The Influences of the Exploration and Settlement of an Area Upon its Later Regional Character

Abstract

T HE PRINCIPAL role of the physiographic region is to provide the stage for a complex economy in which the biotic elements struggle to bring about an equilibrium and in which man builds a culture that best enables him to adjust himself to his physical and social environment. The large natural region contains a number of distinct economic areas and small trade zones which are only semi-independent of each other. In a sense, therefore, the region may not be a sociological unit, but the setting for a number of such units. To the extent, however, that these semi-independent units are integrated and are related to a dominant metropolitan center, the region does become a unit. The tendency toward the development of the distinct economic, or metropolitan region has been promoted by the rise of modem transportation and communication. The purpose of this paper is to show how some of the factors in the early exploration and settlement of an unorganized area have contributed to the ultimate development of an economic or metropolitan region. The Oregon Country. The territory known to early American history as the Oregon Country, was composed of a strip of land lying between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, and extending from the Artic Ocean to the present southern boundary of Oregon, Idaho, and Wyoming. Sir Alexander McKenzie, a partner in the Northwest Company, has been credited with being the first white man to cross the Rocky Mountains and visit this country. His party reached the Pacific Ocean via Canada in I 793 Lewis and Clark visited portions of it in i805. Parties of trappers connected with the American Fur Company trapped along the banks of the Columbia River in i8o8. Other trading parties doubtless visited this territory at an early date in search of game and fur. These were all transient trappers and may be thought of as scouting or prospecting parties rather than as actual settlers. The first settlements that were to play an important role in the ultimate development of the country were made under the direction of the Northwest Company of British Columbia. Under the Joint Occupancy Agreement of i8i8, full sanction had been conferred upon this company to promote trade in the Oregon Country. With this exclusive right as its protection, operations were extended far and wide into the unexplored and unoccupied area. The Hudson's Bay Company, an English company which was originally a colonizing as well as a trading company, had by i824 succeeded to all the rights and interests of the Northwest Company and to the Indian trade west of the Rock Mountains. It was through the promotion of the interests of this company that for at least the next twenty years the settlement of this new territory was to be determined. Rival companies invaded it at various points, but were unable to compete with the strongly entrenched Hudson's Bay Company. The hold of this company was augmented by the controversy between the United States and Great Britian over the ultimate ownership of the territory. The policy of the company also acted as a limited factor to settlement by permanent American settlers.