This page has been validated.
EARLIEST SETTLERS IN OREGON.
73
miles above this point was Champoeg,[1] the first settlement.
Among those who were living on French Prairie at the time of the arrival of the Lees were some who had come with the Astor expeditions, some who hinted at having been left behind by Lewis and Clarke; and to these were later joined the remnants of the expeditions of Wyeth and Kelley.
I will give here the names of some of those who first settled there, and such information concerning them as I have been able to obtain. Some of them we shall frequently meet in the course of this history, according as they play their several parts in the colonization of Oregon. It has been claimed by or for Francis Rivet and Philip Degie that they were with Lewis and Clarke. Roberts, in his Recollections, MS., states that Rivet was a confidential servant of the Hudson's Bay Company for 40 years, living most of the time at Fort Colville. Degie was born in Sorel, Canada, in 1739, and died in Oregon February 27, 1847, at the remarkable age of 108 years. Rivet died September 15, 1852, aged 95. Oregon City Spectator, July 29, 1851; San Francisco Herald, August 14, 1851; Placer Times and Transcript, Nov. 30, 1851; San Francisco Alta, Aug. 14, 1851. Their claim becomes somewhat insecure, though not positively invalid, as we turn to the Lewis and Clarke's Travels, i. 178 written in April 1805, when the expedition was making its final start from the Mandan village, and read: 'The party now consisted of thirty-two persons. Besides ourselves were sergeants John Ordway, Nathaniel Pryor, and Patrick Gass; the privates were William Bratton, John Colter, John Collins, Peter Cruzatte, Robert Frazier, Reuben Fields, Joseph Fields, George Gibson, Silas Goodrich, Hugh Hall, Thomas P. Howard, Baptiste Lapage, Francis Labiche, Hugh McNeal, John Potts, John Shields, George Shannon, John B. Thompson, William Werner, Alexander Willard, Richard Windsor, Joseph Whitehouse, Peter Wiser, and Captain Clarke's black servant, York. The two interpreters were George Drewyer and Toussaint Chaboneau. The wife of Chaboneau also accompanied us, with her young child, and we hope may be useful as an interpreter among the Snake Indians. She was herself one of that tribe, but had been taken in war by the Minnetarees, by whom she was sold as a slave to Chaboneau, who brought her up and afterward married her. One of the Mandans likewise embarked with us, in order to go to the Snake Indians and obtain a peace with them for his countrymen.' In an old man at Fort Colville, Parker, Journal, 292, saw one of Lewis and Clarke's men.
- ↑ Lee and Frost spell this word Chumpoeg, and say that it is identical as to location with Campement du Sable. Champoeg, is said to be an Indian word, though it might have come from the French champeaux, or plains, without as much change as many names have undergone.
