“Shall we kill—is it good we kill—these Bostonais who come to take our lands?” the excited natives asked McLoughlin, the Hudson’s Bay man, at Fort Vancouver. To Pacific Coast Indians, all Americans were Boston men, so named from the first ship seen on the coast. “Shall we kill these Boston men who make bad talk against the King George men?”
“Kill? Who said the word?” thundered McLoughlin, thinking, no doubt, to what lengths such a game on the part of the fur trader led in Red River; and it is said he knocked the Indian miscreant down.
“The people have no boats. They are without food or clothing,” messengers reported at the Company fort.
The weather had turned damp and cold. Autumn rains were slashing down slantwise. Again McLoughlin had to choose between his Company and his conscience. Had he but restrained his hand—done nothing—disease and exposure would have done more than enough to the incoming colonists; but he did not hesitate one moment, not though the colonists were cursing him for a Hudson’s Bay oppressor and the Company threatening to dismiss him for his friendship with the Americans. Instantly, he sent his traders upstream with rafts and boats and clothing and provisions for the belated people.
“Pay me back when you can,” was the only bond he laid on the needy people; and a good many paid him back by cursing him for “an aristocrat.” Rain was drenching down as the boats came swirling opposite Vancouver Fort. On the wharf stood the Chief Factor, long hair, white as snow, blowing wet in the wind, with hand of welcome and cheer extended for every comer. One woman had actually given birth to a child as the rafts came down the Columbia. For days, the Company’s fort was like a fair—five hundred people at a time housed under Vancouver’s roofs or camped in the courtyard till every colonist had erected, and taken his family to, his own cabins.
Among so many heterogeneous elements as the colonists were some outlaws, and these within a few months were threatening to “burn Fort Vancouver about the old aristocrat’s ears.” The colonists had organized a provisional government of their own—which is a story by itself; and they begged McLoughlin to subscribe to it that they might protect Fort Vancouver from the lawless spirits.
“You must positively protect your rights here and at once or you will loose the country,” McLoughlin had written to the Governing Board of London. No answer had come. The threats against Fort Vancouver became bolder. The Indian conspiracy, that shortly deluged the land in blood, was throwing off all concealment. McLoughlin built more bastions and strengthened his pickets. Still no answer came to his appeal for protection by the English Government. Colonists, who loved McLoughlin as “the father of Oregon,” begged him to subscribe to the provisional government. Ogden advised it. Ermatinger was ready to become an American citizen. Douglas was absent in the North. Fearful of Indian war now threatening and dreading still more an international war over the possession of Oregon, McLoughlin, after long struggles between Company and conscience, after prayers for hours on his knees for God’s guidance in his choice—subscribed to the provisional government in August, 1844.
Six months too late came the protection for which he had been asking all these years—the British Pacific Squadron. Perhaps it was as well that the war vessels did come too late, for Captain Gordon, commander of the fleet and brother to Aberdeen, then Cabinet Minister of England, was a pompous, fire-eating, blustering fellow, utterly incapable of steering a peaceful course through such troublous times. With Gordon boasting how his marines could “drive the Yankees over the mountains,” and outlaws among the colonists keen for the loot of a raid on Fort Vancouver—friction might have fanned to war before England or the United States could intervene.
The main fleet lay off Puget Sound. The ship Modiste, with five hundred marines, anchored in the Columbia off Vancouver and patrolled the river for eighteen months, men drilling and camping on the esplanade in front of the fur post.