Oregon Country

Oregon Country was a large region of the Pacific Northwest of North America that was subject to a long dispute between the United Kingdom and the United States in the early 19th century. The area, which had been demarcated by the Treaty of 1818, consisted of the land north of 42° N latitude, south of 54°40′ N latitude, and west of the Rocky Mountains down to the Pacific Ocean and east to the Continental Divide. Article III of the 1818 treaty gave joint control to both nations for ten years, allowed land to be claimed, and guaranteed free navigation to all mercantile trade. However, both countries disputed the terms of the international treaty. Oregon Country was the American name, while the British used Columbia District for the region.

British and French Canadian fur traders had entered Oregon Country prior to 1810 before the arrival of American settlers from the mid-1830s onwards, which led to the foundation of the Provisional Government of Oregon. Its coastal areas north of the Columbia River were frequented by ships from all nations engaged in the maritime fur trade, with many vessels between the 1790s and 1810s coming from Boston. The Hudson's Bay Company, whose Columbia Department comprised most of the Oregon Country and north into New Caledonia and beyond 54°40′ N, with operations reaching tributaries of the Yukon River, managed and represented British interests in the region.

After the dispute became an election issue in the 1844 U.S. presidential election, the United Kingdom and the United States agreed to settle the problem with the Oregon Treaty in 1846. It established the British-American boundary at the 49th parallel (except Vancouver Island). With the end of joint occupancy, the region south of the 49th parallel became Oregon Territory in the United States while the northern portion became part of the British colonies of British Columbia and Vancouver Island. The area that made up Oregon Country now lies within the present-day borders of the Canadian province of British Columbia and the entirety of the U.S. states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, as well as parts of Montana and Wyoming.

Throughout this period, the Oregon Country was inhabited by numerous independent American Indian peoples, who received no recognition by the British or American governments in the eventual disposition of the territory. Indian traders nevertheless played a critical role in the ongoing fur trade that still formed the Oregon Country's primary economic activity until mid-century, and the language of the Chinook nation of the lower Columbia river (Chinook jargon) formed the lingua franca between Indians and the small European population during and after the 1818-46 period. This was the last period in which the Oregon Country's Indian nations retained a sizeable majority in their land, prior to the rapid and devastating arrival of European diseases in the 1860s, and were able to maintain relative economic independence thanks to the necessity of their hunting skills in the fur trade. The eventual partition of the Oregon Country into national domains by the two colonial powers, increasing settlement, and the drastic decline of the fur trade due to diminishing supply all contributed to catastrophic decline in Indian population after 1846, and the arbitrary seizure of their land over the following two decades in the interests of newly arrived settlers.

The earliest evidence of the name Oregon has Spanish origins. The term orejón comes from the historical chronicle Relación de la Alta y Baja California (1598) which was written by the New Spaniard Rodrigo Motezuma and which made reference to the Columbia River when the Spanish explorers penetrated into the North American territory that became part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. This chronicle is the first topographical and linguistic source with respect to the place name Oregon. There are also two other sources with Spanish origins, such as the name Oregano, which grows in the southern part of the region. It is most probable that the American territory was named by the Spaniards, as there are some populations in Spain such as Arroyo del Oregón, which is in the province of Ciudad Real, also considering that the individualization in Spanish language el Orejón with the mutation of the letter g instead of j.

Another theory is that French Canadian fur company employees called the Columbia River "hurricane river" le fleuve d'ouragan, because of the strong winds of the Columbia Gorge. George R. Stewart argues in a 1944 article in American Speech that the name came from an engraver's error in a French map published in the early 18th century, on which the Ouisiconsink (Wisconsin River) was spelled Ouaricon-sint, broken on two lines with the -sint below, so that there appeared to be a river flowing to the west named Ouaricon. This theory was endorsed in Oregon Geographic Names as "the most plausible explanation".

George Vancouver explored Puget Sound in 1792. Vancouver claimed it for Great Britain on June 4, 1792, naming it for one of his officers, Lieutenant Peter Puget. Alexander Mackenzie was the first European to cross North America by land north of New Spain, arriving at Bella Coola on what is now the central coast of British Columbia in 1793. From 1805 to 1806, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark explored the territory of the United States on the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

David Thompson, working for the Montreal-based North West Company, explored much of the region beginning in 1807 with his friend and colleague Simon Fraser, following the Fraser River to its mouth in 1808, attempting to ascertain whether it was the Columbia, as had been theorized about its northern reaches through New Caledonia, where it was known by its Dakleh name as the "Tacoutche Tesse". Thompson was the first European to voyage down the entire length of the Columbia River. Along the way, his party camped at the junction with the Snake River on July 9, 1811. He erected a pole and a notice claiming the country for the United Kingdom and stating the intention of the North West Company to build a trading post on the site. Later in 1811, on the same expedition, he finished his survey of the entire Columbia, arriving at a partially constructed Fort Astoria two months after the departure of John Jacob Astor's ill-fated Tonquin.