Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/107

Rh perity. Think of the great natural wealth of a region that could stand the destruction of two hundred and thirty millions of wild creatures by a single fur company in forty years.

As may readily be seen, the power and influence of this company over the condition and future relations of the country it ruled over was absolute and invincible. It was operated for profits solely. The young men were encouraged to take wives from among native women for no other purpose than to give them power and influence with the Indians, to get their furs and prevent anybody else from getting them. Alcholic liquors were used to a certain extent, and by some factors more than others. Chief Factor Dr. McLoughlin of the Oregon department has a record of great care and prudence not only in handling the natives, but in not demoralizing them with stimulants. And when we consider the wide extended power and influence of this company, the wonder is that the American emigration to this country ever got a foothold at all.

Such was the beginning of trade and commerce in the Columbia river valley. Many people hastily 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 Bay Company for holding the country solely for furs, and working the Indian to discourage American fur traders, there is a silver lining to even that cloud, as we shall see later on. The Hudson bay men got along with the Indians, prevented bloody wars, like those that ravaged the Ohio valley and visited upon the pioneer settlers on the Ohio a thousand more terrors than ever troubled the pioneer Oregonians, by skillfully turning the sexual instinct of the race to the work of peace with the savages, and profits to the corporation. The company encouraged its employees to take wives from among the native women. There was but little thought and less solemnity in but very few cermonials 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 the still more select Lieutenant Bonneville, all of whom tried their fortunes at fur trading in this region, such a proposition as promiscuous marriages with the natives would have appeared as an impracticable proposition. In the settlement of the Ohio, and in fact of all the Atlantic 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 bay traders organized their company, they found the Canadian Frenchmen already in the business of taking furs from the St. Lawrence to the head of the great lakes. The Frenchman 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 Hudson Bay Company adopted the tactics of their rivals for a rich trade and eventually drove them from the field.

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