The Oregon Territory Part 1

The Oregon Territory.

by Travers Twiss.

PREFACE.

The object which the author had in view, in inst.i.tuting the accompanying inquiry into the historical facts and the negotiations connected with the Oregon Territory, was to contribute, as far as his individual services might avail, to the peaceful solution of the question at issue between the United States of America and Great Britain. He could not resist the conviction, on reading several able treatises on the subject, that the case of the United States had been overstated by her writers and negotiators; and the perusal of Mr. Greenhow's Official Memoir, and subsequent History of Oregon and California, confirmed him in this impression, as they sought to establish more than was consistent with the acknowledged difficulty of a question, which has now been the subject of four fruitless negotiations. He determined, in consequence of this conviction, to investigate carefully the records of ancient discoveries and other matters of history connected with the North-west coast of America, concerning which much contradictory statement is to be met with in writers of acknowledged reputation. The result is, the present work, which has unavoidably a.s.sumed a much larger bulk than was antic.i.p.ated by the author when he commenced the inquiry: it is hoped, however, that the arrangement of the chapters will enable the reader to select, without difficulty, those portions of the subject which he may deem to be most deserving of his attention.

The expeditions of Drake and of Gali have thus necessarily come under consideration; and the views of the author will be found to differ, in respect to both these navigators, from those advanced by Mr. Greenhow, more especially in respect to Drake. Had the author noticed at an earlier period Mr. Greenhow's remark in the Preface to the second edition of his History, that he has "never deviated from the rule of not citing authorities at second-hand," he would have thought it right to apologise for attributing the incorrectness of Mr. Greenhow's statements as to the respective accounts of Drake's expedition, to his having been misled by the authority of the article "Drake," in the Biographie Universelle. He would even now apologise, were not any other supposition under the circ.u.mstances less respectful to Mr. Greenhow himself.

In regard to Juan de Fuca, if the author could have supposed that in the course of the last negotiations at Was.h.i.+ngton, Mr. Buchanan would have p.r.o.nounced that De Fuca's Voyage "no longer admits of reasonable doubt,"

he would have entered into a more careful a.n.a.lysis of Michael Lock's tale, to show that it is utterly irreconcileable with ascertained facts. As it is, however, the author trusts that enough has been said in the chapter on the Pretended Discoveries of the North-west Coast, to convince the reader that both the stories of Juan de Fuca and Maldonado[1], to the latter of whom, Mr. Calhoun, at an earlier stage of the same negotiations, refers by name as the pioneer of Spanish enterprise, are to be ranked with Admiral Fonte's account, in the cla.s.s of Mythical discoveries.

[1] Maldonado's pretended Voyage bears the date of 1588. In the copy of Mr. Calhoun's letter, circulated on this side of the Atlantic, it is referred to the year 1528.

In regard to Vancouver, the author, it is hoped, will be pardoned for expressing an opinion, that Mr. Greenhow has permitted his admitted jealousy for the fame of his fellow-citizens to lead him to do injustice to Vancouver's character, and to a.s.sail it with arguments founded in one or two instances upon incorrect views of Vancouver's own statements. Mr.

Gallatin expressed a very different opinion of this officer, in his Counter-statement, during the negotiation of 1826, when he observes that Vancouver "had _too much probity_ to alter his statement, when, on the ensuing day, he was informed by Captain Gray of the existence of the river, at the mouth of which he had been for several days without being able to enter it."

The chapter on the Convention of the Escurial is intended to give an outline of the facts and negotiations connected with the controversy between Spain and Great Britain in respect to Nootka Sound, and the subsequent settlement of the points in dispute. The arguments which the author conceived them to furnish against the positions of the Commissioners of the United States, have been inserted, as the opportunity offered itself, in the chapters on the several negotiations. The author, however, has introduced in this chapter, what appears to him to be a conclusive refutation of Mr. Buchanan's statement, "that no sufficient evidence has been adduced that either Nootka Sound, or any other spot on the coast, was ever actually surrendered by Spain to Great Britain."

The chapter on the Columbia River attempts to adjust the respective claims of Heceta, Gray, and Broughton, to the discovery and exploration of that river.

A few chapters have been next inserted on points of international law connected with territorial t.i.tle, which, it was thought, might facilitate the examination of the questions raised in the course of the negotiations by the Commissioners of Great Britain and the United States. They do not profess to be complete, but they embrace, it is believed, nearly all that is of importance for the reader to be familiar with.

The chapters on the Limits of Louisiana, and the Treaty of Was.h.i.+ngton, were required to elucidate the "derivative t.i.tle" of the United States.

If the author could have antic.i.p.ated the publication of the correspondence between Mr. Pakenham and the Plenipotentiaries of the United States, he would most probably have adopted a different arrangement in his review of the several negotiations, so as to avoid an appearance of needless repet.i.tion. His ma.n.u.script, however, with the exception of the two last chapters, was completed before the President's message reached this country. As the earlier sheets, however, were pa.s.sing through the press, one or two remarks have been inserted which have a bearing on the recent correspondence; but it should be observed, that a separate review of each negotiation was designedly adopted, for the purpose of enabling the reader to appreciate more readily the variety of phases, which the claims of the United States have a.s.sumed in the course of them.

Some observations have been made in Chapter XII. and other places, upon the general futility of the argument from maps in the case of disputed territory. The late negotiations at Was.h.i.+ngton have furnished an apposite ill.u.s.tration of the truth of the author's remarks. Mr. Buchanan, towards the conclusion of his last letter to Mr. Pakenham, addressed an argument to the British Minister, of the kind known to logicians as the _argumentum ad verecundiam_:--"Even British geographers have not doubted our t.i.tle to the territory in dispute. There is a large and splendid globe now in the Department of the State, recently received from London, and published by Maltby & Co., manufacturers and publishers to 'The Society for the Diffusion of Useful knowledge,' which a.s.signs this territory to the United States." The history, however, of this globe is rather curious. It was ordered of Mr. Malby (not Maltby) for the Department of State at Was.h.i.+ngton, before Mr. Everett quitted his post of Minister of the United States in this country. It no doubt deserves the commendation bestowed upon it by Mr. Buchanan, for Mr. Malby manufactures excellent globes; but the globe sent to Was.h.i.+ngton was not made from the plates used on the globes published under the sanction of "The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge," though this is not said by way of disparagement to it.

The Society, in its maps, has carried the boundary line west of the Rocky Mountains, along the 49th parallel to the Columbia River, and thence along that river to the sea; but in its globes the line is not marked beyond the Rocky Mountains. Mr. Malby, knowing that the globe ordered of him was intended for the Department of State at Was.h.i.+ngton, was led to suppose that it would be more satisfactorily completed, as it was an American order, if he coloured in, for it is not engraved, the boundary line proposed by the Commissioners of the United States. The author would apologise for discussing so trifling a circ.u.mstance, had not the authorities of the United States considered the fact of sufficient importance to ground a serious argument upon it.

In conclusion, the Author must beg pardon of the distinguished diplomatists in the late negotiations at Was.h.i.+ngton, whose arguments he has subjected to criticism, if he has omitted to notice several portions of their statements, to which they may justly attribute great weight. It is not from any want of respect that he has neglected them, but the limits of his work precluded a fuller consideration of the subject.

LONDON, Jan. 22, 1846.

THE OREGON QUESTION.

CHAPTER I.

THE OREGON TERRITORY.

North-west America.--Plateau of Anahuac.--Rocky Mountains.--New-Albion.--New Caledonia.--Oregon, or Oregan, the River of the West.--The Columbia River.--Extent of the Oregon Territory.--The Country of the Columbia.--Opening of the Fur Trade in 1786.--Vancouver.--Straits of Anian.--Straits of Juan de Fuca.--Barclay.--Meares.--The American sloop Was.h.i.+ngton.--Galiano and Valdes.--Journey of Mackenzie in 1793.--The Tacoutche-Tesse, now Frazer's River.--North-west Company in 1805.--The Hudson's Bay Company in 1670.--The First Settlement of the North-west Company across the Rocky Mountains in 1806, at Frazer's Lake.--Journey of Mr. Thomson, the Astronomer of the North-west Company, down the North Branch of the Columbia River, in 1811.--Expedition of Lewis and Clarke, in 1805.--The Missouri Fur Company, in 1808.--Their First Settlement on the West of the Rocky Mountains.--The Pacific Fur Company, in 1810.--John Jacob Astor, the Representative of it.--Astoria, established in 1811.--Dissolution of the Pacific Fur Company, in July, 1813.--Transfer of Astoria to the North-west Company, by Purchase, in October, 1813.--Subsequent Arrival of the British Sloop-of-War, the Rac.o.o.n.--Name of Astoria changed to Fort George.

North-Western America is divided from the other portions of the continent by a chain of lofty mountains, which extend throughout its entire length in a north-westerly direction, in continuation of the Mexican Andes, to the sh.o.r.es of the Arctic Ocean. The southern part of this chain, immediately below the parallel of 42 north lat.i.tude, is known to the Spaniards by the name of the Sierra Verde, and the central ridge, in continuation of this, as the Sierra de las Grullas; and by these names they are distinguished by Humboldt in his account of New Spain, (Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne, l. i., c. 3,) as well as in a copy of Mitch.e.l.l's Map of North America, published in 1834. Mr. Greenhow, in his History of Oregon and California, states that the Anahuac Mountains is "the appellation most commonly applied to this part of the dividing chain extending south of the 40th degree of lat.i.tude to Mexico," but when and on what grounds that name has come to be so applied, he does not explain.

Anahuac was the denomination before the Spanish conquest of that portion of America which lies between the 14th and 21st degrees of north lat.i.tude, whereas the Cordillera of the Mexican Andes takes the name of the Sierra Madre a little north of the parallel of 19, and the Sierra Madre in its turn is connected with the Sierra de las Grullas by an intermediate range, commencing near the parallel of 30, termed La Sierra de los Mimbres. The application, indeed, of the name Anahuac to the entire portion of the chain which lies south of 40, may have originated with those writers who have confounded Anahuac with New Spain; but as the use of the word in this sense is incorrect, it hardly seems desirable to adopt an appellation which is calculated to produce confusion, whilst it perpetuates an error, especially as there appear to be no reasonable grounds for discarding the established Spanish names. The plateau of Anahuac, in the proper sense of the word, comprises the entire territory from the Isthmus of Panama to the 21st parallel of north lat.i.tude, so that the name of Anahuac Mountains would, with more propriety, be confined to the portion of the Cordillera south of 21. If this view be correct, the name of the Sierra Verde may be continued for that portion of the central range which separates the head waters of the Rio Bravo del Norte, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico, and forms the south-western boundary of Texas, from those of the Rio Colorado, (del Occidente,) which empties itself into the Gulf of California.

The Rocky Mountains, then, or, as they are frequently called, the Stony Mountains, will be the distinctive appellation of the portion of the great central chain which lies north of the parallel of 42; and if a general term should be required for the entire chain to the south of this parallel, it may be convenient to speak of it as the Mexican Cordillera, since it is co-extensive with the present territory of the United States of Mexico, or else as the Mexican Andes, since the range is, both in a geographical and a geological point of view, a continuation of the South American Andes.

Between this great chain of mountains and the Pacific Ocean a most ample territory extends, which may be regarded as divided into three great districts. The most southerly of these, of which the northern boundary line was drawn along the parallel of 42, by the Treaty of Was.h.i.+ngton in 1819, belong to the United States of Mexico. The most northerly, commencing at Behring's Straits, and of which the extreme southern limit was fixed at the southernmost point of Prince of Wales's Island in the parallel of 54 40' north, by treaties concluded between Russia and the United States of America in 1824, and between Russia and Great Britain in 1825, forms a part of the dominions of Russia; whilst the intermediate country is not as yet under the acknowledged sovereignty of any power.

To this intermediate territory different names have been a.s.signed. To the portion of the coast between the parallels of 43 and 48, the British have applied the name of New Albion, since the expedition of Sir Francis Drake in 1578-80, and the British Government, in the instructions furnished by the Lords of the Admiralty, in 1776, to Captain Cook, directed him "to proceed to the coast of New Albion, endeavouring to fall in with it in the lat.i.tude of 45." (Introduction to Captain Cook's Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, 4to, 1784, vol. i., p. x.x.xii.) At a later period, Vancouver gave the name of New Georgia to the coast between 45 and 50, and that of New Hanover to the coast between 50 and 54; whilst to the entire country north of New Albion, between 48 and 56 30', from the Rocky Mountains to the sea, British traders have given the name of New Caledonia, ever since the North-west Company formed an establishment on the western side of the Rocky Mountains, in 1806. (Journal of D. W.

Harmon, quoted by Mr. Greenhow, p. 291.) The Spanish government, on the other hand, in the course of the negotiations with the British government which ensued upon the seizure of the British vessels in Nootka Sound, and terminated in the Convention of the Escurial, in 1790, designated the entire territory as "the Coast of California, in the South Sea."

(Declaration of His Catholic Majesty, June 4th, transmitted to all the European Courts, in the Annual Register, 1790.) Of late it has been customary to speak of it as the Oregon territory, or the Columbia River territory, although some writers confine that term to the region watered by the Oregon, or Columbia River, and its tributaries.

The authority for the use of the word Oregon, or, more properly speaking, Oregan, has not been clearly ascertained, but the majority of writers agree in referring the introduction of the name to Carver's Travels.

Jonathan Carver, a native of Connecticut and a British subject, set out from Boston in 1766, soon after the transfer of Canada to Great Britain, on an expedition to the regions of the Upper Mississippi, with the ultimate purpose of ascertaining "the breadth of that vast continent, which extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, in its broadest part, between 43 and 46 of north lat.i.tude. Had I been able," he says, "to accomplish this task, I intended to have proposed to government to establish a post in some of those parts, about the Straits of Anian, which having been discovered by Sir Francis Drake, of course belong to the English." The account of his travels, from the introduction to which the above extract in his own words is quoted, was published in London in 1778.

Carver did not succeed in penetrating to the Pacific Ocean, but he first made known, or at least established a belief in, the existence of a great river, termed apparently, by the nations in the interior, Oregon, or Oregan, the source of which he placed not far from the head waters of the River Missouri, "on the other side of the summit of the lands that divide the waters which run into the Gulf of Mexico from those which fall into the Pacific Ocean." He was led to infer, from the account of the natives, that this "Great River of the West" emptied itself near the Straits of Anian, (Carver's Travels, 3d edit., London, 1781, p. 542,) although it may be observed that the situation of the so-called Straits of Anian themselves was not at this time accurately fixed. Carver, however, was misled in this latter respect, but the description of the locality where he placed the source of the Oregon, seems to identify it either with the Flatbow or M'Gillivray's River, or else, and perhaps more probably, with the Flathead or Clark's River, each of which streams, after pursuing a north-western course from the base of the Rocky Mountains, unites with a great river coming from the north, which ultimately empties itself into the Pacific Ocean in lat.i.tude 46 18'. The name of Oregon has consequently been perpetuated in this main river, as being really "the Great River of the West," and by this name it is best known in Europe; but in the United States of America, it is now more frequently spoken of as the Columbia River, from the name of the American vessel, "The Columbia," which first succeeded in pa.s.sing the bar at its mouth in 1792. The native name, however, will not totally perish in the United States, for it has been embalmed in the beautiful verse of Bryant, whom the competent judgment of Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton Irving has p.r.o.nounced to be amongst the most distinguished of American poets:--

"Take the wings Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce, Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound Save his own das.h.i.+ngs."

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 lat.i.tude, 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 lat.i.tudes with Boston and with Florence; whilst its northernmost correspond with the northern extremities of Newfoundland, and with the southern sh.o.r.es 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 a.s.serted by the former power over the port of Nootka and the adjacent lat.i.tudes, 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 lat.i.tude, 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 pa.s.sage. 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 pa.s.sage, p. lvi., prefixed to his Voyage, published in 1790, states that the American merchant sloop the Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 pa.s.sage 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 Valdes, 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 lat.i.tude, 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 Ca.n.a.l. _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 a.s.sociation 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 sh.o.r.es 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 antic.i.p.ate 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 pa.s.sage 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 antic.i.p.ate 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 lat.i.tude 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 princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sing 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 lat.i.tude 43 34', to its junction with the princ.i.p.al 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 lat.i.tude 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 pa.s.sed 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 lat.i.tude. 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 a.s.sociation was John Jacob Astor, a native of Heidelberg, who had emigrated to the United States, and had there ama.s.sed 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. Was.h.i.+ngton 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 ill.u.s.trations 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, an a.s.surance 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 s.h.i.+p 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.

In the following month of July, Mr. Thomson, the agent of the North-west Company, to whom allusion has already been made, descended the northern branch of the Columbia, and visited the settlement at the mouth of the Columbia. He was received with friendly hospitality by his old companion, Mr. M'Dougal, who was the superintendent, and shortly took his departure again, Mr. Stuart, one of the partners, accompanying him up the river as far as its junction with the Okinagan, where he remained during the winter, collecting furs from the natives. The factory at Astoria, in the mean time, was reinforced in January, 1812, by a further detachment of persons in the service of the Pacific Fur Company, who had set out overland early in 1811, and after suffering extreme hards.h.i.+ps, and losing several of their number, at last made their way, in separate parties, to the mouth of the Columbia. A third detachment was brought by the s.h.i.+p Beaver, in the following May. All the partners of the Company, exclusive of Mr. Astor, had now been despatched to the scene of their future trading operations. Mr. Mackay, who had accompanied Mackenzie in his expedition to the Pacific in 1793, was alone wanting to their number: he had unfortunately proceeded northwards with Captain Thorne, in order to make arrangements with the Russians, and was involved in the common fate of the crew of the Tonquin.