The Rev. Mr. Beaver, chaplain of the company at Fort Vancouver, in 1836, writes thus to the Aborigines Protection Society, London, tract 8, page 19:—
“For a time I reported to the governor and committee of the company in England, and to the governor and the council of the company abroad, the result of my observations, with a view to a gradual amelioration of the wretched degradation with which I was surrounded, by an immediate attempt at the introduction of civilization and Christianity, among one or more of the aboriginal tribes; but my earnest representations were neither attended to nor acted upon; no means were placed at my disposal for carrying out the plan which I suggested.”
Mr. Greenhow says, page 389: “Particular care was also extended to the education of the half-breed children, the offspring of the marriage or the concubinage of the traders with the Indian women, who were retained and bred as much as possible among the white people, and were taken into the service of the company, whenever they were found capable. There being few white women in those countries, it is evident that these half-breeds must, in time, form a large, if not an important portion of the inhabitants; and there is nothing to prevent their being adopted and recognized as British subjects.
“The conduct of the Hudson’s Bay Company, in these respects, is worthy of commendation; and may be contrasted most favorably with that pursued at the present day by civilized people toward the aborigines of all other new countries.”
It is a most singular fact, that while Mr. Greenhow was writing the above high commendation of the conduct and policy of the Hudson’s Bay Company, in relation to their treatment of Indians and missionaries under their absolute control, that that company were driving from their posts at Moose Factory and Vancouver, their own Wesleyan and Episcopal missionaries, and doing all they could to prevent the settlement or civilization of the Indians, or allowing any missionary intercourse with them, except by foreign Roman Jesuits, and were actually combining the Indians in Oregon to destroy and defeat civil and Christian efforts among the Indians and American settlements then being established in the country. Page 390, Mr. Greenhow further says: “The course pursued by the Hudson’s Bay Company, with regard to American citizens in the territory west of the Rocky Mountains, was equally unexceptionable and politic. The missionaries and immigrants from the United States, or from whatever country they might come, were received at the establishments of the company with the utmost kindness, and were aided in the prosecution of their respective objects, so far and so long as those objects were not commercial; but no sooner did any person, unconnected with the company, attempt to hunt, or trap, or trade with the Indians, than all the force of the body was turned against him.”
The statement in the last part of the foregoing paragraph can be attested by more than one hundred American hunters and traders, who have felt the full force of that company’s influence against them; as also by missionaries and settlers on first arriving in the country. But Mr. Greenhow says: “There is no evidence or reason to believe that violent measures were ever employed, either directly or indirectly, for this purpose; nor would such means have been needed while the company enjoyed advantages over all competitors, such as are afforded by its wealth, its organization, and the skill and knowledge of the country, and of the natives, possessed by its agents.” This is simply an assertion of Mr. Greenhow, which our future pages will correct in the mind of any who have received it as truth. It is unnecessary to pursue Mr. Greenhow’s history of the Hudson’s Bay Company respecting their treatment of American or English missionaries or American settlers; the statements we have quoted show fully his want of a correct knowledge of the practices of that company in dealing with savage and civilized men. We only claim for ourselves close observation and deeply interested participation in all that relates to Oregon since 1832, having been permitted to be present at the forming of its early civil settlement and political history. This work of Mr. Greenhow’s appears to be peculiarly political as well as strongly national, and in the passages we have quoted, with many other similar ones, he seems to us to have written to catch the patronage of this foreign English corporation, which, according to his own showing, has been an incubus upon the English, and, so far as possible, the Americans also. While he shows his utter ignorance of their internal policy and history, his researches in the history of the early discoveries on this western coast are ample And most useful as vindicating our American claim to the country. But as to its settlement and civilization, or its early moral or political history, as he says of Mr. Samuel Parker, “in all of which he is evidently a stranger.”
Our reasons for giving the extracts from Mr. Greenhow’s work are—
1st. That the reader may the better understand what follows as our own.
2d. To avoid a future collision or controversy respecting statements that may be quoted from him to contradict or controvert our own, respecting the policy and practices of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which, Mr. Greenhow says, page 391, “did no more than they were entitled to do. If the Americans neglected or were unable to avail themselves of the benefits secured to both nations by the convention, the fault or the misfortune was their own, and they had no right to complain.” If this is true, as against the American, what right has the Hudson’s Bay Company to complain and ask pay for what had been rendered worthless to them by the American settlement of the country?
“The hospitable treatment extended to them [American citizens] by the agents of the Hudson’s Bay Company was doubtless approved by the directors of that body; and all who know Messrs. McLaughlin and Douglas, the principal managers of the affairs of that body on the Columbia, unite in testifying that the humanity and generosity of those gentlemen have been always carried as far as their duties would permit. That their conduct does not, however, meet with universal approbation among the servants of the company in that quarter, sufficient evidence may be cited to prove.” He quotes John Dunn’s book, chap. 12.