urging that the company would need its full strength while passing through the hostile tribes between Laramie and Fort Hall.
As the emigrants were told that it would be impossible for them to take their oxen and wagons through to Oregon, many sold or exchanged them for horses, the advantage being generally on the side of the fort people. [1] They also laid in a fresh stock of provisions, for which they had to pay at the rate of a dollar a pint for flour and a dollar a pound for coffee and sugar. Before leaving Laramie the company was joined by F. X. Matthieu and half a dozen Canadians, who had been in the service of the fur company east of the Rocky Mountains, and were now going to settle in Oregon. They had few supplies, but depended on game for subsistence. [2]
The company had now no guide for the remainder of the journey, Coats' knowledge of the country extending no farther than Fort Laramie; but they had hardly proceeded a mile from that post before they met Bridger and Fitzpatrick, of the fur companies, the former being on his way to the States with a large
- ↑ They disposed of their wagons and cattle at the fort; selling them at the prices they had paid in the States, and taking in exchange coffee and sugar at one dollar a pound, and miserable, worn-out horses, which died before they reached the mountains. Mr Boudeau informed me that he had purchased 30, and the lower fort 80 head of tine cattle, some of them of the Durham breed.' Frémont's Expeditions, 40–1.
- ↑ F. X. Matthieu was born in 1818, and in 1837, at the time of the Canadian rebellion, was clerk in a store in Montreal. Being a rebel, he employed his leisure in purchasing and shipping arms to the centres of rebellion, and was obliged at last to quit Canada, which he did in 1838. He went first to Albany, New York, and afterward to St Louis, where he engaged with the American Fur Company to trade in the Yellowstone country; and subsequently made an expedition to Santa Fé, from which place he rejoined the fur company at Fort Laramie in 1841, and traded for one year with the natives in the Yellowstone region. But the natives being furnished with rum became too savage and dangerous to deal with, and Matthieu decided to go to Oregon with the emigration. Two of the Canadians with him were Peter Gauthier and Paul Ojet. Matthieu went to Étienne Lucier at Champoeg, where he remained two years, working as a carpenter or farmer as circumstances required. In 1844 he married and settled at St Pauls as a farmer. When the gold fever broke out he went to California for a time. He was afterward elected constable and justice of the peace under the provisional government of Oregon. In 1878 he dictated to my stenographer an account of his adventures, which, under the title of Matthieu's Refugee, MS., furnishes several items of interest and importance to this work.
