The Champoeg Meetings were the first attempts at formal governance by European-American and French Canadian pioneers in the Oregon Country on the Pacific Northwest coast of North America.

Since the first decade of the 19th century, a small but growing number of pioneers had settled in the Oregon Country, mostly to pursue business interests in the North American fur trade.

The assemblies at Champoeg addressed issues of probate law and estate administration, how to reward hunters who killed animals preying on livestock, and how to compromise on a system of leadership for the proposed government.

The overland treks of Alexander Mackenzie and Lewis and Clark which reached the Pacific coast in 1793 and 1805, respectively, continued to ferment interest by Europe and the United States.

As such expeditions expanded Euro-American knowledge of the Pacific Northwest, the possibilities of exploiting the fur trade provoked several companies to attempt to establish a permanent presence there.

The first to do so was the Montréal-based North West Company, which under David Thompson arrived in what is now Montana and created posts such as the Saleesh House to trade with the Salish and Kootenai tribes.

[2][3] The American Pacific Fur Company financed the next commercial push into the region, working primarily with Chinookan peoples at Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River.

[1] From Fort Vancouver, located near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers, the operations of the Hudson's Bay Company grew and quickly became the primary commercial force in the Oregon Country.

In the 1830s, missionaries, including Protestants such as Jason Lee, Henry H. Spalding, and Marcus Whitman and Catholics such as François Norbert Blanchet, Modeste Demers and Pierre-Jean De Smet, would also travel overland to the Oregon Country and establish missions among the Native Americans there.

[3] Finally, enough Americans, Canadians and Europeans (mainly English and French) were living in the ungoverned land that a critical mass was reached and the settlers began to develop plans for a government.

To mollify French-Canadian discontent over a potential governorship, Dr. Ira Babcock, a physician from the Methodist Mission, was elected as Supreme Judge, using the laws of New York State as his guide to probate any estates.

[11] However, the contemporary historian William H. Gray, in his book A History of Oregon, 1792-1849, explained that there would not have been any copy of the laws of New York available to the settlers and that instead Babcock acted "just as he pleased".

Meeting with five men, Wilkes judged their motivation based on getting "settlers to flock in, there by raising the value of their farms and stock"; consequently he advised the group to wait for the United States to project rule over them.

[8] The last organizational meeting was held on May 2, 1843, in Champoeg, where Babcock was elected President again and, aware of the great friction on that issue, he called for a vote on whether to create a provisional government.

[22] The first count of the division appeared by Gray in an article of the Astoria Marine Gazette in 1866 as 52 "Americans" for and 50 "French-Canadian and Hudson's Bay men" against considering a government, and was later published in his 1870 book A History of Oregon.

[20] Gray's book has been stated to be rife with "acrimonious partisanship and disregard of truth"; contemporaries including Blanchet, Jesse Applegate, Robert Newell, Peter Hardeman Burnett, and George Abernethy, among others, criticized portions of it.

Other offices elected on May 2 were Albert E. Wilson as Supreme Judge, George W. LeBreton as Court Clerk and Recorder, Joseph L. Meek as Sheriff and William H. Willson as Treasurer.

[8] The entire territory was then divided into four administrative districts: Yam Hill (also Yamhill), Clackamas (also Klackamas), Tuality (also Twality, and later Washington County), and Champoick (also Champoeg).

[8] The northern border of the jurisdiction was not initially clearly delineated due to the ongoing Oregon boundary dispute and to the fact that there no willing participants in the government north of the Columbia River.

The Provisional Government of Oregon originally hardly functioned due to various limitations upon its power, but after the adoption of the second Organic Code in 1845, its control over the Willamette Valley was solidified.

[30] Negotiations with the Hudson's Bay Company in 1845 expanded the provisional government's jurisdiction north of the Columbia River, its officers continuing to run the majority of the civil affairs in the newly created Vancouver district.