Brooks: Diplomacy and the Borderlands 51

a ship under the registry of the United States. He returned to the
North Pacific, and in the summer of 1793 met Vancouver. Gray
believed that he had just discovered the mouth of the Columbia,
not knowing that the Spaniard Hegeta had done this seventeen
years before. The Columbia was explored a few months later by
one of Vancouver's ships, which sailed a hundred miles up the
river.
 Salem and Boston traders continued in the Orient and North
Pacific trade, but no settlement was made on the Coast until John
Jacob Astor developed his plan for the Missouri-Columbia fur
trade. The arrival of the "Tonquin" and of the Hunt group further
strengthened the claim of the United States to the region-based
first upon two expeditions of discovery (that of Gray and that of
Lewis and Clark) and now upon these two of settlement.
 Reinforcements came to the new post with the arrival of the
 ship "Beaver" and of the land party under Hunt, both early the
 following year. They were just in time to forestall a British expe-
 dition led by David Thompson, who floated down the river with a
 canoe party. This expedition was but the southern offshoot of ex-
 tensive explorations which had brought Alexander MacKenzie and
 Simon Fraser to the Pacific in the region that was then called "New
 Caledonia," now British Columbia. They gave England the most
 tangible claims she had to the widely disputed regions. But with-
 out bothering to delimit spheres legally, traders of various coun-
 tries continued their quest for furs.
 During the Adams-Onis negotiations, the status of the North-
 west was further complicated by circumstances growing out of the
 War of 1812. When word of the hostilities reached Astoria, early
 in 1813, the Astorians, knowing that they were outnumbered, ar-
 ranged a sale of the post to the Northwest Company, which was
 effected the following November. This provided a peaceful means
 for the inevitable transfer of the post. But, unfortunately for Eng-
 land, the commander of her frigate "Racoon," which arrived two
 weeks later, thought it necessary to take possession as an act of
 war. Astoria became Fort George. British occupation likewise ex-
 tended during the war throughout the entire upper Mississippi-
 Missouri system. Above St. Louis the English and their Indian
 allies found no opposition from a United States hard pressed to
 defend its hither frontiers.