Joseph Gervais
| Joseph Gervais | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1777 Maskinongé, Quebec, British North America, present day Canada |
| Died | July 14, 1861 Oregon |
| Occupation | trapper, hunter, prospector, farmer |
Joseph Gervais (1777 – July 14, 1861) was a pioneer settler and trapper in the Pacific Northwest. He is the namesake for the town of Gervais, Oregon.
Joseph Gervais was born in 1777 in Maskinonge, Quebec, Canada (British North America at the time) along the St. Lawrence River. Jean Baptiste Gervais was likely his younger brother. At the age of 20 Joseph left home and spent time employed as a trapper and along the Arkansas River (in what was part of Louisiana) hunting buffalo to be sold in New Orleans.
Joseph Gervais joined the Pacific Fur Company, a venture owned by John Jacob Astor. Gervais joined the overland expedition headed by Wilson Price Hunt on August 7, 1810, being hired in Michilimackinac. The party arrived at Fort Astoria on February 15, 1812. Later that year Gervais went with a group to the Willamette Valley under the leadership of Donald Mackenzie. They were sent to scout the area and educate the native Kalapuya inhabitants on how to better preserve fur pelts that the trappers were especially interested in acquiring. During this trip he was involved with a fight with a Kalapuya man and on a second trip that fall he became familiar with Étienne Lucier, with both later settling in the area. By October 1813, Gervais had married a Chinookan woman.
During the fall of 1813 the British North West Company (NWC) purchased the assets of the PFC during the War of 1812. This included Fort Astoria, which was renamed to Fort George. During the winter of 1813 to 1814, he stayed at the fort and worked for the NWC. After trapping for both the North West Company and as an independent trapper, he joined the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) in 1824 and was based out of Fort Vancouver. By 1828 he had made a land claim at Chemaway and lived there intermittently until 1831. In January of that year Alexander McKenzie was killed along with several other HBC employees on Hood Canal in modern Washington. Gervais and other HBC employees were sent to retaliate against those in Klallam nation responsible for the killings. That fall he also went to the Umpqua River Valley in Southern Oregon to retrieve the merchandise left when Jedediah Smith and his trapping party were killed by Umpqua natives.
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