The Champoeg Meetings were the first attempts at formal governance by European-American and French Canadian pioneers in the Oregon Country on the Pacific Northwest coast of North America. Between 1841 and 1843, a series of public councils was held at Champoeg, a settlement on the French Prairie of the Willamette River valley in present-day Marion County, Oregon, and at surrounding settlements. The meetings were organized by newly arrived settlers as well as Protestant missionaries from the Methodist Mission and Catholic Jesuit priests from Canada.
Since the first decade of the 19th century, a small but growing number of pioneers had settled in the Oregon Country, mostly to pursue business interests in the North American fur trade. Despite its economic value, the region was so vast and remote that it was left unorganized for several decades, with no European-American government in place to set laws and resolve disputes. Prior to the Champoeg Meetings, the closest thing to a government in the Oregon Country was the privately owned Hudson's Bay Company, which effected a loose authority mainly through the efforts of Dr. John McLoughlin at Fort Vancouver in present-day Vancouver, Washington.
