Hudson’s Bay Company – HBC – ran things in the Pacific Northwest from 1813 until the mid-1840’s. Then American emigrant numbers began to overwhelm their control. While political control in 1818 over the Oregon Country officially split between the governments of Great Britain and the United States, true economic control from a Eurocentric standpoint remained in the bailiwick of the HBC. The story of the Red River colonists featured an attempt by the HBC to help out on the political side.
HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY
The HBC developed after interest developed in fur sources among the Cree, one of the largest groups of Native Americans of the U.S. and Canada, became discovered by two French Canadian traders, Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Medard Chouart des Groseilliers. In turn, working through a Englishman met in Boston, they enticed Prince Rupert of Batavia, cousin to King Charles II, to help back an exploratory trading mission to Hudson’s Bay in 1668. This was so successful that Rupert gathered another 18 investors together forming the Hudson’s Bay Company.
Nepotism rules in monarchies. HBC was given a royal charter in 1670. This granted all commercial rights to the region draining into Hudson’s Bay, an area covering 1.5 million square acres. Company control vested with a governor, deputy governor and five directors chosen by stockholders at an annual meeting in London. From there, the Governor of Rupert’s Land became selected to oversee operations in North America.
A little over a century later, HBC reigned triumphant over much of northern North America having incorporated their chief rival, the North West Company of Montreal, into their realm. Divided into four regions – Northern, Southern, Montreal and Columbia departments – George Simpson oversaw the North American operations helped by an annual council to review and plan for the following year.
HBC IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
Shortly after the 1821 merger, London began having second thoughts as to the profitability of the Columbia department. Simpson decided to get closer to the action and made the journey west for a personal assessment of the region. Accompanying him in the fall of 1824 was the Chief Factor of the department, John McLoughlin. Spending the winter at Fort George, Simpson wrote up his recommendations. First, was relocation of the main HBC trading post from Fort George to Belle Vue Point some 100 miles upstream. The Treaty of 1818 was up for renewal in 1828. Sometime in the future, Britain probably stood to lose all territory south of the Columbia River. Putting the main post on the north bank made sense.
McLoughlin worked hard to make the district profitable introducing trade in salmon and timber exports to California, Hawaii, the Puget Sound and the Russian settlements in Alaska. To deter Americans from the region, he sent out brigades into the Snake River drainage to trap out all the possible fur to create a fur desert. McLoughlin led a district manned by almost 1,000 men over 21 permanent trading establishments. The company ran the Northwest as a de facto government. Throughout the 1820s and 1830s, everything ran smoothly. Relations with local Native Americans were good. But changes slowly ebbed away at the HBC peace.
CHANGES IN THE STATUS QUO
As American trappers sieved into the region beginning in the mid-1820s, London declared, “if the American Traders settle near our Establishments, they must be opposed, but not by violence, which would be the means the Traders to obtain the interference of their government, but by underselling them”. Underselling meant big short term hits to the profit lines.
Trappers gave way to emigrants starting in 1840. Tensions arose between an economy controlled by the HBC and cash poor emigrants. McLoughlin maintained a decent relationship with the newcomers; first, the missionaries followed by land-hungry settlers.
ENTER THE PUGET SOUND AGRICULTURAL COMPANY
In 1839, the new Puget Sound Agricultural Company based out of the company post at Fort Nisqually formed. HBC’s license from the British government did not allow for any other activity beyond the fur trade. The PSAC allowed HBC to get around this technicality. The immediate purpose was to raise crops and livestock for sale to the Russian outposts in Alaska, as well as passing sailing ships in need of re-supply. Simpson had other reasons for the new enterprise. A main secondary reason, to build up a counterweight population to the Americans in the Willamette Valley.
Poor soils around Fort Nisqually led the new company to push most of their agricultural enterprises further south to the Cowlitz Farm – just north of today’s town of Toledo. Fort Nisqually remained a center for sheep and cows. The Cowlitz Farm, led by Chief Trader Jon Tod, originally was an area settled by a couple of retired HBC employees – like the situation in the French Prairie near Champoeg in the Willamette Valley. A three-story granary, employee residences, a couple of storehouses, stables and barns all constructed over time at the PSAC Farm with a house for the presiding officer. Next door, a Catholic mission – St. Francis Xavier – went up to tend to the spiritual needs of the new enterprise.
HBC COLONISTS TO STEM THE TIDE OF AMERICANS
HBC decided to encourage colonists of their own in 1840. James Sinclair, son of an HBC factor and a Cree mother, educated at the University of Edinburgh, became the leader of an HBC emigrant party. He led a group of 23 families – 121 people in total – from the Red River Valley to the PSAC stations the following year. The emigrant families were mostly Métis – part European and part Native. The families hardened to life in today’s Manitoba were well-suited to live off the land. They were lured by promises of land and some livestock to get their farms going. The newcomers would help the industries of the PSAC and boost numbers of British-inclined settlers. The party was actually met along their way in southern Saskatchewan by Simpson. He was off on another world tour of company assets.
Sinclair’s group arrived at Fort Vancouver after a 130-day journey taking them across the plains of Canada and the Rocky Mountains. The new settlers quickly found out they had been misled by the Red River Chief Factor Duncan Finlayson. Lands were to be leased and not sold to the newcomers. Fourteen of the families went to Nisqually and the other seven to Cowlitz Farm. Upset by the failure of the company to uphold promises made, only a couple families stayed to settle either at Nisqually or Cowlitz. The majority traveled south to the Willamette Valley where they laid claim to their own lands. Eventually, the Red River colonists contributed to the American cause politically.
FAILURE TO LIVE UP TO PROMISES
Most of the families owed money to the HBC. A delegation of the former colonists arrived at Fort Vancouver in November 1845 telling McLoughlin of their lack of interest in repaying their debts. Mcloughlin was in his own process of leaving the HBC. He considered the debts not to be worth his time not pressing the matter. One of his clerks, Dugald MacTavish, a future HBC Chief Factor, did unsuccessfully attempt to collect the following year.
Sinclair led a second group of colonists from the Red River to Fort Walla Walla in 1854. He was promised 200 head of cattle to take charge of the former Fort Nez Percés, restoring it to the once efficient post it had been. That enterprise would be short-lived, however. The Yakama War arising in 1855 led to the post’s looting in October 1855 with the cattle dead or gone. Sinclair died the following spring at Fort Cascades in a further incident of the war.
THE CASE OF CHARLES MCKAY
Among the first Red River party was Charles McKay and his family including his wife Letitia Bird, daughter of the former governor of Rupert’s Land and Chief Factor of the Red River Colony. McKay was the son of Scotsman John McKay and Métisse Mary Favel. His uncle, Donald McKay, founded the Bradon House where Charles was born. One brother-in-law was James Sinclair while another was James Bird, Jr. They were among those recruited by Chief Factor Duncan Finlayson, “steady, respectable half breed and other settlers” sought out by George Simpson.
McKay was one of those colonists who took off following the disappointment of HBC reneging on their promises. He took out a claim of land in the Tualatin Plains not far from that of Joseph Meek. During the political meetings at Champoeg in 1843, McKay sided with Americans forming the Provisional Government. He became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. in 1849.
HBC TO AMERICAN CITIZEN
Following the Whitman killings at the end of 1847, Charles joined Thomas McKay – stepson of John McLoughlin and son of founder of the American Fur Company Fort Astoria, Alexander McKay, originally from the Mohawk Valley of New York – and other French Canadian and Métis volunteers as part of the militia sent east. Supposedly, it was Charles, at the Battle of Sand Hollows, who shot Cayuse chief Five Crows. Meeting with Five Crows later in life, Five Crows said, “You tried to kill me and I tried to kill you, but I am not mad at you.” Later, McKay served in the militia in 1855 during the onset of the Yakama War.
Along with most of the rest of the men in the Northwest, Charles went south in 1849 to find gold. While he succeeded a bit, he decided to return to Oregon purchasing cattle opening a butcher shop in Portland. On McKay Creek, the little community of Glencoe became established – now part of the town of North Plains. The townsite became named in honor of Charles’ fathers’ homeland – site of the massacre of members of the McDonald clan by those of the Campbells in 1689. The family, itself, came from further north on the eastside of the upper part of Scotland in the Brora Valley.
While McKay went south joining the American faction in Oregon, he retained HBC and British ties. The officers of the HMS Modeste, frozen in the waters of the Columbia in 1846-1847, not only played curling – Modeste versus HBC – in one of the first matches in the Northwest, but also were guests at the McKay homestead. His little townsite became molded into the railway townsite of North Plains in the early twentieth century.
LOTS OF MCKAYS
McKay seems to be a popular name among early HBC workers. Thomas McKay made two claims for lands – one in the French Prairie and another for a horse farm near Scappoose. The new laws of the Provisional Government allowed for only one claim and Thomas let the one along the Columbia River go. There were a number of Red River people happy to give up their claims in the Tualatin Plains moving across the Tualatin Mountains to the Scappoose Plains, joined by other retired HBC folk.
One of those was Malcom McKay, served as an employee of HBC from 1841. He joined the Company from the Island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Malcom served until 1849 when he marched off to the goldfields of California. Returning to Oregon, he set up on Sauvie Island marrying Sarah Lucinda Lamberson at the end of 1853. The two enjoyed 13 children during their time together. One of their grandchildren, James Douglas McKay would become Governor of Oregon and later Secretary of the Interior.
For a lot more on the Metis and their adventures see John C. Jackson’s “Children of the Fur Trade; Forgotten Metis of the Pacific Northwest“