Oregon Boundary Dispute - Early British and American Activity

Early British and American Activity

George Vancouver explored Puget Sound in 1792. Vancouver claimed it for Great Britain on June 4, 1792, naming it for one of his officers, Lieutenant Peter Puget. That year, on May 12, 1792, American merchant captain Robert Gray found the mouth of the Columbia River, and became the first Westerner to enter the river. He named it for his ship, the Columbia Rediviva.

The American overland Lewis and Clark expedition reached the mouth of the Columbia River in 1805 and built Fort Clatsop, on the south side of the river, as a place to spend the winter of 1805–1806 and provision for the return trip.

North West Company explorer David Thompson extensively explored the Columbia River commencing in 1807. While on his 1811 voyage down the entire length of the Columbia River, Thompson camped at the junction with the Snake River on July 9, 1811. He erected a pole and a notice claiming the country for the United Kingdom and stating the intention of the North West Company to build a trading post at the site. Thompson reached a partially constructed Fort Astoria about two months after the ill-fated Tonquin's departure.

Fort Nez Perces was subsequently constructed by the North West Company. The American Pacific Fur Company selected the more northerly Fort Okanogan as the center for their inland operations. Fort Astoria and all other Pacific Fur Company posts were sold to the North West Company. During the War of 1812, a rash action by the commander of HMS Racoon "captured" the fort, even though it was already under British ownership. The resulting technicality that it was returned to U.S. ownership as part of the war's settlement as a result of the Treaty of Ghent, even though no trading activity was re-commenced.

By Article III of the Anglo-American Convention of 1818 the United Kingdom and the United States agreed to what has since been described as "joint occupancy," deferring on any resolution of the territorial and treaty disputes until a later time.

The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) merged with the North West Company in 1821. That same year, the U.K. Parliament passed a statute requiring that the laws of Upper Canada be enforced by the HBC in Rupert's Land and the Columbia District. The HBC's Pacific Headquarters at Fort Vancouver became the center of activity in the Pacific Northwest.

The HBC held a license to trade with the populous aboriginal peoples of the region, and its network of trading posts and routes extended southward from New Caledonia, another HBC fur-trade district, into the Columbia basin. The HBC's headquarters for the entire region became established at Fort Vancouver (near today's Vancouver, Washington) in 1824, which became the centre of a thriving colony of mixed origin, including Scottish Canadians and Scots, English, French Canadians, Hawaiians, Algonkians and Iroquois, as well as the offspring of company employees who had intermarried with various local native populations.

Every year ships would come from London and India, (via the Pacific) to drop off supplies and trade goods in exchange for the furs. It was also accessed from London twice annually via Hudson Bay and the York Factory Express trade route. Fort Vancouver was the nexus for the fur trade on the Pacific Coast; its influence reached from Rupert's Land and the Rocky Mountains in the east to the Hawaiian Islands, and from Russian Alaska to Mexican California. At its pinnacle in the late 1830s and early 1840s, Fort Vancouver watched over 34 outposts, 24 ports, six ships, and 600 employees.

Early American activity in the region included Fort William on present day Sauvie Island, the establishment of the Methodist Mission in the Willamette Valley and the Whitman Mission east of the Cascades, a saw mill in the Willamette Valley partly owned by Ewing Young, a grist mill also in the valley built in 1834, the Willamette Cattle Company organized in 1837 to bring over 600 head of cattle to the Willamette Valley, as well as ongoing Maritime Fur Trade vessels.

Since the HBC officially discouraged settlement because it interfered with the lucrative fur trade, negotiations over the decades failed to settle upon a compromise boundary along the Columbia River. Strained relationships grew worse as American settlers began trickling into the region in the 1830s, and tensions escalated when settlers started arriving in large numbers in the 1840s along the Oregon Trail.