author
Gabriel Franchère
1786–1863
A French Canadian fur trader and memoirist, this early witness to the Pacific Northwest left one of the most vivid firsthand accounts of the founding of Astoria and the region's fur trade. His writing brings the dangers, ambitions, and daily life of the early nineteenth-century frontier close at hand.
2 Audiobooks
Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific
by Gabriel Franchère
Brackenridge's Journal of a voyage up the river Missouri, 1811; Franchère's Voyage to Northwest Coast, 1811-1814
by H. M. (Henry Marie) Brackenridge, Gabriel Franchère
About the author
Born in Montreal on November 3, 1786, he was trained for commerce and grew up speaking both French and English. In 1810, he joined John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company and sailed west, becoming part of the effort to build a trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River.
That journey led him to Fort Astoria, where he experienced the uncertainties of the fur trade, the War of 1812 era, and the complex world of the Pacific Northwest firsthand. He later returned east and built a successful business career, but he is especially remembered for the memoir he wrote about those years.
His Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America became an important historical source because it records the people, places, and events surrounding the first American settlement on the Pacific coast from the perspective of someone who was there. He died in St. Paul, Minnesota, on April 12, 1863.