States. Among the ironies of the meeting was the proof of the country's 'Eden-like' richness provided by the thriving farms and flocks of the British companies to the early American missionaries, official visitors and settlers, and the subsequent rejection or eradication of the PSA Company's advanced English farming techniques and large-scale operations by determined American exploitive settlers and individual frontier opportunists. The frontier settler's necessity of an immediate return, the need or hope that sometimes drove him to cross the Plains to improve his status, were foreign to a strong corporate British monopoly, even though it knew the profit motive. As Sir George Simpson wrote in 1852,
The Hudson's Bay Company's trading posts were erected many years previous to the Oregon Treaty, at a time when they were the sole occupants of the country, the Sites being carefully selected as the most desirable for carrying on trade and maintaining their communications. The good judgment which was manifested in such selections is apparent from the fact that, now that the territory is becoming closely settled, those stations are considered the most desirable sites for towns, while the main highways of commerce are those which were established by the Company.[1]
The less legal-minded American minority which moved onto the British claims was supported by the opinion of a large part of the American community,[2] and by the actions of the U. S. Army in setting aside its own military reservations.
- ↑ T. C. Elliott, ed., "British Values in Oregon, 1847," Oregon Historical Quarterly, XXXII (March, 1932), 42.
- ↑ The "Proceedings of the Public Meeting" of Lewis County citizens held at New Market November 5,1848 (Oregon Spectator, January 11, 1849, p. 1, cols. 4, 5) included the following provisions in a protest directed against Tolmie and the P.S.A. Nisqually Farm: "4th. That as it has never been the policy of the federal government in enacting laws granting the right of pre-emption, and other conformable laws to induce the speedy settlement of wild tracts within the United States, to grant said benefits to any other than American citizens, or those who had declared their intention to become such, in a legal form; that such will be the provisions of the anticipated grants of land to settlers in this territory we have not the slightest doubt?in fact, a departure from the long established policy of the government would eventuate in no good.
5th. That we view the claims and improvements made by the Puget's Sound Agricultural Society since the ratification of the
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