The Hudson’s Bay Company provided the main source of European influence in the Oregon Country throughout the period of condominium rule shared by the United Kingdom and the United States – 1818-1846.  The Treaty of Ghent noted sovereignty sharing over the vast northwestern regions, but failed to say anything about how to conduct internal affairs.  Into the void, the HBC.

BEAVER GOLD

Fur traders arrived in Oregon in 1811 with the Pacific Fur Company funded by John Jacob Astor of New York.  The AFC established a small trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River naming it Fort Astoria.  The North West Company had been locked into a struggle with the HBC over the fur trade throughout North America.  They had worked with Astor using American-flag ships. This, an effort to get around the British East India Company’s monopoly to ship furs to China. 

ASTORIA

With the War of 1812, the little post at Fort Astoria was sold in 1813 to the North West Company in the face of eminent capture by British forces.   The post, renamed Fort George, kept most of the PFC men in their old jobs only with a new employer.

Outright hostilities between HBC and the NWC brought about a forced merger in July 1821.  The new HBC featured 76 HBC trading posts with another 97 NWC posts added to the mix, though in the search for efficiency, many redundant posts were closed.  Overseeing the new empire was George Simpson, head of the Northern Department of HBC and Governor-in-Chief of the vast Rupert’s Land encompassing much of what is today northern Canada.  Men of formerly different companies came together in the new vast enterprise.   Duncan McDougall led the PFC effort to build Fort Astoria in 1811.  After surrendering the fort to the NWC in 1813, he became a partner with the NWC. He then returned to the east to help in operations in the Winnipeg region.

Another co-founder of Fort Astoria was Alexander MacKay.  Born from a family of New York loyalists living in the Mohawk Valley, the family migrated to Canada during the Revolutionary War.  He accompanied Alexander Mackenzie on his 1793 transcontinental journey, a first such recorded journey.  Later he became a partner with the NWC able to acquire enough wealth to retire at the young age of 38 in 1808.  Two years later, he joined with McDougall and other NWC retired men as they partnered with Astor and his new PFC. 

tonquin episode

MacKay with his thirteen-year-old son Thomas helped found Fort Astoria in May 1811.  They came out on the sailing vessel Tonquin.  MacKay ventured north with the ship in June hoping to set up the fur trade with native Americans further north.  A conflict arose with the ship blown up killing most of the sailors and would-be traders, including Alexander.  His son was still at Fort Astoria. 

His wife, Marguerite Waddens MacKay, had stayed back east while her husband and son came west.  She would remarry, this time to one of the largest names in Oregon Country history, John McLoughlin.

THE DOCTOR

Jean-Baptiste McLoughlin was part Scottish and part French Canadian.  Growing up in Quebec, he gained a medical license in 1803. He went to work as a physician with the NWC at Fort William on Lake Superior.  Soon, he went beyond medicine becoming a trader and eventually, a NWC partner.  He was one of the influencers in the 1821 HBC-NWC merger.  After a period as Chief Factor in the Rainy Lake region – Voyageurs National Park and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness both parts of this area – McLoughlin became the Superintendent of the HBC Columbia Department in 1824.

The Columbia River served as a route used by traders of the NWC from Fort George to Fort William.  Governor Simpson came out with a trading group in 1824-1825.  On his journey, he became aware of a quicker route. This led from York Factory on Hudson’s Bay crossing the Rockies over Athabasca Pass west from Edmonton.  The route then descended the Columbia.  Fort George was replaced by a new fort further up the Columbia near the confluence of the Willamette River. Here, better agricultural land lay enabling the post to become self-providing.

FORT VANCOUVER

The largest HBC fort west of Fort William, as well as the regional headquarters for the Columbia District, Fort Vancouver boasted 358 men from a variety of background – French Canadian, Métis, Native American, English, Scottish and Hawaiian.  McLoughlin became the manager of the post, a position he held from 1824 until 1845.  Law and order was based upon the laws of Upper Canada for British subjects.  As the main man in the Oregon Country, he also tried to maintain order among relations with Native Americans of the region as well as American settlers as they, at first, trickled into the country.

HBC did not want the Oregon Country to become a settled area.  Settlement interrupted the fur trade.  However, settlers did come, first with American missionaries coming west in the late 1830’s. Emigrants began coming west over the Oregon Trail in ever larger numbers in the 1840’s.  Simpson tried to counter the increases in American settlers by bringing Métis families from the Red River Colony in 1841. Lands promised to the Métis were not forthcoming as they discovered upon their arrival at Fort Nisqually. 

CHANGE IN THE WINDS

This was mainly due to the unsettled political situation.  HBC already could see the writing on the wall as more American emigrants settled in the Willamette Valley each year.  On a visit to Fort Vancouver in 1841, Simpson helped host American officers. This group, part of a US party exploring the west coast led by Charles Wilkes.  HBC by this time, were in favor of the border running down the middle of the Columbia River.  Talking with Wilkes, Simpson became aware that Americans wanted to hold out for a boundary much further to the north – 54 degrees 40’ – near the tip of southeast Alaska. 

Almost overnight, Simpson flipped after a delay of three weeks trying to get over the bar at the mouth of the Columbia River.  Not only were the Americans coming, but HBC needed to find a better port for its operations.  He wrote to HBC headquarters in London, “It is exceedingly desirable however for the British interest in this quarter, and for the national honor, that Her Majesty’s Government should not submit to such degrading conditions (as a line along 49 degrees) but I think it is nevertheless well to be prepared for the worst.”

The Red River colonists found that lands, buildings, farm animals all promised by the HBC were not forthcoming.  The Company decided they could not give out land that politically, they could not give out.  It was simple for Simpson to renege on the rest of the promises in pursuit of profit for the company.

HBC ENDGAME

In 1841, McLoughlin oversaw 34 trading posts, 24 ports, 6 ships and 616 men throughout his Department.  He also went against company policy discouraging American settlement in the Oregon Country by extending aid to arriving emigrants.  This worked to reduce the risk of attack by the increasing numbers of American settlers though some remained resentful of not only the aid, but the dominance the company oversaw in the region.

With Simpson’s transformation on the issue of the future of the border and his frustration of being delayed at the mouth of the Columbia, he ordered McLoughlin to move the Department headquarters to Vancouver Island. 

James Douglas, McLoughlin’s assistant and also a Chief Factor by this time, got directions to construct Fort Camosun – soon renamed Fort Victoria.  McLoughlin declined to move north, by this time financially connected to the Willamette Valley.

In his first decade in charge of the Columbia Department, McLoughlin stayed the course with company policy trying to keep HBC employees from retiring onto lands in the Willamette Valley.  Seeing the error of his ways in the 1830’s – “such a country will not remain long without settlers” – he tried to contain the settlement encouraging in the small groupings within the French Prairie just southwest of Willamette Falls.

MCLOUGHLIN MOVES TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RIVER

McLoughlin already noted the potential of the falls twenty-five miles south of Fort Vancouver.  In 1829, he claimed two square miles at the base of the falls for the company building three houses and a millrace.  This was the first white settlement in the Willamette Valley.  Eventually, he platted the town of Willamette Falls in 1842 with the Provisional Government incorporating it as Oregon City in 1844.  The original townsite lay along the Willamette River between the falls and Abernathy Creek.  A hundred structures rose up by 1845 – up from just six buildings two years before – with 300 mostly new residents.

By 1841, problems between McLoughlin and his boss, Simpson, began to arise.  The profit from the Department had been declining.  Added to that, was McLoughlin’s aid in extension of credit to arriving American emigrants.  Simpson also wanted to close several posts and discontinue fur brigades to Oregon and California.  McLoughlin became further insulted by Simpson’s superficial investigation in his son’s murder at Fort Stikine in 1842.

CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS

McLoughlin’s claim to the lands around Willamette Falls faced challenge from missionary Alvin Waller, a frontman for the Methodist mission upriver of Jason Lee – in 1840.  Lee did not like being dependent upon the HBC for the survival of his mission.  Lee tried to mollify McLoughlin in that Waller’s claim existed just in case the HBC claim failed under American law.  McLoughlin assumed personal responsibility for the land and improvements thinking a personal claim more secure under American law than one made by the company.

McLoughlin resolved Waller’s counterclaim in 1844 paying Waller $500 along with five acres plus 14 lots to the Methodist Mission.  The mission closed in 1844 with the lots and buildings sold back to McLoughlin for $5,400.  George Abernathy – another man originally from the Methodist campo – and allies managed to invalidate McLoughlin’s claims in the Donation Land Law of 1850 depriving him of some of his holdings at Oregon City.

MCLOUGHLIN CHANGES SIDES

In the meantime, HBC subdivided the Columbia District reducing McLoughlin’s responsibility and pay.  Further, Simpson offered McLoughlin the choice of transferring to a position east of the Rockies or a leave of absence to remain in Oregon which he grudgingly accepted staying on paper in service to the HBC until 1849.  In 1851, McLoughlin became an American citizen, hoping to further his cause for lands claimed already. He remained in Oregon City even serving for a short time as mayor until his death in 1857, focusing on building his home.

His family stayed in the house until they moved to Portland in 1867.  Eventually, the house became the Phoenix Hotel serving as a brothel to the nearby mill workers.  In 1908, the Hawley Pulp & Paper Company bought the property in order to enlarge their mills at the base of the falls.  The home was donated to a local historical group and moved up Singer Hill to its present location, a former city park.  Renovated in 1935-1936, the home became a museum and eventually a National Historic Site in 1941. 

Since 2003, the house serves as a unit of the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site.  In 1937, the 1849 house of former HBC physician Forbes Barclay was moved adjacent to McLoughlin’s former home on Singer Hill.

McLoughlin and his wife, Marguerite, are buried next to their house.  The Barclays, on the other hand, lie further uphill at Mountain View Cemetery.  Here, is where you can find another giant from the HBC era, Peter Skene Ogden. 

PETER SKENE OGDEN

The Ogdens were Loyalists from Newark, New Jersey.  During the Revolution, the family fled first to Manhattan and then in 1783 to Britain.  His father, Isaac, was later assigned as a judge in Quebec where Peter grew up.

First studying for the law, Peter became a clerk with the NWC with him he became a loyal and sometimes brutal player within.  Like McLoughlin, Ogden mastered several Native languages though a short temper made the little pugnacious Ogden a bit of a hellfighter.

With the 1821 merger of the NWC and HBC, Ogden transferred his loyalties to his new company.  Earlier actions against the HBC required Ogden sail to England first to plead his case before being accepted.  As a Chief Trader working out of Fort Vancouver, Ogden operated on six consecutive Snake Country Brigades between 1824 and 1830.  His primary mission being to create a “fur desert” to discourage American trappers coming west from the Rockies.  His missions created many additions to the map of the west ranging from Oregon to the Mojave.

A NEW FACTOR

He served from 1830 until 1845 mostly in the northern areas of the Columbia Department gaining promotion to Chief Factor.  With the Oregon Treaty in 1846 and McLoughlin’s retirement the year before, Ogden became the HBC lead at Fort Vancouver.  HBC operations were allowed to continue by treaty and Ogden was charged with making arrangements with Americans for their continuance.   He gained praise from Americans with his ability to negotiate the release of 47 American women and children captured by the Cayuse in the aftermath of the Whitman murders at the end of 1847.

In ill health, he moved to his daughter’s house in Oregon City in the summer of 1854.  In September of that year, he died and lies in the Mountain View Cemetery.

NOTE ON FURTHER READING

The best source on the life of McLoughlin is Dorothy Nafus Morrison’s Outpost; John McLoughlin & the Far Northwest – 1999.