OLD FORT OKANOGAN AND OKANOGAN TRAIL 21
or predecessor, I cannot make out for certain which, was Jean Gingras (or Grango) who afterwards went to the Willamette Valley and settled. This Gingras is said to have voted at Champoeg in May, 1843, with the other French settlers against the organization of the provisional government. Then came Joachin La Fleur, a very competent and reliable employee who was in charge off and on from about 1843 till about 1853. By this time the necessity for longer maintaining the fort had ceased as far as the business of the Hudson Bay Company was concerned, and they would have been willing to abandon it but feared to do so until their claims for indemnity from the United States under the treaty of 1846 had been settled. About this time, a step-son of Joachim La Fleur was placed in charge and he was the last. This man was a French half-breed named Francois Duchouquette, very likely a son of that person of the same name mentioned and listed by Alexander Henry in his journals. His mother was an Okanogan woman whose bap- tismal name was "Margaret" but whom the French called "La Petit" on account of her small size. According to her descendants living in this vicinity, her father's name was Siah- ko-ken, and she was a sister of La-pa-cheen, a prominent Okan- ogan chief of those days. This Francois Duchouquette has been mentioned a number of times in writings appertaining to the gold rush of 1858-9 and 60 over the Okanogan trail to the Fraser and elsewhere in that direction, but always by his first name only, and that invariably misspelled in every instance that I have encountered. Sometimes it is spelled "Franswa" and sometimes it appears as "Frenchway." In one place he is termed "old Frenchway." But why he should be termed "old" is strange and conveys a mistaken idea, for the local in- formation available in regard to him clearly proves that he was not over forty years of age in 1860 and some who surely ought to know say he was not over thirty at that time. Francois was in charge at the old fort from about 1853 or 1854 till June, 1860. Under orders from the company he moved all the goods and property from the fort by pack train on or about June 18th or 19th, 1860, and took the same to a point on the Simil-
