Written by Kate Suits, Mary Ann MacLean Educator 

Not much is known about the early life of Marie Rouesna. She was born Aramepinchieue around 1677 to Rouensa, the Chief of the Kaskaskia. In 1689, a French Jesuit priest by the name of Jaques Gravier came to her village. Aramepinchieue converted to Catholicism and took the name Marie Rouensa. 

Rouesna was a pivotal figure in the assimilation of the Kaskaskia to European religion and ways of life. She strongly encouraged the members of her community to convert to Catholicism. She defied orders from her father to avoid the church and openly led other converts to Mass when doing so was expressly forbidden. 

She long resisted her father’s attempts to arrange a marriage with a French man to secure an alliance with the traders. Rouesna wished to remain unmarried and committed to the Church. Finally, she married French fur trader Michel Accault (sometimes written Aco), and Rouesna became an important bridge between the French and Kaskaskia. Marriage and subsequent offspring of Kaskaskia and French couples created a new, dynamic culture that was a blend of both Indigenous and European worldviews. After Aco died, she married another fur trader, Michel Phillipe. Throughout her lifetime, Rouesna accumulated a great amount of property and wealth. She owned enslaved people- four African Americans and one Indigenous woman.

Rouesna died in 1725 and was buried beneath her pew at the Kaskaskia parish church. She was the first woman, French or Indigenous, to be bestowed this honor.