Page:Letters to Mrs. F. F. Victor, 1878-83.djvu/2

 farm's cattle between 1853 and 1856. Like Roberts', Tolmie's verbal protest and written notices were ignored; company officials and Americans who attempted to cooperate in surveying company lands were threatened with bodily harm. When Tolmie asked the London directors for their suggestions toward effective action, they prudently if unhelpfully answered that it would be inexpedient to try to take legal action locally against such "lawless" proceedings unless Tolmie was fairly sure that the company could get a favorable verdict. Settlers who met at Cowlitz in August of 1851 to ask Congress to create a separate Washington Territory north of the Columbia River, embodied their hostility toward the PSA Company's Nisqually establishment, "a large monied institution and a British Fort at That", in their memorial. That the companies were British helped—and the dispute over ex-HBC factor John McLoughlin's claim at Oregon City had 'foreign' overtones—but even those 'vested interests' which were American received an equivalent of the law 'bending' treatment until they became notably less vested.

In the 1840s the Methodist Mission in Oregon was second only to the British companies in strength and wealth. Hardly conceiving they might set an example which could be used against the Mission as well as 'foreign monopoly,' the missionaries at Oregon City were among the earliest to 'take on' the British in the person of McLoughlin and the claim he originally took in his own name for the HBC but wished to hold for himself if the Company could not. While the Meth-