estic ducks, French ducks; shoes of English leather, French shoes; the pound sterling, the louis; Europe, France, and all the whites, French. The Indians themselves carry this belief to such an extreme, that an old guide, an Iroquois halfbreed, on being asked where a beautiful gun that he carried on his shoulder had been made, answered that it came from the old France of London. The name of Napoleon is not unknown to them; several of them have given it to their children. All the houses of the settlement are made of wood, and the tillable lands surrounded with light fences and hedges. At each of the places occupied by the white population there is a Mission, which serves as a sort of center for the French Canadians.
Until 1838 the Protestant agents of the Hudson's Bay Company prevented our priests from crossing the Rocky Mountains, but at that time,, and at the request of the Bishop of Juliopolis, Monseigneur Provencher, residing at the Red River Colony, the Hudson's Bay Company consented to grant a passage to Mr. Blanchet, vicar-general of the Bishopric of Quebec, and also to the Abbe Demers, in their canoes, with the brigade of the annual express from Montreal to the Columbia river.[1]
The funds necessary for the establishment of these two missionaries were furnished by the Association for the Propagation of the Faith, of France, which sends annually to Monseigneur Provencher twenty thousand francs for the missions of Hudson's Bay. This prelate
- ↑ See Annals of the Propagation of the Faith, 1842, No. 82, p. 171.—de Mofras.
F. N. Blanchet to John McLoughlin, St. Paul, Ore., Jan. 25, 1854. " This desire to see the country settled I noticed in you in the month of June, 1838, when, en route for London, you learned with deep regret, at Fort Garry on the Red River, that the Rev. Mr. Demers and myself would be allowed to enter Oregon on the boats of the Honorable Company only on the condition that we would not form any settlement except North of the Columbia, which was then considered the English side. This desire, induced you to exert your influence in London, which obtained the withdrawal of the condition put upon our passage. Hence the happy result of our first settlement in the Willamette Valley in the autumn of 1839." Ms. in Oregon Historical Society.
