THE EARLIEST DEVELOPMENT OF OREGON This year of 1914 is the centennial year of the abandonment of Fort Astor, so called by the employees of John Jacob Astor. It was Fort George from 1813 to 1846. The change of the national master was the result of the visit of H. M. Sloop-ofWar Raccoon. It caused the substitution of the British for the American flag. The men in charge held a meeting and resolved to go back to Fort William and their native Canada. It may be stated here that there were already two distinct classes of men in the fur trade beginning as a direct trade in furs to China. The first were a class of Highland Scots who had already become prominent in the fur trade, from which Mr. Astor chose some of his partners. These were already share owners of the Canadian North-West Company. The men with "Mc" prefixed to their names—as McKay, McDougall, McKenzie-were of Highland Scotch lineage, probably prominent by the natural selection of circumstances, as Alexander McKay was the most notable man of the NorthWest Company, whom Astor chose as a partner in his Pacific Association. His life was sacrificed through the folly of Captain Thorn's treatment of the natives on the Tonquin. There were men not Highland born, as the Stuarts, Manson, Birnie, Black, Douglas, Simpson, Tolmie and Ogden-men of business education; men whom it was not intended to feed on the flesh of horses or dogs. Of the men we suppose John Jacob Astor selected from the North-West Company as partners, all were from Canada, as follows: Alexander McKay, Duncan McDougall, David and Robert Stuart; of clerks, there were eleven,-three Americans, -James Lewis and William W. Matthews, of New York, and Russell Farnham, of Massachusetts, and eight-Alexander Ross, Donald McGillis, Uvide de Montigny, Francis B. Pillot, Donald McLennan, William Wallace, Thomas McKay and Gabriel Franchere-three Canadian French and five Scotch Canadians; of boatmen and mechanics, eighteen in number; thirty rank and file, all Canadians and ex-North-Westers. These, had they not been used to discipline, would have killed Captain Thorn at Terra del Fuego. These men of all the grades of the fur trade they covered were used to obeying the orders of their superiors. Fur hunting was a pursuit of chances of feast or famine, the latter from 1810 to 1830 much predominating. From Franchere's narrative I learn the North-Westers at Post Okanogan ate the flesh of ninety dogs during the winter of 1812-13. Messrs. Wallace and Halsey formed winter camps in the Willamette Valley to relieve the stringency for food at Astoria, and even then Mr. Franchere was detailed to fish for sturgeon in the Columbia River, and mentions the relief so obtained from such contributions as apparently preventing the agonies of death by starvation. The overland arrival of Wilson P. Hunt conduced to make Astoria the gathering point of the needy west of the Rocky Mountains, and of the upcasts of the Pacific Ocean, though the debris from the various posts and parties of Canadian North-Westers seem to have caused accessions to the number fed at Astoria. The sick with scurvy were sent to Franchere's camp. Franchere notes under date March 20 that Reed and Seaton led a starving band from Astoria to the hunting camps of Wallace and Halsey on the Willamette, and returned to Astoria with a supply of dried venison. April 11, McTavish and La Roche arrived at Fort George with nineteen voyageurs to meet the Isaac Todd loaded in London with goods for the North-West Company. The month of May was employed in preparing for return to Canada, but Clarke and Stuart (wintering partners) said there was not time to prepare, so it went over to 1814, and thus for another ten years no preparation would be made on the Pacific slope to give local support of agriculture to the profitable collection of furs and peltries. It is hard to find when and by whom agriculture locally was used in the drainage basin of the great Columbia Valley. Ex perience had already proven that a New York merchant, however able, could not completely conduct the fur business in a humane manner. It is proposed to follow these Canadians to the ruling power of their own organization. We will follow Mr. Franchere's party, using his inimitable narrative, from Fort George, or Astoria, to the place and the tactics that furnished permanent food supply. There is one point that I press upon the attention of my readers. It is that the great majority of the ruling class of the North-West Company in the field service were either Scotch by birth or descent, and largely Highlanders. From the time of the break up of clans by the military order against the McDonalds, there was time for resolute men to place themselves in a chosen line of effort, and to that influence I ascribe the large proportion of Highland Scots named in the Canadian North-West Company. After Prince Rupert's Colony was formed, McKenzie, a trader whose cache had been found and looted at the mouth of the stream now called for him, spent May, 1813, collecting salmon, dried on the skin and baled for food, in the journey back to Canada, which the wintering partners, Clarke and David Stuart, said should not be undertaken till 1814. Mr. Hunt, who had gone up the North-West coast on August 4, 1812, returned in May, 1813, from Sandwich Islands. A man of great energy, he had been to Sitka and to East Kamchatka, and had collected 80,000 skins of fur seals. But owing to the loss of the Tonquin and Alexander McKay, his presence at Astoria had been greatly needed. He welcomed them now with salt beef, pork, rice and taro root which he had brought with him. But his order to continue on was not obeyed, and he will be held largely responsible for Astor's, or the Pacific Fur Company's, failure. His neglect to provide for Fort Astoria, when he first arrived there overland, was little short of dishonor on Hunt's part. It is to the credit of the Canadians that they refused to continue occupants of Fort Astoria, and when Irving's romance is decayed, international good-will will increase. Ninety men. left on April 4, 1814, and six days later bought four horses and thirty dogs for food. On July 14, 1814, they reached Fort William, headquarters of the Canadian North-West Company, encompassed by well cultivated grain fields under promising crops of "barley, pease and oats." Franchere notes the successful cultivation of potatoes at Astoria, also the farming and livestock extending west from Fort William towards Winnipeg, and the strife already beginning for the food from the field. We hear or see little history of Astoria, or Fort George, for ten years after Franchere's narrative leaves it. The replacement of the American flag only causes a laugh by the occupiers in 1818, but a historical event is never a proper subject of laughter. Ten years' time was needed to compress the Canadian North-West Company into union with the Hon. Hudson's Bay Company. Then Astoria was restored, but called Fort George. The Company was now filled with men of business education, from North Britain largely, but there was need for the most capable man they had to supervise the field service of the Oregon country, and it found him in Dr. John McLoughlin, chief trader at Fort William on Lake Superior. He was chosen chief by an association "which was composed and controlled by very active, practical and forceful men." I choose and endorse the words of F. V. Holman. Dr. John McLoughlin was chosen in 1821 to rule over such men at Fort George, or Astoria, and came to the appointment in the fall of 1824. The laborers were chiefly Canadian French, trappers and voyageurs, with a few Scottish Highlanders and less Hawaiian Islanders. The Scots were best for individual trust, and in directing Kanakas handling lumber or wheat; the French to catch and care for fur and peltries. There never were men more docile to do and to endure movement by land or water, fatigue, cold or hunger. A comparison of the songs used in their traffic will do. A few lines by Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, will give the spirit of the Canadians: "Faintly as toll the evening chime Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time. Why should we yet our sail unfurl, Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast; Ottawa's tide this trembling moon A Gaelic Canadian boat song, sung on the St. Lawrence by a crew of Scotch Canadians, and taken by a retiring Hudson's Bay Company's officer to Scotland in 1824 and translated by John Wilson. The crew were six pullers and captain steerer: Listen to me as when we heard our fathers Listen to me, and then in chorus gather All your strong voices, as you pull the oars. From the lone Skeilin, on the misty island, Mountains divide us, and a width of seas, But still our hearts are true, our hearts are highland, Ne'er shall we see the fancy haunted valley Where twixt the dark hills flows the pure, clear stream, Nor e'er around our chieftain's banner rally, Nor see the moon from loyal tombstones gleam. |