Oregon Country - Early Settlement

Early Settlement

Explorer David Thompson of the British-owned North West Company and later Hudson's Bay Company—HBC penetrated the Oregon Country from the north, via Athabasca Pass, arriving in 1807. In 1810, John Jacob Astor founded the Pacific Fur Company, which established a fur-trading post at Astoria, Oregon in 1811. Thompson traveling down the Columbia River reached the partially constructed Fort Astoria just two months after the departure of the ill-fated Tonquin. Along the way, he had camped and claimed the land at the future Fort Nez Perces site at the confluence with the Snake River. This initiated a very brief era of competition between American and British fur traders. The Pacific Fur operation broke down during the War of 1812 and was sold to the North West Company. Under British control, Astoria was renamed Fort George.

In 1821 when the North West Company was merged with the Hudson's Bay Company, the British Parliament imposed the laws of Upper Canada on British subjects in Columbia District and Rupert's Land, and gave the Hudson's Bay Company authority to enforce those laws. John McLoughlin was appointed head or Chief Factor of the Columbia Department in 1824. He moved its regional headquarters to Fort Vancouver, which became the de facto political center of the Pacific Northwest. McLoughlin applied the laws to British subjects, kept the peace with the natives and sought to maintain law and order over American settlers as well.

Astor continued to compete for Oregon Country furs through his American Fur Company operations in the Rockies. In the 1820s, a few American explorers and traders visited this land beyond the Rocky Mountains. Long after the Lewis & Clark Expedition and also after the consolidation of the fur trade in the region by the Canadian fur companies, American "Mountain Men" such as Jedediah Smith and Jim Beckwourth came roaming into and across the Rocky Mountains, following Indian trails through the Rockies to California and Oregon. They sought beaver pelts and other furs, which were obtained by trapping but difficult to obtain in the Oregon Country due to the policy of the Hudson's Bay Company of creating a "fur desert", via deliberate over-hunting in order to make the country's frontiers with the US unprofitable for American ventures. The Mountain Men, like the Metis employees of the Canadian fur companies, adopted Indian ways and many of them married Native American women.

Reports of Oregon Country eventually circulated in the eastern United States. Some churches decided to send missionaries to convert the Indians. Jason Lee, a Methodist minister from New York, was the first Oregon missionary. He built a mission school for Indians in the Willamette Valley in 1834. Others followed within a few years.

American settlers began to arrive from the east by the Oregon Trail starting in the late 1830s, and came in increasing numbers each subsequent year. Increased tension led to the Oregon boundary dispute. Both sides realized that settlers would ultimately decide who controlled the region. Belatedly, the Hudson's Bay Company, which had previously discouraged settlement as it conflicted with the lucrative fur trade, reversed their position. In 1841 James Sinclair guided more than 100 settlers from the Red River Colony to settle on HBC farms near Fort Vancouver, on orders from Sir George Simpson. The Sinclair expedition crossed the Rockies into the Columbia Valley, near present-day Radium Hot Springs, British Columbia, then traveled south-west down the Kootenai River and Columbia River following the southern portion of the well established York Factory Express trade route.

The Canadian effort proved to be too little, too late. For, in what was dubbed "The Great Migration of 1843" or the "Wagon Train of 1843", an estimated 700 to 1000 emigrants left for Oregon. Britain ceded Columbia District south of the 49 parallel to the United States by the Oregon Treaty in 1846.