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( Oregon Country)
Oregon Country or Oregon (to be distinguished from the American State also called Oregon) was a predominantly American term referring to a region of the Pacific Northwest of North America. The region was occupied by British and French Canadian fur traders from before 1810, and American settlers from the mid-1830s. The Oregon Treaty of 1846, ended disputed joint occupancy pursuant to the Treaty of 1818, and established the British-American boundary at the 49th parallel. "Oregon" was a distinctly American term for the region. The British used the term "Columbia" instead.[1] The Oregon Country, consisted of the land north of 42°N latitude, south of 54°40'N latitude, and west of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. The area now forms part of the present day Canadian province of British Columbia, all of the US states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, and parts of Montana and Wyoming. The British presence in the region was generally administered by the Hudson's Bay Company, whose Columbia Department comprised most of the Oregon Country and extended considerably north into New Caledonia (Canada) and beyond 54°40'N, with operations reaching to tributaries of the Yukon River.[2] The origin of the word Oregon is not known for certain. One theory is that French explorers called the Columbia River "hurricane river" la fleuve d'ouragan, because of the strong winds of the Columbia Gorge. Other possibilities have been suggested based on words from French and Spanish (since the region was explored by their nationals), but an official origin of the name is not known. George R. Stewart argued in a 1944 article in American Speech that the name came from an engraver's error in a French map published in the early 1700s, on which the Ouisiconsink (Wisconsin River) was spelled "Ouaricon-sint", broken on two lines with the -sint below, so that there appeared to be a river flowing to the west named "Ouaricon". This theory was endorsed in Oregon Geographic Names as "the most plausible explanation".[4] The Oregon Country was originally claimed by Great Britain, France, Russia, and Spain; the Spanish claim was later taken up by the United States. The U.S. based its claim in part on Robert Gray's entry of the Columbia River in 1792 and the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Great Britain based its claim in part on British overland explorations of the Columbia River by David Thompson (explorer) and on prior discovery and exploration along the Coast. Spain's claim was based on the Inter caetera and Treaty of Tordesillas of 1493-94, as well as explorations the Pacific coast in the late 1700s.[5] Russia based its claim off the settlements it had stretching from Alaska into Oregon. Spain gave up its claims piecemeal. In the Nootka Conventions of the early 1790s that followed the Nootka Crisis Spain granted Britain rights to the Pacific Northwest, although it did not establish a northern boundary for Spanish California, nor did it extinguish Spanish rights to the Pacific Northwest.[6] Spain later relinquished any remaining claims to territory north of the 42nd parallel to the United States as part of the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819. In the 1820s Russia gave up its claims south of 54°40' and east of the 141st meridian in separate treaties with the United States and Britain. [7]
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