Cowlitz anthropology document URL

[Lisa M Peppan]

On Wed, 2 May 2001 ddr11 at COLUMBIA.EDU writes:

> http://www.doi.gov/bia/bar/cowlant.htm
> This is a very extensive document, filled with priceless
> information.  To paraphrase Jack Nisbet without permission,
> it's good to see people acknowledging the presence of metis
> in Washington State.
> [. . . ]
> [There are also several mentions of Simon Plamondon in this
> document]

I thank you for posting this.  I have no doubts of its priceless content.

Many former Hudson's Bay Company employees settled in the Cowlitz -- my
own great great grandfather contemplated it when his daughter married at
Fort Vancouver in 1849 to a fellow named Simon Gill who may have been
related to Simon Plamondon; I say "may" because I'm still building a
genealogical data base of the HBC/Fort Langley employees and have not yet
gone back beyond great great grand uncle Simon Gill's parents, Thomas
Gill and Catherine Basin.

Thanks to BC historian Bruce Watson, I have a break down of Fort
Langley's 109 employees:

French-Canadian........30%
Hawaiians....................28%
Mixed descent (Metis)..7%
Scottish
.............Orcadians*....... 9%
.............Highlanders........ 8%
.............Lowlanders....... 5%
Iroquois ......................... 5%
English** ....................... 7%
Other ............................. 2%

*  From the Orkney Islands
** Includes English from both Great Britain and British North America

And from the footnotes of the Fort Langley Journal:

Simon Plamondon, Oliver Bouchard, Pierre Charles, and François Faniant
from Sorrel, Québec, Dominique Faron from Montréal, and Anawiskum
Macdonald retired in the Cowlitz Valley.  Amable Arquoitte from Montréal,
Louis Boisvert, and Joseph Cornoyer from Sorrel retired in the Willamette
Valley.  Jame Baker appears in the 1840's Clackamas county census.
Laurent Suavé from Vandreuil managed a dairy on the island that still
bears his name at the junction of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers.

Of the above, Plamondon, Bouchard, Faniant, Faron, Boisvert, Cornoyer,
Suavé, and Arquoitte were Canadians; Charles was Abenaquois; Macdonald
was York Factory Indian; and Baker was from the Orkney Islands.

I am doing joint research with the descendants of Plamondon, Bouchard,
Charles, and Arqouitte, plus several others who share Fort Langley
employee ancestors, some of us we live in Washington state, some in
Oregon, some in BC, and a scatter across the continent.  (Then there's
the group in Hawaii seeking the descendants of the Kanakas who left the
Islands in the employ of HBC who never returned.)  As this research
unfolds it is beginning to look like the Canadiens at Fort Langley were
all related to each other in one way or another; something I read
somewhere said that this happened more often than not.  One or two
related men would sign on to the fur trade and then later some how get
word back home that "things were good" and other male relatives would go
sign on to the same fur company and manage to wind up at the same post.

One of the favorite recruiting areas was around Sorel because its mostly
Metis residents were The Best in the boat paddling trade.  It was little
like trying to herd cats, but if you wanted to get there, and get there
FAST, you hired Metis.  Many did not swim; a non-swimming voyageur lost
less cargo because they didn't tip as many canoes.  Sorel was part of the
area dealt with in a seven volume genealogical dictionary that covers
from the founding of New France in 1608 up through the 1700s; big
families + small population base = lotsa relatives.  Most if not all of
the guys who settled in the Cowlitz and the Willamette were from
families listed in this set.

Scholars of the fur trade period comment frequently about how the
Canadiens were "unmindful" of class restrictions.  As the men took Native
wives and had families, new ties of kinship were created.  The children
of one family would marry children of other families, and the men were
godfathers to each others children.  One example of the latter is my
great great grandfather Etienne Pepin -- a Canadien and a Tradesman --
who had a "servant" be godfather to his youngest child; the godfather --
Pierre Urno (aka Renaud) -- was not only Canadien, he was also a
relative.

As for Simon Plamondon, well . . . the brief bio on him in The Fort
Langley Journals says he was among the first Hudson's Bay Company
employees to farm on Cowlitz Prairie, where he settled in 1837 with his
second wife Emilie Bercier (his 1st was a daughter of Scanewah, the 3rd
Harriet Pelletier, a niece of Roman catholic priest F.N. Blanchet).
Simon lived to be 100 years old, and I think Morag Maclachlan sums it up
quite nicely in her closing paragraph on Simon where she says:

"Simon Plamondon's life spanned a period of enormous change.  This
illiterate Canadien Voyageur was one of many who spanned the continent
and made possible the profitable fur trade.  He served as a labourer and
carpenter at various forts.  When the early settlers arrived, his
experience was highly valued until the cities began to grow and his
skills were no longer admired or needed.  The story of his life reveals
much about the clash between the fur and settlement frontiers."

Thus, with all this said, I contend that here *had* to be *some* common
language used amongst the fur trading forts in what is now Oregon,
Washington, and British Columbia, because with the ethnic diversity of
the fur fort employees and the linguistic diversity of the local folks,
how else would they have communicated?  Hawaiian Peeopeeoh and his
Kwantlen wife Catherine appeared to have had no difficulty, and the FL
Journals indicate that the employees who got along with each other THE
best were the Hawaiians and the French-Canadians/Metis.  Why not the
Chinook Trade Jargon?

So, now, I'm off to go look at http://www.doi.gov/bia/bar/cowlant.htm to
see how many relatives I can find.  :)

Lisa Peppan
Edmonds, WA, USA                                              ICQ
#4894690
Family Genealogy -- http://members.tripod.com/~LisaPeppan/index.html
The Children of Fort Langley --
http://members.tripod.com/~LisaPeppan/FtLangleyChildren.html
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