De Mézières y Clugny, Athanase [key], c.1715–1779, explorer and Indian agent in Spanish Louisiana, b. Paris. He went to Louisiana c.1733. When France ceded the territory to Spain he stayed on in the Spanish service. Made lieutenant governor of the Natchitoches dist. (1769), De Mézières, by judicious use of his control of the Native American trade and by tact, kindness, and patience, won the friendship of the previously hostile tribes of the Red River valley and neighboring regions and concluded treaties with them. His valuable reports and diaries are translated in H. E. Bolton's Athanase de Mézières (1914).
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