Les terres d'or

Gustave Aimard

Gustave Aimard (13 September 1818 – 20 June 1883) was the author of numerous books about Latin America and the American frontier. Aimard was born Olivier Aimard in Paris. As he once said, he was the son of two people who were married, "but not to each other". His father, François Sébastiani de la Porta (1775–1851) was a general in Napoleon’s army and one of the ambassadors of the Louis Philippe government. Sébastiani was married to the Duchess de Coigny. In 1806 the couple produced a daughter: Alatrice-Rosalba Fanny. Shortly after her birth the mother died. Fanny was raised by her grandmother, the Duchess de Coigny. According to the New York Times of July 9, 1883, Aimard’s mother was Mme. de Faudoas, married to Anne Jean Marie René de Savary, Duke de Rovigo (1774–1833). Aimard was given as a baby to a family that was paid to raise him. By the age of nine or twelve he was sent off on a herring ship. Later, around 1838, he served for a short while with the French Navy. After one more stay in America (where, according to himself, he was adopted into a Comanche tribe), Aimard returned to Paris in 1847 – the same year his half-sister, Duchess de Choiseul-Pralin, was brutally murdered…