• A longtime Vancouver resident, Mother Joseph, is one of Washington’s two representatives in the National Statuary Hall Collection. The kneeling bronze figure of the pioneering nun was added to the collection in 1980. The state’s first statue was a bronze of missionary Marcus Whitman, donated in 1953.
See the statues for each state in the National Statuary Hall at: http://1.usa.gov/1E0JlQb
From his imposing residence inside Fort Vancouver’s log stockade, John McLoughlin held sway over a region that stretched from San Francisco Bay to Russian outposts in Alaska, from the Pacific to the Rockies.
“For years, the Hudson’s Bay Company was the only organization out here,” said Greg Shine, chief ranger and historian at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site.
As the company’s top administrator — or chief factor — here from 1825 to 1845, McLoughlin “was the key to what Oregon and Washington are today,” Shine said.
It earned McLoughlin the title of “Father of Oregon.”
It also put him in the company of such historic figures as George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower, Helen Keller and Will Rogers.
Well, it put his statue among theirs, anyway. They are some of the 100 Americans (two from each state) honored in the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington, D.C.
Now McLoughlin and another Northwest missionary, Jason Lee, are facing a statuary version of term limits. A commission recommended last week to the Oregon Legislature that the 1953 statues of McLoughlin and Lee be replaced by “two equally worthy individuals who represent different chapters in Oregon’s history.”
“It’s time to tell new stories,” said Kerry Tymchuk, executive director of the Oregon Historical Society.
The candidates
The Oregon panel is recommending suffragette Abigail Scott Duniway and Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph for the Statuary Hall honors. Twentieth-century politicians Tom McCall and Mark Hatfield also are candidates.
Officials at Vancouver’s national park don’t have a rooting interest in the Oregon debate, emphasized Tracy Fortmann, superintendent at Fort Vancouver.
“It’s a decision made by the state,” she said. “That is the system, and the people of Oregon will determine who they believe best speaks to their particular history.
“From a National Park Service perspective, there’s no question John McLoughlin played a key role, and we will continue to tell his story,” Fortmann said.
An interpretive panel inside the replicated chief factor’s house provides some of the background: The policies enacted there affected people, lands and resources in what now is Washington, Oregon and Idaho, as well as parts of present-day California, Montana, Utah and British Columbia.
But it doesn’t say anything about McLoughlin as a person.
“Exhibiting the spirit of a true leader, McLoughlin bucked the system,” Fortmann said.
The Hudson’s Bay Company didn’t want Americans settling in this area. But McLoughlin disregarded company policy and provided assistance to the Oregon Trail pioneers.
“There are many stories in which McLoughlin actually sent men to rescue settlers and bring them to the fort,” she said.
There’s no question that had he followed policy, “desperate people — American settlers — would have had no choice but to take desperate action,” Fortmann said.
And the creation of what was to become Oregon would have been a bloody affair, Fortmann said.
McLoughlin was a transformational figure, said Doug Wilson, Fort Vancouver archaeologist.
“He was symbolic of an earlier colonialism but also of new capitalistic enterprise,” Wilson said. For one person to symbolize this incredible transition — one that had dramatic implications for many tribes and peoples of the region — is extraordinary, Wilson said.
Fort Vancouver’s stewardship of the McLoughlin legacy extends into Oregon. The McLoughlin House, his retirement home in Oregon City, was added to the National Park System in 2003 as a unit of the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site.
‘Ike’ for Glick
Don’t look for the bronzes of McLoughlin and Lee to be returning home immediately.
“They will be there until the new statues are done,” Tymchuk, the Oregon Historical Society official, said. “The money is privately raised, through donations, to send one and return the other.”
Museums and other suitable sites can apply to provide new homes for McLoughlin and Lee.
This isn’t uncharted territory. After Congress approved statue switching in 2000, Kansas replaced George Washington Glick with Eisenhower in 2003.
Ohioans are raising money to build a statue of Thomas Edison to replace a 19th-century politician; the inventor would be the seventh replacement statue.
