The Northern Boundary.— By the treaty of 1783 the northern boundary was defined as a line due west from the northwestern point of the Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi. To draw such a line was almost impossible, since the Mississippi did not rise sufficiently far northward and a joint survey was agreed upon but never made. In 1803, when Rufus King concluded his convention, the boundary was defined as the shortest line from the north west corner of the Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi. Fortunately this convention was never ratified and the Louisiana purchase com plicated the question. Various propositions were made but nothing was done, nor could commissioners appointed under the treaty of Ghent reach an agreement. The chief causes of disagreement were the question of the ownership of Saint George's Island, lying in the water communication between Lake Huron and Lake Superior, and the question of a proper boundary through the water communi cation from Lake Superior to the Lake of the Woods. Accordingly in 1818, when discussing a new commercial treaty to supersede the convention of 1815, Richard Rush and Albert Gallatin proposed that the northern boundary be a line due north or south from the most northwestern point of the Lake of the Woods to the 49th parallel and thence due west to the Pacific. Great Britain was willing to ac cept this boundary as far as the Rockies but insisted on a joint occupation of the territory west of them lying between the 45th and 49th parallels. The matter was compromised on 20 Oct. 1818, by the acceptance of the line suggested by the Americans as far as the Rockies, west of which the country claimed or possessed by either was to be occupied jointly for 10 years. All these points were finally settled in the Webster-Ashburton treaty of 1842, Article II of that treaty stipulating that "from the place where the joint commissioners terminated their labors under the sixth article of the treaty of Ghent, to wit, at a point in the Neebish Channel, near Muddy Lake. the line shall run into and along the ship-channel between St. Joseph and St. Tammany Islands, to the division of the channel at or near the head. of St. Joseph's Island; thence, turning eastwardly and northwardly around the lower end of St. George's or Sugar Island, and following the middle of the channel which divides St. George's from St. Joseph's Island; thence up the east Neebish Channel. nearest to St. George's Island, through the middle of Lake George; thence, west of Jonas' Island, into St. Ddary's River, to a point in the middle of that river, about one mile above St. George's or Sugar Island, so as to appropriate and assign the said island to the United States; thence, adopting the line traced on the maps by the commissioners through the river:St. Mary and Lake Superior, to a point north of Ile Royale. in said lake, one hundred yards to the north and east of Ile Chapeau. which last-mentioned island lies near the northeastern point of Ile Royale, where the line marked by the commissioners terminates; and from the last-mentioned point, southwesterly, through the middle of the sound between Ile Royale and the northwestern mainland, to the mouth of Pigeon River, and up the said river, to and through the north and south Fowl Lakes, to the lakes of the height of land between Lake Superior and the Lake of the Woods; thence along the water commu nication to Lake Saisaginaga and through that lake; thence, to and through Cypress Lake, Lac du Bois Blanc, Lac Is Croix. Little Vermilion Lake and Lake Mamecan and through the several smaller lakes, straits, or streams, con necting the lakes here mentioned, to that point in Lac la Pluie, or Rainy Lake, at the Chaudiere Falls, from which the commissioners traced the line to the most northwestern point of the Lake of the Woods; thence, along the said line to the said most northwestern point, being in latitude 49° 23' 55' north and in longitude 14' 38' west from the observatory at Greenwich; thence, according to existing treaties. due south to its intersection with the 49th parallel of north latitude and along that parallel to the Rocky Mountains." Hence this line, like the previous ones, was a compromise, the United States gaining the valley of the Red River of the North but sac rificing to Great Britain that portion of the Louisiana Purchase which was watered by the head streams of the Missouri.
The Northwestern Boundary.— West of the Rocky Mountains was the so-called Oregon region. The United States based its claim to this territory on the discovery (11 May 1792) and exploration of the Columbia River by Capt. Robert Gray, the exploring expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in 1804-06, the establishment of the first trading settlement at Astoria in 1811 (see AsToa, JoHNI JAcos), and the first permanent agricul tural settlements soon after 1830, all of which claims were disputed by Spain, Russia and Great Britain. On 20 Oct. 1818, a treaty was concluded (renewed 6 Aug. 1827) providing for the joint occupancy of the territory for 10 years. Under the treaty of 22 Feb. 1819, for the purchase of Florida, Spain conveyed to the United States all her rights, claims and pretensions to the territory north of the 42d parallel and west of the Rocky Mountains. The treaty of 1803 for the purchase of Louisi ana was regarded as one of the strongest claims and was persistently urged by our diplomatists who held that under the principle of ((continuity of territory') Oregon was in cluded in the Louisiana purchase and that the French had so regarded it. But in 1829 M. Barbi Marbois, who negotiated the Louisiana treaty, declared that while, according to ancient documents, the bishopric of Louisiana was to extend to the Pacific Ocean, these limits at best were merely a matter of hope and expectation and their spiritual jurisdiction was not concerned with the question of dominion or ownership. Most writers agree that the purchase of Louisiana gave the United States no clear title to the Oregon country. The British based their claims on Drake's visit to the coast in 1580, the ex plorations by Capt. James Cook in 1778, the fact that the coast had been made a trading place jointly with Spain by a convention in 1790, and the surveys of the coast and adjacent islands by Captain Vancouver in 1792 to 1794. Great Britain also denied Spain's claim to the territory on the ground that the latter could not hold the territory by force and thus make good her claim. By the treaty of 17 April 1824 Russia had relinquished her American claims south of 54° 40' north latitude and as Spain had conveyed her claims north of the 42d parallel the strip between the two con stituted the territory in dispute. The United States was willing to continue the boundary along the 49th parallel from the Rockies to the Pacific, but Great Britain objected because the United States thus would possess the lower end of Vancouver Island and the im portant straits of San Juan de Fuca to the south of the island. Finally, by the treaty of 15 June 1846, both nations accepted the 49th parallel as the boundary from the Rockies to Puget Sound and thence a conventional line through Puget Sound and the Straits of San Juan de Fuca to the ocean. The first part of the line was easy to survey and mark, and the maps and surveys of this part were approved by a joint declaration dated 24 Feb. 1870, but a dispute arose over the line from Puget Sound to the sea. In the first place there was a question whether the line of the 49th parallel terminated where it first reached tide water on the eastern side of Boundary Bay or crossed the bay and Point Roberts to the open sound. Until this was decided the sur veyors could not determine the middle of the channel separating Vancouver Island from the continent; and upon the determination of that middle line depended the solution of the ques tion as to what constituted the middle of the channel down to the Straits of Fuca, the settlement of which would determine the ownership of the San Juan Islands. Finally, by the treaty of Washington 8 May 1871, the matter was referred to the Emperor of Ger many, who on 21 Oct. 1872 decided in favor of the United States. Thus the northwestern dispute was terminated and the entire northern boundary was complete. See OREGON QUES