A History of Oregon, 1792-1849. W. H. Gray
any open effort against any settler from any country was a trespass against the rights of such settler. They could only enforce their chartered privileges in British territory. The country, under these circumstances, afforded them a vast field in which to combine and arrange schemes calculated to perpetuate their own power and influence in it. The natives of the country were their trading capital and instruments, ready to execute their will upon all opponents. The Protestant missionaries brought an influence and a power that at once overturned their licensed privileges in trade, because with the privilege of trade, they had agreed, in accepting their original charter, to civilize and Christianize the natives of the country. This part of their compact the individual members of the company were fulfilling by each taking a native woman, and rearing as many half-civilised subjects as was convenient. This had the effect to destroy their courage in any investigation of their conduct. As to their power, as we have intimated above, it was derived from the capacity, courage, prejudices, and ignorance of the Indians, which the American missionary, if let alone, would soon overcome by his more liberal dealings with them, and his constant effort to improve their condition, which, just in proportion as the Indians learned the value of their own productions and labor, would diminish the profits in the fur trade.
This increase of civilization and settlement, says chief-trader Anderson, “had been foreseen on the part of the company, and to a certain extent provided for. The cession of Oregon, under the treaty of 1846, and the consequent negotiations for the transfer to the American government of all our rights and possessions in their territory, retarded all further proceedings.”
In this statement of Mr. Anderson, and the statement of Mr. Roberts, an old clerk of the company, and from our own observations, this “foreseeing” on the part of the company was an arrangement with the Indians, and such as had been half civilized by the various individual efforts of the members and servants of the company, to so arrange matters that an exterminating war against the missionary settlements in the country should commence before the Mexican difficulty with the United States was settled.
This view of the question is sustained by the reply of Sir James Douglas to Mr. Ogden, by Mr. Ogden’s course and treatment of the Indians on his way up the Columbia River, his letters to Revs. E. Walker and Spalding, his special instructions to the Indians, and payment of presents in war materials for their captives, and the course pursued by Sir James Douglas in refusing supplies to the provisional troops and settlers, and the enormous supplies of ammunition furnished to the priests for the Indians during the war of 1847–8.
We are decidedly of the same opinion respecting that company as their own British writer, who, in conclusion, after giving us a history of 281 pages, detailing one unbroken course of oppression and cruelty to all under their iron despotism, says:—
“The question at issue is a serious one—whether a valuable territory shall be given up to an irresponsible corporation, to be colonized or not, as it may suit their convenience; or whether that colonization shall be conducted in accordance with any principles which are recognized as sound and right?”
We can easily see the connection in the principle of right in paying any portion of either of the monstrous claims of that company, which never has been responsible to any civilized national authority.
“The foregoing exposure of the character and conduct of the company has been provoked. When doubts were expressed whether the company were qualified for fulfilling the tasks assigned to them by the Colonial Minister, and when they appealed to their character and history, it became right that their history should be examined, and their character exposed.
“The investigation thus provoked has resulted in the discovery that their authority is fictitious, and their claims invalid. As their power is illegal, so the exercise of it has been mischievous; it has been mischievous to Great Britain, leaving her to accomplish, at a vast national expense, discoveries which the company undertook, and were paid to perform; and because our trade has been contracted and crippled, without any advantage, political or otherwise, having been obtained in return; it has been mischievous to the native Indians, cutting them off from all communication with the rest of the civilized world, depriving them of the fair value of their labor, keeping them in a condition of slavery, and leaving them in the same state of poverty, misery, and paganism in which it originally found them; it has been mischievous to the settlers and colonists under its influence, depriving them of their liberties as British subjects, frustrating, by exactions and arbitrary regulations, their efforts to advance, and, above all, undermining their loyalty and attachment to their mother country, and fostering, by bad government, a spirit of discontent with their own, and sympathy with foreign institutions.”
This writer says: “This is the company whose power is now [in 1849] to be strengthened and consolidated!—to whose dominion is to be added the most important post which Great Britain possesses in the Pacific, and to whom the formation of a new colony is to be intrusted.”
And, we add, this is the power that has succeeded in forcing their infamous claims upon our government to the amount above stated, and by the oaths of men trained for a long series of years to rob the Indian of the just value of his labor, to deceive and defraud their own nation as to the fulfillment of chartered stipulations and privileges.
The facts developed by our history may not affect the decision of the commissioners in their case, but the future student of the history of the settlement of our Pacific coast will be able to understand the influences its early settlers had to contend with, and the English colonist may learn the secret of their failure to build up a wealthy and prosperous colony in any part of their vast dominion on the North American continent.
CHAPTER X.
Case of The Hudson’s Bay Company v. The United States.—Examination of Mr. McTavish.—Number of witnesses.—Their ignorance.—Amount claimed.—Original stock.—Value of land in Oregon.—Estimate of Hudson’s Bay Company’s property.—Remarks of author.
I have carefully reviewed all the testimony in the above case, on both sides, up to May 1, 1867. On April 12, the counsel on the part of the United States having already spent twenty-five days in cross-examining Chief-Factor McTavish, so as to get at the real expenditures of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and arrive at a just conclusion as to the amount due them—Mr. McTavish having frequently referred to accounts and statements which he averred could be found on the various books of the company—gave notice to the counsel of the company in the following language:—
“The counsel for the United States require of Mr. McTavish, who, as appears from his evidence, is a chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and its agent in the prosecution of this claim, to produce here for examination by the United States or their counsel, all accounts, account-books, and letter-books of said company, together with the regulations under which their books were kept, and the various forms of contracts with servants of the company, all of which books, rules, and forms contain evidence pertinent to the issue in this case, as appears from the cross-examination of Mr. McTavish, and suspends the further cross-examination of this witness until he shall produce such books, accounts, rules, and forms.”
On the 1st of May Mr. McTavish’s examination was resumed.
Int. 952.—“Will you please produce here for examination by the United States or their counsel, all accounts, account-books, and letter-books of the Hudson’s Bay Company which were kept at the various posts of that company south of the 49th parallel of north latitude during their occupation by the company, together with the regulations under which their books were kept, and the regular forms of contracts with the company’s servants?”
Ans.—“I can not say whether I will produce them or not.”
(The above question was objected to as incompetent, and as asking the witness, not as to what he knows of the subject, but as to what his future course of action will be, over which, as witness, he can have no control.)
During the examination of Mr. McTavish