William Gray - A History of Oregon, 1792-1849

The American reader will smile at Sir Edward’s little fling at the squatters in Oregon. He asserts a great truth in the same sentence that he utters a positive falsehood. No member of the Hudson’s Bay Company, nor the whole company together, ever encouraged a single American missionary to come to the country. Revs. Lee and Parker and Dr. Whitman came without their invitation or aid. They were entirely independent of the company, and were only suffered to remain, the company not daring to drive them from the country on their first arrival, as they all held the protection of the American government, as Indian teachers, under the great seal of the Secretary of War. This English fling at their own company is evidence of a jealousy existing which could not be satisfied short of the utter extermination of all American influence on this coast, and is further illustrated by this same Sir Edward Belcher, in contrasting the treatment of Captain Wilkes and his party with that of his own. He says (vol. 1, p. 297): “The attention of the chief to myself and those immediately about me, particularly in sending down fresh supplies, previous to my arrival, I feel fully grateful for; but I can not conceal my disappointment at the want of accommodation exhibited toward the crews of the vessels under my command in a British possession .” We old Oregonians are amused at Sir Edward’s ignorance of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s treatment of the crews of vessels, and servants of the company. We all know his crew were allowed to associate freely with the native women in the country and to distribute their rations of rum, and any other supplies they might have, without any remonstrance from the company. Sir Edward continues: “We certainly were not distressed, nor was it imperatively necessary that fresh beef and vegetables should be supplied, or I should have made a formal demand. But as regarded those who might come after, and not improbably myself among the number, I inquired in direct terms what facilities her Majesty’s ship of war might expect, in the event of touching at this port for bullocks, flour, vegetables, etc. I certainly was extremely surprised at the reply that they were not in a condition to supply. As any observation here would be useless, and I well knew this point could be readily settled where authority could be referred to, I let the matter rest. But having been invited to inspect the farm and dairy, and been informed of the quantity of grain, and the means of furnishing flour, and notwithstanding the profusion of cattle and potatoes, no offer having been made for our crew, I regretted that I had been led into the acceptance of private supplies; although, at that time, the other officers of the establishment had told my officers that supplies would of course be sent down.”

Mr. Fitzgerald says “ the American policy of the Hudson’s Bay Company would seem, from the above facts, to be more than a matter of suspicion,” while we Americans are only disposed to regard them as a part of the duplicity of that company in their effort to deceive their own countrymen as to the value of the country over which they had ruled so long.

They had been too successful in deceiving all American writers to allow their own countrymen to understand their secret policy. Sir Edward Belcher and our English historian were equally misled in relation to the American policy of the Hudson’s Bay Company . It is true that Dr. McLaughlin, though he was a French Canadian subject, had not lost his American soul. The British iron had not driven the last noble sentiment of humanity from his heart, nor his connection with that polluted corporation of iniquity which pervades half the continent of North America; for when he found that this Hudson’s Bay Company was utterly lost to humanity, he tells them to their teeth: “ Gentlemen, I will serve you no longer .”

No true American historian will allow, without contradiction, that corrupt company to hand down to future infamy the name of a noble and generous servant, because their infamous policy was defeated by the establishment of the American missions in the country. Dr. McLaughlin did all that he could, honorably, to comply with their “system of iniquity.”

Our English author says, on page 19, in reference to the conduct of the company: “They are convictions which have strengthened and deepened at every step of the inquiry; convictions that the Hudson’s Bay Company has entailed misery and destruction upon thousands throughout the country which is withering under its curse; that it has cramped and crippled the energies and enterprise of England, which might have found occupation in the directions from which they are now excluded; that it has stopped the extension of civilization, and has excluded the light of religious truth ; that it has alienated the hearts of all under its oppression, and made them hostile to their country; above all, that the whole and entire fabric is built upon utterly false and fictitious grounds; that it has not one shadow of reality in law or in justice; that there is not the smallest legal authority for any one of the rights which this corporation claims. It is this conviction which has urged me to submit the statements and arguments contained in the following pages to the consideration of the public; and to arraign before that tribunal, from which in these days there is no escape, – the judgment of public opinion, — a corporation who, under the authority of a charter which is invalid in law , hold a monopoly in commerce, and exercise a despotism in government, and have so used that monopoly and wielded that power as to shut up the earth from the knowledge of man, and man from the knowledge of God .”

With the statements and convictions of this English author before us, we will add a statement of Sir James Douglas, given in answer to interrogatory 11 in the case of Hudson’s Bay Company’s Claim v. United States, to give the reader a better idea of the power and influence of that company in Oregon, in 1846.

Sir James says: “The Honorable Hudson’s Bay Company had fifty-five officers and five hundred and thirteen articled men. The company having a large, active, and experienced force of servants in their employ, and holding establishments judiciously situated in the most favorable portions for trade, forming, as it were, a net-work of posts aiding and supporting each other, possessed an extraordinary influence with the natives , and in 1846 practically enjoyed a monopoly of the fur trade in the country west of the Rocky Mountains, north and south of the forty-ninth parallel of latitude. The profits of their trade,” says this witness, “from 1841 to 1846 were at least seven thousand pounds sterling annually.”

The fifty-five officers and five hundred and thirteen articled men of the company, with their eight hundred half-breeds, and the Indians they could command by the judicious position of their respective posts, were deemed by them sufficient security for their trade, and a substantial reason why they should not give up the country without making another direct effort to drive the missionary and American settlements from it, notwithstanding all their pretension to join in the provisional government organized by the pioneer Americans in 1843.

The reader is referred to the discussion on the liquor question between Judge Sir James Douglas and Mr. Samuel Parker, as found in the tenth and eleventh numbers, first volume, of the Spectator , published June 11 and 25, 1845, and in another chapter of this work, and requested to keep all these facts before the mind, so as not to lose sight of the commanding influence, or, in other words, the commander, when we enter upon the preliminary and immediate causes of the Whitman massacre, and the Indian war that followed.