—11—

Astoria

Astoria in 1813.

IN THE PICTURESQUE HAMLET OF WALLDORF, GERMANY, NEAR the northern edge of the Black Forest, Maria Magdalena Astor gave birth on July 17, 1763, to Johann Jakob, her sixth child and fifth son (the first son died in infancy). The father, Jakob Astor, was a man of limited education and narrow horizons who worked hard and ran the most prosperous butcher shop in the area, although he was by no means wealthy. After Maria died when young Johann was three, his father remarried and in relatively short order he and his new wife added another six children to the already over-crowded Astor home.

Jakob had high hopes that his sons would join the family business, but one by one they disappointed him. George Peter, the oldest, was the first to go, heading to London in the early 1770s, where he made a name for himself as a maker of fine musical instruments. The second oldest, Johann Heinrich, then joined the German army as a cook and was shipped off to America in 1775 as part of a Hessian mercenary force hired by Britain’s King George III to fight the rebels. It wasn’t long though before Johann Heinrich, who by this time had changed his name to Henry, decided that his future lay in America, and after the Battle of Long Island in the summer of 1776, he deserted his regiment and opened a butcher’s stall in Fly Market, at the intersection of Maiden Lane and Pearl Street near the East River in New York.¹ The third oldest son, Johann Melchior, settled near Koblenz, where he ran a school and became a tenant farmer on a local prince’s land. Next it was Johann Jakob’s turn to pursue his own course. While he excelled as a butcher in his father’s shop, he was also a gifted student with unbridled confidence, who from an early age believed he was destined for great success far beyond the borders of his sleepy hometown. The letters from George and Henry, which painted pictures of unlimited opportunity in their adopted cities, only heightened Johann Jakob’s desire to leave.²

Johann Jakob first discussed the idea of leaving with his pastor and Valentine Jeune, his beloved teacher. They knew Walldorf was too small to contain Johann Jakob’s talents and ambitions, but they thought that going straight to New York was unwise. America was in the throes of the revolution, and although Henry had successfully established himself, that didn’t mean Johann Jakob would have the same luck, especially since attempting to launch one’s career in the middle of a war zone seemed risky at best. Instead Jeune and the pastor encouraged Johann Jakob to go to London, where he could work for George, learn to speak proper English, and then, when the situation in America resolved itself, immigrate to New York.

The biggest obstacle to carrying out this plan was Johann Jakob’s father, and Jeune and the pastor kindly offered to broach the subject with him on the young man’s behalf. Not surprisingly Johann Jakob’s father was adamantly opposed to the idea. He didn’t want to lose a fourth son, especially one so skilled with a knife and good with numbers—who, then, would take over the shop? Finally, however, after months of heated discussions, Jakob relented and gave his son permission to go. Just two months shy of his seventeenth birthday, in May 1779 Johann Jakob waved good-bye to Walldorf forever.

As the familiar story goes, Johann Jakob walked to the Rhine, made his way to Holland as a deckhand on a timber barge heading downriver, then hopped a ship to London, where he immediately began working in George’s musical instrument factory. Four years later, after anglicizing his name to John Jacob, learning the language, and honing his skills as a salesman, John was ready for America. His brother Henry had become a prosperous butcher in New York, and his letters to John were brimming with optimism—all one needed to succeed in this new land was intelligence and a strong work ethic, both of which John possessed in abundance. So in November 1783, less than two months after the Treaty of Paris officially ended the war, John booked a berth in steerage on the North Carolina, bound for America, and began his voyage across the Atlantic with just five pounds in his pocket. Packed in his luggage was a small consignment of flutes, the sale of which he hoped would launch his American adventure.

It was on this ship that Astor’s education in furs began. A few of the first-class passengers happened to be employees of the mighty Hudson’s Bay Company, the largest and most powerful fur-trading operation in the world. Astor overheard these men talking shop on their occasional rambles beyond the confines of the first-class decks, and he was intrigued by their animated conversation. His interest was piqued further by a fellow German traveling in steerage, who had been a fur merchant in America since before the war and was eager to answer Astor’s many questions. Most exciting of all was the intelligence that the furs obtained from the Indians for trifling amounts of goods could be sold at a tremendous profit in New York or London.

By the time the North Carolina reached coast of Virginia in mid-January, the frigid grip of a particularly cold winter had choked the lower reaches of Chesapeake Bay with ice. For about a week the captain slowly sailed the ship up the bay, gingerly steering his way through the constantly shifting, sharp-edged floes, which often came dangerously close to the hull. Then, just when Baltimore Harbor hove into view, the temperature plummeted and the ice closed in, immobilizing the ship tantalizingly close to the shore. Frugal and in no particular hurry, Astor opted to stay on board, since according to the terms of his ticket the ship’s owners had to provide food and lodging until the trip was over. More than a month passed while Astor watched many of his fellow passengers lower themselves to the frozen surface of the bay and drag their belongings to land. Then, with the food onboard running low, Astor did likewise and caught a coach that deposited him in downtown Baltimore on March 24 or 25. That same day, while walking up Market Street, Astor met Nicholas Tuschdy, a Swiss shopkeeper, who invited him into his house for a drink and offered to display some of Astor’s flutes in his shop. A few of them sold, and within a month’s time Astor had saved enough money to buy passage to his ultimate destination, New York.³

Having not seen him for nine years, Henry heartily welcomed his younger brother and offered to put him to work at Fly Market cutting meat, but John had no interest in re-creating his life in Germany, and instead took a job peddling cakes, cookies, and rolls baked by one of Henry’s friends. This gave him a chance to learn his way around New York, at the time a relatively compact and impoverished city that was still digging its way out of the rubble of seven years of war and occupation. While he hawked pastries Astor never forgot the informal education he received onboard the North Carolina, and during the summer of 1784 he decided to see if the stories he had heard about furs were true. To find out he knew he would have to learn more about the trade, so he went to work for a Quaker fur dealer named Robert Browne, beating furs to keep them free of moths, a job for which he received two dollars per week as well as room and board.⁴

Astor, ever the diligent and conscientious employee, readily absorbed everything Browne taught him. Then, on his own time, at night and on weekends, Astor took his education one step farther. He scoured the city’s docks, looking for river men or Indians who had furs to sell, and then bought them using the savings from his job as well as the proceeds from any instruments he had sold. Within a year Astor sailed to London with a sizable number of pelts, which he sold for a handsome profit. He picked up more flutes from his brother, persuaded two London piano makers to appoint him their sole American agent, and then returned to New York. Henry was right; America was the land of opportunity, and John was eager to build on his success.⁵

Astor continued working for Browne during the day and peddling instruments and furs on the side, but circumstances were changing, and he was ready to head in a new direction. In September 1785, Astor married Sarah Todd, who brought a dowry of three hundred dollars along with a self-confidence to match her husband’s and an equally strong entrepreneurial drive. With her encouragement and support, Astor struck out on his own in the late 1780s, opening an instrument shop at 81 Pearl Street and also getting more deeply involved with furs.⁶ The instrument business prospered, but furs were foremost on Astor’s mind, and increasingly they took up most of his time and energy. He went on long, arduous, and at times dangerous trips to the backwoods of upstate New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, lugging a sixty-pound backpack and trading with trappers, Indians, and other traders for furs, and then bringing them back to New York for sale or export. He forged strong ties with merchants in Montreal and arranged for joint shipments of furs to Europe, while establishing trading depots at Albany, Schenectady, Fort Schuyler (Utica), and in the Catskills, which became magnets for anyone who had fur to sell.

With beaver selling for twenty shillings per pound or more, the profits accumulated, and Astor saw the promise of an even brighter future. He boldly predicted that when the British finally handed over the disputed fur trading-posts along the northern frontier, “then…I will make my fortune in the fur trade.”⁷ And he was right. After the Jay treaty transferred the posts to the Americans, Astor expanded his operations, and by 1800 he was reportedly worth $250,000, most of which came from the sale of furs.⁸ His success was all the more remarkable, coming at a time when the continental fur trade in America was at a relatively low ebb—indeed, at the beginning of the nineteenth century the only other American fur traders who were generating impressive profits were the “Boston Men” trading for furs in the Pacific Northwest and sending them to China. Astor was well aware of their success, and in 1800 he joined with three other merchants to send the Severn to Canton, loaded with furs. Its return cargo of satin, silk, tea, and porcelain generated hefty profits, which Astor supplemented in subsequent years by assuming sole ownership of the Severn and adding two other ships to his growing China fleet.⁹

 

NOT ONE TO LET HIS MONEY SIT IDLE, ASTOR PLOWED HIS growing profits from the fur trade into real estate. His first purchase came in 1789, when he bought two lots of land on Bowery Lane for a little more than six hundred dollars; an impressive amount when one considers that Astor’s fellow countrymen were earning an average of about one dollar per day. At about this time, as legend has it, some splendidly lavish row houses were built on Broadway, which had the whole city talking. While walking by them one day, Astor supposedly remarked, “I’ll build…a greater house than any of these, and on this very street.” Whether or not he actually uttered these words, he nevertheless followed through on the promise, after a fashion. In 1802, for the grand sum of $27,500, Astor purchased 223 Broadway, the spacious home of Rufus King, New York’s first senator. Thirty-four years later Astor tore down the house and all the others on that block to build an even more imposing edifice—the six-story, 309-room, granite-faced Astor House, which quickly became one of the most fashionable hotels in the city.¹⁰

Over the years many of Astor’s associates ridiculed his real estate transactions, especially those in which he acquired empty land well beyond the city proper. They said he had wasted his money on dirt and trees, but when the city expanded right up to the edge of Astor’s holdings, he sold or rented his “worthless” land for enormous sums—including all of what would one day become Times Square. When he was very old, Astor was asked if he had accumulated an excessive amount of real estate, to which he replied, “Could I begin life again, knowing what I now know, and had money to invest, I would buy every foot of land on the Island of Manhattan.”¹¹

When Astor purchased the King house on Broadway, however, real estate was not yet his primary interest, nor his primary source of income, although in later years it would become both. In the early 1800s Astor, already one of the richest men in the country and on the verge of becoming a millionaire, was first and foremost a fur dealer—the most successful one in the United States, if not the world.¹² Unwilling to sit on his laurels or his growing fortune, he was looking for ways to expand his operations and earn more. And soon after Lewis and Clark returned from their epic journey, Astor’s gaze shifted westward.

 

WHILE MANUEL LISA WAS LAUNCHING HIS FIRST FORAY UP the Missouri in the spring of 1807, Astor was busy formulating a plan, the implementation of which was designed to give him a virtual monopoly of the fur trade west of the Mississippi all the way to the Pacific. The plan was bold in conception and sweeping in scope. He would build a series of trading posts along the Missouri, shadowing the trail of Lewis and Clark, up to and over the continental divide, then along the Columbia to the ocean. Furs gathered to the east of the divide, from throughout the Missouri drainage basin, would be transported to St. Louis or New Orleans and ultimately to markets in New York and Europe, while furs collected on the western side would be brought to the shores of the Pacific and then shipped to China, where they would be traded for silk, spices, tea, and porcelain, which would be sent to New York for domestic and overseas sale. As the anchor of his trading empire in the West, Astor envisioned establishing a post at the mouth of the Columbia River, which would be the portal for the distribution of furs flowing in from the countryside. To carry out his designs, Astor incorporated the American Fur Company on April 6, 1808, with a capital stock of one million dollars.

Astor faced few obstacles in forging ahead with his scheme. He had the money to hire as many people as he needed, and to outfit them with the best supplies and materials. And the federal government, while keenly interested in western development, had no policy regarding private ventures in that quarter and would not stand in Astor’s way. But before beginning his march to the West, Astor wanted President Jefferson to sanction or at least approve of his new enterprise. Such “approbation” would give him an advantage over the competition and might come in handy should any problems arise. Getting the president’s support, however, would not be easy. Astor knew that if he told the truth—that his interests were purely commercial and that he wanted to monopolize the western fur trade for his own personal gain—Jefferson would likely decline. After all, monopolistic ambitions and great concentrations of wealth were not currently in fashion, and Jefferson’s view of western development encompassed more than just expanding the opportunities for trade. So, according to the biographer John Upton Terrell, Astor lied. Astor presented the American Fur Company as being an organization composed of many key investors, when in reality it was almost entirely under his control. He claimed that his goal was to improve relations with the Indians and pave the way for peaceful settlement of the West, when his primary interest was making more money from furs. And he averred that his operations would save government resources because they would obviate the need for the establishment of more fur factories, when all he really wanted was to avoid government competition.¹³

To this litany of mistruths, or at least lies by omission, Astor added one undeniable fact—the Canadians were thrashing the Americans in the race for furs out West. Although article 3 of the Jay treaty gave the Canadians and Americans reciprocal fur-trading rights across the border in and around the Great Lakes region and the Old Northwest, the Americans were not at all sure that these rights extended to the lands of the Louisiana Purchase; the problem was, the Canadians were sure they did, and Canadian trappers and traders annually had been taking hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of “American” furs from the lands west of the Mississippi out to the Missouri and bringing them to Montreal for sale.¹⁴ Astor rightly argued that this traffic amounted to a cross-border flow of profits. He claimed that America was the poorer for it because American trappers and traders were losing out on sales, and American consumers were paying more for their furs because, to meet growing demand, merchants like Astor had to buy furs from Montreal at inflated prices. Invoking the early-nineteenth-century jingoism of his adopted land, Astor maintained that America’s furs should be controlled and sold by Americans; if his plan worked, that would be the case.¹⁵

Astor relied on all these factors in making his pitch to Jefferson, and the president gave his blessing to the enterprise in a letter to Astor in early April 1808. “I learn with great satisfaction the disposition of our merchants to form into companies for undertaking the Indian trade within our own territories…. In order to get the whole of this business passed into the hands of our own citizens,…every reasonable patronage and facility in the power of the Executive will be afforded.”¹⁶

 

WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ONBOARD, ASTOR SHIFTED into high gear. To spearhead the establishment of a fur-trading post at the mouth of the Columbia, he created a subsidiary of the American Fur Company and called it the Pacific Fur Company. The latter was charged with sponsoring two expeditions—one by sea and the other by land. A ship with an assortment of managers, clerks, and fur traders, as well as necessary trading goods, stores, and armaments would be sent around Cape Horn to lay the groundwork for the fortified post at the mouth of the Columbia, while another equally varied group would follow Lewis and Clark’s path and then meet up with the shipborne contingent.

Astor knew that once the Canadians found out about his plans for the Pacific Fur Company they would be incensed; after all, they were equally interested in exploiting the furs beyond the Rockies, and didn’t want to be crowded out by the Americans. So, ever the pragmatist, Astor decided to invite the Canadians in, even though such a move appeared to run counter to his implied promise to Jefferson that his venture would place the trade entirely in American hands. Realizing that unbridled competition for western furs would be damaging to both his interests and the Canadians’, Astor proposed that they join forces, offering his chief Canadian competitor, the North West Company, the opportunity to buy a one-third interest in the Pacific Fur Company. The North West Company, however, wasn’t biting. It wanted the far-western fur trade all to itself. While this rejection frustrated Astor, it also redoubled his resolve to get his post up and running before the Canadians established themselves on the coast.

Although the Pacific Fur Company was not going to be part owned by a Canadian company, Astor still wanted Canadians to be intimately involved in its operations. Astor had long worked with and bought from Canadian fur traders and agents, whom he believed were the best in the business. Since he wanted to do everything to ensure the success of his enterprise, he set about hiring numerous Canadians, many of whom were disgruntled North West Company employees, and giving them minority partnership stakes in the Pacific Fur Company. Among those brought on in this manner were Alexander McKay, Duncan McDougall, David Stuart, and Donald Mackenzie, and to their ranks were added a corps of French Canadian voyageurs, as well as a few Canadian clerks. To round out the Pacific Fur Company’s forces, which ultimately exceeded 140 men, Astor also hired quite a few American fur traders, agents, and clerks, but to make it clear that this was an American operation, he appointed Wilson Price Hunt, a New-Jersey born merchant, to serve both as the leader of the overland expedition and Astor’s chief representative and agent at the planned western post. Astor provided $400,000 to cover the expenses of this massive operation.¹⁷

 

ASTOR’S SHIP THE TONQUIN WAS READYING FOR ITS voyage to the Columbia in early September 1810. It was a fast, sturdy, and relatively new ship, ninety-four feet long, twenty-five feet wide, twelve feet deep, mounted with ten guns, and rated at 269 tons burden. To its crew of twenty-one were added thirty-three employees of the Pacific Fur Company, including four of the partners—McKay, McDougall, Stuart, and Stuart’s nephew, Robert. The captain of the ship was a highly decorated and respected navy lieutenant named Jonathan Thorn, who had been granted a furlough from the navy to command this voyage.¹⁸ And command is exactly what he planned to do. Gabriel Franchère, one of the clerks who sailed on Tonquin, later wrote that Thorn was “a strict disciplinarian, of a quick and passionate temper, accustomed to exact obedience, considering nothing but duty, and giving himself no troubles about the murmurs of his crew, taking counsel of nobody, and following Mr. Astor’s instructions to the letter. Such was the man who had been appointed to command our ship.”¹⁹ While some of these traits had no doubt served Thorn well in the navy, onboard the Tonquin they became a recipe for disaster.

As the Tonquin’s departure date approached, Astor grew increasingly worried about the safety of his ship. Tensions between the United States and Great Britain, which would soon erupt in the War of 1812, were on the rise. Astor had heard a rumor that a British warship had been dispatched from Halifax, perhaps at the urging of the North West Company, to stop the Tonquin, impress all of its British passengers, and thereby put an end to the expedition. To counter this perceived plot, Astor asked the commodore of the navy stationed in New York to provide an escort for the Tonquin so it could safely clear the coast. The commodore obliged, and placed “Old Ironsides,” the U.S. frigate Constitution, at Astor’s service.

The day before the Tonquin was scheduled to leave, Astor handed his partners a letter outlining what he expected of them and how they were to comport themselves during and after the voyage. He asked them to try their best to encourage “harmony and unanimity,” and to discuss major decisions with the entire company and resolve any differences by a majority vote. Since so much of the expedition’s ultimate success would depend on cordial or at least civil relations with the local Indians, who would be supplying most of the furs, Astor gave special attention to this issue, directing his representatives to conduct themselves in such a manner as to win over the Indians. “If you find them kind, as I hope you will, be so to them. If otherwise, act with caution and forbearance, and convince them that you come as friends.” Astor furthermore warned Thorn “to be particularly careful on the coast, and not rely too much on the friendly disposition of the natives. All accidents which have as yet happened there arose from too much confidence in the Indians.”²⁰

 

THE CONSTITUTION ESCORTED THE HEAVILY LADEN TONQUIN out of New York Harbor on September 8, 1810, and with no British warship in the offing, Astor’s ship was sent on its way. The troubles began almost immediately. Used to barking orders and having them instantly obeyed, Thorn quickly came to despise his passengers, whom he viewed as landlubbers and dandies. He didn’t like the familiarity and lack of discipline onboard, or the voyageurs’ boisterous behavior and propensity to break into song. Deriding the incessant note taking of some of the clerks, he found their “literary pretensions” and intention to publish tales of the voyage contemptible. Thorn was particularly disgusted with the partners’ complaints about the food, which the captain believed was more than adequate, including an array of fresh and smoked meats. “When thwarted in their cravings for delicacies,” Thorn commented, “they would exclaim that it was d——d hard they could not live as they pleased upon their own property, being on board their own ship, freighted with their own merchandise. And these are the fine fellows who made such boast that they could ‘eat dogs.’” Thorn questioned the partners’ masculinity and vowed never to ship out with them again “without having Fly-market on the forecastle, Covent-garden on the poop, and a cool spring from Canada in the maintop.” And as for the clerks and laborers on board, Thorn labeled them the “most helpless, worthless beings ‘that ever broke sea biscuit.’”²¹

Thorn’s passengers, in turn, chafed under the military discipline he tried to impose on the ship. The partners were incensed with Thorn’s imperious manner, since they viewed themselves as being his masters instead of the other way around. The voyageurs didn’t like being chastised for singing, nor did they, the clerks, or the partners appreciate Thorn’s demands that they clean their living quarters, exercise on the main deck, and extinguish all lamps at eight o’clock. When Thorn warned the partners that he would clap them in irons if they continued what he perceived to be disrespectful behavior, McDougall grabbed his pistol and threatened the captain with death if he ever carried out such a threat. McKay’s concerns about the captain led him to write in his journal, “I fear we are in the hands of a maniac.”²²

No single event better exemplifies the poisonous atmosphere on the Tonquin than its stopover at the Falkland Islands. On December 4, 1810, crewmen—accompanied by some of the passengers who wanted to explore the island for “curiosities”—were sent ashore to fill the water casks. Although Thorn had warned them not to wander too far and to return to the ship promptly when the gun was fired, when that signal came they ignored it and didn’t reboard the ship until some hours later, when they were greeted with great hostility by the infuriated captain. The Tonquin stopped again at another part of the Falklands on December 7, to make repairs to the ship. For four days the Tonquin lay at anchor, while most of the partners and a few clerks set up a tent on the nearby island and spent their time killing penguins, geese, ducks, and seals, and searching the island for the remains of French and English habitation. On the morning of December 11, McKay and David Stuart were on the far side of the island looking for game while a small group was gathering grass for the hogs and others were carving new wooden headstones to replace the worn ones that stood at the head of the graves of two long-dead Englishmen.

With the repairs completed and additional water supplies taken on, Thorn gave the order to fire one of the guns. Soon everyone but McKay and Stuart had returned to the beach, where the small boat that had taken them ashore was hauled up on the sand, and where they waited for the two partners to appear. Thorn, however, was in no mood for waiting. This was the second time his passengers had disregarded his plea, and he had had enough. He ordered the anchor weighed and the sails unfurled.

By the time McKay and Stuart arrived at the beach, the Tonquin was already receding from view. Dumbfounded and horrified, the eight men jumped into the boat and began rowing furiously toward the departing ship. The ship’s passengers pleaded with Thorn to turn around, and one even bran-dished a gun and threatened to blow the captain’s brains out, but he would not relent. For three and a half hours the eight men rowed into the open ocean, and only a shifting wind, which slowed the Tonquin’s progress, enabled them to overtake the ship and clamber back onboard.²³ Later writing to Astor about this event, Thorn claimed: “Had the wind (unfortunately) not hauled ahead soon after leaving the harbor’s mouth, I should positively have left them; and, indeed, I cannot but think it an unfortunate circumstance for you that it so happened, for the first loss in this instance would, in my opinion, have proved the best, as they seem to have no idea of the value of property, nor any apparent regard for your interest, although interwoven with their own.”²⁴

 

AFTER A TYPICALLY BRUISING TRIP AROUND CAPE HORN, the Tonquin arrived at “Owyhee” on February 11, 1811. The layover lasted a little more than two weeks, and did nothing to elevate Thorn’s abysmal estimation of his passengers. “To enumerate the thousand instances of ignorance, filth, etc.,” Thorn wrote to Astor, “or to particularize all the frantic gambols that are daily practiced, would require volumes.”²⁵ Still, some critical business was done. The Tonquin’s supplies were replenished, and twenty-two islanders were hired, half of whom were slated to service the ship, while the rest were to work for the company. With that the ship left Hawaii and reached the mouth of the Columbia on March 22, 1811.

A less cocksure man would have trembled at the sight of the treacherous, churning waters of the Columbia rushing into the sea, and would have reconsidered his course of action. But Thorn was not that man, and he ordered the first mate along with four men, three of whom were “Canadian lads unacquainted with sea service,” into a whaleboat to find a way over the sandbars, which had breakers crashing all around and standing waves rising ominously toward the sky. The first mate protested that this was a deadly gambit since he was being “sent off without seamen to man [his]…boat, in boisterous weather, and on the most dangerous part of the Northwest Coast.”²⁶ Thorn, enraged by the mate’s temerity, told him that “if you are afraid of water, you should have remained in Boston” then he thundered, “I command here…do not be a coward. Put off!”²⁷

The partners pleaded with Thorn to rescind his orders, but he ignored their entreaties, swearing that a “combination was formed to frustrate his designs.” Realizing that he had no choice but to obey, the tearful first mate faced the partners and said, “My uncle was drowned here not many years ago, and I am now going to lay my bones with his. Farewell, my friends! We will perhaps meet again in the next world.”²⁸ No sooner had they pushed off than the churning waters tossed the boat about like a cork on the waves, spinning it around, hurtling it over crests and into deep troughs, and threatening to swamp or overturn it at any moment. Less than one hundred yards from the ship, the men and the boat disappeared from view, never to be seen again.

Although Thorn was shaken he was unbowed, and over the next few days he sent repeated forays to find a safe passage over the sandbars and into the broad and relatively quiet waters beyond. Three more men were lost, but finally the Tonquin made it across and anchored in Baker Bay near midnight on March 24. Reflecting on the disasters that had just occurred, Franchère commented: “This loss of eight of our number, in two days, before we had set foot on shore, was a bad augury, and was sensibly felt by all of us…. We had left New York, for the most part strangers to one another; but arrived at the river Columbia we were all friends, and regarded each other almost as brothers…. The preceding days had been days of apprehension and of uneasiness; this was one of sorrow and mourning.”²⁹

The immediate task at hand was to find a location for the post. After searching the lower reaches of the river estuary, and various coves and harbors, the partners selected Point George (now Smith Point) on the south shore of the Columbia right next to Youngs Bay. By the second week of April the men were busy with the backbreaking work of clearing the ground for and building the structures of what would be christened Fort Astoria, in honor of their employer. As the fort took shape Chinook and Clatsop Indians began their daily visits, bearing food and furs to trade, and sometimes just reconnoitering. Thorn, impatient to follow his instructions and take the Tonquin north on a trading expedition, finally embarked in early June, taking with him twenty-three men, including McKay who was to be the supercargo, and an Indian interpreter named Lamazu, who was engaged to join the trip along the way. Just before leaving Astoria, Thorn had gotten into a disagreement with his second mate, and ordered him to stay behind. McKay, alarmed by this turn of events, took one of the clerks aside before departing and whispered, “You see how unfortunate we are: the captain, in one of his frantic fits, has now discharged the only officer on board. If you ever see us safe back, it will be a miracle.”³⁰

 

THE TONQUIN ANCHORED IN CLAYOQUOT SOUND, ON THE southwestern side of Vancouver Island.³¹ The local Indians were cordial at first, warmly welcoming McKay and some others onboard into their village, and giving McKay a plush bed of beautiful otter skins to sleep on at night. At the same time Indians paddled out to the ship to trade furs. All was going well until, true to form, Thorn’s imperiousness got the best of him. When the tribal chief badgered Thorn to accept a particularly hard bargain, Thorn grabbed a rolled-up sea otter pelt from the chief’s hands and smacked him in the face with it. Seething, the chief and his warriors departed, but they did not forget about the incident; instead they planned revenge.

A few days later the Indians returned to the Tonquin, seemingly peaceful and ready to trade. The crew allowed multiple canoes to offload, and soon the ship’s deck was swarming with Indians, each of whom was holding a bundle of otter pelts. The sheer number of natives unnerved some of the crew, who ran to inform Thorn and McKay. When the two made it to the poop deck, Lamazu told them that he thought “some evil design was on foot,” and although McKay had similar suspicions, Thorn discounted their concerns, claiming, “that with the firearms on board, there was no reason to fear even a greater number of Indians.”³² Apparently Thorn forgot or simply disregarded Astor’s stern warning to not “admit more than a few [natives] on board…[the] ship at a time.”³³ But as the throng of Indians on and around the ship continued to swell, even Thorn grew alarmed. He abruptly ordered the Indians off the ship and told his men to weigh anchor and set the sails, but it was too late. With a cue from their chief, the Indians attacked, wielding knives and war clubs they had hidden in their bundles of furs.

McKay, the first to die, was clubbed in the head and tossed alive over the side into a canoe full of Indian women, who finished him off with their paddles. Thorn, who had failed to bring his pistol from below, put up a valiant fight using a pocketknife, but after killing two of his assailants, he too was overwhelmed. Within five minutes the slaughter was nearly complete, and only five crewmen remained, one of whom was severely wounded. They withdrew to the lower deck, grabbed guns, and began shooting up the companionway, sending the Indians over the railings. The crewmen then ran to main deck and continued shooting as the Indians furiously paddled to shore.

That night the wounded crewman, realizing that he wasn’t going to survive, and wanting revenge, stayed behind while the others escaped on a whaleboat. The next morning when the Indians returned, the crewman was ready. Not seeing anyone onboard, the Indians, cautiously at first and then in increasing numbers, climbed over the rails and up into the rigging until there were hundreds on the ship. At that moment the crewman lit the nine thousand pounds of gunpowder in the ship’s magazine, and in an instant the Tonquin was blown apart, sending “arms, legs, heads and bodies, flying in every direction.”³⁴ All told more than two hundred Indians were killed along with the crewman. The four men in the whaleboat didn’t fare any better. They were finally caught by the Indians and tortured to death. The only survivor from the Tonquin was Lamazu, who had made it to shore during the initial melee and became a prisoner of the local tribe.

 

THE ASTORIANS WHO REMAINED AT THE MOUTH OF THE COLUMBIA expected the Tonquin to return from its northern trading venture in three months’ time. But as early as July word of the disaster began filtering back to the fort, and by late August the increasingly detailed reports from various Indians confirmed that the Tonquin and its crew were gone, with the final proof coming in early October when Lamazu, freed by his captors, told the Astorians what had happened. The Astorians were deeply depressed over the tragedy, which had greatly diminished their numbers and left them bereft of many goods and supplies that had been blown up along with the ship. But they were also on guard. As news of the Tonquin spread, many Indians became furious about the explosion and emboldened about the prospects of overpowering the white men, whose forces were now much reduced. The Astorians knew something was wrong when the Indians began withdrawing from the area and then stopped coming to the fort. Then, as rumors swirled of a planned Indian attack, the Astorians began enhancing the fort’s defenses and performing daily drills to familiarize themselves with the use of their weapons. But McDougall, the man in charge at Astoria, realized that his small band was no match for the Indians should they stage an assault, so he staged an assault of his own—a psychological one.

McDougall invited the local chiefs to a meeting. Once they were sitting around a fire, McDougall reached into his pocket and produced a small vial. “The white men among you,” said McDougall, “are few in number, it is true, but they are mighty in medicine…. In this bottle I hold the smallpox, safely corked up; I have but to draw the cork, and let loose the pestilence, to sweep man, woman, and child from the face of the earth!” Smallpox introduced by fur traders had ravaged the coastal Indians years earlier, and the prospect of its return terrified them. With McDougall’s threat hanging over them, the chiefs promised to leave the white men alone, and thus an uneasy truce was achieved.³⁵

Despite the disasters that had befallen the Astorians thus far, there was some cause for optimism. They were slowly transforming Astoria into a true fort. They built a warehouse, some dwellings, and a high picket fence, all of which formed an enclosure 90 by 120 feet, palisaded at the front and rear, and with a small cannon mounted at each corner. Using the seeds and root stocks they had brought with them, they planted a sizable garden, which was soon producing a healthy crop of potatoes and turnips, with one of the latter weighing an astonishing fifteen pounds. They used prefabricated materials that had been stowed on the Tonquin to build a small schooner—the first American ship ever constructed on the West Coast—and named it Dolly after Astor’s daughter Dorothea. They had begun trading with the local Indians, and were already sending expeditions upriver to establish new posts. Thus the Astorians appeared to be on their way to establishing the fur-trading entrepôt that Astor had envisioned. But during their raucous celebrations to usher in the new year, 1812, one question was greatly troubling them—what had become of the overland expedition, which was already long overdue?³⁶

 

ON SEPTEMBER 3, 1810, JUST A FEW DAYS BEFORE THE TONQUIN left New York Harbor, Pacific Fur Company partners Hunt and Mackenzie arrived in St. Louis, the jumping-off point for the overland expedition. With a large contingent of Canadian voyageurs already in their employ, they still needed more manpower before they could begin the arduous expedition. Although Astor was the most successful fur trader in America, St. Louis was still the fur-trading capital of the country, and plenty of local fur merchants and traders cast a wary eye on Astor’s ambition to lay claim to the western trade. None, though, were more antagonistic than Manuel Lisa, who viewed Astor’s operation as a most dangerous competitor to his beloved and beleaguered Missouri Fur Company. At every turn Lisa tried to frustrate Hunt’s efforts to recruit men and gather additional supplies. While Hunt was ultimately able to get what he needed, it took him, due to Lisa’s meddling, much longer than expected, leaving him woefully behind schedule. With winter fast approaching, Hunt’s full-scale assault on the Missouri would have to wait until the following year. But overwintering in St. Louis was far too expensive for such a large outfit, so on October 21, Hunt led his men, some sixty strong, on three boats about five hundred miles up the Missouri to its junction with the Nodaway, where he established winter quarters just as the ice was beginning to make river travel impossible.³⁷

Hunt still needed more men, especially a Sioux interpreter and more hunters, and on January 1, 1811, he headed back to St. Louis to get them, arriving toward the end of the month. During Hunt’s absence Lisa had been busy. He had persuaded the partners in the Missouri Fur Company to launch an expedition up the Missouri, with two goals in mind: first, to see if they could find out what happened to Andrew Henry, who had abandoned the Three Forks in the fall of 1810 and hadn’t been heard from since; and second, to monitor Hunt’s expedition to keep it from taking business away from them. Thus, when Hunt got to St. Louis he was immediately forced to compete with Lisa for the best available men. Nowhere was this competition fiercer than for Pierre Dorion, Jr., the Sioux interpreter, because there was really only one person in this bustling frontier town who knew the language.

Dorion was the son of a Sioux mother and Pierre Dorion, “a shrewd, hard-twisted, semiliterate half-breed” who had served as a trapper and the Sioux interpreter for Lewis and Clark.³⁸ Dorion Senior had spent the better part of twenty years among the Yankton Sioux, and that is where his son had become fluent in their language—a fluency that brought Hunt to Dorion’s door with an offer to join the overland expedition. But, as Hunt soon discovered, Lisa would not let Dorion go without a fight.

Just a year earlier, on his trip up the Missouri, Lisa had employed Dorion as an interpreter to help him through the notoriously unpredictable and at times dangerous bands of Teton Sioux who controlled the traffic along major sections of the river and required tribute before letting traders pass. While Dorion’s interpreting skills served Lisa well, his drinking got him into trouble. At Lisa’s Fort Mandan, Dorion freely indulged his love of whiskey, and since it was selling for ten dollars per quart at the company store, he quickly accumulated a hefty tab, which put him ever deeper into debt with his boss. When Lisa learned that Dorion was thinking of signing with Hunt, he became understandably furious. He did everything in his power to keep Dorion from joining the competition, including using the massive debt he had accrued as a cudgel to force Dorion to remain loyal. But it appears that this ploy only served to inflame Dorion’s passions against Lisa, and after two weeks of hard bargaining Dorion decided to throw his lot with Hunt (no doubt the lavish three hundred dollars per year salary Hunt offered made Dorion’s decision much easier).³⁹ One of the terms of Dorion’s employment was that he would be allowed to take along his wife, an Iowa Indian named Marie, and their two sons, who were four and two at the time.

With Dorion and his family, as well as about a dozen other men, Hunt left St. Louis on March 12 to head back to the Nodaway camp. But Lisa remained determined to hold on to Dorion. The day after Hunt’s party started upriver, Lisa obtained warrant for Dorion’s arrest to force him to pay his liquor debt. Among those who heard about the warrant were John Bradbury and Thomas Nuttall, English naturalists specializing in botany who had recently signed on to join Hunt’s expedition, not to work for Astor but as a means to ascend the Missouri and collect specimens. Bradbury and Nuttall had stayed in St. Louis an extra day to wait for the next mail delivery. Late that evening they were tipped off about the warrant, and also learned that officials were being dispatched the next day to bring Dorion back to face charges. To protect Dorion from capture, Bradbury and Nuttall stole out of St. Louis at two in the morning and headed upriver to get to Hunt’s group before they reached St. Charles, where the officials planned to make their arrest. The two botanists caught up with Hunt just in time, and their warning sent Dorion and his family into the secure cover of the woods, where they stayed for a couple of days before rejoining the expedition just beyond St. Charles.⁴⁰

 

A FEW DAYS LATER, AT THE TOWN OF LA CHARRETTE, Hunt spied an old man with a shock of white hair standing at the river’s edge. He casually said to Bradbury, “That’s Daniel Boone, the discoverer of Kentucky.” Since Bradbury had a letter of introduction from Boone’s nephew, he went ashore to speak with the famed hunter, trapper, and explorer. Boone told Bradbury that he was eighty-four years old—although he was only an entirely respectable seventy-seven—and that he had just returned from a hunting trip that yielded nearly sixty beaver pelts. After the two men parted Bradbury caught up with Hunt’s boat, and the next day he, along with Hunt, visited another larger-than-life western figure, John Colter, the erstwhile member of the Corps of Discovery who had become one of Lisa’s trappers.

Bradbury was on the lookout for Colter because back in St. Louis, William Clark had told him that Colter was in the area and might be able to point the young naturalist to “the place on the Missouri where the skeleton of a fish, above forty feet long, had been found.” So when Hunt’s group reached Boeuf Creek, and heard from a local man that Colter lived only a mile away, a meeting was quickly arranged. Although Colter knew nothing about the monster fish, he knew a great deal about western travel, and he stayed with Hunt’s group for many miles, eagerly sharing his knowledge. Colter, said Bradbury, “seemed to have a strong inclination to accompany the expedition; but having been lately married, he reluctantly took leave of us.”⁴¹

Over the next few weeks Hunt’s group slowly progressed up the Missouri, battling torrential rain, strong currents, and many downed trees, which had fallen across the river after the banks beneath them gave way. By early April they had covered 240 miles, and as far as Hunt knew, his little flotilla was the only one on the river. But it wasn’t: Hunt was being followed.

 

AS SOON AS HUNT LEFT ST. LOUIS, LISA STEPPED UP HIS efforts to get his own expedition under way, and finally on April 2, under sunny skies, he set off from St. Charles onboard a keelboat said to be “the best that ever ascended” the river.⁴² Lisa wanted to catch up to Hunt not only to make sure he didn’t steal any of the fur trade, but also because Lisa was fearful of being robbed by “the Teton Sioux,” known as the “pirates of the Missouri.”⁴³ Lisa thought that if he could join with Hunt’s party before they reached the Sioux, together they would present a defense so formidable that the Indians would not attack. Thus began what some have called the greatest keelboat race ever, even though it was more pursuit than race.⁴⁴

Lisa faced an almost insurmountable task. Hunt had a twenty-one-day head start and was more than two hundred miles upriver. But Lisa prided himself on clobbering his competitors, once telling William Clark that “I put into my operations great activity. I go a great distance while some are considering whether they will go today or tomorrow.”⁴⁵ In this case, however, Lisa would have to wait until the next day before truly getting under way. Within hours of shoving off in his keelboat, and just a few miles above St. Charles, he was forced to put to shore because much of his crew of twenty-five was missing. The night before, his men, composed mainly of French Canadians and Creoles, had celebrated their departure by getting rip-roaring drunk. Many of them had yet to return to the boat. The men were in such “high glee from the liquor” that Lisa knew it was no use trying to round them up that day, so instead he let them “take their swing” and have one more night of reckless abandon. By two o’clock the next afternoon, all the men had straggled back to the boat and slept off their hangovers. The chase was on.⁴⁶

Lisa pushed his men at a tremendous pace, leading by example. “He is,” noted Henry Marie Brackenridge, an adventurous lawyer and writer who had joined Lisa’s party, “at one moment at the helm, at another with the grappling iron at the bow, and often with a pole, assisting the hands in impelling the barge.” They sailed, poled, and pulled their way up the rapidly rising river, swollen with spring rains, through raging currents and vicious eddies, over sandbars and submerged trees whose branches grazed the keelboat’s hull, and past bloated buffalo corpses bobbing rhythmically in the water. Beyond the riverbanks the landscape, awakening from its winter slumber and cast in pastel hues of green and yellow, slowly rolled by. Oceans of grass swayed gently in the breeze. Magnificent stands of hickory, oak, cottonwood, and ash, as well as gently sloping hills and craggy limestone cliffs, could be seen in either direction. And with each mile the white man’s mark on the land grew ever fainter until it virtually disappeared.

When Hunt broke up the Nodaway winter camp, about six weeks after leaving St. Louis, and headed upriver in four boats, Lisa was a little more than two hundred miles behind. Six days later, on April 27, some fur traders on the river told Lisa that Hunt was only five days ahead, news that greatly “animated” the party. But their optimism didn’t last long. The men were growing weary and irritable. On May 4 some of them complained to Brackenridge, “It is impossible for us to persevere any longer in this unceasing toil, this over-strained exertion, which wears us down. We are not permitted a moment’s repose; scarcely is time allowed us to eat, or to smoke our pipes. We can stand it no longer, human nature cannot bear it…[Lisa] has no pity on us.” Still they slogged on, propelled forward by the indomitable force of the man who brooked neither pain nor exhaustion.

A couple of weeks later two fur traders descending the Missouri gave Lisa disquieting news. Hunt was still four days ahead of him, and rapidly approaching Sioux territory. To halt Hunt’s progress Lisa sent one of his men and a hired Indian to take a letter overland to Hunt, asking him to wait until Lisa arrived, hoping that they might join forces. On May 24 the letter reached Hunt at the Poncas village, below the mouth of the Niobrara River. Although Hunt didn’t trust Lisa and had no intention of waiting, he sent word back agreeing to do so, hoping that this ruse would encourage Lisa to slow down. Then, two days later, just as Hunt was planning to continue upriver, three trappers arrived and changed the trajectory of the expedition.⁴⁷

Edward Robinson, John Hoback, and Jacob Reznor had been trapping with Henry on the Snake River and now were heading back to Kentucky. “But,” as Bradbury commented, “on seeing us, [their] families, plantations, and all vanished; they agreed to join us, and turned their canoes adrift.”⁴⁸

These three men had traveled extensively throughout the lands Hunt was about to enter, and in sharing their geographic knowledge they prompted Hunt to alter his course.

During the planning stage for the overland trek, Astor had expected his men to follow the path blazed by Lewis and Clark—up the Missouri, across the Rockies, and down the Columbia. But after discussing this scenario with various explorers, Hunt had decided to take a more southerly and supposedly quicker path to the Pacific, down the Yellowstone and across the mountains, which would also keep them farther from hostile Indians in the north, especially the Blackfeet. Upon hearing this Robinson, Hoback, and Reznor urged Hunt to shift his plans once again. Instead of taking the Yellowstone, they argued, the quickest and safest course was to abandon their boats at the Arikara villages, just above the Grand River near the northern border of present-day South Dakota, and obtain horses to travel overland through the mountains and then to the headwaters of the Columbia. Thus convinced, Hunt’s group left the Poncas village midday on May 26, heading toward the Arikara.⁴⁹

The following day Lisa arrived at the Poncas village, only to discover he had been duped. Enraged, he pushed his men to redouble their efforts to catch up, often working them through the night. During one particularly auspicious twenty-four-hour period they managed to cover seventy-five miles. But try as he might, Lisa couldn’t catch Hunt before entering the Sioux country, and both he and Hunt had tense run-ins with these Indians yet came through unscathed.

The race ended one week later. It had taken Lisa sixty-one days to travel eleven hundred miles, averaging a staggering eighteen miles per day, and finally he had Hunt in his sights. Thinly veiled hostility and mutual suspicion between the two expeditions made their meeting less than amicable. Nevertheless they agreed to travel together. But only two days after they met, while the expeditions were camped by the side of the river, a fight nearly broke out. Lisa, still furious at Dorion’s failure to pay his whiskey debt and his decision to sign on with Hunt, angrily confronted the interpreter; Dorion responded in kind, and then the two parted. Later on, when Lisa walked by Dorion’s tent, the interpreter jumped out and repeatedly punched his erstwhile employer. With tempers raging, the two prepared to face off in a duel, and only through the coolheaded intervention of Brackenridge and Bradbury was this clash avoided.⁵⁰

Lisa and Hunt arrived at the Arikara villages on June 12. Although Hunt wanted to leave as soon as possible, obtaining horses for his expedition of sixty-five proved exceptionally difficult. It wasn’t until July 18, through trades with the Indians and Lisa, who brought in horses from his fort farther upriver, that Hunt was able to collect eighty-two animals, far fewer than he wanted. Over the next few months Hunt’s party, many of whom were on foot while the horses carried the supplies, traveled west through present-day South Dakota and Wyoming, to the junction of the Hoback and Snake rivers, arriving there on September 26. Four men were left behind to trap in the area, while the rest of the expedition continued over the Teton Pass to Henry’s Fort on the north fork of the Snake River.

Weary and bruised from their long, punishing journey over rocky terrain, through dense forests, and across windswept plains, Hunt’s group looked upon the river as a possible answer to their prayers, thinking that it might take them to the Columbia and then to their final destination. It is clear Hunt thought so, for on October 19, his party, minus five men who stayed behind to trap beaver, boarded fifteen canoes hewn from nearby trees and pushed off into the river, leaving the horses behind in the care of two Shoshone Indians.⁵¹

 

THE RIVER LOOKED PROMISING AT FIRST. THE FLOTILLA WAS making excellent time, propelled swiftly forward by the current, but then the true nature of the Snake revealed itself. Treacherous rapids and boiling eddies flipped a couple of the canoes, resulting in the loss of valuable cargo. Still, the intrepid band of explorers proceeded on what the voyageurs now called la maudite rivière enragée, or “the accursed mad river,” portaging around particularly nasty patches of whitewater and paddling when they could.⁵² Nearly 350 miles into their river journey, a canoe smashed against the rocks and one of the voyageurs drowned. They had reached a nightmarish stretch of the river dubbed Caldron Linn, described by a later traveler as an area “where the whole body of the river is confined between two ledges of rock somewhat less than 40 feet apart, and here indeed its terrific appearance beggars all description—Hecate’s caldron was never half so agitated when vomiting even the most diabolical spells.”⁵³

It was no use continuing on the river. With food running out and the cold weather coming on, Hunt decided that their luck might improve if they split up into groups and struck out for the Pacific. The travails of these three parties make for bitter reading. Along riverbanks, across desert plains, and over mountains they trudged though snow and biting winds. They had little or no food, at times being reduced to gnawing on their moccasins and eating roasted strips of beaver skin for sustenance. At one point, while hiking along high cliffs lining the Snake River, two of the parties were unable to descend to the river because the slopes were too steep, and as a result they could not obtain water to slake their thirst, forcing them to drink their own urine. No part of their story is more amazing than that of Marie Dorion. Caring for her two- and four-year-old sons, while many months pregnant herself, she never complained. On December 30, not long after crossing an icy stream, she gave birth to a child, only to have it die in her arms eight days later. Marie’s stoic fortitude gained her the admiration of her fellow travelers, and according to Hunt she was “as brave as any among” us.⁵⁴

The first group managed to straggle into Astoria on January 18, 1812, followed on February 15 by Hunt’s party and then later in May by the final group—and miraculously only three men had been lost. Although Hunt’s arrival merited a celebration, replete with roasted beaver, “a genial allowance of grog,” and a “grand dance,” the revitalized Astorians quickly got back to work.⁵⁵ Having already established a trading outpost at the junction of the Okanagon and Columbia rivers, they planned others. By late spring Astoria was showing signs of success, having obtained 3,500 pelts from the Indians, mostly beaver, with a smattering of sea otter, squirrel, and fox. On May 11 Astor’s ship Beaver finally arrived with much-needed supplies and personnel, and the Astorians’ spirits rose even further. It appeared that despite all the misfortune thus far, Astor’s plan was going to work after all.⁵⁶

Meanwhile, back in New York, Astor learned the Tonquin’s fate in the winter of 1812. He took the news calmly, even stoically, as was his temperament. When a friend expressed amazement at his lack of emotion, Astor responded, “What would you have me do? Would you have me stay at home and weep for what I cannot help?”⁵⁷ Astor had succeeded so brilliantly because he was determined to surmount obstacles instead of being stopped by them, and that is what he intended to do now. There was, however, one particularly enormous obstacle that Astor had never had to contend with before—war.

 

PRESIDENT JAMES MONROE DECLARED WAR ON GREAT BRITAIN on June 18, 1812. While the impressments of American seamen, along with punitive British restrictions on seaborne trade are usually cited as the primary causes of the war, the fur trade also needs to be given its due. In the years leading up to the war, the failure to enforce fully the terms of the Jay treaty contributed to rising tensions between Canadians and American fur traders. The Canadians, still seething over the concessions made by the treaty, acted as if they owned the fur trade throughout the Old Northwest as well as parts of the Louisiana Territory, extending their trading networks deep into those areas. No wonder, then, that the Canadians became incensed when American competitors continued showing up on the scene—so incensed, in fact, that the Canadians were among the strongest advocates for war, hoping that they could reclaim the valuable fur lands that the Jay treaty had, at least on paper, given away.

Many American fur traders were equally aggrieved by the Canadians’ imperious behavior. They, too, added their voice to the chorus calling for war, hoping that it might finally gain them unfettered access to the western lands they thought they had already won.⁵⁸ And behind the dispute between fur traders, yet inevitably entwined with it, was the broader and more momentous issue of Indian relations. The British were making alliances with the Indians. They armed some of the western tribes in an effort to stem the advancing tide of Americans, an end that would also, of course, benefit the Canadian fur trade. Some of those Indians, in turn, used their newly acquired arms to attack American settlements, and many Americans were convinced that the British were instigating those attacks. Such behavior, even more than any concerns about access to furs, inflamed the anger of the frontier states and only intensified to the drumbeat for war.⁵⁹

Astor, too, was upset that the Canadians were taking American furs. But he opposed the war because he knew that it would not only cut off his supply of British goods, which were so important to the Indian trade, but also keep his furs from getting to Great Britain. Once the war came, however, Astor didn’t bemoan his predicament; rather he focused his energies on saving Astoria. By late 1812 Astor was hearing through back channels that the North West Company was urging the British government to destroy Astoria, and that if the government failed to act, the company was prepared to take matters into its own hands. To avoid either outcome, Astor wrote to James Monroe, then secretary of state, in February 1813, apprising him of the situation and asking that the United States government send “forty or fifty men” to Astoria, who could, “with the aid of the men already there, repel any [British] force.” To make his request more compelling, Astor implied that if America wanted to claim the country in and around Astoria, it would be well served to save the “infant establishment” from being overrun. And finally Astor promised that he would send his own additional reinforcements as soon as possible.⁶⁰

Monroe ignored Astor’s plea, frustrating but not deterring the fur tycoon. If the government wasn’t going to do anything, he, a financial titan by this time, would. Astor knew that with the onset of hostilities, British men-of-war would be cruising the oceans to capture any American ship that dared leave port, but he was not so easily cowed. His Astorians were in jeopardy, and he was going to help them, the British navy be damned. So Astor outfitted the Lark, a stout merchantman, and sent it to Astoria in March of 1813 to resupply the outpost, collect the warehoused furs, and then sell them in China. In the end, however, it wasn’t the British navy but a fierce hurricane off Hawaii that terminated the Lark’s mission, leaving the ship wrecked and five men dead.

A few weeks after the Lark sailed, Astor learned that the North West Company had sent another memorial to the British government asking for aid in destroying Astoria, and further that the government had responded favorably by sending ships to carry out the plan. With this alarming information, Astor wrote to Monroe once again, warning him of the impeding blow. This time the response was swift. President Madison ordered the frigate Adams, docked in New York, into action to protect Astoria, and while this ship was being readied, Astor began fitting out his own merchant ship to accompany the Adams and resupply the fort.

At this time Astor received information from the Astorians that buoyed his spirits. A small contingent, headed by Robert Stuart, had been dispatched from Astoria in June 1812, to travel east and update Astor on the post’s progress. They arrived in St. Louis on April 30, 1813, after an amazing cross-country trek. The Missouri Gazette trumpeted their return, focusing particular attention on the route taken: “By information received from these gentlemen, it appears that a journey across the continent of North America, might be performed with a wagon, there being no obstruction in the whole route that any person would dare to call a mountain.” Not only that, but Stuart’s route appeared to be largely devoid of Indians, who might “interrupt” the trip. As a result this new route was claimed to be much better than the more northerly route to the Pacific taken by Lewis and Clark, which posed “almost insurmountable barriers.”⁶¹

Although neither the newspaper nor its readers could know it at the time, Stuart’s route, with one minor alteration, would become one of the most storied paths in American history. As the historian William H. Goetzmann observed, “With the exception of the detour to Jackson Hole, [Stuart’s group]…had located and traversed what became the Oregon Trail. The most important features they had discovered were the South Pass across the mountains around the southeast end of the Wind River Mountains, and the Sweetwater River route to the Platte, which they followed across the plains. The South Pass became the ‘great gate’ through which hundreds of thousands of immigrants poured on their way west.”⁶²

Astor was less interested in the route than in finding out what was happening in Astoria. Before Stuart’s return the only thing he knew for sure was that the Tonquin had been blown up and its crew massacred. In contrast the letter that Stuart sent to Astor immediately upon arriving in St. Louis, painted a “flattering” picture of the progress at the mouth of the Columbia, which Astor claimed made him “ready to fall upon my knees in a transport of gratitude.”⁶³ But his joy proved fleeting. Just as the Adams and Astor’s merchant ship were ready to depart, the exigencies of war intervened. Cmdr. Isaac Chauncy, whose small squadron was harassing the British on Lake Ontario, called for more men, which included the crew of the Adams. This resulted in the frigate being laid up along the docks of New York, thus dashing Astor’s hopes of reinforcing and resupplying Astoria. This crushing blow was bad enough, but if Astor knew what was taking place a continent away he would have been even more depressed.

 

WHEN ASTOR’S SUPPLY SHIP, THE BEAVER, DEPARTED ASTORIA in August 1812, with Hunt onboard, the plan had been for it to go to the Russian fur-trading post at Sitka, trade for furs, and then return to Astoria within a few months’ time. Instead, Hunt didn’t return for an entire year. This lengthy delay resulted from a disastrous comedy of errors. When Hunt arrived in Sitka, the Russians had no furs on hand, and Hunt was told to go to the Pribilof Islands to get them. Hunt did, and along the way the Beaver was nearly demolished in a storm. Hunt wanted to head back to Astoria, then go on to Canton to sell the furs, but since winter was fast approaching, he thought the heavily damaged Beaver might not survive the stormy seas off the Northwest Coast, so Hunt took the Beaver to Hawaii for repairs. After the repairs were completed, Hunt ordered the captain, Cornelius Sowle, to go to Canton to sell the furs, while Hunt waited in Hawaii for one of Astor’s resupply ships to take him back to Astoria. When Sowle arrived in Canton, a letter from Astor was waiting for him. It told of the outbreak of war and ordered Sowle to set sail immediately so that he could share that vital intelligence with the Astorians. Sowle wrote to Astor that he would do no such thing, and instead planned to stay in Canton until peace was declared.

Meanwhile Hunt faced a different problem. He desperately wanted to get back to Astoria, but remained stranded in Hawaii because Astor’s resupply ship never showed up. It wasn’t until June 20, 1813, that the Albatross arrived at Hawaii, bearing the first news of the war to reach the islands, information that made Hunt even more determined to get back to Astoria. So he chartered Albatross for two thousand dollars, loaded it with food and other goods, and sailed with it across the Pacific, arriving at the mouth of the Columbia on August 20, 1813. As he soon discovered, Astoria had not fared well during his yearlong absence.⁶⁴

 

THROUGHOUT THE FALL AND WINTER OF 1812 THE ASTORIANS had waited in vain for the Beaver’s return. A gloom had settled over the fort, as McDougall, who was in charge in Hunt’s absence, and the others began to fear that the ship had been lost at sea or attacked by Indians. Then, at the end of January 1813, John George McTavish, a partner of the North West Company, who was trading in the area, informed the Astorians not only that war had broken out but also that, come March, a British naval ship would arrive on the coast to take over Astoria, and that McTavish and his men were supposed to be on hand to meet the ship.⁶⁵

With the Beaver apparently never coming back and there being no expectation that the U.S. Navy would come to the aid of Astoria, McDougall and Mackenzie decided to abandon the post and return to St. Louis. As they began preparing to leave, McTavish and his men arrived. Since it was early April, McTavish expected to see the British naval ship already in control of the post, but the ship wasn’t there. So McTavish, who was cordially greeted by his fellow Canadians McDougall and Mackenzie, stayed in Astoria waiting patiently for the ship to arrive. Months passed, and still no ship.

In late June, McDougall called a meeting of all the partners, and although some of them argued strenuously against abandoning Astoria, in the end all agreed it was the best available option.⁶⁶ By the time this decision had been reached, however, it was too late in the year to begin a trek over the Rockies, so McDougall and McTavish cut a deal. They would both remain in the area, split the fur trade between them, and then, the following spring, the Americans would leave. With this agreement McTavish and his men headed to their post in Spokane, while the Astorians stayed put.

Then, on August 20, the Albatross hove into view. Hunt, alarmed by the Astorians’ dealings, wanted to reverse the decision to abandon the post but couldn’t because the other partners would not change their minds. Still, there were Mr. Astor’s interests to be considered, and Hunt decided that the best he could do on that account was to get a ship to transport Astoria’s furs to Canton so that some profit from the venture could be realized. The Albatross, the most likely candidate, could not make the voyage because it was already engaged to go to the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific, and then head to Hawaii. Undaunted, Hunt departed on the Albatross, and when it finally pulled into Hawaii four months later, Hunt hired a brig called the Pedlar and left for Astoria on January 22, 1814.⁶⁷

 

WHILE HUNT WAS TRAVERSING THE PACIFIC IN SEARCH OF Astoria’s salvation, the British arrived in force. The first wave came in early October 1813, when ten canoes carrying McTavish and seventy-four men from the North West Company pulled up in front of Astoria. McTavish informed the Astorians that a British warship would soon be there, and that its orders were to “annihilate” the American post. After letting this sink in McTavish bought Astoria’s entire supply of furs and trade goods for a fraction of what they were worth.⁶⁸ As part of the sale the Astorians were given the option of joining the North West Company, or, if they chose not to, they would be afforded safe passage east, back to American territory.

The second and final wave of British forces arrived on the Racoon, captained by William Black, at the mouth of the Columbia on November 30. Black, who had been eagerly anticipating his triumphant capture of Fort Astoria, was deeply disappointed when he discovered that the North West Company had already purchased his prize. In fact it wasn’t much of a prize at all. “Is this the fort about which I have heard so much?” Black queried. “Damn me, but I’d batter it down in two hours with a four pounder!”⁶⁹ Nevertheless, on December 13, Black formally took control of Fort Astoria and renamed it Fort George.

By the time Hunt arrived back at Astoria on February 28, 1814, it was too late for him to do much of anything. The sale had been made, and many of the Canadians whom Astor had employed had by now switched allegiance to the North West Company, including McDougall, who had signed on as a partner. Hunt tried to retrieve the furs, but the only deal McDougall offered was to sell them for a much-inflated price, which Hunt was unwilling to match. After recovering the Pacific Fur Company’s notebooks, Hunt boarded the Pedlar on April 3 and sailed for New York. Then next day those Astorians who had not joined the North West Company—ninety in number—headed out in ten canoes up the Columbia, beginning their journey back east.⁷⁰

 

ON APRIL 17 THE DEPARTING ASTORIANS WERE NOT FAR FROM he mouth of the Walla Walla River when three Indian canoes pushed off from the shore and gave chase. The Astorians, unsure of their pursuers’ intentions, continued paddling, but then they heard a child’s voice screaming in French, imploring them to stop, which they did, making for the nearest bank. When the Indians pulled in, the Astorians recognized three of the passengers in one of the canoes. It was Marie Dorion, the wife of the interpreter, Pierre Dorion, and her two boys. She had a tragic tale to tell.

During the summer of 1813 John Reed, one of Astoria’s clerks, led a party to the Snake River to trap beaver. He took with him six men, including Pierre Dorion, who, as was his custom, was joined by his wife and children. In the fall one of the men died after being thrown from a horse, and another deserted. But soon thereafter the ranks of Reed’s party swelled with the arrival of Robinson, Hoback, and Reznor, who had been trapping in the area. As winter approached, the party split up. Reed built a log cabin on the Snake, where he and four men remained. The rest—a Canadian named Gilles Le Clerc, along with Reznor, Dorion, and Dorion’s family—traveled for five days to a spot that was known to be rich with beaver, where they built a hut. There the men spent the days trapping, while Marie and her two boys stayed at the hut, dressing the skins the men brought in and preparing their meals.

One day in early January 1814, Le Clerc arrived at the hut, bloodied and barely able to stand. Just before dying he told Marie that Indians had attacked him and the others, and that her husband and Reznor were dead. Fearing that the Indians would soon come for her, Marie grabbed some provisions, bundled up her boys, and placed them on one horse while she mounted another. She headed for Reed’s cabin on the Snake, hoping to warn him that he was in danger. But she was too late. The cabin was deserted, and the blood-spattered ground was proof enough that Reed and the others had been killed.

Marie immediately headed northwest, toward the Columbia, but the deep snow in the Blue Mountains was impassable. Marie knew that her only chance was to try to survive until the weather turned. So she and her boys hunkered down in a shallow ravine, where they hollowed out a snow cave and pieced together a crude shelter out of bark, branches, twigs, and covered it with the few animal skins she had brought with her. The two horses were soon sacrificed for food, and their skins were added to the shelter to provide more protection from the biting cold.

By mid-March, her food nearly gone and the snows starting to melt, Marie led her boys over the mountains to the Columbia, where the Walla Walla Indians took them in. Marie knew that the Astorians had planned to head back home in the spring, so she waited, hoping that their canoes would soon pass by, which they did on April 17, when the cries of one her boys led to their reunion. The Astorians gave the Indians some presents “to repay their care and pains,” and then took Marie and her boys to a nearby Canadian fur-trading post before continuing on their journey.⁷¹

 

THE NEW-YORK GAZETTE AND GENERAL ADVERTISER PROVIDED a terse obituary for Astoria on November 12, 1814, noting, “The firm of the Pacific Fur Company is dissolved.” A few months earlier, when Astor first began getting reports telling of the enormity of what had happened to his “infant establishment,” he wrote to a colleague, “Was there ever an undertaking of more merit, of more honor and more enterprising, attended with a greater variety of misfortune?”⁷² Astor’s sense of loss was made bitterer by what he perceived to be McDougall’s treachery. Astor was convinced that McDougall had colluded with the North West Company men and as a result had sold out too cheaply, and that for his duplicity he was richly rewarded by being offered a partnership stake in the company.⁷³ McDougall vehemently denied these charges, claiming that given the powerful forces arrayed against him, he had gotten Astor the best deal possible. Whether Astor or McDougall was correct, Astoria was now in Canadian hands. Nevertheless Astor was not ready to let it go. “While I breathe & so long as I have a dollar to spend,” Astor wrote to one of his former partners, “I’ll pursue a course to have our injuries repaired…. We have been sold, but I do not despond.”⁷⁴

 

THE TREATY OF GHENT, ENDING THE WAR OF 1812, WAS SIGNED on December 24, 1814. Article 1 of the treaty required that “All territory, places, and possessions whatsoever taken by either party from the other during the war…shall be restored without delay.”⁷⁵ Astor took this as good news, writing to his nephew in March 1815, “By the peace we shall have a right to Columbia River & I rather think, that I shall again engage in that business.”⁷⁶ But the debate between the United States and Great Britain over the status of Astoria dragged on for years. The Americans, with Astor pushing behind the scenes, argued that Astoria had been captured as a prize of war by Captain Black and therefore must be returned. The British, however, claimed that the sale of Astoria, which had taken place prior to Black’s arrival, meant that the Canadians were entitled to the post.

By late 1817 it looked as if Astor’s wish was finally going to be fulfilled. That is when President James Monroe sent the USS Ontario to the mouth of the Columbia “to assert the claim of the United States to the sovereignty of the adjacent country, in a friendly and peaceable manner, and without the employment of force.”⁷⁷ As a courtesy Monroe sent Astor a letter informing him of the voyage and its purpose. This news, however, did not bring Astor any joy.

He had already determined not to reestablish Astoria, because the government had refused his request to deploy military troops to protect the post. Without such protection Astor didn’t think that his traders would be able to stand up to the Canadian traders in the area, who had already shown in their dealings with one another a willingness to resort to violence to secure their access to furs. In other words, even if the U.S. government asserted its claim of sovereignty to the area, Astor wasn’t coming back. Instead he would focus his energies on other ventures.⁷⁸

The intricacies of the diplomatic ballet between the United States and Great Britain, which ensued after the Ontario left on its mission, are irrelevant here. In the end the two parties concluded that Astoria should be restored to the United States, and on October 6, 1818, the Union Jack flying above Fort George was lowered, and replaced with the Stars and Stripes. But this restoration was merely symbolic. The employees of the North West Company were allowed to remain in the fort, and less than two weeks later the Canadians received the equivalent of a long-term lease to the post when Great Britain and the United States signed the Convention of 1818, in which it was agreed that “all territories and their waters, claimed by either power, west of the Rocky Mountains, should be free and open to the vessels, citizens, and subjects, of both for the space of ten years.”⁷⁹ The Canadians, who quickly rehoisted the Union Jack after the American envoy had left, weren’t going anywhere.

Although Astor’s Fort Astoria was a failure, it would later gain a measure of immortality and fame through the publication in 1836 of Washington Irving’s Astoria: or, Enterprise Beyond the Rocky Mountains. Irving, already one of the most famous American writers of the day, and author of the wildly popular short stories, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle,” was one of Astor’s friends. When Astor suggested to Irving that he write a history of the Astorian enterprise, he got right to work. “It occurred to me,” Irving wrote in the introduction to the book, “that a work of this kind might comprise a variety of those curious details, so interesting to me, illustrative of the fur trade; of its remote and adventurous enterprises, and of the various people, and tribes, and castes, and characters, civilized and savage, affected by its operations.”⁸⁰ While it is reasonable to assume that Irving’s friendship with Astor influenced his interpretation much to Astor’s advantage, Astoria nevertheless provided its many readers with a fascinating depiction of one of the most memorable passages in the entire history of the American fur trade.

 

THE WAR OF 1812 WASN’T A COMPLETE DISASTER FOR ASTOR. While it crushed his aspirations in the Pacific Northwest, he still managed to get a few of his ships loaded with furs off to Europe and China. Other American fur traders were not so resourceful, and as a result their businesses greatly diminished. After the war Astor, with the deepest pockets and a fervent desire to control as much of the fur trade as possible, was the first into the field, and he quickly expanded his operations in the Old Northwest, hiring a small army of traders and establishing new posts. His efforts were given an enormous boost on April 29, 1816, when Congress passed an act for which he—ironically, as an immigrant himself—lobbied, excluding foreigners from participating in the fur trade in the United States unless they were employed by American traders.

Astor’s position was further strengthened by the Convention of 1818, which established the forty-ninth parallel from Lake of the Woods, in present-day northern Minnesota, to the Rocky Mountains as the northern border of the United States. Astor used these new political realities to tighten his grip on the trade in and around the Great Lakes and the upper Mississippi. He bought out the Canadian fur-trading companies that had been operating in United States territories south of the forty-ninth parallel, and then hired hundreds of suddenly unemployed British traders and French voyageurs to work for him. From hubs at Mackinac and Detroit, Astor’s small army of trading brigades, consisting of scores of men and from five to twenty bateaux overflowing with goods, ranged throughout the region. As a result Astor’s American Fur Company became unimaginably lucrative, bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. And driving much of Astor’s success was the revitalization of European and American markets after the war, and the resurgence of beaver hats, along with other furs, once again valued for the comfort and social distinction they provided discriminating consumers.⁸¹

While Astor was dominating the fur trade of the Old Northwest, the St. Louis traders were having a more difficult time rebounding from the ravages of war. Lacking the extraordinary financial resources and commercial connections that Astor possessed, the St. Louis traders only haltingly reestablished their presence on the Missouri. Even the redoubtable Lisa faced obstacles resurrecting his beloved Missouri Fur Company, and when he died on August 12, 1820, his company was still relatively small. Nevertheless there was little doubt that the Missouri was going to play a major role in the future of America’s fur trade. By virtue of the discoveries of Lewis and Clark and the ventures of Lisa and other fur traders, everyone knew that the Missouri was teeming with beavers. And in 1822 one man decided he was going to get them.