| History | |
|---|---|
 United States | |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type | brig |
| Propulsion | sail |
Loriot was an American sailing ship involved in exploration of the Pacific Northwest coast of North America. This brig took a member of a United States presidential expedition to survey land and the inhabitants of the area in the 1830s. The ship then transported members of the Willamette Cattle Company from Oregon Country to California in an effort to increase livestock in the Willamette Valley settlements.
In the early 1830s the vessel traded between the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands and California under the ownership of Alpheus Basil Thompson. [1] The ship had arrived on the islands as early as 1833 under a Captain Nye from Boston. [2]
On November 24, 1836, the Loriot set sail from the Sandwich Islands for the Columbia River [3] with Lieutenant William A. Slacum of the U.S. Navy. [4] Earlier in 1836 President Andrew Jackson sent Lieutenant William A. Slacum to the west coast of North America to examine San Francisco Bay, Puget Sound, and the Columbia River estuary to assess these anchorages for their strategic value. [4] Additionally, Slacum and his expedition were to examine the economy of the region. [4] The ship, under the command of Captain Bancroft, arrived at the river on December 22, 1836. [3] In the Oregon Country, Slacum offered to take some settlers to California on the Loriot to purchase cattle for the settlers to then drive north to Oregon. [5] On February 10, 1837, the ship sailed out of the Columbia and towards California with Ewing Young and other members of the Willamette Cattle Company. [3] Ship and passengers arrived at the Russian settlement of Bodega on February 20, 1837, where the pioneers disembarked with Slacum then continuing on his mission. [6]
During the journey in 1836 the Loriot was involved in an event that created a minor diplomatic incident with Russia involving Russian-America lands. [7] In that year the vessel attempted to make land in the Alexander Archipelago at Tuckessan harbor, but was denied by Russian authorities. [7]
USS Vincennes (1826) was a 703-ton Boston-class sloop of war in the United States Navy from 1826 to 1865. During her service, Vincennes patrolled the Pacific, explored the Antarctic, and blockaded the Confederate Gulf coast in the Civil War. Named for the Revolutionary War Battle of Vincennes, she was the first U.S. warship to circumnavigate the globe.
Jason Lee was a Canadian Methodist Episcopalian missionary and pioneer in the Pacific Northwest. He was born on a farm near Stanstead, Quebec.
The human history of the west coast of North America is believed to stretch back to the arrival of the earliest people over the Bering Strait, or alternately along a now-submerged coastal plain, through the development of significant pre-Columbian cultures and population densities, to the arrival of the European explorers and colonizers. The west coast of North America today is home to some of the largest and most important companies in the world, as well as being a center of world culture.
Joseph Goff Gale was an American pioneer, trapper, entrepreneur, and politician who contributed to the early settlement of the Oregon Country. There he assisted in the construction of the first sailing vessel built in what would become the state of Oregon, sailed the ship to California to trade for cattle, and later served as one of three co-executives ("governors") in the Provisional Government of Oregon. Originally a sailor, he also spent time in the fur trade, as a farmer, and a gold miner in the California Gold Rush.
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.
Ewing Young was an American fur trapper and trader from Tennessee who traveled in what was then the northern Mexico frontier territories of Santa Fe de Nuevo México and Alta California before settling in the Oregon Country. Young traded along the Santa Fe Trail, followed parts of the Old Spanish Trail west, and established new trails. He later moved north to the Willamette Valley. As a prominent and wealthy citizen in Oregon, his death was the impetus for the assemblies that several years later established the Provisional Government of Oregon.
The Puget Sound Agricultural Company (PSAC), with common variations of the name including Puget Sound or Puget's Sound, was a subsidiary joint stock company formed in 1840 by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). Its stations operated within the Pacific Northwest, in the HBC administrative division of the Columbia Department. The RAC-HBC Agreement was signed in 1839 between the Russian-American Company and the HBC, with the British to now supply the various trade posts of Russian America. It was hoped by the HBC governing committee that independent American merchants, previously a major source of foodstuffs for the RAC, would be shut out of the Russian markets and leave the Maritime fur trade.
The Willamette Cattle Company was formed in 1837 by pioneers in the Willamette Valley of present-day Oregon, United States. The company was formed with the express purpose of purchasing cattle in Mexican California. Nearly 750 head of cattle and 40 horses were purchased in total. Ewing Young lead the overland party as they drove these animals overland north back to the Willamette Valley.
The Star of Oregon episode of American history began in 1840 and ended in 1843. This enterprise by pioneers in the Willamette Valley of present-day Oregon consisted of building a ship they named Star of Oregon and then sailing it to California in order to bring back cattle to Oregon Country. The group was led by Joseph Gale and received assistance from Captain Wilkes of the United States Navy prior to setting sail on the open ocean. These pioneers were able to procure nearly 4,000 head of cattle, sheep, and horses combined.
Doctor Ira Leonard Babcock was an American pioneer and doctor in the Oregon Country. A native of New York, he was selected as the first Supreme Judge with probate powers in February 1841 in what would become the state of Oregon.
William A. Slacum was an American sailor and diplomat. He served as a purser in the United States Navy and received a Presidential commission to gather information on the Oregon Country. At that time the region was under the jurisdiction of both the United States and Great Britain. Previously, Slacum served as a diplomat to Mexico.
Webley John Hauxhurst Jr. was a pioneer in Oregon Country. He helped build the first grist mill in Oregon, participated in the Willamette Cattle Company, and was a participant at the Champoeg meeting where he voted for the creation of a provisional government.
During the Age of Exploration, the Spanish Empire undertook several expeditions to the Pacific Northwest of North America. Spanish claims to the region date to the papal bull of 1493, and the Treaty of Tordesillas signed in 1494. In 1513, this claim was reinforced by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa, the first European to sight the Pacific Ocean, when he claimed all lands adjoining this ocean for the Spanish Crown. Spain only started to colonize the claimed territory north of present-day Mexico in the 18th century, when it settled the northern coast of Las Californias.
Thomas Jefferson Farnham (1804–1848) was an explorer and author of the American West in the first half of the 19th century. His travels included interaction with missionary Jason Lee, and he later led a wagon train on the Oregon Trail. While in Oregon Country he wrote a petition to federal authorities that requested federal protection of the region from the United States government, which was signed by many of the local settlers who had come from the United States.
Dr. Elijah White (1806–1879) was a missionary and agent for the United States government in Oregon Country during the mid-19th century. A trained physician from New York State, he first traveled to Oregon as part of the Methodist Mission in the Willamette Valley. He returned to the region after a falling-out with mission leader Jason Lee as the leader of one of the first large wagon trains across the Oregon Trail and as a sub-Indian agent of the federal government. In Oregon he used his authority to regulate affairs between the Natives and settlers, and even between settlers. White left the region in 1845 as a messenger for the Provisional Government of Oregon to the United States Congress, returning in 1850 before leaving again for California in the early 1860s.
William Pope McArthur was an American naval officer and hydrologist who was involved in the first surveys of the Pacific Coast for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey.
James A. O’Neil was an American businessman and politician in the Oregon Country and later Oregon Territory. A New York native, he took part in the Champoeg Meetings and helped form the Provisional Government of Oregon. Prior to the formation of a government he participated in the Willamette Cattle Company, and later served as a judge in the Provisional Government.
The Enterprise was an early steamboat operating on the Willamette River in Oregon and also one of the first to operate on the Fraser River in British Columbia. This vessel should not be confused with the many other vessels, some of similar design, also named Enterprise. In earlier times, this vessel was sometimes called Tom Wright's Enterprise after one of her captains, the famous Tom Wright.
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 maritime fur trade was a ship-based fur trade system that focused on acquiring furs of sea otters and other animals from the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast and natives of Alaska. The furs were mostly sold in China in exchange for tea, silks, porcelain, and other Chinese goods, which were then sold in Europe and the United States. The maritime fur trade was pioneered by Russians, working east from Kamchatka along the Aleutian Islands to the southern coast of Alaska. British and Americans entered during the 1780s, focusing on what is now the coast of British Columbia. The trade boomed around the beginning of the 19th century. A long period of decline began in the 1810s. As the sea otter population was depleted, the maritime fur trade diversified and transformed, tapping new markets and commodities, while continuing to focus on the Northwest Coast and China. It lasted until the middle to late 19th century.