Problems of Land Claims without a Government – illustrated by the case of Dr. John McLoughlin. How does one stake out land claims in lieu of a functioning government?

Before 1812, most of the Pacific Coast north of today’s San Francisco, featured a landscape claimed by several Euro-centric countries. To the north, Imperial Russia slowly crept southward. Spain maintained claims on much of the coastline from California northwards to today’s Vancouver Island. Both the United Kingdom and the United States focused on the region drained by the Columbia River and its tributaries, though that focus stretched far beyond the drainage basin. The various claims based themselves upon discoveries made by explorers of the various nations. Ideas that the land somehow was owned by local Native Americans was put aside for the most part by the nations in question.