THE FUR TRADERS. 19 



prise to English and Scotch partners. He claimed that as 

 Oregon at that time was disputed territorj^, it was the part 

 of wisdom to disarm the suspicions of the British Govern- 

 ment, and keep them from active interference with his 

 plans, by letting it be known that his company was largely 

 made up of British subjects. From a careful consideration 

 of all the facts it appears however as if the chances for suc- 

 cess would have been better if the positions of responsibility 

 had been held by men who were not so closely connected 

 with those in control of the Northwest Company ; for when 

 David Thompson appeared at Astoria on July 15, 1811, with 

 a party from Spokane, he was received with great cor- 

 diality by Mr. McDougal who in the absence of Mr. Hunt 

 was in charge of the station, although there was a sus- 

 picion on the part of the Americans in the settlement that 

 Thompson had only come to spy upon them in the interests 

 of the Northwest Company, and to discourage them with 

 tales of the dangers and hardships before them if they re- 

 mained at the station. During the weary months when 

 the little company were trying to maintain their position 

 at Astoria there were other instances of disloyalty to the 

 new organization on the part of some of the former mem- 

 bers of the Northwest Company, and it was McDougal 

 again who made the agreement with John Laroche and John 

 George McTavish in October, 1813, under which a month 

 later all the furs and merchandise in the country belong- 

 ing to Mr. Astor were conveyed to the Northwest Company 

 for about one-third of their actual value. There has been 

 some controversy as to whether McDougal was acting in 

 good faith when he entered into this contract, and it is a 

 significant fact that within a few months after this deal 

 was made he was given a lucrative position by the North- 

 west Company. 



As Captain Chittenden in his ' ' History of the American 

 Fur Trade, ' ' says : " It is no flight of fancy, but rather a 

 sober and legitimate conclusion, to say that if the Astorian 

 enterprise had succeeded the course of Empire on the , 

 American continent would have been entirely different - 

 from what it has been. With the valley of the Columbia 

 and the neighboring shores of the Pacific occupied by 

 American citizens instead of British subjects during the 

 period of controversy over the Oregon question, no part 



