Willamette Cattle Company
organization
The Willamette Cattle Company was formed in 1837 by pioneers in the Willamette Valley of present-day Oregon, United States. The company was formed with the express purpose of purchasing cattle in Mexican California. Nearly 750 head of cattle and 40 horses were purchased in total. Ewing Young led the overland party as they drove these animals north back to the Willamette Valley.
Background
Prior to the activities of the Willamette Cattle Company, all cattle in the region were owned by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). Chief Factor John McLoughlin had for sometime a general arrangement with the Willamette settlers and missionaries for access to livestock. They were loaned out in pairs to farmers, never sold, and all calves born were then HBC property. The Methodist Mission in Oregon was in 1834 given "seven oxen, one bull and eight cows with their calves" by McLoughlin. Despite later claims by Samuel Thurston, no settler was charged for any cattle that died. The growing herds of cattle tended outside Fort Vancouver numbered only 27 in total in 1825, though by 1837 Slacum estimated their number closer to a thousand.
“Willamette Cattle Company” enters the record as organization. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Willamette, Cattle and Company can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Willamette Cattle Company” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Willamette, Cattle and Company provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8003283. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1837, 1834 and 1825.
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This entry incorporates text from “Willamette Cattle Company” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.