H. S. Lyman

“ By this, of course, the village was almost depopulated, and when, after a time, Tallapus returned, he was very angry to see that the benefits of his fishery had gone, not to the people, but to the wicked skookum. He therefore went forth to the monster and cried out to it, "O, wicked skookum; long enough have you been eating these people." And with one blow of his tomahawk cut off the offending tongue, and buried it under the rocks upon the west side of the falls; after which the people flourished. ”

“ The officer then eyed his red and black diamond squared plaid, which was the patriot uniform, and which Matthieu had not thought of as unsafe while he had his passport. But instead of detaining him, the officer said, "Well, get along with you; the sooner the country is rid of you fellows, the better" probably little dreaming that the blue-eyed patriot was to turn up a few years later in Oregon to confront the British authority and help that important section of North America over to liberty as denned in the American Constitution. ”

“ The Pawnees were the terror of the Sioux; there were many halfbreeds among them. The Sioux did not all have horses. The poorer ones went on foot. But all had buffalo meat. Those that had horses would surprise a herd, and drive them to the Bad Lands, and force many of them over a precipice or into a crevice. Buffalo, when they are stampeded, do not stop at anything, but go over a bluff or into a river. When a crevice is filled full of their bodies the main herd passes on as over a bridge; then the poorer Indians came and helped themselves to the meat. ”

“ The Oregonians, accustomed to a system of equality, finding themselves exposed to outlawry, and not protected from the poor savagery of the Indians, struck as they could. It is to be remembered, too, that the secret murder of thirtytwo men, without any attempt at meting out justice, was an enormity that no community should brook. ”

“ He is still living on the place which he purchased, in 1850, on French Prairie, near Saint Paul. He is a man of fine physical proportion, being in his prime, five feet, eleven inches tall, and full chested, broad shouldered, and erect, and weighing about one hundred and eighty pounds. He has the finely moulded Celtic features, and genial expression of the land of Ulster, and enjoys the fine wit and humor for which his race is famous. His father was a farmer, but learning much of the opportunities in Canada, concluded to cross the ocean to improve the conditions of himself and his family. ”

“ Cosgrove had been trading during the winter, to get suitable wagons and ox teams. He preferred to make the eventful journey comfortably and safely, and lack nothing that forethought could provide. He did not belong to the poorer class, who had to make the trip partly on faith. Three well made, well built wagons, drawn each by three yoke of oxen young oxen and a band of fifteen cows constituted his outfit. He had young men as drivers, and his family was comfortably housed under the big canvas tops. ”

“ It is a noble old place, having both prairie and woodland, and abundant water, and commands beautiful prospects in every direction. His wife was Rose, a daughter of Louis Osant, a Hudson's Bay employee and trapper. The earliest recollections of Mrs. Matthieu are of journeyings on horseback with the parties of her father or of Michel La Framboise, one of the most trusted leaders of the Hudson's Bay trappers. ”

“ None of the family, probably, had any considerable appreciation of the vast race movement to which they as units of society were answering, but felt keenly the bracing effect of increased energy and enthusiasm which that movement imparted.
In Canada they hastened to secure their possessions, locating the one hundred-acre lot of their own, in the hard timber woods out on the boulder-sprinkled soil of lower Canada, in the Dalhousie township, within five miles of Lanark, and obtaining a free government outfit at the government store at Lanark. ”

“ The communistic principle did not, however, extend to family arrangements; each family had its own home and carried on its own work. An entirely different feeling, says Mr. Miller, was fostered under such a system than that developed by the system of individual property—each having a sense that he owned all, and yet that he had no power to withhold any needed article from another. Dr. Keil's object in the communal feature, he thinks, was religious—in order that each, with all natural wants secured by the community, "might live nearer God." ”

“ It was due primarily to a difference in system and ideas between the various elements of the people then in California. It was in fact a part of the final clash between the old Spanish system and the American; the beneficiaries of the Spanish system, or Grandees, being on one side, and on the other the Oregonians, representing the American idea. It was proved in the event that men who could establish an independent government in Oregon, and were able to compel the obedience of the Cayuse Indians, were able also to make in California a deep impression for their idea of liberty. ”

“ Cosgrove had two very large and swift greyhounds, which were able to overtake the antelopes. But the meat of these animals was not very greatly relished, being rather dry.
The wolves were the most constant attendants of the train, appearing daily, and howling nightly. These were the large gray wolves, much like our forest species; also, a handsome cream-colored animal, and the black kind, and most curious of all, the variety that was marked with a dark stripe down the back, crossed by another over the shoulders. Then the coyotes were innumerable, and yelped at almost every camp fire. ”

“ There are eighty thousand Indians in California, and now they will drive every white man from the mines.' So great indeed was the terror, that many new arrivals just up the river from San Francisco, coming to the mines from the east, turned around immediately and left. ”

“ William Keil, a native of Prussia, but who had been preaching at various places in the United States, and had adherents in several states, such as Pennsylvania, Illinois, Iowa and Missouri, were collecting to form a community at Bethel near Shelbyville, and Rapps became a member of this organization. As he remembers, there were some five hundred, all told, finally collected at Bethel. Surrounded as they were by a fine prairie country, which was ready at the touch of the plow to produce abundant crops, and all being industrious and working to a common point, the community prospered greatly. ”

“ The tribe was found and surprised by the band of thirteen armed Oregonians. Twenty-six of the Indians were killed on the instant. No women were shot, however, though they fought the same as the men. They and six men surrendered. Greenwood shouted as the blow was struck, "Now, this is what you get for killing Columbia River men." ”

“ This great band of Indians also could hardly be made to believe that the immigrant train had no liquors, and begged insistently for the firewater. Fitzpatrick, the pilot, both with this band and that at Independence Rock, refused to be made known, not wishing to implicate himself as a leader of white people through their country; and remarked that all the prairie was home to him, and he could drop off anywhere.,Matthieu, therefore, having learned the custom of the Sioux, and knowing some of them personally, was able to help the immigrants, and to greatly reduce the liability of trouble. ”

“ The fondness of organization, and having officers, is only exceeded among Americans by the fondness of "going it on one's own hook;" and this, coupled with the delays of the train, broke up Lot Whitcomb's company in two days. In a company, as large as that, a close organization was next to impossible. A trifling break down or accident to one hindered all, and the progress of the whole body was determined by the slowest ox. When Mr. Cosgrove separated his three fine wagons, and active young oxen, and drove out on the prairie, Captain Wliitcorab said, "that settles it. ”

“ AS TO SLAVERY AMONG THE INDIANS.
Among the Sioux., where I was, all captives were regarded as slaves; so I was told by a chief. I saw but one slave—a woman. Men were not often taken alive.
NEGRO SLAVERY IN OREGON.
This question did not make much stir on French Prairie. The idea was this: Indians were much cheaper and better labor than negroes. For a blanket that cost $3 you could hire an Indian a month- or perhaps two months; and many of the Indians were good workers. They could handle an axe like a white man ”

“ The Oregon men had, during the previous autumn, built a road through, making a long detour from the Rogue River Valley to the borders of Klamath Lake by the old Applegate route, and thence by Lost River and Lake, the Lava Beds, and the long plateau east of Mount Shasta, to Pitt River, and then two hundred miles across the chain of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the Sacramento. The Indians of this region had ever been of the wildest and most warlike character, regarding white men as natural enemies. ”

“ The details of this important meeting need not be here entered into, except so far as concerns the recollection of Mr. Matthieu. The ability of the common people to organize and maintain a sufficient government, in a remote corner of the world, in the midst of numerous and even in some cases of powerful and cunning bands of Indians; and in opposition to the interests and business policy of a great corporation—was to be tested. The character and calibre of the men who constituted the "people' is a matter of the highest and most lasting interest. ”

“ French Prairie is the borderland between the originally heavily timbered country of the lower Willamette and the more open lands of Marion County and the big prairies of the upper valley. Matthieu found the country of the French settlers even more beautifully diversified than at the present, the practice of the Indians, then but recently discontinued, of burning the prairies over, having brought the whole country for miles together to the condition of a park. ”

“ On the east side of the falls at about the site of Oregon City the Indians also made a large village, being nourished by the fishery, and had among them a great chief. But from the mountains on the east there came a frightful skookum, who destroyed the entire village and even the old chieftain and all the people, except the chief's wife and her unborn son. ”

“ When young Labonte was about sixteen, and after spending about two years at Chemaway, the family was employed by Thomas McKay to take charge of his farm on Scappoose Plains, across the Willamette Slough, or Multnomah, from Sauvie's Island—McKay being one of the most energetic and intrepid captains of the Hudson's Bay Company, and being at that time detailed for special service in the Snake River country, where competition with American companies was setting in with much vigor. ”

“ If Cosgrove won't stay by me, there is no use trying to keep the company together.' With thirteen wagons, and oxen well matched, all went well.
Indians of many tribes were gathered or camped at Saint Joe, and followed the train along the now well traveled road. They were polite as Frenchmen, bowing or tipping their hats, which were worn by some, as they rode along. They expected some little present, usually, but were well satisfied with any article that might be given; and the immigrants expected to pass out a little tobacco or sugar, or some trifle. ”

“ However, it seems that this life of a trapper, nomadic and free, and dependent only upon the unlimited bounty of nature, and the friendly offices of the generally tractable Indians, although amusing in many ways to a light-hearted Frenchman, did not wholly satisfy young Matthieu. The desire for settled society, and progressive individual life and home frequently took possession of him; and the opportunity to gratify this was apparently fortuitously afforded at Fort Laramie, early in the summer of 1842.
With his party of trappers he found there the Oregon immigrants of that season. ”

“ During the first months of the year 1843, the question of organizing an independent or provisional government, until the United States should extend its authority over Oregon, was much discussed. Debates were held at Oregon City, and the project was the matter of ordinary conversations at Salem and Tualatin Plains. The leaders of the movement, as is well known, saw the necessity of the whole community participating, and devised a plan that would interest all. The French Canadians could not be interested in the general question of a new government ”

“ Matthieu has lived as a farmer of Oregon, having been able to provide his family with life's advantages, and himself performing the duties of the good citizen. Besides filling the office of Justice of the Peace in the Provisional Government, he was in 1874 and again in 1878, elected to the Oregon Legislature from Marion County. In 1849 he made the trip to the California gold mines, but was so virulently attacked by fever there as to be compelled to return without making a fortune. ”