were later carved the present States of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho,
in their entirety, and Montana and Wyoming in considerable part.
Into this immense wilderness, inhabited only by scattered tribes of Indians, came the American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, heading an expedition authorized by President Jefferson and Congress "to explore the Missouri River, & such principal streams of it, as, by its course £ communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean, may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent, for the purposes of commerce." Starting up the Missouri on May 14, 1804, the party reached the headwaters of the Columbia in October of the following year, journeyed down the river to arrive at Cape Disappointment in November, and passed the winter in a rude log fort which they named Fort Clatsop, after a neighboring Indian tribe. In the spring they began the homeward journey, reaching St. Louis on September 23, 1806.
The accounts of this expedition, the first to be made by white men across the Oregon country, aroused widespread interest, particularly in the immense opportunities for fur-trading offered by the northwest region. In 1806 a British trading post was set up by Simon Fraser of the North West Company, on what later came to be known as Fraser's Lake, near the 54th parallel. But the first post in the Columbia River region was that established by members of John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company in 1811 at Astoria, close to the log fort in which Lewis and Clark had passed the winter of 1805-6. One group of Astor's company sailed from New York around Cape Horn, arriving in March 1811 at the mouth of the Columbia, where eight members of the party lost their lives in an unskilful attempt to enter the river. Another group took the overland route and arrived about a year later. After disembarking the men who built the post at Astoria, the ship in which the first party had arrived proceeded northward along the coast to trade with the Indians, and very soon thereafter was destroyed with a loss of more than 20 lives in a surprise attack by hostile natives.
The fur-trading operations at Astoria were scarcely well under way before war broke out between Great Britain and the United States, and early in 1813 the Astorians received information that a British naval force was on its way to take possession of the mouth of the Columbia. This news was brought by agents of the North West Company, who offered to buy the entire establishment of Astoria at a reasonable valuation. Fearing confiscation if he delayed matters, the American factor
