CHAPTER V
The Fur-Traders, their Bateaux, and their Stations
Importance of the Fur-trade as Connected with all Other Parts of the History—Fur-hunters Compared with Gold-hunters—Sea-otter—Ledyard’s Exploration—The European Inaugurators of the Trade—Beginnings of the American Trade—The Great British Companies and their Struggles with the French—Mackenzie’s Journey across the Continent—Thompson’s Descent of the Columbia—Union of the Two Great Canadian Companies—The American Fur Companies—Henry’s Fort—The Winship Enterprise on the River—John Jacob Astor and the Pacific Fur Company—Rivalry with the North-westers—Arrangements for Expeditions by Land and Sea, and the Personnel of these—Voyage of the Tonquin and her Disastrous Approach of the River—Founding of Astoria—Appearance of Thompson and the North-westers—Interior Expedition and Founding of Fort Okonogan—McDougall, the Smallpox Chief and Bridegroom of the Indian Princess—Evil Tidings in Regard to the Tonquin—Other Disasters—War of 1812 and Sale of Astoria to the North-westers—Restoration of Astoria to the Americans—Monopolisation of the River by the Hudson’s Bay Company—Their Expeditions—Hard Lot of Madame Dorion and her Children—Adventures of Alexander Ross—The Forts and General Plan of Work—Fort Vancouver and its Remarkable Advantages—Dr. McLoughlin, or the “White Eagle”—Profits of the Fur-trade—The Canoes and Bateaux and the Voyageurs—The Routes of the Brigades—Later Americans.
As the reader will doubtless already have discovered, we are presenting the history of the River topically rather than chronologically. The various great stages of progress, discovery by sea, discovery by land, fur-trade, Indian wars, missionary undertakings, international contests, beginnings of steamboat navigation, and settlement, overlap each other, and each topic compels us in a measure to anticipate its successors. This is especially true of the topic treated of in this chapter.
The fur-trade was an important factor in the eras of discovery both by land and by sea, in the Indian wars and in the era of settlement, while the strife of nations for the possession of the land of Oregon is almost a history of the fur companies and their international policies. Remembering this synthetic nature of these features of our history, we shall endeavour, with as little repetition as possible, to present a coherent picture of that great era of the fur-traders.
Without doubt one of the earliest uses to which man has put the lower animals is that of clothing his body in their captured skins. The acquisition of furs has been a special feature of the colder climes. It is obviously also a feature of discovery and conquest, for it is the wilderness only which yields any considerable number of fur-producing animals. Thus navigation, commerce, discovery, invention, economics, finally international wars and policies, have been rooted to a large degree in this primal business. The fur-hunters have held the hunters of gold and precious stones and spicery a close race in the rank of world movers. Indeed it may well be questioned whether results of greater moment to humanity have not proceeded from the quest for furs than from that for gold.
The Spaniards expended their energies in the gold and silver hunt in Mexico and Peru and annihilated the races of those lands in their pitiless rapacity. The other great exploring nations of the sixteenth century, especially the French, while not indifferent to the possibility of encountering the precious metals, found more certain and permanent results in the less feverish and dazzling pursuit of the wild animals of the wilderness. Neither the hunters for gold nor those for peltries were the state-builders and home-builders without whom our American Union would not exist. But they were the avant-couriers of both. Our land of Oregon has had the peculiar fortune of being opened by both for both.
China furnished the most active and convenient market for furs to those who secured their supplies on the Pacific Coast of North America. The Russians were the first Europeans to enter the Chinese market, and they began their voyages as early as 1741.