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Sir James Douglas KCB (August 15, 1803 – August 2, 1877) was a company fur-trader and a British colonial governor of Vancouver Island and British Columbia (B.C.) in northwestern North America, now part of Canada. Douglas had started working in Canada at age 16 for the North West Company, and later for the Hudson's Bay Company, becoming a high-ranking company officer. In the trade he was known as a "Scottish West Indian." From 1851 to 1864, he was Governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island. In 1858, he also became the first Governor of the Colony of British Columbia, in order to assert British authority during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, which had the potential to turn the B.C. Mainland into an American state. He remained governor of both Vancouver Island and British Columbia until his retirement in 1864. He is often credited as "The Father of British Columbia". ==Early life and fur trader== James Douglas was born in 1803 in Demerara (later part of British Guiana, now Guyana) to John Douglas, a Scottish planter and merchant from Glasgow, who was in business with three of his brothers.〔(Margaret A. Ormsby, "Sir James Douglas" ), ''Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online,'' 1972, accessed 5 January 2015〕 His mother was Martha Ann Telfer, also known as "a Miss Richie." She was a Creole of mixed race from Barbados, according to the ''Dictionary of Canadian Biography''. The couple had three children together: Alexander, born 1801 or 1802; James, born 1803, and Cecilia, born 1812, but never formally married. Telfer was classified as ''free coloured'', which in that time and place meant a free person of mixed African and European ancestry. James Douglas and his siblings thus were all mixed race. He appeared majority white.〔Adams, John. 2001. ''Old Square-Toes and His Lady: The Life of James and Amelia Douglas''. Victoria, BC: Horsdal and Schubert. P. 1.〕 In 1812 John Douglas returned to Scotland with his children, putting James into school at Lanark to be schooled. He married Jessie Hamilton in Scotland in 1819, and had more children with her, making a second family.〔 James went to school or was tutored by a French Huguenot in Chester, England, where he learned to speak and write in fluent French, which helped him in North America.〔 At the age of sixteen James Douglas left Britain to enter the fur trade in North America in the employ of the North West Company. He sailed from Liverpool for Lachine, Lower Canada (now part of Montreal) in the spring of 1819. From 1819 until 1820 Douglas was stationed at Fort William, Ontario (now part of Thunder Bay) as a clerk. In 1820 he was transferred to Île-à-la-Crosse on the Churchill River in northern Saskatchewan. The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) was also active in this area, and Douglas was caught up in at least one confrontation with the rival fur traders. At this post Douglas continued a policy of self-education by reading books brought from Britain and meeting with many First Nations people. In 1821 the North West Company was merged into the powerful Hudson's Bay Company, and Douglas' contract was placed onto the HBC's payroll. He quickly moved up the strict hierarchy of the company. 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 stationed at Fort St. James on Stuart Lake, headquarters of the Company's New Caledonia District in British Columbia. In 1827 he established Fort Connolly on Bear Lake. On April 27, 1828, Douglas married Amelia Connolly, the mixed race daughter of William Connolly, New Caledonia's Chief Factor. Her mother was Cree and likely also of mixed race. Douglas was very close to William Connolly, his superior. Connolly was impressed by Douglas' skills and they got along well, resulting in Connolly's agreeing to the marriage of the couple. In 1828, while Douglas was in charge of Fort St. James in Connolly's absence, two Hudson's Bay traders were murdered with the help of a Stuart Lake native. Douglas was said to march into the Stuart Lake village and seize 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 at a later time. 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 stories were passed around the area, and Douglas generally acquired a negative reputation among the local First Nations as a result. Fearing for Douglas' 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, located 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), 1875-1888. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「James Douglas (governor)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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