Spain had long claimed exclusive sovereignty over this region, with the right to forbid the encroachment of other nations, on the ground that it belonged to that region allotted to her by the bull of Pope Alexander VI. England had never recognized Spain's claim to exclusive sovereignty based upon papal authority, but had asserted her right to settle upon any lands included within the limits prescribed by the papal bull, even if discovered by Spain, if, after a reasonable time allowed for settlement had passed, such lands remained unoccupied. This attitude of England's appeared in her policy as early as the reign of Elizabeth; it appears in the Queen's reply to the Spanish ambassador on occasion of his remonstrance against the expedition of Drake, "that she did not understand why either her subjects, or those of any other European prince, should be debarred from traffic in the Indies; that as she did not acknowledge the Spaniards to have any title by donation of the Bishop of Rome, so she knew no right they had to any places other than those they were in actual possession of; for that their having touched only here and there upon a coast, and given names to a few rivers or capes, were such insignificant things as could in no way entitle them to a propriety further than in the parts where they actually settled, and continued to inhabit." This principle, thus early enunciated, of actual settlement as essential to ultimate validity of title, is important to note, not only for its bearing against Spanish pretensions at this time, but because of its ultimate and decisive effect as against England herself in the settlement of the Oregon question. The same principle emerged again in 1770, in the affair of the Falkland Islands, and again still more distinctly ten years later in the Nootka Convention. The point at issue in each of these cases was that Britain claimed the right to make settlement upon a part of the American coast claimed by Spain but remaining unoccupied by her, while Spain denied this right and asserted her exclusive sovereignty over all such places. In order to give effect to this claim of exclusive sovereignty over the Northwest Coast of America, Spain had, within a few years previous to the Nootka Convention, given orders that the coasts of Spanish America should be more frequently navigated and explored, and, in view of the recent encroachment of navigators and traders of other nations in those parts, her "general orders and instructions were, not to permit any settlements to be made by other nations on the continent of Spanish America." It was in carrying out these orders that the Spanish Commandant Martinez, in the summer of 1789, finding two British vessels in Nootka Sound, attempting a settlement there, captured the vessels and broke up the settlement.
In the course of the negotiations that followed on this act of Spain's, the full extent of the Spanish claims appeared. As given by Count Nunyez, Spanish Ambassador at Paris, to M. de Montmorin, Secretary of the Foreign Department of France, June 1, 1790, it was claimed, "that, by treaties, demarkations, taking of possessions, and the most decided acts of sovereignty exercised by the Spaniards in those stations from the reign of Charles II, and authorized by that monarch in 1692, all the coast to the north of Western America, on the side of the South Sea, as far as beyond what is called Prince William's Sound, which is in the sixty-first degree, is acknowledged to belong exclusively to Spain." Not feeling sufficiently strong in herself to enforce this claim, and unable to secure the support of allies, Spain yielded this pretension so far as to make, July 24, 1790, a declaration to Great Britain in which the King of Spain engaged to make full restitution of all British vessels which were captured at Nootka, and to indemnify the parties interested in those vessels for the losses which they should be found to have sustained. "It being understood," the declaration concluded, "that this declaration is not to preclude or prejudice the ulterior discussion of any right which His Majesty may claim to form an exclusive establishment at the port of Nootka." The same day the British Minister at Madrid presented a counter declaration accepting the declaration of the Spanish King as offering "full and entire satisfaction" for the injury complained of, in which counter declaration, however, it was added at the same time "that it is to be understood that neither the said declaration, nor the acceptance thereof in the name of the King, is to preclude or prejudice, in any respect, the rights which His Majesty may claim to any establishment which his subjects may have formed, or should be desirous of forming in the future, at the said Bay of Nootka." The exchange of this declaration and counter declaration in July was followed in October of the same year by the conclusion of the Nootka Convention between Spain and Great Britain. The third article of this convention is: "And in order to strengthen the bonds of friendship, and to preserve in future a perfect harmony and good understanding between the two contracting parties, it is agreed that their respective subjects shall not be disturbed or molested, either in navigating or carrying on their fisheries in the Pacific Ocean, or in the South Seas, or in landing on the coast of those seas, in places not already occupied, for the purpose of carrying on their commerce with the natives of the country, or of making settlements there; the whole subject, nevertheless, to the restrictions and provisions specified in the following articles."
After all the restrictions of the later articles of this treaty are taken into view Britain may be regarded as having maintained her main contention: That she had a right to any establishment which her subjects might have formed, or shall be desirous of forming in future, in any unoccupied places on the islands or the coasts of the Pacific Ocean. The restrictions still left this clear, at least in respect to the Oregon region. In so far as Britain succeeded in maintaining in this convention this claim to the right of settlement, in so far was Spain's claim to absolute sovereignty to this region practically modified and limited. Unless Spain speedily made good her reserved right of sovereignty by actual occupation of the region in question, she must consent henceforth to hold her right of settlement as limited by a similar right now conceded to Britain. It is at this point in history, at the Nootka Convention, that the Oregon Question takes definite form: Whose shall the territory be? Shall it be Spain's? or shall it be Britain's? or shall it be divided between the two?
The story has already been told of the entrance of the United States into the question as a third claimant, through Gray's discovery, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Lewis and Clark expedition. The story of how the United States succeeded to the modified claim of Spain to the Oregon region belongs to the sequel of the Louisiana Purchase. The purchase of Louisiana left the United States with a group of intricate and delicate questions to settle with Spain, and with Spain in no mood for a speedy and amicable settlement. The transfer of Louisiana had not carried with it a clear definition of its boundaries. This was in part true of its boundary on the east, and especially true of its western boundary. Almost immediately on the transfer of the territory negotiations were begun with Spain on questions arising out of the transfer, or intimately connected with it. Two main objects of the negotiations on the part of the United States were, to secure from Spain, by purchase or otherwise, the cession of her remaining possessions east of the Mississippi, and the settlement of the boundary of Louisiana to the west. Any question in respect to the Oregon country seems not at first to have been present to the thought of either party. Negotiations were begun in 1804, and were continued, with intervals of interruption, until February 22, 1819, when, by a convention of that date, the Floridas were ceded by Spain to the United States, and a boundary line west of the Mississippi agreed upon. This western boundary line, after striking latitude 42° near the supposed source of the Arkansas River, was to run west on this parallel to the Pacific Ocean. Article III of this convention, after particularly describing this line, concludes: "The two high contracting parties agree to cede and renounce all their rights, claims, and pretensions to the territories described by said line: That is to say, the United States hereby cede to his Catholic Majesty, and renounce forever all their rights, claims, and pretensions to the territories lying west and south of the above described line; and, in like manner, his Catholic Majesty cedes to the United States all his rights, claims, and pretensions to any territories east and north of the said line; and for himself, his heirs, and successors renounces all claim to the said territories forever." Thus the Florida treaty, though making no mention of the Oregon Territory, incidentally carried with it the final delimitation of that territory on the south, and the transfer to the United States of the Spanish claim to Oregon. By this treaty the earliest claimant to the Oregon Territory ceased longer to be a party to the question of its sovereignty.
The question of sovereignty was not left to Great Britain and the United States alone, on the withdrawal of Spain. More than two decades before, Russia had entered this region with an assertion of her right to make settlement on unoccupied territory, and recently had grown somewhat imperious in the tone of her assertion of that right. This intrusion of Russia followed close upon the Nootka Convention, and was the logical consequence of the principle for which Great Britain had secured recognition in that convention. It will be remembered that Great Britain did not base her right to make, and to have restored to her, the Nootka settlement so much on priority in discovery of the region in which the settlement was made, as on the broader principle of her right to settle in any place by whomsoever discovered, which after a reasonable time she might find unoccupied. This principle could not be valid for England alone, and Russia was not long in discovering its wider validity. After England's previous assertion of this principle, in the affair of the Falkland Islands, Spain had taken alarm, and had sent explorers along the Northwest Coast with the intention of making good her claim to it by the northward extension of her settlements. In like manner Russia now began to extend her claim into new territory by availing herself of this same principle. The grant of Emperor Paul I to the Russian American Company in 1799 gave the company exclusive possession from latitude 55° northward to the Arctic Sea, with the right to extend their settlements south of 55°, if they did not thereby encroach on territories occupied by other powers. In the spring of 1808 the Russian government opened a correspondence with the government of the United States in relation to what Russia was pleased to term the illicit traffic of American traders with the natives inhabiting Russian territories. It appeared in the course of this correspondence that Russia claimed the coast at this time as far south as the Columbia River. The right to make settlements, or at least to establish trading posts, it seems she did not confine to this southern limit, for in 1816, a Russian trading post was established as far south as latitude 38°, in Northern California.
In this later and more aggressive policy of extending her claims southward, Russia is thought to have been influenced by the publication in Paris in 1808 of Humboldt's Political Essay on New Spain, in which such a destiny for Russia had been hinted at. However this may have been, it is certain that the accounts of Humboldt's travels were eagerly read by the Russian Emperor, and an increased boldness and aggressiveness are observable in Russian policy after the publication of this work.
The extreme of Russia's pretensions in the matter of extension of territory was reached in 1810, when the subject of the encroachment of American traders was brought again to the attention of our government. Mr. Adams, American Minister at St. Petersburg, in reply to the Russian Minister, suggested that, since it did not appear how far the Russians stretched their claim southward along the coast, it was desirable that some latitude be fixed as the limit, and that it should be advanced as little southward as might be. The answer of Russia was, that the Russian-American Company claimed the whole coast of America on the Pacific, and the adjacent islands, from Bering's Strait southward toward and beyond the mouth of the Columbia River. With this declaration of Russia's claim negotiations were broken off, and were not resumed until September, 1821, when Emperor Alexander issued a ukase, in which he declared all the Northwest Coast of America north of latitude 51° exclusively Russian, and warned all other nations against intrusion within those limits. The extent of the territory claimed in this imperial ukase was less than that of the territory claimed by Russia in 1810, and in particular the extent of the claim was not so great southward. Several events had occurred since 1810 to limit the extent of Russia's claim, though scarcely to modify the imperiousness of her tone. To this intervening period belong the settlement at Astoria of the Pacific Fur Company in 1811, the exploration of the Upper Columbia the same year by David Thompson, an agent of the Northwest Company, with a view to the extension of the posts of his company far to the westward; the purchase two years later by the Northwest Company of the establishment of the Pacific Fur Company at Astoria, and its transfer a few days later to the British flag with the change of name to Fort George; the surrender of the fort in 1818 in accordance with the terms of the treaty of Ghent; the extension westward of the Hudson's Bay Company into this region, and its union in 1821 with its rival, the Northwest Company; and finally the extension over the settlements of the united companies, by an act of parliament in the same year, of the jurisdiction of the courts of Upper Canada.
These events had so changed the aspect of affairs on the Columbia at the time of the Russian Emperor's decree in 1821 as to leave him no alternative but to resort to the middle line, and drawing a line midway between the Anglo-American settlement at the mouth of the Columbia and the southernmost Russian settlement to the north of that river, to stand for a southern boundary for his possessions at the fifty-first parallel.
This decree, though it withdrew the line of territory claimed thus far northward, was yet offensive in tone and arbitrary in many of the regulations it sought to enforce against the citizens of other nations. Besides, it still encroached upon territory claimed by both Britain and the United States. Both England and America protested, and opened, each in her own behalf, negotiations with Russia which resulted in establishing in 1824 the line of 54° 40´ as the boundary between the territories claimed by Russia and those claimed by America, and in the following year the same line, with modifications to the east, as the boundary between the claims of Russia and those of Britain. These two conventions may be regarded as the final acts in the delimitation of the Oregon Territory.
JOSEPH R. WILSON.