Ebey's Landing Administrative History

Chapter Three:
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF CENTRAL WHIDBEY ISLAND

Having discovered a market for sea otter furs, four empires--Spain, Russia, Britain, and America--vied for control of trade in the northwestern territory. With the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819, Spain withdrew her line of sovereignty to the California-Oregon border; Russia followed suit in 1825 by pulling north to Alaska's southern boundary. This situation left the British and the Americans to dispute ownership of the Pacific Northwest (or "Oregon country"), which they defined as the present-day states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, as well as British Columbia west of the continental divide and portions of Wyoming and Montana. Unable to reach a final settlement they agreed in 1818 to keep Oregon country "free and open" to their respective citizens. In other words, they accepted joint occupation and administration. This unique arrangement persisted for nearly thirty years, until America felt strong enough to demand the territory outright.[11]

Few U. S. citizens other than traders and trappers lived in the Northwest before the 1830s, but such men were the vanguard for a American empire in this territory. Enough New England merchants competed for maritime trade, however, that Indians reportedly took to calling the sea traders "Bostons." Nevertheless, the Hudson's Bay Company, granted a monopoly of "soft gold" by the crown, entered the Northwestern fur trade in 1821, and it would dominate Oregon country politically and economically for a quarter of a century. The Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Nisqually in the southern Puget Sound and began trade with Whidbey Island Indians, among others, in the early 1830s. The company brought new technologies to Whidbey Island, such as cooking pots, guns, and machined textiles, and it helped introduce the potatoes that the Clallams began planting on Ebey's Prairie in the 1840s. The Clallams even started a small trade in potatoes with the British, until Euro-American settlers claimed the prairie for themselves. [12]

In 1841 the United States Exploring Expedition (commonly called the Wilkes Expedition) reported to Congress on the suitability of the Puget Sound as a harbor. This report provided the American leadership with a reason to insist on the 49th Parallel as the international boundary. Yet, despite national pride and the huge wave of migration along the Oregon Trail in the 1840s, relatively few headed north into the Puget Sound area. On Whidbey Island, the Wilkes party noted the presence of a mission on the west shore in 1840, operated with considerable success (although apparently from a distance) by a Roman Catholic priest, Father Francis Blanchet. However, Indian use and occupancy predominated on Whidbey until the early 1850s.

The Oregon Provisional Government Land Act of 1844 imposed the now-familiar pattern of township and range on the Northwest, although the claims established later on Whidbey Island tended to follow unique shapes. Because many people assumed that Britain would retain her claim to land north of the Columbia River once the boundary dispute was resolved, Americans first settled in the Willamette Valley. By 1845 the best lands there were claimed, and settlers began turning north. A great incentive for migration to the Pacific Northwest arose when America finally acquired Oregon Territory outright. That acquisition spelled the end of the dominance of the Hudson's Bay Company in the region.