The Oregon Territory, Its History and Discovery

by Travers Twiss

In the mean time the attention of both Powers was arrested by the publication of a Russian ukase on 16th September 1821, by which an exclusive title was asserted in favour of Russian subjects to the north-west coast of America, as far south as 51° north lat., and all foreign vessels were prohibited from approaching within one hundred miles of the shore, under penalty of confiscation. Great Britain lost no time in protesting against this edict, and Mr. Adams, on the part of the United States, declined to recognise its validity. A correspondence ensued between Mr. Adams and M. de Poletica, the Russian Minister at Washington, which may be referred to in the British and Foreign State Papers for 1821-22. M. de Poletica alleged, as authorising this edict on the part of the Emperor, first discovery, first occupancy, and, in the last place, a peaceable and uncontested possession of more than half a century. Both the other Powers, however, contested the extent to which so perfect a title could be made out by Russia, and separate negotiations were in consequence opened between Russia and the other two Powers for the adjustment of their conflicting claims. The question was additionally embarrassed by a declaration on the part of President Monroe, on December 2, 1823, that the “American continents, by the free and independent condition which they had assumed, were henceforth not to be considered as subjects for colonisation by any European power.” (Greenhow, p. 325.) Against this declaration, both Russia and Great Britain formally protested. A further ground of dissension between Great Britain and the United States resulted from an official paper laid before the House of Representatives in Congress, on February 16, 1824, by General Jessup, the Quartermaster-General, in which it was proposed to establish certain military posts between Council Bluffs on the Missouri, and the Pacific, by which, he adds, “present protection would be afforded to our traders; and at the expiration of the privilege granted to British subjects to trade on the waters of the Columbia, we should be enabled to remove them from our territory, and to secure the whole trade to our citizens.” In the conference which ensued at London on the following July, the British commissioners remarked that such observations “were calculated to put Great Britain especially upon her guard, coming, as they did, at a moment when a friendly negotiation was pending between the two Powers for the adjustment of their relative and conflicting claims to the entire district of the country.” (Greenhow, p. 337.)

Such proceedings on the part of the Executive of the United States were not calculated to facilitate the settlement of the points likely to become subjects of controversy in the approaching negotiations, either at St. Petersburgh or at London. The instructions which were to guide the commissioners of the United States were set forth by Mr. Adams, in a letter to Mr. Rush, the Minister Plenipotentiary at London, of the date of July 22, 1823, which may be referred to in the British and Foreign State Papers, 1825-26, p. 498. In the previous negotiations of 1818, as already observed, Messrs. Gallatin and Rush “did not assert a perfect right” to the country westward of the Stony Mountains, but insisted that their claim was “at least good against Great Britain.” The 49th degree of north latitude had, in pursuance of the Treaty of Utrecht, been fixed indefinitely as the line between the northern British possessions and those of France, including Louisiana, now a part of our territories. There was no reason why, if the two countries extended their claims westward, the same line should not be continued to the Pacific Ocean. So far as discovery gave a claim, ours to the whole country on the waters of the Columbia River was indisputable. Subsequently, however, to these negotiations, His Catholic Majesty had ceded to the United States, by the Treaty of Washington, of February 22, 1819, commonly called the Florida Treaty, “all his rights, claims, and pretensions to any territory” north of the 42d parallel of north latitude; and Mr. Rush opened the negotiations by stating, that “the rights thus acquired from Spain were regarded by the government of the United States as surpassing the rights of all other European Powers on that coast.” Apart, however, from this right, “the United States claimed in their own right, and as their absolute and exclusive sovereignty and dominion, the whole of the country west of the Rocky Mountains, from the 42d to at least as far up as the 51st degree of north latitude.” This claim they rested upon their first discovery of the river Columbia, followed up by an effective settlement at its mouth: a settlement which was reduced by the arms of Britain during the late war, but formally surrendered up to the United States at the return of peace.

Their right by first discovery they deemed peculiarly strong, having been made, not only from the sea by Captain Gray, but also from the interior by Lewis and Clarke, who first discovered its sources, and explored its whole inland course to the Pacific Ocean. It had been ascertained that the Columbia extended, by the River Multnomah, to as low as 42 degrees north; and by Clarke’s River, to a point as high up as 51 degrees, if not beyond that point; and to this entire range of country, contiguous to the original dominion of the United States, and made a part of it by the almost intermingling waters of each, the United States considered their title as established by all the principles that had ever been applied on this subject by the Powers of Europe to settlements in the American hemisphere. “I asserted,” writes Mr. Rush, “that a nation discovering a country, by entering the mouth of its principal river at the sea coast, must necessarily be allowed to claim and hold as great an extent of the interior country as was described by the course of such principal river and its tributary streams; and that the claim to this extent became doubly strong, where, as in the present instance, the same river had also been explored from its very mountain-springs to the sea.

“Such an union of titles, imparting a validity to each other, did not often exist. I remarked, that it was scarcely to be presumed that any European nation would henceforth project any colonial establishment on any part of the north-west coast of America, which as yet had never been used to any other useful purpose than that of trading with the aboriginal inhabitants, or fishing in the neighbouring seas; but that the United States should contemplate, and at one day form, permanent establishments there, was naturally to be expected, as proximate to their own possessions, and falling under their immediate jurisdiction. Speaking of the Powers of Europe, who had ever advanced claims to any part of this coast, I referred to the principles that had been settled by the Nootka Sound Convention of 1790, and remarked, that Spain had now lost all the exclusive colonial rights that were recognised under that convention, first, by the fact of the independence of the South American States and of Mexico, and next, by her express renunciation of all her rights, of whatever kind, above the 42 degree of north latitude, to the United States. Those new States would themselves now possess the rights incident to their condition of political independence, and the claims of the United States above the 42 parallel, as high up as 60°, claims as well in their own right as by their succession to the title of Spain, would henceforth necessarily preclude other nations from forming colonial establishments upon any part of the American continents. I was, therefore, instructed to say, that my government no longer considered any part of those continents as open to future colonisation by any of the Powers of Europe, and that this was a principle upon which I should insist in the course of these negotiations.”

The proposal which Mr. Rush was authorised to make on the part of the United States was, that for the future no settlements should be made by citizens of the United States north of 51°, or by British subjects south of 51°, inasmuch as the Columbia River branched as far north as 51°. Mr. Adams, however, in his instructions, concludes with these words:—“As, however, the line already runs in latitude 49° to the Stony Mountains, should it be earnestly insisted upon by Great Britain, we will consent to carry it in continuance on the same parallel to the sea.”

On the other hand the British plenipotentiaries, on their part, totally declined the proposal, and totally denied the principles under which it had been introduced. “They said that Great Britain considered the whole of the unoccupied parts of America as being open to her future settlements, in like manner as heretofore. They included within these parts, as well that portion of the north-west coast lying between the 42d and 51st degree of latitude, as any other parts. The principle of colonisation on that coast, or elsewhere, on any portion of those continents not yet occupied, Great Britain was not prepared to relinquish. Neither was she prepared to accede to the exclusive claim of the United States. She had not, by her convention with Spain of 1790, or at any other period, conceded to that Power any exclusive rights on that coast, where actual settlements had not been formed. She considered the same principles to be applicable to it now as then. She could not concede to the United States, who held the Spanish title, claims which she had felt herself obliged to resist when advanced by Spain, and on her resistance to which the credit of Great Britain had been thought to depend.

“Nor could Great Britain at all admit, the plenipotentiaries said, the claim of the United States, as founded on their own first discovery. It had been objectionable with her in the negotiation of 1818, and had not been admitted since. Her surrender to the United States of the post at Columbia River after the late war, was in fulfilment of the provisions of the first article of the Treaty of Ghent, without affecting questions of right on either side. Britain did not admit the validity of the discovery by Captain Gray. He had only been on an enterprise of his own, as an individual, and the British government was yet to be informed under what principles or usage, among the nations of Europe, his having first entered or discovered the mouth of the River Columbia, admitting this to have been the fact, was to carry after it such a portion of the interior country as was alleged. Great Britain entered her dissent to such a claim; and least of all did she admit that the circumstance of a merchant vessel of the United States having penetrated the coast of that continent at Columbia River, was to be taken to extend a claim in favour of the United States along the same coast, both above and below that river, over latitudes that had been previously discovered and explored by Great Britain herself, in expeditions fitted out under the authority and with the resources of the nation. This had been done by Captain Cook, to speak of no others, whose voyage was at least prior to that of Captain Gray. On the coast only a few degrees south of the Columbia, Britain had made purchases of territory from the natives before the United States were an independent power; and upon that river itself or upon rivers that flowed into it, west of the Rocky Mountains, her subjects had formed settlements coeval with, if not prior to, the settlement by American citizens at its mouth.”

Such was the tenor of the opening of the negotiations. Mr. Rush, in resuming the subject, stated that it “was unknown to his government that Great Britain had ever even advanced any claim to territory on the north-west coast of America, by the right of occupation, before the Nootka Sound controversy. It was clear, that by the Treaty of Paris, of 1763, her territorial claims to America were bounded westward by the Mississippi. The claim of the United States, under the discovery by Captain Gray, was therefore, at all events, sufficient to over-reach, in point of time, any that Great Britain could allege along that coast, on the ground of prior occupation or settlement. As to any alleged settlements by her subjects on the Columbia, or on rivers falling into it, earlier, or as early, as the one formed by American citizens at Astoria, I knew not of them, and was not prepared to admit the fact. As to the discovery itself of Capt. Gray, it was not for a moment to be drawn into question. It was a fact before the whole world. The very geographers of Great Britain had adopted the name which he had given to this river.”

Having alluded to the fact of Vancouver having found Captain Gray there, Mr. Rush proceeded to meet the objection that the discovery of the Columbia River was not made by a national ship, or under national authority. “The United States,” he said, “could admit of no such distinction; could never surrender, under it or upon any ground, their claim to this discovery. The ship of Captain Gray, whether fitted out by the government of the United States, or not, was a national ship. If she was not so in a technical sense of the word, she was in the full sense of it, applicable to such an occasion. She bore at her stern the flag of the nation, sailed forth under the protection of the nation, and was to be identified with the rights of the nation.”

“The extent of this interior country attaching to this discovery was founded,” Mr. Rush contended, “upon a principle at once reasonable and moderate: reasonable, because, as discovery was not to be limited to the local spot of a first landing-place, there must be a rule both for enlarging and circumscribing its range; and none more proper than that of taking the water-courses which nature has laid down, both as the fair limits of the country, and as indispensable to its use and value; moderate, because the nations of Europe had often, under their rights of discovery, carried their claims much farther. Here I instanced, as sufficient for my purpose, and pertinent to it, the terms in which many of the royal charters and letters patent had been granted, by the Crown of England, to individuals proceeding to the discovery or settlement of new countries on the American continent. Amongst others, those from Elizabeth in 1578, to Sir Humphery Gilbert, and in 1584, to Sir Walter Raleigh: those from James I. to Sir Thomas Yates, in 1606 and 1607, and the Georgia charter of 1732. By the words of the last, a grant is passed to all territories along the sea-coast, from the River Savannah to the most southern stream ‘of another great river, called the Alatamaha, and westward from the heads of the said rivers in a direct line to the South Seas.’ To show that Britain was not the only European nation, who, in her territorial claims on this continent, had had an eye to the rule of assuming water-courses to be the fittest boundaries, I also cited the charter of Louis XIV. to Crozat, by which ‘all the country drained by the waters emptying directly or indirectly into the Mississippi,’ is declared to be comprehended under the name, and within the limits of Louisiana.”