Pioneers of the Pacific Coast / A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters

by Agnes C. Laut

The Treaty of Ghent which closed the War of 1812 made no mention of the boundaries of Oregon, but it provided that any territory captured by either nation in the course of the war should be restored to the original owner. The question then arose: did this clause in the treaty apply to Astoria? Was the taking over of the fur-post by the British company in reality an act of war? The United States said Yes; Great Britain said No; and both nations claimed sovereignty over Oregon. In 1818 a provisional agreement was reached, under which either nation might trade and establish settlements in the disputed territory. But it was now utterly impossible for Astor to prosecute the fur trade on the Pacific. The 'Bostonnais' had lost prestige with the Indians when the Tonquin sank off Clayoquot, and the more experienced British and Canadian traders were in control of the field. At this time the Hudson's Bay Company and the Nor'westers were waging the trade war that terminated in their union in 1820-1821; and when the united companies came to assign officers to the different districts, John M'Loughlin, who had been a partner in the North-West Company, was sent overland to rule Oregon.

John M'Loughlin.
Photographed by Savannah from an original painting.

What did Oregon comprise? At that time no man knew; but within ten years after his arrival in 1824 M'Loughlin had sent out hunting brigades, consisting of two or three hundred horsemen, in all directions: east, under Alexander Ross, as far as Montana and Idaho; south, under Peter Skene Ogden, as far as Utah and Nevada and California; along the coast south as far as Monterey, under Tom Mackay, whose father had been murdered on the Tonquin and whose widowed mother had married M'Loughlin; north, through New Caledonia, under James Douglas—'Black Douglas' they called the dignified, swarthy young Scotsman who later held supreme rule on the North Pacific as Sir James Douglas, the first governor of British Columbia. If one were to take a map of M'Loughlin's transmontane empire and lay it across the face of a map of Europe, it would cover the continent from St Petersburg to Madrid.

The ruler of this vast domain was one of the noblest men in the annals of the fur trade. John M'Loughlin was a Canadian, born at Rivière du Loup, and he had studied medicine in Edinburgh. The Indians called him 'White Eagle,' from his long, snow-white hair and aquiline features. When M'Loughlin reached Oregon—by canoe two thousand miles to the Rockies, by pack-horse and canoe another seven hundred miles south to the Columbia—two of the first things he saw were that Astoria, or Fort George, was too near the rum of trading schooners for the well-being of the Indians, and that it would be quite possible to raise food for his men on the spot, instead of transporting it over two watersheds and across the width of a continent. He at once moved the headquarters of the company from Astoria to a point on the north bank of the Columbia near the Willamette, where he erected Fort Vancouver. Then he sent his men overland to the Spaniards of Lower California to purchase seed-wheat and stock to begin farming in Oregon in order to provision the company's posts and brigades. It was about the time that his wheat-fields and orchards began to yield that some passing ocean traveller asked him: 'Do you think this country will ever be settled?' 'Sir,' answered M'Loughlin, emphasizing his words by thumping his gold-headed cane on the floor, 'wherever wheat grows, men will go, and colonies will grow.' Afterwards, when he had to choose between loyalty to his company and saving the lives of thousands of American settlers who had come over the mountains destitute, these words of his were quoted against him. He had, according to the directors of the company, favoured settlement rather than the fur trade.

Fort Vancouver.
From a print in the John Ross Robertson Collection, Toronto Public Library.

Meanwhile, M'Loughlin ruled in a sort of rude baronial splendour on the banks of the Columbia. The 'Big House,' as the Indians always called the governor's mansion, stood in the centre of a spacious courtyard surrounded by palisades twenty feet high, with huge brass padlocks on the entrance-gates. Directly in front of the house two cannon were stationed, and piled up behind them ready for instant use were two pyramids of balls. Only officers of some rank dined in the Hall; and if visitors were present from coastal ships that ascended the river, Highland kilties stood behind the governor's chair playing the bagpipes. Towards autumn the southern and eastern brigades set out on their annual hunt in California, Nevada, Montana, and Idaho. Towards spring, when the upper rivers had cleared of ice, the northern brigades set out for the interior of New Caledonia. Nothing more picturesque was ever seen in the fur trade than these Oregon brigades. French-Canadian hunters with their Indian wives would be gathered to the number of two hundred. Indian ponies fattened during the summer on the deep pasturage of the Willamette or the plains of Walla Walla would be brought in to the fort and furbished forth in gayest of trappings. Provisions would then be packed on their backs. An eager crowd of wives and sweethearts and children would dash out for a last good-bye. The governor would personally shake hands with every departing hunter. Then to bugle-call the riders mounted their restive ponies, and the captain—Tom Mackay or Ogden or Ross—would lead the winding cavalcade into the defiles of mountain and forest, whence perhaps they would not emerge for a year and a half. Though the brigades numbered as many as two hundred men, they had to depend for food on the rifles of the hunters, except for flour and tobacco and bacon supplied at the fort. Once the brigade passed out of sight of the fort, the hunters usually dashed ahead to anticipate the stampeding of game by the long, noisy, slow-moving line. Next to the hunters would come the old bell-mare, her bell tinkling through the lonely silences. Far in the rear came the squaws and trappers. Going south, the aim was to reach the traverse of the deserts during winter, so that snow would be available for water. Going east, the aim was to cross the mountain passes before snow-fall. Going north, the canoes must ascend the upper rivers before ice formed. But times without number trappers and hunters were caught in the desert without snow for water; or were blocked in the mountain passes by blizzards; or were wrecked by the ice cutting their canoes on the upper rivers. Innumerable place-names commemorate the presence of humble trapper and hunter coursing the wilderness in the Oregon brigades. For example: Sublette's River, Payette's River, John Day's River, the Des Chutes, and many others. Indeed, many of the place-names commemorate the deaths of lonely hunters in the desert. Crow and Blackfoot and Sioux Indians often raided the brigades when on the home trip loaded with peltry. One can readily believe that rival traders from the Missouri instigated some of these raids. There were years when, of two hundred hunters setting out, only forty or fifty returned; there were years when the Hudson's Bay brigades found snow-bound, storm-bound, starving American hunters, and as a price for food exacted every peltry in the packs; and there were years when rival American traders bribed every man in Ogden's brigade to desert.