Sir James Douglas, (August 15, 1803 – August 2, 1877) was a Canadian fur trader and politician who became the first governor of the Colony of British Columbia.
Douglas was the son of a wealthy Scottish planter and a free coloured woman of Creole ancestry. He worked for the Hudson's Bay Company, of which he became Chief Factor.
From 1851 to 1864, he was Governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island, as which his authority nominally extended to the mainland Colony of British Columbia, during its Fraser Canyon Gold Rush.
As a consequence of his indifference to the development of the mainland colony, in preference for the increase of the power of his Hudson's Bay Company associates in Victoria, Douglas feuded with the mainland colony's popular founder and Lieutenant-Governor Richard Clement Moody, whose office was of higher prestige but lesser authority than his own.
Robert Burnaby observed that Douglas proceeded with "muddling [Moody's] work and doubling his expenditure" and with employing administrators to "work a crooked policy against Moody" to "retard British Columbia and build up ... the stronghold of Hudson's Bay interests" and the latter's "landed stake". John Robson, who was the editor of the British Columbian and future Premier of British Columbia, wanted Moody's office to include that of Governor, to make Douglas obsolete.
Early life Family Douglas was born on 15 August 1803 in Essequibo, which was then a colony of the Batavian Republic. His father was John Douglas Junior, a Scottish owner of West Indian plantations and merchant from Glasgow. His first cousins included Lieutenant-General Sir Neil Douglas, Commander-in-Chief, Scotland, and the same's sister Cecilia Douglas, who inherited two slave plantations by marriage and was an art collector. Through his paternal grandmother, James Douglas was related to the diplomat Sir Andrew Buchanan, 1st Baronet.
His mother was Martha Ann (née Ritchie, later Telfer). Ritchie, who was classified as free coloured, was of Creole ethnicity. She and Douglas's father had three children together (Alexander, born 1801 or 1802; James, born 1803; and Cecilia, born 1812), but never formally married.
Early life In 1812, John Douglas returned, from the West Indies, to Scotland with his children and put James into school at Lanark to be educated. John married Jessie Hamilton in 1819, and had more children with her, making a second family. James went to school or was taught by a French Huguenot in Manchester, England, where he learned to speak and write in fluent French, which helped him in North America.
North West Company At the age of 16, James Douglas signed on to join the North West Company (NWC), a major organization active in the North American fur trade. He sailed from Liverpool for Lachine, Lower Canada, in spring 1819. From there, Douglas was assigned as a clerk at Fort William in what is now Thunder Bay.
The following year, he was moved to Île-à-la-Crosse on the Churchill River in what is now northern Saskatchewan. The rival Hudson's Bay Company was also active in this area, and Douglas was caught up in at least one argument with the fighting fur traders. Douglas continued his policy of self-education by reading books brought from Britain and meeting with many First Nations people.
Hudson's Bay Company
In 1821, the NWC was merged into its powerful competitor, the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). Douglas's contract was placed onto the HBC's payroll. He quickly moved up the strict HBC hierarchy. In 1825, he was put in charge of the founding of the Fort Vermilion trading post in what is now northern Alberta. He was next assigned at Fort St. James on Stuart Lake, headquarters of the company's New Caledonia District, roughly located within modern British Columbia.
In 1827, he established Fort Connolly on Bear Lake. The station was named after his manager, William Connolly, who was impressed by Douglas's skills and viewed him favourably. Because of their close relations, Connolly agreed to Douglas marrying his Métis daughter Amelia Connolly. Her mother was Cree and likely also Métis. Douglas and Amelia were married on 27 April 1828 'à la façon du pays', a ceremony repeated almost a decade later at Fort Vancouver.
Throughout part of 1828, Connolly was absent from Fort St. James, leaving Douglas in charge. Two company traders were murdered with the help of a Dakelh. Douglas was said to have marched into the Stuart Lake village and seized the accused murderer, but the exact events of the day are disputed. By some accounts, Douglas shot the native in the head on the spot, with everyone watching. In others, Douglas took him away from the village, to be executed later. Another story is that Douglas tried to shoot the man but missed and got his partners to beat the accused before taking him away. Various accounts were passed around the area, and Douglas generally acquired a negative reputation among the local First Nations as a result.
Fearing for Douglas's life, Connolly asked HBC Governor George Simpson to transfer the younger man elsewhere. He was reassigned to Fort Vancouver, headquarters of the company's Columbia District, near the mouth of the Columbia River in present-day Washington. His wife joined him after the death of their first child in 1830. While they lived in Fort Vancouver, she gave birth to ten more children (five died in infancy). Their son James W. Douglas grew up to become a politician and Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), 1875–1878.
Fort Vancouver
Douglas spent 19 years working in Fort Vancouver. He served as a Clerk until 1835, when he was promoted to Chief Trader, the second highest rank in the HBC. Being a Chief Trader was a very important position that was held by only four others in the large district. He received his commission as one of "the gentlemen of the interior" on June 3, 1835, in York Factory during a meeting of the Council of the Northern Department. In 1838, Douglas was put in charge of the Columbia District while Chief Factor John McLoughlin was on furlough in Europe. While he commanded Fort Vancouver, he denounced the enslavement of Chinookan peoples.
Pugets Sound Agricultural Company
Douglas supported Simpson's plans of making a settlement with the Russian-American Company (RAC). In Hamburg in early 1839, Simpson and Governor of Russian Colonies in America Ferdinand von Wrangel negotiated a commercial treaty that established future relations between the two state companies.
The RAC-HBC Agreement let the HBC rent a portion of Russian American claimed territory referred to as the "Stikine lisière." The area leased by the RAC was on the Alaskan Panhandle, on the northern coast from Mount Fairweather south to 54°40′. In return, the RAC received 2000 otter pelts and a number of other goods, notably a large supply of wheat and provisions needed at various Russian stations. To meet the demand, Simpson and members of the governing committee created the Pugets Sound Agricultural Company (PSAC) to both meet this demand and promote settlement of territories around Cowlitz Farm and Fort Nisqually. Both stations are now located within modern Washington.
Later years at Fort Vancouver In November 1839, Douglas was promoted to Chief Factor, the highest possible rank for field service with the HBC. As a Chief Factor, he traveled to Alta California, where he met with a Mexican administrator and received permission to create a trading post in Yerba Buena, California (modern San Francisco, California). In 1841, Douglas was charged with the duty of setting up a trading post on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. George Simpson had recommended a second line of forts be built in case the Columbia River valley fell into American hands. Charged with the task, Douglas founded Fort Victoria, on the site of present-day Victoria, British Columbia. That proved beneficial when in 1846 the Oregon Treaty was signed, extending the British North America and the United States border along the 49th parallel from the Rocky Mountains to the Strait of Georgia.
Fort Victoria
In 1849, Britain leased the entirety of Vancouver Island to the HBC under the condition that a colony be created. Douglas moved the headquarters of the western portion of the company from Fort Vancouver to Fort Victoria.
Douglas had a Kanaka man accompany him in 1849 on his journey from Fort Vancouver to Victoria by canoe, and at Victoria, he had a Hawaiian cook and household servant.
He was not initially appointed as Governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island, which instead went to Richard Blanshard, an English barrister. However, most practical authorities rested with Douglas as the chief employer and person in charge of its finances and land, and he effectively drove Blanshard from the position. Douglas acknowledged the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and had the policy to trade the natives for their land.
Costs for each parcel of land were usually in the form of blankets, often three for each man. The policy also stemmed from a desire to have good interactions with natives while avoiding violence. After Blanshard resigned in 1851, the British government appointed Douglas as the Governor of Vancouver Island. As he was still Chief Factor of the HBC, he tried for several years to balance his important and time-consuming duties of both positions. He was the subject of controversy in local political debates and editorial tirades.
Governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island As governor, Douglas faced a number of significant challenges, not least of which was the expansionist pressure of the neighboring United States of America. Using his meagre resources, Douglas created the Victoria Voltigeurs, Vancouver Island's first militia, using money from the company and composed of Métis and French Canadians in the company's service. He created the Victoria Pioneer Rifle Corp, otherwise known as the African Rifles, an all-Black militia of immigrants from San Francisco's First African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church who settled on Vancouver Island in the 1860s at his invitation. He also used the sparse presence of the Royal Navy for protection. During the Crimean War, the British and French carried out an attack on Petropavlovsk in 1854, and casualties were sent to Victoria. After facilities of the key port proved inadequate, the British government charged Douglas to build a hospital at Esquimalt harbour, as well as improve Royal Navy supply capacity. This base proved to be important and successful when in 1865 the headquarters of the North Pacific Squadron were moved to Vancouver Island.
In 1859, Douglas also found his colony embroiled in a dispute with Washington Territory over sovereignty in the San Juan Islands. The protracted, twelve-year standoff came to be known as the Pig War. Douglas pressed Britain to exert sovereignty over all islands in the archipelago dividing the Strait of Georgia from Puget Sound. Named for the largest island of the group, the San Juan Islands are immediately adjacent to Victoria and so were of great strategic interest and worry. While opposing troops remained garrisoned on San Juan Island, the dispute was eventually settled by arbitration in favour of the United States.
Douglas's largest problem in the mid- and late 1850s concerned relations with the majority First Nations peoples. These numbered around 30,000 local Songhee, Cowichan, Nanaimo, Nuu-chah-nulth, including raiding Haida from Haida Gwaii and the Euclataws Kwakiutl of northern Georgia Strait and the Sechelt, Squamish, and Sto:lo peoples of the Lower Mainland. In contrast, Europeans in the Colony numbered under 1000. Meanwhile, in neighboring Oregon and Washington Territory the Cayuse and Yakima Wars and other conflicts between Americans and Indigenous peoples were raging.