Champoeg Meetings - Background

Background

After Lewis & Clark’s journey through the region, leaving in 1806, others of European descent explored more and more of the land west of the Rockies. These first explorers were mainly mountain men engaged in the fur trade. Following behind these men were the trading posts set up by people such as John Jacob Astor and those created by the Hudson's Bay Company, the primary forts being Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River and Fort Vancouver near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers. At this time the region was claimed by a variety of European powers such as Spain, Russia, and Great Britain, along with the United States. In 1818, the United States and Britain signed a treaty that called for the two countries to peaceably co-exist in the region, but not exclude other claims. Through a series of other treaties the number of countries claiming the Oregon Country was reduced to just two, the United States and Britain.

Britain and the U.S. continued the "joint occupation" as economic activity in the region continued to expand. In the 1830s missionaries such as Jason Lee, Spaulding, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman would also travel overland to Oregon Country and establish missions among the Native Americans. As time passed many of these trappers and missionaries settled the land and developed farms and other instruments of economy. Then in the 1840s more and more settlers arrived via the Oregon Trail that the early missionaries and trappers helped to pioneer. Finally, enough Americans, Canadians and Europeans were living in this land, that by Western standards was considered ungoverned, that a critical mass was reached and the settlers began to develop plans for a government.