"Thirty years ago there appeared in Chehalis' weekly Bee-Nugget a series of locally prepared articles entitled Claquato Landmarks.
The series was prepared by the late N. B. Coffman, pioneer Chehalis banker, and Charles Miles. The latter was born at Claquato. He lives today in Oakland, Calif., and is an author and Northwest historian of considerable note.
Chehalis city library staff members can be credited with preserving the series of articles in a form which can be easily reproduced, the series was carefully clipped, put in book form and filed with other early history items on the Chehalis area.
Much as we like to think of them as independent and without prejudice, most mid-century settlers in this part of the country looked down on the hardy French-Canadians already here."Earliest Cowlitz Settlers Ignored
By N. B. COFFMAN and CHARLES MILES
North of the Cowlitz settlement on the Prairie southwest of Forest lived at this time another French-Canadian who came to the Coast in very early times. This was Julien Bernier. He was born in Quebec in 1784 and died in Newaukum Prairie June 17, 1871. His obituary, published in the Washington Standard in 1871, shows that he came overland in 1813 with a party led by John G. McTavish.
This was the party of Northwest Fur company men who took over Astoria from the Astor Fur company.
After being on the Columbia for a number of years, according to his obituary, he retired to a farm in the Red River district in Canada; but, on the urging of Sir George Simpson, (Hudson's Bay offical head), he returned to the Oregon Country in 1841, and made permanent settlement on Newaukum Prairie.
Complete and recorded annals of this community of French-Canadian pioneers are lacking for obvious reasons.
In the first place the pioneers themselves were for the most part ment who had not enjoyed the advantages of advanced schooling and were, in consequence, unable to write for themselves. On the other hand the Hudsons' Bay Company officials in the district who might have written for them would not be inclined to do so because they were not only of other national origin (English, Irish or English-Canadian), but by themselves, regarded as of a higher station in life, both by birth and by economic circumstances.
Cast was recognized than more than at present. And, finally, when United States born pioneers began to recognize the importance of their background and took to gathering records of early days they tended to ignore these Cowlitz families; perhaps because they were alienated by their Canadian-French origins and speech.
The early customs of French-Canadian intermarriage with aboriginies gave no occasion for this lack of pioneers recognition. It did not lower their social standing asnwas regarded with general approval.
Many a pioneer family notably that of Dr. John McLaughlin, "the Father of Oregon," regards with pleasure and pride the mixed blood.
As a result of this lack of records much pertaining to the French-Canadian pioneers of highly romantic and of historic value has doubtless been lost. It is to be hoped, meanwhile, that all written and oral records of this earliest pioneer Washington settlement are being preserved and that new records will come to light.
Should the details multiply sufficiently, they should provide Washington in general and Lewis County in particular with something of the same exotic background that has been provided by the Dutch in New York, the Swedes in Delaware, the Acadians in Louisiana, and the Spanish in California.
Source: The Daily Chronicle, Tuesday, 4 Jun 1968.
Transcribed by Jenny Tenlen.