gold mines of California, returning the same year. During the Indian war of 1855–56 he was a member of the Oregon Volunteers in the company of Robert Newell, which was stationed at Fort Vancouver to hold in check the Cascade Indians and the Klickitats to the north.
His reminiscences are important on the following: First, as to his father, Louis Labonte; second, earliest French Prairie; third, experiences at Scappoose; fourth, Spokane Indians and Indian myths; fifth, the names of Indian places and persons; sixth, the primitive Indian articles of food; seventh, on some of the Indian tribes and customs and traditions; and eighth, of the original white men.
I.
LOUIS LABONTE Senior.
Concerning his father, he says that this member of the Astor expedition was born in Montreal, and was about eighteen years old when he came out to Saint Louis, and was there engaged as an employee of the American Fur Company for four years; at the age of twenty-two he was engaged by Wilson P. Hunt of the Pacific Fur Company to come to Oregon, and arrived in the following winter. Upon the disruption of that company in 1814, Labonte took service with the Northwestern Fur Company, which was in 1818 absorbed into the Hudson's Bay Company. He had in the meantime become acquainted with and married at Astoria the daughter of Chief Kobayway of the Clatsop Indians, and it was in the year 1818 that the son was born. Labonte Sr. took six years for the Hudson's Bay Company, and spent three years at Spokane and three at Colville. He then returned to Fort Vancouver and his service terminated some time near 1828, when he asked to be dismissed and allowed to remain in Oregon. This was directly against
