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Then it was decided that parallel forty-two, on the Pacific, running east from that ocean to the Arkansas, down the river to longitude one hundred; on that meridian south till it strikes the Red river; down the Red river to longitude ninety-four; due south on it to the Sabine river; and down the Sabine to the Gulf of Mexico, should define the southern and western boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, which up to that period had remained indefinite. This act fixed, also, the southern boundary of Oregon.
Until 1820 congress remained dormant so far as Oregon interests were concerned. Then it was suggested that a marine expedition be dispatched to guard our interests at the mouth of the Columbia and aid immigration from the United States. Nothing resulted. In 1821 the same question was revived, but again permitted to relapse into desuetude. Mr. Barrows does not use language too strong when he says: "There appeared to be a lack of appreciation of the case, and there was a skepticism and lethargy concerning that half of the union, which have by no means disappeared."
In 1814 the question having been reopened in London Mr. Rush claimed for the United States from the forty-second to the fifty-first parallel. This section would embrace all the waters of the Columbia. Per contra the English demanded possession of the northern half of the Columbia basin. This would have given us, as the northern boundary of Oregon, the Columbia river from a point where it intersects the forty-ninth parallel to its mouth. It is well to examine, at this point, what such a boundary would have meant to Washington. Had it been accepted there would, probably, never have been any state of Washington, at least, not as subsequently defined. It would have meant the loss of the following territory, comprised in the counties of Klickitat. Skamia. Cowlitz, Clark, Wahkiakum. Pacific. Chehalis, Mason, Lewis. Pierce. Jefferson. Clallam. Kitsap, King, Snohomish, Skagit, Whatcom, Yakima, Kittitas, Chelan, Okanogan and Ferry, a territory comprising forty-three thousand, seven hundred and sixteen square miles, two-thirds of the area of the present state of Washington.
Thus remained the status of the dispute until 1828. Joint occupancy had now continued ten years. It must be conceded that the country, owing to this provision, was now numerically British. And English ministers were eager to avail themselves of the advantages of this fact. They said: "In the interior of the territory in question the subjects of Great Britain have had, for many years, numerous settlements and trading posts — several of these posts on the tributary streams of the Columbia, several upon the Columbia itself, some to the northward and others to the southward of that river. * * * In the whole of the territory in question the citizens of the United States have not a single settlement or trading post. They do not use that river, either for the purpose of transmitting or receiving any produce of their own to or from other parts of the world."
Yet why was this the condition in Oregon at that period? Simply because the aggressiveness of the Northwestern Company had opposed American colonization and fought each and every advance made by our pioneers, commercially and otherwise. Nor can it be denied that for many years Oregon was unappreciated by the east. To-day it appears, to unreflecting minds, an extravagant boast to say that only one-fifth of the domain of the United States lies east of the Mississippi river. And yet the statement is true. Only in 1854 did the initial railway gain the banks of the Father of Waters — at Rock Island. From there progress to the northwest was, for many years, slow, perilous and discouraging. Truly, it was a difficult matter for Oregon to assert herself. In 1828 an "Oregon wave" had swept over congress, amid considerable feverish interest and prolonged eloquence. Protracted debate was had on a bill to survey the territory west of the
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mountains between 42 degrees and 54 degrees 40 minutes, garrison the land and extend over it the laws of the United States. The measure was defeated, again the question slumbered.
But the daring American pioneers of the west were by no means idle. Unconsciously they were accomplishing far more toward a final settlement of the "Oregon Question" than all the tape-bound documents sleeping in the pigeon-holes of English parliamentary and American congressional archives. Of these pioneers Captain Bonneville should not pass unnoticed. He was of the army, and with one hundred of his men he made a two years' hunting, trapping and fur-trading expedition, from the Missouri to the Colorado, and thence to the Columbia. In 1832 Nathaniel J. Wyeth organized a company of twenty-two persons, in Massachusetts, for western exploration. Enthusiastic descriptions of Oregon, written by Hall J. Kelly, had contributed greatly to awaken this interest among the scholarly young men who formed Wyeth's party. On July 4, 1832, they had arrived at Lewis' Fork of the Columbia. Among them were sickness, disappointment and insubordination. Here the company divided. Several left to return east; among them Jacob and John, brothers of Captain Wyeth. Nathaniel Wyeth and his remaining companions reached Snake river, and one hundred miles north of Salt Lake, established a trading post. He was ruined by the ever aggressive Hudson's Bay Company, which placed a rival post, Fort Boise, below Fort Hall. British ministers had impudently declared that Oregon was settled by Englishmen; that Americans had no trading posts within its limits. And why not? Read the following from Mr. Wyeth's memoir to congress:
Experience has satisfied me that the entire weight of this company (Hudson Bay) will be made to bear on any trader who shall attempt to prosecute his business within its reach. * * * No sooner does an American start in this region than one of these trading parties is put in motion. A few years will make the country west of the mountains as completely English as they can desire.To the same congressional committee William A. Slocum, in a report, goes on record as follows:
No individual enterprise can compete with this immense foreign monopoly established in our waters. * * * The Indians are taught to believe that no vessels but the Company's ships are allowed to trade in the river, and most of them are afraid to sell their skins but at Vancouver or Fort George.Small wonder that at this time there were less than two hundred Americans west of the Rockies. And Canadian law, by act of parliament, was extended throughout the region of the Columbia. Theoretically it was joint occupation; practically British monopoly. So late as 1844 the British and Foreign Review said, brutally: "The interests of the company are of course adverse to colonization. * * * The fur trade has been hitherto the only channel for the advantageous investments of capital in those regions."
Truly the Hudson's Bay Company had adopted a policy of "multiplication, division and silence." Because meat and beef conduced to pastoral settlements, so late as 1836, the company opposed the introduction of cattle. One of the missionaries stationed at Moose Factory has written this:
A plan which I had devised for educating and training to some acquaintance with agriculture native children, was disallowed. * * * A proposal made for forming a small Indian village near Moose Factory was not acceded to; and instead, permission only given to attempt the location of one or two old men, no longer fit for engaging in the chase, it being carefully and distinctly stated, by Sir George Simpson, that the company would not give them even a spade toward commencing this mode of life.In 1836 when Dr. Marcus Whitman and his party were entering Oregon. J. K. Townsend. a naturalist sent from Philadelphia to collect
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specimens of fauna and flora, said to him at Walla Walla:
The company will be glad to have you in the country, and your influence to improve their servants and their native wives and children. As to the Indians you have come to teach they do not want them to be any more enlightened. The company now have absolute control over them, and that is all they require.And right here is the crux of the differences between the United States and England concerning the territory of Oregon. It was the aim of the former to develop, improve and civilize the country; it was the expressed determination of the latter to keep it in darkness and savagery. For in North America the Hudson's Bay Company was England and English statesmen were under the complete domination of this company's abject commercialism. It has pleased modern English writers to describe Americans as "a nation of shop-keepers." But throughout the whole Oregon controversy the United States stood for progress and civilization; England for the long night of ignorance and barbarism — for profit. Summed up by Mr. Barrows the relations to Oregon of the two countries were as follows:
The Americans struck Oregon just where the English failed, in the line of settlements and civilization. One carried in the single man and the other the family; one, his traps and snares, the other his seed wheat and oats and potatoes; one counted his muskrat nests, and the other his hills of corn; one shot an Indian for killing a wild animal out of season; and the other paid bounty on the wolf and bear; one took his newspaper from the dog-mail twenty-four or thirty-six months from date, and the other carried in the printing press; one hunted and traded for what he could carry out of the country, the other planted and builded for what he could leave in it for his children. In short the English trader ran his birch and batteaux up the streams and around the lakes to bring out furs and peltries, while the American immigrant hauled in with his rude wagon, the nineteenth century and came back loaded with Oregon for the American union.In 1840 the flow of American immigration into Oregon, especially the missionaries, Lee, Whitman and Parker, alarmed the Hudson's Bay Company. It strenuously opposed the advent of wagons and carriages. Immigrants were lied to at Fort Hall; were told that it would be impossible to proceed farther on wheels. It is recorded that on this account many of them reached Dr. Whitman's mission in a deplorably destitute condition. But all the artifices of the company could not check the hegira from the east. It is reserved for another chapter to relate the experiences of these pioneers. We have to do here, mainly, with the final settlement of the great "Oregon Question" between England and the United States — the political struggle for sovereignty.
In 1843 Sir George Simpson, governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, who had made a tour of the continent, challenged us in these words:
The United States will never possess more than a nominal jurisdiction, nor long possess even that, on the west side of the Rocky Mountains. And supposing the country to be divided tomorrow to the entire satisfaction of the most unscrupulous patriot in the union, I challenge congress to bring my prediction and its power to the test by imposing the Atlantic tariff on the ports of the Pacific.Thus the great international question of tariff was brought into the Oregon Controversy. But we must not jump to the conclusion that Sir George was without some foundation for his vaporous remarks. At that time the Hudson's Bay Company had twenty-three posts and five trading stations in the northwest; it had absorbed ten rival companies, not leaving one American or Russian, and had been the means of putting to rout seven immigrant expeditions seeking homes in Oregon.
The Oregon boundary question was still in dispute. But those Americans familiar with
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the subject were destined to temporary disappointment. In 1827 it had been referred, through a convention, to the King of the Netherlands as arbiter. Both parties to the dispute had rejected his decision in 1831. Five efforts had been made to adjust the boundary by President Jackson, and five failures had resulted. The administration of President Van Buren closed with the matter still unsettled. In 1842 Lord Ashburton came from London to negotiate a boundary treaty with Daniel Webster, secretary of state. A certain boundary treaty was negotiated, August 9, 1842, the two ministers signed it; it was ratified by the senate on the 25th; by the Queen soon after, proclaimed on November 10, 1842 — and the Oregon boundary was not in it. Nothing official whatever alluding to Oregon was found therein. The only boundary touched was one "beginning at the monument at the source of the river St. Croix," terminating at the Rocky Mountains on the forty-seventh parallel. Little wonder that sectional feeling developed in the far west.
Dr. Marcus Whitman, whose connection with the "Oregon Question" is treated in another chapter, had arrived in Washington too late for any effectual pleas for consideration of the matter in the treaty just signed. Still, as Mr. Barrows says:
The pressure of Oregon into the Ashburton treaty would probably have done one of three things, prevented the treaty altogether, excluded the United States from Oregon, or produced a war. Delay and apparent defeat were the basis of our real success, and the great work of Marcus Whitman, by his timely presence at Washington, was in making the success sure.With Oregon left out the Ashburton treaty had been ratified. The outlook was, indeed, gloomy. As a reflex of the insidious teachings of the Hudson's Bay Company the following extract from a speech delivered by Mr. McDuffie in the United States senate is interesting. He said:
What is the character of this country? Why, as I understand it, that seven hundred miles this side of the Rocky Mountains is uninhabitable, where rain scarcely ever falls — a barren and sandy soil — mountains totally impassable except in certain parts, where there were gaps or depressions, to be reached only by going some hundreds of miles out of the direct course. Well, now, what are we going to do in a case like this? How are you going to apply steam? Have you made anything like an estimate of the cost of a railroad running from here to the mouth of the Columbia? Why, the wealth of the Indies would be insufficient. You would have to tunnel through mountains five or six hundred miles in extent. * * * Of what use will this be for agricultural purposes? I would not, for that purpose, give a pinch of snuff for the whole territory. I wish it was an impassable barrier to secure us against the intrusion of others. * * * If there was an embankment of even five feet to be removed, I would not consent to expend five dollars to remove that embankment to enable our population to go there. I thank God for his mercy in placing the Rocky Mountains there.At the time this speech was being delivered Dr. Marcus Whitman was on his way from Oregon with "the facts in the case," information destined to shed a flood of intelligence on a rather benighted congress. And, in reality, our country was rapidly nearing the end of this interminable controversy. An area of territory sixty-three times the size of Massachusetts and four times as large as Great Britain and Ireland was about to come under the protecting aegis of the United States government. The Hudson's Bay Company had declared, through its emissaries, that a wagon trip to Oregon was an impossibility. The same sentiment had been voiced in the United States senate. It remained for Dr. Whitman to prove the falsity of such an audacious statement. He led a party of two hundred wagons through to his mission on the mouth of the Columbia, arriving in October, 1843. And this, too, against vigorous opposition from the Hudson's Bay Company, at Fort Hall. Then the people began to manifest a lively interest in the question. This interest had been stimulated in December, 1842, by a message from President Tyler, in which he said:
The tide of population which has reclaimed what was so lately an unbroken wilderness in
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more contiguous regions, is preparing to flow over those vast districts which stretch from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. In advance of the acquirements of individual rights sound policy dictates that every effort should be resorted to by the two governments to settle their respective claims.January 8, 1843, congress received news that Dr. Whitman had made good his claim, and reached his destination, with wagons, in Oregon. Party spirit, for there were two parties to the Oregon Controversy, aside from the British, ran high. Dr. Winthrop said: "For myself, certainly, I believe that we have as good a title to the whole twelve degrees of latitude," i. e., up to 54 degrees 40 minutes. Senator Thomas Benton
voiced the prevailing sentiment of the time in these words:
Let the emigrants go on and carry their rifles. We want thirty thousand rifles in the valley of the Oregon; they will make all quiet there, in the event of a war with Great Britain for the dominion of that country. The war, if it come, will not be topical: it will not be confined to Oregon, but will embrace the possessions of the two powers throughout the globe. Thirty thousand rifles on the Oregon will annihilate the Hudson's Bay Company and drive them off our continent and quiet the Indians.Rufus Choate spoke for peace. He was followed by pacificatory utterances from others. Still, there was sufficient vitality in the "Fifty-four forty or fight" to elect President Polk on such a campaign issue. The population of Oregon at the close of 1844 was estimated by Mr. Greenhow at more than three thousand. The Indian agent for the government, Mr. White, placed it at about four thousand; Mr. Hines said: "In 1845 it increased to nearly three thousand souls, with some two thousand to three thousand head of cattle." The west was warm with zeal and anticipation. In the house of representatives Mr. Owen, of Indiana, said:
Oregon is our land of promise. Oregon is our land of destination. 'The finger of nature' — such were once the words of the gentleman from Massachusetts (J. Q. Adams) in regard to this country, — 'points that way;' two thousand Americans are already dwelling in her valleys, five thousand more * * * will have crossed the mountains before another year rolls round.It was the opinion of the senator from Illinois, Mr. Semple, that ten thousand would cross the Rocky Mountains the following year.
At last a resolution was introduced in congress "affirming Oregon to be part and parcel of the territory of the United States from 42 degrees to 54 degrees, 40 minutes, and that notice should be given at once to terminate the joint occupation of it." It was held on the floor of the house that "no doubts now remain in the minds of American statesmen that the government of the United States held a clear and unquestionable title to the whole of the Oregon territory."
In the region at this time the Hudson's Bay Company had about thirty "trading posts." Really they were forts and powerful auxiliaries to an internecine war. Seven thousand citizens of the United States were in the same country. The question of another war with England had become a live and important issue. To have stood solidly for 54 degrees, 40 minutes, would have meant war, and as one gentleman expressed it, "a war that might have given the whole of Oregon to England and Canada to the United States." During forty days the question of giving notice to England of discontinuance of joint occupancy was discussed in the house. It was carried by a vote of one hundred and sixty-three to fifty-four. The struggle in the senate was longer. An
idea of the engrossing nature of the Oregon topic may be gleaned from the fact that three score bills and resolutions were kept in abeyance on the calendar for future action. Daniel Webster prophesied that war would not result: that the incident would be closed by compromise and that the compromise
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would be on the boundary line of the forty-ninth parallel. The attitude of the two countries was this: We had offered forty-nine degrees from the mountains to the Pacific ocean, not once, but several times; England had offered forty-nine degrees from the mountains to the Columbia, and by that stream to the sea. A comparatively narrow triangle of land only lay between the demands of England and concessions of the United States. Most excellent grounds for a compromise. April 23, 1846, the notice passed the house by a vote of forty-two to ten, with important amendments strongly suggestive to both governments to adjust all differences amicably. No one longer feared war.
From the point on the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude where the boundary laid down in existing treaties and conventions between the United States and Great Britain terminates, the line of boundary between the territories of the United States and those of her Britannic Majesty shall be continued westward along said forty-ninth parallel of north latitude to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island, and thence southerly through the middle of the said channel, and of Fucca's Strait, to the Pacific ocean : Provided, however, that the navigation of the whole of the said channel and straits south of the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, remain free and open to both parties.Thus reads the first article of the final boundary treaty between England and the United States, so far as concerns Oregon. But to mould it into this form and sign the same, fifty-four years, two months and six days had been required by the two countries. On July 17, 1846, the document, previously ratified, was exchanged in London between the two governments. But Captain Robert Gray, of Boston, had discovered the Columbia river May 11, 1792, and fully established a United States title to the country which it drains. It remained yet for a boundary commission, in 1857, to run the line. The first meeting of the commission was held July 27, of the same year.
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