Men see through a glass darkly and a wiser, higher power than man may have guided the old explorer in safety over the dangerous bar, into the great river he discovered and named. He was struck by the grandeur and magnificence of the river as well as by the beauty of the country. He at once christened it "The Columbia," the name of his good ship which had already carried the American flag around the globe. He sailed several miles up the river, landed and took possession in the name of the United States.
It is a singular coincidence that both Spain and England had vessels just at this time on this coast, hunting for the same river, and so near together as to be in hailing distance of each other. Captain Gray only a few days before had met Captain Vancouver, the Englishman, and had spoken to him. Captain Vancouver had sailed over the very ground passed over soon after by Gray, but failed to find the river. He had noted, too, a change in the color of the waters, but it did not sufficiently impress him to cause an investigation.
After Captain Gray had finished his exploration and gone to sea, he again fell in with Vancouver and reported the result of his discoveries. Vancouver immediately turned about, found the mouth of the river, sailed up the Columbia to the rapids and up the Willamette to near the falls.
In the conference between the English and Americans in 1827, which resulted in the renewal of the treaty of 1818, while the British commissioners acknowledged that Gray was first to discover and enter the Columbia river, yet they demanded that "he should equally share the honor with Captain Vancouver." They claimed that while Gray discovered the mouth of the river, he only sailed up it a few miles, while "Captain Vancouver made a full and complete discovery." One of the authorities stated concisely that, "Captain Gray's claim is limited to the mouth of the river."
This limit was in plain violation of the rules regulating all such events, and no country knew it better than England. Besides, it was Captain Gray's discovery, told to the English commander Vancouver, which made him turn back on his course to rediscover the same river. The claim that the English made, that "Captain Gray made but a single step in the progress of discovery," in the light of these facts, marks their claims as remarkably weak. The right of discovery was then the first claim made by the United States upon Oregon.
The second was by the Louisiana purchase from France in 1803. This was the same territory ceded from France to Spain in 1762 and returned to France in 1800, and sold to the United States for $15,000,000 in 1803, "with all its rights and appurtenances, as fully and in the same manner as they were acquired by the French Republic."
There has always been a dispute as to how far into the region of the northwest this claim of the French extended. In the sale no parallels were given; but it was claimed that their rights reached to the Pacific Ocean. Dr. Barrows says, "If, however, the claims of France failed to reach the Pacific on the parallel of 49 degrees, it must have been because they encountered the old claims of Spain, that preceded the Nootka treaty and were tacitly conceded by England. Between the French claims and the Spanish claims there was left no territory for England to base a claim on. If the United States did not acquire through to the Pacific in the Louisiana purchase, it was because Spain was owner of the territory prior to the first, second and third transfers. It is difficult to perceive standing ground for the English in either of the claims mentioned.
The claim of England that the Nootka treaty of 1790 abrogated the rights of Spain to the territory of Oregon, which she then held, is untenable, from the fact that no right of sovereignty or jurisdiction was conveyed by that treaty. Whatever right Spain had prior to that treaty was not disturbed, and all legal rights vested in Spain were still in force when she ceded the territory to France in 1800, and also when France ceded the same to the United States in 1803.
The third claim of the United States was by the commission sent out by Jefferson in 1803, when Lewis and Clarke and their fellow voyagers struck the headwaters of the Columbia and followed it to its mouth and up its tributary rivers.
The fourth was the actual settlement of the Astor Fur Company at Astoria in 1811. True it was a private enterprise, but was given the sanction of the United States and a U. S. naval officer was allowed to command the leading vessel in Astor's enterprise, thus placing the seal of nationality upon it. True the town was captured and the effects confiscated in 1812 by the British squadron of the Pacific, commanded by Captain Hillyar, but the fact of actual settlement by Americans at Astoria, even for a short time, had its value in the later argument. In the treaty of Ghent with England in 1814, Astoria, with all its rights, was ordered to be restored to its original owners, but even this was not consummated until 1846.