Kilakotah Labonté

Quick Facts

Place of Birth:

Clatsop County, Oregon

Date of Birth:

ca. 1793

Date of Death:

July 18, 1873

Cemetery Name:

St. Paul Catholic Cemetery

The story of Kilakotah is not just the story of one woman, but the story of three sisters. These three women - Kilakotah, Celiast, and Yiamist - did not just grow up together, but continued to rely upon each other as they grew older. At key transitional points in their lives, they came together. They shared life experiences, each marrying men who had come to the Northwest seeking a career in the fur trade, and each navigating the economic transformation from furs to agriculture that played out across the Pacific Northwest in the 19th century.

Early Years

Kilakotah was born around the year 1793 on the ancestral homelands of her people, the Clatsop, who have lived near the mouth of the Columbia River since time immemorial. She was the daughter of Clatsop Chief Coboway. She would have grown up in a cedar plank house in a village, part of a network of villages in the area. She would have worn clothing made from cedar bark, and perhaps copper or beaded jewelry that had been received through trade with visiting Europeans. Her favorite foods were likely from the sea or rivers - salmon, sturgeon, trout, whales, or clams dug up from nearby beaches. She would also have grown up eating elk and deer, and may have helped gather foods like berries, salal, cow parsnip, and ferns. Among her relatives were her two sisters, Celiast and Yiamist, who Kilakotah would remain close with as they grew into adulthood.

In late 1805, when Kilakotah was about 12 years old, the Corps of Discovery Expedition led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark arrived at the Pacific Coast. That December, the Corps began building Fort Clatsop, where they planned to spend the winter. On December 12, 1805, Chief Coboway made the first of several trips to the fort as it was built. He would continue to periodically visit the fort once it was completed. In March 1806, the Expedition left the fort and returned to the United States. As they departed in a canoe stolen from the Clatsop days earlier, Lewis described Kilakotah's father in his journal as "kind an[d] hospitable." The wooden fort and its furnishings were left to Chief Coboway, who used it during winter hunting seasons. His daughter Celiast remembered details about the fort, like a large wooden stump used by the fort's inhabitants as a table. It is likely that sisters Kilakotah and Yiamist also visited Fort Clatsop.

The 1810s

In 1811, a group of men employed by American businessman John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company arrived at what is now Astoria, Oregon. They had journeyed there on the sailing ship Tonquin, and were later joined by Pacific Fur Company employees who had crossed the continent by land, led by Wilson Price Hunt. There, they built Fort Astoria, which was meant to serve as the first of many Pacific Fur Company posts in the Northwest. Indigenous peoples in the area came to Fort Astoria to trade furs and create economic relationships with these newcomers. After the War of 1812, the American fort's ties to the Pacific Fur Company were cut, and it was purchased by the Canadian North West Company. After the purchase, it was rechristened "Fort George."

During this time, Kilakotah met and married William Wallace Matthews. Their marriage was "à la façon du pays," or "in the fashion of the country" - a marriage agreement that did not involve the church or state but could involve a ceremony or other public recognition of the union. These marriages, common among fur traders and Native or Métis women, could be brief and easily ended, or long lasting.

Matthews was an American, originally from New York, and had been a passenger on the Tonquin. He worked as a clerk at Fort Astoria and stayed on as it became Fort George. Matthews traveled around the Northwest frequently, and Kilakotah's relationship with him seems to have been brief. In 1815, their daughter Ellen was born. Later that year, Matthews left the Pacific Northwest for Montréal, ending his relationship with Kilakotah. Ellen either traveled with her father or was sent to join him later; she grew up and received her education in Montréal.

Sometime after Matthews' departure, Kilakotah entered into a new relationship with another man who had originally come to the Northwest with the Pacific Fur Company: Louis Labonté. Labonté was a French Canadian, born around 1788 in Quebec, who had arrived at Fort Astoria with Wilson Price Hunt's overland expedition. Like Matthews, he became a North West Company employee after their purchase of the Pacific Fur Company. In 1818, Louis and Kilakotah's son, also named Louis, was born.

The 1820s

Around 1821, Louis Labonté left Fort George for the far-away Spokane House post. After he left, Kilakotah began a relationship with James McMillan, a Chief Trader for the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). In 1821, The HBC merged with the North West Company and took over the operation at Fort George.

Perhaps Kilakotah thought that, like her first husband, Louis would not return to her. Or, once he had received his assignment to leave Fort George, perhaps Louis arranged for James to care for Kilakotah. In the fur trade era, if a fur trader decided not to take his Native or Métis wife with him to a new posting, it was not uncommon for him to arrange for a colleague to make sure that she was provided for, which sometimes meant marrying her.

James McMillan was born in 1783 in Scotland. In the 1810s, he had worked as a clerk for the North West Company, before becoming a Chief Trader for the Hudson's Bay Company's Columbia District in 1821. This position in the Columbia District - a vast area of land that included the present-day states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, parts of Montana and Northern California, and British Columbia - resulted in his meeting Kilakotah in the Pacific Northwest. Their daughter, Victoire, was born in 1821.

Soon after this, McMillan was sent to the HBC's Thompson River post, and then traveled to Upper Canada before returning to the Northwest in 1824, eventually becoming the Chief Factor of Fort Langley. By 1829, he had formally ended his relationship with Kilakotah, and returned to Scotland to marry a Scottish woman. It isn't clear if Kilakotah joined McMillan during his travels in the 1820s, but her son, Louis, later recollected that he and his parents lived at Spokane House, where Louis Labonté worked as a cook, from 1824 to 1827. Perhaps Kilakotah ended her relationship with James McMillan around the time he left for Upper Canada and decided to join Louis Labonté at Spokane House.

Spokane House was a small fur trade post originally established by the North West Company, then taken over by the Hudson's Bay Company after the two companies merged. Located at the confluence of the Little Spokane River and the Spokane River, near the present-day city of Spokane, Washington, this otherwise landlocked post was a popular launching point for the fur-trapping Snake Expeditions. However, its productivity declined in the 1820s, and the HBC transferred its attention to nearby Fort Colvile, which became a center of their operations in the upper Columbia River area. Louis Labonté also worked at Fort Colvile as a servant and cook.

In 1828, Louis Labonté and his family moved to Fort Vancouver, where he worked both as a cook and a carpenter. Fort Vancouver was established in the winter of 1824-25. Not long after Kilakotah arrived with her family, she would have watched as the original fort, built on a bluff near the Columbia River, was dismantled and relocated to the prairie it once overlooked. The fort had initially been built at a higher elevation because it was thought to be a more easily defensible location, and because the fort's founders had been unsure if the prairie below would flood seasonally. After four years of having to haul goods and water from the Columbia River and observing which lower location would be suitable, the decision was made to relocate, and the fort was rebuilt on the prairie in 1829. Louis' skills as a carpenter would likely have been in high demand during this time.

The 1830s

In the early years of the 1830s, Louis Labonté balanced employment with the Hudson's Bay Company with living and working on the Willamette Valley farm owned by Joseph Gervais. Gervais and Louis both came to the Northwest with the Wilson Price Hunt Overland Expedition, but Gervais had ended his work in the fur trade and begun farming in the Willamette Valley around 1830. Louis had wanted to start his own farm, but, as had been the case with other fur trade employees who wanted to start farming around this time, Fort Vancouver's Chief Factor Dr. John McLoughlin had insisted that Louis first return to Montréal to formally end his HBC employment. Louis had objected, insisting that he had begun his HBC employment in the Northwest and should be able to terminate his employment in the Northwest, but McLoughlin was unmoved. Louis made the round trip and formally ended his career with the HBC, making himself free to pursue life as a farmer. Nonetheless, he continued to work as a trapper and cook in the Fort Vancouver Indian Trade until 1836.

When he returned from Montréal, Louis, Kilakotah, and their children joined Gervais at his farm at Chemaway, on the banks of the Willamette River. There, the Labontés helped Gervais raise wheat. Aside from Louis' friendship with Joseph Gervais, there was a family connection that likely drew the families together here: Kilakotah's sister Yiamist had entered into a fur trade marriage with Gervais. And so the extended family living at the Gervais farm at that time included Louis and Kilakotah, son Louis and daughter Victoire, Joseph and Yiamist, Joseph's two children from a previous relationship, and Yiamist and Joseph's young children: Isaac, born in 1829, and Xavier, born in 1831.

In 1832, Kilakotah and Louis' son Louis attended school at Fort Vancouver. Earlier that year, the school at the fort had just been created by John Ball, an American who came to the Northwest with businessman Nathaniel Wyeth's cross country expedition. Ball ran the school, the first class of which was composed of six boys, including John McLoughlin's son David, from October 1832 to the spring of 1833. After that, Ball left to start a farm in French Prairie, and the school was taken over by Solomon Smith. Later, young Louis "recalled little about what was learned, but he did remember that Dr. McLoughlin had taken him by the hand to school, treated him kindly, and told him he would provide him with books and pens." Kilakotah's son distinguished himself through his knowledge of several languages, including the Clatsop, Tillamook, Kalapuya, and Spokane languages, as well as Chinook jargon, French, and English. It's likely that some of his language skills were taught to him by his mother. 

As a student at Fort Vancouver, young Louis might have spent time with his other aunt: Kilakotah's sister Celiast. Celiast was married to the fort's baker, Basil Poirier, and the mother of three children. Celiast likely met Basil when he came to work as the baker at Fort George in 1823. That year, their son Xavier was born. Their son François was born around 1825, and son Alexander was born around 1831. The Poirier family had been living at Fort Vancouver since 1826, first at the fort's original location on the bluff, then at the second location on the prairie. Celiast and her family likely lived in the fort's employee village - a neighborhood of one- or two-room cabins located to the west of the fort. Basil kept long hours at the fort's Bake House, making bread and sea biscuits for the fort's employees, fur traders striking out on long expeditions, and sailors on visiting ships. However, around 1833, Celiast discovered that her husband had a wife living in Canada. Offended by her husband's bigamy, Celiast left him and began a relationship with teacher Solomon Smith. In 1834, Celiast and Solomon left Fort Vancouver and moved to the Gervais farm, where Celiast could be closer to both of her sisters. At the Gervais farm, Solomon and Celiast (who took the name "Helen") opened a school house, and became known as the first schoolteachers in Oregon. Celiast's three sons remained at Fort Vancouver with their father, who remarried.

In 1834, Kilakotah, Louis, and their children left the Gervais farm at the request of Thomas McKay, who asked them to watch over his farm near present-day Scappoose, Oregon. Thomas McKay was the son of Alexander McKay, a fur trade officer who had come to the Northwest on the Tonquin and been killed in 1811, and Marguerite Wadin, who became the wife of Dr. John McLoughlin. Teenaged Thomas had come to the Northwest with his father in 1811, and stayed after his father's death, becoming a clerk at a variety of Hudson's Bay Company post, including Fort Vancouver. He retired in 1833 to start his farm, but briefly rejoined the HBC in 1834, when he asked the Labontés to watch over his farm.

At the McKay farm, the Labontés raised "wheat, oats, peas, potatoes, and various garden products, and had cattle there." Many years later, young Louis Labonté, who was a teenager when the family lived at the McKay farm, remembered hunting deer, elk, beaver, and waterfowl at Scappoose and "on the ponds of Sauvie's Island." Young Louis also remembered seeing Nathaniel Wyeth, who at that time was attempting to establish a trading fort of his own on Sauvie Island. Wyeth's ship, the May Dacre, was anchored in the Multnomah Channel, a waterway that passed between the island and Scappoose. Louis impressed the ship's sailors and captain by easily climbing up the ship's rigging. The captain offered to let Louis sail with them to Boston, "and to this [Louis'] parents were almost persuaded to give their consent, but at the last moment could not quite bring themselves to do this."

In 1836, McKay returned and resumed control over his farm and the Labontés finally struck out to establish their own farm. The family settled near present-day Dayton, Oregon. On January 21, 1839, Kilakotah and Louis were formally married at the recently-dedicated St. Paul Catholic Church. This "official" marriage had the effect of "legitimizing" their children, which at that time included 20-year-old Louis, 17-year-old Victoire McMillan, and 1-year-old Julienne. On January 22, Julienne was baptized.

The Labontés retained close ties to Fort Vancouver. On July 8, 1839, at Fort Vancouver, Kilakotah's daughter Victoire McMillan was baptized at the Catholic mission there. The next day, Victoire married Joseph McLoughlin. Joseph was the son of Chief Factor Dr. John McLoughlin and a Native woman who had died in childbirth. Joseph McLoughlin had worked for the Hudson's Bay Company for many years, often at Fort Vancouver, and was working as a clerk there at the time of their marriage. Shortly after their wedding, Joseph retired, and he and Victoire settled near Champoeg, Oregon, where they would be closer to Victoire's relatives.

Meanwhile, Dr. John McLoughlin enlisted the help of Solomon and Celiast Smith in the establishment of a water-powered sawmill at Chehalem, Oregon. On February 11, 1837, the Smiths were married by Methodist missionary Jason Lee. In February 1839, Celiast brought their daughters, 4-year-old Josephine and 18-month-old Hélène, to the St. Paul Church to be baptized. Solomon Smith was not present at the baptism of his daughters. Perhaps it was a task Celiast accomplished on her own during a visit to see her sisters. In 1840, Celiast returned to the Oregon Coast, where she and her family were welcomed by a special Clatsop ceremony. The Smith family settled on a land claim on the Clatsop Plains, near what is now Seaside, Oregon. Celiast and Solomon had seven children together.

Yiamist, who also went by the name "Marguerite," and Joseph Gervais continued to farm in the 1830s. Yiamist gave birth to her final child in 1838, the youngest of five, a daughter named Adelaïde. After the dedication of the St. Paul Church in early 1839, the Gervais family appears in several records there in a series of baptisms and marriages. On January 22 of that year, Yiamist and Joseph would have attended the baptism of Joseph's 19-year-old daughter Julie from a previous marriage to a Chinook woman, and Julie's wedding the next day. On January 28, Yiamist and two of her children, 7-year-old Françoise and 9-month-old Adelaïde, were baptized there. Later that same day, Joseph and Yiamist were married. On February 3rd, the same day that Celiast had two of her children baptized there, Yiamist's 4-year-old son Edouard was baptized.

Then, in early 1840, Yiamist contracted diphtheria, an infection of the nose and throat that was often fatal before the advent of modern medical treatments. On January 27, 1840, Yiamist died and was buried at St. Paul, Oregon. Likely needing help to care for his young children, Joseph Gervais remarried, to a Chinook woman named Marie Angelique, on July 6.

The 1840s

In the 1840s, the Labonté family continued to live and farm in Oregon. By 1842, their farm encompassed 200 acres. Kilakotah and Louis had another daughter, Caroline, born in 1840.

In 1843, at the age of 24, their eldest son Louis married 18-year-old Caroline Montour. Caroline Montour was the daughter of a fur trader and a Métis woman, and the sister of Thomas McKay's wife Isabelle. This union made Thomas McKay, already a close family friend, young Louis' brother-in-law.

In 1843, settlers in the Oregon Territory decided to vote on whether or not to form a provisional government to oversee affairs in the Northwest. A vote in favor of the provisional government was a vote in favor of the growing American interests in the region. A vote against was a show of support for the status quo and the continuation of Hudson's Bay Company influence. Celiast's husband Solomon, an American who had been born in New Hampshire and studied medicine in Vermont, voted for the formation of the provisional government, as did Joseph Gervais. Louis Labonté, a French Canadian who sold wheat from his farm to the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver, voted against the provisional government. This historic vote, which took place at Champoeg, Oregon, resulted in the formation of the provisional government and the beginnings of formal American control in the region.

In 1848, Kilakotah's son-in-law, Joseph McLoughlin, died. He and Victoire had no recorded children. Victoire may have spent some time with her mother during this period. In the 1850 census, Victoire was living on a neighboring farm to her parents' and was the head of her household. That year, three of the Labontés' children were living with them: Louis, whose wife Caroline had died, 16-year-old Julienne, and 10-year-old Caroline.

Later Life

The Labontés continued to live on their farm in Dayton, Oregon. Kilakotah saw her children marry and have children of their own. Louis Labonté died in 1860. On the 1870 census, Kilakotah was living with her son, Louis, his second wife, and his many children.

Meanwhile, Celiast and Solomon Smith continued to live in northwestern Oregon, operating a store along the Skipanon River and a saw-mill on the Lewis and Clark River. Solomon and Celiast continued their interest in education and helped to start a subscription school in the 1840s. Solomon also served as a county commissioner and was elected to the Oregon State Senate. Celiast outlived her sister; she died in 1891 and is buried alongside her husband in Warrenton, Oregon.

Kilakotah died on July 18, 1873, and is buried at the St. Paul Catholic Cemetery in St. Paul, Oregon.

Kilakotah, Celiast, and Yiamist were three Indigenous women who navigated monumental changes in the Northwest, and did it together. They came together to celebrate marriages and baptisms, and maintained close family ties as they started their families, engaged in family businesses, and moved around the Pacific Northwest. Their stories are a powerful illustration of the interconnectedness of the residents of the Willamette Valley and Fort Vancouver.

Tracing Her Steps

Visit Lewis and Clark National Historical Park to see and learn more about the place where Kilakotah and her sisters grew up. There, you can also visit a reconstruction of Fort Clatsop.

Visit Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area to see the area where Fort Colvile once stood.

Visit Fort Vancouver National Historic Site to see where Louis Labonté and Kilakotah briefly lived, where Celiast lived with her first husband, and where the younger Louis Labonté attended school.

Visit the Willamette Heritage Center in Salem, Oregon, to learn more about the experiences of early settlers in Oregon.

Visit the Champoeg Heritage Area, managed by Oregon State Parks, to learn more about farming in the Willamette Valley and the historic vote for the provisional government.

Bibliography

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Year: 1850; Census Place: Yamhill, Oregon Territory; Roll: 742; Page: 168a.

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