Talk:Oregon Country

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[edit] Miscellaneous

This page has some good facts and is the basis for a good article. It think it needs a little cleaning up, and has some duplicate information.

I removed the statement in the article about it being indentical to the Oregon Territory, which is the formal name of a territory that created from the US portion of the Oregon Country. It now has its own page and does not redirect here.

-- Decumanus 18:26, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Wasn't northern Idaho part of this region too? RickK 23:50, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

A bit late for this reply, given the 2004 timestamp there, but yes, northern Idaho was part of this region; ALL of Idaho was.Skookum1 19:16, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
In Made In America, when discussing the various things named after Columbus, Bill Bryson describes an area of the north-Pacific coast of North America which includes areas of modern B.C., Washtington, Oregon and Idaho, as being named "Columbia". Is this an alternative name for Oregon Country, and if so is it notable enough to mentioned in the intro? Joe D (t) 14:07, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
See Columbia District, and yes, I added it to the intro. heqs 13:02, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
That's funny; I thought I'd added it to this page quite a while ago; implying someone didn't like it or thought it wasn't relevant and took it out; typically APOV (American point-of-view) as also in Oregon boundary dispute and Alaska Boundary Dispute and Pig War; until I got at 'em some anyway; the dispute pages still need work, and still hang on the topics of congressional debates and the like, without equal rep from Whitehall or Westminster (not New West, the other one), where the Columbia issue was debated; don't have my copy of AJP Taylor's book where he discusses it briefly (but pointedly) and the like; all these articles need lots of work to bring them up to NPOV; most Canadians are unaware of the issues, and only a few British Columbians are (and that often doens't include the professional historians, who assume the 49th Parallel to have been inevitable, which it wasn't). Anyway, I'll have to study the history of this page and see when it happened; must've slipped my eye; thanks for putting it back in. And for the record, BC's "Columbia" component is not named for Columbus, but for the river/basin by way of its name being the name of the fur district of which the remainder was/is the British half. And the river was named for Capt. Grey's ship, the Columbia Rediviva, which allegedly sailed up the river now bearing his ship's name (allegedly only, as his journals have questionable geography in them), which was also not named after Columbus but rather was named in tribute to the US itself, as "Columbia" is a poetic name for the republic, etc. The further complication in this is that BC's French name, colombie-britannique (two t's?), varies from this history, as in French the river is la fleuve Columbia and "Columbia" was also the French name for the fur district; doesn't stop 'em from treating it like is British Columbia, y'know, not like that other one in South America, which is la Colombie. Fudging of BC history/culture/identity by Central Canadians, English or French, is nothing new of course...Skookum1 17:32, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] BC & Pacific Northwest History Forum

Please see RE BC & Pacific Northwest History Forum re: Talk:List of United States military history events#Border Commission troops in the Pacific Northwest. If you think maybe I should also move some or copy some of my other stuff from NW history and BC history pages let me know; I never mean to blog, but I'm voluble and to me everything's interconnected; never meaning to dominate a page so have made this area to post my historical rambles on. Thoughts?Skookum1 03:49, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment on my posting of this: if anyone has any questions or wants to debate any issues relating to the Oregon Country/Columbia District history or other NW history, please feel free to drop by the forum and start a thread/topic, or just butt in at yer leisure.Skookum1 05:50, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ban on "coloured" immigration/settlement in Oregon Territory/State?

The goal of the slogan was to rally Southern expansionists (some of whom wanted to annex only Texas in an effort to tip the balance of slave/free states and territories in favor of slavery) to support the effort to annex Oregon Country, appealing to the popular belief in Manifest Destiny.

Can't remember if it was the Territory or the State, but didn't Oregon bar blacks from settling there? And by the way, the many British subjects and employees of the HBC weren't considered "white" by the new government(s), either; most were mixed Metis, French, Iroquoian, Hawaiian and local native, including McLoughlin's own son (still a rabid Indian-hunter himself, though). So often US historical figures concerning the British presence vs. their own are skewed because the non-whites on the British side just weren't counted as citizens/subjects.Skookum1 01:40, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually the Provisional Government, the Territorial Government, and the State governments all banned blacks. The provisional government went so far as to pass a "lash" law that would give 40ish lashes to any black person who did not leave, repeating the process about every so often. They passed that early in 1844, then repealed that in late 1844 and just banned them from settling in the area. This was then carried over when the territory was created in 1848, and then was part of the constitution at statehood in 1859. However the law was never enforced, but did stay on the books until the 1920s. See [1] if you want more details. Aboutmovies 04:29, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Interesting - partly because in 1844 no American had legislative rights in the Oregon Country because of the Anglo-American Convention of 1818; neither did the HBC, who could only enforce British law on their own employees - and actually "club law" was the norm, rather than any kind of jurisprudence; the reference isn't to bludgeons, but to "clubbiness" and hazing-type discipline; the term was applied to the fur empire by its Gov. Simpson, as a mark of his disdain for the way many factors and traders ran their posts (particularly ex-NWC men, especially D. MacLean and P.S. Ogden). Anyway, passing a law and having the right to are two entirely different things; I wonder if they tried to pull that on any Fort Vancouverites (I think there were a few blacks attached to the company by that time, though not many; most non-whites in the company's employ were either Kanaka or some kind of aboriginal or Metis)Skookum1 06:17, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
The book "Puget's Sound" by Murray Morgan has a passage on this topic, as one of the first American settlers on Puget Sound's shores was George Washington Bush, a "probably black" man. He and his family were drawn to the frontier, apparently due to the anti-black laws of states back east (North US states often had laws harsher than southern ones in terms of restricting the rights of free blacks). By the 1840s Bush was in Missouri. In 1844 his family joined a wagon train to Oregon, one of the first "mass crossings" of the plains by American settlers. He told another member of the wagon train (who wrote about it in his journal) that he was interested to find out how free colored people were treated in Oregon and that he'd seek a better place if it turned out bad.
Bush arrived at The Dalles in December, 1844, where another member of the wagon train, who had gone ahead to the Willamette area and returned, told Bush that, as this book puts it, "the Provisional Government of Oregon, an ad hoc settlers' organization which had no legal power but did reflect the mood of the populace, had just voted to exclude blacks. The method was to be periodic whippings for any black, slave or free, man or woman, who sought to stay in Oregon. This barbarous penalty was never exacted, but its presence on the books greeted the man of color and his party on arrival." It's not known if this is the reason, but Bush and his family decided to settle on the north side of the Columbia, upriver from Fort Vancouver, where the HBC "dominated". Soon after, he moved up to the Puget Sound area, near today's Olympia. They got a letter of introduction to Dr. Tolmie, who was then chief factor at HBC's Nisqually House. The party survived at first with food from HBC, given on credit.
I just had to relate this story not only because it has info on the law excluding blacks from American Oregon, but it has a benevolent Dr. Tolmie, one of my favorite 19th century Pacific Northwesterners.Pfly 07:42, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, then, I hereby nominate YOU to write the article on William Fraser Tolmie :=) ; there's one on his son Simon Fraser Tolmie, but nothing on the good doctor; as I recall the guy had learned something like ten local languages and a few others from Europe and I think also some Japanese...(in the 1840s! - due to a shipwreck at Nagasaki and being engaged as a teacher, or something to that effect - there was something on him in a recent newspaper history-column by Stephen Hume, in the Vancouver Sun...I'm sure it was him; maybe Helmcken though....)Skookum1 08:45, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
There's no article on him?? Sheesh.. I'll put it on my to-do list! He was also the first European to climb Mt Rainier, though not to the summit. Had to spin it as a "botany expedition" to his HBC boss to get permission. Pfly 08:54, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Is he the one that came back with the story about the sleeping giants and the big copper chambers and such? Or was that later?Skookum1 09:21, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
PS if I find anything juicy about him in my BC Chronicle I'll copy-text it to my BC&PacNW Resources sandbox (linked here somewhere....but I'll let you know the link when I do anyway). About to transcribe Akriggs about Lieut. Broughton and the British entry into the Columbia in 1792, which somehow doesn't get the airplay that a certain Captain Gray does (Broughton's trip wasn't as convenient to American claims to the region....)Skookum1 09:24, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Skookum1, as I wrote in the information above, the exclusion/lash laws were never enforced, so obviously they never tried it on any HBC people, or ANY person. Though the non-slavery law was enforced when in Holmes v. Ford (1853) the courts released a settler's slave from servitude.

As to the Provisional Government, the 1818 treaty[2] did not say there could not be some sort of government set up (just there would not be one by the US or Britain), and it specifically says in Article III that it did not preclude other power's claims. So an independent republic could have been created, please not I am not saying one was created. Therefore the whole joint occupancy term is a misnomer in regards to 1818 to 1846. What's more in regards to the Provisional Government is it was not an American government. It did lean towards US views and sent memorials to Congress asking for annexation. But it was a settler's government voted on by the non-native peoples including the British/Canadians, non-US folks had the majority of people at the meeting. The oath the members took specifically did not include references to either British or US sovereignty. The Organic Laws that were drafted and in 1844 and voted on by a popular vote of all the settlers (US folks by then did have a majority) stated to the effect that this government was to stay in effect until another country annexed the territory, specifically leaving out which country to avoid the issue of what country. Obviously US folks wanted it to be US territory and British/Canadians wanted it to be British territory.

To me at least a government formed and voted on by the people (note similar efforts failed in 1841) is more legitimate than one assigned via hereditary. The fact that the HBC did not recognize their power is meaningless. Just because other powers do not recognize a government as legitimate does not mean they do not exercise authority over the people (see most revolutionary governments for further details, especially the US and say the Taliban in Afghanistan prior to 2001). The fact that they set up a government that taxed, waged war (response to the Whitman Massacre happened before the territorial government was formed), made laws, set up courts, built roads, and handled land claims (which McLoughlin and many non-US folks filed) demonstrates that a government was formed and authority exercised. McLoughlin even wrote a letter to the road committee (I think it was 1845) claiming they had exceeded their authority in authorizing a road across his land claim, not that they had no authority. If you want a copy of the original letter and the committee's response you can visit the Oregon Archives and look at this and all the other records of the Provisional Government (tax books, court records, land claims, legislative meetings, etc.). Now, this government did claim authority over a large region, and this was not enforceable, but they did have districts on the north side of the Columbia that elected and sent representatives to the legislature, namely Lewis and Vancouver Districts. The legislature later changed Vancouver District to Clark County as an affront to the HBC and British in general once Americans began to dominate the area via the immigrations of 1844, 1845 and 1846. Regardless of how large or small of an area effectively governed, the fact remains that this was the first White organized government in the area that governed all settlers. The HBC was not a government and never claimed authority over non employees. If you want to read more about this see the references on the Champoeg Meetings page. Aboutmovies 18:05, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Therefore the whole joint occupancy term is a misnomer in regards to 1818 to 1846.

It may be a misnomer to you, but it's the diplomatic language/terminology that was used; and as such, whatever argument you're making for the legitimacy of the provisional government was not recognized, and could not be recognized by the British-US agreement (allowing another government to emerge in an area where they'd both agreed not to establish one? I don't think so....). And as for the HBC staff voting on the Provisional Government, I've never heard of that although I have heard that non-white British subjects were not counted by American head-counters (principally Metis but also some Algonkians and other aboriginals from Eastern Canada); so what if the pro-American John McLoughlin voted in this referendum. Did James Douglas? Peter Skene Ogden? The inhabitants of Forts Vancouver and Colville? I'll fly this by a friend of mine who's a specialist in regional HBC history (she's American, and descended from Ft Vancouver and Ft Langley staff...) and see what she has to say about it.Skookum1 20:32, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I implore you to read the 1818 treaty. Then tell me what line “joint-occupancy” is in. This term has been used for a long time do describe the treaty by both sides, but it does not exist in the treaty, therefore it is not the “diplomatic” term used. Much like Indians was known to be the wrong term as soon as European geographers realized the Western hemisphere was not Asia, yet the term stuck and is till used to describe to West Indies. Just because the term/word stuck does not mean it is correct. Additionally, if you look at the treaty and not go by other secondary sources you will see that the countries do not talk about a joint occupancy:
“Article III
It is agreed, that any Country that may be claimed by either Party on the north-west coast of America, westward of the Stony Mountains, shall, together with its Harbours, Bays and Creeks, and the navigation of all rivers within the same, be free and open for the term of 10 years from the date of the signature of the Present Convention, to the Vessels, Citizens and Subjects, of the 2 powers: it being well understood, that this Agreement is not to be construed to the prejudice of any claim which either of the 2 High Contracting Parties may have to any part of the said Country, nor shall it be taken to affect the claims of any other Power or State to any part of the said Country, the only object of the High Contracting Parties, in that respect, being to prevent disputes and differences amongst themselves.”
As you can see it specifically says “any” in the first sentence. I know I was a bit thrown by this fact when I read it the first time as everything we are taught as students and in historical literature says joint-occupancy. But the fact is the term is not in the treaty.
As to the government, McLoughlin did not vote at the main meeting nor do I have any record that he was a participant in the government, and as far as I can tell he was not even at the vote or related meetings. Here is a list of those listed as British by birth that voted for the government (all born after 1776): Francis Fletcher, George Gay, Joseph Holman, William Johnson, Etienne Lucier, Francois X. Matthieu, Charles McKay, John L. Morrison, John Edmunds Pickernell, and W.J. Bailey. Maybe run those names by your Ft. Vancouver person and see if they were HBC or former HBC. Additionally there are about 50 names of those who voted against, but participated in the main meeting and most have French names. My copy of the list comes from the Oregon Blue Book, but I’ve seen it elsewhere. Aboutmovies 23:20, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
You also won't find "convention" in the British North America Act, but constitutional procedure in Canada is built around it; "joint occupancy" is the terminology evolved by diplomats and by diplomatic historians to describe the situation in the Oregon Country/Columbia District; it's legal/diplomatic shorthand for what was spelled out; which was not "overlapping claims" or any of the other wordings that have been trotted out here; "joint occupancy", as you note, has a literature behind it, including the core literature of diplomatic history; if there's a better accurate term, then by all means what is it?
This brings to mind your suggestion that the Provisional Government was a self-legitimized government because it passed laws, waged wars etc. Yeah, and so did the Native American/First Nations peoples/governments/chiefs. And I'd say they had a much more a priori claim on being a legitimate government, never mind a "provisional" one, than the US squatters in the Williamette did. As for the British/HBC, they were bound by the Royal Proclamation of 1763 (later wilfully ignored by the fledgling Province of BC, butthat's another story) to recognize the legitimacy of indigenous regimes; which is why the HBC had such cordial and respectful relations with their native customers and their chiefs/leaders; it was part of the terms of reference. Not built into the HBC Charter (vintage 1670) but definitely expected of any British company, just as it was a requirement for colonial regimes (though near-always screwed around with). In other words, the British already knew the region had its own legitimate government; the Provisional Government was founded irrespective of anybody but their own; as you note, only whites were allowed to vote, meaning that the 60,000 odd First Nations people didn't; and likely also the 80% of HBC staff who also were non-white. And I still am waiting for you to come up with evidence that the HBC staff in the regiona claimed by the Provisional Government actually took part in this farcical vote; even Ft Vancouver personnel - or did the Provisional government make a point of calling for a show of hands in Forts Langley, Victoria, Colville and Kamloops too (since show-of-hands was normal on the frontier; unless you're going to tell me it was a secret ballot....). Skookum1 02:03, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
As to the Provisional Government. I’ll show you where the HBC people participated as soon as you show me where I said that. You can’t show me that, because I never wrote that. I specifically wrote British, and I have provided a list of people of British/Canadian origin that participated in the vote. I did that for the specific purpose that I only know that many former HBC employees voted. As to the other forts in the region, I don’t know if anybody traveled to the meeting from those locations you listed, but the call went out months before and everyone was welcome to participate in the meeting (minus the natives) and settlers from all over the valley attended and the valley is where the majority of people in the area lived. If they didn’t show, to bad. When William the Conqueror took the crown in England I don’t think the people in London were asked to vote, I don’t think the Chinese were asked to vote when Mao took over in 1949, and I don’t think all the Mexicans in what became Texas were asked to participate in Texas’ decision to revolt against Mexico. History is littered with instances of people forming governments that no other political state gave them the authority to create (see also US History), this does not mean they did not exist or were not valid governments. Legitimacy is demonstrated through the exercise of authority/power. That is what they did, and it did not violate any treaty between the US and Britain. As to the natives, unfortunately Western history says they do not count when it comes to politics until about the 1950s. If we go with your argument on the natives then Canada and the US did/do not exist. Try telling that to the tax collector and see if they care. Please note that I do believe the natives got a raw deal, but fairness is not usually a major ingredient in politics. The point is the government existed, functioned, and exercised authority. They did not have actual control over much of the territory they claimed to govern, but they did control the majority of the settlers since the majority of the settlers were in the Willamette Valley.Aboutmovies 20:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Your William the Conquerer comparison is completely specious. If William had set up a council of 200-300 peasants/squatters somewhere in Kent, and sent out invites to Franco-Norman shopkeepers in Sussex and Devon and Wiltshire who wanted nothing to do with him, then held a vote claiming everything from the English Channel to the Scots border, you'd have a point. Almost. But I suspect you know little about the nature of medieval and specifically Norman/Norse monarchy and the associated dynastic laws, etc. There were hereditary claims involved in the case of the Norman Succession, not just invasion by conquest. If the Oregon squatters had come in over from the Great Plains with an armed force of 20,000 "knights" and hangers-on, and managed to vanquish the Wasco or Chinookan or Yakama leadership in a show of force, you again might have a point; but they didn't, and didn't even have the balls to take on the native governments of the region (and in the HBC's eyes, they were governments and in a highly de facto sense, not in the spurious de jure sense that you seem to think is de facto about the Provisional Government), then the Provisional Government and its leadership might have been somewhat legitimate - by right of conquest (although William also had dynastic/hereditary claims, as previously mentioned). But for a few hundred farmers in the range of the 45th Parallel to claim all the lands - none of which they'd seen or cared to venture into - all the way to 54-40 is just sheer CRAP, especially given the tens of thousands of other people living there that they'd excluded from the so-called "vote" (a show of hands in front of a potentially hostile crowd is not democracy; if you think it is, you're a fool). Justifying it by pointing at William the Conquerer, or any other abstruse non sequitur, is just sophomoric nonsense. That you think somehow this qualified as a mandate of sovereignty (still unsurrendered over most of BC, by the way) is just sheer idiocy.Skookum1 22:33, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for proving my point. My point about William and the others I mentioned was exactly as you pointed out: there are other means to legitimacy for a government. William had the claims (though note that had he lost at Hastings he would not have been king despite those hereditary rights) and was thus king. Your previous point seems to have been: nobody said they could have a government, therefore their was no government. “the Provisional Government was founded irrespective of anybody but their own”

My point is that it was irrespective of anybody else, but they were still legitimate by exercising power and nobody needed to give them authority. And if you would take the time to read everything I write you would see that I have said they did NOT have control over the entire area, I only said they claimed to. So you can stop brining that up. Aboutmovies 01:15, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


Back to this "joint occupancy" thing....you're seriously going to tell me that YOU, as a student, have the judgement and knowledge to dispense with this term, when generation after generation of diplomatic historians, and national historians, have used it, and understood it, even if it's not in the source you've decided it has to be in? That YOU know better than someone like A.J.P. Taylor or the Akriggs or Bancroft or ???? I mean, c'mon, get real. The term exists because it exists, and it has a meaning in diplomatic history and in diplomatic language and an established body of literature. You don't.Skookum1 02:06, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Skookum1, as I was researching Lt. Salcum and the brig Loriot I came across something very interesting for you here about the misnomer: (please note I copied verbatim, so any typos are not mine)

Mr. Adams (that is John Quincy Adams) said: "And here I beg leave to repeat an idea that I have already expressed before, and that is, that there is a very great misapprehension of the real merits of this case, founded on the misnomer which declares that convention to be a convention of joint occupation. Sir, it is not a convention of joint occupation. It is a convention of non-occupation--a promise on the part of both parties that neither of the parties will occupy the territory for an indefinite space; first for ten years; then until the notice shall be given from one party to the other that the convention shall be terminated" ... (p. 341, 3d col.) "All these titles are imperfect. “Discovery is therefore no title of itself. The discovery of a river and of land is no title of itself. Exploration conies next. That gives something more of a title. Continuity and contiguity both concur to give a title. They are none of them perfect in themselves. There is nothing complete in the way of title but actual possession; and that is the only thing we now want, to have a perfect, clear, indisputable and undoubted right to the territory of Oregon. It is possession--it is occupation, if you please. Well, sir, we have made two conventions with Great Britain--one in 1818, one in 1827--by which we have not agreed to anything like joint occupation. Sir, in the days of Sir John Falstaff, so facetiously alluded to by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Starkweather) the other day, he says 'a captain;' these villains will make the word 'captain' as odious as the word 'occupy,' which was an excellent good word before it was ill-sorted. Now this 'occupation' is as 'odious' in some parts as Sir John Falstaff said the word 'occupy' was in his time after it had been ill-sorted. There is no occupation now. Occupation is the thing we want. Occupation is what I aim for putting an end to that convention for; because it says we shall not occupy that territory." April 13, 1846 (Cf. Cong. Globe, p. 664), Mr. Adams said: "But in that convention of 1818 it was merely stipulated that we should not make settlements, that is, that we should not occupy, and that same stipulation was binding upon Great Britain as well as upon us. It was not only a total misnomer, but a total perversion of the 284 ACQUISITION OF OREGON whole question of right, to call that convention a convention of joint occupation--it was a convention of non-occupation.

This was bittersweet for me. You see I was hoping to write an article to expand upon my idea of the misnomer, but I guess I was not the first after all. But, on the other hand it does show that others, namely diplomats of the era, also thought of the term as a misnomer. Aboutmovies 21:55, 3 February 2007 (UTC)


First, what does me being a student have to do with anything? Does you being Canadian somehow invalidate any of your points by about 85% since Canada has about 15% of the population that the US has? No, this is nothing more than a red herring. It is irrelevant to the argument at hand. But just to humor you, what makes the people you cite an authority? It looks like Akrigg earned a BA in history, but his advanced degrees were in English and he was a English professor if the info I found online is accurate. I earned my bachelors degree in history as did he, but I am also a member of the national honor society for historians, and have been for 10 years. I have completed a handful of graduate level history and anthropology courses (please note that I am in law school, and not an undergraduate). Taylor? I’m sorry but where is his work on the topic since I did not see anything written by him that related much to history around here? And while we are off topic, what are your academic credentials?
But back to the actual discussion. I never said that we should dispense with the term “joint-occupancy,” I simply said it is a misnomer in that the common perception is that the parties agreed to joint-occupancy, and the treaty between the parties meant that it was only for British & US occupancy. However, the treaty clearly states that the treaty does not affect any other claims in the area: “nor shall it be taken to affect the claims of any other Power or State.” Now joint can sometimes mean multiple parties, as in more than just two, but the history written only discusses US/British occupancy. So my point is that the term is not technically correct, not that we need to go re-write history or that the term does not best describe the actual situation that developed in the area. It is much like the term tidal wave. Used for years (less so now), but it was inaccurate. History changes and evolves over time, theories change, the languages change. Everything changes. We used to believe the world is flat, now we don’t. Historians have to be able to evolve and be able to objectively look at events (bias never completely goes away) and then write about it. But each generation is going to have their own filters that will change the view. Just because something is written down, published, and used does not mean it is correct.Aboutmovies 20:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
You're talking about inserting into this article "original research" based on your own conclusions as to the legitimacy or not of the long-accepted/used term "joint occupancy". Your own interpertations of the treaty and the diplomatic debates/quarrels leading up to it can only be constured as "original research". If you want to write a formal paper criticizing "joint occupancy" as the accepted term, by all means do so - just not in Wikiepedia; your dispute of the term can then be cited as a dispute, but not until then. In the meantime I have taken out the completely erroneous "shared sovereignty" which was on the Oregon boundary dispute page, as it's comlete nonsense. As for you belonging to an int'l society of historians that doesn't impress me; I can go buy a degree in the Bahamas or Turks and Caicos, too, and join any international organization of tiddly-winkers. Academic historians in these parts leave a lot to be desired, and it's shameful what they get away with publishing these days while being critical of older-era historians; trying to sidle yourself up to them isn't the best reference in the world, given the various turkeys in the way of books and papers that have been published in recent years, and the tripe they contribute to things like the Canadian Encyclopedia Online and whatever its American equivalents are. So what if you finished your baccalaureate? It's quite likely the Ph.D who was teaching you didn't have a clue what he/she was talking about. Stick with the sources, and the sources here include the interpretations of the Oregon Treaty and the dispute behind it as laid down by diplomatic/international law/history experts in that period and since; yes, and THEY did know what they were talking about, even if academics today largely don't.Skookum1 23:18, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Revmoed POV succession box

This was removed:

[edit] Government

Preceded by
Second Executive Committee*		 Provisional Governor of Oregon Country
1845-1848		 Succeeded by
Joseph Lane
Notes and references
1. Executive committees were three-person boards which served as executives for a one-year term.

As the provisional government was co-extant and much preceded by the administration of the Hudson's Bay Company; and as I recall the provisional executive committee/governor was of the Oregon Territory no the Oregon Country. Anyway, having a US-based succession box without consideration of the dual POV necessary for this article is unsatisfactory and that box removed here for discussion/improvement.Skookum1 15:54, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Astor

John Jacob Astor founded a fur-trading post at Astoria, Oregon in 1811, beginning the organized trade in furs that had already been initiated by a few hardy trappers and traders.

This makes it sound like Astor was on-the-spot and no he wasn't. True that neither the NWC or HBC were on-site yet, but there weren't any "hardy trappers and traders" in the area yet, either. Astoria was founded as a land base for the marine fur trade, largely still sea-otter in that time, and despite the Boston ownership and maybe an American manager, the staff were French-Canadians/Metis hired away from HBC/NWC operations on the Prairies/Great Plains (all theoretically British subjects, BTW). I HATE FUZZY HISTORY and get tired of stuff like this; will Americans adding to this page please do more research before contributing high-school curriculum memories/bowdlerizations?Skookum1 07:36, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

This article don't considere french settlers maybe this http://www.oregonvos.net/~clenzen/frprairie.html can contribute to that

in reply to that, the original USAcentric content here hasn't fully been amended/emended; the French settlers (Metis mostly, actually) were HBC staffers, and part of the fur trade culture in the region, and also may have been shunted aside in mainstream history as, being half-aboriginal, and with aboriginal wives, they weren't considered "white" or "British"; which helps explain why many US histories focus on US settlers, and ignore the "British" (fur company) settlers already in situ, who were French/aboriginal, Hawaiian, and various others; only few were fully "white".Skookum1 00:19, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question on Oregon Country category

Just wondering what to do with articles relating to north-of-49 locations that are part of the history of the Oregon Country, though maybe not known in US histories of the Oregon Country; e.g. the Fort Langley, Fort Hope, Fort Yale, etc; anything pre-1846 seems fair game, plus some afterwards; also native biographies such as Nicola (chief) (b.~1790 d. 1865).Skookum1 00:19, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Oregon a "republic" after 1818?

Meanwhile, the United States and Britain negotiated the Anglo-American Convention of 1818 that extended the boundary between their territories west along the 49th parallel to the Rocky Mountains. The two countries agreed to "joint occupancy" of the land west of the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean.
At this time, Oregon evolved into a de facto republic, with a 3-person executive branch and a chief executive. A certain faction of Oregonian politicians hoped to continue Oregon's political evolution into an independent nation, but pressure to join the United States would prevail by 1848. [citation needed]

I quoted both paragraphs because of the "at this time" that starts the second paragraph. This makes it sound like Americans in the Oregon Country organized their "republic" in 1818 or shortly thereafter. Very curious indeed consdering there were NO Americans in the territory until the 1830s, and then only a trickle; the American "flood" into the Oregon Country didn't start until about 1843 and I don't recall any American declarations of "republic" prior to 1846; if there were they were illegal as the area was still under joint occupancy with Britain. There are other mis-written bits of history on this page; this was a glaring one and, apposite to someone else asking me for cites about there being a "negligible" (on Pacific Northwest; see Talk:Pacific Northwest, the onus on the other hand is on Americans to prove there was a "flood of settlers" into Oregon in the 1830s (the context in that quote); or, in this case, on the claim that Americans had self-constituted as a republic in the wake of the Anglo-American treaty of 1818....Skookum1 18:46, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

The same claim is made on the Oregon page. I've asked about it on the Talk:Oregon page. My guess about it (guessing needed since there is no citation) is that the distance frontier was "de facto" independent since it was, well, distant. If that is the case for Oregon, it is the case for most frontier regions in their early colonization/settlement era. The "citation needed" has been there for a while now. I figure that without a reference that shows the de facto independence as something more than just being a frontier region, the claim can be removed. Pfly 20:24, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I think

Oregón, come from the Columbia´s (or Snake) river old name, maybe like Aragón river from Spain or a dialectal name in spanish for Oregano (spice or field) "No todo el monte es oregano" In Spain some villages, rivers and places are named Oregón. "Orín" a related word is "rust" in english, and the end "-gon" is a basque root for "river" or "Stream". For example Aragón, word of Basque origin, can be translate "Blackthornwood River" or "Thorn Creek". "Cisneros" from Leonese language is the name of a village, a river and gintreewood. The similarity with "Cisne" (Swan) is chance. The Iberian peninsula have had many languages latins or prehistoric, with words yet used in locations Anselmocisneros 23:15, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I have yet to hear of a map produced in New Spain that even showed this river, much less gave it a name, and as I said above, no Spanish expedition even got this far (there is an apocryphal one as far north as the Canadian-US border but I've never seen a proper documentation of it. The Spanish, in the pursuit of Cibola, never made it across the Great Basin to even get to the Snake or Columbia, much less realize they existed. So there's no reason whatsoever to think there's a connection; unless you can show one - that so-and-so came such-and-so far and "named" the river in such-and-so a year, the word's resemblance to anything in Spanish is purely incidental and a non sequitur.Skookum1 01:01, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
George R. Stewart describes this theory, along with quite a few similar ones, as guesses. As in, well the word Oregon looks kind of like the Spanish word oregano, or like the Shoshone word for this, the French for that, etc etc. His claim is that these are not so much theories are wild guesses, sort of like saying Cheasapeake comes from the English words "chest peek". Pfly 03:46, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] It Continues

Skookum1 Listen, have you been kicked in the head too many times? I never wrote the “shared sovereignty” item, therefore NOT part of this discussion. The only two things I have ever contributed to the article are the template at the very bottom, and the addition of the economic activities pre-1840. That’s it. The rest of this is on the talk page where things are discussed. Also please note, and I have said this before, I am merely pointing out that the term is technically incorrect based on the treaty that the term was spawned from. IT CAN STAY because it IS THE COMMON UNDERSTANDING/TERM. The term does appear in documents of that era, such as an 1826 document that is titled British Statement of 1826 that was written to US foreign policy people. But it is not in the language of the 1818 or 1826 treaties, and the language of those treaties does not exclude other powers/states. I have never said the term joint-occupancy should be changed/removed and I would never do as such. Again, since I didn’t say we should change things, there is no “original research” problem. The entire point of all of this is that a government or other new political entity could have, within the language of the treaty, developed within the boundaries of the Oregon Country. It just could not be a US or British controlled government. British citizens could have gotten together and formed a government if they wanted to, nothing precluded them from doing so. This was in reaction to this statement by you: “Interesting - partly because in 1844 no American had legislative rights in the Oregon Country because of the Anglo-American Convention of 1818”

Next, so now that you realize I’m not some 19 year old college student suddenly credentials don’t matter? You can’t just keep changing you argument. Stick with one. Earlier you seemed to think that because I’m a student my opinion does not matter compared to others and you in particular. I demonstrated my credentials, so now you change the argument so credentials don’t matter? Stick with something, anything.

On a side note, I did find it rather interesting that the joint-occupancy item came up in July and you said you were going to go read the treaty, what couldn’t find what you were looking for therefore the treaty is wrong? “I'll read the 1818 treaty and see what the language used in that is, as it should be mirrored here” Treaty not what Skookum1 think, not right. All you are doing here is demonstrating that you are unable or unwilling to see different points of view as demonstrated by this quote: “THEY did know what they were talking about, even if academics today largely don't” Which I take to mean that unless you approve of a source, nobody can use it. Is that it, otherwise explain to me what that means? Aboutmovies 01:15, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Where did you go? I miss my self proclaimed “big nasty.”
I’ve got more evidence to show the legitimacy of the Provisional Government, which honestly is the entire purpose of this series of debate. You see, I specifically included the “Provisional” government part in a reply to an old post of yours to bring up this debate. I was baiting you in response to posts such as this: “but there's no demonstration of effective control or other actual government;” from the Oregon talk page. Luckily you took it hook, line, and sinker.
As to more evidence, the Provisional Government also minted money, Beaver Coins which would have been illegal if they were an apparatus of the United States, The Constitution prohibits everyone but the US government from minting money for circulation within the US. But since the territorial government had not arrived yet, they could still act independent of US laws. This didn’t last but a few weeks, but it is just more to add to the fact that there was a legitimate, working, non-US government in Oregon Country. And by the way, the state of Oregon recognizes the Provisional Government as the precursor to the Territorial and state governments.[3]
Next, I’m surprised you haven’t brought up more on Akrigg. Well, let me then.
Opening line to Robin Fisher’s book review of Akrigg’s British Columbia Chronicle,: Gold and Colonists from 1978 in The American Historical Review:
“This book is exactly the kind that the student of British Columbia history does not need.”
The closing line to the review goes like this: “With the single exception of some new information on the death of Governor Fredrick Seymour in 1869, this book will disappoint the serious student who seeks an enlarged understanding of the colonial phase of British Columbia’s history.”
And just so you cannot claim US bias or Eastern Canadian bias, Fisher signed off from Simon Fraser University. I think that is in BC.
As to volume one, similar criticisms such as:
“The critical reader may, however, consider the result none too satisfactory; he may, indeed, say that the book suffers from the uncritical love of the authors for their subject.” Then in relation to their scholarly research: “The references, however, suggest a greater familiarity on the part of the authors with the printed than with the manuscript sources.” To put that in historical research terms, they used secondary sources and not primary sources that are the hallmark of good, authoritative historical works. This review was by George F. G. Stanley, also in The American Historical Review, the reviewer being from Mount Allison University.
Now, hopefully you won’t go off on some tangent attacking sources I have used. Not because I care about them, but because I didn’t put any of them on some sort of pedestal. Most of the sources out there have flaws and biases, including the ones I have used as sources throughout Wikipedia. But I did not make it a point to try and compare credentials of historical acumen and list out some beloved author such as Akrigg as the be all of history. Basically it comes down to you saying Akrigg knows it all, I say respectable historians disagree. Not to mention respectable historians usually can get their works published by a third party and not resort to self publication as Akrigg did.[4]
But I digress. Aboutmovies 20:24, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Have a look at my edit contributions and you'll get a rough idea of how busy I am, and how far-ranging my contributions to Wiki are. My summary of what you're doing here spins off the opening of your post above, which I don't have time to read in full at the moment, nor to address today:

’ve got more evidence to show the legitimacy of the Provisional Government, which honestly is the entire purpose of this series of debate.

By continuing to try to establish the "legitimacy of the Provisional Government" without also trying to research the legitimacy of British claims or, indeed, the very much more REAL legitimacy of Native American and First Nations governments in the same era, is to me a clear demonstration of your POV agenda here; are you Oregonian, by any chance? Because I know there's a sort of "Oregonian manifest destiny mythology", also expressed in the State of Jefferson stuff and lurking around the Cascadia agenda and more, and clearly "all over" the various Oregon Country, Oregon Treaty and Oregon boundary dispute pages. "Legitimacy" is not a word that would be applied to the Provisional Government by non-US, or non-Oregon, historians; and certainly not by Native American historians; for that matter, the absence of Native American culture/life/history from the Oregon Country page is a glaring ommission, and implicitly POV; likewise the absence of any mention of the Columbia District (until I put it in, long ago); That the Provisional Government's declaration of its self-importance claimed territories reaching to 54-40 when there were only eight Americans north of the Columbia at all is more proof of the irrelevance of its touting itself as "legitimate" and of your efforts to "prove" its legitimacy. I'm writing forty other historical articles in the next while, and clearly have read a lot more regional history - from all sides- than you have, or are bothering to. The attnetion given the Provisional Government in this article - the increasing attention, thanks to you - is a POV agenda and very close to being something like vandalism; I suggest you create a separate article on Provisional Government of Oregon or something to that effect; but be prepared for Native Americans to intervene on it and denounce any "proof" of its legitimacy....and to hell with it, if this talkpage doesn't have the Indigenous peoples' project template already I might as well add it; in the hopes that someone from Grand Ronde or Wasco might want to stop in and give their opinion of "the legitimacy of the Provisional Government", which is a bunch of USPOV hogwash.Skookum1 20:43, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I have not written provisional government even once in the article. If you mean on this page, please note this is a talk page, and this is where this is to be discussed, not in hidden comments on the article's page. The edits I have contributed are adding links to the Champoeg Meetings, the Oregon History template/list at the bottom, a link to Gray Sails the Columbia, and a cite where a citation was requested (I did nothing to the content). Somebody else added the content.
Wow, you sure are good at making points by screaming out all this POV. Again, if something is missing, then add it. If someone deletes something, then you have a POV argument. If someone writes "Actual British settlers in the area numbered 120," then you have a POV argument. But no matter what other people's NPOV contributions, this does not disprove in anyway my points about the legitimacy of the Provisional Government. And brining in the native inhabits issue gets you nowhere since neither the US or Canada had delegates from the natives at their formation. The Seneca and Cherokee did not ratify the Declaration of Independence. What that means is that in history, natives did not matter when it came to making governments. It's sad, it's deplorable, but that is the legacy of European/Native relations. Plain and simple, the native populations did not matter in regards to the creation of political entities. It seems rather odd that you accept that there is a state of Oregon, yet again no natives were consulted in that process either. Going off what is on Wiki under the History of British Columbia I find the same situation with the creation of BC, not a single mention of the First Nations people being consulted. Like it or not, racism has a long history in most societies, North America is no different. Move on, try something else, otherwise argue that all governments in North America are not legitimate.
As to British claims, they were legitimate, unless of course you want to keep going with your natives line of thought. The Brits could have set up independent governments if they wanted to under the terms of the 1818 treaty, but they didn’t. It just could not be a crown colony, it had to be independent of British authority. And again, nothing in that treaty precluded other “states” from having claims in the disputed area. Just like the US, the Brits could not claim exclusive control of any territory in the area as covered by the treaty. So even with overlapping claims, this does not mean the government set up in the valley was not legitimate. They exercised their power as I have previously shown, therefore they were. Like it or not.
By the way, have you heard back from your Fort Vancouver expert? Aboutmovies 22:54, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Another Name Origin Theory

Besides the "Wisconsin" theory, the other most plausible theory, is that the name "Oregon" is from "hooligan," "oorigan," "eulachon," "oolichan," "oulachon," or "uthlecan," the Native American (Chinookan) name for a greasy Pacific fish that was fished on the coast by Native Americans, dried, and traded inland as far as the Great Basin and Rockies regions of Western America. It was an important trade item in the region. Sorry, but do not have the citation, a 1940s journal article. As a personal aside, when I lived in Alaska as a child in the early 1950s, my father would go fishing and come home with buckets of these smelt-like hooligans. See the Wikipedia article "Eulachon."—Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.113.181.22 (talk) 17:38, April 7, 2007

[edit] Possible POV Fork?

Oregon Country? Columbia district? What's the rationale behind having different articles for the same piece of land? - TheMightyQuill 01:18, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

They're not, that's why. I guess it was you placed the merge template on Columbia District. The US claims to the Oregon Territory included New Caledonia is why; the rough boundary between the Columbia District is approximately the Thompson River; Ft Kamloops eventually coming under Ft Vancouver's jurisdiction, i.e. as part of the Columbia District; its HBC orientation was usually to the New Caledonia HQ. Also, at the onset of the Fraser Gold Rush that area, the lower Fraser Canyon, as well as Cariboo before it "earned" its name with the onset of the Cariboo Gold Rush - both were spoken of as being New Caledonia, not the Columbia District; in terms of a term as it was used, the Columbia District was only the Columbia basin; until such time anyway as the New Caledonia fur district became administered from Ft Vancouver (then Ft Langley...also described as being New Caledonia, not Columbia District, a name that got abandoned post-1846 except when US-annexed territories were spoken of as "Southern Columbia", a term the Akriggs also like. The Columbia District is a fur co. adminstrative district within the Oregon Country claim.....of much more interest/need is fleshing out hte non-USPOV version of events leading to the US annexation etc, ditto on Oregon Treaty and Oregon boundary dispute and so on (ditto with the parallel Alaska pages).Skookum1 (talk) 18:52, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] French and French Canadian in Oregon Country

Why in the section concerning early settlement, there is any mention of this :

European American settlement

The European presence in the French Prairie area began with the Willamette Trading Post established in 1814.[1]

In the 1830s the French Canadian settlers, who were Roman Catholic, petitioned to the Bishop of Juliopolis at the Red River Colony (present-day Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) to have a priest sent to them.[3] Two of these petitions were sent in 1836 and 1837. Bishop François Norbert Blanchet finally arrived in the French Prairie area in 1838. These first French Canadian settlers built hewn log homes in the French style and started wheat farms.[4] The homes were built with clay and stick chimneys, ash bark roofs, and animal skin windows that were similar to the homes built on the eastern Canadian frontier.[4] By 1843, approximately 100 French Canadian families lived on the prairie.[4]

For a short time the Oregonian Railway Company had a station named French Prairie about two miles southeast of the city of St. Paul.[2]

The St. Paul Roman Catholic Church, in St. Paul, was built by the settlers of French Prairie and is the oldest brick building in the Pacific Northwest.[1] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.251.136.246 (talk • contribs) 22:09, April 18, 2008

Do you mean "no mention" of this? It looks like you copied the information from the French Prairie article I started? You can just link to it like this [[French Prairie]]: which makes the bluelink like this: French Prairie. Katr67 (talk) 22:42, 18 April 2008 (UTC)