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Apostles of Commerce: the Fur Trade in the Colonial Northwest and the Formation of a Hemispheric Religious Economy, 1807-1859 Jonathan W

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Apostles of Commerce: the Fur Trade in the Colonial Northwest and the Formation of a Hemispheric Religious Economy, 1807-1859 Jonathan W Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2014 Apostles of Commerce: The Fur Trade in the Colonial Northwest and the Formation of a Hemispheric Religious Economy, 1807-1859 Jonathan W. Olson Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES APOSTLES OF COMMERCE: THE FUR TRADE IN THE COLONIAL NORTHWEST AND THE FORMATION OF A HEMISPHERIC RELIGIOUS ECONOMY, 1807-1859 By JONATHAN W. OLSON A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2014 Jonathan Olson defended this dissertation on May 28, 2014. The members of the supervisory committee were: John Corrigan Professor Directing Dissertation Andrew Frank University Representative Amanda Porterfield Committee Member Michael McVicar Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii Always for Courtney iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the members of my committee, Amanda Porterfield, Andrew Frank, Michael McVicar, and especially John Corrigan, for taking time out of their busy schedules to read over drafts and provide helpful feedback. I am also in the debt of numerous archivists, namely those at the Bancroft Library, University of Washington Library, the Hudson's Bay Company Archives, and the Hawaiian Mission Children's Society Library. Lastly, I would like to thank my family and friends for their endless encouragement and, most of all, my wife Courtney, who graciously endured many long and lonely evenings. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... vi 1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................1 2. FUR TRADE IMPORTS, INDIGENOUS SPIRITUALITY, AND THE CONFLATION OF ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE: THE CASE OF KAUXUMA-NUPIKA ..................................25 3. KAPU AND COMMERCE: HAWAIIANS IN THE NORTHWEST FUR TRADE AND THE MATERIALIZATION OF A PACIFIC WORLD RELIGIOUS EXCHANGE ............................84 4. REVENUE, REGULATION, AND RELIGION: THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY ON THE PACIFIC SLOPE ................................................................................................................166 5. HARVESTS AND HANDOUTS: AMERICAN PROTESTANT MISSIONARIES AND THE SCOPE OF THE NORTHWEST FUR TRADE .........................................................................237 6. BAPTISMS, BENEFACTORS, AND BRIGADES: THE CATHOLIC MISSION ECONOMY AND THE FUR TRADE IN COLONIAL OREGON .................................................................300 7. EPILOGUE ..............................................................................................................................355 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................360 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................375 v ABSTRACT The ethnic and national mélange that characterized the Pacific Northwest in the first half of the nineteenth century (Native Americans, Metis, Hawaiians, British, Americans, and French- Canadians all called it home) facilitated a wide range of local and trans-regional religious exchanges largely visible within the networks, resources, and methods of the area's foremost economy: the fur trade. I argue that this trans-continental commercialism, sustained in part by the trafficking of furs in the colonial Northwest, integrated into its system of operations a hemispheric religious economy, whereby fur trade and religious transactions manifested as conflated economic performances within the larger scope of imperial expansion. I explore a variety of religious encounters from the early stages of the trade to its collapse in the mid- century. After establishing a historiographical and interpretative framework in chapter one, I highlight, in chapter two, the interplay between indigenous prophecy and fur trade imports from eastern North America and Europe, which included not only durable goods, but also theologies and moralities. In chapter three, I underscore the role played by Hawaiian employees of fur trading companies in shaping a religious economy which linked the Northwest to a wider Pacific World exchange. In chapter four, I dissect the region's leading trade organization, the London- based Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), and their exploitation of religion as a means of preserving a monopolizing control over all commercial activity in the area. Lastly, in chapters five and six, I scrutinize the Protestant and Catholic mission economies, and their comparable yet contrasting forms of dependence on the capital of fur trading giants such as the HBC. In the end, I suggest that the diffusion of religion into the "secular" - into the "commercial" and "ecological" - during the early nineteenth century set a precedent for the contemporary Northwest as the "None Zone." vi CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION They called him Tsalakum. As the headman of a village on Whidbey Island - a twelve mile stretch of land that forms the northern barrier of what is now Puget Sound - he served as the primary liaison between his community and the Euro-American traders who began arriving in the early part of the nineteenth century. He was responsible for the welfare of his kin and conducted his negotiations with a shrewdness that became legendary within the ranks of trading organizations such as Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). In the early 1840s, he encountered a new type of trader on the Island. Although their skin was light, they wore long black garments instead of leather pantaloons and seemed to care very little about animal furs. They also distributed a different set of commodities. Instead of offering blankets, guns, and ammunition, these Black Robes (as they were called) offered greater spirit power in the form of water purification, which was said to ward off disease and improve one’s fortunes in the arenas of gambling and warfare. These newcomers also gave gifts of significant value. Tsalakum himself "received a wooden strip [also known as the Sahale Stick] on which were marks to designate," according to one writer, "the centuries after the creation of the world and some of the principal events of sacred [biblical] history."1 This stick was nothing the headman or any of his people had ever seen before and he accepted it with great pleasure. The following year, one of these Black Robes (a priest named Francis Norbert Blanchet) was busy conducting a mission at the HBC trading post on the southern end of the Sound (Fort Nisqually) when a visitor arrived with an urgent message. It was the wife of Tsalakum, who 1 F. N. Blanchet to the Bishop of Quebec, St. Paul of Walamette, 23 February 1841, in Notices and Voyages of the famed Quebec Mission to the Pacific Northwest, trans. Carl Landerholm (Portland, OR: Champoeg Press, 1956), 62. 1 beseeched the priest to return home with her, as the chief and others were ill and in need of intervention. To prove their identity and sincerity, she presented Blanchet with the same Sahale Stick her husband received months prior, except in this instance it had been "carefully enclosed in the skin of a sea-lion."2 The packaging of Tsalakum’s Stick offers an apt metaphor for the broader relationship between religion and commerce in the colonial Northwest. The ethnic and national mélange that characterized the region during this era (Native Americans, Metis, Hawaiians, British, Americans, and French-Canadians all called it home) enabled a wide range of local and trans- regional religious exchanges largely visible within the networks, resources, and practices of the area's foremost economy: the fur trade. This trans-continental commercialism, sustained in large part by the hunting and trafficking of animal pelts, integrated into its system of operations a hemispheric religious economy, in which fur trade and religious transactions manifested as conflated economic performances within the larger scope of imperial expansion. Much like Tsalakum’s Stick, religious actors found themselves enveloped in what is best described as an "ecology of exchange," cultivated from decades of fur trade encounters, and one that would prove vital to the transference of their own sets commodities across ethnic and regional lines. In the words of one local trader, "commerce [was], in truth,…hand maid to religion."3 2 Philip M. Hanley, History of the Catholic Ladder, ed. Edward J. Kowrach (Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1993), 22. 3 Archibald McDonald and Malcolm McLeod, Peace River: A Canoe Voyage from Hudson's Bay to the Pacific, by the Late Sir George Simpson in 1828 (Ottawa: J. Durie & Son, 1872), 64. 2 Religion and Trans-Regionalism in the Pacific Northwest This study centers on an area known commonly as the Pacific Northwest. As with any regional identification, it can be as restrictive or expansive as one imagines it to be. It could simply include the modern states of Oregon and Washington or it could stretch as far north as the Arctic Circle. I am most interested in the commercial and religious activity
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