OLD FORT OKANOGAN AND OKANOGAN TRAIL 25
river. The next night we usually got about to where Salmon Creek comes into the Okanogan. The Indians called that creek Con-con-ulps, the second night after that we would get probably to Bonaparte creek and the next night to Osoyoos Lake. From there we kept on up the Okanogan valley past the lakes to Penticton and around the east side of Okanogan Lake, and on through to Kamloops. When the Hudson Bay people used to come into Okanogan from the other places there was often many people there."
Joe's father, Old Joachim La Fleur, left Okanogan about 1853, and went to the Colville valley, and is said to have started a little store of his own near where Marcus now is. He was murdered some time along in the sixties near Walla Walla, where he had gone to buy a supply of goods. Descendants of the Gingras, La Fleur and Duchouquette families are liv- ing now on the Colville and Spokane reservations. Many of the old folks amongst them were born at or near old Fort Okanogan, and are capable of relating reminiscences of the olden times. Peter Skene Ogden is well remembered. But not by that name. He is referred to as "Pete Og-den," with accent strong on the last syllable. They also frequently men- tion a personage whom they designate as "Old Pete." This, I take to be none other than the great Peter Skene Ogden 'himself. One of Gingras clan recently recited to me in French, a fragment of a ditty about the famous old trader that must date back three-quarters of a century. It is not quite suitable for print, however. One of the most interesting relics of the fur trading days that is still with us is old Joe La Fleur, above mentioned. He is about 80 years of age, but still retains all his faculties substantially unimpaired and speaks English fairly well. He is a son of the well known Joachim La Fleur, hereinbefore mentioned, and a half brother of Francois Duchouquette. He was born at Fort Okanogan in 1834, and was baptised by Father Demears there in 1838, on the first trip of that missionary down the Columbia. Joe's boyhood and early manhood was spent with his family between Okano- gan and Kamloops and he remembers Todd, Work, Douglas, Anderson and all the others of that time ; he even recalls the
