The Columbia River: Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery, Its Commerce

by William Denison Lyman

And what were the claims of the United States? First and foremost was the discovery by Robert Gray of the River and his actual twenty-five-mile ascension of it in May, 1792. He had gone much farther than Heceta, who had only looked in, but he had not gone so far as Broughton. The latter indeed, claimed, and his government followed him in the claim, that Gray had not really been in the River at all, but was only in an estuary of the sea into which the River flowed. But that, to any one who has seen the River, is too much of a forced construction to stand serious examination. Moreover, Gray antedated Broughton by some months.

Turning from sea claims to land claims, England could point to Alexander Mackenzie as having crossed the continent in 1792, and as having reached the veritable ocean at Cascade Inlet. But it again was a very strained construction to extend that claim so far as to include the lower Columbia Valley. The United States could justly advance as a sufficient offset, the expedition of Lewis and Clark in 1804. In 1811 David Thompson had traversed the entire length of the Columbia for the British flag, only to find the Astor Company already established under the Stars and Stripes at the mouth of the River. From these essential facts out of many, we can easily draw the conclusion that no one of these three contestants could justly be too arrogant and exclusive. Some degree of modesty was befitting each.

We have already seen the rivalries of the great fur companies, the Hudson’s Bay and the North-western of the British, and the Pacific of the Americans, and the effect of the War of 1812 on their fortunes. As a result of that war the Pacific Fur Company sold out to the North-westers, and a few years later the North-westers united with the Hudson’s Bay Company under the name of the latter. To all appearance the Yankee was worsted, and the Briton in possession of the River.

But the Treaty of Ghent in 1815, closing the War of 1812, provided that all territory taken by either party should be restored. The boundary line west of the Lake of the Woods was left undrawn. John Jacob Astor now applied to the Government to restore his captured property on the Columbia, stating that if again in possession, he would resume his former operations. The United States Government accordingly notified Great Britain of its intention to re-occupy the fort at the Columbia’s mouth. For two years the communication lay unanswered. In September, 1817, the sloop-of-war, Ontario, Captain J. Biddle, was despatched to the Columbia with Mr. J. B. Provost as special agent, under instructions to assert the claim of the United States to the territory of the River. This decisive move compelled Great Britain to come out from under cover. A long and tedious diplomatic warfare ensued. Meanwhile the Ontario was pursuing her long journey around Cape Horn. In 1818, an agreement was reached to the effect that Astoria should be formally restored to the United States, but that the North-western Fur Company should be allowed to remain in actual possession. Captain Biddle of the Ontario had left Mr. Provost in Chile and had proceeded to the Columbia to take possession. Captain Sheriff, commandant of the British ships in the Pacific, being in Valparaiso, in H. M. S. Blossom, learning of Mr. Provost’s presence there, conceived the happy thought that it would be an international courtesy to invite Mr. Provost to accompany him to Astoria. Accordingly on October 1, 1818, the Blossom pushed her bow across the Bar, and on the 6th the formal ceremony of transfer from the Union Jack to the Stars and Stripes took place. Captain J. Hickey of the Blossom represented Great Britain, Mr. J. Keith acted for the North-west Fur Company, while Mr. Provost stood for the United States. It seems to have been a very good-natured affair throughout. Placards were posted at the capes on both sides of the River declaring the change of sovereignty. Fort George was quite a powerful structure at that time, consisting of a strong stockade of fir logs twelve feet high, enclosing a parallelogram one hundred and fifty by two hundred and fifty feet, having within it dwellings, shops, store houses, and magazines. On the walls were two eighteen-pound cannon, six six-pounders, four four-pound carronades, two six-pound cohorns, and seven swivels. The day of transfer must have been a very picturesque day among the many such in Astoria’s history. We can imagine the soft October haze floating over Cape Hancock, and the long, lazy swell of six thousand miles of sea, thundering across Point Adams.

One interesting feature of Mr. Provost’s presence at Astoria was his observation of the bar at the entrance of the River. This had generally been represented to the world as something frightful. It is often so represented at the present time. Mr. Provost in a letter to Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, says that there is a spacious bay, by no means so difficult of ingress as has been represented. He states that there is a bar across the mouth of the River, at either extremity of which there are sometimes appalling breakers; but that there is a channel of nearly a league in width with a depth of twenty-one feet at the lowest tides. He thinks, therefore, that with proper buoys the access to vessels of almost any tonnage may be rendered secure. This statement in regard to the Bar is of much interest as furnishing a basis for comparison with the present conditions. The depth at low tide now is about twenty-six feet, the increase probably being due to the jetty.

The logic of the restoration of Astoria to the United States, while at the same time the British Fur Company was left in practical possession, was realised in the Joint Occupation Treaty of 1818. By this singular arrangement it was agreed that any country on the north-west coast of America that may be claimed by either power shall be open for ten years to the vessels, citizens, and subjects of the two powers.

In 1819 another very important step was taken; viz.: the Florida Treaty with Spain. By this, Spain retired to the line of 42 degrees, ceding to the American Republic all her rights above that line. With her own claims joined to those of Spain, the Republic would seem to be able to snap her fingers at England. But, with characteristic tenacity, the latter power made ready to insist all the more strenuously upon her claims. In 1825 England and the United States agreed with Russia upon the line of 54 degrees 40 minutes, as the southern line of Russian claims. With Spain and Russia out of it, Oregon was left for England and the United States to fight over. The Joint Occupation Treaty was to last ten years, with the privilege of renewal. Meanwhile what were the factors in the struggle for possession? There was on the side of England the Briarean monopoly of the Hudson’s Bay Company, supported by a disciplined and intelligent government. But the English people were not in it. On the American side the Government was strangely indifferent. There were several ambitious attempts to control the situation by American trading and fur companies. But the essential forces were the American immigrant, the American missionary, the Declaration of Independence, and the ox-team. Those were the champions of America. They were the Davids against the Goliaths of British monopoly. At first thought it seemed that Goliath would have a “walk-over.” The case seemed hopeless for the Americans.

But to the deeper observer, American triumph was inevitable. It was the Age of Democracy. The conception both of popular government and of individual ownership of land, with which went the corollary of “equal opportunities for all men and special privileges for none,” was graven deep upon American character. With these things there went, of necessity, the disapproval of slavery and the support of free labour. Still further there went, by the same logic, the doctrine of unity and continental expansion. These various influences have constituted the broad foundation on which were reared the towers and battlements of American nationality.

In previous chapters we have outlined the operations of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the coming of the missionaries, and the immigrations of Americans. The policy of the Hudson’s Bay Company was to keep the country a wilderness, to maintain amicable relations with the Indians, and to depend mainly on the fur-trade for the great profits of their enterprise. The policy of the American immigrants was to build homes, cities, roads, steamboats, mills, develop the country, crowd out the natives, and depend on mining, farming, stock-raising, lumbering, for their profits; not profits of a monopoly located in a distant money centre, but profits of the individual worker on his own land. The difference was world-wide. It represented two different conceptions of government and of life itself.

But though the American people had the manifest destiny of expanding to the Pacific, the Government was strangely supine. We say “strangely,” but it was not so strange after all. Congress was dominated by the South in the interest of slavery, and by the East in the interest of the tariff. Calhoun usually led the South, and he weighed everything in the scales of slavery. Webster governed Eastern sentiment largely, and he spoke for New England manufacturers. It is true that Clay was at all times a power in the councils of the nation, and Clay’s constant word was nationalisation and expansion. But even Clay was so committed to the tariff that he did not always appreciate the possibilities of the “West-most West.” The Presidents of the period from 1819 to 1846 were from the South or the Atlantic seaboard and not usually inclined to regard the far West with special interest.