Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/168

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demoralizing them with stimulants. And when we consider the wide extended power and influence of this company, the wonder is that the American immigra- tion to this country ever got a foothold at all.

Such was the beginning of trade and commerce in the Columbia river valley. Many people hastih^ conclude that such a trade was a trifling matter. But such a conclusion is not based upon a consideration of the facts. The fur trade is now foreign to the great mass of our people. But not so ninety years ago. It was a great business then, and it is a great business yet. The city of St. Louis is now the headquarters of the fur trade of the United States; and it will strike the reader with surprise to learn that there are over five hundred thousand people in the United States who now, today, make their living trapping and dressing the furs and skins of wild animals.

And no matter how much we may condemn the Hudson's Bay Company for holding the country solely for furs, and working the Indian to discourage Amer- ican fur traders, there is a silver lining to even that cloud, as we shall see later on. The Hudson 's Bay men got along with the Indians, prevented bloody wars, like those that ravaged the Ohio valley, by skillfully turning the sexual instinct of the race to the work of peace with the savages, and profits to the corpora- tion. The company encouraged its employees to take wives from among the native women. There was little thought and less solemnity in but very few ceremonials of that kind. But it served the purposes of the company, satisfied the instincts of nature and formed a bond of confidence and peace between the two races camping in the wilderness. To the phlegmatic John Jacob Astor, or the more refined Wilson Price Hunt, or still more select Lieutenant Bonne- ville, all of whom tried their fortunes at fur trading in this region, such a proposi- tion as promiscuous marriages with the natives would have appeared as an im- practicable proposition. In the settlement of the Ohio, and in fact of all the At- lantic state regions, intermarriages with the natives as a custom was looked upon with horror; notwithstanding the romantic unions of Pocahontas and others equally well authenticated. When the Hudson's Bay traders organized their company, they found the Canadian French already in the business of taking furs from the St. Lawrence to the head of the great lakes. The Frenchmen set the pace with the Indians. And whatever he might have been on the boulevards of Paris, he was not at all fastidious in the wilds of America, when it came to living with, camping with and managing wild Indians, to trap for furs and put the good francs in his pocket. And we very soon see in the history of the French in the fur trade of North America, that the trapper's wife was nearly always a native woman. The custom worked well with the French. They profited in the fur trade and in the main preserved the peace with the Indians; and the Hud- son 's Bay Company adopted the tactics of their rivals for a rich trade and event- ually drove them from the field.

The Hudson's Bay Company produced many forceful, useful and distin- guished men. They had not the culture of the colleges, or the polish of the so- called polite society. But they accomplished far more for mankind and for civ- ilization than all the college men who have walked in their steps since their day.

They governed a wilderness empire filled with more natural wealth than any other equal territory in the world. They successfully managed a population of two hundred thousand wild Indians, which but for their tact, perseverance,