By his Astoria Washington Irving drew the eyes of the world to the now far famed Columbia River and perpetuated the story of the late John Jacob Astor's ill fated enterprise on the Pacific Coast. The name "Astoria" recalls, not only the trading fort which gave the book its title, but the varied adventures by sea and land of those who went forth to plant the Stars and Stripes on the Columbia and to secure for Mr. Astor's company a share of the rich fur trade of the far West.
If Mr. Astor's great enterprise was, through no fault of his, doomed to failure, almost from its beginning, it enabled him to supply, from the correspondence and journals of his co-partners and employees, material with which Washington Irving was able to shed the halo of a romantic early history upon the Columbia and the Northern Pacific Coast. Captain Bonneville's adventures enabled the illustrious author to extend his chronicles to regions further east.
Among the cherished possessions of the present writer is an old volume, presented to his father by the author. It was published in Montreal in 1820. It is written in French by G. Franchere, fils, one of the clerks who sailed in the Tonquin in 1810, on her memorable voyage round Cape Horn, to the Sandwich Islands and the Columbia, where he remained to assist in the founding of Astoria and other trading posts. On the cession of the posts to the Canadian "Northwest Company" he remained a few months in the employ of the latter, and returned over the mountains and by way of the Red River settlement and Lake Superior to Montreal in 1814. His narrative agrees in the main with that of Irving. Indeed, it is probable that it was one of the sources from which the latter obtained his account of the Tonquin's trip and subsequent events on the Columbia. On two points dwelt on by Irving it is, however, silent—the one, the marriage of Macdougall, one of the partners in the Astor company, to the dusky princess, the daughter of King Comcomly—the other, the chief part played by Macdougall in the transfer of Astoria to the British company. It is probable, however, that a marriage, after the Indian custom, may have taken place between these personages, M. Franchere not thinking it worth while to mention the matter, nor even the fact of the young woman's existence. That there was treachery toward Mr. Astor in McDougall's dealings with the North West Company is rather a matter of inference with Irving than a distinct charge. Franchere—who speaks of the bargain with the North West Company as participated in by all present at Astoria at the time—not being a partner, could scarcely know more than appeared on the surface.
The only sentence in English in Franchere's book is contained in a footnote. It is the now historic exclamation of Captain Black of His Majesty's ship Raccoon when he landed at Astoria: "What! Is this the Fort I have heard so much of! Great God! I could batter it down with a four pounder in two hours." Franchere evidently thought his French rendering of these memorable words did not do the gallant captain complete justice, so he re-translated them, and Irving repeats them in all their nautical Anglo-Saxon vigour.
Washington Irving's chronicle of Astoria practically closed with the cession of that post to McTavish, representing the North West Company—with the running up of the British in place of the American flag at the Fort in 1813 and the change of name from Astoria to "Fort George." As the North West Company thus swallowed up the American Company in 1813, so in 1821 the Hudson's Bay Company practically swallowed the North West Company—though the settlement of the irregular warfare, waged for years between these rival British companies, was termed an association or coalition.
The industrious beaver and his less industrious neighbour, the Indian, saw little or no change. It will, however, be remembered by readers of Astoria how disgusted was the worthy one-eyed monarch, King Comcomly, chief of the Chinooks, at the sudden change of flag at Astoria, brought about by his son-in-law, McDougall, whom he finally concluded to be a squaw rather than a warrior. Yet Comcomly lived on and, making a virtue of necessity, cultivated friendship and amity with the British as he had before with the Americans. His poor opinion of his whilom son-in-law may have subsequently been confused by the fact of the latter's leaving the princess, his wife, behind when he left the country—though, as a rule, both the wife and her family in such cases preferred her remaining among her own people to venturing into the haunts of civilization. The divorced princess in question, too, we reserved for higher honours; as we are told by Paul Kane, a Canadian artist and traveller, who visited the country in the forties, that she subsequently became the favourite wife of a powerful chief named Casanov, who could previously to 1829 lead into the field 1000 men—leaving at home, at the same time, ten wives, four children and eighteen slaves. Casanov is described as a man of more than ordinary talent for an Indian, and of great influence with the people whom he governed, in the vicinity of the British fort, Vancouver—Chinooks and Klickitats. He possessed, among other luxuries, a functionary, known as his "Scoocoone" or "evil genius"—a sort of Lord High Executioner—whose duty it was to remove persons obnoxious to his lord and master, by assassination. This functionary had the misfortune to fall in love with one of Casanov's wives, who eloped with him—with the result that, though they at first eluded his search, Casanov at length met and "removed" his errant wife on the Cowlitz river and procured also a like fate for her lover, the whilom executioner himself.
It was the belief of the chiefs that they and their sons were personages so important that their deaths could not occur in a natural way, but were always attributable to the malevolent influence of some one, whom they selected in an unaccountable manner and unhesitatingly sacrificed. One most near and dear to the deceased was as likely to be selected as another. The former wife of McDougall, now favourite wife of Casanov, was thus selected by him, to accompany her own son, who died of consumption, to the great beyond, but she escaped and sought and was accorded protection at Fort Vancouver. Mr. Black, an officer of the Hudson's Bay Company in charge of their Fort on Thompson's River, fell a victim to the same superstitious custom—shot in the back by the nephew of an old chief with whom Black had been on the most friendly terms, at the instigation of the dead chief's widow. Regard for Mr. Black, however, impelled the young man's tribe to ignore the sanction of the custom and hunt down and put him to death.
The company chartered by gay King Charles II—"the company of gentleman adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay," or "the Honourable the Hudson's Bay Company"—as it was and still is styled—was undoubtedly the dominant partner in the new coalition. Newspaper and pamphlet warfare occasionally broke out between partizans or admirers of the former rival corporations during the next half century—an occasional flow of ink of controversy instead of the flow of blood which sometimes characterized their collisions in former days—but the North West Company had ceased to exist, while the Hudson's Bay Company ruled almost half a continent.
On the Columbia their chief post was established ninety miles up the river from the sea and was called Fort Vancouver—which must not be confused with the flourishing young city at the western terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Fort George or Astoria became thereafter a subsidiary post, utilized as a place from which a watch could be kept on the movements of American traders. Though the territory now comprising Oregon and Washington was claimed by the United States ever since Captain Gray with his good ship Columbia passed the dreaded bar and gave the river a name, the Hudson's Bay Company was, under a series of ten-year treaties between the two nations, leaving the question of ownership open—providing indeed for a joint occupation—in practical possession of the country and its trade, until the boundary question was finally settled in 1846—not long after which the company withdrew its headquarters to the north of the 49th parallel. The company gradually obtained control by lease of a number of the Russian posts as well, maintaining also vessels to trade along the seashore. The country tributary to the Columbia was rich in furs in those days. Even as late as 1840, one trader, for example, was able to bring out of the Snake country 3300 beaver and otter skins, the result of his season's work for the company.
Though Sir George Simpson was the governor in chief of the Hudson's Bay Company after the coalition, the dominant spirit west of the Rocky Mountains for some twenty-five years was Dr. John McLaughlin—the "Big Doctor," as he was familiarly termed. "He was the partner in charge of the whole Columbia department, to which is attached that of New Caledonia and Fraser River, for more than a quarter of a century," wrote an old Hudson's Bay clerk[213] who knew the doctor, "a more indefatigable and enterprising man it would have been difficult to find. With an energetic and indomitable spirit, his capacious mind conceived and pushed forward every kind of improvement for the advancement of commerce and the benefit of civilization. With only seven head of horned cattle and others which he imported from California, by good management and perseverance, he stocked the whole of the Oregon territory, until they had increased to thousands. He built saw mills and cultivated an extensive farm on the beautiful prairie of Fort Vancouver. Subsequently he laid the foundation of Oregon City, where he built a splendid grist mill. The machinery of the mill he imported from Scotland and from the same country a good, practical miller. * * * By every means in his power he promoted trade and commerce with other countries. To Sitka, the principal Russian establishment, the company exported produce—chiefly wheat—to the Sandwich Islands lumber and salmon, and to California, hides and tallow. In short, under Dr. McLaughlin's management, everything was done to develop the resources of the country." Two military officers, Warre and Vavaseur, who visited Oregon on the part of the British government, reported that the doctor favoured the Americans. While his correspondence shows a sympathy with the advanced political party in Canada, which at that time would have been there regarded as proof positive of "Americanism," the fact is that the doctor's mind was of that liberal cast which favoured everyone who could be useful to the country. Britisher or foreigner. This is borne out by his actions as well as his unpublished correspondence.