Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival

The settlement on the Oregon, connecting the trade of that river [Columbia] and the coast with the Missouri and the Mississippi, is to open a mine of wealth to the shipping interests and the western country, surpassing the hopes of even avarice itself. --John Floyd, Virginia Representative to the U.S. House, 1822

While the subtitle of Peter Stark's chronicle of John Jacob Astor's west coast folly is subtitled "A Story of Wealth, Ambition and Survival," it might also be called a tale of greed, rapine and murder. Because the government-sponsored Lewis & Clark Expedition of 1804-6 achieved its ends, with only one death, this entrepreneurial foray of 1810-12 -- larger, bolder, and, ultimately, a debacle -- fell into North American historical oblivion. In the first half of the 19th century, however, the tale was well known to United States' citizens, all residents of the eastern half of the continent, due to Washington Irving's chronicle of 1836, Astoria, or Anecdotes of an Enterprise Beyond the Rocky Mountains. It is a story worthy our 21st century awareness, serving, once again, as a reminder of white voracity.

The Sam Walton of his day, worth 110 billion in contemporary dollars, Astor financed the massive land and sea excursion from New York City to the mouth of the Columbia River in hopes of creating a Jamestown on the Pacific, colonizing the region for his fur trapping and exporting business, to make Astoria one port of a China/London/New York/Oregon trading empire.

He hadn't foreseen the navigational dangers: the seagoing party lost 8 men before even reaching the coast -- not around dangerous Cape Horn but at the apparently more perilous mouth of the Columbia. The captain of Astor's ship, The Tonquin, sacrificed his first mate and 7 others attempting to locate the channel through the Columbia Bar.

Later, the same Captain Thorn would sacrifice his life, his crew's lives and The Tonquin itself to his overweening zealousness to achieve Astor's commercial ends by any means necessary. After Insulting their Indian hosts -- necessary trading partners on Vancouver Island -- the Tonquin was set upon by the Clayoquot tribe. Thorn "had a vast deal of ... pride in his nature, and, moreover, held the whole savage race in sovereign contempt," wrote Irving, who knew the captain personally.

Indeed, the "whole savage race" does not signify to Astor and his ilk. A German immigrant who was once a street vendor in lower Manhattan, Astor rose to the summit of American capitalism through his mastery of global trade and his willingness to overlook the nations of indigenous people already populating the lands he wished to acquire. In this, he is no different from the Founding Fathers.

The Overland Party, taking a route south of the Lewis & Clark Trail, winters badly en route. Some 100 travelers, including a pregnant contemporary of Sxxx, her translator husband and two toddlers, are rescued by Shoshones, who save them from starvation and exposure, then guide them through the Blue Mountains to the river. This route to the coast would eventually become the Oregon Trail, preferred route for the huge migrations of settlers in the 1840s and 50s.

After its treacherous beginnings, the Astoria settlement is ultimately cashiered but the war of 1812, which all the dollars of Astor could not foresee or prevent. The British will shortly take over the trade and the fort, built by Astor's employees. Astor's failure is perhaps responsible for securing a few decades for the coastal Indian tribes before U.S. expansionism swamps the Pacific Northwest -- the beaver, otter and buffalo suffering a similar diminution.