Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival (41 page)

EPILOGUE

281
McTavish, of the rival North West Company
: Irving,
Astoria,
p. 482.

McDougall’s own uncle, Angus Shaw
: Ibid.; Franchère,
Narrative,
p. 191.

282
“to take and destroy”
: Irving,
Astoria,
p. 482.

“totally annihilate”
: Ronda,
Astoria & Empire,
pp. 256–57.

for about thirty cents on the dollar
: Irving,
Astoria,
p. 484.

“I lost in a moment all my hopes of fortune”
: Franchère,
Narrative,
p. 193.

283
He and his Chinook warriors would hide
: Cox,
Adventures on the Columbia River,
pp. 132–33.

284
“I leave the Country”
: Seton,
Astorian Adventure,
p. 151.

285
It had happened the past winter
: Franchère,
Narrative,
pp. 273–76; Irving,
Astoria,
pp. 492–95; and Ross,
Adventures,
pp. 277–81.

287
“Good god,” he had written
: Porter,
John Jacob Astor, Business Man,
p. 524.

$2.5 million
: Ronda,
Astoria & Empire,
p. 266.

“And for want of one ship and crew”
: Ibid., p. 269.

Astorians who perished as tallied by clerk Alexander Ross
: Ross,
Adventures,
p. 283.

288
splitting open his skull with his own tomahawk
: Barry, “Archibald Pelton,” pp. 200–201.

Astor had sent a total of about 140 men
: Chittenden,
The American Fur Trade of the Far West,
pp. 887–88.

“[Mr. Astor] assumed the financial risks”
: John Denis Haeger,
John Jacob Astor: Business and Finance in the Early Republic
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991), p. 117.

“My plan was right”
: Elbert Hubbard,
Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen
(1916, reprint [New York]:Cosimo Classics, 2005), pp. 224–25.

Irving was undoubtedly speaking for Astor himself
: Irving,
Astoria,
pp. 497–501.

289
“It was [Astor’s] great misfortune”
: Ibid., p. 498.

291 “
the crafty M’Dougall”
: Franchère,
Narrative,
p. 227.

“charge of treason will always be attached”
: Ibid., p. 204.

293
“I have not had so quiet and delightful a nest”
: Gebhard,
The Life and Adventures of the Original John Jacob Astor,
p. 288. Gebhard includes an illustration of Hell Gate.

for whom Astor happily sent
: Stanley T. Williams,
The Life of Washington Irving
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1935), p. 83.

“occupation and amusement”
: Irving,
Astoria,
pp. xix–xx.

294
“old gentleman’s”
: Irving,
Astoria,
pp. xix–xx.

“What the vague term of the ‘whole country’ ”
: Ross,
Adventures,
p. 259.

“[W]hile I breath & so long as I have a dollar to spend”
: Porter,
John Jacob Astor, Business Man,
p. 239.

Soon Mackenzie came under Astor’s suspicions
: Ronda indicates Astor and Mackenzie had a falling-out in the fall of 1814. Ronda,
Astoria & Empire,
p. 304.

295
“Had our place and our property been fairly captured”
: Irving,
Astoria,
p. 485.

Astor later estimated
: Letter from Astor to James Monroe, August 17, 1815, in Porter,
John Jacob Astor, Business Man,
p. 585.

“If I was a young man”
: Letter from Astor to Gallatin dated December 30, 1818, quoted in Ronda,
Astoria & Empire,
p. 315.

“I remember well having invited”
: Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Astor, May 24, 1812, in
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series,
vol. 5 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 74.

296
“I learn with great pleasure the progress you have made”
: Letter from Jefferson to Astor, November 9, 1813, in
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series,
vol. 6, p. 603.

297
But on October 22, 1812
: Rollins,
The Discovery of the Oregon Trail,
pp. 163–66.

298
Astor pressed the U.S. government through Albert Gallatin
: Letter from Gallatin to Astor, August 5, 1835, reprinted in Irving,
Astoria,
pp. 507–509.

American politicians strived to bring the region solely to U.S. control
: For a detailed account of this, see Ronda,
Astoria & Empire,
pp. 330–36.

“The settlement of the Oregon”
: Floyd quoted in ibid., p. 333.

“Not an American ship will be able to show itself beyond Cape Horn”
: Benton, quoted in ibid., p. 334.

299
Among them was an elderly Marie Dorion
: J. Neilson Barry, “Madame Dorion of the Astorians,”
Oregon Historical Quarterly
30, no. 3 (September 1929): 275.

“She, from various traditions”
: T. C. Elliott, “The Grave of Madame Dorion,”
Oregon Historical Quarterly
36, no. 1 (March 1935): 104.

300
“It is no flight of fancy”
: Chittenden,
The American Fur Trade of the Far West,
vol. 1, p. 227.

301
“[W]hen California came into our hands”
: Charles M. Harvey, “Our Lost Opportunity on the Pacific,”
North American Review
193, no. 664 (March 1911): 402.

which ranks him fourth
: See http://www.forbes.com/2007/09/14/richest-americans-alltime-biz_cx_pw_as_0914ialltime_slide_5.html.

At his death, John Jacob Astor came under criticism
: Porter,
John Jacob Astor, Business Man,
pp. 1096–97.

which went to found the Astor Library
: Ibid., pp. 1094–97.

ended with Vincent Astor
: Axel Madsen,
John Jacob Astor: America’s First Multimillionaire
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001), p. 292.

302
The ten-foot-long, thousand-pound anchor
: See Robinson and Griffiths, “Investigations of a Potential Shipwreck Site, Templar Channel, Clayoquot Sound, B.C.”

304
“Let him but visit these regions of want and misery”
: Stuart journal entry, in Rollins,
The Discovery of the Oregon Trail,
pp. 157–58.

FATE OF THE ASTORIANS

305
Wilson Price Hunt
: T. C. Elliott, “Wilson Price Hunt, 1783–1842,”
Oregon Historical Quarterly
32, no. 2 (June 1931): 132.

Duncan McDougall
:
Dictionary of Canadian Biography,
s.v. “McDougall, Duncan,” http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?id_nbr=2538.

Ramsay Crooks
:
Dictionary of Canadian Biography,
s.v. “Crooks, Ramsay,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/crooks_ramsay_8E.html.

Chinook Nation
: John Robinson, “From Boston Men to the BIA: The Unacknowledged Chinook Nation,” in
Recognition, Sovereignty Struggles, and Indigenous Rights in the United States,
ed. Amy E. Den Ouden and Jean M. O’Brien (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), pp. 263–86. For Christopher Stevens, see “Slain Ambassador Was Member of Local Chinook Tribe,”
Chinook Observer,
September 13, 2013.

306
Clayoquot Nation
: See http://www.tla-o-qui-aht.org/.

Robert Stuart
: Rollins,
The Discovery of the Oregon Trail,
p. xl.

Donald Mackenzie
:
Dictionary of Canadian Biography,
s.v. “Mackenzie, Donald,” http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=4075.

Alfred Seton
: Seton,
Astorian Adventure,
introduction and pp. 176–77.

307
Joseph Miller
: Rollins,
The Discovery of the Oregon Trail,
pp. c–ci, 86.

Robert McClellan
: Ibid., pp. xci–xcv.

Alexander Ross
:
Dictionary of Canadian Biography,
s.v. “Ross, Alexander,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/ross_alexander_8E.html.

308
Ross Cox
:
Dictionary of Canadian Biography,
s.v. “Cox, Ross,” http://www
.biographi.ca/en/bio/cox_ross_8E.html.

308
Gabriel Franchère
:
Dictionary of Canadian Biography,
s.v. “Franchère, Gabriel,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/franchere_gabriel_9E.html.

Baptiste Dorion
: See http://www.oregonpioneers.com/JeanBaptisteDorion
.htm.

John Day
: Chittenden,
The American Fur Trade of the Far West,
vol. 2, p. 889; Rollins,
The Discovery of the Oregon Trail,
p. xcvii.

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