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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It was France’s sale of its vast holdings of Louisiana to the United States in 1803 that eventually led to the European settlement of Oregon. Maybe not surprisingly, in the decades after selling what amounts to almost a third of today’s lower 48 States, there might have been a little bit of seller’s remorse on the part of France. While, by the 1830 – 1850s, the watershed of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers represented a net loss for France’s diminishing Overseas Empire, Frenchmen still found themselves coveting regions also coveted by the upstart North American republic. Here are two visits from Frenchmen, De Mofras and Saint-Amant to Oregon a decade apart giving intriguing perspectives on the Oregon that might have been French.
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A long time in planning, preparing and recruiting, the United States Exploratory Expedition finally sailed out from Hampton Roads, Virginia, 18 August 1838, under the command of Navy Lieutenant Charles Wilkes en route for Madeira. The six-ship squadron would spend the next four years at sea moving around the world, exploring, charting and discovering. During their voyages which took them to six of the seven continents – they only missed Europe. In 1841, the ships visited the Oregon Country. An adjunct to their scientific missions was to visit Oregon to report on specific conditions there as American interest in those lands were on the upswing. Only one official American probe ventured into the Oregon Country previously.
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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 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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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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When is an ocean not an ocean? When is a river, a bay? A bay the sea? William Clark on 7 November 1805 looked downstream from the camp of their expedition near Pillar Rock writing famously in his journal, “Ocian in view. Oh what joy!”
This is one of the most famous quotes from the annals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Clark wrote the note describing the party’s view from their camp on the north bank of the Columbia River opposite Pillar Rock. Historically, the quote was not the first note Clark wrote down. This note actually written some months later in a third edit by the explorer. His first two journal entries were a little less emotional, though still maintaining the ocean they had sought finally found.
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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.
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As school children, we bused out on field trips to Champoeg State Park to see where Oregon was “born”. Most of us kids had little idea of the events which transpired here. We, like our parents, also lack a fundamental knowledge of a history of the times in which the meetings and subsequent events took place. The Provisional Government of Oregon simply did not mean much then or later.
But Champoeg gave the Northwest got its first version of a Eurocentric government. The United States and England decided to agree to not agree in 1818 forming a condominium of political control over the vast region. A major problem with the agreement, no mention made of internal government. That was not much of a problem when the only Europeans in the region were busy searching for animal pelts. However, events took a big turn as the 1830’s became the 1840’s and American settlers began coming onto the scene.
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