Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 15.djvu/297



This year of 1914 is the centennial year of the abandonment of Fort Astor, so called by the employees of John Jacob Astor. It was Fort George from 1813 to 1846. The change of the national master was the result of the visit of H. M. Sloop-of-War Raccoon. It caused the substitution of the British for the American flag. The men in charge held a meeting and resolved to go back to Fort William and their native Canada. It may be stated here that there were already two distinct classes of men in the fur trade beginning as a direct trade in furs to China. The first were a class of Highland Scots who had already become prominent in the fur trade, from which Mr. Astor chose some of his partners. These were already share owners of the Canadian North-West Company. The men with "Me" prefixed to their names—as McKay, McDougall, McKenzie—were of Highland Scotch lineage, probably prominent by the natural selection of circumstances, as Alexander McKay was the most notable man of the North-West Company, whom Astor chose as a partner in his Pacific Association. His life was sacrificed through the folly of Captain Thorn's treatment of the natives on the Tonquin. There were men not Highland born, as the Stuarts, Manson, Birnie, Black, Douglas, Simpson, Tolmie and Ogden—men of business education ; men whom it was not intended to feed on the flesh of horses or dogs.

Of the men we suppose John Jacob Astor selected from the North-West Company as partners, all were from Canada, as follows: Alexander McKay, Duncan McDougall, David and Robert Stuart ; of clerks, there were eleven,—three Americans,—James Lewis and William W. Matthews, of New York, and Russell Farhham, of Massachusetts, and eight—Alexander Ross, Donald McGillis, Uvide de Montigny, Francis B. Pillot, Donald McLennan, William Wallace, Thomas McKay and Gabriel Franchere three Canadian French and five Scotch