A History of Oregon, 1792-1849: Drawn From Personal Observation and Authentic InformationGray, W. H. (William Henry)
History
A History of Oregon, 1792-1849: Drawn From Personal Observation and Authentic Information
Gray, W. H. (William Henry)
Frontier and pioneer life -- Oregon; Oregon Territory -- History
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.
We have before us the original depositions in reference to the facts
stated, and also the attempt to excuse the principal actors in that
horrible transaction, as given by Brouillet in justification of the
course pursued by the Jesuit missionaries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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