The long-delayed final settlement of the claims between the American and British governments[1] (and the boundary, in some respects hardly separable from the companies) allowed lengthy and bitter controversy. Court cases continued for years; repercussions of the "pig war" were felt from the Army's Department of Oregon to the Secretaries of War and State and the President; periodically various aspects rose and receded in newspaper columns like the Pacific tides; finally, many pioneer residents and most pioneer 'histories' of the region were marked with the bitterness or legends the disputes spawned. Duly weighing both legends and arguments, Frances Fuller Victor was the earliest and for many years the most generally disinterested historian of the Pacific Northwest; in gathering her material from sources such as George Roberts, she must have gained in knowledge and sophistication.
Cowelitz Farm Journal August 1847[2]
August
Monday 23rd. Morning cool, midday very warm, air filled
- ↑ For a discussion of the snags, fits and starts in international negotiations, see Ralph A. Martig, "Hudson's Bay Company Claims, 1846-69," OHQ, XXXVI (March, 1935), 60-70.
- ↑ George Roberts' Cowlitz Farm journal was presented to the Oregon Historical Society by Edward Huggins in 1901. In editing it for publica-
treaty, before alluded to, as a nullity; as that society can gain nothing by any contemplated grants of land to American citizens, or for reimbursement for the same, as said treaty only confirmed the possessory rights of said society; and that the United States has never parted with the actual right in fee to said land, and that all such claims and improvements are subject to any American citizen who may choose to appropriate the same to his use.6th. That we view the claims as located by the chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, or Puget Sound Agricultural Society, for the servants in the employ of said company, as amounting to a nullity, unless said persons for whom said lands were located are out of the employment of said society, or company, and have settled on and continue to occupy the same."
Background for this American attitude in the Pacific Northwest may be found in Frederick Merk's "The Oregon Pioneers and the Boundary," in OHQ, XXVIII (December, 1927), 366-88; and for frontier attitudes and difficulties pertinent to land claims, in Paul W. Gates' "Tenants of the Log Cabin," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XLIV (June, 1962), 3-31 .
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