Old Missoula

“Old Man” Chabot – spending his last days in Missoula’s Rattlesnake Poor House

Below are two separate Missoulian articles about an old gentleman who lived in Missoula about 100 years ago. They were written a few years apart. Mr. Chabot may have been close to 100 years old at that time, but nobody could say for sure. He had seen a good part of the West. While they interviewed him for these articles they were fascinated with his contented philosophy and sought to unlock his past while recording some of his recollections. He seemed a happy person which was astounding given his circumstances. Hopefully, he was well taken care of in Missoula’s Poor House.

Sad Are His Sunset Days

He sits in the long, warm upper room in the county poorhouse and plays solitaire. “Old Man” Chabot, his pauper pals call him; G. B. Chabot is the manner in which he is registered in the county auditor’s books. Eighty-five years of age is he; if he lives until the 24^th day of next June, he’ll be 86. From morning until night he plays solitaire, leaning far over the table, the better to see the cards, chuckling to himself if they run right, scowling with childish petulance if they do not. Then, when cards pall, “Old Man” Chabot sits with folded hands and goes back into the long ago, harks back to the stirring days of his youth, sees the snow of Alaska, feels the bite of the wind off Hudson bay, believes that he can sense again the dancing bump of the birch canoe under him as the paddles grip the water. It is then that he starts from abstraction, that his eyes lose the film of age, that they glow from under the bushy white of eyebrows, lending life to the great head of white with its heavy fringe of white beard. It is then that 50, 60, 70 years slip off and the face of the poor, old fellow is that of the man who can do and dare, suffer and enjoy, hit the trail or run a canoe through the rapids. “Old Man” Chabot starts up – yes, and settles back again in his chair, for what is there but solitaire when one is 85 and alone in a poorhouse?

He is a good old man, not a one of the vices of civilization has ever held him in its grip, yet he is 85 and a pauper. He is a true philosopher, is “Old Man” Chabot, for he blames neither fate nor the government. If there is a fault of anything, he thinks, it lies in the fact that he is 85. Perhaps, he differs little from the men who surround him, from the others who live in the long, warm room that looks down the Rattlesnake valley to where Missoula is just around the corner. It may be that he is of the same clay as the others out there, but there seems a subtle difference. The little old Frenchman is so polite, so naïve, so helpless, so anxious to let you know that he is contented, if not satisfied, so full of the idea of life, after all, is good, that one cannot but believe him different.

To spend the evening of life in solitaire is not the sort of finish that one would have picked for the end of “Old Man” Chabot, had one known him six or seven decades ago. Then he was a voyageur for the Hudson Bay company and the waterways and trails of the northwest were to him as the streets of a city. That’s the way he traveled from Montreal into our northwest, to penetrate ‘way into the frozen north and to come to Montana to play solitaire in a poorhouse.

To us the life of Chabot seems exciting, thrilling, a succession of adventures. To him it is commonplace, for it was the life of his people.

By 1865 his voyageur days were practically over; he remembers them, but not clearly, to talk of them, but in a general way. Before that time he had known John Nome, the sturdy swimmer whom ice and icy water could not kill, who swam to give a great camp his name. Before that time he had known men who had helped pick up the pitiful evidence of the fate of Sir John Franklin’s expedition into the dead-cold fastnesses of the Artic[1]. By that time he had come to Montana, just to work and to start the train of circumstances that were to lead to solitaire in a poor house.

“Old Man” Chabot knows Bear Gulch and he knows the Walla Walla trail and once formerly traveled into the Kootenai country. In ’68 he freighted from Frenchtown to Salt Lake City and back, for T. G. Demers of Frenchtown, so he knows the life of the open that the freighter leads, with long days under the hot sun and short nights that are cold.

Then, he knows the old-time reservation life, for he went onto the Flathead country when Major Ronan commanded at the agency. And there he remained, growing a bit older, a bit less straight, a bit whiter, a bit less strong – for he is not yet weak – each time the snow flew. Then, there came an accident. It was nothing severe, just a wounded foot, hurt in jumping from a wagon.

“It got bad,” says Chabot, “and I came here to get cured.”

Yes, and to play solitaire and to wait for the “cure” that is final and complete.

French T. Ferguson.

 

The above article (with photo) appeared in The Sunday Missoulian on December 17, 1911.

https://www.newspapers.com/image/349018064/?terms=%22chabot%22

 

Chabot, Seeker of Romance, Spends Hundredth Birthday in Poorhouse, Blind, Alone

Wrapped in a heavy overcoat, with canvas gloves on his hands and his pipe draped from his well-nigh toothless mouth, John B. Chabot sits all day at the Missoula county farm where he has lived for the past 11 years.

As nearly as he can tell definitely, he will pass his hundredth birthday some time this month. He recalls that his mother used to tell him, long years ago when they lived in Montreal, that he was born in July, 1817. And that is only a memory.

He speaks only in French, and his voice is not strong. However, in substance, this is the story he tells of his life:

“I was born in Montreal. My father was Frank Chabot, who came to America with his wife from Paris along with early French settlers. My mother had studied much in Parisian convents, and from her lips I had my education. Of course, she spoke only in French. She taught me the things that I understand are given in the common grade schools of today.

Had Taste for Roving.

“I early developed a roving disposition. Life in the little French town of Montreal did not appeal to me at all, and at the age of 16 I left home to see the western world. I had learned something in blacksmithing and I was good and strong, so that I had little trouble in making my way.

“It wasn’t long before I became acquainted with some men who worked for the Hudson Bay company. With them, I went far into the interior of Canada, where I lived about a year.

To Nome With Fishermen.

“Again, however, the desire to go on came over me, and I left for the western coast. I met the crews of some fishing boats there about to leave for the far north. I joined them, after I had persuaded them to let me go, and we landed in Nome, Alaska. Of course, it was not called Nome then, though the day before I reached there, the man, Nome, for whom the town later was named, died. I went to his funeral a day or two later.

“The following summer I returned from Alaska on one of the fishing boats and came back to Canada. There I wandered about much until I met the sweetheart of my youth. In 1861 we were married.

Left Wife to Roam.

“I remained with her several years when again the wandering spirit came upon me and I went away. From that day I never saw her. I never learned of her death and I don’t know what became of her.

“When I left it was with a party of Hudson Bay traders bound for Montana. Arriving in the northern part of the state with two other men I left the main party and came south to lands of the Blackfeet and Flathead Indians. For many years I lived with the Indians and taught them many things, such as the white man’s method of tilling the soil and the art of blacksmith.

Became Indian Agent.

“I was at an army post some time after my arrival when the captain there, knowing of my friendship among the Indians and my acquaintance with their methods and knowledge of how to handle them, wrote to Washington. As a result I became agent for them. I also worked for the government in other lines.

“About this time I was beginning to get a little old. But in spite of that I did heavy manual labor for 15 years. I came to this farm about 11 years ago and probably I never shall leave.

Pathetic Figure Now.

Old John B. Chabot is a pathetic figure today. None who ever knew him in his stalwart and roving youth would recognize his feeble form now. Beside the natural weakness accompanying great age, he is almost totally blind. Truly might Oliver Wendell Holmes’ lines have been written for him as he is today:

“They say that in his prime,

Ere the pruning knife of Time

Cut him down,

Not a better man was found

By the crier on his round

Through the town.”

He is cheerful, withal, despite his life’s closing chapters. He will tell you what he believes is the reason for his long life on this earth. You have but to ask him and he will say:

“I never drank in my life. But I have smoked since a boy, and smoked a great deal. I have lived an outdoor life, and that is the real reason, I think, for my length of days.”

“And what, Mr. Chabot, are your chief pleasures now?” asked the reporter. Quick as a flash came the answer:

“Hot cakes to eat and good tobacco to smoke!”

And his face wrinkled up into a cheerful smile.

 

The above article appeared in The Daily Missoulian on July 8, 1917.

https://www.newspapers.com/image/349079115/