Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 15.djvu/30



22 JUDGE WILLIAM C. BROWN

kameen river about two miles below the present town of Kere- meos and established a new trading station there. Francois died at Keremeos a few years afterwards. He is said to have been a very intelligent person and a good business man, but much addicted to Hudson's Bay rum. I quote the following from a recent article by Mr. Robert Stevenson, of Princeton, B. C., entitled "The Story of a Trip Through the Okanogan Valley in the Summer of 1860." Mr. Stevenson, then a young man, was with a party of gold seekers headed for the placer mines of Rock Creek in British Columbia.

" we pushed on crossing the Wenatchee, Chelan, Antiatka, so called by the Indians at that time the Methow, and reached the. Okanogan river on the evening of the 16th (June, 1860).

On the morning of the 17th Capt. Collins called for volun- teers to go to Fort Okanogan to get a boat in which to cross the Okanogan river. An Indian guide had informed us that we were then four miles from the fort. Five other men and myself volunteered for the duty, and crossing the river on a sort of a raft went to the fort. Fort Okanogan was a sta- tion owned by the Hudson Bay company, and was in charge of a chief factor by the name of Franswa, a half breed French and Indian. At the time of our visit all the Indians in that part of the country were congregated at the fort assisting the factor in packing up the goods preparatory to moving the post to Keremeos in British Columbia. The goods were packed in Hudson Bay "parflushes" made of raw hide, and loads were arranged for 150 horses. The post was to be abandoned the following day, and no goods were on sale that day.

To clear up a seeming misunderstanding as to the exact location of Fort Okanogan I will at this point state that when I visited the fort on June 17 1860, it was located on the west or north bank of the Columbia river, about two miles above the mouth of the Okanogan. The location is so clearly fixed in my mind because of the necessity of descending the Colum- bia in a boat from the fort before we could enter the Okanogan, up which our camp was located. The fort consisted of a stockade built of fir trees, 14 to 20 inches in diameter and twenty feet long, standing on end with the lower end firmly planted in the ground. Entrance to this stockade was by means of a strong gate. A space of 60 to 80 feet square was enclosed and all buildings opened to the center, and the walls of the stockade were firmly braced on the inside.