Pacific Fur Company

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The Pacific Fur Company was a short-lived North American fur trading company founded by Johann Jakob Astor in 1810, and whose sole base, Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River , was sold again in 1813. In the dispute over this fort, British and US interests clashed on the Pacific coast for the first time.

history

The Pacific Fur Company was founded in New York on June 23, 1810 . The half of the shares of wholly owned by owned John Jacob Astor located American Fur Company . Astor also provided all of the capital for the Pacific Fur Company's operations. The other half of the capital consisted of reserves and shares of the employees and collaborating partners. Astor, a German emigrant who came to America when he was 20 and who had stayed in Montreal for a long time , had returned to Albany in the USA in 1809 .

As early as 1811, the company established a trading post at what is now Astoria in Oregon , on the south bank of the Columbia . Astor tried to get into the triangular trade between the Pacific coast, China and Europe. In the process, goods that were important or significant for the local Indian tribes were loaded into New York and exchanged for furs. These were sold to China in exchange for china , silk , spices and other goods. These goods were to be returned to New York via Hawaii . Two expeditions were sent out, one overland and one around Cape Horn .

The leader of the sea expedition was Jonathan Thorn . He set off with the Tonquin , which Astor had bought for $ 37,860 , in New York Harbor on September 8, 1810, and reached the Columbia Estuary on March 22, 1811. Here Thorn lost eight men in a storm. They built Fort Astoria near Fort Clatsop , known since the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1805/06 . In his attempt to trade furs further north, with the Tla-o-qui-aht on Clayoquot Sound , he lost his life, his ship and the entire crew of 61 men ( Tonquin disaster ) in June .

The overland group known as the Astor Expedition or Hunt Party was led by Wilson Price Hunt . She set out from Montreal in July 1810 with 16 men , followed the Great Lakes and drove down the Mississippi to St. Louis . In March 1811 she set out from there, followed the Missouri to the Arikara villages near today's Mobridge in South Dakota , crossed the North American continental divide at Union Pass and reached the Snake River in southern Idaho . But the men were scattered there, lost food and goods, and reached Fort Astoria by various routes in January and February 1812.

During the war between Great Britain and the USA (1812 to 1814/15) an employee of Astor sold the only base to the British North West Company (October 16, 1813). As early as the beginning of the war, London had sent Isaac Todd and a land force. Astor tried to contact the Russian Fur Trading Company, and plans arose to send the USS Adams to protect the fort. Astor's ship, the Lark , still left Hawaii, but was sunk in the storm. The surviving captain and Hunt bought a new ship, the Albatross , which they took to reach Astoria. But McDougall and Mackenzie were now in charge there.

The neighboring British were starving and they waited in vain for the rescue ship, the Isaac Todd . They bought the trading post from Duncan McDougall, who now ran Fort Astoria and had married the daughter of a Chinook chief named Concomly , on October 16, 1813. The British took over the fort and were encouraged by the arrival of the British ship HMS Racoon on November 30th. This ship had been sent in place of the Isaac Todd .

Hunt and a few other opponents of the sale left the now British fort in April 1814 and reached New York in 1816. As early as November 1814, reports appeared in the New York newspapers that Astor's society was in ruins. But Astor still didn't give up. The peace of Ghent of Christmas 1814 provided for the return of all conquered land. Astor alleged that McDougall had no authority to sell the fort. In fact, he was able to get John Quincy Adams , who later became President of the United States, to support him. He sent the USS Ontario to the Pacific, which claimed the area for the USA in August 1817, but left it again immediately. In 1818 Great Britain and the USA agreed on a common use of the huge area.

Astor's fur trading company, the American Fur Company , still had the right to trade fur in the region. He had reached related to Fort Astoria, the US government that the Lewis and Clark Expedition summoned, but also to Robert Gray , while the British on the purchase agreement and to be discovered since to John Meares and George Vancouver called had.

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