Joseph S. Harris and the U.S. Northwest Boundary Survey, 1857-1861

JOSEPH S. HARRIS

AND

 THE U.S. NORTHWEST BOUNDARY SURVEY 

 1857-1861

Anne P. Streeter

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© Copyright 2012 Anne P. Streeter.

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isbn: 978-1-4669-3621-8 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4669-3622-5 (hc)

isbn: 978-1-4669-3623-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012907918

Trafford rev. 05/01/2012

North America & international

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Contents

Preface

Chapter One – Beginnings

Chapter Two – The Science of the Survey

Chapter Three – New York to San Francisco—1857

Chapter Four – San Francisco to Semiahmoo—1857

Chapter Five – Camp Semiahmoo—Early Fall, 1857

Chapter Six – Camp Semiahmoo—Late Fall—1857

Chapter Seven – Life of Native Americans

Chapter Eight – Semiahmoo Winter—1858

Chapter Nine – Taking to the Field—1858

Chapter Ten – Tummeahai and Chiloweyuck—1858

Chapter Eleven – Winter—Semiahmoo—1859

Chapter Twelve – The Cascades—Summer—1859

Chapter Thirteen – 1859—Fall—Following the Kettle River

Chapter Fourteen – Winter in Colville—1860

Chapter Fifteen – 1860—East of the Columbia River

Chapter Sixteen – From Kootenay West to Akamina—1860

Chapter Seventeen – Finishing the Camps

Chapter Eighteen – Relations with the Native Americans

Chapter Nineteen – The Last Year in the Field—1861

Chapter Twenty – Preparing the Report— 

 Washington, D.C.—1861-69

Chapter Twenty-One – Summing Up and Conclusions

Appendix A

End Notes by Chapter

List of Portraits, Maps, and Pictures by Chapter.

Bibliography

Dedicated to

The Harris Family Genealogists

Elizabeth Harris Stevens, Grand-daughter

and

Nonya Stevens Wright, Great-grand-daughter

of

Joseph S. Harris

Preface

I was cleaning out some trunks in the attic after my mother died, when I found a large official portrait of a distinguished looking gentleman and also a black legal binder with about 300 typewritten carbon pages of a manuscript. I took these to my Aunt Bet (Elizabeth Harris Stevens) and asked her to tell me about them. Surprised and delighted to see them, she identified the portrait as her grandfather, Joseph Smith Harris, taken while president of the Reading Railroad. The manuscript was a copy of his Autobiography, written in 1908, two years before his death. He was on the Northwest Boundary Survey when he was a young man, she said. He is one of the most interesting men in the Harris family. Someone ought to write a book about him!

Among the other things I received from my mother were two landscapes by James Madison Alden, the Northwest Boundary Survey artist. They are dramatic water colors of the Rocky Mountains, drawn when the Survey had nearly reached the Continental divide at Mount Akamina. Apparently Alden made several sketches each day. Later, while they were in Washington, D.C., pulling together the final report, he chose the best of these for the Final Report. Some he included in an album. The rest he gave away to the other officers on the survey. My grandfather, George, Joseph’s son, inherited eight which now belong to several of my cousins and me. Later I found out there are sixty-six boundary landscapes at the National Archives in Maryland. These can be accessed on the internet. Also many are included in a biography of Alden by Franz Stenzel, M.D. Alden accompanied the Survey for two years and the watercolors give one an excellent feel for the variety of landscapes they encountered.

Intrigued with the story of Joseph’s part in the Northwest Boundary Survey, in 1993, my husband and I visited the southern border of British Columbia. We traced Harris’s route in reverse. First we flew to Boise, then by car to Pend D’Oreille Lake and on to Mooyie on the border of British Columbia. Continuing fairly near the 49th parallel westward, we traveled up and down mountains and across rivers, finally ending at modern day Vancouver. There we found a fine museum of native and Inuit cultures. Going south to Point Roberts we took a hydrofoil across the Straits of Georgia to Vancouver Island. There we visited Victoria and its naval harbor, Esquimalt. Crossing the Juan de Fuca Straits to Port Angeles, we went to Port Townsend on the eastern part of the Olympic peninsula. After visiting the American Olympic State Park (though Harris never went there) we picked up his trail again at Olympia, the capital of the State of Washington. After stopping at Tacoma, where we found Franz Stenzel’s book, James Madison Alden, we flew home from Seattle. These last three cities were all located on the Puget Sound.

Along the International Border we had gone to each crossing point, taking pictures of the markers and viewing the swaths on each side. When we visited some of the local history museums, we realized that the recorded history of these localities began with the arrival of the Boundary Commission expedition. Several museums had copies of the Alden paintings. From this trip I put together a picture album of the trip with pertinent Harris text.

This was not to be the end, however. Kadi Stevens, a Harris relative and a professional archivist, heard of my trip. She e-mailed me about the purchase of Joseph Harris’s letters, more than 200, by the Beinecke Manuscript and Rare Book Library at Yale University as part of its Americana Collection.

When I visited the Beinecke to transcribe the letters, I found the task too formidable. Harris wrote in a slanted handwriting on a pale blue, tissue-thin paper in ink on both sides of the paper. At first glance, one saw only a series of X’s because the back side showed through to the front. I had all but given up, when I learned that C. Ian Jackson, a well-respected editor of correspondence written during a wide variety of arctic expeditions, was also working on the Northwest Boundary story.

Jackson was undertaking the task of transcribing not only the letters of Joseph Harris, an Assistant Astronomer on the American Northwest Boundary Commission, but also the letters of Samuel Anderson, a Royal Engineer on the British Northwest Boundary Commission. This gave the story of the joint survey as seen by a member on each side. It also meant I didn’t have to transcribe those letters. What a relief!

When Ian Jackson and I met, I quickly realized that he had all the credentials to edit the Harris Letters and to give the political background from both the British and American perspectives. His book, with the edited letters, was published in 2000 by the Champlain Society. It is a scholarly volume, owned by many academic and prominent libraries. Called Letters from the 49th Parallel, 1857-1873, this limited edition is a valuable primary resource.

A quarter of Jackson’s book is devoted to its explanatory Introduction. The book contains 950 well-researched footnotes and all the parts of the letters of Harris and Anderson that pertain to the work of the survey or of interest about the region. Ian was grateful for the history of the family that I could give him and regretted that he couldn’t do more about Harris. He encouraged me to do a companion book to his which would be less scholarly and more personal.

With the Autobiography, the pictures, the trip and now the transcribed letters and the encouragement of Ian, I felt compelled to write about this little known Boundary Survey and my great grandfather’s role in its success. In later years, Harris said that those survey years and the courting of his wife Delia, whom he married in 1865, were the romantic part of his life. He was to have an eventful career but no experiences that were more formative. My book explains why.

There is a special reason to write a detailed account of the Survey now that I had these materials. The full Official Report of the American Northwest Boundary Survey was inexplicably lost in 1872, a year after it had been completed. Because the United States was awash in debt due to the Civil War, no copy of the official Boundary Survey Report was ever published. When the original Report and all its backup materials were borrowed from the State Department by Mr. Campbell, they were subsequently lost and there were no copies. In 1900 Marcus Baker was directed by Congress to try to recapture the lost material as best he could by examining other records. I describe his Report which was very useful but mainly statistical.

In 1995 when I became interested in the Survey, all I could find about the expedition on the internet was the story of San Juan Island and the death of its famous pig. Now, since the publication of Ian Jackson’s book, much more information can be found in research libraries and on the internet. The International Boundary Line between Canada and the United States Line on the 49th parallel has been checked several times since this expedition and only minor changes have been made to it.

Now, through Harris’s letters, we can recapture the story of the frustrations and triumphs of the joint American and British Commissions who were charged with marking the parallel. Through many pictures and maps we can visualize the challenging terrain which was mostly in a primitive state. Madison Alden’s paintings capture the beauty of the landscape. Together with Clinton Gardner’s Reports and John Parke’s dispatches, these letters give us a fuller picture of the challenges these two Commissions faced.

The sometimes ineptness of the two governments, the magnetism that affected their instruments, the interference of the gold rush, the threat of warfare over San Juan Island, the lack of supplies and the approach of the Civil War, could have derailed this Survey.

In the end it was only through dogged determination and a willingness to overcome their differences that the professionals on the ground from both Commissions made the Northwest Boundary Survey a success. Harris, in particular, profited from this experience which brought out his leadership qualities.

The first thing you will notice in this narrative is that Indian place names are not spelled consistently. Harris’s family asked him why he spelled the same name in different ways in his letters. His reply was,

I suppose you do not understand the double spelling Chilowehuk & Chiloweyuck (I believe I use them both). They are both Gardner’s spelling, one his first and the other his present style and I have got them mixed up. They sound alike, you, see, but neither sounds much like the Indian word which would be more nearly represented by Tsitwheyok. No two persons spell any of these names alike if they have not seen each other’s orthography. The miners call the Chiloweyuck River Chillywhack. When we talk of Soomas or Sumass, as it is generally written, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s people don’t understand and ask if we mean Swess.

Confusion exists even today. On modern charts, Canadians call the creek Kishenena; the Americans call it Kishenehn when it gets over the border. With a brother named Frazer, Harris called the Fraser River, Frazer River. Gardner called it Frazier’s River.

Luckily the American Survey Commission ethnologist, Mr. George Gibbs, spent much of his time with the Native Americans and was compiling dictionaries of their languages. When the Commission was ready to publish its report, Mr. Parke asked Gibbs to produce a list of place names whose spelling was to be followed in American official publications. For the purpose of this story, however, when I quote directly, I allow each person to give his own spelling.

In addition to spelling, Harris’s writing style differed from modern convention. He wrote very long run-on sentences. I have taken the liberty of breaking these sentences up and adding periods to the ends of his sentences.

Letters quoted are almost all from Harris to his family. Usually he wrote to his older brother, Stephen Harris, who was his closest friend and a fellow surveyor. Stephen understood and sympathized with the difficulties that Harris was facing as an astronomer. When Autobiography is mentioned, I refer to the Joseph Harris Autobiography. George Clinton Gardner, the senior astronomer, wrote a very interesting Journal which is referenced also.

A great deal more could be written about the Native Americans and their culture. There were fine museums in both Victoria and Vancouver, describing the artifacts and culture of tribes from Alaska to areas south of the parallel. I have often used the word Indian to describe, in a general term, people from many different nations because that is what Harris used.

One of the difficulties I have faced has been interpreting the relationship between the Native Americans and the white men invading their territory. There are vast differences between the way American historians have viewed the American expansion beyond the thirteen colonies in the past and the way modern historians see it now.

This is particularly true because of the popular concept of Manifest Destiny in the 19th century, and even in these more modern times. This concept convinced many in the United States that it was destined, even divinely ordained, to expand across the North American continent, from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. It had little or no regard for the nations and people who were already dwelling there. The sorry story of the eighteenth and nineteenth century Western Movement was one of treaties broken, promises betrayed and Indian nations destroyed. In the Boundary Survey’s account local examples are given of the American militia cutting off a tribe’s fishing grounds, leading to tribe’s starvation and in another act of maliciousness, the slaughter by the military of all a tribe’s horses in an act of revenge.

The story of Harris, with all his prejudices and preconceived attitudes toward the non-white people he encountered, needs to be seen, however, as part of the larger attitude of his countrymen. The official task Harris was undertaking resulted in the restriction of the territory that was available to the population that lived on it. He, however, saw it more as defining the border between the Americans and British, not seeing that such an action would result in taking away the land of a defenseless native population and giving it to the white man. He also felt, because of the treaty, it was all right to take it away from the Hudson’s Bay Company which was using it commercially, not for settlement. He dismissed the Indian claim to territory because they didn’t farm or build permanent housing on it. He thought they were not using it productively, and he was happy to see it properly settled by the newcomers.

If one condemns Harris for this attitude of superiority toward the lesser peoples as he called them, it does not diminish the fact that Harris tried to live up to the highest standards of what his family and his education asked of him. He was flawed in accepting the prevailing opinions of his society without question and inclined to be self-righteous. We can blame him for never learning from his fellow countryman, George Gibbs, that Indians were fellow human beings, worthy of being treated fairly and whose friendship was to be highly prized.

On the other hand, Harris was very young, only twenty one when he began the Survey, and as he matured, he became far more tolerant of others than his upbringing had prepared him for. In his Resolutions, he was determined to become more understanding of others.

Since there has been so little written about this Northwest Boundary Survey, there is a great temptation to go into the whole story, giving alterative political perspectives and more of the British point of view. Having the rare gift of so many of Harris’s letters, however, I have limited the account to Harris’s perspective. I hope this account will also give the reader some measure of the man, his hopes, his joys, his successes, his fears and even his faults.

Acknowledgements

As a non-academic, I knew I was going to require assistance in bringing this story to the public. First and foremost I would like to thank Ian Jackson for bringing his formidable editing skills and his thorough grasp of the subject to bear. He exercised considerable patience in explaining the difficulties of defining a boundary through an astronomical survey. He ferreted out inaccuracies, corrected spelling and was generous in giving good advice. I feel I was very lucky to have a person of his qualifications to help me.

I also want to thank my family for their support. My gratitude goes to my patient son Richard Streeter, a cartographer, who produced five of the maps. Another family member, Jonathan Streeter, living in California, provided local color and assisted in the editing along with his sister, Deborah Streeter, a professor at Cornell, University. Her husband, Tom Owens, rescued me from my computer problems. My sister-in-law Connie Paul also was most helpful. Marge Bishop gave me encouragement when I most needed it.

My cousin Nonya Stevens, the family genealogist, gave me great encouragement and help by supplying me with family background and pictures.

Most of all I would like to thank Diana MacPherson, for helping to bring this book through the publishing process. She remained supportive and cheerful through the several years it has taken to prepare this book for publication. What a friend!

Anne Streeter

West Hartford, Connecticut

2011

Chapter One 

 Beginnings

Joseph’s Boyhood

Joseph Smith Harris, son of Dr. Stephen Harris and his wife Marianne, was born on April 29, 1836, in East Whiteland Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania He was the second child and second son of nine children. His home, a 200 acre farm, had been in the family since it was acquired in 1770 by Thomas Harris, Joseph’s great-grandfather. Today this property, owned by the Chester Valley Golf Club, is at the corner of Swedesford Road and Church Road in Malvern, Pennsylvania. Two buildings still remain. The barn has an added wing but retains the original stonework and beams; the spring house is still in use as storage and as a home for irrigation pumps.

Fig. 1. Harris Home in East Whiteland Township, 1840

Harris Collection

During Joseph’s childhood in East Whiteland, as this area was called, his father, Dr. Stephen Harris, was engaged in a busy country medical practice. The family read a Whig newspaper and followed the election contests of Harrison, Tyler and Polk with interest. Their more immediate concerns, however, were the affairs of the Presbyterian Church and the success of their farm. Also central to Stephen and Marianne’s life was the upbringing of their children and a determination to provide a classical education for their sons in Greek, Latin, and Mathematics. When Joseph was eleven, he and his brother were sent to live with an uncle in Philadelphia for the winter so they could attend Dr. Crawford’s, a preparatory school for the University of Pennsylvania. Although the boys did well, it was not a success.

We learned very little in the school where we stayed till the spring. We always knew our lessons, but it was before the art of teaching was invented… . Dr. Crawford was, of all men I have ever known, the most cruel and brutal whipper.

They returned to East Whiteland and attended a neighborhood school the following winter. Unfortunately, the health of Dr. Harris began to fail. By 1848, when Joseph was 12, the decision was made to sell the farm, move to Philadelphia, and start a new practice. This would allow Dr. Harris to have a less taxing routine by concentrating more patients in a smaller area and would provide better schooling for the boys.

Two years later, in 1850, after moving to a home on 292 Pine Street in Philadelphia, Joseph and his older brother Stephen were enrolled in Philadelphia’s Central High School. Stephen was promoted a grade at once for his good marks and Joseph soon followed him into the same class and for the next years they were at or near the top of their class.

The unthinkable happened on Nov. 18, 1851, only eighteen months after they had arrived in Philadelphia. Their father died.

Joseph wrote in his Autobiography,

I have no memory of his being ill except that, toward the close of his life, he called me to his bedside and told me that he was going to die. I was overcome and wept and told him that we could not spare him. He said he would gladly stay with us if he could be relieved of the great pain which had for some time distressed him, but that he thought of death as a relief. He urged me to be good to my mother. This, only, I remember of our last interview.

From that time on, Stephen and Joseph became the main support of their mother, both in advice and in finances. All hopes for a professional education in medicine, law, or the ministry were now over. Their mother, Marianne, started to maximize their resources. She had already sold the Pine Street home previous to her husband’s death in 1851 and purchased a house on Spruce Street. This she rented to a girls’ school in order to provide her daughters with a free education and generate a small income.

She then rented the house next door to the girl’s school. This she filled with boarders, as well as using it as her own home. There were now six children left in the family, two having died in East Whiteland before the age of three and one soon after they moved to Philadelphia. In 1852, the remaining children in order of age were Stephen, 18, Joseph, 16, Martha, 14, John Campbell (called Cam), 12, Frazer, 11, and Mary, 9.

Through rigorous economy their mother was able to save enough money to allow the three older boys to finish at Philadelphia’s Central High School for Boys.

Central High School

Central High School was a rigorous training ground for aspiring scientists and engineers. It was modeled on the ideas of Alexander Bache, who was a great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin and who inherited his strong interest in science. A graduate of West Point and a professor there, he was requested on behalf of the trustees of what became Girard College in 1848, to study the science programs in educational institutions in Europe for a two year period.

Abroad, Bache examined European systems of education and determined that a change was needed from the traditional classical curriculum popular in educational institutions of that period in America.

He wanted a curriculum unusually strong in the study of science and mathematics, as well as in the development of character, the use of discipline and charged with a sense of purpose. From 1839 to 1842, he served as the first president of Central High School. His goal there was to make Central equal to West Point in delivering a thoroughly practical education. Later in 1848, he was appointed Superintendent of the U.S. Coast Survey. Joseph and Stephen attended Central High in the 1850s and both benefited tremendously from this scientific education, its sense of mission and its high moral standards.

In 1853, even before he had graduated from Central High, Joseph started his first job as a topographer with the Engineer Corps of the Easton and Water Gap Railroad, which later became the North Pennsylvania Railroad. He took time off from his field work to return to Philadelphia to take his final exams, graduating among the top of his class. He and his brother had done four years of study in three years. He graduated with an A.B. degree at the age of seventeen.

Joseph now had to help provide for his family. After a year with the Easton Railroad, he found new employment with the U.S. Coast Survey doing survey work in Delaware County, about ten miles west of Philadelphia. This began a series of part time jobs with the U.S. Coast Survey. Having never traveled far in his life, he found himself in places such as St. Louis, New Orleans, Mobile and Washington, D.C. His brother Stephen had also joined the Coast Survey. Special permission was granted to waive the Survey rule that no two members of the same family could be employed at the same time.

Two interesting opportunities now arose. One was to survey the U.S./Mexican boundary. The second was to survey a Northwest Boundary, which would divide Oregon Country between the United States and Britain.

Joseph applied for them both. While waiting to hear, being out of work, he landed a job with the Kentucky Geological Survey briefly and then rejoined the U.S. Coast Survey to help survey the Gulf of Mexico, along with his brother. On March 10th, 1857, he was called to Washington, D.C. His application to join the Northwest Boundary Survey had been accepted.

The U.S. Coast Survey

It was no accident that Harris had applied to and been accepted by the U.S. Coast Survey in part-time work from 1854 to 1857, and then full time from 1857 to 1864. He had the training Bache was looking for.

As he had at Central High School, Alexander Dallas Bache had taken on the complete modernization of the Coastal Survey. Instead of looking at surveying through conventional narrow disciplines, Bache envisioned the U.S. Coast Survey as a center for developing surveyors who were conversant in all branches of science.

To complete an accurate trigonometric survey, surveyors needed to do much more than simply measure angles and distances. They also had to solve problems in astronomy, geodesy (the study of the shape or figure of the earth), optics, physics, mathematics, statistics, error analysis, and scientific instrumentation. In the interest of defense, there was a broad mandate for students to study economics, commerce and navigation. National Surveying often meant doing research in meteorology, oceanography, hydro graphics, natural history, and terrestrial magnetism.

Under Bache’s direction, the Coast Survey became the largest and most important institution supporting science in antebellum America. Bache used his position on the Coast Survey to become the foremost patron of science in this period and to develop close relationships with influential politicians, businessmen, civic leaders, military officers, and other social and intellectual elites. He, himself, was actively involved in the leadership of the Smithsonian Institute, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences.

In the absence of graduate schools, the Coast Survey helped give promising young men a professional education. According to historian, Richard Hugh Slotten, in his book U.S. Coast Survey, parents who did not have enough money to send their sons to specialized scientific schools such as the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Lawrence Scientific School, sought, instead, to obtain positions for them on the Coast Survey. The Navy did not yet have as high a standard of instruction as West Point so they used the Coast Survey to give their officers an advanced education.

The Survey, therefore, had the largest budget of any scientific institution in the U.S. and supported more men of science—either directly on the Survey or indirectly through Bache’s policy of using individuals as consultants.

Bache believed strongly that the development of scientific research and education could not take place without the financial support of the U.S. government. With a modest budget, he stretched it in every possible way to help support or supplement the salaries of able college professors and graduates. The salaries for beginning graduates were not generous. The Survey had an apprenticeship system. During the 1850s aides were paid $15 per month for living expenses, then, after a year or more, $50 a month. The salary of the majority of assistants was $1,500-$2,000 per year. Stephen Harris was earning about $800 a year working in the Gulf of Mexico at the same time that his younger brother, on the Northwest Boundary Survey (considered much more hazardous) was earning $1,500 a year.

During the 1850s the Coast Survey reached its pinnacle of power and influence under Bache’s command. According to Hugh Slotten, By 1855, the Coast Survey employed 776 individuals. Bache distributed scientific reports to all sorts of influential people. He also chose to do his mapping in areas with the most political influence. He even curried favor with the religious community by using church steeples to complete triangulation work and used surveyors with local ties to keep the complaints down.

There was criticism that Bache favored Philadelphians and graduates of Philadelphia’s Central High School. He took these complaints to heart and in 1854 started testing applicants in algebra, geometry, plain and spherical trigonometry, analytical geometry, differential and integral calculus, theoretical astronomy and analytical mechanics before accepting them. Despite these rigorous requirements, he was accused of nepotism and favoritism. When, in 1857, Joseph was offered the important Northwest Boundary job by Bache, it was because he was looking for the brightest and best to join him in building the U.S. Coast Survey into a unique institution.

It is evident that the shaping of Joseph’s character was determined by both his days at Central and by his career at the Coast Survey. His self-discipline, his intellectual curiosity, his morality, his interest in both science and the humanities, were qualities nurtured by these two institutions.

It was a credit to the abilities of both Joseph and Stephen that the U.S. Coast Survey should employ both of these graduates of Central High School in light of the prohibition against hiring two people from the same family.

Opening up the West

In 1836, when Joseph Harris was born, the lands west of the Mississippi were an area of mystery to most Easterners. The Southwest, which encompassed today’s states of California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Kansas and Texas, were in the hands of Mexico. The American Northwest was a vast, seemingly empty area that stretched from the northern border of Mexican California to the southern border of Russian Alaska. This area was called Oregon Country. Little was known about it, nor were its boundaries defined.

Joseph’s parents may have read about the exploits of Lewis and Clark who, in 1803-1806, had pushed through from Missouri to the Pacific Coast on an historic journey of exploration. Accounts of that journey were widely published and many Easterners were left with an impression of hostile Indians, fast rushing, dangerous rivers, and nearly impenetrable mountains, with the final destination, a cold, dreary and foggy Pacific coast.

The thought of any of their children ever visiting such an area was likely never entertained by the Harris family. Joseph’s parents wanted their children to remain together in safe Pennsylvania and hoped for professional careers for their boys. They never dreamed that one of their own children would travel to the same shore where Lewis and Clark and their companion, Sacagawea, had spent a cold winter.

In 1816, after the War of 1812, the treaty of Ghent set the boundary between the United States and British North America at the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude. It started at Minnesota and extended to the Stony Mountains soon to be known as the Rocky Mountains.

The northern coastal area west of the Rocky Mountains and north of the Mexican area was known to the Americans as Oregon Country and to the British as the Columbia Department or Columbia District of the Hudson’s Bay Company. (Also included in the district was the southern portion of another fur district, New Caledonia.) The treaty provided for joint control of that land for ten years. Both countries could claim land and both were guaranteed free navigation throughout. In 1827 when the ten year 1816 agreement was up, the two countries sparred over a boundary settlement which would continue the 49th parallel as the international boundary between the Rockies and the Pacific Ocean.

Fig. 2. Growth of the United States in the 1800s

USA. An American History

The settlement of this area, only partially explored and mapped, was the one concern Britain and the United States could agree upon. They did not want Russia to gain a foothold. There were many other issues to be resolved, but finally the two countries agreed to extend their joint arrangement on the Pacific Slope for an indefinite period. From the British point of view this was a triumph for the United States since there had been no substantial American presence in this area yet.

The British had never used the territory north of the Columbia River for settlement, but pursued it for the profitable fur trade. The North West Company, which had merged with the Hudson’s Bay Company (sometimes referred to as the Company or HBC) sent men to the Canadian Rockies in 1821, to explore the western region of Canada and collect furs in the Oregon Country, south to the Columbia River.

The British equivalents of Lewis and Clark explored a large area in Northwest America. Alexander Mackenzie in the 1790s had traveled the great Mackenzie River, crossed the Rockies and reached the Pacific. In 1808, Simon Fraser discovered the Fraser River and followed it almost to the sea. In 1807, David Thompson surveyed many parts of Canada and became the first man to make a detailed survey of the region drained by the Columbia River. No settlers, however, followed these great discoveries.

Up until the 1840’s, the Hudson’s Bay Company remained very much in charge in Oregon Country. In 1825 the Company began to concentrating on the coast by building Fort Vancouver on the north bank of the Columbia, across from the modern city of Portland, in hopes that the British would have a fair claim to what is now Washington State. (This Fort Vancouver should not be confused with Vancouver Island or the city of Vancouver, later built in Canadian territory on the Fraser River.)

Other Hudson’s Bay Company posts south of the 49th parallel were Fort Nisqually (today Tacoma) Fort Okanagan, Fort Colville, and Fort Walla Walla. Then later, when it seemed likely that the 49th parallel might become the international boundary (but with Vancouver Island remaining entirely British) the Company expanded north, founding Fort Langley on the lower Fraser River in 1827.

During this period the Hudson’s Bay Company had continued to be the ruling agent of the British crown. By 1849, recognizing the need for the presence of government in the most prosperous part of the Oregon Country, north of the established boundary line, Britain made Vancouver Island a Crown Colony with Fort Victoria as its capital. James Douglas, who was a factor or managing agent of the Hudson’s Bay Company, was then made Governor of Vancouver Island. The rest of the area, known as New Caledonia, remained under the jurisdiction of the Hudson’s Bay Company which began to branch out into mining and farming.

After 1840 the situation in the Western part of the country, began to change dramatically. The United States purchased the rest of the formerly Spanish lands in the west from Mexico, including California, which added the vast Southwest to its territory. New routes or trails now began to open up this land for westward migration. The Oregon Trail went through Fort Laramie and split off into the California Trail. The Mormon Trail went to Salt Lake City, the California Cut-Off went to Los Angeles and the Santa Fe Trail went to Santa Fe.

Easterners were lured west by glowing reports by settlers of a magnificent climate and the natural resources of this virgin country. They were also drawn by the attraction of trade with the Orient and by a missionary zeal for conversion of the Indians. By 1846 there were over 5,500 settlers south of the Columbia River in a part of Oregon Country soon to become Oregon Territory. The newcomers began clamoring for protection of their property by the United States, especially against the Indians.

In Congress a new group called the Democratic Expansionists persuaded Congress not to renew the old Northwest Boundary treaty of 1827 with Great Britain. They called for the annexation of the entire region up to 54⁰ 40' north, the southern limit of Russian territory as established by parallel treaties between the Russian Empire and the US (1824) and Britain (1825).

Fig. 3. Overland Routes to the Pacifi c, 1840.

USA, Faulkner, Kepner & Pitkin

President Polk, in his 1844 presidential campaign, boldly declared that the U.S. should claim all of Oregon right up to the Russian border—using the slogan Fifty-four forty or Fight, (referring to the Russian latitude) or All of Oregon or none!, (referring to all of Oregon Country.) He wanted to remove all British claims to the Northwest. However, when Mexico went to war with the United States over the annexation of the Republic of Texas, calmer heads advised Polk that it would be unwise to fight both Mexico and Britain at the same time.

Relinquishing its hopes of making the boundary at the Columbia River, Britain now had proposed returning to the old proposed boundary dividing Oregon Territory at the 49th parallel from the Rockies to the waters of the Pacific. Resisted at first by Congress, it was later agreed upon under very favorable terms to the United States.

The 49th parallel was established in 1846 as the international boundary from the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast, with the exception of the Colony of Vancouver Island which clearly belonged to the British. By adopting this border west of the Rocky Mountains, it completed the border already established on the 49th parallel east of the Rocky Mountains to Point of Woods, Minnesota. Adopting this line was a triumph for the Americans because the British had several forts south of the parallel and the small British Red River settlement had a pretty good case that they had occupied this territory continuously.

The British found themselves in anomalous position. Even though a treaty had been signed, making the 49th parallel the boundary between the United States and British Columbia, no physical and accurate boundary was yet established on the ground. Both countries still continued to jointly occupy the coastal area. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s properties south of the 49th parallel were still allowed to operate and were ostensibly protected by the treaty.

Then, American settlers began coming into the territory in droves. By 1854 there were about 11,000 settlers in the area south of the Columbia River. On the northern side of the Columbia River there was no similar increase. The HBC in 1841 had chosen the area on the northern side of the Columbia River for settlement by retired employees of the Company, their Indian wives and their mixed blood relatives. It was estimated, however, that there were less than twenty-four Caucasian settlers in that area in 1846 and this number did not grow substantially during the next ten years. According to D. W. Meinig, a modern day critic of American expansionism, there was a basic difference in the character of the British and American positions in the human geography of Oregon.

The one was created and maintained by a commercial company, the other by a spontaneous folk movement; the one a network of widely dispersed stations staffed by assigned agents, the other an organic colony of settlers… . We should recognize that the Hudson’s Bay Company regarded colonization within its own territories as being a costly complication and an infringement upon the fur business, and only reluctantly took it as an implied obligation to win renewal of its charter from politicians with larger British interests in Oregon.

The inhabited regions of British Canada on the East Coast were 2,000 miles away from the West coast, separated by impassable mountains, desolate prairies and the barren northern shores of Lake Superior. For the British, this huge unexplored area in the mid-continent made it nearly impossible for settlers to traverse. As an alternative, they faced long sea voyages. A ship leaving Britain must round Cape Horn, go up the entire west coasts of South America and of the United States.

The other route was to go by ship across the Atlantic Ocean to Central America. There the passengers had to cross on land the Isthmus of Darien to today’s Panama, and pick up an American ship to reach San Francisco. There they still must find their way by foot or smaller ship to Victoria. The English public had little interest in settling in a land which was so hard to get to. Also, when they arrived at Victoria, the only business intercourse these Oregon Country British had was, not with their own countrymen, but with the pioneer Americans in the Northwest.

The British settlers depended on American traders for supplies. There was no proper local postal communication. Letters from Victoria to Fort Vancouver or San Francisco had to be prepaid in cash or else bear the American stamps that were sold in the post office at Victoria. There were not enough agricultural products grown to meet the demands of any new inhabitants. The British could easily see that without a definite boundary, the territory would be simply overwhelmed by the growing number of Americans coming inexorably from the south.

The British had other pressures too. As the gold rush of 1849 in California began to peter out, miners began to travel further north. Substantial deposits were discovered in the Colville region of Oregon Country. Now miners began to travel north of the Columbia River by the hundreds. Exploring further they made strikes in the mountains around the 49th parallel and by 1855 had pushed all the way up to the Fraser River.

In 1858 the Crown designated the mainland area above the 49th Parallel, from the Pacific to the Rockies, a British colony. Queen Victoria named the colony Columbia. There was still no clearly demarcated border, however, and no government official could control this burgeoning mining activity without one. Great Britain recognized that something must be done immediately.

The U.S. Congress was feeling the same urgency as the British. In 1848 American settlers living below the 49th parallel in Oregon Territory had petitioned Congress for territorial status to be called Oregon Territory, with Salem as its capitol. The American settlers, however, who lived north of the Columbia River on the Puget Sound, but below the 49th parallel, did not want to be part of this new Territory of Oregon.

Originally, Oregon Territory ran five hundred miles from the south Oregon border to the 49th parallel. The Columbia River, which bisected the area, was wide and difficult to navigate. In 1854 the northern American pioneers petitioned Congress to divide the Territory of Oregon into two parts. They wanted to name the northern territory the Territory of Columbia. Congress, realizing the confusion this would cause, renamed this territory Washington Territory to commemorate their founding president. To further clarify the situation, the British changed the name of their new colony Columbia to British Columbia.

Fig. 4. The creation of the Oregon and Washington Territories.

Wikipedia—Oregon Territory

The Northwest Boundary Treaty

The Northwest Boundary Treaty was signed by James Buchanan, U.S. Secretary of State, and Richard Pakenham, British Prime Minister. It was proclaimed by both countries in August, 1846.

The British had hoped to keep the area north and west of the Columbia River where they had the only settlements, especially the eastern side of the Puget Sound with its deep sea ports. They were willing to cede the western side of the Sound called the Olympic peninsula. The United States, however, refused this offer because it, too, wanted both sides of the easily navigable Puget Sound. The treacherous entrance to the Columbia River further south had made the northern Puget Sound a far safer alternative for a naval base. Setting the boundary line at the 49th parallel meant almost none of the British wishes were granted by the Pakenham-Buchanan treaty makers.

There were several factors at play in the negotiations to locate a boundary. The British public had slight interest in this far away region. There had been less than enthusiastic support by the British for the Hudson’s Bay Company’s business monopoly and their lack of interest in allowing settlement. Also there were domestic issues at home such as free trade, the repeal of the Corn Laws, the Irish famine, and the American war with Mexico, Britain’s ally, over Texas. The only concession the United States eventually had to make was continuing the navigation privileges on the Columbia River for the Hudson’s Bay Company, but not for British citizens. The historian, D.W. Meinig, criticizes this division as imperialism, saying,

As a large body of historical studies makes clear, settlement of the Oregon dispute was more the result of particular persons and parties working within the context of other national and international issues than of the actual historical geography of exploration, exploitation and occupation of that vast territory by the contending nations.

One must conclude that momentous geopolitical decisions on Oregon, as with so many other parts of North America, were made with limited understanding of, and even limited concern about, its geography.

The U.S. gained a major geopolitical victory because Oregon became a more important issue in its national politics and gave the impression that it was willing to risk more in support of its demands than was the case with Great Britain.

On the other hand, Frederick Merk, an American specialist in the history of Western America, contends that The Forty-ninth parallel was the most reasonable basis of settlement; indeed, that line was the boundary that the finger of nature and the finger of history pointed out for the partition of the Oregon area.

Up until 1854, various United States Presidents had largely ignored the pleas from the few northwest settlers for help against the Indians and in establishing their borders. But with miners pushing claims ever northward, it was important to know with which government claims could be filed. Congress at last started to pay attention.

Both nations had compelling reasons for surveying the boundary between them. In 1856, ten years after the 1846 Treaty had been signed, the joint British and U.S. Northwest Boundary Commissions were established.

The first article of the Northwest Boundary Treaty described the boundary in the following words,

From the point on the 49th parallel of north latitude, where the boundary laid down in existing treaties and conventions between the United States and Great Britain terminates, the line of boundary between the Territories of the United States and those of Her Britannic Majesty shall be continued westward along the said 49th parallel of north latitude to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver’s Island and thence southerly through the middle of said channel, and of Fuca’s [Juan de Fuca] Straits to the Pacific Ocean.

This boundary treaty continued an unmarked border from Lake of Woods in Minnesota all the way to the Pacific. The treaty also called for the marking of the border to be performed by joint commissions, separately appointed by each country, but working cooperatively. The two countries were to mark the boundary border in two phases.

The first phase, performed by The Northwest Boundary Commission proceeded from west to east, from the Juan de Fuca Straits, skirted Vancouver’s Island and then marked the 49th parallel on the mainland. It went east for 410 miles on the mainland to the Summit of the Rocky Mountains. The field work was done from the fall of 1857 to the fall of 1862. Joseph Harris was a member of the first boundary survey party. The original concept was to have no hiatus between the first and second phase. Because of the Civil War, however, there a long pause of ten years before the joint Boundary Commission was re-established.

The second boundary survey was made by The Northern Boundary Commission. It demarcated the border from Lake of Woods, Minnesota, proceeding west to the summit of the Rockies, again at Mount Akamina. It took place between the fall of 1872 and the summer of 1874. Joseph Harris was not part of this survey.

For the first phase, the United States government appointed a single Commissioner, Archibald Campbell, whose powers covered the maritime boundary which started at the Pacific Ocean, and ran east through the Juan de Fuca Strait, through the islands in the Georgia Strait to the mainland. His powers also included the land survey where the line preceded along the 49th parallel to the crest of the Rocky Mountains.

For this phase, the British Government appointed three Commissioners. They chose British Naval officers Captain James Prevost and Captain George Richards for the maritime survey. A year later, Colonel John Hawkins of the Royal Engineers was appointed for the land boundary survey.

Members of the U.S. Boundary Survey

The Buchanan-Pakenham Treaty provided for the appointment of a Commissioner and a Chief Astronomer and Surveyor on the part of the United States to unite with similar officers to be appointed by Great Britain. Their task was to survey the boundary and mark it with monuments. It also provided for the appointment of an Assistant Astronomer and Surveyor, a Secretary and a Clerk. For the first year, it appropriated a total of $71,000, of which $11,000 was for the annual salaries of these five officers and $60,000 for provisions, transportation and contingencies. It restricted the work to the northern boundary of Washington Territory, from the Pacific Ocean to the Rocky Mountains. Finally, it authorized the President to direct the employment of such officers, assistants, and vessels of the U.S. Coast Survey as he might deem necessary or useful.

The following five officers of the U.S. Boundary Survey were appointed:

Archibald Campbell—Commissioner.

   Lieut. John G. Parke—Corps of Topographical Engineers—

      Chief Astronomer and Surveyor.

   George Clinton Gardner—Assistant Astronomer and Surveyor.

      (He was called Clinton.)

   William J. Warren—Secretary.

   John J. Major—Clerk to the Commissioner.

The other professionals on the U.S. Boundary Survey were:

Joseph S. Harris—Assistant Astronomer. A later historian listed

   Joseph Harris as a surgeon or as a naturalist. Harris had a rudimentary training in first aid, but his principal duties were those of an astronomer and surveyor.

Francis Herbst—Topographer. He was later replaced by

   Charles Gardner, Clinton Gardner’s brother.

Henry Custer—Topographer.

Nevin King—Quartermaster and Commissary in 1857.

George Gibbs—Geologist, Naturalist and Interpreter.

C.B.R. Kennerly, MD—Surgeon and Naturalist.

R.V. Peabody—Indian Agent for east of Lake Depot and Quartermaster.He was selected in 1858 for that year only.

Prof. James Nooney—Statistician. He had been on the Mexican

   Boundary Survey in a mathematical capacity. He came in 1859.

James Madison Alden—Boundary Artist. He joined them part-time on two occasions.

George Davidson—Surveyor. He was the principal officer of the Coast Survey on the West Coast who was to assist in taking some of the land measurements around Puget Sound. He was not officially attached to party and left in 1858.

Frank Hudson—Mathematician. He joined the group in 1859.

Charles Gardner—Topographer. He was Clinton Gardner’s older brother and came in 1859 to replace Francis Herbst.

The rest of the men who worked on the American Northwest Boundary Survey were drawn from the local population and from disaffected miners. Many of these were native to the area and were skilled woodsmen. They could be dismissed during the winters and rehired in the spring. It was particularly helpful to have a local Quartermaster. Mr. Peabody, who was able to find local workers when they needed them,

When it came to the U.S. President’s selection of the members of the Northwest Boundary Commission, one can see in the background the fine hand of Alexander Bache, head of the Coast Survey. George Davidson, who was assigned to the maritime part of the boundary work, was a special favorite of Bache and was already in charge of all West Coast operations of the Coast Survey. Frank Hudson was also one of his men.

Julius Hilgard, Bache’s chief assistant, in consultation with Lieut. John Parke, proposed Joseph Harris’s inclusion, and they were displeased when Clinton Gardner was selected over other Coast Survey favorites. Later, when Davidson had to be replaced, the name of Stephen Harris was proposed, and when Stephen Harris turned down this appointment, ironically, Clinton Gardner’s brother, Charles (named Charley to avoid confusion with his father, Charles K. Gardner) was picked.

Commissioner Campbell had been a Chief Clerk in the War Department. Joseph Harris considered him as a good friend and a good Commissioner in the field.

Lieutenant Parke and Harris were old friends. Parke had been introduced to Harris in Washington and had recommended him for the survey. A native of Downingtown, Pennsylvania, he and Harris had mutual friends and interests. Parke, a West Point graduate and a member of the Topographical Engineers, had been in charge of one of the important Pacific Railroad surveys. When he joined the Boundary Survey, he was no longer under military command so was called Mr. Parke in dispatches. (In later years, General Parke became the Superintendent of the U.S, Military Academy at West Point.) Both Parke and Campbell were now paid $3,000 per annum.

William Warren, the Secretary, had been a clerk in the War Department under Campbell. He usually accompanied Campbell on all his trips. To the men his important role was seeing that their mail was delivered.

Twenty-six year old George Clinton Gardner had served under his father, Colonel Charles K. Gardner, the Surveyor General of Oregon Territory in 1854. Of Clinton Gardner, Joseph wrote,

He was the one officer of the Commission who was familiar with the western coast. He was