The Oregon Territory, Its History and Discovery

by Travers Twiss

If we adopt the more extensive use of the term Oregon territory, as applied to the entire country intermediate between the dominions of Russia and Mexico respectively, its boundaries will be the Rocky Mountains on the east, the Pacific Ocean on the west, the parallel of 54° 40′ N. L. on the north, and that of 42° N. L. on the south. Its length will thus comprise 12 degrees 40 minutes of latitude, or about 760 geographical miles. Its breadth is not so easily determined, as the Rocky Mountains do not run parallel with the coast, but trend from south-east to north-west. The greatest breadth, however, appears to comprise about 14 degrees of longitude, and the least about 8 degrees; so that we may take 11 degrees, or 660 geographical miles, as the average breadth. The entire superficies would thus amount to 501,600 geographical square miles, equal to 663,366 English miles. If, on the other hand, we adopt the narrower use of the term, and accept the north-western limit which Mr. Greenhow, in his second edition of his History of Oregon and California, has marked out for “the country of the Columbia,” namely, the range of mountains which stretches north-eastward from the eastern extremity of the Straits of Fuca, about 400 miles, to the Rocky Mountains, separating the waters of the Columbia from those of Frazer’s river, it will still include, upon his authority, not less than 400,000 square miles in superficial extent, which is more than double that of France, and nearly half of all the states of the Federal Union. “Its southernmost points” in this limited extent “are in the same latitudes with Boston and with Florence; whilst its northernmost correspond with the northern extremities of Newfoundland, and with the southern shores of the Baltic Sea.”

Such are the geographical limits of the Oregon territory, in its widest and in its narrowest extent. The Indian hunter roamed throughout it, undisturbed by civilised man, till near the conclusion of the last century, when Captain James King, on his return from the expedition which proved so fatal to Captain Cook, made known the high prices which the furs of the sea otter commanded in the markets of China, and thereby attracted the attention of Europeans to it. The enterprise of British merchants was, in consequence of Captain King’s suggestion, directed to the opening of a fur trade between the native hunters along the north-west coast of America, and the Chinese, as early as 1786. The attempt of the Spaniards to suppress this trade by the seizure of the vessels engaged in it, in 1789, led to the dispute between the crowns of Spain and Great Britain, in respect of the claim to exclusive sovereignty asserted by the former power over the port of Nootka and the adjacent latitudes, which was brought to a close by the Convention of the Escurial in 1790.

The European merchants, however, who engaged in this lucrative branch of commerce, confined their visits to stations on the coasts, where the natives brought from the interior the produce of their hunting expeditions; and even in respect of the coast itself, very little accurate information was possessed by Europeans, before Vancouver’s survey. Vancouver, as is well known, was despatched in 1791 by the British government to superintend, on the part of Great Britain, the execution of the Convention of the Escurial, and he was at the same time instructed to survey the coast from 35° to 60°, with a view to ascertain in what parts civilised nations had made settlements, and likewise to determine whether or not any effective water communication, available for commercial purposes, existed in those parts between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

The popular belief in the existence of a channel, termed the Straits of Anian, connecting the waters of the Pacific with those of the Atlantic Ocean, in about the 58th or 60th parallel of latitude, through which Gaspar de Cortereal, a Portuguese navigator, was reported to have sailed in 1500, had caused many voyages to be made along the coast on either side of North America during the 16th and 17th centuries, and the exaggerated accounts of the favourable results of these voyages had promoted the progress of geographical discovery by stimulating fresh expeditions. In the 17th century, a narrative was published by Purchas, in his “Pilgrims,” professing that a Greek pilot, commonly called Juan de Fuca, in the service of the Spaniards, had informed Michael Lock the elder, whilst he was sojourning at Venice in 1596, that he had discovered, in 1592, the outlet of the Straits of Anian, in the Pacific Ocean, between 47° and 48°, and had sailed through it into the North Sea. The attention of subsequent navigators was for a long time directed in vain to the rediscovery of this supposed passage. The Spanish expedition under Heceta, in 1775, and the British under Cook, in 1778, had both equally failed in discovering any corresponding inlet in the north-west coast, doubtless, amongst other reasons, because it had been placed by the author of the tale between the parallels of 47° and 48°, where no strait existed. In 1787, however, the mouth of a strait was descried a little further northward, between 48° and 49°, by Captain Barclay, of the Imperial Eagle, and the entrance was explored in the following year by Captain Meares, in the Felice, who perpetuated the memory of Michael Lock’s Greek pilot, by giving it the name of the Straits of Juan de Fuca. Meares, in his observations on a north-west passage, p. lvi., prefixed to his Voyage, published in 1790, states that the American merchant sloop the Washington, upon the knowledge which he communicated, penetrated the straits of Fuca in the autumn of 1789, “as far as the longitude of 237° east of Greenwich,” (123° west,) and came out into the Pacific through the passage north of Queen Charlotte’s Island. Vancouver’s attention was directed, in consequence of Captain Meares’ report, to the especial examination of this strait, and it was surveyed by him, with the rest of the coast, in a most complete and effectual manner. A Spanish expedition, under Galiano and Valdés, was engaged about the same time upon the same object, so that from this period, i. e., the concluding decade of the last century, the coast of Oregon may be considered to have been sufficiently well known.

The interior, however, of the country, had remained hitherto unexplored, and no white man seems ever to have crossed the Rocky Mountains prior to Alexander Mackenzie, in 1793. Having ascended the Unjigah, or Peace River, from the Athabasca Lake, on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, to one of its sources in 54° 24′, Mackenzie embarked upon a river flowing from the western base of the mountains, called, by the natives, Tacoutche-Tesse. This was generally supposed to be the northernmost branch of the Columbia river, till it was traced, in 1812, to the Gulf of Georgia, where it empties itself in 49° latitude, and was thenceforth named Frazer’s river. Mackenzie, having descended this river for about 250 miles, struck across the country westward, and reached the sea in 52° 20′, at an inlet which had been surveyed a short time before by Vancouver, and had been named by him Cascade Canal. This was the first expedition of civilised men through the country west of the Rocky Mountains. It did not lead to any immediate result in the way of settlement, though it paved the way by contributing, in conjunction with Vancouver’s survey, to confirm the conclusion at which Captain Cook had arrived, that the American continent extended, in an uninterrupted line, north-westward to Behring’s Straits.

The result of Mackenzie’s discoveries was to open a wide field to the westward for the enterprise of British merchants engaged in the fur trade; and thus we find a settlement in this extensive district made, not long after the publication of his voyage, by the agents of the North-west Company. This great association had been growing up since 1784, upon the wreck of the French Canadian fur trade, and gradually absorbed into itself all the minor companies. It did not, however, obtain its complete organisation till 1805, when it soon became a most formidable rival to the Hudson’s Bay Company, which had been chartered as early as 1670, and had all but succeeded in monopolising the entire fur trade of North America, after the transfer of Canada to Great Britain. The Hudson’s Bay Company, with the characteristic security of a chartered company, had confined their posts to the shores of the ample territory which had been granted to them by the charter of Charles II., and left the task of procuring furs to the enterprise of the native hunters. The practice of the hunters was to suspend their chase during the summer months, when the fur is of inferior quality, and the animals rear their young, and to descend by the lakes and rivers of the interior to the established marts of the company, with the produce of the past winter’s campaign. The North-west Company adopted a totally different system. They dispatched their servants into the very recesses of the wilderness, to bargain with the native hunters at their homes. They established wintering partners in the interior of the country, to superintend the intercourse with the various tribes of Indians, and employed at one time not fewer than 2,000 voyageurs or boatmen. The natives being thus no longer called away from their pursuit of the beaver and other animals, by the necessity of resorting as heretofore to the factories of the Hudson’s Bay Company, continued on their hunting grounds during the whole year, and were tempted to kill the cub and full-grown animal alike, and thus to anticipate the supply of future years. As the nearer hunting grounds became exhausted, the North-west Company advanced their stations westwardly into regions previously unexplored, and, in 1806, they pushed forward a post across the Rocky Mountains, through the passage where the Peace River descends through a deep chasm in the chain, and formed a trading establishment on a lake now called Frazer’s Lake, situated in 54° N. L. “This,” according to Mr. Greenhow, “was the first settlement or post of any kind made by British subjects west of the Rocky Mountains.” It may be observed, likewise, that it was the first settlement made on the west of the Rocky Mountains, by civilised men. It is from this period, according to Mr. Harmon, who was a partner in the company, and the superintendent of its trade on the western side of the Rocky Mountains, that the name of New Caledonia had been used to designate the northern portion of the Oregon territory.

Other posts were soon afterwards formed amongst the Flathead and Kootanie tribes on the head waters or main branch of the Columbia; and Mr. David Thomson, the astronomer of the North-west Company, descended with a party to the mouth of the Columbia in 1811. Mr. Thomson’s mission, according to Mr. Greenhow, was expressly intended to anticipate the Pacific Fur Company in the occupation of a post at the mouth of the Columbia. Such, indeed, may have been the ultimate intention, but the survey of the banks of the river, and the establishment of posts along it, was no less the object of it. Mr. Thomson was highly competent to conduct such an expedition, as may be inferred from the fact that he had been employed in 1798 to determine the latitude of the northernmost source of the Mississippi, and had on that occasion shown the impossibility of drawing the boundary line between the United States of America and Canada, due west from the Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi, as had been stipulated in the second article of the treaty of 1783. Mr. Thomson and his followers were, according to Mr. Greenhow, the first white persons who navigated the northern branch of the Columbia, or traversed any part of the country drained by it.

The United States of America had, in the mean time, not remained inattentive to their own future commercial interests in this quarter, as they had despatched from the southern side an exploring party across the Rocky Mountains, almost immediately after their purchase of Louisiana, in 1803. On this occasion, Mr. Jefferson, then President of the United States, commissioned Captains Lewis and Clarke “to explore the River Missouri and its principal branches to their sources, and then to seek and trace to its termination in the Pacific some stream, whether the Columbia, the Oregon, the Colorado, or any other, which might offer the most direct and practicable water communication across the continent for the purposes of commerce.” The party succeeded in passing the Rocky Mountains towards the end of September, 1805, and after following, by the advice of their native guides, the Kooskooskee River, which they reached in the latitude 43° 34′, to its junction with the principal southern tributary of the Great River of the West, they gave the name of Lewis to this tributary. Having in seven days afterwards reached the main stream, they traced it down to the Pacific Ocean, where it was found to empty itself, in latitude 46° 18′. They thus identified the Oregon, or Great River of the West of Carver, with the river to whose outlet Captain Gray had given the name of his vessel, the Columbia, in 1792; and having passed the winter amongst the Clatsop Indians, in an encampment on the south side of the river, not very far from its mouth, which they called Fort Clatsop, they commenced, with the approach of spring, the ascent of the Columbia on their return homeward. After reaching the Kooskooskee, they pursued a course eastward till they arrived at a stream, to which they gave the name of Clarke, as considering it to be the upper part of the main river, which they had previously called Clarke at its confluence with the Lewis. Here they separated, at about the 47th parallel of latitude. Captain Lewis then struck across the country, northwards, to the Rocky Mountains, and crossed them, so as to reach the head waters of the Maria River, which empties itself into the Missouri just below the Falls. Captain Clarke, on the other hand, followed the Clarke River towards its sources, in a southward direction, and then crossed through a gap in the Rocky Mountains, so as to descend the Yellowstone River to the Missouri. Both parties united once more on the banks of the Missouri, and arrived in safety at St. Louis in September, 1806.

The reports of this expedition seem to have first directed the attention of traders in the United States to the hunting grounds of Oregon. The Missouri Fur Company was formed in 1808, and Mr. Henry, one of its agents, established a trading post on a branch of the Lewis River, the great southern arm of the Columbia. This seems to have been the earliest establishment of any kind made by citizens of the United States west of the Rocky Mountains. The hostility, however, of the natives, combined with the difficulty of procuring supplies, obliged Mr. Henry to abandon it in 1810. The Pacific Fur Company was formed about this time at New-York, with the object of monopolising, if possible, the commerce in furs between China and the north-west coast of America. The head of this association was John Jacob Astor, a native of Heidelberg, who had emigrated to the United States, and had there amassed very considerable wealth by extensive speculations in the fur trade. He had already obtained a charter from the Legislature of New-York in 1809, incorporating a company, under the name of the American Fur Company, to compete with the Mackinaw Company of Canada, within the Atlantic States, of which he was himself the real representative, according to his biographer, Mr. Washington Irving, his board of directors being merely a nominal body. In a similar manner, Mr. Astor himself writes to Mr. Adams in 1823, (Letter from J. J. Astor, of New-York, to the Hon. J. Q. Adams, Secretary of State of the United States, amongst the proofs and illustrations in the appendix to Mr. Greenhow’s work,) “You will observe that the name of the Pacific Fur Company is made use of at the commencement of the arrangements for this undertaking. I preferred to have it appear as the business of a company rather than of an individual, and several of the gentlemen engaged, Mr. Hunt, Mr. Crooks, Mr. M’Kay, M’Dougal, Stuart, &c., were in effect to be interested as partners in the undertaking, so far as respected the profit which might arise, but the means were furnished by me, and the property was solely mine, and I sustained the loss.” Mr. Astor engaged, on this understanding, nine partners in his scheme, of whom six were Scotchmen, who had all been in the service of the North-west Company, and three were citizens of the United States. He himself had become naturalised in the United States, but of his Scotch partners the three at least who first joined him seem to have had no intention of laying aside their national character, as, previously to signing, in 1810, the articles of agreement with Mr. Astor, they obtained from Mr. Jackson, the British Minister at Washington, an assurance that “in case of a war between the two nations, they would be respected as British subjects and merchants.”

Mr. Astor, having at last arranged his plans, despatched in September, 1810, four of his partners, with twenty-seven subordinate officers and servants, all British subjects, in the ship Tonquin, commanded by Jonathan Thorne, a lieutenant in the United States navy, to establish a settlement at the mouth of the Columbia river. They arrived at their destination in March, 1811, and erected in a short time a factory or fort on the south side of the river, about ten miles from the mouth, to which the name of Astoria was given. The Tonquin proceeded in June on a trading voyage to the northward, and was destroyed with her crew by the Indians in the Bay of Clyoquot, near the entrance of the Strait of Fuca.