OREGON PIONEER HISTORY

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'Oregon Pioneer History' (1806 to 1890) is the time in the European History of Oregon when pioneers and mountain men traveled west to explore and settle the lands west of the Rocky Mountains and north of California. The period begins after the Lewis and Clark Expedition to Oregon Country and runs until circa 1890 when railroads and urban centers created a more settled state.

Contents

Fur trade

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References

Fur trade

The Lewis & Clark Expedition help to expand interest in the Pacific Northwest.Oregon Blue Book: Oregon History: Land-based Fur Trade and Exploration Although seaborne traders had been engaged in the fur trade along the coastline for many years, Lewis and Clark’s news and descriptions of the region spurred others in the United States to seek fortunes in the fur trade business in Oregon Country. The first Americans to return were members of John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company as part of an expedition that established Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River in 1811. However, some of the first British traders overland include members of the North West Company that crossed the Rocky Mountains in 1808 and traveled down what they named the Fraser River in modern British Columbia. The fur trade was often a triangular trade that sent the furs and pelts to China, Chinese goods such as tea to the United States Eastern seaboard, and manufactured goods to the Pacific Northwest for trade with the Native Americans.
In 1813 during the War of 1812 the Pacific Fur Company sold Astoria to the British owned North West Company who renamed the post Fort George, but the post was returned after the war as U.S. diplomats interpreted the Treaty of Ghent ending the war to include the return of the fur trade post. In 1821 the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company were merged by an act of Parliament with the name of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) retained for the combined entity. The HBC then named Dr. John McLoughlin as Chief Factor for the region the HBC called the Columbia District which encompassed much of the drainage of the Columbia River. In 1822 McLoughlin had a new post built near where the confluence of the Willamette River and the Columbia. On the north shore of the Columbia a new headquarters, Fort Vancouver, became the centerpiece of a multi-post system where furs and supplies were funneled in and out of Fort Vancouver. Additionally, brigades of fur trappers that would go out for months on end trapping animals and then returning with the pelts to the fur posts such as Fort George, Fort Umpqua, Fort Walla Walla, Fort Nisqually, Fort Okanogan, and Fort Boise were used. Later the HBC would start the Puget Sound Agricultural Company to supply food staples to the venture.
The next player in the fur trade was American Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth who had made a fortune in the ice business in New England. In 1832 he lead a new expedition to establish a fur trading empire through his new Pacific Trading Company. After returning from Oregon Country, Wyeth set out again in 1834 to set up the trading posts. His expedition established Fort Hall (on the Snake River) and Fort William (on Wapatoo Island), but the venture was a failure do to the dominance of the HBC in the region and the American Fur Company’s control of the trade in the Rocky Mountains. In 1836 Wyeth sold his two posts to the HBC.
Beginning in the early 1840s the fur trade began to decline as fashion tastes shifted away from beaver pelt hats and the numbers of beavers declined due to over harvesting. Then beginning in the mid 1830s missionaries and settlers began to arrive in the regionOregon Blue Book: Oregon History: Souls to Save Also the majority of the Native Americans in many areas were killed off by diseases introduced by Euro-Americans, including up to 70 percent in the Willamette Valley and Lower Columbia valley by 1830. Mass migration began in 1842 when a wagon train of around 100 wagons came overland along the Oregon Trail.Oregon Blue Book: Oregon History: Overland to Oregon In 1846 McLoughlin retired from leading the HBC in the region.^[1] Then in 1849 the United States Army arrived after the creation of the Oregon Territory and set up adjacent to Fort Vancouver.NPS: Fort Vancouver: Introduction to the Village In June of 1860 the Hudson’s Bay Company closed the fort and withdrew to Fort Victoria, essentially ending the systematic fur trade in the region.

See also

★ History of the United States

★ American Old West

★ Oregon Trail

★ Oregon Modern History

★ Oregon History to 1806

★ Oregon Native Peoples History

References

1. Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online: John McLoughlin