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| Mattawa River (La Petite Rivière) |
2,513 miles
June 29 – Mattawa
is a town of about 2, 000 people at the confluence of the Mattawa and Ottawa
Rivers.
The name means "Meeting of
the Waters" or “Meeting of the Waterways” in Algonquin language. (Ottawa means “trading”.) Native peoples used the rivers as an
important transportation corridor for many centuries. In the early 1600s,
French explorers travelled through the area, and it became a link in the water
route leading from Montreal west to Lake Superior. Canoes travelling west up the Ottawa turned
left at "the Forks" (the mouth of the Mattawa) to enter the
"Petite Rivière" ("Small River", as compared to the
Ottawa), before continuing on to Lake Nipissing.
Another
Mattawa
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| Mattawa, Washington |
I discovered
interesting features of this town, but because this is a virtual trip and I’m
learning about the place from afar, my online explorations revealed another
place that I would not have found if I were actually in Ontario. In my own state of Washington, USA, is another
town of Mattawa. It is also situated
near a great river, the Columbia. I
wondered whether Canadians from Ontario had resettled in Washington and created
this town. I was surprised to find a
very different story.
Mattawa,
Washington, was said to be named with an “Indian” word meaning “Where is it?” This was a very cryptic and incongruous way
to name a new town in the ebullient days of Euro-American settlement. In fact, the town that is now Mattawa was
originally platted & planned in 1909, and it was then called Priest
Rapids. When I learned this, I began to
speculate again about French Catholic Canadians exploring and naming things in
this area. I was wrong again in my
attempts to connect the two Mattawas.
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| Wanapum house by Priest Rapids |
Priest
Rapids was a narrow, fast-flowing stretch of the Columbia River where seven
separate cataracts dropped the river 72 feet. It was an ideal salmon fishing site that
supported a dozen or so Wanapum villages along the west bank of the river.
In 1811 Alexander Ross of the Pacific Fur
Company visited the "strong and rocky rapid", where his group was
greeted by a Wanapum “medicine man” or “priest”. Haquilaugh was an influential leader who
performed religious ceremonies and smoked a peace pipe with Ross. Ross named the rapids for the holy man.
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| Priest Rapids Dam |
In the
1950s, the construction of Priest Rapids Dam submerged Priest Rapids, taking
advantage of the river's drop for hydroelectric power production. Today there
are no rapids at Priest Rapids.
The town
was renamed Mattawa around that time. Now
that I know the story of the place, the name makes sense. Rather than retain the name of rapids that no
longer exist, the town chose a name that refers to the disappearance of the
traditional fishing site. “Where is it?”
Mattawa,
Ontario
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| easy canoe access |
In Mattawa,
Ontario, people still enjoy access to their rivers. Numerous access points provide opportunities
for canoeing or boating on the Ottawa and Mattawa Rivers.
The Ottawa River is a
natural border between Ontario and the hills of Quebec, but the river provides crucial transportation and communication links, and francophone culture is
strong here.
Mattawa
features many large wooden statues depicting local historical figures, such as
the explorer Samuel de Champlain and Big Joe Mufferaw, a regional folk hero. The
statues are placed throughout Mattawa, and in two locations along Highway 17 outside
the town.
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| Big Joe Mufferaw statue |
Big Joe
Mufferaw was a French Canadian folk hero from the Ottawa Valley. Like Paul Bunyan, he made his living chopping
down trees. His name was originally Montferrand, but anglophones who had
trouble with it more often spelled it as Muffero, Muffera, or Muffraw.
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| Jos Montferrand portrait |
In addition to being the subject of many tall
tales of heroic logging exploits, Big Joe Mufferaw is depicted as a defender of
oppressed French Canadian loggers in the days when their bosses were
English-Canadians and their rivals for work were Irish-Canadians. In one story, Big Joe was in a Montreal bar,
where a British army major named Jones was freely insulting French Canadians.
After Big Joe beat the major, he bellowed, "Any more insults for the
Canadians?"
The Mattawa area
contains many kilometers of year-round ATV and snowmobile trails, known as the Voyageur
Multi-Use Trail System.
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| Voyageur Days live music festival |
Every summer,
the Mattawa Voyageur Days Festival is held the last weekend of July. (Even though I feel much delayed in my
journey, it appears that I’ve arrived here too early for this festival.) Mattawa’s Voyageur Days Festival includes
live music concerts behind the town museum, a regional talent night, a lumberjack
competition, and a canoe race.
info:
Wikipedia.com
Phillips,
James W. Washington State Place Names. Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1971.
images:
Google Images
