Fort Vancouver Cultural Landscape Report

The Columbia River Basin and the Pacific Coast

American and British traders became interested in the fur resources of the Pacific Northwest Coast after the journal of British Captain James Cook's third voyage to search for the Northwest Passage, which publicized the sea otter skins found there and sold in China, was published in the 1780s. Traders of both nations began to ply the coast, exchanging manufactured goods for furs with the native population, and, in the case of the Americans, establishing a lucrative trade with the Russians, long-established in Alaska, exchanging basic necessities for furs. From the east, British and Americans also came overland. In 1793, Alexander Mackenzie, of the powerful fur-trading British North West Company operating from Montreal, crossed the interior of British Columbia--then called New Caledonia--to reach the Pacific Ocean. Other Nor'westers followed.

In 1804 President Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark west on what became a two year journey of exploration: they spent the winter of 1805-6 at the camp they called Fort Clatsop, near the mouth of the Columbia River. Their return to the United States stimulated the interest in the profit to be made from furs. A few years later John Jacob Astor of New York organized the Pacific Fur Company, and sent two parties to the mouth of the Columbia, where they began construction of a fur-trading post, Fort Astoria, in 1811. For the next two years the Pacific Fur Company established a number of posts west of the Rockies, in competition with the North West Company. The outbreak of war between Great Britain and America in 1812 disrupted supply ships to Astoria's posts. In 1813 the company's interests on the Columbia were sold to its British competitor: in December of that year Great Britain took formal possession of Astoria, renaming it Fort George. In the following eight years the North West Company was virtually unchallenged in its operations in New Caledonia and the Columbia river basin, successfully trapping the Snake and Flathead countries through the use of large trapping parties--brigades--an operational system they developed to protect themselves from Indians. During this period, the company also established a system of provisioning some of their interior posts in New Caledonia and the Columbia district by sea from Boston to Fort George, rather than overland from Montreal, although it was not used regularly.

The war of 1812 was ended with the Treaty of Ghent, in 1814, but the treaty failed to resolve issues surrounding the claims of both Great Britain and the United States to the entire territory lying west of the Rocky Mountains, from the Spanish settlements in the south to the Russian posts in the north. In 1818 a joint occupation convention was negotiated between the two countries, which left the territory west of the Rockies free and open to the "vessels, subjects and citizens" of both countries for a period of ten years; as part of the settlement, however, Fort George was returned to the United States, although it was never occupied by the Americans during this period, and continued to be used by the North West Company. Up to and after the 1818 Convention, both countries had accepted the concept of partition of the lands in question: disagreement centered on the location of the boundary. The United States proposed the boundary follow the 49th parallel from the Rockies to the ocean. Great Britain wanted the boundary to follow the 49th parallel to the Columbia, and then follow the river's route to the ocean. Uncertainty regarding the resolution of this issue, which left the eventual fate of the lands between the 49th parallel and the Columbia River in doubt, and consequent political strategies on the part of Great Britain during the following decade, was later reflected in the founding of Fort Vancouver.

In the summer of 1824 Great Britain and the United States suspended boundary negotiations, which, while leaving the ultimate settlement of the dispute in doubt, fueled the Hudson's Bay Company determination to exploit the trade potential in the Pacific Northwest and to reinforce Great Britain's claim to the territory in dispute--the area between the 49th parallel and the lower Columbia River. One of the principal reasons for founding Fort Vancouver was as a political strategy to keep territory north of the Columbia River under British dominion. [3]