cartridges and transporting arms to the scene of the fighting. The group's armed struggle was regarded as treasonous by the British government, who executed captured participants by hanging. Matthieu's participation was discovered and the youth was forced to flee Canada for refuge in the United States, crossing the border there by means of a forged passport. Upon arrival in the United States, Matthieu worked for a time as a carpenter in Albany, New York.<ref name=OPA>"Francis Xavier Matthieu," Transactions of the Forty-Second Annual Reunion of the Oregon Pioneer Association, Portland, June 25, 1914; pg. 96.</ref> He moved to Chicago in 1839 and then to St. Louis. It was in the latter city that Matthieu met Jean Pierre Chouteau, a representative of the American Fur Company. Chouteau hired Matthieu as a frontier clerk in charge of trappers and traders working among Native American tribes in the Midwest. Matthieu subsequently spent three years in the fur trade on the Platte River and its tributaries. He would ultimately leave for Oregon as a result of disaffection with the company's policy of supplying alcohol to the Native American population — sales which would sometimes lead to catastrophic drunken situations from which multiple murders would result. Champoeg participant Matthieu came to the Oregon Country with the Elijah White party September 25, 1842, spending his first winter with fellow pioneer Étienne Lucier and discussing politics and government. In Oregon he once again returned to practice the carpenter's trade. On May 2, 1843, a meeting of the settlers in the region was held on French Prairie at Champoeg, and a decision was to be made as to whether the pioneers would form a government to rule over themselves. Some 102 people were present — a majority of the European population of the Oregon Territory at that time. These were initially evenly divided, 51-51, over the question. As tension over the standoff mounted, Matthieu was one of two individuals to break ranks with backers of British rule, voting instead for formation of an independent Provisional Government of Oregon. Matthieu's vote therefore proved decisive, and he would be celebrated in his twilight years as the man "whose vote saved Oregon" for the United States. This melodramatic crossing over of two voters, recalled for decades in popular lore, was more akin to creation myth than political reality. In actuality, the boundaries of American and British control in the Pacific Northwest were