stealing them by wholesale in spite of a Watch; they are not ripe yet scar[ce]ly more than half grown. Sent over the river for horses to start three ploughs on the pea field tomorrow. 2 Carts leading out manure.
Tuesday 31st. Very close & smoky, light air from North and West-finished cutting & binding-employed cradlers & carters this afternoon hightening & making a secure fence round the large potatoe field. Women cleaning, collecting & thrashing timothy & clover seeds. Leclair39 & Kamaka40 making up fences round the sheds of grain. 2 Carts leading out manure. Plomondons41 new saw mill commenced operations.
[September, 1847]
Wednesday 1st. Close smoky weather, unable to see more than a few paces before one. Sent the 4 men who were lately ordered to be kept here to Vancouver that they may have an opportunity [of] getting their little traps here and bring up a batteux with salt, sundries & servants orders-accord ing to directions received from Mr Douglas. Employed much as yesterday, making secure fences round the potatoe fields. Indian harvest women collecting & thrashing clover & tim othy. The three indians at the well fortunately found abun dance of good water at the depth of 27 feet. Louis Leclair & harvest indians thrashing with the machine flax & self sown wheat.
Louis Leclair or Leclaire is listed as a laborer and middleman, Cowlitz Farm employee lists, H.B.C. Arch. He went to work at Nisqually in February, 1850, was fired, June 1850. Nisqually Journal, WHQ, XI:145, 229. A Louis "Lecleine," probably a misreading of census taker Joe Meek's "Leclaire" is in the 1850 census for Lewis County. "Laborer" and "Middle man" were the lowest and next to lowest in the Company classification of employees (see Barker, McLoughlin Letters, 45). 40. Probably a Kanaka or Hawaiian Islander, classified as a laborer, 1847-50, Cowlitz Farm employee lists, H.B .C . Arch. 41. Simon Plomondon (Plamondo, Plomondeau) was an old Company employee (see Barker, McLoughlin Letters, 321). Born in Canada, he retired from Company service in the late 1830s, and took a claim on the Cowlitz, the site of "Plomondon's Landing," located about a mile south of the present town of Toledo. See George F. Plamondon, "Simon Plamon don and the Early Northwest," in Cowlitz County Historical Quarterly, I (August, 1959); also Plomondon's testimony in v. 2, P.S .A. Co. Ev., 11-15.
