The Oregon Territory, Its History and Discovery

by Travers Twiss

This was the first notice of any claim on the part of the United States to territory west of the Rocky Mountains: it may be presumed that the acquisition of the western bank of the Mississippi formed the ostensible basis of her claim, as on that ground the expedition of Lewis and Clarke had been despatched in the preceding year to follow up the Missouri to its source, and thence to trace down to the Pacific Ocean the most direct and practicable water-communication for the purposes of commerce. It may be observed, that the arrangement contemplated by this fifth article was highly favourable to the United States, as their acquired title to Louisiana would not strictly have entitled them to any territory north of the Mississippi. This convention, however was never ratified by the United States, on account of the absence of any provisions to restrain the impressment of British sailors serving on board of American ships. (Schoell, Histoire des Traités de Paix, ch. 40.)

Mr. Greenhow, (p. 281,) in alluding to the negotiations antecedent to this convention, states that Mr. Monroe, on the part of the United States, proposed to Lord Harrowby the 49th parallel of latitude, upon the grounds that this parallel had been adopted and definitively settled, by commissaries appointed agreeably to the tenth article of the treaty concluded at Utrecht in 1713, as the dividing line between the French possessions of Western Canada and Louisiana on the south, and the British territories of Hudson’s Bay on the north; and that this treaty, having been specially confirmed in the Treaty of 1763, by which Canada and the part of Louisiana east of the Mississippi and Iberville were ceded to Great Britain, the remainder of Louisiana continued as before, bounded on the north by the 49th parallel. The same fact was alleged by the commissioners of the United States, in their negotiations with Spain in 1805, respecting the western boundary of Louisiana. (British and Foreign State Papers, 1817-18, p. 322.)

He further goes on to state, that there is every reason to believe, that though commissioners were appointed, in accordance with the treaty, for the purpose of determining the boundaries between the French and British possessions, they never executed their task, and that no line was ever definitely adopted by the two Governments.

This opinion of Mr. Greenhow seems to be fully supported by the proofs and illustrations annexed in his Appendix, but his mode of stating the substance of the tenth article of the Treaty of Utrecht is calculated to mislead his readers into supposing, that the northern boundary of Louisiana was under discussion when that article was signed. On the contrary, the words of the article were as follow:—“But it is agreed on both sides, to determine within a year, by commissaries to be forthwith named by each party, the limits which are to be fixed between the said Bay of Hudson and the places appertaining to the French; which limits both the British and French subjects shall be wholly forbid to pass over, or thereby go to each other by sea or by land. The same commissaries shall also have orders to describe and settle in like manner the boundaries between the other British and French colonies in those parts.”

On this article Mr. Anderson, in his History of Commerce, published in 1801, vol. iii., p. 50, observes, under the events of the year 1713:—“Although the French King yielded to the Queen of Great Britain, to be possessed by her in full right for ever, the Bay and Straits of Hudson, and all parts thereof, and within the same, then possessed by France; yet the leaving the boundaries between Hudson’s Bay and the north parts of Canada, belonging to France, to be determined by commissaries within a year, was, in effect, the same thing as giving up the point altogether, it being well known to all Europe, that France never permits her commissaries to determine matters referred to such, unless it can be done with great advantage to her. Those boundaries therefore have never yet been settled, although both British and French subjects are by that article expressly debarred from passing over the same, or merely to go to each other by sea or land.”

The object of the tenth article of the Treaty of Utrecht was to secure to the Hudson’s Bay Company the restoration of the forts and other possessions of which they had been deprived at various times by French expeditions from Canada, and of which some had been yielded to France by the seventh article of the Treaty of Ryswick. By this latter treaty Louis XIV. had at last recognised William III. as King of Great Britain and Ireland, and William in return had consented that the principle of ubi possidetis should be the basis of the negotiations between the two crowns. By the tenth article, however, of the Treaty of Utrecht, the French King agreed to restore to the Queen (Anne) of Great Britain, “to be possessed in full right for ever, the Bay and Straits of Hudson, together with all lands, seas, sea coasts, rivers and places situate in the said bay and straits, and which belong thereto, no tracts of land or sea being excepted, which are at present possessed by the subjects of France.” The only question therefore for commissaries to settle, were the limits of the Bay and Straits of Hudson, coastwards, on the side of the French province of Canada, as all the country drained by streams entering into the Bay and Straits of Hudson were by the terms of the treaty recognised to be part of the possessions of Great Britain.

If the coast boundary, therefore, was once understood by the parties, the head waters of the streams that empty themselves into the Bay and Straits of Hudson indicate the line which at once satisfied the other conditions of the treaty. Such a line, if commenced at the eastern extremity of the Straits of Hudson, would have swept along, through the sources of the streams flowing into the Lake Mistassinnie and Abbitibis, the Rainy Lake, in 48° 30′, which empties itself by the Rainy River into the Lake of the Woods, the Red Lake, and Lake Travers. This last lake would have been the extreme southern limit, in about 45° 40′, whence the line would have wound upward to the north-west, pursuing a serpentine course, and resting with its extremity upon the Rocky Mountains, at the southernmost source of the Saskatchawan River, in about the 48th parallel of latitude. Such would have been the boundary line between the French possessions and the Hudson’s Bay district; and so we find that, in the limits of Canada, assigned by the Marquis de Vaudreuil himself, when he surrendered the province to Sir J. Amherst, the Red Lake is the apex of the province of Canada, or the point of departure from which, on the one side, the line is drawn to Lake Superior; on the other “follows a serpentine course southward to the river Ouabache, or Wabash, and along it to the junction with the Ohio.” This fact was insisted upon by the British Government in their answer to the ultimatum of France, sent in on the 1st of September, 1761; and the map, which was presented on that occasion by Mr. Stanley, the British minister, embodying those limits, was assented to in the French Memorial of the 9th of September. (Historical Memorial of the Negotiations of France and England from March 26th to September 20th, 1761. Published at Paris, by authority.) By the fourth article, however, of the Treaty of 1763, Canada was ceded in full, with its dependencies, including the Illinois; and the future line of demarcation between the territories of their Britannic and Christian Majesties, on the continent of America, was, by the seventh article, irrevocably fixed to be drawn through the middle of the River Mississippi, from its source to the river Iberville, and thence along the middle of the latter river and the Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain to the sea. Thenceforward the French territory in North America was confined to the western bank of the Mississippi, and this was the Louisiana which was ceded by France to Spain in 1769, by virtue of the treaty secretly concluded in 1762, but not promulgated till 1765. There would have been no mistake as to the boundaries of Louisiana, Canada, and the Hudson’s Bay territories, as long as they were defined to be the aggregate of the valleys watered by the rivers flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the Bay of Hudson respectively. The difficulty in executing the provisions of boundary treaties in America, has arisen chiefly from adopting the data which incorrect maps have furnished, to which there has been nothing in nature corresponding, and from agreeing to certain parallels of latitude, as appearing from those maps to form good natural frontiers, but which have been found upon actual survey to frustrate the intentions of both parties.

The relative positions of the Lake of the Woods, the Red Lake, and the northernmost source of the Mississippi, were evidently not understood by the parties to the 2d article of the Treaty of 1783, when it was proposed to continue a line from the northwestern point of Lake Superior through the Long Lake, and thence to the Lake of the Woods, and due west to the Mississippi. In order to hit off the sources of the Mississippi, which was the undoubted purport of the treaty, the line should have been drawn from the westernmost point of Lake Superior up the river St. Louis, and thence it might have been carried due westward to the source of the Mississippi in 47° 38′. No definite substitute was proposed in the Treaty of 1794, which admitted the uncertain character of the proposed frontier; for even then the country had not been surveyed, and as neither of the conventions of 1803 nor 1806 was ratified by the United States, nor could the respective plenipotentiaries come to any agreement on the subject at the negotiation of the Peace at Ghent, the question remained unsettled, until it was at last arranged by the provisions of the 2d article of the Convention of 1818, that the boundary line agreed upon in 1806 should be the frontier westward as far the Rocky Mountains.

If this view be correct of the boundary line of the Hudson’s Bay territory, as settled by the Treaty of Utrecht, and of the western limit of Canada, as expressed upon its surrender to Great Britain, it will be conclusive against the opinion that the French possessions ever extended indefinitely northwestward along the continent of North America.

It should be kept in mind, that the Treaty of Utrecht was signed in the interval between the grant to Crozat in 1712 and the charter of Law’s Mississippi Company in 1717. By the former grant Louisiana had been definitely limited to the head-waters of the Mississippi and the Missouri, and before the subsequent annexation of the Illinois to the province of Louisiana in 1717, all the territory watered by the streams emptying themselves into the Bay of Hudson had been acknowledged by France to be part of the possessions of the Crown of England. As then the Hudson’s Bay territories were implied by that treaty to extend up to the Red Lake and Lake Travers, this would definitely bar the French title further north; but the declaration of the French authorities themselves, on the surrender of Canada, that its boundary rested upon the Red Lake, will still more decisively negative the assertion that Louisiana, after 1717, extended “to the most northern limit of the French possessions in North America, and thereby west of Canada and New France,” unless it can be shown that the Illinois country extended to the west of the Red Lake, which was not the fact. This question, however, will be more fully discussed in the next chapter.