Puget Sound Agricultural Company
The RAC-HBC Agreement was signed in 1839 between the Russian-American Company and the HBC, with the British to now supply the various trade posts of Russian America.
It was hoped by the HBC governing committee that independent American merchants, previously a major source of foodstuffs for the RAC, would be shut out of the Russian markets and leave the Maritime fur trade.
Because its monopoly license granted by the British Government forbade any activity besides the fur trade, the HBC created the PSAC to sidestep this issue.
Through its company stations, the PSAC would promote settlement by British subjects in this disputed area, although it largely failed in this particular aspect.
At Fort Nisqually (near present-day Olympia, Washington) due to poor soil, the station focused on pastoral operations, including flocks of sheep for wool, cattle herds for beef and cheese manufacturing.
Simpson and his cohorts knew the general position of the British Government for any potential negotiations with the United States to resolve the Oregon boundary question.
In 1832 he proposed that HBC officers and employees in the Columbia Department should create a new joint stock company to purchase several hundred cattle from Alta California.
Called "The Oragon Beef & Tallow Company," as McLoughlin told his superiors, it was formed "with the view of opening from the Oragon Country an export trade with England and elsewhere in tallow, beef, hides, horns, &c."[1] If the cattle were gathered from Alta California in 1833, McLoughlin projected Fort Vancouver area to have a herd of over 5,000 by 1842.
They feared that if the Oragon Beef and Tallow Company were successful then HBC employees would quit the fur trade to become pastoralists and agriculturalists.
[1] While Simpson was favorable to the idea of growing expansive numbers of livestock and farm products, he was decidedly against McLoughlin's proposal of independent operators supplying the provisions for trade in Russian America and the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Previous outbreaks of disease at Fort Vancouver worried the administrators, who ordered McLoughlin to thoroughly examine Whidbey Island and other potential locations north of the Columbia River, although he had done neither by 1837.
[2] While the proposed livestock project languished, the HBC pushed for a renewal of its monopoly licence from the British Government, set to expire in 1841.
Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company John Pelly highlighted to Secretary of the Colonies Lord Glenelg the benefits the British Empire had for decades received from the HBC in 1837.
The HBC was still only British enterprise allowed to trade with native peoples west of Rupert's Land, but it did not include the right to engage in commercial farming.
In February 1838, he pushed for the dispatch of a naval force to the Columbia, in addition to offering land grants to interest American settlers.
Having finally secured this financially important agreement, the HBC formally incorporated the Puget Sound Agricultural Company in 1840.
Starting with Étienne Lucier in 1829, a steady number of primarily French-Canadian employees of the HBC became farmers in the Willamette Valley.
Their agricultural products were sold to the HBC and continued to use Fort Vancouver as their source of needed supplies and household goods.
Eventually Provencher selected François Norbert Blanchet and Modeste Demers as capable for traveling to the distant Willamette Valley.
[6] If the initial movement of settlers from Red River was successful, company officials wanted at least fifteen families arriving at the Cowlitz Farm annually.
The sales would happen only if the Oregon Question was settled with British receiving the northern bank of the Columbia River, rather than a direct continuation of the 49th parallel.
The men and lads traveled in the saddle, while the vehicles, which were covered with awnings against the sun and rain, carried the women and the young children.
A delegation of Red River men arrived at Fort Vancouver in November 1845 to notify McLoughlin of their disinterest in paying back the money owed to the HBC.
