1799.

trade of the north Pacific, was protected and encouraged by the 1796. Empress Catherine, who bestowed upon it many valuable privileges. Her son and successor, Paul, was, at the beginning of his reign, inclined to withdraw these advantages, and even to break up the association, on account of the cruel conduct of its agents towards the natives and the Russians who were employed in its service. Reasons of state, however, induced him to abandon this resolution; and he at length, by a decree of the 8th of July, 1799, granted to the united merchants a charter, assuring to them, under July 8. the title of the Russian American Company, the exclusive use and control, for twenty years, of all the coasts of America on the Pacific, and the islands in that ocean, from Beering's Strait to the 55th degree of south latitude, together with the right of occupying any other territories not previously possessed by some civilized nation. The residence of the directors of the company was at first fixed at Irkutsk, in Siberia, the great depository of the China trade; it was afterwards transferred to St. Petersburgh, and their affairs were placed under the superintendence, or rather the directors were placed under the surveillance, of the Imperial Department of Commerce.

The privileges thus accorded by Paul, were confirmed and extended by Alexander; and, under these favorable auspices, the power and influence of the Russian American Company rapidly advanced. In 1803, its establishments on the north Pacific coasts extended eastward, as far as Port Guadelupe, or Norfolk Sound, called by the Russians the Gulf of Sitca, which separates the small Island of Mount San Jacinto, or Edgecumb, or Krooze, from Baranoff's Island, the largest of the group named by Vancouver King George the Third's Archipelago. The settlement on the Gulf of Sitca was destroyed by savages in 1804; another was, however, soon founded in the vicinity of the same spot, which received the appellation of New Archangel, and has ever since been the capital of Russian America.

1800.

1803.

1804.

In 1806 preparations were made for occupying the mouth of 1806. the Columbia River, but the plan was abandoned; although that part of the coast, and all north of it, was then, and for many years afterwards, represented on the maps of the Russian American Company as included within the limits of its possessions.

The Government of Russian-America was arranged and conducted in the most despotic manner possible, nearly resembling that of a Turkish Pashalik; each factory was superintended by a Russian overseer, who, with the aid of a small number of Russians, maintained absolute control over all the natives in his district, compelling them constantly to labor for the benefit of the company. The overseers were under the superintendence of agents, one of whom resided in each group of settlements; and all were subject to the authority of a chief agent, or governor-general, appointed by the directors, whose powers, though nominally defined and limited by regulations drawn up at St. Petersburgh, were, in fact, absolute and unrestricted. The person who filled the office of governor-general at the beginning of this century, and for many years afterwards, was Alexander Baranoff, a bold, shrewd, enter

1800.

1800. prising, and unfeeling man, under whose iron rule the affairs of the company prospered, and its stock rose proportionally in value; his proceedings were, therefore, always approved by those to whom he was accountable, and complaints against his tyranny were always disregarded.

1803.

The Russians engaged in the service of the company, under the direction of the overseers, were distinguished by the general name of Promuschleniks, (meaning speculators,) and were employed as hunters, fishermen, seamen, soldiers, or mechanics, as their superiors might command. In the best of these situations, their lot appears to have been more wretched than that of any other class of human beings, with the exception, perhaps, of the natives, whom they aided in keeping under subjection; and it therefore is not surprising that none but vagabonds and adventurers should ever have become promuschleniks. The gallant and humane Krusenstern, in the narrative of his expedition to the Pacific in 1804 and 1805, presents a number of dreadful pictures of the sufferings of these unfortunate persons from want of food, from the severity of the climate, and from too much labor. According to the most recent accounts, it appears that their situation, while they are on land at least, has not been materially improved.*

The greater part of the furs collected on the northwest coasts of America continued to be, during the period mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, transported to Petro-Paulowsk and Ochotsk, from which places were brought nearly all the articles required for the use of the settlements; the remainder of the supplies being obtained from American vessels in the manner already described. The Russian Government, however, soon became desirous to exclude the vessels of the United States from the north Pacific, not only from a wish to monopolize the fur trade, but also in order to prevent the natives of the coasts from procuring arms and ammunition, with which they were furnished by the Americans, to the great detriment of the authority and interests of the Russian company. For this purpose, it would be necessary to maintain a naval force in the vicinity of the settlements, and to establish regular communications, by ships, between them and Europe; and, with the view of inquiring how those measures might be best executed, as well as of opening, if possible, some intercourse with Japan and the ports of China, it was determined that a scientific and political expedition should be made to the north Pacific.

Two ships, the Nadeshda, commanded by Captain Krusenstern, and the Neva, by Captain Lisiansky, were accordingly despatched from Cronstadt in August 1803, carrying out the chamberlain, Von Resanoff, as ambassador to Japan, and plenipotentiary of the Russian-American Company, together with a large body of officers and men of science. These were the first vessels, under the Russian flag, which crossed the equinoctial

* It will be recollected that these accounts are derived from Russian authorities.

line; they passed around Cape Horn, and, touching at the Washington and the Sandwich Islands, they reached the coasts of the north Pacific in the summer of 1804. Without detailing the subsequent occurrences of the expedition, which lasted until the summer of 1806, it will be sufficient to say, that none of the political or commercial objects proposed were attained. The Japanese, as usual, refused peremptorily to allow any intercourse to be carried on between their dominions and those of Russia; nor would the Chinese admit the commercial ships of the latter Power into Canton. The plans of Von Resanoff (who appears to have been a ridiculous and incompetent person) for the management of the affairs of the company proved wholly inapplicable; and the propriety of immediately expelling the Americans from the north Pacific, even could it be done, was rendered very questionable by the fact that the garrison and inhabitants of Sitca would have all infallibly perished from famine, in the winter of 1805-6, had they not been fortunately supplied with provisions by the ship Juno from Rhode Island. Finally, whatever may have been the conclusions formed upon the information acquired during the expedition, as to the practicability of maintaining a direct commercial intercourse, by sea, between the Russian ports in Europe and their settlements on the Pacific, certain it is that no attempt for that purpose was again made until 1814.

The expedition above mentioned was, however, in all respects, highly honorable to those who conducted it. The accounts separately published by Krusenstern, Lisiansky, and Langsdorf, particularly those of Krusenstern, are among the most instructive works which have appeared relating to the north Pacific and its coasts. They exhibit, indeed, frightful pictures of the misery endured by the persons in the service of the Russian-American Company; but they, at the same time, present instances of fortitude, perseverance, and good feeling, on the part of the Russians, calculated to counteract any unfavorable impressions which might otherwise have been formed with regard to the general charac· ter of that people.

After the return of Krusenstern's ships, representations were addressed by the Russian Government to that of the United States, with regard to the improper conduct of American citizens in trading in arms and ammunition with the natives on the coasts of the north Pacific; and endeavors were made to procure the passage by Congress of some act, or the conclusion of some convention between the two nations, by the effect of which such commerce might be prevented. These representations producing no results, Count Romanzoff, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, proposed to Mr. Adams, the American Envoy at St. Petersburgh, an arrangement by which the vessels of the United States should be allowed to transport furs from the Russian-settlements to China, on condition that they should abstain from all

* Langsdorf, vol. ii, page 89.

1803.

1806.

1808.

1810.

1810. trade with the natives on the northwest coasts. Mr. Adams, in his answer to this proposition, desired to know-within what latitudes the restriction would be expected to be observed? and the reply being, that the Russian-American Company claimed possession of the whole coasts extending from Beering's Strait to the southward of the Columbia River, the correspondence was not continued. An arrangement conformable with the views of the 1812. Russians was, in 1812, concluded between their American company and a citizen of the United States, but circumstances prevented it from being carried into execution.

Before 1812, Sitca was the most southern portion on the western side of America occupied by the Russians. In that year they formed an establishment in California, which deserves particular notice. The chief agent, Baranoff, obtained from the Spanish Governor of Monterey permission to erect some houses, and to leave a few men on the shore of the small Bay of Bodega, near Port San Francisco, in order to procure and salt the meat of the wild cattle, which overrun that country, for the supply of the settlement at New Archangel. In the course of two or three years after this permission was granted, the number of the persons thus employed had become so great, and their dwelling-place had assumed so much the appearance of a fortress, that the Governor thought proper to remonstrate on the subject; and his representations being disregarded, he formally commanded the Russians to quit the territories of his Catholic Majesty. The command was treated with as little respect as the remonstrance; and when it was repeated, the Russian agent, Kuskoff, replied by denying the right of the Spaniards over the country, which he asserted to be vacant and open for occupation by the subjects of any civilized Power. The Governor was unable to enforce his orders; 1815. and as no assistance could be afforded to him from Mexico, which was then ravaged by civil wars, the intruders were left in undisturbed possession of the ground, where they have ever since remained, in defiance alike of the Spaniards and of their republican

successors.

The Russian-American Company, about the same period, made another effort to create a direct commercial intercourse by sea between its settlements on the Pacific and the European ports of the Empire. With this object, the American ship Hannibal was purchased from Mr. Astor, of New York; and her name having been changed to the Suwarrow, she was despatched from Saint Petersburgh, in 1814, under the command of Lieutenant Lazaref, laden with goods for New Archangel. She returned in 1816 with a cargo of furs, valued at a million of dollars; and the adventure having been pronounced successful, others of the same nature were undertaken.

In 1815 Baranoff endeavored to obtain possession of Atooi, one

*The Russians have now several establishments in that part of California, of which the principal, called Ross, is situated immediately on the Pacific, in latitude of 38 degrees and 33 minutes, about thirty miles north of Port Bodega, or Port Romanzoff, as the Russians have named it.

of the Sandwich Islands. For that purpose about a hundred men, nearly all Aleutians, were sent in two vessels from Sitca, under the direction of Dr. Sheffer, a German, who had arrived in the Pacific as surgeon to the ship Suwarrow. They landed on the island, which they ravaged, without subduing it, for more than a year, and were then obliged to depart for Owyhee, where they entered the service of some American whalers, by whom they were finally restored to their country. The Russian Government appeared to disapprove this act of Baranoff; and no attempt has been since made by subjects of that or any other foreign nation to invade those islands.

The Government of the United States had before this period begun to assert claims to the possession of the territory drained by the Columbia river, the origin and extent of which claims will now be traced.

The discovery of the Columbia by Gray attracted very little attention in the United States for more than ten years after it had been effected. None but persons concerned in the fur trade of the north Pacific, and the curious in geographical matters, were acquainted with the fact; and no one imagined that any thing connected with that river would ever be considered important to the Americans in a political point of view. The territories of the United States were then bounded on the west by the river Mississippi, and on the north by the dominions of Great Britain; beyond the Mississippi lay the vast region called Louisiana, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico northward and northwestward to an undefined extent; so that all communication, except by sea, between the Federal Republic and the Pacific side of America, was completely barred by the intervention of countries belonging to foreign and rival Powers. Louisiana, originally settled by the French, had been ceded, in 1762, to Spain, which held it until October 1, 1800, and then retroceded it to France, "the same in extent," says the treaty of retrocession, "as it now is in the hands of Spain, as it was when France formerly possessed it, and as it should be, according to the treaties subsequently made between Spain and other nations."

1815.

1792

to

1800.

Under such circumstances, any claims of the United States to territories bordering upon the Pacific, would have been nominal and barren, and all attempts to realize them must have proved abortive. But the position of the Americans, and the views of 1803. their Government towards the northwestern section of the conti- April 30. nent, were materially changed after the 30th of April, 1803, when Louisiana came into their possession by purchase from France, "with all its rights and appurtenances, as fully, and in the same manner, as it had been acquired from Spain" in 1800. Before relating the dispositions made in consequence of this cession, some observations will be necessary respecting the northern and northwestern limits of the country which thus became the property of the United States.

The earliest attempt, either real or ostensible, to define the boundaries of Louisiana, was made by Louis XIV, in 1712, in the patent by which he granted to Antoine Crozat the exclusive