My Company Tis of Thee

Update: Court OK's Hudson's Bay selling trademarks, like iconic stripes, to Canadian Tire, CBC, June 3, 2025

While the Thirteen American Colonies gained their independence from Great Britain in 1776, another English colony in North America could not claim the same until 1846. Located in the upper northwestern corner of North America, the British originally called the colony the Columbia District, and later, the Columbia Department. When the geopolitical ambitions of the young United States stirred at the turn of the 19^th century, its citizens not only claimed the colony as its own but also renamed it. Nineteenth century Americans called the region, the Oregon Country.

Relying on diplomacy, it took the United States and Great Britain nearly 40 years to resolve their conflicting claims on the territory. The first formal agreement between the two nations came in 1818 when they agreed to occupy the region jointly. At that time, however, neither the U.S. nor Great Britain was willing to establish an official government in the area. For American statesmen, the Oregon Country was simply too distant to be a priority, and after 1821, the British had the Hudson’s Bay Company, a British fur trading corporation, to serve as the region’s de facto government.

The oldest extant company in North America, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) was established in 1670 as “the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson’s Bay.” King Charles II granted the corporation “exclusive English rights…to all lands within the watersheds of Hudson’s Bay and the Hudson’s Bay Straits,” an almost unimaginably large territory of over three million square miles called Rupert’s Land. The holdings were so vast, writes Peter C. Newman in Empire of the Bay, his history of the HBC, that at a royal dinner in Norway in 1838, HBC Overseas Governor Sir George Simpson was toasted as the “head of the most extended dominion in the known world—the Emperor of Russia, the Queen of England and the President of the United States excepted.”” (Newman, 4)

Through its monopoly “over natural resource extraction and commerce,” the “Governor and Company of Adventurers of England” meant to turn the harvest of fur animals into a lavishly lucrative endeavor. The main “natural resource” the HBC sought to control in North America was the beaver, a “pug-nosed rodent” that provided two highly-valued commodities in European society: fur and castoreum. Milliners valued the soft fur from the underbelly of the beaver because it was easily converted into felt for hats, and furriers used the other parts of the pelts to make coats. Castoreum, a creamy substance that beavers secrete, was used as a musk base for perfumes. (Newman, 39)

“Beaver,” writes Newman, “became the breathing equivalent of gold. Men risked their lives and reputations for a scramble at the bonanza.” The potential for great wealth was so high that men chose to ignore the Company’s royal monopoly; even the threat of “punishment from the crown” (“When push comes to shove, I’ll remind you of my love.”) failed to deter an especially determined group of Canadian businessmen. In 1779, several fur traders organized in Montreal as the North West Company for the purpose of working the fur trade west of the Rocky Mountains. It was the North West Company, in fact, that named the interior region of the Pacific Northwest, the Columbia District, and the first non-Native man to reach the Columbia Plateau, David Thompson, was a Nor’Wester. (Newman, 271; Miranda, “You’ll Be Back,” Hamilton)

The North West Company did more than hold its own against the mighty Hudson’s Bay Company. From 1813 to 1821, it dominated the fur trade in the Columbia Plateau region. Yet, the ensuing competition between the two companies was so fierce that the British government forced them to merge in July 1821. A royal charter has its advantages. The merger not only called for the absorption of all North West Company operations into the Hudson’s Bay Company, it also granted the HBC authority to enforce British laws on British subjects in the Columbia District. The Hudson’s Bay Company had not only regained its monopoly but also gained official authority to extend its influence throughout the Pacific Northwest.   

David Thompson statue,
Sandpoint, Idaho

To conduct business, the HBC maintained a network of trading posts throughout its territory; the men who were in charge of the posts were called factors. Trappers, who were often Native, delivered furs to the posts, which the HBC called “forts,” to barter them for European and American-made goods, such as pots, beads, cloth, blankets, knives, and especially, rifles and ammunition. Furs were transported by canoe or barge to supply centers, from which goods were shipped in the opposite direction. Notable HBC posts in the Pacific Northwest were the Flathead Post in western Montana; Fort Nez Percés in central Washington; Fort Colville, near Kettle Falls on the Columbia River; and Fort Vancouver, located at the confluence of the Columbia and Willamette Rivers in the present states of Washington and Oregon. 

 As important as the posts were to the commercial success of the HBC, they played an equally important role in the opening up of the Oregon Country. The posts became way stations for non-Native travelers arriving in the region as missionaries and as colonizers. Like oases in a desert, the HBC posts were havens where travelers could rest from the physical ordeal of crossing the continent, and as isolated and primitive as they were, the posts solaced homesick migrants, aching for the comforts of home and family. Without them – without the hospitality their factors offered freely – it is likely that neither missionaries nor settlers would have flourished as they did.

The grandest of all the HBC posts in the Oregon Country was Fort Vancouver largely because, its factor, Dr. JohnMcLoughlin, was the grandest of all the factors in the Columbia Department. He was, in fact, the Chief Factor of the department. After the merger of the North West Company and the HBC in 1821, Governor George Simpson reorganized the Company’s operations west of the Rockies into a single district, the Columbia Department. In 1824, he not only built Fort Vancouver to serve as Department headquarters, he also hired the larger-than-life Dr. John McLoughlin to manage it. According to Father Wilfred Schoenberg in his history of the Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest, McLoughlin was “the de facto ruler of the Oregon Country. His authority was supreme,” and during his reign, “there was peace and almost perfect order in the entire region of Oregon.” (Schoenberg, 14)

Dr. John McLoughlin

A “striking figure with steel blue-grey eyes, a ruddy complexion, a tall, muscular frame, and shoulder-length white hair,” McLoughlin also had an out-sized temper. When, for example, a visiting Anglican minister named Herbert Beaver described McLoughlin’s wife Marguerite as “a female of notoriously loose character,” the good doctor became so outraged that he thrashed the priest in full view of the fort’s residents. There are two likely reasons why Reverend Beaver disapproved of Marguerite. One, she was Métis, the daughter of a Swiss fur trader and a Native woman who was probably Ojibwe, and two, she and McLoughlin had married sometime around 1810 “in the custom of the country.” While the couple would be united in a religious ceremony in 1842, most of their 50-year relationship as man and wife was a customary arrangement. Yet, John and Marguerite’s marriage was a loving one that produced four children and lasted until John’s death in 1857; Marguerite died in 1860. (Shine, “John McLoughlin,” 1)

Marguerite McLoughlin

Another happy Hudson's Bay Company marriage was the one between John Work and Susette Legace. Work, who was born in County Donegal, Ireland in 1791, began his long association with the Company in 1814, and sometime during one of his many trading expeditions throughout the Pacific Northwest, he married Susette, the daughter a Spokane woman and an unknown father, who was, presumably, French-Canadian. In an 1841 letter to his friend Edward Ermatinger, Work wrote, "The little wife and I get on very well. She is to me an affectionate partner, simple and uninstructed as she is and takes good care of my children and myself." Considering that the couple had ten children, John is indeed complimenting his wife. John died in 1861 and Susette in 1896. (Phillips, 72)

The marriage of North West Company fur trader and geographer David Thompson and Charlotte Small, the daughter of a Cree woman and Scotsman Patrick Small, was even more prolific. After marrying the 29-year-old Thompson on June 10, 1799, three months shy of her fourteenth birthday, Charlotte gave birth to thirteen children. When David died in 1857, the couple had been married for 58 years. Bill Waiser, a historian of Western Canada, writes that Thompson could not have “produced his master work in 1814, a great map of northwestern North America” without “Charlotte’s presence and assistance.” He adds that Thompson fully acknowledged Charlotte’s contributions to his work, “Indeed, David would later admit, “my lovely wife … gives me a great advantage.”” (Bill Waiser, “Partners for life”)

As important as women were to the economic success of the Northwest fur trade, it is difficult to find historical information about them in official corporate records. For example, Douglas Deur writes in An Ethnohistorical Overview of Groups withTies to Fort Vancouver National Historic Site that “the largely Native female population of the fort community was almost invisible in the official records of the Hudson’s Bay Company.” While this omission is not surprising, it becomes especially profound in the knowledge that, from the its beginnings in the 1670s, the Hudson’s Bay Company kept careful and detailed records of its “activities, growth, and expansion.” In fact, the company’s records are so extensive and so significant that they are now considered a world treasure. In June 2007, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) added the company’s archives to the Memory of the World Register. Held by the Archives of Manitoba, the textual records of the Hudson’s Bay Company alone take up nearly 5,000 linear feet. Among these records are fur post factor reports, ships’ captain logs, minute books in which top-level decisions were recorded, and private diaries and letters. In addition to textual records, there are also nearly 130,000 photographs and more than 12,000 maps. Additional formats include moving images and sound recordings. (Duer, 65 of 366; Archives of Manitoba, HBCA Resources)

An example of textual records held in the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives is a collection of incoming correspondence from the North West Company dating from 1791 to 1827. The collection includes correspondence to the directors and agents of the North West Company concerning such business activities, as the establishment and the supplying of posts and the trapping, shipping, and selling of furs. Two topics also addressed in the correspondence is the competition between the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company and the HBC’s expansion into the Columbia Plateau. Finan McDonald, a Nor’Wester who worked with David Thompson in the Pend Oreille Country of northern Idaho, is among the correspondents in the series.

Another textual collection pertinent to the Pend Oreille Country is the one that holds 43 letterbooks documenting Columbia Department correspondence from 1825 to 1853. The letterbooks contain copies of both inward and outward correspondence that was, for the main part, written by John McLoughlin. Generally, McLoughlin’s letters were inter-departmental communications regarding its operations, but the letterbooks also contain copies of letters about issues involving the relationship between the Hudson’s Bay Company and the United States. While most of the correspondence deals with trade issues, there is also correspondence addressing the political situation in the Oregon Country.

By establishing a mission in the Oregon Country’s Willamette Valley in 1834, American minister Jason Lee directed the nation’s attention on the region, and by the end of the decade, small groups of American settler colonists had begun arriving in the Oregon Country. During the early 1840s, the trickle of Americans migrating westward turned into a steady stream, and when expansionist James K. Polk was elected president in 1844, the acquisition of the Oregon Country (and Texas, too) became a national priority. At the same time, British interests were shifting away from the region; the North American fur trade was coming to a close just as Chinese ports were opening up to foreign trade. William L. Lang sums up the situation well in his essay on the “Oregon Question” in OregonEncyclopedia.org. “Britain’s changing opinion,” writes Lang, “coincided with a tide of American migration to the Oregon Country.” (Lang, 2)

As the U.S. moved to achieve its geopolitical goals, a few hot-headed politicians on both sides of the Atlantic called for war to settle the Oregon issue; fortunately, however, most were unwilling to risk a third war between the two nations. In addition, Lang credits an editorial published in the Times of London in January of 1846 for helping “push Britain to give up its insistence on the Columbia River” as the boundary between the U.S. and Canada in the Oregon Country. Expressing their “hope that the statesmen of the Republic are no more amenable than the Ministers of England to the influence of the most violent or the most thoughtless among their countrymen,” the editors urged a return to the negotiating table. (Lang, 3)

Both nations heeded the editors’ advice, and in March of 1846, U.S. representatives were in London to begin negotiations, which, writes Lang, “quickly produced a treaty resolution to the Oregon question.” According to the terms of the agreement, the boundary between the U.S. and Canada was extended at the 49^th parallel “into Puget Sound and left Vancouver Island in British hands.” The U.S. Senate approved the Treaty of Oregon on June 15, and two years later, Congress created the Territory of Oregon, providing the region with an official American government. The 1848 Act to Establish the Territorial Government of Oregon marked both an end and a beginning: the end of British colonialism in the Oregon Country, and the beginning of American settler colonization in the Pacific Northwest. (Lang, 3)

Notes

Archives of Manitoba, Hudson’s Bay Company Archives Resources, https://www.gov.mb.ca/chc/archives/hbca/search_hbca.html, last visited January 30, 2021.

Canada’s First Peoples, “Founding of the Hudson’s Bay Company,” http://firstpeoplesofcanada.com/fp_furtrade/fp_furtrade3.html#:~:text=First%20Nations%20middlemen%20collected%20furs,control%20and%20kept%20rivals%20out, last visited January 28, 2021.

Deur, Douglas, “An Ethnohistorical Overview of Groups with Ties to Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, Pacific Northwest Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, National Park Service, Pacific West Region, Seattle, Washington, https://www.nps.gov/fova/learn/historyculture/upload/Deur-2012_Ethno-Overview-Ft-Vanc-FNL.pdf, last visited January 29, 2021.

Find a Grave, John Work, last visited August 17, 2021.

Find a Grave, Susette Legace Work, last visited August 17, 2021.

Lang, William L. “Oregon Question,” OregonEncylopedia.org, Portland State University and Oregon Historical Society, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/oregon_question_54_40_or_fight/#.YBQuYOhKhPY, last visited January 29, 2021.

Miranda, Lin-Manuel, “You’ll Be Back,” Hamilton: An American Musical, viewed on Disney+ streaming platform, January 2021.

Newman, Peter C., Empire of the Bay: The Company of Adventurers that Seized a Continent, Penguin Books, Reprint Edition, 2000.

Schoenberg, Wilfred P., S.J., A History of the Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest 1743-1983. The Pastoral Press, Washington, D.C., 1987.

Shine, Gregory P., “Hudson’s Bay Company,” OregonEncylopedia.org, Portland State University and Oregon Historical Society, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/hudson_s_bay_company/#.YBQvOuhKhPY, last visited January 29, 2021.

Shine, Gregory P., “North West Company,” OregonEncylopedia.org, Portland State University and Oregon Historical Society, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/north_west_company/#.YBQv6OhKhPY, last visited January 29, 2021.

Waiser, Bill, “Partners for life,” https://billwaiser.com/partners-for-life, last visited October 21, 2020.

Wikipedia, “Columbia District,”  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_District, last visited January 29, 2021.

Wikipedia, “Oregon Country,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Country, last visited January 29, 2021.

Images:

Oregon Country/Columbia District map; Hudson’s Bay Company flag; John McLoughlin: Wikimedia Commons.

Marguerite McLoughlin: National Park Service, Fort Vancouver National Historic site, https://www.nps.gov/people/margueritemcloughlin.htm, last visited January 30, 2021.