Hudson’s Bay Company

The TRUE Shifting Winds ~ 3: Mountain Men

Janet Fisher

This third in a series of posts about the true events behind my historical novel The Shifting Winds looks at the American side of the fur trade at about the time Dr. John McLoughlin was sent to take charge of the Columbia District for his employer, the honorable British Hudson’s Bay Company. The Astor venture, having failed for the Americans, left the United States without much footing in the Columbia, but fur trade prospects had already begun brewing for the Americans in another arena, the Rocky Mountains on the edge of their now undisputed Louisiana Territory.

Before I focus on that American trade directed by St. Louis companies, I want to present a painting and go back to that young man I mentioned in post number 2, John Colter, a member of the historic Lewis and Clark expedition.

The American Scheme

The painting below by modern-day artist Andy Thomas of Carthage, Missouri, represents John Colter. Thomas calls the image “The First Mountain Man.” This artist offers many paintings of historic people and events, and his mountain man appealed to me.

I was looking online for photos to represent my characters when I came across it.

I wanted to put together a poster and banner with images portraying my protagonist, American pioneer Jennie Haviland, and the two men in Oregon who were vying for her affections, British Hudson’s Bay Company clerk Alan Radford, and American mountain man Jake Johnston.

Alan was a well-dressed gentleman of the times and I had no trouble finding an 1800s fashion plate that had the right look for him.

I found one complete with frock coat and tall beaver hat, even if the face wasn’t quite as gorgeous as I imagined him. And I found a young woman in a fashion plate with period dress, her face hidden by a bonnet so folks can imagine her appearance as they choose.

But there were no fashion plates for mountain men. Most of the mountain man pictures I found were of crusty old fellows with long, scraggly beards. Now, there may have been some mountaineers like them, but trapping in the Rockies was not a business for old men. These guys had to be tough and in their prime, and most were clean shaven.

Part of the reason for shaving was that the Native American men they associated with had little face hair and plucked what grew, so the women seeing a bearded white man might laugh disparagingly and call him a dog face. If these trappers wanted to win the hearts of these women, shaving was a good idea–not to mention the greater ease of keeping small critters out of their soup.

Anyway, I came across this image of a mountain man and it spoke to me. The guy in the painting had the gravitas I was looking for, and with the artist’s permission, John Colter now plays the role of Jake for me on my poster.

He’s also on a larger horizontal banner, and in other marketing materials for the book.

He doesn’t look exactly the way I see Jake either, but he has keen eyes that might be about to twinkle and a bit of don’t-mess-with-me attitude I can’t help but like. He’ll probably shave when he gets back to camp.

And that brings us to the real John Colter. He was born in Virginia sometime around 1775, his father evidently having come from Ireland. The family moved to the Kentucky frontier around 1780 when John was a young boy. At about 30 years of age he impressed Meriwether Lewis with his frontier skills, and Lewis recruited him for the Lewis and Clark Expedition as a private.

Colter may have been a little hotheaded because he got into a fracas with his sergeant even before they left and threatened to shoot the man, but somehow it got smoothed over and he became a valued member of the team and one of the best hunters. Lewis learned he could trust Colter to handle many difficult situations. The man showed skill in bartering with the tribes they met, and he would strike out alone wherever Lewis or Clark asked him to go and always find his way.

Two months before the end of the journey home, the expedition met some trappers headed west, and Colter joined them as a worthy addition, given his fresh knowledge of much of the territory. He went out alone for them during the winter, traveling some 500 miles through the wilderness to establish trade with the Crow nation, and was probably the first white man to see such sights as the spewing Yellowstone wonders, which came to be known as Colter’s Hell. Many stories of his skills and scrapes have been the stuff of books and movies, but probably none so dramatic as his run from the Blackfeet.

Colter was canoeing up the Jefferson River with another trapper, Potts, when several hundred Blackfeet showed up and demanded the two go ashore. The Blackfeet killed Potts in the incident, hacking him to death, then stripped Colter naked and told him to run. He soon realized they expected him to run for his life. His nose began to bleed, but he kept going as blood streamed and was well ahead of all but one of his pursuers.

With a suddenness that startled the man on his tail, Colter came to an abrupt stop and swung around to face him, arms wide. Caught by surprise at Colter’s actions, and perhaps the blood streaming over Colter’s naked body, the man also tried to stop but fell forward as he threw a spear and plunged it into the ground. Colter snatched up the broken weapon and killed him, then grabbed a blanket from him and fled the others. After a five-mile run he reached the Madison River and jumped in, taking refuge in a beaver lodge until nightfall when he escaped.

Thus he became something of a legend. When he did return to civilization a few years later he visited William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition and reported on his travels, adding considerable detail for Clark’s maps. He got married and farmed in Missouri awhile before fighting in the War of 1812. He never returned to the mountains.

About ten years after the war, just before Dr. John McLoughlin went out to the Columbia, some men of St. Louis, William Ashley and Andrew Henry, put together a fur company that significantly impacted the American fur trade. Prior to that time, most furs were acquired through trade with the Indians. But Ashley and Henry led their own trappers into the west, where they built a couple of forts and wintered with the Crow tribe. In the spring of 1824 the trappers went into the Green River country and found it rich in beaver. Ashley came up with a working scheme when he put together the first supply train and took the caravan to the Rockies the next summer so the trappers didn’t have to haul their furs to market in St. Louis. The annual rendezvous had begun.

amfurcaravan

The above painting by Alfred Jacob Miller shows the supply caravan bringing supplies to the Rocky Mountains for the annual rendezvous of the mountain men. Miller went out with the supply train in 1837 and created many portraits of the landscapes and mountaineers and Native Americans he saw there. The man on the white horse is the Scottish adventurer William Drummond Stewart who hired Miller to take the journey with him to record the event.

The Rocky Mountain Rendezvous lasted from 1825 until 1840 when beaver began to play out and prices dropped because men discovered silk hats to replace their beavers. It was a great run and the rendezvous an uproarious party when men let loose after they’d spent a year working hard in dangerous conditions. The supply trains brought out pure alcohol to mix with the clear water of the mountain streams, adding to the craziness. Friendly tribes gathered with the mountaineers, and many of the Americans took wives from these tribes or enjoyed temporary liaisons.

Miller greeting

This Miller portrait shows the rip roaring greeting trappers typically gave to the arriving caravan. Again the Scot Stewart is on the white horse.

During these years the Americans pretty well kept to the Rockies, while the British reaped the Oregon Territory of beaver there. Sometimes they bumped up against each other, and competition was fierce. The British ultimately pursued a scorched earth policy to make sure there weren’t enough beaver left on the west side to lure the Americans to Oregon.

Because of the supply train system many of the American trappers never went back home, and after years of living in the wilderness, often with wives and children they knew wouldn’t be accepted in the States, they felt adrift when the mountain life ended. So after the last rendezvous of 1840 quite a few went to Oregon anyway and decided to become settlers, a situation that didn’t always set well with the British. Thus legendary mountain man Joe Meek, a major player in my book, enters the stage, along with others who are named in the pages, accompanied by the fictional Jake Johnston. This was just two years before the book’s 1842 opening.

Dr. McLoughlin, another major historic player in my book, found himself caught in a dilemma between honoring the interests of his nation and following his own humanitarian instincts.

But when the good doctor first went to the Oregon Country in 1824 the British had a near monopoly there and prospects all looked rosy.

Gowans, Fred R. Rocky Mountain Rendezvous: A History of the Fur Trade Rendezvous 1825-1840. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1976.
Various websites.

Next: British Stronghold

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The TRUE Shifting Winds ~ 2: Fur Traders

Janet Fisher

As my upcoming July 16 book event at Fort Vancouver nears, this new blog series sets the stage for that historic place and the part it plays in my book The Shifting Winds.

The overview of the true history of the world’s shifting winds continues in this post as the unknown Pacific Northwest keeps luring explorers into the region. Of course, mere curiosity would not compel them like the hopes of gaining a new possession and the riches the land offered. While the glitter of gold may have drawn earlier navigators like the Spanish and Portuguese to the centers of their discoveries, another prize put a gleam in men’s eyes and prompted a race to win the Pacific Northwest territory.

Beaver peltsFur.

The prime fur was beaver like these pelts at right displayed in the reconstructed Fort Vancouver warehouse. Without the fur, Fort Vancouver would not have been. This was the chief bounty, thanks to the beaver hat which became a popular fashion statement in Europe and the States, as traders from two nations pressed for advantage in one land.

The Race for Possession

Thomas Jefferson had been interested in the Pacific Northwest for some time when he took office as President of the United States in 1801, but without a contiguous territory overland he was not ready to consider more than an independent state in the region. Even that he considered to be a hazardous endeavor for the young nation.

1794_Samuel_Dunn_Wall_Map_of_the_World_in_Hemispheres_-_Geographicus_-_World2-dunn-1794This 1794 double hemisphere wall map of the world, or terraqueouis globe, by Samuel Dunn shows the new discoveries and marginal delineations. From Geographicus.

So the maps they are a-changing. It’s beginning to look more familiar.

Jefferson was intrigued by the 1765 report of Major Robert Rogers, who had written of a great “River of the West, or Ouragon River” said to flow west into the Pacific Ocean, a potential northwest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. And by 1792 the US navigator Captain Robert Gray had already discovered and named the Columbia River. Soon afterward British Lieutenant William Broughton, under the command of Captain George Vancouver, had sailed some 120 miles upriver.

But the condition of the Columbia beyond that point remained an unknown to these explorers. Was it the River of the West? The Ouragon? Or the Oregon? And would it allow direct transportation—or at least an easy portage—to a navigable river flowing east to the Atlantic, essentially the sought after northwest passage?

1794_Samuel_Dunn_Wall_Map_of_the_World_in_Hemispheres_-_Geographicus_-_World2-dunn-1794 (crop) (4)Zooming in on Dunn’s above map you can see two Rivers of the West flowing into the Pacific. Perhaps folks were still trying to decide, or hedging their bets.

Meanwhile Canadian fur traders had begun to consider the overland route to the Pacific. Alexander Mackenzie, a partner in the Canadian North West Company, became a firm skeptic of the northwest passage after following a large river into the northern interior in hopes of locating the mythical route, only to find that this river emptied into the Arctic. Convinced that no northwest passage for sea vessels existed, he insisted if Canadians wanted to reach the Pacific from Hudson’s Bay they should go overland.

Mackenzie organized an expedition to do just that, intending to cross the Rockies, then go down the River of the West. His party came across a major waterway, which he assumed to be this elusive stream, but he discovered it was not the river dubbed Columbia by the American Captain Gray, but a more northerly river which would be named the Fraser. Mackenzie’s party reached the coast at Port Meares in July 1793 after a harrowing journey, the first transcontinental crossing north of Mexico.

Jefferson must have been pondering all this when the international winds shifted again, and Napoleon’s dilemma became Jefferson’s boon. The United States had been negotiating with France for New Orleans, because the Americans wanted the mouth of the Mississippi. But when the entirety of the Louisiana Territory, once a French possession, was dropped back into Napoleon’s lap through various treaties, he knew he was no longer in a position to protect it, and he greatly feared that his arch enemy, the British, now ensconced in Canada, would ultimately take it from him.

Jefferson was just as fearful at the prospect of the powerful French on his border, but he didn’t want to make this longtime friend an adversary. He was surprised when Napoleon offered to sell the Louisiana Territory to the United States for a song, and suddenly the fledgling US nation nearly doubled its size.

Lewis & Clark 2The Great Explorers – Lewis & Clark: Halftone reproduction of drawing by Frederic Remington in Collier’s Magazine, 1906 May 12, from Library of Congress.

The Americans didn’t know much about the Louisiana Territory, not even the boundaries on the north and south, though its western boundary lay somewhere along the crest of the Rockies. Louisiana now provided that contiguous link with the territory of the west. So Jefferson sent out Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to see what the United States had bought and to explore and map the region. However, he didn’t want them to stop at the western edge of the newly acquired Louisiana, but to continue into the west to explore that land of uncertain possession, including the intriguing river their compatriot Gray had discovered.

Leaving St. Louis in the spring of 1804, Lewis and Clark proceeded up the Missouri River, crossed the Rocky Mountains and came down the Clearwater River to the Snake before making their way into the Columbia River, which they navigated all the way out to Young’s Bay. The Columbia proved to be a magnificent waterway, but not a northwest passage, given the ruggedness of the land between it and the east flowing streams. A young member of the expedition named John Colter would later gain fame for adventures upon his return into the mountains to look for furs, leading many to call him the first mountain man. More about him in the next post.

When Lewis and Clark returned to the States in 1806, Americans became excited about commercial possibilities in the west. Fur dealer John Jacob Astor approached the North West Company about joining forces, but when they refused, he founded his own Pacific Fur Company. He sent out two parties to the Columbia, one by land, led by Wilson Price Hunt, and one by sea aboard the Tonquin.

Men from the Tonquin arrived in the Columbia in March 1811 and set up a trading post on the south bank, naming it Fort Astoria. The overland party straggled in almost a year later after a grueling trek.

FortAstoria1813The above 1813 sketch of Fort Astoria was created by Gabriel Franchère, one of Astor’s men from the Tonquin, and later published in 1819 with Franchère’s account of the venture.

At about the same time, the Canadian North West Company sent David Thompson over the mountains to establish fur trading posts and continue to the mouth of the Columbia. The Astorians offered Thompson a friendly greeting, but the War of 1812 erupted, putting the men on opposite sides of the conflict. Through a complicated series of events, the fort of Astoria was sold under some duress and turned over to the Canadians. A British warship, the HMS Raccoon, entered the Columbia soon afterward, its captain hoping to capture the fort, but the sale had already occurred.

Author Robert C. Johnson, in his book John McLoughlin, describes the disappointment of the warship’s Captain William Black when he saw Fort Astoria. “‘What! Is this the fort I have heard so much of?’ exclaimed Black. ‘Good God, I could batter it down with a four-pounder in two hours.'” He took possession and renamed it Fort George after the British king.

When this news reached Astor in New York he was not pleased, but the deed was done. Given the remoteness of the fort, its sale and surrender were unknown to negotiators of the Treaty of Ghent ending the war in 1814. The treaty provided that territory and possessions taken by one nation from the other should be restored. Because of this agreement, the British were expected to restore Fort George to the Americans. However, a question remained as to whether the fort was taken or sold. That and other controversies between the nations led to another treaty in 1818 to settle the boundary issues in the region.

Spain and Russia also came into the question, but the United States was haggling with Spain over Florida and didn’t want to press too hard on the southern boundary with Spain, though the line was established the next year at the 42nd parallel. Russia was pushing for a boundary in the north where they would take all territory down to the 51st, but neither Britain or the United States would accept that and finally negotiated it back to 54-40. With Spain and Russia settled, that left the Americans and the British.

The US claim to the territory was founded on Gray’s discovery of the Columbia, the Lewis and Clark expedition, the founding and restoring of Astoria, and the title acquired from Spain. After settling with the Spanish, the United States contended that any rights Spain possessed as a result of discovery had passed to the United States. The British claim was based on early voyages along the northwest coast, land exploration by Mackenzie, North West Company posts on the Columbia and Fraser Rivers, and Broughton’s ascent up the Columbia River.

The 1818 treaty set the boundary between Britain and the United States at the 49th parallel from the Lake of the Woods to the Stony Mountains, the Rockies, each nation ceding some land to make a straight border, but at the Rockies they hit a snag. Americans suggested continuing the 49th parallel to the coast, though many of their countrymen wanted to push the British north all the way to 54-40. Britain wanted the boundary to drop southward and follow the Columbia River so they could retain the lucrative fur trade there. With the two sides unable to agree, the treaty declared that the Oregon territory be jointly occupied between the United States and Britain for 10 years, giving them time to settle on a boundary between them. The treaty allowed both nations the right of settlement and trade, but neither could claim title to the land. Agreement would take much longer than 10 years.

While the Americans and British hassled over the details of negotiation, another virtual war raged between the Montreal-based North West Company and the other major British fur company doing business in the region, the London-based Hudson’s Bay Company, resulting in the deaths of many trappers and traders. To end hostilities the beleaguered companies finally merged in 1821 under the Hudson’s Bay Company.

The history of the restoration of Fort George (Astoria) to the United States seems a little murky. As the 1818 treaty was concluding, a representative of the US government arrived at the fort to receive the fort’s surrender, and the US flag was raised. By some accounts, as soon as the US representative sailed away, the US flag came down. In any case, the Canadian North West Company continued to maintain the post, perhaps for lack of further US action, and when that company ceased to exist, the British Hudson’s Bay Company took it over, more or less by default.

Dr. John McLoughlin, formerly an employee of the North West Company, became a Hudson’s Bay Company man and was assigned in 1824 as commander of the HBC western district. He would soon make a grand entry at Fort George.

Carey, Charles H., LLD. General History of Oregon: Through Early Statehood. Portland, OR: Binfords & Mort, 1971.
Johnson, Robert C. John McLoughlin: “Father of Oregon.” Portland, OR: Binfords & Mort, 1958.
Various websites.

Next: Mountain Men

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Fort Vancouver Event Coming Soon

Janet Fisher

My reading and signing event at the fantastic Fort Vancouver site in Vancouver, Washington, is just three weeks away, Saturday, July 16, starting at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. As mentioned in my March post “Upcoming Book Event at Fort Vancouver,” it was a dream of mine to hold an event at this historic fort for my new historical novel, The Shifting Winds, because the fort plays a significant part in the story. Now that dream is about to happen.

599.Ft.Vanc.Bastion -titleThrough my presentation at the fort Visitor Center–a lecture, a slideshow of related photos, and a tour of the fort–I hope to draw people back to the days of my story. The lecture and book signing will be from 2 to 3:30. Afterward, from 4 to 5 I’ll lead attendees on a tour through the fort and highlight some of the places that appear in my book. The bastion in the fort palisade is shown above.

Several scenes in the story take the reader to this amazing spot of British civilization in a wilderness isolated from all that’s familiar to the young American protagonist, reluctant pioneer Jennie Haviland. And one of the major players, Hudson’s Bay Company clerk Alan Radford, works at the fort.

In the early 1840a when the story takes place, Fort Vancouver stands as the center of the British fur trade in the Pacific Northwest, and American settlers have just begun trickling into the area, hoping to gain the land for the United States. For more than 20 years Britain and the United States have jointly occupied the Oregon Country, unable to come to terms on a boundary between them.

Ft.Vanc.Big House FrontGiven Fort Vancouver’s significance in Western American history, the fort has been faithfully reconstructed as a living representation of the times, including the home of the commanding officer and his second in command, above, which is furnished much as it would have been when Chief Factor Dr. John McLoughlin lived there and essentially ruled the Oregon Territory. The McLoughlin sitting room is shown below.

613.Ft.Vanc.McLoughlin Sitting RoomNow a National Historic Site maintained by the National Park Service, the fort offers visitors a chance to step back in history and see what life was like in the fort’s heyday.

622.John McLoughlin Daguerreotype - creditChief Factor McLoughlin, shown in the daguerreotype, is one of the real characters portrayed in the book (photo courtesy of National Park Service).

My story takes place during the historic time of rising tension between the two nations over this one land. Within that true story of conflict, a fictional clash develops between two men–the British HBC clerk Alan Radford, and American mountain man Jake Johnston–who vie for protagonist Jennie as their nations vie for Oregon.

To find the fort and center, their website offers maps and directions. The Visitor Center, where my event will be held, is at 1501 East Evergreen Boulevard.

The Visitor Center Bookstore will have copies of The Shifting Winds for sale, as well as copies of my previous book, A Place of Her Own.

My thanks to the National Park Service and the Friends of Fort Vancouver for co-hosting the event. And a special thanks to Mary Rose, Executive Director of the Friends of Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, for making the arrangements.

In these next three weeks I plan to offer a series of posts here on my blog to help set the stage for my story and for this event. Because the posts will delve into the historical setting, I’ll call the new series “The True Shifting Winds.”

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Stories of Story

Janet Fisher2 Comments

I spoke at the Roseburg Rotary Club meeting last night. They invited me to talk about my new book The Shifting Winds, and when I began putting together my speech for this I struggled a bit. What could I say in 20 minutes to give the essence of this full-length novel and still entertain an audience? So I asked myself, what is special about this particular book? Well, for one thing, the historical setting stands out. This story steps back in time to places here in the Pacific Northwest–like Fort Vancouver, a historic site you can visit today. And I had stories about that.

Ft.Vanc.Big House Front (3)The Big House was the home of the commanding officer at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fort Vancouver, the western headquarters of the British fur trading empire during the nineteenth century. Much of the fort has been reconstructed on the original site in what is now Vancouver, Washington, with meticulous attention to authenticity.

As I mulled over ways to present this information, the thought came to me that people want to hear stories, so my speech told stories about my story. The Shifting Winds is a historical novel of the 1840s Oregon Territory with a lot of real historical drama set in real places. While it’s often hard to find a historic site unaltered by modernization, the reconstructed Fort Vancouver can take you right back into these early times. Ft.Vanc.Douglas Sitting Room

You can walk into the chief factor’s house where characters from my story walked and see the furnished rooms as they would have appeared in the 1840s.

You can stroll across the grounds where my characters strolled and see the Indian Trade Store and hear the blacksmith’s hammer striking hot metal on the anvil.

So in my speech I told about visiting the fort for research that inspired the book. Then I told about my dream of holding an event at the fort for this newly published book–and how it happened that this dream will come true in July. My stories.

Another way to tell about a book is to read from it. So I did that too. I’ve heard it said that we’re hardwired for stories. It’s how we communicate and our stories tend to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. We expect resolution.

But of course if you want people to read your book, you don’t want to spoil their reading by giving away the end. So you stop short, leaving them guessing. The cliff hanger. This jolts their innate sense of story.

Willamette Falls (2)One of the excerpts I shared in the speech showed my characters trekking up the portage trail around the Willamette Falls. Modernization may have dimmed the glory of these falls in what is now Oregon City, but the power of the water cannot be denied. The thrum rolls through you when you stand nearby, and you can see why the settlers rushed to claim it.

That except follows the protagonist as she tells her suitor good-bye at the head of the falls, then decides to take a walk alone in the woods above town. There’s a reason she’s been warned against going into the woods by herself, and when she comes face to face with danger I choose to leave the vignette hanging. The audience reacted with a burst of groans and uneasy laughter as I had hoped. The tension strikes because we need the satisfying conclusion as part of our sense of story. Resolution.

So throughout the evening we shared story. Even before the meeting when I met my friend Laura Lusa who’d arranged for me to speak, she and I sat down together and shared our stories. “How are you doing?” I ask. She answers with her story. I respond with mine. Unfinished stories. How will they turn out? Will there be resolution?

During Q & A I found myself answering questions with snippets of story. And after my speech people came up to talk to me. They told me their stories–about their pioneer families, their interests in history–and I came to know them a little bit better.

Stories. It’s how we communicate. And perhaps that’s why we so need the complete stories in books. When our own stories lack completion, we answer part of our need by reading a well-crafted book with a beginning, a middle, and a satisfying end. Resolution.

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Upcoming Book Event at Fort Vancouver

Janet Fisher

Woo-hoo again! I have news. But first a little background.

In the Oregon Territory of 1842, the opening year of my book The Shifting Winds, the British Hudson’s Bay Company held sway over the region from their western headquarters at Fort Vancouver in what is now the city of Vancouver, Washington. Several scenes in The Shifting Winds take the reader to this amazing place, and I began to have a dream. What if I could have an event there, to draw others to this place so they could walk where my characters walked?

Ft.Vanc.Big House FrontThe fort has been meticulously reconstructed with a number of the original buildings, like the Big House, grand home of the Chief Factor, then Dr. John McLoughlin.

I called the site and learned that yes, they do host events, and was directed to Mary Rose, Acting Director of the Friends of Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. She expressed a strong interest in the story immediately. I sent her a book, we emailed back and forth, talked on the phone. Then yesterday, the day after my event at Annie Bloom’s Books in Portland, I drove up to the fort to meet her.

I am excited to announce that we agreed on the date. The event is scheduled. It’s four months away, a Saturday afternoon, July 16. Right in the middle of tourist season when the fort becomes a major destination. It’s going to happen! A dream come true for me.

Ft.Vanc.McL Office After meeting with Mary in the Visitor Center I went down to the fort, first to the Big House, where I stepped into Dr. McLoughlin’s office. This was a spot of British civilization in an otherwise wild land.

Ft.Vanc.From VerandaBack outside, I surveyed some of the other structures from the long front veranda. Many of the buildings have been reconstructed, not all. This scene faces south. The Columbia River isn’t too far away in that direction, convenient for transportation in those days.

Ft.Vanc.Veranda longLooking west, down the long veranda, one can see the next building over, the Counting House or Office. The British had two different offices built over time. The one in the photo replicates the second office, which came after our story. The one the book portrays as the residence and workplace of our handsome Hudson’s Bay Company clerk, Alan Radford, has not yet been reconstructed.

Ft.Vanc.Dining longHere is the elegant table in the Mess Hall where American mountain man Jake Johnston stops for a quick bite the evening of the Christmas Ball–the tables set up differently of course for the occasion.

I had visited the fort before I wrote the book, but seeing all this again after publication, I reimagined my characters wandering through these places, and strolling out across the grounds. The story and people lived for me again.

What a fantastic place to have an event for this book!

In a quest for accuracy I spent a lot of time here before, and had copies of the two huge volumes of the Historic Structure Report by John A. Hussey providing historical data prior to reconstruction. They did their best to build an authentic representation of the original, using archeological finds (they even found blue-and-white Spode china), and many documents from the period offering description and detail.

Ft.Vanc.Bastion 3.15.16The fort is now a National Historic Site maintained by the National Park Service. My reading and signing will be held in the new Visitor Center, a beautiful venue just up the hill from the fort. Afterward we can either walk or drive down to the grounds to explore this glimpse of the past.

When I got home yesterday I took my usual walk up the mountain of the family farm described in my first book, A Place of Her Own, and when I stood looking out over the green slopes and the mountains beyond, I smiled. A walk across the historic grounds of Fort Vancouver in the morning, a walk up Martha’s mountain in the late afternoon. All under the same shining sun. What a grand day!

COMMENT

Lovely Crowd at Annie’s

Janet Fisher

A lovely crowd turned out for my book reading and signing at Annie Bloom’s Books in Portland. It was such a cold, rainy evening. Icy rain hammered me as I drove into the city. I wondered if anyone would come out on such a night. But Portlanders don’t let anything like a little rain stop them. The people came.

Annie's 3.15.16Here is Annie’s as I arrived early on that wet evening. But a warm welcome awaited inside.

Molly Bloom, the silky black cat who rules the store, soon made her presence known, and I was determined to get her picture this time. I never got my own picture of her last time I had an event there with my first book, A Place of Her Own. So I must confess the rest of my pictures of the event are of Molly. None of the crowd. None of me speaking. Just Molly.

Annie's.Molly hidingShe seemed a little shy at first. “I’m not quite ready to go out there yet.” I knew the feeling. Here she has tucked herself under the table where I sat to do my reading, a little different from other venues where I usually stand. But it was pleasant, conversational.

I do want to thank my cousin-in-law Judy Fisher, who helped with serving wine after my presentation. She and my cousin Jack came over from Lake Oswego, and it was great to see them. And a special thanks to Stephanie, the human at Annie’s who handled the event and introduced me.

I had some surprises. A friend who had known my father came. She had worked with him when he served on the State Board of Education years ago, and even had dinner once at my parents’ house at the farm. Also in attendance was someone who had worked on the archeological digs at Champoeg, a significant locale in the story of The Shifting Winds.

Annie's.Molly checkingMolly kept busy before we started. “I just need to check something over here in the stacks.”

As I began to do my reading Molly started working the crowd in earnest. She traipsed around the chairs. She paused for gentle strokes on her silky fur. She leaped into laps. My camera was on the corner of my table. I considered stopping midsentence to get a better picture, but decided that would break the flow, and it was an intense scene. I could have asked someone beforehand to do pictures, but didn’t. Even with Molly’s antics the reading was well received.

And we had a great Q & A. Many of the people knew the history that surrounds my story, so we had a vibrant interaction. Quite a few were interested in A Place of Her Own too. All in all, a delightful event. And afterward Molly was all worn out.

Annie's.Molly sleepingSigh. “It’s a big job running an event like this. But I am content. It went well.”

My thanks to everyone at Annie’s. This was my go-to bookstore when I lived in Portland, just up the street, and I always love going back there. It’s such a pleasure to be able to share my own work in this warm and friendly place. Like Molly, I was content.

NEXT UP: News on an exciting upcoming event.

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Oregonian Feature on Shifting Winds

Janet Fisher4 Comments

Woo-hoo! The Oregonian, Portland’s longtime newspaper of note, did a terrific feature on The Shifting Winds. The article went up online last week, and is in today’s print version. You can find the online feature here.

And here’s a photo of the print version, below. A nice spread.

Oregonian.Diane.DunasPhoto by Diane Dunas

My daughter Carisa called this morning to tell me my friend Diane Dunas had posted the above picture of the article on Facebook, and Diane kindly sent me a copy of her photo to share here.

The story of The Shifting Winds is set in and around the area where Portland eventually grew up, and I’ll be holding an event next week at Annie Bloom’s Books in Portland. So it’s a great match. And excellent timing. The Oregonian not only covers the Portland area but reaches readers throughout the state. Very exciting!!

🙂

UPDATE: Amy Wang, who wrote the article, clarified that it’s a feature, not a review, so I’m editing accordingly. Either way, it’s super.

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COUNTDOWN – 3 DAYS TO LAUNCH

Janet Fisher2 Comments

Fort Vancouver

In today’s post counting down to the book launch of The Shifting Winds, we’ll visit the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fort Vancouver, a thriving center of British civilization in the wilderness of the Oregon Country in the nineteenth century. When the story begins, this fort has been the center of the fur trade in the Pacific Northwest for seventeen years, having been established in 1825. Today, the city of Vancouver, Washington, has grown up around the site, and with archeological investigation and in-depth study of early drawings and descriptions, an elaborate reconstruction project has brought back the palisade walls and many of the buildings, offering a glimpse into the fort’s glory days. It’s now a National Historic Site maintained by the National Park Service.

(Troy Wayrynen/picturesbytroy)

National Park Service photo by Troy Wayrynen

The above photo provides an artistic portrayal of a finely crafted lantern with the fort bastion behind. This fort was no rustic outpost. The commander’s residence, an elegant two-story house which he shared with his second in command, looked like a mansion to protagonist Jennie Haviland. The house included a public sitting room and formal dining hall for gentlemen, where substantial meals were served, sometimes with wine, but no “spiritous liquors.” Within the palisade walls the company was a self-sufficient establishment with workshops for carpenters, blacksmiths, coopers and others, as well as a school house, a chapel, a brick and stone powder house, and more. Outside, farming activities required more employees than the fur enterprise.

Nancy Funk, wearing period clothing, takes care of a garden at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site in Vancouver, Washington. (Troy Wayrynen/picturesbytroy)

National Park Service photo by Troy Wayrynen

In the above photo taken at the beautifully reconstructed site, you can see some of the gardens typical of the fort’s past, and behind the gardens, the palisade walls with bastion at the corner. The large hip-roofed building on the far left with the chimney is the Big House where Dr. John McLoughlin lived as Chief Factor of the fort.

When the Company sent Dr. McLoughlin out to the Oregon Country, he selected this site for the Company’s western headquarters because he found a broad fertile plain there and he intended to grow things while conducting the fur trade. Grain, fruits, and vegetables flourished on this land, as well as livestock. He also wanted a site on the north side of the Columbia River because the British had recently made an offer to the United States to resolve a contentious boundary dispute, agreeing to set the boundary between the two nations along the Columbia. That would have essentially given today’s Washington State to the British. I guess we all know that offer was not accepted.

The Company initially built the fort a short distance inland from the final location, but after four years they moved it closer to the river and gradually developed the remarkable establishment it became.

village

National Park Service photo

The Company employed many people, and while some lived inside the fort walls, many more lived in a village just outside. Some of the reconstructed buildings of the village are shown in the above photo.

When Jennie visits the fort in our story, she’s curious about the houses outside the walls and asks her escort Alan Radford about them. He tells her they’re the workmen’s cabins, and she asks, “‘Do you live in one of these cabins?”

“Oh no. I live inside the fort. The gentlemen live inside.’

“‘Oh.’ She puzzled over that. ‘How do you decide?’

“‘Decide?’

“‘Yes. How do you decide who’s a gentleman?’

“‘Well, the officers and clerks are gentlemen, and the common workers are not. It’s simple enough.’”

Jennie finds that surprising but focuses on the fort as the wagon carries them inside. She’s amazed. “‘It’s like a small city right here inside the walls.’

“Lights glittered around her now, twinkling from the many windows of the fort buildings—glass windows, real glass windows. And the buildings! There were real frame buildings. Not simple little crude log cabins like those at Willamette Falls. . . . The frame house directly in front of her . . . had proper white weatherboarded walls, a proper shingled hip roof, shutters beside the tall glass windows, and a wide veranda that crossed the entire front, with a gracefully curved staircase forming a half circle from the veranda to the ground.”

Jennie has been invited to stay in that house, the Big House, as the guest of Dr. and Mrs. McLoughlin, but discussion ensues about where American mountain man Jake Johnston will stay. He has traveled with their party from Willamette Falls for his own reasons. With sudden decisiveness, Dr. McLoughlin says Jake will stay in the Bachelor’s Quarters next to the Big House. But Alan doesn’t appear to like that decision. When he begrudgingly leaves to make arrangements, Jennie quietly asks Jake what’s wrong.

Jake’s response: “‘With Radford? Well, it’s only gentlemen who are allowed to stay inside the fort, and I don’t think Radford considers me a gentleman.’ Jake grinned at her, and her brows rose. She wasn’t sure Jake was a gentleman either, but she was surprised at the rigidity.”

NEXT: Dr. John McLoughlin

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COUNTDOWN – 6 DAYS TO LAUNCH

Janet Fisher

Willamette Falls

As we continue the countdown to the launch of my new book, The Shifting Winds, today’s historical factoids focus on the developing settlement of Willamette Falls, soon to be named Oregon City, the first Euro-American settlement in Oregon’s Willamette Valley and the destination for many American settlers who would cross the Oregon Trail.

Society208-Clackamas County Historical Society Photo, All Rights Reserved

The above lithograph was created in the 1840s by lithographer J. H. Richardson who traveled to Oregon City during the settlement’s early days, one of several artists sent out to record images of the West during that period. The picture shows the bluff and the heavy forest above, which will become familiar to readers of The Shifting Winds.

A dramatic horseshoe-shaped falls gave the place its first name. Long before the white men came, the remarkable cascade drew Native American tribes like the Clowewallas, one of several Chinookan tribes who found excellent fishing at the site, and it became a place for the tribes to gather for trade. Some said the salmon were so thick a person could walk across the river on the salmons’ backs. Men built scaffolds right in the plunging water and climbed up to use spears and dip nets to catch fish struggling to leap the falls for the great return to their spawning grounds upriver.

When British fur traders entered the region they quickly recognized the potential power of the falls, and in 1829 Dr. John McLoughlin, HBC Chief Factor at nearby Fort Vancouver, laid out a two-square-mile claim at the site. By the time the characters of my story arrive, he’s in the process of building a sawmill on an island there.

The construction work brought HBC employees to the place which they called Willamette Falls. Then Americans began to arrive, and contentions stirred at this focal point, as well as across the Oregon territory. When the story opens in 1842, the Oregon country has been jointly occupied by the British and Americans for almost twenty years, because the two nations still can’t agree on a boundary. The British have been entrenched for years with their fur trading operations, and only a few Americans have trickled in—some missionaries, a few mountain men escaping a dying beaver trade in Rockies, and a scattering of emigrants who’ve come by land and sea.

Protagonist Jennie Haviland isn’t happy her father tore her away from her prestigious academy in Utica, New York, to come to this wilderness, but her one hope is that she’ll find a place she can call home in Willamette Falls. As she and her family follow their Indian guides through the dense woods to an overlook of the mighty cascade, she hopes to get her first view of this town. Awed by the spectacle of the falls, she can’t help admiring the beauty, but she doesn’t see a town, only some shacks on the island and a couple of log cabins with a few outbuildings on the flat bench of land below. Homes of isolated settlers? She turns to her father.

“‘But where is the town? Where’s Willamette Falls?’ She wanted to find the town of proper houses.

“The young guide mumbled to Pa again, and Pa nodded. ‘So that’s it,’ Pa said. ‘That’s our settlement.’

“Jennie scanned the tree-cloaked hills. ‘Where?’

“‘Those cabins are it.’ He pointed to the flat bench of land. . . .

“Jennie darted a quick look at the cabins on the flat, then jerked her head back to stare at Pa. ‘What do you mean?’”

NEXT: Mountain Men

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Tasting Local History

Janet Fisher2 Comments

DSCN0429It’s time for Fort Umpqua Days again, an annual event in my hometown of Elkton, Oregon, when we honor our past and have some fun doing it. It’s Labor Day weekend, Saturday and Sunday, September 5 and 6, pretty much all day, at the Elkton Community Education Center just west of town.

The photo above shows the massive gates for the reconstructed Fort Umpqua, which was the southernmost fort of the British Hudson’s Bay Company in the 19th century. Thanks to the dedication of local people this fort was reconstructed with an eye to authenticity so folks can get a glimpse of life back then.

I’m particularly interested in the period because I write about it. In my first book, A Place of Her Own, my great-great-grandmother comes to Elkton near where the fort stood. The fort has fallen by the time she gets there and the British have left the area following the 1846 settlement of a boundary at the 49th parallel. However, conditions haven’t changed dramatically. It’s a part of her immediate history. And in my next book, a novel called The Shifting Winds, the story opens in 1842 when Oregon was still contested territory between the British and the Americans, and tensions stirred rumors of war. In my story a triangle romance parallels the conflict, when two young men, a Hudson’s Bay Company clerk and an American mountain man, vie for the protagonist, a young pioneer woman who never wanted to leave her New York home in the first place.

So I revel in events like this that help bring history alive. Also, I serve on the writing committee for the annual pageant that’s performed both nights of the event, where we bring out a little history with a bit of humor and music and dance and a whole lot of fun. During the day there are games for the kids down at the fort, crafts for sale, food, black powder demonstrations by our own mountain men, and more.

I’ll have a booth both days where I’ll be selling and signing copies of A Place of Her Own, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. If you’re in the neighborhood, welcome to a dip into our past.

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