SIR GEORGE SIMPSON, GOVERNOR OF HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY, 1820
By the union of the companies both sides avoided proving their rights in the law courts. Most important of all, the Hudson's Bay Company escaped proving its charter valid; for the charter applied only to Hudson Bay and adjacent lands "not occupied by other Christian powers"; but on the union taking place, the British government granted to the new Hudson's Bay Company license of exclusive monopoly to all the Indian territory, meaning (1) Hudson Bay Country, (2) the interior, (3) New Caledonia as well as Oregon. In fact, the union left the fur traders ten times more strongly intrenched than before. By the new arrangement Dr. John McLoughlin was appointed chief factor of the western territories known as Oregon and New Caledonia. When the War of 1812 closed, treaty provided that Oregon should be open to the joint occupancy of English and American traders till the matter of the western boundary could be finally settled. Oregon roughly included all territory between the Columbia and the Spanish fort at San Francisco, namely, Washington, Oregon, Northern California, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, parts of Montana and Wyoming. It was cheaper to send provisions round by sea to the fur posts of New Caledonia, in modern British Columbia, than across the continent by way of the Saskatchewan; so McLoughlin's district also included all the territory far as the Russian possessions in Alaska.
This part of the Hudson's Bay Company's history belongs to the United States rather than Canada, but it is interesting to remember that just as the French fur traders explored the Mississippi far south as the Gulf of Mexico, so English fur traders first explored the western states far south as New Spain. This western field was perhaps the most picturesque of all the Hudson's Bay Company's possessions.
Fort Vancouver, ninety miles inland from the sea on the Columbia, was the capital of this transmontane kingdom, and yearly till 1846 the fur brigades set out from Fort Vancouver two or three hundred strong by pack horse and canoe. Well-known officers became regular leaders of the different brigades. There was Ross, who led the Rocky Mountain Brigade inland across the Divide to the buffalo ranges of Montana. There was Ogden, son of the Chief Justice in Montreal, who led the Southern Brigade up Snake River to Salt Lake and the Nevada desert and Humboldt River and Mt. Shasta, all of which regions except Salt Lake he was first to discover. There was Tom McKay, son of the McKay who had crossed to the Pacific with MacKenzie, who, dressed as a Spanish cavalier, led the pack-horse brigades down the coast past the Rogue River Indians and the Klamath Lakes to San Francisco, where Dr. Glen Rae had opened a fort for the Hudson's Bay Company. Then there was the New Caledonia Brigade, two hundred strong, which set out from Fort Vancouver up the Columbia in canoes to the scream of the bagpipes through the rocky canyons of the river. Close to the boundary, shift was made from canoe to pack horse, and, leaving the Columbia, the brigade struck up the Okanogan Valley to Kamloops, bound for the bridle trail up Fraser River. This brigade, in later days, was under Douglas, who became the knighted governor of British Columbia. Tricked out in gay ribbons, the long file of pack ponies, two hundred with riders, two hundred more with packs, moved slowly along the forest trail with a drone as of bees humming in midsummer. So well did ponies know the way that riders often fell asleep, to be suddenly jarred awake by the horses jamming against a tree, or running under a low branch to brush riders off, or hurdle-jumping over windfall. Each of these brigades has its own story, and each story would fill a book. For instance, Glen Rae at San Francisco has a difficult mission. The company has a plan to take over the debts of Mexico to British capitalists and exchange them for California. Glen Rae is sent to watch matters, but he commits the blunder of furnishing arms to the losing side of a revolution. The debt for the arms remains unpaid. Glen Rae suicides, and the company withdraws from California.
JOHN MCLOUGHLIN
Presently come American settlers and missionaries over the mountains. The American government delays settling that treaty of joint occupancy, for the more American settlers that come, the stronger will be the American claim to the territory. McLoughlin helps the settlers who would have starved without his aid, and McLoughlin receives such sharp censure from his company for this that he resigns. When the American settlers set up a provisional government, the foolish cry is raised, "54, 40 or fight," which means the Americans claim all the way up to Alaska, and for this there is no warrant either through their own occupation or discovery. The boundary is compromised by the Treaty of Oregon in 1846 at the 49th parallel.
When settlers come, fur-bearing animals leave. Long ago the Hudson's Bay Company had foreseen the end and moved the capital of its Pacific Empire up to Victoria. A string of fur posts extends up Fraser River to New Caledonia.