Tag Archives: Hudson’s Bay Company

EWING YOUNG – WHISKEY, CATTLE EQUAL A NEW STATE

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Oregon White Oak marks the grave of Ewing Young in the Chehalem Valley.
Oregon White Oak marks the grave of Ewing Young in the Chehalem Valley.

Ewing Young lived a life of adventure. A major figure in the fur trade in the Far Southwest both as a trapper, but mainly as a leader. He migrated to the Oregon Country in 1834, where Young amassed a land claim of some 50 square miles. In his life, he figured big, but it was his early death at the age of 41 in the winter of 1841 for which he is best remembered. Dying without known heirs, local settlers came together to figure out how to settle his estate. That process is considered a germinal moment in the eventual founding of a local government in the divided Oregon.

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HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY – HBC – DISAPPEARS IN THE OREGON MISTS

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Kristi Cameron, of Metis ancestry, presents George Simpson in his canoe - Gathering Hall Exhibit of the Ontario Legislative Hall, Toronto.
Kristi Cameron, of Metis ancestry, presents George Simpson in his canoe – Gathering Hall Exhibit of the Ontario Legislative Hall, Toronto.

One of the cool things a king – or queen – in an absolute monarchy can do is to give away land. So popular, democracies have tried similar editions of their own. One of the largest giveaways happened in British North America where King Charles II gave away lands within the drainage system of Hudson’s Bay. That included lands within the James Bay drainage since James is simply a bay off the main Hudson’s. He gave them to a group headed by his cousin Prince Rupert in 1670. The HBC many exclaimed as an “empire within an empire.” 

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CHAMPOEG – MYTHOLOGY LIVES STRONG WITH A SELF-GOVERNMENT PREMIERE

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The 1901 memorial stone with the 1918 Pioneer Memorial Building behind at Champoeg State Park.
The 1901 memorial stone with the 1918 Pioneer Memorial Building behind at Champoeg State Park.

Mythology – a popular belief or assumption that has grown up around someone or something; one of the definitions of the word.  Synonyms include “legend”, “tradition”, “lore”, “legend”, “knowledge”, “wisdom”, “folktale” and “anecdote” among other words. These words go a long way in describing the events at Champoeg, Oregon on 2 May 1843 and how those events lie remembered in our minds today.

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THE GREAT REINFORCEMENT – AMERICAN PUSH TO GAIN THE OREGON TERRITORY

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The Lausanne which carried members of the Great Reinforcement to the Oregon Country.
The Lausanne which carried members of the Great Reinforcement to the Oregon Country.

With a non-Native American population numbering in the low hundreds in the 1830s, the long-simmering struggle for control over the vast Oregon Country began its inexorable swing towards the United States.  Methodist missionaries doubled down on their numbers at their Willamette Mission sited a few miles north from today’s city of Salem along the Willamette River.  The Great Reinforcement brought fifty-one men, women and children from New York City all the way to the Hudson’s Bay Company fort at Vancouver. 

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SECRET AGENTS TO THE OREGON TERRITORY – TOO LATE IN THE GREAT GAME

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Canoe voyageurs passing a waterfall - painting by Frances Ann Hopkins 1869.
Canoe voyageurs passing a waterfall – painting by Frances Ann Hopkins 1869.

The United States and United Kingdom came to an agreement in 1818 in which they would share sovereign rule over the Oregon Country.  Oregon’s borders came into reasonable shape in the next couple of years with an agreement between Russia and the US followed by one between Russia and England demarcating the northern border to be at the point of 54°40’ latitude.

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MAGIC OF CHRISTIANITY – THE METHODIST MISSION TO OREGON

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Scene from Henry Eld Jr.'s Encampment on the banks of the Willamette with the Methodist Mission on the opposite side of the River - 1841 Oregon Territory - Yale Collection.
Scene from Henry Eld Jr.’s Encampment on the banks of the Willamette with the Methodist Mission on the opposite side of the River – 1841 Oregon Territory – Yale Collection.

Most stories – articles or books – discussing the Methodist Mission of Jason Lee to Oregon which lasted from 1834 until 1843, start with the same story.  The story of four Native Americans who came to St. Louis to ask Missouri governor William Clark – yes, the same “Clark” of the Lewis & Clark fame – for teachers to provide them with the power of white man’s religion. Of the Native Americans, three were of the Nez Percé tribe and one was a Flathead elder.  The two tribes were both neighbors and friends.  They reached St. Louis early in October 1831, soon after meeting with Governor Clark, also the superintendent of Indian Affairs.

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WILLIAM SLACUM – AN AMERICAN “SPY” CHECKS OUT THE OREGON COUNTRY

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USS Potomac at anchor in Valparaiso harbor, Chile.

William Slacum joined the US Navy in the summer of 1829 at the age of 30. Two years later, he served as the purser aboard the USS Potomac. A naval purser served as a supply and financial officer aboard ships. He acted both as the maintainer of ship’s pay and muster roles but also ran a ship’s store from which a sailor’s pay would be deducted for articles of clothing or luxury items like tobacco, sugar, tea or coffee. Purser positions were highly sought after. The title of purser in the American navy would change in 1860 to paymaster. Today, they men and women officers belong to the Pay Corps of the navy.

Aboard the Potomac, he spent four years circumnavigating the world. In December 1833, Slacum found himself posted as Special Agent of the Pacific Squadron in Valapraiso, Chile. This gave him time to recover from a bout of trigeminal neuralgia – tic douloureux. His posting was subject to confirmation from Washington, which he failed to obtain when the Navy appointed someone else to fill the post.

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DEFT OF HAND AND A KEG OF WHISKEY: MAGIC AT CUMBERLAND GAP – JOHN DE COURCY IN AMERICA

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Drawing by a Union soldier of Federal camps at Cumberland Gap after its capture in 1864.
1864 Drawing by a Union soldier of Federal camps at Cumberland Gap after its capture by John De Courcy.

I knew before that a certain Captain George Pickett, a thirty-four-year-old veteran of the Mexican War and graduate of West Point – albeit, last in his class – served on San Juan Island in the Puget Sound just before the American Civil War. What I did not know, was one of his opposites in the whole Pig War ordeal in 1859 was an Anglo-Irish peer by the name of John De Courcy. Like Pickett, De Courcy would figure in the next war, as well. Pickett’s role would be bigger and better known, but De Courcy’s role was big enough for someone involved in command. And not even as a citizen of either side.

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TERRITORIAL OREGON – IN THE THRALL OF THE SALEM CLIQUE

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Shirt commemorates one of the election slogans of James K. Polk in 1844.

With the Cayuse War, the federal government finally acted in Washington, D.C., 18 August 1848, to develop an official form of government over the region of the Oregon Country transferred to American control by the Oregon Treaty of 1846 officially ending the awkward condominium shared with Great Britain since 1818. The new territorial government ushered in new power brokers – aka the Salem Clique – to administer the political machine during the next decade. This setting the stage for a Statehood granted 14 February 1859 with war clouds gathering furiously back in the East.

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MCLOUGHLIN AND OGDEN – HBC REMINDERS LYING IN OREGON CITY

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John Mix Stanley's painting of Oregon City 1850.
John Mix Stanley’s painting of Oregon City 1850.

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.

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