F. X. Matthieu - Willamette Valley

How Oregon's Provisional Government was formed.

...many of our members. Some of our young men they hung in the public square as an example.

I was on their list but they did not hang me.

I got away.

I met a Scotchman named Dr. Fraser, he told me he had a nephew, Dr. John McLoughlin, an official of the Hudson's Bay company at fort Vancouver.

He told me of the west.

continued below...

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...I went across the border to the United States. In the Fall of 1839 I was in St. Louis, the outfitting point for the fur traders.

Many of the officers of the American Fur Company were of my race, having been born either in France or Canada. They gave me work.

I was sent out to Ft. Pierre. In those days we traded with the Sioux Indians. I had the faculty of picking up languages readily. Soon I was able to speak the Sioux tongue.

I spent the winter of 1839-40 with the Indians trading for furs. Next spring I went back with my furs to St. Louis.

Next spring I outfitted myself as a free trapper and went out near Bent's Fort. While I was at Fort Laramie, a party of emigrants came there with their wagons on the road to Willamette valley.

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Excerpted from Oregon Folks, Fred Lockley (1927) Knickerbocker Press, New York

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