Cowlitz Prairie is located in Lewis County,

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. The natural prairie roughly lies along the west side of the

Cowlitz River The Cowlitz River is a river in the state of Washington in the United States, a tributary of the Columbia River. Its tributaries drain a large region including the slopes of Mount Rainier, Mount Adams, and Mount St. Helens. The Cowlitz has a ...

, north of Toledo, east of

Interstate 5 in Washington Interstate 5 (I-5) is an Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States that serves as the region's primary north–south route. It spans across the state of Washington, from the Oregon state border at Vancouver, through the Puget ...

, and South of

U.S. Route 12 U.S. Route 12 (US 12) is an east–west United States Numbered Highways, United States highway, running from Aberdeen, Washington, to Detroit, Detroit, Michigan, for almost . The highway has mostly been superseded by Interstate 90 (I-90) an ...

. The Lower Cowlitz tribal group's traditional territory includes Cowlitz Prairie. Early 19th century visitors noticed an area mainly cleared of trees and assessed its dimensions from 4 to 6 miles long, 1 to 2 miles wide, adding up to nearly 6000 acres. The geographical area holds numerous historical locations in what is now the U.S. state of

, such as the Simon Plamondon original settler property after being adopted by the Lower Cowlitz people (1826), the

Hudson Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business div ...

Cowlitz Farm Fort Cowlitz or Cowlitz Farm was an agricultural operation by the British Puget Sound Agricultural Company (PSAC), a subsidiary of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). It was located on the Cowlitz plains, adjacent to the west bank of the Cowlitz River a ...

(1839), the Saint Francis Xavier Mission (1839), the first

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in the state and the nearby Cowlitz Landing location where a first convention was held (1851), leading to the creation of a new territory. Cowlitz Prairie is also known as an early

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...

mixed ancestry settlement, sometimes referred as a French Canadian or a Métis settlement.

History

The Cowlitz river and a direct portage to

Puget Sound Puget Sound ( ) is a sound of the Pacific Northwest, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and part of the Salish Sea. It is located along the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected ma ...

located near Cowlitz Prairie have been used throughout history by various regional Indigenous groups. First newcomer to venture as far as Cowlitz Prairie was Simon Plamondon in 1819 for the

Northwest Company The North West Company was a fur trading business headquartered in Montreal from 1779 to 1821. It competed with increasing success against the Hudson's Bay Company in what is present-day Western Canada and Northwestern Ontario. With great wealt ...

(NWC). He returned a year later with two others. The first

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business div ...

(HBC) expedition to travel through (on its way to the

Fraser River The Fraser River is the longest river within British Columbia, Canada, rising at Fraser Pass near Blackrock Mountain in the Rocky Mountains and flowing for , into the Strait of Georgia just south of the City of Vancouver. The river's annual d ...

) was led by James McMillan in 1824. HBC official George Simpson has been incorrectly credited in the past as the first European to travel through (1828). Simon Plamondon now associated with the HBC married the daughter of a Cowlitz tribe leader and built the first cabin in the early 1830s with permission to settle near the tribe. By 1833, Plamondon and François Faignant were successful subsistence farmers soon joined by Joseph Rochbrune and Michel Coutenoir, after also having gained permissions. By 1838, the HBC had permission to set up its Cowlitz Farm facility on 3000 acres, nearly half of the prairie area. By 1841, the Wilkes expedition reported « a Catholic priest belonging to the Columbia Missionary established among the small community here which consists of half a dozen Canadians who have married Indians & half-breeds”. About two dozen workmen were attending the farm sheep and cattle, including some local natives. By 1843, sixty-four people and thirteen families form the settlement. Retired Canadian fur traders with Cree, Ojibwe, Nipissing, Abenaki, and Iroquois ancestry continued to settle and marry into the local Cowlitz and Chinook tribes. This would evolve into a heterogeneous Métis village of log cabins and Indian camps scattered over the remaining acres in the prairie. The HBC had also started to head north of 1846, the border. Twenty early settlers were installed by 1850s by which time the Cowlitz Farm was ramping down after the expiry of the

Russian-American Company The Russian-American Company Under the High Patronage of His Imperial Majesty (russian: Под высочайшим Его Императорского Величества покровительством Российская-Американс� ...

HBC contract. Following various Indigenous uprisings throughout the Territory of Washington and escalating pressure from settlers arriving through the Oregon Trail, the first territorial Governor ordered in 1855 the Cowlitz and Chinook tribal members to clear out of their homelands. Some refused and found shelter in the settlement. In addition, exclusionary laws limiting land claims made it difficult to secure claims as Americans were also filing claims, displacing squatters allowed in earlier on. Although shattered by much turmoil, the community nonetheless continued on close-knit French-speaking Catholics, under an influx of newcomers attracted by such a community. Well into the 20th century, many inhabitants of Cowlitz Prairie and surrounding communities continued to speak the Cowlitz Salishan language and French, supplemented by the Chinook Wawa. Robert Foxcurran, Michel Bouchard, Sébastien Malette. ''Songs Upon The Rivers''. Baraka Books. Montreal 2016. p. 46,66,316,319,331,332

References

{{coord, 46, 28, 43, N, 122, 48, 26, W, type:city_region:US-WA_source:GNIS-enwiki, display=title French-Canadian American history Métis in the United States Landforms of Lewis County, Washington Western Washington

History

Further reading

References