The First White Settlers

During the time between the early exploration and the permanent settlement of the Northwest, British and American trading posts emerged to take advantage of the area’s abundant supply of beaver and sea-otter pelts. Two English companies, the North West Company and Hudson’s Bay Company, merged in 1821; American fur-trading outfits included many small, independent companies as well as John Astor’s Pacific Fur Company and the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.

The most influential of them, the Hudson’s Bay Company, built its temporary headquarters on the north side of the Columbia, 100 miles inland at Fort Vancouver, across the river from its confluence with the Willamette.

The settlers planted crops (including the apples and wheat that are so important to Washington’s economy today), raised livestock, and made the fort as self-sufficient as possible. At its peak, 500 people lived at or near the fort. Fort Vancouver served as a model for other Hudson’s Bay Company posts at Spokane, Okanogan, and Nisqually. When settlers began arriving in droves and the beaver population diminished in the late 1840s, the Hudson’s Bay Company was crowded out and moved its headquarters elsewhere.

Missions were another important method of establishing white settlements in the Washington Territory. The first missionary, Jason Lee, was sent by the Methodist Church in 1834 to introduce Christianity to the native peoples, but instead he spent much of his time and resources ministering to whites at Fort Vancouver.

The promise of free land under the Organic Act of 1843 and the Donation Land Law of 1850 fueled the “Great Migration” of 1843, in which almost 900 settlers traveled to the Oregon Country, six times the number of the previous year. More pioneers followed: 1,500 in 1844 and 3,000 in 1845. Most settlers came by way of the Oregon Trail from St. Joseph, Missouri, along the North Platte River, through southern Wyoming and southern Idaho into Oregon, then north to the Columbia River. Soon the route looked like a cleared road; traces of it can still be seen where the wagon tires dug ruts in stone and where wheels packed the ground so hard that grass still cannot grow. Washington’s early settlers congregated around five fledgling cities: Seattle, Port Townsend, Oysterville, Centralia, and Walla Walla; other smaller communities developed at Tumwater, Steilacoom, Olympia, and Fairhaven, now part of Bellingham. In eastern Washington the major communities were Spokane and Walla Walla.

Settling the Claims

By 1846, only the U.S. and England retained claims to the Oregon Country; Spain and Russia had sold or lost their North American possessions. Negotiators brought the U.S. and England to agreement on a division at the 49th parallel from the Rockies to the main channel between Vancouver Island and the mainland, running through the center of the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the Pacific Ocean.

The unspecified “main channel” was viewed to be either the Rosario Strait or the Haro Strait, leaving the San Juan Islands in the middle of the disputed waterway. Both nations claimed the islands. The British maintained a Hudson’s Bay Company fort, but American settlers began moving in and establishing farms. In 1859, an American shot and killed a British-owned pig that had repeatedly rooted in his garden, and the resulting uproar nearly started a war. The British demanded payment for the pig, the American refused, and soon both sides began bringing in soldiers and heavy weapons. Within three months the English had a force of 2,140 troops, five warships, and 167 heavy guns arrayed against the American army’s 461 soldiers and 14 cannons. Fortunately, calmer heads prevailed, and no further shots were fired in the “Pig War.” Soldiers of both nations remained on the islands for the next 13 years, and in 1872, Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm was chosen to conduct arbitration. He awarded the islands to the Americans and pronounced the Haro Strait the dividing channel.

In spite of all this arbitration, one small piece of real estate managed to be overlooked. A peninsula hung down from the Canadian mainland into the Strait of Georgia south of the 49th parallel, making it American land. Rather than settling the matter when it was discovered, the appendix still dangles there and is known as Point Roberts, a bit of America attached to Canada.

© Ericka Chickowski from Moon Washington, 8th edition