Chapter 1
America's Forgotten Frontier Dream: A Tale of Ambition, Peril, and Perseverance
In the early 1800s, while Lewis and Clark's expedition was still fresh in American memory, a far more ambitious venture was quietly taking shape-one that would ultimately shape the nation's destiny but somehow fade from our collective consciousness. John Jacob Astor's audacious plan to establish America's first Pacific colony wasn't just a business venture; it was a geopolitical chess move that Thomas Jefferson himself believed could create "a great, free and independent empire" on the Pacific Coast. This forgotten American epic captivated Washington Irving, who transformed it into an international bestseller in 1836. Today, Astoria remains largely unknown despite its profound impact-the routes blazed by its suffering participants would later become the Oregon Trail, forever altering the course of American expansion. Had Astor's venture succeeded, historians believe the United States might today stretch unbroken from San Diego to Alaska's Point Barrow. The story of Astoria combines the high-stakes ambition of a Gilded Age business titan with the raw survival tales of ordinary men and women facing an unforgiving wilderness-all against the backdrop of a young nation finding its place in the world.
Chapter 2
The Visionary Gambler: Astor's Grand Design
John Jacob Astor approached business like the solitaire games he played each evening-calculating odds, accepting measured risks, and strategizing several moves ahead. Having arrived in America as a poor German immigrant, he had methodically built a fortune in the fur trade, but by 1808, he envisioned something far grander: a global trading triangle connecting New York, the Pacific Northwest, and China that would dominate commerce across the Pacific Rim.
The plan was breathtaking in its ambition. Astor would establish a trading post at the Columbia River's mouth-a settlement that would serve as the cornerstone of his empire. From there, his ships would carry valuable furs to China, exchange them for porcelains, silks, and teas, then sail to New York where these exotic goods would fetch enormous profits. Meanwhile, inland trading posts would funnel more furs to the coastal settlement, creating a self-sustaining commercial ecosystem.
President Thomas Jefferson enthusiastically supported Astor's vision, seeing it as an extension of his own dream to establish American presence on the Pacific. Jefferson understood what many contemporaries didn't-that the Pacific would eventually rival the Atlantic in commercial importance. For Astor, this political blessing was crucial, as his enterprise would face competition from British interests already established in the region.
To execute this plan, Astor created the Pacific Fur Company and organized two advance parties: one traveling by sea aboard the Tonquin around Cape Horn, another trekking overland across the continent. For leadership, he selected Wilson Price Hunt, a kind but inexperienced businessman, to lead the Overland Party and eventually head the colony; Captain Jonathan Thorn, a decorated naval hero known for strict discipline, to command the Tonquin; and Duncan McDougall, a proud Scottish fur trader, as second-in-command.
What Astor couldn't foresee was how the extreme isolation of the remote Pacific Northwest would distort these men's personalities under pressure. His meticulous planning accounted for logistics, supplies, and competition-but not for the human element that would ultimately determine his venture's fate. As his voyageurs crossed New York Harbor that summer Sunday in 1810, no one could imagine the immense toll this "grand venture" would exact in lives, fortunes, and sanity.
Chapter 3
Clash of Cultures: The Troubled Voyage of the Tonquin
The Tonquin had barely left New York Harbor on September 8, 1810, when the first conflicts erupted. Captain Thorn, operating with naval precision, ordered lights out at 8 PM. The Scottish fur trader partners, considering themselves part-owners of the ship as shareholders in Astor's enterprise, flatly refused. When Alexander McKay threatened resistance, Thorn coldly replied he would "blow out the brains of the first man who dares disobey my orders."
This clash of cultures-Thorn's rigid military discipline versus the fur traders' forest-grown hierarchy-would plague the entire journey. The captain grew increasingly inflexible, forbidding Scottish partners from gathering on the starboard quarterdeck and banning clerks entirely. He was appalled by the casual camaraderie between the Scottish managers and voyageurs, writing bitterly to Astor about their "effeminacy" and demands for better food despite the "luxury" of the cabin.
As they sailed toward Cape Horn, powerful storms struck. The voyageurs experienced their first sea tempest with terror as lightning made the sea appear "all a-fire." A rogue wave crashed over the deck, injuring the helmsman and nearly washing others overboard. With water supplies dangerously low, Captain Thorn reduced rations to a pint daily before finally reaching the Falkland Islands in December.
There, while passengers explored and hunted waterfowl, Captain Thorn suffered a humiliating incident. After shooting what he thought was a wild goose, he discovered it had been tied to a rock as a prank by one of the clerks. Furious at being mocked, Thorn returned to the ship and, to the passengers' horror, set sail without them, abandoning them on the barren island.
Only when Robert Stuart pursued in a rowboat and confronted Thorn with loaded pistols did the captain allow the passengers to reboard. This dangerous incident revealed the depths of Thorn's rigid personality and foreshadowed troubles ahead.
By February 1811, after rounding Cape Horn, the Tonquin reached Hawaii. The Hawaiians welcomed them with fresh food and hospitality. At Kealakekua Bay, they visited the exact spot where Captain Cook had been killed thirty-two years earlier-an old Hawaiian recounting how Cook's temper and mistreatment of natives led to his demise. The irony of this story would soon become painfully relevant to the Tonquin's own fate.
Chapter 4
Perilous Passage: The Columbia's Deadly Welcome
When the Tonquin arrived at the Northwest Coast on March 22, 1811, they faced one of the world's most dangerous navigational hazards: the Columbia Bar. Here, the continent's largest western river collided with the Pacific Ocean, creating ferocious standing waves up to twelve feet high, while thirty-foot ocean swells crashed over the shallows in a chaotic tumult.
Captain Thorn ordered first mate Mr. Fox to take a whaleboat to sound the depths. Fox was dismayed to discover his crew would consist of three inexperienced French Canadians and an aging sailor. When he protested that the seas were too rough, Thorn coldly replied, "Mr. Fox, if you are afraid of water, you should have remained in Boston." Fox silently turned to the crew and issued the fateful order: "Lower the boat."
The small whaleboat was quickly tossed violently in the waves, becoming "utterly unmanageable" and disappearing between swells. When they hoisted a distress flag, passengers implored Captain Thorn to rescue them, but he angrily ordered the ship about, abandoning Fox and his crew to their fate.
Over the next several days, multiple attempts to cross the treacherous bar nearly ended in disaster. When Job Aiken finally found a channel and signaled the Tonquin to follow, Thorn callously refused to slow down to retrieve Aiken's pinnace. The Tonquin struck bottom crossing the bar but broke free into deeper water, while Aiken's pinnace capsized in the breakers.
Two Hawaiian sailors displayed extraordinary seamanship, righting the swamped boat and rescuing armorer Stephen Weeks, though Aiken and sailmaker John Coles were lost immediately. Fighting hypothermia in the 45-degree water, the Hawaiians and Weeks faced a desperate night. One Hawaiian died around midnight, while Weeks kept rowing to generate body heat. The next morning, when finally rescued, he accused his rescuers: "You did it purposely."
Neither Fox, his crew of voyageurs, Aiken, nor Coles were ever seen again. In total, eight of Astor's sixty men aboard the Tonquin had perished simply trying to land at the Columbia's mouth-an inauspicious beginning for John Jacob Astor's Pacific empire.
Chapter 5
The Overland Struggle: Hunt's Fateful Choices
While the Tonquin struggled at the Columbia's mouth, Wilson Price Hunt's Overland Party was falling significantly behind schedule. Having traveled only four hundred miles up the Missouri River from St. Louis by late 1810, they were forced to establish winter camp at the mouth of the Nodaway River, a thousand miles short of their goal.
By spring 1811, Hunt's fully assembled party of sixty finally embarked from Nodaway in four riverboats. The voyageurs worked hard against the Missouri's strong current, rowing, poling, or hauling boats upstream with towropes while maintaining their cheerful spirits, singing traditional songs that lightened their labor.
In late May, they encountered three Kentucky trappers who had fled Blackfeet attacks. One man, Edward Robinson, wore a bandana covering his scalped head-a vivid warning of dangers ahead. The Blackfeet had relentlessly attacked trapping parties, killing twenty to thirty men. Despite their harrowing experiences, these trappers eagerly joined Hunt's party but strongly advised avoiding Blackfeet territory.
Hunt faced a difficult decision: follow Astor's instructions and risk Blackfeet attacks, or venture into uncharted territory. After questioning the trappers and consulting with his partners, Hunt chose to leave the Missouri River and strike south of Blackfeet territory-a fateful decision that would lead his party into some of North America's most challenging terrain.
After reaching the Arikara villages and purchasing horses, the party abandoned their boats and headed west across unknown lands. By October, they reached what they called the "Mad River" (today's Snake River) and constructed canoes, believing they could follow this waterway to the Columbia. This decision proved disastrous when they discovered the river narrowed to just sixty feet wide, filled with rapids and falls between ten and forty feet high.
After losing canoes and supplies to the treacherous waters, including the death of voyageur Antoine Clappine, Hunt faced a crisis. With food supplies dwindling to just five days' worth and winter approaching, he split the party. Hunt and Crooks each led separate groups down opposite sides of the river canyon, with Hunt keeping the heavily pregnant Marie Dorion and her children in his party. Each person received just five and a quarter pounds of meat as they set off on November 9, 1811, with no idea how long their journey might take or where exactly they were headed.
Chapter 6
Into the Abyss: Starvation and Survival
"Geography is destiny," Napoleon once said of empires, but for Hunt's party traversing the Rockies in late fall 1811, geology proved equally decisive. The Mad River cut through a vast lava plain, flowing three hundred feet below through a canyon of black basalt that would eventually become North America's deepest gorge-Hell's Canyon.
Their buffalo jerky quickly exhausted, they sometimes subsisted on nothing but bouillon. When they encountered small Shoshone encampments, Hunt managed to trade for small amounts of food, noting with satisfaction, "I bought two dogs, and we ate one for breakfast." Despite their weakened state, they maintained a grueling pace of twenty to thirty miles daily.
As they followed a Shoshone shortcut across the lava plain, they suffered terribly from thirst, with voyageurs drinking their own urine until rain puddled in rock hollows. Communication difficulties mounted as they entered territory where Pierre Dorion's language skills proved useless. With no clear guidance about the route ahead, Hunt followed the Mad River northward, assuming it would lead to the Columbia and the Pacific Coast.
By December, Hunt faced an impossible decision. With his party split on opposite sides of the river, starving and weakening by the day, he reluctantly decided to backtrack, hoping to find Indians and buy horses for food. The situation was dire-they had encountered no game for over a week, Ramsay Crooks and voyageur Le Clerc were severely weakened, and the party was fragmenting as hunger drove people to make individual survival decisions.
After agonizing over whether to stay with the failing Crooks or lead the main party forward, Hunt pushed ahead, leaving two beaver skins and two men to help the weakened pair. Ten days into their retreat, they fortunately encountered a Shoshone camp where they acquired five horses, slaughtering one immediately. When Crooks's group attempted to cross by bullboat to join them, a frantic voyageur named Prevost capsized the craft and drowned-the expedition's second death.
By December 16, after twenty futile days trying to navigate the river, the exhausted party finally emerged from the mountain gorge. At a Shoshone village, Hunt traded for horses, dried fish, roots, and pounded cherries-the latter crucial as they contained vitamin C to combat the scurvy weakening them. Despite the Shoshone's warnings about crossing the mountains in winter, Hunt refused to delay Astor's business timeline further.
Chapter 7
Blissful Ignorance: Astor's Holiday Confidence
As the holiday season of 1811 began in New York City, John Jacob Astor felt confident about his Pacific enterprise. As far as he knew, the Tonquin party had established his trading post, collected valuable sea otter furs along the Northwest Coast, and was now crossing the Pacific to Canton to trade for porcelains and silks. Just two months earlier, he had dispatched a follow-up supply ship, the Beaver, to his West Coast emporium.
With his global triangle trade apparently in motion, Astor enjoyed the holiday season with Sarah and their remaining children in their Manhattan home. His daughter Magdalen and son-in-law were in St. Petersburg negotiating exclusive rights with Russian authorities for Astor's ships to supply Russian fur posts in Alaska. His son William was studying at the University of Heidelberg.
Astor wrote enthusiastically to Thomas Jefferson about his enterprise, reporting on his ships, expeditions, and diplomatic contacts. He believed Hunt's Overland Party had found a better route than Lewis and Clark and had likely reached the Columbia by October. He couldn't possibly imagine his men staggering through barren plains, gnawing on moccasins and drinking their own urine, or a pregnant woman with two small children tumbling down mountainsides in a snowstorm.
The contrast between Astor's confident holiday celebrations and the desperate reality of his men thousands of miles away couldn't have been more stark. While he sipped wine in his Manhattan mansion, Marie Dorion was giving birth in a snowbound mountain camp, rejoining the party the next day on horseback with her newborn "as if nothing had happened to her." A week later, her infant would die as they struggled through waist-deep snow in the Blue Mountains.
Chapter 8
The Tonquin's Tragic End
Back at the newly established Astoria, the men had built a wooden palisade enclosing a square about 90 by 120 feet, with a warehouse and living quarters. At the corners, they mounted four-pounder cannons and established a constant guard. By August 1811, they felt more secure in their fortified post but anxiously watched downriver for the Tonquin's return.
Meanwhile, northern tribes gathering at the Columbia's mouth brought disturbing rumors that the Tonquin had been destroyed. Though the Astorians didn't fully believe these reports, they made "a painful impression on our minds."
The truth was even more horrific than the rumors. Captain Thorn had sailed the Tonquin north to trade with coastal tribes. Despite warnings from interpreter Joseachal about the number of Clayoquot Indians boarding the vessel, Thorn dismissively pointed to his cannons, declaring, "I won't believe that a parcel of lazy, thieving Indians has the courage to attack a ship like this."
The trading proceeded smoothly at first, with Thorn offering just one blanket and one knife for each valuable sea otter pelt. When a chief rejected this price "with a smile of contempt," Thorn grew angry and rubbed the chief's face with the fur, a grave insult that sealed the Tonquin's fate.
The next day, as the Clayoquot returned with fur packets, Joseachal grew increasingly anxious about the number of natives climbing aboard, some wearing fur mantles that might conceal weapons. As the deck grew crowded, Thorn finally ordered his men to clear the decks and prepare to sail. Seven sailors climbed aloft to unfurl the sails when suddenly, at a chief's signal, the Clayoquot warriors unleashed war cries and produced war clubs and knives from beneath their mantles.
The attack was swift and brutal. McKay was clubbed and thrown overboard. Captain Thorn fought fiercely with only a pocketknife, killing four warriors before being overwhelmed and tossed into the sea. The sailors on deck were quickly dispatched.
Five survivors barricaded themselves in the cabin below, armed themselves with stored weapons, and drove the Clayoquot back to shore with gunfire. That night, four escaped in a longboat, while one wounded man remained aboard. The next morning, when hundreds of Clayoquot returned to loot the ship, this lone survivor waited until they swarmed aboard, then detonated the ship's nine thousand pounds of gunpowder. The massive explosion killed approximately two hundred Clayoquot and completely destroyed the Tonquin.
Chapter 9
The Colony's Fragile Existence
In Astoria, the pleasant late summer weather of 1811 gave way to October rains, deepening the settlers' growing anxiety. With no sign of either the Tonquin or Hunt's Overland Party, McDougall-clever with ruses and behind-the-scenes strategies-began contemplating how to protect their precarious position. Knowing the natives' mortal fear of smallpox from a devastating epidemic twenty years earlier, he invited local chiefs to Astor's emporium and threatened them with a vial he claimed contained the disease: "I have but to draw the cork, and let loose the pestilence."
Despite ongoing anxiety, the Astorians continued building their settlement, completing a dwelling house in September and launching the small schooner Dolly in October. They celebrated Christmas and New Year's with extra grog and dancing, despite their meager diet and the onset of scurvy.
In mid-January 1812, Donald McKenzie's advance party arrived in "fluttering rags," having endured extreme thirst and starvation. A month later, Hunt's main party of thirty-three finally reached Astoria, their "emaciated, downcast looks and tattered garments" telling of their winter suffering.
Spring 1812 brought renewed optimism. The half-starved Overland Party members regained their strength on fat-rich candlefish harvested from the Columbia's spring runs. Reports from interior trading posts showed promising results-the Okanagan post alone had traded $200 worth of merchandise for $10,000 in furs. With nearly one hundred men now at the settlement, Hunt took command from the unpopular McDougall and immediately set three priorities: send messages to Astor via the overland route, deliver supplies to interior fur posts while establishing new ones, and recover the cached trade goods left at Caldron Linn.
On May 11, they were greeted by an unexpected sight-the Beaver, a well-armed 490-ton vessel dispatched by Astor with supplies for his Pacific enterprise. The ship brought a tremendous boost to the outpost-dozens of men, hundreds of bales of trade goods, armaments, food, live animals, and liquor. With all partners present, Astoria buzzed with planning for an ambitious expansion to establish posts in all directions.
Chapter 10
The Final Betrayal: War and Surrender
Three thousand miles away in New York, John Jacob Astor received devastating news on May 12, 1812. The New York Gazette confirmed rumors that the Tonquin and her crew had been lost in an Indian attack near Nootka Sound. When a friend expressed surprise at seeing Astor at the theater that evening after such a blow, Astor replied pragmatically, "What would you have me do? Would you have me stay at home and weep for what I cannot help?"
Despite this setback, Astor's determination only hardened when he received news of his ship Enterprise returning from a profitable voyage to the Northwest Coast and China. The venture had worked exactly as planned-$20,000 worth of trinkets traded for furs had yielded $80,000-$100,000 from Canton merchants. His Pacific Rim triangle trade was proving immensely profitable. What worried him now was the escalating tensions between the United States and Great Britain.
These tensions soon erupted into the War of 1812. With Hunt stranded in Hawaii after a trading voyage to Alaska, McDougall and Mackenzie-both former North West Company employees-began contemplating their options. When North West Company partner John George McTavish arrived with seventy-five men and a warning that British warships were coming to "totally annihilate" American settlements, McDougall sold Astoria to the North West Company for about thirty cents on the dollar on October 23, 1813.
When the British warship Racoon finally arrived five weeks later, its officers were disappointed to find Astoria already in British hands. Before the formal transfer, Chinook Chief Comcomly offered to ambush the British, but McDougall declined. On December 12, 1813, Captain Black raised the Union Jack and claimed the territory for Britain.
In February 1814, Hunt returned on the Pedlar, which he had purchased with Astor's funds, only to find Astoria under British control and McDougall now working for the North West Company. Bitter arguments ensued as Hunt tried to negotiate the repurchase of Astor's furs, but the damage was done. Astor's Pacific empire had crumbled.
Chapter 11
Legacy: The Forgotten Path to America's Destiny
Hunt's absence from the Columbia at a crucial time left the door open for McDougall to sell out. Without strong leadership loyal to Astor, McDougall and Mackenzie fashioned themselves a "golden parachute" and bailed out of what they saw as a doomed enterprise.
Twenty-two years later, in 1835, Washington Irving moved into Astor's Hell Gate mansion to write the story of the "great enterprise." Now 72, Astor had recently retired and sold his fur business to Ramsay Crooks. Despite building an enormous fur empire east of the Rockies after Astoria's fall, Astor never quite recovered from the loss of his Pacific venture.
The Northwest remained under "joint occupation" between Britain and America for decades. Ironically, the Astorians' greatest contribution came through their suffering. Hunt's Overland Party discovered the best route across the continent's last third, while Stuart's Return Party found South Pass-the gentle crossing of the Continental Divide. Together, these discoveries would become the Oregon Trail, though this remained obscure for thirty years.
American politicians like John Floyd and Thomas Hart Benton advocated for U.S. control of the Northwest based on Astoria's claim, but Congress rejected their proposals. Only in the 1840s did American settlers begin following the Astorians' route in significant numbers, with the "Great Migration" of 1843 reaching the Willamette Valley.
The "Oregon Question" was finally resolved in 1846, with Britain and America compromising at the 49th parallel. Had Astoria succeeded, historians believe "the course of empire on the American continent would have been altogether different," potentially giving the United States an unbroken coastline from San Diego to Point Barrow, Alaska.
The Astorians followed diverse paths after the expedition. Wilson Price Hunt became St. Louis's respected postmaster. Duncan McDougall joined the North West Company but soon "died a miserable death." Ramsay Crooks helped build Astor's American Fur Company and died peacefully in New York in 1859. Robert Stuart married shortly after returning east and managed Astor's fur operations at Michilimackinac Island. Marie Dorion, the remarkable woman who gave birth in the wilderness and survived countless hardships, lived to old age in Oregon's Willamette Valley, where she was found by later American settlers following the very trail her suffering had helped establish.
Astoria's story-a tale of ambition, cultural collision, leadership failure, and extraordinary human endurance-deserves to be remembered not just as a business venture that failed, but as a pivotal moment that shaped America's continental destiny.
