Canadian trappers were among the first non-Native Americans to spend extended periods of time in the nascent Oregon Country during the early years of the 19th century. Most were French speakers from rural Lower Quebec. Many took on Native American women as their wives. Common law marriages and the resultant children failed to receive recognition from either British law. Catholic priests ventured out slowly behind the trappers to bring a modicum of religious stability to those living beyond the pale of society. Most of the retired trappers settled on what is today the French Prairie.
THE BEAVER
Beaver trapping developed as a large enterprise across North America through the 18th and early 19th centuries. While many of the furs went to Europe – especially through the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) port on James Bay in Rupert’s Land – today, northern Manitoba – extension of the fur trade to the Pacific Northwest, featured an eye on potential trade to China. The first two fur trading businesses setting up in Oregon were the Pacific Fur Company of John Jacob Astor and the Montreal-based North West Company. The PFC soon ran afoul of the War of 1812.
Their main base at Fort Astoria became sold to the Nor’Westers in 1813. The North West Company set up a series of posts along the Columbia River and some of its major tributaries. That same year, the company established the Fort Kalapuya a few miles north of today’s town of St. Paul. All left of the small trading post today is a roadside history sign on a pullout on the east side of Oregon 19 just south of its Willamette River crossing below Newberg. That little post lay sited just west of the Kalapuyan village of Champoeg.
hudson’s bay company
Hudson’s Bay Company began from a royal charter issued in 1670. The HBC gained exclusive rights to act as “absolute lords and proprietors” to all lands within the watersheds of Hudson’s Bay and the Hudson’s Bay Straits. These rights included full governmental authority to create and enforce laws and sole control over the natural resources found in the area. English subjects were not allowed to access or create trade within the HBC lands – Rupert’s Land. The North West Company – 1787 – arose to challenge the HBC in Rupert’s Land and beyond. By 1821, the North West Company merged with HBC ending the sometimes violent rivalry between the two. The newly enlarged HBC took over here in the Pacific Northwest using mainly Nor’Westers to run things as they had before.
The North West Company recognized little profit in the fur trade in the area they called the Columbia District. The political situation made an abandonment of the region unfeasible however in light of possible encroachment of Russian or Americans. With the newly re-formed HBC, the new governor, George Simpson, visited the region, now a jointly occupied land shared between the United States and Great Britain. Simpson decided to continue the presence of the HBC looking at making the various posts self-sufficient. That led Simpson to reorganize the district out of newly created Fort Vancouver – over 100 miles up the Columbia River from its mouth – better ground for agriculturally keeping within Simpson’s mandate for self-sufficiency.
POLITICS, HBC AND THE OREGON COUNTRY
With a view to the political situation, Simpson’s view held that the Columbia River would eventually become the border between the United States to the south and Great Britain to the north. He directed his Chief Factor John McLoughlin at Fort Vancouver to “push the Trade south of the Columbia”. He also sent out Peter Skene Ogden on a series of expeditions into the Snake Country to trap as many animals as possible to leave the area unattractive to American trappers, a “fur desert”. McLoughlin served as HBC’s main director in the region from 1825 until his resignation in 1846.
By the late 1820s, several of the trappers of the HBC – many who formerly worked as Nor’Westers – had tired of trapping. They wanted to settle down with their Native American wives and children. At first, McLoughlin let them settle south of the Columbia, where agricultural prospects were much better than north. Later on, as American emigrants began trickling into the Oregon Country, McLoughlin pushed retirees to settle north of the river in an attempt to maintain the region for British – thus, HBC – control.
enter religion
The onset of missionaries into Oregon muddied the waters of control further. Protestant missionaries like Jason Lee and Marcus Whitman sought initially to convert natives to Christianity. As opposed to the later Catholic missionaries, they took a more rigid in their approach to Indians. They sought not only conversion on a faith-scale but insisted on outward signs of conversion like shortened hair and white clothing. The Protestants showed themselves to be more nationalistic in their focus on American government and values. Their focus on taking the Native Americans away from their hunting-gathering transient lifestyle and transforming them to live on fixed plots of land to show Indians how to settle down and farm made conversion much more difficult.
Catholics were more likely to accept the Natives as they were. External conformity was not their goal. As a result, over the long run Catholics found much more success gaining converts.
The Protestant missionaries went around these problems through their messages of the glories of the Oregon Country to their fellow Americans back east. A slow trickle of American emigrants would soon become a deluge.
FRENCH PRAIRIE
French Prairie, original territory of the Kalapuyans, became named for the French-Indian families who settled there from the late 1820s through the 1840s. Set in the mid-Willamette Valley, the French Prairie lies bounded by the Willamette River to the north and west, the Pudding River to the east, and the remains of Lake Labish to the south.
Methodist missionaries first visited the French-Indian families living in the Kalapuyan territory while searching for a spot for their mission. They stayed with Joseph Gervais, his wife Yiamust Clatsop and their children. They livedon a farm about ten miles southwest of Champoeg. Also living at the Gervais home were Yiamust’s sister Celiast and her husband Solomon Smith, who served as a schoolteacher to the local French-Indian children.
The families whom the missionaries met at the Gervais farm were happy to see the Lees. They provided them with food and lodging while they were in the valley. According to Lee’s diary, the French-Indians families encouraged the Methodists to build a mission near their small agrarian settlement.
Oregon’s First White Settlers on French Prairie on JSTOR
French Prairie at the time of Lieutenant Slacum’s Visit
US Navy Lieutenant William Slacum has thirty men settling in the French Prairie area when he visited in December 18. As the 1830s progressed, McLoughlin began to push those employees who wished to leave the HBC at the end of their contracts to settle north of the Columbia. This hoped to better the British claim to the region north of the river, especially the trickling of American settlers beginning to take form in the Willamette Valley. Of the thirty men Slacum lists, 13 had French surnames. Slacum’s visit estimated 750-800 people living at Fort Vancouver with 1000 stock 700 hogs 200 sheep 450-500 horses 40 yoke of working oxen. The fort received an annual trade ship from London and HBC employees signed contracts for five years.
REQUEST FOR PRIESTS
In 1813, the Northwest Fur Company established the small Willamette Trading Post about three miles north of present-day St. Paul. Later, in 1826, the HBC established a ferry crossing the Willamette River at a nearby point. Here, Native Americans used as a crossing point where the river became narrow during the summertime.
By 1829, some of the retired French-Canadian employees of the HBC had settled their families in the present-day St. Paul area. Etienne Lucier is generally considered to be the first farmer on the Prairie and in Oregon, in general. His farm was about three and a half miles north of St. Paul. The French Canadians, with their native wives and mixed-blood children, were Catholic.
A group of eighteen French Prairie settlers got together in 1834 to have John McLoughlin write to Bishop Joseph-Norbert Provencher in Winnipeg, Manitoba. They wanted him to ask for priests who might come to the Willamette Valley. The bishop said he had no priests at Red River but that he would forward their petition to Archbishop Joseph Signay in Quebec. The settlers repeated their requests in 1836 and 1837. The archbishop ultimately decided to send two priests to the Oregon country, though the HBC objected to the establishment of a mission south of the Columbia River, an area in which the British figured they would eventually lose.
a mission takes form
It was finally agreed by all parties the original mission would establish north of the Columbia River, near the banks of the Cowlitz River (near present day Toledo). In lieu of Catholic priests, several of the French Prairie families turned to Jason Lee’s Methodist Mission. Most of the families also joined Lee’s Temperance Society hoping to discontinue Ewing Young’s attempt at founding a whisky distillery.
It took Fr. Francis Norbert Blanchet and Fr. Modest Demers six months to travel from Montreal to Fort Vancouver. They arrived on Saturday, November 24, 1838. Dr. John McLoughlin was on a visit to Canada and England, so they were greeted by James Douglas.
At the fort was a delegation of men representing the Canadians in the Willamette Valley. The following day, Sunday, Fr. Blanchet celebrated a High Mass at the fort—for many, the first celebration of Mass in ten or even twenty years, an emotional occasion bringing tears of joy.
fort vancouver
A census taken at the time showed seventy-six Catholics at the fort, including several Catholic Iroquois. Fr. Blanchet wasted no time in getting his mission going, giving special attention to the spiritual needs of the native peoples. Father Demers had already learned the Chinook Jargon (a common language between the native peoples and Europeans, also called Chinuk Wawa), so he taught the Indians their prayers, which he had translated for them. He also taught about a hundred women and children who were preparing for Baptism.
While Fr. Demers was with the Indians, Fr. Blanchet taught the catechism to the Canadians in both French and English (Blanchet was fluent in English from a previous assignment in New Brunswick). He also taught Gregorian Chant, taking great pride in the chant sung by both the Canadians and the Indians.
RELIGIOUS COMPETITION
When the first missionaries arrived in the Pacific Northwest, in 1834, Indians outnumbered non-Indians by a substantial margin. Yet the white missionaries – soon transformed into colonizers – remained confident about their eventual success in changing the scene. Whitman and other Christians had a right granted by the Bible and obligation to colonize all corners of the earth.
Protestants like Marcus Whitman and Jason Lee only had the field to themselves for a short period, however. Catholic missionaries soon competed with them for Indian souls. In order to convert natives to Christianity, each side had their own methods. Protestants were more rigid in their approach. They wanted rapid conversion including outward signs of conversion such as shortened hair and white clothing. The Protestants were more nationalistic with their focus on American government and values. They also determined to have Natives give up their transitory lifestyles to live on fixed plots of land where the missionaries could show the Natives how to settle down and farm. These policies sought to convert the Indians to white cultural patterns and western European religious beliefs. The Natives were to be transformed into copies of their white neighbors.
enter the catholics
Into this world of Anglo-Protestant missionaries came the Catholic missionaries – in the Pacific Northwest. they were predominantly Jesuits. The Catholics walked a different road. Their goal was also conversion, but with meaning somewhat different meaning. Catholics as well as Protestants argued civilization and Christianity must go hand in hand, with education, hard work and civility necessary for acceptance of Christian living. Both were part of the missionary impulse of the 19th century sending European missionaries to the edges of the world. Both heeded Jesus’ command to go forth and baptize all nations.
The missionaries remained blinded by the Protestant Reformation and the bitterness of old religious wars. The Catholic missionaries came with a residue of Counter-Reformation mentality. While each group wanted the Indians to accept Christianity, each insisted that Christianity be its own brand. One gets the uncomfortable feeling in reading Catholic and Protestant missionary documents, more time and energy ended up directed to condemning the other side than to converting Indians. Each side held firmly to its revealed truths while eagerly consigning the other to the flames of hell.
THE LADDERS
Catechetical – basic religious teaching – charts developed from the hand-crafted sticks used by 17th and 18th century Jesuits for their Native American faithful. They evolved into mass-produced charts used to evangelize in oral and visual societies worldwide. As they developed, these aids increasingly used sequences of pictures with vivid colors and detailed graphics from the Bible and captions or companion narratives. These sticks and charts were called “ladders”.
Father Blanchet created a Catholic ladder for use at the Cowlitz Mission in 1839. The ladders began as a carved stick which he quickly transposed onto paper. He published several versions (i.e.1839-1843, 1856) revising with time. They continually grew both in size and complexity from 1843 to 1860. Pierre-Jean de Smet learned about the Catholic ladder from Blanchet. He then published his own in 1843. De Smet’s version became the first ladder distributed widely across North America.
Much like paintings inside early Christian churches, the charts graphically displayed to the Native Americans the main aspects of Christianity and the road to salvation. Pictures, symbols and timelines served as mnemonic devices for both the catechist and novice. The charts were printed upon long rolls of paper – up to six feet long by a foot wide – upon which the stories of Christianity unfolded from creation on the bottom, upward through pre-Christian times to the mission of Christ all the way to the present. Millenia and centuries were represented by heavy bars giving the chart the appearance of a ladder.
protestant counterpoint
In counterpoint, Henry Spalding developed a Protestant version of the ladder. His – produced in 1845-1856 – was a little short on Christian doctrine. Two roads were shown with the wider road leading to Hell. The broad road was full of worldly popes, immoral priests and peddlers of indulgences. The narrow road – the Protestant path – led directly to Heaven.
ETIENNE LUCIER
Etienne Lucier was born in the Montreal region of Lower Canada – Quebec – in 1793. He had worked for the PFC coming to Oregon in 1811 with the overland party set out by John Jacob Astor. He was one of those helping to establish Fort. With the 1813 sale of Astor’s holdings in Astoria, Lucier became an independent fur trader with the North West Company and later – after 1821 – with the HBC. Lucier retired from the HBC in 1829 settling first on the east side of the Willamette in today’s Portland. Soon, he moved further south around the Native community at Champoeg.
retirement
Lucier applied to McLoughlin to farm in 1828, by which time several other trappers also had spoken to the Chief Factor. HBC policy bound company supervisors to return men who wished to leave the company from where they hired on. The policy meant to prevent troublemakers set loose among the Native Americans which could lead to hostility toward the HBC. By the fall of 1829, McLoughlin had a change of heart. He changed his mind for strategic reasons. He agreed to loan Lucier and other Willamette freeman implements and supplies to assure the French Canadians’ strong economic relations with the HBC.
Knowing Lucier to be an honest man, McLoughlin let remain him here instead of having return to Quebec to retire. McLoughlin explained, “…if he went to Canada and unfortunately died before his children could provide for themselves, they would become objects of pity and a burden to others.”
He kept Lucier and others on the HBC employee books so as not to expose the company or himself to possible fines. While they remained on the HBC books as employes, McLoughlin expected no further work from them. He also provided seed grain, a two-wheeled cart, plow, two cows, two steers and additional farm implements sold at a discount to the retirees.
settling on the french prairie
By the early 1830s, Lucier and his family—along with the French Indian families of Joseph Gervais, Pierre Bellique, Jean Baptiste Desportes McKay, and Louis Labonte—were the first non-Kalapuyans living year-round in the valley above Willamette Falls. Lucier and his French-Canadian compatriots later assisted the Methodist and Catholic missionaries who established missions in French Prairie in the mid to late 1830s.
In 1843, following the arrival of more Americans in 1842, Lucier voted to support the organization of a provisional government. Lucier sought to give French Canadian settlers a voice in community affairs. He and others wanted to protect the economic interests of their French-Indian families in the Willamette Valley, which many believed to eventually fall under American jurisdiction.
The land where Lucier and others set up their farms was basically where they squatted as long as they did not interfere with neighbors. It would not be until the Provisional Government formed in 1843 that settlers could “officially” stake out claims.
a new country
His eventual Donation Land Grant on the French Prairie occupies the south bank of the Willamette River running from the Oregon 219 bridge to another bridge a little over a half mile further upriver which carries a pipeline across the water near the waste treatment center for Newberg. Lucier is credited with giving the nearby Pudding River its name. He and another fur trapper, Joseph Gervais, killed an elk on that river making blood pudding from its blood. Along with his countryman Joseph Gervais, Lucier was one of two French Canadians voting to support the American-led effort to organize a provisional government at Champoeg in 1843.
Lucier married twice. His first wife, Josephe Nouite, came from Vancouver Island. They had six children together. After her death in 1840, he married Marie Margarette Chinook from the area near Astoria. At least two children resulted before her death in 1863.
FATHER FRANÇOIS NORBERT BLANCHET
François Blanchet came from St. Pierre, Quebec. Born in 1795, he and his brother, Augustin-Maglorie – A.M.A. – trained in the Petit and Grand Seminaries in Quebec City. He had served in Catholic mission work in New Brunswick among the Acadian and Micmac tribes. After seven years, he spent the next eleven at St. Joseph de Soulanges parish next to the Rapide du Costeau des Cèdres – Cedar Rapids – on the St. Lawrence just upstream from Montreal. Here he ministered to a mélange of people both European and Native American, including fur traders passing to and from the interior.
In 1837, tired of getting no answers from the Red River, the people of French Prairie wrote directly to the Archbishop of Quebec, Joseph Signay. This time, they gained the answer they desired. Signay recalled Blanchet for a new assignment as vicar general for a new Oregon mission. Along with Reverend Modeste Demers, the two men set out on 3 May 1838 with the annual HBC express. Leaving from Lachine, Quebec, the distance they covered by boat and horseback was almost 5,000 miles. They crossed the Rocky Mountains on 16 October and finally arrived at Fort Vancouver on 24 November. Their mission was to administer both to the local Native Americans and to the members of the HBC, present and past.
arrival in oregon country
Shortly after arriving, Blanchet established the first Catholic mission at Cowlitz where the HBC subsidiary Puget Sound Agricultural Company maintained a large farm. Here, he devised the Catholic Ladder, an evangelical tool laying out the story of Jesus in a graphical form.
Next, he celebrated mass with the people of the French Prairie in their log church. This became the regional center for Catholic missions for the next decade. On September 19, 1847, Blanchet, now an archbishop, conducted the first ordination of a priest in the Oregon Country in St. Paul Church. Demers gained consecration as a bishop in the church on November 30, 1847, the first bishop ordained in the Oregon Country.
Blanchet as bishop
The first Provincial Council of the Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest was held on the French Prairie in St. Paul on February 28, 1848. In 1870, a steeple was added to the building, and the church was totally renovated between 1900 and 1903 at a cost of about $15,000. An earthquake on March 25, 1993, severely damaged the church. Because of the building’s historical significance, the parish decided to restore it, and the walls taken down and rebuilt with concrete and steel before reinstalling the original bricks. The church was rededicated on November 5, 1995. The St. Paul Roman Catholic Church was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
At the end of 1839, Blanchet became appointed Apostolic vicar for the Oregon mission, receiving the rank of titular Bishop of Philadelphia at the same time. The letters arrived from Rome only in August 1844.
To gain episcopal consecration, Blanchet had to return to Canada. His voyage began on 5 December. His vessel went to Dover, England, by way of Honolulu and Cape Horn. After a short rail trip to Liverpool, he took another ship to Boston and another train to Montreal where he was consecrated 25 July 1845.
a new archbishop
In 1846, Pope Pius IX raised the vicariate to the rank of an archdiocese, the Archdiocese of Oregon City. Francis Norbert Blanchet became its first archbishop. After the Archdiocese of Baltimore on the east coast, the Archdiocese of Oregon City (now Portland), is the second oldest archdiocese in the United States. His brother Augustin-Maglorie was raised to the rank of bishop for the new diocese of Walla Walla and Father Demers became bishop for Vancouver’s Island.
While in Europe, Blanchet gathered his own counterpart to Jason Lee’s Great Reinforcement – six secular priests, four Jesuit priests, three lay brothers and seven Sisters of Notre Dame. Setting sail from Brest, France on 22 February 1847, they reached the Columbia River on 12 August.
Catholics in the region faced persecution by the majority Protestant white settlers, with Father Augustin Magliore Blanchet, Francis Blanchet’s brother, being blamed for the Whitman Massacre in 1847, despite only arriving in Walla Walla three months prior to the events.[7]
Blanchet would spend many years away from Oregon, raising funds for his province in South America, attending meetings in Baltimore and Rome. He gathered another 31 members to help him in 1859. Blanchet retired in 1880 spending his final three years at St Vincent Hospital in Portland.
MODESTE DEMERS
Modeste Demers was born at St. Nicholas, Quebec on 11 October 1809. Ordained on 7 February 1836 by Bishop Signay, he spent fourteen months as an assistant priest at Trois-Pistoles. Volunteering to accompany Reverend Blanchet, they ventured west in 1838. Demers concentrated his mission on the Native tribes of the region, especially north into what would become British Columbia. His ability as a skilled linguist allowed him to learn Chinook Jargon letting him lead services on the French Prairie in their language. He produced a dictionary and missionary handbook in his first years giving other missionaries an essential tool with which to communicate with.
In 1844, he came to Oregon City to serve as vicar general and oversee the now nine missions, eleven churches and chapels and two schools – fifteen priests and six sisters. He filled in for Blanchet for three years during which time the churches in both Oregon City – St. Mary’s – and St. Paul became completed. The Church in St.Paul was the first brick building erected in Oregon – 1846. With the return of Blanchet, Demers became appointed bishop of Vancouver’s Island on 30 November 1847, he made Victoria his headquarters.
His mission to the poor soon added the care for his European flock. He gained services of the Sisters of St. Anne who established schools in Victoria and beyond. The Oblate Fathers of Mary Immaculate came to help spread his mission to the Native Americans founding a college in Victoria, as well. But like Blanchet, Demers spent much of the rest of his life traveling to raise money for his poor diocese. Those travels wore on him and he died in Victoria 28 July 1871.
ST. PAUL CHURCH
Though no mission was to be established south of the Columbia River, this did not stop Fr. Blanchet from attending to the spiritual needs of the Catholics in the Willamette Valley. On January 3, 1839, at the encouragement of Dr. McLoughlin, Fr. Blanchet set out for Champoeg. A church, the first erected in Oregon, already stood built in 1836—a log structure in anticipation of a priest. On January 6, 1839, the church with Mass celebrated for the first time in Oregon. Fr. Blanchet remained for four weeks in the French Prairie community, instructing them, baptizing the women and children, and blessing marriages. There was confidence that, with the assistance of Dr. McLoughlin, a permanent mission would be established. The log church was replaced by a brick building in 1846, the oldest brick church in Oregon.
Blanchet claimed about 2,500 acres of land for the mission. The land was used for farming to support the church community, including the church, a flourmill, and a sawmill. St. Joseph’s College, a school for boys, was opened in 1842.
After traveling to Europe seeking help for his new flocks, Blanchet returned to St. Paul in August 1844. He established the St. Francis Xavier Mission, about a mile to the west of the St. Paul Church. He brought with him six sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, who established an academy for girls at the mission. The mission also served as the headquarters of the Jesuits in Oregon. It proved too remote a location to serve the missions that were over five hundred miles away to the northeast. It closed after five years.
a new church
A new church built in 1846, reportedly using 160,000 bricks fired on site at a cost of $20,000. The foundation laid and blessed on May 24, with a dedication on November 1. The church was 100 feet long and 45 feet wide with two 15-by-15-foot side chapels. Designed in the shape of a cross, the building boasted an 84-foot-high bell tower. Atop the tower, a church bell, cast in Belgium, installed.
On September 19, 1847, Blanchet, now an archbishop, conducted the first ordination of a priest in the Oregon Country in St. Paul Church. Demers was consecrated bishop in the church on November 30, 1847, the first bishop ordained in the Oregon Country. The first Provincial Council of the Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest was held in St. Paul on February 28, 1848.
In 1870, a steeple was added to the building. The church was totally renovated between 1900 and 1903 at a cost of about $15,000. An earthquake on March 25, 1993, severely damaged the church. Because of the building’s historical significance, the parish decided to restore it. The walls were taken down and rebuilt with concrete and steel before reinstalling the original bricks. The church was rededicated on November 5, 1995. The St. Paul Roman Catholic Church was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
CATHOLIC GREAT REINFORCEMENT
Among the twenty-one men and women Blanchet brought to Oregon in 1844 were six Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. They boarded the L’Infatigable in Antwerp in January 1844, journeying around Cape Horn to reach the Columbia River bar on 31 July. With the Sisters were five priest including the Jesuit missionary Pierre Jean DeSmet who focused his attention on establishing missions among the Native Americans of the Rocky Mountains. The nuns were the first to arrive in Oregon.
The order, founded only in 1804, aimed at educating girls and training teachers. In St. Paul, they established their first school – Sainte Marie de Willamette. Along with the school, they had a farm to provide food for themselves and saleable products. The farm also gave training to the students in agriculture and marketing.
A second school was established after seven more Sisters augmented their ranks from Belgium in 1848 – Yoiung Ladies’ Academy – in Oregon City. Anti-Catholic tensions brought on by the Whitman murders combined with malaria epidemics and the chaos created among the local population rushing south to participate in the California Gold Rush led to the closure of the St. Paul school in 1852. The next year, the sisters closed their Oregon City school, as well. Selling off their Oregon properties, the order moved to San Jose, California, themselves.
on to oregon city
In 1843, Blanchet and John McLoughlin selected a site for a new church in Oregon City. Built the following year, St John the Apostle Church celebrated its first mass 3 March 1844 with Modeste Demers as the first pastor. McLoughlin had been baptized as a Catholic but was raised as in the Anglican faith. Now, he returned to the Catholics with his family becoming original members of the second parish established in Oregon. The parish became the headquarters for a new Archdiocese of Oregon City in 1846, though the administration moved downriver to Portland in 1862.
SAINT LOUIS and GERVAIS
On 3 November 1847, the third Catholic parish in Oregon became established in the community at St. Louis. Located about three miles NW of Gervais, St. Louis is one of the oldest settlements in the Willamette Valley.
In 1844, a Jesuit missionary, the Reverend Aloysius Verecuysee, visited the early settlers and in 1845 he built a log church at St. Louis. In November 1847, the parish was first organized with a resident priest, the Rev. B. Delorme. The parish was named for Saint Louis, King of France. In 1880, the old church burned down. Rebuilt, the present church building is the oldest wooden church in the archdiocese.
marie dorion
The remains of Madame Marie Dorion, famous member of the Astor overland party in which she served as an interpreter, lie buried at St. Louis Church. When that church burned down in 1880, her remains lie forgotten with their exact whereabouts no longer known. The current 1880 church building became erected near the old church, but the exact site of the old church remains not known. A metal marker on the current church reads “built 1845” but that actually refers to the original, log church building.
The parish included the area where Gervais later developed. The community in Gervais separated from the St. Louis parish in 1872 – Sacred Heart. The two parishes reunited in 1991 – Sacred Heart-St. Louis – when it was discovered no decree was ever written allowing the parishes to separate in the first place.
today
St. Louis is a small community in the French Prairie area of the mid-Willamette Valley. It was founded in 1845 by a Jesuit missionary who built a log church here for early residents. In 1880, the old church burned down. Even with the later date, the present church building is the oldest wooden church in the archdiocese.
Gervais
Beyond the church, there are only a few houses remaining in St. Louis today. Most local developments have happened in the town of Gervais. Gervais, like Woodburn, Canby and Hubbard, developed because of the Oregon and California Railroad.
Samuel Brown came out to Oregon with the Appelgate wagon train in 1846. Soon, however, Samuel was off to California with many other Oregon pioneers. He built a mill on the Feather River and made $20,000 – worth a little over $819,000 today – prospecting for gold – 62 pounds worth of gold. The family returned to Oregon in 1850. He built his wife one of the first architect-designed homes built in Oregon in 1857 among the over 1,000 acres he purchased. The house served as a station along the Oregon-California stagecoach line.
As a state senator from 1866 until 1872, Brown probably had something to do with the new railroad running through part of his properties the year he left the senate. He platted a town site along the railroad selling off lots for $50 each during the 1870s. The town of Gervais incorporated in 1878 – The stagecoach and Sam Brown’s house appear on the town’s seal – taking its name from the French-Canadian pioneer Joseph Gervais.
JOSEPH GERVAIS
Gervais came to Oregon in 1810 with the Astor Pacific Fur Company’s overland team. For twenty years, he worked as a fur trapper for Pacific Fur, the North West Company and finally, the HBC. He and his second wife, Yiamust Coboway – a Clatsop – settled along the east bank of the Willamette River in 1830 or 1831 near where the now-abandoned community of Fairfield lay. They had 125 acres where he raised wheat and a small apple orchard. He also had a grist mill, and a small two-story house built in the poteaux-sur-sol – posts on sills – style. He and his family—along with the French-Indian families of Pierre Bellique, Etienne Lucier, and Jean Baptiste Desportes McKay—were the first non-Kalapuyans to live year-round in the valley above Willamette Falls.
In 1835, with the arrival of the Jason Lee mission, the Lee brothers preached from the Gervais home on Sundays with thirty to forty people present. The Lees did not know French – and were not about to learn – so Gervais’ name appears at the head of the list of names sent to Bishop Joseph Norbert Provencher in Juliopolis – Red River – seeking priests to come out to Oregon to tend the Catholics of the French Prairie
ewing young probate
After the death of Ewing Young in 1841, with no will nor heir, settlers in the Willamette Valley sat faced with a problem relating to probate. No legal power existed at the time beyond the HBC. Settlers came together to decide upon a local constitution and laws for the region in February 1841. It was not until 2 May 1843 before the Provisional Government established itself.
The actual vote at Champoeg was never recorded. Historians surmise the vote was 52-50 in favor of the formation of a Provisional Government. Gervais is thought by some to vote against the formation while others think he was one of two French Canadians voting in favor. In 1850, he became a naturalized citizen to register his donation land claim.
Going off with several other French Canadians to California to take part in the Gold Rush, he returned only to lose his farm due to a failed mortgage payment with the land sold off in 1850. His claim of 642 acres was taken up by Freeman Eldriedge, a pioneer of 1847. Eldriedge next gained the 643 acres of Xavier Ladirtoute, ultimately expanding his acreage to some 2,000.
The community of Fairfield built up around the area, though with the development of rails over the river, led to that community’s disappearance over time. Gervais spent the rest of his life living with his children dying 15 July 1861. He lays buried in the Old Cemetery at St. Paul.
GAGNON BROTHERS
Luc Gagnon and Joseph Gagnon, two French Canadian brothers, made their home on Oregon’s French Prairie. Luc was a leader in the Prairie’s development. Through his efforts land was acquired for the St. Louis Church. Illiterate himself, he still supported education. He sent his daughters to the Academy established by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in St. Paul. He made sure his daughters became educated.
In 1828, Luc Gagnon joined the HBC. From 1828 to 1837, serving on trade canoes in the Columbia District until his retirement in 1841. He married – unofficially – his wife in 1833, a union officially recognized in 1841 when his marriage was consecrated and his three daughters baptized. In December 1844, Luc Gagnon gave a tract of Champoeg County land to Rev. Louis Verecruysse for what became today’s church to replace the log structure.
On 2 May 1843, Luc Gagnon was present at the Provisional Government organization meeting in Champoeg where he, along with most of the French Canadians, voted against forming a government. On 1 December 1850, he filed his declaration to become an American citizen, most likely to be eligible for an Oregon Donation Land claim.
He died 18 August 1872 and was buried in the St. Louis Church graveyard.
joseph
Luc’s brother Joseph Gagnon was born and baptized 16 May 1809 in St. Cuthbert. He officially married Marguerite Desjarlais on 18 July1842 in St. Paul, Oregon. In 1842, Joseph was farming 30 acres on French Prairie in 1842. His household consisted of one male and one female. He had one horse, but he had not been on the land long enough to harvest crops.
Joseph Gagnon was one of the French Prairie men who went to the California gold fields in 1848 with Rev. B. Delorme, pastor of the St. Louis Church. He died 13 September 1849 in the California goldfields where he was buried in an unmarked location. Dying before 1850, joseph was never able to file an official claim to his land.
other gagnons
A couple other Gagnons lived around St. Paul. Whether they all were related remains a question. François Gagnon entered service in the Upper Red River District with the North West Company in 1817. Transferring to the HBC in 1821, he on trade canoes in the Upper Red River District and later in the Swan River District. In 1841, he became one of the settlers in James Sinclair’s party who left Red River for Oregon. He settled first at Cowlitz and then French Prairie.
Louis Gagnon was born about 1797 in Canada and died 5 April 1861 in St. Louis, Oregon. François Gagnon was born about 1803 in St. Cuthbert and died in the California goldfields. François Gagnon claimed land on the “Grand Prairie,” (St. Louis area). Louis Gagnon claimed land on the Grand Prairie. His neighbors were Laderoute on the north and Jos. Delord on the south. He abandoned his claim to Laderoute on 10 May 1848.
PIERRE BELLEQUE
Listed as one of Oregon French Prairie’s “Big Four” – Pierre Belleque, Joseph Gervais, Etienne Lucier, and Louis LaBonte – Pierre Belleque was another “Nor’Wester”. He continued with the HBC working through the 1820s on trading canoes. By 1832 Belleque and his family farmed on the French Prairie where he claimed 640 acres adjoining the Willamette River and Church Creek. His neighbors were Joseph Despard, Etienne Lucier, and I. Martin. Belleque was one of the signers of a petition to Congress in March 1838, requesting American government in the Willamette Valley.
Along with Etienne Lucier, Belleque escorted Father Blanchet – 3 January 1839 – from Fort Vancouver to Champoeg by canoe. From there on rode horseback to the log church at St. Paul. In February 1841, Belleque joined Joseph Gervais and Etienne Lucier in the discussion of the establishment of a provisional government. The settlers appointed him as one of three Constables. However, he voted against the organization of an American Provisional Government.
Pierre Belleque and his son Pierre joined other St. Paul settlers traveling to the California gold fields. In 1849, returning home, Belleque died at sea and was given a sea burial.
FRANÇOIS RIVET
François Rivet was one of the Lewis and Clark expedition’s voyageurs. A French-Canadian, he became one of French Prairie’s oldest settlers. He was born on 7 June 1754 at St. Suplice, Quebec. At St. Louis, Missouri, François signed up with Lewis and Clark for their overland expedition. He did not winter at Fort Clatsop with the rest of the expedition members, staying instead near Fort Mandan in present-day North Dakota. Here he and several other Frenchmen built a shelter and found work. François and several other boatmen took Lewis and Clark’s keelboat back to Missouri.
Returning to the Mandans, Rivet was there when Lewis and Clark returned from the Oregon Territory. François remained in the west working with the Pacific Fur Company as an interpreter and hunter. In 1824, he was with Alexander Ross in the Snake River as an interpreter. His wife and family were apparently with him because he was credited with having a lodge during the winter of 1824.
oregon country
At age sixty in 1827, his wages as an interpreter in the Columbia District recorded at 50 pounds per year. He served with Ross at the Flathead Post as an interpreter before transferring to Fort Colville. François retired in 1838, settling on the French Prairie. In Elijah White’s Oregon census in 1842, the household consisted of two males over eighteen, two females over eighteen, and three children with seventy acres under improvement.
François and his son, Antoine, in a 1845 partnership, claimed 1,280 acres about three miles southeast of the Catholic Church in Champoeg District. Their neighbors were Joseph “Revais” – Rivet – on the south, Louis Vandal and J. B. Delcour on the west, and Louis Gainier on the north. “Francis Reve” of Marion County received a donation claim. In his settler’s affidavit, he stated he was born in 1759 in Canada. Given that his church baptismal record gave his birth date as 7 June 1754, he wasn’t too far off.
A letter from B. F. Harding of Fairfield, Oregon, was included in the claim file. Mr. Harding wrote, “The statement that Frances Rive was born in 1759, I think correct. I have been told many times that he was over 90, nearing a hundred when he died in 1852 or 1853, and being 1759 would allow him only 94 years. He came to this country with Lewis and Clark. Started from St. Louis in the spring of 1804. He stopped in the Spokane Country and never returned to Mo.”
Rivet died on 25 September 1852 and lies buried at St. Paul, Oregon.
LOUIS LABONTE
Louis LaBonte, carpenter, fur-trapper, and early French-Prairie settler was considered one of French Prairie’s “Big Four.” He was born about 1789. When Louis Labonte was about eighteen years old, he left Canada for St. Louis, Missouri, where he hired on as a carpenter with the American Fur Company.
Astor formed the Pacific Fur Company – a subsidiary of the AFC – to set up a fur trading network operating out of the Columbia River. Two parties set out to establish what became Fort Astoria – one by sea and one by land. The overland party – with LaBonte included – reached Astoria in February 1812. He assisted William Matthews building canoes, armchairs, boxes, and ladders, while also working as a blacksmith. In October 1813, the Pacific Fur Company sold out to the Canadian North West Company. Around twenty Pacific Fur Company employees, including Louis, went to work for the Northwest Company and were based out of Fort George – formerly Fort Astoria.
During this time, Louis met Kilakotah – Marguerite – daughter of Chief Coboway of the Clatsop Tribe. Marguerite previously married to William Wallace Matthews, an American, had been a passenger on the Tonquin. The Tonquin served as the seaborne party of Astor’s foray into the Oregon Country. He served as a clerk at Fort Astoria and then Fort George. William and Marguerite’s daughter, Ellen, was born in about 1815.
beyond the NOrth west
The North West Company merged with the HBC in 1821 with Louis becoming an employee of the HBC stationed at Ft. George. Louis left Fort George for the Spokane House working there as a carpenter. That post closed in 1826 with Louis working as a cook at Fort Colville until 1828 when his contract with the HBC ended. He wanted to remain in the Northwest with his wife and children, but HBC policy for employees to go back to the place where they originally hired from. Even though Louis hired with the HBC in the Oregon Country, he needed to go to Montreal to secure his discharge.
Returning, LaBonte and his family settled next to Thomas McKay’s farm on Scappoose Creek near Sauvie’s Island where they raised wheat, oats, peas, potatoes, and other garden produce. Thomas McKay’s mother was Marguerite Waden, the wife of John McLoughlin. Thomas McKay’s father, Alexander McKay, was an Astorian on the Tonquin. He died in the fatal explosion aboard that ship. Thomas stayed on at Fort Astoria where he knew the Labonte family.
on the French Prairie
Louis voted against the formation of a Provisional Government at Champoeg in May 1843. He went ahead and made a claim for land located between the Willamette and Yamhill rivers. The claim he purchased from Baptiste Tahiquari, an Iroquois Indian who worked with both the North West Company in 1815 and later, the HBC after 1821.
Louis LaBonte, Joseph McLaughlin, and Charles Pichet were Baptiste’s neighbors when he filed his land claim. The appearance of “American” names on the 1852 General Land Office survey map shows overlanders from the States arriving in numbers soon far to outnumber the original French Canadians and their Indian wives and children. He died on 11 September 1860 and lies buried in the St. Paul cemetery.
SISTERS OF NOTRE DAME DE NAMUR
Early in January 1844, six Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur departed Antwerp aboard L’Infatigable bound for Oregon. After a long journey taking them around South America, they crossed the Columbia River bar on July 31. Accompanied by their recruiter, Rocky Mountain Jesuit missionary Pierre Jean DeSmet, the Sisters and four other Catholic priests constituted a significant reinforcement for the recently established Catholic missions in the Pacific Northwest.
The Oregon mission was the second North American foundation for the Sisters, after Cincinnati, Ohio – 1840. They became the first Catholic nuns in the Pacific Northwest. The order began in Amiens, France, in 1804 by Saint Julie Billiart and François Blin de Bourdon. The Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur dedicated themselves to the education of girls and to training teachers. Their educational mission, originally designed to help re-establish Catholicism in post-revolutionary France. It soon broadened to include general education for all classes of girls. Unresolvable differences with ecclesiastical authorities in Amiens led to the abandonment of their French establishments in 1813 and the transfer of the Sisters’ headquarters to Belgium with the motherhouse at Namur.
sisters in oregon
In Oregon, the Sisters established their first school at St. Paul (in present-day Marion County)—Sainte Marie de Willamette (later officially chartered as St. Paul’s Mission Female Seminary). The school primarily attracted daughters of the Canadian fur traders and Native American or women of mixed ancestry who settled at French Prairie. The Sisters also prepared local Indian women and fur trader’s wives to receive the sacraments. A farm supported the community with foodstuffs for their own consumption and products to sell. The farm also served as a training ground for its students who worked in the fields. They learned to produce marketable goods, s well. The nuns offered instruction in French while also acquiring some knowledge of the Chinook Jargon familiar to their students.
reinforcements
With the arrival of an additional seven Sisters from Belgium in 1848, a second school—the Young Ladies’ Academy at Oregon City — catered to families in the upper ranks of the fur trade and to incoming American and European settlers. Students included the granddaughters of John McLoughlin and daughters of several well-known Oregon pioneers. The Oregon City school followed a curriculum taught in English.
American settlement brought anti-Catholicism rampant in the States, further encouraged by Protestant missionaries in Oregon. Tensions following the murder of the Whitmans at Waiilaptu, the population drain caused by the California gold rush, and an epidemic of diseases among the part-native students strained the Sisters’ resources. The Sisters closed the St. Paul school in 1852. In the following year, they shuttered the Oregon City academy. Next, they sold their Oregon properties, and transferred all goods, personnel, and a few remaining students, to San José, California. Their Willamette Valley religious associates, the Jesuits, had already relocated to neighboring Santa Clara. Today, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur maintain an active educational mission in California.
ST PAUL CEMETERY
The first St. Paul cemetery established in 1839, lying next to the small log. The site was the main cemetery for St. Paul until 1875. The cemetery sits on the east side of Main Street in St. Paul- Oregon Highway 219. The current cemetery sits at the end of Church Street on the southwest corner of town, also Highway 219. A small number of graves may have moved to the newer cemetery. Most of the original graves remain at the original site – St. Paul Pioneer Cemetery.
Because the original grave markers became lost or damaged, no individual grave markers remain from the nineteenth century. Today, a commemorative park sits where the cemetery lay with a series of information tablets and one later gravestone – a local settler William Cannon, who came west to Oregon in 1814 with John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company.
A plaque commemorates“early settlers of Oregon” buried in the cemetery, naming Joseph Gervais, André Chalifoux, Étienne Lucier, Louis Labonté, Michel La Framboise, Pierre Lacourse, André Picard, and Joseph McLoughlin, son of John McLoughlin. The cemetery also contains approximately 550 other graves, including the male settlers’ Native wives and children and local Kalapuyans and their children. The Parish of St. Paul installed a series of ten engraved stone panels documenting the names of all individuals known buried in the pioneer cemetery between 1839 and 1891.
a new cemetery
The modern St. Paul cemetery contains the graves of Rev. Francis Norbert Blanchet, his nephew, the Rev. François-Xavier Blanchet and the Rev. J. DeCraeme. A nearby grave marker memorializes the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, who served the St. Paul Parish and lie buried in the cemetery between 1870 and 1912.
The ethnicity of the local residents interred in the St. Paul cemetery shows the changing demographics of French Prairie, as Americans of Irish and German ancestry came to settle in the area alongside French Indian and Kalapuyan families. The cemetery remains the main burying ground for the town today.
BUTTEVILLE
The Willamette settlement of Butteville was initially referred to as “La Butte” or often just called “Butte”. Joel Palmer noted in his Journal of 1845 that “eight miles from Pudding River is a village called Buttes … there were but a few cabins in it when I left. The proprietor had erected a warehouse to store wheat they might purchase of the settlers … at this place are some conical hills called Butes…” An upriver trip from Willamette Falls featured a slow, full day of travel which required docking in the area, due to darkness.
The Butte was a sentinel to the French Prairie rising 417 feet above some of the most fertile land in the United States. The name became used throughout the mid-1840’s. Joel Palmer also wrote about the Butte: “it was laid out by George Abernathy and Alanson Beers of the Methodist missionary forces.” This surveyed layout became the plat of the town of Butteville.
beginnings
For many years, the only trading post was located at Fort Vancouver, except for the small former North West post of Campement du Sable – Sandy Camp. This post lay probably just east of the Butte. Pacific Fur Company clerk, Gabriel Franchere notes about the Sandy Camp, “The post had been established for the purpose of keeping a number of hunters constantly engaged to provide the Fort with venison. … The mildness of the climate never permitted us to take fresh meat from the Willamette to Astoria [without it spoiling], and the attempts that we made to dry or smoke the venison always failed” written in December 1813.
Alexander Henry noted in his journey up the Willamette a month later the location of the post lay three hours upstream of the confluence of the Molalla-Pudding Rivers with the Willamette. He noted the post leader to be William Hall with thirty other men working out of the post. Charles Wilkes in 1841, placed the post at two miles downstream from the village of “Champooing” – Champoeg.
hbc trade
Trade was a barter system with a mix of agricultural products and furs exchanged for goods and services. Wheat grown on the French Prairie went to the HBC Warehouse in Champoeg. A receipt given, became like money for exchange for goods or hardware at Ft. Vancouver. It wasn’t until 1841 that the first non-HBC trading post or mercantile opened in Oregon City. At this time the economy of the Butteville area funneled through Champoeg.
Farming by the retired HBC employees was made possible by the advance of materials by McLoughlin in the early 1830’s. The advance given as a loan to be repaid for production above sustenance. The surplus sold to HBC. By 1837 farmers in French Prairie were selling over 5,500 bushels of wheat to the HBC. By 1843, they were selling over 10,000 bushels from which the HBC began an export market to Alaska and Hawaii.
steamboat landing
The commerce picked up in a large way with the arrival on the upper river of stern-wheelers replacing canoes, keelboats and flat boats. By 1851, more than 60 ferry and steamship landings existed on the upper river above Willamette Falls. A budding rivalry between Champoeg and Butteville resolved itself with a flood in 1861. Champoeg was washed away, while Butteville, sitting higher above the river, was spared, then became the central river port for the French Prairie.
The town continued to prosper as a shipping port until 1871 when the Oregon & California Railroad – the rail line going south on the east side of the Willamette Valley from Portland – extended from Oregon City through Canby to Aurora, Hubbard, Woodburn and south to California. Soon the town’s commerce shifted to Aurora, shipping with rail. In 1907, the Willamette & Pacific Railroad, the westside rail line, crossed the Willamette River at Wilsonville with stops on Arndt Road, Fargo and Donald. This ended water traffic as all French Prairie products shipped by rail afterwards.
Butteville was originally platted as two towns: St. Alexcie and Butteville because the Donation Land Claim boundaries of Aubuchen and Laferie ran right through the middle of the town. The plat map of Butteville above pictures a town platted with home sites, as well as an Episcopal church, public school, Masonic hall & Odd Fellows hall, post office, Grange hall, vinegar factory and a warehouse carrying the name La Roque.
butteville today
Little remains of the old town beyond the Historic Butteville Store founded in 1863. The store remains the oldest continuously operating retail establishment in Oregon. Acquired by Oregon Parks & Recreation Dept. in 1999 as an adjunct part of Champoeg State Park. The Friends of Historic Butteville operate the store.
Recently, the Friends of Historic Butteville restored the Historic Butteville Landing giving the public access to the Willamette River at no charge. The 1849 Butteville Jail and 1858 Butteville School – actually a building which doubled as an Episcopal church – moved to the Newell Pioneer Village just west of Champoeg State Park (open only Friday through Sundays March through October).