The year was 1841. General Mariano Vallejo had two visitors at his palatial adobe north of the Sonoma Plaza. Sir George Simpson was the governor of the Hudson Bay Company overseas, meaning primarily Canada. Headquartered in London and incorporated in 1670, the “Bay” was the leading organization of fur trappers in the world, and by the 1820s it had a monopoly in Canadian furs. It was so powerful that it was the virtual government of western Canada. And no one was more powerful than Simpson, an illegitimate, ambitious man known as “Napoleon,” and other names, in the fur trade.
A stocky man, 5 feet 7 inches with balding red hair, the 49-year-old Simpson had been carried down from Fort Victoria at the tip of Vancouver Island on the HBC’s Beaver, the first steamship on the West Coast. He was examining the California coast to judge the possibilities of business for his company, as well as to assess whether Great Britain might be able to take advantage of the turmoil of the Mexican government and the isolation of the province of Alta California from the capital in Mexico City. Simpson stopped at Yerba Buena (the village that would become San Francisco) and took a side trip up the bay to meet the already famed Vallejo at the most northern Mexican outpost, Sonoma.
After the visit in Sonoma Sir George, just knighted by 21-year-old Queen Victoria, would proceed to Monterey and Santa Barbara before heading across the Pacific on a round-the-world tour. It had been almost 50 years since the great British explorer George Vancouver had made a similar inspection of Spanish California settlements on his way home to England.
Accompanying Simpson was Dr. John McLoughlin, an HBC veteran who was in charge of the western headquarters at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River (now Vancouver, Washington), which he had founded back in 1825. McLoughlin, a medical doctor, was a big man who towered over Simpson. He had a head of wild gray hair, giving him the aspect of a mad scientist. Simpson had been an admirer of McLoughlin, but by the time they reached Sonoma the two men were at odds with each other, on policy as well as personally. This friction could make a difference to the future of Sonoma and Mexican California.
Simpson later wrote that the Vallejos were gracious hosts and they laid on a delightful banquet, remarkable for the frontier. At the same time he reported he was shocked at the squalid conditions in which the natives in Sonoma lived, with much of their shelter consisting of huts. However, he liked the land, the people and especially the Mexican women, with their “sparkling eyes…glossy hair, sylph-like forms and neatly-turned ankles.” This was not surprising since Simpson was a notorious womanizer who had left behind two children by two different maidens in England, and at least three more resulting from liaisons with young women of partial native heritage at various frontier settlements.
Dr. McLoughlin became upset with Simpson after the Doctor’s son, John, Jr. was murdered by native people while managing an HBC outpost, and Simpson argued that young McLouglin had brought it on himself by oppressive management. Also, Simpson wanted to move the western headquarters of HBC from the fort on the Columbia River to the newly-built Fort Victoria north of Puget Sound on Vancouver Island. Simpson’s reasoning was that the “Oregon territory,” covering land north of California clear to Alaska, would soon by divided between the United States and Britain and old Fort Vancouver would wind up in the more southerly American portion. This was a bit of unfinished business remaining from the War of 1812, leaving the Northwest open to settlement by settlers from both nations subject to renewal every ten years. McLoughlin loved the land in what are now the states of Oregon and Washington and did not favor the move, but Simpson was the boss. The good doctor left Simpson at Monterey and caught a ship back to his fort on the Columbia River.
As it would turn out, Simpson was right. When the American and British negotiators drew the border west of the Rockies in 1846 on the eve of the American declaration of war against Mexico, Fort Victoria (now Victoria, British Columbia) was given to British Canada and Fort Vancouver ended up in the United States. Dr. McLoughlin retired instead of moving north, received a gold watch and a handsome pension, and became a leader in the movement for Oregon statehood. His home can be visited in Oregon City, Oregon. The line between Oregon and California had actually been established in 1819 by treaty between the United States and the King of Spain, negotiated by American secretary of state John Quincy Adams two years before Mexico gained independence.
It was not unreasonable in 1841 to consider increasing British influence in California and possibly taking it over as a colony. As the inability of the Mexican government to manage this distant province became more obvious, there was a division of sentiment among those living in California. Some favored looking toward the United States (including General Vallejo), some were for an independent republic, others favored autonomy within Mexico or becoming a colony of France (as a Catholic country). Those of English heritage were intrigued with the worldwide power, Great Britain.
While McLoughlin was favorable to Britain, Simpson was convinced that California did not offer a chance for a British takeover of the government or for controlling business opportunities. Simpson’s report, written on return from his around-the-world trip, marked the demise of any such thinking back in London. Eventually Hudson Bay would content itself with a trade office in San Francisco. Californians would salute the stars and stripes and not raise a toast to the Queen.
Gerald Hill is co-author with his wife, Kathleen Thompson Hill, of six books on regions of the West Coast, Sonoma Valley, Napa Valley, Santa Barbara and the Central Coast, Monterey and Carmel, Victoria and Vancouver Island, and Northwest Wine Country, as well as The People’s Law Dictionar,y The Encyclopedia of Federal Agencies and Commissions and several other books and numerous articles.
