Fort Vancouver Cultural Landscape Report

Administrative and Political Context

While the Oregon Treaty between the United States and Great Britain, settled in June of 1846, guaranteed the Hudson's Bay Company's "possessory rights" in territory south of the 49th parallel, in practical terms British hegemony, influence and holdings, as expressed through the Company, was rapidly drawing to a close. On the international scene, meetings, envoys, and diplomatic missives passed back and forth between London and Washington, D.C., in an attempt to settle the value of the claims of the Hudson's Bay Company and its subsidiary, the Puget's Sound Agricultural Company, in what was now American territory. Throughout this period, negotiations to settle the companies' claims remained unresolved.

American Immigration and Settlement

During this period, the population of the "Oregon Country" increased dramatically. In 1845, a census ordered by the provisional government showed a total of 2,109 white people. By 1849, a census of the Oregon Territory, ordered by Governor Joseph Lane, showed a population of 9,083, 8,785 of which were U.S. citizens; 304 of these resided in Vancouver and Lewis Counties, north of the Columbia River. The federal census of 1850 showed a total population of 13,294; 1,049 were north of Columbia River. [852] By 1860, the federal census showed a population of 52,465 in the new state of Oregon; Washington Territory that year had a population of 11,594, which included the lands soon to become Idaho Territory.

The meetings of early American--and former Company--settlers in the Willamette Valley in the early 1840s had culminated in 1843 with the establishment of a provisional government in Oregon Country. At this session, a land law was enacted providing for the establishment of claims of free land--in 640 acres sections--by individuals; it was later amended to require the making of improvements and occupancy by the claimant or his tenant. In 1844 taxes were established to pay the expenses of the government. As noted previously, the Hudson's Bay Company determined to cooperate with the fledgling authorities for its own protection, and in 1845 a new district of the territory, north of the Columbia, called Vancouver, was established. In August of 1848 the Congress of the United States passed an act creating the Oregon Territory, which was signed into law on August 14. By 1852, thousands of immigrants had traversed the Oregon Trail, settling throughout the territory; that year alone close to 13,000 people arrived in Oregon Territory, which included both Vancouver and Lewis counties, north of the Columbia River. In March of 1853 Washington Territory was created by the federal government, which included the lands on which Fort Vancouver was located. In February of 1859 Oregon was admitted to the Union as a free state.

By 1850, clashes between the Territorial government and the British were escalating: the Hudson's Bay Company schooner, Cadboro, was seized in 1850 for carrying goods from Victoria to Nisqually without customs declarations, and the following year, the Beaver was seized for not reporting to Olympia before landing a passenger at Nisqually. These seizures, despite the guarantee of free navigation assured the Company by the 1846 treaty, exacerbated strained relations, and contributed to the Company's decision to withdraw from Fort Vancouver by the end of the 1850s.

Looking for free land and opportunities to create better lives for themselves, many immigrants began to view the Hudson's Bay Company lands as subject to the Donation Land Claim Law--particularly after news of the 1846 treaty arrived. At Nisqually, Cowlitz, and other former posts--and particularly at Fort Vancouver--the Company fought a losing battle to eject squatters from their lands. In the mid-1840s, in an effort to protect the Company's lands at Fort Vancouver, fourteen employees--among them Thomas Lowe, James Douglas, Forbes Barclay--laid claims of 640 acres each--the maximum allowed under the Donation Land Claim law of the Oregon Provisional Government--to the lands at Fort Vancouver. This effort was largely for naught--although litigation by some individuals such as Forbes Barclay forestalled some claim jumpers for a few years. By 1860, most Company employees had either sold "their" claims, having settled elsewhere, or abandoned them.

In 1848 the troublesome Henry Williamson and others platted a town site on his claim west of the stockade at Fort Vancouver, naming it Vancouver City. When he left for California in 1849, where he was shot and killed at Sutter's Fort, claim to the town site was established by Amos Short, who had been in dispute with Williamson and Dr. David Gardner over the site since his arrival. By 1850 the federal census listed ninety-five houses in the newly established Vancouver County, of which Vancouver City was the county seat. In the ensuing decade, town development included two schools, a ferry service, saloons, boarding houses, a courthouse, a livery stable/dance hall and theater, and other buildings. In 1857 the town was incorporated, and in 1859 it was a serious, although unsuccessful, contender for the Washington Territorial capitol.

Despite the assistance offered immigrants passing through Fort Vancouver by McLoughlin in the early 1830s and '40s, there was a great deal of resentment towards the Hudson's Bay Company by settlers. With an effective monopoly established on imported, manufactured goods, as well as control of agricultural material necessary for survival-seed, agricultural implements, and livestock--the Company was viewed as a barrier to progress and civilization. The policy of taking part of the settler's production of wheat and increase in cattle, in exchange for the original loan by the Company, has already been discussed. In addition, until the early 1840s settlers were obliged to process their wheat into flour at the Company's mills at Oregon City and Fort Vancouver, and to trade produce or borrow on credit from Company stores at Champoeg, Oregon City and Fort Vancouver for any manufactured goods. Father J.B.Z. Bolduc noted in 1845:"...Since the country has been inhabited not a bit of fabric has been made; which compels a recourse to the Company for lesser things as well as for those that are important...there is no money at all, everything is done by barter. The things which the farmers give for the merchandise that is furnished them are various grains, and particularly wheat, for which they receive only the value of three shillings per minot...From this it comes about that many are poor and in debt." [853]

By 1846, a number of Americans had established stores and mills, at which paper money they floated could be redeemed for goods. However, even then the Company stores were the best stocked and most reliable. Pioneer William Barlow stated that in 1846:

All the merchants floated more or less paper money, which was only redeemable at their own store, and you had to take just what they had to sell or take nothing. That was what made some a great deal better than others. Abernethy's [in Oregon City] was considered the poorest paper, though you could get flour and lumber at his mills, gunflints and remnants at his store. Ermatinger, or the Hudson's Bay store, was gilt-edged. You could get all kinds of substantial goods at that store if you had their paper. The way this paper was floated was through the agency of Dr. McLoughlin. He had a large flour mill, three run of fine French burrs and they made as good flour there then as any mill does in Oregon today. He bought the bulk of all the wheat that was raised in Oregon at that time, paid the farmer or whoever had the wheat with paper on Ermatinger or the Hudson's Bay store. They in turn would pass it to the credit of the wheat man, then he would draw orders in favor of any person or persons to the full amount due him and those orders were good until they were taken in. It made no difference how many hands they had passed through or when it was presented, it would be put to your credit; and you could draw on it a dollar at a time or take it all up then if you wished... " [854]

By 1850, with an increase in the number of American ships entering Oregon, the development of reliable money, and the increase in settlers, and subsequently merchants and manufacturers--and concomitant number of available goods in the territory--the Company's monopoly was effectively broken. The number of mills and stores owned and operated by Americans had increased dramatically. The principal town in Oregon Territory was Portland, which superseded Oregon City, the original goal of most immigrants in the 1830s and 1840s, due to its more favorable location as a port for deep sea vessels and its relative ease of access to the interior of the country. Most rural settlement occurred in the Willamette Valley, for the same reasons McLoughlin had, in the late 1820s, recommended it to his retiring engages: ease of access via rivers, fertile soil, moderate climate, and the like. Small towns sprang up throughout the valley, including Salem, established as the territorial capitol in 1854-5; McMinnville; the communal settlement at Aurora; Marysville (by 1853, Corvallis); Albany, and many others, often centering on grist or sawmills, or missionary institutions. Some were situated due to favorable transportation networks, such as Champoeg, established, like Oregon City, by the Hudson's Bay Company, before any significant number of Americans had entered the country.

U.S. Army

After Indians killed Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa, and fourteen others at the Whitman Waiilatpu station in November of 1847, the federal government promised to send troops to Oregon for the protection of settlers. It was not until 1849, however, that federal troops arrived in Oregon: two companies of artillery, the L and M First Artillery, arrived at Astoria on May 9, under the command of Brevet Major J.S. Hathaway via the U.S.S. Massachusetts, under orders to establish a post at the mouth of the Willamette River. In September and October, a rifle regiment dispatched overland from Fort Leavenworth under the command of Brevet-Colonel W.W. Loring straggled into Camp Vancouver, where Hathaway had established camp on the hill behind the Fort Vancouver stockade. The U.S. Army and the Hudson's Bay Company were to exist side by side in amity for a few years. However, the rapid increase in population, due principally to immigration from the states, the establishment of American government and laws, and the establishment of American social institutions greatly altered the political, economic and social climate by the end of this period: by 1860 the Hudson's Bay Company was considered an interloper with no practical claim to the vast holdings it had controlled for decades. At the end of this period, under increasing strained relations between the U.S. Army and the Company's employees at Fort Vancouver, the Hudson's Bay Company vacated the post.

Saint James Mission

The Bishop of Nisqually, A.M.A. Blanchet, filed a claim to 640 acres at Vancouver, centered around St. James Catholic Church in May of 1853, based on the Oregon Territory Organic Act, passed by Congress in 1848, which basically guaranteed the claims of any religious mission made prior to the passage of the law. [855] Chief Factor Ogden vigorously protested the claim to the surveyor general, pointing out that the church occupied Company land. [856] In January of 1854, Isaac Ebey noted, "...The claim of land upon which Fort Vancovuer stands is at this time claimed by Bishop Blanchette, bishop of Nisqually, as a Catholic mission, by virtue of a provision in the act of Congress organizing Washington Territory, approved March 3, 1853. The bishop has notified the surveyor general of Oregon of his claim, embracing six hundred and forty acres. The same tract...is claimed by James Graham, chief clerk to the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver...There may be other claims upon this tract..by citizens under the donation law; if so, I was unable to find them." [857]

In fact, the east edge of the Short claim overlapped the west edge of the St. James Mission claim, and the army reserve encompassed much of the mission claim as well. Army Quartermaster Rufus Ingalls noted in 1859 that it was an "...attempt on part of subsequent post commanders to curtail the Mission enclosures authorized to be put up by Col Bonneville that made the Bishop fly to the President and the Press...no officer ever dreamed that this mission would put forth so preposterous a claim as the one in question..." [858] In addition, Clark county laid claim to a portion of the area for a county seat, and a claim to most of the area claimed by the mission was also made on behalf of the town of Vancouver in 1859. And, of course, underlying all these claims were the possessory rights guaranteed by the 1846 treaty of the Hudson's Bay Company. The mission's claim was not to be resolved until 1895, when, through the appeals process, it reached the United States Supreme Court: the final ruling limited the claim to the land actually occupied--less than .44 acres--in 1848. [859]

In 1856, Bishop Augustine Magliore A. Blanchet, in charge of the dioceses of Walla Walla, Fort Hall and Colville since the mid 1840s, requested a mission from the Sisters of Charity of the House of Providence in Montreal: five volunteered, arriving by ship via Panama in December of that year. The nuns--three professed sisters and two postulants--were apparently initially lodged in the attic of the St. James Mission's bishop's house. Legend says that by the spring of 1857, the nuns established a convent in a fur storage building within the stockade of the Hudson's Bay Company, or in an "old fur storage building abandoned by the Hudson Bay Company and later turned into a barn." [860] This does not correlate with the U.S. Army inventory of Hudson's Bay Company structures in 1860, which makes no mention of any stockade building's use as a convent, nor does there appear to be any reference to it in any communications from Company employees at the stockade through 1860. What does seem likely, is that the convent was established in the rectory of the church: it is located there on a map prepared in 1866. Also, the 1860 census of Clark County lists a building associated with the St. James Mission as occupied by eleven nuns, twenty-two female orphans, and six domestic servants.

The superior of the Sisters of Charity mission was Esther Pariseau, Sister Joseph of the Sacred Heart. She was born in Quebec in 1823, and joined the Sisters of Providence in Montreal in 1843. Daughter of a carriage-maker, she was proficient in carpentry and woodworking; later her skills in planning and organization would become evident. Mother Joseph is credited with erecting a series of small structures, referred to as "the Providence enclosure," apparently on the site of the St. James Mission, to minister to the needs of the area's population--both native and white. [861] Rufus Ingalls, in January of 1859, noted that "Most of the improvements which pertain to the Mission have been created with our consent [the army's] by Mr. Broullet the Vicar General of the Dioceses, since my return here in 1856. This gentleman has opened fine schools for both sexes, has a hospital for the indigent sick." [862] The school apparently began operation in 1857 under the supervision of Mother Joseph, who also organized an orphanage for both boys and girls. As noted above, the 1860 census noted twenty-two female orphans lodging with the nuns; it also listed a third structure with two "perceptors" and fifteen male orphans. The latter structure, which can be seen on an army map prepared under the command of Brigadier General W.S. Harney in 1860, later became known as Holy Angels College.