicle

image003.jpg

Copy of the Frontispiece to Coppier’s

History and Voyage . . .

image005.jpg

Engraver: Crispin de Pas

The Mind of the Frontispiece to a Book

From death and dark oblivion (near the same)

The mistress of man’s life, grave History,

Raising the world to good and evil fame

Doth vindicate it to eternity.

Wise Providence would so: that nor the good

Might be defrauded, nor the great secured,

But both might know their ways were understood,

When vice alike in time with virtue dured: [. . .]

Ben Jonson (1614)

Coppier informs us that it was curiosity and a desire to learn by traveling to foreign lands that led him to sign up for the Antilles; that as a sensitive young man, he was not prepared for the hardship that awaited him at sea and in the West Indies. We learn from his book that he left Le Havre on board Les Trois Roys, (The Three Kings) commanded by [Claude] du Royssé, a younger brother of D’Esnambuc’s associate Urbain du Royssé, also known as Du Roissey, Du Roissy and De Roissey. We are informed that the pilot or navigator of Les Trois Roys was [Jean] Hervé, a Huguenot, a good man and an expert navigator; and that Urbain du Royssé, the leader of this petite flotte, this small fleet, sailed in la Cardinale (Coppier: Preface).

Referring to the entire group of colonists that traveled to the West Indies between 1627 and 1628, and not only to those who sailed in his small fleet, of 1628, Coppier informs us that there were some six hundred Frenchmen, as many Picards as Bretons and a majority of Normands. I was the only Lyonnois (Preface: 6). Indeed, on the tabellionages (official lists of emigrants) where each name listed is followed by the region of origin of the person, there is no one from the Lyonnois. Coppier’s name does not appear in the contracts and tabellionages of January 13, and of May 17 and 20, 1627.

But, there were names missing from the lists, namely the names of those who had entered into some direct association or partnership with the two Captains-Commanders (associez (sic) avec lesd. Sieurs du Roissey et d’Esnambuc qu’ils ont dit consister au nombre de . . . (sic) hommes . . .); there are three dots in lieu of the number of said persons (Anthiaume, 1916: 536). Guillaume Coppier may have been one of those associez (sic), one of those individuals who had entered into some sort of association, partnership or indentureship with one or several of the De Roissey gentlemen.

The small fleet traveled to Saint Christopher, better known today as St. Kitts, where, according to Dampierre, Coppier served his term as an indentured servant, and where, according to the chronicler himself, he took part in the defense of the island in September 1629, when the Spanish attacked and destroyed the newly established colonial settlements of the French and English.

Coppier recounts that following this attack, he spent two months stranded in Saint Martin where he thought he would die abandoned, but that he was finally rescued by the famous Flemish captain Giron, who took him and his companions back to Saint Christopher where he spent some fourteen months working on the fortification of the French settlement in the Low Land, the Basse Terre of that island while doing some cotton and tobacco.

We know from the contract that indentured time began to run upon arrival in St. Christopher, presumably in April 1628 with respect to Coppier. Thus by the 17th of September 1629 (date of the Spanish attack), he would have already served one years and a half with roughly another year and a half remaining. The chronicler informs us that when he returned to St. Christopher [in December 1629] after having spent some two months stranded in St. Martin, he spent fourteen months or so working on that island. These fourteen months or so would complete the standard three year indentureship of that period (April 1628 to April 1631).

We also learn that during some fifteen or sixteen months our future chronicler was a hostage among the English on St. Christopher; that he spent some time in the French navy (dans nostre armée Navalle); that after some eight or nine years, on and off, at sea and in the West Indies, he left Saint Christopher on board La Marie-Irlandoise, (The Irish-Mary); a boat owned by an Irish gentleman who was [a] British [subject]. According to Dampierre, in a later publication, Coppier stated that he spent some seven or eight years in the Antilles (Dampierre: 89).

What, exactly, was the nature of Coppier’s work in St. Christopher? Did he toil—like a white slave—next to the wretched captives as Dampierre and others maintain, or was he a writer, one of those escrivains whose job consisted mainly of keeping ledger-journals?

One gathers from the various statements in Coppier’s book that he sailed the Atlantic, and the Caribbean Sea, on and off, during some seven years. This is a period that includes the years he spent in St. Christopher as an indentured servant as well as some time spent as a hostage among the English on that island. At the end of his three year contract, Coppier most likely became a matelot by joining in association with one or several former fellow alloués. The matelots pooled their meager resources to share expenses and living quarters; the Jesuit Father, Jacques Bouton refers to this practice in his chronicle published in 1640.

Whatever the time spent in the Caribbean, on land and at sea, it appears that some years after Coppier had finished his indentureship, he became one of the leaders of a party of Frenchmen who pooled their merchandise, mainly tobacco, for intended sale in Europe. The vessel loaded down with tobacco and some other merchandise was piloted by a Scotsman.

Pursued by pirates, and blown off course by storms, the vessel arrived in Ireland after having traveled the coast of Newfoundland and Canada. Unable to sell their precious cargo in Ireland, for some reason not explained, Coppier and his companions had to purchase the vessel from the Irishman who, presumably, was now home, by trading part of their goods for the ship.

The crew then sailed further north (to Germany?). It is not clear whether they finally managed to sell their goods there, but we learn that the vessel was almost home, off the coast of Normandy, when, suddenly, disaster struck. Naufragium in portu, shipwreck in port is the heading Coppier uses to end his narrative, adding that Alexander [the Great] did not weep more tenderly the death of his "favorite, [Hephaestion] than poor him, stricken by such a notable disaster" (Book II: 171–172).

Faire naufrage au port is a French expression meaning: to fail at the very moment when success seems imminent or assured. There was probably no real shipwreck. Rather, as historian Jacques de Dampierre has suggested, the vessel that Coppier and his companions had acquired from the Irishman may have been stolen property that port authorities in France had to impound (Dampierre, 1904: 85–90). They may have also seized any remaining merchandise and any money derived from a sale, for Coppier and his associates may not have had proper authorization to engage in commerce of this nature.

Indeed, Coppier and his mates may have been involved in unauthorized acts of piracy, or they may have failed to clear port properly in Saint Christopher, where an ordinance of November 1634 forbade the exporting of goods from the West Indies without the approval of the Compagnie de Saint Christophe and the payment of dues to that company.

The Dominican friar Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre (1610–1687), the so-called Herodotus of the Antilles, and Saint Martin’s earliest historian, informs us that in 1634, company officials in Saint Christopher reacted to French colonists in the West Indies being more eager to do business with foreigners, with Dutch and English sea merchants, than to send their merchandise (meanly tobacco, rocou and cotton) to France. Du Tertre adds that some individuals were imprisoned in the ports of France for running afoul of this 1634 ordinance (Du Tertre, 1667–1671, t1: 39–44).

Guillaume Coppier may have been one such person. He may indeed have been locked-up at Le Havre, or he may have managed to escape incarceration thanks to connections back home in Lyon. The fact that he was a writer, that he could write, may have played some part in any such release. There is also the possibility that he negotiated an enlistment in the burgeoning French Navy instead of serving time in prison. But this is conjecture of sorts, though it might account for the general tone of Coppier’s epistle to his protector wherein this magistrate’s generosity is the haven of men of letters; the port that prevents Fortune from becoming the reef… , the shoal that would lead to a shipwreck.

Be all of that as it may, one thing appears certain: the former indentured servant was finally back home in France, as poor as when he had embarked for the West Indies, but the ambitious adventurer then in his early thirties who explained that his riches flew away as on the wings of an eagle, was now a traveler and a man of some experience.

As noted, prior to the publication of his chronicle in 1645, Coppier may have sailed the Atlantic and the Caribbean Sea on several occasions, but it seems that in his book he chose to organize or plot his adventures around his 1628 voyage to Saint Christopher; his sojourn there, his adventures in Saint Martin following the Spanish attack on St. Christopher in 1629, subsequent travel to various islands of the Lesser Antilles and a return trip to Europe some seven years later, none of which is clearly outlined.

The chronicler informs us that when he left Le Havre Monsieur [Jean] De Guitton was then Mayor of La Rochelle; thus his departure had to have taken place before the fall of La Rochelle, which occurred in November 1628 (Duby, 1995: 418). Dampierre places Coppier’s departure in 1627, but in Coppier’s Preface, there is no mention of D’Esnambuc being part of their small fleet. The chronicler refers to du Royssé, [Du Roissey] our Admiral sailing aboard la Cardinale, and to du Royssé, Sieur de la Trenettiere, Parisien, & frère puis-nay, a younger brother of the Admiral.

Father Du Tertre informs us that Urbain de Roissey sailed back to France on le Cardinal in 1627; that he returned to St. Christopher in the same vessel accompanied by un Flibot; and that he arrived in St. Christopher in mid-April 1628 (Du Tertre, 1667–1671, t1: 21).

All of the above would place Coppier’s departure on that voyage that left France in February 1628—before the fall of La Rochelle—when Maire Guiton’s lieutenant, Forent or Forant was still giving chase to vessels of the French royal navy. After the fall of La Rochelle, Mayor Jean Guiton (1585–1654) was relieved of his mayorship (Callot: 1872).

According to Professor Jean-Pierre Sainton, who cites Jacques Petitjean Roget’s 1978 thesis, Coppier’s name appears on the list of alloués who left from Le Havre and arrived in Saint Christopher in 1629 (Sainton, 2001: 45). In a later work published under his direction, Sainton appears to have changed Coppier’s departure date to 1628 (Sainton, 2004: 27).

In 1635 when François de Vignerot II, marquis du Pont-Courlay was still Commander of Le Havre, before he was named Général des Galères, Coppier returned to France, after spending some seven years in the West Indies ( . . .) & à mon retour comme orrez, Monsieur Du Pont de Courlay,( . . .) (Coppier, Book I : 1; Anselme et Du Fourny, 1633, t7 : 936). He may have enlisted in the French Navy for a few years before or after returning to Lyon where his book was published in 1645.

On July 16, 1646, roughly one year after selling the rights to his chronicle, Coppier re-embarked for the West Indies, but this time the former alloué, now a published author, sailed to Martinique with an associate (Mathurin du Coudray or Coudré) and a group of indentured servants who would work for them on the island (Dampierre, 1904: 89).

Coppier and Du Coudray were colonists on Martinique in 1647, one year before the Agreements of the Island of Saint Martin of March 23, 1648 that partitioned the island between the French and the Dutch, somewhat in keeping with the way Saint Christopher had been partitioned between the English and the French earlier in the 1620s. Coppier states that, in Martinique, he resided at morne aux bœufs near the cabin of Sir du Coudré, « sur le morne aux bœufs proche de la case du sieur du Coudré . . . » (Dampierre, 1904: 89). Dampierre refers to Coppier as an associate of Du Coudray. Were both men proprietors, or was this partnership an agreement in which the former alloué was working for Du Coudré (Coudray) the gentleman?

According to Dampierre, Du Tertre spent 1647 in Guadeloupe, and more so in Martinique where he could have gathered information on the earlier period of French settlement in the Caribbean and on Saint Christopher particularly (Dampierre,