Francois Rivet

[Jay Edward (deceased)]

Notes for FRANCOIS RIVET:

!Following taken from page 237 of "The Mountain Men and Fur Trade of the Far West"

Biographical sketches of the partcipants by scholars of the subject and with introductions by the editor. Volume VII
Editorial Supervision of LeRoy R. Hafen State Historian of Colorado, Emeritus Professor of History, Brigham Young University.

The Arthur H. Clark Company Glendale, Calif. 1969
Francois Revet by Harriet D. Munnick West Linn, Oregon
 
"Old Revay" was the usual appellation by which Francois Rivet was noted in the records of the fur trade, for he was already past the prime of life when he first appeared in the West. He was born in St. Sulpice, Montreal, in 1757, possibly 1759, of French-Canadian parentage. He apparently received no schooling, as he signed with an "X" to a misspelled name in later years, and drifted down into the Mississippi Valley to begin a roving life at an early age. These youthful years were spent in total obscurity as a hunter on the prairies of the Midwest. Discounting all the fictional speculation that has been written about this unknown period of his life, it may be surmised that He and a few companions were living with some Indian tribe and hunting with them for the St. Louis market in an area that still belonged to Spain and later France.

Following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Lewis and Clark were dispatched to the West on their tour of exploration, and it is here that Rivet crops up positively, he and Philippe Degie, a man of sixty-five, joined the crew of explorers at St. Louis (Reuben G. Thwaites, ed., Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Cambridge, Mass., 1904) I, page 30.)

The expedition preceded up the Missouri River during the autumn of 1804, accompanied by a detachment of the United States Army under Warfington, and went into winter Quarters in a village of Mandan Indians in southern North Dakota. The dull winter was enlivened during Christmas week by extra rations of grog and tobacco and y dances amongst the men to the music of Pierre Cruzatte's fiddle. The astonished Indian spectators saw Rivet "dance on his head," meaning on his hands, but however accomplished, no mean stunt for a fellow nearing fifty.

Neither Rivet nor Degie continued with the party in the spring. having constructed a canoe or dugout for themselves, they accompanied Warfington's barges back down stream as far as an Arikara village. There Lewis and Clark again met Rivet, now in company with one Grenier, as the explorers returned from the West. (I bid., 283) The two hunters were evidently bound for Manuel Lisa's western venture. If the two Americans who "had been with Lewis and Clark," as noted by David Thompson in the unexplained "Jeremy Pinch" affair in 1807, were Rivet and perhaps Degie, as seems probable, and the "party of 42" to which they belonged was that of Lisa, Rivet's migration to the West becomes clear. (For a full discussion of the Pinch Affair and additional references, see Dorothy Johansen and Charles M. Gated, Empire of the Columbia (New York, 1957), 115-119. Phillippe Degie settled in Oregon at some unknown date, dying at St. Paul on 28 February 1847, at the age of 108.)

He is known to have been in western Montana "about 1809," for a son was born to him at a place later known as Paradise, between the Bitterroot Mountains and Flathead Lake. (Church records, 21 January 1839, loc. city.) The mother of his child was a woman of the Flathead tribe, called Therese Tete Platte, whom Rivet married formally when the church reached the Oregon Country. Dates amongst the illiterate are conjectural, and Therese could not have been as old as the ninety-nine years claimed for her at the time of her death in 1852. She had, by a native Husband of the Flatheads, at least one older surviving child known in history as "Princess Julia, daughter of a chief" in a customary romantic embellishment.

Whatever her heritage, she was called more prosaically "step-daughter of Francois Rivet," and best known as the dauntless wife of Peter Skene Ogden. (T.C. Elliot, "Peter Skene Ogden, Fur Trader, "Oregon Historical Quarterly, XI (September 1910), 245.)

By 1813 Rivet was "a freeman engaged by the North West Fur Company" as an interpreter of Flathead House in western Montana. (Freeman Engaged by the North West Company in 1813, Extracted from HBC Archives, F.4/61, fos. 6-7d, Oregon State Archives, Salem.) As he was still interpreter for Alexander Ross, setting out from the same post in 1824, he had apparently spent the intervening decade in the Rocky Mountains of Montana and Idaho in the Successive employ of the North West and the Hudson's Bay companies.

The Snake River Expedition of Ross in 1823-1824, was no doubt fairly typical of Rivet's fifty similar years on the plains and in the mountains. Ross himself left one of the best accounts known of such annual hunts. (Agnes Laut, "Journal of Alexander Ross, Snake Country Expedition, 1824," in Oregon Historical Quarterly, XIV (1913), 369-388.) On this hunt which proved to be one of exceptionally severe weather, Rivet, now nearing seventy, was outfitted with 2 guns, 6 traps, 15 horses, 1 lodge," more that twice the equipment of the other engages and on a par with that of Ross. He was undoubtedly accompanied by his wife and sons, Antoine and Joseph, now fifteen and thirteen years old. The expedition, starting from Flathead Houses in February, spent ten months in a southerly journey along the valleys of the Bitterroot and Snake rivers, crossing the spine of the Rockies in the region of the Beaverhead and returning by much the same route to Flathead House the following November. They were continually plagued by threats of desertion by their Iroquois trappers and with attacks by hostile natives. They were snowbound in the mountains in their "Valley of Troubles" until, by almost incredible labor, they beat out a track for eighteen miles to the warmer plains below.

Provisions for such a crew were a matter of feast or famine, for while there might be on day "27 elk and 6 deer brought in, on another day the children were "calling from hunger," and although "Francois Rivet caught a beaver...the wolves devoured it, skin and all." By the last of March "thirty persons went on snowshoes across the mountains to the buffalo," the grass was beginning to appear through the snow, and "all the women went off to collect berries." The berries could have been only such fruit as rose hips protruding from the snow, perhaps to be used in making pemmican when the buffalo hunters returned.

Despite various alarms in a country of previous Indian trouble, the expedition lost but two members, neither to hostile action. A few days from the outset, "Antoine Balle's boy died," and near the close of the hunt "this morning after an illness of twenty days during which we carried him on a stretcher died Jean Ba't Boucher, aged 65, an honest man." All in all, with a catch of 5000 beavers and sundry other peltries, the expedition was considered normally successful.
Upon his return Ross was given charge of Flathead Post for the winter, releasing Peter Skene Ogden to head the ensuing Snake hunt. The bustle and excitement of the Indian trade season at the post, forerunner of the famous rendezvous in the mountains, was followed by the equally noisy business of equipping the 1825 outfit for the hunt. Rivet, as interpreter, was assigned to the Indian shop; his knowledge of tribal languages appears to have been extensive.

He remained at Flathead until 1829 when the current post master, John Work, was transferred to Fort Colville on the upper Columbia, and Rivet with him. "Old Rivet," wrote Chief Factor McLoughlin to Work," also proceeds to you place, whom, I presume, you will find useful." (Burt Brown Barker, ed., Letters of Dr. John McLoughlin (Portland, Oregon 1948), 43.) Francis Heron, who succeeded Work at Colville, also found work for the aging servant;"

" ...Payette requests all his affects in his Casette-his Appidhimons &-which are in charge of Rivet...," even so far as to dispatch him to the mountains as in earlier times. "I approve of your sending Rivet and Mr. Montour with the Indians as also of the Gratuity you promised the first (Rivet), but I hope you have kept in mind that the Hon'ble Committee has directed that we are not to send any of our people South of 49 (degrees) on the East side of the mountains."

Evidently Montour, who was never particularly reliable, refused to obey orders, for the chief factor's second letter to Heron left no doubt concerning his estimate of the two employees.

It is to be regretted that Rivet and Montour did not separate as you directed...and if Montour will not go you can give his situation and terms to old River, if he accepts them, but if Montour goes with the Flatheads and you think Rivet's services to be required (at the post) You can engage him for three years at an advance of five pounds P annum. (Ibid., 113,212, 263-264.)

Promotion in the hard-headed company was certainly rare at the age of seventy-five, but Rivet was good for six more years before retiring at last to French Prairie in 1838. Forty years at Fort Colville, as George B. Roberts credited to Rivet, is not entirely accurate, less so than his recollecti9on of the old mountaineer carrying on faithfully:"...a kind of confidential man, he was a kind of hedge Blacksmith, & contrived to do the little Iron Work for our Columbia boats. They were always built at Colville, were clinger built, overlapped, not flush..."(Thomas Vaughan, ed., "The Round Hand of George B. Roberts," Oregon Historical Quarterly, XIII (1962), 203)

The same year, 1838, saw the arrival of the Catholic fathers in the Willamette Valley, Old Rivet and Therese Tete Platte were among several dozen couples married formally in the "big wedding" immediately instigated by the priests. Thereafter Francois Rivet appears regularly in church records as godfather to children of his old companions or as witness to their marriages.

Prior to the land laws of 1850, while sovereignty of the Oregon country was still in abeyance, settlers merely laid claim to any unoccupied area to their liking. Rivet chose a tract south of the St. Paul Mission, apparently sharing it with his sons Antoine and Joseph, who were now farmers on the Prairie with families of their own. Francois Rivet's name does not appear as a taxpayer in 1844 nor on the census roll of 1850, yet he was certainly living on his claim on those dates. Among the disputed lists of voters at the Champoeg meeting in 1843 his name is never given as one of those present, but he was one of three vice presidents at a meeting the following year, when a memorial, commonly known as "The French Petition" was addressed to Congress, asking for some assurance of governmental interest in Oregon and protection against Indian uprisings.

The Donation Land Claim Laws enacted in 1850 granted claims only to United States citizens; a general cross-over in national allegiance followed in order for the Canadians to secure title to their land. Rivet's claim on the Land Record gives the date of his naturalization as 9 September 1852, less than three weeks before his death. (Genealogical Material in Oregon Donation Land Claims, I (Genealogical Forum of Portland, Oregon, 1957), 90) That he was still voyaging about the Willamette Valley as in earlier times had been noted by the Spectator (Oregon City) the previous year:
29 July 1851

The oldest resident of Oregon, Monsieur Rivet, was in town yesterday. He came to this country in 1805 and lives in the French settlement some 20-odd miles up the river. Monsieur Rivet is the oldest man in Oregon, save one-he is in his 93rd year. He came to the country with Lewis and Clark- is healthy, robust, and active, and bids fair to live out the hundred. (Who the "oldest...save one" might be is not known. Rivet's old friend, Phillippe Degie, who had settled nearby, and was certainly the oldest citizen during his time, had died in 1847 at the reputed age of 108.)

The family chapter close quickly in 1852, excepting only Antoine. Son Joseph died suddenly of alcoholism in March, old Francois died in September, and Therese in October. All lie in unmarked graves in the Old Cemetery at St. Paul. (Chruch Records, 1852, loc. cit.)
 
!Adrian Gravelle writes: Gerald Lenzen, a board member of St. Paul's Mission, found the information in a book by an acquaintance of his: (lists Pierre-Nicolas (or Nicolas-Pierre) Rivet and Madeleine Gauther dite Landerville as the parents of Francois-Alex Rivest.
George Brown, "Friend and Family on French Prairie," privately published by the author in 1993. The book is available, with updates, from the St. Paul Mission Historical Society, 4225 Mission Ave., NE, P.O. Box 158, St. Paul, OR 09137-0158.
 
!The Gene Pool: Roster of Lewis & Clark Expedition; Rivet, Pvt. Francois: Born near Montreal in 1757; interpreter; later was with Hudson's Bay Company. Died in Oregon 15 Sept. 1852, age 96.

[RatherBHuntin]

Jay,
Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to sit around a campfire with a gentleman like this?  The knowledge in his head and the skills he possessed must have been amazing.

[Jay Edward (deceased)]

Jay,
Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to sit around a campfire with a gentleman like this?  The knowledge in his head and the skills he possessed must have been amazing.

I've frequently cogitated on how much a woodsman/mountain man these folks are and really feel sadly lacking in my own abilities.  Rivet was one of the men who often 'went ahead' of the trading expeditions.  Their parts in the unfolding drama were not recorded to any where near the extent of the 'traders' who kept journals for one reason or another.

I have hunted alone in fairly deserted territory from time to time and enjoyed it immensely.  The absolute silence of human noise has been one of the great rewards of this type of hunting.  I have never feared camping alone and enjoyed the noise created by passing animals which gave no hint as to their true identity.  A bear does have a little different sound and an elk will sometimes make a tremendous racket when it exits suddenly but this is not always the case.

I would give quite a bit to travel with such men as these... knowing full well at what level they existed.


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