Lecture: Mathieu Sagean and the Fabulous City of Gold

As a military port opening onto the New World, Rochefort experienced a unique and little-known episode in its colonial history: the secret interrogation in 1700 of a Canadian buccaneer and adventurer, Mathieu Sagean, regarding his alleged discovery of a city of gold in the heart of Louisiana. Whether a fraud or a discoverer, Minister Pontchartrain asked his intendant Bégon and the Canadian privateer Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville to get to the bottom of Sagean’s claims.

This lecture presents the various historical aspects of this confrontation in the light of the 1970 discovery of the Mesoamerican city of Cahokia in the state of Illinois.

There will be an opportunity to continue the evening with a dinner with the speaker at the restaurant Les Longitudes (registration required by Thursday 9 April).

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