Thursday 2nd. The air has become rather clearer, strong breeze blowing from north. Employed much as yesterday. Carted in this afternoon the remainder of the wheat off field No. I9 which concludes the harvest. 2 ploughs agoing, Car rier arranging others to start as soon as possible. Began to dig a well on the hill behind the house. Friday 3rd. The weather much clearer to day & the sun has at length been able [to] strike its beams thro the Smoke. Paid off the harvest indians. Carrier has 8 ploughs now ready & several of the lads are preparing to commence ploughing. Carting manure, making up fences round potatoe fields & as usual. The 2 mnen digging the well have got down 9 feet. Saturday 1th. Close sultry smoky dusty weather. 4 ploughs agoing, getting 2 others ready. Employed digging well; weve got down 12 feet in two days. Sunday 5th. Air much clearer of smoke and cooler. Smart breeze from Westward. Monday 6th. Smoky still strong NW breeze-employed ploughing removing mill to white wheat shed-digging well (i6 feet deep to night). Sent Laportre42 to Naw wa cum43 for bark. Carrier pulling down & carters removing Gilbeauts44 old house to below the hill where it is to be set up again to answer for a stable this winter. Boys carting manure. En gaged two heads of indian families. Sow a sow & Kawasi45 to look after the sheep for four months at the rate of I 2 Blkts pr month. Engaged 5 Indian women to work at the thrashing machine or elsewhere until strawberry season summer '48. The water in the Cowelitz exceedingly low. The indians at the weir take but very few salmon. Sal-lal ripe.
42. Jean Baptiste Lapoitre (Laportre), a middleman, 1847-49 , Cowlitz Farm employee lists, H.B.C. Arch. He appears in the 1850 Lewis County census, and in 1851 took charge of Muck Farm, a Nisqually outpost, after John McPhail left (Nisqually Journal, WHQ, XIL224).
43. Edmond Meany, in Origin of Washington Geographic Names (Seattle, 1923), 187, mentions the Puget Sound Agricultural Company farmsite called Newaukum. The Newaukum River is a tributary of the Chehalis, and a prairie and later town were given the name.
44. Hilard Gilbeault, middleman and farmer, 1847 -48 , Cowlitz Farm employee list, H .B.C . Arch. He was at the farm as early as 1842 (HBRS VI:66n).
45. Probably Indians.
