Fort Vancouver Cultural Landscape Report

Fort Vancouver Outposts

During this period, only two principal settlement sites beyond the immediate vicinity of Jolie Prairie could be considered under the influence or control of the new establishment at Fort Vancouver. The post's later development as a hub of agricultural activity encompassing remote outposts really began after 1830, and is discussed in the following section. During these earlier years, however, the nascent white settlement in the Willamette Valley was probably established, and the old Astorian post of the Pacific Fur Company at the mouth of the Columbia, which the Canadian North West Company re-christened Fort George, continued to operate at a reduced capacity under McLoughlin's direction from Fort Vancouver.

Willamette Valley

The Willamette Valley extends about 150 miles south from the Columbia River; the valley floor averages about thirty miles in width. The Willamette River is the means of drainage from the Coast Range on the west and the Cascade mountains on the east, and, like the Columbia River, for many years was the principal means of transportation of goods and people, where the only break in the river was a relatively short portage required to circumnavigate the falls at what became Oregon City. Its soil was rich; its vegetation included dense forests and open prairies covered with grass. During this period wildlife-including the beaver, principal object of the fur trade--was abundant.

About eighteen miles above the falls, where the river makes a bend to the west, was a natural clearing which is now called Champoeg. It was the northernmost of a series of openings south of the river bend, extending for around twenty miles and terminating just northeast of the present day city of Salem. This area came to be called French Prairie, bounded on the east by the Pudding River and on the west by the Willamette, its soil consisted primarily of black loam, rich farming land. North of the Willamette River's bend was a series of low hills, and north of them, extending from the area of the present day Forest Grove to Lake Oswego. From the river bend to the hills lining the west bank of the Willamette River, were the Tualatin Plains, traversed on the south by the Tualatin River. Principal routes to these sites from Fort Vancouver included the Willamette River, and an overland trail long-established by fur traders and later used by the Hudson's Bay Company, which began near the present day site of St. Helens, Oregon, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers, and extended south through the Tualatin Plains to Champoeg.

The exact date of white settlement in the Valley--and the consequent alteration of its landscape is not positively documented: oral histories indicate settlement by free trappers may have begun around 1812, although whether farms were established or the settlement consisted merely of hunting camps is not known at present. By 1826-27, however, some freemen had establishments in the valley: by 1826 a free trader named Etienne Lucier had at least a semi-permanent camp near Champoeg. where he herded and sold horses, but it does not appear he had begun any substantial farming there at that time. In 1828 he applied to John McLoughlin for assistance in establishing a farm in the Willamette. McLoughlin later recalled, "I told him I would loan him seed to sow and wheat to feed himself and family, to be returned from the produce of his farm, and sell him such implements as were in the Hudson Bay Company's store at fifty percent, on prime cost. But a few days after he came back and told me he thought there was too remote a prospect of this becoming a civilized country, and as there were no clergymen in the country, he asked me a passage for his family in the Hudson Bay Co.'s boats, to which I acceded." [97] But Lucier missed the connection with the Company's fall express to Canada, and returned to Fort Vancouver, where McLoughlin dispatched him, early in 1829, on a hunting expedition headed by Chief Trader McLeod, then camped on the Umpqua River in southern Oregon, and due to head into California.

In either 1829 or 1830, Lucier applied to McLoughlin again for assistance in starting a farm in the Valley, and it was then that the Company, through the aegis of McLoughlin, became involved in the development of farming in the Valley, through its provision of seed, livestock and agricultural implements to freemen and retired employees. [98] Oral tradition also credits two other freemen with the honor of having established the first farm in the Willamette Valley--Joseph Gervais, who may have staked out a farm near Chemaway on French Prairie in 1827 or 1828, and Jean Baptiste Desportes McKay, who was, according to U.S. Navy Purser William Slacum in 1837, the first settler on the "Willhamett," near Champoeg. Because McLoughlin later recollected that it was in 1829--some historians believe 1830--that he first lent agricultural materials to settlers, who he personally approved, the Willamette settlements are discussed in more detail in the following section. For the purposes of this study, it is sufficient to note that it was the Hudson's Bay Company's seed, agricultural implements and livestock which provided the foundation for the first farms established in the Valley, and therefore significantly impacted its establishment--and development--as a settlement center.

Fort George

As noted earlier, Fort Astoria had been established in 1811 by the American Pacific Fur Company, but was sold to the Canadian North West Company in 1813, a casualty of the War of 1812. Under international treaty, the post was officially the property of the United States from 1819 onwards; in practical terms, it remained in the hands of the North West Company. Re-named Fort George, the post served as at least an intermittent supply depot for the North West Company's interior posts west of the Rockies. After the merger of the North West and Hudson's Bay companies in 1821, Fort George fell under the umbrella of the reorganized Hudson's Bay Company. Because it was located within the North West Company's Columbia district, it fell under the direction of the head of the Company's Northern Department (or Factory), whose first governor was George Simpson.

At the time Simpson visited the post, in 1824-25, he noted it was "...a large pile of buildings covering about an acre of ground well stockaded and protected by Bastions or Blockhouses, having two Eighteen Pounders mounted in front and altogether an air or appearance of Grandeur & consequence which does not become and is not at all suitable to an Indian Trading Post." [99] The site chosen by the Astorians for their post in 1811 was on the south bank of the Columbia, about ten miles east of the mouth of the river on the rising ground of a point of land which formed a natural harbor. Forested hills rose steeply from a narrow strip of land along the river. The initial establishment had consisted of a log residence, a storehouse, and a powder magazine, and a vegetable garden was planted. It was not a particularly suitable site--it was vulnerable to sea attack, it was far from the fur riches of the interior, and the climate was damp. Its various occupants had cultivated a garden of about fifteen or twenty acres; by the time of Simpson's arrival it was producing potatoes, peas, carrots, turnips, cabbages and radishes. The soil, however, was poor, he noted, "being a mixture of Clay & Sand..." [100] Simpson also reported the presence of thirty-one head of cattle and seventeen hogs; most, if not all, were soon moved to Fort Vancouver. [101]

The move of stores and provisions to Fort Vancouver in 1824-25 has been addressed. By September of 1825, John Scouler reported Fort George was abandoned, and in a state of "ruin and filth." [102] However, in 1829, McLoughlin had the post reoccupied, and it was manned into the 1840s.

Map 1. 1825 map Columbia River, Surveyed 1825. Portion of map showing site of first Hudson's Bay Company stockade at Fort Vancouver, on bluff overlooking Columbia River. Printed at Lithographic Establishment, Quarter Master Generals Office, Horse Guards, October 1826. Courtesy Washington State Historical Society.