CHAPTER XXXIII
1840-1859
THE PASSING OF THE COMPANY—THE COMING OF THE COLONISTS TO OREGON—THE FOUNDING OF VICTORIA NORTH OF THE BOUNDARY—-WHY THE H. B. C. GAVE UP OREGON—MISRULE OF VANCOUVER ISLAND—MCLOUGHLIN’S RETIREMENT.
THE PASSING OF THE COMPANY—THE COMING OF THE COLONISTS TO OREGON—THE FOUNDING OF VICTORIA NORTH OF THE BOUNDARY—-WHY THE H. B. C. GAVE UP OREGON—MISRULE OF VANCOUVER ISLAND—MCLOUGHLIN’S RETIREMENT.
Anothersubject had McLoughlin and Simpson laid before the Governing Board of London in that winter of 1838-39. The treaty of joint occupation continued between the United States and Great Britain; but Americans were yearly drifting into the valley of the Columbia. First came such occasional trappers as Jedediah Smith and Wyeth, retreating with loss of life at the hands of the Indians and loss of profits from the opposition of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Of the two hundred men who followed Wyeth through the mountains in the early thirties, one hundred and sixty were killed; but men like Wyeth and Kelley, of Boston, sent back word to the Eastern States of the marvelous wealth in forest and land of this Oregon empire. Then came the missionaries in 1834,the Lees, and Whitmans, and Spauldings—a story that is, in itself, a book; but it does not concern this record of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Missionaries were not in the service of the English corporation. They, too, sent word to the East of openings in the Oregon country for the American settler. To be sure, two thousand miles of waste land and mountain lay between the Eastern home seeker and this Promised Land, but was that a thing to deter frontiersmen whose ancestors had hewn their way from Virginia across the Blue Mountains to the Bloody Ground of Tennessee and Kentucky? The adventure of it but acted as a spur. Old pathfinders who had settled down as farmers on the frontier of the Missouri and Mississippi, felt again the call of the wilderness, shouldered their rifles, and with families in tented wagons set out for Oregon. Another cause stimulated the movement. In the East were hard times. The railroad had not yet reached the pioneer of the prairie. He had no way of sending his produce to market. Far off hills looked green. If he could but reach the Columbia—he thought—there was the ocean at his door as a highway for commerce.
American farmers began to drift to the Columbia Valley. At first there was no general movement. The thing was almost imperceptible. Wanderingtrappers turned farmers and squatted down with their families in the valleys of the Willamette and the Walla Walla and the Cowlitz. Then, as early as 1838, four families from the East came riding over the mountains seeking homesteads. McLoughlin shook his head. The thing seemed almost impossible. He remembered what the coming of the colonists had meant in Red River—the beginning of the end with the fur trade; and in Oregon, the coming of the colonist would be fraught with more importance. If American settlers outnumbered English traders, diplomacy might fold its hands. Joint occupancy would end in American possession. From the first, McLoughlin had encouraged his old traders and trappers to settle on farms in the Willamette Valley—at the famous Champoeg Colony. Fort Vancouver, itself, now comprised thirty miles of cultivated land, but between the Columbia and the Russian posts to the north wasnosettlement, only fur posts, and this was the very region where hinged the dispute between England and the United States for possession.
“Fifty-four forty or fight,” became the slogan of the jingoists, which meant the United States claimed territory as far as 54°; in a word to the Russian possessions. In a nutshell, the reasons for the claim were these:
When the United States took over Louisiana, Louisiana extended to the Columbia. Gray, the Boston trader, had discovered the Columbia River. Lewis and Clarke, the American explorers, had erected their wintering fort on its banks. Astor, the American trader, had built his fur post on the Columbia before the Canadians had come; and though the fort was sold to the Canadians, after the war of 1812, the American flag had been restored to Astoria, though it remained in possession of the Canadians.
Answered the British to these claims: Louisiana may extend to the Columbia, but it does not extend beyond it. Gray, the Boston man, may have discovered the mouth of the Columbia, but Vancouver, the Englishman, in the same year as Gray’s voyage, ascended the Columbia, and explored every inch of the coast from the Columbia to the Russian settlements, taking possession for Great Britain. Especially, did he discover all parts of Puget Sound. Astor, the American, may have built the first fur post on the Columbia, but Astor’s managers sold that post to the Canadian Company; and though the American flag was restored to Astoria, it was distinctly on the specified understanding that the treaty of joint occupancy should not prejudice the final decision of possession in Oregon.
Jingoists in England wanted all of Oregon. Jingoists in America wanted all of British Columbia’s coast up to Sitka. Wise heads in England were willing that the boundary should be compromised at the north bank of the Columbia. Wise heads in America were willing to relinquish United States claims beyond the forty-ninth parallel; but the foolish catch cry of “Fifty-four forty or fight” was being used as an election dodge and stirred up ill feeling enough to prevent compromise on either side.
While pompous statesmen, who knew absolutely nothing about Oregon, were deluging Congress and Parliament with orations on the subject of the boundary, ragged men and women, colonists in homespun, colonists many of them too poor for even homespun, with barefooted children, and men and women clad in buckskin, were settling the question in a practical way. They were nottalkingabout possessions. They weretakingpossession.
This was the situation as McLoughlin and Simpson laid it before the Governing Board in the winter of 1838-39. Now fur traders never yet welcomed colonists. The coming of the colonists means the going of the game; but something must be done to counteract these American settlers and if possible hold the Columbia River as a highway for the Hudson’s Bay brigades. The Puget Sound AgriculturalCompany was formed with Hudson’s Bay men as stockholders and McLoughlin as manager, to hold the country between Columbia River and Puget Sound—modern Washington—for the English. The capital was £200,000 in 2000 shares; but there never was any intention that the venture should pay. Very little of the capital was ever paid in. The aim was to hold a region as large as England and Scotland for the Hudson’s Bay Company.
Coming back to Oregon, in 1839, with his son David, now a graduated doctor, McLoughlin sent his old trappers into the Cowlitz Valley as settlers, and had a farm of five thousand acres measured off for the Puget Sound Company. Here the stock was raised that supplied the inland posts with food. Hudson’s Bay men from Red River were sent overland to colonize the Puget Sound region.
The precaution was useless. There are times when the ragged colonist in homespun is wiser than the wariest diplomat that kingcraft ever produced. Congressional disputes, missionary lectures, the report of the American secret agent Slocum sent from Washington to observe the trend of events on the Pacific, the efforts of the Oregonian Society formed in Massachusetts—all fanned the flame of emigration to the West to a furore. More settlers in tentedwagons rolled slowly westward from the Missouri. Jason Lee comes back with more missionaries in 1840. Lieutenant Wilkes of the American Exploring Squadron slips up the Columbia, in 1841, to observe things for himself. In 1842, Doctor White leads more than one hundred and twenty people to the Columbia, and all the while the settlers are clamoring to Washington for two things: (1) land grants for the farms on which they have “squatted”—some of them have “squatted” on as much as 1000 acres; (2) extension of American Government over them. And all the while, Washington politicians delay to close the boundary dispute. Why? Every day’s delay brought more settlers into the country and strengthened the American claim.
Lieutenant Wilkes of the American Squadron visits McLoughlin at Fort Vancouver. McLoughlin returns the courtesy by going across to the American ships off Puget Sound and dining with Wilkes. Unfortunately, while McLoughlin was absent, down came Sir George Simpson with the Columbia brigade from New Caledonia. It was the 5th of July. Simpson’s suspicions took fire. Was McLoughlin—the Company’s Chief Factor—celebrating the 4th of July on the American ship? As a matter of fact, McLoughlin had been invited to do so, but out of respect for his Company had gone across a daylate. McLoughlin returned to find Simpson in a towering rage, raking Douglas and Ogden and Ermatinger over the coals for not “driving out the Americans.” Wilkes came back with McLoughlin. The encounter must have been comical. Sir George, icy and frigid and pompous at the head of the banquet table; Wilkes, the American, suave and amused; Douglas, grave, plainly perceiving the time had come when he must choose between loyalty to McLoughlin or loyalty to Simpson; Ogden, down from New Caledonia, pudgy and good natured as usual, but missing not a turn of the by-play; Ermatinger doing his best to fill in the heavy silence with tales of his mountain brigade; the Governor’s Highland pipers puffing and skirling and filling the great dining hall with tunes of Scottish Highlands. What were McLoughlin’s thoughts? Who knows? Simpson’s orders were to givenoaid of any sort to American colonists and missionaries; but McLoughlin—as one of the Company’s directors afterward reported—was not a man to be bulldozed. He, too, perceived the time had come when he must choose between his Company and his conscience; for no man ever appealed in vain to McLoughlin for aid. To colonists and missionaries alike, he extended goods on credit. If he had not, the chances are they would have passed their first year on the Columbiain semi-starvation; and to their shame, be it said, some forgot to pay the debts they owed McLoughlin. To them, he was the hated aristocrat, representative of the hated English monopoly, that was trying to wrest Oregon from American control. Not the reproofs of his Company, not the rage of his governor, but the ingratitude of the people whose lives he had saved at sacrifice to himself—cut McLoughlin to the quick. The very winter after Governor Simpson’s visit, a petition was drawn up by the settlers and forwarded to Congress, bristling with bitter charges against the Hudson’s Bay Company.
Adam ThomIn the early days of Red River Settlement there were neither judges nor juries. The Company was autocrat supreme. When the people began to clamor for self-government, Adam Thom, a writer of Montreal, was brought up as First Recorder, and his régime became noted for his autocratic rule. Enemies, of course, said that Thom was the tool of the Company.
Adam Thom
In the early days of Red River Settlement there were neither judges nor juries. The Company was autocrat supreme. When the people began to clamor for self-government, Adam Thom, a writer of Montreal, was brought up as First Recorder, and his régime became noted for his autocratic rule. Enemies, of course, said that Thom was the tool of the Company.
One more influence tended to quicken the pulse of public interest in Oregon. This was the famous and disputed Whitman Ride. Did Doctor Whitman, the missionary, save Oregon? For years popular sentiment cherished the belief that he did. Of late, historical critics have gone to the other extreme. The facts are these. It is not easy to make converts of Indians. Results are of slow growth. In the fall of 1842, the Missionary Board of the East decided to withdraw its mission on the Walla Walla. To Whitman such a move at this critical time when a straw’s weight might turn the balance either way to England or to the United States—seemed nothing short of a national calamity. “I must go East,” he told his wife. “I must see Webster at Washington, but theMission can send me to Boston. I don’t want the Hudson’s Bay to know what I am about.” It was already October. Snow was falling on the mountains. The passes were closed for the year. “Can I get through to the East?” Whitman asked trappers and Indians. In answer, they laughed. The thing was not only impossible—it was mad. But Whitman had already accomplished things both mad and impossible. He had brought wagons across mountains, where fur traders said wagons could never come; and he had led missionaries over mountain barriers difficult as any Alps scaled by European warriors. Accompanied by Lovejoy, a lawyer, Whitman set out on October 3rd. Mrs. Whitman remained alone at the mission till the danger of a brutal Indian, trying to force his way into her room at night, induced the dauntless woman to accept Chief Trader McKinlay’s invitation to go down to the Hudson’s Bay fort at Walla Walla, where Mrs. McKinlay, Peter Ogden’s daughter, afforded companionship. On pressed Whitman over the mountains. This was the ride famous in the Western States. Its story belongs more to the pioneer than the Company. Therefore, it may not be related here. Suffice to say, Whitman increased “the Oregon fever” already raging in the East. He stirred up Webster, and he stirred up Congress, and he stirred up missionaryboards of every denomination. Frémont was appointed by Congress to convoy the emigrants westward. The Oregon movement of 1843 would have been important without Whitman’s crusade. With his crusade, it became epoch-marking. If this was “saving Oregon,” then spite of historic critics, Whitman played an important rôle.
The movement westward had become a tide. From Massachusetts, from the Mississippi States, from the South, the emigrants gathered to Fort Independence on the Missouri for the long trip overland. This was the starting point of the Oregon Trail. Tented wagons—the prairie schooner—pack horses, ox carts, straggling herds of horses and cattle and sheep came rolling to the Missouri in ’43. May 22nd, with a pilot to the fore and a whoop as signal, the long line files out for Oregon—one thousand persons, one hundred and twenty wagons, some five thousand head of stock. On the Kansas, in June, pause is made to elect officers and maintain some kind of system. Peter Burnett, a lawyer, is chosen Captain; J. W. Nesmith, second in command, with nine others as assistant officers. Later, the travelers going light—on horseback or in light wagons—march to the fore. The heavy wagons and ox carts and stock come behind. The former division is known as “the light,” the latter as “the cow column.”Chief leader of the slow-goers is Jesse Applegate, a man to become famous in Oregon.
It is like the migration of ancient people in prehistoric times—the rise at dawn, the rifle shot to signal watch for the night is over, the tents and wagons pouring out the people to begin another day’s march, the women cooking breakfast over campfire, the men rounding up the stock! Forward scour the scouts to see that no danger besets the trail. Oxen are slowly hitched to the wagons forming a circular fort for the night camp; and these drag out in divisions of fifteen or twenty each. Young men on horseback flank the trail as out-guards and hunters. These have arduous work. They must ride twenty miles from the humming caravan before they will find scampering game for the night supper. Sharp at sevenA. M.a trumpet blows. The long whips lash out. The wagons rumble into motion. The outriders are off at a gallop. The long caravan moves drowsily forward, and the camping place sinks on the horizon like a sail at sea. Pilots choose watering place for the noon hour, but teams are not unhitched. Promptly at one, writes Mr. Applegate, “the bugle sounded and the caravan resumed its western journey. Drowsiness falls on man and beast. Teamsters drop asleep on their perches ... till the sun is low in the west.” Again thepilot has chosen good watering place for camping ground, and the wagons circle into a corral for the night.
By the end of August, the pioneers are in the mountains at Fort Hall, on the very borders of their Promised Land. Two-thirds of the journey lies behind them, but the worst third is to the fore, though they are now on the outskirts of what was then called Oregon. Doctor Whitman goes ahead with the trail breakers to cut a road for the wagons through the dense mountain forests. Space does not permit the details of this part of the journey. This, too, belongs to the story of the pioneer. It was November before the colonists reached the Columbia. How splendid was the reward of the long toil, they now know; but ominous clouds gathered over the colony. The Columbia was a swollen sea with the autumn rains. The Indians were rampant, stampeding the stock.
“Shall we kill—is it good we kill—these Bostonais who come to take our lands?” the excited natives asked McLoughlin, the Hudson’s Bay man, at Fort Vancouver. To Pacific Coast Indians, all Americans were Boston men, so named from the first ship seen on the coast. “Shall we kill these Boston men who make bad talk against the King George men?”
“Kill? Who said the word?” thundered McLoughlin,thinking, no doubt, to what lengths such a game on the part of the fur trader led in Red River; and it is said he knocked the Indian miscreant down.
“The people have no boats. They are without food or clothing,” messengers reported at the Company fort.
The weather had turned damp and cold. Autumn rains were slashing down slantwise. Again McLoughlin had to choose between his Company and his conscience. Had he but restrained his hand—done nothing—disease and exposure would have done more than enough to the incoming colonists; but he did not hesitate one moment, not though the colonists were cursing him for a Hudson’s Bay oppressor and the Company threatening to dismiss him for his friendship with the Americans. Instantly, he sent his traders upstream with rafts and boats and clothing and provisions for the belated people.
“Pay me back when you can,” was the only bond he laid on the needy people; and a good many paid him back by cursing him for “an aristocrat.” Rain was drenching down as the boats came swirling opposite Vancouver Fort. On the wharf stood the Chief Factor, long hair, white as snow, blowing wet in the wind, with hand of welcome and cheer extended for every comer. One woman had actuallygiven birth to a child as the rafts came down the Columbia. For days, the Company’s fort was like a fair—five hundred people at a time housed under Vancouver’s roofs or camped in the courtyard till every colonist had erected, and taken his family to, his own cabins.
Among so many heterogeneous elements as the colonists were some outlaws, and these within a few months were threatening to “burn Fort Vancouver about the old aristocrat’s ears.” The colonists had organized a provisional government of their own—which is a story by itself; and they begged McLoughlin to subscribe to it that they might protect Fort Vancouver from the lawless spirits.
“You must positively protect your rights here and at once or you will loose the country,” McLoughlin had written to the Governing Board of London. No answer had come. The threats against Fort Vancouver became bolder. The Indian conspiracy, that shortly deluged the land in blood, was throwing off all concealment. McLoughlin built more bastions and strengthened his pickets. Still no answer came to his appeal for protection by the English Government. Colonists, who loved McLoughlin as “the father of Oregon,” begged him to subscribe to the provisional government. Ogden advised it. Ermatinger was ready to become an American citizen.Douglas was absent in the North. Fearful of Indian war now threatening and dreading still more an international war over the possession of Oregon, McLoughlin, after long struggles between Company and conscience, after prayers for hours on his knees for God’s guidance in his choice—subscribed to the provisional government in August, 1844.
Six months too late came the protection for which he had been asking all these years—the British Pacific Squadron. Perhaps it was as well that the war vessels did come too late, for Captain Gordon, commander of the fleet and brother to Aberdeen, then Cabinet Minister of England, was a pompous, fire-eating, blustering fellow, utterly incapable of steering a peaceful course through such troublous times. With Gordon boasting how his marines could “drive the Yankees over the mountains,” and outlaws among the colonists keen for the loot of a raid on Fort Vancouver—friction might have fanned to war before England or the United States could intervene.
The main fleet lay off Puget Sound. The shipModiste, with five hundred marines, anchored in the Columbia off Vancouver and patrolled the river for eighteen months, men drilling and camping on the esplanade in front of the fur post.
Came also in October, 1845, two special commissioners from the Hudson’s Bay Company to report on Oregon. The report was sent back without McLoughlin’s inspection. They had reported against him for favoring the American settlers. Knowing well this was the beginning of the end, McLoughlin sent for Douglas to come down and take charge. The mail of the following spring dismissed McLoughlin from the service. That is not the way it was put. It was suggested he should retire. McLoughlin gave up the reins in 1846 and withdrew from Vancouver Fort to live among the settlers he had befriended at Oregon City on the Willamette. He died there in 1857. It is unnecessary to express an opinion on his character. The record of his rule in Oregon is the truest verdict on his character. His was one of the rare spirits in this world that not only followed right, but followed right when there was no reward; that not only did right, but did right when it meant positive loss to himself and the stabs of malignity from ungrateful people whom he had benefited. The most of people can act saintly when a Heaven of prizes is dangling just in front of the Trail, but fewer people can follow the narrow way when it leads to loss and pain and ignominy. McLoughlin could, and that Christ-like quality in his character places him second to none among theheroes of American history. As Selkirk’s name is indissolubly connected with the hero-days of Red River, so McLoughlin’s is enshrined in the heroic past of Oregon. In Hudson’s Bay House, London, I looked in vain for portraits or marble busts of these men. Portraits there are of bewigged and beruffled princes and dukes who ruled over estates that would barely make a back-door patch to Red River or Oregon; but not a sign to commemorate the fame of the two men who founded empires in America, greater in area than Great Britain and France and Germany and Spain combined.
It would be interesting from a colonial point of view to know just what qualifications the British Government thought Commander Gordon of the Pacific Squadron and his officers, Lieut. William Peel, son of Sir Robert Peel, and Lieutenant Parke of the Royal Marines, possessed to judge whether Oregon was worth keeping or not. It would be interesting from a purely Canadian point of view. American historians, who ought to be profoundly grateful to Gordon for his blunders, pronounce him the most consummate bungler ever sent on an International mission. Reference has been made in an introductory chapter as to how these naval officers dealt with the matter and the grave injustice theydid the Hudson’s Bay Company. Parke and Peel came down to the Columbia and passed some weeks on hunting expeditions up the Walla Walla and the Willamette. They surveyed Fort Vancouver and laughed. All the international pother about that wooden clutter! They observed the colonists and laughed! Why, five hundred marines from any one of their fifteen war ships lying in Puget Sound could send these barefooted, buckskin-clad, tobacco-spitting settlers skipping back over the mountains to the United States like deer before the hunt in English parks! To the two naval officers, these people were but low-living peasants. It did not enter into the narrow vision of their insular minds that out of just such material as these rough pioneers do new nations grow. The two gentlemen regarded the whole expedition as a holiday lark.They had a good time!Up on Puget Sound Gordon was serving the British Government still more worthily. He had landed at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s new post of Victoria—of which more anon. He was given the best that the fur post could offer—table of wild fowl and the Company’s best wines, but Half-breed servants do not wait on a table like an English butler; and berth bunks are not English feather beds; and an ocean full of water is not an English bath. Alas and alas, poor gentleman! Such sacrifices is he called to makefor his country’s service! Then my gentleman demands what sport. “Deer,” says Finlayson, “or bear hunting; or fishing.”
“Do you use flies or bait?” asks Gordon with a due sense of condescension for having deigned to enquire about this barbarous land’s sport at all. Finlayson must have had some trouble not to choke with laughter when my gentleman insists on fishing with flies in streams where salmon could be scooped in tubfuls. Later, he deigns to go hunting and insists that deer be run down in the open as they hunt in enclosed Scottish game preserves, not still-hunted, which is a barbarous way; with the consequence that Gordon does not get a shot. In vain Finlayson and Douglas, who comes North, try to please this mannikin in gold braid. In response to their admiration of the mighty mountains, he makes answer that goes down to history for civility—“that he would not give the bleakest knoll on the bleakest hill of Scotland for all these mountains in a heap.”
Oregon’s provisional government forced the boundary dispute to an issue. It must be settled. The Hudson’s Bay Company press their case, pleading that if the American colonists are to retain all south of the Columbia, then the Company, having settlers between the Columbia and Puget Sound, should retain all between Columbia River and Puget Sound.The case hangs fire. Gordon is called in. In language which I have given in a former chapter, he declares the country is not worth keeping. Naturally, Aberdeen listens to his own brother’s opinion and Peel to his son’s. By treaty of June, 1846, England relinquishes claims to all territory south of 49°. Gradually fur trader is crowded out by settler. In 1860, Fort Vancouver is dismantled and taken over as a military station by the United States. Ermatinger, for having joined the Oregon government, is packed off to a post in Athabasca. Ogden saves himself from punishment by following McLoughlin’s example and resigning to become a settler on the Willamette. For the Puget Sound farms, the Company receives compensation of $450,000 and $200,000 from the American Government; the former amount payable to the Hudson’s Bay Company proper, the latter to the Puget Sound Company, though the shareholders were nominally the same persons.
So ended the glories of the fur trade in Oregon. It still had a few years to run in British Columbia. Long ago McLoughlin had plainly seen the beginning of the end in Oregon and sent Douglas to spy out the site of a permanent fort north of 49°.
It is really one of the most interesting studies in American history to observe—if it can be done withoutprejudice or prepossession—how when this great Company, changing in its personnel but ever carrying down in its apostolic succession the same traditions of statecraft, of obedience, of secrecy, of diplomacy—how when this great Company had to take a kick, it took it gracefully and always made it a point of being kickedup, not down. This is illustrated by the Company’s policy now.
Cruising north in June of ’42, Douglas notices two magnificent bays north of 49°, on the south end of Vancouver Island opposite what is now British Columbia. The easterly bay named by the Indians, Camosun, meaning rush of waters, offers splendid sea space combined with a shore of plains interspread with good building timber. Also, there are fresh-water streams. The other bay, three miles west, called Esquimalt—the place of gathering of roots—is a better, more land-locked harbor but more difficult of anchorage for small boats. Simpson and McLoughlin decide to build a new fort at Camosun—the modern Victoria. Those, who know the region, need no description of its beauty. To those who do not, descriptions can convey but a faint picture. Islands ever green, in a climate ever mild, dot the far-rolling blue of a summer sea; and where the clouds skirt the water’s horizon, there breaks through mid-heaven, aërial and unreal, the fiery andopal dome of Mt. Baker, or the rifted shimmering, ragged peaks of the Olympic Range in Washington. So far are the mountains, so soft the air, that not a shadow, not a line, of the middle heights appear, only the snowy peaks, dazzling and opalescent, with the primrose tinge of the sheet lightning at play like the color waves of Northern Lights. Westward is the sea; eastward, the rolling hills, the forested islands, unexpected vistas of sea among the forests, of precipices rising sheer as wall from the water. Hither comes Douglas to lay the foundations of a new empire.
To Hubert Howe Bancroft the world is indebted for details of the founding of Victoria. Bancroft obtained the facts first-hand from the manuscripts of Douglas, himself. Fifteen men led by Douglas left the Columbia in March, ’43. Proceeding up the Cowlitz, they obtained provisions from the Puget Sound Company at Nisqually and embarking onThe Beaver, March the 13th, at tenA. M., steamed northward for Vancouver Island. At four o’clock, the next afternoon, they anchored just outside Camosun Bay. “On the morning of the 15th of March, Douglas set out from the steamer in a small boat to examine the shore.... With the expedition was a Jesuit missionary, Bolduc.... Repairing to the great house of the Indian village, the priest harangued the people ... and baptized themtill arrested by sheer exhaustion. The 16th, having determined on a site, Douglas put his men at work squaring timbers and digging a well. He explained to the natives that he had come to build among them, whereat they were greatly pleased and pressed their assistance on the fort builders, who employed them at the rate of a blanket for every forty pickets they would bring.... Sunday, the 19th, Bolduc decided to celebrate mass. Douglas supplied him with men to aid in the holy work. A rustic chapel was improvised; a boat’s awning serving as canopy, branches of fir trees enclosing the sides. No cathedral bell was heard that Sabbath morning ... and yet the Songhies, Clallams, and Cowichins were there, friends and bloody enemies.... Bolduc, desirous of carrying the gospel to Whidby Island, was paddled thence on the 24th....”
While his men proceeded with the building, Douglas went north onThe Beaverto dismantle Fort Tako and Fort McLoughlin and bring the men from these abandoned posts to assist at Camosun. “The force now numbered fifty men ... armed to the teeth ... constantly on guard.” By September, stockades, bastions and dwelling houses were complete. Douglas departed in October, leaving Charles Ross in charge, but Ross died in the spring of ’44 and Roderick Finlayson became chieftrader at Camosun, first named Albert Fort after the Prince Consort, then Victoria, its present name, after the Queen of England. Finlayson had been in charge of a little post at Bytown—the modern Ottawa, but coming to Oregon had been dispatched north to Stickine.
The steamer had not been long gone when the Cowichin Indians fell to the pastime of slaughtering the fort cattle. Finlayson demanded pay or the surrender of the Indian “rustlers.” The Indian chief laughed the demand to scorn.
“The fort gates will be closed against you,” warned Finlayson.
“And I will batter them down,” retorted the chief.
Fort Vancouver, at the bend in Columbia River, where Chief Factor McLoughlin held sway for fifty years, and where the First American Colonists were welcomed and sheltered.
Fort Vancouver, at the bend in Columbia River, where Chief Factor McLoughlin held sway for fifty years, and where the First American Colonists were welcomed and sheltered.
“The spirit of butchery,” relates Bancroft, “was aroused. Within the fort, watch was kept day and night. After a lapse of two days, the threatened attack was made. Midst savage yells, a shower of musket balls came pattering down upon the fort, riddling the stockades and rattling on the roofs. Instantly, Finlayson shouted his order that not a shot was to be returned.... The savages continued their fire ... then rested from the waste of ammunition.... Then the commander (Finlayson) appeared ... and beckoned (the chief).... ‘What would you do?’ exclaimed Finlayson. ‘What evil would you bring upon yourselves! Knowyou that with one motion of my finger I could blow you all into the bay? And I will do it! See your houses yonder!’
“Instantly, a nine-pounder belched forth with astounding noise, tearing to splinters the cedar lodge.
“Finlayson had ordered his interpreter to run to the lodges and warn the inmates to instant flight. Hence no damage was done save shivering to splinters some pine slabs.”
The results were what one might expect. The Indians sued for peace, and paid full meed in furs for the slaughtered cattle.
It may be added here as a sample of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s economy in detail—that Fort Victoria was built without the driving of a single nail. Wooden pegs were used. After the relinquishment of Oregon, the old Okanogan-Kamloops trail could be no longer used. Anderson of Fort Alexandria in New Caledonia succeeded in 1845-46 in finding and cutting a new trail down the Fraser to Langley and Victoria. This was the trail that later developed into the famous Cariboo Road of the miners and of which ruins may still be seen clinging to the precipices above the Fraser like basket work, the strands of the basket bridges being huge cedar logs mortised in places for a depth of hundreds of feet. Except where the embankment has crumbled beneaththe timber work, Anderson’s old fur trail is still used to enter Cariboo. From 1846, one Joseph McKay becomes chief clerk under Chief Factor Douglas of Victoria. Indians brought first word of the famous coal beds of North Vancouver Island. Hence the building of Fort Rupert on Beaver Harbor in ’43.
And now occurs the fine play of the Company’s rare diplomacy. Rumors of gold in California are arousing the fever that is to result in the pell-mell stampede of the famous ’49. At any time, similar discoveries may bring a stampede to the North. No one knew better than the Company those Indian legends of hidden minerals in the Rockies, and when colonists came there would be an end to the fur trade. Did the Company, then—as is often charged—conceal knowledge of precious minerals in its territory? Not at all. It simply let the legends slumber. Its business was not mining. It was fur trading, and the two were utterly hostile.
Came Sir John Pelly, Governor of the Company in England, and Sir George Simpson, Governor of the Company in America, to the Cabinet Minister of Great Britain with a cock-and-bull story of the dangers of an American, not invasion, but deluge such as had swept away British sovereignty in Oregon. What, they ask, is to hinder American colonistsrolling in a tide north of the boundary and so establishing rights of possession there as they had in Oregon. Any schoolboy could have guessed the trend of such argument, and let us not blame the Hudson’s Bay Company for cupidity. It was a purely commercial organization, not a patriotic or charitable association; and it pursued its aims just as commercial organizations have pursued their aims since time began—namely, by grabbing all they could get. To talk cupidity is nonsense. Cupidity, according to the legal rules of the game, is the business of a money-getting organization. Not the cupidity of the Hudson’s Bay Company was to blame for the extraordinary episodes in its history. Place the blame where it belongs—at the door of an ignorance as profound as it was indifferent on the part of the British statesmen who dealt with colonial affairs.
My Lord Grey listens to the warning of this impending disaster. What would the Hudson’s Bay Company suggest to counteract such danger? Modestly, generously, with a largesse of self-sacrifice that is appalling to contemplate, the two Hudson’s Bay governors offer to accept—accept, mind you, notask—the enormous burden of looking after “all England’s possessions in North America.” As aquid pro quo, it is a mere detail of course—they would expect exclusive monopoly of trade in the sameregions. It is said when Gladstone, now rising to fame, heard the terms of this offer, he burst out in a loud laugh that brought the blush of misunderstood modesty to the brow of the two Hudson’s Bay men. The Company dropped the subject like a hot coal for the matter of a few months to let the coal cool. Then they came at it again with an aggrieved air, demanding government protection for their interests on the Pacific Coast. Earl Grey tumbled into the trap with a celerity that was beautiful. He answered “that the Company must protect themselves.” Exactly the answer expected. Then if “the Company must protect themselves from dangers of American encroachment, they ask for exclusive monopoly for purposes of colonization in—Vancouver Island.”
For two years furious waxed debate in Parliament and out on this request of the Company. The Hudson’s Bay Company as a colonizer was a new rôle. Mr. Isbister, descendant of Red River people and now a barrister in London, has something to say as to how the Hudson’s Bay Company act in the colony of Red River, and Mr. Gladstone in Parliament openly and hotly opposes the request on the ground that a company which had a charter of exclusive monopoly for two hundred years entitling it to colonize and had done nothing, had proved itself incompetent as a colonizer.
Furious waxed the debate, but the one thing lacking in all long-drawn out debates is a basis of fact. Only the Hudson’s Bay Company possessed the facts about this West Coast. Reports of such government emissaries as Gordon of the Squadron were worse than useless. The opponents were working in the dark. In the House of Commons were several shareholders of the Hudson’s Bay Company, chief among them, Ellice, son of the old Nor’Wester.
The request was officially granted in January, 1849, but with such absurd restrictions attached, that any one possessing the slightest knowledge of West Coast conditions must have been aware that the alleged aim to colonize was but a stalking horse for other designs. The Company was to be permitted to retain only one-tenth of the proceeds from its land sales. The other nine-tenths were to be spent improving the island. What bona fide colonization company would accept such conditions? Ten per cent. of land sales would not suffice to pay for advertising. If no settlement were made, the grant was to be revoked in five years. To the colonists, land was to be sold at £1 ($5.00) an acre. In Oregon, the colonist could have 640 acres for nothing. For every one hundred acres sold at $5.00 an acre, the buyer was bound by covenant to bring to Vancouver Island athisown expense three families, or six singlepersons. Last of all and most absurd of all, at the end of five or ten years, the Government might buy back the Island by paying to the Company all it had expended. Another point—but this was not in the official terms—retired servants of the Hudson’s Bay Company might buy the land at a few shillings an acre. Looking squarely at this extraordinary contract, only one of two conclusions can be reached: either the ignorance of conditions was so dense that dynamite could not have driven a hole through it, or there was no intention whatever of colonizing Vancouver Island, the real design being twofold: (1) on the part of the Government to keep this remote region securely British, for Mormons had talked of escaping persecution by going to Vancouver Island; (2) on the part of the Company, to hold colonizing in its own control to be forwarded or retarded as suited its interests. The Company declared that from the time Lord Grey framed the conditions of the grant, they knew the scheme was foredoomed to failure. This did not prevent them accepting the terms; but the fur traders were too tactful to suggest one of their own men as governor of the new colony. Earl Grey suggested Richard Blanchard, a barrister, as governor; and Blanchard foolishly accepted the appointment without a single stipulation as to residence, salary, land, or staff.Pelly talked unofficially of the governor being given one thousand acres, but when Blanchard reached Victoria he found that Chief Factor Douglas had received no instructions. The governor of the colony was to have only the use of the one thousand acres, not the possession. One year of such empty honors satisfied Blanchard’s ambitions. He had neither house nor salary, subjects nor staff, and came home to England in 1851, £1,000 the poorer. James Douglas, the Chief Factor, was at once appointed Governor of Vancouver Island.
The record of the colony is not a part of the history of the English Adventurers, and therefore is not given here. How many colonists were sent out, I do not know; exclusive of the Company’s servants, certainly not more than a dozen; including the Company’s servants, not more than three hundred in ten years. Provisions must be bought from the Company. Produce must be sold to the Company—a one-sided performance that easily accounted for the discontent expressed in a memorial sent home with Blanchard when he retired.
The man, who had hauled fish and furs in New Caledonia at $300 a year, was now governor of Vancouver Island. James Douglas received his commission in September of 1851. Five years ago, he had been compelled to choose between loyalty toMcLoughlin, and loyalty to his Company. He took his choice, was loyal to his Company and had been promoted to a position worth $15,000 a year. Events were now coming that would compel Douglas to choose between his country and his Company. Wisely, he chose the former, sold out all interests in the Hudson’s Bay Company, received knighthood in ’59 and died at Victoria full of honors in 1877. Upon renewing the grant of Vancouver Island to the Company in 1854, the English Government requested Douglas to establish representative government in the colony. This was not easy. Electors were scarce, consisting mainly of retired Hudson’s Bay officers; and when Douglas met the first parliament of the Island on August 12, 1856, it consisted of less than a dozen members; all directly connected with the Hudson’s Bay Company; so that the governor was able to report to England that “the opening” passed off quietly without exciting “interest among the lower orders”—upon which Bancroft, the American, wants to know “who thelower orderswere” unless “the pigs on the parson’s pig farm.”
As told in the story of Kamloops, gold was discovered this very year on Thompson River. A year later, the air was full of wild rumors of gold discoveries north of Colville, in Cariboo, on Queen Charlotte Island. The tide, that had rolled over themountains to California, now turned to British Columbia. When the second five-year grant of Vancouver Island to the Hudson’s Bay Company expired in 1859, it was not renewed. Douglas foresaw that the gold stampede to the North meant a new British empire on the Pacific. The discovery of gold sounded the death knell of the fur lords’ ascendancy. Douglas resigned his position as Chief Factor and became governor of the new colony now known as British Columbia, including both Vancouver and the mainland. For the repurchase of Vancouver Island, the British Government paid the Hudson’s Bay Company £57,500. The Company claimed that it had spent £80,000. Among the gold seekers stampeding north from Oregon were our old trappers and traders of the mountain brigades, led by Dr. David McLoughlin, now turned prospector.
Notes to Chapter XXXIII.—The contents of this chapter are drawn from the same sources as XXXII; in addition Hansard and Congressional Reports for both the Vancouver Island and Oregon disputes, the Parl. Enquiry Report of 1857; H. B. C. Memorial Book on Puget Sound Company; Fitzgerald’s Vancouver Island, 1849; Martin’s H. B. Territories, 1849; De Smet’s Oregon Missions, 1847; Oregon (Quarterly) Hist. Soc. Report, 1900; Schafer’s Pacific Northwest, 1905; and most important—H. H. Bancroft’s invaluable transcripts of Douglas and Finlayson MS. in his “British Columbia.” For a popular account of McLoughlin from an absolutely American point of view nothing better exists than Mrs. Dye’s “Old Oregon,” though it may be sniffed at by the higher critics for unquestioning acceptance of what they please to call the “Whitman myth.” Whitman’s ride was not all myth, though the influence wasgreatly exaggerated; and the truth probably exists half way between the critics’ skepticism and the old legend. Wilkes’ Narrative of the Exploring Squadron, 1845; the reports of Warre and Vavasseur, the two special spies on McLoughlin; early numbers of the oldB. C. ColonistandCariboo Sentinel; Sir Geo. Simpson’s Journey Round the World; Lord’s Naturalist, 1866; Macfie’s Vancouver Island, 1865; Mayne’s B. C., 1862; Milton’s North-West Passage, 1869; Paul Kane’s Wanderings, 1859; Dunn’s Oregon Territory, 1844; Grant’s Ocean to Ocean, 1873; Gray’s Oregon, 1870; Greenhow’s Oregon, 1844; Dawson’s Geol. Reports, Ottawa; Peter Burnett’s Letters toHeraldN. Y.—also throw side lights on the episodes related.
Notes to Chapter XXXIII.—The contents of this chapter are drawn from the same sources as XXXII; in addition Hansard and Congressional Reports for both the Vancouver Island and Oregon disputes, the Parl. Enquiry Report of 1857; H. B. C. Memorial Book on Puget Sound Company; Fitzgerald’s Vancouver Island, 1849; Martin’s H. B. Territories, 1849; De Smet’s Oregon Missions, 1847; Oregon (Quarterly) Hist. Soc. Report, 1900; Schafer’s Pacific Northwest, 1905; and most important—H. H. Bancroft’s invaluable transcripts of Douglas and Finlayson MS. in his “British Columbia.” For a popular account of McLoughlin from an absolutely American point of view nothing better exists than Mrs. Dye’s “Old Oregon,” though it may be sniffed at by the higher critics for unquestioning acceptance of what they please to call the “Whitman myth.” Whitman’s ride was not all myth, though the influence wasgreatly exaggerated; and the truth probably exists half way between the critics’ skepticism and the old legend. Wilkes’ Narrative of the Exploring Squadron, 1845; the reports of Warre and Vavasseur, the two special spies on McLoughlin; early numbers of the oldB. C. ColonistandCariboo Sentinel; Sir Geo. Simpson’s Journey Round the World; Lord’s Naturalist, 1866; Macfie’s Vancouver Island, 1865; Mayne’s B. C., 1862; Milton’s North-West Passage, 1869; Paul Kane’s Wanderings, 1859; Dunn’s Oregon Territory, 1844; Grant’s Ocean to Ocean, 1873; Gray’s Oregon, 1870; Greenhow’s Oregon, 1844; Dawson’s Geol. Reports, Ottawa; Peter Burnett’s Letters toHeraldN. Y.—also throw side lights on the episodes related.