William Gray - A History of Oregon, 1792-1849

This supreme selfishness, this spirit of oppression, was applied not only to the Digger Indians on the barren Snake plains and the salmon fisheries of the Columbia River, but to the miserable discharged, and, in most cases, disabled, Canadian-French. This policy the Hudson’s Bay Company practiced upon their own servants, and, as far as was possible, upon all the early settlers of the country. In proof of this, hear what Messrs. Ewing Young and Carmichael say of them on the thirteenth day of January, 1837, just three months after our mission party had arrived, and had written to their friends and patrons in the United States glowing accounts of the kind treatment they had received from this same Hudson’s Bay Company. How far the Methodist Mission joined in the attempt to coerce Mr. Young and compel him to place himself under their control, I am unable to say. The Hudson’s Bay Company, I know, from the statement of Dr. McLaughlin himself, had an abundance of liquors. I also know they were in the habit of furnishing them freely to the Indians, as they thought the interest of their trade required. Mr. Young’s letter is in answer to a request of the Methodist Mission, signed by J. and D. Lee, C. Shepard, and P. L. Edwards, not to erect a distillers on his land claim in Yamhill County (Nealem Valley). The Methodist Mission was made use of on this occasion, under the threat of the Hudson’s Bay Company, that in case Mr. Young put up his distillery the Hudson’s Bay Company would freely distribute their liquors, and at once destroy all moral restraint, and more than probable the mission itself. Lee and party offered to indemnify Mr. Young for his loss in stopping his distillery project. The Hudson’s Bay Company held by this means the exclusive liquor trade, while the mission were compelled to use their influence and means to prevent and buy off any enterprise that conflicted with their interests. Mr. Young says, in his reply: —

“Gentlemen, having taken into consideration your request to relinquish our enterprise in manufacturing ardent spirits, we therefore do agree to stop our proceedings for the present: but, gentlemen, the reasons for first beginning such an enterprise were the innumerable difficulties placed in our way by, and the tyrannizing oppression of, the Hudson’s Bay Company, here under the absolute authority of Dr. McLaughlin, who has treated us with more disdain than any American’s feelings could support; but, gentlemen, it is not consistent with our feelings to receive any recompense whatever for our expenditures, but we are thankful to the society for their offer.”

The writer of the above short paragraph has long since closed his labors, which, with his little property, have done more substantial benefit to Oregon than the Hudson’s Bay Company, that attempted to drive him from the country, which I will prove to the satisfaction of any unprejudiced mind as we proceed, I am fully aware of the great number of pensioned satellites that have fawned for Hudson’s Bay Company pap, and would swear no injustice was ever done to a single American, giving this hypocritical, double-dealing smooth-swindling, called honorable, Hudson’s Bay Company credit for what they never did, and really for stealing credit for good deeds done by others. The company insisted that the mission party should, as a condition of being permitted to remain in the country, comply with their ideas of Indian trade and justice in dealing with the natives. The utmost care and attention was given to impress this all-important fact upon the minds of these first missionaries. They were told: “Gentlemen, your own pecuniary interests require it; the good — yes, the good – of the natives you came to teach, requires that you should observe our rules in trade.” And here, I have no doubt, lies the great secret of the partial failure of all the Protestant missions. But, thank God, the country is relieved of a curse, like that of slavery in the Southern States. An overgrown monopoly, in using its influence with Catholicism to destroy Protestantism in Oregon and the American settlements, has destroyed itself. Priestcraft and Romanism, combined with ignorance and savagism, under the direction of the Honorable Hudson’s Bay Company traders, is a kind of mixture which Mr. Ewing Young says “is more than any American citizen’s feelings could support;” yet for six years it was submitted to, and the country increased, not so much in wealth, but in stout-hearted men and women, who had dared every thing, and endured many living deaths, to secure homes, and save a vast and rich country to the American Republic. Was the government too liberal in giving these pioneers three hundred and twenty acres of land, when, by their toil and patient endurance they had suffered every thing this arrogant, unscrupulous, overgrown monopoly could inflict, by calling to its aid superstition and priestcraft, in the worst possible form, to subdue and drive them from the country?

Is there an American on this coast who doubts the fact of the tyrannical course of the company? Listen to what is said of them in 1857, ’58, in their absolute government of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, by a resident. He says: —

“In my unsophisticated ignorance, I foolishly imagined I was entering a colony governed by British institutions; but I was quickly undeceived. It was far worse than a Venetian oligarchy; a squawtocracy of skin traders, ruled by men whose lives have been spent in the wilderness in social communion with Indian savages, their present daily occupation being the sale of tea, sugar, whisky, and the usual et cæteras of a grocery, which (taking advantage of an increased population) they sold at the small advance of five hundred per cent.; by men, who, to keep up the entente cordiale with the red-skins, scrupled not (and the iniquitous practice is still continued) to supply them with arms and ammunition, well knowing that the same would be used in murderous warfare. I found these ’small fry’ claiming, under some antediluvian grant, not only Vancouver Island, but a tract of country extending from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, from British Columbia to Hudson’s Bay – a territory of larger area than all Europe. The onward march of civilization was checked; all avenues to the mineral regions were closed by excessive, unauthorized, and illegal taxation; and a country abounding with a fair share of Nature’s richest productions, and which might now be teeming with a hardy and industrious population, was crushed and blasted by a set of unprincipled autocrats, whose selfish interests, idle caprices, and unscrupulous conduct, sought to gratify their petty ambition by trampling on the dearest rights of their fellow-men. In Victoria and British Columbia the town lots, the suburban farms, and the water frontage were theirs, – the rocks in the bay, and the rocks on the earth; the trees in the streets, which served as ornaments to the town, were cut down by their orders and sold for fire-wood; with equal right (presumption or unscrupulousness is the appropriate term) they claimed the trees and dead timber of the forests, the waters of the bay, and the fresh water on the shores; all, all was theirs; – nay, I have seen the water running from the mountain springs denied to allay the parched thirst of the poor wretches whom the auri sacra fames had allured to these inhospitable shores. They viewed with a jealous eye all intruders into their unknown kingdom, and every impediment was thrown in the way of improving or developing the resources of the colony. The coal mines were theirs, and this necessary article of fuel in a northern climate was held by them at thirty dollars per ton. The sole and exclusive right to trade was theirs, and the claim rigidly enforced. The gold fields were theirs likewise, and a tax of five dollars on every man, and eight dollars on every canoe or boat, was levied and collected at the mouth of the cañon before either were allowed to enter the sacred portals of British Columbia. This amount had to be paid hundreds of miles from the place where gold was said to exist, whether the party ever dug an ounce or not. They looked upon all new arrivals with ill-subdued jealousy and suspicion, and distrusted them as a prætorian band of robbers coming to despoil them of their ill-gotten wealth.”