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This was the chief to whom Lewis and Clark presented Fort Clatsop (see post);
he occupied it for several years, each fall and winter, during the hunting season. The
descendants of Coboway (Comowoll)—see vol. iii, p. 278, ante—have had a large
share in Oregon history. Three of his daughters married white men—the eldest
was the wife, first of W. W. Matthews, one of the clerks of the Astorian expedition
(1811–13); later, she married Louis Labonte, who came overland with Wilson P.
Hunt in 1811–12, and after serving with the North West and Hudson's Bay Companies
settled at French Prairie in the Willamette Valley, where one of their sons was
still living in 1900. See Lyman, "Reminiscences of Louis Labonte", in Oregon
Hist. Soc. Quarterly, 1900. The second daughter, Celiast or Helen, married
Solomon Smith, a teacher at old Fort Vancouver; she lived until 1891, and distinctly
remembered Lewis and Clark. For the reminiscences of her son, see Smith,
"Beginnings of Oregon," in Ore. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, 1899. Mrs. Smith acted
as an envoy to negotiate with the Clatsops after the unfortunate wreck of the
"William and Ann," in 1829, and the supposed complicity of the tribe therein.
The third daughter became the wife of Joseph Gervais, a French fur-trader and early
settler of French Prairie.—Ed.

Among our other difficulties we now experience the want of tobacco; and out of
thirty-seven persons composing our party, there are but seven who do not make use
of it; we use crab-tree bark as a substitute.—Gass (p. 271).