THE AMERICAN FRONTIER AND THE SCOTTISH FUR TRADE IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST By ALYS RACHEL WEBBER A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY Program in American Studies DECEMBER 2019 © Copyright by ALYS RACHEL WEBBER, 2019 All Rights Reserved © Copyright by ALYS RACHEL WEBBER, 2019 All Rights Reserved To the Faculty of Washington State University: The members of the Committee appointed to examine the dissertation of ALYS RACHEL WEBBER find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted. Rory Ong, Ph.D., Chair Mary Bloodsworth-Lugo, Ph.D. Orlan Svingen, Ph.D. C. Richard King, Ph.D. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENT My deepest appreciation to all my friends and family at the Ft Vancouver Historic Site, Vancouver, Washington and the Oregon-California Trails Association (OCTA), The Idaho Chapter for letting me work on the 2016 OCTA Convention and the Northwest Chapter for allowing me to present at the 2017 Spring (NW Chapter) Symposium, Vancouver: Layers of History on the Columbia River , hosted by OCTA and the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation. And especially to: Brian and Terry Hart for taking my mom so I could write; sorry I couldn’t go along on all those trips with you. Sam Pambrun, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla and Historic Frenchtown, Walla Walla, Washington, whom I met at the “Base o’ Blue Mountains” 2015 (NW Chapter) Symposium. As it turned out we are related; Virginia Roberts for providing the McBean genealogy (which included that connection); and Jim Hardee, editor of the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Journal , whom I met at the 2013 “End of the Trail” OCTA Convention in Oregon City, Oregon. Professor Orlan Svingen for allowing me to go, not once, but twice to Virginia City, Montana and especially to his co-instructor Leo Ariwite, Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of Idaho, Ft Hall, ID for teaching me how to make Indian Fry Bread and Indian Tacos, but more importantly, for making mom and I part of the family during our two trips to Salmon, ID for Agai’Dika Days; and to the Agai’Dika for including mom and I in their commemoration. My mother who helped me get past my year long road block (“From Colonized to Colonizer”). Turns out I had already written much of the chapter as part of my reenactor’s persona “Portraying Mrs. M.” It was written as background for appearances when I wore a dress the Ft. iii Vancouver seamstresses were making for me using pictures of Marguerite McLoughlin as a guide. And my committee: Committee chair Rory Ong (English), past Graduate Director of American Studies, WSU Mary Bloodswoth-Lugo (philosophy), current Graduate Director of American Studies Orlan Svingen (public history), Department of History, WSU C. Richard King (social/cultural anthropology), past chair, Department of Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies, WSU; current chair, Humanities, History, and Social Sciences Department, Columbia College Chicago iv THE AMERICAN FRONTIER AND THE SCOTTISH FUR TRADE IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST Abstract by Alys Rachel Webber, Ph.D. Washington State University December 2019 Chair: Rory Ong The French and Indian War opened up the fur trade for Scots. They developed their own “model” of country marriage that evolved into a horizontal “clan” system stretching across the continent. Scots “married-in” to Native communities and encouraged other employees, including the French Canadians and Hawaiian kanaka laborers and their own Scots-Indian sons to do likewise. They married their daughters to newcomers, thereby bringing them into the network as well. This pattern can be identified by researching fur trade genealogies. Over time dowries replaced bride prices and marriage became a formal affair, written contract, before a justice of the peace or in a church rather than an oral agreement. European fathers began to employ ideological institutions like schools and church which taught their daughter to act according to social standards such as the “Cult of Domesticity.” Native women had had a long history of adapting European trade goods into Native fashion and altering their traditional clothing styles to accommodate new lifeways, but now the daughters were expected to dress according to their European social status. The daughters of the country were now seen as assimilated and to have “married-out” of their Indian cultures and into the v Euro American culture. In order to move Indian lands into the trade network and thereby the public sphere these mixed-blood women were considered assimilated and these European-Indian marriages were deemed legal and binding Americans traveled across the North American continent expecting to find an empty wilderness in which to plant their own version of the Puritans “city on the hill.” They took with them ideologies about the frontier, wilderness, and Indians, especially the “Indian Princess.” Captivity narratives had been used by the Puritans to establish social conformity and their morality code continued to permeate American lives 200 years later as thousands left the United States for the Pacific Northwest. Rather than a barren wilderness they found an already established agricultural community operated by the London based Hudson’s Bay Company. This “imagined community” had schools, churches, a cemetery, a lumber mill, produced grain and had a mill, as well as orchards, gardens, and livestock. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENT................................................................................................................ iii ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................v CHAPTER CHAPTER ONE; INTRODUCTION – THE SCOTTISH FUR TRADE IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST.....................................................................................................1 CHAPTER TWO: THE AMERICAN PERCEPTION OF THE FRONTIER ..................19 CHAPTER THREE: FIRST FAMILIES OF THE COLUMBIA [RIVER FUR TRADE] ......................................................................................................50 CHAPTER FOUR: WOMEN IN BETWEEN ....................................................................76 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION..................................................................................104 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................131 vii Dedication For my mother …who knew she was Indian even before she was told, a brief statement at that, which included, and “it’s forbidden to speak about it,” and DNA has confirmed. Now she has the answer to the question, “Are you Indian?” And my dad …who, as a kid, would walk to the Indian campground while out picking up bottles for change and spent much of his retirement years making Indian regalia for reenacting (Boy Scout Camping Honor Society, aka Order of the Arrow). Would he be surprised to find out that his DNA/ genealogy links him to Pocahontas? viii CHAPTER ONE: Introduction - The Scottish Fur Trade in the Columbia River The largest fur trade enterprise in North America was the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). The HBC was more than just a commercial franchise, it was an “imagined community” (Anderson 7). Chartered in 1670, and still in existence today, it was originally situated on the Bay named for explorer Henry Hudson. At its apex it came to encompass parts of the United States and much of what is now Canada (Newman 4). Geographically the HBC was not limited to North America, but operated a fleet of ships which stretched around the world with representatives in Spanish California and the Kingdom of Hawai’i, brigades in both Spanish and Russian territories, as well as trading operations in China. Life was not peaceful for these traders with many of the outposts or houses on the Bay falling to the French and then returning in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 (Queen Anne’s War). The Treaty of Paris in 1763 (French & Indian or Seven Years War) didn’t remove aggressions towards the HBC, but rather it saw an increase. HBC employees killed and in turn were killed by fellow Brits, continuing the clan friction’s brought over from Scotland (Devine, Ends 18). The HBC’s biggest rival – the Northwest Company (NWC) – had evolved out of the void left by French trappers and traders who could no longer get licenses once the French government in North America was replaced by the British government. The NWC was situated along the HBC’s fringes and employees spent much of their time exploring the wilderness seeking the Northwest Passage. Many becoming more famous for those exploits than for being trappers or traders. While the Northwest Company itself was an amalgamation of smaller trading firms, that did not stop it, nor the HBC, from either buying out or bulling their smaller rivals into giving up 1 the trade. This included the Pacific Fur Company (PFC) which the NWC bought out in 1813. The Northwest Company operated in the Pacific Northwest from the eighteen-tens until it was forced to merge with the HBC in 1821. In 1824 the reconfigured HBC moved its operations from the NWC’s Ft. George, originally the PFC’s Ft Astoria, to Ft. Vancouver. The new location was better for farming and the head of the Columbia District, Dr. John McLoughlin, was instructed to grow as much of his own food as possible. This saved the Company the cost of buying and shipping food to such a distant location. An “imagined community,” one of several agricultural stations in the region, soon