Joseph Meek

Joseph Lafayette "Joe" Meek (February 9, 1810 – June 20, 1875) was a trapper, law enforcement official, and politician in the Oregon Country and later Oregon Territory of the United States. A pioneer involved in the fur trade before settling in the Tualatin Valley, Meek would play a prominent role at the Champoeg Meetings of 1843 where he was elected as a sheriff. Later he served in the Provisional Legislature of Oregon before being selected as the United States Marshal for the Oregon Territory.

Meek as a young man

Joe Meek was born in Washington County, Virginia, United States, near the Cumberland Gap on February 9, 1810. At the age of 18 he joined William Sublette and the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, and roamed the Rocky Mountains for over a decade as a fur trapper. In about 1829, the nineteen-year-old Meek traveled with a trapping party along the Yellowstone River. A band of Blackfoot scattered the trappers, leaving Meek to travel into what is today Yellowstone National Park. In a later account included in author Frances Fuller Victor's 1870 biography of Meek, The River of the West, he described the region. The whole country beyond was smoking with the vapor from boiling springs, and burning with gasses, issuing from small craters, each of which was emitting a sharp whistling sound. In Idaho in 1838, he married the daughter of Nez Perce chief Kowesota. Her true name is unknown, but Meek called her "Virginia". He had previously been married to a different Nez Perce lady.

By 1840, as it was becoming clear that the fur trade was dying due both to a change in fashion preferences and the overtrapping of beaver, Meek decided to join fellow trappers Caleb Wilkins and Robert Newell in Oregon. On their way there, they met a small group of emigrants at Fort Hall who were also headed to Oregon. The trappers agreed to guide them to the Whitman Mission near Fort Nez Percés. The single wagon that the group brought became the first ever to make it as far west as the mission on the Oregon Trail, although to get it there they ended up leaving the load behind.

In Oregon Country, Meek took to wearing a bright red sash in imitation of the French Canadian trappers employed by the Hudson's Bay Company. As the French trappers enjoyed good relations with most of the Indian tribes in the area, Meek seems to have hoped that the Indians would take him for a Québécois and leave him alone. In 1841, Meek settled in the Tualatin Valley, northwest of Oregon City, and entered into the political life of the area. In the spring of 1841, Meek served as guide in Oregon for the United States Exploring Expedition. In 1843, at meetings in Champoeg, Oregon called to form a provisional government, his was one of the foremost voices on the side of the American settlers. In 1843, when the provisional government was formed, Meek was appointed sheriff, and he was elected to the legislature in 1846 and 1847.

In the late fall of 1847, some Cayuse and Umatilla Indians killed Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa, and 12 others at the Whitman Mission. Among the dead was Meek’s daughter by his first wife, Helen Mar Meek, age 10, who died in captivity. Meek traveled to Washington, D.C. with the news of the killings (known as the Whitman massacre) and the ensuing Cayuse War. Leaving in early January, Meek, George W. Ebbert, and John Owens made the difficult winter trip, arriving in Saint Joseph, Missouri on May 4 and proceeding to Washington by steamboat and rail.

While in Washington, where he met with President James K. Polk (whose wife Sarah Childress Polk, was Meek's cousin), he argued forcefully for making the Oregon Country a federal territory. The following spring, Joseph Lane was appointed Territorial Governor and Meek was made Territorial Federal Marshal. Meek served as Territorial Marshal for five years. His account with the Hudson's Bay Company was often in debt, the mountain man owing the company over $300 in 1849, equivalent to $8,600 in 2016. In 1850 as Marshal, he supervised the execution of five Cayuse Indians found guilty of the Whitman massacre, despite Archbishop François Norbert Blanchet defending the men as innocent. Meek organized the Oregon Volunteers and led them in the Yakima Indian War and was promoted to the rank of major for his service.

On June 20, 1875 Meek died at his home on the land he settled on the Tualatin Plains just north of Hillsboro, Oregon, at the age of 65. His wife survived him by almost 25 years. Virginia Meek died on March 3, 1900. They are buried at the cemetery of the Tualatin Plains Presbyterian Church ("Old Scotch") north of Hillsboro, in Washington County, Oregon. As Meek said "I want to live long enough to see Oregon securely American... so I can say that I was born in Washington County, United States, and died in Washington County, United States."

His older brother Stephen Meek was also a trapper, and became known for his role in the ill-fated Meek Cutoff.