François "Francis" Xavier Matthieu was a French Canadian pioneer settler of the Oregon Country. He was educated in American values by a radical schoolteacher. Matthieu became involved in the 1837–1838 armed rebellion against British rule in Canada, for which he was forced to flee his native Quebec for safety in the United States, where he worked as a carpenter and a fur trader.

The Champoeg Meetings were the first attempts at formal governance by European-American and French Canadian pioneers in the Oregon Country on the Pacific Northwest coast of North America. Between 1841 and 1843, a series of public councils was held at Champoeg, a settlement on the French Prairie of the Willamette River valley in present-day Marion County, Oregon, and at surrounding settlements. The meetings were organized by newly arrived settlers as well as Protestant missionaries from the Methodist Mission and Catholic Jesuit priests from Canada.