Joe Meek

In the twenty years from 1840 to 1860, the Oregon Territory was transformed from a remote frontier populated chiefly by Native Americans to the newest of the United States.  In his passage from mountain man to political organizer, Joseph Lafayette Meek provides an example of the tremendous change that swept over the West in just one generation.

Joe Meek left Virginia at an early age to become a Rocky Mountain trapper in 1829.  For eleven years he lived the strenuous life of a mountain man.  He became famous for telling exaggerated tales about his exploits, such as a hand-to-paw encounter with a grizzly bear, a narrow escape in a confrontation with a Blackfoot warrior, the death of his first Indian wife in an attack by a Bannock raiding party, and his second marriage to the daughter of a Nez Perc� chief.

By 1840, the decline of the fur

trade forced Meek to come in from the mountains.  Along with another ex-trapper, he led a wagon train up the Oregon Trail to the Willamette Valley, one of the first wagon trains to make the trip.  Meek settled in Oregon with his third Indian wife and their family, becoming a farmer and an activist in the effort to make Oregon part of the United States.  Congress granted Oregon territorial status in 1848.  Joe Meek was made federal marshal of the territory, and he married Henderson Lewelling's daughter.

Meek lived long enough to experience himself one of the unjust consequences of Westward Expansion; his half-Indian children were discriminated against by the white Oregonian society he had helped to create.

About Meek's Sublimity Marionberry Spread
Blackberries growing wild in the Willamette Valley near present-day Salem, Oregon were exploited first by Native Americans.  The Santiam tribes regularly burned meadows and forestland to provide feeding grounds for deer which they hunted for food.  This practice also stimulated the regeneration of berries. 

Early American settlers found endless ways to enjoy blackberries--with cream or wine, in syrups, jams, pies, cobblers, grunts, slumps, pandowdies, wine cordials, teas, fruit waters and flummeries.  In 1926, a grower in Sublimity, Oregon found a thornless blackberry plant which quickly gained popularity as the main blackberry sold in the United States.  Thirty years later, researchers at Oregon State University introduced a sweet, hardy hybrid berry, the marionberry, named after Marion County. 

Our marionberry fruit spread contains Willamette Valley berries, a bit of sugar and little else.  It captures the full flavor of Oregon berries at peak harvest time.   It's also a good source of anti-oxidants such as carotenoids and vitamin C, minerals such as calcium and iron, and dietary fiber.  Net weight 18 oz.