Book Beginning: At the Hearth of the Crossed Races

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YOUR BOOK BEGINNING



MY BOOK BEGINNING

In the summer of 1851, the French traveler Pierre Fournier de Saint Amant visited the Oregon Territory, spending several weeks with French-Indian families living in a corner of the Willamette Valley known as French Prairie.

At the Hearth of the Crossed Races: A French-Indian Community in Nineteenth-Century Oregon, 1812-1859 by Melinda Marie Jette.

Jette takes a new look at the role of French-Canadian fur trappers, the French-Indian families they created, and their indigenous kin in colonizing the Pacific Northwest,  She re-examines the traditional history of the region that puts Anglo-American settlers at the center of the story, focusing on the 47 years from 1812, when the Kalapuyans first had direct contact with Euro-Americans, and 1859, when Oregon became a state.