Fort Vancouver Cultural Landscape Report

Operations at Fort Vancouver

Overview

With the retirement of McLoughlin in 1846, the superintendency of the Columbia Department fell to the two remaining members of the Board of Management appointed by London, James Douglas and Peter Skene Ogden. As noted earlier, in the winter of 1846-47, Governor Simpson ordered Douglas to inventory the holdings and improvements of all "...farms, lands and other property of every description..." belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company and the Puget's Sound Agricultural Company. By May of 1846, Henry Peers, who prepared the larger 1844 map, was employed in taking surveys of the back plains "..in order to have claims taken on them by people in the Company Service." [863]

In the spring of 1849, the Columbia Department was split in two; James Douglas was moved to Fort Victoria in June to administer the principal activities of the Company's west coast operations, and a succession of managers at Fort Vancouver were appointed to administer the post there. In 1853, the split was formalized, with the Oregon Department Headquarters located at Fort Vancouver, and the Western Department Headquarters at Fort Victoria. This administrative split was to continue, with the Oregon Department of decreasing importance within the Company's operations, until the abandonment of Fort Vancouver in 1860. The first resident manager at Fort Vancouver after Douglas' removal was Ogden, who supervised operations until December 6, 1851, when he went on leave. He was succeeded by John Ballenden, a Chief Factor and former Company accountant, in Outfit 1851-52 and 1852-53. Ballenden was relieved by Ogden, who had returned from leave, and who was assisted by a clerk who supervised the routine operations of the Fort Vancouver farm, James Grahame, appointed a chief trader in Outfit 1854-55. The Board of Management for the Oregon Department consisted of Ogden and another old hand, Dugald Mactavish, for Outfits 1853-54 and 1854-55. After Ogden's death in September of 1854, Mactavish continued as manager of the Department until June of 1858, with William Tolmie, now manager of the Puget's Sound Agricultural Company farm at Nisqually, acting as co-manager in Outfits 1856-57 and 1858-59. James Grahame was appointed manager between 1859 and 1860.

The discovery of gold in California greatly reduced the size of the work force at the Company's Vancouver post. The number of servants listed on the rolls between 1846 and 1849 decreased by over two-thirds, as employees headed south to try their luck in the gold fields. The price of labor raised the cost of producing crops and raising livestock, leading some Company managers to suggest that provisions could be bought for less than the cost of raising them. [864] Theodore Talbot, a U.S. Army officer who arrived in May of 1849 at Fort Vancouver wrote to his mother on May 25:

It is next to impossible to get a white person to work steadily, for the highest wages. The H.B. Company have lost nearly all their employees being obliged to hire Indians and even they charge 4 and 5 $ a day for their paltry services. Mr. Douglas the R. Governor of the H.B. Compy. has left this place since our arrival to assume command of their new Head Quarters, at Victoria, Vancouver's Island. Peter Ogden Esq. succeeds in the charge of Fort Vancouver. We have found them very kind and willing to furnish us every assistance, but the present state of things renders them almost helpless. They are very anxious to leave the American part of Oregon. [865]

By 1850 fur-trading at Fort Vancouver had become a minor--if not insignificant part of the company's business there. Even by 1846 the trade had been on the decline, and the Whitman Massacre in 1847, the Cayuse War, and the Indian wars of 1855-56 affected communication with inland posts and consequently the fur trade. The stockade played a brief role during the mid-50s Indian wars, when settlers in the area, erroneously anticipating the battles might extend downriver, briefly sought shelter within the fort's pickets.

The depot remained an important sales center until at least the early 1850s: in 1849 Fort Vancouver profits on sales exceeded £17,000. [866] However, as noted earlier, competition from merchants in Portland, in other Oregon towns, and in the growing Vancouver City appears to have affected the post's ability to maintain profits even in this aspect of its operations. Agricultural operations began to decline soon after the treaty was signed, with American squatters taking up possession of most of the lands beyond the immediate vicinity of the stockade, and with the U.S. Army gradually altering the landscape beyond the stockade to suit its purposes. By the mid 1850s it appears the Company was essentially occupying the post and what acreage it could protect in the immediate vicinity of the stockade, in order to assert its claims before the British and American Joint Commission.

Hudson's Bay Company Activities

For a few years, activities within the stockade continued much as usual. American P.W. Crawford, describing the fort stockade in 1847 noted that the "Apothacury hall or doctors shop where Medicine is served out to whites and natives..." and the "...wholesale & Retail store with numerous clerks in Attendance The Chief of which is a young Scotchman from near Edinburgh..." and a "Store house where Casks of Sugar Molases and larger Groceries are Kept and dealt out by a Red River Scotch half Breed--The Baker has his shop and Fixtures in the North East Corner The Black Smith Shop is in the South East Corner..." and he mentions the carpenter and cooper's shop. The Catholic Church, he said, had French Canadian priests. [867]

Artist Paul Kane, at Fort Vancouver in the winter of 1846-47, indicated some of the amusements enjoyed at the post continued. In the spring of 1847 he noted, "I found plenty of amusement with the officers of the 'Modeste,' who had built stables, and selected some very good horses. With these we ran races, and chased the wild calves; the object of the latter exercise consisted principally in showing the dexterity of the rider, in stooping from his saddle and throwing the calf head-over-heels by the tail...These sports we occasionally varied by shooting and fishing, ducks and geese and seal being in great quantities in the neighbourhood of the fort." [868]

The post was still intact enough in October of 1849 to impress the Catholic priest Honore Timothee Lempfrit, who noted in his journal that "Fort Vancouver is a very important place where the Hudson's Bay Company has a magnificent establishment." [869]

The U.S. Army arrived as the Company was experiencing a high rate of employee desertion in 1849. In the fall of 1849, Peter Skene Ogden, as manager of Fort Vancouver and the Oregon Department, rented vacant and under-used buildings to the army in and around the stockade, including the two fairly new schoolhouses, a house and stable northwest of the schools, the first floor of the fur store within the stockade, several dwellings in Kanaka Village, and the stables erected by the crew of the Modeste near the river on Fort Plain. In 1850, several additional structures were rented to the army in Kanaka Village and along the river, including the Company's hospital, and the Lattie house west of the Catholic church, the garden of which had been threatened in the 1844 fire.

The Company continued to operate the farm at Fort Vancouver, despite encroachments by settlers and the U.S. Army, and, according to Thomas Lowe, continued to import goods for sale until at least the spring of 1852. Apparently operations within the stockade-blacksmithing, cooperage, carpentry, and so forth--continued at a reduced level until 1856. Henry Atkinson Tuzo, who arrived in 1853, said that until 1856 "...the Company enjoyed undisturbed use and possession of their property..." [870] By 1853, however, even the merchandising operations at the fort appear to have become somewhat desultory. On March 28, a young army officer, Bradford Ripley Alden wrote to his wife, "These English people in the Hudson's Bay store are unlike any business people we have seen. In their large store every thing lies about open and neglected. They manifest no anxiety to sell you anything altho' they are very polite. The store, too, is shut up for an hour at 12 M. and closes altogether at sunset." [871]

As the decade passed, many of the improvements beyond the stockade were allowed to fall into ruin or were destroyed by settlers and the army. Alexander C. Anderson, who served at Fort Vancouver in 1852-53 said, "...it was only within the immediate limits of the Fort that it was found possible to make restorations to prevent decay. I say within the immediate limits of the fort, because outside there was no protection, in fact, against the outrages of unprincipled persons around." [872]

Hudson's Bay Company Agriculture

According to a Company Chief Factor, Archibald McKinlay, who testified on behalf of the Company to the British and American Joint Commission, crops were raised at Fort Vancouver until 1849 or 1850. McKinlay, who had charge of purchasing grain from the American settlers said that the wheat raised to fill the contracts with the Russians in Alaska was raised at Fort Vancouver until 1846, and that the contracts after that year were "filled by me at Oregon City and Champoeg by purchase. The farm, he said, "...from 1846 and upwards...began to be ruined." While staying at the fort in 1849-50, he observed that compared with 1840, "...comparatively there was very little land under cultivation." [873]

Beset by squatters appropriating fields and improvements on all lands beyond the immediate vicinity of the stockade, suffering from a reduced labor force due to desertions, laboring under taxes and duties imposed by the territorial government, and facing increasing competition from settlers no longer beholden to the Company, the managers of the farm during this period attempted to maintain a holding action on its operations. By the early 1850s it was apparent the farm could no longer operate at a profit--the cheap labor supply was gone, and ability to use hands on the payroll for the fur trade during the off season was no longer possible. The ability of the farm to absorb disasters like drought or flooding was reduced, along with the acreage cultivated. When the various managers reported excessive costs to Simpson and London, and urged either the sale of the lands or the cessation of farming altogether, they were told to continue the agricultural operations as a strategy to protect the Company's claims. The governor and committee foresaw that land not cultivated would be viewed as "abandoned," or "vacated," and that maintaining possession was the principal means by which the Company could be assured of a favorable settlement with the United States government. Sowing and harvesting, then, for at least the last eight years of Fort Vancouver's operation, continued, although at an increasing loss to the Company. The vast herds of cattle and horses, and flocks of sheep had vanished from the farm. By the end of 1852 most of Fort Vancouver's livestock had been sent to other posts or sold; later testimony by some former Company employees indicated that many cattle were "wantonly" slaughtered by American settlers.

Field Crop Production

In 1847 John Work wrote "The crops this year have been deficient and a scarcity is apprehended." [874] Douglas and Ogden reported a general crop failure throughout the country. "It was with great difficulty that we managed to collect 8000 bushels in the Wallamette, but fortunately we had a large stock remaining on hand...The yield of the Company's Farm at this place did not exceed a third of the preceeding years... 1500 bushels wheat, 1200 pease, 1300 oats, 100 barley, 2670 potatoes." [875] The following year, production was more in line with "average" year yields, with Douglas reporting a harvest of 6,000 bushels of wheat, 1,500 of peas, 2,000 of oats. In October, Douglas and Ogden told London they were buying all available wheat from the Willamette Valley settlers in anticipation of higher prices in 1849; news of the discovery of gold at Sutter's mill at what is now Coloma, California in 1848, had reached Fort Vancouver that summer. [876]

In the fall of 1850, production at Fort Vancouver appears have stabilized: Ogden reported the crops were "most favorable." In fact, wheat production had soared to the extent that there was a surplus the Company was unable to unload. However, the Company still purchased a large amount of grain from American settlers in the Willamette Valley and elsewhere; it was the only means by which they could collect on the debts owed them for loans and outstanding credit accounts. [877] In the spring of 1851 Ogden reported a heavy demand for provisions and high prices for wheat, which they "...make every exertion to sow." [878] Reports on the harvest differ: Ogden reported the crops were "most abundant," but John Ballenden, arriving in December of 1851, reported that the harvest was "poor." [879] Ballenden noted that it cost the company at least three dollars per bushel to raise wheat, compared to a dollar or a dollar twenty-five per bushel in price when purchased from the Willamette Valley settlers. Within a few months of his arrival at Fort Vancouver, he had leased the Mill Plain farm to three settlers in exchange for a portion of the produce, and reported to Eden Colvile that he planned to turn the fields near the fort into "grazing parks." [880] In 1852 he leased three-quarters of the garden, "the upper half of the field immediately below the fort," two fields north of the Upper Mill Plain Road, and a piece of ground between the new army barracks and the Hudson's Bay Company barn to Colonel Bonneville of the U.S. Army for one year. [881] In July of 1852 Ballenden complained to Simpson that during the last few years, not more than one hundred acres had been under cultivation, excluding Mill Plain, and that the remainder of the farm had squatters "...long before I arrived." While the harvest that year was apparently satisfactory, Ballenden told Simpson he did not expect future success, because the sheep and cattle used to fertilize the soil had been sold, slaughtered or shipped north. [882]

Under Ballenden's superintendency the dismantling of the Fort Vancouver farm accelerated. To be fair, it must be noted that Ballenden was facing increasing encroachment by settlers on Company lands, fighting a losing battle in an attempt to retain laborers, many of whom had deserted, and had to deal with the demands made by the U.S. Army. In 1852 he told Simpson "I will carry on farming if you say so although neither I nor the Indians on whom I must principally depend for labor can be expected to know much of agriculture." [883] Early in 1853 Simpson told Ballenden that agricultural operations at Fort Vancouver had to continue, despite the hardships he perceived, "for the present at least," and stated that "...by ceasing to cultivate the ground, we might afford a handle to ill disposed persons to dispute our right to it." [884]

Ballenden was replaced in March of 1853 by Ogden, reassigned once again to Fort Vancouver after his leave. Ogden was joined September by Dugald Mactavish. That year the freshets led to a loss of one-quarter of the grain crop, and a smallpox epidemic during harvest time cut the available labor force in half. Nonetheless, Ogden said the yield was "good," and that he would have sufficient grain for two years with a "little augmentation," presumably by purchase from settlers. [885] Under Ogden and Mactavish the harvest for 1854 was anticipated as "good," although figures for that year are not available. Isaac Stevens, supplying testimony on behalf of the United States to the British and American Joint Commission, enclosed a report by I.N. Ebey who visited Fort Vancouver in late 1853, and reported that at the time of the 1846 treaty, the cultivated lands "about Fort Vancouver," presumably the lands on Fort Plain only, "did not exceed two hundred and fifty acres; since that time many of the enclosures have been broken up, and lands once cultivated now all a waste." [886] At Mill Plain farm, Ebey reported, "...the buildings [have been] left to dilapidature and decay" and that "a very considerable portion of the [claims] held by them at the date of the treaty have become obsolete by abandonment." [887] It was in 1853-54 that the need to continue agricultural operations at Fort Vancouver was blamed for a loss in the Oregon Department. [888] From this point on, results of harvest at Fort Vancouver are reported in terms of loss, rather than profit.

In 1855 Chief Trader James Grahame wrote in reference to squatters that "If the military [was] not here, [the] company would not have one inch of ground left." In June Fort Plain was flooded. The Depot, Grahame reported, suffered a "very large loss for the year." [889] In 1856 Mactavish reported to Simpson that the expense of the farm was "still great," and the following year he reported the farm incurred the"usual expenses." [890] In 1858 the farm at Vancouver reported a loss of over £300, and the following year Grahame reported to Simpson that the farm at Vancouver "resulted in more outlay." [891]

Livestock

In the spring of 1847, the total number of livestock on the Fort Vancouver farm included 1,915 head of neat cattle--272 more than the previous spring; 517 horses; 7-800 pigs, and 3,000 sheep. These totals excluded 263 cattle that had been sold or slaughtered by the Company. Ogden and Douglas reported to George Simpson that spring that it would be necessary to move the cattle to other posts because there were too many for the available pasturage, especially when the Columbia rose and reduced the range at the Lower Plain, and because settlers were "crowding in upon our pastures and restricting us to narrower limits each year." In August, 300 head of cattle and horses were driven to a stock farm being established near Thompson's River. By the following spring 1600 cattle, 140 horses and the pigs and sheep were left at Fort Vancouver, "...the range is still eaten lamentable close, an evil increased by the number of Americans who have settled on every side of the company's pastures though not actually occupying and land that we claim." [892] In the summer of 1848 the Rev. George Atkinson observed employees shearing sheep in large but still unfinished school buildings not far north of the garden. The sheep, he noted were divided into three separate flocks--a "pure Merino" flock; a flock with some Leicester mix, and a third of unspecified breed, probably descendents of those brought from California. [893] That fall about 1000 head of sheep were sent to the Cowlitz farm.

In November of 1852, John Ballenden wrote to William Tolmie at Nisqually that he had decided to send "all the sheep which still remain here...McPhail, with the party of Kanaka's and Indians, sent here by you, will start in the course of today...I shall this year finally close the accounts of the P.S. Co. in so far as regards live stock or other property remaining at Vancouver, charging whatever weder or wedder lambs may then remain to account of Fort Vancouver--Western Department, outfit 1853...I cannot help feeling glad to see the last of the P.S. Co's stock taken away from the place as in consequence of the lawless population of this neighbourhood, and the impossibility of getting good and careful shepherds they had not received that attention during the last few years which they well merited. The number sent...is 840 of all kinds." Ballenden also reported that the farm had only enough horses left at Vancouver that were required for its own use. [894]

There are scattered references to livestock at Fort Vancouver between the years 1853 and 1860, but for the most part, by the end of 1852, the large herds and flocks, so carefully nurtured at the farm since its inception, were gone. A young army officer in 1853 noted that the meadows at Fort Vancouver were "...dotted with the Company's herds of sheep, cows, and horses," but it appears the livestock he saw belonged to squatters, who by then controlled most of the fields surrounding the stockade. [895] In 1854 Isaac Ebey reported to Governor Stevens that the Company had a few head of cattle in the Mill Plain vicinity, "...driven from Fort Walla-Walla last summer." [896] In 1855 Dugald Mactavish reported to Simpson that he sold two hundred head of cattle. [897] A.C. Anderson, who served as an assistant at Vancouver between 1851 and 1853 later testified that "The large herd of cattle which had formerly roamed upon the pastures had been, some removed to positions of greater security, otherwise branded and stolen by squatters, some wantonly shot, and the remainder driven into the woods, where, from want of the ordinary herding, they gradually became wild...During my residence as second in command at Vancouver, in the winter of 1852-53, I was present during the settlement of a contract with Colonel Chapman of Oregon City, I think, who on the payment of a certain sum per head, purchased the privilege of slaughtering the cattle which had been driven to a distance, and were then in a wild state." [898]

Hudson's Bay Company Mills and Associated Activities

In the 1860s, Thomas Lowe testifying on behalf of the Hudson's Bay Company to the British and American Joint Commission, said that at the time of the 1846 Treaty, the Company's foreign trade "...was confined to the Sandwich Islands and the Russian possessions on the North West coast. The exports...lumber, pickled salmon, flour and dairy produce. In 1848, soon after the discovery of gold mines in California, an extensive trade in these articles was opened in San Francisco. "Regarding imports of manufactured items for the store at Fort Vancouver, Lowe said, "When I went to San Francisco in the spring of 1852 they [the Company] were still sending goods up the river in their own boats... " [899]

For some years, the saw and gristmills continued to operate, apparently at capacity. The Company, to some extent, was shifting its operation to emphasize manufacturing, taking advantage of the increased demand for flour and milled lumber, at first to fulfill the contracts with the Russians in Alaska and to meet the demands of the growing number of settlers, and later to take advantage of the California markets, spurred by the discovery of gold. Wheat bateaux and boats continued to carry grain from the Willamette Valley to the Company's gristmill on the Columbia until enterprising Americans began to erect their own mills. Large vessels in the Columbia were loaded with lumber from the sawmills by using staging built, according to William Crate, the Company's millwright, fifty or sixty feet from shore. [900]

The new gristmill begun in 1846 was half finished when William Crate, returned to Fort Vancouver in 1849: he described the building as sixty by forty feet, four stories high, intended to run with eight or ten stones. As noted earlier, it appears this building was never finished.

The 1846 sawmill Douglas had built, and the large gang sawmill built in the early 1840s, operated until 1849; the large gang mill, which had high labor requirements to operate efficiently, was, according to Crate, shut down in 1849--the year after employees began to desert the post--and for several years the Company relied on the small single-saw mill built by Douglas. In 1851 Crate supervised construction of a new--and apparently less labor-intensive--sawmill below the one Douglas had erected in 1846, and on the opposite side of the stream. The new sawmill building, finished, according to Crate in 1852, was about sixty by twenty feet, and cost about $15,000 to erect. It included one sash saw, driven by an overshot wheel, originally with single motion, but later altered to double motion. It would cut, he said, between three and four thousand feet of timber in twelve hours "without any driving." Crate reported that when the mills were running regularly, thirty to forty men were employed, producing about 1,800,000 feet of lumber for sale each year. Apparently, when begun, the construction of a new sawmill was justified, as lumber prices in 1849-1850 reached a peak of $100 per thousand feet; by the end of that year, prices had fallen to $50 per thousand feet, and later dropped as low as $20 per thousand. [901]

At least one sawmill remained in operation until 1856, when the lands on which they were located were claimed by an American settler. In November of 1850 James Ballenden leased one of the mills for six months to a James Leach. In 1854 Ebey reported to Isaac Stevens that a sawmill, "built since the treaty" was still in operation; he also noted that the 1838-9 gristmill was "now nearly worthless," and that the new gristmill, the one to which Crate made reference "has never been completed." [902] Dugald Mactavish, said, however, that one of the gristmills was in fair condition and still working when he left Fort Vancouver in 1858. [903] By late 1857 or early 1858 only one sawmill was extant, according to the testimony of William Farrar, an attorney representing the American claimant, J.E. Taylor, who said it "...had evidently been abandoned; it was disused; there was no perfect machinery there; the building was open and exposed to the ingress and egress of cattle...I neither saw nor heard anything whatsoever that made any impression on my mind that there was any mill or mills, other than the one I have already mentioned, in its immediate vicinity of any value whatever." [904]

Another source of revenue for the sawmill was the U.S. Army. In June of 1849 Ogden agreed to deliver one hundred thousand feet of boards, planks, joists and other milled materials to the newly arrived Quartermaster, Rufus Ingalls, for building structures at Camp Vancouver, above the stockade. The army paid $60 per thousand feet, and supplied soldier labor to log and raft the lumber downriver from the sawmill. The Company also sold the army shingles for roofing the structures. [905] By December of that year, Ingalls had erected his own "patent saw mill" at Fort Vancouver. [906]