An odd couple are pictured on today’s #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp issued on August 14, 1948 to mark the 100th anniversary of the formation of the Oregon territory.
One was a British fur trader who in the 1840s advocated creating an independent country in the Pacific Northwest. The other was a Methodist minister who made a 2,000 mile trek to Oregon after Native Americans came to St. Louis after a group of Native Americans went to St. Louis to request a copy of the “Book of Heaven.”
The trader was John McLaughlin, a French Canadian fur trader who in the 1824 was named Hudson’s Bay Company’s Chief Factor and Superintendent of the Columbia District (the firm’s name for the Oregon territory). This made him the de facto governor because the company had a monopoly on the fur trade in the region, which was lucrative because beaver-skin hats were popular in Europe.
The minister was Jason Lee, who came to Oregon in 1834 after the Native Americans’ journey to request a book their tribes had heard about was written up in a Christian magazine read by Wilbur Fisk (the first president of my alma mater, Wesleyan University) who had been one of Lee’s teachers when Fisk was principal of the Wilbraham Methodist Academy (now the Wilbraham and Monson Academy, one of America’s oldest private schools).
As these two brief descriptions suggest, the U.S. and England both claimed sovereignty over the area. In fact, in the early 1800 so did the Spanish (who controlled California) and Russia. In 1818, the British and Americans agreed to “joint occupancy of the lands; in 1819 the Spanish gave up their claim as did the Russians in treaties signed in the 1820s. McLaughlin and the Hudson Bay Company initially tried to prevent settlers from coming to the region because they thought the newcomers would interfere with the lucrative fur trade. But some trappers settled down; other missionaries followed in Lee’s footsteps; and American settlers began coming to the lush Willamette Valley.
By the early 1840s, as the number of American settlers increased, so did calls for making the land part of the United States. Jason Lee, who by this time oversaw missionaries and ministers serving the settlers in the area, chaired the first official meeting to discuss that idea. McLaughlin, reportedly, suggested that the area become an independent nation. While that idea wasn’t adopted, in 1843 settlers did create a Provisional Government to govern the region “until such time as the United States of America extends their jurisdiction over us.” While representatives of that provisional government soon reached an agreement with McLaughlin on how the new government would interact with the Hudson’s Bay Co., there was growing acrimony as both the Americans and British pressed for full sovereignty over the disputed land.
In fact, the question was a factor in the presidential election of 1844 which was won by James K. Polk who campaigned with the slogan “Fifty-Four Forty or Fight.” (The 54 referred to the claim that the territory should extend from south from 54°40’N latitude all the way to 42°N latitude, the border with California. While some feared this would lead to war, in 1846 Polk signed a treaty with Great Britain fixing the 49th parallel as the border.
Polk, who also campaigned for annexing Texas, was less successful in resolving claims to land also claimed by Mexico. Two months before he signed the treaty with Great Britain, the Mexican-American war began. It continued until 1848 when Mexico ceded claims not only to Texas but also to what are now the states of California, Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico, as well as most of Arizona, the western quarter of Colorado, and the southwest corner of Wyoming.
Lee did not live to see the Oregon issue resolved. In about 1843, he was relieved of his post after many settlers complained about his leadership. In 1844, he travelled to New York to plead his case but was only partially successful. He was cleared but wasn’t given his job back. On that trip, he also met with President Polk to discuss the Oregon land issue and raised money for the Oregon Institute (now Willamette University). In 1845, while visiting his sister in Canada, he became ill and died. For his part, McLaughlin decided to stay in Oregon rather than going north with the Hudson’s Bay Co., which relocated its operations to what is now Victoria in Canada. Instead, he resigned and moved to Oregon City in the Willamette Valley. He became an American citizen and was elected mayor of that small locale in 1851. He died in 1857.
Oddly, the U.S. government left the Oregon region unorganized for two years, only acting after news reached Washington of the murder of an American missionary and 12 others by members of the Cayuse Tribe who believed that the missionary had killed about 200 of their members. (The deaths, it appears, may have been due to an outbreak of measles and the murders likely had their roots in deeper disagreements between the new settlers and the tribe.) Finally, on August 14, 1848, Congress created what was officially the Territory of Oregon. In 1853, the portion of the territory north of the lower Columbia River and north of the 46th parallel east of the river was organized into the Washington Territory. In 1857, the Oregon Constitutional Convention drafted a constitution in preparation for becoming a state, with the convention delegates approving the document in September, and then general populace approving the document in November. And on February 14, 1859, the territory entered the Union as the U.S. state of Oregon. The remaining eastern portion of the territory (the portions in present-day southern Idaho and western Wyoming) was added to the Washington Territory.
And to close the loop on this loopy tale, in q953 Oregon chose McLaughlin and Lee to be its representatives in the U.S. Capital’s National Statuary Collection, which holds two statues donated by each state, all of them notable people in the histories of the respective states.
I’m sure there’s a deeper meaning in all of this but I don’t see it at the moment.
Be well, stay safe, fight for justice and work for peace.