Cheat sheetsTips and toolsAncestors' storiesChallenge AZNews
Between travel, passion, and family, discover the story of an extraordinary woman.
©️Miroir de l’histoire
On November 1st, we shared the portrait of a pioneer woman of her time, Ada Lovelace. It is another woman's portrait that we offer you in this article, that of a woman ready to do anything to join her husband, that of Isabel Godin des Odonais, the sole survivor of an expedition to the heart of the Amazon rainforest. Between travel, passion, and family, discover the story of an extraordinary woman.
Isabel Gramesón, born with that surname, was born in 1728 in the Viceroyalty of Peru (Ecuador) then ruled by Spain. Isabel learned Spanish, Quechua, quipu (Inca accounting method), and French, a language that only fueled her passion for France. Still a young girl, she meets Jean Godin des Odonais, a French naturalist cartographer of the first geodesic expedition in Ecuador, established between 1735 and 1744. Soon after, in 1741, the lovers marry, Isabel is 14, he is 28. This 18th-century fairy tale could end there, "they married and had many children," except that they married and lived apart for many years.
Isabel and Jean will have several children who, unfortunately, did not live long, carried away by smallpox. As she is pregnant again, Jean, who had delayed his departure with the French explorer Charles Marie de La Condamine, learns of his father's death and decides to return to France with his wife and child. The project seems simple, Jean will travel alone to French Guiana, passing through the Amazon, to assess the danger before bringing his family safely home.
But things will not go as planned. At the time, Portuguese and Spanish settlers refuse to let him cross the Amazon again to retrieve his wife and suggest that he return to France alone, which Jean obviously refuses. He is forced to stay and live in Guiana and is also not allowed to write to Isabel. He even pleads with Europe to obtain permission to return to Riobamba, where his wife and daughter await him, whom he will never know. It is only after years, in 1765, that the king of Portugal agrees to send a galiot to allow Jean to find his wife. But he is suspicious and prefers to leave the ship at the first port. The galiot, however, will continue its journey to Isabel, following the orders of Joseph 1stst of Portugal.
Even without the internet, rumors of a ship waiting for her reach Isabel, who, after confirmation of the facts by her father Don Pedro, her servant Joachim, and Amerindians, decides to set out on an expedition to this famous galiot.
So it is 42 people who, on October 1st, 1769, set off towards the ship, for 3000 km to be covered in 6 months. She took with her her two brothers, her nephew, three servants, thirty-one Amerindians, and three Frenchmen to face the Andes mountains and the Amazon basin. Between the archaic repair of their canoe, more than difficult navigation on the river, and repeated desertions or drownings of the Amerindians, the expedition is threatened. Isabel's travel companions die one after another... killed by insect bites, injured, or lost in the forest. Only her son and the doctor, who went scouting, were spared. But when they return to the camp, they will find only the bodies of the travelers. Not having found Isabel's body, they conclude her death and inform Don Pedro, her father, and then Jean.
But Isabel is not dead, devastated by the death of her loved ones, she still finds the courage to look for food and drink to survive. For 10 days, she will wander in the Amazon forest, hungry and afraid, before having the chance to meet a group of Amerindians who will help her get to Cayenne. History tells that Isabel's hair, traumatized, turned white in just a few days. Jean and Isabel reunite in July 1770 in Saint-Georges-de-l'Oyapock (Guyana), after 20 long years without seeing or speaking to each other. The lovers return to France in 1773, with Don Pedro, and settle in Saint-Amand-Montrond (Cher). "And they lived happily" until 1792, the year of their death or the end of a tragic adventure that is also a true historical story of the 18th century.