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THE FUR TRADE IN THE COLUMBIA RIVER BASIN PRIOR TO 1811

By T. C. ELLIOTT*

One of the present activities of the historical societies of Oregon and Washington is the publication of source material relating to the early fur trade along the Columbia River. It has been a popular and to an extent a scientific habit to refer to the city of Astoria as the oldest trade center of the Old Oregon Country; some of our histories furnish evidence to that effect. It was on the 12th of April, 1811, that the officers and employees of the Pacific Fur Company were landed from the ship Tonquin and established a temporary encampment on the south side of the Columbia River, ten miles from Cape Disappointment, and immediately thereafter began the erec- tion of the trading post named by them Fort Astoria. On the 15th of July, four months later, David Thompson, the North- West Company fur trader and astronomer, coming from the source of the river recorded in his journal: "At 1 P. M., thank God for our safe arrival, we came to the house of Mr. Astor's Company, Messrs. McDougall, Stuart and Stuart, who received me in the most polite manner." And in another con- nection Mr. Thompson has recorded that the establishment then consisted of "four low log huts." It is the purpose of this paper to designate ad seriatim the trading posts that had been built and in use west of the Rocky Mountains prior to the founding of Astoria and to briefly sketch the beginnings of the fur trade on the waters of the mighty Columbia River.

The first barter with white people by the natives residing on the Columbia River was with the masters of trading vessels along the Coast, of which little record has been left to us. When Captains Lewis and Clark, the explorers, descended the river in the fall of 1805 they found among Indians living quite a distance in the interior "sundry articles which must have been procured from the white people, such as scarlet and blue

Historical Association at the University of Washington, Seattle, May 2ist, 1914.
 * A paper read at the meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American

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