A History of Oregon, 1792-1849

There have been twenty-seven witnesses examined to prove the claims above set forth, and not a single one of them testified or gave the least intimation that there ever was any such company as here set forth in existence, only as connected with and subject to the control and management of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the same as their farming operations at Vancouver or Colville, or any other of their posts. The claim is so manifestly fictitious and without foundation, that the learned attorney for the company bases his whole reliance upon the wording of the treaty, and in consequence of the wording of that treaty, “and according to the terms of the fourth article thereof, he says the United States became and were bound to confirm.” So we suppose any other monstrous claim set up by a band of foreign fur traders having influence enough to start any speculation on a nominal capital in our country and failing to realize the profits anticipated, must apply for an acknowledgment of their speculation, be mentioned in a treaty, and be paid in proportion to the enormity of their demands. We are inclined to the opinion that so plain a case of fraud will be soon disposed of, and the overgrown monster that produced it sent howling after the Indians they have so long and so successfully robbed, as per their own admission, of £20,000,000 sterling. (See Mr. M. Martin’s Hudson’s Bay Company’s Territory, etc., p. 131.)

There is another question arising in this supposed Puget Sound concern. Suppose, for a moment, the commissioners decide to pay the whole or any part of this demand, who will be the recipients of this money? We doubt whether the learned commissioners or the counsel of the supposed company could tell, unless it is to be his fee for prosecuting the case.

Doctor William Fraser Tolmie and Mr. George B. Roberts are the only two witnesses that appear to know much about the matter, and Mr. Roberts’ information seems to be derived from the same source as our own, so that the writer, though not a member of the company, has about as good a knowledge of its object and organization as Mr. Roberts, who was connected with the Hudson’s Bay Company, and also an agent of this Puget Sound Company.

Dr. Tolmie says: “The Puget Sound Company acquired, or purchased from the Hudson’s Bay Company, all its improvements at Cowlitz and Nasqualla, with its lands, live stock, and agricultural implements, all of which were transferred, in 1840 or 1841, by the Hudson’s Bay Company to the Puget Sound Company.”

As we understand this matter, it amounts to just this, and no more: The Hudson’s Bay Company had consented to enlarge their business by employing an outside capital or sinking fund they had at their disposal; they instructed Dr. Tolmie, their special agent for that purpose, to receive all the property at the two stations or farms named, to take possession of them, and instead of opening an account with their opposition sinking fund, they called it the Puget Sound Agricultural Company. This explains the ten per cent. paid stock into that company. Now, if this venture is profitable, nothing is lost; if it is not, it does not interfere with the legitimate business of the fur company – hence the distinct claim under this name.

“The Puget Sound Company charged the Hudson’s Bay Company for all supplies furnished, and paid the Hudson’s Bay Company for all goods received from them.”

This was exactly in the line of the whole business done throughout the entire Hudson’s Bay Company, with all their forts, and other establishments.

“Were not the accounts of the Puget Sound Company always forwarded to the Hudson’s Bay Company’s depot?” “They were,” says Dr. Tolmie; and so were all the accounts of all the posts on this coast sent to the depot at Vancouver, and thence to head-quarters on the other side of the Rocky Mountains.

We have shown, by reference to the capital stock of the Hudson’s Bay Company, that, in 1821, it was counted at £200,000. From this sum ten per cent., or £20,000, was set apart as a sinking fund to oppose any fur company or traders on the west side of the mountains, and an equal sum for the same purpose on the east.

This western amount, being placed under the direction of Dr. Tolmie and his successors, produced in seven years £11,000 sterling, equal to $53,240. This transaction does not appear, from the testimony adduced in the case, to have interfered in the least with the fur trade carried on at these stations, and by the same officers or clerks of the Hudson’s Bay Company; hence, we are unable, from the whole catalogue of twenty-seven witnesses in the case, to find out who is to receive this nice little sum of $1,168,000 or £240,000 – only £40,000 more than the mother had to trade upon when she produced this beautiful full-grown child, the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, – having had an abortion on the other side of the continent in the loss, without pay, of a large portion of the Red River or Selkirk country. Uncle Sam was ungenerous there.

This is truly an acre of wonders, and this Hudson’s Bay Company and its productions are entitled to some consideration for their ingenuity, if not for their honesty. It will be interesting to look at our British cousins and see what is said about this “itself and its other self.” Mr. Fitzgerald says, page 260: “It is a matter of importance to know whether the Hudson’s Bay Company is about to submit itself and its other self– the Puget Sound Association – to the same regulations which are to be imposed on other settlers of Vancouver Island and British Columbia.”

On page 287, he further states: “The Oregon Territory was peopled, under the influence of the company, with subjects of the United States. (Since Writing the former chapter, I have heard this account given of the conduct of the Hudson’s Bay Company, in regard to the Oregon boundary, which offers still stronger ground for inquiry. The country south of the 49th parallel, it seems, was hunted up – therefore the posts of the Hudson’s Bay Company were become of no value at all. By annexing all that country to the United States, and inserting in the treaty a clause that the United States should pay the company for all its posts if it turned them out, the company were able to obtain from the Americans a large sum of money for what would have been worth nothing had the territory remained British.) That lost us the boundary of the Columbia River. That is one specimen of the colonization of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The boundary westward from the Lake of the Woods, we have seen, gave to the United States land from which the company was engaged, at the very time, in driving out British subjects, on the plea that it belonged to the company; and now that the boundary has been settled only a few years, we learn that the settlers on our side are asking the United States to extend her government over that country.”

If this does not show a clear case of abortion on the part of that honorable Hudson’s Bay Company east of the Rocky Mountains, tell us what does. But it is interesting to trace a little further the British ideas and pretensions to this Pacific coast. Our British author says, page 288: —

“Make what lines you please in a map and call them boundaries, but it is mockery to do so as long as the inhabitants are alienated from your rule, as long as you have a company in power whose policy erases the lines which treaties have drawn.

“Forasmuch, then, as these things are so, it becomes this country [Great Britain] to record an emphatic protest against the recent policy of the Colonial Office in abandoning the magnificent country on the shores of the Pacific Ocean to the Hudson’s Bay Company.

“The blindest can not long avoid seeing the immense importance of Vancouver Island to Great Britain. Those who, two years ago [1846], first began to attract public attention to this question, are not the less amazed at the unexpected manner and rapidity with which their anticipations have been realized.

“Six months ago it was a question merely of colonizing Vancouver Island; now it is a question involving the interests of the whole of British North America, and of the empire of Great Britain in the Pacific Ocean.”

It is always more or less difficult to trace the course of a false or fictitious object. It becomes peculiarly so when two objects of the same character come up; the one, by long practice and experience, assuming a fair and honorable exterior, having talent, experience, and wealth; the other, an illegitimate production, being called into existence to cripple the energies of two powerful nations, and living under the supreme control of the body, having acquired its position through the ignorance of the nations it seeks to deceive. It is out of the question to separate two such objects or associations. The one is the child of the other, and is permitted to exist while the object to be accomplished remains an opponent to the parent association.

The opposition to the fur monopoly having ceased west of the Rocky Mountains, a new element of national aggrandizement and empire comes within the range of this deceitful and grasping association. Its child is immediately christened and set to work under its paternal eye. We have the full history of the progress made by this Mr. Puget Sound Agricultural Company in the testimony of the twenty-seven witnesses summoned to prove his separate existence from that of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

We find, in tracing the existence of these two children of the British empire in North America, that they have established themselves in an island on the Pacific coast called Vancouver. In this island they are more thrifty and better protected than they were in the dominions of Uncle Samuel. Notwithstanding they are comfortably located, and have secured the larger part of that island and the better portion of British Columbia, there is occasionally a British subject that grumbles a little about them in the following undignified style: —

“If the company were to be destroyed to-morrow, would England be poorer? Would there not rather be demanded from the hands of our own manufacturers ten times the quantity of goods which is sent abroad, under the present system, to purchase the skins?” My dear sir, this would make the Indians comfortable and happy. “We boast [says this Englishman] that we make no slaves, none at least that can taint our soil, or fret our sight; but we take the child of the forest, whom God gave us to civilize, and commit him, bound hand and foot, to the most iron of all despotisms —a commercial monopoly.

“Nor, turning from the results of our policy upon the native population, to its effect upon settlers and colonists, is there greater cause for congratulation.

“The system which has made the native a slave is making the settler a rebel.

“Restrictions upon trade, jealousy of its own privileges, interference with the rights of property, exactions, and all the other freaks in which monopoly and despotism delight to indulge, have, it appears, driven the best settlers into American territory, and left the rest, as it were, packing up their trunks for the journey.”

This, so far as relates to the proceedings, policy, and influence of that company upon the settlement of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, is verified by the facts now existing in those British colonies. Their whole system is a perfect mildew and blight upon any country in which they are permitted to trade or to do business.

We have little or no expectation that any thing we may write will affect in the least the decision of the commissioners, whose business it is to decide this Puget Sound Company’s case; but, as a faithful historian, we place on record the most prominent facts relating to it, for the purpose of showing the plans and schemes of an English company, who are a nuisance in the country, and a disgrace to the nation under whose charters they profess to act. Up to the time we were permitted to examine the testimony they have produced in support of their monstrous claims, we were charitable enough to believe there were some men in its employ who could be relied upon for an honest and truthful statement of facts in relation to the property and improvements for which these claims are made; but we are not only disappointed, but forced to believe the truth is not in them, – at least in any whose testimony is before us in either case. Our English author says: —

“It does not appear that the interposition of ‘an irresponsible company’ can be attended with benefit to the colony. – A company whose direction is in London, and which is wholly irresponsible, either to the colonists or to the British Parliament. – There is ample evidence in the foregoing pages that it would be absurd to give this company credit for unproductive patriotism. – Considering the identity existing between this association [the Puget Sound Association] and the Hudson’s Bay Company, in whose hands the whole management of the colonization of Vancouver Island is placed, there is a very strong reason to fear that the arrangements which have been made will, for some years at any rate, utterly ruin that country as a field for colonial enterprise. There is a strong inducement for the company to grant all the best part of the island to themselves, under the name of the Puget Sound Association; and to trust to the settlements which may be formed by that association as being sufficient to satisfy the obligation to colonize which is imposed by the charter.

“There is a strong inducement to discourage the immigration of independent settlers; first, because when all the colonists are in the position of their own servants, they will be able much more readily to prevent interference with the fur trade; and secondly, because the presence of private capital in the island could only tend to diminish their own gains, derived from the export of agricultural produce.

“And, on the other hand, there will be every possible discouragement to emigrants of the better class to settle in a colony where a large part of the country will be peopled only by the lowest order of workmen, where they may have to compete with the capital of a wealthy company, and that company not only their rival in trade, but at the same time possessed of the supreme power, and of paramount political influence in the colony.

“There is a reason, more important than all, why the Hudson’s Bay Company will never be able to form a colony. An agricultural settlement they may establish; a few forts, where Scotchmen will grumble for a few years before they go over to the Americans, but never a community that will deserve the name of a British colony. They do not possess public confidence.

“But the Hudson’s Bay Company – the colonial office of this unfortunate new colony —has positive interests antagonistic to those of an important settlement.

“It is a body whose history, tendency, traditions, and prospects are equally and utterly opposed to the existence, within its hunting-grounds, of an active, wealthy, independent, and flourishing colony,” (we Americans say settlements) “with all the destructive consequences of ruined monopoly and wide-spread civilization.”

Need we stop to say the above is the best of British testimony in favor of the position we have assumed in relation to a company who will cramp and dwarf the energies of their own nation to increase the profits on the paltry capital they have invested.

Have the Americans any right to believe they will pursue any more liberal course toward them than they have, and do pursue toward their countrymen? As this writer remarks, “civilization ruins their monopoly.” The day those two noble and sainted women, Mrs. Spalding and Mrs. Whitman, came upon the plains of the Columbia, they could do no less than allow England’s banner to do them reverence, for God had sent and preserved them, as emblems of American civilization, religious light, and liberty upon this coast. One of them fell by the ruthless hand of the sectarian savages, pierced by Hudson’s Bay balls from Hudson’s Bay guns. The other was carried, in a Hudson’s Bay boat, to the protecting care of the American settlement; and for what purpose? That the savage might remain in barbarism; that the monster monopoly might receive its profits from the starving body and soul of the Indian; that civilization and Christianity, and the star of empire might be stayed in their westward course.

Not yet satisfied with the blood of sixteen noble martyrs to civilization and Christianity, quick as thought their missives are upon the ocean wave. Wafted upon the wings of the wind, a foul slander is sent by the representatives of that monopoly all over the earth, to blast her (Mrs. Whitman’s) Christian and missionary character with that of her martyred husband. And why?

Because that husband had braved the perils of a winter journey to the capital of his country, to defeat their malicious designs, to shut up the country and forever close it to American civilization and religion. And now, with an audacity only equaled by the arch-enemy of God and man, they come to our government and demand five millions of gold for facilitating the settlement of a country they had not the courage or power to prevent.

This, to a person ignorant of the peculiar arrangements of so monstrous a monopoly, will appear strange – that they should have an exclusive monopoly in trade in a country, and have not the courage or power to prevent its settlement, especially when such settlement interferes with its trade. So far as American territory was concerned, they were only permitted to have a joint occupancy in trade. The sovereignty or right of soil was not settled; hence, any open effort against any settler from any country was a trespass against the rights of such settler. They could only enforce their chartered privileges in British territory. The country, under these circumstances, afforded them a vast field in which to combine and arrange schemes calculated to perpetuate their own power and influence in it. The natives of the country were their trading capital and instruments, ready to execute their will upon all opponents. The Protestant missionaries brought an influence and a power that at once overturned their licensed privileges in trade, because with the privilege of trade, they had agreed, in accepting their original charter, to civilize and Christianize the natives of the country. This part of their compact the individual members of the company were fulfilling by each taking a native woman, and rearing as many half-civilised subjects as was convenient. This had the effect to destroy their courage in any investigation of their conduct. As to their power, as we have intimated above, it was derived from the capacity, courage, prejudices, and ignorance of the Indians, which the American missionary, if let alone, would soon overcome by his more liberal dealings with them, and his constant effort to improve their condition, which, just in proportion as the Indians learned the value of their own productions and labor, would diminish the profits in the fur trade.

This increase of civilization and settlement, says chief-trader Anderson, “had been foreseen on the part of the company, and to a certain extent provided for. The cession of Oregon, under the treaty of 1846, and the consequent negotiations for the transfer to the American government of all our rights and possessions in their territory, retarded all further proceedings.”

In this statement of Mr. Anderson, and the statement of Mr. Roberts, an old clerk of the company, and from our own observations, this “foreseeing” on the part of the company was an arrangement with the Indians, and such as had been half civilized by the various individual efforts of the members and servants of the company, to so arrange matters that an exterminating war against the missionary settlements in the country should commence before the Mexican difficulty with the United States was settled.

This view of the question is sustained by the reply of Sir James Douglas to Mr. Ogden, by Mr. Ogden’s course and treatment of the Indians on his way up the Columbia River, his letters to Revs. E. Walker and Spalding, his special instructions to the Indians, and payment of presents in war materials for their captives, and the course pursued by Sir James Douglas in refusing supplies to the provisional troops and settlers, and the enormous supplies of ammunition furnished to the priests for the Indians during the war of 1847-8.

We are decidedly of the same opinion respecting that company as their own British writer, who, in conclusion, after giving us a history of 281 pages, detailing one unbroken course of oppression and cruelty to all under their iron despotism, says: —

“The question at issue is a serious one, – whether a valuable territory shall be given up to an irresponsible corporation, to be colonized or not, as it may suit their convenience; or whether that colonization shall be conducted in accordance with any principles which are recognized as sound and right?”

We can easily see the connection in the principle of right in paying any portion of either of the monstrous claims of that company, which never has been responsible to any civilized national authority.

“The foregoing exposure of the character and conduct of the company has been provoked. When doubts were expressed whether the company were qualified for fulfilling the tasks assigned to them by the Colonial Minister, and when they appealed to their character and history, it became right that their history should be examined, and their character exposed.

“The investigation thus provoked has resulted in the discovery that their authority is fictitious, and their claims invalid. As their power is illegal, so the exercise of it has been mischievous; it has been mischievous to Great Britain, leaving her to accomplish, at a vast national expense, discoveries which the company undertook, and were paid to perform; and because our trade has been contracted and crippled, without any advantage, political or otherwise, having been obtained in return; it has been mischievous to the native Indians, cutting them off from all communication with the rest of the civilized world, depriving them of the fair value of their labor, keeping them in a condition of slavery, and leaving them in the same state of poverty, misery, and paganism in which it originally found them; it has been mischievous to the settlers and colonists under its influence, depriving them of their liberties as British subjects, frustrating, by exactions and arbitrary regulations, their efforts to advance, and, above all, undermining their loyalty and attachment to their mother country, and fostering, by bad government, a spirit of discontent with their own, and sympathy with foreign institutions.”

This writer says: “This is the company whose power is now [in 1849] to be strengthened and consolidated! – to whose dominion is to be added the most important post which Great Britain possesses in the Pacific, and to whom the formation of a new colony is to be intrusted.”

And, we add, this is the power that has succeeded in forcing their infamous claims upon our government to the amount above stated, and by the oaths of men trained for a long series of years to rob the Indian of the just value of his labor, to deceive and defraud their own nation as to the fulfillment of chartered stipulations and privileges.

The facts developed by our history may not affect the decision of the commissioners in their case, but the future student of the history of the settlement of our Pacific coast will be able to understand the influences its early settlers had to contend with, and the English colonist may learn the secret of their failure to build up a wealthy and prosperous colony in any part of their vast dominion on the North American continent.

CHAPTER X

Case of The Hudson’s Bay Company v. The United States. – Examination of Mr. McTavish. – Number of witnesses. – Their ignorance. – Amount claimed. – Original stock. – Value of land in Oregon. – Estimate of Hudson’s Bay Company’s property. – Remarks of author.

I have carefully reviewed all the testimony in the above case, on both sides, up to May 1, 1867. On April 12, the counsel on the part of the United States having already spent twenty-five days in cross-examining Chief-Factor McTavish, so as to get at the real expenditures of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and arrive at a just conclusion as to the amount due them, – Mr. McTavish having frequently referred to accounts and statements which he averred could be found on the various books of the company, – gave notice to the counsel of the company in the following language: —