It was France’s sale of its vast holdings of Louisiana to the United States in 1803 that eventually led to the European settlement of Oregon. Maybe not surprisingly, in the decades after selling what amounts to almost a third of today’s lower 48 States, there might have been a little bit of seller’s remorse on the part of France. While, by the 1830 – 1850s, the watershed of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers represented a net loss for France’s diminishing Overseas Empire, Frenchmen still found themselves coveting regions also coveted by the upstart North American republic. Here are two visits from Frenchmen, De Mofras and Saint-Amant to Oregon a decade apart giving intriguing perspectives on the Oregon that might have been French.
LOUISIANA PURCHASE
Background
The Spaniard Hernando de Soto rates as the first European to have explored the area of Louisiana in 1541, but it was France creating the colony which became Louisiana starting in 1702. New Orleans got its start in 1718, and Louisiana became an official French crown colony in 1731. Thirty-one years later, “the country known as Louisiana, as well as New Orleans” was ceded to Spain in the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau.
The Treaty of Paris, one year later in 1763, officially ended the Seven Years’ War between France and Great Britain. That treaty split Louisiana in two with the western half retained by France and the eastern section going to Britain. Spain gave Florida to Britain and in return gained control of western Louisiana. France lost Canada as a result of the war, but they did gain the return of the sugar island of Guadeloupe considered by many was more valuable than today’s Quebec – Voltaire dismissed the lost colony as “quelques arpents de neige” – a few acres of snow.
REVOLUTION AND IMPENDING EMPIRE
Spanish control over the vast region was never ironclad except for New Orleans and the trading post of St. Louis in Upper Louisiana. With the French Revolution, Spain found itself allied first against the new republic following the 1793 execution of Louis XVI. The War of the Pyrenees – 1793-1795, ended with Spain giving up it areas of the island of Hispaniola – today’s Dominican Republic and forming an alliance with France in 1796.
On 9 November 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte rose up to become the First Consul of France’s First Republic – the Coupe of 18 Brumaire. Bonaparte had left his army fighting in the Middle East returning to France a month before his coup. In the aftermath of the coup, Napoleon and foreign minister Charles Talleyrand looked for the restoration of lost French colonies. On 1 October, Spain and France agreed to exchange Louisiana for territories in Tuscany. Spain was already having problem with American settlers coming into the Mississippi basin. Also, the British blockade had a direct deleterious effect upon New Orleans. Spain had regained all of Florida at the end of the American Revolution – 1783. They would lose West Florida in 1810 and 1812; east Florida followed in 1819.
The Purchase
The first step in re-establishing France in the New World was to send 30,000 Frenchmen to put down a slave rebellion in Haiti. Fighting the rebellion in Haiti cost the French an estimated 29,000 men by the mid-summer of 1802. Without a base in Haiti – Saint-Domingue to the French – Napoleon decided control of Louisiana was probably going to be a losing proposition as France and Britain veered toward another war.
Knowing the strength of the British fleet and the lack of French forces in Louisiana, he decided to sell the lands to the US for 80 million francs – $15 million (today’s equivalent $426,723,451). This was rather than have the land fall to British forces stationed in Canada. Spain had not officially turned over Louisiana to France doing so only on 30 November 1803. France then turned over New Orleans to the US a month later. St. Louis in Upper Louisiana underwent a similar set of ceremonies 9 and 10 March 1804. First the flag of France was raised and then the United States.
A series of exploring parties – the most well-know being the party of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark – helped define borders of the vast Purchase leading up to the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819 leading to definite boundaries on the west. That treaty also gave the US Florida and a western extension to Louisiana to the Sabine River. While Lewis and Clark ventured westward over the Continental Divide into the watershed of the Columbia River following the river to the Pacific Ocean, the Oregon Country remained an ambiguous region politically shared by both Great Britain and the United States after the Treaty of Ghent – February 1815 – ended the War of 1812.
FRANCE AFTER NAPOLEON
France and Europe immersed themselves in a series of wars ending only with the second defeat of Bonaparte at Waterloo in 1815. The Congress of Vienna restored the House of Bourbon to the throne of France. The Bourbon Restoration lasted only fifteen years. Then, Charles X was deposed after his 1830 July Ordinances sparked revolution in the streets. He and his son abdicated in favor of Henri, Duke of Burgundy and a ten-year-old grandson of Charles with Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans as regent.
Louis Philippe had served as an officer with the French Revolutionary armies until March 1793. He fled France during the Reign of Terror which followed after the execution of Louis XVI. A young 19-year-old, Louis Philippe remained in exile for 21 years returning only after the fall of Napoleon. Louis Philippe traveled extensively during his exile. He even visited the United States from 1796 until 1798 – two of his brothers lived in Philadelphia in exile. Eventually, in 1800, he made it to England where he spent much of the rest of his exile.
The House of Orléans was the second French familial line for the throne of France after the House of Bourbon. Louis Philippe remained on decent terms with Charles X who succeeded his brother Louis XVIII in 1821. He remained opposed to many of the policies of Charles’ prime ministers, however. They saw in Louis Philippe a potential challenger to the Bourbon government. With a more liberal bent of mind than found within the ranks of the Bourbons, Louis Philippe managed to swing his own coronation as “King of the French” repealing some of the unpopular laws drawn up during the years of the Bourbon Restoration. One of those laws was one banishing the Bonaparte family.
ENTER ONE ENTERPRISING FRENCHMAN IN MEXICO
Eugène Duflot de Mofras was a 31-year-old French diplomat. He was appointed attaché to Mexico and sent to investigate Alta California and the Pacific coast from 1841-42. His special mission, to explore and evaluate the commercial possibilities of California and the Oregon Territory. That territory was still subject for dispute between the United States and Great Britain at the time. In De Mofras’ words, he was to find out “what advantages might accrue to France from commercial expeditions and the establishment of stations in these regions, still so little known in France.”
His report was published in Paris in 1844 by order of King Louis Philippe. Most of his report centered on California. He especially enjoyed his time with Jacob Sutter on the Swiss gentleman’s huge estate in not far from today’s Sacramento. Two chapters of his work from volume two included his report concerning the six weeks he spent in Oregon. He arrivied in October and left 21 December 1841.
duflot de mofras in the oregon country
In his description of Fort Vancouver, Mofras puts the population at 700 of whom 25 were English and 100 French-Canadian. The remainder of the population were Native Americans and Hawaiians. For those living on the Puget Sound, Mofras counted six to seven hundred people with three-quarters were free settlers. At the Puget Sound Agricultural Company farm at Cowlitz, he mentions six humdred of whom 500 were free settler and forty families were “engages”. For the Willamette Valley, Mofras writes of “about two thousand persons, all free settlers.”
He noted the white men were married to Native women for the most part conversing in French. He wrote about both Hudson’s Bay Chief Factor John McLoughlin and James Douglas. De Mofras was even present when HBC Governor for North America George Simpson paid one of his periodic visits to the Northwest. From the notes in Simpson’s letters, he was not too happy about Mofras’ visit.
a cool visit to the HBC
“Among other unwelcome visitors this year is a Frenchman named Eugene du Flot de Mofras, describing himself as an attaché of the French Embassy at Mexico; he says he was directed by his government to make a tour through California, and to visit this river if possible; but we have only his word for the accuracy of his statements. This person, it appears, made application to Mr. Rae for passage on the Cowlitz to this place, which I regret to say he very inconsiderately granted. His desire, I have reason to believe, was to have obtained passage through the interior to Canada; but I imagine the coolness of his reception here has prevented his making application for that passage, and as we cannot get rid of him in any other way, he returns to California in the Cowlitz as our fellow-passenger.” 25 November 1841.
Mofras noted “the cold and formal reception” he was greeted with at Fort Vancouver. He contrasted it with his earlier reception from Russian officers at Fort Ross in California, “truly imperial welcome.” He attributed it to the presence of Horatio Hale, a philologist left behind by the Charles Wilkes’ United States Exploring Expedition. They had visited Oregon before Mofras. “We understood, Mt. Hale and I, that our presence could be nothing but disagreeable to the agents of the Company, who monopolizing all information concerning the Territory in dispute, could see only with a certain displeasure the country explored by two envoys of the French and American governments.”
DE MOFRAS’ VISIT SEEN THROUGH hBC EYES
The Frenchman goes on to describe the Company forts at Vancouver, “Nesquallly” and “Fort Kaoulis or Cowlitz”. This caused Simpson further views, “Though this gentleman professed to be collecting information for the purpose of making a book, yet, with the exception of accompanying us to the Willamette, he scarcely went ten miles from the comfortable quarters of Fort Vancouver, while in conversation he was more ready to dilate on his own equestrian feats than to hear what others might be able to tell him about the country or the people.”
a quick visit to the french prairie
But Mofras did go up the Willamette River describing his passage to and over Willamette Falls. Here, he found the Frenchmen established since 1831. About the land, he noted “if they have not the advantages of a harbor, as those at Nesqually have, they possess as compensation a land more fertile, they enjoy a milder climate, and above all they have more that the others the valuable convenience of easy access to California to procure cattle of all kinds.”
Of the French-Canadian settlers, “we remarked not without pleasure the eagerness with which the Frenchmen of Canada come, wometimes several league, to see a Frenchman from France … they asked us a thousand questions about France, and expressed their keen desire to be reunited with her…” He follows in his report with a census of the various families living in the Willamette Valley – French Prairie. He lisited when they came to settle, acreages owned and cultivated, livestock, what crop and livestock. He also noted those settlers who earlier signed a petition to the US Congress seeking more American involvement in Oregon.
One of the observations Mofras made concerned Canadian feelings of things French being superior. “During our visit to the Willamette with Governor Simpson, we could not help noticing the painful impression the Canadians experienced in seeing themselves governed by a person of a race and religion different from their own, and who did not even speak the same language.”
warmth experienced among the french canadians
He wrote about the mission of Fathers Blanchet and Demers. They came out to minister to the religious needs of the Catholic majority living in the Territory. “If at Fort Vancouver we were received as a foreigner, at the mission of Saint Paul Abbe Blanchet welcomed us as a compatriot and a brother; and we felt again a keen joy in finding on these distant shores, in a country where France has allowed herself to be deprived of all her rights. A parish and villages which reminded us of those of our own provinces.”
The fears of the HBC for the future of the Territory were evident to Mofras. “It would like for the colonization to develop on the right bank of the Columbia. The Company fears that the free population of the Willamette will escape it some day, especially since in March, 1838, at the instigation of Mr. Lee, head of the American Methodists, a petition signed by twenty-seven Americans and nine of the principal French Canadian settlers was address to Congress to claim the protection of the United States Government and invite it to take possession of the territory.”
historical background provided by de mofras
The report goes describing some of the history of how Oregon began starting with French explorations of North America. Of the Louisiana Purchase, he writes “This sale, forever to be deplored, took place by virtue of a decree of the First Consul (Napoleon) … If the cabinet of France committed an irreparable error, that of Washington gave proof of the wisest foresight …” Mofras also mentions the trips of both William Slacum and Charles Wilkes to collect information about the Oregon Country.
Americans in Oregon, Mofras estimated a total of two hundred living in the country. Most lived near Lee’s mission north of Salem. In contrast, he puts the Franco-English population “subject to the Hudson’s Bay Company increased at the same time to at least three thousand persons.” He does note though about potential American emigration in the future, “Some families, however, have come with wagons by the South Pass, and both in the territory and in the United States one may expect to see before many years a wave of immigrant population carried beyond the Rocky Mountains”.
DUFLOT DE MOFRAS’ INFLUENCE ON FRENCH POLICY
Mofras’ trip was authorized directly by the French Minister of Foreign Affairs François Pierre Guillaume Guizot. Guizot was one of the most dominant figures of Orleanist France. Technically, Mofras was attached to the French Minister to Mexico Baron Isidore Elizabeth Jean Baptiste Alleye de Cyprey. However, de Mofras was authorized to communicate directly with Minister Guizot “…independently of the reports that he will have to address to you, shall profit by every occasion to transmit directly to me the result of his explorations.” De Cyprey was not happy with the arrangement. He wrote to Guizot 22 March 1842, “M. Duflot has returned from his trip into California, and will leave the 24th for Vera Cruz, whence he will sail for France. The information he has given me verbally does not make it possible to judge if his explorations will have any utility for France or not.,”
MEXICAN DREAMS
Orleanist France was interested in possibly having Mexico fall into her lap. California and potentially Oregon could have been additional plums, as well. As Mofras writes about San Francisco, “…it is evident that California will belong to whatever nation chooses to send there a man-of-war and two hundred men.” Here, Mofras and de Cyprey (a long serving minister in Mexico) agreed in the decadence of Mexico. De Cyprey wrote in the late 1830s “Like the Arabs, they (Mexicans) submit when addressed with the authority of force and become humble and supplicating.” “Mexico is not a nation, it is a mixture of races devoid of the meaning of national sentiment.”
Such feelings would lead France twice into costly military adventures in Mexico. The first occasion was in 1838-1839 with the so-called “Pastry War”. More significant involvement occured in 1862-1867 with Napoleon III’s attempt to re-create a strong and united Mexico albeit under French supervision. But of Oregon – and California – those lands remained out of reach for France, though they remained interested observers.
END OF THE JULY MONARCHY
Louis Philippe ruled as a constitutional monarch until a coup in1848 deposed him in favor of a Second Republic. Winds of liberalism blew through Europe in 1848, and France was one of the first nations where change took root. Riots in Paris in February led to his abdication as the “Citizen King”. With the institution of direct universal suffrage and unrest in the country, Louis Napoleon, nephew of his imperial predecessor, gained election as president. Following three years as president of the Second Republic, Louis Napoleon organized another coup near the end of 1851 leading to his coronation and the beginning of the Second Empire.
PIERRE CHARLES FOURNIER DE SAINT-AMANT
Not only did Louis Napoleon gain his crown in 1851, but Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant gained an irregular, somewhat vague appointment as a “consular agent” to serve under Guillaume Patrice Dillon, the French consul in San Francisco. Saint-Amant, with a position not dissimilar to de Mofras, traveled also to report on conditions in Oregon. Unlike the somewhat short and limited visit of de Mofras, Saint-Amand traveled much more extensively covering much more than Fort Vancouver and the French Prairie of the Willamette Valley.
Saint-Amand became a government clerk at a young age. He gained a posting as the secretary to the governor of French Guiana while serving with the French Navy from 1819 until 1821. He was dismissed because of objections to the slave trade still existing within the colony. After Guiana, he tried journalism, acting before becoming a successful wine merchant – he was from southwestern France near Bordeaux.
CHESS CHAMPION TO FRENCH DIPLOMAT
He is probably best known as one of the best chess players in the world at the time. A French champion, he also bested British champion Howard Staunton though he lost the rematch.
During the 1848 Revolution, Saint-Amand served as a captain with the National Guard. As such, he was instrumental in saving the royal Tuileries Palace from the street mobs. A confirmed Bonapartiste, he looked for a reward of a consular position in California which Bonaparte promised him. Funds and the post came about with the 1851 budget. His wife, Françoise de Saint-Amand had already gone ahead to San Francisco with merchandise to sell a year before.
Some thirty thousand Frenchmen and women had come to California during the gold rush. The official French consul in San Francisco was Patrice Dillon. Dillon gained his position as a good friend of former French Minister of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister François Guizot.
OFF TO OREGON
Saint-Amant, similar to de Mofras, Consul Dillon did not know what to do with Saint-Amant. So, he sent him on a survey of Oregon to evaluate possibilities for French investment and trade with the new territory. One reason he did this was he did not have funds to keep him occupied in San Francisco. Saint-Amant eventually parlayed his trip to Oregon into six reports to the Foreign Ministry and several books which he wrote.
Astoria and Portland
As others have noted, Saint-Amant was surprised at the lack of US investment in the Port of Astoria. This because of US prioritization of San Francisco with the gold rush and limited US funds. There was also the perception of Oregon as a hinterland.
Portland was already in 1851, the main “center and depot of commerce and exportation” for the region. Portland was where “capital is swallowed up with a feverish ardor”. But he also came into contact with two local Frenchmen. One had captained a ship bringing French and Belgian Catholic missionaries to Oregon. Both of their ships suffered damage crossing the Columbia River bar. As a result, both captains settled in Oregon becoming merchants.
Oregon City and the French Prairie
Visiting Fort Vancouver, Saint-Amant went up the Willamette River stopping first at Oregon City. Oregon City, he saw much less business activity than he found in Portland. But he saw potential with of factory power from Willamette Falls. Also, Oregon City could expand as a transportation point if a canal could develop for steamships to ascend the falls gaining access to the main part of the Willamette Valley above, the town. He also noted the churches in the town. Three were Protestant. Plus, Oregon City was the Catholic seat for the now-Archbishop François Norbert Blanchet. He oversaw now thirty other priests within his region south of the Columbia River.
Going further upriver, he stayed several days with French-Indian families who lived on the French Prairie. In these families, he saw indolence much as he saw in local Native Americans. They seemed uninterested in increasing their economic affairs possibly because of their former condition under the HBC – whom most of the men had worked for at one time. Saint-Amant also saw the mild climate allowed the families to grow an abundance without too much work. This, he felt, left their community – like the Native Americans – in a poor position vis-à-vis more energetic Anglo-Americans emigrating in ever-greater numbers.
OFF TO EASTERN OREGON
Returning to Fort Vancouver, Saint-Amant next hired a boat with a few Americans to move up the Columbia River. Once through the Cascades, they switched to horseback at The Dalles. They rode first to Fort Nez Perces at the confluence of the Walla Walla and Columbia Rivers. From there he ventured across the Columbia Plateau as far as present-day Wenatchee and southeast to Fort Boise. Along the way, he wrote of the various tribes he encountered. He also wrote of the possible future ahead for them and the vast natural resources he discovered. From Moses Coulee, he joined a party of French-Canadians heading down the Columbia to Fort Vancouver. After resting at the Catholic mission at The Dalles, Saint-Amant returned by boat to Vancouver in order to visit the Tualatin Plains west of Portland.
RETURN TO PORTLAND AND CAPTAIN TRAVAILLOT
He accompanied Captain Oswald Travaillot, a Frenchman who came north from California in 1851. Impressed with the well-maintained modest farms of recent Anglo-American farms in the Tualatin Valley, he predicted the area would soon boom both economically and population-wise.
A quick aside, Travaillot’s ship, the brig Duc d’Lorges sank near the west end of the Burnside Bridge runs today. In the Portland City Directory of 1882 Taravaillot is described of as a “character”. “He had discharged cargo and was sitting in a saloon one night when a sailor announced the Duc D’Lorges had sunk. It was too true; she was anchored off the foot of D Street , and getting weary of waiting for the captain, simply turned over and went to sleep on the bed of the river. … The captain was afraid to return to France and spent the greater part of the proceeds of his cargo in the city.”
His ship formed a navigational hindrance for many years afterwards along the Willamette waterfront. After running a store in Portland for a few years, Travaillot would venture further north into the new British colony of British Columbia with another gold rush where he died in 1879.
END OF sAINT-AMANT’S JOURNEYS
Saint-Amant finished his journey at the mouth of the Columbia River where he visited Father Louis Joseph Lionnet. Lionnet was a Catholic priest in charge of the Stella Maris mission in the Native American village at Chinook. After visiting the missionary work of Father Lionnet, Saint-Amant also took in the efforts of the local Chinook to adapt to the fast changes happening in Oregon. Then, his trip was over as he boarded a steamship to return to San Francisco.
While his boss in San Francisco, Dillon, aspired to Napoleon III’s imperialistic ideals, Saint-Amant basically just produced a travelogue on his travels, in a Eurocentric version of the mid-19th century. Saint-Amant returned to France retiring to Algeria where he died in a carriage accident.
FRANCE AND OREGON
France was more concerned with Hawaii – Sandwich Islands – and California (where several thousand Frenchmen came out to make their fortunes). De Mofras and Saint-Amant represented two separate versions of the Pacific Coast from a time period only a decade apart. Two different versions of France are represented – the Orleanist version and the later Bonapartiste version. France never acted as an active participant in either California or especially Oregon but can be thought of as tentatively imperialistic. By the time of Saint-Amant, the Oregon Question had resolved with the Treaty of 1846. De Mofras found French-Canadians in Oregon fascinated by the thought of France, but ignorant of the changes brought about by Louis Philippe. Saint-Amant found a new territory quickly in the middle of transformation.