The Mallet brothers visit the Skidi Pawnee in 1739.

Pierre Antoine Mallet (b. 20 June 1700, d. after 1750) and his brother Paul Mallet (b. ?, d. 1753, Arkansas Post, Arkansas), were born in Montreal, Canada and moved to Detroit in 1706 and Kaskaskia, Illinois in 1734.

From Kaskaskia, in 1739, they attempt to travel to Santa Fe, New Mexico with six companions and nine horses loaded with trade goods.

They follow  the Missouri River north to South Dakota to the villages of the Arikara.

It was believed at this time that the Missouri River flows all the way to the Spanish colonies in New Mexico.

Told by the natives that New Mexico is to the southwest, they backtrack to the Pawnee villages on the Loup River in Nebraska.

From here on May 29, 1739, they embark for Santa Fe.

The Mallet brothers' account of their journey to Santa Fe is lost and their route can only be roughly approximated.

They had followed the Platte and South Platte River, which they called the River of the Padoucas (Padoucas probably refers to the Apache Indians who had inhabited this area a few years earlier, or possibly the Comanches).

They had followed the South Platte upstream to approximately the Colorado-Nebraska border, then turned south.

While crossing a river (probably the Republican), theyhad  lost seven horses loaded with merchandise.

They reached the Arkansas River near the Kansas-Colorado line and followed it upstream.

On July 5, probably near present-day La Junta, Colorado, they encounter a village of “Laitane” Indians (Comanche).

Among the Comanche is an enslaved Arikara whom they hired as a guide to lead them to Santa Fe.

The Arikara guiding the Mallet brothers leads them, probably following a route approximating the later Santa Fe Trail, to Picuris Pueblo, New Mexico where they first meet Spaniards and are “pleasantly received.”

The Mallet brothers had proceeded onward to Santa Fe, where they had proposed opening trade relations between New Mexico and the French.

After a nine-month wait in Santa Fe, the response from the government in Mexico City is negative and they are told they had to leave.

However, they are given letters encouraging trade by New Mexican officials.

The Mallets and their party had left Santa Fe to return east on May 1, 1840.

One of their men had married a Spanish woman and had remained in New Mexico.

Three men had split off to return to Illinois via the same route they had followed to New Mexico; the Mallets and two others had followed the Canadian River eastwards from New Mexico through the Texas Panhandle and into Oklahoma.

En route they had encountered a Comanche village and traded knives and other items for horses.

Later, probably in Oklahoma, they encountered several Padoucas (Apache?) who were frightened of them, possibly because of experience with slavers.

Downstream, when the Canadian became navigable, the Mallets abandoned their horses and made canoes and on June 24 they arrivde at the junction of the Canadian and Arkansas Rivers and found there a hunting party of French Canadians.

By boat they had proceeded down the river to Arkansas Post and hence to New Orleans, Louisiana, arriving in March 1741.

Although the Mallet’s first expedition had been a commercial failure, the French send out a second, and larger, trade expedition to New Mexico.

Andre Fabry de la Bruyere, a government official in New Orleans, had been appointed to lead the expedition, which left New Orleans in September 1741.

The Mallet brothers and several other voyageurs and one Negro slave accompanied him.

Fabry had proceeded by boat up the Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers to the Canadian and then with agonizing slowness up the Canadian to the junction of the Little River near present-day Holdenville, Oklahoma.

There he met a war party of thirty-five Osage who were in search of their Mento (Wichita) enemies.

The river being unnavigable, Fabry had attempted unsuccessfully to buy horses from the Osage and other tribes to continue the journey.

In September 1742 he abandons the expedition.

The Mallets meanwhile, apparently disgusted with Fabry’s leadership, had departed on foot for Santa Fe.

They were also unsuccessful and turns back to Arkansas Post, where they live during the 1740s.

Pierre will continue to trade and explore along the Canadian River.