History of Frenchtown
PREPARED FOR: Pacific Northwest History Conference
PREPARED BY: Sam Pambrun
DATE: 02 March 2014
The place called Frenchtown in the Walla Walla Valley encompasses an area of historic importance much larger than its geography. Frenchtown was created as an indirect result of the earliest fur trade establishments in the Pacific Northwest. Several of John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Companymétisemployees were those who first settled Frenchtown. Métis is French for “mixed blood.” In addition, métis employees of the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company also intermarried with local Columbia Plateau women and established homes in Frenchtown. Frenchtown began about 1823 or 1824 in the mid Walla Walla Valley among the “Pasxa” (pácxapu) band of Cayuse Indians. By this time the Hudson’s Bay earlier policy regarding intermarriage was reversed; they now encouraged their employees to intermarry with local natives. The rationale was: “It is easier to trade with your family and friends than with strangers.” This policy change encouraged Frenchtown to become the French-speaking, mixed blood, multicultural community mentioned in so many history books and journals.
The Frenchtown settlement enjoyed both commercial and familial ties to nearby Fort Nez Pérces. The climate was temperate and the soil was excellent. The locals were hospitable. The métis men who settled Frenchtown were the product of French, Scots, and English fur traders and Cree, Iroquois, Ojibwa, and Algonquin women. They married Cayuse and Walla Walla women, raised more mixed blood children, and grew crops they marketed to the fort. Some of the Frenchtown residents were employed part-time tending Hudson’s Bay Company gardens and their livestock scattered up and down the lower and mid Walla Walla Valley. Frenchtown was nothing like the stereo-typical Hollywood Western town. It encompassed sixty to eighty square miles. Its commercial district was twenty five miles away at Fort Nez Pérces.
Some other French-speaking, Catholic communities in the Pacific Northwest have published their stories but, to date there have been no books published nor comprehensive studies devoted to the Walla Walla Valley’s Frenchtown. As we are discovering, however, there are hundreds of oral histories from the métis families who made up the core of the Frenchtown population from 1825 – 1895.
For this paper, I have relied heavily on my own Pambrun Family history. My great grandfather Andrew Dominique Pambrun’s autobiography “Sixty Years on the Frontier of the Pacific Northwest” was published by Ye Galleon Press in 1978. A few other family members wrote and published books, including Theresa Truchot, Edward Umfreville, and Sam Wilson. For the most part, our family’s oral history has not been published. Fortunately, most of it has been recorded in some form; such as interviews, audio tapes, remembrances, and informal papers written by several family members.
Short of attempting a formal, comprehensive history of Frenchtown, this paper seeks to simply record key events of Frenchtown and those of the early Pacific Northwest that affect Frenchtown, from one family’s perspective.
Frenchtown was established when Joseph Larocque built a house in 1823 or 1824 on the north side of the Walla Walla River three miles down river from what later became the Whitman Mission compound. We don’t know much about Joseph except that he was employed by the Pacific Fur Company, and he arrived at Astoria on the sloop Beaver in 1812. At one time there were three Joseph Larocques on the Columbia River. The one who built the first Frenchtown house was the Joseph Larocque who was hired by the North West Company when it bought Astor’s Fort in 1813. He then worked for the North West Company for eight years, likely traveling by and through the Walla Walla Valley many times during his service. He was not, however, retained by the Hudson’s Bay Company when they merged with the North West Company in 1821.
Joseph, unemployed after the merger, likely became a “free trapper,” although this is not certain. He clearly was not listed among the former North West Company employees the Hudson’s Bay Company gladly transported out of the country to Rainy Lake, Canada. Also, Joseph was not listed as a member of the 1821 – 1824 Snake River Brigades, a likely place for a “free trapper.”
My speculation is that Joseph Larocque was the “disgruntled Frenchman” my family said built a whiskey still at the foot of Poker Jim Ridge on the Umatilla River (Oregon), a place which later became known as Cayuse Station. The spring there was frequently used by the Snake River Brigade and later by emigrants on the Oregon Trail. According to my family, this disgruntled Frenchmen got even with the Hudson’s Bay Company when their Snake Brigade members wound up drunk at Cayuse Station for two or three weeks. At that time the Snake Brigades were under orders to create “a fur desert” by trapping out all the tributaries of the upper Snake River. This ploy was designed to keep American trappers on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, a Hudson’s Bay Company strategy to assist in claiming Oregon for the British. Missing two or three weeks of prime beaver trapping was not good for the strategy.
Joseph Larocque married Lisette Walla Walla in 1824. Lisette appears to have been a sister of Walla Walla Chief PeoPeoMoxMox. Joseph and & Lizette likely built their house among the tule mat lodges of her family, whether Cayuse or Walla Walla is unknown. Based on Catholic Church records, Joseph, Lisette and their children moved back and forth between métis settlements in the Willamette Valley and Frenchtown.
A stone cellar was constructed in 1913 on the foundation of the Frenchtown Joseph LaRoque house on what is now the Terry Bergevin farm. The site of the Larocque cabin is approximately a hundred and fifty yards southwest from the footprint of the St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, an important feature of the Frenchtown Historic site. The Bergevin family, over the years, has almost single-handedly preserved the history of Frenchtown.
Frenchtown occupies a pivotal place in the history of the Walla Walla Valley, and for that matter, in the history of the Pacific Northwest. It was established less than 20 years after Lewis and Clark passed through and dozen years after David Thompson planted a flag at the confluence of the Snake and Columbia Rivers, claiming the whole region for the British. Frenchtown had a dozen residents when the Whitmans arrived in 1836.
I like to think that my great, great grandfather Pierre had something to do with the growth and development of Frenchtown. Pierre, his spouse Catherine “Kitty” Umfreville and their children arrived at Fort Nez Pérces at the confluence of Columbia and Walla Rivers in 1831 from New Caledonia (British Columbia). Kitty continued down the Columbia to Fort Vancouver with the children to spend the winter and Pierre took charge of re-building the fort, mostly because Simon McGillvray, then the master of Fort Nez Pérces, had a drinking problem. Pierre decided to move the fort to the mouth of the Walla Walla River from the delta at the mouth of the Snake, where Donald McKenzie & Alexander Ross of the North West Company had built the first stockade in 1818.
1818 was also the date of the first Joint Occupation Treaty between the United States and Britain that provided for the “joint occupation” of the “Oregon Country,” or that portion of the Pacific Northwest lying west of the Rocky Mountains, south of Russian Alaska and north of Mexican California.
My family account of the construction of Fort Nez Pérces differs somewhat from conventional history. Most accounts have the fort being built in 1818 by a collection of about a hundred North West Company employees, several of whom were Hawaiians. Our family contends a small trading post was built in 1816 on the Snake River delta at the site of David Thompson’s flag, to fulfill Thompson’s 1812 promise to Walla Walla Chief Yelept. This post consisted of a small hut, a stable and a lean-to for storing trade goods. In 1818 logs were floated down the Yakima and Columbia Rivers to the Snake delta near Attalia and used to build the stockade that would become known as the “Gibraltar of the Columbia.”
I remember from my earliest years my father telling me to “look over there” at the place where he said the first Fort Walla Walla stood. He’d always say this as we neared Burbank from Wallula on Highway 12. Dad always added “McNary Dam almost covered it up.” This, like other family history lessons, was a routine occurrence while I was growing up.
In 1818, local Tribesmen attempted to stop construction of the Fort Nez Pérces stockade because it would exclude them from the trading post after “having the run of the place.” In addition, my family contends that in 1831, Pierre Pambrun moved the fort’s location to the mouth of the Walla Walla so he could grow gardens and pasture livestock in the fertile Walla Walla Valley. This is plausible since Governor George Simpson at that time was reminding Hudson’s Bay post managers they would be evaluated based on how well and soon their posts became self-sufficient.
Joseph Larocque was listed as “horse herd” on the Hudson’s Bay Company rolls after 1824. If Joseph’s job was to acquire and train horses for the Fraser-Columbia Brigade, and Pierre’s job seven years later was to grow enough food to feed his staff, it makes sense that the Company would move its headquarters closer to its breadbasket and to support the establishment of a community of employees to maintain that breadbasket.
Pierre was killed on the lower Walla Walla River in May 1841 when he was impaled on the saddle horn of a horse that shied at a white rock. (A new winery recently removed all the white rocks from that site.) Pierre’s friend Dr. Marcus Whitman attended him but Marcus could not save him. While he was lingering Chief Factor James Douglas came up the Columbia from Fort Vancouver to obtain his last will and testament. Pierre died on May 15, 1841 after six days of agony. He left all his assets to Douglas and his company credit to his wife Catherine. The will was recorded at the Hudson’s Bay Company office in London. Douglas was a good choice; he still sent checks to Kitty while he was governor of British Columbia.
During the 1830’s the residents of Frenchtown had asked the Bishop of Quebec to “send priests.” This caused the Hudson’s Bay Company alarm, not because of any moral dilemma, but because of the cost of accommodating the wishes of their lowest rung employees. Catholic priests were the last thing the Whitmans wanted in the Walla Walla Valley. The Company had been supporting the Whitmans’ Presbyterian Mission, serving as their supply depot for food, hardware and dry goods, post office, and their window to the outside world. Other American missionaries also settled near Hudson’s Bay posts or trade routes. Based on the reception the Frenchtown half breeds received from the Whitman Mission, it is not surprising they wanted their own religious teachers.
The first Catholic priests in the Walla Walla Valley arrived at Fort Nez Pérces, now being called Fort Walla Walla, in October 1838. Fathers Francois Norbert Blanchet and Modeste Demers paddled in with a Hudson’s Bay Brigade that had departed from York Factory on Hudson’s Bay in June of 1838. They did not stay long; they baptized and married a few of the local citizens and traveled on down the Columbia to Fort Vancouver and to the Willamette Valley. Their assignment in the Willamette Valley was to induce the Catholic, French-speaking citizens there to migrate across the Columbia to Puget Sound. The Hudson’s Bay Company was almost certain the north side of the Columbia River would be in British Territory once joint occupation was ended and the boundary was settled. This assumption didn’t work out well for either the Company or the Willamette Valley Catholics.
In 1846, an event unimaginable to Frenchtown residents occurred. The United States and Britain settled the “Oregon Question” by establishing the international boundary between the two countries at the 49th parallel. This put Frenchtown and her British citizens deep in U.S. Territory. Frenchtown inhabitants went from being valued citizens of a French-speaking community vital to the interests of a powerful international corporation, to being aliens in a foreign country.
The Canadian Catholics who arrived in 1847 came to establish a mission in what was now American territory. They also arrived under a cloud of controversy. Bishop A.M.A Blanchet and his assistants Reverend J.B.A. Brouillet, Father Rosseau, and Deacon LeClaire were given a Cayuse headman’s cabin on the Umatilla River (Oregon) to use to establish St. Anne’s Mission. Tauitau (Young Chief)’s cabin was built by Pierre Pambrun and the métis employees of the Hudson’s Bay Company sometime around 1837. The cabin was an offering of peace after a serious conflict. Tauitau was one of three Indians who beat Pierre, incurring the wrath of the entire Company. Pierre gave the cabin to Tauitau who, ten years later, gave it Bishop Blanchet. The Umatilla mission gave the Catholics an alternative to setting up their own establishment next to the Whitman Mission at Frenchtown, as offered by another headman. Still, the priests have never lived down the blame they were given for the November 29, 1847 Whitman massacre which occurred two days after the Catholics occupied Tauitau’s house on the Umatilla.
St. Rose of the Cayouse Mission was established in 1853 by Father Eugene Chirouse. Father Chirouse applied for a donation land claim of 160 acres adjoining the claim of William McBean at the confluence of the Walla Walla River and Yellow Hawk Creek east of the Whitman Mission. Church records show seventeen burials at that site. The St. Rose claim was abandoned and the mission house was burned during the Yakima War in 1855. In 1863, McBean built a log chapel on his property and later that year moved it down the Walla Walla River to approximately the location of the current Frenchtown Historic Site. A new cemetery was also established there on the bank of the river. At this time there were about 1500 practicing Catholics in the Pacific Northwest.
Services for Frenchtown inhabitants were also conducted in an 1870 log school house located in the vicinity of the second cemetery. By 1876 a flood had washed out the second cemetery and the remains of those interred there were moved to a hill north of the river on the Donation Land Claim of Narcisse Raymond. That same year the St. Rose of Lima Mission church was constructed on the land then owned by Marcel Gagnon, previously the Raymond land claim. Both the final cemetery and St. Rose of Lima church locations are now part of the Frenchtown Historic site. The St. Rose of Lima church was torn down in 1911, salvaged, and used to build a grocery store at the corner of 9th and Chestnut Streets in Walla Walla, Washington.
The leader of the Pasxa band residing about three hundred yards east of the Whitman Mission compound was man named Umtippe. Umtippe’s younger brother, the Prince, was one of the three Indians who threw a blanket over Pierre and his interpreter Jean Toupin and severely beat them in the early 1830’s. The whole issue was over prices. Captain Bonneville told the Indians that the Hudson’s Bay Company was cheating them. Pierre refused to raise the prices he paid for horses and skins. The Indians beat him and he blacklisted the Prince, Tauitau, Looking Glass and their families from trading at any Hudson’s Bay post on the Columbia Plateau. Eventually the three sued for peace. Typical of the Hudson’s Bay Company in dealing with their customers, Pierre bought them off and reportedly built each a house. On at least one occasion, immigrants staying with the Whitmans used The Prince’s house in Umtippe’s village, as documented by a Narcissa Whitman letter written in 1844.
The “Prince” was a derogatory term applied by the Hudson’s Bay Company, usually to the “worthless son of a chief.” The Prince’s cabin has recently been moved to the Frenchtown Historic Site for restoration and preparation for interpretation. The Prince declared himself a Catholic about the time St. Anne’s was established on the Umatilla. I’ve often wondered if the decision to execute the Whitmans was made at the Prince’s house.
Following Pierre’s death in 1841, his wife Kitty moved to Fort Vancouver, and later to West Chehalem, near Newberg, Oregon. For a ten year period from 1841 to 1851, there were no Pambruns at Frenchtown. In 1851, Pierre and Kitty’s eldest son, Andrew Dominique, returned to Oregon from Red River and took charge of Fort Walla Walla. Andrew, obviously a British (Canadian) citizen, arrived just in time to get entangled in American politics.
The Walla Walla Treaty commissioners, Washington Territorial Governor Isaac I. Stevens and Oregon Territory Superintendent of Indian Affairs Joel Palmer, arrived in the Walla Walla Valley May 21, 1855 to conduct a treaty council with the Columbia Plateau Indians. The proposed treaties were contentious; the Indians didn’t want to sell their land. Andrew Pambrun was selected as the Cayuse interpreter because the Indians didn’t trust the “Boston” men (Americans) and preferred the “King George” men (British-Canadians). First the Cayuse, and then several other Tribes, refused to come to the council until they had their own interpreters (those not appointed by the Americans).
Governor Stevens hired Andrew and several other Hudson’s Bay men as interpreters. This didn’t make Andrew too popular with the Americans who still sought revenge or justice (take your pick) for the Whitman incident. The Oregon City Spectator newspaper recommended that Andrew be “tried and hung as an obstructionist to Indian Policy.”
Andrew’s plans to retire from the Hudson’s Bay Company and take up farming and stock raising intersected with the treaty council in an interesting way. Andrew had hired Al Tallman, an American married to a Cayuse woman, to build a house for him on Mill Creek. The house, according to our family tradition, became ground zero for the treaty talks, and was mysteriously burned to the ground in the ensuing hostilities.
Shortly after the treaties were signed, a hysterical Indian Sub Agent, Nathan Olney, rode through the Walla Walla Valley ordering everyone out, and warning of the impending Indian War. Unfortunately for posterity, Olney appeared to be the voice of reason in Eastern Oregon and Washington at this time and the best source of information on Indian affairs. The governmental leaders in the Willamette Valley seemed generally to take his advice. The few Americans in the Walla Walla Valley were removed, and most of the French Canadian métis there reluctantly left the valley as well. The métis position was relatively simple; they were living among their native relations and had nothing to fear except leaving their houses, barns, stock, fences and crops to the Americans. This proved all too true. Andrew and his family moved to Oregon City to live with his sister Maria and her husband Dr. Forbes Barclay. This sojourn lasted until the Oregon City newspaper went after him, after which he moved across the Columbia to Fort Vancouver.
The Battle of Walla Walla, fought at Frenchtown from December 7-10, 1855 became a watershed event for Frenchtown, the Walla Walla Valley, and Washington Territory. By 1855 Frenchtown had become an American village, governed by American laws, and obligated to defend the American “way of life.” This way of life included intense hatred of “the foreign company” that sold guns and ammunition to Indians who killed American settlers with them. In the fall of 1855, Oregon Territorial Governor Curry organized the Oregon Mounted Volunteers, one company per Willamette Valley County, along with one French Canadian company, to march on Walla Walla Chief PeoPeoMoxMox (Yellow Bird, by now called Yellow Serpent by the Americans). Yellow Serpent was accused of “sacking and burning” the British trading post. The “sacked and burned” is a stretch, and the fact that Americans were interested in protecting British interests is curious, too.
When Colonel James Kelly and the Oregon Mounted Volunteers left to make war on the Indians of Washington’s Walla Walla Valley they had few supplies, little support from the U.S. Army, and less funding than a traveling medicine show. The Volunteers pillaged their way backwards on the Oregon Trail to the Utilla Indian Agency at present-day Echo, Oregon on the Umatilla River. They found the agency in ashes and spent most of November 1855 building Fort Henrietta around the burned Agency well and playing hide and seek with the local Indians who harassed them almost daily. Kelly left a skeleton crew at Fort Henrietta and battered his way cross country through the sagebrush to Fort Walla Walla where he camped on December 3-4, 1855. Also on December 4, the Cayuse raided Fort Henrietta forty miles away as the crow flies, and stole horses Kelly had left behind with a few guards. One soldier died in this skirmish.
On December 5th Colonel Kelly sent Major Chinn, the pack train, baggage, and one hundred fifty men up the Walla Walla River to the mouth of the Touchet to establish a base camp. Kelly then marched his two hundred best mounted men northeast across country to the bend of the Touchet in search of PeoPeoMoxMox’s camp. On the bunch grass plateau above the Touchet River canyon Kelly encountered a group of about forty Indians waving a white flags. To his surprise, one of the Indians was the great Walla Walla Chief PeoPeoMoxMox, a Treaty signer and influential Walla Walla Valley leader. Kelly parlayed with PeoPeoMoxMox about many topics, some of which were clouded by the hysteria of Nathan Olney.
PeoPeoMoxMox said he didn’t want war, promised to return the blankets and other goods he’d taken from the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fort Walla Walla, and to take Kelly to his camp where there was plenty of food. The offer of food was irresistible to the Volunteers who had brought no supplies. It is likely PeoPeoMoxMox was buying time so his people could get away and also likely that Kelly understood this.
The Oregon Mounted Volunteer command and the forty Indians marched down into the Touchet River canyon and headed up river about dusk. Five of the Indians, including PeoPeoMoxMox, stayed with Kelly as his hostages, while the rest rode ahead promising to prepare a feast for the Volunteers. As the canyon walls closed in, the Volunteers, fearing an ambush, retreated downriver to camp and wait for daylight. By then PeoPeoMoxMox was no longer a host on his way to a dinner party, he was a prisoner.
The next morning, December 6, 1855, the Volunteers arrived at PeoPeoMoxMox’s camp and found it deserted, the camp fires still burning. The Volunteers dug around but found no food. With their five captive Indians in tow, the Oregon Mounted Volunteers rode back to Chinn’s camp at the mouth of the Touchet. The next day, December 7, the Volunteers marched east across the Touchet River, the line they’d been told not to cross if they wanted to avoid war with the Indians. They were attacked almost immediately as they headed up the Walla Walla Valley into the heart of Frenchtown. No one knows for sure, but it is estimated that there were three times as many Indians as soldiers. The running battle that ensued ended at the Larocque Cabin about eight miles up the valley.
After fierce fighting, the Volunteers drove the Indians from the Larocque cabin and occupied it for the next four days, during which time the cellar was used for a hospital. The Oregon Mounted Volunteers were under siege, an unusual tactic in Indian Wars. The battle lines moved back and forth between the Larocque cabin and the Louis Tellier cabin a mile to the east. Tellier had previously been employed as Whitman’s blacksmith. There were substantial casualties on both sides. Kelly received reinforcements from Fort Henrietta on the evening of December 10, 1855. By the next morning, the Indians who’d been pinning down the Volunteers followed their women and children up Mill Creek to the Tucannon, Snake, Clearwater and Salmon Rivers. It was not a pretty retreat. The Volunteers who cautiously followed in their wake found discarded tents, clothing, food, supplies, lamed horses and cows, and even a pack horse with three small Indian children tied to it.
The Battle of Walla Walla at Frenchtown was the largest battle of the Yakima War, involving more Indians, soldiers and time than any other in Washington territorial history. PeoPeoMoxMox and four of his colleagues were killed on December 7 by the Volunteers at the Larocque Cabin as they tried to “escape.” The Volunteers cut off parts of PeoPeoMoxMox’s body for souvenirs. A.B. Roberts, sickened by the mutilation of the Chief’s body, removed it at night to a place near the Larocque Cabin and buried it. Roberts never revealed where he buried the body.
The aftermath of these pivotal Frenchtown events changed the community and likely had much to do in shaping the character of Washington Territory. The Corps of Discovery and initial fur trade exploration gave the Walla Walla Valley and Frenchtown both multicultural and international prominence in early American history. The missionary phase had profound emotional and political consequences, and the emigrant phase forever changed the demographics of a place once home to Native American and later, métis people. But the war, all about conquest and power, forever changed the demeanor of a once idyllic place.
The Indians were eventually removed to the Umatilla, Nez Perce and Yakima Reservations. This took another thirty years. The métis dispersed, some to the reservations, some to other French-speaking métis communities in Oregon, Idaho, Montana and British Columbia, and some stayed in the Walla Walla Valley, forming the nucleus of a vibrant community. Frenchtown citizens built a community hall in Lowden, Washington in the 1940’s where the Frenchtown Historical Foundation was organized as a non-profit, 501(c)(3) corporation in 1993. Although Frenchtown descendents have scattered all over the world, the place, Frenchtown, remains, and those who live near it do their best to assure it is not forgotten in history.
Bibliography – Draft; need to fill in details
- Anna Goodwin, Whitman Video
- Bruce Rigsby, Cayuse Bands
- Greg Cleveland, Prince’s Cabin
- Bill Erickson, Prince’s Cabin
- Robin Peterson, Prince’s Cabin
- John Jackson, Children, Little War, Distany of the Golden Dragon, Children of the Fur Trade
- Gilbert, History of Walla Walla
- Drury, Whitmans
- Military History, Lieutenant ??
- Steve Plucker, Battle of Walla Walla
- Frenchtown Partners Website
- Verne Ray, Harry Jim Letters
- Catholic Church Records
- Stern, Chiefs & Chief Traders
- Ruby & Brown, Cayuse Indians
- Alexander Ross, Oregon Settlers
- B.C. Payette, Oregon Under the Union Jack
- George Hunter, Reminiscences of Old Timer
- Roberta Brown, A.M.A Blanchet
- Jennifer Karson, As Days Go By (Tribal History)
- Theodore Kolecki, 1858 Wright Campaign Maps
- Claro Bergevin, Frenchtown School District #2 Board Meeting Notes, 1873 – 1891
- Theresa Truchot, Black Wind and Chips
- Andrew Dominique Pambrun, Autobiography
- Pambrun Oral History: Fay Samuel Pambrun, Sadie Pambrun Stinemates, Laura Belle Pambrun Bare, Ellen LeClair Pambrun Wilson, Sam Wilson, George Gilbert Pambrun, Cecil Andrew Pambrun, Angelique Pambrun Haverland, Alfred Roland Pambrun, Arthur and Ronald Fay Haverland
APPENDIX A
Frenchtown Families, 1824 – 1900
Dan – help me, I’m missing a few and maybe have some extras (combined burials & residents from the monument)
Allard Beauchamp
Beauchemin Belanger
Bergevin Bonenfant
Braden Brechtel
Brisbois Dauphin
Depot Dobson
Dorion Dufrene
Farron Forêt
Gagnon Gardipe
Gravel Groves
LaCourse Lefebvre
Larocque Lussier
Martin McBean
Morais Murphy
Normandin Pambrun
Parent Pereygne
Pichet Plante
Tellier Ouvre
Woodward Boucher