Fort Vancouver Cultural Landscape Report

Operations at Camp Vancouver/Columbia Barracks/Fort Vancouver

In May of 1846 the United States Congress authorized the President to establish a line of military posts along the route settlers were following from the Mississippi to the Columbia for protection of emigrants. In 1848 the Secretary of War directed the commanding officer of the stations along the route to establish a ten mile square reservation on the Columbia River, near the mouth of the Willamette River. In the spring of 1849 Brevet Colonel W.W. Loring left Fort Leavenworth with a column of mounted riflemen for Oregon country, and Companies L and M of the First Artillery under the command of Captain and Brevet Major J.H. Hathaway embarked in the steamer Massachusetts from New York for the Columbia River, via the Straits of Magellan. The artillery companies arrived at Fort Vancouver in the middle of May, and established a camp on the hill behind the Hudson's Bay Company stockade at Fort Vancouver, with Peter Skene Ogden's permission. In September and October, Loring's command arrived in three separate detachments, after "an arduous march." [907] Loring's command, according to a civilian who lodged at the post in March of 1851, "was raised expressly for Oregon, and put under the command of Col. Loring, a young army officer who served in Mexico, and where he lost his arm. The ranks of the Regiment are made up of the meanest and most unprincipled set of fellows that ever disgraced an Army..." [908]

Captain Rufus Ingalls, an assistant quartermaster, had been directed in April of 1849 to proceed to Oregon and report to the senior officer in charge; his principal task was to make preparations for quartering the men assigned to the new post, which was called Camp Vancouver, established to house the Eleventh (Oregon) Department of the Pacific Division. Ingalls arrived from San Francisco on May 25.

During the summer of 1849 the command camped in tents on the high ground behind the Fort, and built log structures for shelter the following winter. Troops, local mechanics and Indians were engaged in the construction. Officer Theodore Talbot wrote his mother in June that "The Quartermaster I believe intends to employ some of our men in the erection of buildings etc. giving them the high market wages for labor, the Captains of Companies giving them short furloughs for that purpose. This plan may have a good effect towards keeping them. I doubt it myself." [909]

Some troops and provisions were housed in structures rented from the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver and in Oregon City. In October, D.H. Vinton reported to the Commander of the Pacific Division, Persival F. Smith:

Should the negotiations now on foot for the purchase of the property belonging to the Hudson's Bay Co be brought to a favorable conclusion, we will have acquired an extensive domain from the best cultivable portions of the Territory, affording the most eligible points for military occupation--selected with the characteristic sagacity of the experienced factors and Agents of this Company, whose adventurous service partaking as it does, most esentially, of a military nature, has made them good judges in matters of the kind. [910]

In April of 1850, six companies of Mounted Riflemen arrived at the post--A,D,G,H, I and K--and one more company, F, arrived in June. Company L of the First Artillery, under Hathaway, was sent to occupy Fort George in Astoria in May, where Captain Ingalls had been attempting to put together suitable quarters for them. In November Company B of the Mounted Riflemen arrived at Fort Vancouver. In May of 1850, Ingalls entered into an agreement with Ogden on behalf of the U.S. government and the Hudson's Bay Company for the use and appropriation of an eight acre field about one-quarter of a mile north of the stockade, planted in wheat. In exchange for $ 1,000--later adjusted to $872.40--for the loss of the crops and with the specification that the Company's right to the soil be acknowledged, the army obtained a site on which to construct barracks to house the increased military population. [911] That year twenty-six buildings were erected, primarily by "citizen carpenters" employed by Ingalls; most were located in a ring around the former wheat field, to become the parade grounds, but several were built in the Kanaka Village area, and near the River.

On October 31, the army formally proclaimed the establishment of a military reservation of about four square miles, which included the Hudson's Bay Company stockade and the land and improvements about two miles to the east and west of it; the announcement stated the reservation was "subject only to the lawful claims of the Hudson's Bay Company," as guaranteed by the Treaty of 1846. [912] That year the post was given the official title of Columbia Barracks. The extent of the military reservation immediately raised political and policy questions, prompting Washington D.C. to reconsider its size, despite the concerns expressed by subordinates on the West Coast. In 1851 Brevet Brigadier General E.A. Hitchcock wrote from the Pacific Division headquarters in Benicia, California, to C.M. Conrad, the U.S. Secretary of War, describing the Hudson's Bay Company post at Vancouver and reported:

...when the United States troops reached there...by an amicable arrangement between the agent of the Company and the United States commander, the troops were encamped and subsequently erected quarters, upon grounds cleared by the Company, immediately in the rear of the picket-work and enclosed grounds of the Company; a portion of said enclosed grounds being relinquished...for the convenience of the troops, to be paid for on certain terms agreed upon...A questions was raised by settlers...as to the extent of the "possessory" rights of the Company; some giving the opinion that those rights did not extend beyond actual enclosures. In this view a settler established himself and has built a house on the river bank about a mile, or perhaps a mile and a quarter, below the picket-work of the Company, against the remonstrances and repeated efforts of the agent of the Company to prevent it...The county authorities, taking the same limited view of the rights of the Company, have laid off a town and have disposed of lots, taking in the actual buildings occupied by the employés of the Company, and are only restrained from actual occupancy by the site falling within the declared military reservation; and if now the reservation should be restricted to narrow limits it could not fail to bring about a most unpleasant state of things... [913]

Ultimately the military bowed to political pressure. In October of 1853, the Secretary of War was obliged by an act of Congress to reduce the reserve to 640 acres, subject to the claims by the Company as guaranteed by the 1846 treaty. The new boundaries were surveyed by Brevet Lieutenant Colonel B.L.E. Bonneville, who arrived at Fort Vancouver in September of 1852, when he assumed command of the post. Bonneville was already noted as an explorer, having served in Oregon in the 1830s. In July of 1853, the name of the post was changed to Fort Vancouver; it operated under this designation until 1879 when it was redesignated Vancouver Barracks.

In May of 1851, the eight Mounted Riflemen companies were sent to California, leaving a small detachment under the command of Lieutenant Theodore Talbot at Columbia Barracks until the fall, when reinforcements --Company L of the First Artillery from Fort George, and a detachment from Company M, stationed at the Dalles, arrived; the command of the post was placed under Brevet Major Hathaway in November. Bonneville arrived in the fall of 1852, with companies C,E,G and H of the Fourth Infantry; in 1853, Company L of the First Artillery was disbanded, and several infantry companies moved elsewhere. Between July of 1853 and June of 1854 the garrison consisted of companies G and H of the Fourth Infantry, and Company L of the Third Artillery joined the post in June of that year. In 1854 and '55, a new spurt of building activity took place in the vicinity of the parade grounds.

Brevet Captain Ulysses S. Grant, was stationed at Columbia Barracks/ Fort Vancouver in the early 1850s, serving as regimental commissary officer, and later as regimental quartermaster. In the winter of 1852-53 he lived with Captain Thomas Brent and Captain Rufus Ingalls in a two-story prefabricated house Ingalls had had built in the Quartermaster Depot area of the post in 1850.

In the fall of 1852, Chief Factor John Ballenden leased a parcel known as the "island farm," described as one mile east of the fort, to Grant for one year, although the Company retained fifteen to twenty acres at the west end of the farm. The island farm was probably the present-day Government Island, referred to as Goose Grass Island by some Company employees, and for a brief time as Miller's Island. The military apparently raised or harvested grass hay on the island in the early 1850s. [914]

In 1855 and '56, and to some extent through 1858, Fort Vancouver served as a staging area for the regular army engaged in what is generally referred to as the Indian Wars, a series of uprisings and battles ranging from the Puget's Sound in Washington Territory to southern Oregon, and both east and west of the Cascade mountains. During this period, a series of companies from the Dragoons, Artillery, and Infantry were lodged at the post. During the winter of 1855-56, some of the volunteers called up by the territorial governor to protect settlers were housed at Fort Vancouver, although they were not part of the regular army. Colonel George Wright, who was largely responsible for bringing the wars to a close in 1858, was placed in command of eight companies of the Ninth Infantry, which arrived in January of 1856 at Fort Vancouver, and of the entire regiment at the post.

Until the Indian Wars began in earnest, military life on the post at Vancouver appears to have been somewhat boring, at least for young officers stationed there. Theodore Talbot wrote to his sister in March of 1852, "I live in a house by myself and for days and days, indeed, almost weeks, have only ventured out of my shell or cell for a few minutes each day to get my meals, not having the society of a living thing except at these times. This retirement has been part voluntary, partly enforced, from bad weather and want of sociability or inclination for out door wanderings." [915] A year later, Bradford Ripley Alden wrote his wife:

Two Indians are before my door, with two rugged and kittenish looking little bear cubs. One of the companies has bought them for pets, I hear. Officers and soldiers often are wondrous lonely and low-spirited at all out of the way stations. Pets are natural enough amusements for lonely men...The other evening, as I strolled in to cheer up old Col. Bonneville, he rose up to receive me, half asleep: "...Jove, Sir! Do you know, between you and me, I felt so lonely and restless tonight I had half a mind to go up to my bedroom and take a few drinks to myself, just to drown thought and get a little boosy."...He never drinks, but many officers at out of the way stations get boosy as he says, just to drown care. We are fortunate in not having one drinking man at this post... [916]

There were often one or two musicians in each company assigned to the post, and early on a structure was designated for the regimental band's quarters. In April of 1853, Bradford Alden wrote his wife, "Three nights since, the band gave me a serenade, and then went round to the other houses." [917]

In 1854, the timber in the immediate vicinity of the now reduced Military Reservation was pretty much depleted: Captain Thomas Brent, assistant quartermaster, purchased forage and firewood for the post from nearby settlers. Water for the post was hauled from the Columbia River by a six mule team. Some officers assigned to the post in the early and mid-50s had to be lodged in rented Hudson's Bay Company buildings, many of which were falling into disrepair. One, a Captain H.D. Wallen, asked the army for reimbursement of the private funds he expended in repairing his quarters, a request seconded by Quartermaster Ingalls. The request was denied. [918] Until 1856, the hospital for the post was one of the unfinished Hudson's Bay Company school buildings north of the stockade, a "very inferior building." [919]

In 1856 the U.S. Congress approved the establishment of an Ordnance Reserve on twenty acres of land adjoining the east boundary of the military reservation. The Company protested the establishment of permanent buildings for an arsenal on the reserve, and the military acquiesced, erecting temporary buildings on the site.

Following Bonneville's departure in 1855, the military post at Vancouver experienced a succession of commanding officers, sometimes alternating depending on duty assignments. Major Gabriel Rains of the Fourth Infantry served as commander for a part of 1855 and 1856; Colonel George Wright several times in 1856; Lieutenant Colonel Thompson Morris of the Fourth Infantry when Wright was away in 1856, and periodically between 1857 and 1859. Others included First Lieutenant John Withers of the Fourth Infantry; Captain H.D. Wallen--whose remodeling expenditures had been refused; First Lieutenant Henry Hodges of the Fourth Infantry; First Lieutenant R. Macfeelly of the Fourth; Captain Henry Indah of the Fourth,; Lieutenant Bonnycastle; Captain Andrew Smith of the First Dragoons; Maj. George Nauman of the Third Artillery, and Major William Ketchum of the Fourth Infantry.

Beginning in 1856, the amicable relationship between the Hudson's Bay Company and the army began to deteriorate. At that time, said Company doctor Henry Atkinson Tuzo, "...the military authorities commenced and continued to call in question the rights of the Co....Some of their buildings outside the fort were taken possession of by persons in the employ of the various military departments. Several were burnt or otherwise destroyed while in the occupation of these persons; the Company's corrals were made use of at first, and finally altogether removed by the quarter master's department. The landing jetty on the river was removed, and a large warehouse and wharf erected by the Govt on its site. The fences, and some of the head boards in the co's graveyard, were removed by some of the soldiers of the garrison at various times, and...used as fuel at their quarters..." [920]

In 1857, a note of testiness, or perhaps exasperation, appears in the correspondence from Rufus Ingalls, who had worked cooperatively with the Company as military quartermaster since 1849, to various Hudson's Bay Company managers. He wrote Dr. William Tolmie in August of 1857 that not:

...foreseeing any possible obstacle to a fair understanding and settlement between the military authorities and your Company, and the stage of water at that date making it necessary to begin driving the piles, I accordingly commenced, and now have a capacious, convenient, and expensive wharf nearly completed, right in front of the 'Salmon House.'...It has been constructed with a view of having a permanent storehouse attached to it on the shore line, and, to do this, it will be necessary to take down, or remove the 'Salmon House'...there is plenty of space for both buildings, and hitherto the Company and the Post have accommodated each other on all occasions, and it is hoped such will be the case now...You are aware that we have already executed improvements to a great extent and value, whatever questions may be involved in the settlement, are so already. We now have an imperative necessity for this store house. [921]

The Company's protests were in vain; a new quartermaster's storehouse was erected in 1858.

In the summer of 1858 Chief Trader Grahame protested to Major Mackall regarding the destruction of a house in the Kanaka Village area. Ingalls responded to Mackall inquiry regarding the matter:

There was but one old shed pulled down--it was made originally as a hut by some employés of the HBC but it has not been used by the Co for years, if ever. It did not belong to that Co. Its old occupant abandoned it years ago, and latterly, a person in town has used it occasionally as a cow shed and now feels more aggrieved at its loss than Mr. Grahame. It was a nuisance and worthless and the person was putting himself in a position to give the post much vexation. It was within the limits of this Reservation and the person who was striving to keep a hold on the premises had no manner of just claim thereto... [922]

The relationship between the military and the Company continued to deteriorate over the next two years. Early in 1860 the army, under Brigadier General W.S. Haney, commander of the Department of Oregon, determined that, among other things, it wanted land for a drill ground. Harney ordered a board of officers at Fort Vancouver to evaluate the Company's improvements on the targeted site, south and west of the stockade; they concluded the land contained some hundreds of yards of fencing and eight or nine buildings rapidly going to decay. Hudson's Bay Company clerk John Work, in charge of the Hudson's Bay post in the absence of Grahame, was notified of the proposed summary condemnation, and protested, claiming the area contained several fields under cultivation and leased for the year. Harney responded, in writing, saying the Company was "not recognized as having any possessory rights in the soil of the military reservation at this place," which appears to have come as a shock--at least to see it in writing--to A.G. Dallas, president of the Council of the Hudson's Bay Company in North America. On March 5, the army told Work to remove all enclosures and structures on the lands west of a line of stakes set about eighty yards from the Catholic church, and running south to the river. Work refused. On March 12 soldiers and government employees began removing the fences of Hudson's Bay Company fields west and southwest of the fort. Between March 16 and March 27, the army, according to Work, burned an old house used as a hay house, the Company pig house, a house still occupied by a Hawaiian, William Kaulehelehe, and several other buildings in the Kanaka Village area In addition, the military removed fencing around a Kanaka Village residence, the Company's hospital on the river bank, a house in the river front area which had been rented in 1855-56 by the volunteer quartermaster as an office, the Company's stable and its "cow house," or ox byre. Some materials removed from the dismantled buildings--posts, sills, windows and doors--and one entire building occupied by a Hawaiian, were hauled to the army's ordnance reserve, apparently for re-use there. Other materials were given to "citizens" or supplied to "houses in the garrison for firewood." [923]

After the army's actions, A.G. Dallas, in May of 1860, wrote a bitter letter to Harney, protesting the army's lack of regard for the rights of the Hudson's Bay Company, and notifying him that the Company would be vacating Fort Vancouver "...as soon as necessary arrangements can be made." [924] To Lord Lyons, the British envoy to Washington, Dallas wrote in August of 1860 that Chief Trader Grahame had, on July 2, been given illicit access to a letter by an unnamed person in the army at Fort Vancouver. The letter, according to Grahame, was from the U.S. Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, to General Harney, ordering "...the removal of all improvements at Fort Vancouver." To date, this letter has not been traced, but its existence would certainly remove the onus from General Harney, later cast by most Company witnesses for the Joint Commission in the role of villain, and raises intriguing questions regarding American foreign policy at the highest levels of government in 1860. It is of particular interest, as the British North West Boundary Commission survey team was slated to visit Fort Vancouver later that spring, surveying the boundary lines, and recording, with photographs, the Hudson's Bay Company posts. [925]

On May 1, Charles William Wilson, a royal engineer with the Boundary Commission, arrived at Fort Vancouver. He wrote:

...the Fort is now surrounded by the Garrison of American troops under General Harney of San Juan renown; alas the poor old Fort once the great depot of all the western fur trade is now sadly shorn of its glories, General Harney having taken forcible possession of nearly all the ground round & almost confined the H.B.C. people to the Fort itself; the H.B. Company are going to give up their post here as most of their business is now transacted in Victoria & in consequence of General Harney's disregard of the treaty of 46 which secured them their rights; it is most annoying to them to see all the fields & land they have reclaimed from the wilderness & savage gradually taken away from them; we have at present the use of the buildings which are nearly empty now, what a place it must have been in the olden time! [926]