The Battle of Frenchtown (1855), Washington Territory: the Political and Demographic Context rev 9/4/11
(a) Distilling a New Regional Brew of Metis West of the Rockies
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- (b) Working with the New Majority
- (d) The Frenchtowns Get Whiter as the Metis Relocate to the Reservations
(a) Distilling a New Regional Brew of Metis West of the RockiesThis tale covers several generations of mixed-blood or metis families originating with: a father who was Euro-Canadian, Metis (with a Chippewa or Cree admixture), or Iroquois; and with a mother who was either Metis – also from east of the Rockies - or an Indian from one of the Pacific Northwest (PNw) tribes. One way or the other, within a generation, these bi-cultural and multi-lingual people had close relations of blood and friendship with members of the local Indian tribes. Straddling two worlds, the culture of this mixed community was hybrid. No small matter. Their wife’s know-how allowed them to live off the land and their Indian relations brought trade, security, friendship and language instruction. Given their antecedents and the requirements of the place and time, their culture was ‘all of the above’ - a very useful skill set for bridging two worlds still attempting to accommodate each other. Much like the Chinatowns that would soon be cropping up on the edge of Euro-American settlements and mining camps all over the west, the metis settlements were informal affairs. Per earlier mention, they were usually referred to by a generic name, one often associated with ethnicity and language such as French-towns, French Settlements, or Prairies. The ‘Prairies’ included the largest original metis settlement, French Prairie on the middle Willamette, but also Cowlitz Prairie at the head of navigation for the river (and tribe) of that name, or Muck Prairie in the south Puget Sound area. French Prairie proliferated into a set of villages bearing the names of St. Paul, St. Louis, Gervais, Champoeg and Butteville. Other than the French Prairie villages, and Frenchtown on the Clark Fork, few settlements ever retained these names. One in the distant Colville Valley kept an Indian name, Chewelah, but most were sub-planted by names brought in by the later wave of settlers such as Lowden, Toledo, Melrose, or Deere Lodge, or simply translated from the French, such as Kettle Falls. And Fort Vancouver remained Vancouver, along with keeping a share of les Canadiens,’their metis families, living there under the spiritual guidance provided fellow Canadiens including Bishop Augustin M.A. Blanchet, Father Jean-Baptiste Brouillet and the initial establishment of the Sisters of Providence in the West. The latter included the immortalized Mother Joseph. Though the HBC did not originally allow former employees to settle on their own farms near their principal entrepot and plantation at Fort Vancouver, once the U.S. jurisdiction was settled, they could and did make Donation Land Claims around Vancouver much as any other Euro-American settler. A Catholic Church census of their flock had been performed early in 1844, prior to Father Francois Norbert Blanchet’s return to Quebec to become Bishop, and to recruit his younger brother, Augustin Magloire Blanchet. Francois Blanchet then continued on to Europe in order to recruit priests and nuns while raising funds. While there he again advanced in the hierarchy to become Archbishop of history’s least populated archdiocese. The census had placed the number of Indian converts in the Pacific Northwest at 6,000, while les Canadiens and metis parishioners, per earlier mention, were calculated to number roughly one thousand souls. Location of the latter, at that point in time, was divided approximately as follows: about 600 in the French Prairie settlements of the Willamette valley; about 100 each around the Fort Vancouver and Cowlitz Prairie facilities of the Hudson Bay Company, plus another 200 scattered between the interior posts of Forts Colvile, Walla Walla, and Okanogan, plus Fort Langley on the lower Fraser River. There were also smaller establishments on the upper Fraser, as well as along the Pacific coast stretching from Vancouver Island to the Russian Alaskan settlements. An impasse in negotiations between the U.S. and the authorities representing British North America had left the Oregon Country in limbo under ‘joint occupancy’ for three decades. While F. A. Blanchet was in Europe, a treaty finally partitioning the Columbia and Oregon region had been signed. But this was just the beginning of a long process. There was a lot to be sorted out south of the line - one that would exist on paper only for much of the balance of the century. While most Catholic Canadians and their families west of the continental divide remained in the U.S., very few of their descendents stayed in the same locations. People were on the move, and the Catholic Church had some catching up to do. Ditto for U.S. federal government authorities. (b) Working with the New MajorityOnly months prior to a new Catholic Church census, a major milestone in local demographics and history had been reached. In November 1843 the American Protestant settlers arriving over the Oregon Trail achieved majority status over the earlier Canadiens and metis group in the Willamette valley. With partition of the region two and a half years later in 1846, very few of les Canadiens or metis moved north, the large majority staying put in what was now definitively to become U.S. territory. There would soon be a new set of rules imposed by a new majority. However, the metis were still closely tied to the former majority – the Indians. Fortunately, les Canadiens had acquired significant know-how in the art of accommodating majorities. Furthermore, second-class status here with their lifelong friends and Indian relatives, was better than the third class option available further to the north. The 49th parallel slowly firmed up during a messy transition period from 1846 to 1871, while the Hudson's Bay Company gradually withdrew from their last trading posts in Washington Territory. The small American settler group north of the Columbia in the area that would soon become Washington Territory would achieve parity in numbers with les Canadiens and metis by around 1850. But again, it wouldn’t be until around1860 that the white and metis settler groups combined would outnumber the Natives. When Oregon agreed to the plan to spin off Washington Territory in 1853, it was in order to let the latter serve as the Oregon Country’s Indian Territory, and thereby to facilitate Oregon’s rush to statehood, achieved in 1859 – thirty years before Washington became a state. The final withdrawal of the HBC and the British Army in 1871-2 timeframe would coincide with British Columbia joining the new Canadian Confederation. And fortunately, with the large majority of les Canadiens and metis shorn of with the southern half of Columbia south of the 49th parallel, the northern half retained by Canada could be re-engineered demographically to become an Anglo-Canadian paradise on the Pacific. Lines were starting to coalesce in more ways than one. Property owners among the Canadiens and the first generation of metis had been major beneficiaries of the Oregon Provisional Government, and subsequently, the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850. However, along with a small sprinkling of countrymen of more recent derivation from the British Isles, they soon found themselves engaged as useful, though suspect, intermediaries in all three Indian Wars from 1847 thru 1858, starting with the controversies festering around the Whitman Massacre. They had also been at the center of debates during the first two legislative assemblies of Washington Territory over ethnicity and determination of voting and property rights. And finally, they were the aforementioned targets of Territorial Governor Stevens’ declaration of martial law in the spring of 1856. Facilitating the transition to the new majority might buy them time, but re-integration would present its challenges. [see graphic] (c) “Eastward, Boys, to the Reservation” During the early decades of the 19th century, as mentioned earlier, many of the tribes of the lower and middle Columbia had tribal members who had married les Canadiens and metis from points east. Early alliances and the resultant locale of trading posts meant that some northwest tribes had inter-married with the easterners more than others. Over the second half of the 19th century, a certain number of metis descendents were able to enter the white settler world. This was especially true of metis daughters and grand daughters. Others, however, retreated ever further into the backcountry, forming new communities, or grafting themselves onto the older native communities. For some of the tribes west of les Cascades whose surviving members had a high incidence of inter-marriage with the French-Canadians - such as the Cowlitz, the Chinook/Clatsop and the Cow Creek Band of the Umpqua – reservations were never established. One reason for this was that they had the misfortune of living in what were becoming major thoroughfares or transportation corridors. Like the Spokane and Palouse tribes east of les Cascades, they mostly scattered to reservations set aside for other tribes, or into the deeper recesses of the backcountry. Only those with a head of household who was at least 50% white could stay-put through having obtained – and kept – a donation land claim. Otherwise they soon found themselves guilty of being “trespassers” or tenants on some newcomers land. Unlike their brethren to the west, those tribes east of les Cascades with a significant percentage of intermarriage with les Canadiens did obtain reservations. Tangled up in the tribes’ turmoil and trauma, the net flow of their metis cousins was moving further inland, looking for a refuge. As the frontier settled down and closed up late in the century, it was decided in Washington, D.C. that the recently established Indian reservations suddenly needed to be ‘opened up,’ for further white settlement. Given the alternatives, several of the tribes, as well as the metis, were willing to accommodate. As previously mentioned, a prior generation of metis had gained land ownership through their fathers’ participation in the Oregon Provisional Government, later endorsed under the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850. Now it would be the turn of later generations of metis thru the Dawes Act of 1887 to get another chance at obtaining free land. This time though, between 1885 and 1916, it would have through allotments on the reservation as adopted Indians, not as white settlers. By the early 20th century the largest interior concentrations in the PNW of French-Breeds, as these French-speaking Indians were often called at the time, were found on four reservations. In descending order of numbers, these were the Flathead, Umatilla, Colville, and Coeur d’Alene Reservations. Just after the turn of the century, the number of French-speaking Indians on these four reservations was collectively estimated to have numbered about 1600 people. Included among them were descendents of the Laroque and Tellier families. Joe Laroque’s wife was baptized Lizette Walla Walla, and Louis Tellier’s was called Angelique Pendoreille. By a convenient Catholic practice, Baptismal names for Indian wives included their tribe of origin. Consequently, due to their mother’s origins some Laroque family descendents later received allotments with other Walla Walla tribal members on the Umatilla Reservation, while the Tellier children received allotments on the reservation where the Pend Oreille tribe had relocated, the Flathead Reservation. A similar scenario played itself out for many dozens of other metis families. For example, there were the families of the two senior members of the metis detachment of the Oregon Mounted Volunteers serving as scouts, Narcisse Cornoyer and Antoine Rivet. After the interior of Washington Territory was reopened for settlement in the late 1850s, Narcisse moved with his metis wife Sophie Beleque and their family to the re-established Frenchtown in the Walla Walla Valley, picking a lot on upper Pine Creek. Sophie’s sister, Ester, and her family also joined them taking up farming on Mud Creek just to the northwest of the Cornoyer place. Narcisse then got himself appointed to serve as Superintendent of the Umatilla Indian Reservation between 1871 and 1880. In 1878 he was granted land on the Umatilla reservation when he was adopted, along with another 1/2 dozen members of the metis community as ‘friends of the tribes.’ This also included Andre Dominque Pambrun. The Rivet clan had also trickled inland during this period, leaving French Prairie in the Willamette Valley for the Colville Valley, and ultimately Frenchtown on the Clark Fork and the Flathead Reservation. (d) The Frenchtowns Get Whiter as the Metis Relocate to the ReservationsTwo of the metis settlements inhabited at some point by a number of these families, actually came to be known as ‘Frenchtown.’ The one in the Walla Walla Valley, we are already familiar with. The other was located on the Clark Fork River (now Montana). Both eventually developed into white communities. The same thing happened to other metis settlements such as kettle Falls and Chewelah in the Colville Valley, or the one that had been centered on Grant’s Ranch near Deer Lodge on the upper Clark Fork. In the end, most of the descendents of the original metis families relocated to the nearby reservations. Follow-on immigration from Canada - or once removed via Minnesota - had allowed one of the Frenchtowns, the one on the Clark Fork of the Columbia, to remain on the map and continue to speak French well into the 20th century. This also occurred in the villages of French Prairie in the Willamette Valley, though here les Canadiens were supplemented by an admixture of French-speakers of European origin from Alsace, Belgium and France. Frenchtown on the Walla Walla, on the other hand received few demographic infusions from these sources after the 1860s. During the late 1880s and early 1890s, most of the earlier metis families had moved from the Walla Walla settlement to the nearby Umatilla Reservation located 30 miles to the southeast. Left behind were a small number of families of Canadien origin – fragments of the Bergevin, Allard, Beauchamp, and Gagnon clans. The inducement of adoption by the relocated Walla Walla tribe, would be a powerful one. It entitled individual members of the metis families to a free allotment of up to 160 acres of land on the upper Umatilla River in the north part of the reservation. Agitation by settlers in the Pendleton area for opening the Umatilla reservation to white settlement had developed into federal government policy. This was embodied in the Slater Bill in 1885 under the sponsorship of one of Oregon’s ‘one term wonders’ in the U.S. Senate. Among the three confederated tribes on the Umatilla, the Walla Walla under chief Homilie willingly served as the adoption agency for the metis. During this turn of the century period the Walla Walla tribe grew from the smallest of the three tribes on the reservation to the largest. This would be undone however in the course of the 20th century as the 1/4 blood quantum rule gradually excluded many of the increasingly diluted descendents. Table 1 Umatilla Reservation census - by tribal group 1876-1906Impact of 1885 Slater Bill opening the reservation to white homesteaders after providing for adoption of mixed-bloods and granting of allotments to each tribal member. Note that virtually all mixed-bloods or ‘metis’ were adopted by one tribe, the Walla Walla whether or not their antecedents were Walla Walla, Cayuse, Cree, or from other tribes. 1876 1888 1898 1903 Walla Walla 128 406 529 574 Including 216 Mixed- Bloods
Including No Mixed- Bloods
Umatilla 169 171 188 191 Including 16 Mixed- Bloods
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