Rabasca

Mentioned by Finlayson on 24th August, 1849, in connection with nine men who had “decamped with a fine canoe belonging to old Rabasca.” The entry does not indicate whether Rabasca was engaged as a servant at Fort Victoria. Probably Rabasca had come to the fort to deliver a package or letters. It is likely Rabasca performed such duties, as entries, for 13th March, 1851, in the Fort Nisqually Journal identify Rabasca as carrying 38 letters for Fort Vancouver between Fort Nisqually and Cowlitz, and returning on the 16th with a packet. An entry in the Pacific Northwest Quarterly recorded his service with the “Pugets [sic] Sound Company for one year or till the end of Cattle killing in 1851.” His year of service with the Puget’s Sound Company at Fort Nisqually was “in consequences of having received a promise of advances to enable him to purchase a Wife.” In addition to his service at Fort Nisqually in 1850-1851, Rabasca’s presence as a labourer at a farming outpost (Muck Station) in Pierce County is recorded in Edward Huggin’s Journal of Occurrences at Muck Station, 1858-1859.

Sources:

• Farrar, Victor J., “The Nisqually Journal, Continued from Vol. XII, Page 303, [March 1851], [Ms. Page 49],” The Washington Historical Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 1, (January, 1922): 57-66. http://journals.lib.washington.edu/index.php/index/search/titles?searchPage=174 .
• Galbraith, John S. “The British and Americans at Fort Nisqually, 1846-1859,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Volume 41, No. 2, (April, 1950): 109-120. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/ stable/10.2307/40487610?origin=api .
• Huggins, Edward, .Journal of Occurrences at Muck Station, 1858-1859: A Farm of the Puget’s Sound Agricultural Company in Pierce County, Washington Territory. (Tacoma: Tacoma Public Library, 1984).