Mornin zita...this looks like an interesting read:
Sunday, July 11, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.
Book Review
Issaquah historian digs up a rich mix of nuggets
By Michael Upchurch
Seattle Times book critic
Remember the Fraser River gold rush of 1858?
Issaquah historian Robert E. Ficken ("Washington Territory") is
betting that you don't. And in his excellent short history, "Unsettled
Boundaries: Fraser Gold and the British-American Northwest," he
suggests in the nicest way that maybe you should.
The discovery of gold on British Columbia's largest river, he
maintains, attracted so many American gold-seekers north of the
49th parallel — the border established between the U.S. and British
America in 1846 — that the sovereignty of Britain over "New
Caledonia" (as British Columbia was then called) began to look
shaky. That border might look very different now, Ficken suggests, if
the cool head of James Douglas, governor of Vancouver Island,
hadn't prevailed.
First, some background: By the 1830s the British, in the form of the
Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), had settlements on the lower
Columbia River and Puget Sound. The Columbia River gave the
HBC's vast inland mercantile empire access to the Pacific, whereas
the Fraser route, with its deadly rapids and "goat-appropriate
mountain pathways," did not. HBC officials and British diplomats
naturally hoped to make the Columbia the Anglo-American border in
the west.
While
the
border
was
under
negotiation,
all of
"Oregon
Country"
(anything between Russian Alaska and Mexican California) was open to both British and American settlers. If British settlement
meant mostly HBC forts and farms, American settlement meant land-hungry pioneers from all points east — many with strong
anti-British sentiments.
After the 1846 ruling, American immigrants helped themselves to HBC property, much to the indignation of the British. Twelve
years later, when gold was discovered on the Fraser, attitudes weren't much changed. Many Americans "experienced difficulty," as
Ficken tartly phrases it, "in remembering that the Fraser was British-owned."
At least 30,000 men, many of them veterans of California's 1849 gold rush, turned up hoping to strike it rich — this at a time when
Vancouver Island had less than 800 non-Indian residents. (The native population was about 18,000.)
Many miners tried to avoid paying for mining licenses by reaching the Fraser via Port Townsend or overland from Bellingham Bay.
Whether entering legally or illegally, this "non-hostile invasion by foreigners" created a huge logistical problem.
New arrivals were clueless about local geography, climate or the lack of supplies. Many, after going bust, were unable to afford
passage back to California. New Caledonia at this point didn't even have a government, so it was up to Vancouver Island Gov.
James Douglas to step in.
In Ficken's opinion, Douglas is the hero of this story, and not just from a British point of view. Trying to govern without a budget
(London's instructions were that its Pacific coast colonies should be self-sufficient), he managed to keep out-of-work miners from
starvation, suppress incipient violence between rowdy Americans and local Indians, and keep a lid on food-price inflation in Victoria
(if not on the far reaches of the Fraser). He also offered black-American immigrants and Chinese laborers more protection from
mob bigotry than they enjoyed in the U.S. at the time.
Douglas is a fascinating figure, and while Ficken portrays him vividly in action, he could have offered more on his background.
Dubbed "British Columbia's mulatto king" by one Canadian historian, Douglas was the illegitimate son of a Glasgow merchant and
a black free-woman from Barbados, and he had a "part Indian" family (his wife was half Cree). His diverse personal background,
along with his many years with the HBC, surely contributed to his resourcefulness in keeping this "invasion" from turning to chaos.
If Douglas is the hero of "Unsettled Boundaries," then the archetypal "ugly American" is its blundering villain. We weren't, to put it
mildly, gracious guests.
Part of the problem was that we didn't think of ourselves as guests. And if Douglas hadn't handled the situation so well, Ficken
suggests, the comical 1859 spark of hostilities over territorial rights in the San Juan Islands (known as the "Pig War," after the
dispute's one casualty: an HBC pig) might have turned bloody, with an unknown outcome for all. A Washington under British rule, if
the British navy had been called into action? A U.S.A. stretching uninterrupted up to the Alaskan panhandle, as the Democratic
campaign slogan of 1844 ("Fifty-four forty, or fight!") demanded? Who knows?
What "Unsettled Boundaries" deftly shows is how much in flux the very notions of "British America" and "U.S.A." still were, locally,
in the late 1850s. Throw in Ficken's wry style, brisk storytelling and scrupulous annotation (for anyone wanting to do follow-up
reading), and you have a book that's a model of its kind.
seattletimes.nwsource.com |
