216 LESTER BURRELL SHIPPEE the Rockies, and they came in contact in the Red River Country and in the region to the northwest of Lake Winnipeg. 1 A bloody contact here brought the quarrels of the two organ- izations definitely before Parliament. Even before this, owing to the complaints of the Hudson's Bay Company against its rival, Parliament had noticed the existing tension, but the latest outrage brought an investigation in 1819. In 1820 the death of Lork Selkirk, the largest stock-holder in the old company, removed the one person to whom more than any other the bitterness of the rivalry was due, consequently a move to consolidate the two organizations resulted in an Act of Parliament to that effect in July, 1821. By a grant in the following December the joint organization received the exclu- sive right to trade with the natives throughout all the unsettled regions claimed by Great Britain in North America, including the Oregon country. The Company's officers were made justices of the peace so that all British subjects within the granted area were brought under the protection of British law. In 1824 the amalgamation of the two companies was completed by full absorption of the North-West Company in the Hudson's Bay Company. The Company had several "forts 2 " to the west of the Cascade Mountains, the principal of which was Vancouver on the Columbia River, four miles above the mouth of the Willamette, where the headquarters of the Company in the Pacific North- west were located. Two important posts and several scattered ones of less significance controlled the trade between the Cascades and the Rockies. The whole organization in the Northwest was under the direction of Dr. John McLoughlin, who assumed his position as chief factor for this region in 1824 and continued therein until he resigned in 1846, when he took up his residence in Oregon City on the Willamette. Whatever direct interest Great Britain or her subjects had in Oregon was centered about the Company whose word was law and under whose smile or frown fortunes prospered or languished. No chartered organization with monopoly priv- 1 See especially Bancroft, History of the Northwest Coast II, ch 14 2 Bancroft, History of Oregon, I, ch. i.
