252 John H. Mitchell—Oregon 
should, through its subjects, occupy Oregon territory jointly with 
our citizens for a period of twenty-eight years, instead of stand- 
ing in 1817 on our rights as sovereign and insisting that they 
should be respected, is now generally conceded. The value of 
the furs of which that country was stripped by the Hudson Bay 
companyj{in that time was immense, amounting to many mil- 
lions of doJlars. In the four years 1834 to 1837 the Hudson 
Bay company alone killed in that region (Oregon territory) over 
3,000,000 fur-bearing animals, including beaver, marten, otter, 
fox, muskrat, bear, ermine, fitchew, lynx, mink, wolf, badger 
and raccoon. The American fur-traders could not compete with 
the Hudson Bay company, as all the supplies of the latter came 
in free of duty. But the fact that by the joint occupancy this 
great monopoly was enabled to strip the country of its wealth 
was as nothing compared with the powerfully hostile influence 
it constantly exerted against the settlement of the country by 
mericans and the foothold it afforded Great Britain, enabling 
that power to successfully postpone for nearly a century the final 
settlement of the question as to our rights, and which in the end 
compelled us to compromise, and deprived us of that vast extent 
of territory lying between the forty-ninth parallel and 54° 40’, 
the Rocky mountains and the Pacific ocean. Thomas H. Ben- 
ton and many other leading men denounced this policy of joint 
occupation. Said Senator Benton in 1845, referring to the treaty 
of joint occupation: “I have been clear against joint occupation 
for twenty-eight years as a treaty of unmixed mischief to the 
United States.” Historians agree that this company stripped 
Oregon territory of furs of the value of over one million dollars 
annually, amounting to perhaps thirty millions of dollars in the 
twenty-eight years of joint occupancy. 
The political historian, J. Henry Brown, himself an Oregon 
pioneer of 1846, in referring to this matter in his “ Political His- 
tory of Oregon,” says: 
‘“Our government could have well afforded to have given a bonus of 
$10,600,000 and settled the question in 1818. Then, to cap the climax, 
our government was again swindled in the treaty of 1846 by agreeing to 
pay an unknown bill to that greatest of frauds and swindles, the Puget 
Sound Agricultural company, to the tune of $450,000, on account of pos- 
sessory rights and claims of the Hudson Bay company, and on account 
of possessory rights of the Puget Sound Agricultural company, the sum of 
$200,000, a total of $650,000—a nice commentary on American sagacity, 
statesmanship and diplomacy !”’ 
