Pacific Fur Company
Of his final employers, Reed's final one was the Pacific Fur Company (PFC). He was hired at Mackinac Island as a clerk in August 1810. From there he joined Wilson Price Hunt and the other members of an expedition bound for the Columbia River. An advanced party of PFC administrators and laborers was planned to arrive on board the Tonquin , leaving New York City in September 1810. This second group was to begin a company headquarters prior Hunt's arrival from the United States. The party Reed joined was largely composed of French-Canadian and Métis subjects of the United Kingdom, in addition to a number of Americans.
The group arrived at the newly established Fort Astoria in January 1812. He was given important documents by the management of the PFC in March, with orders to return overland and deliver them directly to John Jacob Astor. He and the few men with him were attacked in the interior by a group of natives prior to crossing the Continental Divide.Wounded in the engagement, he was about to get medical attention at Fort Okanogan. Reed later returned to Fort Astoria in May 1812.
Reed opened a dwelling in 1813 along the Malheur River in the vicinity of modern Vale, Oregon. He later relocated to the junction of the Boise and Snake Rivers. In the first month of 1814, an attack on the post by a group of Bannock natives and killed Reed and two men there. An outpost some distance away maintained by the trappers was also attacked. Four PFC employees were killed there, including Pierre Dorion Jr., though his wife Marie Aioe Dorion and two infant children survived. Marie survived the winter alone and took care of the two children until she reached Fort Okanogan in the spring.
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.
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. An American rival of the NWC, the Pacific Fur Company opened a station adjacent to Spokane House, called Fort Spokane. The War of 1812 and ongoing supply issues caused the collapse of the PFC, with its posts now under the control of the NWC. The original Spokane House was abandoned in favor of Fort Spokane, though the latter location was still called Spokane House. The second Spokane House saw use as a major post in the interior Oregon Country until the NWC was absorbed by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1821. During a general tour of the Pacific Northwest, Spokane House was abandoned by George Simpson in 1825, in favor of a new post that became Fort Colvile. The site of Spokane House is in Spokane County in the U.S. state of Washington, just northwest of the city of Spokane.
Donald McKenzie was a Scottish-Canadian explorer, fur trader and Governor of the Red River Colony from 1821 to 1834.
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.
Fort Okanogan was founded in 1811 on the confluence of the Okanogan and Columbia Rivers as a fur trade outpost. Originally built for John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company, it was the first American-owned settlement within Washington state, located in what is now Okanogan County. The North West Company, the PFC's primary competitor, purchased its assets and posts in 1813. In 1821 the North West Company was merged into Hudson's Bay Company, which took over operation of Fort Okanogan as part of its Columbia District. The fort was an important stop on the York Factory Express trade route to London via Hudson Bay.
Alexander Ross was a fur trader and author.
John Day was an American hunter and fur trapper in the Pacific Northwest, including present-day Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Western Montana and Southern British Columbia.
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.
Joseph Gervais was a French-Canadian, later American, pioneer settler and trapper in the Pacific Northwest. He is the namesake for the town of Gervais, Oregon.
Étienne Lucier, né Lussier, was a French-Canadian fur trader active primarily in the Pacific Northwest. He was hired by John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company and sent to the region to help establish Fort Astoria. Later he became a settler in the Willamette Valley. Lucier attended the Champoeg Meetings and was one of few French-Canadians or "Canadiens" to vote for the Provisional Government of Oregon, an American and Canadian civil authority for the valley. He is credited with becoming the first European descendant farmer within the modern state of Oregon.
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.
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.
The first Fort Lisa (1810-1812), also known as the Fort Manuel Lisa Trading Post, Fort Manuel or Fort Mandan, was started by the notable fur trader Manuel Lisa of the Missouri Fur Company in 1809. This fort was likely where Sacagawea died; she had been the guide for the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Fort Lisa superseded Fort Raymond as the uppermost post of the Missouri Fur Company on the Missouri River. In 1812 Lisa built a replacement fort downriver near present-day North Omaha, Nebraska, which he also named Fort Lisa.
The Wallace House, Wallace Post or Calapooya Fort, was a fur trading station located in the French Prairie in what is now Keizer, Oregon, United States. Founded by personnel of the Pacific Fur Company (PFC) in 1812, it was an important source of beaver pelts and venison for the short lived American enterprise in the Pacific Northwest. Isolated in the War of 1812, the real possibility of the Royal Navy or their North West Company (NWC) competitors attacking Fort Astoria motivated the PFC management to sell its holdings and 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.
Pierre Dorion Jr. (1782–1814) was a Métis fur trapper and interpreter who worked across the modern Midwestern United States and later the Pacific Northwest.
Ovide de Montigny was a French-Canadian fur trapper active in the Pacific Northwest from 1811 to 1822.
David Stuart (1765-1853) 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).
Coalpo was a Clatsop Chinookan leader alive in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He married a daughter of Comcomly, the most prominent Chinookan headman on the lower Columbia River.
