CHAPTER IV OREGON : 1827 TO 1842 In this narrative of the relations of Oregon to the Federal Government of the United States there is no place for the history of the development of the region itself that has been told elsewhere and many times. But in view of the fact that there would otherwise be an inexplicable gap for nearly ten years it is necessary briefly to sketch some of the factors which made it possible for the far-off and unpeopled land of 1827 to have acquired a sufficient population by 1848 to become an organized territory; in fact according to its fore- most champions in Congress, to have been ready for that stage at least ten years before. Reference has been made to the North- West Company, with its headquarters at Montreal, and to the Hudson's Bay Company which had been operating in Canada ever since its charter had been issued in 1670. It was the former to which the dubious sale of Astoria was made during the War of 1812, for in the establishment of that factory the directors of the North- West Company saw the entrance of a rival, probably a powerful one, upon their rich hunting grounds west of the Rockies. While on the eastern slopes of the mountains, and from there to the wilds about Hudson's Bay, the older English company had long held nearly absolute sway, nothing more than an occasional trapper or illy-organized band of hunters had penetrated into the Columbia River region.* John Jacob Astor's effective competition with the Hudson's Bay Company in the Great Lakes region made the North- West Company look upon his advent at the mouth of the Columbia with little favor, consequently their nipping his scheme to tap the fur trade of that country caused great satisfaction. Both British companies were expanding, the older one to the westward from Hudson's Bay and the newer east from
- The writer here has overlooked the extensive explorations that David Thomp-
son had been conducting on the upper Columbia and its tributaries. See Ore. Hist. Quar., V. XII, pp. 195-205.
