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MEMORIAL ADDRESS

COMMEMORATING Life, Character and Services of FRANCIS XAVIER MATTHIEU*

BY CHARLES B. MOORES.

One year ago today upon these grounds, there appeared for the last time the sole survivor of a group of 102 men who, 70 years before, had laid here the foundation of a new State. Burdened with the weight of 95 years he was yet a keenly alive, and a happy, and a thoroughly interested participant. For years it had been his wont to celebrate with us each recurring anniversary of this occasion. Today his chair is vacant, and never again will we be cheered with the genial presence of the kindly old man to whom we delighted to pay the respectful homage that was his due. A tribute to his memory can be but little more than the repetition of a story that is familiar to every student of Oregon pioneer history.

Francis Xavier Matthieu was born at Terrebonne, near Montreal, Canada, on the second day of April, 1818. He died at his home near Butteville, Oregon, on February 4th, 1914, lacking less than two months of being 96 years of age. His father and mother were both of pure French descent. His father was a native of Normandy, his mother of Brittany. Both branches early migrated to Canada. When a mere slip of a boy he became a clerk in a mercantile house of Montreal.

*Delivered at the fourteenth Champoeg, May 2, 1914.

annual commemoration services held at

It was at that critical time in the history of Canada when Louis J. Papineau, a statesman and orator of wonderful eloquence, was stirring the French population to resist the aggressions of their British rulers. Under the spell of Papineau's eloquence, and moved by a keen sense of the wrongs of the French, Matthieu, boy that he was, soon found himself enrolled as a member, and an officer, of the "Sons of Liberty," organized for resistance to the constituted authorities.

The incipient rebellion was short-lived. Matthieu's brief career in Canada ended in 1838 when, with the assistance of Dr. Fraser, an uncle of Dr. John McLoughlin, he was enabled to cross the border and enter the United States under a forged passport. Reaching Albany, N. Y., he found employment as a clerk. Later he went to Milwaukee, and thence to St. Louis, where he found service with the American Fur Company. His employment carried him as a trader among the Sioux and the Dakotas. Returning to St. Louis he outfitted as a free trapper and in 1840 went to the Arkansas at Bent's Fort, where he encountered Kit Carson and George Bent, the trapper captain.

The following Winter and Spring were spent trapping in the Black Hills. This life, however, did not appeal to him, and early in the Summer of 1842, at Fort Laramie, the opportunity offered to join Captain Hastings' Company of over 100 emigrants bound for Oregon, among whom were Dr. Elijah White, A. L. Lovejoy, Medorem Crawford, Sidney W. Moss and others who were afterwards prominent in Oregon pioneer history. Mr. Matthieu's familiarity with the language and the peculiarities of the Sioux made him an invaluable member of this company. After varied experiences, the farm of Dr. Whitman at Waiilatpu was reached and 15 days were there pleasantly spent in his companionship. The trip over the Cascades, after this visit, was the most trying and difficult of the entire journey. Oregon City was reached about the 25th day of September, 1842.

Learning there that there was a settlement of French Canadians about 15 miles up the Willamette Valley, near Champoeg, Mr. Matthieu continued his journey to this his

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 Company. 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 immediate 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 CanadianFrench who held preliminary meetings in opposition at Vancouver, at Oregon City, and on the French Prairie. The subject 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 government, 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

Lee, the two chief figures of the time in the Northwest, were both absent, and it seems to be an open question as to whether they were absent by accident or design. That was the one crucial and pregnant occasion of our early day history. There are some reasons to believe that Dr. McLoughlin, in spite of his relationship to the Hudson Bay Company, desired an independent government, and that Jason Lee regarded the movement as premature, while really favoring the American contention. There was no lack, however, of the presence of men bearing names that are familiar to the pages of the pioneer history of the state.

It seems a far cry, back to that beautiful May morning in 1843, when that rugged and motley band of frontiersmen gathered here at this romantic spot, on the banks of the Willamette, of whose varied beauties Sam L. Simpson has so sweetly sung. Little conception had they of the import and vast possibilities involved in the action to be taken by them on that day, and it is even yet difficult to estimate how much their decision has affected the historical currents of the world.

The scene was one to challenge the highest talent of the historical painter and the story is one worthy the loftiest periods of an epic poet. These men were the vanguard of the millions who have since followed in their footsteps, and of the multiplied millions who are yet to come. Here was the frontier, thousands of miles from the western borderland of civilization-the northwest corner of a new and an undiscovered continent. The richest half of what we know as the American continent was theirs. In all that vast empire, stretching from the Mississippi to the Pacific, now teeming with its millions of souls, and its billions of wealth, there was hardly a home, or a school, or a church, or an orchard, or a grain field, or a solitary mile of railroad. No richer prize ever tempted the greed of man. No greater empire ever asked the taking. They stood at the very dawn of two generations of time whose marvelous achievements had never been matched in any preceding thousand years.

It was their high good fortune to face an opportunity that is seldom offered in the history of any nation. It was a call, not so much for men of talent, as men of purpose, fitted for taking the raw material that frontier conditions provide and moulding it into form. The black frock coats of Gray and Parrish, of Griffin and Beers, of Willson, Babcock and Hines, contrasted no less strangely with the buckskin suits of Meek and Newell and Ebbert, than did their habits, their ideals, and their life purposes. But they were as one in their impulses, and their conceptions of the orderly forms, that were needed to promote the common good. Political opinions, considered in the narrow party sense, did not divide them.

Such differences as existed were based upon various social and moral conditions, and their respective national, religious and commercial affiliations. Any ordinary public hall would have housed the whole American population then living in the western half of the continent. The American population at the beginning of 1842 was 137, including women and children, although this number was almost doubled by the end of the year. Of the 102 men who voted at the meeting of May 2, 1843, the 50 who voted against organization were all of the Catholic faith, and of French or French-Canadian descent, whose relations to Dr. McLoughlin and the Hudson Bay Company were such as to make it almost a duty to take the stand they did.

For their course there can be no reasonable word of censure. The sincerity of their motives is not open to question. Of the 52 men who took the American side when Joe Meek dramatically called for a divide, five including Matthieu and Lucier, were of the Catholic faith, four were Baptists, six Congregationalists, six Episcopalians, eight Presbyterians and fourteen Methodists, while the affiliation of nine are unknown. Five were natives of England, two of Scotland, one of Ireland, two, Matthieu and Lucier, of Canada, one each of Alabama, North Carolina and the District of Columbia, three each of Ohio and New Hampshire, four each of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, ten of New York, and six unknown.