Review of Mr. Greenhow’s work in connection with the conduct and policy of the Hudson’s Bay Company.—Schools and missionaries.—Reasons for giving extracts from Mr. Greenhow’s work.—Present necessity for more knowledge about the company.

As stated by General Gibbs, Mr. Greenhow has given us a complete history of the discovery of Oregon. At the point where he leaves us the reader will observe our present history commences. We did not read Mr. Greenhow’s very elaborate and interesting history till ours had been completed in manuscript. On reading it, we found abundant proof of statements we have made respecting the policy of the British government to hold, by the influence of her Hudson’s Bay Company, the entire country west of the Rocky Mountains that was not fully occupied by the Russian and Spanish governments.

This fact alone makes our history the more important and interesting to the American reader. Mr. Greenhow, upon pages 360 and 361 of his work, closes the labors of the eleven different American fur companies with the name of Captain Nathaniel Wyeth, and upon these two pages introduces the American missionaries, with the Roman Jesuits, though the latter did not arrive in the country till four years after the former.

On his 388th page, after speaking of various transactions relative to California, the Sandwich Islands, and the proceedings in Congress relative to the Oregon country, he says: “In the mean time, the Hudson’s Bay Company had been doing all in its power to extend and confirm its position in the countries west of the Rocky Mountains, from which its governors felicitated themselves with the idea that they had expelled the Americans entirely.”

Page 389. “The object of the company was, therefore, to place a large number of British subjects in Oregon within the shortest time, and, of course, to exclude from it as much as possible all people of the United States; so that when the period for terminating the convention with the latter power should arrive, Great Britain might be able to present the strongest title to the possession of the whole, on the ground of actual occupation by the Hudson’s Bay Company. To these ends the efforts of that company had been for some time directed. The immigration of British subjects was encouraged; the Americans were by all means excluded; and the Indians were brought as much as possible into friendship with, and subject to, the company, while they were taught to regard the people of the United States as enemies!”

In a work entitled “Four Years in British Columbia,” by Commander R. C. Mayne, R. N., F. R. G. S., page 279, this British writer says: “I have also spoken of the intense hatred of them all for the Boston men (Americans). This hatred, although nursed chiefly by the cruelty with which they are treated by them, is also owing in a great measure to the system adopted by the Americans of removing them away from their villages when their sites become settled by whites. The Indians often express dread lest we should adopt the same course, and have lately petitioned Governor Douglas on the subject.”

Commander Mayne informs us, on his 193d page, that in the performance of his official duties among the Indians, “recourse to very strong expressions was found necessary; and they were threatened with the undying wrath of Mr. Douglas, whose name always acts as a talisman with them.”

We shall have occasion to quote statements from members of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and from Jesuit priests, further confirming the truth of Mr. Greenhow’s statement as above quoted. It would be gratifying to us to be able, from our long personal experience and observations relative to the policy and conduct of the Hudson’s Bay Company, to fully confirm the very plausible, and, if true, honorable treatment of the aborigines of these countries; but truth, candor, observation, our own and other personal knowledge, compel us to believe and know that Mr. Greenhow is entirely mistaken when he says, on his 389th page, speaking of the Hudson’s Bay Company:—

“In the treatment of the aborigines of these countries, the Hudson’s Bay Company admirably combined and reconciled humanity with policy. In the first place, its agents were strictly prohibited from furnishing them with ardent spirits; and there is reason to believe that the prohibition has been carefully enforced.

“Sunday, March 11, 1852,” says Mr. Dunn, one of their own servants, “Indians remained in their huts, perhaps praying, or more likely singing over the rum they had traded with us on Saturday.——Tuesday, April 26.—Great many Indians on board.——Traded a number of skins. They seem to like rum very much.——May 4.—They were all drunk; went on shore, made a fire about 11 o’clock; being then all drunk began firing on one another.——June 30.—The Indians are bringing their blankets—their skins are all gone; they seem very fond of rum.——July 11.—They traded a quantity of rum from us.”

The Kingston Chronicle, a newspaper, on the 27th of September, 1848, says: “The Hudson’s Bay Company have, in some instances with their rum, traded the goods given in presents to the Indians by the Canadian Government, and afterward so traded the same with them at an advance of little short of a thousand per cent.”

Question asked by the Parliamentary Committee: “Are intoxicating liquors supplied in any part of the country—and where?” The five witnesses answered:—

1st. “At every place where he was.”

2d. “All but the Mandan Indians were desirous to obtain intoxicating liquor; and the company supply them with it freely.”

3d. “At Jack River I saw liquor given for furs.”

4th. “At York Factory and Oxford House.”

5th. The fifth witness had seen liquor given “at Norway House only.”

The writer has seen liquor given and sold to the Indians at every post of the company, from the mouth of the Columbia to Fort Hall, including Fort Colville, and by the traveling traders of the company; so that whatever pretensions the company make to the contrary, the proof is conclusive, that they traffic in liquors, without any restraint or hinderance, all over the Indian countries they occupy. That they charge this liquor traffic to renegade Americans I am fully aware; at the same time I know they have supplied it to Indians, when there were no Americans in the country that had any to sell or give.

In the narrative of the Rev. Mr. King, it is stated that “the agents of the Hudson’s Bay Company are not satisfied with putting so insignificant value upon the furs, that the more active hunters only can gain a support, which necessarily leads to the death of the more aged and infirm by starvation and cannibalism, but they encourage the intemperate use of ardent spirits.”

Says Mr. Alexander Simpson, one of the company’s own chief traders: “That body has assumed much credit for the discontinuance of the sale of spirituous liquors at its trading establishments, but I apprehend that in this matter it has both claimed and received more praise than is its due. The issue of spirits has not been discontinued by it on principle, indeed it has not been discontinued at all when there is a possibility of diminution of trade through the Indians having the power to resent this deprivation of their accustomed and much-loved annual jollification, by carrying their furs to another market.”

This means simply that Mr. Greenhow and all other admirers of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s manner of treating Indians have been humbugged by their professions of “humanity and policy.”

We are inclined to return Mr. Greenhow’s compliment to the Rev. Samuel Parker in his own language, as found on the 361st page of his work. He says: “Mr. Samuel Parker, whose journal of his tour beyond the Rocky Mountains, though highly interesting and instructive, would have been much more so had he confined himself to the results of his own experience, and not wandered into the region of history, diplomacy, and cosmogony, in all of which he is evidently a stranger.” So with Mr. Greenhow, when he attempts to reconcile the conduct of the Hudson’s Bay Company with “humanity,” and admires their policy, and gives them credit for honorable treatment of “Indians, missionaries, and settlers,” he leaves his legitimate subject of history and diplomacy, and goes into the subject of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s moral policy, to which he appears quite as much a “stranger” as Mr. Samuel Parker does to those subjects in which Mr. Greenhow found him deficient.

But, notwithstanding we are inclined to return Mr. Greenhow’s compliment in his own language, his historical researches and facts are invaluable, as developing a deep scheme of a foreign national grasping disposition, to hold, by a low, mean, underhanded, and, as Mr. Greenhow says, “false and malicious course of misrepresentation, the country west of the Rocky Mountains.” There are a few pages in Mr. Greenhow’s history that,—as ours is now fully written, and we see no reason to change a statement we have made,—for the information of our readers, and to correct what we conceive to be an erroneous impression of his relative to our early settlements upon this coast, we will quote, and request our readers to observe our corrections in the history or narration of events we have given them.

“Schools for the instruction of their children, and hospitals for their sick, were established at all their principal trading-posts; each of which, moreover, afforded the means of employment and support to Indians disposed to work in the intervals between the hunting seasons.”

Says the Rev. Mr. Barnley, a Wesleyan missionary at Moose Factory, whose labors commenced in June, 1840, and continued till September, 1847: “A plan which I had devised for educating and turning to some acquaintance with agriculture, native children, was disallowed,——it being very distinctly stated by Sir George Simpson, that the company would not give them even a spade toward commencing their new mode of life.”

Says Mr. Greenhow: “Missionaries of various sects were encouraged to undertake to convert these people to Christianity, and to induce them to adopt the usages of civilized life, so far as might be consistent with the nature of the labors in which they are engaged; care being at the same time taken to instill into their minds due respect for the company, and for the sovereign of Great Britain; and attempts were made, at great expense, though with little success, to collect them into villages, or tracts where the soil and climate are favorable to agriculture.”

Mr. Barnley says: “At Moose Factory, where the resources were most ample, and where was the seat of authority in the southern department of Rupert’s Land, the hostility of the company (and not merely their inability to aid me, whether with convenience or inconvenience to themselves) was most manifest.”

Another of the English missionaries writes in this manner: “When at York Factory last fall (1848), a young gentleman boasted that he had succeeded in starting the Christian Indians of Rossville off with the boats on a Sunday. Thus every effort we make for their moral and spiritual improvement is frustrated, and those who were, and still are, desirous of becoming Christians, are kept away; the pagan Indians desiring to become Christians, but being made drunk on their arrival at the fort, ‘their good desires vanish.’ The Indians professing Christianity had actually exchanged one keg of rum for tea and sugar, at one post, but the successive offers of liquor betrayed them into intoxication at another.”

The Rev. Mr. Beaver, chaplain of the company at Fort Vancouver, in 1836, writes thus to the Aborigines Protection Society, London, tract 8, page 19:—

“For a time I reported to the governor and committee of the company in England, and to the governor and the council of the company abroad, the result of my observations, with a view to a gradual amelioration of the wretched degradation with which I was surrounded, by an immediate attempt at the introduction of civilization and Christianity, among one or more of the aboriginal tribes; but my earnest representations were neither attended to nor acted upon; no means were placed at my disposal for carrying out the plan which I suggested.”

Mr. Greenhow says, page 389: “Particular care was also extended to the education of the half-breed children, the offspring of the marriage or the concubinage of the traders with the Indian women, who were retained and bred as much as possible among the white people, and were taken into the service of the company, whenever they were found capable. There being few white women in those countries, it is evident that these half-breeds must, in time, form a large, if not an important portion of the inhabitants; and there is nothing to prevent their being adopted and recognized as British subjects.

“The conduct of the Hudson’s Bay Company, in these respects, is worthy of commendation; and may be contrasted most favorably with that pursued at the present day by civilized people toward the aborigines of all other new countries.”

It is a most singular fact, that while Mr. Greenhow was writing the above high commendation of the conduct and policy of the Hudson’s Bay Company, in relation to their treatment of Indians and missionaries under their absolute control, that that company were driving from their posts at Moose Factory and Vancouver, their own Wesleyan and Episcopal missionaries, and doing all they could to prevent the settlement or civilization of the Indians, or allowing any missionary intercourse with them, except by foreign Roman Jesuits, and were actually combining the Indians in Oregon to destroy and defeat civil and Christian efforts among the Indians and American settlements then being established in the country. Page 390, Mr. Greenhow further says: “The course pursued by the Hudson’s Bay Company, with regard to American citizens in the territory west of the Rocky Mountains, was equally unexceptionable and politic. The missionaries and immigrants from the United States, or from whatever country they might come, were received at the establishments of the company with the utmost kindness, and were aided in the prosecution of their respective objects, so far and so long as those objects were not commercial; but no sooner did any person, unconnected with the company, attempt to hunt, or trap, or trade with the Indians, than all the force of the body was turned against him.”

The statement in the last part of the foregoing paragraph can be attested by more than one hundred American hunters and traders, who have felt the full force of that company’s influence against them; as also by missionaries and settlers on first arriving in the country. But Mr. Greenhow says: “There is no evidence or reason to believe that violent measures were ever employed, either directly or indirectly, for this purpose; nor would such means have been needed while the company enjoyed advantages over all competitors, such as are afforded by its wealth, its organization, and the skill and knowledge of the country, and of the natives, possessed by its agents.” This is simply an assertion of Mr. Greenhow, which our future pages will correct in the mind of any who have received it as truth. It is unnecessary to pursue Mr. Greenhow’s history of the Hudson’s Bay Company respecting their treatment of American or English missionaries or American settlers; the statements we have quoted show fully his want of a correct knowledge of the practices of that company in dealing with savage and civilized men. We only claim for ourselves close observation and deeply interested participation in all that relates to Oregon since 1832, having been permitted to be present at the forming of its early civil settlement and political history. This work of Mr. Greenhow’s appears to be peculiarly political as well as strongly national, and in the passages we have quoted, with many other similar ones, he seems to us to have written to catch the patronage of this foreign English corporation, which, according to his own showing, has been an incubus upon the English, and, so far as possible, the Americans also. While he shows his utter ignorance of their internal policy and history, his researches in the history of the early discoveries on this western coast are ample And most useful as vindicating our American claim to the country. But as to its settlement and civilization, or its early moral or political history, as he says of Mr. Samuel Parker, “in all of which he is evidently a stranger.”

Our reasons for giving the extracts from Mr. Greenhow’s work are—

1st. That the reader may the better understand what follows as our own.

2d. To avoid a future collision or controversy respecting statements that may be quoted from him to contradict or controvert our own, respecting the policy and practices of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which, Mr. Greenhow says, page 391, “did no more than they were entitled to do. If the Americans neglected or were unable to avail themselves of the benefits secured to both nations by the convention, the fault or the misfortune was their own, and they had no right to complain.” If this is true, as against the American, what right has the Hudson’s Bay Company to complain and ask pay for what had been rendered worthless to them by the American settlement of the country?

“The hospitable treatment extended to them [American citizens] by the agents of the Hudson’s Bay Company was doubtless approved by the directors of that body; and all who know Messrs. McLaughlin and Douglas, the principal managers of the affairs of that body on the Columbia, unite in testifying that the humanity and generosity of those gentlemen have been always carried as far as their duties would permit. That their conduct does not, however, meet with universal approbation among the servants of the company in that quarter, sufficient evidence may be cited to prove.” He quotes John Dunn’s book, chap. 12.

Mr. Greenhow wrote his history with the light then existing, i. e., in 1844. About that time Dr. McLaughlin was called to an account by the directors of the Hudson’s Bay Company, in London. He explained to them his position, and the condition of the Americans, who came to this country both naked and hungry, and that, as a man of common humanity, he could do no less than he did. The directors insisted upon the enforcement of their stringent rule, which was, to starve and drive every American from the country. He then told them: “If such is your order, gentlemen, I will serve you no longer.” As to Mr. Douglas, we have no such noble sentiment to record in his behalf; he belonged to that English party called by Mr. Greenhow “Patriots.” He says: “There were two parties among the British in Oregon, the Patriots and the Liberals, who, while they agreed in holding all Americans in utter detestation, as knaves and ruffians, yet differed as to the propriety of the course pursued with regard to them by the company. The Patriots maintained, that kindness showed to the people of the United States was thrown away, and would be badly requited; that it was merely nurturing a race of men, who would soon rise from their weak and humble position, as grateful acknowledgers of favors, to the bold attitude of questioners of the authority of Great Britain, and her right, even to Vancouver itself; that if any attempts were made for the conversion of the natives to Christianity, and to the adoption of more humanized institutions (which they limited to British institutions), a solid and permanent foundation should be laid; and for that purpose, if missionaries were to be introduced, they should come within the direct control of the dominant power, that is, the British power, and should be the countrymen of those who actually occupied Oregon, etc. The Liberals, while admitting all that was said on the other side, of the character of the Americans, nevertheless charitably opined that those people should not be excluded, as they possessed some claim, ‘feeble, but yet existing,’ to the country, and until ‘these were quashed or confirmed, it would be unjust and impolite’ to prevent them from all possession; that these missionaries, though bad, were better than none; and that good would grow out of evil in the end, for the Americans, by their intercourse with the British, would become more humanized, tolerant, and honest.”

As most of the above sentiment relative to the two English parties in the country appears to be quoted by Mr. Greenhow from some author, it would be interesting to know who he is; still, the fact is all that is essential to know, and we have reason to believe and know that the sentiments expressed were entertained by the controlling authority of the company in London and in Oregon; and that Messrs. Douglas and Ogden, and the Roman priests under their patronage, acted fully up to them as Roman and British Jesuits, there is no question; and under such circumstances, it is not surprising that the immigration from the United States in 1843, ’44, and ’45, should increase that feeling of hostility and hatred of the American settlement and civilization in the country.

We do not propose at present to speak of the action of the American Congress relative to Oregon, but, as will be seen, to connect and bring into our own history such allusions of Mr. Greenhow as serve to illustrate and prove the several propositions we have stated respecting the early history of its settlement, and also to prepare the reader to understand in a manner the combined influences that were ready to contest any claim or effort any American company or citizen might make for the future occupation of the country.

It will be seen that no company of settlers or traders could have succeeded, having arrived in advance of the American missionaries. They were unquestionably the only nucleus around which a permanent settlement could have been formed, eleven different American fur companies having commenced and failed, as will be shown; and although Mr. Greenhow seems to regard and treat the American missionary effort with contempt, yet impartial history will place them in the foreground, and award to them an honorable place in counteracting foreign influences and saving the country to its rightful owners.

It will be seen by the preliminary and following remarks and narrative of events, and by a careful study of all the histories and journals to which we have had occasion to refer, or from which we have quoted a statement, that the forming, civilizing, and political period in our Oregon history is all a blank, except that the Hudson’s Bay Company were the patron saints, the noble and generous preservers of the “knaves” and “ruffians” that came to this country to rob them of their pious and humane labors to civilize their accomplished native “concubines.” That, according to their ideas, the missionaries, such as came from the United States, “though bad,” could become “humanized, tolerant,” and even “honest,” by associating with such noble, generous, tolerant, virtuous, and pure-minded traders as controlled the affairs of that company, under the faithfully-executed and stringent rules of the honorable directors in London.

At the present time there is an additional important reason for a better understanding and a more thorough knowledge of the influences and operations of this British monopoly than formerly. Notwithstanding they have been driven from Oregon by its American settlement, they have retired to British Columbia, and, like barnacles upon a ship’s bottom, have fastened themselves all along the Russian and American territories, to repeat just what they did in Oregon; and, with the savage hordes with whom they have always freely mingled, they will repeat their depredations upon our American settlements, and defeat every effort to civilize or Christianize the natives over whom they have any influence.

Six generations of natives have passed away under their system of trade and civilization. The French, English, and Indians before our American revolution and independence could not harmonize. The French were driven from their American possessions and control over the Indians, and peace followed. The Indians, English, and Americans can not harmonize; they never have, and they never will; hence, it becomes a question of vast moment, not only to the Indian race, but to the American people, as to the propriety and expediency of allowing the English nation or British or foreign subjects to further exercise any influence among our American Indians.

Mr. A. H. Jackson estimates the expense of our Indian wars, since 1831 to the present time, at one thousand millions of dollars and thirty-seven thousand lives of our citizens, not counting the lives of Indians destroyed by our American wars with them. If the reader will carefully read and candidly judge of the historical facts presented in the following pages, we have no fears but they will join us in our conclusions, that the Monroe doctrine is irrevocably and of necessity fixed in our American existence as a nation at peace with all, which we can not have so long as any foreign sectarian or political organizations are permitted to have a controlling influence over savage minds. A Frenchman, an Englishman, a Mormon, a Roman priest, any one, or all of them, fraternizing as they do with the Indian, can work upon his prejudices and superstitions and involve our country in an Indian war—which secures the Indian trade to the British fur company. This is the great object sought to be accomplished in nearly all the wars our government has had with them.

One other remarkable fact is noted in all our Indian wars, the American or Protestant missionaries have been invariably driven from among those tribes, while the Roman Jesuit missionaries have been protected and continued among the Indians, aiding and counseling them in the continuance of those wars. It is no new thing that ignorance, superstition, and sectarian hate has produced such results upon the savage mind, and our Oregon history shows that a shrewd British fur company can duly appreciate and make use of just such influences to promote and perpetuate their trade on the American continent.