Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/214

154 (Joseph L. Meek was a native of Washington County, Virginia, born in 1810. He grew up without education on a Virginia plantation, and being troubled because his father contracted a second marriage, ran away and joined a party of fur traders going to the Rocky mountains, and drifted into Oregon in 1840. He married a Nez Perce woman, and they raised a very respectable family; his daughter, Olive, is a woman of education, talent and refinement, and his son, Stephen, was a member of the Oregon legislature. Meek had a splendid physique, a magnetic presence, wit, courtesy, and generous to a fault, and if he had been afforded the advantages of an education, would have reached high official station.)

But not all the heroes and savers of Oregon rage the battle field, or pace the forum in the limelight of popular acclaim. Every man at that historic meeting at old Champoeg, proved his title to true worth and honorable mention. Victor and vanquished proved their worth in the founding of a new empire. Those who were defeated, promptly and quietly withdrew, showing neither faction or opposition, and proved their real worth as men and citizens in yielding cordial obedience to the new government.

Of Francis X. Matthieu, the only one of that band of immortals, still living when this history of the events is recorded, too much cannot be said in his praise. Born and reared under the flag that on that day he reluctantly discarded, with all his educational bias, and all his personal associations with the policy and men who were defeated, it must have been a soul-trying ordeal to cast in his lot with the Americans. But being convinced that it would be better for those men and their families, and the future of the country, to be ruled by the United States than by England, he sacrificed all personal feeling and the associations of his life time, and voted unselfishly for what he conceived to be the greatest good to the greatest number. On his vote depended the hopes and fears of both sides—the whole mass. Had he remained with the Canadians the vote would have tied evenly, and no decision. The future of the community might have drifted helplessly, or broken out into faction and violence. At the least sign of dangerous strife the great commercial company backed by England, would have intervened, and British immigration and settlement would have followed, and Oregon would have been lost to the United States. And well we may conclude, that the single vote cast by the far seeing and patriotic heart of Francis Xavier Matthieu, solved a momentous question at a critical moment, and enrolled the name of this true man among the savers of Oregon.

(Francis Xavier Matthieu was born at Montreal, Canada, 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 centers of rebellion, and was obliged at last to quit Canada to save his life, and come over to the United States, which he did in 1838. Going first to Albany, New York, and thence to St. Louis, he joined a party of the American Fur Company to trap and trade up into the Yellowstone region. But the Indians being furnished with rum, which Matthieu did not approve of. he left the party and joined a party of immigrants on their way to Oregon. Reaching Oregon he went to Champoeg, and hired out to Etienne Lucier for two years as a carpenter and farmer. Married a good woman in 1844, and settled at St. Paul in French Prairie as a farmer. He is the only survivor of the 102 men taking part in the Champoeg meeting to organize a new state; and now resides with a daughter in East Portland, enjoying life and his friends at the age of 92.)

But as "Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war," so we find that after the hazardous and strenuous contest to establish the provisional government, and launch the frail ship of state on the unsounded seas of inexperience, that the right man finally came to the helm. Sooner or later, the right man always comes to a good cause; and when plain, modest citizen George Abernethy was elected the first governor of Oregon, the good people of the new born state