MEMORIAL ADDRESS FOR F. X. MATTHIEU 75
toric point, and here he made his home almost continuously, for the ensuing 72 years of his life. Here he met and secured employment from Etienne Lucier, who was to share with him, in the following year, the honor of settling for all time the question of American sovereignty in the Northwest. Here was a location that had been selected by Dr. John McLoughlin in 1830 as a strategic trading point for the Hudson Bay Com- pany. Lucier had settled in this locality about 30 years prior to Matthieu's arrival. He was one of the old trappers who had come in Hunt's party, the overland exploration party of the Astor Expedition. Having reached the age of 60 years he had the Hudson Bay Company trapper's suspicions of the tyrannous exactions of American laws and customs, suspicions that were generally entertained by the French-Canadians of the Valley.
The leaven of unrest, however, was already working among the people of the Willamette Valley. Their 'necessities called for some kind of an organization. Opinion was divided. Some desired American control, some British control, and some were insistent upon an entirely independent government. The im- mediate formation of a provisional government did not appeal to either Jason Lee or to Abernethy, who was later Provisional Governor, and it had the open opposition of the Canadian- French who held preliminary meetings in opposition at Van- couver, at Oregon City, and on the French Prairie. The sub- ject of a provisional government was diplomatically approached at two meetings held in February and March, 1843, ostensibly called for the adoption of some measures to protect their flocks and herds from wild animals. These were known as "Wolf meetings." Mr. Matthieu attended neither of them. Their culmination, and at least a partial consummation, of their real object, a provisional governme'nt, was reached at the historic meeting of May 2, 1843.
The story of that meeting has become an Oregon classic. Champoeg means as much to the history of Oregon as does the story of Plymouth Rock to the history of New England. It is a singular, and rather significant, fact that McLoughlin and
