Before leaving, he named the river the Columbia, after the primary ship to anchor in its inland waters. Into this immense wilderness, inhabited solely by scattered tribes of Indians, got here the American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, heading an expedition authorized by President Jefferson and Congress “to explore the Missouri River, & such principal streams of it, as, by its course £ communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean, could offer the most direct & practicable water communication throughout this continent, for the needs of commerce.” Starting up the Missouri on May 14, 1804, the get together reached the headwaters of the Columbia in October of the following year, journeyed down the river to arrive at Cape Disappointment in November, and passed the winter in a rude log fort which they named Fort Clatsop, after a neighboring Indian tribe. And he will even, as do the natives, discover merit within the lengthy winter of dismal skies and warm but chilling rains, calling himself a “webfoot” and stoutly proclaiming that he likes it-when all the while he implies that he considers it poor sportsmanship to complain, since he is aware of that that is the annual tax he pays for eternal verdure, for bushes and grass and ferns and ivy and hydrangeas and holly, and for the privilege of appreciating by distinction the brief bright rainless summer time cooled by the softest yet most invigorating northerly winds.
But the primary post within the Columbia River region was that established by members of John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company in 1811 at Astoria, near the log fort in which Lewis and Clark had handed the winter of 1805-6. One group of Astor’s company sailed from New York around Cape Horn, arriving in March 1811 on the mouth of the Columbia, where eight members of the get together misplaced their lives in an unskilful attempt to enter the river. Ten years later another Englishman, Captain John Meares, fitted out a naval expedition in the hunt for the good river that Heceta had reported in 1775. Entering the broad mouth of the current Columbia, he determined that this was no more than a large bay and departed after naming the entrance Deception Bay and the promontory on the north Cape Disappointment. By the Treaty of Florida in 1819, the southern boundary was fixed on the 42nd parallel; and in 1846, Great Britain and the United States agreed to a northern boundary along the 49th parallel. The treaty of joint management was in impact when Dr. John McLoughlin destined to be probably the most highly effective particular person in the territory for 20 years, got here down the Columbia to Fort George.
After its buy of Astoria in 1813, the North West Company continued to manage the Oregon fur trade until 1821, when it was merged with its British rival the Hudson’s Bay Company. Astoria was restored to American possession in 1818, and the United States and Great Britain agreed to a ten-years’ joint occupancy of the Oregon nation. The fur-buying and selling operations at Astoria have been scarcely effectively beneath means earlier than war broke out between Great Britain and the United States, and early in 1813 the Astorians received data that a British naval force was on its strategy to take possession of the mouth of the Columbia. This news was brought by brokers of the North West Company, who supplied to purchase the entire institution of Astoria at a reasonable valuation. Geographically-minded individuals, conscious that Portland is the farthest west of America’s massive cities, advised “Oregon-Farthest West.” Another group needed “Oregon-Nearest Japan,” and their argument was political. In 1806 a British buying and selling put up was arrange by Simon Fraser of the North West Company, on what later got here to be referred to as Fraser’s Lake, near the 54th parallel. On a second voyage from Boston, within the Columbia, Gray once more visited this area and entered the long-sought river on May n, 1792, crusing for a number of miles upstream, buying and selling with the natives, and making notes about the surrounding country.
