- DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Glyndwr Williams, “OGDEN, PETER SKENE (baptized Skeene) (Skeen, Skein),” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 8, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–.
- DCB profile notes:
- Fur trader and explorer; baptized 12 Feb. 1790 at Quebec, son of Isaac Ogden, jurist, and Sarah Hanson; d. 27 Sept. 1854 in Oregon City (Oreg.).
- Peter Skene Ogden is one of the most energetic and controversial figures to have left his mark on the North American fur trade.
- His first station was at Île-à-la-Crosse (Sask.), where soon after his arrival at the end of September 1810 he and fellow clerk Samuel Black were involved in a fight with Peter Fidler at the nearby HBC post. By 1814 Ogden was in charge of the post at the north end of Green Lake, about 100 miles south of Île-à-la-Crosse. What little is known of his activities during these years comes from HBC records, which note with growing disapproval the bully-boy tactics he and Black employed.
- An indictment against Ogden for murder was drawn up in Lower Canada in March 1818. To put Ogden out of reach of the HBC he was transferred to the Columbia department in 1818, and there he served variously at Fort George (Astoria, Oreg.), Spokane House (near Spokane, Wash.), and Thompson’s River Post (Kamloops, B.C.). At about this time he took as his country wife Julia Rivet, a Spokan Indian, having left behind him at Green Lake the Cree woman who had borne his first child. The terms of the coalition agreement between the HBC and the NWC, signed in March 1821, excluded Ogden and Black, among others, from the new organization because of their violent conduct during the years of conflict between the two companies. Nevertheless, at the slightly abashed request of the HBC, Ogden remained in charge of Fort Thompson for the winter of 1821–22 before journeying east in 1822, first to the Canadas, and then to England, where he sought to persuade the company to reconsider its ban.
- Geographical knowledge, however, was not his only, nor even his main, object and for the HBC it was clearly secondary to the task of trapping the country bare. Here the normal rules of company policy did not apply. If, as many believed, the region south of the Columbia was eventually to go to the United States, a careful trapping program of conservation would benefit only the Americans. On six separate expeditions between 1824 and 1830 Ogden did this, and more. The first expedition ran into trouble when Ogden lost many of his freemen, independent traders outfitted by the company, and their furs to a larger American group; the final expedition experienced tragedy near the end when 9 men, 500 furs, and Ogden’s papers disappeared in the swirling cascades of the Dalles on the Columbia River. But between these misfortunes Ogden’s returns delighted Chief Factor, his immediate superior, who wrote enthusiastically that the Snake country ventures were yielding 100 per cent profits. They were profits made at a cost, however, for even by tough fur-trade standards the hardships of the Snake country were exceptional. Men and horses fell sick and died, were killed by Indian arrows, froze in winter, and suffered from heat and fever in summer. In June 1827, as Ogden’s party was heading northeast from Goose Lake (Calif.), a region where liquid mud was their only drink, he wrote that “this is certainly a most horrid life in a word I may say without exaggeration Man in this Country is deprived of every comfort that can tend to make existance desirable.” Later that month the once-sturdy Ogden noted with disgust how illness, low rations, and excessively high temperatures had reduced him “to Skin and Bone.” His journals, sometimes cynical in tone and often outspoken, give the overriding impression of a persistent and tenacious personality. With his men and horses Ogden discovered the Humboldt River (Nev.) and sighted Great Salt Lake (Utah). On his last expedition he probably reached the lower Colorado River and possibly the Gulf of California. Either to carry out exploration or to trap furs was an achievement over such terrain and to combine the two was a remarkable feat.
- Ogden’s last years at Fort Vancouver were frustrating ones as he coped with the problems of a fast-changing environment in which settlers and prospectors were more in evidence than fur traders and Indians. In August 1854, in ill health, he left Fort Vancouver for Oregon City, where he died in September at 64 years of age.
- Son of United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=13238
- Find a Grave: Cannot locate
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