The Hudson’s Bay Company (“HBC”) was a fur trading monopoly incorporated by English royal charter in 1670; it functioned as the de facto government in parts of North America for ~200 years, almost as long as the USA has existed as a country. From a fort on the Columbia River (by today’s Portland, OR), HBC formally ruled the area of the Farm and Gardens. Fort Vancouver was the largest settlement, some 600 strong, between Sitka and San Francisco (then called New Archangel and Yerba Buena respectively), each surrounded
by ~200x that many Indigenous populace; this was the land of the Chinook. Their villages surrounded and stretched to the sea with an average range of 25% to 46% slaves for the harder drudgeries (Chinook women and children for the rest). Russian trappers (Post #047) and HBC’s often crossed paths as Fort Ross was to the south (read of the English Grade’s trapper cabin). Peoples from 30 different Indigenous tribes were imported from afar worked for HBC and lived by the Fort, the Iroquois being the largest, then the Cree. Other workers were French-Canadians, Metis, Hawaiians (Kanaka), Irish, and the occasional Welsh, like mapmaker David Thompson (Post #084). HBC also had its own employees, 3–5-year contracted laborers from Scotland and the Orkney Islands (Post #080). All joined together to trap the beaver “to extinction (Post #042 ). HBC finally withdrew to move to Victoria, Canada in 1860, but this was long after the “fort” had become a relic. Approximately 40 cultures lived together in harmony, speaking Chinook Jargon as a 1st language; perhaps using Canadian French when “formal,” with writing and accounting in English, but the common day language was a mixture of First Nation (Canada) and Chinookan, then French and Canadian, with a few words from the other 40 cultures added as the language evolved. Proving, like the Pioneers of this area and the artists at the Pilchuck Glass School, we walk best into the future honoring our tribes, but melding into a culture stronger and better; doing what it takes to make a quality future for the next generations without forgetting our past.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Vancouver
https://www.nps.gov/fova/learn/historyculture/population-of-the-village.htm
http://npshistory.com/publications/fova/ethnohistorical-overview.pdf
http://www.plc215.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Scots.pdf
https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/hudson_s_bay_company/
http://npshistory.com/publications/fova/index.htm
History Farm Prose & Primary Level Question
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