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The Pacific Fur Company (PFC) was an American fur trade venture wholly owned and funded by John Jacob Astor that functioned from 1810 to 1813. It was based in the Pacific Northwest, an area contested over the decades among the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Spanish Empire, the United States of America and the Russian Empire.
Fort Astoria was the primary fur trading post of John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company (PFC). A maritime contingent of PFC staff was sent on board the Tonquin, while another party traveled overland from St. Louis. This land based group later became known as the Astor Expedition. Built at the entrance of the Columbia River in 1811, Fort Astoria was the first American-owned settlement on the Pacific coast of North America.
The American Fur Company (AFC) was a prominent American company that sold furs, skins, and buffalo robes. It was founded in 1808, by John Jacob Astor, a German immigrant to the United States. During its heyday in the early 19th century, the company dominated the American fur trade. The company went bankrupt in 1842 and was dissolved in 1847.
Tonquin was a 290-ton American merchant ship initially operated by Fanning & Coles and later by the Pacific Fur Company (PFC), a subsidiary of the American Fur Company (AFC). Its first commander was Edmund Fanning, who sailed to the Qing Empire for valuable Chinese trade goods in 1807. The vessel was outfitted for another journey to China and then was sold to German-American entrepreneur John Jacob Astor. Included within his intricate plans to assume control over portions of the lucrative North American fur trade, the ship was intended to establish and supply trading outposts on the Pacific Northwest coast. Valuable animal furs purchased and trapped in the region would then be shipped to China, where consumer demand was high for particular pelts.
Spokane House was a fur-trading post founded in 1810 by the British-Canadian North West Company, located on a peninsula where the Spokane River and Little Spokane River meet. When established, the North West Company's farthest outpost in the Columbia River region was the first ever non-Indigenous settlement in the Pacific Northwest. Prior to the arrival of the white traders, the site of what would become Spokane House was a gathering place for area tribes who came to catch and dry salmon, which contributed to its development as a trading post.
The Columbia District was a fur trading district in the Pacific Northwest region of British North America in the 19th century. Much of its territory overlapped with the disputed Oregon Country. It was explored by the North West Company between 1793 and 1811, and established as an operating fur district around 1810. The North West Company was absorbed into the Hudson's Bay Company in 1821 under which the Columbia District became known as the Columbia Department. The Oregon Treaty of 1846 marked the effective end of the Hudson's Bay Company's Columbia Department.
Oregon pioneer history (1806–1890) is the period in the history of Oregon Country and Oregon Territory, in the present day state of Oregon and Northwestern United States.
Robert Stuart was a Scottish-born, Canadian and American fur trader, best known as a member of the first European-American party to cross South Pass during an overland expedition from Fort Astoria to Saint Louis in 1811. He was a member of the North West Company (NWC) until recruited by John Jacob Astor to develop the new Pacific Fur Company, which was based at Fort Astoria, on the coast of present-day Oregon. Astor intended the venture to develop a continent-wide commercial empire in fur trading.
Wilson Price Hunt was an early pioneer and explorer of the Oregon Country in the Pacific Northwest of North America. Employed as an agent in the fur trade under John Jacob Astor, Hunt organized and led the greater part of a group of about 60 men on an overland expedition to establish a fur trading outpost at the mouth of the Columbia River. The Astorians, as they have become known, were the first major party to cross to the Pacific after the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
The York Factory Express, usually called "the Express" and also the Columbia Express and the Communication, was a 19th-century fur brigade operated by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). Roughly 4,200 kilometres (2,600 mi) in length, it was the main overland connection between HBC headquarters at York Factory and the principal depot of the Columbia Department, Fort Vancouver.
Russel Farnham was an American frontiersman, explorer, and fur trader. An agent of John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company, he oversaw fur trading in the Great Lakes region throughout the 1810s and 1820s. A member of the Pacific Fur Company headed by Wilson P. Hunt during 1810–1812, he is also the first American to semi-circumnavigate the world traveling by foot from Fort Astoria to St. Petersburg, Russia, to New York City.
HMS Racoon, sometimes spelled HMS Raccoon, was an 18-gun ship sloop of the Cormorant class of the Royal Navy. She was built by John Preston, of Great Yarmouth, and launched on 30 March 1808. She sailed as far as Fort Astoria on the Columbia River. She became a hospital ship in 1819 and finally was sold in 1838.
Before the 1849 California gold rush, American, English and Russian fur hunters were drawn to Spanish California in a California fur rush, to exploit its enormous fur resources. Before 1825, these Europeans were drawn to the northern and central California coast to harvest prodigious quantities of southern sea otter and fur seals, and then to the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta to harvest beaver, river otter, marten, fisher, mink, gray fox, weasel, and harbor seal. It was California's early fur trade, more than any other single factor, that opened up the West, and the San Francisco Bay Area in particular, to world trade.
The Battle of Woody Point was an incident in western Canada in June 1811 involving the Tla-o-qui-aht natives of the Pacific Northwest and the Tonquin, an American merchant ship of the Astor Expedition. The vessel had traveled to Clayoquot Sound off Vancouver Island to trade for furs. Following an argument begun during the bartering, the Tla-o-qui-aht captured the vessel and massacred most of the crew; one remaining sailor then scuttled her by detonating the powder magazine.
The Wallace House, Wallace Post or Calapooya Fort, was a fur trading station located in the French Prairie of the Willamette Valley. Opened by the Pacific Fur Company (PFC) in 1812, it was an important source of beaver pelts and venison. The possibility of either the Royal Navy or North West Company (NWC) competitors attacking Fort Astoria during the War of 1812, motivated the PFC management to sell its assets to the NWC in late 1813. Wallace House was utilized by the NWC until 1814, when they abandoned it in favor of the nearby Willamette Trading Post. The station is now located in Keizer, Oregon.
Beaver was a 427-ton merchant ship owned by John Jacob Astor that was in service from 1806 to the middle of the century.
Ovide de Montigny was a French-Canadian fur trapper active in the Pacific Northwest from 1811 to 1822.
John Reed (??-1814) was an American clerk employed by several fur trade companies until his death in 1814.
David Stuart was a fur trader who worked primarily for the North West and Pacific Fur companies throughout his varied career.
François Benjamin Pillet was a French-Canadian fur trapper active in the Pacific Northwest in the early 19th century, primarily employed by the Pacific Fur Company (PFC).
References
- 1 2 3 Chittenden, Hiram Martin (1986). The American Fur Trade of the Far West, Volume 1. University of Nebraska Press. pp. 216–221. ISBN 9780803263208 . Retrieved 21 July 2017.
- ↑ Irving, Washington (1903). The Fur Traders of the Columbia River and the Rocky Mountains. Putnam. p. 88.
- ↑ Dolin, Eric Jay (2011). Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America. W.W. Norton. p. 215. ISBN 9780393079241.
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