Talk:Oregon Country

message: This page has some good facts and is the basis for a good article. It think it needs a little cleaning up, and has some duplicate information.
I removed the statement in the article about it being indentical to the Oregon Territory, which is the formal name of a territory that created from the US portion of the Oregon Country. It now has its own page and does not redirect here.
-- Decumanus 18:26, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: A bit late for this reply, given the 2004 timestamp there, but yes, northern Idaho was part of this region; ALL of Idaho was.Skookum1 19:16, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

text: In Made In America, when discussing the various things named after Columbus, Bill Bryson describes an area of the north-Pacific coast of North America which includes areas of modern B.C., Washtington, Oregon and Idaho, as being named "Columbia".  Is this an alternative name for Oregon Country, and if so is it notable enough to mentioned in the intro?  Joe D (t) 14:07, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: See Columbia District, and yes, I added it to the intro. heqs 13:02, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's funny; I thought I'd added it to this page quite a while ago; implying someone didn't like it or thought it wasn't relevant and took it out; typically APOV (American point-of-view) as also in Oregon boundary dispute and Alaska Boundary Dispute and Pig War; until I got at 'em some anyway; the dispute pages still need work, and still hang on the topics of congressional debates and the like, without equal rep from Whitehall or Westminster (not New West, the other one), where the Columbia issue was debated; don't have my copy of AJP Taylor's book where he discusses it briefly (but pointedly) and the like; all these articles need lots of work to bring them up to NPOV; most Canadians are unaware of the issues, and only a few British Columbians are (and that often doens't include the professional historians, who assume the 49th Parallel to have been inevitable, which it wasn't).  Anyway, I'll have to study the history of this page and see when it happened; must've slipped my eye; thanks for putting it back in.  And for the record, BC's "Columbia" component is not named for Columbus, but for the river/basin by way of its name being the name of the fur district of which the remainder was/is the British half.  And the river was named for Capt. Grey's ship, the Columbia Rediviva, which allegedly sailed up the river now bearing his ship's name (allegedly only, as his journals have questionable geography in them), which was also not named after Columbus but rather was named in tribute to the US itself, as "Columbia" is a poetic name for the republic, etc.  The further complication in this is that BC's French name, colombie-britannique (two t's?), varies from this history, as in French the river is la fleuve Columbia and "Columbia" was also the French name for the fur district; doesn't stop 'em from treating it like is British Columbia, y'know, not like that other one in South America, which is la Colombie.  Fudging of BC history/culture/identity by Central Canadians, English or French, is nothing new of course...Skookum1 17:32, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Miscellaneous

message: I just edited out the plural in Hudson, Was I correct?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.217.15.21 (talk) 19:44, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: No, and its not a plural, it is a possessive. The company name is Hudson's Bay Company, which you can confirm by clicking the link. Aboutmovies (talk) 20:53, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.217.15.21 (talk) 22:06, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Hudon Bay Company

message: Please see 
RE BC & Pacific Northwest History Forum re: Talk:List of United States military history events#Border Commission troops in the Pacific Northwest.  If you think maybe I should also move some or copy some of my other stuff from NW history and BC history pages let me know; I never mean to blog, but I'm voluble and to me everything's interconnected; never meaning to dominate a page so have made this area to post my historical rambles on.  Thoughts?Skookum1 03:49, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Comment on my posting of this: if anyone has any questions or wants to debate any issues relating to the Oregon Country/Columbia District history or other NW history, please feel free to drop by the forum and start a thread/topic, or just butt in at yer leisure.Skookum1 05:50, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[User talk:Skookum1/BC&PacificNorthwestHistory|BC & Pacific Northwest History Forum]]

message: This was removed:
===Government===
As the provisional government was co-extant and much preceded by the administration of the Hudson's Bay Company; and as I recall the provisional executive committee/governor was of the Oregon Territory no the Oregon Country.  Anyway, having a US-based succession box without consideration of the dual POV necessary for this article is unsatisfactory and that box removed here for discussion/improvement.Skookum1 15:54, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed POV succession box

message: As the provisional government was co-extant and much preceded by the administration of the Hudson's Bay Company; and as I recall the provisional executive committee/governor was of the Oregon Territory no the Oregon Country.  Anyway, having a US-based succession box without consideration of the dual POV necessary for this article is unsatisfactory and that box removed here for discussion/improvement.Skookum1 15:54, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Government

message: :John Jacob Astor founded a fur-trading post at Astoria, Oregon in 1811, beginning the organized trade in furs that had already been initiated by a few hardy trappers and traders.
This makes it sound like Astor was on-the-spot and no he wasn't.  True that neither the NWC or HBC were on-site yet, but there weren't any "hardy trappers and traders" in the area yet, either.  Astoria was founded as a land base for the marine fur trade, largely still sea-otter in that time, and despite the Boston ownership and maybe an American manager, the staff were French-Canadians/Metis hired away from HBC/NWC operations on the Prairies/Great Plains (all theoretically British subjects, BTW).  I HATE FUZZY HISTORY and get tired of stuff like this; will Americans adding to this page please do more research before contributing high-school curriculum memories/bowdlerizations?Skookum1 07:36, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: in reply to that, the original USAcentric content here hasn't fully been amended/emended; the French settlers (Metis mostly, actually) were HBC staffers, and part of the fur trade culture in the region, and also may have been shunted aside in mainstream history as, being half-aboriginal, and with aboriginal wives, they weren't considered "white" or "British"; which helps explain why many US histories focus on US settlers, and ignore the "British" (fur company) settlers already in situ, who were French/aboriginal, Hawaiian, and various others; only few were fully "white".Skookum1 00:19, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Astor

message: Just wondering what to do with articles relating to north-of-49 locations that are part of the history of the Oregon Country, though maybe not known in US histories of the Oregon Country; e.g. the Fort Langley, Fort Hope, Fort Yale, etc; anything pre-1846 seems fair game, plus some afterwards; also native biographies such as Nicola (chief) (b.~1790 d. 1865).Skookum1 00:19, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Question on Oregon Country category

message: :Meanwhile, the United States and Britain negotiated the Anglo-American Convention of 1818 that extended the boundary between their territories west along the 49th parallel to the Rocky Mountains. The two countries agreed to "joint occupancy" of the land west of the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean.
:At this time, Oregon evolved into a de facto republic, with a 3-person executive branch and a chief executive. A certain faction of Oregonian politicians hoped to continue Oregon's political evolution into an independent nation, but pressure to join the United States would prevail by 1848. [citation needed]
I quoted both paragraphs because of the "at this time" that starts the second paragraph.  This makes it sound like Americans in the Oregon Country organized their "republic" in 1818 or shortly thereafter.  Very curious indeed consdering there were NO Americans in the territory until the 1830s, and then only a trickle; the American "flood" into the Oregon Country didn't start until about 1843 and I don't recall any American declarations of "republic" prior to 1846; if there were they were illegal as the area was still under joint occupancy with Britain.  There are other mis-written bits of history on this page; this was a glaring one and, apposite to someone else asking me for cites about there being a "negligible" (on Pacific Northwest; see Talk:Pacific Northwest, the onus on the other hand is on Americans to prove there was a "flood of settlers" into Oregon in the 1830s (the context in that quote); or, in this case, on the claim that Americans had self-constituted as a  republic in the wake of the Anglo-American treaty of 1818....Skookum1 18:46, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The same claim is made on the Oregon page. I've asked about it on the Talk:Oregon page. My guess about it (guessing needed since there is no citation) is that the distance frontier was "de facto" independent since it was, well, distant. If that is the case for Oregon, it is the case for most frontier regions in their early colonization/settlement era. The "citation needed" has been there for a while now. I figure that without a reference that shows the de facto independence as something more than just being a frontier region, the claim can be removed. Pfly 20:24, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Oregon a "republic" after 1818?

message: Oregón, come from the Columbia´s (or Snake) river old name, maybe like Aragón river from Spain or a dialectal name in spanish for Oregano (spice or field) "No todo el monte es oregano" In Spain some villages, rivers and places are named Oregón. "Orín" a related word is "rust" in english, and the end "-gon" is a basque root for "river" or "Stream". For example Aragón, word of Basque origin, can be translate "Blackthornwood River" or "Thorn Creek". "Cisneros" from Leonese language is the name of a village, a river and gintreewood. The similarity with "Cisne" (Swan) is chance. The Iberian peninsula have had many languages latins or prehistoric, with words yet used in locations Anselmocisneros 23:15, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have yet to hear of a map produced in New Spain that even showed this river, much less gave it a name, and as I said above, no Spanish expedition even got this far (there is an apocryphal one as far north as the Canadian-US border but I've never seen a proper documentation of it.  The Spanish, in the pursuit of Cibola, never made it across the Great Basin to even get to the Snake or Columbia, much less realize they existed.  So there's no reason whatsoever to think there's a connection; unless you can show one - that so-and-so came such-and-so far and "named" the river in such-and-so a year, the word's resemblance to anything in Spanish is purely incidental and a non sequitur.Skookum1 01:01, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: George R. Stewart describes this theory, along with quite a few similar ones, as guesses.  As in, well the word Oregon looks kind of like the Spanish word oregano, or like the Shoshone word for this, the French for that, etc etc. His claim is that these are not so much theories are wild guesses, sort of like saying Cheasapeake comes from the English words "chest peek". Pfly 03:46, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  I think 

message: Oregon Country? Columbia district? What's the rationale behind having different articles for the same piece of land? - TheMightyQuill 01:18, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: They're not, that's why.  I guess it was you placed the merge template on Columbia District.  The US claims to the Oregon Territory included New Caledonia is why; the rough boundary between the Columbia District is approximately the Thompson River; Ft Kamloops eventually coming under Ft Vancouver's jurisdiction, i.e. as part of the Columbia District; its HBC orientation was usually to the New Caledonia HQ.  Also, at the onset of the Fraser Gold Rush that area, the lower Fraser Canyon, as well as Cariboo before it "earned" its name with the onset of the Cariboo Gold Rush - both were spoken of as being New Caledonia, not the Columbia District; in terms of a term as it was used, the Columbia District was only the Columbia basin; until such time anyway as the New Caledonia fur district became administered from Ft Vancouver (then Ft Langley...also described as being New Caledonia, not Columbia District, a name that got abandoned post-1846 except when US-annexed territories were spoken of as "Southern Columbia", a term the Akriggs also like.  The Columbia District is a fur co. adminstrative district within the Oregon Country claim.....of much more interest/need is fleshing out hte non-USPOV version of events leading to the US annexation etc, ditto on Oregon Treaty and Oregon boundary dispute and so on (ditto with the parallel Alaska pages).Skookum1 (talk) 18:52, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible POV Fork? 

message: Why in the section concerning early settlement, there is any mention of this :
European American settlement
The European presence in the French Prairie area began with the Willamette Trading Post established in 1814.[1]
In the 1830s the French Canadian settlers, who were Roman Catholic, petitioned to the Bishop of Juliopolis at the Red River Colony (present-day Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) to have a priest sent to them.[3] Two of these petitions were sent in 1836 and 1837. Bishop François Norbert Blanchet finally arrived in the French Prairie area in 1838. These first French Canadian settlers built hewn log homes in the French style and started wheat farms.[4] The homes were built with clay and stick chimneys, ash bark roofs, and animal skin windows that were similar to the homes built on the eastern Canadian frontier.[4] By 1843, approximately 100 French Canadian families lived on the prairie.[4]
For a short time the Oregonian Railway Company had a station named French Prairie about two miles southeast of the city of St. Paul.[2]
The St. Paul Roman Catholic Church, in St. Paul, was built by the settlers of French Prairie and is the oldest brick building in the Pacific Northwest.[1] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.251.136.246 (talk • contribs) 22:09, April 18, 2008
:Do you mean "no mention" of this? It looks like you copied the information from the French Prairie article I started? You can just link to it like this French Prairie: which makes the bluelink like this: French Prairie. Katr67 (talk) 22:42, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: French and French Canadian in Oregon Country

message: Re:
:In the 1820s Russia gave up its claims south of 54°40' in separate treaties with the United States and Britain. 
I encourage contributors to read the Alexander Begg references on Alaska boundary dispute: I'm ill and don't have the fuss to go look for a page number, but the story goes like this as to why 54-40.  In the Russo-British negotiations that led to the 1825 treaty the British, I believe it was, proposed 55 degrees north, as the Russians were expected to retreat from the 51st parallel revision of the Ukase of 1821 (in its original form claing to 43 North....); Beg recounts memorandums from Bagot and Canning concerning the Russian desire to retain the whole of Prince of Wales Island, so an agreeable amendment to the first-position 55 which the Russians had found reasoanble, other than the loss of the whole of that island; it's in that context that Begg builds the case for why the water boundary didn't touch land to 56-30 North, which was the BC position in the alaska boundary dispute.  That's obvoiusly too compliated to recount in detail in the econtext of an Oregon Country article; but it could be said/quoted that the 54-40 line resulted from a British proposal or counterproposal over the 55th line of latitude, and then provide the cite to the appropriate page in Begg.  Does it alraedy say in teh article that 54-40 bisected New Caledonia btw?  Anyway if I find the energy I'll try and find the passage in question....Skookum1 (talk) 21:49, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes this could be better phrased and made clearer. Will try later. Pfly (talk) 23:13, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry I'm being so lazy about this and so much; the complexity of hte issues and my usual profuse style do not lend themselves to easy additions; especially now as I understand the importance of page-citing everything; on many articles you've contributed to there's quite a bit I know if in my usual suspects and other places, much of which I've phrased in my mind but, like Bridge River-Lillooet Country articles yet unwritten, there's so much.  In the case of the above item there's a whole series of articles issuant from the issue, or connected to it; I probably should get off my butt and make the Ukase and 1825 treaty  article/additions in Alaska boundary dispute, but likewise in Oregon boundary dispute where there's a lot of British-side political history and related events; but this article, Oregon Country, too, is a cross-border article, so balance and respective perspectives and "truthinesses" have to be settled slowly, I guess; what I mean is the same kind of additions needed on the Alaska boundary article, and "related documents/events/people" ancillary articles, is extensive; and teh re-reading's time consuming, and for now as much lately, like you with your kid, I'm working on hatching tracks out of my sessions; not as painful as childbirth but just as time-consuming; not much time for Wiki other than repair edits and occasional kibbitzing...gotta turn this artso thing into a livign somehow... ;-).Skookum1 (talk) 02:14, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Origin of 54-40

message: I just expanded and reworded some text about the Provisional Government of Oregon and the applying of British and American laws in Oregon Country during "joint occupation". Short on time, but one quick thing I wanted to say: I took out the claim that the provisional government "was a deliberate violation of the terms of the Convention of 1818, which forbade the creation of any formal government or pressing of any claims by citizens of either signatory power." The text of the Treaty of 1818 is on wikisource here and I can see nothing to confirm this. There were renewal treaties and such, so I am not 100% certain, but no source I have found makes this claim. Even if it were true, neither the HBC nor the British government resisted the provisional government. The best I have seen is that the HBC "discouraged" its formation, but took part in it anyway, once it was operational and accepted British subjects. Further, the Chiorazzi book I cite says British law was applied to Oregon by an act of the British Parliament. The HBC had no legal authority over Americans, nor did the Oregon provisional government have authority over British subjects. If the Treaty of 1818 was broken, it would seem to me that both parties did so, no? Anyway, gotta run. The text I added could use, at the least, wikilinking. Will look for more info later. Pfly (talk) 22:54, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Provisional government 

message: In some accounts "Felton", it just occurred to me that this story perhaps deserves a quick mention here; at some early date an American - ? - staggered into Fort Vancouver - or was it Astoria even earlier - rather raving mad and half-starved; can't remember the exact description of his condition.  Why he's of interest historically is because he represents another kind of migrant into the region, one who somehow survived thousands of miles of wilderness without any skills, nor any sanity by the trip's end; rather reminiscent of Dead Man Walking, though I suppose Jarmusch might have known the story of Mr. Fenton....y'see, he's historically or rather linguistically notable; in the Chinook Jargon "Pelton", an Indianized phonology of his name, came to mean foolish, addled, silly; "hiyu pelton" - really stupid, nuts. whacked.  Just a reminder that there are stories from the historical period within the region, like his and Nicola and Kauxuma Nupika (sp? - Man-like Woman) and others - than just portraits of HBC factors and American mountain men; the region was the outer fringe, thet land beyond the moutains, in that era; not all who went into it wrote journals, or are known only of through other writers; but it was a colourful place for a  lot of its life; I guess I'll try and find Pax Brittanica in the Hali bookstores or Dal's library and find the passage about Simpson's trip into the area; though perhaps all that is better in History of the Pacific Northwest, which might be a workable compromise title on a common regional history article for Oregon Country v. Columbia District/Department, also where native history would apparently fit in more comfortably (s OC is about the American perception/colonziation, Columbia Department is about the HBC/British perception/colonization)....I'll come back with what bits I have about Mr. Fenton and that word; such stragllers are mentioned in various journals, but even fur company employees who settled down locally get little mention; what I'm saying is tehre was more going on in the region than the usual cast of characters....it's interesting isn't it that there's no mention of any ruling chief in the region by name in either article; both histories are written as if 98% of the region's population at the time, or any of its governments/chieftaincies, didn't exist...hmmmm History of the Pacific Northwest makes more and more sense as an article for varouis reasons, wish I had the time (and saintly NPOVness...).....Skookum1 (talk) 02:26, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  The unfortunate Mr. Fenton 

message: That image from Charles Marion Russell has bothered me for a while as unrepreeentative for various reasons; the clincher is that Russell was born in 1864 and while a Montanan by residence I don't think he much to do with what was across the mountains; this is a romantic rendering of a mythological Oregon Country -= perhaps valid in taht right, especially if it were from the migration period - but this is long post facto.  That birchbark canoe is the most pointed reminder how wrong it is; the big bateaux and York Boats of the fur companies look nothing like it, and if it's supposed to be an Indian canoe it's on teh wrong side of the Rockies.  Just wondering what else might be more representative; an old rendering of Colville or Vt Vancouver or ??Skookum1 (talk) 01:22, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: How about :Image:Lewis and clark-expedition.jpg instead? Not as general as a "generic" Oregon picture, but at least the boats are better. Pfly (talk) 01:35, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Marginally better, but those canoes and head-dresses are of a style I'm not sure ever saw the Lower Columbia, except in the form of raiding parties (Haida and Euclataws raided as far upstream as the Cascade Rapids...Clatsops and other Chinooks did have big canoes, but I'm pretty sure not quite of that style); definitely the image of Sacagawea is part of the American mythology of the region which is legitimate since the conception of Oregon Country was indeed American mythology....but if we're going to draw on an artist from after teh period of the existence of the Oregon Country, what about jumping all the way to Curtis? (who is at least ethnographically correct, or as close as is possible).  Another thought - David Douglas, not sure if there's any of his images.  There's out there somewhere, if not in Wikipedia, a romanticized portrait of Simposon's arrival at Ft Vancouver.....maybe it's online somewhere I'll do some digging.  What else could be a good illustration is debatable; the region's geography is so diverse that there's really no representative geographic image....Skookum1 (talk) 15:13, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm far too verbose to try it, but how 'bout attaching a footnote to the caption that it is a romanticized image from a later era and not actually representative of any particular landscape (?) and that the birchbark canoe is anomalous in the region; not that the many Iroqouians and Cree who worked for hte HBC might not have constructed them "but".....there's a famous painting of Gov Simpson's journey in a larger version of same ,le grand bateau, not sure if it's the same as a York boat or not, probably; same kind of structure only meant for a large amount of crew and cargo, with a broader beam...i wonder, are there any mentions in any journals that any of the Iroquoians or Algongkians or other indigenous employees from outsdie the region cnostructed birchbarks?Skookum1 (talk) 19:26, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Russell vs whose image?

message: I took this out of the "territorial evolution" section and took similar passages out of the various Russian America/Alaska-related articles which made the same claim; in those cases settlements in Washington and British Columbia were also claimed to have existed.  Is this from some source somewhere, i.e. "source" being a popular history of some kind?  I'm unaware of any Russian settlements between Sitka and Fort Ross, though I vaguely recall there were landings at Coos Bay or Siletz or Tillamook....Skookum1 (talk) 19:26, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: "Russian settlements in Oregon"

message: Hadn't looked at this page in a while and doing so just now, this bit at the end of the lead caught my eye, ...New Caledonia (also known as "King Rupert's Land" or "Kingsland") ... So I looked into the history and found the parenthetical comment and the CN tag were both added, in the same edit, by the IP editor 71.102.7.77 (diff). I also noticed the same user added a section to this talk page (diff) titled "A future plan for a new country in North America", with some comments the "Cascadian Independence Movement", links to State of Jefferson and State of Lincoln, and something about an "effort to split" states and provinces into smaller ones, "i.e....New Caledonia and Kingsland of Canada". User:Aboutmovies removed it, saying "rv chat; has no bearing on the historic region this covers". This is all fine by me, so can I remove the parenthetical thing about King Rupert's Land or Kingsland [citation needed]? Well I looked for the terms on pages like List of active autonomist and secessionist movements, Cascadia (independence movement); nothing. I googled various terms like "Cascadian Independence Project", Cascadia, Kingsland, secession, and so on; found just same old stuff and nothing about the terms Kingsland. A google search on "King Rupert's Land" turns hardly anything other than a few Wikipedia mirrors. Given this quick research and the CN tag added by the same user who added the claim, I'm going to remove it. Alrighty? Pfly (talk) 23:56, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: totally spurious, and never heard of it; I suspect IP-editor's name might be Rupert, maybe Rupert King; a vanity edit/secession; or someone making an extension off the name of Prince Rupert (which isn't even in New Caledonia, past or present, except in the gold-rush era usage of New Caledonia for the whole mainland, prior to the coining of the term British Columbia.Skookum1 (talk) 01:28, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Caledonia aka King Rupert's Land or Kingsland