ACClIJISIfiii OF OREGON 
 
 Mil8Hi'L:L^ 
 
 '.I
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 WILLIAM L ALVRSHALL
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 AND THE 
 
 Long Suppressed Evidence About 
 Marcus Whitman 
 
 
 BY 
 
 
 
 PRINCIPAL 
 
 WILLIAM 
 
 OF CHICAGO 
 
 I. 
 
 MARSHALL 
 
 
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 PAR r 
 
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 SEATTLE 
 
 LOWMAN & HANFORD CO. 
 
 1911
 
 Copyright 1905 by 
 
 WILLIAM I. MARSHALL 
 
 All rights riserved 
 
 CLARENCE B. BAGLEY. Publisher 
 April. 1911 
 
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 1 , I 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 
 FOREWORD 2 
 
 INTRODUCTION 6-21 
 
 V WILLIAM I. MARSHALL. A Biographical Sketch 23-24 
 
 ^ CHAPTER I. The Unique Features of the History of Oregon 25-28 
 
 " CHAPTER II. The Period of Maritime Discovery 29-38 
 
 ^ CHAPTER III. The Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and 
 
 ^ Clark Exploration 39-48 
 
 CHAPTER IV. The Founding and Capture of Astoria 49-52 
 
 CHAPTER V. The True History of the Discovery of Routes 
 Practicable for, and the Development of the First Trans- 
 continental Wagon Road 53-140 
 
 CHAPTER VI. Governmental Action Relating to the Acqui- 
 ' sition of Oregon 141-284 
 
 > CHAPTER VII. The Truth About the Relation of the Hud- 
 ^ son's Bay Company to the American Exploration, Occu- 
 pation and Settlement of Oregon as Shown in Original 
 Documents 285-450 
 
 ? 

 
 FOREWORD 
 
 The publication of these volumes is made possible by the volun- 
 tary contributions of a number of citizens of the States of Oregon 
 and Washington who are interested in the encouragement of indi- 
 vidual research that concerns the history of those States and of the 
 whole of "Old Oregon." These contributors may not necessarily 
 agree with all of the sentiments and conclusions herein contained, 
 but desire that the citations and quotations which have been so care- 
 fully and laboriously gathered together by Mr. Marshall, and his 
 conclusions, shall be permanently preserved for the use of those who 
 may seek for the truth of history. They also wish to give recogni- 
 tion to the work of an author whose life was largely spent in the ill- 
 paid profession of an educator and whose best years were given 
 without financial reward to the study of the history of the acquisi- 
 tion of the "Oregon Country" to the Ignited States, and who at the 
 time of his death ranked among the highest authorities upon that 
 subject. No attempt has been made to change the manuscript ; it has 
 been printed as left by the author. 
 
 Many years ago Mr. C B. Bagiey, of Seattle, became interested 
 in the controversy regarding any influence Dr. Marcus Whitman 
 might have had upon the final adjustment of the rival claims of the 
 United States and Great Britain to a part of Old Oregon, and began 
 collecting material for a pamphlet or book giving his views upon 
 the questions involved. 
 
 After the death of Mr. Marshall, the private library, letters, note 
 books and manuscripts of that gentleman passed into Mr. Bagiey's 
 possession, making his collection perhaps the largest extant of books, 
 pamphlets, manuscripts and early newspapers covering both sides 
 of the controversy. Several years ago a small book published by 
 Mr. Marshall came under his observation ; this was followed by 
 personal acquaintance and knowledge of the extent and value of 
 the work that ^Ir. ]Marshall had in ])reparation. This led to a 
 change of plan whereby Mr. Bagiey furnished valuable historical 
 material allied to the work in hand and abandoned the plan of writ- 
 ing and publishing on his own account because of his general accord 
 with the findings and conclusions of Mr. Marshall.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 My discussion of Prof. Bourne's paper as an appendix herein, 
 being a reprint from the plates of the Trans. Am. Hist. Asscn. for 
 1900, necessarily retains the paging of the Transactions. 
 
 Justice to us both requires the statement that his investigations 
 up to the Detroit meeting, Dec. 27-29, 1900, were entirely independ 
 ent of mine, neither of us knowing of the other's work till shortly 
 before that time, and we never having corresijonded or met till the 
 evening before his paper was read, when, for the first time, I learned 
 its scope and point of view. 
 
 In 1888, after eleven years' careful investigation of the History 
 of the Acquisition of the Old Oregon Territory, I wrote a book of 
 300 pages on it, but not wishing, as so many have done, "to darken 
 counsel by words without knowledge" on so important a subject, 
 when it was ready for the press I laid it aside to follow up the exam- 
 ination of some minor points, on which (though as my subsequent 
 studies proved my conclusions were right), I had not then obtained 
 as irresistible evidence as for all the more important points. 
 
 In 1893, just as I had found the evidence which established 
 beyond question the correctness of my conclusions on these minor 
 points, so that I was ready to revise and publish, the panic nearly 
 ruined me, and I was obliged to again postpone publication and 
 struggle for my financial existence, as I well knew that there could 
 be no pecuniary profit in publishing the truth about the Whitman 
 Saved Oregon fiction. Though not able to print, the industry and 
 devotion of my daughter, who was my private secretary for four- 
 teen years, enabled me to send to many of our leading historians 
 and teachers and students of history extensive duplicate type-writ- 
 ten transcripts of much of the long-concealed contemporaneous evi- 
 dence in the Whitman matter, in nearly 2,000 pages (letter size) of 
 criticisms of the astonishing errors on every important phase of the 
 Oregon Acquisition — its diplomacy; the executive and congress- 
 ional action upon it; the discovery and development of the trans- 
 continental wagon road to it; the interest of the people of the 
 nation in it ; the extent to which it had been explored and reported 
 on to the government prior to March, 1843; the true relations of 
 the Hudson's Bay Company to the American exploration, occupation
 
 6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 and settlement of Oregon ; the origin and proper place in its his- 
 tory of the missions to the Oregon Indians of the Methodist and 
 the Am. Bd. of Com. of Foreign Missions; and the origin, pnrpose, 
 and results of Whitman's ride — which were in many of our leading 
 school histories and in a number of more pretentious historical 
 works, as 1lie result of the dependence of theii* authors on Kev^s. 
 11. H. Spalding, Wm. Barrows, J. G. Craighead, C. Eells, M. Eells, 
 and on Mr. W. H. Gray, and other advocates of the Whitman Saved 
 Oregon Story. 
 
 These ''original sources," which are the only proper basis for the 
 history of Oregon (as, when existent and accessible, they are for 
 the history of all other regions), the advocates of the Whitman 
 Saved Oregon Story have all either totally ignored, like Kevs. C. 
 Eells, Wm. Barrows, H. H. Spalding, J. G. Craighead, and Mr. W. 
 H. Gray, or else have deliberately suppressed nearly all of it and 
 misquoted and garbled the very little they have used, like Nixon, 
 and Mo wry, and Coffin, and Mrs. Eva Emory Dye, and Revs. M. 
 Eells, S, B. L. Penrose, Thos. Laurie, H. W. Parker, and L. H. 
 Hallock. 
 
 I requested the leading historians to whom these manuscripts 
 were sent to subject them to the most rigorous scrutiny, to compare 
 their quotations and summaries with any of the original documents 
 accessible to them, and to be so kind as to inform me if they found 
 any statement of any important fact incorrect, or any quotation 
 in the least degree inaccurate or any summary of documents 
 (which want of space prevented me from fully quoting), in any way 
 unfair, as he who shows me anv error in mv work does me the great 
 favor of enabling me to be wiser than I have been. 
 
 Of the several score of those who have read these manuscripts — 
 historians of national and international reputation, professors of 
 history in universities and colleges, teachers of history in normal 
 schools, high schools and academies, principals of schools, judges, 
 clergymen, lawyers, editors, and public officials of various kinds — 
 most of whom had been bel level's in the ^A'hitman Saved Oregon 
 Story and had endorsed it in lectures or sermons, or in newspaper 
 and magazine articles, or in their school and other histories, and 
 therefore very naturally would have preferred not to have it proved 
 false, and who therefore subjected all criticism of and evidence ad- 
 verse to it to the most careful, and some of them to the most hostile 
 scrutiny, no one has pointed out a single error of any fact of the 
 least impoi'tance, or a single inaccurate quotation, or unfair sum- 
 mary, and, except Dr. W. A. Mowry, every person — man or woman 
 — who has read even one quarter part of these manuscripts, has been 
 convinced that they totally demolish every form of the A\'hitman 
 Saved Oregon Story.
 
 INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 Why Dr. Mowry was not convinced will be apparent from some 
 extracts from a letter he wrote me on Dec. 9, 1898, imploring me 
 not to publish any of the really vital evidence relating to the Whit- 
 man mission, and the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride as fol- 
 lows: ''I have copied hundreds of typewritten pages from those 
 letters" {i. e., of Whitman and his associates to the Am. Bd.) "dur- 
 ing the last thirteen years. 
 
 ''One thing, however, I have not felt at liberty to copy, and do 
 not think the Board should ever have permitted you or any one else 
 TO copy. 
 
 "I refer to the confidential letters written by the missionaries to 
 the Secretary of the Board, relating to their private and personal 
 afi'airs, and particularly complaints one of another. 
 
 "I do not think you ought to publish any extracts from the letters 
 of that character. 
 
 ". . . In my own case, I always showed to the secretary the 
 matter which I had copied, and I believe that this has been the gen- 
 eral practice. I certainly hope you will not make public such pri- 
 vate affairs, even though the courtesy was extended to you to copy 
 private letters." 
 
 It only needs to be said concerning this attempt to cajole or 
 frighten me into continued concealment of all the really vital evi- 
 dence as to the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride, and as to all 
 the other questions needful to an understanding of Whitman's life 
 and character, that, first, there were no "confidential letters," and, 
 second, that the Secretary of the American Board did not attempt 
 to limit the thoroughness of my investigations, and, third, that I 
 was not given the privilege "to copy private letters," but to examine 
 the official correspondence of sundry employes of the Am. Bd. of 
 Comrs. of Foreign Missions, a great eleemosynary corporation, con- 
 tinually begging for funds from the public to support its employes 
 in missionary labor (which ought, certainly, to include not only the 
 inculcation by them upon heathen peoples of the importance of 
 constantly telling the truth, but also to include a constant practice 
 of that most fundamental of all the virtues by the said missionaries 
 themselves — and by the secretaries and other officers in the home 
 offices of the said American Board). 
 
 When, in an evil hour in 1866, Secretary Treat of the American 
 Board endorsed the Whitman Saved Oregon Story, by the publica- 
 tion of Kev. C. Eells' letters of May 28, 1866, in the Missionary 
 Herald for December, 1866, it "goes without saying" that he at once 
 made every letter or other paper in the archives of the American 
 Board, which would throw any light on that historical problem, a 
 public historical document, freest access to which no officer of that 
 society had any moral right thenceforth to deny, to any honest stu-
 
 8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 dent of the history of the United States, nor to put any limitations 
 on what such student should copy from and publish of them. 
 
 By constantly adhering throughout his "Marcus Whitman and 
 the Early Days of Oregon" to the ideas of the proper limits of his- 
 torical investigation and publication, stated in the foregoing ex- 
 tracts from his letter to me of Dec. 9, 1898, and carefully suppress- 
 ing not only everything in the archives of the American Board, but 
 also everything in the government archives which would give his 
 readers the real facts concerning the origin, purpose and results of 
 AVliitman's ride, and the real attitude of the national government 
 and the people generally towards the acquisition of Oregon, and 
 also all that relates to the rapid decadence of the American Board 
 mission in Oregon after 1839, and all that relates to the real causes 
 of the Whitman massacre, and nearly all that shows the true rela- 
 tion of the Hudson's Bay Company to the missionaries, and to 
 Americans generally in the Oregon territory, and the most vital 
 parts of the evidence needful to a fair estimate of Whitman's char- 
 acter and work. Dr. Mowry has produced a book somewhat less 
 hysterical than "Barrows' Oregon," and Nixon's "How Marcus 
 "VA'hitman Saved Oregon," and Craighead's "Story of Marcus Whit- 
 man," but a book every whit as worthless and misleading as any of 
 them. 
 
 To several of these parties, that they might be fully informed of 
 all that could be said in defense of the Whitman Saved Oregon 
 Story, in addition to my copious quotations by page and chapter 
 from Gray, and Spalding, and ]>arrows, and Nixon, and Mowry, and 
 Craighead, and Mrs. Dye, and Revs. C. Eells, and Myron Eells, and 
 Penrose, and Parker, I sent a copy of a pamphlet published in 1883 
 by M. Eells, and the pamphlet published in I'ortland, Ore., in 1885, 
 entitled "The Whitman Controversy," containing articles by M. 
 Eells, W. H. Gray, and Edward C. Ross, and if I had had copies to 
 spare should have been glad to have sent these pamphlets to each 
 of them. 
 
 Of course, I much regret that it should have fallen to the lot of 
 Prof. Bourne (who never began the examination of this subject 
 until some years after I had completed its investigation as far as 
 all really imjjortant points are concerned), to anticipate me in the 
 jjublication of its fictitious nature, but that is merely another ex- 
 ample of "the irony of fate," and I have not the least cause to com- 
 plain of him, as his treatment of me has been in all respects thor- 
 oughly honorable and courteous. 
 
 The original form of his "Legend of Marcus Whitman" (in Am. 
 Hist. Review, January, 1901), was in print before we met, but I 
 had much pleasure in rendering him considerable aid in preparing
 
 INTRODUCTION^ 9 
 
 his revised and fuller version of it (in "Historical Essays," Scrib- 
 ners' Sons, 1901), for which he gave me full credit therein. 
 
 Having got niy head a little above water tinancially, it was my 
 purpose to publish in January, 1903, a volume containing the most 
 important part of the contemporaneous evidence on the Oregon 
 question, and I had procured an estimate of the cost, when my 
 daughter's health failed, and the doctors peremptorily ordered her 
 sent to California, where, unexpectedly to all, she died, Dec. 17, 1902. 
 
 This not only took all the heart out of life for her mother and 
 me, but again crippled me, not only financially, but otherwise also 
 by depriving me of her almost indispensable aid in preparing copy 
 and reading proof, and so again compelled postponement of publica- 
 tion, and even now I cannot find time nor heart to prepare one-half 
 the matter that I think ought to be printed; but fearful that if 
 longer delayed some other stroke of adverse fortune may prevent 
 forever the publication of the evidence collected by me at such great 
 expense of time and money, herewith is presented to the public the 
 vital parts of that evidence, most of it first unearthed by me, and 
 heretofore wholly inaccessible to the general public, and onh^ made 
 accessible to a few score historians and historical students by my 
 manuscripts, as stated on page 6, ante. 
 
 The study of the history of the Acquisition of Oregon has occu- 
 pied most of my spare time since 1877. From 1875 to 1887, being a 
 lecturer with illustrations on Yellowstone National Park ; Yosemite 
 and the Big Trees of California; Colorado; Utah and the Mormon 
 Question; California; The New West; Gold Mines and Gold Min- 
 ing, and other subjects pertaining to the scenery, resources, indus- 
 tries and history of the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Coast regions, 
 appearing in many of the leading lecture courses of twenty-six 
 states from Maine to California, and from Minnesota to Georgia, 
 1 was much taken with the Whitman Saved Oregon Storv when first 
 told to me, in 1877, by Dr. W. A. Mowry, and, like Mrs. Victor and 
 Hon. Elwood Evans, and Gov. P. H. Burnett, and many others, 
 assented to it without investigation, because the men who originated 
 and endorsed it were in position to know the facts and ought to 
 have told the truth. 
 
 Besides, it would have been worth fifteen or twenty thousand 
 dollars to me as the basis of two illustrated lectures on ''Where 
 Kolls the Oregon," if I could have found evidence to support it so 
 that I could have risked my reputation in advocating it from the 
 lecture platform, while, if not true, I saw clearly that no lectures 
 could be prepared on far-away Oregon which, in this generation, 
 would even repay the expense necessary for obtaining illustrations 
 for them, let alone any profit on them. Naturally, therefore, I very 
 much wished the story to be true, not only for the pleasure it would
 
 10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Lave been to me to have called the attention of the public to a neg- 
 lected ])atriotic hero, but also because it would have ijreatly in- 
 creased my income as long as 1 had cared to remain in the lecture 
 field. 
 
 Thus strongly predisposed to accept the Whitman Saved Oregon 
 Story as true, and all the vital evidence having been so carefully 
 concealed from the public that I did not get access to it till 1887, 
 for five years I continued to assent to it, but was constantly puz- 
 zled by my inability to obtain any definite and conclusive evidence 
 for it, though eagerly welcoming every bit of evidence that even 
 seemed to support it, and scrutinizing with utmost rigor all that 
 seemed to militate against it. 
 
 In 1882, having prepared a lecture endorsing the Whitman Saved 
 Oregon Story, and begun to book dates for it, I journeyed across 
 the continent from Massachusetts (where I then lived), to Oregon, 
 thinking I should certainly there be able to find the conclusive evi- 
 dence that I had sought in vain for five years in the East. I made 
 a pilgrimage to Whitman's grave, and learned, from the man then 
 living on the site of the mission station, that there was very great 
 doubt about the truth of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story, and 
 returning to Portland called at the Oregonian office, and was re- 
 ferred to Hon. M. P. Deady, Ignited States District and Circuit 
 Judge for the Oregon region from 1800 till his death in 1893, and a 
 man whose ability and character I had heard Associate Justice 
 Field, of the T'nited States Supreme Court, commend in the very 
 highest terms. 
 
 To Judge Deady I stated my purpose in journeying to Oregon, 
 and said: ''I shall be greatly obliged. Judge, if you can inform me 
 ^\here I can find valid evidence- that will establish the truth of the 
 Whitnmn Saved Oregon Story." 
 
 He replied: "I am sorry that I can do nothing to help you out, 
 Mr. ^larshall, but the fact is, there is no truth in the stoi-y, and no 
 evidence has been produced that will bear examination in support 
 of it. The whole story is merely one of old Cray's yarns." 
 
 He referred me to Mrs. Victor and Hon. El wood Evans as two 
 persons who had on investigation been convinced of the total falsity 
 of the Saving Oregon Story of Whitman's Ride. 
 
 I corresponded with both of them (not having time then to 
 remain longer on the I'acific Coast), and soon became convinced 
 that I must cancel the dates already booked for the Oregon lecture 
 and give it a much more careful examination before risking my rep- 
 utation by endorsing the AYhitman Saved Oregon Story. 
 
 Hoping still that something might be saved from the ruins of 
 the story that T could use on the lecture ])latform, I continued my 
 study of the subject for two years more, and then, on Nov. 13, 1884
 
 INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 in a lecture on Oregon in the great Peabody Institute course in Bal- 
 timore, after some forty minutes' discussion of the Whitman Saved 
 Oregon Story, I concluded with the following: "Heroic as was 
 Whitman's ride (as is every daring deed done for an adequate mo- 
 tive), it was undertaken solely on missionary business, had no politi- 
 cal purpose, accomplished no political result, and had no more to 
 do with saving Oregon, or any part of the Old Oregon Territory, to 
 the United States, than it had with the election of Louis Napoleon 
 to the presidency of the French Republic, and no man who will read 
 the evidence can doubt that if Marcus Whitman had never been 
 born our line would have been 49 degrees to the Pacific Coast, pre- 
 cisely as it is today." 
 
 This conclusion having been questioned with no little acerbity by 
 Dr. W. A. Mowry, in the spring of 1885 I sent so much of the manu- 
 script of the lecture as covered the discussion of the Whitman mat- 
 ter (concluding with the above quoted paragraph) to George Ban- 
 croft, with a request that he would read it, and give me his opinion 
 as to its historical accuracy. 
 
 George Bancroft knew the agencies which secured the Oregon 
 Territory to us, not only better than anyone else ever did know, 
 but better than anyone else ever can know them, because he was in 
 Polk's cabinet until after the Treaty of 1846 fixing the north bound- 
 ary of Oregon was made, and immediately thereafter was sent as our 
 Minister to England, and remained there through the rest of Polk's 
 administration, and when, in 1871, after the San Juan Island ques- 
 tion — which was the very fag end of the Oregon boundary question 
 — had, on several occasions, nearly embroiled us in a war with 
 Great Britain, it was submitted by the two nations to the Emperor 
 William for arbitration, Bancroft — then past 70 years of age and 
 a lifelong Democrat — was promptly nominated by the Republican 
 President, Grant, and unanimously confirmed by a Republican Sen- 
 ate, as our Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to 
 Berlin, distinctly on the ground that from his intimate personal 
 connection with the settlement of the Oregon boundary he was the 
 one man best qualified to present our case successfully, as he did. 
 
 Six months later he returned it, with the following note : 
 
 "Newport, Sept. 17, 1885. 
 "Mr. William I. Marshall. 
 
 "Dear Sir: I have read your lecture and herewith return it. 
 It is conclusive on the question you discuss. 
 
 "Yours truly, 
 
 "GEORGE BANCROFT."
 
 12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 This alone ought to be suflBcient to satisfy any candid person 
 that the Whitman Saved Oregon Story is unhistorieal. 
 
 Further, owing to the deceit ])raeticed upon nie in 1877, as here- 
 inafter stated, it was not till 1SS7 that I obtained access to the 
 "original sources" at the American lioard rooms in Boston, so that 
 the evidence which Mr. Bancroft so positively endorsed as "conclu- 
 sive" was merely such ]u-inted matter as was even then easily 
 accessible to any patient and industrious student determined to 
 know the truth, and was not one-fiftieth part as weighty and con- 
 vincing as that which I subsequently obtained and incorporated in 
 the manuscripts sent to leading historians in 1898, 1899, and 1900, 
 and the essential parts of which will be found herein published for 
 the first time. 
 
 My occupation as a lecturer traveling all over the country gave 
 me excej)tional facilities for studying the subject in leading public 
 and ])rivate libraries, and old book stores, in nearly all of our large 
 cities, and there are few extensive collections of Americana of which 
 I have been able to learn in which I have not worked in person, or 
 from which I have not obtained by correspondence what they could 
 offer on this matter. 
 
 My investigations have been entirely independent of every one 
 else, except in the few cases in which I acknowledged indebtedness 
 (as e. g. to Prof. Bourne, for Atkinson's two letters of 1858 and 
 1859), and while early in my study of the subject the letters of Mrs. 
 Victor and Hon. Elwood Evans to me furnished some assistance, it 
 is now more than sixteen years since I ceased to depend upon them 
 for anything, as I found that while they were in the main correct 
 in their conclusions on all the vital points involved in the Whitman 
 Saved Oregon controversy, their failure to examine the ''original 
 sources'' in the correspondence and diaries of Whitman and his 
 associates, and in the government publications and unpublished 
 documents, had resulted in so many errors on minor points that I 
 felt unwilling to rely uj)on them, preferring to ])ariently study the 
 original sources myself for evidence upon all the points involved. 
 
 I should i)robably never have made a thoroughly exhaustive ex- 
 amination of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story if Mrs. Victor had 
 not written me, in 1883, as follows: "I would advise you against 
 going more deeply into investigation of the AVhitman affair, for if 
 you begin you will be led on for a great length of time to no pur- 
 pose." 
 
 Pondering on that declaration, I said to myself: "Can it be true 
 that an honest investigator, seeking to know the truth about so 
 important a historical question as to what were the agencies which 
 secured to this country nearly one-twelfth of its domain on this 
 continent, when the disputed jioint is only forty years, old (as was
 
 INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 then the case), and when there must be, if one only has the patience 
 and the perseverance to search them out, contemporaneous docu- 
 laents that will settle the matter beyond dispute — can it be that 
 such an investigator, on such a quest, is only to wade through a 
 dismal swamp of uncertainty and doubt and come out nowhere? 
 
 "If this is so, regarding historical matters only forty years old, 
 how about those eighty or one hundred, or two, or three, or five 
 hundred, or a thousand? If this statement is correct, surely we 
 would all do better to burn all historical books, and read only fic- 
 tion, for then we should be entertained, and not feel at the same 
 time that we were probably being humbugged and deceived. 
 
 "I do not believe Mrs. Victor is correct in this matter, and I am 
 going to the bottom of the Whitman myth." 
 
 I am free to say, however, looking back on it now, that had I 
 then supposed it would cost me to arrive at the truth about this 
 matter one-fortieth part of the time and labor and money it has, I 
 should not have been willing to undertake the task. 
 
 I have visited Washington, D. C, a half dozen times to pursue 
 my investigations in the State, War and Navy Departments, and the 
 Congressional Library. 
 
 I have been four times across the continent, in 1882, 1899, 1902 
 and 1905, to examine original sources in Oregon, California and 
 Washington, and have in my library a full set of the Transactions 
 of the Oregon Pioneer Association, and have carried on an extensive 
 correspondence with the pioneer settlers of Oregon, including the 
 real leaders of the migration of 1843. 
 
 I have read every book and every magazine article printed in 
 this country and in England, prior to the treaty of 1846, which in 
 any way related to the Oregon question, and also all of any impor- 
 tance published since that time. 
 
 I have carefully studied all the debates on Oregon in the seven- 
 teen sessions of Congress at which it was discussed prior to Whit- 
 man's ride, and every one of the reports of committees of the Senate 
 or House of Representatives made to those seventeen sessions, and 
 also every report of special agents and government explorers and 
 cabinet officers on Oregon made before March 1, 1843, and all Con- 
 gressional discussions had or committee reports on Oregon made; 
 since that time. 
 
 I have studied with care the full official documents on the Louis- 
 iana Treaty, the Treaty of Ghent, the Florida Treaty and the Ash- 
 burton Treaty (all of which have an important bearing on the Ore- 
 gon question), and also of the three great negotiations with Eng- 
 land in 1818, 1823-24, and 1826-27 on Oregon, and the negotiations 
 with Russia in 1823-4, all in American State Papers, Foreign Rela- 
 tions, as well as the negotiations which resulted in the Treaty of
 
 14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 1S4G, and the subsequent treaties for the settlement of the claims 
 of the Hudson's Bay Company and the l*uget's Sound Agricultural 
 Company vs. the T^nited States, and for the arbitration of the San 
 Juan Island question, including the volume on ''The Berlin Arbi- 
 tration." 
 
 I have also gone carefully over the 2,300 pages of evidence, and 
 also the arguments of counsel in the famous cases of the Hudson's 
 Bay Company and the Puget's Sound Agricultural Company vs. the 
 United States. 
 
 I have read carefully every book and pamphlet, and every impor- 
 tant magazine and newspaper article on both sides of the Whitman 
 Saved Oregon Story. I have carefully studied the files of the New- 
 York Christian Advocate and Zion's Herald for 1833 to 1837, for 
 the early records of the Methodist Mission to the Oregon Indians, 
 and the files of the Missionanj Herald from 1835 to 190G for such 
 information as they w^ere willing to give to the public, as to the 
 history of the mission founded by Messrs. Spalding and Whitman, 
 and, by far the most important of all, I have carefully studied all 
 the correspondence at the office of the American Board from all the 
 members of their Oregon mission from 1835 to 1871, and in Oregon 
 and Washington the existing fragments of the diaries of Eev. H. H. 
 Spalding, Kev. Elkanah Walker, Mrs. Spalding, and Mrs. Walker; 
 the whole aggregating very close to one million words. 
 
 In the winter of 1877-78 I, on three separate occasions, inquired 
 of the late Charles Hutchins, for years business manager of the 
 Missionary Herald, if there was anything at the American Board 
 rooms that would give me any information about the origin and 
 purpose of Whitman's ride, and he informed me that there was 
 nothing, except what was in the Missionary Herald for March, 18G9, 
 and May, 1870, of which he sent me copies, and, relying on the cor- 
 rectness of his statements, it was not till 1887 that I learned that 
 there was the above mentioned immense mass of original manu- 
 scripts there. 
 
 Had I not been thus deceived, I should have gone to the bottom 
 of the whole matter in 1877, when the Whitman Saved Oregon 
 Story had never been even mentioned in any book or magazine (ex- 
 cept the Missionary Herald) having any wide circulation, and 
 before the immense amount of legendary tales had grown up about 
 the matter which now exist, so that then a ten or twelve-page mag- 
 azine article would have made an end of the whole fiction. 
 
 As I like to think of Mr. Hutchins as an honest man, I am in- 
 clined to believe that he was himself imposed upon by the report of 
 some one else at the Mission House, and did not wilfully deceive 
 me; but, however that may be, the deception has cost me many 
 thousands of dollars in time and money.
 
 INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 Beginning my investigations a believer in the theory that Marcus 
 Whitman was a great patriotic hero who saved Oregon, and that 
 the Hudson's Bay Company were hostile to Americans exploring and 
 establishing missions in and settling in Oregon, and that they 
 sought, by establishing trading posts and making settlements there 
 themselves, to hold Oregon for Great Britain ; and that our people 
 and government down to Whitman's arrival in the States in March, 
 1843, were indifferent about retaining Oregon, and ignorant as to 
 its value, and believed it inaccessible by wagons over the Rocky 
 Mountains; and at every step applying the strictest scientific meth- 
 ods to the examination of all the evidence, seeking not to support 
 any theory, but to arrive at the exact truth about the acquisition 
 of Oregon, I was forced, after five years, to the conclusion that 
 Whitman was in no sense a great man or a great patriot; that his 
 ride was undertaken solely on the business of his mission, and had 
 nothing to do with saving any part of Oregon to the United States; 
 but I still thought the charges against the Hudson's Bay Company 
 as made by Gray, and Spalding, and Barrows substantially correct, 
 and it was not till after five years' further study that I found the 
 abundant and irresistible evidence that those charges were false, 
 and that every particle of the contemporaneous correspondence and 
 reports of all Americans — explorers, travelers, settlers and mis- 
 sionaries — (including Gray and Spalding themselves )^ — ^who actu- 
 ally went to Oregon from 1828 to 1846, and came in contact with 
 the Hudson's Bay Company officers at their various posts, declared 
 that they had been most hospitably received and treated at each 
 and all of those posts, and aided in every way in exploring the Ore- 
 gon Territory, and in establishing missions and making settlements 
 therein, and that only those Americans who sought to wrest the 
 fur trade from the Hudson's Bay Company or to "■jump" their land 
 claims at Oregon City and at Vancouver had the slightest cause 
 of complaint against them, and even they were subject to no fiercer 
 antagonism in the fur trade by the Hudson's Bay Company than 
 they were from rival American fur traders in regions farther east, 
 where the Hudson's Bay Company had no posts, nor to any severer 
 and often not as severe measures, as from Americans whose land 
 they tried to ''jump" away from them, for it was a common thing 
 for men who ''jumpd claims" to be shot on sight all over the 
 Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast regions by owners of mining 
 and other possessory claims (held by precisely the same tenure 
 that the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver, and Dr. Mc- 
 Loughlin at Oregon City, held their claims). 
 
 In my nearly ten years' residence in Montana (1866-1875) I 
 personally knew many men who had thus shot "claim jumpers," and 
 in every case, if any judicial inquiry was made (which was not
 
 16 INTRODUCTION 
 
 counnonly deeiued ;U uU necessary), the verdict was "justifiable 
 homicide," and I never knew of a case of more wanton and inex- 
 cusable "claim jumpinji" than Kev. A. F. Waller's attempt, in 1842, 
 to seize on part of Dr. :McLoughlin's claim at Oregon City (claimed 
 by him in 1829), the story of which (as very briefly told by 
 T)r. McLoughlin himself) will be found in a ''Copy of a Document" 
 hereinafter (Part I., Chap. VII.), and more fully by H. H. Bancroft 
 in his "Oregon," Vol. I., pages 203-225, or the attempt of Williamson 
 and Aldernmn, in 1845, to jump part of the premises at Fort Van- 
 couver that had then been in the peaceable and undisputed posses- 
 sion of the Hudson's Bay Company for twenty years (Cf. Kept, of 
 Dr. E. White, sub-Indian Agent to Secretary of War, dated April 
 4, 1845). But no one of these men experienced death, or even 
 the slightest violence at the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company's 
 otticers or emi)loyes. 
 
 The contemporaneous evidence on this point from Americans 
 who went to Oregon to explore, or as missionaries and settlers, 
 prior to 1846, much of it never yet printed, and most of the rest of 
 it only to be found in old books, magazines, newspapers and gov- 
 ernment reports, of which few copies exist, will fill about 250 pages 
 like this, and, of course, the scope of this volume will not allow 
 full quotation of this immense mass. 
 
 The reader may rest assured, however, that the quotations from 
 it, in the chapter on the "Truth About the Relations of the Hud- 
 son's Bay C()m])any to the American Exploration, Occupation and 
 Settlement of the Oregon Territory," are perfectly fair samples of 
 the whole. 
 
 It being an absolutely indispensable postulate of the Whitman 
 Saved Oregon Story that the Hudson's Bay Company constantly 
 and bitterly opposed Americans getting to or settling in Oregon, 
 it goes without saying that these quotations have been carefully 
 omitted from the books and magazines and newspaper articles advo- 
 cating that story. 
 
 Undoubtedly, the Hudson's Bay Company, as was their duty as 
 British subjects, desired and hoped that England would succeed in 
 retaining that i)art of the Oregon Territory north and west of the 
 Columbia (being all that was really in disjjute after 1824), but 
 they understood perfectly well, as did the governments of England 
 and the United States, that by the express terms of the Treaties of 
 1818 and 1827 no settlements made by either party, while those 
 treaties remained in force, could in any way affect the question of 
 the title to the country, and that till the treaty of 1827 was abro- 
 gated, and a boundary line established, the citizens and subjects of 
 each nation had exactly the same rights to be in, any part of the 
 Old Oregon Territory.
 
 INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 My investigations have been entirely independent of all others, 
 and every conclusion arrived at has been forced upon me by the 
 irresistible weight of the evidence. My opinions, however, like the 
 opinions of other people on historical questions, are not of the 
 slightest consequence, any farther than they are a faithful and 
 honest reflection of the valid evidence, and I have never asked any 
 one to accept my opinions, but only to examine the evidence. 
 
 Much of the most vital part of that evidence has never hereto- 
 fore been accessible to historical students even, except in my manu- 
 scripts, and much less to the general public, and while, for reasons 
 already stated, I cannot even now aflord to print all I should like to 
 of it, there is enough herein, it seems to me, to convince any candid 
 mind : 
 
 First, that ]Marcus Whitman did not save Oregon, or any part 
 of Oregon, to the United States. 
 
 Second, that no thought of any possibility of doing any such a 
 thing was in his mind when he started to ride to the States. 
 
 Third, that about the region really in dispute between the two 
 countries, that is, the part north and west of the Columbia, Whit- 
 man not only knew nothing of the slightest value to communicate 
 to the national government in the spring of 1843, but learned noth- 
 ing about it till nearly three years later, and then learned it, not 
 from his own explorations, or those of any of his associates in the 
 American Board Mission, but from the report of an exploring party 
 sent into the Puget's Sound country from the settlement in the 
 Willamette Valley, in the autumn of 1845. 
 
 Fourth, that there was not the slightest danger of the loss of 
 any part of Oregon if no missionary had ever gone there. 
 
 Fifth, that there was really in dispute bet^ een the Ignited States 
 and Great Britain, after 1824, onlv the region north and west of the 
 Columbia River. 
 
 Sixth, that the national government had very much fuller infor- 
 mation about Oregon prior to 1843, from the reports of American 
 fur traders and government explorers, than it has had about any 
 other territorial acquisition we have ever made on this continent 
 on the day of its final accomplishment, and that before Whitman 
 went to Oregon, in 183G, or even the Methodist missionaries went 
 there, in 1834, it was generally understood throughout the country 
 that Oregon was easily accessible by wagons over the low passes in 
 the Rocky Mountains, especially the South Pass. 
 
 Seventh, that Marcus Whitman was not in any sense of the term 
 a great man, and that, though he was undoubtedly a very zealous 
 missionary, he was far from being a wise, or a far-seeing, or a 
 magnanimous, or a prudent, or a successful one.
 
 18 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The Missionary Herald, the oflicial organ of the American Board, 
 in its issue for July, 1848, on page 237, prefaced an account of the 
 dreadful massacre (Nov. 29-l)ec. 8, 1847), in which Dr. and Mrs. 
 \\hitman and twelve others were murdered by the Indians, among 
 whom he had been missionarying for eleven years, with the follow- 
 ing 1G2 words of biography of Marcus Whitman. As the secretaries 
 of the Board had absolute control of the columns of the Missionary 
 Herald, and as they had before them all the correspondence of the 
 mission, including Whitman's own extravagant claims of great ser- 
 vice to the government, and also had reasonably fresh in their mem- 
 ories all that Whitman said when in Boston (March 30-April 8, 
 1843), about the origin and purpose of his ride, and as they have 
 never been in the least degree "backward about coming forward" 
 with claims of good accomplished in any direction by their mission- 
 aries, and as they well knew that in this account of the massacre 
 They were chronicling the utter destruction of their Oregon mis- 
 sion, which had cost them some |40,000, and also well knew that 
 every one of their readers, in the sympathy aroused by his tragic 
 end, would be in most receptive and least critical mood concerning 
 any claims they might make for the value of Dr. Whitman's life 
 and work, what is more evident than that if they had regarded him 
 as in any Avay a remarkable man, or believed that their Oregon 
 mission had in any manner favorably affected the political destinies 
 of the Oregon country, much more if they had believed that the 
 mission as a whole, or Whitman as an individual, had "Saved Ore- 
 gon," or any part of Oregon to the nation, they would then have 
 claimed it? 
 
 Instead of which, they published the following absolutely truth- 
 ful sketch of his life, a sketch whose correctness no critic of the 
 U'hitman Saved Oregon Story is disposed to question in the slight- 
 est: 
 
 "Doctor Whitman was born in Rushville, in the State of New 
 York, Sept. 4, 1802. He joined the church in that place in Janu- 
 ary, 1824, though he dated his conversion from a revival in Plain- 
 field, Massachusetts, in 1819. 
 
 "He gave himself to the missionar}' work in 1834. In February, 
 1835, he went to Oregon for the first time. Having returned the 
 same year, he was married in February, 1836; and in the following 
 month he set out a second time for his chosen field of labor. He 
 made a visit to the Atlantic States in the spring of 1843, being 
 called thither by the business of the mission. He was a diligent 
 and self-denying laborer in the work to which he consecrated his 
 time and energies. In the last letter received from \ym\ he described 
 at considerable length his plans and hopes in regard to the Indians,
 
 INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 showing his interest not only in the Kayuses, but in more distant 
 tribes." 
 
 Nothing more did the Missionary Herald say about Marcus 
 Whitman's life and deeds till its issue of December, 180(;, in which 
 appeared its first mention of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story. 
 Much better would it have been for Whitman's memory in the end, 
 as well as for that of all his associates in the mission, if nothing 
 but these 162 truthful words had ever been printed concerning his 
 life. 
 
 Not a single advocate of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story in 
 book, magazine or newspaper, has ever been honest enough with 
 his readers to even allude to this biographical sketch of Whitman, 
 much less to quote it. 
 
 In my study of this subject I have depended on "Greenhow's His- 
 tory of Oregon and California," and John Fiske's "Discovery of 
 America" for the history of the Spanish explorations of the Ore- 
 gon coast, but for everything later than the Nootka treaty I have 
 in all cases gone to original sources, whenever possible to obtain 
 access to them, in no case trusting to any historian's account of an 
 exploration by land or sea when an account written by the explor- 
 ers themselves could be obtained, nor to any "Abridgment" of 
 "Debates in Congress," but going to the full official report in the 
 "Debates in Congress," "Annals of Congress," and "Congressional 
 Globe," nor to anybody's summary of the reports of committees of 
 the House and Senate, but to the full reports in the bound volumes 
 of executive documents of the two Houses, nor to any one's state- 
 ment of the results of the negotiations with England and Russia 
 about Oregon, and with Spain about Florida and the southwest 
 boundary of Louisiana, and the south boundary of Oregon, and 
 with France about the Louisiana Purchase, and with England about 
 the questions settled by the Ashburton Treaty, and the Treaty of 
 1863, concerning the claims of the Hudson's Bay Company and the 
 Puget's Sound Agricultural Company, but to the official reports of 
 the negotiations. I have myself made every investigation, except in 
 the very few cases where I acknowledge indebtedness to others, and 
 have taken the utmost pains to verify the accuracy of my work, and, 
 knowing well how easily mistakes are made in copying, T shall be 
 greatly obliged if any inaccurate quotation, or any error of fact is 
 found, if the finder will have the kindness to notify me of the same. 
 I hope that the enormous labor and pains I have bestowed on this 
 subject will make this book merit Prof. John Fiske's commendation, 
 in his letter to me, which is published in my discussion of Prof. 
 Bourne's "Legend of Marcus Whitman," as follows: 
 
 "You have done your work so thoroughly that it will not need 
 to be done again."
 
 20 INTRODUCTION 
 
 It seems to me best to treat the Oregon Expansion under the 
 following heads: 
 
 PART I . 
 
 'fc> 
 
 1. The period of early maritime discovery and exploration 
 (1543-1792K This period outlined the coast and determined the 
 harbors, and discovered the mouth of the great navigable river 
 which drains nearly all the Old Oregon Territory. 
 
 2. The period of overland exploration and discovery and of the 
 fur traders (1804-1S40). This period discovered every im])ortant 
 natural feature — mountain ranges, peaks and passes, plains, river 
 valleys, lakes (of any considerable size), desert regions, fertile 
 areas, forests and prairies of the whole Oregon Territory (south of 
 49 degrees), except that ijart north and west of the Columbia, being 
 about 55,000 to 58,000 square miles. 
 
 It is not claimed that all the minute details of the geography of 
 Oregon were known, even forty years later than 1842, but all the 
 great features were perfectly w^ell known to the fur traders and to 
 the national government before there was anv excitement in the 
 States about any missionaries going to Oregon, and no missionary, 
 Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregationalist or Catholic, ever dis- 
 covered any im])ortant geographical feature of any part of the Old 
 Oregon Territory. 
 
 3. The beginning of real American settlement (1832). 
 
 4. The discovery of a route for and the development of the first 
 transcontinental wagon road. 
 
 5. Governmental action in relation to Oregon. 
 
 (a) The diplomacy of the Oregon question. 
 
 (b) Executive and Congressional action on the Oregon ques- 
 tion. 
 
 0. The truth about the relation of the Hudson's Bay Company 
 to the American exploration, occupation and settlement of Oregon. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 THE MISSIONARY EPISODE. 
 
 7. The truth about the origin of missions to the Oregon Indians. 
 
 8. The establishment and continuance of missions to the Ore- 
 gon Indians. 
 
 (a) The Methodist Mission (1834-1844-6). 
 
 (b) The A. B. C. F. Mission (1835-1848). 
 
 (c) The Catholic Mission to the Flatheads and allied tribes, 
 October, 1841, to 1850, and September, 1806, to the pres- 
 ent time.
 
 INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 9. The long-concealed facts about the origin, purpose and re- 
 sults of Whitman's ride to the States begun Oct. 3, 1842. 
 
 10. The decadence of the American Board Mission after 1839. 
 
 11. All that Whitman ever claimed about his ride and the bene- 
 fits of his mission in his letters after his return to Oregon. 
 
 12. The true causes of the Whitman massacre. 
 
 13. An examination of the ''testimony" given in support of the 
 Whitman Saved Oregon Story. 
 
 Necessarily there must be some overlapping in time of some of 
 these periods, it being impossible to draw hard and fast chronolog- 
 ical lines between most of them.
 
 WILLIAM I. MARSHALL 
 
 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 William Isaac Marshall was born June 25tli, 1840, at Fitchburg, 
 Worcester County, Massachusetts. His father was William Mar- 
 shall, a mason contractor, and his mother was Fiorina (Weeks) 
 Marshall. The first American ancestor of the Marshall family came 
 to Boston from London, England, in 1635, on the ship Hopewell. 
 
 Mr, Marshall's early educational training was limited to the 
 grammar school and one year at high school. His father died when 
 he was seventeen years old, and he was forced to labor to assist his 
 mother in the care and support of the family. At the age of eighteen 
 he commenced teaching in Massachusetts, and a few mouths later, 
 January, 1859, he moved westward to Conneaut, Ohio, where he 
 taught school for |10 per month and "boarded round." In 18G0 he 
 made the acquaintance of the late Prof. P. R. Spencer, originator of 
 the Spencerian system of penmanship, and became a student of his, 
 and graduated under his personal instruction. After this he taught 
 school in several towns in Canada, and was principal of the schools 
 of the borough of Manchester, now a part of Pittsburg, Pa. Follow- 
 ing this experience, he acted for a time as agent for the "Spencerian 
 System," and also became part owner in the "Capital City Business 
 College," at Columbus, Ohio, and later sole owner of the institution. 
 While conducting this college he was in correspondence with an 
 old schoolmate, who induced him to go to Virginia City, Montana, 
 to the famous Alder Gulch gold mines. He remained there nearly 
 ten years, working his mines; was also principal of the schools at 
 Virginia City, and was superintendent of the schools of Madison 
 County, Montana. While there he studied law and was admitted 
 to the bar of Montana, and later, on his return East, to practice in 
 the United States courts. 
 
 Returning to Massachusetts in 1876, he began lecturing on "Gold 
 Mines and Gold Mining," "The Yellowstone National Park" and kin- 
 dred subjects, and was the original lecturer, with illustrations, on 
 American suljects. As a lecturer he was accorded a place continu- 
 ously in the leading lecture courses of the East, and occupied the
 
 24 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 platform in all the large cities of the Eastern and Middle States. 
 He continued on the lecture platform till 1887, when he moved to 
 Chicago to enter an insurance partnership with his brother. This 
 partnership he left to become a i)rincipal in the schools of the city, 
 and was at the head of the William E. Gladstone School at the 
 time of his death, October 30th, 190G. 
 
 For twenty-nine years he had been studying about the ''Acquisi- 
 tion of the Old Oregon Territory to the United States." In 1904 he 
 published ''History vs. The Whitman Saved Oregon Story," and in 
 1905 issued the pamphlet, "The Hudson Bay Company's Archives 
 Furnish No Support to the Whitman Saved Oregon Story," and 
 shortly before death claimed him, had finished the manuscript for 
 this book. 
 
 He was a member of the Third Unitarian Church of Chicago, and 
 for sixteen years its secretary and treasurer. 
 
 He was a Mason, one of the organizers of and first master of 
 Columbian Lodge No. 819, A. F. & A. M. ; a member of the George 
 Howland Club, Principals' Club of Chicago, and of the American 
 Historical Association, the National Geographical Society, and an 
 honorary member of the Oregon Historical Society. 
 
 In 1864 Mr. Marshall married Miss Ellen P. Foster, and one 
 child, Ellen Foster Marshall, was born to this union. She died four 
 years previous to her father's death. Mrs. Marshall still survives 
 them. 
 
 Chicago, August, 1909. Mrs. Ellen Foster Marshall.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 AND THE 
 
 LONG suppressp:d evidence 
 
 ABOUT MARCUS WHITMAN 
 
 PART ONE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE UNIQUE FEATURES OF THE HISTORY OF THE 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON. 
 
 The Old Oregon Territory comprises all our territory on this 
 continent west of the summit of the main range of the Rocky Moun- 
 tains between 42 degrees and 49 degrees, north latitude, covering 
 the present States of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, with so much 
 of Montana (about 28,000 square miles) as is west of the main 
 range, and so much (about 13,000 square miles) of Wyoming as is 
 west of the main range and north of 42 degrees, in all about 292,000 
 square miles, or nearly 1/12 of all our domain on this continent, 
 and the true history of its acquisition by the United States is not 
 only full of most romantic incidents, but is unique in the following 
 respects : 
 
 1. It is that part of our territory to which our chain of title is 
 not only as long as to any other, but is very much more curiously 
 complex than to any other region we possess. 
 
 2. It is the only territory on this continent to which we have 
 ever claimed a title by priority of (a) discovery, (b) exploration 
 and (c) settlement. 
 
 3. It is the only acquisition of territory on this continent to 
 which we have obtained an undisputed title without either conquest 
 or cash purchase. 
 
 4. It was the first territory on the Pacific Coast to which we 
 ever made any claim, and the first one on that coast to which we 
 established a title. 
 
 5. It was the first Pacific Coast region to which there was any 
 considerable overland migration from the States east of the great 
 plains.
 
 26 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 6. It is the only ])art of our territorial acquisition concerning 
 whose great valne to ns the foresight of our greatest statesmen 
 was so clear and so unanimous that, while it was separated from 
 our most western settlements by a full thousand miles of little 
 known and wholly unsettled wilderness, they all — Jelfei-son, INladi- 
 son, Monroe, J. Q. Adams, Jackson, Van Ruren, Tyler, Polk, Tierce^ 
 Buchanan, Calhoun, Clay, Gallatin, Everett, Webster, Walker, For- 
 syth, Richard Rush, Henry Middleton, Cambreling, Choate, ]\[ore- 
 head, Floyd, Kobt. J. Walker. J. W. Taylor, Sevier, Kint!;, P.enton, 
 Linn, Woodbury, John Reed, Caleb Cushing, and many others — in- 
 sisted on no line more favorable to Great Britain than 4!) degi-ees 
 to the Pacific — and, as early as 1826, J. Q. Adams' administration 
 notified the English government that ^'49 degrees to the Coast was 
 our ultimatum." 
 
 7. It is our only acquisition of territory on this continent 
 which had been very extensively explored by land and sea, alike by 
 our ])rivate citizens on fur trading and scientific exi)editions, and 
 by government parties under command of officers of our army and 
 navy, before our title to it was fully established. The reports of 
 their explorations had not only been widely read by our own citi- 
 zens, but also republished in London and Dublin, and translated 
 into the Fi-ench, German and Dutch languages, and published in 
 those countries in 1814 and 1819, and between 183G and 1841. 
 
 8. It is the only territory not undisputably ours which Great 
 Britain captured from us in the War of 1812, and was compelled to 
 restore to us by the Treaty of Ghent. 
 
 9. It is the only territory in which for nearly a whole genera- 
 tion (1818 to 1840) the citizens and subjects of Great Britain and 
 the United States were, by wise and freely executed treaties, at 
 liberty to live on a footing of perfect equality, and where, during 
 all that time — as every particle of the contemporaneous corre- 
 spondence of the Americans shows — every American who entered 
 the territory — fur traders, missionaries, scientists, explorers or 
 settlers — was very kindly received and most hospitably entertained 
 by the Hudson's Bay Company's officers at all their posts; and, if 
 they desired to remain in any other caj)acity than fur traders, were 
 aided in the most liberal manner to establish themselves as mis- 
 sionaries or as settlers. 
 
 If Americans sought to engage in the fur trade they were met 
 with the strongest competition that the Hudson's Bay Company 
 could wage, but that competition was as fair as, and no fiercer than, 
 the rival American fui- traders waged against each other in regions 
 far east of those ever occu]>ied by the Hudson's Bay Company's 
 posts.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 27 
 
 10. It is the acquisition to which there was far less opposition, 
 whether we consider the relative numbers of those who spoke and 
 wrote against and for it, or their weight in the councils of the 
 nation, than to any other acquisition of territory we have ever made, 
 except the Florida Purchase and the Gadsden Purchase, to both of 
 which there was practically no opposition. 
 
 11. It is that part of our territory about which, before March 
 1, 1843 (/. e., more than three years before our title to it was fully 
 established, and before Marcus Whitman could have reached St. 
 Louis, let alone Washington), we had had more numerous and more 
 important diplomatic negotiations, more debates in Congress, more 
 committee reports to Congress — all unanimous by the committees 
 and unanimously adopted by Congress — more books and magazine 
 articles printed for general reading, more reports printed by the 
 government for gratuitous distribution, and therefore far more 
 knowledge possessed alike by the government at Washington and 
 by the people of the country generally, than about any other terri- 
 torial acquisition we have ever made on this continent, even on the 
 day such other acquisition was finally accomplished. 
 
 12. It was the region which originated so much of the Monroe 
 Doctrine as declares ''That the American continents, by the free 
 and independent position they have assumed, are to be henceforth 
 no longer regarded as open to colonization by any European na- 
 tion," this having been first stated July 22, 1823, in two letters of 
 instructions from John Q. Adams, Secretary of State, to Henry 
 Middleton, Minister to Russia, and Richard Rush, our Minister to 
 England, who were then negotiating respecting the Oregon bound- 
 ary. 
 
 13. It is the only portion of our territory where for more than 
 twenty-five years all British suljects were liable to arrest and trial 
 by the ofiScers of the Hudson's Bay Company for minor otfenses, 
 and where, between British subjects, all civil cases involving no 
 more than 200 pounds were also tried before the Hudson's Bay 
 Company's officers, while for graver offenses British subjects were 
 liable to be arrested by the Hudson's Bay Company's officers and 
 sent to Upper Canada for trial, and civil cases involving more than 
 200 pounds, between British subjects, were also sent to Upper Can- 
 ada for trial (Cf. Act of Parliament, July 2, 1821, quoted in full 
 by Greenhow, Ed. 1845, p. 467). 
 
 14. It is the only part of our territory where, for more than 
 three years, the citizens of the United States and the subjects of 
 Great Britain jointly supported a provisional government organized 
 by the people living in Oregon, without any authorization therefor 
 or assistance therein from either home government, and without 
 those of either nationality losing their allegiance to their respective
 
 28 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 governments. In the language of a memorial of this provisional 
 government, dated June 28, 1844, ''By treaty stipulations, the terri- 
 tory has become a kind of neutral ground, in the occupancy of which 
 the citizens of the United States and the subjects of Great Britain 
 have equal rights and ought to have equal protection." 
 
 Although the Treaty of 184G, fixing 49 degrees as the north 
 boundary of Oregon, the news of which reached Oregon Nov. 12, 
 184G, ended "the neutral territory" matter, and also all authority 
 of the Hudson's Bay Company to arrest and try British subjects 
 in Oregon, or send them to (Janada for trial, this provisional gov- 
 ernment continued to be the only government in Oregon till, on 
 March 3, 1849, Joseph Lane of Indiana (having arrived at Oregon 
 City the day before) assumed his duties as the first regularly ap- 
 pointed territorial governor of Oregon, under the Act of Congress 
 of Aug. 14, 1848, creating the Territory of Oregon, and providing 
 for its government. 
 
 15. It is the only territory we have acquired concerning the 
 obtaining of which there has been injected into our history, and 
 Tery widely circulated and believed, a pure legend known as the 
 Whitman Saved Oregon Story, a fiction for the history of whose 
 genesis and development, and the proof of whose total falsity the 
 reader is referred to Part II. of this book. 
 
 It is the purpose of this book (which is the result of more than 
 twenty -eight years' careful study of the subject) to establish be- 
 yond any possibility of dispute the correctness of all the foregoing 
 fifteen propositions, and to state without fear or favor all the 
 important facts about the acquisition of Oregon, as they appear in 
 the original contemj)oraneous documents, many of which have not 
 heretofore been published (arid the more important of which that 
 relate to Marcus Whitman have been deliberately suppressed for the 
 past half century or more by those advocates of the Whitman Saved 
 Oregon Story who have possessed or controlled them). 
 
 Conscious of his lack of a polished literary style, the author will 
 permit each of the imj)ortant actors in the Oregon Expansion to 
 tell, as far as possible, in his own words, his i)art (herein : and as 
 several of the positions he seeks to establish are directly contrary 
 to the ideas generally believed about the history of the acquisition 
 of the Oregon Territory, he must crave the reader's indulgence if he 
 not only cites very many oi-iginal authorities, but if he also quotes 
 very fully from many of (hem, and especially from those which 
 other writers upon the subject have neglected to examine, or to 
 mention ; or, in the case of a few that they have mentioned, to 
 quote fairly, so that the reader could judge for himself whether or 
 not the documents really sustain the claims that the advocates of 
 the AMiitman Saved Oregon Story have advanced.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PERIOD OF MARITIME DISCOVERY. 
 
 The true story of the acquisition of the Old Oregon Territory 
 must be sought in many an unfamiliar book and many an unpub- 
 lished manuscript, and is all too little known, even by those who 
 are very well read in the history of our States east of the Rocky 
 Mountains, but one whose interest, as well as value, to all patriotic 
 Americans yields rich compensation for the time needed to rapidly 
 review it. 
 
 The history of the Oregon Territory vividly recalls the story of 
 Cinderella. 
 
 From 1818 to 1848 the Oregon Territory largely occupied public 
 attention, while all else we now own beyond the Rocky Mountains — 
 then belonging to Mexico and Russia — was rarely mentioned. But 
 the discovery of gold in California in 1848, and later of the rich 
 silver mines in Nevada, so fixed attention on these States that for 
 more than thirty years little was heard of the Oregon Territory 
 till, a few years since, it suddenly appeared ; that when the prince 
 came seeking what Pacific Coast section could wear the dainty 
 slipper of highest prosperity, it best fitted, not the golden nor even 
 the silver State, but their long-neglected, patiently drudging sister, 
 ^'Where Rolls the Oregon." The exports of Oregon in 1880 having 
 exceeded, per capita, those of any other State in the Union, and 
 with the speedy completion thereafter of transcontinental railroad 
 communication with it, first by the Oregon Short Line division of 
 the Union Pacific, soon followed by the Northern Pacific, and a few 
 years later by the Great Northern, it began to receive again its 
 proper share of attention from the people of the rest of the country, 
 who had almost entirely ignored it for a whole generation. 
 
 As in the case of all other territory on this continent, any part 
 of our title to which is derived from Spain, the first link in our 
 curiously complex chain of title to Oregon is written in the Bull of 
 Pope Alexander V., in 1493, granting Spain exclusive rights of 
 trade, navigation, fishery and conquest in all seas not before occu- 
 pied by a Christian prince or people, which they might find in west- 
 ward exploration, as Pope Nicholas had, in 1454, granted to Port- 
 ugal for southward and eastward exploration.
 
 30 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 In 1494 Spain and Portujial signed the famous 'Treaty of Par- 
 tition of the Ocean," whicli jiave l*ortn<ial everythinij east of a 
 meridian passin*; 37(> leaijnes west of the ("ape Verde Ishmds, and 
 t>pain everyrhinir west of that line. Tlie east coast of Urazil being 
 afterwards found to extend east of that meridian, this treaty gave 
 that immense empire to Portugal, much to the chagrin of Spain, 
 which had hoped to monopolize the New World. In 1519 Cortez 
 landed in Mexico and soon conquered it. 
 
 Exploration crept northward along the Pacific Coast from Mex- 
 ico very slowly till, in 1543, Cabrillo is supposed to have reached 43° 
 X. Lat., which is one degree N. of the line which, by the Florida 
 treaty of 1819, was established as the S. boundary of Oregon. 
 
 About 1543 Spain concluded that the less known about the 
 coasts and countries north of Mexico, the less likely would they be 
 to have other nations contending with them for the commerce and 
 dominion of the Pacific and its coasts, and for manv vears thev dis- 
 couraged all farther exploration, and by most stringent regulations 
 strove to prevent the too-rapid development of Spanish America. 
 
 No Spaniard could emigrate to America, no new settlement be 
 formed there, no new sea or country explored without express per- 
 mission of the King, which was very difficult to obtain ; and the 
 results of exploration were often concealed or tardily and imper- 
 fectly announced. Nothing could be cultivated or manufactured for 
 commerce in America which could be imported from Spain : and no 
 intercourse could be carried on between Spanish colonies, or be- 
 tween them and Spain, except in government vessels, or those under 
 its immediate supervision. The Spanish American could have no 
 correspondence with other countries, and foreigners were prohibited 
 from touching territories claimed by Spain, or even navigating the 
 seas in their vicinity, under pain of death. "Whoever," says Hak- 
 luyt, at the end of the lOth century, 'is acquainted with the Spanish 
 and Portugese writers shall find that they account all other nations 
 for pirates, rovers and thieves who visit any heathen coast, that they 
 have sailed by or looked on." 
 
 No other ex})loring expedition went to the N. W. Coast for sixty 
 years, when, in 1002-3, Vizcaino made a fairly good survey of the 
 California coast, discovering and remaining some time in the lovely 
 Bay of Monterey, but saw no more of Oregon than Cabrillo. His 
 voyage was attended with serious troubles. The scurvy raged vio- 
 lently, and they were sorely tried — says Torquemada, the historian 
 of the expedition — by their ''chief enemy the N. W. wind," (which 
 is the prevailing summer wind of that coast, but) which, in accord- 
 ance with the general superstition of his age, he declares "was 
 raised up by the foe of the human race, in order to prevent the ad-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 31 
 
 vance of the ships, and to delay the discovery of those countries, 
 and the conversion of their inhabitants to the Catholic faith." 
 
 Though annually the Spanish galleons, on their voyages from the 
 East Indies to Acapulco sailed along the California coast south- 
 ward from Cape Mendocino, and the Russians, under Behring and 
 Tchirikof, in 1741 and '42, had discovered and partly explored our 
 territory of Alaska, one hundred and sixty years passed after Viz- 
 caino's voyage, before Spain consented to any colonization of Cali- 
 fornia, or farther exploration of the N. W. Coast. 
 
 But while all the Oregon Coast remained thus untrodden and 
 unseen by Europeans, numerous fictitious accounts were published 
 in Europe, of explorations there, and of the discovery there of the 
 long sought N. W. passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the most 
 noted of which were those of Maldonado and of Fonte, which, though 
 widely believed, were pure fabrications, and of de Fuca, which (if it 
 had any foundation in an actual voyage) was mistaken in suppos- 
 ing that the strait through which he claimed to have sailed led 
 across the continent. These fabulous narratives are striking proofs 
 of the ignorance, even of the most enlightened nations of Europe, as 
 late as the early years of the 18th century, concerning the shape and 
 extent of America, and especially its North West Coasts. 
 
 Spain's high pretensions to exclusive ownership of America on 
 the Atlantic coast were successfully resisted by other European na- 
 tions, and French, English, Dutch and Swedish colonies had occu- 
 pied that coast, from the St. Lawrence to some way south of the 
 Savannah, and were slowly creeping over the Alleghanies and along 
 the Great Lakes into the Mississij^pi Valley, when the mighty strug- 
 gle between France and England for American supremacy ended 
 in the fatal defeat of Montcalm, and the fall of Quebec, in 1759, fol- 
 lowed by the secret cession to Spain, in 1762, of all the claims of 
 France to territory west o/" the Mississippi River, and the following 
 year, by her surrender to England of all her claims east of the Mis- 
 sissippi. 
 
 Spain, now fearing for the security of her claims to exclusive 
 dominion on the Pacific Coast, devised an extensive but unpractical 
 scheme of colonization and exploration, under which between 1769 
 and 1779, eight missionary establishments under the charge of the 
 Franciscans were placed in the present state of California, stretch- 
 ing from San Diego north to San Francisco. 
 
 Unlike the Jesuits who had had missions in Lower California, 
 from 1697 to 1767 (when they were expelled from Spain and all 
 Spanish America), and who had diligently explored the country and 
 studied all its natural resources, the Franciscans, who were mostly 
 from the lower orders of societ}' and wholly uneducated (except in 
 their church duties and ritual, and some kind of industry), made no
 
 32 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 attempt at exploration, and no efforts to acquire a knowledge of the 
 resonrces of T'p])er California. 
 
 They seem tt) have been honest, patient, well meaning men, who 
 labored heroically and faithfnlly to discharge their duty as they 
 understood it, but whose mental horizon was so very narrow, that 
 their seventy years' occupancy of the country added scarcely any- 
 thing to the world's knowledge of its climate, natural features, 
 vegetable and animal productions or mineral resources, and under 
 ^^•hose regime California furnished nothing to the world's commerce 
 but hides, horns and tallow. 
 
 How different the history of the modern world would have been 
 had Spain, in the plenitude of her pride and power, explored Cali- 
 fornia in the Kith century, sufficiently to have discovered its rich 
 mines of gold ! 
 
 Even in her decline, in the latter ])art of the 18th and the earlier 
 years of the 19th century, had the Jesuits instead of the Franciscans 
 been put in charge of the Upper California missions or had Spain 
 not crushed the energy and enterprise out of her colonists by more 
 than 200 years of rejjression of development, there could scarcely 
 have been failure for more than half a century to find those mines of 
 gold, the possession of which by Spain would certainly have changed 
 the destinies of this country in ways no man's imagination can con- 
 ceive, and have exercised a profound and far-reaching effect on all 
 the later, modern history of civilized humanity. 
 
 To strengthen her claims to exclusive ownership under the papal 
 bull by at least a show of occupancy, in 1774 for the first time in 171 
 years, the Spanish flag again saluted the breeze off the Oregon coast, 
 waving from the corvette Santiago, under command of Ensign Juan 
 Perez, whose explorations were so unsatisfactory that the next year 
 Capt. Bruno Heceta was sent in the same corvette, with Lieut. 
 Bodega accompanying, in the schooner Sonora. The day the battle 
 of Bunker Hill was fought, they were taking fresh water on board, 
 in the little harbor of Port Trinidad, about fifty miles south of the 
 Oregon line. 
 
 Exploring the Oregon coast with various adventures and mis- 
 haps, on August 15, 177.^. in Lat. 46^ 17', Heceta came opposite 
 an oi»ening whence rushed too strong a current to allow his enter- 
 ing, though he remained another day to try it. 
 
 He named this bay Assumption Inlet, but on the charts pub- 
 lished in Mexico, after his return, it is called Heceta's Inlet, and 
 Rio de San Roque. This opening was the bay at the mouth of the 
 "Great River of the West," the full discovery, exploration, naming 
 and ownership of which was reserved for the citizens of the new 
 nation, whose soldiers were then besieging their British foes in 
 Boston.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 33 
 
 In 1776, the last of Oapt. Jas. Cook's famous exploring expedi- 
 tions sailed from England, mainly to determine the question of a 
 northwest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, Parliament hav- 
 ing amended an act offering 20,000 pounds reward to any English 
 merchant vessel discovering such a passage from Hudson's Bay, so 
 that it was offered to naval as well as merchant ships, for any such 
 passage by Hudson's Bay or otherwise. Cook made important dis- 
 coveries farther north, but saw nothing on the Oregon coast not 
 l)reviously seen by the Spaniards. He was murdered in the Sand- 
 wich Islands, and in December, 1779, his ships anchored at Canton, 
 China, where they made a wholly unlooked for discovery, of vastly 
 more commercial importance than all the others they had made, and 
 one which profoundly affected the destinies not only of the Oregon 
 Territory, but of the whole N. W. Coast of America, opening new 
 avenues to commerce, and within a dozen years thereafter sending 
 adventurous vessels into every nook and corner of that immense 
 stretch of coast which for 250 years after the conquest of ]\Texico, 
 had only at long intervals, and at a few points been beheld by 
 white men. 
 
 As they had touched here and there, officers and crew had bar- 
 tered to the natives old clothes, buttons, knives, and other things 
 To them of little or no value, for rich furs, not as articles of merch- 
 andise, but for use on board ship, for clothes and bedding. 
 
 Many of them had thus become spoiled or much damaged. 
 
 When reported in Canton (whither no ship had ever before come 
 from the N. W. Coast of America), that Cook's ships had furs, there 
 was great excitement, and eager competition, and in a few days for 
 what had cost them little or nothing the seamen received money and 
 goods to the value of more than $10,000. 
 
 The news of this immense profit stimulated adventurous Eng- 
 lish and American merchants to fit out vessels for this ''Northwest 
 Trade," as it was called. 
 
 Irving well says "It was as if a new Gold Coast had been dis- 
 covered." 
 
 Some of the earliest vessels in this trade were commanded by 
 John Meares, a lieutenant in the British navy on half pay, but sail- 
 ing under the Portugese flag to avoid the claims of the British East 
 India Co. to a monopoly of the commerce of the Pacific, in vessels 
 under the British flag. 
 
 July 5, 1788, he started to sail into the bay at the mouth of the 
 •'Great River of the West," but, frightened by the terrible breakers, 
 hauled out without crossing the bar, and, though the river must 
 then have been at high flood, he unaccountably concluded that there 
 was no river there, entering in his log-book, that ''We can now 
 safely assert that there is no such river as that of St. Roque exists,
 
 34 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 as laid down on the Spanish charts;" and so he rechristened the As- 
 sumption Inlet of Ileceta as Deception Bay, and the bold cape on its 
 north side as Cape Disappointment. 
 
 Yet, so hard pressed for argument were the British commission- 
 ers, apj)ointed in 182G to treat with our Government on the ques- 
 tion of title to the Oregon Territory, that they actually quoted this 
 paragraph from Meares' Narrative, as proof that he had actually 
 discovered the mouth of the river, whose existence is in it positively 
 denied. 
 
 Meares' vessels were seized in 1789, by the Spanish Commander 
 at Nootka Sound, as intruders on Spanish territory. 
 
 This led to a vigorous diplomatic correspondence between the 
 English, Spanish and French governments, some phases of which, 
 owing to the famous ''Family Compact'' between the kings of France 
 and Spain, and to the complications of the French Revolution, are 
 very interesting and curious, if space permitted entering into par- 
 ticulars of them, to extensive war preparations on the part of most 
 of the powers of Europe, and to various demands and counter i)ro- 
 posals, one of which demands made by England was that the 
 Northern line of exclusive Spanish dominion should be fixed at the 
 40th parallel of North Latitude, from the Pacific to the Missouri 
 River. 
 
 Fortunately for our national welfare, Spain absolutely refused 
 any limitation on the North, and the rapid progress of the French 
 Revolution compelling England to abate her unjustifiable demands, 
 finally, October 28, 1790, the first treaty ever made between any 
 European nations concerning the N. W. Coast of America, and gen- 
 erally known as the "Nootka Treaty," was signed. 
 
 John Ledyard, the famous traveller, was born in Connecticut, 
 and was serving as a corporal of marines on board the Resolution, 
 one of Capt. James Cook's ships in his last famous exploring voyage 
 (1770-1780) and from his letters the news of the immense profits to 
 be made in the fur trade of the N. W. Coast of America soon spread 
 among the adventurous merchants and fearless seamen of New Eng- 
 land, and the result is thus told by Geo. Bancroft, in the "Reply wof 
 the Ignited States to the case of the Govt, of ller Britannic 
 Majesty," in the San Juan Island Arbitration : "The British case 
 exaggerates the importance of the voyage of Captain Vancouver. 
 So far were American fur-traders from following his guidance, they 
 were his forerunners and teachers. Their early voyages are among 
 the most marvelous events in the history of commerce. So soon as 
 the Independence of the United States was acknowledged by Great 
 Britain the strict enforcement of the old unrepealed navigation laws 
 cut them off from their former haunts of commerce, and it became a 
 question from what ports American ships could bring home coffee,
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 35 
 
 and sugar, and spices, and tea. All British colonies were barred 
 against them as much as were those of Spain. So American ships 
 sailed into eastern oceans, where trade with the natives was free. 
 The great Asiatic commerce poured wealth into the lap of the new 
 republic, and Americans observing the fondness of the Chinese for 
 furs, sailed fearlessly from the Chinese seas, or round Cape Horn 
 to the northwest coast of America, in quest of peltry to exchange 
 for the costly fabrics and products of China. They were in the 
 waters of northwest America long before the Hudson's Bay Com- 
 pany. We know, alike from British and from Spanish authorities, 
 that an American sloop, fitted out at Boston in New England, and 
 commanded by Captain Kendrick, passed through the straits of 
 Fuca just at the time when the American Constitution went into 
 operation — two years before Vancouver, and even before Quimper 
 and de Haro. Americans did not confine themselves to one passage 
 in preference to others, but entered every channel, and inlet, and 
 harbor, where there was a chance of trafficking with a red Indian 
 for skins ; and they handed down from one to another the results of 
 their discoveries. 
 
 ''The instruction from the British Admiralty to Captain Van- 
 couver was prompted by an account, which they had seen, of the 
 voyage of Kendrick, and the belief, derived from that account, that 
 the waters of the Pacific might reach far into the American con- 
 tinent." (Cf. Berlin Arbitration, pp. 124-125.) 
 
 Among the American captains in the N. W. trade was Robert 
 Gray, Master of the good ship Columbia, from Boston, who, sailing 
 from Nootka Sound, for Canton, in 1789, sold his furs, took in a 
 cargo of tea, and August 10, 1790, entered Boston Harbor, having 
 the honor of first carrying the stars and stripes around the world. 
 
 He immediately returned to the N. W. Coast, and remained 
 exploring and trading with the natives till the spring of 1792. 
 
 In April, 1792, the famous British explorer, Capt. Geo. Van- 
 couver, reached the California coast, and sailed slowly northward, 
 examining closely — as he himself says — "under the most favorable 
 conditions of wind and weather," the whole coast and especially the 
 Deception Bay of Meares, and April 29th, entered in his journal 
 that "The several large rivers, and capacious bays and inlets, that 
 have been described as discharging their waters into the Pacific, 
 between the dOth and 48th parallels were reduced to brooks, insuf- 
 ficient for our vessels to navigate, or to bays inaccessible as harbors 
 for refitting." 
 
 The very day that Vancouver thus recorded his conviction that 
 there was no great river at Deception Bay, he spoke the Columbia, 
 and was informed by Captain Gray that he had been off the mouth 
 of a great river, in Lat. 46°, HY, where the outset was so
 
 36 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 strong as to batUe all liis attempts at entrance for nine days, where- 
 upon, Vancouver, with that lordly contempt for an American cap- 
 tain, then felt by all His Britannic Majesty's naval ofiicers, added 
 to his entry of Captain (Jray's information, in his journal, that 
 "This was ])robably the ()|)eninj; i)assed by us on the forenoon of the 
 27lh, and was ap]>arenlly inaccessible not from the current, but 
 from the breakers that extend across it." 
 
 Eminent explorer and great navigator as Captain Vancouver 
 of His Majesty's service was, he was vastly mistaken for once, as 
 the Down East merchant captain proved by immediately sailing 
 away to Meares' Deception Bay, and, on May 11, 1792 — a date ever 
 memorable in Oregon history — he sailed boldly through the break- 
 ers which the British naval officers had agreed were impassable, and 
 into the mouth of the "Great River of the West," long sought for, 
 and which Meares and Vancouver both declared did not exist, and 
 Ihus gave us a claim by priority of discovery to the vast territory 
 it di"ained. 
 
 Anchoring ten miles up the stream, he remained three days, trad- 
 ing and filling his casks there with fresh water from its vast flood, 
 and then sailed twelve or fifteen miles farther up the stream, when 
 finding that he had taken the wrong channel, he anchored again, 
 and on the 20th sailed out and to the North, where, fortunately for 
 his fame as the discoverer of the most important river of the Pacific 
 coast, he gave Quadra, the Spanish commandant at Nootka the par- 
 ticulars of his discovery, and charts of the mouth of the river. 
 
 That Captain Gray was a man of energy, and enterprise, and 
 dauntless courage is plain from his whole career, and from nothing 
 more so than from his passage of that fearful bar, which has swal- 
 lowed so many lives in its foaming breakers and is even now dreaded 
 by many experienced seamen. 
 
 That he was modest is evident from his not attemi)ting to affix 
 his own name to the Great River. That he was y)atriotic, as became 
 the captain whose good fortune it had been to first carry his 
 country's flag around the world, appears from the name he did give 
 it, and he would seem to have been gifted with something of pro- 
 phetic vision, for he entered the name in his log-book, not as we now 
 have it, the Columbia River, but with the apostrophe and s of the 
 possessive — Columbia's River — as if giving notice to all the world 
 that his country would ever maintain its claim by right of discovery, 
 which his enter{)rise and valor had given it to the vast region which 
 it drains. Gray's logbook (covering May 7-21, 1792) was first 
 ]>rinted in full by Congress in Baylies' Supplemental Rept. (No. 
 213, H. of R., 19 Cong., 1st Sess., May 26, 1826) ; also in Linn's Rept. 
 (No. 470, Vol. 5, Sen. Docs., 25 Cong., 2d Sess., June 6, 1838) accom- 
 panied by the deposition of Chas. Bulfinch; also in Cushing's Rept.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 37 
 
 of which 10,000 extra copies were ordered printed January 4, and 
 February 16, 1839 (Kept. No. 101, H. of R., 25th Cong., 3d Sess.) ; 
 also in the Government edition of Greenhow's Oregon, February 10, 
 1840 (No. 174, Vol. 4, Sen. Docs., 26th Cong., 1st Sess.) of which 
 2500 copies besides the usual number were ordered. It was printed 
 in full in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine in April, 1842, and the article 
 copied in full into Niles' Register for May 21, 1842. It was also 
 printed on pp. 434-6 of the 1845 edition of Greenhow's "History of 
 Oregon and California." 
 
 Nixon (p. 17) of ''How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon" and p. 
 90 of his "Whitman's Ride Through Savage Lands," and Mowry, 
 (''Marcus Whitman," p. 1) says "Gray took posession in the name 
 of the United States of America" but neither gives any authority 
 for it (and Gray's log-book gives no intimation of any such proceed- 
 ing, which he certainly would have recorded had it been done). The 
 only entry in his log-book about any one from the ship going on 
 shore at all is the following : "May 15. In the afternoon Captain 
 Gray and Mr. Hoskins, in the jolly boat, w^ent on shore to take a 
 short view of the country." 
 
 Nothing could be more unlikely than that Gray would attempt 
 to take possession of the country in the name of the United States, 
 for the United States reckoning from the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence was not quite 16 years old, and since out of the confederation 
 of jealous and mutually distrustful colonies a still pretty loosely 
 ^'Ufiited States" had been formed, it was only three years when 
 Gray discovered and named "Columbia's River." 
 
 The population of these states (which were still so weakly bound 
 together that no one yet spelled Nation with a big N.) was almost 
 entirely on the Atlantic slope of the Alleghanies and its western 
 boundary was the Mississippi river, so that, between the headwaters 
 of the Columbia and any territory owned by the United States, 
 stretched about a thousand miles owned by Spain, a region wholly 
 unknown, except that all geographical principles made it certain 
 that there must be a vast mountain system there, and as the world 
 then looked it would take two centuries for the region east of the 
 Mississippi to become thickly populated. 
 
 Not till after the Treaty of Ghent had provided for the restitu- 
 tion of Astoria to the United States did the U. S. Government have 
 so much as a copy of Gray's log-book, but knowing of the discovery 
 through "Vancouver's Narrative" and from newspaper accounts, in 
 1816 President Madison applied to Samuel Brown, Esq., the prin- 
 cipal living owner of the sloops Washington and Columbia (which 
 Capt. Robt. Gray had commanded), for correct copies of all proceed- 
 ings relative to the discovery of the Columbia that should be found 
 in the papers left by Captain Gray, and after some search Mr. Silas
 
 38 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Atkins, a brother of the widow of Gray, found the log-book of the 
 Columbia, as appears by a deposition of Chas. Bulfinch of Boston, 
 accomj)anying the copy of the log which he furnished the Govern- 
 ment. (Cf. p. 20, Linn's Rept., being No. 470, Sen. Docs., 2nd Sess., 
 25th Cong.. Vol. V., June G, 1838.) 
 
 Five months to a day after Gray left the Columbia, Vancouver, 
 having obtained copies of Gray's chart and narrative from Quadra, 
 the Spanish Commander at Nootka Sound, sent his subordinate, 
 Broughton, into the river, who, anchoring a few miles from the 
 ocean, rowed 80 miles farther up the stream, and then had the 
 effrontery '*To take possession of the river and the country in its 
 vicinity in llis Britannic Majesty's name, having every reason to 
 believe that the subjects of no other civilized nation or state had 
 ever entered this river before. In this opinion he was confirmed by 
 Gray's sketch, in which it does not appear that Mr. Gray either saw, 
 or was within five leagues of its entrance." (Cf. Vol. 1, Chap. XL, 
 and Vol. 2, Chap. IIL, of "A Voyage of Discovery to the No. Pacific 
 Ocean and Bound the world, etc., under command of Capt. George 
 Vancouver, London, 1798.") 
 
 This quibble, devised to rob Gray of the honor and his country 
 of the benefit of his daring deed, without which it is plain that Van- 
 couver would never have thought of trying to enter the stream, 
 which he had declared to be *'only a mere brook, or at most a stream 
 too small for navigation," must ever remain a stain on the fame of 
 Vancouver, and was based on the very ingenious and before un- 
 heard of device of claiming that the river began 25 miles up the 
 stream, where it narrows to the width of a thousand yards, and that 
 Gray had only entered a bay at its mouth, and this though Gray's 
 log-book states that he filled his casks with fresh water at his first 
 anchorage only 10 miles inside the bar.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE. THE LEWIS AND CLARK 
 
 EXPEDITION IN 1803-6. 
 
 After escaping in 1782 from a British frigate on which he was 
 compelled to serve against his native land, John Ledyard interested 
 the famous Robt. Morris in a project to trade on the N. W. Coast, 
 but the ruin of Morris' fortunes spoiled the plan, and in February, 
 1786, Ledyard was in Paris, trying to interest French capital in the 
 North West Coast fur trade, but failing to succeed, his adventurous 
 spirit led him to accept a proposition made him by Thos, Jefferson, 
 then our minister at Paris, which is stated in Jefferson's own words 
 as follows : ''I then proposed to him to go by land to Kamtchatka, 
 cross in some of the Russian vessels to Nootka Sd., fall down into 
 the latitude of the Mo., and penerate to and through the "U. S." 
 (Coues' Ed. of Lewis and Clark, Intro, pp. XVIII. and XIX. See 
 also Biography of Ledyard by Jared Sparks, pp. 233-372. Also 
 Greenhow, 1845 Ed. pp. 162-63). Jefferson, through the famous 
 Baron de Grimm, obtained the consent of the Empress Catharine 
 of Russia and Ledyard had proceeded as far as Irkutsk, in Siberia, 
 where, on the night of the 28th of February, 1788, he was arrested 
 by order of the Empress (probably at the instigation of the Russian 
 American Co., who wished to keep all the details of their opera- 
 tions secret), and conveyed night and day in a closed carriage to the 
 border of Poland, and there released with strict orders not to again 
 set foot on Russian territory. 
 
 In 1792, Jefferson (then Secretary of State) arranged with Cap- 
 tain Merriwether Lewis to attempt to cross the continent, with 
 Michaux the famous French botanist as his only companion, and 
 they had proceeded as far as Kentucky, when Michaux was unex- 
 pectedly recalled by the French government, and so the trans-con- 
 tinental trip was abandoned (Cf. Coues' Lewis and Clark, Vol. 1, 
 Intro, pp. XIX.-XX.) October 1, 1800, Spain by a secret treaty 
 (never published in full till 1820) ceded to France "The colony or 
 province of Louisiana, with the same extent which it now has in the 
 hands of Spain, and which it had when France possessed it, and 
 such as it should be according to the treaties subsequently to be 
 made between Spain and other States."
 
 40 ACQUTSITWN OF OREGON 
 
 The .same vear Thos. Jefferson, whose ureat mind had for vears 
 appreciated the value of the Louisiana Ty., and the absolute neces- 
 sity of at least the Isle of Orleans (on which New Orleans is sit- 
 uated), with its control of the Mississippi River, to the prosperity 
 of the rapidly growing States beyond the Alleghanies, was first 
 elected Pi-esident. 
 
 In unexpected emergencies, the mere poUtician, thinking only 
 and always of self, asks "'What must I do to be consistent with my 
 own record, and my party platform?" But the statesman, knowing 
 that new conditions often impose new duties, and so the consistent 
 pursuit of his country's advantage will frequently require him to 
 do things inconsistent with his own past opinions, as well as with his 
 l)arty's platform, asks only, ''What action will best promote my 
 country's welfare?'' Fortunately for our national welfare Thos. 
 Jefferson was one of the ablest, most unselfish, and most patriotic 
 of statesmen. 
 
 He had been elected after an exceedingly acrimonious contest, as 
 the chamj)ion of *'the strict construction of the constitution," and 
 the most ingenious sophistry could not find in a strict construction 
 of that instrument any authority for the President to purchase new 
 territory; but the good of his country demanded it, and so among 
 the early acts of his administration he instructed the venera.ble 
 Chancellor Livingston, our minister to France, to try to buy at least 
 the Isle of Orleans, and, if })0ssible, all of Louisiana. 
 
 But Xa])()le()n, bent on founding a great French military colony 
 in Louisiana, and so repairing the disaster of Montcalm's defeat 
 and the fall of Quebec, would listen to no proposition to sell, till in 
 the spring of 1803, it became plain that the famous peace of Amiens 
 would barely live out its first brief year. 
 
 Meanwhile Jefferson — determined to carry out his pet project of 
 a trans-continental exploration — on January 18, 1803, sent to Con- 
 gress a confidential message recommending such an expedition, 
 which resulted in an appropriation of $2,r)00.00, and the selection 
 again of Captain ]\Ierriwether Lewis, w^ho had been private secre- 
 tary to Jefferson, to command the party in association with Captain 
 William Clark, a younger brother of General George Rogers Clark, 
 the conqueror of the N. W. Territory in the Revolutionary War, each 
 commander having equal authority. 
 
 This message of President Jeflerson was on request of the House 
 of Representatives again transmitted by President J. Q. Adams, 
 December 27, 182.5, and they voted to continue to treat it as confi- 
 dential. (Cf. Cong. Debates, lOth Cong., 1st Sess., 1825-6, Vol. 2, 
 Part 1, p. 002.) It is not printed in Jefl'erson's Works, and was 
 never published till 181(>, when it appeared in the 2d edition of ''The 
 Addresses and Messages of the Presidents of the United States, In-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 41 
 
 augural. Annual and Special, 1789 to 1846, 2 vols., 8vo., New York, 
 Edw. Walker, 1846, Appendix, pp. XXV.-XXVII., entitled "Jeffer- 
 son's Confidential Message recommending a Western Exploring Ex- 
 pedition." 
 
 It is now easily accessible, being printed on pp. 352-354 of ''Mes- 
 sages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1897, Vol. 1, 1789-1817. 
 Eichardson." As France then owned Louisiana, and Spain claimed 
 the whole Pacific Coast as far north as Prince William's Sound in 
 Lat. 61° No. it was needful to avoid exciting their antagonism. 
 
 The message began as follows : 
 
 "Gentlemen of the Senate and House of Representatives : 
 
 "As the continuance of the Act for establishing trading houses 
 with the Indian tribes will be under the consideration of the Legis- 
 lature at its present session, I think it my duty to communicate the 
 views which have guided me in the execution of that Act, in order 
 that you may decide on the policy of continuing it in the present or 
 any other form, or discontinuing it altogether if that shall on the 
 whole seem most for the public good." Then for something more 
 than a page he states his view of the proper mode of conducting 
 Indian affairs so as to lead the Indians to abandon hunting and 
 fishing, for stock raising and farming, and then adroitly introduces 
 the subject of an exploring tour across the continent, on the plea of 
 the necessity of a better knowledge of the Indians along the Mis- 
 souri River, and the great advantages which would accrue from the 
 fur trade being diverted from the Canadian route to some of the 
 numerous channels which our great river systems offer, mentioning 
 so many of them as to attract support for the measure from all the 
 Atlantic seaboard south of New England as follows: "The river 
 Missouri and the Indians inhabiting it are not as well known as is 
 rendered desirable by their connection with the Mississippi, and 
 consequently with us. 
 
 "It is, however, understood that the country on that river is 
 inhabited by numerous tribes, who furnish great supplies of furs 
 and peltry to the trade of another nation, carried on in a high lati- 
 tude through an infinite number of portages and lakes, shut up by 
 ice through a long season. 
 
 "The commerce on that line could bear no competition with that 
 of the Missouri, traversing a moderate climate, offering, according 
 to the best accounts, a continued navigation from its source, and 
 possibly a single portage from the Western Ocean, and finding to 
 the Atlantic a choice of channels through the Illinois or Wabash, 
 the Lakes, and Hudson, through the Ohio and Susquehanna or 
 Potomac, or James Rivers, and through the Tennessee and Savan- 
 nah Rivers.
 
 42 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 "An intelligent officer with 10 or 12 chosen men fit for the enter- 
 prise and willing to undertake it, taken from our posts where they 
 may be spared without inconvenience, might explore the whole line, 
 even to the Western Ocean, have conferences with the natives on the 
 subject of commercial intercourse, get admission among them for 
 our traders as others are admitted, agree on convenient deposits for 
 an interchange of articles, and return with the information acquired 
 in the course of two summers. 
 
 ''Their arms and accoutrements, some instruments of observa- 
 tion, and light and cheap presents for the Indians would be ail the 
 apparatus they would carry, and with the expectation of a soldier's 
 portion of land on their return would constitute the whole expense. 
 
 ''Their pay would be going on whether here or there. 
 
 "While other civilized nations have encountered great expense to 
 enlarge the boundaries of knowledge by undertaking voyages of dis- 
 covery, and for other literary purposes in various parts and direc- 
 tions, our nation seems to owe to the same object, as well as to its 
 own interests, to explore this the only line of easy communication 
 across the continent, and so directly traversing our own part of it, 
 
 "The interests of commerce place the principal object within the 
 constitutional powers and care of Congress, and that it should 
 incidentally advance the geographical knowledge of our own con- 
 tinent cannot but be an additional gratification. 
 
 "The nation claiming the territory, regarding this as a literary 
 pursuit which it is in the habit of permitting within its dominions, 
 would not be disposed to view it with jealousy, even if the expiring 
 state of its interest there did not render it a matter of indilTerence, 
 
 "The appropriation of |2,500 for the purpose of extending the 
 external commerce of the Ignited States, while understood by the 
 executive as giving the legislative sanction, would cover the under- 
 taking from notice, and prevent the obstructions which interested 
 individuals might otherwise previously put in its way." 
 
 Thus (while it was uncertain whether or not we could buy any 
 part of Louisiana) originated that famous Lewis and Clark's expe- 
 dition, which Cones fittingly characterizes as "Our great National 
 epic of exj)loration." 
 
 While the plans for the trans-continental exploring expedition 
 were thus taking shape, the negotiations relating to the Louisiana 
 Purchase went on, and Mr. Monroe, sent on a s[)ecial mission by 
 Jefferson with written authority to pay |2,000,000 for the little 
 Isle of Orleans, and ample verbal instructions for the possible 
 chance to purchase all of Louisiana, joined Livingston, in Paris, 
 April 12, 1803, and, to his delighted astonishment learned that 
 Napoleon, who had so long refused all offers for a little island, had
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 43 
 
 the day before thrown an empire at Livingston's feet by offering the 
 whole of Louisiana, comprising not only the present State of 
 Louisiana, but also all of Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, North 
 and South Dakota, and Indian Territory and most of Kansas, Okla- 
 homa, Montana, IMinnesota and Wyoming, and part of Colorado, an 
 area larger than the United States then possessed, and about four 
 times the size of France, because he knew that when the then rapidly 
 approaching war should begin, his hated enemy — Great Britain — 
 would seize it if owned by France. 
 
 Negotiations progressed rapidly, and April 30, 1803, the whole of 
 Louisiana (Avith the same provisions as to boundaries heretofore 
 cited from the treaty of 1800 ceding it to France (Cf. p. 39, ante), 
 was ceded to the United States for |1 5,000,000, or about two cents 
 an acre. (Cf. Greenhow, p. 279, J. Q. Adams' Life of Monroe, pp. 
 
 255-6, Kandall's Life of Jefferson, pp. , and Am. State Papers, 
 
 Foreign Relations, Vol. IL, pp. 506-583.) 
 
 Though owned by France since 1800, the Spaniards still re- 
 mained in possession of Louisiana, when the treaty was made ceding 
 it to the United States, and protested against its transfer to the 
 United States; and not till November 30, 1803, did the Spanish 
 Commissioners at New Orleans deliver possession of the Province 
 of Louisiana to the French Commissioners, and three weeks later, 
 on December 20, 1803, the French Commissioners formally trans- 
 ferred it to our Commissioners, Governor Claiborne of the Mis- 
 sissippi Territory and General Wilkinson. (Cf. Jefferson's Message to 
 Cong., dated January 16, 1804, in Messages and Papers of the Presi- 
 dents. 1789-1817. Vol. 1, 1789-1817, Richardson, p. 367; also p. 
 581, Vol. IL, Am. State Papers, For. Rel.) 
 
 History records no other real estate transaction approaching this 
 in magnitude and in the importance of its results, and yet there 
 were not wanting many truly patriotic, albeit in this narrow minded 
 men, who bitterly opposed its consummation, and zealously labored 
 to prevent the ratification of the treaty — so true is it that parti- 
 sanship often blinds the judgment even of able and honest men, and 
 the supposed necessities of party make even true patriots sometimes 
 opposed to measures, that their sons and grandsons, with fuller 
 knowledge, applaud. 
 
 Not always are the men knaves who stone the prophets, nor their 
 sons hypocrites when they build sepulchers, alike to the prophets 
 whose mission their fathers failed to comprehend, and to their 
 fathers also, not because they stoned the prophets, but, in spite of 
 that mistake for their many other sterling qualities of head and 
 heart. 
 
 Thus, as in 1790, the early stages of the French Revolution com- 
 pelled England to abate her unjust demands on Spain to fix her
 
 44 ACQUI8ITWX OF OREGON 
 
 northern boundary line at 40° N. Lat., to our serious injury, so in 
 1803, the prog:ress of that mighty struggle, unexpectedly and with- 
 out bloodshed, more than doubled our National domain. 
 
 In both cases the results appear to have been the best for human- 
 ity which could have hapj)ened, and it is such events, which compel 
 all reverent souls as they read history to believe in a Divine Provi- 
 dence ruling in human affairs and make them join devoutly in the 
 Psalmist's declaration, that "He maketh the wrath of man to praise 
 Him." 
 
 A few days after the original instructions for the trans-con- 
 tinental tour in President Jeffei'son's own hand writing had been 
 received by Captain Lewis, news of the signing of the treaty for the 
 cession of Louisiana reached our Government. This necessitated 
 some changes in the instructions, and though a start was made for 
 the West in the Autumn of 1803, with the hope of going some dist- 
 ance up the Missouri before the winter should begin, the unexpected 
 delay in the transfer of the territory prevented it." (Cf. Ch. I., 
 'Xewis and Clark Expedition,") 
 
 At length, on May 14, 1804, the party, in all forty-four persons 
 in three boats, entered the mouth of the Missouri River. 
 
 The steamboat was then just taking shape in Fulton's brain, and 
 they were forced to struggle against the swift current of the muddy 
 stream as best they could, with sails and oars. 
 
 October 20, 1804, they had worked their toilsome way 1,600 miles 
 up to the Mandan Indian villages, at ''the great bend" of the Mis- 
 souri. They had not merely to explore the country, and observe its 
 geography, but also to obtain all possible information about the 
 Indian tribes dwelling on it, and to notify them of the change in the 
 ownership of the country, and of the good intentions of the new 
 ''Great Father" at Washington, and his purpose to establish trading 
 posts among them. 
 
 They held councils with various tribes, and many a chief there- 
 after strutted proudly about his village, full dressed in an uncom-. 
 fortable cocked hat and feather, and an ill-fitting coat gaudy with 
 gold lace and scarlet embroidery and with a ])ewter medal proudly 
 disj)layed on his naked breast, while his favorite squaw was made 
 passing rich by the gift of an awl, a little mirror in a pewter frame, 
 some needles, a few yards of brass wire for bracelets, ear-rings, and 
 pendants to her jet-black locks, or by some strands of cheap beads — 
 more piecious to her than pearls or diamonds — or perhaps best of 
 all, a little vermillion to heighten the color of her coppery cheeks 
 and forehead. 
 
 In the Aricaras they found one of the very few tribes of savages 
 wise and abstemious enough to despise strong drink, which they 
 refused with the sensible remark, "That they were surprised that
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 45 
 
 their great father should present them with a liquor which would 
 make them fools." (''Lewis and Clark," 1842 Ed., p. 111.) 
 
 Though thus singular in the matter of drink, they were thorough 
 Indians on the title to horseflesh, for, a few years after, when, in a 
 council about selling horses to the Astoria party, one chief doubted 
 if they could spare enough, another chief promptly rebuked him, 
 declaring that there need be no trouble about it, for, if they had not 
 enough, they could easily steal a plenty. ("Astoria," Chap. XX.) 
 
 Building a stockade near the Mandan villages they wintered 
 there, and their narrative furnishes many interesting glimpses of 
 Indian life, of which none is more thoroughly characteristic than 
 that Pocapsahe, one of the principal Mandans, visited them New 
 Year's day, and brought them some meat, not on his own lordly 
 shoulders, but on — (what doubtless seemed to him the most natural 
 and proper beast of burden in the world) — his wife's back. ("Lewis 
 and Clark," 1842 Ed., Ch. VL, p. 151.) 
 
 April 6, 1805, sending a detachment back with reports, etc., the 
 balance continued up the — from there — unknown river, and June 
 13th— first of white men — they beheld the grandeur of the Great 
 Falls of the Missouri. 
 
 July 19, they passed through the sublime defile which they named 
 The Gate of the Rocky Mountains, and, six days later reaching the 
 Three Forks of the Missouri, and naming them Gallatin, Madison, 
 and Jefferson, they paddled up the latter (because it came from the 
 West instead of the South, like the other two streams), till it 
 divided into three forks, of which they followed the middle, or 
 Beaverhead, till it would no longer float a canoe. 
 
 Now, late in August of their second summer, their situation was 
 diflScult if not desperate, for they were worn down with incessant 
 toil, and almost constant wading in the oft-recurring shallows of 
 the cold, swift streams, their provisions were nearly exhausted, and 
 game had become scarce, and unless they should soon meet a band of 
 Indians and get horses to transport their luggage over none knew 
 how many hundreds of miles of lofty and rugged mountains, to the 
 navigable waters of the Columbia, they must fail in the great object 
 of all their toils and dangers. 
 
 Reaching the source of the stream, "One of the men in a moment 
 of enthusiasm, standing with one foot on either bank of the little 
 rivulet, thanked God that he had lived to bestride the mighty Mis- 
 souri," (L. & C, Ch. XIV.) and soon crossing the summit they drank 
 of the headwaters of the Salmon River branch of the Columbia, and 
 in a little while came suddenly on three Shoshone squaws, who, 
 taking the bronzed strangers for the ever dreaded Blackfeet Indians, 
 expected only death or captivity; but Captain Lewis stripping up 
 his sleeve to show his color, and saying tab'ba hone, which is Sho-
 
 46 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 shone for white man, soon calmed their fears; and giving them 
 presents and painting their cheeks a brilliant vermillion, "made 
 their hearts very good," and they soon notified the tribe, whereupon, 
 hastening to meet for the first time the "pale faces," the chiefs first, 
 and then the whole body of the warriors saluted the Captain and 
 his men with utmost cordiality and in most approved style of Indian 
 politeness, by each j)utting the left arm over the stranger's right 
 shoulder, clasping the back and applying the left cheek to the right 
 cheek of his white brother, vociferating "Ah-hi-e ah-hi-e!" "I am 
 much pleased ! I am much rejoiced." (L. & C, Ch. XVI.) 
 
 It scarcely needs be said that when the ceremony ended the pale 
 faces had received no small share of the paint and grease with which 
 the Indians were freely besmeared. 
 
 Nor was pathos wholly wanting, for Sacajawea, the interpreter's 
 wife, was a Shoshone, taken prisoner years before by the Blackfeet, 
 and in Cameahwait, the Shoshone chief, she recognized her brother. 
 
 Buying horses they started across one of the most rugged of all 
 the Rocky Mountain regions, and suffering much hardship from 
 snow, and frost, and scarcity of food, after twenty-one days or 
 nearly four hundred miles travel, having been forced to kill two 
 colts and one horse for food, they came out September 21st among 
 the Nez Perces Indians, about six hundred miles from the Pacific, 
 on a stream navigable for boats. 
 
 Leaving their horses with the Nez Perces, they built canoes, and 
 October 7, 1805, started down the river for "the great stinking pond," 
 as the Indiai'S of the mountains called the ocean, and on November 
 7th their journal says: "The fog suddenly clearing away we were 
 at last presented with the glorious sight of the ocean — that ocean, 
 the object of all our labors, the reward of all our anxieties." 
 
 No holiday pastime had this month been of boating down the 
 unknown Koos Kooske, the Snake and the Columbia, for they have 
 numerous rapids where huge rocks divide their waters, and threaten 
 the daring boatsmen with destruction. 
 
 More than fifty of these rapids they ran with imminent hazard, 
 but, fortunately with no more serious consequences than frequent 
 wetting of cargoes and ducking of crews. 
 
 Other rapids they dared not run, but made weary portages, car- 
 rying boats and lading on their shoulders and carefully watching to 
 prevent the Indians from plundering. 
 
 Provisions, too, were scarce and high priced, for westward of 
 the Mandans none of the Northern Indians cultivated the soil, and 
 our explorers were reduced to the necessity of subsisting very 
 largely on dogs bought from the Indians, and as the tribes on the 
 Columbia, unlike those on the Missouri, never ate dogs, the dema- 
 gogues among them soon held the pale faces up to ridicule and con-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 47 
 
 tempt as "dog eaters," precisely as now, white demagogues hold the 
 patient, industrious Chinaman up to as ill-deserved reproach, as 
 eaters of cats and rats. 
 
 As the Astoria party — the next party of whites that passed 
 down the Columbia — were reduced to the same necessity of living 
 on dogs, I have often wondered what legends would have been 
 handed down among these tribes if it had chanced that no more 
 whites had visited them for a generation or two. 
 
 How the "medicine men" would have sneered whenever the pale 
 faces were mentioned, and savagely denounced them as "Miserable, 
 degraded dog-eaters — men who, by some strange freak of the Great 
 Spirit had been given skill to make many wonderful and useful 
 things but whose tastes in the matter of food were sadly debased." 
 
 Nothing speaks more eloquently of the material progress of the 
 past century, than the comparison of this first journey ever made 
 overland to the Pacific within our territory, which occupied this 
 well equipped and admirably managed party eighteen months of 
 arduous toil from St. Louis, with much hardship, and many perils 
 and no little risk of starvation on the way, and the present overland 
 journey made from St. Louis to the Pacific by any one of a half 
 dozen routes in three days in the luxurious ease of a palace car. 
 
 They wintered in log huts on the south of the mouth of the Co- 
 lumbia, and March 23, 1806, started back, and when they reached 
 the Flathead country, turning more to the north they struck 
 across to and followed up the great northern branch of the Colum- 
 bia, since then known as Clark's Fork, or the Flathead River, and 
 about where Missoula, Mont., now stands the party divided. Cap- 
 tain Lewis taking an easterly route, and crossing the main range of 
 the Rockies on to the Dearborn River, by Lewis and Clark's Pass 
 (though Captain Clark never saw it), while Captain Clark, taking 
 a more southeasterly course, crossed the main range of the Rockies 
 to the headwaters of the Jefferson River, not far from where Dillcm, 
 Mont., now is, over a pass which is sometimes called Gibbon's, but 
 more commonly is called — as it ought ever to be — Clark's Pass, con- 
 cerning which their narrative says, "They had now crossed from 
 Traveller's Rest Creek to the head of Jefferson's River, which seems 
 to form the best and shortest route over the mountains during al- 
 most the whole distance of 164 miles. It is, in fact, a very excellent 
 road ; and by cutting down a few trees it might be rendered a good 
 route for wagons, with the exception of about four miles over one of 
 the mountains, which would require some levelling." (L. & C Ex. 
 1842 Ed., p. 285. Coues' Ed. Vol. 3, p. 1128.) Of the great import- 
 ance of this discovery of a pass so easily practicable for wagons I 
 shall have something to say hereafter in discussing the story of the 
 development of a wagon road across the continent.
 
 48 ACQUI;SITI0X OF OREGON 
 
 After various adventures the two parties were reunited near the 
 mouth of the Yellowstone, on August 12, 180G, and September 23d, 
 two years, four months and nine days after they first entered the 
 Missouri Kiver, they ran out of its mouth, and in the language of 
 their journal, "Rounded to at St. Louis, where we received a most 
 hearty and hospitable welcome from the whole village." (L. & C. 
 Ex., 1842 Ed., Vol. 2, p. 338.) 
 
 This expedition added priority of exploration of the valley of 
 Columbia's river, to discovery of its mouth in our chain of title, 
 Great Britain being too late in reaching its sources, as she had been 
 in entering its mouth, for though as soon as they heard of Lewis 
 and Clark's expedition, the Northwest Company sent a party to 
 explore it, for some unknown reason they never went beyond the 
 Mandan villages. (Greenhow, p. 290, Harmon's Journal, pp. 132 
 and 137, under dates of Nov. 24, 1804, and Apr. 10, 1805.)
 
 CHAPTER lY. 
 
 THE FOUNDING AND CAPTURE OF ASTORIA. 
 
 American fur trading companies having their headquarters in 
 St. Louis quickly followed up the route of Lewis and Clark and as 
 early as the autumn of 1810, Mr. Andrew Henry, of the Missouri 
 Fur Company, following up the Madison fork of the Missouri, had 
 crossed the main range of the Rockies on to that beautiful branch 
 of the Snake or Lewis River, which has ever since been known as 
 Henry Fork, and established a trading post on it, which was the 
 first establishment of any kind made by American people in the ter- 
 ritory drained by Columbia's river. The enmity of the savages in 
 its vicinity, and the difficulty of obtaining provisions^ obliged Mr. 
 Plenry to abandon the post in the spring of 1811 (which proved very 
 disastrous to the overland part of the Astoria party in the autumn 
 of 1811). 
 
 Henry's Lake is the head of Henry Fork, and is a most lovely 
 little lakelet covering about twelve square miles. It lies in a horse- 
 shoe-shaped bend of the main range of the Rocky Mountains, and 
 upon its shores, within a semicircle of less than fifteen miles con- 
 verge three passes, Reynolds, Tahgee and Red Rock, each so gentle 
 of slope that wagons could be driven across the Continental Divide 
 into the Oregon Territory, over any one of them with only a few 
 days' labor in road making, and, in fact, over two of them, Reynolds 
 and Tahgee — hundreds of wagons went before even a survey for a 
 road was made, and when the entire amount of labor expended on 
 the two passes was not more than the equivalent of the labor of five 
 men for a week. This I know from my own experience in driving 
 over them in 1873 and 1875. 
 
 So far as I have been able to learn there is no other place on 
 earth where three easy passes across a great Continental Divide con- 
 verge within a semicircle of fifteen miles. 
 
 Meanwhile the Astoria party was organizing, whose story 
 through the elegant narrative of Irving, and the less known and less 
 fascinating but very valuable books of Franchere, of Ross Cox and 
 of Alexander Ross, is so well known as to need but brief mention. 
 
 Admirably planned by the keen intellect of John Jacob Astor, 
 the project, which would finally have settled the title of the Oregon
 
 50 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Territory by nddinji- actual occupancy to our claims by discovery, 
 and exploration, and the continuity of territory result inj; from the 
 Louisiana purchase failed through the war of 1812, and the treach- 
 ery to Mr. Astor's interests of those partners in the company who 
 were British subjects. 
 
 The overland part of the Astoria Expedition (numbering sixty 
 well-armed men), fearing the hostility of the Blackfeet Indians, 
 struck southwest from the Missouri Iviver at the Arickara village, 
 crossed the Continental Divide south of what is now the Yellow- 
 stone National Tark, and, guided by the mighty Tetons (which they 
 named the Pilot Knobs), came on to the headwaters of the Lewis or 
 Snake River, where they made the sad mistake of leaving their 
 horses, and trying the rest of the journey in canoes, but finding the 
 stream unnavigable from its numerous cataracts and rapids, they 
 were forced in winter to traverse on foot the (to white men) wholly 
 unknown, disnuil, sand deserts and dreary lava beds of the central 
 part of the Snake River valley, where the Indians, knowing the 
 whole country and all its scanty resources were barely able to sub- 
 sist. 
 
 They suffered the direct extremes of hunger, so that they ate 
 their beaver skins, and even their old moccasins, and when, at some 
 miserable encani])ment of squalid savages they obtained a few dogs, 
 or a horse, they could not wait for the flesh, to be cooked, but ate it 
 half or wholly raw. 
 
 Two perished in the raging torrent, to which the Canadian voy- 
 ageurs gave the name of "the accursed mad river." 
 
 Some died of hunger and cold, and several were killed by In- 
 dians. 
 
 Thus always it is true of the progress of humanity, that ''(^ther 
 men have labored," aye and suffered and died too, "and we have en- 
 tered into their labors," and of no part of our country is it truer 
 than of the Oregon territory, that our title to it was finally estab- 
 lished only by the great heroism, patient endurances, and in not a 
 few cases the life blood of some of the bravest, truest hearted souls 
 that ever lived. 
 
 That part of the Astoria party (seven in number) which re- 
 turned overland discovered in November, 1812, that remarkable gap 
 in the main range of the Rockies known as the South Pass. (See 
 letter of Ramsay Crooks dated New York, June 20, 18.5f», to Anthony 
 Dudgeon, Esq., Detroit, Mich., and printed in Detroit Free Press in 
 1856. I have the clij)ping from the Free Press containing the letter, 
 but not the precise date of publication. In this letter, Crooks says 
 he was then the only survivor of that party of seven.)
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 51 
 
 The British hoped to forestall us in the actual occupation of the 
 valley of Columbia's river, but as in its discovery and exploration, 
 they were a little behind hand. 
 
 As soon as they learned of Mr. Astor's plans the Northwest Com- 
 pany (the great Canadian fur company which after sixteen years of 
 bitter and relentless competition with the Hudson's Bay Company 
 was consolidated with it in 1821) started a party for ^'Columbia's 
 River," but though they did succeed in crossing the Rocky Moun- 
 tains onto its extreme headwaters, did not descend it till a few 
 weeks after the foundation of Astoria on April 12, 1811. (Irving's 
 "Astoria," Ch. IX.; Greenhow, p. 296; Franchere, p. 101.) (The 
 Northwest Company, by their intrepid explorer David Thompson, 
 actually occupied the extreme headwaters of the Columbia in 1808, 
 1809 and 1810.) 
 
 On October IG, 1813 (according to Irving, but October 23, accord- 
 ing to Franchere), all the interests of Mr. Astor in the Oregon coun- 
 try were sold by his managing partner, McDougal, to the North- 
 west Company of Montreal, for about one-third of their value, 
 for which piece of treachery to his partner's interests McDougal 
 was shortly afterwards rewarded with an interest in the Northwest 
 Company. (Cf. Irving's "Astoria," Chap. 59, Franchere, Chap. 
 XV.) November 30, 1813, the British sloop-of-war Raccoon of 
 twenty-six guns and 120 men, arrived off Astoria, its officers and 
 crew eagerly anticipating great profits for themselves in the prize 
 money they should receive for the American vessels and the rich 
 store of furs they expected to capture there. When they discovered 
 that there were no American ships there, and that their expected 
 fortunes had been traded away from their grasp only six weeks be- 
 fore by the shrewd Scotch agents of that same Northwest Com- 
 pany, one of whose partners had not only instigated their being de- 
 spatched on their tedious cruise to capture Astoria from its Yankee 
 owners, but, with five voyageurs for the service of his company, had 
 been taken as passengers on the Raccoon, their disgust and disap- 
 pointment were inexpressible, and at fii'st they were inclined to re- 
 sent what they regarded as a trick put ui)on them by their bargain- 
 ing countrymen, and demanded that the property should be in- 
 ventoried that measures might be taken to recover its value in Eng- 
 land, from the Northwest Company. A few days' reflection, how- 
 ever, satisfied Captain Black, Commander of the Raccoon, that 
 he might better make the best of the situation and not attempt any 
 legal contest with the sharp traders who had so cunningly jockeyed 
 a fortune out of his hands. 
 
 Fortunately for us. Captain Black was not content "to let well 
 enough alone," and sail away without going through the form of 
 having captured Astoria, and so, on December 12, 1813, "Attended
 
 52 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 by his oflBcers he entered the fort, caused the British standard to be 
 erected, broke a bottle of wine, and declared in a loud voice, that he 
 took possession of the establishment and of the country, in the name 
 of His Britannic Majesty, changing the name of Astoria to that of 
 Ft. George," and soon after sailed away. (Irving's "Astoria," Ch. 
 60, Chanchere, Chap. XV.) 
 
 This empty ceremonial, as we shall soon see, forged another 
 strong link in our complex chain of title to the vast region "Where 
 Rolls the Oregon."
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY OF A ROUTE 
 
 PRACTICABLE FOR AND THE DEVELOPMENT 
 
 OF THE FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL 
 
 WAGON ROAD. 
 
 The myth-loving originators and advocates of the Whitman Le- 
 gend have invented so many amazing and amusing fictions about 
 Whitman's experience with his *'oId wagon" that a vast majority of 
 those who have read anything about him regard him as the chief 
 factor in discovering and developing the wagon road to Oregon. 
 
 It is doubtful if about any other so wholly unimportant and in- 
 consequential an event in our history has there ever been imagined 
 and printed as true so many palpably false statements, as about 
 Whitman's driving his "old wagon" to Ft. Boise in 1836, and hence 
 it becomes necessary to relate briefly, not only the true story of that 
 event, but also of what preceded and followed it in the discovery of 
 a route for and the establishment of a wagon road to Oregon. First 
 let us glance briefly at what is claimed for Whitman in this mat- 
 ter. In the chapters on the varying forms of the Whitman Saved 
 Oregon Story, and on what Whitman himself claimed (in Part II.), 
 will be found abundant proof of the extravagance of the claims 
 made by Atkinson in the first two forms of the Whitman Saved Ore- 
 gon Story in 18.58 and 1859, and in AVhitman's own letters from No- 
 vember 1, 1843, to October 18, 1847, as to his share in leading the 
 migration of 1843 to Oregon ; but neither Atkinson nor Whitman 
 claimed that his wagon in 1836 was of any special consequence, and 
 though the legend had as early as 1858-9 so far developed as to ac- 
 cuse the H. B. Co. of opposing later wagons going bej^ond Ft. Hall, 
 even Atkinson does not venture to accuse the H. B. Co. of opposing 
 Whitman's taking his wagon in 1836, while not a sentence has been 
 found in any letter or diary of Whitman, or Mrs. Whitman, or Mrs. 
 Spalding, or in any letter or diary of Spalding, or Gray, or C. Eells, 
 or Mrs. Eells, or E. Walker, or Mrs. Walker prior to the publica- 
 tion of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story in 1865-6, that accuses 
 the H. B. Co. of offering any opposition to wagons going beyond Ft. 
 Hall, or making any effort to prevent Americans from reaching and 
 settling in Oregon. And though in his articles in the '^Pacific'' in 
 September, October and November, 1865, in launching the first pub-
 
 54 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 lication of any definite and detailed form of the Whitman Saved 
 Oregon Story, Spalding accused the H. B. Co. of stopping wagons 
 at Ft. Hall to prevent the settling of the country by Americans (Cf. 
 '^Pacific/' Nov. 9, 18G5), nowhere in any of those articles, nor in 
 his pamphlet jiublished in 1871 (as Sen. Ex. Doc. 37, 41st Cong. 3d 
 Sess.), with all its wildly extravagant and baseless claims for Whit- 
 man, and its equally unfounded denunciations of the H, B. Co. is 
 there one sentence about any opposition on the part of the Hudson's 
 Bay Co. to Whitman's driving his wagon beyond Ft. Hall in 1836. 
 
 But as the legend developed, and it became evident that it could 
 not obtain credence unless the belief could be created that the Hud- 
 son Bay Co. was bitterly opposed to Americans reaching and set- 
 tling in Oregon, the myth-lovers speedily invented statements to 
 that effect, and that this opposition began when Whitman drove his 
 old wagon up to Ft. Hall, and grew more intense year by year there- 
 after. These statements having been often repeated and apparently 
 substantiated by fraudulent quotations (like that from Palmer's 
 Jouniiil hereinafter examined), and by other fabricated evidence 
 have come to be generally accepted as true, though there exists the 
 most indisputable contemporaneous evidence of their total falsity. 
 
 In his article in the '^Pacific' for September 28, 1865, Spalding 
 wrote: "The only one purpose of these consecrated women" (Mrs. 
 Whitman and Mrs. Spalding) ''was to obey their Lord and carry 
 the Gospel to the Indians. God had also another, the opening the 
 Great ^^'agon Route from the ]\Tissouri to the Columbia and the 
 gold mines of the Pacific. They actually settled the question by 
 their own sacrifices and trials and dangers, that women, and wagons 
 and cattle could cross the mountains, a thing pronounced impossible 
 by hundreds of mountain men. . . Therefore to these two Ameri- 
 can missionary heroines are the })eople of the Ignited States, es- 
 pecially the citizens of this coast, indebted more than to any other 
 two persons dead or alive, for the present and prospective import- 
 ance of this Great West. . . . This vastly important emigrant 
 route, thus established by the personal sacrifices and hazards of 
 these two devoted missionaries" (Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spald- 
 ing) , ''was saved to our country as it was about to be extinguished by 
 the false representations and wiles of the Hudson's Bay Co., by the 
 personal hMzar<ls and hardships of that devoted missionary. Dr. 
 Whitman, in the California Mountains in the winter of 184'2 and 
 '43." Turn now to W. H. Gray's contemporaneous letters and state- 
 ments and com]>are thorn with what he wrote and })ublished in 1870 
 in his "History of Oregon." If the reader will turn to Chapter 3 
 of Part II., infra, he will find Gray's testimony in the case of 
 the Hudson's Bay Co. vs. the U. S., in which he admitted not only 
 that he knew that Dr. ^A'hitman reported to the American Board
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 55 
 
 that he had been treated by the officers of the Hudson's Bay Co. with 
 the utmost and unlimited liindness all the time he had been in Ore- 
 gon, but that ''I did the same myself when I was at home" (L e., in 
 the winter of 1837-38). 
 
 January 10, 1838, Gray wrote a long letter from Fairfield, N. Y., 
 to Rev. D. Greene, Secretary of the A. B. C. F. M. (from which noth- 
 ing has yet been published as far as I know, but), from which the 
 following is an extract : 
 
 *'You have been informed as to the very kind reception and treat- 
 ment we have received from the Officers and Gentlemen connected 
 with the Honorable Hudson's Bay Company. You are also fully 
 acquainted with their object in the country and you also know ours. 
 The request we have to make is that you will forward to the Com- 
 missioners of the Honorable Hudson's Bay Company in London a 
 statement of instructions that you may forward to us, requiring us 
 as your agents, or representatives, or servants, to have nothing to do 
 with the Trade of the country, so far as it relates to furs of any 
 kind. You will be particular and explicit on this point. We have 
 thus far received almost, if not quite, the unbounded confidence of 
 the gentlemen of the Company. We have told them that we will 
 have nothing to do with the Fur Trade in the country. It is not our 
 business nor do we mean to be troubled with it. We wish an ex- 
 pression of the Board to be forwarded to the Commissioners in Lon- 
 don, and also to Dr. McLoughlin at Vancouver. This will relieve 
 them from any apprehension of our becoming at all concerned in 
 the Fur Trade. If I am correctly informed as to our Methodist 
 friends on the Columbia, they have in this particular excited sus- 
 picion, if nothing further, as to their object in coming to the coun- 
 try. The Company are extremely jealous of their Trade, and as we 
 have no definite instructions from the Board on this particular, we 
 wish them to understand through the Board what our instructions 
 are." 
 
 Accordingly, in the "Instruction of the Prudential Committee 
 of the A. B. C. F. M. to Rev. Messrs. E. Walker, C. Eells, A. B. 
 Smith and W. H. Gray, March 18, 1838," the original Mss. of which 
 is now among the documents of the Oregon Historical Society (and 
 a copy of which covers 29 pp. letter size double space type-written 
 Mss.), we find the following: "On your long journey and after your 
 arrival at the place of your destination, you will have more or less 
 intercourse with the gentlemen engaged in the Indian trade, es- 
 pecially with those connected with the American Fur Company and 
 the Hudson's Bay Company. They will be your companions in 
 travel and, during the last half of your journey, you will often stop 
 at their trading posts. From these, your predecessors in the field 
 have received the most friendly and hospitable treatment, and we
 
 56 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 have no reason to doubt that they will extend similar facilities to 
 you in your journeys and labors. They have in this respect laid 
 your brethren and the Board under great obligations, of which we 
 take pleasure in making this ])ublic acknowledgment. We are con- 
 fident that you, in your turn, will be to them courteous and respect- 
 ful, rendering them aid, meeting their wishes, and especially min- 
 istering to them of spiritual things, as far as the accomplishment of 
 your work among the Indians will permit; thus showing that you 
 value their friendship and are grateful for their favors. You, of 
 course, hardly need to be reminded that you are in no manner to 
 interfere with their trade, but scrupulously to stand aloof from 
 everything which may awaken jealousy on this point. Your objects 
 are entirely different from theirs. Theirs are the ordinary gains of 
 traffic ; yours to introduce and establish Christianity." 
 
 Yet in face of this positive instruction from the American Board 
 to its missionaries made at the request of Whitman and Spalding 
 through Gray, not to have anything to do with the fur trade, in the 
 progress of the development of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story 
 we find the following on page 74 of Spalding's pamphlet (Sen. Ex. 
 Doc. 37) in the "Resolutions adopted by the Pleasant Butte Baptist 
 Church of Linn County, Oregon, October 22, 1869 : 
 
 ''By the crossing of the Rocky Mountains in 1834 (four years be- 
 fore any Romish ])riest set foot in Oregon), by the Protestant Lee, 
 the i)ioneer missionary, and his little band, to become permanent 
 missionaries and settlers on this coast. And the undaunted patriot- 
 ism exhibited by this Christian hero in his first interview with the 
 governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, then a corrupt British 
 monopoly on this coast. The governor said to Mr. Lee : "All needed 
 supi)lies and facility in our power shall be afforded to your mission 
 while you confine yourselves to your work as teachers, but the day 
 you lay hands on beaver all supplies will be stopped, and you will 
 be left destitute. The trade in furs and the commerce of these seas 
 belong to us." The reply of this missionary, American withal, was 
 promj)t and characteristic : "Governor, it is true I was born a Brit- 
 ish subject; but I am now an American citizen, and as such I have 
 and shall claim the same right on these shores as the most favored 
 British subject, and that too by treaty. I shall therefore trade 
 beaver where and when I please." The same reply, almost word for 
 word, was made two years later to the same English oflScer, by that 
 faithful Christian but stern patriot, Marcus Whitman. That deter- 
 mined the fate of both of these valuable men; they fell martyrs to 
 this their country. The destruction of the one was brought about 
 through apostate Americans and disaffected friends employed to 
 misrepresent; that of the other by imported Romish agents and 
 Hudson's Bay interpreters worikng upon the savages." These reso-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 57 
 
 lutions contain abundant proof that they were written by Spalding 
 as was pretty much everything else in the pamphlet. 
 
 In 1839, Gray, having quarreled with all his associates, began 
 to scheme to desert the mission, which he finally did in Sept., 1842, 
 in a manner that Rev. C. Eells and Rev. E. Walker denounced as 
 dishonorable and deceptive. 
 
 His first step was to apply to the Hudson's Bay Co. for the po- 
 sition of teacher of their school at Ft. Vancouver for his wife, and 
 employment for himself in some capacity, (not named in the evi- 
 dence, but probably at his "profession" of cabinet maker or car- 
 penter). 
 
 His application was promptly declined on the ground that the 
 company had no satisfactory evidence that the Mission were will- 
 ing that he should sever his connection with it. (Cf. on these points 
 Gray's testimony in case of the H. B. Co. vs. the U. S., Part 2, Chap- 
 ter III., infra, and C. Eells' letter of Oct. 3, 1842, to D. Greene, 
 secretary, endorsed as correct [especially in its criticism of Gray's 
 course] by Rev. E. Walker, Part 2, Chapter IV., mfra.) 
 
 Forthwith Gray reported to the American Board that there was 
 a rupture of the friendly relations that had previously existed be- 
 tween their missionaries in Oregon and the Hudson's Bay Co., which 
 being reported back to Whitman, in 1840, in a letter from D. Greene, 
 evoked a most emphatic contradiction from Whitman in his of July 
 13, 1841, in which he wrote "Your fears lest our good understand- 
 ing with the gentlemen of the Hudson's Bay Co. should have been 
 interrupted are not well founded, for it has remained undisturbed 
 up to this date, indeed we never were on better terms than at 
 present." And the evidence hereinafter presented in Chapter VII., 
 on "The Truth About the Relation of the Hudson's Bay Co. to the 
 American Exploration, Occupation and Settlement of Oregon," 
 demonstrates beyond dispute that this good understanding re- 
 mained unimpaired till the destruction of the Mission by the mas- 
 sacre in Nov., 1847. Yet, when Gray published his "History," in 
 1870, he declared, (p. 183) "From that time forward" (i e., the fall 
 of 1839) "a marked change was manifest in the feelings of most 
 of the gentlemen of the company." 
 
 (P. 118) Gray says, "Whitman and his four men opened it (/. e., 
 the wagon road to Oregon) as far as they could with a light wagon 
 and a cart. To him must be given the credit of the first practical 
 experiment, though Ashley, Bonneville and Bridger had taken 
 wagons into the Rocky Mountains and left them, and pronounced 
 the experiment a failure, and a wagon road impracticable. Whit- 
 man's i^erseverance demonstrated a great fact — the practicability 
 of a wagon road over the Rocky Mountains."
 
 58 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 (P. 133) Gray says that at Ft. Hall, "Miles Goodyear left the 
 Mission party," and continues, "This loss of manual strength to the 
 Mission party compelled the Doctor to curtail his wagon, so he 
 made a cart on two of the wheels, i)laced the axle tree and the other 
 two wheels on his cart, and about llio 1st of August, 183(5, our camp 
 was again in motion." Idem. (p. 140) "At this place {i. e., Ft. 
 Boise) "McLeod and McKay, and all the Johnny Crapauds of the 
 company united in the opinion that it was impossible to get the 
 Doctor's cart any farther without taking it all apart . . . and 
 packing it . . . After several consultations, and some very de- 
 cided ex])ressions against any further attempt to take the wagon 
 further, a compromise was made, that after the party had reached 
 their permanent location the Doctor or Mr. Gray would return with 
 the Hudson's Bay Company's caravan and get the wagon and bring 
 it through." Why neither he nor Dr. Whitman ever sent for the 
 cart left at Ft. Boise, Gray vouchsafes no information. In the 
 whole 021 pages of his History, Gray not only does not quote one 
 sentence from the contemporary correspondence and diaries of the 
 various members of the American Board Mission in Oregon, but he 
 gives no intimation that any such matter existed at the headquar- 
 ters of the xVmerican Board in Boston and in the possession of the 
 friends and relations of the missionaries to the amount of nearly or 
 quite one million words. 
 
 Possibly some of his friends might urge in his defense that it 
 was a long and expensive journey from Oregon to Boston, in 1866- 
 70, more than a dozen j^ears before there was any transcontinental 
 railroad into Oregon. 
 
 But what can be said in defense of Rev. Wm. Barrows, who not 
 only lived most of his life in and close to P>oston, but for six years — 
 1873-79 — just before he "threw together" his "Oregon," as Secre- 
 tary of the Massachusetts Home Missionary Society had his oflTice 
 in the same building as the A. B. C. F. M., and must have known of 
 all the correspondence therein existing, and yet, as Prof. Bourne 
 says, not only "Successfully resisted the temptation" to examine 
 and quote any of it, but, from title page to finis of his book never 
 even alludes to its existence, but instead of these original sources 
 of the history of American Board Mission in Oregon relies on Gray's 
 History of Oregon, Si)alding's Pamphlet (Ex. Doc. 37), and Rev. M. 
 Eells' Indian ^fissions, (which is as untrustworthy as Gray or 
 Spalding), and, more than all else, on his own vivid and myth- 
 loving imagination. 
 
 Naturally in his book the "Whitman's old wagon" myth blos- 
 soms out in its wildest form, as witness the following quotations, 
 page 140, chapter XVI., "Whitman's Old Wagon": "The Oregon 
 question finally turned on wheels . . . Then diplomacy, civil
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 59 
 
 engineering and the two nations — all concerned — had to wait for 
 the wagons. The taking one through overland to the Columbia by 
 Dr. Whitman was the most important act in all preliminaries in 
 the settlement of the Oregon controversy. At first only two parties 
 took a proper view of a wagon for Oregon — Marcus Whitman and 
 the Hudson's Bay Co. In 1836, when the wagon was at Fort Hall 
 and Fort Boise with its two women occupants, it suggested to the 
 Company the family and a civilized home and permanent settle- 
 ment in Oregon, and a highway from the Missouri to that settle- 
 ment which others could follow. The Company therefore deter- 
 mined to turn the wagon back, or divert it to California, or stop it 
 absolutely. Dr. Whitman took the same view of the wagon, and 
 therefore concluded to take it through to Oregon." 
 
 (P. 142) "Arrived at Ft. Hall ... all parties, mission, and 
 Hudson's Bay and the postmen, too, combined to say that the wagon 
 could be hauled no farther . . . But the iron Doctor was im- 
 movable . . . Finally the indomitable man made a compromise, 
 converted the wagon into a cart, loaded in the duplicate wheels and 
 axletree and started again on wheels for the Columbia." 
 
 (P. 142) Speaking of what took place at Ft. Boise, Barrows 
 says: "Finally a compromise was effected. The wagon should be 
 left at Ft. Boise, till some one could come back and take it on to 
 the established mission . . . and soon after the 'old wagon' 
 went through, the first to pass the plains and the mountains so far 
 towards Oregon." So (on p. 14.5) he says: "The 'Old Wagon' of 
 Marcus Whitman . . . finally and later came out all right on 
 the lower Columbia at Ft. Walla Walla." P. 146 he says: "The 
 wagon and the two brides, Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding, had 
 won Oregon. The first wheels had marked the prairie, and brushed 
 the sage, and grazed the rocks and cut the river banks all the way 
 from the Missouri to the Columbia." As to the "two brides," it is 
 proper to observe that the Spaldings were married Oct. 12, 1833, 
 and Mrs. Spalding had borne and buried a child before Whitman 
 invited them to go to Oregon in February, 1836, and, except in such 
 romances as the Whitman Legend, a woman is supposed to cease 
 to be "a bride" some time before she bears a child — (Cf. on this 
 "Sketch of Life of H. H. Spalding in Trans. Oregon Pioneers' Asso- 
 ciation," 1897, p. 107) — and as to the child (which none of the ro- 
 mancers wishing to represent this as a double bridal tour have ever 
 alluded to), Cf. Whitman's letters to D. Greene, secretary, dated 
 Rushville, N. Y., January 29, 1836, as follows: "Your allusion to 
 Mr. Spalding is incorrect. They lost their child by death some time 
 since." 
 
 (P. 147) Writing of the journey of the 1838 reinforcement to 
 the American Board Mission — consisting of Rev. C. Eells, E. Walker,
 
 GO ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 A. B. Smith and their wives, Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Gray and Mr. 
 Cornelius Kogers, Barrows says of their experiences at Ft. Hall : 
 "Impediments, perils and Indians do not seem to have been put 
 before them at that fur traders' Gibraltar, for they had no car- 
 riages." 
 
 "They had acted on the already well-established impression in 
 the East that carriages could not travel to Oregon." But W. H. 
 Gray in his History of Oregon, (p. 177), says: "In the winter of 
 1837-8 Gray is in the States giving an account of his trip across the 
 Eocky Mountains with Messrs. Spalding and Whitman and of . . 
 the fact that a wagon had been taken by Dr. Whitman and his party 
 to Ft. Boise, and that it could be taken to the Wallamet Settle- 
 ment." 
 
 That there was no "well-established impression in the East that 
 carriages could not travel to Oregon" is evident from the fact that 
 this party started with a wagon, as appears from the following 
 extract from a letter of W. H. Gray to D. Greene, secretary, (from 
 which nothing has yet been published), dated Rendezvous, Wind 
 River Mountains, July (no day), 1838. On p. 8, after explaining 
 that they had been compelled to dispose of a wagon in trade for a 
 mule at a loss of |45, because it was old and not adapted to the 
 trip, he says: "The wagon we purchased to supply the place of the 
 one sent by Dr. Weed" (which was the old one before referred to) 
 "we have exchanged for a horse with Capt. Fontenelle, who kindly 
 exchanged with us when we could bring it no further for want of 
 horses." This, bear in mind, was 27 years before there was any 
 "Whitman Saved Oregon" tale invented, and when there was no 
 temptation, even to Gray's mendacious mind, to falsely accuse that 
 awful Hudson's Bay Company of stopping the wagon, which he .id- 
 mits they had traded off to an American fur trader at some point 
 more than 350 miles east of Ft. Hall, not from any opposition of 
 fur traders to its further progress, nor on account of the difficul- 
 ties of the way, but because they "could bring it no further for want 
 of horses." This swapping of the wagon for a horse took place at 
 Ft. Laramie. (Cf. Mrs. Eells' Diary in Tr. Oregon Pioneers' Asso- 
 ciation, 1889, p. 73.) 
 
 Dr. Weed kept a religious book store in Cincinnati for many 
 years, and was the agent there for the A. B, C. F. M. He was the 
 father of Geo. Ludington ^^'eed, who has written two of the most 
 wildly extravagant and grotesquely fictitious newsj)aper articles in 
 support of the Whitman Legend that have ever been printed. (Cf. 
 Ladies' Home Journal, November, 1897, and Sunday School Times, 
 August 23, 1902.) 
 
 (P. 152) Barrows says: "Now such a company (i. e., the Hud- 
 son's Bay Company) was driven into anxiety. It was confronted
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 61 
 
 and troubled and forced into strategy by an 'old wagon.' Under 
 this fear" (i. e., that if wagons went through they would lose Ore- 
 gon) ''they fought all its kith and kin as they drove up to Ft. Hall, 
 and they spread the impression through the United States from 
 New Hampshire to Texas, that wheels could not be driven from the 
 Snake River Valley to the Columbia." 
 
 (P. 153) "Not only did the Company hold this known pass by 
 representing it to be impassable for carriages, but they kept the 
 knowledge of other passes a secret." 
 
 (P. 166) Speaking of Whitman's ride to the States in 1842-3, 
 and his arrival at Ft. Hall, Barrows says: "If Capt. Grant and 
 the Hudson's Bay Co. generally made a mistake in letting Dr. Whit- 
 man through with his old wagon six years before, they made a 
 greater one in letting him return on horseback to the States." I 
 shall present the most indisputable evidence that no Hudson's Bay 
 Company's officers or men made any objection to Whitman's trying 
 the experiment of driving his wagon to and beyond Ft. Hall, nor 
 did any one of them offer the slightest opposition to his return to 
 the States. 
 
 Furthermore, Grant was not at Ft. Hall six, nor five, nor four, 
 nor three, nor two years before this, but came there to take com- 
 mand less than one year before this time, as witness the following 
 extract from a letter of A. McKinley (who was in command at Ft. 
 Walla W^alla from 1841 to 1846), to Hon. Elwood Evans, quoted 
 by Mr. Evans in Seattle Daily Intelligencer of April 28, 1881: 
 
 "The Red River Colony arrived at Walla Walla when the old 
 fort was burned, October 3, 1841. The express from Selkirk ar- 
 rived about the 25th of October, in charge of Mr. Richard Grant, 
 afterwards for several years in charge of Ft. Hall. 
 
 "In 1842 not a single immigrant came from Red River to Ore- 
 gon." So Grant had no more to do with hindering or helping Whit- 
 man about his wagon in 1836, than Rev. Wm. Barrows himself had, 
 and, as we shall see later, the contemporaneous testimony of every 
 American who was at Ft. Hall while Grant was in command there 
 {i. e., from 1842 to 1851) was that Grant's treatment of all Ameri- 
 cans who reached Ft. Hall on the way to Oregon was uniformly 
 kind and courteous. 
 
 Nixon, of course, accepts these fictions of Barrows about Grant 
 as authentic history, and gives freest rein to his own very lively 
 and unrestrained imagination in embellishing in the most lurid 
 "newspaperish" English his ideas of Grant's interview with Whit- 
 man, in October, 1842. So much easier is it to dash down a his- 
 tory (?) of Oregon, as one does an editorial for the Inter-Ocean 
 from "one's own interior consciousness," assisted by intense re- 
 ligious prejudices, than to patiently study contemporaneous evi-
 
 62 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 dence to learn what actually occurred. (Cf. Nixon's "How Marcus 
 Whitman Saved Oref-on," pp. 109-110.) 
 
 liarrows (p. 171) says of Whitman: "The same man this is 
 who made the Kocky Mountains jjive up to a wagon." 
 
 (P. 247) Writing of the arrival of the 1843 migration at Ft. 
 Hall, Barrows says: "Serious troubles confronted the Doctor. He 
 could feed a thousand people on the plains, ford the rivers and 
 force the mountains, but to run the gauntlet of the Hudson's Bay 
 })ost, whose intei-ests were so deeply involved in stop])ing him, was 
 another labor." . . . (P. 246) "A desperate etlort must be made" 
 (i. e., by the Hudson's Bay Company's officers at Ft. Hall) "to 
 scatter or divert or turn back the company" (/. e., the 1843 migra- 
 tion.) . . . "At this point many immigrant companies had 
 been intimidated and broken up, and so Ft. Hall served as a cover 
 to Oregon, just as a battery at the mouth of a river ])rotects the 
 inland city on its banks." (P. 249) "Here the postmen had made 
 the fatal mistake of allowing the 'old wagon' of the Doctor to go 
 through seven years before . . . Oregon was taken at Ft. Hall." 
 
 As we shall see in this chapter, and in the chapter on "The Truth 
 About the Kelation of the Hudson's Bay Company to the American 
 Ex{)loration, Occupation and Settlement of Oregon," all this about 
 opposition by the Hudson's Bay Company at Ft. Hall — or anywhere 
 else — in 1836, or 1843 — or at any other time — to wagons going to 
 Oregon is pure fiction, not only absolutely destitute of any support 
 in contemporaneous letters, diaries, reports of government officers, 
 and books i)ublished in 1838, 1839, 1840, 1845 and 1847, by ex- 
 plorers, and travelers and emigrants to Oregon, but is squarely con- 
 tradicted by all those contemporaneous documents published and 
 unpublished, the writers of every one of which gratefully acknowl- 
 edge their obligations to the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company 
 for their most kind and hosi)itable reception and treatment at all 
 their various posts in the Oregon Territory, especially Ft. Hall, Ft. 
 Boise, Ft. Walla Walla and Ft. Vancouver. 
 
 Barrows, who never saw it — calls Ft. Hall "This fur traders' 
 Gibraltar," but Col. Wm. Gilpin — a graduate of West Point, who 
 accompanied Fremont to Oregon in 1843, and returned via Ft. Hall 
 and the Spanish Trail to Bent's Fort in 1844, and afterwards took 
 a prominent i)art in the Mexican War, and was subsequently Gov- 
 ernor of Colorado — (and as such organized the little army that 
 utterly routed the Confederate army sent under Gen. Sibley to con- 
 quer New Mexico and Colorado, and, if possible, California), on 
 February 8, 1867, in Washington, D. C, testified in the famous case 
 of "The Hudson's Bay Co. vs. the U.S." (Cf. vol. 6, pp. 330 et seq. of 
 report of that case) as follows: That he was at Ft. Hall several 
 days in 1843 on his way to Oregon, and several weeks in the sum-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 63 
 
 mer of 1844 on his return ; that it was a small quadrangular trad- 
 ing post, about 100 feet square, built of adobies (or sun-dried bricks) 
 and log cabins, occupied by about eleven men, designed for mere 
 temporary use for the protection of stores, and trade with the In- 
 dians; that having built such structures himself, and having once 
 been in treaty for the purchase of Bent's Fort, he was well ac- 
 quainted with the value of such establishments, and that he should 
 consider |2,000 a liberal price to pay for all the buildings he saw 
 at Ft. Hall. 
 
 The magnifying by Barrows of this little |2,000 trading post 
 "occupied by about eleven men" into a "fur traders' Gibraltar" is a 
 perfectly fair example of the way Barrows' imagination swelled and 
 distorted every fact connected in any way with Whitman's relation 
 to Oregon. 
 
 With the publication of Barrows' Oregon, in 1883, the "wagon 
 myth" concerning Marcus Whitman may be regarded as fully de- 
 veloped, though some of the later myth loving advocates of the 
 Whitman Legend, notably Geo. Ludington Weed, Rev. Jonathan 
 Edwards, and Rev. L. H. Hallock, have added "some frills and 
 feathers of ornamentation" to it with which even Barrows' fervid 
 imagination, wholly unlimited as it was by any sense of obligation 
 to inquire into the truth of what his fancy impelled him to write, 
 did not venture to adorn his story. 
 
 We are now ready to examine the contemporaneous evidence and 
 learn the true story of the whole of the discovery of routes practi- 
 cable for, and the speedy development of the first wagon road across 
 the continent, and to learn how very trifling was Whitman's part in 
 that matter. 
 
 But before we can understand with what ease many routes prac- 
 ticable for wagons when almost or entirely in a state of nature were 
 discovered along the whole eastern edge of the old Oregon Territory, 
 from 42 degrees to 47 degrees north latitude, and the speed with 
 which a wagon road was developed over not only the Main Range 
 of the Rocky Mountains, but over all the outlying ranges as far 
 West as the Cascades, without any governmental expenditure even 
 for a survey of the route we must know a little of the peculiar geo- 
 graphical features of the Rocky Mountain region. 
 
 The whole Appalachian system before the whites settled our 
 country was covered with dense forests stretching far out east and 
 west from their bases, and generally full of a dense undergrowth 
 of vines and shrubs, which rendered the exploration of their slopes 
 and the discovery of passes over their summits an exceedingly slow 
 and laborious task. 
 
 In the Rocky Mountain region, on the contrary, timber covers 
 but a small part of the higher slopes of the ranges, all the lower
 
 64 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 slopes and the foothills and the plains stretching hundreds of miles 
 away to the east, and the great interior plateaus and basins and 
 broad valleys of the larger rivers west of the Main Range as far as 
 the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountains being almost entirely 
 destitute of trees except here and there a little grove in a moist 
 spot, and a narrow fringe — generally of cottonwood, and poplar, 
 and box elder, and alders, and willows — along the banks of the 
 streams. The forests of the whole Koeky Mountain region on the 
 borders of and within the Old Oregon Territory, as far west as the 
 Cascade Mountains, were almost entirely of conifers — pines, firs, 
 hemlocks, cedars, etc. — and in the Rocky Mountains proper rarely 
 began below 6,000 to 7,500 feet above the sea level, and were rarely 
 continuous for any great distances, but were interspersed with 
 great stretches of grass land, which cover generally much more than 
 one-half the area within the forest belt on the mountains. 
 
 Furthermore, the forests rarely have much undergrowth, and 
 the trees usually are so scattering that there is not the slightest 
 difficulty in riding on horseback where one chooses in the forests, 
 except as fallen timber from fires and storms sometimes blocks the 
 way, and very often one can drive a wagon with very little trouble 
 through the forests for long distances with only cutting here and 
 there a tree. ' 
 
 This openness of the country has been one of the most potent 
 factors in the speedy exploration and settlement of the whole region 
 beyond the Great Plains, since from the summit of a range one can 
 ''read the face of the country" in the valleys on either side as easily 
 as one can read the pages of an open book, and often, after study- 
 ing for an hour or two with a field glass the landscape below him, 
 tracing every turn and winding not only of the main stream that 
 drains it, but also of each of its tributaries, by the belt of trees 
 along the courses of all the larger streams and the ribbon of shrubs 
 and bushes along the smaller ones, one can make a more accurate 
 map of a region covering one or two or three or four hundred square 
 miles in which he has not even so much as set his foot, than any one 
 could have made of an equal area in the Appalachian system masked 
 with dense forests after spending many weeks in constantly travel- 
 ing over it. 
 
 Hut the s])ecial feature in the structure of the Rocky Mountains 
 that made the opening of a transcontinental wagon road a very 
 easy matter is the wonderful breaking down of the whole range 
 between 41 degrees and 47 degrees north latitude. 
 
 The Rocky Mountains culminate in so remarkable a manner in 
 Colorado, that in that State between 87 degrees and 41 degrees 
 north latitude are some 70 peaks more than 14,000 feet high, and 
 no pass exists across the Main Range in that State less than about
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 65 
 
 11,000 feet above the sea, and they range np from that to more than 
 13,000 feet, while going northwest along the Main Range from there 
 to British America, a distance along the windings of the range 
 much more than twice as many miles as from the southern to the 
 northern boundary of Colorado, not a single peak rises to the height 
 of 14,000 feet, and very few reach even 13,000 feet, while the passes 
 — of which there are many — range from 5,800 feet to 8,500 feet 
 above the sea, or fully 3,000 to 4,000 feet lower than in Colorado, 
 and several of these passes are broad, grassy valleys of such gentle 
 slope and so flat on their summits that even those of us who have 
 often crossed them on horesback are always in doubt when we have 
 reached the top, and are only satisfied of it when we find some 
 little watercourse running to the other ocean. 
 
 Between 1866 and 1905 I have crossed the Main Range of the 
 Rocky Mountains seventy-six times over twenty-six different passes 
 between 35 degrees and 47 degrees north latitude, of which thirteen 
 led directly into the Old Oregon Territory and two others led into 
 what was formerly Mexican territory (now in Southwest Wyo- 
 ming), very near the southeast corner of the Old Oregon Territory. 
 
 Over ten of these passes leading directly into the Old Oregon 
 Territory I have ridden twenty-eight times on horseback. All these 
 passes were well known to and used by our fur traders several years 
 before Whitman or anybody else dreamed of going missionarying 
 to the Oregon Indians. 
 
 It is impossible for me to recall how many times I have crossed 
 the various spurs and outlying ranges of the Rocky Mountain sys- 
 tem during my continuous residence from June, 1866, to October, 
 1875, in the Rocky Mountains, and my extensive journeying in Colo- 
 rado, New Mexico, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, Ore- 
 gon, Washington and California since that time. 
 
 Why our first overland expedition in their westw^ard journey in 
 1805 did not find any of the three easy passes by the entrances of 
 which they journeyed — the Pipestone, the Deer Lodge and Clark's 
 or Gibbon's — (the last of which they discovered on their return trip 
 in 1806) — I have not space to explain, but it was not because they 
 might not easily have been found had the party been mounted in- 
 stead of in canoes, and had they not set their faces so steadfastly 
 to the west that they would not turn to the north or the northwest. 
 
 On their return trip the division under Capt. Clark discovered 
 and traversed the pass commonly known as Gibbon's, though it 
 ought forever to bear the name of Clark, and in the "History of the 
 Expedition Under the Command of Capts. Lewis and Clark," vol. 
 3, p. 1128, of Cones' edition and vol. 2, pp. 285-6 of the 1842 edition, 
 it is thus mentioned : "They had now crossed from Travelers' Rest 
 Creek to the head of Jefferson's River, which seems to form the best
 
 66 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 and shortest route over the mountains during almost the whole 
 distance of one hundred and sixty-four miles. 
 
 "It is, in fact, a very excellent road; and by cutting down a few 
 trees it might be rendered a good route for wagons, with the excep- 
 tion of about four miles over one of the mountains, which would 
 require some leveling." 
 
 On this Dr. Coues prints the following note: "It seems almost 
 incredible that the modesty or the inditference of the great explorer 
 should have led him to dismiss this part of his route without fur- 
 ther remark. A road of 164 miles across the great Continental Di- 
 vide — we hardly realize what it meant to make that discovery in 
 180G." 
 
 The original edition of the "History of the Expedition Under 
 the Command of Capts. Lewis and Clark" (of which Dr. Coues' 
 edition is an exact reprint) was published in Philadelphia in 1814, 
 and before 1818 three editions of it were also published in London, 
 and one in l^ublin, besides which it was translated into German, 
 and also into Dutch, and editions were published in Germany and 
 Holland. 
 
 In the spring of 1810 Andrew Henry, one of the leading men in 
 the St. Louis "Missouri Fur Co.," founded an Indian trading post 
 in what is now Montana, about two miles above the junction of the 
 Madison and Jefferson Rivers, but was so harassed by the Blackfeet 
 that in the autumn of 1810 he abandoned that locality, journeyed 
 up the Madison and crossed the Continental Divide, and established 
 a post called Ft. Henry on Henry Fork of the Snake River, the 
 stream which will ever perpetuate Andrew Henry's name. This 
 post was about fifty miles southwest of Henry Lake and near where 
 the town of Egin, Idaho, now stands. 
 
 As Ft. Henry was only about forty to fifty miles a little east of 
 south of the summit of Beaver Canon Pass (over which many thou- 
 sands of the early settlers of Montana went with their wagons be- 
 fore there was any expenditure of money in making a road, and over 
 which the Oregon Short Line Railroad now goes), there is every 
 probability that Henry traversed that pass also while occupying Ft. 
 Henry. 
 
 This post was abandoned in the spring of 1811, an event which 
 had much to do with the disastrous experiences of the overland por- 
 tion of the Astoria expedition, who occupied this abandoned post 
 for ten days in October, 1811. Henry Fork is a beautiful stream of 
 crystal water rising in Henry Lake, one of the loveliest little lakes 
 in all the Rocky Mountain region, of irregular outline, covering 
 about twelve miles, swarming with salmon trout, and the summer 
 home of countless water fowl — ducks, geese, brant, swans, pelicans, 
 cranes, herons, gulls, etc.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 67 
 
 Around its shores the Continental Divide sweeps in a very short 
 horseshoe shaped bend, whose opening is scarcely a score of miles 
 across. The basin of the lake is so flat that it is nowhere more 
 than fifteen feet deep, and its waters will not average more than 
 four or five feet in depth. 
 
 The most remarkable thing, however, about this mountain bend 
 and the lake that rests within it is that across the Continental Di- 
 vide three passes, each easily practicable for wagons, converge on 
 the shores of Henry Lake with a semicircle of less than fifteen miles. 
 
 Reynold's Pass leads over from the Madison at a point just 
 below its second or middle canon, and is a broad, grassy valley of 
 such gentle slope that one has no idea he is crossing a mountain 
 range, but just as he begins to inquire, "When are we going to leave 
 this valley and start across the range?" he is informed that he has 
 just crossed the summit. 
 
 About seven miles to the southwest around the shore of the lake, 
 and almost at right angles to Reynold's Pass, is Tahgee Pass, com- 
 ing also from the Madison, but starting between its middle and 
 upper canons, while directly opposite the mouth of Tahgee Pass is 
 Red Rock Pass, leading over to Red Rock Lake, the source of the 
 Red Rock Fork, which is the longest tributary of the Jefferson 
 River — the longest of the three streams which unite to form the Mis- 
 souri — so that Red Rock Lake is the beginning of the longest river 
 in the world. Over all these passes I have been on horseback, and 
 over Reynold's and Tahgee in a two-horse wagon before any money 
 had been spent on the former, and less than forty dollars on Tahgee 
 in road making. 
 
 All three of these passes must have been perfectly well known to 
 Andrew Henry and his men in 1810-11. (Cf. for Henry's experience 
 near the junction of the Madison and Jefferson, and his founding 
 and abandonment of Ft. Henry, ''The History of the American Fur 
 Trade of the Far West, by Hiram M. Chittenden, Captain Corps 
 of Engineers, U. S. A.," N. Y., F. P. Harper, 1902, Vol. I., 143-4, and 
 Vol. III., 974.) The next party of Americans to cross the Conti- 
 nental Divide was the Astoria party, who, on their westward jour- 
 ney, from fear of the Blackfeet Indians, swung so far to the south- 
 west from where they left the Missouri River at the Arickara Vil- 
 lages, as to cross the Continental Divide south of Yellowstone Lake 
 in one of its wildest and most rugged portions along the whole bor- 
 der of the Old Oregon Territory, and so they discovered on their 
 outbound journey no easy pass practicable for wagons but, as we 
 have already seen in Chapter IV., that part of the Astoria party 
 who returned overland to the States discovered, in November, 1812, 
 the pass afterwards known as the South Pass, which for thirty
 
 68 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 years after its rediscovery in 1824 was by far the most widely known 
 feature of the Rocky Mountains in Europe as well as America. 
 
 So far therefore is it from being true, as Barrows states (Ore- 
 gon, p. 158) ''Not only did the Company" (i e., the Hudson's Bay 
 Co.) "hold this known pass by representing it to be impassable for 
 carriages, but they kept the knowledge of other passes a secret," 
 that before the Hudson's Bay Co. had any post within 500 miles 
 of any part of the only portion of the Oregon Territory for which 
 we were really contending (/, e.^ the part south of 49 degrees), al- 
 most before its more energetic rival, the Canadian '^Northwest Co.," 
 had succeeded in establishing itself at any point in the Old Oregon 
 Territory the Americans had certainly already discovered five passes 
 practicable for wagons into Oregon, viz. : Clark's, Bed Rock, Rey- 
 nold's, Tahgee and South Pass. Besides these it is altogether prob- 
 able that John Colter (who had at his own request been discharged 
 from the Lewis and Clark party on its return trip, that he might 
 remain in the mountains and trap beaver) had before 1808 discov- 
 ered Pipestone and Deer Lodge Passes over the Continental Divide 
 in Montana — the former situated a few miles south of the Home- 
 stake Pass, which is now traversed by the Northern Pacific Railroad, 
 and the latter by the Oregon Short Line — and that Henry had dis- 
 covered Beaver Caiion Pass. 
 
 One would suppose, to read Barrows and many writers who have 
 depended on him as an authority, that mountain passes, instead of 
 being great natural features of the geographical structure of the 
 country — often visible dozens and scores of miles away — were nice 
 little toys, that a Hudson's Bay Co. trader could lock up in his 
 writing desk, or wrap in a bit of paper and hide in his tobacco 
 pouch. 
 
 When traveling on horseback over the mountains of Idaho, Mon- 
 tana and Wyoming, I have often beheld these passes, like mighty 
 gateways in the ranges, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty and even sixty 
 and seventy-five miles away. 
 
 Mr. Barrows and those who have endorsed him have refrained 
 from telling us by what process the Hudson's Bay Co. "kept the 
 knowledge of other passes a secret" from the hundreds of American 
 trappers and traders who were constantly traveling and pursuing 
 their vocation on both sides of the Rocky Mountains after 1824 
 (when the South Pass was rediscovered). None but fearless and 
 resolute and hardy men attempted this life, and a most rigorous 
 "natural selection" soon weeded out those who were unfitted for it, 
 so that those who remained in it were as keen-witted, clear-eyed, 
 energetic, vigorous and resourceful men as ever explored new re- 
 gions on any continent. 
 
 To suppose that from such men as W. H. Ashley, L. Maxwell,
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 69 
 
 Thomas Fitzpatrick, A. Godey, Kit Carson, Milton Sublette and his 
 brother W. L., James Bridger, David E. Jackson, Jedediah Smith, 
 Joseph Walker, J. L. Meek, Caleb Wilkins, Robert Newell, and 
 scores of other American mountaineers, the Hudson's Bay Co. — or 
 any other organization on earth — could "keep the knowledge of 
 passes a secret" is a proposition so inane that its statement is its 
 sufficient refutation, and it seems to be one of the very many of the 
 most preposterous fictions about the Whitman myth, which Bar- 
 rows' fancy invented. 
 
 After the treachery to Mr. Astor's interests of his partner Mc- 
 Dougal had put the Northwest Co. in possession of Astoria, our 
 fur traders seem to have confined their efforts to the east side of the 
 Rockies, and mainly to the region along the Missouri River, till in 
 the winter of 1822-23, in a quarrel between some hunters and a party 
 of Arickara Indians, two of the latter were killed. This caused the 
 Arickara Indians on June 2, 1823, to attack Mr. W. H. Ashley's 
 party of thirty-five men, of whom they killed thirteen and wounded 
 ten. This resulted in Col. Leavenworth, in command of the military 
 post at Council Bluffs, proceeding with 200 soldiers against the 
 Indians, and in a battle fought August 10, 11 and 12, 1823, they 
 were defeated, Ashley taking part in the fight with eighty of the 
 employes of the Missouri Fur Co. (Cf. Niles Register, August 9, 
 1823, and October 11, 1823.) The result of this was that Ashley 
 withdrew from operations on the Upper Missouri, and determined 
 to follow up the valley of the Platte, and strive to cross the Conti- 
 nental Divide where the return portion of the Astoria party had 
 crossed it. 
 
 This he succeeded in doing in 1824, and crossing first the Con- 
 tinental Divide on to Green River, and next the range between 
 Green and Bear Rivers, he followed the latter stream down to the 
 Great Salt Lake, and explored the beautiful valley about that lake, 
 and following the Jordan River to the south established a fort on 
 Utah Lake, some forty miles south of where the Mormons twenty- 
 three years later located Salt Lake City. 
 
 How quickly the knowledge of this important discovery reached 
 the earnest friends of Oregon, and was by them given the widest 
 possible publicity, may be seen from this description of the pass 
 given by Floyd of Virginia in a debate on Oregon in the House of 
 Representatives, December 20, 1824. (Cf. Debates, not Abridgment 
 of Debates, in Congress, 18 Cong., 2 Sess., p. 24.) 
 
 After speaking of easy passes discovered at the headwaters of 
 the Yellowstone and Big Horn Rivers, and declaring, "Through 
 them you may pass with ease and safety, so much so that I have 
 the most perfect confidence that even now a wagon with the usual 
 freight could be taken from this capital to the mouth of the Co-
 
 70 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 himbia," he goes on : "Besides these passes there is still another, 
 which though longer to the iii)poi' part of that river, is yet better, 
 where even the ieeble ditliculties there are here almost annihilated. 
 This route, pursued by many now engaged in that" (i. e., the fur) 
 "trade, holds its course from the Missouri up the Kansas Kiver . . 
 then falling on to the river Platte, thence entirely up that river to 
 its source, where the Oregon or Rocky Mountains sink into a bed 
 of sand, without water or timber for the space of eighty miles, 
 smooth and level." 
 
 A fuller and more exact description appeared in the Missouri 
 Herald in the autumn of 1826, and was widely copied throughout 
 the country, appearing on page 229 of Vol. 31 of Niles' Register, 
 December, 1826, as follows : "The recent expedition of Gen. Ashley 
 to the country west of the Rocky Mountains has been productive of 
 information on subjects of no small interest to the people of the 
 Union. It has proved that overland expeditions in large bodies may 
 be made to that remote region without the necessity of transport- 
 ing provisions for men or beasts. Gen. Ashley left St. Louis in 
 March last, and returned in September. His return caravan con- 
 sisted of upwards of 100 horses and mules, and more than that 
 number of men. He went to the station of the party Avhich he had 
 left bevond the mountains when he came in a vear ago, and thence 
 descended a river believed to be the Bonaventura, about 150 miles 
 to the Great Salt Lake. The return march to St. Louis occupied 
 seventy days, each horse and mule carrying nearly 200 pounds of 
 beaver fur, the animals keeping their strength and flesh on the grass 
 which they found and without losing any time on this long journey. 
 The men also found an abundance of food. They say there was no 
 day on which they could not have subsisted a thousand men, and 
 often ten thousand. Butfalo furnished the principal food, water of 
 the best quality was met with every day. The whole route lay 
 through a level and open country, better for carriages than any 
 turn})ike road in the United States. Wagons and carriages could 
 go with ease as far as Gen. Ashley went, crossing the Rocky Moun- 
 tains at the sources of the Platte and descending the valley of the 
 Bonaventura towards the Pacific Ocean." 
 
 Then follows a brief description of the Great Salt Lake, after 
 which the article goes on as follows : "In the whole exj^edition 
 Gen. Ashley did not lose a man, nor had any of those died whom 
 he left behind last year, many of whom have been out four or five 
 years, and are too happy in the freedom of these wild regions to 
 think of returning to the comparative thralldom of civilized life. 
 It would seem that no attempt has been made to ascertain the pre- 
 cise latitude and longitude of the point at which Gen. Ashley 
 crossed the mouiilnins. It is to be hoped that this will not be neg-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 71 
 
 lected on the next expedition. From all that we can learn the ele- 
 vation is exceedingly small where the passage of the mountains was 
 effected, so small as hardly to affect the rate of going of the caravan, 
 and forming at the most an angle of three degrees, being two de- 
 grees less than the steepest ascent on the Cumberland road." 
 
 What happened in the discovery of routes practicable for trans- 
 continental wagon roads, and the development of the first of those 
 roads in the next six years, is best stated by W. H. Ashley, Major 
 Joshua Pilcher, and the Rocky Mountain Fur Co. (or the firm of 
 Smith, Sublette & Jackson) in letters which the National Govern- 
 ment deemed of so much importance that less than three months 
 after the last of them was received by the Secretary of War, in re- 
 sponse to a resolution of the Senate asking him to communicate any 
 information in possession of the Government relative to the British 
 establishments on the Columbia, President Jackson sent to the 
 Senate a very brief message of transmittal, dated January 24, 1831. 
 January 25 it was referred to the Committee on Military Affairs, 
 and January 26 that committee reported it back with a recom- 
 mendation that the message and accompanying documents be 
 printed and "1,500 copies in addition to the usual number" (which 
 was a liberal allowance for that time) "be furnished for the use 
 of the Senate." It is Sen. Ex. Doc. 39, 21st Cong., 2d Sess., covers 
 thirty-six pages and is very interesting. Ashley's letter is dated 
 Washington, March, 1829, and begins: "You request me to com- 
 municate to you, by letter, my opinion as it regards a military force 
 best calculated for the protection of our western frontier, the fur 
 trade and our trade and intercourse direct from Missouri and Ar- 
 kansas to the Mexican provinces, etc., etc." 
 
 He then gives his opinion on the number of troops needful to 
 protect our citizens west of the mountains, and on pages 6 and 7, 
 "in compliance with your request," he states his method of equip- 
 ping and moving men through the Indian country "in the course of 
 my general excursions to the Rocky Mountains," and concludes as 
 follows: "In this way I have marched parties of men the whole 
 way from St. Louis to the vicinity of the Grand Lake, which is sit- 
 uated about 150 miles down the waters of the Pacific Ocean, in 
 seventy-eight days. In the month of March, 1827, I fitted out a 
 party of sixty men, mounted a piece of artillery (a four-pounder) on 
 a carriage which was drawn by two mules. The party marched to 
 or near the Grand Salt Lake, beyond the Rocky Mountains, remain- 
 ing there one month, stopped on the way back fifteen days, and re- 
 turned to Lexington, in the western part of Missouri, in September, 
 where the party was met with everything necessary for another out- 
 fit, and did return (using the same horses and mules) to the moun- 
 tains by the last of November in the same year."
 
 72 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 This letter is addressed at its close "Gen. A. Macomb, Com- 
 mander in Chief of the Army of the United States, Washington 
 City," and signed ''W. H. Ashley." 
 
 (Cf. also for accounts of Ashley's expeditions of 1826 and 1827, 
 Niles' Kegister, p. 229, December, 1826, and p. 213, December, 1827.) 
 
 Immediately following Ashley's letter is a letter by Major Joshua 
 Pilcher addressed to Hon. J. H. Eaton, Secretary of War, undated, 
 but from its contents certainly written between July 1, 1830, and 
 January 20, 1831. 
 
 It describes his very extensive and fearless expedition of explora- 
 tion and discovery between September, 1827, and June 30, 1830. I 
 regret that space will not permit me to quote its whole fourteen 
 pages here, but part of it, as well as of the Rocky Mountain Fur 
 Company's letter, belongs more properly to Chapter VII., on "The 
 Truth About the Relation of the Hudson's Bay Company to the 
 American Exploration, Occupation and Settlement of Oregon." 
 
 Pilcher says that he "engaged in the Indian trade of the Upper 
 Missouri eleven years ago, say 1819." . . . and "I determined 
 in 1827 on more extensive operations. With this view I left Council 
 Bluffs in September of that year with a party of men, forty-five in 
 the whole, and an outfit of merchandise suited to the object. My 
 route lay up the river Platte to its forks, and thence up its north 
 branch to its source in the Rocky Mountains. Here I had to make 
 a depot of merchandise and i)roperty, which is done by burying it 
 in the ground, the Indians having completed their designs upon our 
 horses by stealing the last of them. I had set out from Council 
 Bluffs with 104 of these indispensable animals, and was left to 
 make the transit of the mountains almost without any. The snow 
 was deep, but the ascent and descent easy, being a depression of the 
 mountains to such a degree that a carriage could cross without the 
 least dilliculty. The dei)ression was not only low, but wide, some- 
 thing like a valley through the mountains, say thirty or forty miles 
 wide, the river Colorado taking its rise on the opposite side. I 
 passed the winter of 1827-28 on the Colorado." . . . "In July, 
 1828," his ])artners and most of the men having returned to St. 
 Louis, Pilcher, "with nine men commenced a tour of the Northwest, 
 with a view of exploring the region of the Columbia River to ascer- 
 tain the attractions and capabilities for trade." . . . "The ex- 
 cursion occupied me till June, 1830 (a period of nearly two years), 
 when I returned to St. Louis." He kept along the west side of the 
 Rocky Mountains to Lewis River and thence to Clark's River, and 
 December 1, 1828, began a winter's camp at Flathead Lake. 
 
 "In the latter part of the spring" of 1829 all his men but one 
 were at their own request discharged to return to St. Louis with a
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 73 
 
 small party with whom they had spent part of the winter, and with 
 that one companion he continued his explorations. 
 
 In the summer of 1829, by invitation of the Hudson's Bay Com- 
 pany trader among the Flatheads, he accompanied him to Ft. Col- 
 vile, and after being hospitably entertained there for twenty days, 
 on September 21, 1829, having been invited to accompany the Hud- 
 son's Bay Company's annual East-bound express, he set out up the 
 Columbia "with six men of the post carrying the annual export 
 across the mountains," recrossed the Continental Divide in 54 de- 
 grees north latitude, and reached the Red River Settlement March 
 24, 1830, and after three days' hospitable entertainment there, he 
 struck off on snowshoes to the Mandan Indian villages on the Upper 
 Missouri, and from there finally returned to St. Louis June 30, 
 1830. 
 
 On p. 19, writing of Passes through the Mountains, he says: 
 "The most erroneous ideas prevail upon this head. The Rocky 
 Mountains are deemed by many to be impassable, and to present 
 the barrier which will arrest the westward march of the American 
 population. The man must know but little of the American people 
 who supposes they can be stopped by anything in the shape of moun- 
 tains, deserts, seas or rivers, and he can know nothing at all of the 
 mountains in question to suppose that they are impassable." 
 
 He then says that he has known these mountains for three years 
 and has crossed them from 42 degrees to 54 degrees, and continues : 
 "I say then, that nothing is more easily passed than these moun- 
 tains." 
 
 "Wagons and carriages may cross them (i. e., the Rocky Moun- 
 tains) in a state of nature without diflSculty, and with little delay 
 on the day's journey. Some parts are very high, but the gradual 
 rise of the country in the vast slope from the Mississippi to the foot 
 of the mountains makes a considerable elevation without percept- 
 ible increase, and then the gaps or depressions let you through al- 
 most upon a level. 
 
 "This is particularly the case opposite the head of the Platte," 
 (i e., the South Pass) "where I crossed in 1827, and which has al- 
 ready been described. I have crossed here often and always without 
 delay or difficulty. It is, in fact, one of the best passes, and presents 
 the best overland route from the valleys of the Mississippi to the 
 mouth of the Columbia that would follow the line of the Platte and 
 Lewis Rivers . . . These observations I address to you, sir, as 
 an organ of communication with the President. As an American 
 citizen anxious for the prosperity of my country, I deem it my duty 
 to communicate to the Government the observations which I have 
 made upon the state of things west of the Rocky Mountains." 
 
 The letter of Smith, Sublette and Jackson, doing business as the
 
 74 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Rocky Mountain Fur Co., is dated St. Louis, October 29, 1830, and 
 addressed to Hon. J. H. Eaton, Secretary of War. It begins as fol- 
 lows: ''The business of taking furs from the United States Terri- 
 tories beyond the Kocky Mountains has since been continued by 
 Jedediah S. Smith, David E. Jackson and AY, L. Sublette, under the 
 firm name of Smith, Sublette and Jackson. 
 
 ''They commenced business in 1826, and have since continued it; 
 and have made observations and gained information which they 
 think it important to communicate to the Government. The num- 
 ber of men they have employed has usually been from 80 to 100, 
 and with these divided into parties they have traversed every part 
 of the country west of the Rocky Mountains, from the peninsula of 
 California to the mouth of the Columbia River. Pack horses or 
 rather mules were at first used; but in the beginning of the present 
 year it was determined to try wagons; and in the month of April 
 last, on the tenth day of the month, a caravan of ten wagons drawn 
 by five mules each, and two dearborns drawn by one mule each, set 
 out from St. Louis. There were eighty-one men in the party, all 
 mounted on mules. Our route was nearly due west to the western 
 limits of the State of Missouri, and thence along the Santa Fe trail 
 about forty miles, from which the course was some degrees north of 
 west, across the waters of the Kansas, and up the great Platte River 
 to the Rocky Mountains, and to the head of Wind River, where it 
 issues from the mountains. This took us until the 10th of July, 
 and was as far as we wished to go with the wagons, as the furs to 
 be brought in were to be collected at this place, which is, or was 
 this year, the great rendezvous of the persons engaged in that 
 business. 
 
 "Here the wagons could easily have crossed the mountains, it 
 being what is called the Southern Pass, had it been desirable for 
 them to do so, which it was not for the reasons stated. For our 
 supj)ort, at leaving the Missouri settlements, until we should get 
 into the buffalo country, we drove twelve head of cattle, besides a. 
 milch cow. 
 
 "Eight of these only being required for use before we got to the 
 buffaloes, the others went on to the head of Wind River. We began 
 to fall in with buffaloes on the Platte, about 350 miles from the 
 white settlements, and from that time lived on buffaloes, the quan- 
 tity being infinitely beyond what we needed. On the 4th of August, 
 the wagons being in the mean time loaded with the furs which had 
 been previously taken, we set out on our return to St. Louis. 
 
 "All the high points of the mountains then in view were white 
 with snow; but the passes and valleys, and all the level country 
 were green with grass. Our route back was over the same ground 
 nearly as in going out, and we arrived in St. Louis on the 10th of
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 75 
 
 October, bringing back the ten wagons, four of the oxen and the 
 milch cow, as we did not need them for provisions. Our men were 
 all healthy during the whole time; we suffered nothing from Indians 
 and had no accident but the death of one man, being buried under 
 a bank of earth that fell in upon him, and another crippled at the 
 same time. Of the mules we lost but one by fatigue, and two horses 
 stolen by the Kansas Indians, the grass being along the whole route 
 going and coming suflScient for the support of the horses and mules. 
 The usual weight in the wagons was about 1,800 pounds. 
 
 "The usual progress of the wagons was from fifteen to twenty 
 miles per day. 
 
 "The country being almost all open, level and prairie, the chief 
 obstructions were ravines and creeks, the banks of which required 
 cutting down, and for this purpose a few pioneers were generally 
 kept in advance of the caravan. This is the first time that wagons 
 ever went to the Rocky Mountains, and the ease and safety with 
 which it was done prove the facility of communicating overland 
 with the Pacific Ocean. The route from the Southern Pass, where 
 the wagons stopped, to the Great Falls of the Columbia, being easier 
 and better than on this side of the mountains, with grass enough 
 for the horses and mules ; but a scarcity of game for the support 
 of the men." 
 
 This it will be remembered was six years before Whitman went 
 to Oregon with his wagon ; four years before any one went as a 
 missionary to the Oregon Indians and three years before the "high- 
 wrought and incorrect" account of the visit of the Flatheads to St. 
 Louis in the Christian Advocate and Zion's Herald started the ex- 
 citement about sending missionaries to Oregon. These letters of 
 Pilcher and the Rocky Mountain Fur Co. were widely read in Docu- 
 ment 39, and repeatedly quoted in newspaper and magazine articles, 
 and, as we shall see, in later Congressional reports. 
 
 In 1832 (the very next year after the publication of this Senate 
 Document No. 39), Capt. Bonneville of the United States Army, 
 having obtained a furlough for his famous fur trading expedition, 
 by "offering to combine public utility with his private projects, and 
 to collect statistical information for the War Department concern- 
 ing the wild country and tribes he might visit" (Cf. Gen. Macomb's 
 Instructions to Capt. Bonneville, in Appendix to Irving's "Bonne- 
 ville"), proceeded to demonstrate the correctness of Smith, Sublette 
 and Jackson's prediction by driving twenty loaded wagons across 
 the Rocky Mountains through the South Pass and into the Oregon 
 Territory as far as the fur traders' rendezvous for that year, which 
 was in Green River Valley, and in 1837 Irving published his account 
 of "Bonneville's Adventures," which was immediately republished 
 in England.
 
 76 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Whitman knew about these wagons of Bonneville before he 
 started with his two wagons in 1836, and also that the route pre- 
 sented no particular ditliculties, for in a sixteen page letter which 
 he wrote in the form of a journal of his trip with Rev. Samuel Par- 
 ker to the rendezvous on Green River, just west of the South Pass 
 (from which nothing has been published heretofore), he wrote, on 
 page 13, under date of October 20, 1835 : "If Col. Dodge should go 
 to the Pacific and transport cannon as he did last year, we could 
 cross the mountains with a wagon." 
 
 "There were twenty wagons at one time from St. Louis at the 
 place where the company rendezvoused last summer. 
 
 "There is no obstruction from timber except in a few instances 
 of willow upon the streams, which is trifling." No advocate of the 
 Whitman Legend has ever alluded to this letter, or given any inti- 
 mation that Whitman had ever heard of Bonneville's wagons. 
 
 I have been unable to learn whether or not the fur traders* 
 annual caravans took any wagons in 1833 and 1834, but as Ft. 
 Laramie (589 miles from Independence, Mo., and 272 miles east 
 of the summit of the South Pass) was founded in 1834, it is alto 
 gether ])robable that wagons were taken that far. 
 
 In 1835 the annual caravan of the American Fur Co., with 
 which Rev. S. Parker and Dr. Whitman went as far as Green River, 
 took six wagons as far as Ft. Laramie, where they left them, not on 
 account of any fear of being unable to take them across the Main 
 Range into Oregon, but for the very obvious reason that now hav- 
 ing a permanent fort, where Indians and white trappers could come 
 to trade all the year, a very large part of their goods for that trade 
 need not be transported any farther than Ft. Laramie. (Cf. for 
 these wagons, and the leaving of them. Rev. S. Parker's "Journal 
 of an Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains," pp. 52 and 
 72.) 
 
 This brings us to 1836 and Whitman's wagon, and that the reader 
 may know all the facts about his wagon, I will quote all of the 
 contemporaneous evidence known to exist that says anything about 
 his wagon (which is something not to be found in any book advo- 
 cating the Whitman Legend). 
 
 As both Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding kept diaries of this 
 journey, and both Dr. \Miitman and Mr. Spalding wrote letters in 
 which the facts about the wagon and its fate are explicitly stated, 
 we have abundance of contemporaneous evidence to enable us to 
 know the truth about this innocent and unimportant vehicle, and 
 those who have accepted as trustworthy authorities Gray's History 
 and Spalding's Pamphlet, and Barrows, Nixon, Craighead, Mowry, 
 Rev. M. Eells, Prof. Lyman, President Penrose, D. H. ^Montgomery's 
 Leading Facts (?) in American History, Prof. H. W. Parker, Geo.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 77 
 
 Ludington Weed, and all the other inventors or endorsers of the 
 fictions about Whitman's wagon, will be greatly surprised to read 
 what Mr. and Mrs. Whitman and Mr. and Mrs. Spalding wrote 
 while on the journey and immediately after its conclusion, and no 
 less so what they did not write in the next six years. 
 
 May 5, 1836, Whitman wrote to D. Greene, secretary, from '^Can- 
 tonment Leavenworth": "We have one wagon for ladies and one 
 for baggage." 
 
 May 20, 1836, H. H. Spalding wrote from Otoe Agency to D. 
 Greene, secretary, as follows : "We have two hired men, one Nez 
 Perce, a faithful and valuable young man, besides Richard and 
 John, ten of us in all. Two wagons, thirteen horses, six mules, 
 seventeen head of cattle, including calves. We think it best to take 
 the wagons to the Black Hills with horses, then our packing animals 
 will be packed for the remainder of the journey with sound backs." 
 "We have now a very limited supply of everything. We find that 
 we must leave many things we consider almost indispensable. My 
 classical and theological books will nearly all be left. We can 
 take almost nothing in the line of mechanical tools and farming 
 utensils, but very little clothing, no seeds except a few garden 
 seeds." 
 
 Mrs. Spalding's diary (among Mss. of Oregon Historical So- 
 ciety) under date of Liberty, Mo., April 27, 1836, after stating that 
 Messrs. Spalding and Gray, and the two Nez Perces boys, and one 
 young man to assist them, had started that day by land from Lib- 
 erty for Council Bluffs, continues: "It was necessary for the gen- 
 tlemen to make the route by land on account of the wagons, horses 
 and cattle purchased at this place." 
 
 Mr. Spalding wrote to D. Greene, secretary, from Rendezvous, 
 July 9, 1836, as follows: "We have got our wagon to this place 
 without much difficulty, and shall probably take it through." 
 
 A postscript on margin of page 1 says: "Mr. McLeod, a di- 
 rector of the Fur Company, arrived in camp today, 12th of July, 
 from Walla Walla, bringing letter from Mr. Parker. Arrangements 
 are made for us to return in his company. It seems the most 
 marked Providence in our favor of any we have yet experienced. 
 Now all anxieties respecting a long and dangerous route with the 
 Indians cease. We have now a safe convoy that will conduct us 
 immediately to the spot. We find Mr. McLeod very friendly, and 
 well disposed toward our object. He says he will render us any 
 assistance in his power." 
 
 Mrs. Whitman's diary (in the Transcript Oregon Pioneer Asso- 
 ciation, 1891, on page 41) says: "We attempted to reach Loup 
 Fork that night (i e., Tuesday, May 14, 1836,) "and part of us suc- 
 ceeded. Those in the wagons drove there by 11 o'clock, but it was
 
 78 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 too much for the cattle." . . . (P. 42) The next morning "the 
 Fur Company was on the opposite side of the river, which we 
 forded and without unloading our wagons much." . . . "Since 
 we came up with the camp, I rode in the wagons most of the way 
 to the Black Hills. It is astonishing how well we get along with 
 our wagons where there are no roads. I think I may say it is easier 
 traveling here than on any turnpike in the States." 
 
 (P. 43) Under date of July 14, 1836, she wrote: "We are now 
 at the Rocky Mountains, at the encampment of Messrs. McLeod and 
 McKay, expecting to leave on Monday morning for Walla Walla. 
 It seems a special favor that that company has come to Rendezvous 
 this season ; for otherwise we would have had to have gone with the 
 Indians a difficult route, and so slow that we should have been 
 late at Walla Walla, and not have had the time we wanted to make 
 preparations for winter." 
 
 Mrs. Spalding's diary under date of June 15, 1836, at Ft. Wil- 
 liam, (i e., Ft. Laramie), says: "We are camped near the fort and 
 shall probably remain here several days, as the company" (i e., 
 the American Fur Co.) "leave their wagons at this post, and make 
 arrangements to transport their goods the remainder of the journey 
 on mules." 
 
 Returning again to Mrs. Whitman's diary (Trans. O. P. A. 1891, 
 p. 44) : "July 25, 1836. Husband has had a tedious time with the 
 wagon today. It got stuck in the creek this morning when cross- 
 ing, and he was obliged to wade considerably in getting it out. 
 After that, in going between the mountains, on the side of one so 
 steep that it was difficult for horses to pass, the wagon upset twice ; 
 did not wonder at this at all it was a greater wonder that it was 
 not turning somersaults continually. It is not very grateful to my 
 feelings to see him wearing out with such excessive fatigue, as I 
 am obliged to. He is not as fleshy as he was last winter. All the 
 most difficult part of the way he has walked, in laborious attempts 
 to take the wagon." 
 
 (P. 45) "July 28. One of the axle-trees of the wagon broke 
 today; was a little rejoiced, for we were in hopes they would leave 
 it, and have no more trouble with it. Our rejoicing was in vain, 
 for they are making a cart of the back wheels this afternoon and 
 lashing the fore wheels to it — intending to take it through in some 
 shape or other. They are so resolute and untiring in their efl'orts 
 they will probably succeed." 
 
 This, it will be noticed, was not at Ft. Hall (where all the ad- 
 vocates of the Whitman Legend represent Whitman as reducing his 
 wagon to a cart on account of the opposition of the fiudson's Bay 
 Co. to its going any farther), but six days' journey east of Ft. Hall,
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 79 
 
 at which place, according to Mrs, Spalding's diary, they arrived a 
 little after noon of August 3. 
 
 (P. 49) Friday, August 12, Mrs. Whitman's diary says: "Dear 
 Harriet, the little trunk you gave me has come with me so far, and 
 now I must leave it here alone . . . The hills are so steep and 
 rocky that husband thought it best to lighten the wagon as much 
 as possible, and take nothing but the wheels, leaving the box" {i. e., 
 the rude box he made out of the wagon body on July 28, when the 
 breaking of the axle compelled him to make his wagon into a cart), 
 "with my trunk." 
 
 (P. 50) "Saturday, August 13. We have come fifteen miles 
 and have had the worst route in all the journey for the cart. We 
 might have had a better one but for being misled by some of the 
 company who started out before the leaders. It was 2 o'clock be- 
 fore we came into camp." . . . Describing the crossing of Snake 
 River: "Husband had considerable difficulty in crossing the cart. 
 Both cart and mules were turned upside down in the river, and en- 
 tangled in the harness. The mules would have been drowned but 
 for a desperate struggle to get them ashore. Then after putting 
 two of the strongest horses before the cart, and two men swim- 
 ming behind to steady it, they succeeded in getting it across." 
 
 (P. 52) August 22. "As for the wagon, it is left at the fort, 
 and I have nothing to say about crossing it at this time. Five of 
 our cattle were left there also, to be exchanged for others at Walla 
 Walla. Perhaps you will wonder why we have left the wagon, 
 having taken it so nearly through. Our animals were failing, and 
 the route in crossing the Blue Mountains is said to be impassable 
 for it. We have the prospect of obtaining one in exchange at Van- 
 couver. If we do not we shall send for it, when we have been to 
 so much labor in getting it thus far. It is a useful article in the 
 countrv." 
 
 Turning now to Whitman's own letters, we find every advocate 
 of the Whitman Legend has failed not only to quote from, but in 
 any way to allude to, the existence of the following two, written 
 to Rev. D. Greene, secretary: "Encampment of Messrs. McCloud 
 and McCay" (should be McLeod and McKay, W. I. M.), "near 
 Green River, ten miles from Rendezvous, July 16, 1836. Our great- 
 est difficulty was to bring our cattle up to the forced march of the 
 company {i. e., the American Fur Co. or Fitzpatrick and Dripps), 
 "and with our wagon, one of which we have brought to this place, 
 and expect to take it through the whole journey. Most of the diffi- 
 culty with the wagon originated from the forced marches manner 
 of traveling, the company having one cart only from Ft. William to 
 Rendezvous. When we first met the Indians we did not know of 
 any other company with whom we could go, and intended to accom-
 
 80 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 modate ourselves to their route, although we might have to go out 
 of our way to aeconmiodate them for buffalo, and should be de- 
 tained for them to kill and dry their winter's supply of meat. But 
 by the arrival of Messrs. McCloud and McCay we are furnished 
 with a safe and direct escort to Walla Walla, and have availed our- 
 selves of their company and protection. We received the most 
 flattering encouragement from these gentlemen, one of whom, Mr. 
 McCloud, is a partner in the Northwest Fur Co." (should be Hud- 
 son's Bay Co., W. I. M.) ''that we should have every facility in our 
 journey, and all necessary supplies of goods, provisions, etc., at 
 Walla Walla." 
 
 September 15, 183G, W^hitman wrote from Ft. Walla Walla . . 
 "We have received the kindest hospitality from those with whom 
 we have traveled, but more especially since we joined the camp of 
 Messrs. McLeod and McKay. For most of the way that we trav- 
 eled with them we were in a country where there is but little game, 
 yet by their great exertion they often obtained some, and when- 
 ever they were so fortunate we were sure to share largely with 
 them. We brought our wagon and all our cattle to Snake Fort" 
 (Ft. Boise), "about 2.50 miles above this post on Lewis (or, as 
 called here, Snake) River. The wagon we left subject to future 
 order." 
 
 September 20, 1836, H. H. Spalding wrote a very long letter to 
 D. Greene, secretary, from Ft. Vancouver, from which copious ex- 
 tracts were printed in the Missouri Herald for October, 1837, but 
 every advocate of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story has always 
 carefully refrained from quoting from it or even mentioning it. 
 
 In it he wrote: "We drove a wagon to Snake Fort, and could 
 have driven it through but for the fatigue of our animals; expect 
 to get it at some future time." From these dates, September 15, 
 1836, for Whitman, and September 20, 1836, for Spalding, the word 
 wagon does not occur again, nor one word about a wagon road in 
 all the voluminous correspondence of Whitman, Spalding and Mrs. 
 Whitman, till after Whitman had returned from Boston to Mis- 
 souri, in May, 1843, except that Mrs. Whitman, in a letter to her 
 husband begun October 4, and finished October 17, 1842, describ- 
 ing the kindness of McKinlay, the Hudson's Bay agent in command 
 of Ft. Walla Walla (in whose charge her husband left her when 
 he returned to the States), in taking her from the mission station 
 to Walla Walla on October 11, 1842, wrote: "I am now at Walla 
 Walla — came here yesterday; was too unwell to undertake the 
 journey, but could not refuse, as Mr. McKinlay had come on pur- 
 pose to take me. He came in the wagon, and brought the trundle 
 bed, and I laid down most of the way." 
 
 This failure to even mention wagon or wagon road for more
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 81 
 
 than six years after their arrival in Oregon shows how intense was 
 their interest in the ''desperate," or "patriotic," or "heroic," or 
 "resolute" "attempt" to "open up a passage on wheels to Oregon!" 
 (Cf. Trans. Oregon Pioneer Association, 1891, p. 166, for this letter 
 of Mrs. Whitman.) 
 
 There is not in all the voluminous correspondence, and the frag- 
 ments of journals of these missionaries, not only during this jour- 
 ney, but subsequently during the whole continuance of the mission, 
 and even after its destruction on account of the Whitman massacre, 
 during all the years to the invention of the Whitman Saved Oregon 
 Story, a single sentence that gives any intimation that Whitman 
 in trying to get his wagon through to Ft. Hall ; or the rude cart to 
 which it was reduced by the breaking of the axle six days' journey 
 east of Ft. Hall, and finally the wheels and axle only through to 
 Ft. Boise, was influenced by any greater or loftier motive than that 
 stated by Mrs. Whitman above, viz: "It is a useful article in the 
 country." Nor did Whitman in all the extravagant and unwar- 
 ranted claims he made of service to the Government in letters after 
 his return to Oregon, in September, 1843, down to his death (Cf. 
 Chapter VII., Part 2 infra) ever write one word about his driving 
 this wagon and its reduction to a cart and finally to a pair of 
 wheels driven to and left at Ft. Boise "on account of the fatigue 
 of the animals." The evidence in the diaries of Mrs. Whitman and 
 Mrs. Spalding and the letters of Dr. Whitman and Mr. Spalding is 
 absolutely irrefutable that from the time McLeod and McKay in- 
 vited them to join their camp on July 9, 1836, at Green River, these 
 Hudson's Bay Company's ofiicials treated them with the greatest 
 possible kindness, nor is there a single intimation in any of this 
 contemporaneous evidence that there was at any time or place the 
 least objection made by any Hudson's Bay Co. oflicer or employe 
 to Whitman's attempt to drive his wagon or cart or pair of wheels 
 through to the Columbia. 
 
 It should be remembered that none of this party of Hudson's 
 Bay Co. officers and men had the least acquaintance with any one 
 of this party of American missionaries, that there were no letters 
 of introduction to them, that they were not under the least con- 
 ceivable special obligation — political, religious, fraternal, or finan- 
 cial — to do anything whatever to help these missionaries to get over 
 the longest and most dreaded part of their journey, and that they 
 were traveling with saddle and pack animals, so that (as all of us 
 well know who have had experience — as the writer repeatedly has — ■ 
 with a mixed cavalcade of saddle and pack animals and wagons) to 
 undertake to convoy a party with a wagon, even over a region 
 where there was a plainly marked road, would inevitably mean 
 some trouble and delay to them, and much more over a region
 
 82 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 where no road had been even located, and where, consequently 
 (thoiijjh the route was easily practicable for a wagon road), there 
 must necessarily be a good deal of time consumed in determining 
 where, and for how long distances, it was necessary to depart from 
 the saddle trail to find a route over which a wagon could be driven. 
 
 They would therefore have been perfectly justified had they said 
 to the missionary party at Green River: "We shall be glad to 
 have you travel with our party, if you will leave the wagon here, 
 since it must be no small delay to our movements to have it taken 
 further." 
 
 And had they said this it would not have been the slightest evi- 
 dence of any '^fear of," or any "antagonism to," the development 
 of the wagon road further into Oregon. 
 
 There is not in Mrs. Whitman's nor in Mrs. Spalding's diaries 
 nor in any of the contemporaneous letters of the Spaldings, Whit- 
 man's and Mr. W. H. Gray the least intimation that at any point 
 on I he journey the Hudson's Bay Company people made the least 
 objection to the wagon, nor in any way opposed the efliort to take it 
 through, but the opposition was chiefly on the part of Mrs. Whit- 
 man, who, like many another bride, thought her husband was work- 
 ing too hard, and also on that of others of the missionary party, 
 who evidently thought "the game not worth the candle." 
 
 Beyond Boise the fragments of Whitman's wagon never went, 
 though why Whitman should have so completely lost all interest 
 in the subject of a wagon road for six and a half years after he 
 left it there, as not only not to have sent for it, but never again to 
 have written the words wagon or wagon road in any of his letters 
 from September 1.5, 1836, to May 28, 1843, is an utterly unsolvable 
 mystery. Various advocates of the Whitman Legend have asserted 
 that Whitman's old wagon subsequently went through to the Wil- 
 lamette or to Walla Walla, but no one of them has produced any 
 proof of it. 
 
 Gray in an article in the Oregonian, February 1, 1885, reprinted 
 in the "Whitman Controversy" (pamphlet), Portland, 1885 (p. 29), 
 declares that he saw Whitman's wagon at Boise in 1838, as Farn- 
 ham did (in 1839), but even he dares not affirm that it was ever 
 taken beyond there, and though he says (p. 31), "The wagon was 
 not abandoned, but left for Gray to bring through at some future 
 time," he vouchsafes no information as to why he never brought it 
 through. He speaks of it as a wagon all through this article, 
 though he well knew it was but "the thills, one axle, and a pair of 
 wheels." 
 
 In 1837, so far as appears, no wagons crossed the Continental 
 Divide, nor in 1838, though, as we have already seen, Gray claims 
 to have been telling audiences in the States in the winter of 1837-8
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 83 
 
 that ''Whitman's wagon could have been taken through to the Wil- 
 lamette" (Cf. Gray's History of Oregon, p. 177), and so far was it 
 from being true that the 1838 reinforcement to the American Board 
 Mission had, as Barrows says, no wagon, "because they had acted 
 on the already well-established impression in the East that car- 
 riages could not travel to Oregon" (Cf. Barrows' Oregon, p. 147) ; 
 that they had acted on the precisely opposite belief, even then so 
 generally diffused in the States, that wagons could go to Oregon; 
 that Dr. Weed — the agent of the A. B. C. F. M. in Cincinnati — had 
 sent a wagon to the frontier for them, which, not being suitable for 
 their use, they had traded for another, and that they traded that 
 one to Capt. Fontenelle, at Ft. Laramie, 631 miles east of Ft. Hall, 
 when they could take it no farther "for want of horses." 
 
 On this point we have the following strictly contemporaneous 
 evidence: (1) Mr. W. H. Gray wrote to D. Greene, secretary, a let- 
 ter covering four jjages closely written foolscap, dated "Rendezvous 
 on Wind River, Rocky Mountains, July (no day), 1838." It is al- 
 most entirely taken up with an account of the expenses of the 1838 
 reinforcement. 
 
 On page 2, after explaining that they had been compelled before 
 starting from the Missouri frontier to dispose of a wagon in trade 
 for a mule at a loss of |4.5, because it was old and not adapted to 
 the trip, he says : "The wagon we purchased to supply the place 
 of the one sent by Dr. Weed" (which was the old one before re- 
 ferred to), "we have exchanged for a horse with Capt. Fontenelle, 
 who kindly exchanged with us when we could bring it no further 
 for want of horses." 
 
 (2) Mrs. C. Eells kept a journal of this trip, which was pub- 
 lished in Trans. Oregon Pioneer Association, 1889, pp. 54-89, and 
 mentions their wagon repeatedly (pp. 63, 66, 67), and (p. 73), un- 
 der date of May 31, 1838, at Ft. William (or Laramie) she wrote: 
 "Give the wagon to Capts. Drips and Fontenelle." 
 
 Thos. J. Farnham, ostensibly a private traveler and explorer, 
 but really in the employ of the National Government (Cf. Con- 
 gressional Globe, 27th Cong., 3d Sess., Appendix, p. 229), in 1839 
 led out a small migration to Oregon. He was described by an 
 Englishman who was a fellow passenger on the Pacific with him 
 as a "flamboyantly patriotic American." September 13, 1839, he 
 reached Ft. Boise (Travels, p. 141), and (p. 142) he says: "The 
 14th and 15th were spent very pleasantly with this gentleman" 
 {i. e., Mr. Payette) . . . "Among the curiosities of this estab- 
 lishment were the fore wheels, axle-tree and thills of a one-horse 
 wagon, said to have been run by the American missionaries from 
 the State of Connecticut through the mountains thus far towards 
 the mouth of the Columbia. It was left here under the belief that
 
 84 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 it could not be taken through the Blue IMountains. But fortunately 
 for the next that shall attempt to cross the continent, a safe and 
 easy passage has lateh' been discovered by which vehicles of the 
 kind may be drawn through to Walla Walla." 
 
 Farnham returned to the States via the Sandwich Islands, and 
 at Poughkeepsie, N. Y., in 1841, published the first edition of his 
 "Travels on the Great Western Prairies, the Anahuac and Rocky 
 Mountains, and in the Oregon Territory." It was so popular that 
 in 1843 two more editions were published in New York, and a two 
 volume edition in London. 
 
 Some of the advocates of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story — 
 notably Ixev. M. Eel Is and W. H. Gray — have sought to make it ap- 
 pear that Paj'ette did not communicate this information to Farn- 
 ham, but that he was informed of this easy pass by Whitman, de- 
 claring that he revised his "Travels" after he was at Whitman's 
 mission (which was September 23 to 30, 1839). To this it is enough 
 to reply that: First, this paragraph appears in its regular order 
 under the date of his stop at Ft. Boise, without any intimation 
 that he had learned anything included in this paragraph at any 
 later time, or from any other person than Payette. 
 
 Second, it is certain that this paragraph was not revised by 
 Farnham after his visit at Whitman's, on account of the error it 
 contains about these missionaries, as follows: "American mission- 
 aries from the State of Connecticut." Immediately preceding Farn- 
 ham, in 1839, were Revs. J. S. Griffin and Asahel Hunger and their 
 wives, who had been sent out as "Independent Missionaries" (i e., 
 indei)eudent of the American Board) by some churches in Con- 
 necticut which had become dissatisfied with the management of the 
 A. B. C. F. M. Monsieur Payette's knowledge of the geography of 
 the States was limited, and he very naturally would speak of 
 "American missionaries from the State of Connecticut," since the 
 last ones who had passed were from that State, but if during his 
 week's stay at Whitman's station Farnham had discussed this mat-- 
 ter with Whitman, who had left these wagon wheels there in 1836, 
 not for the reason assigned by Farnham, nor from any opposition 
 of the Hudson's Bay Co., but, as stated by Spalding in his letter of 
 September 20, 183(5, as follows : "We drove a wagon to Snake Fort, 
 and could have driven it through but for the fatigue of our animals, 
 expect to get it at some future time," certainly Whitman would 
 have corrected the statement that the "thills and wheels and axle- 
 tree" Farnliam saw at Boise were left there by "American mission- 
 aries from the State of Connecticut," since neither Whitman nor 
 anyone of his associates in the Mission of the American Board 
 was from Connecticut. 
 
 Griffin and Munger are said to have taken a wagon over the
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 85 
 
 Continental Divide and as far as Ft. Hall, where they left it, as 
 Whitman did his axle and wheels at Boise, ''on account of the 
 fatigue of their animals." 
 
 In 1840 Revs. Harvey Clark and A. T. Smith, and Mr. P. B. 
 Littlejohn and their wives, Independent Protestant missionaries to 
 the Oregon Indians, reached Ft. Hall with wagons, and left them 
 "on account of the fatigue of their animals." 
 
 What happened soon after they left Ft. Hall is best told in the 
 following extract from the address of Hon. Elwood Evans at the 
 1877 meeting of the Oregon Pioneer Association (Tr. 1877, pp. 22- 
 23) : 
 
 "Let me now refer to the statement of the late Dr. Robert 
 Newell, Speaker of the House of Representatives of Oregon, in 1846, 
 a name familiar and held in high remembrance by ancient Oregon- 
 ians. It is interesting for its history, and in the present connec- 
 tion illustrates the difficulty at that time of getting into Oregon. 
 It details the bringing of the first wagon to Ft. Walla Walla, Ore- 
 gon, in 1840, the Wallula of Washington Territory. The party 
 consisted of Dr. Newell and family. Col. Joseph L. Meek and family, 
 Caleb Wilkins of Tualitan Plains and Frederic Ermatinger, a Chief 
 Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company. It had been regarded as 
 the height of folly to attempt to bring wagons west of Ft. Hall. 
 The Doctor, suggested the experiment, Wilkins approved it and 
 Ermatinger yielded. The Revs. Harvey Clark, A. B. Smith (should 
 be Alvin T. Smith, Cf. Gray's History, p. 109, also list of members 
 Oregon Pioneer Association in Trans., 1877, p. 94) and P. B. Lit- 
 tlejohn, missionaries, had accompanied the American Fur Com- 
 pany's expedition as far as Green River, where they employed Dr. 
 Newell to pilot them to Ft. Hall. On arriving there, they found 
 their animals so reduced that they concluded to abandon their two 
 wagons, and Dr. Newell accepted them for his services as guide. In 
 a letter from the Doctor, he says : "At the time I took the wagons, 
 I had no idea of undertaking to bring them into this country. I 
 exchanged fat horses to these missionaries for their animals, and 
 after they had been gone a month or more for Wallamet, and the 
 American Fur Company had abandoned the country for good, I 
 concluded to hitch up and try the much-dreaded job of bringing a 
 wagon to Oregon. I sold one of those wagons to Mr. Ermatinger, 
 at Ft. Hall. Mr. Caleb Wilkins had a small wagon which Joel 
 Walker had left at Ft. Hall. On the 5th of August, 1840, we put 
 out with three wagons. Joseph L. Meek drove my wagon. In a 
 few days we began to realize the difficult task before us, and found 
 that the continual crashing of the sage under our wagons, which 
 was in many places higher than the mules' backs, was no joke. 
 Seeing our animals begin to fail, we began to light up; finally
 
 8(3 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 threw away our wa^on-beds and were quite sorry we had under- 
 taken the job. All the consolation we had was that we broke the 
 first sage on that road, and were too proud to eat anything but 
 dried salmon skins after our provisions had become exhausted. In 
 a rather rough and reduced state we arrived at Dr. Whitman's 
 mission station in the Walla Walla valley, where we were met by 
 that hospitable man, and kindly made welcome and feasted accord- 
 ingly. On hearing me regret that I had undertaken to bring 
 wagons, the Doctor said, 'Oh, you will never regret it. You have 
 broken the ice, and when others see that wagons have passed they, 
 too, will pass, and in a few years the valley will be full of our 
 people.' The Doctor shook me heartily by the hand; Mrs. Whit- 
 man, too, welcomed us, and the Indians walked around the wagons, 
 or what they called 'horse canoes,' and seemed to give it up. We 
 spent a day or so with the Doctor and then went to Ft. Walla 
 Walla, where we were kindly received by Mr. P. C. Pambrun, Chief 
 Trader of Hudson's Bay Company, Superintendent of that post. 
 On the 1st of October we took leave of those kind people, leaving 
 our wagons and taking the river trail." 
 
 The simple fact that these, the first wagons to go through to the 
 Columbia, were not only outfitted at Ft. Hall, but that one of them 
 was owned, outfitted and driven by Frederic Ermatinger, the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co. chief trader in charge of Ft. Hall in 1838, 1839, 1840 
 and 1841, of itself reduces to senseless drivel all the scores of pages 
 in Barrows, Nixon, Craighead, Mowry and the other advocates of 
 the Whitman Saved Oregon Story, which accuse the Hudson's Bay 
 Co. of opposing the passage of wagons beyond Ft. Hall. 
 
 One point should not be forgotten in reading the account of 
 these first wagons through to the Columbia. Unable from their 
 small number to keep a party of pioneers in advance to dig down 
 steep banks of creeks, and select the most favorable routes over 
 hills and mountains, they found the difficulties of the way so great 
 that they threw away their wagon beds, and only got the frames 
 and running gears through to the Columbia. 
 
 This, however, was all that was of any special importance, as 
 they could easily get pine or fir boards to make new bodies for the 
 wagons at Ft. Vancouver, but well-seasoned hardwood lumber for 
 wagon wheels, and axles, and framework could not be had, nor 
 could the iron work be easily obtained at Vancouver, or elsewhere 
 in Oregon at that time. 
 
 The experience of these men fully justified the advice given at 
 Ft. Hall to the parties of '39, '40, '41 and '42, to leave their wagons, 
 and go from there with pack animals, while at the same time it fully 
 confirmed the declaration of the Bocky Mountain Fur Co., in 1830, 
 that they — a party of resolute, well-disciplined men— could have
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 87 
 
 driven their wagons through to the Great Falls of the Columbia, 
 and would have found a better road beyond the Continental Divide 
 than on the east of it. Meek, Newell and Wilkins were miserably- 
 poor, so that they had very little as a loading for their wagons. 
 Meek and Newell had Indian wives, who, however little they might 
 have been adapted to grace a drawing room, were true ''helpmeets" 
 for such a journey, being as expert as the men in all its drudgery 
 and hardships, and especially in making and breaking camp. The 
 four men, Meek, Newell, Wilkins and Ermatinger, were all experi- 
 enced mountaineers and trappers, vigorous, skilled in "reading the 
 face of the country," resourceful in any wilderness emergency, as 
 brave as any men ever were, able to converse freely with the In- 
 dians, and so to obtain assistance from them if needed, and with 
 all the prestige of the Hudson's Bay Co. to assist them — Ermatin- 
 ger being well known to all the leading Indians of that region as 
 a Hudson's Bay Co. chief trader — and they left Ft. Hall with fresh 
 horses. It is quite within bounds to say that, considering all these 
 circumstances, they were at least two or three, if not five or six 
 times as strong a party for the journey from Ft. Hall to the Co- 
 lumbia by wagon as either the party of 1839 or 1840, composed as 
 they were of unpractical men, fresh from theological schools, with 
 little experience in overcoming the difiSculties of the way, with no 
 knowledge of the Indian language, and no experience in dealing 
 with Indians and no prestige of the Hudson's Bay Co. to aid them, 
 with stock worn out by the more than 1,200 miles journey from 
 the Missouri frontier to Ft. Hall, with white wives who could be 
 of little service in pioneering a wagon road, and loaded down with 
 much more weighty and bulky impedimenta of various sorts than 
 these poverty-stricken trappers. 
 
 If Meek's party, with all their skill, and courage, and energy, 
 and Indian wives to help them, and with fresh stock at Ft. Hall, 
 were obliged to throw away their wagon bodies, what can be more 
 evident than that if the missionary parties of '39 and '40 had tried 
 it, they would have been obliged not only to wholly abandon the 
 wagons, but also to leave behind most, if not all, of their loading, 
 and so have experienced much more of hardship and discomfort, 
 and have reached the Columbia much poorer than they did by 
 taking pack animals from Ft. Hall? 
 
 Neither Whitman nor his wife nor any other of the American 
 Board missionaries in any letter written to the American Board, 
 or to their friends, even so much as mentioned the arrival of these 
 three wagons at his station in 1840, with their complete demonstra- 
 tion of the easy practicability of the route for loaded wagons when- 
 ever a party of 80 to 100 or more resolute and tolerably disciplined 
 men should attempt it.
 
 88 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 The only contemporaneous account I have been able to find of 
 the 1841 overland niij>ration is the very brief and vague one in 
 "Letters and Sketches, with a Narrative of a Year's Residence 
 Among the Indian Tribes of the Rocky Mountains, by P. J. De 
 Smet, S. J., Philadelphia, 1843." 
 
 Father DeSmet, notwithstanding his great ability, is like most 
 enthusiastic missionaries provokingly inexact in many of his state- 
 ments, and so absorbed in the emotions excited by his religion that 
 he omits any mention of a multitude of matters that seem to the 
 historian of vastly more consequence than much of what he has 
 written. 
 
 On page 64, speaking of the crossing of the Kansas River, he 
 wrote: ''Our baggage wagons and men crossed in a pirogue, which 
 at a distance looked like one of those gondolas which glide through 
 the streets of Venice." 
 
 (P. 05) "On the 19th (May, 1841,) we continued our journey 
 to the number of seventy souls, fifty of whom were capable of man- 
 aging the rifle." 
 
 (P. 104) "It was here that we left Bear River. On the 14th of 
 August our wagons, having proceeded ten hours without intermis- 
 sion, arrived at the outlet of a defile which seemed to us the end 
 of the world." 
 
 (P. 125) Writing of the rapid current of the South Platte where 
 they had forded it, he writes : "It would have carried away wagons 
 and carts, had they not been supported on all sides while the mules 
 exerted all their strength to pull them onward." 
 
 (P. 12(5) Crossing of North Platte: "The largest wagon was 
 carried ort" by the force of the current in spite of all the efforts, 
 shouts and cries of the men, who did all they could to keep them- 
 selves from being drowned. Another wagon was literally turned 
 over." 
 
 On pages 127-8 he describes the overturn in fording Snake River 
 of some sort of wheeled vehicle, with which he had left Ft. Hall for 
 his journey with the Flathead Indians to their home in the Flat- 
 head Valley, in northwest Montana. He twice calls it a "vehicle," 
 and three times a "carriage," but in a letter to another party de- 
 scribing the same incident (on p. 175) he twice calls it a "cart." 
 How far he took this vehicle he does not inform us, nor why he 
 abandoned it (if he did so), but by the route he traveled u]) Snake 
 River to Henry Lake, across the Continental Divide over Red Rock 
 Pass, down the Beaver Head, and back again across the Continental 
 Divide over Deer Lodge Pass, he could certainly have driven a cart 
 through to Ihe Flathead Valley. How many wagons there were in 
 this party is unknown, but there would seem to have been six or 
 eight at least as I'ai- as some point well up the Platte, for in an
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 89 
 
 account (p. 129) of an alarm given at the appearance of a band 
 of eighty Cheyenne warriors he says, "The Colonel orders the 
 wagons to be drawn up in double file, and places between them 
 whatever may be exposed to plunder." 
 
 From page 97 it appears that that part of this migration that 
 had started for California did not go to Ft. Hall, but ''left us a few 
 days before our arrival at the fort, in the vicinity of the boiling 
 springs which empty into Bear River" (i e., the Soda Springs, 
 which are about eighty miles south of east from Ft. Hall). 
 
 Page 96 informs us that those who had joined the party merely 
 for information or pleasure, some five or seven in number, had 
 started back to the States at Green River. 
 
 Whether the California party took any wagons beyond Soda 
 Springs we are not informed. The only information we have as to 
 the relative numbers in this party for California, and those for the 
 settlements in Oregon, is in a letter of Mrs. Whitman to her sister 
 Jane, dated "Wieletpoo, Oregon Territory, October 1, 1841" (and 
 published in Trans. Oregon Pioneer Association, 1891, p. 139), as 
 follows : 
 
 "The emigrants were twenty-four in number — two families, with 
 small children, from Missouri. This company was much larger 
 when they started. About thirty went another route, to California. 
 The company of Jesuits were twelve in number, consisting of three 
 priests, three novitiates, four laborers, and their pilot, started from 
 St. Louis, one they found on their way. Their pilot is Fitzpatrick, 
 the same person that commanded the party we came with from the 
 States. This company came as far as Ft. Hall. They then go with 
 the Indians to the Flathead country, or Pend d'Oreille. It is not 
 known where they will settle, but it is reported that they expect to 
 locate themselves somewhere in that region, and in the same lan- 
 guage that part of our mission are occupying." 
 
 That this party was too small to open a wagon road over the 
 Blue Mountains is obvious, and the fact that Ermatinger was still 
 in command at Ft. Hall is all the proof needed that there was no 
 opposition on the part of the Hudson's Bay Co. at Ft. Hall to 
 wagons going beyond there, and that the advice given this small 
 party to leave their wagons there and go on with pack horses was 
 entirely proper. 
 
 This brings us to the 1842 migration, and fortunately we have 
 abundant and detailed contemporaneous evidence of the movements 
 of this migration, and the fate of its wagons, and its treatment at 
 Ft. Hall, in (a) "The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California," 
 by Lansford W. Hastings (who was one of the leaders of the party). 
 The first edition of this was published at Cincinnati in 1845 and 
 later editions in 1847 and 1849.
 
 90 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 (b) Fremont's report of his first and second expeditions, pub- 
 lished by the Government in 1845. 
 
 (c) The reports of Dr. Elijah White (the organizer and first 
 captain of the party) as Sub-Indian Agent to the Commissioner of 
 Indian Afl'airs. 
 
 (d) ''White's Ten Years in Oregon," Ithaca, N. Y., 1847. 
 
 (e) ''The Journal of Hon. Medorem Crawford," one of the pub- 
 lications of the Oregon Historical Society, and Crawford's address 
 as President of the Oregon Pioneer Association at its 1881 meet- 
 ing. This address is fairly entitled to rank as a contemporaneous 
 account because based on and agreeing with his journal. This was 
 the first large overland migration, numbering fifty-one men and 
 fifty-seven women and children. 
 
 From these strictly contemporaneous sources we learn that this 
 first large American overland migration started from the Missouri 
 frontier May 16, 1842, with seventeen or eighteen wagons. Craw- 
 ford's Journal (p. 7) says 17, and White's Ten Years (p. 147) says 
 18; that at the American trading posts of Fts. Laramie and John 
 — rivals and competitors of the Hudson's Bay Co. — and located 
 more than 600 miles east of Ft. Hall, part of these wagons were 
 traded oft", not to that wicked Hudson's Bay Co., but to American 
 Fur traders; that more of them were abandoned in the Green River 
 Valley, about 300 miles east of Ft. Hall, and only seven wagons 
 reached that place, and that they, the first large overland migra- 
 tion, were received with the utmost kindness at Ft. Hall, and fur- 
 nished with flour at only one-half of what the American traders 
 had charged them at Ft. Laramie. A letter to me from Mr. Craw- 
 ford, dated September 17, 1891, says: ''Only eight wagons went 
 beyond Green River, one of which was abandoned, and seven 
 wagons arrived at Ft. Hall. . . We were very kindly treated 
 at Ft. Hall. Never heard the ofiicers at Ft. Hall charged with 
 misrepresentations. It had been understood by all that we were 
 too late to take wagons farther than Ft. Hall." Hasting's Emi- 
 grants' Guide (p. 9) says: "Upon arriving at Fts. Laramie and 
 John we were received in a very kind and friendly manner by the 
 gentlemen of those forts. . . While here several of our party 
 disposed of their oxen and wagons, taking horses in exchange. 
 This they were induced to do under the impression that wagons 
 could not be taken to Oregon, of which they were assured" (not 
 by any wicked Hudson's Bay Co. oflScers, but) "by the gentlemen 
 of these forts and other mountaineers," (i. e., by American fur 
 traders, who were rivals of and bitterly antagonistic to the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co., and as thoroughly patriotic Americans as ever 
 lived).
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 91 
 
 HASTINGS'S ACCOUNT OF TREATMENT AT FT. HALL. 
 
 Idem, pp. 18-20, describes their arrival and reception at Ft. 
 Hall, and the following are extracts: "We were received in the 
 kindest manner by Mr. Grant, who was in charge; and we received 
 every aid and attention from the gentlemen of that fort during 
 our stay in their vicinity. We were here informed, by Mr, Grant 
 and other gentlemen of the company, that it would be impossible 
 for us to take our wagons down to the Pacific, consequently a meet- 
 ing of the party was called for the purpose of determining whether 
 we should take them further or leave them at this fort, from which 
 place it appeared that we could take them about half way to the 
 Pacific without serious interruption." (This would be to the east- 
 ern base of the Blue Mountains, W. I. M.) "Some insisted that 
 the great convenience of having wagons with us would amply war- 
 rant taking them as far as we could, while others thought, as we 
 would eventually be under the necessity of leaving them, it would 
 be preferable to leave them at the fort, especially as we could there 
 obtain tools and all other means of manufacturing our packing 
 equipage, which we could not do elsewhere. Another reason which 
 was urged in favor of leaving them was that we could, perhaps, sell 
 them for something at this place, which we could do at no other 
 point upon the route. The vote having been taken, it was found 
 that a great majority was opposed to taking them any further, the 
 consequence of which was that there was no alternative for the 
 minority, as our little government was purely democratic. Mr. 
 Grant purchased a few of the wagons, for which he paid in such 
 provisions as he could dispose of without injury to himself. He 
 could not, of course, afford to give much for them, as he did not 
 need them, but bought them merely as an accommodation." 
 
 FREMONT'S ACCOUNT OF THE 1842 MIGRATION AT FTS. 
 
 LARAMIE AND JOHN. 
 
 Page 40 of Sen. Ex. Doc. 174, 28th Cong., 2d Sess., being report 
 of Fremont's 1842 Exploration, under date of July 13, 1842, after 
 describing his arrival at Fts. Laramie and John (less than 600 
 miles from Independence, Mo., and over an almost level country, 
 with a plainly marked wagon road the whole way), continues as 
 follows: "The emigrants to Oregon and Mr. Bridger's party met 
 here, a few days before our arrival. Division and misunderstand- 
 ings had grown up among them ; they were already somewhat dis- 
 heartened by the fatigues of their long and wearisome journey, 
 and the feet of their cattle had become so much worn as to be 
 scarcely able to travel. In this situation, they were not likely to 
 find encouragement in the hostile attitude of the Indians and the
 
 92 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 new and unexpected difficulties which spranj? up before them. 
 They were told that the country was entirely swept of grass, and 
 that few or no buffaloes are to be found on their line of route; and 
 with their weakened animals it would be impossible for them to 
 transport their heavy wagons over the mountains. Under these 
 circumstances, they disposed of their wagons and cattle at the 
 forts, selling them at the prices they had paid in the States, and 
 taking in exchange coffee and sugar at one dollar a pound, and 
 miserable, worn-out horses, which died before they reached the 
 mountains; Mr. Bondeau informed me that he had purchased 
 thirty, and the lower fort eighty head of fine cattle, some of them 
 of the Durham breed." 
 
 WHITE'S ACCOUNT OF ABANDONING WAGONS BY 1842 
 MIGRATION AND ITS TREATMENT AT FT. HALL. 
 
 White's ''Ten Years in Oregon" (p. 147) says that they set out 
 from the Missouri frontier with 18 wagons. P. 154 "At this fort" 
 (Laramie) "they exchanged herds for fresh horses and purchased 
 materials for food — some at enormous rates. For flour, for in- 
 stance, they were charged half a dollar per pint; coffee, tea, sugar, 
 etc., corresponding — all of which they were obliged to have, as 
 many of the party were by this time destitute of the articles." 
 P. 162 "Here" (/. e., on the Little Sandy tributary of the Green 
 River, more than 300 miles east of Ft. Hall) "tw-elve of the party, 
 who were extremely desirous of advancing more rapidly, divested 
 themselves of carts, wagons and all unnecessary encumbrances and 
 went on, leaving the general encampment to follow more leisurely 
 to Ft. Hall. This was not accomplished without a struggle with 
 those who remained; some being grieved, and others provoked, at 
 being left behind." P. 164 "Four days' longer march through an 
 interesting and verdant country brought them to Fort Hall. . . . 
 Their reception was of the kindest character, and they spent a. 
 week very ])leasantly with Mr. Grant and his worthy associate, Mc- 
 Donald, who made advantageous exchanges of commodities and 
 afforded them every facility in their power for their further jour- 
 ney. Flour cost them but half what it did at Ft. Laramie, al- 
 though conveyed on horseback 800 miles." As it is certain that 
 this 1842 migration was the only one that had reached Ft. Hall 
 when Grant was in command of it, prior to the arrival of the 1843 
 migration, and as the wrongs which Gray (writing 1860 to 1870), 
 who was never within some 400 miles of Ft. Hall after 1838 till 
 after the treaty of 1846 was made, and Spalding (writing in 1858 
 to 1870), who was never within 300 to 400 miles of, Ft. Hall after 
 1836, allege that this 1842 migration suffered there, at the hands
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 93 
 
 of Grant, form a large part of the basis on which they rest the 
 Whitman Saved Oregon Story, and as not a single advocate of 
 that story has ever quoted any part of this contemporaneous evi- 
 dence of Dr. White and L. W, Hastings, the leaders of the party, 
 and of Fremont and Crawford as to what actually happened to 
 them on the road, inducing them to abandon their wagons, and as 
 to their treatment at Ft. Hall, it seemed to me best to quote it 
 fully preparatory to discussing the experiences of the 1843 migra- 
 tion at Ft. Hall. 
 
 From what will be demonstrated in the account of the 1843 mi- 
 gration to have been the trifling difficulties of the route from Ft. 
 Hall to Walla Walla it is certain that this 1842 migration, if har- 
 monious and under any reasonable discipline, could have taken their 
 wagons to the Columbia. But they were inharmonious from the 
 start, and when only a month on the road split into two discordant 
 factions, which much of the way would not even camp together. 
 The advice Grant gave them therefore was good, for they unques- 
 tionably could not have taken their wagons over the Blue Mountains. 
 
 Instead of referring to these strictly contemporaneous sources 
 for the history of this 1842 migration and the disposition made of 
 its wagons, Spalding when he first launched the Whitman Saved 
 Oregon Story wrote: "In 1840 three missionary ladies from New 
 York, Mrs. Smith, Clark and Littlejohn, and their husbands crossed 
 the mountains and brought their wagons. But on reaching Fort 
 Hall they were compelled to abandon their wagons by the repre- 
 sentatives of the Hudson's Bay Co. . . . In 1842 considerable 
 emigration moved forward with ox teams and wagons, but on reach- 
 ing Ft. Hall the same story was told them, and the teams were 
 saciificed and the emigrant families reached Dr. Whitman's station 
 late in the fall, in very destitute circumstances." (Cf. Pacific, Sept. 
 28, 1865.) This was also used by Spalding in his "Lecture" embody- 
 ing his version of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story. (Cf. p. 20 
 of his pamplet; Ex. Doc. 37, 41st Cong. 3d Sess.) Barrows with 
 his usual disregard of all original sources copies this from Spald- 
 ing's pamphlet (Cf. Barrows Or., p. 148), and then on p. 149 he tells 
 it again in his own language as follows: "In 1842 immigrants 
 to the number of one hundred and thirty-seven" (should be 108), 
 "men, women and children, secular and missionary, had run the 
 gauntlet of the traders and escaped the financial steel-traps of a 
 monarch monopoly all along the path. But they had been forced 
 by alarms and dangers made to order to leave their wagons be- 
 hind." Rev. M. Eells ("Ind. Missions," p. 156) echoes these false 
 statements as follows: "At Ft. Hall ... in 1842 the same 
 misrepresentations" {i. e., that wagons could not be driven through 
 to the Columbia) "were again successful with a small company of
 
 94 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 emigrants led by Dr. E. White." Dr. Nixou a.s usual gives his 
 fervid imagination full swing on this, and (p. 190 of "How Marcus 
 Whitman Saved Oregon") prints the following (which is more 
 ridiculously false than anything anybody else has written about 
 Whitman's wagon, and the action of the Hudson's Bay Co. relative 
 to it, and all subsequent wagons) : "It is not at all strange they 
 made the fight they did ; they had in 183G feared the advent of Dr. 
 Whitman's old wagon more than an army with banners. They had 
 tried in every way in their power except by absolute force to arrest 
 its i)rogress. They foresaw that every turn of its wheels upon 
 Oregon soil endangered fur. Those in command at Fort Hall and 
 Fort Boise were warned to be more watchful. The consequence was 
 that not another wheel was permitted to go beyond those forts from 
 1836 to 1843." As a specimen of pure fancy in direct contradiction 
 of the facts as established by overwhelming contemporaneous evi- 
 dence, this is probably unsurpassed even by any other writer in 
 support of the Whitman Legend, and in this paragraph we doubt- 
 less have the climax of all the absurdities about Whitman's "old 
 wagon." He follows this by the usual deceptive quotation made by 
 the advocates of the Whitman Legend from Palmer's Journal, but 
 shows his ignorance of the book by beginning with "Gen. Palmer 
 . . . says 'While at Fort Hall in 1842' " (though the title page 
 of Palmer's Journal shows that he was not there till 1845), and then 
 Nixon continues (on p. 192) : "They {i. e., the H. B. Co. at Ft. 
 Hall) did succeed in scaring this band of one hundred and thirty- 
 seven men, women and children in 1842 into leaving all their wagons 
 behind, but they went on to Oregon on pack-saddles." 
 
 Instead of this migration arriving at Dr. Whitman's "late in the 
 fall in very destitute circumstances," they arrived there very early 
 in the autumn, to-wit, Sept. 14 and 15. (Cf. Crawford's Journal, 
 p. 20, and Rev. C. Eells' letter of Oct. 3, 1842, to D. Greene, secre- 
 tary, which says that letters brought by Dr. White were received 
 by Eells and Walker, five days' journey from AYhitman's Station, 
 on Sept. 21, and no contemporaneous account has anything to say 
 about their being in destitute circumstances.) 
 
 This brings us to the 1843 migration — the first one which ful- 
 filled the conditions of the Rocky Mountain Fur Co.'s letter of Oct. 
 29, 1830, giving an account of the first wagons to the Rockies, in 
 which they stated, not that any })arty of one, or two, or a half dozen 
 men could drive wagons through to the Great Falls of the Columbia, 
 but that they, a well armed and fairly disciplined company of 
 eighty-one resolute men — numerous enough to be able to keep a 
 small band of pioneers in advance to select the best route, and dig 
 down the steep banks of creeks, and cut out brush apd trees where 
 they were in the way — could have gone through with their wagons.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 95 
 
 That Whitman's connection with the origin of that migration 
 was trifling and inconsequential is evident from four of his own 
 letters, the first from St. Louis, May 12th, the other three from 
 Shawnee Indian Mission, about ten miles from the rendezvous of 
 the migration. May 27th, 28th, 30th, 1843. 
 
 The first and last were to D. Greene, secretary, and the others 
 to two of Dr. Whitman's brothers-in-law. 
 
 All about the migration in the first is the following: 
 
 "I have made up my mind that it would not be expedient to 
 take any families across the mountains this year, except such as 
 can go at this time. For this reason I have found it my duty to 
 go on with the party myself." 
 
 On page 181, Dr. Mowry prints part of this letter, but carefully 
 omits the above paragraphs. 
 
 In that addressed to his wife's brother, Edward Prentiss, dated 
 May 27th {i. e., five days after the migration had started from its 
 camp near Independence, Mo., for Oregon), all that relates to it is 
 the following : 
 
 ''I cannot tell you very much about the migration to Oregon. 
 They appear very willing, and, I have no doubt, are generally of 
 an enterprising character. There are over 200 men, besides women 
 and children, as it is said. No one can well tell until we are all on 
 the road and get together how many there are. Some have been 
 gone a week, and others have not yet started. I hope to start to- 
 morrow. I shall have an easy journey, as I have not much to do, 
 having no one depending on me." 
 
 To this letter Dr. Mowry (though fully informed about it) never 
 alludes, and the same is true of every other book, magazine or news- 
 paper article advocating the Whitman Saved Oregon Story. 
 
 I have conducted sundry excursions to the Rocky Mountain and 
 Pacific Coast regions myself, but while they were gathering I did 
 not stay ten miles from their rendezvous, nor wait for an invitation 
 to visit and address them, nor say — after they were fairly started — 
 that "I could not tell very much about them," and, still less, that 
 "I expected to have an easy journey, not having much to do, having 
 no one depending upon me," and if there were no other letter but 
 this — the authenticity of which is beyond dispute — it would utterly 
 destroy the whole story that Whitman had any special influence 
 on or concern about the originating or organizing of that migra- 
 tion, or felt any responsibility for its getting through to Oregon, 
 with or without wagons. 
 
 In that of May 28th he wrote: "I have been, as it were, wait- 
 ing for three weeks. When I got to St. Louis I found I had time, 
 and so I went to Quincy and saw sister Jane. I had a fine journey 
 all the way, and have been here nearly two weeks. I shall start
 
 96 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 tomorrow or next day. Some of the emigrants have been gone a 
 week, and others are just going. ... I hope to be expeditious 
 in traveling. After we get to Fort Hall I shall try to go on rapidly, 
 if not before." From this Dr. Mowry (erroneously stating that it 
 was written from St. Louis) quotes (on pages 19(5-7) about 275 
 words, but carefully omits the last two sentences above quoted, 
 which show that a week after the migration had started (except the 
 few stragglers which always bring up the rear of such a great move- 
 ment), Whitman intended on reaching Fort Hall (beyond which 
 there was no danger from Indians) to leave the migration behind, 
 though that was the only part where there was not a well-known 
 wagon road, and where he could be of any special service to it. 
 
 In that of May 30th he wrote : 
 
 ''You will be surprised to see that we are not yet started. . . . 
 I shall start tomorrow. I regret that I could not have spent some 
 of the time spent here in suspense with my friends in the East. I 
 have only a lad of thirteen, my nephew, with me. I take him to 
 have someone to stay with Mrs. W. 
 
 ''I cannot give you much of an account of the emigrants until 
 we get on the road. It is said that there are over 200 men, besides 
 women and children." 
 
 The proper place for this in Mowry's ''Marcus Whitman" was 
 on page 197, after that of May 28th, but Dr. Mowry neither prints 
 it there nor puts a footnote of reference to it, but on pages 262-3 
 he puts it in the Appendix, where few of his readers will peruse it, 
 and fewer note its significance in refuting the claim that Whitman 
 was prominent in originating, organizing and leading the 1843 
 migration. 
 
 I have specified Dr. Mowry's treatment of these four letters be- 
 cause he is the only author who in a book or magazine article advo- 
 cating the Whitman Legend mentions any of them, and the in- 
 genious way in which he suppresses the conclusive evidence they 
 furnish of Whitman's ignorance concerning and utter lack of any 
 feeling of responsibility as to the organization or movements of this 
 migration even eight days after it had started is thoroughly char- 
 acteristic of the deceptive methods which mark every chapter of 
 his book. 
 
 (Cf. for the full text of the letters of May 27 and 28, Tr. Or. 
 Pi. Asscn., 1891, pp. 177-9, and for those of May 12 and 30, Vol. 138, 
 Mss. A. B. C. F. M.) 
 
 It is impossible to determine just where and when Whitman 
 overtook the migration, but it was probably when they were about 
 150 miles on their journey, as a letter published in the Burlington 
 Gazette of July 8, and copied into the New York Trihune of Aug. 
 5, 1843, says : "Dr. Whitman from W^alla Walla, who is in our
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 97 
 
 company, advises that the company divide into three or four parties 
 for speed and convenience, as there will be no danger from Indians." 
 
 This letter was dated Kansas River, June 3, 1843, and though 
 unsigned was undoubtedly written by M. M. McCarver. Though 
 dated June 3, it is altogether probable that it was not finished for 
 some days afterward, as their first opportunity to send it back was 
 on June 10, when about 160 miles from their starting point, they 
 met a party of fur traders from Fort Laramie going back to the 
 States with furs. I am indebted to the courtesy of Prof. Shafer 
 for a copy of this letter. 
 
 That he was a useful member of the party after he overtook it 
 no one disputes, but that he was in any sense an indispensible mem^' 
 ber of it, or that it would not have gone through with its wagons 
 had he not been with it, is, I think, established beyond a shadow 
 of a doubt by the evidence with which I shall conclude this chapter, 
 since this party completed the development of the transcontinental 
 wagon road to the Dalles of the Columbia (i e., to the eastern base 
 of the Cascade Mountains), across which range the Barlow road 
 was built by Barlow, of the 1845 migration, in the spring of 1846, 
 as hereinafter stated in Chapter III. of Part II. 
 
 Unfortunately no contemporaneous book was published by any 
 member of that migration, nor has any such full and detailed con- 
 temporaneous account of it in letters or journals ever been found 
 as every student of the history of the Oregon Expansion wishes had 
 been written, and we must content ourselves with a few letters from 
 various members of the migration as hereinafter stated, and with 
 very brief extracts from and not very full accounts based on the 
 only known journal of the movements of the migration. This journal 
 was kept by Peter H. Burnett (who was the first Governor of the 
 State of California), and of this he says: "I kept a concise journal 
 of the trip as far as Walla Walla and have it now before me." (''Old 
 Pioneer," p. 101.) That it was so very "concise" as to be little more 
 than a memorandum from which to refresh his memory is certain 
 from some extracts from it which he sent me in 1885. It is much 
 to be regretted that Governor Burnett's sons have not so far acceded 
 to repeated requests made by me (and presumably by others) to 
 publish that journal in full, excepting, of course, such parts (if there 
 are any) as relate to personal and domestic matters which do not 
 concern the public, or at least to furnish me with a transcript of 
 everything in it which relates in any way to Dr. Whitman. Three 
 accounts (one of only a small part, and the other two of the whole) 
 of that journey, based on that "concise journal," have been pub- 
 lished, as follows: (A) Five letters written by Burnett in January, 
 February and March, 1844, and printed in the New York Herald, 
 Dec. 28,^1844, Jan. 5 and 6 (two letters), and 18, 1845. These let-
 
 98 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 ters were reprinted in Or. Hist. Quarterly, December, 1902. (B) 
 Part II. (pp. G3-113) of George Wilkes' ^'History of Oregon," New 
 York, May, 1845. (C) Pages 97-138 of IJiiruett's ''Recollections of 
 an Old Pioneer" (written between March and October, 1878), New 
 York, 1880. 
 
 Besides this there are some very important passages in the re- 
 port of Fremont's 1843 exploration, as will hereinafter appear, and 
 a letter of Whitman, of Nov. 1, 1843, and a few other letters as here- 
 inafter mentioned and quoted where they give any information of 
 consequence about the development of the Wagon Road to Oregon. 
 Three of the Herald letters cover the movements of the migration 
 in some detail only up to June 27, that is for 37 days, and for only 
 about 400 miles, or scarcely one-fifth of their journey, leaving them 
 east of the crossing of the South Fork of the Platte, and more than 
 400 miles east of the Continental Divide, and though the other two 
 letters give considerable information about the scenery, geographi- 
 cal divisions, timber, fisheries, climate, etc., of Oregon, there is not 
 in all the letters published in the Herald the least information about 
 what took place at Fort Hall when this migration reached there, 
 nor about their reception at Fort Boise, Fort Walla Walla and Fort 
 Vancouver, nor is the Hudson's Bay Co. so much as mentioned, and 
 though Dr. McLoughlin's name is indeed once mentioned, it is not 
 "as the good angel of the migration," assisting them as if they were 
 his brothers, nor is there the least intimation that they were in- 
 debted to the Hudson's Bay Co.'s good offices in any way, and for 
 anything which appears in the Herald letters. Dr. McLoughlin 
 might have been a member of this American migration. Nor is there 
 a word in the Herald letters about any incident of their journey 
 bevond the South Fork of the Platte, nor a word about their ex- 
 perience in developing the wagon road beyond Fort Hall. The ac- 
 count in Wilkes was undoubtedly based upon the letters written 
 to the Herald which Burnett (Cf. O. P., pp. 177-8) stated covered 
 some 125 pages of foolscap. 
 
 The Herald letters are absolutely valueless as to the develop- 
 ment of the wagon road, though they are of value as to the organi- 
 zation of the migration, and interesting as to its movements over 
 about 400 miles of level prairie, over which the Rocky Mountain 
 Fur Co.'s train of loaded wagons had gone without the slightest 
 difficulty thirteen years before, and numerous other wagons in the 
 intervening vears. 
 
 The Herald published but a small part — probably not more than 
 about one-third to one-fourth — of the matter that Burnett would 
 naturally have written on "some 125 pages of foolscap," and in the 
 absence of the full text of the letters, and of any pther reference 
 to them by Burnett than that heretofore mentioned (on pp. 177-8 of
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 99 
 
 "Old Pioneer"), it must ever remain uncertain to what extent its edi- 
 torial force altered those which it did publish, though it is probable 
 (since on all material points there is a close agreement as to facts 
 between this part of the Wilkes Narrative and the Herald letters), 
 that there were no material alterations except such as would result 
 from a condensation of them by a New York city editor, wholly un- 
 familiar with frontier life and manners. 
 
 Similarly it will never be possible to determine with absolute 
 certainty whether or not on immaterial points Wilkes rewrote some 
 parts of the letters in a more ornate style than that of Burnett, nor 
 is it of any particular consequence, since by comparison with Fre- 
 mont's Kept, and with Whitman's letter of Nov. 1, 1843, and with 
 "Ford's Road Makers" (MS.), and with the letters to me herein- 
 after quoted from Burnett, Shively, Jesse and Lindsay Applegate, 
 and from a comparison of the movements of the migration from the 
 Missouri frontier to Fort Hall, and from Fort Hall to the Columbia, 
 it can be proved beyond any possibility of dispute that Wilkes' state- 
 ments are correct, even when they differ from the statements on 
 the same points in the "Old Pioneer," as to all the really important 
 points, which are : 
 
 (1) Were the difficulties of the route from Fort Hall to the 
 Columbia serious or comparatively trifling? 
 
 (2) What was Whitman's real relation to the party, and how 
 far was he its guide beyond Fort Hall ? 
 
 (3) What treatment did the migration receive at Fort Hall from 
 the officers of the Hudson's Bay Co.? 
 
 (4) Would the migration have gone through with wagons had 
 Whitman not been with it? 
 
 As Wilkes did not claim that he was presenting either a tran- 
 script of the journal or a verbatim copy of the letters, he violated 
 no principle of the most rigid code of historical or literary ethics 
 if in preparing the "Narrative of the Migration of 1843" (which 
 he explicitly declared was not a copy of the journal, but was "pre- 
 pared from the journal of a member of the recently organized Ore- 
 gon Legislature") he rewrote a little or much of it, provided he did 
 not change any material statement of fact it contained, nor is its 
 value as an "original source" for this migration affected, when it 
 is admitted that in some wholly immaterial points, as for instance 
 the number of miles traveled May 22 and 23, the statements in 
 Wilkes are erroneous. That they were not intentionally so is patent 
 to the dullest comprehension, since Wilkes prints (p. 112) the 
 "Table of Distance," which proves the statements as given (on p. 
 72) of the distances traveled May 22 and 23 to be incorrect. The 
 probability is that the error relates to distances traveled the 18th 
 and 19, or the 20th and 21st (of which there is no record in either
 
 100 ACQUIi^ITION OF OREGON 
 
 the letters published iu the Xew York Herald or in the "Old Pio- 
 neer"), and which were misplaced bj one of those printer's errors 
 which continually vex the souls of authors and editors. 
 
 First as to the route from Fort Hall to the Columbia. 
 
 The advocates of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story have so 
 enormously exaggerated the difficulties of the route from Fort Hall 
 to the Columbia that it is time a few plain and indisputable facts 
 about it should be stated. Let us consider first the relative rate of 
 travel of this migration over this part of the route, compared with 
 its travel from the Missouri frontier to Fort Hall — 1,323 miles — 
 over "the best natural road of its length in the world." Burnett 
 ("Old Pioneer," pp. llG-117) says they arrived at the Great Soda 
 Springs on Bear River (83 miles east of Fort Hall), on Aug. 22, 
 and reached Fort Hall Aug. 27, and quitted Fort Hall Aug. 30, 
 "many of our young men having left us with pack trains." The 
 Wilkes Narrative (pp. 82-4) says they left the Great Soda Springs 
 Aug. 27, and reached Fort Hall, 83 miles distant, Aug. 30. Turn- 
 ing to Fremont's Kept. (Sen. Ex. Doc. 174, 28th Cong., 2d Sess., pp. 
 133-9), we find that Aug. 22 he rode for several miles down Bear 
 River by the camps of this migration, who "had been reposing for 
 several davs in this delightful vallev in order to recruit their 
 
 I, Of 
 
 animals on its luxuriant pasturage after their long journey, and 
 prepare them for the hard travel along the comparatively sterile 
 banks of the Upper Columbia." He did not make a camp (which 
 was 42 miles east of Soda Springs) till 10 at night of the 22d, and 
 under date of the 23d he says: "The road in the morning pre- 
 sented an animated appearance. We found that we had encamped 
 near a large party of emigrants ; and a few miles below another 
 party was already in motion." August 26 he remained in camp at 
 Soda Springs, till 11 a. m., and says: "In the course of the morn- 
 ing the last w^agous of the emigration passed by." These wagons, 
 of course, camped the night of Aug. 26 not many miles beyond Soda 
 Springs, and started from there on the 27th, as stated in Wilkes, 
 and as there is no place named (in Wilkes or in the "Old Pioneer") 
 between Soda Springs and the Portneuf, Burnett naturally and 
 properly would say, as stated in Wilkes, that they left the Soda 
 Springs on the 27th, though as a matter of fact it was a camp 
 probably six or eight miles west of Soda Springs, where they camped 
 the night of the 26th. Fremont, it is true, says (p. 139), that it 
 was "probably fifty miles to Fort Hall from where they left the 
 valley of Bear River." But he did not go over that route to Fort 
 Hall, while Burnett, who did go over it, estimated the distance from 
 Soda Springs to Fort Hall as 83 miles. This would give for the 
 distance from where they undoubtedly camped the night of the 26th 
 to Fort Hall about 71 to 75 miles, which would require at least
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 101 
 
 four days' travel, and bring them to Fort Hall about August 30, 
 as Wilkes states, and not August 27, as Burnett wrote in *^01d Pio- 
 neer" 35 years after the event. Accepting the date given in the 
 Wilkes Narrative — August 30 — as the correct one for the arrival 
 at Fort Hall of the larger part of the migration, which it is certain 
 that Fremont found strung out along Bear River Valley, August 
 22 to 25, they had occupied 101 days in traveling 1,323 miles, or 
 an average rate of progress of practically 13 1-10 miles a day ; and 
 even if we admit, what from Fremont's contemporaneous record is 
 proved incorrect, that they reached Fort Hall three days earlier, 
 as stated in the "Old Pioneer," that would only make the average 
 daily journey 13% miles. How does this compare with their prog- 
 ress from Fort Hall to the Columbia? Wilkes and ''Old Pioneer" 
 agree in the statement that they came down the western slope of 
 the Blue Mountains and camped on the Umatilla on Oct. 6, and 
 from that camp to Whitman's Mission, 29 miles, and thence to Fort 
 Walla Walla, 25 miles, in all 54 miles, was a stretch of plains with 
 some sand hills. The difficult part of the road, therefore, was all 
 passed when they were at the Umatilla, and they had traveled 417 
 miles from Fort Hall to the Umatilla, in 36 days, if we accept as 
 correct the date of leaving Fort Hall — Sept. 1 — as given in Wilkes, 
 which gives an average of 11 7-12 miles a day, while even if we 
 accept the manifestly erroneous "Old Pioneer" date of Aug. 30 for 
 the departure from Fort Hall, the daily average was 10 37-38, or 
 practically 11 miles. But several other things must be taken into 
 account. 
 
 First — Their teams were all fresh when they started from Mis- 
 souri, May 22, and it goes without saying that after 1,323 miles 
 travel they were much reduced in strength when they reached Fort 
 Hall. 
 
 Second — Until they reached Fort Hall they had all the way 
 (except perhaps the five days, Aug. 12-17, ocupied in the detour via 
 Bridger's Fort to Bear River), a plainly marked road, and needed 
 to spend no time in finding or making a road, and had no trees to 
 cut to open the road, while between Fort Hall and the Umatilla, or, 
 more strictly, between Fort Boise and the Umatilla, they had to 
 lose a little time at a few points determining the best way to go, 
 and for a few miles (probably about 25 miles, or three days' jour- 
 ney) they had to cut a road through the forests on the Blue Moun- 
 tains. 
 
 Third — And most important of all, from May 22 to Sept. 1, they 
 had an average length of day between sunrise and sunset of two 
 and a half hours more than between Sept. 1 and Oct. G, /. e., 14 
 hours 40 minutes, against 12 hours 8 minutes. The lightening of 
 the loads by the consumption of provisions counterbalanced in part.
 
 102 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 at least, the jaded condition of their teams, bnt (since the weight 
 of wagons, clothing, furniture, etc., remained unchanged) even if 
 we allow (what I do not think is correct) that the lightening of the 
 loads entirely balanced the jaded condition of the teams, the other 
 two conditions are not affected thereby, and the indisputable fact 
 remains that with some time lost in road making, and an average 
 of two and a half hours less daylight, this migration made an aver- 
 age of only just about two miles a day less from Fort Hall to the 
 plains of the Columbia River than from the beginning of their jour- 
 ney 1,323 miles to Fort Hall, over what Burnett (*^'01d Pioneer," p. 
 IIG) says ''was perhaps the finest natural road of the same length 
 to be found in the world." 
 
 In Old Pioneer (p. 12G) Burnett says: "On the 10th of October 
 we arrived within three miles of Dr. Whitman's mission, and re- 
 mained in camp until the 14th." This conveys the impression that 
 the whole migration stopped there, but turning to Wilkes (pp. 88-89) 
 we finding the following: "On the 8th of October we moved on" 
 (i. e., from the Umatilla) "and encamped in the afternoon within 
 t^'enty miles of the Methodist mission establishment kept by Dr. 
 Whitman, on the banks of a little tributarv of the Walla Walla; 
 but not finding the pasturage to our liking, we moved on the next 
 day a few miles farther in advance, and finding a prairie offering 
 us all the advantages we sought, the section to which I was at- 
 tached, determined to make a halt for a few days, to recruit our 
 weary and way-worn cattle. Most of the party had advanced be- 
 fore us, and were already at the mission, but we, in consequence of 
 our halt, which continued through a period of five days, did not 
 reach there until the loth." Burnett's high character is sufficient 
 guarantee that the omission (on p. 126 of "Old Pioneer") of the fact 
 that only the section to which he was then attached made this five 
 days' halt, and so lengthened the time from Fort Hall to the Co- 
 lumbia River, and that the larger part of the migration did not make 
 this halt, and so reached the Columbia Oct. 11, instead of Oct. 16, as 
 he did, was not intended to deceive ; but it is a striking commentary 
 on the claims of Prof. Schafer that the "Old Pioneer" should be sub- 
 stituted for the Wilkes Narrative as "virtually a contemporary 
 source for the whole of the migration of 1843," that in this, as in 
 every other case in which we can compare the Wilkes account with 
 unquestionable contemporary documents it is found correct. 
 
 Nothing is more evident than that when Burnett wrote the "Old 
 Pioneer" account of this migration he followed his journal closely, 
 and wrote only of the movements of that part of the migration to 
 which he was attached. That section of the party reached Fort 
 ITall, as he states in "Old Pioneer," and as the extract from his 
 journal (published by l*rof. Schafer in the Oregonian of Nov. 13,
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 103 
 
 1903, states), on Aug. 27, but that the bulk of the migration could 
 not have arrived there before Sept. 1, as stated by Wilkes, is certain 
 from the extracts herein quoted from Fremont's Kept., under dates 
 Aug. 22-26 inclusive. How far from accurate was Burnett's memory 
 even about very important matters connected with the movements 
 of this migration 35 years afterward, when he wrote the account of 
 it in "Old Pioneer," is evident from the things he omits to mention 
 in that account, which are in both the Herald letters and the Wilkes 
 Narrative, and a letter of his to me fully confirms this, and also 
 shows that his journal was so very concise as to be — certainly on 
 most dates — merely a series of memoranda, with which to subse- 
 quently to refresh his memory, and not any detailed account of the 
 events of the day. June 26, 1885, he wrote me as follows : ''In re- 
 ply to your third inquiry" (which was as to how long the 1843 mi- 
 gration continued together, and where and how they divided) ''I 
 will give the following extracts from my journal, as the entries were 
 'uade at the time, except a few corrections in the spelling of certain 
 words and names." (I quote the extracts from his journal verbatim 
 as they are given in his letter. ) 
 
 "May 22, 1843. A general start was this day made from the ren- 
 dezvous. 
 
 "May 23. Wagons still coming in, and others yet behind. 
 
 "May 26. Camped at Kansas River. ... As yet no organi- 
 zation and no guards put out. 
 
 "May 28. Wagons still coming in rapidly. 
 
 "May 30. The company still crossing rapidly and new wagons 
 arriving. 
 
 "May 31. Still crossing Kansas River. . . . Many of the 
 company disposed to separate into two companies. 
 
 "June 1. Organized our company by electing P. H. Burnett 
 captain, and Mr. Nesmith orderly sergeant and nine council men. 
 
 "June 10. At night we overtook old man Zachary and some 
 others and formed a good corral. 
 
 "July 4. Continued crossing." (S. Platte.) . . . "Chiles 
 here overtook us. 
 
 "July 8. Part of the company joined Chiles and left us. 
 
 "July 14. Reached Fort Laramie about 10 o'clock. . . Here 
 we found Applegate and Chiles. 
 
 "July 20. Mr. Hembree belonged to Applegate's company, which 
 is only two or three miles ahead of us now. 
 
 "Aug. 6. Overtook Applegate's company. 
 
 "Aug. 7. Chiles' company. Cooper's and Applegate's all in 
 sight at 12. 
 
 "Aug. 13. Divided our company into smaller companies of 
 about 15 wagons.
 
 104 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 "The greater portion of the emigrants for Oregon left the ren- 
 dezvous together on May 22, 1843, and others, who had not arrived 
 in time, came up later. At the time of the organization, June 1, 
 they had all overtaken us except a very few, and all joined in the 
 organization except Mr. Zachary and a few others, not exceeding 
 thirty persons in all, according to my best recollection. They united 
 with the company June lU. The first division of the company oc- 
 curred July G, when some of the company left with Chiles, who had 
 overtaken us on the 4th of July on his way to California, and while 
 we were crossing South Platte. But as we approached nearer to 
 the Rocky Mountains our people formed still smaller parties, as 
 shown in the extracts herein given." 
 
 Certainly one of the most important events connected with the 
 journey of that migration was its division into two sections, one 
 under the command of William Martin, and the other under Jesse 
 Applegate, which took place according to both the Herald letters 
 and the Wilkes Narrative on June 9, 1843, yet that seems to have 
 been omitted entirely from Burnett's "concise journal," and is not 
 even alluded to in the "Old Pioneer," and so completely had his long 
 residence in California put him "out of touch" with Oregon pioneer 
 affairs and dimmed his memory where there was no record in his 
 "concise journal" by which to refresh it, that in this letter to me 
 he explicitly declares (in answer to my inquiry as to when the 1843 
 migration first divided) that "the first division of the company 
 occurred July G." 
 
 Whitman's letter of Nov. 1, 1843, hereinbefore referred to, not 
 only confirms this item in Wilkes' account about "most of the party" 
 having reached the mission before Oct. 10, but also shows that Bur- 
 nett's statement in "Old Pioneer" (p. IIG) that "Whitman was our 
 pilot from Fort Hall to the Grand Ronde" is incorrect, and that, as 
 a matter of fact, over the really difticult portion of the route (i. e., 
 that west of Fort Boise), Whitman was not with the party at all, 
 and this fact confirms the accuracy of the only allusion made in 
 the Wilkes Narrative to any important service rendered to the mi- 
 gration by Whitman at any time between its starting from the 
 Missouri frontier on May 22, and the time they reached his mission 
 station and purchased provisions of him, being charged therefor the 
 full market rates. Wilkes (p. 35) says: "On the 23d (Sept.) we 
 started ofl: again, with the same cutting wind that had visited us 
 the day before, and which stayed with us over night. Our road to- 
 day was tolerably good, and after having accomplished 16 miles 
 over it, we brought our day's journey to a close on the bank of a 
 dry creek, with no water at hand, except what was found in a sort 
 of puddle in its bed. Two miles further on would have taken us 
 to a good encampment, with plenty of fine range and water, but the
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 105 
 
 Indian pilot who had been employed for us by Dr. Whitman was 
 ahead, and out of reach with the foremost wagons." 
 
 The following extracts from Whitman's letter of Nov. 1, 1843, 
 to Rev. D. Greene, secretary of the A. B. C. F. M. (which no advo- 
 cate of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story has ever quoted, except 
 that Mowry, in his "Marcus Whitman and the Early Days of Ore- 
 gon," not having quoted a word from it in the body of his book, 
 nor even referred to it in his Chapter XVIII. describing the journey 
 of the 1843 migration, prints this letter in full in his Appendix, 
 where few will read it, or note its significance in connection with 
 the claims made for Whitman as leader of that migration), show 
 that Whitman left the migration at Fort Boise, 100 miles east of 
 the Grande Ronde, and did not see any members of it again (except 
 perhaps some of those who went ahead on horseback and with pack 
 trains) until Oct. 9 or 10, at or near his mission. ''By taking a 
 light wagon I was enabled to come ahead from Fort Boise. At 
 the Grand Ronde, east of the Blue Mountains, I met a letter from 
 Mr. Walker, written at Lapwai, urging me to come with speed to 
 see Mr. and Mrs. Spalding, who were both in a dangerous state of 
 sickness. At this point I engaged one of the Wailatpu (Kayuses) 
 to complete the piloting of the company across the Blue Mountains, 
 which he did in a most judicious and faithful manner, and I hired a 
 fresh horse and guide, and went direct to Mr. Spalding's, where I 
 arrived on Monday evening, 25th Sept. ... I did not remain 
 but one night, and then returned with Mr. Geiger to Wailatpu, 
 which had been left in the care of an Indian only, the wheat being 
 in chaff and out of doors and part of the corn to be gathered by them 
 also. In the meantime some of the advance parties of the emi- 
 grants on horseback had reached and broke open the house, and 
 left it open to the Indians, although wheat, corn, potatoes, garden 
 vegetables, hogs and cattle were in abundance outside." He then 
 went to Tshimakain (i. e., Eells' and Walker's station), and re- 
 turned to Wailatpu, Oct. 9, and the letter continues : "In the mean- 
 time a large part of the emigrants had passed my house with their 
 wagons." Whitman could not have made the journey from the 
 Grand Ronde to Spalding's station in less than two days, so that he 
 must have been in Grande Ronde (69 miles in advance of the migra- 
 tion he is stated in "Old Pioneer" to have been piloting) on the 
 same 23d of Sept. that, according to the Wilkes Narrative, that mi- 
 gration, for want of a competent pilot, was obliged to make a "dry 
 camp," only 31 miles from Boise. As both "Old Pioneer" and 
 Wilkes state that the migration did not reach Fort Boise till Sept. 
 20, it is evident that if Whitman was with them when they reached 
 Boise, and did not stop there at all himself, he must have traveled 
 "with a light wagon" the 100 miles between Boise and Grande
 
 106 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Ronde (including the 26 miles up Burnt River, which all authorities 
 agree was much the roughest stretch of road the whole journey) 
 in the four davs Sept. 20-23, which is enough of itself to demonstrate 
 beyond dispute that the road offered no obstacle that these 200 reso- 
 lute men — descendants of those who had pioneered from the Atlan- 
 tic Coast over the Alleghanies and across the prairies to the Mis- 
 souri — could not easily have surmounted if neither Whitman nor 
 "the Indian he employed" had been with them. Wilkes (p. 87) says 
 they might have avoided the two worst hills they encountered on 
 the whole route (being the ones by which they descended into the 
 Grande Ronde on Oct. 1, and left it on Oct. 2) "by turning to the 
 left on the mountain side and passing them altogether," and this 
 (which is not mentioned in "Old Pioneer") finds full confirmation 
 in Fremont's Rept., under date of Oct. 17-21, 1843 (pp. 178-81) as 
 follows : 
 
 "Probably with the view of avoiding a circuit, the wagons had 
 directl}' descended into the Ronde by the face of a hill so very 
 rocky and continuously steep as to be apparently impracticable; 
 and following down on their trail we encamped on one of the 
 branches of the Grande Ronde River, immediately at the foot of 
 the hill." 
 
 We have already quoted Burnett's statement in Wilkes (p. 88) 
 that Fremont found a much easier route over the Blue Mountains 
 than the one over which the migration went. Burnett in "Old Pio- 
 neer" makes no allusion to this, though he gives considerable space 
 to his interviews with Fremont and travel with him from Fort Van- 
 couver to the Dalles. (O. P., pp. 130-135.) Turning again to Fre- 
 mont's Rept. (pp. 179-181), we find that the reason why he followed 
 the migration down the steep hill into the Ronde, instead of making 
 the circuit of the mountain side, was that he intended to go a good 
 ways farther to the north in the Roude, and cross the Blue Moun- 
 tains by an easier pass. (P. 179.) "Oct. 18. We resumed our 
 journey somewhat later than usual, traveling in a nearly northerly, 
 direction across this beautiful valley; and about noon reached a 
 place on one of the principal streams, where I had determined to 
 leave the emigrant trail, in the expectation of finding a more direct 
 and better road across the Blue INIountains. At this place the emi- 
 grants appeared to have held some consultation as to their further 
 route, and finally turned directly off to the left, reaching the foot 
 of the mountain in about three miles, which they ascended by a 
 hill as steep and difficult as that by which we had yesterday de- 
 scended to the Ronde. Quitting, therefore, this road, which, after 
 a very rough crossing, issues from the mountains by the heads of 
 the Fmatilah River, we continued our northern course across the 
 valley, following an Indian trail which had been indicated to me
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 107 
 
 by Mr. Payette, and encamped at the northern extremity of the 
 Grande Ronde on a slough-like stream of very deep water, without 
 any apparent current. . . . Elevation 2,600 feet above the sea. 
 Oct. 19. We passed out of the Grande Ronde by a fine road along 
 the creek, which for a short distance runs in a kind of rocky chasm. 
 Crossing a low point, which was a little rocky, the trail conducted 
 us into the open valley of the stream — a handsome place for farms, 
 (p. 180.) . . . We halted for a few minutes in the afternoon 
 at the foot of the Blue Mountains, on a branch of the Grand Ronde 
 River, at an elevation of 2,700 feet. Resuming our journey, we com- 
 menced the ascent of the mountain through an open pine forest of 
 large and stately trees, among which the balsam pine made its ap- 
 pearance; the road being good, with the exception of one steep 
 ascent with a corresponding descent, which might both have been 
 easily avoided by opening a way for a short distance through the 
 timber. Oct. 20. . . . The instrument carriage occasioned 
 much delay, it being frequently necessary to fell trees and remove 
 fallen timber. The trail we were following led up a long spur with 
 a very gradual and gentle rise. . . . After traveling occasionally 
 through open places in the forest, we were obliged to cut a way 
 through a dense body of timber, from which we (p. 181) emerged 
 on an open mountain side, where we found a number of small 
 springs, and encamped after a day's journey of 10 miles. Our ele- 
 vation here was 5,000 feet." "Oct. 21. . . .We continued to 
 travel through the forest, in which the road was rendered difficult 
 by fallen trunks, and obstructed by many small trees which it was 
 necessary to cut down. But these are only accidental difficulties 
 which could easily be removed, and a very excellent road may be 
 had through this pass, with no other than very moderate ascents 
 and declivities." This pass was undoubtedly the same one of which 
 Payette had informed Thomas J. Farnham, as stated by Farnham 
 in that passage from his ''Travels" (quoted on p. 83 ante), which, 
 as hereinbefore stated, Wilkes quoted (on p. 52) as demonstrating 
 beyond question the feasibility of the route for a national railroad 
 to the Pacific. As there is not a shadow of doubt that Payette 
 would as readily have informed the leaders of the 1843 migration 
 of this "easy pass" as he had informed Farnham, in 1839, and as 
 he informed Fremont 18 days after the migration had passed, it is 
 plain that if the migration, instead of depending on Whitman's 
 Indian guide Isticus, had consulted Payette, they would have learned 
 of a much easier route over the Blue Mountains than the one over 
 which Isticus led them. That the difficulties of that one, however, 
 were by no means great will appear from the simple fact that both 
 Wilkes (pp. 87-88) and "Old Pioneer" (pp. 125-126) agree that the 
 migration left the Grande Ronde Oct. 2, and crossed the Blue Moun-
 
 108 ACQUISITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 tains 43 miles, to the Umatilla Kiver, during Oct. 2 to 6 inclusive. 
 That is, with a day from sunrise to sunset of only lli^ hours, with 
 considerable forest through which they were compelled to cut their 
 way, and with teams pretty thoroughly worn out, they traveled 
 across this range at an average of 8 3-5 miles a day, which was 
 only about 41/2 miles less than they had traveled on an average from 
 the Missouri frontier, 1,323 miles, to Fort Hall, over "the best nat- 
 ural road of its length in the world," starting with fresh teams, 
 with no forest through which to cut their way, and having an aver- 
 age length of day from sunrise to sunset of 14 hours and 40 minutes. 
 Whoever will read Fremont's Kept, of his 1843 exploration with 
 care will find in it ample confirmation of the positions herein ad- 
 vanced as to the slight difficulties of the route beyond Fort Hall, 
 for though he says the road up Burnt River was very bad, he men- 
 tions no other very bad road except a few hills, and several times 
 he declares of other portions of this part of the road that they 
 were "very good." The Or. Hist. Quarterly for December, 1902 
 (pp. 395-8), publishes a letter of Tallmadge B. Wood, "written about 
 April, 1844," from Willamette Falls, Oregon. He states that he 
 was second in command of one of the divisions of the 1843 migra- 
 tion, but does not say which division it was, and his letter gives a 
 very brief and vague account of the movements of the migration, 
 covering only about 700 words. Though he intended, undoubtedly^ 
 to be accurate, it is curious that two of the three dates he gives 
 are erroneous, as he says they started April 25, 1843, instead of 
 May 22, and that they arrived at Fort Hall the last of September 
 instead of the last of August or first of September. He also says 
 there were 320 wagons, whereas J. W. Nesmith, who was the orderly 
 sergeant of the company, says "there were 111 wagons of all kinds." 
 (Tr. Or. P. Asscn. 1875, p. 53). (P. 39G) Wood's letter says: 
 "W^e arrived at Fort Hall the last of September. Here (though 
 two-thirds of the distance was passed) the difficulties of the journey 
 just commenced, though not so difficult as had been represented, yet 
 the roads from this place were very rough and grass in many places 
 very scarce.'" So far as yet appears, besides these forty-eight words 
 in Wood's letter, the only contemporary accounts of the difficulties 
 of the way beyond Fort Hall except what is in the Wilkes Narrative 
 and in Fremont's Kept, are: 
 
 First — In a letter published in the Ohio Statesman, Sept. 11, 
 1844, dated Willamette, Nov. 6, 1843, Mr. M. M. McCarver (who was 
 one of the Council of Nine and one of those who went ahead of the 
 migration on horseback from Fort Hall) wrote as follows: "We 
 have had less obstacles in reaching here than we had a right to 
 expect, as it was generally understood before leaving the States 
 that one-third of the distance — to-wit, from Fort Hall to this place —
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 109 
 
 was impassable with wagons. Great credit, however, is due to the 
 energy, perseverance and industry of this emigrating company, and 
 particularly to Dr. Whitman, one of the missionaries at the Walla 
 Walla Mission, who accompanied us out. His knowledge of the 
 route was considerable, and his exertions for the interest of the 
 company were untiring." 
 
 Second — In the Or. Hist. Quarterly for September, 1903, are 
 two letters from members of this migration. 
 
 (1) (On pp. 274-G) A letter from John Boardman to J. Wells, 
 Esq., dated at Sandwich Islands, July 17, 1844, and published in 
 the Western (Mo.) Journal^ Jan. 4, 1845, and space only permits 
 the following extracts: "I left the Shawnee Mission on the 29th 
 of May; our route was through the Caw Indian country, which is 
 good, has considerable timber, and is well watered. It is a bad 
 country for wagons to travel through, having so many sloughs and 
 bad creeks; the teams were often stalled, and made very slow prog- 
 ress. ... On the 13th of July we arrived at the crossing of 
 Laramie's Fork, at the fort of the American Fur Co. . . . After 
 we left Laramie we came to the Black Hills, the worst of all travel- 
 ing — hilly, sandy and full of wild sage — 'tis death on a wagon. 
 The country is all of this barren, sandy kind, until we reach Fort 
 Hall, and destitute of timber. Arrived at Fort Hall the 13th of 
 September, after experiencing some cold rains, snow, hail, etc. The 
 country down Snake River is hilly, rocky, sandy, no timber, but an 
 abundance of sage, until we get to the Blue Mountains. Here is 
 plenty of pine, the country very broken, and bad traveling, though 
 the wagons went through. ... I hardly know what to write 
 about Oregon, or what you would like to know; though if I were 
 where you are, and should see someone from Oregon, I could ask 
 him a hundred questions, as you could me. The report of Wilkes 
 that you had is very correct." (This is, of course, the 14 pages of 
 Lieut. Charles Wilkes' Special Report, published in the 2d edition 
 of Pendleton's Report, of which 5,000 copies were ordered printed 
 by the House Jan. 4, 1843. [Ho. Ex. Doc. No. 31, 27th Cong., 3d 
 Sess.]— W. I. M.) 
 
 It will be noticed that Boardman gives the time of arrival at 
 Fort Laramie as July 13, whereas the Wilkes Narrative gives the 
 date as July 9, and says they left there July 11, while "Old Pioneer" 
 says they arrived July 14, and remained two days repairing the 
 wagons. Boardman also did not arrive at Fort Hall till Sept. 13. 
 
 (2) On pp. 280-84 is a letter from Mr. S. H. Gilmore dated Fort 
 Vancouver, Nov. 11, 1843. He does not give a date when they were 
 at any point between May 27 and the arrival of the party he was 
 with at Fort Hall, Aug. 25, two days in advance of the party Bur- 
 nett was with, and 19 days before the party with whom Boardman
 
 110 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 was traveling. All that Gilmore (who was later a prominent man 
 in Oregon) says about the difficulties of the road is the following 
 extracts: ''We left Westport on the 27th of May, and crossed the 
 Kansas River near the old village; thence up the north side of 
 the Kansas, where we had a great deal of rain and stormy weather 
 to encounter. . . . We came to a small stream, called Sweet- 
 water, one of the streams of the northern branch of Platte; we 
 traveled up this until we passed through the Rocky Mountains, 
 which we found to be as good as any part of our road." . . . 
 (This plainly refers only to the stretch of road up the Sweetwater 
 and over the South Pass to Green River — W. I. M.) . . . "We 
 traveled several days down this river (Bear River), then crossed 
 over to the Snake River, and arrived at Fort Hall on the 25th day 
 of August. Here I found some of the best beef I ever saw. . . . 
 From here we traveled down Snake or Lewis River, crossing and 
 recrossing the same to Fort Bosie (Boise) ; thence to Fort Walla 
 Walla, crossing the Blue Mountains in our route. We passed them 
 much easier than I expected. . . . The road from Independence 
 to Fort Hall is as good a road as I would wish to travel ; from Fort 
 Hall there is some bad road and some good." 
 
 (3) Prof. Schafer, in a letter to me, quotes the following from 
 "a letter from one of the emigrants" published in the New York 
 Herald of June 3, 1843: "We had a very good road to the fort 
 (Hall), from there the worst in the world." There seems to be 
 some mistake as to either the paper or the date as to this, for in 
 response to a request for a copy of the whole letter, the librarian 
 of the Wisconsin Historical Society informs me that the Herald 
 of that date contains no letter from anyone referring to the Oregon 
 migration. 
 
 Assuming that in the Herald (or some other paper), such an 
 anonymous letter was published, it amounts to nothing in view of 
 the indisputable figures hereinbefore given showing the rate of prog- 
 ress of the migration. The expression "the worst road in the world" 
 is merely an exaggerated statement of one's impatience with a rough, 
 uncomfortable road, and I have heard that precise expression used 
 about stretches of highway in Ohio, Kentucky, Vermont and New 
 Hampshire which had been traveled continuously for from 60 to 200 
 years. W^hitman's letter of Nov. 1, 1843, does not contain one word 
 about the difficulties of the route, nor do any of his subsequent 
 letters give any information about any difficulties of the way, but 
 only assertions that the opening of the wagon road was due to his 
 being with the party. 
 
 Wilkes (p. 8G) : "On the 28th (Sept.) the road got worse, if 
 anything, than before, and after floundering through the hills and 
 hollows for six miles, we struck a hill of most difficult ascent that
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 111 
 
 required us to double our teams. Yet even this hill, as well as an- 
 other still more difficult which we descended, might have been 
 entirely avoided by an advance of 200 yards farther up the stream, 
 where nature had furnished an easy ascent round the sides of both. 
 This, however, was not discovered until all the wagons had passed. 
 The above hill is the first that we have met in our road, which 
 obliged us to double our teams." This was at the head of Burnt 
 River, and in H. H. Bancroft's "Oregon," Vol. I., p. 401, we find the 
 following: ''The first grading required on any part of the route 
 from the main Platte to the Columbia was at the crossing of the 
 ridge at the head of Burnt River; and this, too, was the first occa- 
 sion on which it had been necessary to double teams." (Ford's 
 Road Makers, Ms. 10.) This first hill requiring any grading or 
 the doubling of teams was 350 miles west of Fort Hall, and 1,673 
 miles from their starting point, and only 131 miles east of Fort 
 Walla Walla. 
 
 As Prof. Schafer (in Oregonian for Nov. 13, 1903) still insists 
 that Wilkes deliberately deceived his readers as to the diflQculties 
 of the road west of Fort Hall, and as he does not quote one word 
 of what Fremont says about that stretch so that his readers can 
 judge whether his condemnation of Wilkes is warranted by the 
 facts, I will now quote every word in Wilkes, and in Fremont's 
 Rept., and in "Old Pioneer" as to the road from Fort Boise to the 
 Grande Ronde, where Fremont's route diverged from that of the 
 migration, that he might follow Payette's direction and cross the 
 Blue Mountains by an easier route, as hereinbefore stated. 
 
 There is no use in wasting any time on the road from Fort Hall 
 to Fort Boise, since that offered no difficulties worth considering, 
 as this migration traveled that 274 miles at almost exactly the same 
 average daily rate as they did the 1,323 miles from the Missouri 
 frontier to Fort Hall, though their day was an average of almost two 
 and a half hours shorter from Hall to Boise than from Missouri to 
 Fort Hall. No one's opinion is of any consequence on historical mat- 
 ters except as it agrees with "the weight of evidence" after examin- 
 ing all the valid evidence, and unlike Prof. Schafer in this matter, I 
 prefer to put all the evidence before my readers, that they may judge 
 for themselves as to whether there is any warrant for his accusations 
 against Wilkes. 
 
 Fort Boise to Burnt River occupied the migration Sept. 22, 23 
 and 24 according to Wilkes, and 21, 22, 23 and 24 according to "Old 
 Pioneer." The distance is given in the "Table of Distance" in both 
 Wilkes and the Herald letters as 41 miles, and by Fremont, who 
 went over it Oct. 11 and 12, as 47 miles. Fremont's distances (where 
 his route was identical with that of the 1843 migration) are almost 
 always considerably greater than those given by Burnett, and prob-
 
 112 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 ably more accurate, but as his route was very different from that 
 of the migration from the crossing of the Kansas River to the Sweet 
 Water, from Soda Springs to Fort Hall, and from the place where 
 the migration started out of the Grande Ronde over the Blue Moun- 
 tains to Whitman's station, it seems necessary to use Burnett's 
 'Table of Distances" for the whole journey. 
 
 Let us compare what Wilkes says as to the quality of the road 
 with what Fremont says. We cannot compare with "Old Pioneer" 
 for this stretch, for all Burnett says of this journey from Fort Boise 
 to Burnt River is the following (on p. 124) : "On the 21st we re- 
 crossed the Snake River by fording, which was deep but safe. On 
 the 24th we reached Burnt River." 
 
 Turn now to Wilkes (p. 85) : "On the 22d we left Fort Boise, 
 and after traveling over an excellent road for fifteen miles we came 
 to a creek in the latter part of the afternoon. This we crossed 
 without serious difficulty, and encamped upon its western bank. 
 . . . On the 23d we started off again with the same cutting wind, 
 etc. . . . Our road today was tolerably good. 
 
 "On the 23d we had to encounter a very hilly road which re- 
 tarded our progress most seriously. The hills, however, were not 
 high, neither were they rugged or abrupt, but they were frequent, 
 and thence our difficulty." 
 
 Now let us see what Fremont reported of this precise stretch 
 of road. 
 
 On p. 174 of his report of his 1843 expedition (Sen. Ex. Doc. 
 174, 28 Cong., 2 Sess.) we find, under date of Oct. 11, 1843. . . . 
 "At 11 o'clock we resumed our journey. . . . About sunset we 
 reached the Riviere aux Malheurs. . . . With the exception of 
 a bad place of a few hundred yards long, which occurred in rounding 
 a point of a hill to reach the ford of the river, the road during the 
 day had been very good." 
 
 Oct. 12 (p. 175). "Leading for five miles up a broad, dry branch 
 of the Malheurs River, the road entered a sandy hollow, where the 
 surface was rendered firm by the admixture of other rock; being 
 good and level until arriving near the head of a ravine, where it 
 became a little rocky, and we met with a number of sharp ascents 
 over an undulating surface. Crossing here a dividing ridge, it be- 
 came an excellent road of gradual descent down a very marked 
 hollow." 
 
 Oct. 13 (p. 176). "Leaving entirely the Snake River ... we 
 ascended a long and somewhat steep hill ; and crossing the dividing 
 ridge came down into the valley of Burnt River." 
 
 Up Burnt River all accounts — Wilkes, Fremont and "Old Pio- 
 neer" — agree was the roughest road of the whole journey, but it 
 was only 26 miles, and it was not so bad but what they made the
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 113 
 
 26 miles in three days (Sept. 25, 26 and 27), or an average of eight 
 and two-thirds miles a day, with only 11 hours 53 minutes between 
 sunrise and sunset. A careless reading of Wilkes under date of 
 Sept. 27 would lead one to think that the migration left Burnt River 
 on the morning of the 27th, but a careful reading and a footing of 
 the miles traveled on the 25th, 26th and 27th shows that it was only 
 the more difficult part of the road up Burnt River that they left 
 behind them on the morning of the 27th, and that they did not 
 finally leave its valley till the 28th, which agrees exactly with "Old 
 Pioneer" (p. 124). 
 
 Let us now compare the ''Old Pioneer," the Wilkes and the Fre- 
 mont accounts of this — admitted by all to be — the worst stretch of 
 road on the whole route. 
 
 All that "Old Pioneer" says (p. 124) is: "It hardly deserves to 
 be called a river, being only a creek of fair size. The road up this 
 stream was then a terrible one, as the latter runs between two tall 
 ranges of mountains, through a narrow valley full of timber, which 
 we had not the force or time to remove." 
 
 Wilkes (p. 85) : "Sept. 25 we started up the line of Burnt River. 
 The valley of the stream is very narrow, at some points being not 
 more than 20 yards across, and it is hemmed in by mountains on 
 either side. 
 
 "Though it abounds in timber, quite a safe and passable road 
 could be made through it by clearing out the space for a track, but 
 to do this effectually several crossings of the stream would have to 
 be made. 
 
 "This could easily be performed in consequence of its low banks 
 and firm bottom, but we had no time to clear out the way, but of 
 late the tortuousness of the roads had so scattered and divided our 
 company that we proceeded belter skelter along in separate detach- 
 ments, each following, as best it could, the careless lead of those 
 who went before. We were thus betrayed into many diflflculties 
 that might have been avoided, if an orderly arrangement had been 
 preserved. Sometimes the turn of only a few yards would have 
 saved us the most obstructive hills and hollows, and I am informed 
 that the course of the river could have been avoided altogether by a 
 turn to the left, which strikes the trail near Powder River, running 
 in an extensive plain, remarkable for a solitary tree in its midst, 
 known as the "Lone Pine." But if this should not be the case (Foot- 
 note by Wilkes, 'It is the case'). 
 
 "I would advise future emigrants to select some eight or ten 
 good men to send on ahead to search for the most eligible route, and 
 if necessary to clear one. 
 
 "This will save them much trouble. . . . The range from this 
 spot to the end of the journey is most excellent; the bunch grass is
 
 114 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 plenty in the valleys and on the sides of the hills, and there is plenty 
 of rushes along the banks of the stream. We made but eight miles 
 today. 
 
 "On the 2(>th the road got worse, if anything, than before, and 
 after floundering through hills and hollows for six miles we struck 
 a hill of most difficult ascent, that required us to double our teams. 
 Yet even this hill, as well as another still more difficult, which we 
 descended, might have been entirely avoided by an advance of 200 
 yards farther up the stream, where nature has furnished an easy 
 ascent round the sides of both. This, however, was not discovered 
 till all (he wagons had passed. . The above hill is the first that we 
 have met in our road, which obliged us to double our teams. 
 
 "Sept. 27. . . . This morning we emerged from our troublous 
 passage through the immediate valley of the river, and struck a 
 beautifully undulating valley . . . and after completing 12 
 miles over a good road, halted for the night." 
 
 This is every word in the Wilkes Narrative as to the road, and 
 the movements of the migration over the 26 miles up Burnt River. 
 It is interesting to compare what he says about the ease with which 
 they could have avoided the two worst hills had they gone 200 yards 
 further up the stream, "where nature had furnished an easy ascent 
 round the sides of both," with their experience as stated in both 
 Wilkes (p. 72) and in the Herald letters (N. Y. Herald, Jan. 6, 1845, 
 Or. Hist. Quart., Dec, 1902, p. 409) on May 24 at the crossing of the 
 Wakarusa River, a small branch of the Kansas. (The Herald calls 
 it Walkalusia, and Wilkes Walpalusia.) 
 
 They reached this stream May 23, and Wilkes says: "As soon 
 as we had fallen into our regular disposition for the night and staked 
 our horses, several of us turned out with nets and fishing tackle 
 to sweep and tickle the river. But though we were successful in 
 furnishing ourselves with some amusement, we were not so success- 
 ful in the object of our endeavors, being only fortunate enough to 
 secure a few trout, most of which fell to the share of the female 
 department of the expedition. 
 
 "On the morning of the 24th we made preparations for crossing 
 the stream, but in consequence of the steepness of its banks were 
 obliged to let our wagons down with ropes, and to draw them up in 
 the same way. . . . We might have avoided all the delay and 
 trouble of this crossing if we had searched a hundred yards farther 
 up the stream, for there we would have found a practicable ford." 
 
 The Herald letter says: "We let our wagons down the bank 
 (which was very steep) with ropes. There was, however, a very 
 practicable ford unknown to us about 100 yards above. . . . We 
 found very few fish in this stream." 
 
 If in the open prairie of Eastern Kansas, "a very practicable
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 115 
 
 ford" within 100 yards of where they spent the time and labor needed 
 to let their wagons down with ropes and draw them up the steep 
 banks of this ''little stream of clear water, only about 60 feet wide 
 and with a pebbly bottom," escaped the observation of all the mem- 
 bers of this great party, though they had not only camped there 
 over night, but had fished along the stream, how entirely credible is 
 the statement in Wilkes that had they gone 200 yards farther up 
 this canon of Burnt River they might have found a side valley which 
 would have given them an easy ascent out of the canon, and avoided 
 these two diflQcult hills. 
 
 The Herald letters make no mention of this stretch of road up 
 Burnt River except the following: "You see no stumps on the road 
 until you get to Burnt River, and very few there." (N. Y. Herald, 
 Jan. 6, 1845, reprinted in 0. H. Quart, Dec, 1902, p. 418.) 
 
 This appears on p. 68 of the Wilkes Narrative as follows : "You 
 meet with no stumps on the road until you come to Burnt River, and 
 there they are very few." 
 
 Let us see now what Fremont says of this road up Burnt River. 
 
 Under date of Oct. 13 (p. 176) : "We now traveled through a 
 very mountainous country, the stream running rather in a ravine 
 than a valley, and the road is decidedly bad and dangerous for single 
 wagons, frequently crossing the stream where the water is some- 
 times deep; and all the day the animals w:ere fatigued in climbing 
 up and descending a succession of steep ascents, to avoid the pre- 
 cipitous hill sides; and the common trail, which leads along the 
 mountain side at places where the river strikes the base, is some- 
 times bad even for a horseman. . . . Oct. 14. . . . After 
 traveling about three miles up the valley, we found the river shut 
 by precipices in a kind of canon, and the road makes a circuit over 
 the mountains. In the afternoon we reached the river again, by 
 another little ravine; and after traveling along it for a few miles, 
 left it enclosed among rude mountains. I have never seen a wagon 
 road equally bad in the same space as this of yesterday and today. 
 I noticed where one wagon had been overturned twice, in a very 
 short distance, and it was surprising to me that those wagons which 
 were in the rear, and could not have much assistance, got through 
 at all. Still, there is no mud, and the road has one advantage, it 
 being perfectly firm." 
 
 Surely no fair-minded, unprejudiced person can read these two 
 contemporaneous accounts, in the Wilkes Narrative and in Fre- 
 mont's Rept, without saying that they are substantially the same 
 as to the difiSculties of the 26 miles up Burnt River — the real diffi- 
 culties seem to have been in the first 14 miles, as the third day's 
 travel of 12 miles indicates a fair road. 
 
 There remains to be considered only the road from the divide
 
 116 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 between Burnt and Powder Rivers to Grande Ronde, as we have 
 already discussed the 43 miles over the Blue Mountains, which the 
 migration traveled, and the somewhat longer route — just how much 
 longer we cannot determine, as the "Table of Distance" on p. 292 
 of Fremont's Rept. omits Oct. 23, doubtless by printer's mistake — 
 which Fremont traveled in crossing the Blue Mountains by the 
 ''much easier route" of which the Hudson's Bay Co.'s officer in 
 charge of Fort Boise had informed him. 
 
 Of the character of this stretch of road there is not one word in 
 "Old Pioneer." Wilkes (pp. 86-7) only says of the first two days 
 after leaving Burnt River that Sept. 28 "our road led through a 
 beautiful valley," Sept. 29 "we left the plain . . . and in the 
 middle of the day entered another valley." 
 
 "Sept. 30. Traveled nine miles over an excellent road, with 
 the exception of the last half mile, which was rocky and perplexed ; 
 but this might have been escaped, as we afterward found, had we 
 turned down an opening to our right, which led through a smooth 
 and easy passage directly to the place where we finally encamped." 
 
 We have already shown that Fremont's Rept. fully confirms 
 Wilkes' statement under date of Oct. 2, that they might have avoided 
 the two worst hills they encountered on the whole route, being 
 those by which they descended into and ascended from the Grande 
 Ronde, by keeping around on the side of the mountain. 
 
 Fremont's record of precisely this same stretch of road from 
 the head of Burnt River to the edge of the Grande Ronde is on 
 pp. 177-8 of his report, as follows : "Oct. 15. The trail did not 
 much improve until we had crossed the dividing grounds between the 
 Brule (Burnt) and Powder Rivers. . . . From the dividing 
 grounds we descended by a mountain road to Powder River, on an 
 old bed of which we encamped." 
 
 "Oct. 16. . . . We made today but a short journey of 13 
 miles, the road being very good, and encamped in a fine bottom of 
 Powder River." 
 
 "Oct. 17. . . . We traveled this morning across the aifluents 
 to Powder River, the road being good, firm and level ; and the coun- 
 try became constantly more pleasant and interesting. . . . From 
 the waters of this stream the road ascended by a good and moderate 
 ascent to a dividing ridge, but immediately entered upon ground 
 covered with fragments of an altered siliceous slate, which are in 
 many places large, and render the road racking to a carriage." 
 
 All else that Wilkes says about the road beyond Fort Hall to 
 the Valley of the Columbia is the following (on p. 88) : 
 
 "Let me remark for fear that I may overlook it, that while travel- 
 ing on the Burnt River, and while passing through the Blue Moun- 
 tains, we had much trouble in finding our stock in the morning, as
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 111 
 
 they wandered off in the bushes during the night, and often strayed 
 out among the hills after the bunch grass. We found the road along 
 this river, and through these mountains, the worst of the whole 
 route, and indeed, nearly all the bad road we saw at all. Lieutenant 
 Fremont, who came behind us, and who had Mr. Fitzpatrick for a 
 guide, went further down the Grande Ronde to the right, came out 
 at a different point, and made his way through the Blue Mountains 
 by a route which he states to be more safe and easy by far than the 
 one by which we came. Our route, at any rate, can be so improved 
 with a small amount of labor as to be quite practicable, and even 
 as it was we came through it with our wagons in perfect safety, 
 without even unloading them at a single point. Many, if not most, 
 of the bad hills we had passed could have been avoided or over- 
 come with a very little labor." 
 
 Every candid reader having before him in this all that is said 
 in the two contemporaneous accounts of the Wilkes Narrative and 
 Fremont's Report, and also all that Burnett says (in ''Old Pioneer") 
 about the quality of the road from Fort Boise to Grande Ronde, can 
 see for himself how totally unfounded is Prof. Schafer's persistent 
 assertion that Wilkes strove to mislead the public as to the diffi- 
 culties of this portion of the route in the interest of his railroad 
 project — th© fact being that Wilkes' whole purpose was to convince 
 his readers that neither he, nor any of his political or personal 
 friends, nor any other private person or corporation, should be per- 
 mitted to build, own or operate a transcontinental railroad, but that 
 it should be built and owned and operated by the nation, and that 
 he almost assumed the feasibility of the route, devoting to that only 
 about 1,200 words, or scarcely one per cent, of his book. 
 
 I think his scheme was visionary, but the fact that it was one 
 that cut off all possibility of private gain for not only himself, but 
 all others, certainly removed from his mind all temptation to inten- 
 tionally misrepresent the facts concerning the feasibility of the route. 
 
 But Prof. Schafer, having started out with the erroneous notion 
 that Wilkes' purpose was to prove the feasibility of the route, can- 
 not consent to admit his mistake, which would be evident to all his 
 readers if he would only quote the passages in which Wilkes himself 
 states his ideas about "a national railroad across the continent." 
 (Cf. Wilkes Preface, p. 4, and Part I., pp. 47 and 62, and especially 
 the passages on pp. 58-60, beginning, "There are many and insur- 
 mountable reasons why it should be a national undertaking, and 
 not left to the mercy of a band of speculators, whose narrow objects 
 would be private gain," and ending with "lastly, it should be 
 national, because its vast revenues would not only enable the gov- 
 ernment, after paying off the cost, to relieve the country of the bur- 
 den of almost every tax, whether impost or otherwise, but afford a
 
 118 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 surplus, which might be expended to advantage in the gradual in- 
 crease of the navy, and in strengthening our seaboard and harbor 
 defenses to a state amounting to impregnability.") 
 
 Never once alluding in his discussions of the Wilkes Narrative 
 to this thoroughly unselfish and patriotic (though very visionary) 
 purpose of Wilkes in his advocacy of a "national railroad" to Ore- 
 gon, Prof. Schafer calls him "a railroad projector," and character- 
 izes his "History of Oregon" as a "promoter's pamphlet, nothing 
 more nor less," (Cf. Orcgonian, Nov. 13, 1903), and in the same 
 paper after declaring that Wilkes "at all points shows the greatest 
 concern to avoid admitting diflSculties, or to explain them away 
 when admitted," he continues : 
 
 "The following quotations will illustrate Wilkes' method of deal- 
 ing with them : 
 
 " 'On the 24th we had to encounter a very hilly road, which re- 
 tarded our progress most seriously. The hills, however, were not 
 high, neither were they rugged or abrupt.' " Here Prof. Schafer in- 
 serts the following parenthetical note: ("so as not to interfere with 
 a railroad"). 
 
 Let us see what Fremont says of this same succession of short 
 hills (p. 175) : 
 
 "The road entered a sandy hollow, where the surface was ren- 
 dered firm by an admixture of other rock ; being good and level until 
 arriving near the head of the ravine, where it became a little rocky, 
 and we met with a number of sharp ascents over an undulating sur- 
 face." Surely "a number of sharp ascents over an undulating sur- 
 face" conveys precisely the same meaning as "the hills, however, 
 were not high, neither were they rugged or abrupt," and doubtless 
 Prof. Schafer would not venture to accuse Fremont "of deliberately 
 falsifying" the facts about the difficulties of this stretch of road. 
 
 Prof. Schafer follows this with what has been hereinbefore 
 quoted from Wilkes as to the road up Burnt River, and as to all 
 of the accounts he quotes of the actual difficulties of this, the worst 
 road of the whole journey, he says: "So far Wilkes may be giving 
 us a free rendering of Burnett." Then he quotes what the Wilkes 
 account says about the possibility of avoiding some of the most 
 obstructive hills and hollows, and about the possibility of avoiding 
 the line of Burnt River altogether, as heretofore quoted by me, and 
 then continues: "Here is an evident attempt to mislead the un- 
 wary. While Burnett probably suggested that the road could be 
 imjn'oved, there is scarcely a possibility that he should have hinted 
 at a way of avoiding the valley of the river. Fremont, who followed 
 the emigrants, used the road they made, and nowhere intimates the 
 existence of another possible route. I am personally convinced that
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 119 
 
 Wilkes had not the slightest authority for suggesting a new route, 
 or for the note asserting its existence." 
 
 Could determined prejudice go farther than this? 
 
 George Wilkes was an honorable man through all his long life — 
 a man who would have scorned the petty deceptions with which 
 Prof. Schafer accuses him and concerning which, if Prof. Schafer 
 would have only quoted Wilkes' own statements of his interest in a 
 national railroad to Oregon, everyone would see at once that he 
 had no ''axe to grind" nor any temptation to in any way misstate 
 the diflSculties of the route. 
 
 Considering the constant efforts to find easier routes as exem- 
 plified in the records of many a transcontinental migration, both to 
 Oregon and California, what conceivable ground is there for the 
 assertion that "there is scarcely a possibility that Burnett should 
 have hinted at a way of avoiding the valley of this river" ? 
 
 Pray, why did it not occur to Prof. Schafer that if Wilkes were 
 such an unprincipled knave as he represents him to be, he would 
 have avoided all necessity of a footnote by altering Burnett's letter, 
 and simply omitting ''but if this should not be the case"? 
 
 Prof. Schafer continues: "At the Grande Konde the case is 
 somewhat different." It is indeed somewhat different, for I had 
 quoted from Fremont (Cf. Oregon ian, Sept. 20, 1908), the passage 
 which proves beyond question that the Wilkes Narrative is exactly 
 correct. "He had the authority of Fremont for declaring that the 
 two worst hills could have been avoided, and it is even possible 
 that Burnett quotes Fremont here." 
 
 On this it is enough to remark : 
 
 First — That it is not easy to see how Burnett, writing in Janu- 
 ary, February and March, 1844, a full year before Fremont's Report 
 of this expedition was published, and while he was still exploring 
 in the present states of California and Nevada, could have "quoted 
 Fremont here." 
 
 Second — That it is certain that Burnett did not even obtain this 
 information from Fremont orally, while with him Nov. 7 to 18, 1843 
 ("Old Pioneer," pp. 130-135; Fremont's Report, pp. 192-195), be- 
 cause, instead of crediting Payette with furnishing the information 
 about the easy pass over the Blue Mountains, as Fremont's Report 
 does, the Wilkes account credits it to the fact that Fitzpatrick was 
 the guide to Fremont's party. But, as a matter of fact, Fitzpatrick, 
 though guide most of the way, not only was not with Fremont's 
 party over the Blue Mountains, but he was not with it from Sept. 
 27, 1843—12 days before reaching Fort Boise— till Nov. 21, 1843, 
 three days after Burnett and his family, and Mr. William Gilpin 
 had started from the Dalles for Fort Vancouver, in the boats in 
 which Burnett had accompanied Fremont from Vancouver to the
 
 120 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Dalles, as witness the following extracts from Fremont's Report: 
 ''Sept. 27. . . . Our progress with 12 or 14 wheeled carriages, 
 though light and made for the purpose, in such a rocky country was 
 extremely slow; and I again determined to gain time by a division 
 of the camp. 
 
 "Accordingly, today the parties again separated, constituted 
 very much as before — Mr. Fitzpatrick remaining in charge of the 
 heavier baggage" (p. 166). . . Idem (p. 197) "Mr. Fitzpatrick 
 with Mr. Talbot and the remainder of the party arrived on the 
 21st" (Nov.). 
 
 Prof. Schafer continues as follows : 
 
 "But when (p. 88) Wilkes dexterously combines the Burnt River 
 stretch with the Grande Ronde road, and uses Fremont to prove 
 the feasibility of the latter" (he probably means the former, W. I. 
 M.) "he is clearly trying to throw dust in the eyes of his reader. 
 He" (Wilkes) "says, 'We found the road along this river' (i. e., 
 Burnt River, W. I. M.) 'and through these mountains' (Blue Moun- 
 tains) 'the worst of the whole route, and, indeed, nearly all the bad 
 road we saw at all. Lieut. Fremont, who came behind us, and 
 who had Mr. Fitzpatrick for a guide, went further down the Grande 
 Ronde to the right, came out at a different point, and made his way 
 through the Blue Mountains by a route which he states to be more 
 safe and easy by far than the one by which we came. Our route, 
 at any rate, can be so improved with a small amount of labor as to 
 be quite practicable, and even as it was, we came through it with 
 our wagons in perfect safety, without even unloading them at a 
 single point. Many, if not most, of the bad hills we passed could 
 have been avoided or overcome, with a very little labor.' 
 
 "In such ways as these Wilkes tried to bolster up his railroad 
 scheme, for which he had sad need of support." 
 
 "How desperate are the shifts of a confirmed theorist" has rarely 
 received so strong a verification as in this attempt by Prof. Schafer 
 to make Wilkes appear a dishonest "railroad promoter," deceiving 
 the public by this perfectly fair statement of the difficulties of the 
 only really bad stretches of road they had found. 
 
 Furthermore, Wilkes did not, "dexterously" or otherwise, "com- 
 bine the Burnt River stretch with the Grande Ronde road" (for 
 he says not one word about the road in the Grande Ronde, which 
 was a level prairie-like valley), but with the road over the Blue 
 Mountains, which was an altogether different thing. 
 
 How completely baseless is this vision which Prof. Schafer has 
 evolved from "the mysterious depths of his own inner conscious- 
 ness," of Wilkes as a rascally railroad promoter, striving to gull 
 the public by wickedly altering Burnett's letters, so as "to minimize 
 the difficulties of the way," is shown not only by what has been
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 121 
 
 hereinbefore quoted as to the disinterested and purely patriotic 
 aims he sought to advance in advocating a national railroad to Ore- 
 gon, and by the comparison of what he says of the difficulties of 
 the road with Fremont's Report of it, and with what the "Old 
 Pioneer" says of it; but also by the fact that even the word rail- 
 road does not once appear in the 50 pages, or nearly 40,000 words, 
 of his "narrative of the migration of 1843," although so greatly is 
 the usual fairness of Prof. Schafer's mind warped by this curious 
 theory of his about Wilkes, that he actually declares (Oregonimi, 
 Nov. 13, 1903) that "the very next sentence reveals him" (Wilkes) 
 "from another angle as the railroad projector." That next sentence 
 consists of the following mere truisms (the italics used to show 
 "Wilkes as a railroad projector" being Prof. Schafer's, and not 
 Wilkes'), viz: "Liberty and enterprise are inseparable qualities, 
 and were it not for the obstacles of inadequate means of travel, no 
 corner of our country would be left unpeopled." 
 
 What a curious state of mind must possess one who finds in 
 this simple and appropriate statement of a general truth proof of 
 the wiles of a "railroad projector," seeking to deceive the people of 
 the country as to the feasibility of a transcontinental railroad. 
 
 Having disposed of the matters of the real difficulties of the 
 route from Fort Hall to the Columbia and of the extent to which 
 Whitman was the guide of the 1843 migration, let us now finish 
 the story of the development of the first transcontinental wagon 
 road with an examination of the other two important points, which 
 are, What was the treatment of the migration at Fort Hall? and 
 Would it have gone through with wagons if Whitman had not been 
 with it? These are so closely connected that it is best to consider 
 them together. 
 
 The advocates of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story all allege 
 that at Fort Hall the Hudson's Bay Co.'s chief trader, Mr. Richard 
 Grant, contrived to frighten all parties of Americans migrating to 
 Oregon with such dreadful stories as to the diflQculties and dangers 
 of the route from there to the Columbia, and the absolute impossi- 
 bility of getting through with wagons, that they all prior to 1843 
 had there left their wagons, and that he tried by exaggerations and 
 misrepresentations to prevent the 1843 migration from going on 
 with wagons, and would have succeeded had not "VMiitman been 
 there and made them a speech, which alleged speech most of the 
 advocates of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story print in quotation 
 marks (as if its authenticity is undoubted). (Cf. for this, "Spald- 
 ing's Lecture," in Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 37, 41st Cong., 3d Sess, p. 21; 
 Barrow's "Oregon," pp. 166-7 and 247-8; Gray's "History of Ore- 
 gon," p. 289 ; Nixon's "How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon," pp. 
 140-41; Craighead's "Story of Marcus Whitman," p. 76; Mrs. Eva
 
 122 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Emery Bye's ^'McLoughlin and Old Oregon," pp. 253-4 ; M. Eell's 
 ^'Indian Missions," pp. 156 and 177-8 ; Mowry's ''Marcus Whitman," 
 p. 205.) All of these give substantially the same account of what 
 they allege took ])lace at Fort Hall, but no one of them quotes a 
 single contemporaneous book, government document, newspaper or 
 magazine article, letter or diary in support of this story, which 
 appears first, as far as has yet been discovered, in the two recently 
 found letters written in 1858 and 1859 by Rev. Geo. Atkinson, a 
 man who had never been within 400 miles of Fort Hall, having 
 gone to Oregon by sea, after the Whitman massacre. These two 
 letters contain the first two versions (so far as known) of the 
 W^hitman Saved Oregon Story, but the first or 1858 version was 
 so palpably false that the 1859 one dropped several of the lead- 
 ing and easily proved false statements of the first. These letters 
 are herein printed for the first time. (Cf. Part II., Chapter III.) 
 
 False and widely variant as are both these versions of the Whit- 
 man Saved Oregon Story, they are admittedly derived from Rev. 
 H. H. Spalding and Rev. C. Eells. In their anxiety to make a 
 strong case against Grant, Barrows (pp. 166-7 and 247-8), and 
 Nixon (])p. 110 and 139-41), represent him as having been in 
 charge of Fort Hall from 1836 onward, and as having striven to 
 prevent Whitman from taking his wagon beyond Fort Hall in 
 1836, and as having prevented all others in later years from going 
 with wagons beyond Fort Hall, whereas, the fact is, that he was 
 not at Fort Hall till after the migration of 1841 had passed there, 
 so that but one migration — that of 1842 — had ever passed Fort 
 Hall after Grant had charge of it until the 1843 migration reached 
 it. 
 
 Mrs. Whitman's Diary (Tr. Oregon Pioneer Association, 1891, 
 p. 46) says (speaking of the arrival and reception of the Whitman- 
 Spalding party at Fort Hall on August 3, 1836, a little after noon) : 
 "We were hospitably entertained by Capt. Thing, who keeps the 
 fort." This should be Thyng. He was one of Wyeth's 1834 party, 
 and was left in charge of Fort Hall by Wyeth, on its erection in 
 1834. (Cf. Lee and Frost's Ten Years in Oregon, p. 114.) Who 
 was in charge of Fort Hall in 1837 I have been unable certainly 
 to determine, but think Mr. Thyng continued in command there 
 till Ermatinger was sent to take charge, which was certainly as 
 early as 1838, as witness the following extracts from Mrs. C. Eells' 
 diary (in Trans. Oregon Pioneer Association for 1889, p. 83) : 
 ''Friday, July 27th, 1838, arrive at Fort Hall . . . Sunday, 
 July 29th, about 10 o'clock, Mr. Ermatinger comes to invite us to 
 breakfast, says he has just got up. After breakfast he comes again 
 to invite us to have preaching at the fort. Afternoon Mr. Eells 
 preached in the dining room . . . Tuesday, July 31, find our
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 123 
 
 provisions and four mules and one fresh horse sent by Dr. Whit- 
 man and Spalding. Ermatinger gives ten pounds sugar." While 
 there is here no explicit assertion that he was in command, the 
 inference that he was in charge is irresistible. 
 
 That Frederick Ermatinger was in command at Fort Hall in 
 1839 is distinctly stated by Farnham (Travels, p. 153), (under 
 date of September 27th, when he was at Whitman's Mission), as 
 follows: '"In the afternoon the arrival of Mr. Ermetinger (should 
 be ma instead of me, W. I. M.) the senior clerk at Fort Hall from 
 Fort Walla Walla, created quite a sensation. His uniform kind- 
 ness to the missionaries has endeared him to them." . . "28th 
 Mr. Ermatinger started for Fort Hall." While Ermatinger was 
 absent from Fort Hall on this trip to Vancouver, Farnham's party 
 had arrived at Fort Hall, on September 1st, and had been most 
 kindly received there, as every other party of Americans was who 
 ever were at Fort Hall on their way to Oregon, as long as it was 
 a Hudson's Bay Company's post, according to all the contemporary 
 letters, and diaries, and books, and reports to the government of 
 all the members and leaders of those parties who have left any con- 
 temporaneous written or printed record of their reception and 
 treatment at Fort Hall. Mr. Walker, an American, was tempo- 
 rarily in charge of Fort Hall while Ermatinger was on this trip, 
 and Farnham (Travels, p. 130) says: '^'We spent the 2d and 3d 
 most agreeably with Mr. Walker in his hospitable adobie castle, 
 exchanged with him our wearied horses for fresh ones, and ob- 
 tained dried buffalo meat, sugar, cocoa, tea and corn meal, a guide 
 and every other necessary within that gentleman's power to fur- 
 nish for our journey to Walla Walla; "and at 10 o'clock a. m., of 
 the 4th of September, bade adieu to our very obliging country- 
 man." That Ermatinger was in charge of Fort Hall in 1840 is evi- 
 dent from the account of the outfitting there of three wagons by 
 Newell, Wilkins, Meek and Ermatinger himself in August, 1840, 
 and the driving them through from there to Fort Walla Walla. 
 (Cf. Tr. Oregon Pioneer Association, 1877, p. 22, also pp. 85-87 
 ante ) . 
 
 That Ermatinger was in command there when the 1841 migra- 
 tion passed there, and received and treated them with utmost kind- 
 ness, is distinctly asserted by the famous Father P. J. De Smet, 
 who was of that party, as follows: 
 
 (Under date of August 10, 1841) "But I feel bound before all 
 to pay Mr. Ermatinger, the captain of Fort Hall, the tribute of 
 gratitude which we owe him. Although a Protestant by birth, this 
 noble Englishman gave us a most friendly reception. Not only did 
 he repeatedly invite us to his table, and sell us, at first cost, or at 
 one-third of its value in a country so remote, whatever we required.
 
 124 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 but he also added as a pure gift many articles which he believed 
 would be particularly acceptable.'' (Cf. "Letters and Sketches, 
 etc.," P. J. De Smet, S. J., l»hiladelphia, 1853.) 
 
 We have already quoted (on pp. 90-94 ante) the strictly con- 
 temporary evidence of White's report to the government as Sub- 
 Indian agent, dated April 1, 1843, and his ''Ten Years in Oregon" 
 (Ithaca, N. Y., 1848), and L. W\ Easting's ''Emigrant's Guide to 
 Oregon and California" (Cincinnati, 1845), and of Fremont's Re- 
 port of his 1842 expedition, and of Hon. Medorera Crawford's ad- 
 dress, as president of the Oregon Pioneer Association at its 1881 
 meeting (the latter contemporaneous because based on and strictly 
 agreeing in all its facts with his Journal, since published verbatim 
 by the Oregon Historical Society) that this 1842 migration — the 
 first large overland migration — were received with the utmost kind- 
 ness at Fort Hall, and furnished with flour at only one-half of what 
 the American traders had charged them at Fort Laramie. 
 
 Whether Spalding or Gray first invented these charges against 
 Grant will probably never be known, but it is certain that they have 
 never been found in print, or in unpublished letters or diaries till 
 after the Whitman Saved Oregon Story began to be circulated, and 
 Gray is chiefly responsible for their wide circulation, by publishing 
 them in his History of Oregon (1870), as follows: 
 
 Page 321. "Grant at Fort Hall with the Indians along the route 
 had combined to deceive and rob the naked and starving immi- 
 grants." 
 
 Page 521, "So far as McBean was concerned, he obeyed orders 
 as implicitly as Grant of the Hudson's Bay Co. did, when he sent 
 'forty families in 184G into the mountains of California to perish in 
 the snow with cold and hunger." The italics are Gray's. (This 
 relates to the Donner party, who were never within hundreds of 
 miles of Fort Hall, they having left the regular Oregon trail on the 
 Little Sandy tributary of Greeu River, to go via Bridger's Fort and 
 the Hastings' Cut-Off, south of the Great Salt Lake, directly to Call-, 
 fornia. [Cf. in Trans. Oregon Pioneer Association, 1878; address 
 of Hon. J, C. Thornton on the migration of 184G, p. 51 ; also Thorn- 
 ton's "Oregon and California," Vol. II., pp. 95-240.] The last named 
 is the best and fullest account of the Donner party.) It is certain, 
 therefore that for the dreadful fate which befell the Donner party 
 neither Grant nor any other Hudson's Bay Co.'s employe was any 
 more responsible than "the man in the moon" was, or than Gray 
 himself was. (Had that party gone by Fort Hall they doubtless 
 would have reached California safely, as did all of the other Cali- 
 fornia emigrants that year who declined to go with them by Hast- 
 ings' Cut-Off, and went by Fort Hall ; and all the authorities are 
 agreed that it was the time the Donner party lost finding and mak-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 125 
 
 ing a new road between where they left the Oregon trail, in Green 
 River Valley, and the time they reached the eastern base of the 
 Sierra Nevadas, which caused them to be too late to cross the 
 Sierras. W. I. M.) 
 
 Page 360. Speaking explicitly of the 1843 migration, he says: 
 "An immigration of 875 persons arrived in the fall, notwithstanding 
 that deceitful servant of the Hudson's Bay Co., Grant, at Fort Hall, 
 did all he could under the instructions of the company to induce as 
 many as possible to go to California, by telling them all the fright- 
 ful stories he and his men could invent of their danger, and of the 
 difficulties they must encounter in getting through to the settlements 
 on the Wallamet." 
 
 Page 367. ''Grant, of the Hudson's Bay Co., must occupy Fort 
 Hall, and do all he can to turn immigrants to California, and rob 
 such as persist in coming to Oregon. General Palmer says in his 
 journal (p. 43) : "While we remained at this place (Fort Hall) 
 great efforts were made to induce the immigration to pursue the 
 route to California. The most extravagant tales were related re- 
 specting the dangers awaiting a trip to Oregon, and the difficulties 
 and trials to be surmounted. The perils of the way were so magni- 
 fied as to make us suppose the journey to Oregon almost impossible. 
 For instance the two crossings of Snake River, and the crossings 
 of the Columbia and other smaller streams were represented as 
 being attended with great danger. Also, that no company hereto- 
 fore attempting the passage of these streams succeeded but with 
 the loss of men, from the violence and rapidity of the current, as 
 also that they had never succeeded in getting more than fifteen or 
 twenty head of cattle into the Willamet Valley. 
 
 "In addition to the above, it was asserted that three or four 
 tribes of Indians in the middle regions had combmed for the pur- 
 pose of preventing our passage through their country. In case we 
 escaped destruction at the hands of the savages, that a more fearful 
 enemy — famine — would overtake us before making the Cascade 
 Mountains. On the other hand, as an inducement to pursue the 
 California route, we were informed of the shortness of the route 
 when compared with that to Oregon, as also of the many other 
 superior advantages it possessed." The italics in this quotation 
 are Gray's, not Palmer's. Although Gray knew perfectly well that 
 Palmer never was at Fort Hall till 1845, and although the title page 
 to Palmer's book is "Journal of Travels over the Rocky Mountains to 
 the mouth of the Columbia River in the years 1845 and 1846," he not 
 only here gives his readers no hint of the date, but nowhere in his 
 "History of Oregon" gives the date of Palmer's first overland jour- 
 ney, and he prints the above quotation in such connection that all 
 except those tolerably well acquainted with Oregon history are sure
 
 126 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 to suppose that Palmer was with the 1842 or 1843 migration. Nat- 
 iiralh', Kev. William Barrows, O. W. Nixon and Rev. Myron Eells 
 fell into this trap, Barrows (p. 148) printing the above quotation 
 between two paragraphs relating to the 1842 migration (though not 
 asserting that it related to that migration), and Nixon (p. 191) 
 beginning a condensation of the above quotation with ''General 
 Palmer, in speaking of this, says, 'While at Fort Hall in 1842 the 
 perils of the way to Oregon were so magnifiedV' etc. ; and Rev. M. 
 Eells ("Indian Missions," p. 177) in the middle of his account of 
 the 1843 migration, introducing this quotation with " 'For instance,' 
 says General Joel Palmer, of that year's emigration," and this 
 though he had in his house the Trans. Oregon Pioneer Association 
 for 1877, giving an alphabetical roster of the members of the asso- 
 ciation, which states that Palmer was a pioneer of 1845. The result 
 has been that all giving credence to these books think that there is a 
 strictly contemporaneous account from a man of the highest char- 
 acter, sustaining the accusation that the 1842 and 1843 migration 
 (and, presumably, if either, then both of them) encountered decep- 
 tion and misrepresentation from Grant, evidencing opposition from 
 the Hudson's Bay Co. to wagons going beyond Fort Hall. Finding 
 some twenty years ago that this was in 1845, I became suspicious 
 that somehow the quotation must be otherwise dishonest, as Grant 
 was admittedly an able man, and it seemed to me utterly incredible 
 that after the two great migrations of 1843 and 1844 had gone 
 through with their wagons, even if he was as bad a man as Gray 
 claimed, he should be foolish enough to try to deceive this 1845 
 migration with the statement that they could not easily and safely 
 go where more than 2,000 of their countrymen had gone, and had 
 reported far and wide in the States that the road was plainly 
 marked and offered little difiQcultv, 
 
 At the earliest possible opportunity, therefore, I examined 
 Palmer's Journal (which is a rare book), and found that this is a 
 sample of that kind of misquotation — as ancient as it is disrep- 
 utjible — which consists in stopping a quotation when the imme- 
 diately following context completely changes the impression con- 
 veyed by the part quoted. The next paragraph in Palmer's Journal 
 after the above quotation from it is as follows: "These tales, told 
 and rehearsed, were likely to produce the effect of turning the tide 
 of emigration thither" (/, e., to California). Mr. Greenwood, an 
 old mountaineer, well stocked with falsehoods, had been dispatched 
 from California to pilot the emigration through, and assisted by a 
 young man by the name of McDougal, from Indiana, so far suc- 
 ceeded as to induce 35 or 36 wagons to take that trail ; about 15 
 wagons had been fitted out expressly for California, and joined by 
 the aforementioned, completed a train of 50 wagons. What the
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 127 
 
 result of their expedition has been I have not been able to learn." 
 There is not one sentence in Palmer's Journal which, honestly 
 quoted in connection with its context, furnishes the least support to 
 the charges of Gray against Grant, nor to any charge that the treat- 
 ment of Americans migrating to Oregon was unkind or uncourteous 
 either at Fort Hall or at any other Hudson's Bay Co. post, nor one 
 sentence censuring Grant for anything whatever, and what little 
 he says of Grant is entirely favorable to and commendatory of him. 
 
 Having shown from the contemporaneous records of Fremont, 
 White, Hastings and Crawford how the 1842 migration came to 
 leave part of their wagons at Fort Laramie, part at Green River, 
 and the last seven at Fort Hall, and that they had only words of 
 praise for Grant and his treatment of them, and having by quoting 
 the immediate context disproved the claim that Palmer's Journal 
 supports the charge that Grant attempted to prevent Americans 
 from going beyond Fort Hall with wagons, and sought to send them 
 to California, we are now prepared to examine the question of what 
 treatment the 1843 migration met at Fort Hall. 
 
 Burnett's letters, as printed in Part II. of Wilkes, furnish as 
 far as yet appears the only strictly contemporaneous account of their 
 reception and treatment by Grant, as follows: "We arrived in 
 the afternoon at Fort Hall, a trading post belonging to the Hudson's 
 Bay Co., on the Snake or Saptin River, and encamped in a fine 
 piece of timber land, under cover of its wooden battlements. We 
 passed a most pleasant evening, in exchanging civilities with its 
 inmates, who were not a little surprised at this tremendous irrup- 
 tion in their solitude. Some of the members told us that they could 
 scarcely believe their eyes when they saw the immense stretch of 
 our line, the number of our lowing herds and our squads of prancing 
 horsemen, and they inquired laughingly if we had come to conquer 
 Oregon or devour it out of hand. They treated us, however, with 
 every attention, and answered with the utmost patience, and par- 
 ticularly all our inquiries in relation to the country. We paused 
 here a day to recruit our cattle, and when we set out in the morning 
 following (1st Sept.) we received a parting salute from one of the 
 guns of the fort, and answered it with a volley from our small 
 arms." 
 
 Since the foregoing was written in the Oregonian of Nov. 13, 
 1903, Prof. Schafer has printed a few extracts from Burnett's Jour- 
 nal recently obtained from the Burnett family by Prof. Young, sec- 
 retary of the Oregon Historical Society, as follows : 
 
 "27th (Aug.). Came to Fort Hall. This being Sunday, no 
 business was done. Mr. Grant very hospitable. Fort Hall stands 
 in a wide plain of bottom land formed by Snake River. The com-
 
 128 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 pany have a great many horses and cattle, made by trading, etc., 
 and good range. 
 
 "28th. Remained at Fort Hall and many trades were made. 
 Price of provisions : Flour, 25c a pint ; coffee, 50c a pound ; sugar, 
 25c a pint; rice, 33 l-3c; for powder, 56c a pound. 
 
 "29th. Still remained at Fort Hall. 
 
 "30th. Left Fort Hall and came 11 miles to the Portneuth 
 (neuf). Good range, wood and water." 
 
 These extracts, like those hereinbefore quoted by me, show how 
 very "concise" was this journal ; but, as far as it goes, its state- 
 ment about the treatment this immigration received from Mr. Grant 
 fully supports the statements in the Wilkes Narrative. 
 
 So far as yet appears, no other contemporaneous evidence has 
 been found in support of the accuracy of this extract from Burnett's 
 Journal, but this statement in Gilmore's letter of Nov. 11, 1843: 
 "We found the Hudson's Bay Co. at all their posts very accommo- 
 dating" (Cf. Or. Hist. Quarterly, Sept., 1903, p. 281) except the very 
 strong negative evidence, that not a sentence has yet been discov- 
 ered in any contemporaneous letter from that migration which in 
 any manner censures Grant's conduct, or complains of any treat- 
 ment the migration received at Fort Hall, and it is quite incredible 
 that if this account were not a correct one of the treatment they 
 received there, some one or more of this migration would not have 
 complained of wrongs inflicted and that the first accusation against 
 Grant's treatment of this migration should appear in a letter writ- 
 ten 15 years afterward, not by any member of this or any other 
 migration that was ever at Fort Hall, but by Rev. G. H. Atkinson, a 
 Congregational clergyman, who was in 1843 a youth at school in 
 New England, and never went to Oregon till the summer of 1848, 
 and then by sea, and whose ideas were plainly derived from Spald- 
 ing, and Gray, and C. Eells. 
 
 Having settled that the use made by Gray, Rev. William Bar- 
 rows, Rev. M. Eells and others of the quotation from Palmer's Jour- 
 nal was deceptive, and that it had nothing to do with the 1842 or 
 1843 migration, as far back as 1884, failing to find any contempo- 
 raneous evidence of the experience of the 1843 migration at Fort 
 Hall, except that in the Wilkes Narrative, in accordance with the 
 fundamental principles of scientific historical investigation, I sought 
 the next best evidence, to-wit, the carefully considered subsequent 
 statements, not of the boys like William W^aldo, P. B. Whitman, 
 John Hobson and John Zachary, who were in that migration, nor 
 of other people in it, who, however honest and well intentioned they 
 might have been, were not its leaders, and so had no sense of respon- 
 sibility for its movements to impress upon their memories what took 
 place there, nor were likely to have come directly in contact with
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 129 
 
 Captain Grant as the leaders of the party did, but from the five 
 survivors of the six men who are universally admitted to have been 
 the real originators, organizers and leaders of that migration, to-wit : 
 Hon. J. M. Shively, the three Applegates, Jesse, Charles and Lind- 
 say ; Gov. P. H. Burnett and Hon. J. W. Nesmith, Of these Charles 
 Applegate died in 1877, before any thorough investigation of the 
 Whitman Saved Oregon Story was made, and, unfortunately, I did 
 not learn of Mr. Nesmith's address in time for my letter to reach 
 him till after he was attacked with the softening of the brain that 
 clouded the last few months of his long and honorable life, so that I 
 never heard from him, Nesmith, in his address to the Oregon Pio- 
 neer Association (Trans. 1875, p. 47), gives the following account of 
 what took place at Fort Hall (but with no claim that he had any 
 contemporaneous written account of it to assist or refresh his mem- 
 ory as to what happened 32 years before) : "Captain Grant, then 
 in charge of the Hudson's Bay Co. at Fort Hall, endeavored to dis- 
 suade us from proceeding further with our wagons, and showed 
 us the wagons that the emigrants of the preceding year had aban- 
 doned as an evidence of the impracticability of our determination. 
 Dr. Whitman was persistent in his assertions that wagons could 
 proceed as far as the Grand Dalles of the Columbia River, from 
 which point he asserted they could be taken down by rafts or bat- 
 teaux to the Willamette Valley, while the stock could be driven by 
 an Indian trail over the Cascade Mountains, near Mount Hood. Hap- 
 pily, Whitman's advice prevailed, and a large number of the wagons, 
 with a portion of the stock, did reach Walla Walla and the Dalles, 
 from which points they were taken to the Willamette the following 
 year. Had we followed Grant's advice and abandoned the cattle 
 and wagons at Fort Hall, much suffering must have ensued, as a 
 suflScient number of horses to carry the women and children of 
 the party could not have been obtained, besides wagons and cattle 
 were indispensable to men expecting to live by farming in a country 
 destitute of such articles." There is nothing in this at all contrary 
 to what is stated in the Wilkes Narrative. No one even moderately 
 acquainted with the true story of that 1843 migration has ever 
 doubted that at Fort Hall there was a discussion as to the advisa- 
 bility of wagons going farther, nor that Grant thought it doubtful 
 if they could get them across the Blue Mountains, and that Whit- 
 man thought they could. The only question is, was this an honest 
 opinion of Grant, and was he candid in stating it? and upon that 
 point the evidence here adduced is overwhelmingly and unanswer- 
 ably in favor of Grant, nor has any other opinion been found written 
 in letter or diary till some 15 years after the event, when it became 
 necessary, as an indispensable postulate of the Whitman Saved 
 Oregon Story, to create the impression that the Hudson's Bay Co.
 
 130 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 was opposed to wagons going beyond Fort Hall, and that Grant 
 wrongfully strove to prevent them ironi going on. This correspond- 
 ence with Burnett, Shively, Jesse and Lindsay Applegate began in 
 1884, a dozen years before I began an investigation of the Wilkes 
 Narrative, and before I paid any attention to that narrative Gov. 
 Burnett had died, which explains why I did not obtain any state- 
 ment from him as to the authorship of that narrative and the 
 faithfulness with which it reproduced his letters to the Herald. 
 I put to each of these four men very definite and comprehensive 
 questions as to Whitman's true relations to the migration gener- 
 ally, and as to what actually took place at Fort Hall, and the fol- 
 lowing are their replies. 
 
 Oct. 14, 1884, Gov. P. H. Burnett wrote me as follows : 
 "In answer to your first question I will say that, basing my 
 judgment upon my individual knowledge of the conduct and lan- 
 guage of Captain Grant, and also upon what I heard from reliable 
 persons at Fort Hall in 1843, I do not believe that he made any 
 efforts to prevent the emigration of 1843 from going through to 
 Oregon by exaggerating the difiiculties of the remainder of the 
 journey or by attempting to persuade them to go to California in- 
 stead of to Oregon." 
 
 *'In answer to your second inquiry, I have to state that, found- 
 ing my opinions upon the circumstances above mentioned. Captain 
 Grant did not strive to prevent the emigrants from going farther 
 with wagons by any statements of the difiBculties of the way which 
 I, as I subsequently passed over it, deemed exaggerated. While at 
 Fort Hall, in 1843, I neither saw nor heard of anything objection- 
 able in the conduct or language of Captain Grant, then in charge of 
 that post. He seemed to speak and act with candor and with 
 reasonable caution under all the then existing circumstances." 
 
 April 14, 1887, Gov. Burnett, in answer to my question, "Who, 
 if anyone, in the migration of 1843, so far as you know, was in- 
 duced to join it by Dr. Whitman?" replied as follows: "I have no 
 present recollection of any person who was induced to join that 
 migration by Dr. Whitman." 
 
 Hon. J. M. Shively wrote me from Astoria, Ore., Oct. 20, 1884, 
 that in the autumn of 1842 he was living in St. Louis, and decided 
 to try and organize a migration to Oregon for 1843, and had hand- 
 bills printed and ])osted and held several public meetings, and had 
 a list of about 300 names of those who agreed to join the party. 
 That at the request of the party he took a petition to Congress ask- 
 ing for military protection at least through the Pawnee country, 
 being furnished with letters from leading men in St. Louis to many 
 members of Congress. 
 
 En route to Washington he held public meetings at Louisville,
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 131 
 
 Cincinnati and Pittsburg, on the subject of migrating to Oregon. 
 He did not give the precise date when he reached Washington, but 
 says he left only a few days before Congress adjourned and returned 
 to St. Louis. 
 
 He says: ''I was received in Washington with marked defer- 
 ence, but failed to get the desired escort of troops. I had a number 
 of conferences with Mr. Spencer, then Secretary of W^ar, and Presi- 
 dent Tvler and manv other executive officers, and Senators Linn 
 and Benton and Caleb Cushing, but none of them ever mentioned 
 Dr. Whitman to me, and I never saw nor heard of him until he over- 
 took the migration on the plains. . . . The party was made up 
 of hardy frontiersmen, and anything Grant might say on one side or 
 Whitman on the other would not have deterred or encouraged them. 
 They had started to take their wagons and stock through, and 
 they did. 
 
 "I heard a number ask Captain Grant at Fort Hall about the 
 route down Snake River. His reply was that he knew only the 
 pack-trail, and that wagons could not go that trail. You ask when 
 I first heard the" (Whitman Saved Oregon) "story, as told by Gray 
 in his History of Oregon. Answer : I never heard it spoken of till 
 the publication of that history by Gray. I never saw any pamphlet 
 or letter ever published by Dr. Whitman at any date." 
 
 "The part I took in 1812-3 is evidence that Dr. Whitman never 
 made a public speech or had anything published at that time." 
 . . . "A few words of inference: Were Dr. Whitman alive you 
 would never have heard of his being the Savior of Oregon. It is 
 all a fabrication ; nor did Dr. Whitman ever claim to have any 
 influence in getting up the emigration of 1813 — when he overtook 
 us the magnitude of the train took him by surprise." 
 
 June 19, 1885, Mr. Shively wrote me again, denying pointblank 
 what Hon. John Hobson (who was a boy of 18 in 1843) wrote to 
 Rev. M. Eells, under date of Jan, 30, 1883, as to Whitman inducing 
 Mr. Shively, and the Hobson family, and Miles Eyars (or Ayers) to 
 join the 1843 migration, (Cf. M, Eells' pamphlet, "Did Dr, M. 
 Whitman Save Oregon," p, 30,) 
 
 He says: "I don't know how to reconcile Mr. Hobson's state- 
 ments that I was prevailed upon to come to Oregon by Whitman, 
 for I had no knowledge of Dr, Whitman till he overtook the migra- 
 tion on the Platte, in 1843." , , . "About the 1st of November, 
 1842, in St. Louis, Mo., I first of all had bills printed and posted to 
 make up a party to migrate to Oregon. About this time arrived from 
 England William Hobson and family, and they joined the migra- 
 tion. So did Miles Ayers, another English family, and hundreds of 
 others, Mr, John Hobson was a boy at that time, and is laboring 
 under a great mistake when he says Whitman influenced me to come
 
 132 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 to Oregon. Six hundred and forty acres of land is what induced 
 me to come to Oregon, and I got it. Dr. Whitman passed St. Louis 
 after I had left, and brought me documents from my friends there. 
 I do not remember any advice on the part of Captain Grant to leave 
 the wagons; he told the questioners that they could not go the 
 pack-trail, but says he, "You Americans can do anything." I do 
 not think that what Grant or Whitman said had a shade of influ- 
 ence; the party had started for the Willamette with wagons, and 
 they were going through with them or 'bust'." 
 
 In April, 1887, I sent Mr. Shively the following questions: 
 "From all your experience of pioneer life, do you think that the ser- 
 vices of Dr. Whitman to the migration of 1843 were any other than 
 or any greater than those which any vigorous, energetic and reason- 
 ably public spirited pioneer physician would have rendered, and 
 ought to have rendered, to any party of emigrants largely composed 
 of women and children, with whom he was traveling toward his 
 present and their future home?" To which, on May 2, 1887, he re- 
 plied : "Dr. Whitman was in the noonday of life, and was of great 
 service to the immigrants the fore part of the route, but he soon 
 grew weary, and finally he grew very cross, and quarreled with Mr. 
 Lovejoy, his traveling companion, on arriving at his station." 
 
 When the migration divided into two bands, on June 9, 1843, 
 William J. Martin was elected captain of one band and Jesse Apple- 
 gate of the other. At Fort Hall, Mr. Martin, with Captain John 
 Gantt, Mr. Joseph Childs and 14 other men took the road to Cali- 
 fornia. (Cf. Tr. Oregon Pioneer Association, 1875; Nesmith's ad- 
 dress, p. 53.) Mr. Jesse Applegate went to Oregon and spent the 
 rest of his long and honorable life there and in California, much 
 the greater part in Oregon. 
 
 June 22, 1885, he wrote me from Yoncalla, Ore., as follows: 
 "Your" (my) "questions are: 
 
 " 'First. Did you at any time hear Dr. Whitman claim to have 
 any interviews with Webster and Tyler about Oregon matters?' 
 
 "Ans. I have no recollection of any such interviews." 
 
 " 'Second. Did you at any time hear him claim that the pos- 
 session of Oregon by the United States was in any sense dependent 
 on that migration of 1843 going through with wagons?' 
 
 "Ans. I did not." 
 
 " 'Third. Do you remember whether or not from the letters 
 of Robt. Shortess and others or from any other source you had 
 learned that wagons could be taken through the Blue Mountains 
 before you left Missouri?' 
 
 "Ans. No." 
 
 " 'Fourth. Had you heard of Dr. Whitman before you left 
 Missouri?'
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 133 
 
 "Ans. Through a letter from Robt. Shortess I heard of Dr. 
 Whitman as a missionary in the Walla Walla country." 
 
 (Robert Shortess was one of the Oregon migration under Thos. 
 J. Farnham in 1839, and was hired by Dr. Whitman to work at 
 Wailatpu for a short time in 1839-40, W. I. M.) 
 
 " 'Fifth. Would your party have gone through with wagons 
 all the way in any event, whether Dr. Whitman had been with you 
 or not?' 
 
 ^'Ans. Dr. Whitman had nothing to do with our outfit or mode 
 of travel. From the time he joined us on the Platte River he was 
 a valuable addition to our party, but not indispensable to it." 
 
 " 'Sixth. Did you hear Capt. Grant at Fort Hall make any 
 representations about the difficulty of taking wagons beyond Fort 
 Hall, which you, from your subsequent experience and observation 
 in going over the route, deemed unfair or unwarranted by the facts 
 of the case?' 
 
 "Ans. There were none such made." 
 
 " 'Seventh. Was Dr. Whitman in any sense regarded by that 
 migration after he joined it as its leader?" 
 
 "Ans. He was not so regarded." 
 
 " 'Eighth. When did you first hear this story about Whitman 
 having saved Oregon to the United States substantially as told by 
 Rev. H. H. Spalding and Mr. W. H. Gray?' 
 
 "Ans. About the time those gentlemen convinced themselves 
 that such was the case." 
 
 "Having answered your questions categorically I will simply 
 state that Dr. Whitman was an energetic, intelligent and useful 
 man, who did well his part, but his part was not a high one. He 
 was not one to become a leader of men or a mover in any great 
 enterprise." 
 
 Jesse Applegate had two brothers in that migration, Charles 
 and Lindsay. That all three, like Burnett, Shively and Nesmith, 
 were natural leaders of men is evident from their subsequent 
 prominent records as citizens of Oregon. 
 
 In September, 1888, I sent to Hon. Lindsay Applegate at Ash- 
 land, Ore., a letter containing questions, to which he replied Octo- 
 ber 7, 1888, as follows: 
 
 "My answers to your questions are as follows : 
 
 " 'Question 1. Was Dr. Whitman considered by you or by that 
 migration generally as in any sense the organizer or one of the 
 organizers or the leader of the migration of 1843?' 
 
 "Ans. No one ever heard of such a man until we were hun- 
 dreds of miles on the way." 
 
 " 'Question 2. Did you at any time while that migration was 
 on the way hear him say or hear any one else say that they had
 
 134 ACQULSITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 heard him say that his object in going to the States had been to 
 lead an emigration to Oregon with wagons?' 
 
 ''Ans. No. lie uniformly explained that his expedition was 
 in the interest of his mission. He rushed back to prevent his Mis- 
 sion Board from discontinuing his mission and to urge upon the 
 attention of that Board the necessity of not only continuing his 
 mission, but that he should be provided with more means that he 
 might resist the encroachments of the Catholics. He traveled with 
 us until the most dangerous tribes of Indians had been passed, 
 which brought us to the Burnt River Hills, and then he left us 
 and went on to his mission station and we had our way to explore 
 and cut through the Blue Mountains forest after that. And he 
 took off with him a lot of our young men that we fed across the 
 plains, whose desertion greatly weakened our force in cutting 
 through the forests." 
 
 ''At the Pacific Springs, our first camp west of the Rocky 
 Mountains and first day's travel into Oregon, the Oregon question 
 came up. It was in this form : What should we do in case Oregon 
 should some time become a British province? Various determina- 
 tions were expressed, many saying they would return to the States. 
 But Whitman said that the question of the jurisdiction of any 
 earthly i)rince, potentate or power was of but small consideration. 
 What he was concerned about was the jurisdiction of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ." 
 
 '^ 'Question 3. Did you at any time while that migration was 
 on the way hear from Dr. Whitman any declaration that the Amer- 
 ican title to Oregon was in any way dependent on that migration 
 going thr(mgh with wagons?' 
 
 "Ans. No. But when he overtook us on the plains he did say 
 that he had never heard that any migration had started until he 
 got to St. Louis." 
 
 " 'Question 4. Did you then or at any later time hear Dr. 
 Whitman claim that he had had any interviews with Secretary 
 Webster and President Tyler about Oregon matters, and if not 
 then, when did you hear this claim made for him, substantially as 
 stated by Spalding and Gray?' 
 
 "Ans. No. He never pretended to any such thing. I never 
 heard of any such claim being set up until long after the Doctor 
 was dead." 
 
 " "Question 5. In your judgment would that migration have 
 gone through to Walla Walla with wagons if Dr. Whitman had 
 not been with it?' 
 
 "Ans. We did not depend upon the Doctor at all for any course 
 or direction. We depended and relied upon the instructions which 
 we had received from Robert Shortess of Oregon."
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 135 
 
 " 'Question G. Did you hear Capt. Grant at Fort Hall make 
 any representations about the difficulty of taking wagons beyond 
 Fort Hall, which you from your subsequent experience and obser- 
 vation in going over the route deemed unfair or unwarranted by 
 the facts of the case?' 
 
 "Ans. He was glad to see us and he was kind. He said that 
 considering what we had done and what he knew of the country 
 we could go with wagons anywhere." 
 
 '' 'Question 7. Did Captain Grant make any effort to induce 
 the migration of 1843 to go to California instead of Oregon by ex- 
 aggerated statements about the difficulties of the route to Oregon, 
 or in any other way or by any other means as far as you know?' 
 
 "Ans. He did not undertake to advise us in any way." 
 
 " 'Question 8. Before starting from Missouri did any fear of 
 not being able to get through with wagons disturb you or influence 
 you in any way?' 
 
 "Ans. We understood what we were about. We had instruc- 
 tions from Shortess — a careful account of the country all the way. 
 We were able to make roads, boats or do anything, were prepared 
 with all manner of tools. We were not starting out in a helpless 
 condition. We had bands of cattle and horses with us. We could 
 have left our wagons and gone on, or we could have wintered and 
 taken another season for it. No, we had no doubt about being able 
 to go through." 
 
 " 'Question 9. Were the services of Dr. Whitman to the migra- 
 tion of 1843 any other than or any greater than those which any 
 vigorous, energetic and reasonably public-spirited pioneer physi- 
 cian ought to have rendered to a migration composed largely of 
 women and children, with whom he was traveling towards what 
 was his and was destined to be their future home?' 
 
 "Ans. As far as Dr. Whitman's being of any service to the mi- 
 gration of 1843 is concerned, I consider it a misfortune that we 
 ever saw him, from the fact that he left us at Boise, taking with 
 him a portion of our young men, and leaving us to cut our way 
 through the Burnt River and Blue Mountain forests without their 
 aid." 
 
 " 'Question 10. In your judgment would anything that Capt. 
 Grant or any other officers of the Hudson's Bay Co. might have 
 said about the difficulties of going further with wagons have 
 influenced any considerable number of the 1843 migration to have 
 left their wagons at Fort Hall, if Whitman had not been with 
 you?' 
 
 "Ans. No." 
 
 " 'Question 11. Did you notice or hear of anything in the con- 
 duct of Capt. Grant while the migration of 1843 was at Fort Hall
 
 136 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 which seemed to you then, or subsequently as you thought about it 
 and about the actual difficulties of the route, as being otherwise 
 than candid and honorable, and reasonably cautious and prudent 
 in view of all the facts of the case?' 
 
 "Ans. No." 
 
 From Nesmith I never heard, as the mild insanity which 
 clouded the last few months of his long and honored life had at- 
 tacked him just before my letter reached him, but in a letter to 
 Kev. M. Eells (published on pp. 28-9 of the before mentioned pamph- 
 let entitled ''Marcus Whitman, M. I)., Portland, Ore., 1883,"), he 
 wrote : 
 
 "Dixie Station, Polk County, Oregon, Jan. 22, 1883. 
 
 "Rev. M. Eells, 
 
 "My Dear Sir: In answer to your first question, 'Where did 
 you first see Dr. Whitman?' I am not able to reply as definitely as 
 I could wish to do, but will give you the best of my recollections. 
 Our party of immigrants assembled at a point near Fitzhugh's 
 Mill, a few miles west of Independence, Missouri, on the 20th of 
 May, 184.S, for the purpose of organizing. I will not be certain 
 whether it was at this meeting or a day or two after, on the line 
 of march, that I first met the Doctor. I had never seen or heard 
 of him before, consequently nothing that he said or wrote had any 
 infiuence in inducing me to go to Oregon. In fact, I had started 
 from Iowa in 1842 to come to Oregon with Dr. White's party of 
 that year, but I arrived at Independence seventeen days after Dr. 
 White's party had left, and as the Pawnee Indians were hostile, 
 I did not dare venturing alone to overtake the party, and remained 
 at Fort Scott, 110 miles south of Independence, in the then Kansas 
 territory, until the party of 1843 rendezvoused as above stated. 
 
 "I know of no person who was induced to come to Oregon in 
 consequence of Dr. Whitman's representations, and I think that 
 the rest of the immigration were as ignorant of Dr. Whitman, his 
 speaking and writing, as T was. 
 
 "I am, respectfully, your obedient servant, 
 
 "(Signed) J. W. NESMITH." 
 
 And certainly nothing further is needed to show that in 1883 
 (when the Whitman Saved Oregon Story had been pretty thor- 
 oughly discussed on the Pacific Coast) he took no stock in any 
 "Whitman Saved Oregon" tale. 
 
 As conclusive proof of just how that wicked Hudson's Bay 
 Co., through their agent Grant, sought "to deceive and rob the 
 naked and starving immigrant," I submit the following statement 
 of the ])rices charged the 1843 migration by the American Fur Co., 
 at Fort Laramie, only 589 miles from the Missouri frontier, and
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 137 
 
 with a good wagon road over a level country all the way to it, and 
 at Fort Hall, 1,323 miles from the Missouri frontier, and 700 miles 
 east of its base of supplies at Vancouver (of which 475 miles was 
 pack trail transportation), and at Fort Boise. At Fort Laramie, 
 according to "Old Pioneer" (p. 112), "coffee was |1.50 a pint; 
 brown sugar, the same; flour, unbolted, 25 cents a pound; powder, 
 |1.50 a pound ; lead, 75 cents a pound ; percussion caps, |1.50 a 
 box; calico, very inferior, $1 a yard." Contrast this with the fol- 
 lowing in a letter to me from Gov. P. H. Burnett, dated San Fran- 
 cisco, Dec. 4, 1888: 
 
 "I find the following entries in my journal : At Fort Hall, 
 prices of provisions, etc. — Flour, 25 cents a pint; coffee, 50 cents; 
 sugar, 50 cents ; rice, 33 1-3 cents ; powder, 56 cents per pound. At 
 Fort Boise, nothing in the provision line to sell but butter, 25 
 cents, and coffee, 50 cents a pint. Everything mentioned was sold 
 by the pint except powder. I suppose this usage was based upon 
 the fact that Indians understood measure better than weight. 
 
 "Yours truly, 
 
 "PETER H. BURNETT." 
 
 Yet Mrs. Eva Emery Dye, in "McLoughlin and Old Oregon," 
 published as late as 1900, writes (p. 255) of the experiences of this 
 migration at Fort Hall as follows : 
 
 "Flour at Fort Hall was selling at mountain prices — a dollar a 
 pint," — which is as close to the truth as any of her statements in 
 support of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story. 
 
 If it is asked why Grant did not know as much about passes 
 over the Blue Mountains as Payette did, the answer is that Payette 
 had been then at Fort Boise (only 100 miles east of the Blue 
 Mountains) for nearly nine years, while Grant had been less than 
 two years at Fort Hall, 375 miles east of the Blue Mountains. It 
 is very curious if Whitman had any special interest in the opening 
 up of a wagon road from the States to Oregon, that he had lived 
 for six years — 1836-1842 — only twenty-nine miles from the western 
 base of the Blue Mountains, and less than fifty-five miles from the 
 summit of that range, and only seventy-two miles by the route the 
 1843 party traveled from the Grande Ronde, and in all that time 
 had learned nothing of this "easier pass" that Farnham learned 
 about from Payette at Fort Boise in September, 1839. 
 
 From Walla Walla part of the migration of 1843 drove their 
 wagons down the south side of the Columbia (keeping back a few 
 miles from the river so as to have good grass) to the Dalles, and 
 so completed the development of the wagon road to the eastern 
 base of the Cascade Mountains.
 
 138 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Various .advocates of the Whitman Legend, including Mowry (p. 
 200), (^raighead (]). 7(\), Rev. M. Eells, "Ind. Missions" (p. 79), 
 have asserted that Whitman lurnished the migration with a guide 
 for til is part of their journey, but all the evidence is to the con- 
 trary. 
 
 The Wilkes Narrative says (pp. 89-90) : ''While pausing at this 
 place (Whitman's Mission), we w^ere agitated and perplexed in the 
 extreme what course to take in relation to the arrangements we 
 should make for the successful conclusion of our expedition. We 
 were assailed with various opinions from every one we met, and 
 in the general indecision were for. a time brought to a dead stand. 
 Most of the residents of the mission agreed in advising us to leave 
 our cattle and wagons at this point, or if we did take them to the 
 Dalles or narrows (a point on the Columbia, 120 miles in advance) 
 to send them back here to winter. Others told us that we could 
 not reach the Dalles with our teams, as jaded as they were, as we 
 would find no range along the course of the Columbia. All, how- 
 ever, seemed to think that it would be impossible for us to get our 
 wagons or our cattle to the Willamette this fall. But we had 
 already overcome too many difficulties to admit the word impos- 
 sible as a part of our vocabulary. We could not remain where we 
 were for a number of reasons. The pasturage in the immediate 
 vicinity w^as too scanty ; the width of range would not allow us to 
 keep our stock together, and we suffered an additional danger of 
 their loss from the dishonest practices of the Indians, who, if they 
 did not steal them outright, led them off for the purpose of being 
 })aid to bring them in. Many of us were obliged to pay a shirt (the 
 price uniformly charged by the Indians for every service) for three 
 or four successive mornings, to get back the same animal, and this 
 was a kind of tribute that if kept up would make fearful inroads 
 upon our wardrobe. The majority of the emigrants therefore re- 
 solved to attempt the threatened dangers" (rather than continue 
 subject) "to the actual evils that now beset us. Accordingly they 
 set out in scpiads, on successive days, and before the end of the 
 month all had reached the Dalles in safety. What surprised them 
 most, after the representations which had been made, was the fine 
 pasturage they met with all along the way, and especially at the 
 Dalles, where, we had been led to believe, the cattle could not sub- 
 sist at all dui-ing the winter. As the parties to which I now 
 allude preceded me, I may as well continue this anticipatory ac- 
 count of the route as far as it concerns their progress. They 
 struck otf in a southwesterly direction, leaving the sterility of the 
 river's bank, and instead of ]»erishing for want of range, their cat- 
 tle even improved all along the way. Some of them left their 
 wagons at the Dalles and drove their cattle through the Cascade
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 139 
 
 Monntains, conveying their baggage and families on pack horses 
 through the mountain paths; and some went down the river by the 
 boats. But the greatest portion of them constructed rafts of dead 
 pine timber, a few miles below the Dalles, large enough to carry 
 six or eight wagons, and upon these floated safely down to the Cas- 
 cades on the Columbia. Their cattle were driven down the river's 
 bank about thirty miles, then swam across and were driven down 
 the other bank to Vancouver. Here the party obtained boats from 
 Dr. McLaughlin, the Governor of the Hudson's Bay Co.'s estab- 
 lishments in Oregon, and returned to the Cascades for such of 
 the families, wagons and baggage as had been left behind. This 
 method was found to be of all the most successful. By the first of 
 December, all the emigrants had arrived at Vancouver, but the 
 greatest portion of them had reached there as early as the 15th of 
 the preceding month." 
 
 H. H. Bancroft's '^Oregon," Vol. I. (p. 405), says: "Neither 
 Whitman nor McKinlay at Fort Walla Walla knew anything of 
 the country back from the Columbia River (This is McKinlay's own 
 statement, given in a letter to Elwood Evans, which Evans has 
 kindly sent me), or whether there could be found crossings for 
 the wagons at the John Day and Des Chutes Rivers, and both ad- 
 vised the immigrants to leave their wagons and cattle in the Walla 
 Walla Valley to be brought down in the spring, and to make them- 
 selves boats in which to descend the Columbia. One of the argu- 
 ments used in favor of this plan was that no grass would be likely 
 to be found on the route, as the natives were accustomed at this 
 season of the year to burn it off — a statement which sufficiently 
 proved the Doctor's ignorance of the country, and which was con- 
 strued to his disadvantage by those who traveled through it. (Says 
 Waldo, who did not take the advice offered: 'Whitman lied like 
 hell. He wanted my cattle, and told me the grass was burnt off 
 between his place and the Dalles. The first night out I found the 
 finest grass I ever saw, and it was good every night.' Critiques, 
 Ms., 16.)" 
 
 Idem (p. 406) : "At the mission they received one fat bullock 
 of Spanish stock for two poor emigrant oxen. Those who did not 
 distinguish the difference between Spanish and American cattle 
 consented willingly to pay this price for fat beef. Without any 
 expense to the missionaries they had in the spring two fat Ameri- 
 can work-oxen for their one bullock." 
 
 This road, about 1,845 miles long, thus developed without a 
 dollar of expenditure by either the national or any local govern- 
 ment, or by any private corporation in either surveying or con- 
 structing it, continued to be used for many years with only such 
 improvements in clearing out rocks, trees and stumps, and making
 
 140 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 detours to avoid the worst hills, as successive yearly migrations 
 made of their own volition. Over the Cascade Mountains a road was 
 made to the Willamette Valley in the Spring and Summer of 1846 
 by Mr. S. K. Barl-ow, one of the 1845 migration, under a grant for 
 a toll road made him by the provisional government of Oregon, at 
 a total cost of $2,500^ and after two years, when the amount it had 
 cost for original construction and needful repairs had been repaid 
 to Barlow in the tolls collected, he donated the road to the Terri- 
 tory of Oregon. (Cf. El wood Evans' "History of the Pacific North- 
 west," Vol. II., p. 203.) 
 
 With the building of this road over the Cascades neither Whit- 
 man nor any other missionary had anything whatever to do.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 GOVERNMENTAL ACTION RELATING TO OREGON. 
 
 (a) Diplomacy of the Oregon Question. 
 
 (b) Congressional Debates and Committee Reports on Oregon. 
 
 (c) Executive Action About Oregon. 
 
 An absolutely indispensable postulate for the Whitman Saved 
 Oregon Story is that the National Government at Washington was 
 ignorant as to the value of and indifferent concerning the acquisi- 
 tion of Oregon, and that in this they merely reflected the condition 
 of mind of the people of the country; and as the Whitman Legend 
 has been so widely circulated in the past twenty-five years that not 
 merely popular writers caring nothing for truth if fictions would 
 better sell their books, like CoflSn in ''Building of the Nation," Eva 
 Emery Dye in "McLoughlin and Old Oregon," but some really emi- 
 nent historians — without investigating original documents them- 
 selves — have imposed these fictions on their readers, it seems neces- 
 sary to present the facts on this phase of the Oregon question in 
 some detail. 
 
 Up to 1821 it is almost purely a question of diplomacy, from 
 1821 to 1831 diplomatic and congressional action were both much 
 in evidence, from 1831 to October, 1843, it was congressional and 
 executive action without diplomacy, and after October, 1843, di- 
 plomacy and congressional action were again both active; but di- 
 plomacy was the chief factor in the final settlement of the bound- 
 ary at 49 degrees. 
 
 The first diplomatic action in any way affecting the acquisition 
 of Oregon was the Louisiana purchase, in 1803 ; not that Louisiana 
 ever covered any part of the old Oregon Territory, or anything else 
 west of the summit of the Rocky Mountains, but that the acquisi- 
 tion of the Louisiana Territory carried our possessions to the east- 
 ern verge of Oregon, and so gave us as strong a claim by con- 
 tiguity to that part of Oregon south of 49 degrees as England had 
 by contiguity to that part north of 49 degrees. 
 
 It is utterly inconceivable that we should have ever cared to 
 possess Oregon if we had not first acquired the Louisiana Terri- 
 tory. 
 
 As we have seen, while negotiations for the purchase of Louisi- 
 ana were in progress and before it was certain that any part of 
 Louisiana could be bought, Jefferson sent his famous message of
 
 142 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Jauuary IS, 1803, to Congress, rocoiiunoiKlini; that an expedition 
 be fitted out and sent up the ^Missouri and across the ''Stony 
 Mountains," and down the Columbia to the Pacific, and this recom- 
 mendation was adopted, and $2,500 appropriated, and tlie expe- 
 dition actually under way before the news of the cession of Louis- 
 iana was received, though when that news arrived the expedition 
 was halted east of the Mississippi till the spring of 1804, that the 
 iurnial transfer of the territory might be made before the expedi- 
 tion entered it. 
 
 The story of this expedition, which forged so strong a link in 
 our chain of title to the Oregon Territory, has already been briefly 
 stated in Chapter I IT. 
 
 When the Astoria expedition was organizing the project was 
 submitted to the National Government, and according to Gallatin, 
 "met with its full approbation and best wishes for its success." 
 (Cf. letter of Albert Gallatin to John J. Astor, dated August 5, 
 1835, in apj)endix to Irving's ''Astoria.") Astor himself goes much 
 further in his letter to Benton, dated New York, January 29, 1829, 
 saying: ''I was promised by the Administration the protection of 
 the Government, and in fact more, but I regret to say, hitherto 
 nothing has been done." (Cf. Benton's Report on the Fur Trade, 
 being No. G7 of Sen. Ex. Doc, 20 Cong., 2d Sess.) 
 
 So far as yet appears, however, there are no contemporaneous 
 documents showing any action by our Government in connection 
 with this expedition. 
 
 Though (he total results of the war of 1812 (prior to the battle 
 of New Orleans, which was fought after the treaty of peace had 
 been signed,) were so unsatisfactory to us that our Government 
 was willing to end it with the Treaty of Ghent, which did not even 
 mention the impressment of our sailors, the right of search, the 
 inciting of Indians to attack our frontiers, nor the Orders in Council, 
 which the I'resident had announced as the causes of the war, yet so 
 far-sighted were the statesmen of that time and so determined to 
 secure for us at least the greater part of the valley of Columbia's 
 River, that on March 22, 1814, James Monroe, Secretary of State 
 under President Madison — not knowing whether or not Astoria 
 had been captured — gave the following insti'uctions to our pleni- 
 ])otentiaries to negotiate the treaty (who were John Quincy Adams, 
 J. A. Bayard, Henry Clay, Jonathan Russell and Albert Gallatin) : 
 "Should a treaty be concluded with Great Britain and a reciprocal 
 restitution of territory be agreed on, you will have it in mind that 
 the United States had in their possession nt the commencement of 
 the war a post at the mouth of the river Columbia, which com- 
 manded the river, which ought to be com])rised in the stipula- 
 tions should the possession have been wrested from us during the
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 143 
 
 war. On no pretext can the British Government set up a claim to 
 territor}^ south of the northern boundary of the United States. It 
 is not believed that they have any claim whatever to territory on 
 the Pacific Ocean. You will, however, be careful should a definition 
 of boundary be attempted, not to countenance in any manner, or in 
 any quarter, a pretension in the British Government to territory 
 south of that line."' (Berlin Arbitration, p. 5G.) (For the whole 
 subject of Treaty of Ghent, Cf. American State Papers, Foreign 
 Eelations, Vol. III., Docs. 209 and 271, and Idem, Vol. IV., Doc. 
 325.) 
 
 The capture of Astoria by the British was not known to our 
 plenipotentiaries at Ghent when the treaty was signed December 
 21, 1814 (Cf. Greenhow, 1845 Ed., p. 30G). 
 
 Forty-nine degrees was proposed as the boundary from the 
 Lake of the Woods to the summit of the Stony Mountains, but the 
 British would not grant it unless we would consent to relinquish 
 what we deemed ''our rights in the fisheries within the jurisdiction 
 of Great Britain," and so our plenipotentiaries refused to make any 
 concessions on that subject. The treaty said nothing about bound- 
 aries, but provided that "all territory, places and possessions what- 
 soever, taken by either party from the other during the war, or 
 which may be taken after the signing of this treaty, excepting the 
 islands hereinafter mentioned (in the Bay of Fundy) shall be re- 
 stored without delay." 
 
 February 7, 1838, Henry Clay, then Senator from Kentucky, 
 said in a debate on Oregon in the Senate, that he himself had in- 
 troduced the word possessions in this stipulation for mutual sur- 
 render, for the express purpose of securing the restoration of As- 
 toria. (Cf. Cong. Globe, 25th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 169.) Thus be- 
 gan that diplomatic struggle with Great Britain for 49 degrees as 
 our northern boundary to the Pacific, which continued thirty-two 
 years to the Treaty of Washington in 1846. 
 
 The unswerving tenacity with which through all those years 
 every administration insisted on that line, constitutes one of the 
 most remarkable chapters in, and one of the most brilliant 
 triumphs of our diplomacy, and although the advocates of the 
 Whitman Legend claim that Webster and Tyler were ready to re- 
 cede from it, and were only prevented by the opportune arrival of 
 Whitman, we shall see that there is the most positive contempo- 
 raneous evidence of the entire falsity of this claim, and that Web- 
 ster — to use his own precise language, in January and February, 
 1843, when Whitman (of whose existence even there is no evidence 
 that Webster and Tyler were then aware) was still far west of the 
 Missouri frontier — had "never meditated any line south of 49 de- 
 grees as a negotiable boundary line for the United States."
 
 144 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 July 18, 1815, Mr. Monroe, Secretary of State, informed Mr. 
 Baker, the charge d'affaires of Great Britain at Washington, that 
 "the President intended immediately to reoccupy the post at the 
 mouth of the Columbia. . . ." But no measures were adopted 
 for the purpose until September, 1817, when Capt. J. Biddle, com- 
 manding the sloop of war Ontario, and Mr. J. B. Prevost were 
 jointly comini.s.sioned to proceed in that ship to the mouth of the 
 Columbia and there "to assert the claim of the United States to 
 the sovereignty of the adjacent country, in a friendly and peace- 
 able manner, and without the employment of force." (Greenhow, 
 Ed. 1845, p. 307.) 
 
 The British Plenipotentiary at Washington, being informed of 
 the mission of Biddle and Prevost, protested versus the contem- 
 plated action, on the ground that Astoria had not been captured, 
 but bought by the North West Co., and further that "the ter- 
 ritory itself was early taken possession of in His Majesty's name 
 and had since been considered as forming part of His Majesty's do- 
 minions," though without specifying when or by whom this pos- 
 session had been taken, nor on what grounds it was claimed as 
 British territory. The matter was referred to London and dis- 
 cussed between the British Foreign Ofiflce and Richard Rush, our 
 Minister there, and on his clear and vigorous presentation of our 
 rights in the premises the British Government admitted that we 
 might rightfully claim its restoration, and instructions were issued 
 under which Mr. Prevost, then at Valparaiso, Chile, was offered 
 passage in the British frigate Blossom to the Columbia, and on 
 October 0. 1818, the British flag was hauled down and the United 
 States flag hoisted over Astoria, and the following act of delivery 
 was presented by the British Commissioners: "In obedience to the 
 commands of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, signified in a 
 dispatch from the Right Honorable the Earl Bathurst, addressed to 
 the partners or agents of the North West Co., bearing date the 27th 
 of January, 1818, and in obedience to a subsequent order dated the 
 2r»th of July, from W^ H. Sherifif, Esq., captain of His Majesty's 
 slii]) Andromache, we, the undersigned, do, in conformity to the 
 first article of the Treaty of Ghent, restore to the Government of 
 the United States, through its agent, J. B. Prevost, Esq., the set- 
 tlement of Fort George on the Columbia River. Given under our 
 hands, in triplicate, at Fort George, Columbia River, this 6th day 
 of October, 1818. 
 
 "(Signed) F. HICKEY, 
 
 "Captain of His Majesty's Ship Blossom. 
 
 "J. KEITH, 
 
 "Of the N. W. Co."
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 145 
 
 This restoration formed, as we have already seen and shall see 
 in further examination of the long struggle for the Oregon Terri- 
 tory, a strong link in our chain of title, and the British Govern- 
 ment, promptly realizing into what a diflicult position it had been 
 placed by Capt. Black's folly in "capturing" Astoria, instead of 
 sailing quietly away when he found it in the undisputed possession 
 of the great Canadian fur company, endeavored to minimize the 
 effect of this restoration by claiming that certain dispatches which 
 the British Foreign Ottice sent to its own agents, but which those 
 agents did not communicate to our Government, either through Mr. 
 Prevost or any other of its officers, and which were never published 
 till the negotiations of 1826, and in which they claimed that though 
 willing to surrender up the possession to the United States, "they 
 are not prepared to admit the validity of the title of the Govern- 
 ment of the United States to this settlement" rendered nugatory the 
 claim of the United States that this entirely unlimited restoration 
 "in conformity to the first article of the Treaty of Ghent" was a rec- 
 ognition of our right to the sovereignty of the country. As though 
 the private opinion of one litigant in a court expressed to his own 
 counsel, but not stated even to the opposing counsel, much less to 
 judge or jury, till eight years afterwards, could affect the title to 
 property delivered without protest or reserve to the other party in 
 pursuance of the judgment of the court ! Mr. Prevost made not only 
 an exact report of the restoration ceremonies, but also a brief but 
 very favorable report on the value of the country, saying: "It 
 appeared to me that by exhibiting the importance of the position 
 only, I should not have fulfilled the object of the President, but 
 that it was equally incumbent upon me to present a view of the 
 country, of its inhabitants, of its resources, of its approach, and 
 of its means of defense." 
 
 James Keith wrote Prevost October 6, 1818, asking the inten- 
 tions of the United States Government towards the North West 
 Co., to which Prevost replied under date of October 6, 1818 : 
 
 "In answer to your note of this morning I have the honor to 
 state that the principal object of the President in sending me thus 
 far was to obtain such information of the place, of its access and 
 of its commercial importance, as might enable him to submit to the 
 consideration of Congress measures for the protection and exten- 
 sion of the establishment." 
 
 (All who care to read the whole report, which is valuable, and 
 was often quoted in later congressional reports and in debates in 
 Congress, will find it, with accompanying papers, in Doc. No. 112, 
 Vol. 8, Ex. Papers, 17th Cong., 1st Sess.) 
 
 (The document covers thirty-eight pages and it begins with a 
 message of President James Monroe dated April 15, 1822, which
 
 146 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 was read in the House of Representatives April 17, 1822, so that 
 the message is soiiietinies referred to as the message of A])ril 15th 
 and sometimes as of April 17, 1822.) 
 
 May 22, 1818. Albert Gallatin and Richard Rush had been ap- 
 pointed as Envoys Extraordinary and Ministers Plenipotentiary 
 to negotiate a treaty with Great Britain on five subjects, about 
 which ])roposals had at intervals been passing between the two 
 governments nearly all the time since the Treaty of Ghent was 
 proclaimed and October 20, 181 8, only two weeks after the restora- 
 tion of Astoria, they signed the convention which is generally 
 called (he hrst Treaty of Joint Occupanc y of Orego n, though at 
 that time and for nearly a "dozen years lit'terwards the region in 
 question was not generally spoken of as Oregon, but as the "Co- 
 lumbia River Country," or ''the northwest coast of America,'' and 
 is so indexed in "Annals of Congress" and "Debates in Congress" 
 down to 1828-9. Article 1 of the treaty gave us the right to take, 
 cure and dry fish on certain parts of the coast of British America. 
 
 Article 2 fixed the boundary between the United States and 
 British America as the 49th parallel of north latitude from the 
 Lake of the Woods westward to the Stony Mountains (the name 
 Rocky Mountains not being commonly used till many years later). 
 
 Article 4 extended for 10 years "all the provisions of the Con- 
 vention of 181.5 to regulate commerce between the United States 
 and the British dominions." 
 
 Article 5 provided for submitting to arbitration the claims of 
 the United States for slaves captured by the British in the War 
 of 1812-14. 
 
 Each of these provisions doubtless seemed to everybody except 
 a few far-seeing statesmen of more consequence than Article 3, 
 which was as follows: 
 
 "Article 3. It is agreed that any country that may be claimed 
 by either party on the northwest coast of America westward of 
 the Stony Mountains shall, together with its harbours, bays and 
 creeks, and the navigation of all rivers within the same, be free 
 and o])en, for the term of 10 years from the date of the signature 
 of this convention to the vessels, citizens and subjects of the two 
 powers. 
 
 "It being well understood that this agreement is not to be 
 construed to the prejudice of any claim which either of the two 
 high contracting powers may have to any part of the said coun- 
 try; nor shall it be taken to affect the claims of any other power 
 or state to any part of said country, the only object of the high 
 contracting ])arties in that respect being to prevent disputes and 
 differences among themselves." (American State Papers, Foreign
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 147 
 
 Eelations, Vol. IV., pp. 406-407; or Doc. 30G, 15th Congress, 2d 
 
 Session.) 
 
 Why our plenij)otentiaries did not insist then on the extension 
 of the 49th parallel as our northern boundary to the Pacific is 
 clearly stated by Hon. George Bancroft in the ''Memorial of the 
 United States" which he presented to the Emperor William of 
 Germany as the arbitrator of the San Juan Island question, on 
 December 12, 1871, as follows : "On the 29th of October, 1818, the 
 parallel of 49 degrees was adopted as the boundary line between 
 the two countries as far as the Stony, or, as we now more com- 
 monly call them, the Rocky Mountains. 
 
 "From that range of mountains to the Pacific, America, partly 
 from respect to the claims of Spain, was willing to delay for ten 
 years the continuance of the boundary line." (Berlin Arbitration, 
 p. 6.) The negotiations relating to this treaty are often spoken 
 of as of 1817-18, but as we have seen, our plenipotentiaries were 
 not appointed till May 22, 1818, and the first protocol of the nego- 
 tiations was not presented till August 27, 1818. 
 
 No little confusion exists in the public mind as to the grounds 
 advanced by our plenipotentiaries, several of the advocates of the 
 Whitman Saved Oregon fiction (notably Burgess in Chapter XIV. 
 of "The Middle Period") claiming that the main contention was 
 that the Louisiana purchase extended to the Pacific. 
 
 None of the statesmen who negotiated about the subject ever 
 attached much importance to the claim that Louisiana extended to 
 the Pacific. 
 
 On the day this treaty was signed Messrs. Gallatin and Rush 
 wrote a letter from London to John Q. Adams, Secretary of State, 
 stating the history of the negotiations, and the part relating to 
 Article 3, is as follows: 
 
 "3. Columbia River. 
 
 "This subject was during the whole negotiation connected by 
 the British Plenipotentiaries with that of the boundary line. They 
 appeared altogether unwilling to agree to this in any shape, unless 
 some arrangement was made with respect to the country westward 
 of the Stony Mountains. 
 
 "This induced us to propose an extension of the boundary line 
 due west to the Pacific Ocean. AVe did not assert thsit the United 
 States had a perfect right to that country, but insisted that their 
 claim was at least good against Great Britain. The 49th degree 
 of north latitude had, in pursuance of the Treaty of Utrecht, been 
 fixed indefinitely as the line between the northern British Possess- 
 sions and those of France, including Louisiana, now a part of our 
 territories. There was no reason why, if the two countries ex-
 
 148 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 tended their claims westward, the same line should not be con- 
 tinued to tlie Pacific Ocean. 
 
 "So far as discovery gave a claim, ours to the whole country on 
 the waters oi' the (,'olumbia Kiver was indisi)utable. It had de- 
 rived its name from that of the American ship commanded by Capt. 
 Gray, who had first discovered and entered its mouth. 
 
 ''It was first explored from its sources to the ocean by Lewis 
 and riark, and before the British traders from Canada had 
 reached any of its waters; for it was now ascertained that the 
 river Tacoulche Tesse, discovered by McKeuzie, and which he had 
 mistaken for the Columbia, was not a branch of that river, but 
 fell into the sound called the Gulf of Georgia. The settlement at 
 the place called Astoria was also the first permanent settlement 
 made in that quarter." (Am. State Papers, Vol. Y., p. 381.) 
 
 It is ])lain that this was not a claim that Louisiana extended 
 to the Pacific, but only an aj)plication of the principle of con- 
 tiguity of territory, making it proper that if the two nations "ex- 
 tended their claims beyond the Stony Mountains," the parallel of 
 4 J) degrees (which it was then suj)posed had been fixed in pur- 
 suance of the Treaty of Utrecht as the boundary of Louisiana on 
 the north) should be extended with the extension of their claims. 
 
 As to whether any bound,ary was ever actually run as the 
 Treaty of T'trecht provided should be done (Cf. Greenhow, 2d Ed., 
 Boston, 1845, pp. 140, 281, 436-7-8-9; also George Bancroft's ''His- 
 tory of the United States," Vol. III., p. — ; also Caleb Cushing's 
 "Treaty of Washington," p. 208; also a lecture on the Oregon 
 Question by Caleb Cushing, delivered in Boston in November, 
 1845, p. 10 ; also Gallatin's Letters on the Oregon Question, 1846, 
 p. 20) there certainly seems in these authorities a great prepon- 
 derance of evidence that as Greenhow says, **If Commissioners ever 
 w^ere appointed, there is no evidence that the line was ever run by 
 theiu," though several treaties were made based on the supposition 
 that commissioners appointed in pursuance of that treaty had 
 fixed 40 degi-ees as the line. 
 
 All doubt ui)on the question is, however, now ended, and Green- 
 how's position that "If commissioners were appointed there is no 
 evidence that any line was ever run by them," is proved correct 
 by Chapter XVII. of "The Great Company, Being a History of the 
 Honorable Company of Adventurers Trading Into Hudson's Bay," 
 by Beckles Willson, Toronto, 1800,- ' 
 
 From this it ap])ears that for several years there was a persist- 
 ent exchange of letters between the two governments, and finally, 
 September 3, 1710, Daniel Pulteney and Martin Bladen, Lords of 
 Trade, were a])pointed commissioners by England to meet the 
 Mareschal Comte D'Estrees, and the Abbe Dubois, Minister and
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 149 
 
 Secretary of State, who had been appointed commissioners by the 
 French King. Pnlteney and Bladen went to Paris, and Sir Bibye 
 Lake, Governor of the Hudson's Bay Co., soon after followed them, 
 and was permitted to take a silent part in the conference. 
 
 At the end of six months only three conferences had been held, 
 and nothing having been accomplished, the English Commission- 
 ers, thoroughly discouraged, returned to London, and thus ended 
 the only attempt ever made to run the boundary line between the 
 French and English possessions according to Article X. of the 
 Treaty of TTtrecht. 
 
 In the negotiations of 1818 the British did not claim any ex- 
 clusive right of sovereignty over any part of the Northwest Coast 
 of America, but only that the whole region was open to settlement 
 by them or by any other civilized nation, and suggested the line of 
 the Columbia as a convenient boundary, to which our plenipoten- 
 tiaries responded with the offer of the line of 49 degrees to the 
 Pacific. 
 
 Of course the British Government knew perfectly well that the 
 line of 49 degrees had never been fixed as the northern boundary 
 of Louisiana '^according to the tenth article of the Treaty of 
 Utrecht," but as it was much to their interest to have our negotia- 
 tors believe that it had been so fixed, they very naturally said 
 nothing about the true state of the case, and, so far as I have been 
 able to ascertain, Beckles Willson's ''History of the Great Com- 
 pany" contains the first publication of the facts in the case. 
 
 Only forty-six days after this first Treaty of Joint Occupancy 
 was signed, John C. Calhoun, then Secretary of War, sent to the 
 House of Kepresentatives his famous report on "The Trade With 
 the Indians," recommending radical changes in the methods there- 
 tofore in use. (This report covers pp. 2455 to 2466 of Vol. II. of An- 
 nals of Congress, 15th Cong., 2d Sess.) 
 
 On pp. 2462-66 he takes up "The trade with the Indians who 
 occupy the vast region extending west to the Pacific Ocean," and 
 recommends "the formation of a company with sufiicient capital 
 to be divided into shares of |100 each, and to be limited to twenty 
 years," and after stating the advantages of such a project, says: 
 
 "The mere objection that it would create a monopoly ought not 
 to outweigh so many advantages. The trade with the Indians has 
 never been opened without restrictions to our citizens. Licenses 
 from the Government have at all times been required, and the Gov- 
 ernment has itself through its factories to a considerable extent 
 monopolized the trade, and by an extension of its capital only 
 might engross the whole of it. All of these provisions, however 
 necessary in the Indian trade, would be absurd in any other branch 
 of commerce.
 
 150 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 4 ''Besides the })rofit of the trade with the Indians has at all 
 times been conlinod to a few individuals, and it is highly probable 
 that a greater })ortion of the community would participate in it 
 by carrying it on in the manner proposed than in any other mode. 
 In fact, absurd as commercial monopoly would be where law and 
 authority exist to repress the mischievous effects which might 
 spring from unbounded rivalry, and to give to such rivalry salu- 
 tary consequences, just in the same degree would it be wise and 
 advantageous to carry on the trade under consideration by an in- 
 cori)orated company. A nation discovers its wisdom no less in de- 
 parting from general maxims where it is no longer wise to adhere 
 to them than in adhering to them in ordinary circumstances. In 
 fact it evinces a greater effort of reason. The first advance of a 
 nation is marked by the establishment of maxims which are deemed 
 universal, but which furtlier experience and retlection teach to be 
 only general, admitting of occasional modifications and excep- 
 tions." 
 
 He also declares that in this case a monopoly is a necessity if 
 we would compete successfully with the North West Co., which 
 then conlrolled absolutely the fur trade of the country west of the 
 Stony ^lountains, and says "the success of such a company prop- 
 erly conducted scarcely admits of a doubt. 
 
 "Our position in regard to this trade, the facility which the 
 navigation of our great and numerous rivers in that quarter would 
 afford, the protection from our military posts would speedily de- 
 stroy all foreign competition, and would in a few years push our 
 trade to the Pacific Ocean. The most profitable fur and peltry 
 trade in the world would be ours, accompanied with a decided in- 
 fluence over the numerous and warlike tribes inhabiting those ex- 
 tensive regions." 
 
 Whether such a company as Calhoun proposed would have 
 succeeded, as he prophesied, in a struggle versus the North West 
 Co., with its many years of experience, and its carefully trained 
 force — most if not all of whose leaders had risen from the ranks 
 through long apprenticeship which had made them adepts of the 
 first rank in every detail of the Indian trade, is by no means cer- 
 tain, but it is certain, as 20 years of subsequent experience fully 
 demonstrated, that successful competition with the North West 
 Co. or the Hudson's Bay Co. (after their consolidation in 1821) 
 was not possible in any other way, and the fact that Calhoun as 
 Secretary of War under ]Monroe proposed such a measure imme- 
 diately after joint occupation was agreed on, shows how far-sighted 
 and cleai* of vision were the members of the first American admin- 
 istration which had been brought face to face with the question 
 of how to secure our claim against the adverse claim of Great
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 151 
 
 Britain to what some years later came to be known as the Oregon 
 Territory, but was still generally described either as "The Columbia 
 Eiver" or "The Northwest Coast of America," for it must be remem- 
 bered that though our negotiators at Ghent were instructed to 
 consent to no claim of Great Britain to territory south of 49 de- 
 grees, nothing was said at Ghent about any claim of Great Britain 
 on the Pacific Coast, and the restoration of Astoria was provided 
 for by the insertion by Henry Clay of the word "possessions" in a 
 general provision for mutual restitution of territory, so that 1818 
 was the first time there was any formal official denial by the British 
 Government of our claim to the valley of the Columbia River. 
 
 Whatever might have been the outcome of a struggle between 
 the North West Co. and the Hudson's Bay Co., representing 
 British interests and such an American fur trading monopoly as 
 Calhoun proposed, had the measure been adopted, the spirit of 
 opposition to such monopolies was so determined that not even 
 Calhoun's strong argument, albeit it was plain that in it he was 
 merely the mouthpiece of Monroe's administration, was sufficient 
 to carry the measure through Congress, and so the plan was never 
 tested. 
 
 Negotiations had been going on with Spain since 1816 regard- 
 ing certain claims for indemnity which our citizens had against 
 Spain, and similar claims which Spain advanced on behalf of her 
 citizens against the TTnited States, and certain complaints which 
 Spain made against us for violations of neutrality laws in the 
 wars which Spain was waging upon her revolted American colonies, 
 and concerning the southern and western boundaries of Louisiana, 
 and concerning East and West Florida, which we desired to 
 purchase. 
 
 The interests involved were vast in extent, and so complicated 
 with various considerations involving the pride and honor of the 
 two nations that the formulating of a satisfactory treaty was only 
 reached after negotiations whose record covers 506 pages of the 
 Annals of Congress and Appendix (15th Congress, 2d Session, 1818- 
 1819, Vol. II., pp. 1630-2136), or 203 of the large folio pages of 
 American State Papers, Foreign Relations, Vol, IV., pp. 422-625, 
 
 February 1, 1819, Don Luis de Onis, the Spanish Minister, wrote 
 Secretary of State J. Q. Adams as follows: 
 
 "Upon this view, therefore, of the subject, and considering that 
 the motive for declining to admit my proposal of extending the 
 boundary line from the Missouri to the Columbia and along that 
 river to the Pacific appears to be the wish of the President, to in- 
 clude within the limits of the Union all the branches and rivers 
 emptying into the said river Columbia. I will adapt my proposals
 
 152 ACQUISITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 on this point so as fnlly to satisfy the essential object, namely, that 
 the boundary line shall as far as possible be natural and clearly 
 defined, and leave no room for dispute to the inhabitants on either 
 side." 
 
 The Secretary of State thereupon made a proposition to fix the 
 boundary from the source of the Arkansas Kiver along the 41st 
 parallel of north latitude to the Pacific, to which De Onis res])onded 
 proposing- the 43d parallel, and finally the treaty established the 
 parallel of 42 degrees north latitude as the boundary from the 
 Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. 
 
 The treaty ceded us East and West Florida, and we agreed to 
 pay therefor certain claims made for indemnity by our citizens 
 against Spain to an amount not exceeding (|5,000,fl0()) five mil- 
 lion dollars, and to release Spain for any responsibility therefor, 
 and in Article 3 Spain defined the south and west boundary of 
 Louisiana as follows : '*The boundary line between the two coun- 
 tries west of the Mississippi shall begin on the Gulf of Mexico at 
 the mouth of the river Sabine in the sea, continuing north along 
 the western bank of the river to the 32d degree of latitude; thence 
 by a line due north to the degree of latitude where it strikes the 
 Rio Roxo of Natchitoches, or Red River; then following the course 
 of the Rio Roxo westward to the degree of longitude 100 west from 
 London and 23 from Washington ; then crossing the said Red River, 
 and running thence by a line due north to the river Arkansas ; then 
 following the southern bank of the Arkansas to its source in lati- 
 tude 42 north ; and thence by that parallel of latitude to the South 
 Sea. The whole being as laid down in Melish's map of the United 
 States published at Philadelphia, improved to the 1st of January, 
 1818. But if the source of the Arkansas River shall be found to 
 fall north or south of latitude 42, then the line shall run from the 
 said source due south or north, as the case may be, till it meets the 
 said ]>arallel of 42, and then along the said parallel to the South 
 Sea; all the islands in the Sabine and the said Red and Arkansas 
 Rivers throughout the course thus described to belong to the United 
 States; but the use of the waters and the navigation of the Sabine 
 to the sea, and of the said Rio Roxo and Arkansas throughout the 
 extent of the said boundary on their respective banks shall be com- 
 mon to the respective inhabitants of both nations. The two high 
 contracting parties agree to cede and renounce all their rights, 
 claims and pretensions to the territories described by the said line; 
 that is to say, the United States hereby cede to His Catholic 
 Majesty, and renounce forever all their rights, claims and pre- 
 tensions to I ho territories lying south and west of the above de- 
 scribed line, and in like manner His Catholic Majesty cedes to 
 the said United States all his rights, claims and pretensions to any
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 153 
 
 territory east and north of the said line, and for himself, his heirs 
 and successors renounces all claim to the said territories forever.-' 
 
 The treaty provided for a commission to run this boundary line 
 and mark it where needful, but Mexico so soon won her independ- 
 ence that this provision was never carried into effect. This treaty 
 was ratified by the Senate Feb. 24, 1819, and proclaimed by the 
 President Feb. 25, 1819, but for some reason Spain did not ratify 
 lill Oct. 21, 1820, and the account of that ratification by Spain, and 
 the concurrence therein of our government, with all the correspond- 
 ence between the two governments about the subject between Feb. 
 24, 1819, and Oct. 24, 1820, was communicated to the Senate Feb. 
 14, 1821, and printed as Doc. 321, 16th Congress, 2d Session, and 
 it covers 53 of the large folio pages of American State Papers, 
 Foreign Relations (Vol. V., pp. G50-703.) 
 
 The full text of this "Treaty of Amity, Indemnification and 
 Limits" in Spanish and English is also to be found as Doc. 347, 
 16th Congress, 2d Session, in American State Papers, Foreign Re- 
 lations (Vol. v., p. 127, et seq.) 
 
 This treaty ceding to us all of Spain's claims to the valley of 
 Columbia's river removed the only cloud on our right to it, and 
 gave us at last a complete title to it on paper. 
 
 Had we made and concluded this treaty with Spain, say in 
 1817, there is no reason to suppose that Monroe's Administration 
 would have consented to any form of Joint Policy about Oregon, 
 but at the very time that the negotiations were progressing in Lon- 
 don which resulted in the first Joint Policy treaty, these negotia- 
 tions with Spain were in a very critical condition, which explains 
 why our diplomats — not desiring to offend Spain and so fail to 
 obtain the Floridas and a settlement of the south and west bound- 
 ary of the Louisiana Territory did not claim, at London, that we 
 had "an absolute title" to the Columbia River country, but only 
 that "our title was absolute as against Great Britain." 
 
 Within a year after Spain ratified this treaty her dominion 
 was finally overthrown over all the territory contiguous to the 
 boundary therein fixed. 
 
 Had the line of 41 degrees which our government proposed west 
 of the Rocky Mountains been adopted, it would have included in 
 our country all the land drained by the southern branches of the 
 Columbia, but the line of 42 degrees left the extreme head waters 
 of a few of the small southerly branches of the Snake River, in 
 what is now Northwestern Utah and Northern Nevada in Spanish 
 Territory. 
 
 There has been much discussion as to whether or not the Louisi- 
 ana Purchase included the Oregon Territory, and several who have 
 taken the aflirmative have depended entirely or mainly on this
 
 154 ACQUISITION OF OREGON | 
 
 treaty to sustain their opinion, but it seems a very weak support 
 for their conclusion. 
 
 Had this trealy been negotiated merely to define the limits of 
 Louisiana it would furnish strong if not conclusive evidence in 
 favor of the contention that Oregon was included in Louisiana. But 
 it was a treaty covering the cession of Florida, the question of claims 
 of Spain versus the United States, of the United' States versus 
 Spain for a long term of years, and about various tfct^ which each 
 claimed as wrongful on the part of the other, and of tne amount of 
 compensation due for such wrongs, and of payment for the cession 
 of Florida, and for the defining of the limits of all of the territories 
 of the two nations which were then contiguous, and it nowhere de- 
 clares that the limit fixed is only the limit of the Louisiana Pur- 
 chase, and I think whoever will read carefully the^whole of the 
 negotiations preceding the treaty in so far as they reTaiffe to the 
 questions of territory ceded, and limits defined, and compensation 
 to be paid, and will examine with care the instructions |^iven to 
 our negotiators in '23--24 and '2()-'2T, will be satisfied that in the 
 opinion of Monroe and J. Q. Adams, who certainly *i3ught to know 
 the truth about the matter better than any one eIse,|Jno })art of 
 Oregon was included in the Louisiana Purchase. 
 
 Consult especially on this point the letter of J. Q. Adams, as 
 Secretary of State under Monroe, to Gallatin and Rush, our Envoys 
 to Great Britain, dated July 22, 1823, in Doc. 417, VoL V., American 
 State Papers, Foreign Kelations, pp. 700-793. The letter covers two 
 folio printed pages, and is devoted to the subject of our title to 
 Oregon, which it declares to depend on Gray's discovery and en- 
 trance of the mouth of Columbia River, the exploration of the river 
 from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific by Lewis and Clark, 
 and farther exploration and the occupancy of its valley by the 
 Astor party, the restoration of Astoria by England in accordance 
 with the Treaty of Ghent, and the acquisition of the claims of Spain 
 by this ''Treaty of Amity, Limits and Indemnification" (more com- 
 monlv known as the Florida Treatv), but does not so much as men- 
 tion the Louisiana Purchase. 
 
 After most exasj)erating delays Spain finally delivered Florida 
 to us on July 17, 1821, and the correspondence relating to it makes 
 f»7 more folio pages in American State Papers, Foreign Relations, 
 VoL v.. Doc. 324. 
 
 Before the delivery of Florida was made. Dr. Floyd of Virginia 
 began Congressional action on the Oregon question (though the 
 region was not yet called Oregon, but the Columbia River country) 
 by moving on Dec. 19, 1820, for the appointment of a committee 
 of three to "inquire into the settlements on the Pacific Ocean, and 
 the expediency of occupying the Columbia River," and on Jan. 25,
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 155 
 
 1821, the committee made a report of 15 pages, accompanied with 
 a bill to authorize ''the occupation of the Columbia River and to 
 regulate trade and intercourse with the Indian tribes thereon." The 
 report is No. 45, Reports of Committees, House of Representatives, 
 16th Congress, 2d Session, 1820-21, and was a very able document, 
 replete with valuable statistics and urging that our government 
 should take possession of the region, and "the fur trade, the Asiatic 
 trade and the i)reservation of our own territory were the advan- 
 tages proposed." (For a full account see Annals of Congress, IGth^ 
 Congress, 2d Session, and Reports of Committees, as above; also 
 Chapter V. of "Benton's Thirty Years' View." (Benton says: "Mr. 
 Ramsay Crooks of New York" (who discovered the South Pass in 
 1812) "and Mr. Russell Farnham of Massachusetts, who had been 
 in the employment of Mr. John Jacob Astor in founding Astoria 
 . . . had their quarters at the same hotel where Dr. Floyd and 
 I had ours . . . and their conversation full of information 
 upon a new and interesting country was eagerly devoured by the 
 ardent spirit of Floyd." Floyd's Report (p. 11) says: "The prac- 
 ticability of a speedy, safe and easy communication with the Pacific 
 is no longer a matter of doubt or conjecture; from information not 
 to be doubted, the Rocky Mountains at this time in several places 
 is so smooth and open that the labor of 10 men for 20 days would 
 enable a wagon with its usual freight to pass with great facility 
 from the navigable waters of the Missouri to that of the Columbia." 
 
 The bill was referred to the committee of the whole House. 
 
 July 2, 1821, less than six months after Floyd's First Report, and 
 only 15 days before Spain finally executed the treaty of Feb. 22, 
 1819, fixing 42 degrees as the north boundary of California and 
 the south boundary of the "Columbia River country," an Act of 
 Parliament was passed which resulted in the consolidation of the 
 North West Co., the great Canadian fur company, with its older 
 and wealthier and less enterprising rival, the Hudson's Bay Co. 
 
 Of the long contentions, with no little bloodshed — the plots and 
 counter plots, the ruinous expenditure of the resources of both com- 
 panies, and the resulting demoralization of the Indians, which re- 
 sulted in the consolidation of these companies, I shall treat some- 
 what in detail in the chapter on "The Truth About the Relation of 
 the Hudson's Bay Co. to the American Exploration, Occupation and 
 Settlement of Oregon," and it only needs to be said here that though 
 the union was one of equality as to capital and as to treatment 
 of the owners of each company, the North West Co.'s name van- 
 ished, and thenceforth the Hudson's Bay Co., which had never before 
 had any posts west of the Stony Mountains, occupied all the North 
 West Co.'s posts, not only in Oregon, but everywhere else west of 
 the Continental Divide, and, as against British subjects, had an
 
 156 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 absolute monopoly of the trade with Tndians, over a region larger 
 than the Tnited States then possessed. In Oregon its legal mon- 
 opoly was only as to British subjects, Amei'ieans by the treaty of 
 181S having tliere exactly the same rights as British subjects, but 
 outside of Oregon their monopoly was absolute over all of what 
 is now British America that is situated north and west of the 
 provinces of Quebec and Ontario. 
 
 December 10. 1821, at the beginning of the first session of the 
 17th Congi-ess, Floyd, liaylies and Scott were appointed a commit- 
 tee of the House of Rejtresentatives to "inquire into the expediency 
 of occupying the Columbia River and the territory of the Ignited 
 States adjacent thereto, and of regulating the trade with the Indian 
 tribes, and that they have leave to report by bill or otherwise," They 
 reported a bill (p. 744, Annals of Congress, 17th Congress, 1st Ses- 
 sion) which was referred to the committee of the whole, and at 
 the 2d Session it was debated with great ability and vigor, the re- 
 port of the debates covering 60 columns in the House and 5V2 
 columns in the Senate. (Cf. Annals of Congress, 17th Congress, 
 2d Session, 1822-23.) 
 
 Pages .300-400 contain a speech of Floyd of Virginia, in which, 
 after entering fully into the great advantages we should derive by 
 the control of the fur trade, the benefit to the whaling industry 
 then and long after carried on extensively in the Pacific, and the 
 great profits of the China trade, all of which he was sure would be 
 promoted by the passage of the bill, he proceeds to answer the 
 bugbear of the inaccessibility of the Oregon country as follows: 
 'The route to the mouth of the Columbia is easy, safe and expedi- 
 tious. We all recollect distinctly the delays, dangers and difficulties 
 which attended the merchant on his first opening the trade to Ken- 
 tucky ; in those days much preparation was necessary, and from 
 30 to 35 days were exhausted in getting to market; his goods were 
 then transported to Fort Pitt (now Pittsburg) or to Wheeling by 
 wagon, creeping on with appalling slowness; if there was a freshet 
 in the Ohio he ari-ived in season, but sorrow and ruin attended him 
 if his goods did not arrive in time for this advantage, his spring 
 supplies arrived in the fall, and his fall goods detained sometimes 
 until the spring. Even now, an intelligent friend from Tennessee, 
 who usually sits on the other side of the House, tells me that the 
 merchants of Nashville take their wagoners' receipts to deliver their 
 goods at that place in from 30 to 50 days. From Louisville in 
 Kentucky down to New Orleans formerly required a voyage of from 
 30 to 40 days, and using on the voyage up the river what they 
 called a barge, it required them 00 days to make the tri]) in what 
 they called good time. Now. however, by steamboat navigation, 
 they make the voyage down in seven days and uj* in 1(5 days. This
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 157 
 
 I believe is the average voyage between the places. Now, Mr. Chair- 
 man, we cannot be mistaken when we apply the same calculations 
 to the route to the mouth of the Oregon, as steamboat navigation 
 we all know to be safe and sure. Wherefore it will take a steam- 
 boat 24 days to arrive at the Falls of the Missouri, thence I allow 
 a wagon 14 days to travel 200 miles to the mouth of Clark's River, 
 thence 7 days to the mouth of the Oregon, making the time nec- 
 essary for the trip 44 days. To return the boat would reach 
 Clark's Fork in 14 days, double the time she would go down; the 
 wagon would return to the Falls of the Missouri in 13 days, thence 
 the boat would arrive at St. Louis in half the time necessary for 
 her upward voyage, which would be 12 days, making the whole time 
 39 days. If there were any doubt existing in the mind of any gen- 
 tleman, surely it might be done away when we recur to the fact of a 
 wagon having already passed from St. Louis to Santa Fe and re- 
 turned in the course of the last summer, bringing with it the sum of 
 110,000 as the profit of the trip." . . . ''As to distance, I have 
 already shown that in point of time the mouth of the Oregon or 
 Columbia is not farther distant than Louisville was 30 years ago 
 from New York, or St. Louis was 20 years ago from Philadelphia," 
 
 Baylies of Massachusetts, on Dec. 18, 1822, made a strong argu- 
 ment for the bill, and showed that within the recollection of mem- 
 bers who heard him the whole course of westward migration 
 — first to Berkshire County, in Massachusetts, next to the Genessee 
 Valley in New York, then to the eastern side, and later to the west- 
 ern side of the Mississippi Valley — had met with the same opposi- 
 tion and prophecies of disaster. On January 25, 1823, the bill was 
 laid on the table by 76 to 61, that is, a change of eight votes would 
 have passed the bill through the House. 
 
 Undoubtedly there was no intention of passing the bill, as it 
 would have been a plain violation of the treaty of 1818 (w^hich 
 did not expire till October 20, 1828), and the real object aimed at 
 was to keep the subject before the public, and inform the nation 
 as to the merits of the case in anticipation of the time when either 
 the expiration of the convention of 1818, or the negotiation of a 
 new treaty in advance of that date should give us the right to oc- 
 cupy the Columbia River country. 
 
 Why Floyd chose the Missouri River route and overland to 
 Clark's Fork of the Columbia is evident, when we remember that 
 our fur traders all at this time went up the Missouri, Ashley not 
 leading his first party up the Platte and over the "Stony Moun- 
 tains," through South Pass into the southeast corner of the Ore- 
 gon Territory, till the summer of 1824 — eighteen months after this 
 speech was made. 
 
 Turning to Annals of Congress, 18th Cong., 1 Sess., 1823-24,
 
 158 ACQUISITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 Vol. I., p. 890, we find that December 29, 1823, on motion of Mr. 
 Floyd, another select committee on the occnpation of the Colum- 
 bia Kiver was api)ointed, consisting of Floyd, Gurley, Scott, Hay- 
 den, Bassett, Frost and Baylies. They reported a bill January 19, 
 1824, which was read twice, and referred to the committee of the 
 whole. This bill passed the House by 113 to 57, but as it was in plain 
 violation of the convention of October 20, 1818, it was finally laid 
 on the table in the Senate by 25 to 14, having served its obvious 
 purpo.se of keeping alive the interest of the people in the Columbia 
 Kiver country, and spreading before them a great deal of informa- 
 tion in the debate on the bill, (the report of which fills 261/^ col- 
 umns in ''Debates in Congress,'* not "Benton's Abridgments of 
 Debates," which should never be depended on by any student of 
 American history',) and in the report of the committee made April 
 15, 1824, commonly known as Floyd's second report. This report 
 (which was made merely to place before the public General Jesup's 
 letter) is to be found on p. 2345 of Vol. II. of ''Debates in Con- 
 gress" for this session, and is very brief, saying in substance that 
 so much had i)reviously been submitted for the information of the 
 country that although the subject was of great importance they 
 now only deemed it necessary to present a view of the difficulties 
 which would probably present themselves in an attempt by us to 
 occupy the country, and the manner in which they can be over- 
 come. To obtain information on these points they had written to 
 Brigadier General T. S. Jesup, Quartermaster (Jeneral of the army, 
 and his reply they printed, and declared that the}' had adopted it 
 as part of their report. 
 
 Jesup wrote: "I should consider a line of posts extending from 
 Council Bluffs entirely across the continent necessary. 
 
 ''A post should be established at the Mandan village, because 
 there the Missouri a])proaches within a short distance of the Brit- 
 ish territory, and it would have the effect of holding in check the 
 Hudson's Bay and North West Cos., and controlling the Kicka- 
 rees, Mandans, etc. ... A post at or near the head of naviga- 
 tion on the Missouri would control the Blackfeet Indians, j)rotect 
 our traders, enable us to remove those of the British companies 
 from our territories, etc. ... On the latter river" (/. e., the 
 Columbia) "and its tributaries there should be at least three posts. 
 
 "They would afford protection to our traders, and on the expira- 
 tion of the privileges granted to British subjects to trade on the 
 waters of the Columbia, would enable us to remove them from our 
 territory, and to secure the whole to our own citizens." 
 j^ These declarations about using the troops on the Missouri to 
 "immediately remove the British traders from our territories," and 
 to use them to remove the British traders in the Collimbia River
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 159 
 
 country '"on the expiration of the privileges granted them" (i e., 
 after October 20, 1828), were the things to which the British pleni- 
 potentiaries objected, as stated by Rush (on p. 556, Vol. V., Am. 
 State Papers on For. Rel.). They also objected to the Monroe 
 Doctrine as applied to the non-colonization of the northwest coast 
 by them. Jesup says further that "the expenses of the posts might 
 be greatly diminished by cultivating as at Council Bluffs, and build- 
 ing mills and keeping cattle for labor and for subsistence," and 
 urges that operations should commence at once, saying: "The 
 British companies are wealthy and powerful ; their establishments 
 extend from Hudson's Bay and Lake Superior to the Pacific, many 
 of them within our territory. It is not to be supposed they would 
 surrender those advantages without a struggle, and though they 
 should not engage in hostilities themselves, they might render all 
 the Indians in that extensive region hostile. . . . That the 
 route from the Council Bluffs is practicable has been proved by 
 the enterprise of more than one of our citizens. It, no doubt, pre- 
 sents difficulties, but difficulties are not impossibilities. We have 
 only to refer to the pages of our history to learn that many opera- 
 tions, infinitely more arduous, have been accomplished by Ameri- 
 cans. The march of Arnold to Quebec, or of Gen. Clark to Vin- 
 cennes, during the Revolutionary war, exceeded greatly in fatigue, 
 privation, difficulty and danger the proposed operation, and I be- 
 lieve I may say without fear of contradiction that the detachment 
 might be supplied, during the whole route, with less difficulty than 
 in the war of 1756 was experienced in supplying the forces operat- 
 ing under Gen. Washington and Gen. Braddock, versus the French 
 and English on the Ohio." 
 
 In that brief sentence, "difficulties are not impossibilities," is 
 the key to the whole question of a wagon road to Oregon, and in 
 this letter, written in April, 1824, is everything of any importance 
 about establishing a line of posts to Oregon, and having them raise 
 provisions and stock, which the advocates of the Whitman Saved 
 Oregon Story have for years urged as proof of Whitman's great 
 ability and foresight, because 191/2 years later, in a letter to the 
 Secretary of War, he enclosed a draft of a bill, which Nixon and 
 Mowry say was for the "Organization of Oregon," though, in fact, 
 from beginning to end it said nothing about "the organization of 
 Oregon," and was by him properly entitled "A bill to promote safe 
 intercourse with the Territory of Oregon, to suppress violent acts 
 of aggression on the part of certain Indian tribes west of the In- 
 dian Territory, Neocho, better protect the revenue, for the trans- 
 portation of the mail, and for other purposes" (Cf. for this letter 
 and draft of the bill, Tr. Oregon Pioneer Association, 1891, pp. 69- 
 78, where it first appeared in print without the false claim of Nixon
 
 160 ACQUISITIONS OF OREGON 
 
 and Mowry that it suggested a plan for the "Organization of Ore- 
 gon.") Jesup in 1824, clearly recognizes (what all our statesmen 
 perfectly well nnderslood l the unwillingness of the British to sur- 
 render Oregon, the hold the Hudson's Hay Co. had ui)on its fur 
 trade — then its only valuable resource — the need of a line of posts, 
 and the possibility of cultivating, and grazing about them, to sub- 
 sist their garrisons, and his letter did not contain the various im- 
 practicable crochets of AN'hitnian's scheme, which were so i»atent to 
 the (Jovornment that his letter and draft of a bill were promptly 
 pigeon-holed in the ai-chives of the War Department, and, so far 
 as can be ascertained, never even read by any one for more than 
 forty years thereafter, till some advocates of the Whitman Legend 
 looking in vain for any proof in the archives of the Government 
 that any act of Whitman's had in any way affected governmental 
 action about Oregon unearthed this letter, somewhere about 1885; 
 while it is certain that not a single one of his recommendations 
 was ever even submitted in a bill for discussion in Congress, much 
 less enacted into law. There is much of interest in the extended 
 debate on this bill in the second session of the 18th Congress, but 
 space will only permit the following extracts: 
 
 December 80, 1824, Floyd, after describing some easier passes 
 than those over which Lewis and Clark went, which had been found 
 by later adventurers, continues: "Through these you pass with 
 ease and safety, so much so that I have the most perfect confidence 
 that even now a wagon with the usual freight could be taken from 
 this capital to the mouth of the Columbia. Besides these passes 
 there is still another, which, though longer to the upi)er part of 
 that river, is yet better, where even the. feeble difficulties there en- 
 countered are here almost annihilated. This route, pursued by 
 many now engaged in that trade, holds its course from Missouri 
 up the Kansas River, continuing some distance up the Republican 
 fork of that river, then falling on to the river IMatte; thence en- 
 tirely uj» that river to its source, where the Oregon or Rocky Moun- 
 tains sink into a bed of sand, without water or timber, for the 
 space of sixty miles smooth and level." 
 
 This fairly accurate description of the route up the Platte Val- 
 ley and across the Stony Mountains, and over the South Pass into 
 the Oregon Territory, given in Congress in December, 1824, only 
 a few weeks after news had reached St. Louis of Ashley's success 
 in leading the first party of fur traders from the States by that 
 route to the Great Salt Lake and back to Missouri, shows how 
 speedily the National Government was informed of the discoveries 
 of the fur traders in exploring the Rocky Mountain regions, while 
 the fact that it was not till the summer and autumn of 1824 that 
 Ashley thus rediscovered the South I'ass (the discovery of Avhich
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 161 
 
 by Eamsay, Crooks and Company in 1812 had not then been pub- 
 lished) shows why Jesup, in his letter written in April, 1824, pro- 
 posed a line of posts and the sending of troops up the Missouri, 
 and thence across the Stony Mountains and down Clark's Fork of 
 the Columbia. 
 
 Benton's great speech, March 1, 1825, on this bill in the Senate, 
 at the very end of this second session of the 18th Congress, I pre- 
 fer to discuss in connection with his opposition to the treaty of 
 August 6, 1827, renewing the third section of the treaty of 1818. 
 
 Before taking up the action of the 19th and 20th Congresses on 
 this question, it seems best to return to the field of diplomacy and 
 consider the negotiations of 1823-24 with both Russia and Great 
 Britain. 
 
 It was at first hoped by our Government that there might be 
 joint negotiations between the United States and Great Britain 
 with Russia, but it soon became evident that Great Britain was 
 unwilling to unite with us, and so that effort was abandoned and 
 each nation negotiated separately with Russia. 
 
 The result of our negotiations with Russia was the treaty of 
 April 5, 1824, Article 3 of which is as follows: '*It is moreover 
 agreed that hereafter there shall not be formed by the citizens of 
 the United States or under the authority of said States, any estab- 
 lishment upon the northwest coast of America, nor on any of the 
 islands adjacent, to the north of 54 degrees and 40 minutes of 
 north latitude; and that in the same manner there shall be none 
 formed by Russian subjects or under the authority of Russia south 
 of the same parallel." (Cf. Vol. V., Am. State Papers, For. Rel., 
 Doc. No, 384.) This fixed finally the utmost northern limit of 
 what soon after came to be called the Oregon Territory at 54 de- 
 grees and 40 minutes. 
 
 No agreement could be arrived at with Great Britain as to a 
 boundary for our territory on the northwest coast, but the record 
 of the negotiations shows that very substantial progress was made 
 in that direction by the ofifer of Great Britain to surrender all 
 claim to more than four-fifths of the territory south of 49 degrees, 
 by offering us the line of 49 degrees from the ^'^Stony Mountains to 
 the most northeasterly branch of the Columbia, known as McGilli- 
 vray's River" — and thence that stream and the Columbia — to the 
 Pacific, thus limiting the real contest from this time on to that 
 part of what is now the State of Washington, which is north and 
 west of the Columbia River. 
 
 Another very interesting and important feature of these nego- 
 tiations is that at the very beginning of them, in two letters of 
 Secretary of State John Q. Adams, dated July 22, 1823, one ad- 
 dressed to Henry Middleton, our Minister to Russia, and the other
 
 162 ACQUISITIONS' OF OREGON 
 
 to Rk-hard Kush, our .Minister to London, was the first statement 
 of so much of the .Monroe Doelrine as deehired the American conti- 
 nents no longer open to colonization by European governments. 
 
 As no advocate of the Whitman myth has ever staled those 
 points with any such clearness and detail as to inform his readers 
 of the great importance of these negotiations, and their signifi- 
 cance as showing the intlexible determination of our (lovoi-nment 
 in 1824 — twelve years before the Whitman Mission was established, 
 and not only at a time when not a single American citizen was re- 
 siding at any point in the Oregon Territory, but eight years before 
 the first overland migration under Wyth went there — to insist on 
 no line south of 49 degrees as the northern boundary of our terri- 
 tory on the Pacific, it seems necessary to (luote from the official 
 record of this negotiation at some length. 
 
 Am. State Papers, For. Kel., Vol. V., Doc. 384, contains "Corre- 
 spondence and Convention with Russia Relative to Navigation and 
 Trade on the Northwest Coast of America, Communicated to the 
 Senate December 15, 1824," covering pp. 432 to 471. Pages 436-7 
 contain ''Letter of instructions to Ilenrj' Middleton, our Minister 
 to Russia, from John Q. Adams, Secretary of State, dated Wash- 
 ington, July 22, 1823, from which the following are extracts: (P. 
 436) ''So far as prior discovery can constitute a foundation of right, 
 the papers which I have referred to prove that it belongs to the 
 United States so far as 49 degrees north latitude, by the transfer 
 to them of the rights of Spain. There is, however, no part of the 
 globe where the mere fact of discovery could be held to give weaker 
 claims than on the northwest coast." . . . (p. 437) "The right 
 of the United States from the 42d to the 49th parallel of latitude 
 on the Pacific Ocean we consider as unquestionable, being founded, 
 first on the acquisition by the treaty of February 22, 1819, of all 
 the rights of Spain ; second, by the discovery of the Columbia River, 
 first from the sea, at its mouth, and then by land by Lewis and 
 Clark ; and third, by the settlement at its mouth in 1811. 
 
 "This territory is to the United States of an importance which 
 no possession in North America can be of to any European nation, 
 not only as it is but the continuity of their possessions from the 
 Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, but as it offers their inhabitants the 
 means of establishing hereafter water communications from the 
 one to the other." 
 
 (P. 445) Among the papers communicated with the foregoing 
 letter of instructions is "(No. 3 k.) Observations on the claim of 
 Russia to territorial ])Ossessions on the continent of North Amer- 
 ica." (pp. 443 to 446 inc.) 
 
 On ]). 445 Mr. Adams wrote: "The only object of present in- 
 terest for which all these settlements on the northwest coast have
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 163 
 
 been made, whether by Russians, English or Americans, has been 
 to traffic with the natives for furs and for the China market. 
 
 "This trade has, in point of fact, not only been enjoyed by the 
 citizens of the United States, but has been prosecuted by them to 
 a greater extent than by all the others together. 
 
 "It has been combined with a trade in sandal wood from the 
 Sandwich Islands to China; and during the long wars in which 
 Europe was involved, from 1790 to 1815, it was left alnyost entirely 
 to them. 
 
 "In 1818 a Russian settlement was made at AtooL one of the 
 Sandwich Islands, and another near the coast of California, within 
 a few leagues of San Francisco, the most northern Spanish settle- 
 ment. * 
 
 "It the motive of these establishments was to lay the foundation 
 for an exclusive territorial claim of Russia to the northwest coast, 
 down to the very borders of California, and founded thereon to 
 assert exclusive rights of trading with the natives of the north- 
 west coast, and to navigation and fishery in the Pacifip Ocean, it 
 is time for the nations whose rights and interests are, affected by 
 this project effectually to interpose. 
 
 "There can perhaps be no better time for saying«'^frankly and 
 explicitly to the Russian Government that the futurcyfeeace of the 
 world, and the interest of Russia herself, cannot be promoted by 
 Russian settlements upon any part of the American continent. 
 
 "With the exception of the British establishments *4iorth of the 
 United States the remainder of both the American continents must 
 henceforth be left in the management of American ha^ds. It can- 
 not possibly be the purpose of Russia to form extensive colonial 
 establishments in America. f^*-' 
 
 "The new American republics will be as impatient m a Russian 
 neighbor as the United States." 
 
 Of this Doc. 384, Papers V., and Nos. 11 and 12, ppl$69-471, are 
 about negotiations with Great Britain resulting from*the negotia- 
 tions with Russia. No. 11 is a letter of Richard Rush .to J. Q. 
 Adams, Secretary of State, dated London, December'^9, 1823, in 
 which he reports a conversation with Mr. Canning,']^ which he 
 had told Mr. Canning that "the United States were wining to stipu- 
 late to make no settlements north of the olst degree of north lati- 
 tude on that coast, provided Great Britain stipulated to make none 
 south of the 51st degree or north of 55 degrees, and Russia to make 
 none south of 55 degrees ... we were willing to forbear all 
 settlements north of 51 degrees, as that limit might be sufficient to 
 give us the benefit of all the waters of the Columbia River." 
 
 Doc. 896, pp. 510-582, contains the "Correspondence with Great 
 Britain on the Various Topics of Discussion between the United
 
 164 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 States and Great Britain (in 1823-24), communicated to the Senate 
 January 20, 1825." 
 
 The sixtli of these topics was ''The North West Coast of Amer- 
 ica." 
 
 For some reason J. Q. Adams' letter of instructions to Richard 
 Rush, of July 22, 1823, was not printed with the other papers 
 in Doc. 396, but January 31, 1826, (Adams having become l*resi- 
 dent) in response to a resolution of the House, he sent a brief mes- 
 sage enclosing this letter, and it appears as Doc. 417, of Vol. V., 
 pp. 790-793. 
 
 It is especially interesting and valuable for its statement of 
 the Monroe Doctrine, because if any man ever knew exactly the 
 grounds on which we claimed "the Columbia River country" (for 
 it was not yet called Oregon) it was J. Q. Adams, and he in this 
 letter stated those grounds with great precision, as follows (p. 
 791) (after reciting the restoration of Astoria, on October 6, 1818) : 
 "The right of the United States to the Columbia River, and to the 
 interior territory washed by its waters, rests upon its discovery 
 from the sea and nomination by a citizen of the United States, 
 upon its exploi-ation to the sea by Capts. Lewis and Clark; upon 
 the settlement of Astoria made under the protection of the United 
 States and thus restored to them in 1818, and upon the subsequent 
 acquisition of all the rights of Spain, the only European power 
 which prior to the discovery of the river had any pretensions to 
 territorial rights on the northwest coast of America." 
 
 (P. 792) . . . "It is not imaginable that in the present 
 condition of the world any European nation should entertain the 
 project of settling a colony on the northwest coast of America; 
 that the United States should form establishments there with views 
 of absolute territorial rights and inland communication is not only 
 to be ex]>ected, but is pointed out by the finger of nature, and has 
 been for years a subject of serious deliberation in Congress. 
 
 "A })lan lias for several sessions been before them for estab- 
 lishing a territorial government on the borders of the Columbia 
 River. 
 
 "It will undoubtedly be resumed at their next session, and 
 even if then again postponed, there cannot be a doubt that, in the 
 course of a very few years, it must be carried into effect. As yet, 
 however, the only useful ])urpose to which the northwest coast of 
 America has been or can be made subservient to the settlements 
 of civilized men are the fisheries on its adjoining seas and trade 
 with the aboriginal inhabitants of the country. These have hith- 
 erto been enjoyed in common by the people of the United States 
 and by the British and Russian nations. 
 
 "The S})anish, I'ortugese and French nations have also parti-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 165 
 
 cipated in them hitherto, without other annoyance than that which 
 resulted from the exclusive territorial claims of Spain so long as 
 they were insisted on by her. . . . 
 
 ''Previous to the restoration of the settlement at the mouth of 
 the Columbia River in 1818, and again upon the first introduction 
 in Congress of the plan for constituting a territorial government 
 there, some disposition was manifested by Sir Charles Bagot and 
 Mr. Canning to dispute the right of the United States to that es- 
 tablishment; and some vague intimation was given of British 
 claims on the northwest coast. The restoration of the place and 
 the convention of 1818 were considered as a final disposal of Mr. 
 Bagot's objections, and Mr. Canning declined committing to paper 
 those which he had intimated in conversation." ... "A neces- 
 sary consequence of this state of things will be that the American 
 continents, henceforth, will no longer be subject to colonization. 
 
 ''Occupied by civilized independent nations, they will be access- 
 ible to Europeans, and to each other, on that footing alone, and 
 the Pacific Ocean, in every part of it, will remain open to the navi- 
 gation of all nations in like manner with the Atlantic 
 
 (P. 793) "Mr. Middleton is authorized by his instructions to 
 propose an article of similar import" {i. e., to the 3d Article of the 
 convention of October 20, 1818, for Joint Occupancy of Oregon) 
 "to be inserted in a joint convention between the United States, 
 Great Britain and Russia for a term of ten years from its signa- 
 ture. You are authorized to make the same proposal to the British 
 Government, and with a view to draw a definite line of demarca- 
 tion for the future, to stipulate that no settlement shall hereafter 
 be made on the northwest coast, or on any of the islands thereto 
 adjoining, by Russian subjects, south of latitude 55 degrees; by 
 citizens of the United States, north of latitude 51 degrees, or by 
 British subjects either south of 51 degrees or north of 55 degrees. 
 I mention the latitude of 51 degrees as the bound within which we 
 are willing to limit the future settlement of the United States, be- 
 cause it is not to be doubted that the Columbia River branches as 
 far north as 51 degrees, although it is most probably not the Ta- 
 coutche Tesse of Mackenzie. As, however, the line already runs 
 in latitude 49 degrees to the Stony Mountains, should it be earn- 
 estly insisted upon by Great Britain, we will consent to carry it in 
 continuance on the same parallel to the sea." 
 
 Returning now to Doc. 396, we find Rush's statement respect- 
 ing the negotiations on pp. 553-558. On p. 556 he says the British 
 plenipotentiaries complained of Gen. Jesup's letter in a report of 
 a select committee of the House of Representatives "adopted in 
 April last," and he goes on : "Yet I was bound unequivocally to 
 reassert, and so I requested the British plenipotentiaries would 
 
 %..
 
 166 AC(^{ ISITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 consider me as doinji;, the full and exclusive sovereignty of the 
 United States over the whole of the territory beyond the Rocky 
 Mountains washed by the river Columbia, in manner and extent 
 as I had stated, subject, of course, to whatever conventional ar- 
 rangements they may haxe formed with regard to it with other 
 powers. Their title to this whole country they considered as not 
 to be shaken. It had often been proclaimed in the legislative dis- 
 cussions of the nation and was otherwise public before the world." 
 
 At the 12th Conference, April 2, 1824, Rush proposed to con- 
 tinue the Convention of 1818 for ten years more, but with stipu- 
 lation that (lui-ing tliat term no settlement should be made by citi- 
 zens of the Tnited States north of the 51st degree or by British 
 subjects south of the 51st or north of the 55th degree, on either the 
 main land or any of the islands thereunto adjoining. 
 
 At the 20th Conference, June 29, 1824, the British plenipoten- 
 tiaries offered 49 degrees to the most northeastern branch of the 
 Columbia, and thence down the middle of that stream to the 
 Pacific. 
 
 ''The American plenipotentiary in remarking upon this bound- 
 ary declared his utter inability to accede to it; but finding that 
 the line offered in his former proposal was considered wholly in- 
 admissible by the British plenipotentiaries, said that, in the hope 
 of adjusting the question, he would so far vary his foi-mer line to 
 the south as to consent that it should be the 49th instead of the 
 51st degree of north latitude." 
 
 The l^ritish negotiators being unwilling to accept this last offer 
 of Rush, the negotiations of 1823-24 with Great Britain terminated, 
 with no extension of our northern boundary west of the Stony 
 Mountains, but with these two important gains for us, that the 
 Monroe Doctrine had been announced and that Great Britain, by 
 the offering of 49 degrees from the Stony Mountains to the north- 
 eastern branch of the Columbia and thence down the middle of the 
 stream to the ocean, had finally relinquished all claim to the terri- 
 tory south and east of that stream, and so left in dispute, after 
 1824, only about 58,000 square miles, being that part of the present 
 State of Washington north and west of the Columbia, and compris- 
 ing a little less than one-third of the "Columbia River country" or 
 the Old Oregon territory south of 49 degrees. 
 
 There is the most abundant evidence in later negotiations and 
 in the debates in Congress that this was the general understand- 
 ing of the statesmen of both nations, as will aj)pear hereinafter by 
 abundant citation of authorities. 
 
 So certain were the Jiritish of this that, as appears in the ''Copy 
 of a Document Found Among the Papers of the Late Dr. John 
 McLoughlin" (published in Tr. Oregon Pioneer Association, 1880,
 
 ACQUISITION^ OF OREGON 167 
 
 and quoted herein in full in Chapter VII.), "The Hudson's Bay 
 Co. officially informed him in 1825 that in no event could the Brit- 
 ish claim extend south of the Columbia, and that he so informed 
 the few Canadian employes of the company, who on finishing their 
 term of service wished to settle in the Willamette Valley, instead 
 of being returned to Canada, as provided by their contracts with 
 the company." 
 
 Am. State Papers, For. Kel., Vol. V., pp. 245-250, contains Presi- 
 dent Monroe's Message to the 18th Congress at its 1st session, date 
 December 2, 1823, in which (on p. 246), after stating that, at the 
 request of the Russian Emperor, our Minister to St. Petersburg 
 and the British Minister there have been empowered to arrange an 
 amicable settlement of the respective rights and interests of Rus- 
 sia and the United States and Russia and England on the north- 
 west coast of America, the whole of the famous Monroe Doctrine 
 was stated to all the world, its non-colonization part being as fol- 
 lows : "In the discussions to which this interest (/. e., the title to 
 the Oregon Territory) has given rise, and in the arrangements by 
 which they may terminate, the occasion has been judged proper for 
 asserting as a principle in which the rights and interests of the 
 United States are involved, that the American Continents, by the 
 free and independent condition which they have assumed and main- 
 tain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future col- 
 onization by any European power." 
 
 At the first session of the 19th Congress a select committee was 
 appointed on "so much of the President's message as respects the 
 establishment of a military post at the mouth of the Columbia 
 River and the more perfect exploring of the northwest coast of 
 America," of which Baylies of Massachusetts was chairman, and 
 it made two unanimous reports, commonly known as Baylies first 
 and second reports. The first (No. 35, Vol. I., Repts. of Coms. H. of 
 R., 1st Sess., 19th Cong., p. 26) was made January 16, 1826. 
 
 The second (No. 213, Repts. of Coms. H. of R., 19th Cong., 1st 
 Sess., Vol. II., p. 22) was made May 15, 1826. These reports were 
 repeatedly referred to and quoted not only by Representatives and 
 Senators in debates in later years from 1828 to 1843, but also in 
 other committee reports to both houses of Congress, and in news- 
 paper and magazine articles. 
 
 Those who still labor under the delusion that our National Gov- 
 ernment and the people of the country were ignorant of the fertility 
 of the soil, the geniality and healthfulness of the climate, and the 
 great resources in timber and fish of the Columbia River country, 
 till the missionaries furnished information on those points in their 
 letters (the first of which were not received in the States till 
 1835), and that as late as March, 1843, the Government and the
 
 168 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Xatiou ill general were ij^norant about Oregon and indifferent to 
 its acquisition till Whitman infornied them about it, are respect- 
 fully invited to peruse the following extracts from these two unani- 
 mous reports, unanimously adopted by the House of Representa- 
 tives in January and May, 1820, more than ten years before Whit- 
 man and Spalding established their mission, and more than eight 
 3'ears before the .Methodist ^Mission was established. (Kept. No. 
 35) After describing in very favorable terms the country between 
 the Cascade Mountains and the Pacific, it speaks thus (on pp. 3 
 and 4) of the region between the Cascade Mountains and the Rocky 
 Mountains — the very region in which the Whitman-Spalding-Eells 
 mission stations were established in 1830-38: 
 
 "Beyond and between this chain and the Rocky Mountains the 
 country for several hundred miles in length, and about fifty wide, 
 is described by Lewis and Clark as a high, level plain, in all its 
 parts extremely fertile. 'Nearly the whole of this widespread tract' 
 (say they) 'is covered with a profusion of grass and plants, which 
 were at this time' (May IG) 'as high as the knee. Amongst them 
 are a variety of esculent plants and roots, acquired' (p. 4) 'with- 
 out much difficulty, and yielding not only a nutritious, but a very 
 agreeable food. The air is pure and dry, the climate quite as mild 
 if not milder than the same parallels of latitude in the Atlantic 
 States, and must be equally healthy. In short, this district affords 
 many advantages to settlers, and if properly cultivated would yield 
 every object necessary for the subsistence and comfort of civilized 
 man. . . .' 
 
 "(P. 10) As to subsistence, the great variety and abundance 
 of game, both beasts and birds, and the prodigious quantities of the 
 finest and most nutritious species of fish that throng the waters of 
 this noble river, can leave no doubt on that subject, even if sup- 
 plies from home were wholly withheld. We learn from Lewis and 
 Clark that the multitudes of salmon in the Oregon are inconceiv- 
 able, and they ascend to its remotest sources, to the very ridge of 
 the dividing mountains. . . 
 
 "(P. 20) The gre.at but undeveloped capacities of this region 
 on the northwest coast for trade must be obvious to every one who 
 inspects its map. 
 
 "A vast river, with its tributaries and branches, waters its 
 whole extent through seven degrees of latitude, and even penetrates 
 beyond into the territories of other nations. 
 
 "It abounds in excellent timber, and in spars equal to those of 
 New Zealand, unsurj)assed by any in the world. Its waters are 
 navigable for vessels through half its extent, and for boats (saving 
 a few short portages) through half the remainder.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 169 
 
 "The water power for moving manufacturing machinery is un- 
 equaled and commences where the navigation terminates. 
 
 "It is bounded on the south by a country which abounds in 
 cattle and wheat, the two great sources of subsistence for a new 
 colony, and which can be reached by sea in less than ten days. . . 
 
 "On one side it approaches a country where coal in prodigious 
 quantities has already been discovered, and, on the other, the bor- 
 ders of a sea, which, for a space of 76 degrees, is seldom ruffled by 
 a storm, and which, in all probability, can be traversed in every 
 direction by steamboats. 
 
 "These advantages, great as they now are, will be trifling in 
 comparison to what they will be whenever a water communication 
 between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, through the isthmus di- 
 viding North and South America shall have been efliected. Of the 
 practicability of this communication there is no doubt. If Hum- 
 boldt is to be believed the expense at one place would not exceed 
 that of the Delaware and Chesapeake canal. Should it be done, a 
 revolution in commerce will be effected, greater than any since the 
 discovery of America; by which both the power and the objects of 
 its action will be more than doubled. The Indian commerce of 
 Europe will pass through the Americas, and more commercial 
 wealth will be borne upon the ample bosom of the Pacific than ever 
 was wafted over the waves of the Atlantic in the proudest days of 
 the commercial greatness of Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and 
 England. 
 
 "If it were given to a civilized, commercial and manufacturing 
 people where to choose their place of rest, the world affords no po- 
 sition equal to this, and it requires no prophetic spirit to foresee 
 the wealth and grandeur of that fortunate race whose happy des- 
 tiny shall have placed their ancestors in this beautiful region." 
 
 (Kept. No. 213) On p. 2 they describe the remarkable journey 
 of Samuel Adams Ruddock, who, in 1821, with a party of fur 
 traders went from the Missouri frontier up the Platte some 200 
 miles, thence southwest to Santa Fe, New Mexico, thence north- 
 west to the head of the Willamette (or Multnomah) River, and 
 down the Columbia, reaching the mouth of the Columbia August 1, 
 1821, seventy-nine days after leaving the Missouri River at Council 
 Bluffs. 
 
 After describing (on p. 10) the founding of Astoria (on p. 13) 
 the report says: "The American title is founded on occupation, 
 strengthened (as the committee believe) by purchase, by prior dis- 
 covery of the river, and its exploration from some of its sources 
 in the Rocky Mountains to the Ocean. Great Britain can have no 
 title so strong as this. This occupation, it is true, was not author- 
 ized originally by the Government of the United States, but they
 
 170 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 siibseqiiently sanctioned it by demanding and receiving the sur- 
 render of the Fort; and the posts of the United Northwest and 
 Hudson's Bay Co., for all national and legal purposes, are now, 
 and have been for several years, in the possession of the TJ^uited 
 States." 
 
 (P. 20) "After a careful examination of the British claim, the 
 committee have unanimously come to the conclusion that it is 
 wholly unfounded, and that the navigators of Great Britain were 
 not the original discoverers of any part of the region which is in- 
 cliulod between the Mexican and Russian boundaries. Neverthe- 
 less, the minute examination which has been made by them of 
 parts of this coast ought, perhaps, to secure to the nation who pa- 
 tronized them something more than could be claimed as a positive 
 right; but we think the otfer of Mr. Rush to continue the bound- 
 ary along the 49th parallel of latitude from the Rocky Mountains 
 to the ocean was as great a concession as would be compatible with 
 our interests, our honor, or our rights." 
 
 Then discussing for something more than a page Great Britain's 
 policy of world-wide dominion, the report continues (p. 21) as fol- 
 lows: "What then remains to enable her to encompass the globe? 
 Columbia River and De Fuca's Strait. Possessed of these she will 
 soon plant her standards on every island in the Pacific. Except 
 the Columbia there is no river which opens far into the interior 
 on the whole western shore of the Pacific Ocean. There is no se- 
 cure port or naval station from 39 degrees to 46 degrees. The pos- 
 session of these waters will give her command of the North Pacific, 
 enable her to control the commerce and policy of Mexico, Central 
 America and South America. 
 
 ''These rich nations will be her commercial colonies. 
 
 "She will then gather to herself all nations and her ambition 
 will span the earth. The committee entertain no disposition to 
 risk controversy with Great Britain on a question of doubtful 
 right; neither have they any disposition, in defense of an incon- 
 testable right, to avoid it." 
 
 In the 2d session of the 19th Congress no action was taken on 
 the Columbia River country, because the negotiations with Great 
 Britain which resulted in the treaty of August 6, 1827, were then 
 in i>rogress. The correspondence relating to these negotiations is 
 in Ex. Doc, H. of R., Vol. V., 20th Cong., 1st Sess., Doc. No. 199, 
 and also in Am. State Papers, For. Rel., Vol. VT.. Doc. No. 458. I 
 quote from Doe. 458. 
 
 It began with a letter from George Canning of the British For- 
 eign Office to Rufus King, then our Minister to England, dated 
 April 20, 1826, announcing the desire of Great Britain to reopen 
 negotiations on the title to the northwest coast of America, and
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 111 
 
 ended August 7, 1827, with a letter from Albert Gallatin to Henry 
 Clay, Secretary of State. 
 
 Remembering not only the very brilliant intellect and the in- 
 tense Americanism of each of the three men who conducted all of 
 this negotiation, John Quincy Adams, as President, Henry Clay, as 
 Secretary of State, and Albert Gallatin (who had been associated 
 with Rush in the negotiations of 1818, and who was sent, as En- 
 voy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to England, on 
 purpose to carry on this negotiation in London ) , but also that they 
 were the leading three of the five men who negotiated for us the 
 Treaty of Ghent, and by the word "possessions" in its first article 
 secured to us the restoration of Astoria, it goes without saying 
 that all our interests would be carefully safeguarded, and that the 
 negotiations would show a full acquaintance with every phase of 
 the subject. 
 
 The outcome of these negotiations was the convention signed 
 August 6, 1827, which in its first article continued in force indefi- 
 nitely the 3d Article of the Convention of October 20, 1818, making 
 the territory and waters claimed by both the United States and 
 Great Britain westward of the Stony Mountains "free and open to 
 the vessels, citizens and subjects of the two powers;" but in its 2d 
 Article provided that either party might after October 20, 1828, at 
 any time terminate the treaty by giving the other party twelve 
 months' notice; and its 3d Article provided that "nothing con- 
 tained in this convention, or in the 3d Article of the convention of 
 the 20th of October, 1818, hereby continued in force, shall be con- 
 strued to impair, or in any manner affect, the claims which either 
 of the contracting parties may have to any part of the country 
 westward of the Stony or Rocky Mountains." 
 
 The significant change in this third article is that the reserva- 
 tion of "the claims of any other power or state," which was in- 
 serted in the 3d Article of the Convention of 1818, was omitted, as 
 we had bought the Spanish claim in February, 1819, and limited 
 the Russian claims at 54 deg. and 40 min. by the treaty of April 
 5-17, 1824. 
 
 The following extracts from the correspondence show how thor- 
 oughly our negotiators understood the value of the Oregon Terri- 
 tory to us, and how carefully they guarded our interests, and with 
 what unswerving tenacity they adhered to the line of 49 degrees as 
 the utmost we would concede to Great Britain. Three times with- 
 in less than two months Gallatin was instructed by the President 
 that 49 degrees from the Stony Mountains to the Pacific Ocean 
 was our "ultimatum," that precise word being used in one case, and 
 expressions equivalent to it the other two times, as follows: H. 
 Clay, Secretary of State, on June 19, 1826, wrote a letter of in-
 
 172 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 striietious to A. Gallatin, in which, after declaring that "it is not 
 thought necessary to add much to the argument advanced on this 
 point in the instructions given to Mr. Rush" (/. e., in 1823) "(a 
 copy of which is herewith coniniunicated), and that which was em- 
 ployed by him in the course of his negotiation to support our title 
 as derived fi-oni ])rior discovery and settlement at the mouth of the 
 Columbia, and from the treaty with Spain concluded on the 22d of 
 February, 1810, he said : 
 
 '•That argument is believed to have conclusively established 
 our title on both grounds. Nor is it conceived that Great Britain 
 has or can make out even a colorable title to any portion of the 
 Northwest Coast. . . You are then authorized to propose the 
 annulment of the third article of the Convention of 1818, and the 
 extension of the line on the parallel of 49 degrees from the eastern 
 side of the Stony Mountains, where it now terminates, to the Pa- 
 cific Ocean, as the permanent boundary between the territories of 
 the two powers in that quarter. This is our ultimatum, and you 
 may announce it. We can consent to no other line more favorable 
 to Great Britain." 
 
 Only four days later, June 23, 1826, Clay again wrote to Gal- 
 latin as follows: ''Mr. Crook's information adds little to what was 
 previously possessed. If the land on the Northwest Coast between 
 the mouth of the Cohnnbia and the jiarallel of 49 degrees be bad, 
 and therefore we should lose but little in relinquishing it, the same 
 consideration will apply to the British. The President cannot con- 
 sent to vary the line proposed in your instructions." 
 
 August 9, 1820, ;Mr. Clay again wrote to Mr. Gallatin as fol- 
 lows: "The President cannot consent that the boundary between 
 the territories of the two powers on the Northwest Coast should 
 be south of 40 degrees. 
 
 "The British Government has not been committed by a positive 
 rejection of a line on the parallel of 49 degrees; but if it had been 
 its pride may take refuge in the offer which for the first time you 
 are to propose of a right in common with us to the navigation of 
 the Columbia Kiver." 
 
 Although this "ultimatum" letter of Clay seemed so important 
 to Congress that, as we shall see later, the Senate and the House 
 of Representatives by unanimous votes ordered it printed in 25,000 
 copies of four reports in 1838, 1839, 1842, and January, 1843, no 
 advocate of the Whitman Saved Oregon tale has ever even alluded 
 to the letter, nor to anything else of vital significance in this great 
 negotiation as showing how thoroughly every phase of the subject 
 was discussed, and how infiexiblv Adams, Clav and Gallatin stood 
 for our rights to the Oregon Territory south of 49 degrees.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 173 
 
 The following extracts from Gallatin's letters to Clay are so 
 very significant of the real position of the parties that it seems to 
 me essential that they should be quoted, and I only regret that 
 space will not permit quoting much more from them. 
 
 Under date of London, November 16, 1826: "Mr. Huskisson, 
 amongst the reasons for taking up that subject" (i e., the north- 
 west boundary), ''first mentioned that it had for several sessions 
 occupied the attention of Congress, and that it was not possible to 
 foresee the effect which the measures they might adopt would have 
 on the question and on the friendly relations of the two countries. 
 In a subsequent part of the conversation he said that the joint 
 occupancy would cease in 1828 unless renewed; and that the re- 
 moval of any settlement made by British subjects would be con- 
 sidered as an act of aggression. 
 
 "This having been already intimated in the course of the nego- 
 tiations of 1824, I asked whether he would consider as an aggres- 
 sion the removal of such British subjects from Astoria, or such 
 other of our settlements as were directed to be restored by the 
 Treaty of Ghent. 
 
 "To which it was answered that these were considered as in 
 our possession. Mr. Addington added that the British had removed 
 from Astoria to the opposite side of the river, where I understood 
 they had now a fort called Vancouver. 
 
 "Protocol of seventh Conference of the British and American 
 plenipotentiaries held December 19, 1826. 
 
 "Present Mr. Gallatin and Mr. Addington." 
 
 In the course of his argument Mr. Gallatin said: "If the pres- 
 ent state of occupancy is urged on the part of Great Britain, the 
 probability of the manner in which the territory west of the Rocky 
 Mountains must be settled belongs essentially to the subject. 
 
 "Under whatever nominal sovereignty that country may be 
 placed, and whatever its ultimate destinies may be, it is nearly 
 reduced to a certainty that it will be almost exclusively peopled 
 by the surplus population of the United States. 
 
 "The distance from Great Britain and the expense incident to 
 emigration forbid the expectation of any being practicable from 
 that quarter but on a comparatively small scale." 
 
 Under date of London, December 22, 1826: "Mr. Huskisson, in 
 the course of the discussion, several times repeated that there was 
 no intention on the part of Great Britain to colonize the country. 
 They have certainly no other immediate object than that of pro- 
 tecting the North West Co. in her fur trade. 
 
 "In every other respect the question appeared to be with them 
 rather one of national pride than anything else. Not only from 
 them, but from several other distinct quarters, it is certain that
 
 174 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 that pride was sorely wounded by that part of the late President's 
 message which declared that America was no longer open to Euro- 
 pean colonization. 
 
 "This was new doctrine and was considered as dictatorial, and 
 as hinting, too, with no favorable intentions to the existing British 
 colonies. Those parts of the second report of a committee of the 
 House of liepresentatives at the last session of Congress, (that is 
 Baylies' second report) to which I have alluded in a former dis- 
 patch, gave great, fresh and additional offense, awakening anew 
 the feelings which had been excited by the former passage in the 
 President's message. 
 
 ''I think it not improbable that we might have come to an ar- 
 rangement had it not been for these causes. The North West Com- 
 pany is also very inimical, and has no inconsiderable weight." 
 
 Under date of June 27, 1827 : '"The British plenipotentiary de- 
 sired to insert in the protocol a declaration that neither party 
 should establish any military posts in the Oregon Territory. 'Great 
 Britain,' they said, 'had no wish to establish such posts and would 
 do it only in self defense.' . . . 'There was no intention on the 
 part of Great liritain to colonize the country, or to impede the 
 progress of our settlements.' ... 'It appeared from that ex- 
 position that Great Britain denied, indeed, their' (i. e., the United 
 States') 'exclusive right to any part of the territory in question, 
 but made no exclusive claim herself, and considered it open to the 
 first occupant.' 
 
 "Although the United States asserted and w^ould not abandon 
 her exclusive right, yet, in fact, the country must necessarily be- 
 come ultimately theirs, even according to the British doctrine. In 
 that view of the subject all that the United States declared to be 
 hers, viz., the ])reservation of peace until (if no arrangement should 
 previously take ])lace) the whole country was occupied; and I had 
 myself no doubt that it would be entirely occupied and settled by 
 citizens of the Thiited States." 
 
 Under date of July 10, 1827: "Whatever change may hereafter 
 take place in the views of the British Government concerning that 
 country, I may with confidence say that there is not at present any 
 wish to colonize it; that they view it rather with indifference; that 
 they do not believe that it will when once settled long remain either 
 a British colony or a part of the United States; that they do not 
 think it therefore a matter of great importance whether it shall re- 
 ceive its inhabitants from Great Britain, Canada or the United 
 States; and that they are willing to let the settlement of the coun- 
 try take its natural course." 
 
 August 7, 1S27: '*l>ut in addition to the reasons wliicli were 
 assigned in the course of the negotiation in favor of continuing it"
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 175 
 
 (i. e., joint occupancy) ''in force, there is still one peculiar to the 
 United States. They claim exclusive sovereignty over a territory a 
 considerable portion of which is occupied by British traders whom 
 they could not dispossess without engaging in a war, and whom 
 from their distance and other causes they are not at this time pre- 
 pared to remove. 
 
 "It is certainly more eligible that those persons should remain 
 on the territory of the United States by virtue of a compact and 
 with their consent, than in defiance of their authority." 
 
 After stating that the British from their system of government 
 could govern the Oregon country in its then condition by a monop- 
 olistic trading company, Gallatin continues : "But in order to at- 
 tain the same ends the United States would be obliged to resort to 
 difi'erent means. The establishment of an exclusive company ap- 
 peared incompatible with their habits and institutions. They 
 could not govern the country and preserve the peace through that 
 medium." 
 
 Benton bitterly opposed the ratification of this treaty of August 
 6, 1827, but could only rally against it six other Senators (only 
 one of whom, Cobb of Georgia, was from a seaboard State) — the 
 vote being 31 for and 7 against, with no record of the opinions of 
 the eight Senators who did not vote. 
 
 Fifteen years later Benton opposed with equally bitter invective 
 the ratification of the Ashburton treaty, largely because it had not 
 included a settlement of the Oregon question, and could only rally 
 9 against to 39 for it, with no record of the opinions of the two 
 Senators who did not vote. 
 
 The injunction of secrecy seems not to have been removed from 
 the discussion of the 1827 treaty, but in Appendix to Congressional 
 Globe, 3d Sess., 27th Cong., pp. 1-26, will be found Benton's speech 
 (covering 76 columns) against the Ashburton Treaty, delivered in 
 secret session of the Senate, August 18, 1842; the injunction of 
 secrecy having been removed. 
 
 So overwhelmingly was the judgment of the Senate against 
 Benton on both of these treaties, that on each the friends of rati- 
 fication could have granted leaves of absence to as many as were 
 required to ratify and then have had remaining three more than 
 the two-thirds necessary to ratify ; or, in other words, instead of 
 having merely twice as many in favor of ratifying as were opposed 
 to it, they had in each case three more than four times as many 
 as voted against ratification. 
 
 It is doubtful if any other politician in our history ever suc- 
 ceeded in acquiring so widespread a reputation as a chief factor 
 in accomplishing a great national work, upon which his real in- 
 fluence was never decisive, as Benton acquired in connection with
 
 176 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 the Oregon acquisition, by merely writing newsj)ay)er articles and 
 incessantly making speeches about it, though of the real construc- 
 tion work which secured us Oregon he not only did absolutely noth- 
 ing, but bitterly oi)posed what such statesmen as Madison, Monroe, 
 J. Q. Adams, Albert Gallatin, Richard Rush and Henry Clay did 
 do, which secured us Oregon without war and without expense. 
 
 A very ambitious young lawyer, already well experienced in 
 politics, Benton, at Jio, migrated in 1817 from Tennessee to St. 
 Louis, in the then Territory of Missouri, which it was certain must 
 soon be admitted as a State. 
 
 The Convention of 1818 about "the Columbia River country" 
 had been ratified unanimously by the Senate, but St. Louis being 
 then the headquarters of the fur trade, Benton was astute enough 
 to see that a violent opposition to that convention, on the ground 
 that ''the Columbia River country" was ours, and that we should 
 never have made a convention allowing the British fur traders the 
 same rights there as our own traders had, would be so very popu- 
 lar as to land him in the position he coveted of Senator from Mis- 
 souri ; and so in the St. Louis Enquirer he attacked it with utmost 
 vehemence of language, declaring that it should not have been 
 made, and that it would result in the British acquiring the Valley 
 of the Columbia. 
 
 That in the judgment of all our statesmen who ever negotiated 
 on the Oregon question that treaty was the best that could then be 
 made, that its renewal in 1827 was equally wise, that the omission 
 of Oregon from the Ashburton treaty was also equally wise, and 
 that the treaty of 1818 and its renewal in 1827 by their very terms 
 made it impossible (in the opinion of such men as Albert Gallatin, 
 George Bancroft, Edw. Everett, James Buchanan, John C. Calhoun, 
 John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren and 
 many other of our ablest statesmen) that Great Britain by found- 
 ing trading ])osts or establishing settlements could, while those 
 treaties remained in force, in the least degree strengthen her claims 
 to any i)art of the Columbia River country; that every British, 
 diplomat who negotiated with us on the question, from Huskisson 
 and Canning in 1821^ to Pakenham in 1844-46, had tacitly endorsed 
 the correctness of this position by never making any claim that 
 anything done by Great Britain subsequent to October 20, 1818, 
 had in any way affected the title to any part of the region in dis- 
 pute; and that Lord Aberdeen (head of the British Foreign Office 
 from 1841 till after the treaty of 1846 was concluded) explicitly 
 assented to the correctness of our position on this policy — all this 
 counted for naught with Benton. 
 
 Nor did the fact that Rush and Gallatin both pointed out that 
 we could not expect to remove the Hudson's Bay Co. by force in
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 111 
 
 1823, nor in 1827, and that it was therefore better for us to con- 
 tinue the joint occupancy condition till the unequaled and majestic 
 westward movement of our population should so change the then 
 existing conditions as to make it desirable for us to insist on imme- 
 diately fixing our boundary at 41) degrees, and so acquiring the 
 right coincidently with the development of the unquestionable 
 power to take undisputed control of the Oregon country, in the 
 slightest degree atfect Benton's constant clamor for immediately 
 abrogating the treaty and taking jjossession of the country ; and in 
 the later years of the struggle from insisting that in contemptuous 
 disregard of our own freely executed treaty obligations we should, 
 by granting lands to settlers and assuming full control of Oregon, 
 do that which the "correspondence" in Doc. 458 shows it was dis- 
 tinctly agreed by both parties in 1826-27 should not be done by 
 either, without first giving the twelve months' notice required to 
 abrogate the treaty. 
 
 Benton was never intrusted with any share in conducting any 
 negotiations about Oregon, nor was he made chairman of either of 
 the special committees of the Senate on Oregon, which in 1838 and 
 1842 made extensive and very valuable reports on Oregon, though 
 as chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs he made a report 
 on the fur trade in February, 1829, which, like Calhoun's in 1818, 
 was chiefly connected with Oregon matters, as, indeed, any valu- 
 able report on the fur trade in those days must have been. 
 
 He was also chairman of the Military Committee of the Senate 
 in January, 1831, when it reported back President Jackson's mes- 
 sage enclosing the letters of Ashley, Smith, Sublette and Jackson, 
 Major Pilcher and Lewis Cass and Gen. William Clark, with a 
 recommendation that the documents be printed and 1,500 copies 
 extra be furnished for the use of the Senate. 
 
 But when all proper deductions have been made from the 
 greatly exaggerated reputation of Benton as a chief factor in se- 
 curing Oregon, these indisputable facts remain : That he was al- 
 ways, after 1818 (three 3'ears before the commencement of his term 
 as United States Senator from Missouri), an extremely ardent if 
 sometimes not a specially wise friend of Oregon ; that he not only 
 never uttered or wrote a single sentence depreciatory of the value 
 of Oregon to the United States, but uniformly used the most ex- 
 travagant language about the soil, the climate, the fisheries and 
 the commercial possibilities of the Oregon Territory, and the im- 
 mense importance of our asserting our title to it and occupying it; 
 and that the steadfastness and persistence with which upon every 
 possible occasion he thus spoke and wrote about it from 1818 to- 
 1846 made him an important factor, though by no means the chief 
 one in securing Oregon to us.
 
 178 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Like Jefferson, and Jackson, and probably a large majority of 
 the members of his party, Benton for a quarter of a century after 
 he began his open and constant advocacy of the acquisition of Ore- 
 gon did not expect that it would permanently remain a part of the 
 I'nited States, but expected that when, by migration overland from 
 the States it should become populous, it would separate from us 
 and establish a new republic on the I'acific, with the Kocky Moun- 
 tains as a natural boundary between the two nations. 
 
 This view often expressed by him (the last time, as far as I 
 have been able to learn, in the Senate, August 18, 1842) did not, 
 however, in the least diminish the intensity of his conviction, nor 
 the ardor of his speech in favor of the right of the United States 
 to the Oregon Territory and the duty resting upon us to assert that 
 right and drive the British out, and occupy and settle it ourselves. 
 
 One looks in vain through his ''Thirty Years' View" and his 
 "Abridgment of Debates in Congress" for any intimation that he 
 had ever held any such opinion about the final destiny of Oregon, 
 he having carefully "abridged out" of the debates all the things he 
 wished he had not uttered, and with equal care omitted to include 
 in the field of vision of his ''Thirty Years' View" anything which 
 showed that he was not as wise at the beginning, or the middle of 
 his career, as at the end. 
 
 Personally, outside of politics, Benton was probity itself, but 
 like many politicians he had two codes of honesty, one to be fol- 
 lowed in matters outside of politics and another and very different 
 one inside of politics, the consequence of w^hich is that his "Thirty 
 Years' View" and his "Abridgment of the Debates in Congress" 
 are both so intensely partisan, and so often distort the history they 
 ostensibly illuminate that no careful student dares depend on them 
 about any matter affecting the political struggles which filled so 
 much of Benton's life, or on any other matter on which he had seen 
 occasion to change his opinions with the lapse of years. 
 
 In view of this record of Benton's uniform and enthusiastic 
 advocacy of the acquisition of Oregon from 1818 to 184G, and his 
 persistent denunciations of Great Britain's claims to it, one would 
 suppose that not even the most reckless of the myth-loving advo- 
 cates of the Whitman Legend, seeking to find support for the in- 
 dispensable postulate of that story that our leading statesmen 
 were ignorant about Oregon and indifferent to its fate, and even 
 anxious that it should be yielded up to England, would have the 
 hardihood to misquote Benton's great speech of 1825 and represent 
 him as one of those who derided Oregon and was rather anxious 
 than otherwise that it should be yielded to Great Britain. Yet 
 precisely that has happened.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 179 
 
 In this, as in most of the misquotations by which the public has 
 been completely befogged about the Oregon acquisition, Barrows' 
 "Oregon" seems to have been the "original sinner," with Nixon's 
 "How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon" as a close second. 
 
 In his chapter entitled "Is Oregon Worth Saving?" after some 
 four pages packed full of misstatements of facts and several quo- 
 tations from the Edinburgh Review and the London Examiner, 
 which are so ingeniously garbled as to convey to the minds of his 
 readers the precise opposite of the ideas which the articles hon- 
 estly quoted would convey, Barrows (on p. 193) continues as fol- 
 lows: "Their" (i e., the Hudson's Bay Co.'s) "trappers and 
 traders, in a gossipy way, were undervaluing Oregon, as the stately 
 quarterlies were doing in a more dignified manner. This depre- 
 ciating view of that country came to possess our own literature 
 and popular speech. Captain William Sturgis, who had trafficked 
 on the Northwest Coast and at the English posts there, uses this 
 language in a lecture before the Mercantile Library Association of 
 Boston, two years after the arrival of Whitman : 'Rather than have 
 new States formed beyond the Rocky Mountains, to be added to our 
 present Union, it would be a lesser evil, as far as that Union is 
 concerned, if the unoccupied portion of the Oregon Territory should 
 sink into Symmes' Hole, leaving the western base of those moun- 
 tains and the borders of the Pacific Ocean one and the same.' " 
 
 The plain meaning and purpose of this paragraph is that in this 
 statement Sturgis was merely echoing the general sentiment of the 
 American public concerning the Oregon Territory, and (not being 
 able to get hold of a copy of Sturgis' lecture) for some years after 
 I became fully satisfied that that was untrue, I assumed that Bar- 
 rows had quoted fairly in this instance, and that Sturgis had made 
 the statement quoted, supposing that in that opinion he was in ac- 
 cord with the general sentiment of his countrymen. But finding 
 in the Wisconsin State Historical Society's splendid library a copy 
 of Sturgis' lecture, it was speedily evident that Barrows had delib- 
 erately deceived his readers in this quotation. 
 
 Sturgis' lecture was delivered January 22, 1845, avowedly to 
 combat the "54 deg. 40 min. or fight" craze, and to persuade the 
 American people that we should be satisfied with 49 degrees as the 
 northern boundary of Oregon, and referring to pp. 37, 42 and 44 
 of the "Berlin Arbitration," we find that "it exercised quite an in- 
 fluence" on some leading English statesmen. 
 
 On p. 22 of Sturgis' lecture he says: "Our Government, on the 
 contrary, seeks the acquisition of the region west of the Rocky 
 Mountains as an extension of the territory of the United States, 
 to be used hereafter in the same manner as any other portion of 
 our territory for the formation of new States; for this purpose the
 
 180 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 country south of the 49th parallel of latitude is most conveniently 
 situated. Being the portion best adapted to agriculture and (p. 
 23) manufacturing purposes, it might be reasonably expected that 
 we should be content with this division, but I am not quite sure 
 that our Government will so readily accede to it. The people of 
 this country are both covetous and ambitious in regard to terri- 
 tory. They covet and are ready to grasp at all that lies upon their 
 borders, are ambitious of extending their empire from sea to sea, 
 from the shores of the Atlantic to the borders of the Pacific. 
 
 "I do not participate in this feeling and have little sympathy 
 with those who cherish it. Settlements scattered over a vast ex- 
 tent of territory — very likely to Ibe badly governed in time of peace 
 and certain to present remote and exposed points to be defended 
 in times of war — will not, in my belief, add to the power or pro- 
 mote the prosperity of the United States." 
 
 Then, after quoting from Presidents Jackson and Jefferson, Mr. 
 Sturgis goes on (p. 24) as follows: "I will add as my own views, 
 that rather than have new States formed beyond the Kocky Moun- 
 tains to be added to our present Union, it would be a lesser evil so 
 far as that Union is concerned if the unoccupied portion of the 
 Oregon Territory should sink into Symmes' Hole, leaving the 
 western base of those mountains and the borders of the Pacific 
 one and the same. But as this consummation, however devoutly it 
 may be wished, can hardly be expected, I deem it very desirable 
 that the question of boundary (p. 25) should be speedily adjusted, 
 and that the limits of the rights of each party be so closely estab- 
 lished and defined as to prevent all danger of collision hereafter. 
 In this opinion I doubt not that the distinguished statesmen, 
 Messrs. Pakenham and Calhoun, who now have charge of the nego- 
 tiation, will cordially concur; and it seems to me that each party 
 will attain their object, and justice be done to both, by adopting 
 as the boundary a continuation of the parallel of 49 degrees across 
 the Rocky Mountains to tidewater, say to the middle of the Gulf 
 of Georgia, thence by the northern most navigable passage (not 
 north of 49 degrees) to the Straits of Juan de Fuca, and down the 
 middle of those straits to the Pacific Ocean, the navigation of the 
 Gulf of Georgia and the Straits of Juan de Fuca to be forever 
 free to both parties; all the islands and other territory lying south 
 and east of this line to belong to us, and all north and west to 
 Great Britain. . . . (P. 27) Very ditterent and conflicting 
 representations have been made by different writers in regard to 
 the general aspect of the whole territory, and its adaptation to 
 agricultural ])urposes ; some have described it as a perfect paradise, 
 while by others it has been represented as wild and sterile. Ac- 
 cording to my observation both are exaggerated. (P. 28) The
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 181 
 
 climate, however, is altogether milder and the winter less severe 
 than on this side of the continent, and more nearly resembles the cli- 
 mate of Europe." 
 
 Could human ingenuity more completely mislead the readers 
 of a book as to the true opinion of the American Government and 
 people about the value of Oregon than Barrows did in this gar- 
 bled quotation from Sturgis' lecture? 
 
 The very next sentence on p. 193 of Barrows' ''Oregon," after 
 this garbled quotation from Sturgis' lecture, is the following: "A 
 similar view of Oregon's value probably led Benton to make that 
 remarkable utterance in 1825: 'The ridge of the Rocky Moun- 
 tains may be named without offense as presenting a convenient, 
 natural and everlasting boundary. Along the back of this ridge 
 the western limits of this Republic should be drawn, and the statue 
 of the fabled god Terminus should be raised ui)on its highest peak 
 never to be thrown down.' " 
 
 But when we turn to the speech of Benton, from which these 
 two brief sentences are taken, we find it covers 14 pages of the 
 "Debates in Congress" (not Benton's Abridgment, but the full offi- 
 cial Debates in Congress), 18th Congress, 2d Session, Vol. 1, pp. 
 699-713, and is an impassioned plea for the immediate occupation 
 of Oregon, and that instead of any depreciatory view of Oregon, 
 it expressed a higher opinion of it than any candid and well- 
 informed resident of that Territory would today say is fully justi- 
 fied by the facts, as appears from the following, which Barrows 
 does not quote: "It is a country too great and too desirable to 
 remain longer without civilized inhabitants. ... In extent, 
 soil and climate it is superior to the old thirteen United States." 
 
 Then (immediately following the two sentences which Bar- 
 rows quotes) Benton goes on as follows: "In planting the seeds 
 of a new power on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, it should be well 
 understood that when strong enough to take care of itself the new 
 government should separate from the mother empire as the child 
 separates from the parent at the age of maturity. The heights of 
 the Rocky Mountains should divide their possessions, and the 
 mother Republic would find herself indemnified for her cares and 
 expenses about the infant power in the use of a port on the Pacific 
 Ocean, the protection of her interests in that sea, the enjoyment 
 of the fur trade, the control of the Indians, the exclusion of a 
 monarchy from her border, the frustration of the hostile schemes 
 of Great Britain, and above all in the erection of a new republic 
 composed of her children, speaking her language, inheriting her 
 principles, devoted to liberty and equality, and ready to stand by 
 her side against the combined powers of the Old World. Gentle- 
 men may think this is looking rather deep into the chapter of
 
 182 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 futurity, but the contrary is the fact. The view I take is both 
 near and clear. Within a century from this day a population 
 greater than that of the present United States ^yill exist on the 
 western side of the Rocky Mountains." 
 
 Plainly then, instead of "similar view of Oregon's value" caus- 
 ing Benton to utter this sentiment about the western boundary of 
 the United States being the crest of the Rocky Mountains, it was 
 his belief (in which doubtless all sensible men even now will agree 
 with him), that, as the world then looked, when the first mile of 
 railroad had not been built, when the telegraph was not even 
 dreamed of, and the successful application of steam to ocean navi- 
 gation was a very doubtful problem, the government by the United 
 States of colonies on the Pacific Coast when they should become 
 populous from the migration thither of our citizens, would be im- 
 possible. Benton continued to hold this view certainly as late as 
 August 18, 1812, for in that part of his famous speech against the 
 Ashburtou treaty which denounced it because it did not settle the 
 Oregon boundary, he most vehemently reiterates all these senti- 
 ments of his speech of ^larch 1, 1825. (Of. App. to Cong. Globe, 
 27th Cong., 3d Sess., pp. 1-2G.) Just when and why he changed 
 his o])inions (not on the immense value of the Oregon Territory to 
 the United States, and the duty of the Government to at once oc- 
 cupy and colonize it — for on that his opinions were constant from 
 1818 [/. e., before he entered public life] down to the date of the 
 treaty of 1846 — and Cato was no more persistently insistent that 
 Carthage should be destroyed than Benton was during all those 
 years that we should occupy Oregon ; but as to the possibility of 
 our continuing to hold it after we should have populated it enough 
 for statehood) it seems impossible certainly to determine. But in 
 his two long speeches in the Senate on the great debate on Ore- 
 gon in 1842-3, the first on January 12, 1843, and the second on 
 February 2, 1843, he says nothing about Oregon ever separating 
 from the TTnited States, so that the time of the change would seem 
 to have been between August 18, 1842, and January 12, 1843, but 
 I know of no clue as to the cause. (Cf. App. to Cong. Globe, 27th 
 Cong., 3d Sess., pp. 74-78 and llG-117.) 
 
 Nixon is so delighted with these two sentences that Barrows 
 misquotes from Benton, that he not only quotes them on p. 40 
 of his "How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon," at the beginning 
 of his attem])t to show what he is pleased to call (on p. 41) "the 
 educating power of the Hudson's Bay Co. on the United States, 
 and the ignorance of our statesmen as to the extent and value of 
 the territory" (/. e.. the Oregon Territory), but quotes them twice 
 more on pp. 170 and 186, of course with no reference to the rest of 
 Benton's speech, or the place where his readers can find it, and
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 183 
 
 utterly oblivious of the fact that the only "ignorance" displayed 
 in the matter is his own total ignorance concerning the real posi- 
 tion of Benton and all our other leading statesmen from 1814 to 
 1846 on the Oregon question. 
 
 Having carefully compared every quotation in Barrow's "Ore- 
 gon" and Nixon's "How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon" with the 
 original book, Government document, magazine or newspaper to 
 which it is credited — so far as any such source really exists, for 
 some of their alleged quotations are pure fabrications, never hav- 
 ing appeared in the sources from which they are claimed to have 
 been quoted — I can assure the reader that on any important dis- 
 puted point there is not in either book from title page to finis a 
 single quotation that is not as false and misleading as these two 
 from Sturgis' lecture and from Benton's 1825 speech. 
 
 Returning now to the record of governmental action on the 
 Oregon question. The Senate having ratified the Convention of 
 August 6, 1827, during the first session of the 20th Congress, it 
 was proclaimed May 15, 1828. (Cf. Doc. 492, Am. State Papers, 
 For. Rel., Vol. VI., p. 1000.) 
 
 The Senate, in the first session of the 20th Congress, 1827-8, 
 having debated every phase of the Oregon question in executive 
 sessions during the discussions on the ratification of the second 
 Treaty of Joint Occupancy, did not take the subject up again for 
 any extended discussion till the second session of the 25th Con- 
 gress, 1837-38, though in the mean time two reports were made 
 to it — Benton's on the Fur Trade, February 9, 1829, and the report 
 of the Military Committee, January 26, 1831, which were very valu- 
 able — the latter especially so. 
 
 No record of Benton's report is to be found in the official re- 
 port of "Debates in Congress," but turning to the "Journal of the 
 Senate" we find (p. 47) that on December 23, 1828, on motion of 
 Mr. Benton (chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs), and 
 by unanimous consent, it was "Resolved: That the Committee on 
 Indian Afi'airs be instructed to inquire into the present condition 
 of the fur trade within the limits of the United States, and to re- 
 port what measures, if any, are necessary to the safe and success- 
 ful prosecution of that trade by citizens of the United States." 
 
 February 9, 1829, (p. Ill) "Mr. Benton, from the Committee 
 on Indian Afl'airs, who were instructed by a resolution of the Sen- 
 ate on the 23d of December last to inquire into the present condi- 
 tion of the fur trade, made a report, accompanied by a bill for the 
 encouragement of the fur trade, which was read, and ordered that 
 it pass to a second reading, and that the report be printed." 
 
 The bill provided only for a duty on foreign furs imported into 
 this country, but no legislation was effected, as the same com-
 
 184 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 plaints were made as to the disabilities under which the fur trade 
 suffered in the letters of the Kocky Mountain Fur Co. and of Major 
 Pilcher, and of Gen. William Clark and Hon. Lewis Cass, in Sen. 
 Ex. Doc. 30, date January 26, 1831. 
 
 The report is No. 37, Sen. Ex. Doc, 20th Cong., 2d Sess., and 
 covers 15) pages. 
 
 lienton wrote only about two pages of the report, the rest be- 
 ing extracts from a message of Gov. Miller of Missouri to the Gen- 
 eral Assembly of that State, dated November, 1828; a memorial of 
 the (Jeneral Assembly of Missouri to Congress, dated December 
 1828; a statement by Senator Benton to the Committee on Indian 
 Affairs, and letters as follows: One each from Thomas L. McKen- 
 ney. Commissioner of Indian Affairs ; John Jacob Astor, Hon. C. 
 C. Cambreling, and one signed by Gen. William Clark of Missouri 
 and Gov. Lewis Cass of Michigan, and two from W. H. Ashley, the 
 whole concluding with a page from the "History of the Fur Trade" 
 (London, 1801) by Alex. McKenzie, the sturdy Scotchman, long 
 a leader of the "North Westers," who was the first white man to 
 go overland in North America to the Arctic Ocean, which he 
 reached in 1789, and the first to cross North America north of 
 Mexico, reaching the Pacific July 22, 1793, in latitude 52 deg. 20 
 min. and 48 sec. 
 
 The committee urge that the joint occupancy treaty be termi- 
 nated and a boundary line established, and the traders of both 
 nations confined to their own respective territories, and suggested 
 three things as necessary for the prosperity of the fur trade, viz.: 
 
 "(1) A reduction of duty on the blankets, shrouds and scarlet 
 cloths used in trade. 
 
 "(2) A drawback of duties upon these articles when carried 
 into the Indian countries for the purposes of trade. 
 
 "(3) A duty on foreign furs." 
 
 The letters published in the report endorsed its conclusions and 
 recommendations. 
 
 McKenzie seems to have been the first to suggest the consoli- 
 dation of the North W^est Co. and the Hudson's Bay Co. (Cf. p. 
 408 of his "Journal of a Voyage Through the Northwest Conti- 
 nent of America") as a means of monopolizing that trade in Brit- 
 ish North America and in the Columbia River country, and as a 
 necessary part of that plan urges (in the page which Benton 
 quotes from him) that the British should insist on having the line 
 between their North iVmerican possessions and the United States 
 so run as to insure them the control of the Columbia, as being the 
 only stream on the Pacific Coast by which it would be possible to 
 obtain the cheap transit of goods from the interior of the mountain 
 regions to the ocean.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 185 
 
 To this extract from McKenzie Benton appends the following 
 characteristic note: "(N. B. This is the origin of all the British 
 claims on the Columbia, of all the robberies and murders now go- 
 ing on there, of the 500 men killed and the $500,000 worth of prop- 
 erty plundered from them in the last twenty years.) T. H. B." 
 
 This false accusation that the recommendations by McKenzie 
 were the origin of all the British claims to territory on the Colum- 
 bia, and of all the losses of life and property by our citizens en- 
 gaged in the fur trade in and beyond the Rocky Mountains, were 
 constantly reiterated by Benton to the end of the Oregon contro- 
 versy in 1846. 
 
 The "Memoirs of John Quincy Adams" (Vol. XI., p. 37, under 
 date of December 10, 1841), say of Caleb Cushing, what might 
 quite as appropriately have been written of Benton, as follows : 
 
 '^Cushing thought that inflammatory declamation against Eng- 
 land upon all possible topics was the short cut to popularity, and 
 he speechified accordingly." 
 
 Though the -Senate did not care to farther debate the Oregon 
 question at the second session of the 20th Congress, it was taken 
 up in the House and debated vigorously and at great length, the 
 report filling 85 columns, or one-tenth of the whole volume of the 
 oflScial report of ''Debates in Congress," being more space than was 
 accorded to Oregon in any other session till the third session of 
 the 27th Congress, 1842-43' 
 
 This great debate, in which the sentiment was so overwhelm- 
 ingly in favor of the great value of Oregon to us, and of our duty 
 to hold it at least up to 49 degrees, as it was at every other session 
 which discussed the subject, has either been ignored or misrepre- 
 sented by every advocate of the Whitman Legend, since a fair pre- 
 sentation of it would utterly overthrow that fundamental postu- 
 late of the Legend, that as late as 1843 our Government and people 
 were ignorant about and indifferent as to the political destiny of 
 Oregon, and that it was the establishment of missions to the Ore- 
 gon Indians in 1834 by the Methodist and 1836 by the American 
 Board which wakened the nation to an appreciation of the value 
 of Oregon. 
 
 The fact is that as early as the autumn of 1828, before there 
 was a mile of railroad on this continent, and five years before there 
 was any move to send any missionaries to Oregon, and eight years 
 before Whitman established his mission there, there was such wide- 
 spread interest in Oregon that in regions as widely separated as 
 Massachusetts, Ohio and Louisiana there was a wholly inexplicable 
 craze to migrate to Oregon, there being organizations from Boston, 
 New Orleans and Ohio seeking grants of large tracts of land in 
 Oregon from this second session of the 20th Congress.
 
 186 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 The Massachusetts Association undoubtedly was mainly the re- 
 sult of the untiring efforts of Hall J. Kelley, ever since 1817, to 
 start a migration to Oregon, but I have never been able to discover 
 what caused the New Orleans and the Ohio organizations. 
 
 Barrows is chietly responsible for the widespread opinion that 
 the nation was indifferent about Oregon, and his treatment of this 
 great debate is a fair sample of the disingenuous treatment he 
 gives to the whole subject. 
 
 On p. 76 of his "Oregon" he says: "This renewal of the ar- 
 rangement of 1818 was confirmed by Congress, but immediately a 
 great and protracted debate arose in that body. A bill was re- 
 ported in the House authorizing the President to survey the terri- 
 tory west of the mountains between the parallels of forty-two and 
 fifty-four forty, occupy the same by military posts and garrisons 
 and extend the laws of the United States over it. The bill was 
 lost, and very little interest on the subject showed itself again in 
 Congress for many years." 
 
 To the ordinary mind it would seem evident that if there was 
 that profound ignorance about Oregon till Whitman reached the 
 States in 1843 which his book continually asserts, "a great and 
 protracted debate about it" in Congress in 1828-29 would not have 
 occurred, but such self-stultifications as that are common in this 
 most worthless and misleading book, whose success in completely 
 deceiving the public about the whole history of the Oregon acquisi- 
 tion does little credit to the historians who, without investigating 
 original sources, accepted it as authority, and copied its shameful 
 slanders alike of American statesmen and of the Hudson's Bay 
 Co., and its garbled and fabricated quotations, and printed them 
 even in our school histories, till the circulation of my manuscripts 
 in 1905 and 1900 drove these fictions out of all of them whose 
 authors cared to have their books accurate. 
 
 Perhaps the most striking example of the pernicious influence 
 of Barrows on a really great historian, who had accepted him as 
 authority without investigation, is seen in McMaster's treatment 
 of this debate, in Vol. V. of his "History of the People of the United 
 States," pp. 477-83, as follows: "The debate which followed richly 
 deserves to be read, as a fine illustration of how little the men of 
 that day understood the marvelous growth of their country, which 
 in less than twenty years was to found two States in the region 
 they did not think worth having." 
 
 To support this assertion that "the men of that day" did not 
 think Oregon "worth having," McMaster quotes 84 lines, or nearly 
 three pages, from the speeches of Mitchell of Tennessee and Bates 
 of Missouri, although their speeches only covered one-fifth of the 
 report of the discussion; and from the speeches of those who fa-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 187 
 
 vored the acquisition of Oregon (though some of the ablest of them 
 opposed the pending bill as in violation of the treaty of 1827), he 
 only quotes 11 lines, or, counting his own abstracts of their speeches 
 with the quotations he makes from them, he only prints 20 lines 
 from those who favored the Oregon acquisition, and does not name 
 a single one of them! 
 
 But Mitchell and Bates were two absolute political nonentities, 
 both having been repudiated by their constituencies at the elections 
 the preceding autumn — Mitchell after two terms and Bates at the 
 end of one term as Representatives in Congress — and but for these 
 ridiculous speeches on Oregon, resurrected to seem to support the 
 Whitman Legend, they would both have rested forever in the po- 
 litical oblivion to which those who knew them best had consigned 
 them in the autumn of 1828, for neither of them ever again was 
 able to achieve an election to any office as important as Member 
 of Congress, though a whole generation afterwards Lincoln, in 
 1861, finding it desirable to have a Cabinet officer from a border 
 State, called Bates, who was a good lawyer, into his Cabinet as 
 Attorney-General, where he served two and a third years. These 
 two men from whom McMaster quotes nearly three pages to sup- 
 port the theory that ''the men of that day did not think Oregon 
 worth having," served therefore an aggregate of eight and one-third 
 years in positions as important as or more important than a Rep- 
 resentative in Congress; and the name of neither one is associated 
 with the initiation of any measure of the slighest consequence in 
 our political, or economical, or social condition. 
 
 But the men who in this same debate favored the acquisition 
 of Oregon included two who were subsequently Presidents, Polk 
 and Buchanan; two who were subsequently Secretaries of State, 
 Buchanan and Everett; two who were subsequently Speakers of 
 the House, Taylor of New York for 3 years and Polk of Tennessee 
 for 4 years; two who were subsequently Senators, Buchanan for 
 12 years, and Everett for 1 year, when ill health compelled his res- 
 ignation ; two who were subsequently Ministers to England, Bu- 
 chanan for 3 years and Everett for 4 years; three who were sub- 
 sequently Governors, Everett of Massachusetts for 4 years, Floyd 
 of Virginia for 4 years, Polk of Tennessee for 2 years; and three 
 who were subsequently Ministers to Russia, Buchanan for 2 years, 
 Cambreling for 4 years, and Ingersoll of Connecticut for 2 years 
 when he resigned. 
 
 In the list were also the following elected over and over again 
 to the House: Buchanan, Pa., 10 years; Cambreling, N. Y., 18 
 years; Drayton, S. C, 8 years; Everett, Mass., 10 years; Gurley, 
 La., 8 years; Floyd, Va., 12 years; Ingersoll, Conn., 8 years; Reed, 
 Mass. (from his long service often called ''the life member"), 24
 
 188 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 years; Storrs, N, Y., 10 years; Strong, N. Y., 10 years; Taylor, N. 
 Y., 20 years; Polk, Tenn., 14 years. 
 
 Against the aggregate of eiglit and one-third years of service of 
 Mitchell and Kates in public stations as important as or more im- 
 portant than Represent a tive, those of whom McMaster does not 
 mention one name, and from whose speeches he only quotes and 
 abstracts less than one-quarter of what he quotes from Bates and 
 Mitchell, served as Kepresentatives, Senators, Secretaries of State, 
 Presidents, Ministers to England and Russia and Governors of 
 States an aggregate of more than 200 years. 
 
 These plainly were the strong men of the House — the men whose 
 speeches showed whether or not; the ''men of that day thought Or- 
 gon worth having." 
 
 Let us see what a few of them said, as stated in "Debates in 
 Congress," 20th Cong., 2d Sess.: 
 
 (lurley of Louisiana (p. 145) "He was decidedly opposed to the 
 exploration of the country before the occupation of it, as was sug- 
 gested by the gentlemen from Missouri and New York. They 
 should be simultaneous. He could see no possible object in it un- 
 less we were i)rei)ared to surrender it if it did not e(]ual our ex- 
 pectations, which he presumed all would disdain. 
 
 "If it was as barren as the deserts of Siberia we should never 
 surrender it, and he would do nothing that could be so construed, 
 as would necessarily be such a proposition. He said we could not 
 surrender the territory if we would. 
 
 "We were already committed on this subject, having long since 
 made and published to the world that no foreign power should 
 plant a colony on this continent. We. could not, therefore, without 
 violating our own honor, truth and sincerity voluntarily surrender 
 this territory to any foreign power." 
 
 Cambreling of New York (p. 171) : "But, sir, it is vain to talk 
 of surrendering the country beyond the Rocky Mountains. The 
 gentleman from Missouri asks 'If we will fight for it.' Yes, sir, if 
 it was as frightful in every feature as that gentleman has described 
 it; if it was barren as the Arabian sands; nay, sir, if it was bleak 
 and desolate as an iceberg, the American people would never yield 
 it, they would never allow themselves to be dispossessed of it by 
 the Hudson's Bay Co. ; they would never surrender it to Great 
 Britain, 
 
 "They ought not. A people who would be governed by such a 
 policy — who would not go to war in defense of the national do- 
 minion and honor — should withdraw from the society of nations." 
 
 Drayton of South Carolina (p. 142) "The British settlers in 
 what I shall term the territory of Oregon (for the want of a known 
 appellation distinguishing the territory upon the northwest coast
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 189 
 
 of America in dispute between Great Britain and ourselves) are 
 already protected." ... (p. 143, 1st col.) "From the distance 
 of the territory of Oregon, and from the natural barriers and ob- 
 stacles by land which are interposed between it and the United 
 States, I have never dreamed of its becoming a State. 
 
 "I believe it will never be organized as a territory. I much 
 doubt the benefits of possessing it; but we have it, and whether we 
 be influenced by national honor and policy or less meritorious mo- 
 tives, we shall never voluntarily relinquish it; it will never be 
 yielded, should the title be found to be in us, but to superior physi- 
 cal power. Considering ourselves as rightfully entitled to the 
 country, we should conduct ourselves towards it as wise and poli- 
 tic sovereigns; as such we ought, in the most economical and effi- 
 cient manner which is practicable, to secure its adherence to us, 
 to protect, in their persons and in their property, those of our citi- 
 zens who inhabit it, or who may occasionally resort to it in the 
 pursuit of their lawful occupations, and to derive from it all the 
 advantages we can. The measures which I have advocated will, it 
 seems to me, produce these results. I am, therefore, for adopting 
 them." 
 
 Ingersoll of Connecticut (p. 188) "But, when, although he en- 
 tertained these opinions, still, when the question was put and turn 
 it as you may, it will come to this, whether we shall surrender this 
 vast territory into the hands of the British or maintain our own 
 jurisdiction there, he was ready to give a positive and decisive 
 answer. It should not with his consent go into the hands of a 
 foreign power." 
 
 Buchanan (p. 120) "He was not unfriendly to the bill, but 
 thought its language ought to be studied with care lest the nation 
 should inadvertently compromise its own rights. He disliked the 
 feature in the amendment which proposed a monopoly to one com- 
 pany of forty miles square; and believing that the subject required 
 more mature consideration moved that the committee rise, and it 
 rose accordingly." 
 
 Everett of Massachusetts (p. 126) "Mr. Edw. Everett stated 
 that in that part of the country from which he came there was an 
 association of 3,000 individuals, respectable farmers and indus- 
 trious artisans, who stood ready to embark in this enterprise, so 
 soon as the permission and protection of the Government should 
 be secured to them, and expressed a doubt whether an exclusive 
 grant of forty miles square to the Louisiana company would have 
 a just and proper bearing upon other settlers equally enterprising 
 and meritorious." 
 
 Polk of Tennessee (pp. 129-32) showed that he had carefully 
 studied the record of the negotiations of 1826-7 and urged caution.
 
 190 ACQUISITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 lest the bill then proposed by Floyd of Virginia, as chairman of the 
 committee on the Oregon Territory, should coullict with the treaty 
 of August 6, 1827, and so involve us in war with Great Britain and 
 perhaps result in loss of the whole territory in dispute. On p. 130 
 he says that in the discussion of the question between Mr. Gallatin 
 and the British plenij)otentiaries in 1827 the question of exclusive 
 occu]>ancy was taken up. "Mr. Gallatin, our Minister, in a letter 
 dated at London, June 27, 1827, addressed to his Government, gives 
 the views entertained by the respective parties. He says: 'The 
 British plenipotentiaries had it in contemplation to insert in the 
 protocol a declaration purporting either, that, according to their 
 understanding of the agreement, either party had a right to take 
 military ])ossession of the country, or, that, if the United States 
 did establish any military posts in the country Great Britain 
 would do the same.' They preferred the first mode, as the other 
 might be construed by the United States as having the appearance 
 of a threat. Great Britain, they said, had no wish to establish 
 such posts, and would do it only in self-defense." 
 
 "Again they say, as stated by Mr. Gallatin in the same letter, 
 'Occasional disturbances between the traders of the two countries 
 might be overlooked; but any question connected with the flag of 
 either power would be of a serious nature, and might commit them 
 in a most inconvenient and dangerous manner.' " (P. 132, col. 1) 
 *'We ought, he said, to pause before we pass this bill ; not that he 
 would, for a moment, think of abandoning our title (for he be- 
 lieved it to be the better one), or of permitting any foreign power 
 to become the owner of the country. 
 
 "We should not act now; but as the question of title is left to 
 future adjustment by negotiation, until we ascertain that there is 
 no hope for regulating it by the Executive, let us postpone any 
 measure on the subject. In the meantime, he would not permit 
 Great Britain, or any other power, to take exclusive possession of 
 it. By delay we can lose nothing. By acting now, we may hazard 
 much." 
 
 Early in the debate Floyd (pp. 125-129) "Adverted to a peti- 
 tion now before Congress of a company of persons in New Orleans 
 offering to commence a colony at their own expense ; on the leader 
 of which company, a former schoolfellow of his own, he bestowed 
 the highest praise." 
 
 Gurley of Louisiana moved as an amendment to the bill that 
 the New Orleans Co. be granted forty miles square of land. 
 
 The next day this amendment of Gurley's was modified by 
 striking out that part of it which provided that our Government 
 should extinguish the Indian title to forty miles square of land in 
 favor of John M. Bradford and his associates (a company of ad-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 191 
 
 venturers proposing to set out from New Orleans) ; and also by in- 
 serting the names of Paul and J. Kelley (doubtless meant for Hall 
 J. Kelley) and his associates (a similar company from Massachu- 
 setts) ; and Albert Town and his associates (a company from Ohio), 
 as entitled to the permission granted by the bill for the erection 
 of a fort on certain conditions. 
 
 Later Floyd said: (p. 192) "On all occasions the Government 
 seem to have taken upon themselves to think for the people; and 
 in all instances have been behind the enterprise of private indi- 
 viduals — so true is it they perceive their own interests long before 
 Government can be prevailed upon to co-operate, or permit them 
 to pursue what would seem to be manifest to all. At an early day 
 Britain attempted to arrest this wave of emigration, which was 
 rolling to the West; and by proclamation prohibited any from set- 
 tling beyond the Alleghany Mountains, which was at that time a 
 part of Louisiana, according to the claims of the French King. Nor 
 was private enterprise more successful in obtaining the approba- 
 tion of Government in the settlement of Tennessee. Gov. Sevier, 
 one of their most enterprising and respectable citizens, was out- 
 lawed for making the attempt. 
 
 "It is true that all the western part of Virginia, which at that 
 day comprised the country on the southern bank of the Ohio River 
 from its mouth to the Great Kanawha, was settled by private en- 
 terprise, and was approved by that State, which has always acted 
 with liberality to her citizens. Even this Government, hardly re- 
 leased from British rule, thought, or acted as though it thought, 
 the people ought to be directed and controlled in the pursuit of 
 happiness, as they attempted to arrest or prevent the settlement 
 of Boone's Lick, the finest and most fertile portion of the State of 
 Missouri. The result was a complete failure. The people in the 
 pursuit in their own way persisted, disregarding these efforts, and 
 did that which all now acknowledge would have been injurious to 
 the country to have failed to do." 
 
 Richardson of Massachusetts (one of the committee who re- 
 ported the bill), (on p. 138) said: "But the descriptions given yes- 
 terday by gentlemen {i. e., Bates and Mitchell) on the opposite 
 side, of the Oregon Territory have almost shaken my confidence in 
 the correctness of the judgment I had formed. They have de- 
 scribed the territory as a region of desolation, the river unnavi- 
 gable, the whole claim as worse than worthless, and, as it would 
 seem, even reproachful to its author. 
 
 "How are these contradictory statements to be accounted for? 
 Those who have navigated the river and traversed the region from 
 the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific have represented the country 
 as luxuriant and beautiful.
 
 192 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 ''Sir, I am old enough to remember having read the speeches in 
 Congress on the question of the acquisition of Louisiana, when 
 that question was pending. The most horrible pictures of that 
 country were drawn in Congress and spread before the Union to 
 deter the Government from the accpiisition. 
 
 "And, sir, I have read accounts published by foreign travelers, 
 and which were spread through Europe, describing the whole of 
 the United States as country fit to be inhabited by none but wild 
 beasts and savages. Of such accounts there were latent causes 
 which (iuH' has unfolded. I5ofore the face of the world events have 
 contradicted those accounts. Surely the statements of gentlemen 
 on all sides of what they have not seen are to be received with 
 caution." 
 
 As the provisions of the bill plainly violated the terms of the 
 treaty of 1827, it is evident that it was not designed that it should 
 be enacted, but only that as a part of the campaign of education 
 and stimulation about Oregon it should be thoroughly debated, 
 and the fact that our Government — like that of Great Britain — 
 could not grant land to any one in Oregon while that treaty re- 
 mained in force, should be so emphasized that those infected with 
 the Oregon migration fever even at that early date, might under- 
 stand that although our Government was inflexibly determined to 
 hold Oregon, at least as far north as 19 degrees, it could grant no 
 title to lands in Oregon until that treaty should be abrogated and 
 a boundary line should be established between Oregon and the 
 British possessions on the north of it. 
 
 The bill was finally defeated by 75 to 99. 
 
 It is an amusing commentary on the claims made by Benton 
 and L. (J. Tnylor and some others that Oregon was saved to the 
 United States by the action of Western and Southern men against 
 the indifference about or the opposition to its acquisition of the 
 statesmen from the Northeastern States, and especially New Eng- 
 land, that in this, the most extensive and thorough debate ever 
 had on Oregon prior to that of the winter of 1842-:{ in the Senate, 
 the only two Representatives who denounced Oregon worthless and 
 iniiccessible were ^litchell of Tennessee and liates of Missouri, 
 while of the fourteen who declared in most emphatic terms its 
 great value and insisted that we owned it, and sooner or later would 
 certainly assert our title to it, and maintain that title at all haz- 
 ards, three — Everett, Reed and Richardson represented Massachu- 
 setts districts; one — Ingersoll, a Connecticut district; and lour — 
 Cambrel ing, Storrs, Strong and Taylor represented New York dis- 
 tricts, while Gurley, though representing a Louisiana district, was 
 born and reared in Connecticut and graduated froni Yale College, 
 and Strong was also a native of Connecticut.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 193 
 
 Ten years passed before there was another considerable debate 
 on and committee report about Oregon in the House of Representa- 
 tives. 
 
 In the first session of the 21st Congress there was no discus- 
 sion about Oregon, but early in the session a resolution was passed 
 requesting the President to transmit any information in his pos- 
 session respecting the British establishments on the Columbia and 
 the state of the fur trade. 
 
 January 24, 1831, Jackson wrote a very brief message, trans- 
 mitting letters of Gen. W. H. Ashley, Maj, Joshua L. Pilcher, 
 Smith, Sublette and Jackson, or the Rocky Mountain Fur Co., and 
 Lewis Cass and Gen. William Clark. January 25, 1831, it was read 
 and referred to the Committee on Military Affairs, and January 
 26 it was reported back from that committee, and 1,500 copies or- 
 dered printed besides the usual number for the use of the Senate. 
 It is Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 39, Vol. I., 21st Cong., 1st Sess. (p. 34), and 
 with its descriptions of Ashley's method of conducting his fur trad- 
 ing expeditions, and Pilcher's simple, straightforward and graphic 
 story of his remarkable explorations, and his descriptions of passes 
 over the Continental Divide by which wagons could be easily driven 
 into the Oregon Territory; and the Rocky Mountain Fur Co.'s re- 
 cital of their extensive operations and explorations (with from 80 
 to 100 men divided into small parties) of "all the country beyond 
 the Rocky Mountains from the Gulf of California to the mouth of 
 the Columbia," and the story of their successful experiment in 
 driving 10 five-mule wagons and two Dearborns or light wagons 
 from St. Louis to the foot of the South Pass and back to St. Louis, 
 between April 10 and October 10, 1830, and their declaration — 
 based not on conjecture, but on the knowledge derived from their 
 own explorations — that they could have driven the wagons to the 
 Great Falls of the Columbia if they had cared to do it, make this 
 one of the most valuable documents ever printed concerning the 
 Rocky Mountain and Pacific regions, and one which is still and 
 must ever be full of interest to all who care to know the true his- 
 tory of the development of the region beyond the Missouri. 
 
 I have quoted from it at some length in Chapter V., and must 
 quote more from it in Chapter VII., and will only say here that 
 it was repeatedly referred to and its essential portions not only re- 
 printed in later Government reports and in debates in Congress, 
 but also in newspapers and magazine articles. 
 
 On the 1st of August, 1831, Jackson's ^Administration took up 
 again the diplomatic phase of the question, but England not caring 
 to settle the matter then, no farther offer was made by our Gov- 
 ernment to negotiate upon it for more than a dozen years there- 
 after
 
 194 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 The only record 1 have found of this 1881 effort is on pp. 29-30 
 of Sen. Ex. Doc. 489, L*9th Couj;., 1st Sess., in a letter from James 
 Buchanan, Secretary of State, to Louis McLane, then our Minister 
 to Euf^land, dated July 12, 1845, in a resume of the diplomacy of 
 the Orejj^on question up to that time, as follows: "The next notice 
 of this question will be found under the administration of General 
 Jackson. It is contained in the instructions of Mr. Livinj^ston 
 (Secretary of State), to Mr. Van Buren (our Minister to ]Cn<;]and), 
 dated on the 1st of August, 1831. . . . After stating that the 
 term of joint occupation was indefinitely continued for the pur- 
 pose, in the language of the treaty, 'of giving time to mature meas- 
 ures which shall have for their object a more definite settlement 
 of the claims of each ])arty to the said territory,' they go on to 
 remark that 'this subject, then, is open for discussion; and until 
 the rights of the parties can be settled by negotiation, ours can 
 suffer nothing by delay.' From the 1st of August, 1831, the date 
 of Mr. Livingston's instructions to Mr. Van Buren, until the 9th 
 of October, 3843, no further notice of the Oregon question was 
 taken in any instructions from this dej^artment. On that day Mr. 
 Upshur, then the Secretary of State under Mr. Tyler's administra- 
 tion, addressed instructions to Mr. Everett on that subject." 
 
 But as we shall speedily see there was abundance of executive 
 and Congressional action in these twelve years to acquire and dis- 
 seminate far and wide, not only in this country, but in England 
 also, full and very valuable information about Oregon, and to in- 
 form not only our own citizens, but the English i)eople and Govern- 
 ment as well, that we were determined at all hazards to hold Ore- 
 gon as far north as the 49th degree. 
 
 May 21, 1831, Capt. B. L. E. Bonneville wrote to Maj. Gen. 
 Alex. Macomb, commanding the United States Army, asking leave 
 of absence for his famoiis expedition to the Rocky Mountains, 
 partly for fur trading and trapping and partl}^ for geographical 
 exploration, and observation of the British and American trading 
 establishments beyond the Rocky Mountains. (Cf. Bonneville's 
 [unpublished] Ap])lication for Furlough in War Dept. archives.) 
 
 August 3, 1831, Gen. Macomb wrote him that his application 
 had been submitted to the War Department and api)roved, and 
 leave of absence granted him until October, 1833, and after enum- 
 erating many things which it was desired he should observe and 
 report to the Government, he concluded with ''in short, every in- 
 formation which you may conceive would be useful to the Govern- 
 ment." (Cf. Aj)p. to Irving's Bonneville.) 
 
 May 1, 1832, with 110 men and 20 wagons, he set out from the 
 Missouri frontier. Unforeseen delay caused him to overstay his 
 furlough, and he did not reach the frontier settlements of Missouri
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 195 
 
 on his return till August 22, 1835, and meanwhile, as very full dis- 
 patches which he had confided to Mr. Cerre in 1833 had failed to 
 reach Washington, by the order of President Jackson his name was 
 stricken from the army rolls, and it was with very considerable 
 difficulty that he secured its restoration. He subsequently was in 
 command of Fort Vancouver, after the United States Government 
 took the old Hudson's Bay Co. post there as a military reservation, 
 and served faithfully in the civil war, rising to be Colonel and 
 Brevet Brigadier General, and remained an army officer till his 
 death, June 12, 1878, after being an officer in the army 621/2 years. 
 
 We have already learned that he developed the first transconti- 
 nental wagon road from where the Rocky Mountain Fur Co. 
 stopped in 1830, at the east end of the South Pass, by driving his 
 twenty loaded wagons through that broad, grassy valley over the 
 summit of the Continental Divide and into the Oregon Territory 
 some sixty miles to Green River. 
 
 Irving's ''Bonneville" (published in both New York and Lon- 
 don in 1837, as his "Astoria" had been in 1836) — and ever since 
 one of the most widely read books of western travel and adven- 
 ture — stimulated interest in and determination to hold Oregon in 
 all parts of our land, as "Astoria" had done. 
 
 Bonneville's unpublished dispatches, and still more his personal 
 interviews, undoubtedly gave much valuable information about the 
 operations of the Hudson's Bay Co., the face of the country, the 
 resources and the climate of Eastern Oregon — for he did not get 
 as far west as the Cascades, turning back from the Columbia at a 
 point about midway between Fort Walla Walla and the Dalles. 
 (Cf. Bonneville, Chapter 46.) 
 
 No sooner had Bonneville reported in Washington than Presi- 
 dent Jackson determined to have a report from a competent man 
 of the then existing conditions in Western Oregon, and selected 
 Lieut. William A. Slacum of the Navy for the task, and (for some 
 reason unknown), issued through the State, and not the Navy De- 
 partment, the following letter of instructions to him: 
 
 "State Dept., Washington, Nov. 11, 1835. 
 
 "Lieut. William A. Slacum, 
 
 "Sir: Having understood that you are about to visit the Pa- 
 cific Ocean the President has determined to avail himself of the 
 opportunity thus afforded to obtain some specific authentic informa- 
 tion in regard to the inhabitants of the country in the neighbor- 
 hood of the Oregon or Columbia River. In the belief that you will 
 willingly lend your services in the prosecution of this object, I now 
 give you, by the President's direction, such general instructions as
 
 196 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 may be necessary for your <i;nidance in the execution of the pro- 
 posed commission. 
 
 "I'pon your arrival on the northwest coast of America you will 
 embrace the earliest oj)portunity to proceed to and up the river 
 Oregon, by such conveyances as may be thought to otter the great- 
 est facility for attaining the end in view. 
 
 "You will, from time to time, as they occur in your progress, 
 stop at the different settlements of whites on the coast of the 
 United States, and on the banks of the river, and also at the 
 various Indian villages on the banks or in the immediate neighbor- 
 hood of that river; ascertain as nearly as possible the population 
 of each; the relative number of whites (distinguishing the nations 
 to which they belong) and aborigines; the jurisdiction the whites 
 acknowledge; the sentiments entertained by all in respect to the 
 United States and to the two European powers having possessions 
 in that region; and, generally, endeavor to obtain all such informa- 
 tion, political, physical, statistical and geographical as may prove 
 useful or interesting to this Government. For this purpose it is 
 recommended that you should whilst employed on this service keep 
 a journal in which to note down whatever may strike you as worthy 
 of observation, and by the aid of which you will be enabled, when 
 the journey is com])leted, to make a full and accurate report to the 
 Dei)artment of all the information you may have collected in re- 
 gard to the country and its inhabitants. 
 
 "Your necessary and reasonable traveling expenses will be paid 
 from the beginning of your journey from the coast of the Pacific to 
 the Columbia River and till your return to this city. 
 
 "(Signed) JOHN FORSYTH, 
 
 "Secretary of State." 
 
 Slacum's report is to be found in Sen. Ex. Doc. 24, 25th Cong., 
 2d Sess., Vol. I. (p. 31), read December 18, 1837, and ordered 
 l)rinted and referred to Committee on Foreign Relations, consist- 
 ing of Ruchanan, Clay, Tallmadge, Rivers and King of Alabama; 
 
 He left Guaymas, Mexico, June 1, 1836, had much difhculty in 
 reaching the Sandwich Islands, but arrived there November 5, 1836, 
 and chartered the brig Loriot, and on November 24 set sail for the 
 Columbia River, and arrived there December 22, 1836. 
 
 On the lOth of February, 1837, he sailed out of the Columbia 
 and towards Rodega and the Russian Settlement in California. 
 
 His "Report" proper begins on p. 3 of his memorial, and is 
 dated "American Rrig Loriot, off San Bias, March 26, 1837," and 
 is very valuable and was repeatedly quoted in later committee re- 
 ports to both the Senate aiid the House, and referred to in debates 
 in both Houses as of the highest value.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 197 
 
 Its most important parts are: (1) The account of the forma- 
 tion of the company which went to California and purchased a 
 large band of cattle. (2) The statements concerning the agri- 
 cultural and stock raising value of the Oregon country. (3) The 
 enthusiastic argument for our insisting on holding the Puget Sound 
 region, as follows : 
 
 (P. 12) "In the course of conversation with Mr. Lee, Young 
 and other settlers, I found that nothing was wanting to insure 
 comfort, wealth and every happiness to the people of this most 
 beautiful country but the possession of neat cattle, all of those in 
 the country being owned by the Hudson's Bay Co., who refuse to 
 sell them under any circumstances whatever. I then proposed to 
 give as many of the settlers as chose to embark in the Loriot a 
 free passage to California, where they might procure cattle at $3.00 
 a head." 
 
 (P. 13) '^I advanced Mr. Lee |500. This sum, added to the 
 contributions of the settlers, produced $1,600, a sum sufficient to 
 purchase 500 head of cattle in California." . . . "At a public 
 meeting that took place at 'Camp Maud De Sable' on the subject 
 of the expedition to California the liveliest interest appeared to be 
 felt when I told the 'Canadians' that, although they were located 
 within the territorial limits of the United States, their pre-emption 
 rights would doubtless be secured to them when our Government 
 should take possession of the country." 
 
 It is plain that without this initiative by Slacum there would 
 have been no cattle company, and as appears from the "Copy of a 
 Document by Dr. McLoughlin, 'He subscribed in behalf of the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co. for one-half the stock of the cattle company.' " 
 
 Yet the writers who seek to make it appear that everything 
 good in the early settlement of Oregon was due to the Methodist 
 and American Board missionaries ascribe this entire project to 
 Eev. Jason Lee, and those of them who are most malignant to- 
 wards the Hudson's Bay Co. accuse that company of having bit- 
 terly opposed the cattle company, Gray even going so far as to 
 accuse the Hudson's Bay Co. of inciting the Rogue River Indians 
 "to destroy the expedition." (Cf. Gray's "History of Oregon," p. 
 156; Spalding's pamphlet, [Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 37, 41st Cong., 3d 
 Sess.], p. 75.) 
 
 (P. 16 "I consider the Willhamet" (Willamette) "the finest 
 grazing country in the world. Here there are no droughts, as on 
 the pampas of Buenos Ayres or the plains of California, whilst the 
 lands abound with richer grasses, both in winter and summer." 
 
 (P. 17) "It may be fairly estimated that the valleys of the 
 rivers certainly within the limits of the United States (exclusive 
 of the Columbia and Willamette) contain at least 14,000,000 acres
 
 198 ACQUT8ITI0X OF OREGON 
 
 of land of first quality, equal to the best lands of Missouri or Illi- 
 nois. ... 1 be^ leave to call your attention to the topography 
 of 'Pugitt's Sound/ and urge in the most earnest manner that this 
 point should never be abandoned. If the United States claim, as 
 I hope they ever will, at least as far as 49 degrees of north lati- 
 tude, running due west from the 'Lake of the Woods' on the above 
 ])arallel we shall take in 'Pugitt's Sound.' In a military point of 
 view, it is of the highest importance to the United States. . . . 
 I hope our claim to T)-! degrees of north latitude will never be 
 abandoned; at all events, we should never give up Pugitt's Sound, 
 nor i)ermit the free navigation of the Columbia, unless, indeed, a 
 fair equivalent was offered, such as the free navigation of the St. 
 LaAvrence." 
 
 It is a very significant fact that less than eight months after 
 this earnest plea by this naval officer for holding on to the Puget's 
 Sound region was read in Congress, the Navy Department, on Au- 
 gust 11, 1838, in its "instructions" to Lieut. Charles Wilkes, wiien 
 setting sail in command of by far the most extensive exploring ex- 
 pedition this Ciovernment has ever sent out, consisting of six ships 
 and nearly GOO men, specifically directed him to spend six months 
 of the three years that it was then supposed would be required for 
 the whole exploration, as follows: "Thence" (i e., from the Sand- 
 wich Islands in April) "you will direct your course to the north- 
 west' coast of America, making such surveys and examinations, first 
 of the territory of the United States on the seaboard and of the 
 Columbia Hiver, and afterwards along the coast of California, with 
 special reference to the Bay of San Francisco, as you can accom- 
 plish by the month of October following." 
 
 How faithfully Wilkes carried out these instructions in the 
 summer of 1841 and of what great value not only Congress but the 
 nation at large deemed his "Special Report" of his work in Oregon, 
 filed in the Navy Department June 13, 1842, we shall see a little 
 later, but we must first consider what was done about Oregon in 
 the Senate and House of Representatives in 1838-1842. 
 
 At the first (or special) session of the 25th Congress the Hou.se 
 of Representatives, on October 9, and the Senate, on October 16, 
 1837, unanimously adopted resolutions requesting the President: 
 "If not incompatible with the i)ublic interests, to communicate 
 to each body at the next session of Congress information as to 
 whether any, and if so, what portion of the territory of the United 
 States west of the Rocky Mountains and bordering on the Pacific 
 Ocean is in the possession of any foreign power, and if so, in what 
 way, by what authority and how long such possession or occu])ancy 
 has been kept." The Senate resolution also asked that there should 
 be communicated any correspondence between our Government and
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 199 
 
 any foreign Government relative to the occupation of said terri- 
 tory. 
 
 These resolutions were referred to the State Department for a 
 report, and December 22, 1837, to the Senate, and December 26, 
 1837, to the House of Representatives, President Van Buren sent 
 two line messages of transmittal of the two reports of John For- 
 syth, Secretary of State, in response to these resolutions. To each 
 body the Report stated that the Astoria establishment had passed 
 into the hands of the British North West Co. by sale of Astor's 
 interest, during the war of 1812, and on the consolidation of that 
 company with the Hudson's Bay Co. it had passed to and remained 
 in possession of that company, and that its retention by them, and 
 the establishment of other trading posts by them within the Ore- 
 gon Territory was not deemed incompatible with the provisions of 
 the treaties of 1818 and 1827. The Senate was also informed that 
 no correspondence had been had on the occupation of the said ter- 
 ritory with any foreign government since the convention of August 
 6, 1827, was made. (Cf. Messages and Papers of the Presidents. 
 Richardson, Vol. III., pp. 397-8.) 
 
 At the second session of the 25th Congress (December 11, 1837, 
 to July 9, 1838), on February 7, 1838, Senator Lewis F. Linn of 
 Missouri introduced a bill to establish Oregon Territory. (Cf. 
 Cong. Globe, p. 168.) 
 
 This was debated by Clay of Kentucky, Buchanan of Pennsyl- 
 vania, Linn and Benton of Missouri and Lyon of , and in 
 
 the course of the debate Clay declared (p. 169) that he had intro- 
 duced the word ''possessions" into the Treaty of Ghent for the pur- 
 pose of securing (as it did) the restoration of Astoria to the United 
 States. 
 
 February 13, 1838, the Senate unanimously adopted a motion 
 calling on the Secretary of War to send to the Senate all informa- 
 tion in his Department relating to the Oregon Territory and to 
 have a map of the territory made for the use of the Senate. (Cong. 
 Globe, p. 179.) 
 
 June 6, 1838, Linn, as chairman of the Select Committee on the 
 Oregon Territory, presented a report (Sen. Ex. Doc. 470, 25th 
 Cong., 2d Sess.) covering 23 pages, with a copy of the famous Ul- 
 timatum Map. 
 
 It begins with : "The attention of the Government has been, on 
 several occasions, called to this important subject by bills and reso- 
 lutions, through able and elaborate reports from committees of 
 Congress, and in various Executive communications." 
 
 On the question of our right to the Oregon Territory it says: 
 (p. 3) "This question has been so ably argued by the late Gov- 
 ernor Floyd, who was the first to urge on Congress the use and
 
 200 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 occupation of the Oregon Territory, by Mr. F. Baylies, in two re- 
 ports to the House of Kepreseiitatives, and in the diplomatic cor- 
 respondence of our Oovernnient with (Jreat Britain, and in various 
 other public documents, as to make it unnecessary for us to go at 
 large into this subject." 
 
 On p. 2 it quotes in full the letter of instructions from the State 
 Department to Lieut. Slacum (as hereinbefore given), and on later 
 pages quotes freely from Slacum's Report, not forgetting to include 
 (on p. 10) his eulogy of Puget's Sound (hereinbefore quoted), and 
 from the Reports of Lewis and Clark, and J. B. Prevost, and from 
 Irving's ''Astoria," and also quotes (pp. 20-23) Gray's "Log Book 
 of the Columbia," May 7-21, 1792. 
 
 On p. 31, after briefly reciting that Col. Dodge, between May 
 29 and September IG, 1835, had marched three companies of the 
 Second Regiment of Dragoons (with two pieces of artillery and two 
 wagon loads of tlour, and 25 head of beef cattle), from Fort Leav- 
 enworth up the riatte River to the Rocky Mountains, and after a 
 month's stay there had continued south to the Arkansas River, and 
 thence back to Leavenworth, a distance of 1,600 miles, and had 
 only lost one man on the whole trip, the report continues : ''Col. 
 Dodge is decidedly of the opinion that an army could march with 
 ease from our western confines to the Pacific Ocean, taking with it 
 all its artillery, munitions of war and provisions." 
 
 On p. 11, speaking of the Continental Divide, it says: '"This 
 line of continuous mountains, when viewed at a distance, every- 
 where seems impassable; the mind shrinks or recoils from such 
 frowning and forbidding obstacles. But within ten or fifteen years 
 passes of such gentle ascent have been discovered that loaded 
 wagons easily traverse them." 
 
 Though the 23 ])ages of text is valuable, it contains absolutely 
 nothing new, and the chief importance of this report is that it is 
 the first one of four Congressional reports on Oregon to use the 
 map i)re}inred by the War Department "for use of the Senate" in 
 accordance with its unanimous resolution of February 13, 1838. 
 
 Of this, and Slacum's Chart of the Columbia (wiiich was also 
 used) the committee said: (P. 19) "The map of the Territory of 
 Oregon, and chart of the Columbia River, which accompany this 
 report, are believed to be the most correct, and furnish the most 
 recent and authentic information, of any yet published, and were 
 prepared by Colonel Abert, of the Topographical Bureau, with 
 much care and labor. The chart was made by Mr. Slacum, after 
 his recent visit to Oregon." 
 
 This map showed our line as 49 degrees through to the Pacific, 
 and bore, in i)lain type out in the "Pacific Ocean," where no bound- 
 ary line, or mountain chain, or stream, or anything else in the
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 201 
 
 slightest degree obscured it, the following legend : "The prolonga- 
 tion of the 49th parallel from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific 
 has been assumed as the northern boundary of the United States 
 possessions on the Northwest Coast, in consequence of the follow- 
 ing extract from the Hon. H. Clay's letter to Mr. Gallatin, dated 
 June 19, 1826 (see Doc. 199, 20th Cong., 1st Sess., H. of R.) : 'You 
 are authorized to propose the annulment of the third article of the 
 Convention of 1818, and the extension of the line on the parallel 
 of 49 degrees from the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains where 
 it now terminates to the Pacific Ocean as the permanent boundary 
 between the two powers in that quarter. This is our ultimatum, 
 and you may so announce it.' " 
 
 Of this, which may properly be called the "Ultimatum Map" of 
 Oregon, Congress ordered 20,000 copies in three other Reports, viz. : 
 10,000 in Cushing's Report (1839) ; 5,000 in Pendleton's first Re- 
 port (May, 1842) ; and 5,000 in Pendleton's second Report (Janu- 
 ary, 1843). 
 
 As these were "besides the usual number for the use of Con- 
 gress" (which was 1,500 copies) the entire number on the four Re- 
 ports was about 26,000. 
 
 How was it possible for our Government more emphatically to 
 announce to all the world its inflexible determination to adhere to 
 its ultimatum of 1826, and insist on 49 degrees as the northern 
 boundary of Oregon, than by thus publishing, in four Reports — in 
 1838, 1839, 1842 and 1843 (all unanimous by the committees, and 
 all unanimously adopted by the Senate or the House) — 26,000 
 copies of this "ultimatum map," a map not published by some irre- 
 sponsible publisher, but prepared by the War Department at the 
 unanimous request of the Senate, which is a part of the treaty 
 making power in our Government? 
 
 No advocate of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story seems ever 
 to have heard of our 1826 "ultimatum instructions" to Gallatin 
 hereinbefore quoted, nor of this "Ultimatum Map," and, so far as 
 I have been able to ascertain, I am the first writer on Oregon his- 
 tory who has mentioned either President Adams' "Ultimatum in- 
 structions" to Gallatin in 1826, or this "Ultimatum Map" of 1838- 
 1843. 
 
 At this second session of the 25th Congress the Message of 
 President Van Buren of December 26, 1837, relating to Oregon 
 was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, of which Caleb 
 Gushing of Massachusetts (one of the ablest lawyers of the land) 
 was a member (Cf. Cong. Globe, 25th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 401), and 
 May 17, 1838, Gushing delivered a very able speech covering 12i/2 
 columns. (Cf. App. to Cong. Globe, 25th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 565, 
 for verbatim report of this speech.) In this speech he appealed to
 
 202 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 ex-President John Q, Adams, then a member of the House, for con- 
 firmation of the accuracy of his statements of the facts as to our 
 rifijht to Orejion, characterizing Mr. Adams as "A living record of 
 the diplomatic history of the country." 
 
 In this speech (App., p. 567, 2d col.) Cushine; said: ''Mr. Astor 
 offered to renew his enterprises on the Columbia, provided the 
 Government would establish a military i)ost there with the most 
 trifling force, even a lieutenant's command; needing only the coun- 
 tenance and flag of the United States. If his advice had! been 
 adopted the question would have been settled then before the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co. had struck root in the Territory," 
 
 No report on Oregon was made to the House at thi.s session, 
 but at the third session Cushing, from the Committee on Foreign 
 Affairs, on January 4, 1839, made a report of 51 pages, of which, 
 on motion of John Q. Adams, 10,000 extra copies were ordered 
 printed (a number fully equivalent to 50,000 copies at the present 
 time), and on February 1(1, 1839, he made a supplemental report 
 of Gl Images, of which also 10,000 copies were ordered printed. 
 
 The two were printed together as ''Report No. 101, House of 
 Representatives, 25th Cong., 3d Sess.," with the ''Ultimatum Map." 
 It discusses all phases of the Oregon question very thoroughly, for 
 few men in America had so carefully studied that question or writ- 
 ten so much upon it as Cushing. In the North American Review — 
 then by far the most influential magazine published in the United 
 (States, and the only one which exercised any influence on opinion 
 in England — he had published three long articles on the Northwest 
 Coast of America: October, 1828 (36 pp.); January, 1837 (37 
 pp.) ; January, 1839 (34 pp.) ; and these were followed January, 
 1840, by an article of 70 pp. 
 
 On p. 15 of his Report, discussing the various (and as the Eng- 
 lish diplomats and writers had claimed conflicting) grounds under 
 which the United States claimed Oregon, he says: "Though their 
 several claims" (/. e., under Capt. Gray's discovery; the Louisiana. 
 Purchase; the explorations of Lewis and Clark; the Astoria settle- 
 ment, and the Florida Purchase) "conflicted with each other orig- 
 inally, they acquired mutual strength in the same hands; as if 
 three persons claim the same estate, one by deed or devise, another 
 by inheritance, and a third by possession, the union of all in one 
 person by purchase or otherwise would result in the best of titles." 
 
 On p. 16 he gives the following splendid description of the re- 
 sistless westward movement of our population : "Who shall under- 
 take to define the limits of the expansibility of the United States? 
 Does it not flow westward with the never ceasing advance of a ris- 
 ing tide of the sea? Along a line of more than a thousand miles
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 203 
 
 from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, perpetually moves forward 
 the westward frontier of the United States. 
 
 "Here, stretched along the whole length of this line, is the van- 
 guard as it were of the onward march of the Anglo-American race, 
 advancing, it has been calculated, at the average rate of about one- 
 half a degree of longitude each succeeding year. Occasionally an 
 obstacle presents itself, in some unproductive region of country or 
 some Indian tribe; the column is checked; its wings incline to- 
 wards each other; it breaks; but it speedily reunites again beyond 
 the obstacle, and resumes its forward progress, ever facing, and 
 approaching nearer and nearer to the remotest regions of the West. 
 This movement goes on with the predestined certainty and the un- 
 erring precision of the great works of Providence, rather than as 
 an act of feeble man. Another generation may see the settlements 
 of our people diffused over the Pacific slope of the Kocky Mountains. 
 It is idle to suppose any new colony to be sent out by Great Britain 
 will or can establish itself in the far West, ultimately to stand in 
 competition with this great movement of the population and power 
 of the United States." 
 
 As to the unanimity with which all our leading statesmen had 
 supported our claim to Oregon, this Report says: (on p. 22) "The 
 committee beg leave to subjoin, that in the course of this Report 
 they have not undertaken to raise any novel pretensions in behalf 
 of the United States. They have relied on the grounds of right 
 alleged by every American statesman who has had occasion to ex- 
 amine the subject from the time of Mr. Jefferson to the present 
 day; referring more especially to the instructions, correspondence 
 and despatches of Mr. Monroe, Mr. Adams, Mr. Rush, Mr. Clay, 
 Mr. Gallatin and Mr. Lawrence and the reports of Mr. Floyd, Mr. 
 Baylies and Mr. Linn, and superadding only such further illustra- 
 tions, facts and arguments as the personal research of the com- 
 mittee has brought to their knowledge." 
 
 It quotes fully from the previous reports of Baylies, Linn and 
 Slacum, including Slacum's enthusiastic endorsement of the Pu- 
 get's Sound region (which Linn had quoted), and N. J. Wyeth's 
 Memoir ; also the Memorial of 36 settlers in the Willamette ; also a 
 letter from J. K. Paulding, Secretary of the Navy, stating that he 
 had directed ''the commander of the squadron in the Pacific to em- 
 ploy a sloop of war in making a close and accurate survey of this 
 part of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, with a view to ascertain its 
 advantages as a station or harbor for ships of war over the Co- 
 lumbia;" also a letter from Rev. Mr. Tracy of Lynn, Mass., contain- 
 ing an exposition of the views and objects of the "Oregon Provis- 
 ional Emigration Society" formed in August, 1836, and having for 
 its object the planting of Christian American Settlements in Ore-
 
 204 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 gon, and enclosing a copy of the Oregonian, a monthly periodical 
 devoted to the interests of the society, and saying that ''Not less 
 than 200 men will compose our first migrating company." 
 
 At this third session of the 25th Congress in the Senate on De- 
 cember 11, 1838, Linn introduced a bill for the occupation of the 
 Columbia or Oregon Territory, which was read twice and referred 
 to a Select Committee consisting of Linn (chairman), John C. Cal- 
 houn, Henry Clay and Franklin Pierce. (Cf. Cong. Globe, p. 22.) 
 
 January 28, 1831), Linn reported a bill for the occupation of 
 Oregon, which after brief debate was referred to the Committee on 
 Foreign Affairs, of which James Buchanan was chairman and H. 
 Clay a member. 
 
 Twenty-sixth Cong., 1st Sess., December 9, 1839, to July 21, 
 1840. December 18, 1839, Linn "Introduced a joint resolution de- 
 claring that our title to the Oregon was indisputable, and will 
 never be abandoned,'' and that the Government should give the 
 requisite twelve months' notice that we desired to terminate the 
 Convention of August 6, 1827, for extending the laws of the United 
 States over Oregon, for raising soldiers to protect immigrants to 
 Oregon ; and for giving 640 acres of land in Oregon to each white 
 male of 18 years of age, resident of the Territory, who would live on 
 and cultivate it for five years. January 8, 1840, these resolutions 
 were referred to a Select Committee consisting of Linn, ^yalker, 
 Preston, Pierce and Sevier. 
 
 By far the most important action on the Oregon question of 
 this session of Congress was the publication of the first or Gov- 
 ernment edition of "Greenhow's History," as Sen. Ex. Doc. No, 
 174, 2Gth Cong., 1st Sess. — a document of immense significance in 
 this discussion, and of which no advocate of the Whitman Saved 
 Oregon Legend seems ever to have heard, till my manuscripts with 
 their criticisms of Barrows, and Nixon, and Craighead for omitting 
 to mention this — caused Mowry and M. Eells in 1901 to mention 
 its existence, but without quoting from it or otherwise giving their 
 readers any idea of its inii)ortance. 
 
 It is the only official history of any of our territorial acquisi- 
 tions which our (Tovernment has ever printed while the title was 
 still in dispute, and the account of its origin giv'en in its preface 
 is full of interest when we remember not only that the Senate Se- 
 lect Committee on Oregon adopted it as their report, but that the 
 Senate unanimously accepted the report and ordered 2,500 copies 
 of it printed in addition to the usual number — which was a very 
 liberal number for the time. It was also immediately published 
 in New York City, and also in London by Wiley and Putnam, as 
 a book for general sale, without a word of change except striking 
 off from the title page the fact that it was a Government docu-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 205 
 
 ment. The English charged that the publication of the London 
 edition was paid for by the United States Government, and un- 
 doubtedly some of the Secret Service fund was used for that pur- 
 pose. The work covered 228 pages, with a map and a good index, 
 and was highly commended not only by Senators and Members of 
 the House of Kepresentatives, but also by the Edinburgh Review. 
 Its preface begins as follows : 
 
 "The following correspondence between the chairman of the 
 Committee of the Senate on the Oregon Territory and the Secre- 
 tary of State, together with extracts from the Journal of the Sen- 
 ate, will serve to show the circumstances under which this Memoir 
 has been written and published : 
 
 "Washington, January 25, 1840. 
 
 ''Sir: I am informed that your department is in possession of 
 much information relating to the Territory of Oregon, its geog- 
 raphy, resources, and the title of the United States to the same. 
 If consistent with your duty, I would be pleased to be put in pos- 
 session of such papers and documents as you may think proper 
 to send me, requesting that you will mark such as you would rather 
 not have printed or made public. 
 
 ''Your obedient servant, 
 
 "L. F. LINN, 
 ''Chairman of the Select Committee on the Territory of Oregon. 
 
 "Hon. John Forsyth, Secretary of State." 
 
 "Answer. "Department of State, 
 
 "Washington, January 25, 1840. 
 
 "Sir: I have had the honor to receive your letter of this day's 
 date, asking for information relative to the Territory of Oregon, its 
 geography, and resources, and the title of the United States to the 
 same. Mr. Greenhow, the translator and librarian of this depart- 
 ment, has been for some time past, by my direction, employed in 
 collecting and arranging historical information on the subject of 
 the northwestern coasts of America; I send you the result of his 
 labors, and submit it to the discretion of the committee to be 
 printed or not, as they may think most advisable. Not having had 
 the leisure to compare the statements in the Memoir with the 
 various works and documents upon which they are founded, I can 
 vouch for the zeal, industry and good faith of Mr. Greenhow, by 
 whom they were prepared. 
 
 "I am, sir, your most obedient servant, 
 
 "JOHN FORSYTH, 
 "Hon. Lewis F. Linn, "Secretary of State. 
 
 "Senator of the United States."
 
 206 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 ''From the Journal of the Senate of the United States: 
 
 "Monday, February 10, 1840. On motion of Mr. Linn, 'Ordered, 
 that a History of the Northwest Coast of North America and the 
 adjacent territories, communicated to the Select Committee on the 
 Oregon Territory, be printed, with the accompanying map, and that 
 two thousand five liundred copies, in addition to the usual number, 
 be printed for the use of the Senate." 
 
 How perfectly well known were the facts about the easy accessi- 
 bility of the Oregon Territory by wagon and its value for agri- 
 culture and grazing will be apparent from the following extracts 
 from this Government Edition of Greenhow. 
 
 (P. 12) "Near the place of union of these chains is a remark- 
 able depression of the Kocky Mountains, called the Southern I'ass, 
 affording a short and easy route for carriages, between the head- 
 waters of the south branch of the Platte, on the east, and those of 
 the Colorado, in the west; from which latter is another pass 
 through the mountains, northward, to the Lewis River. There are 
 other de])res8ions on the great chain farther north, between the 
 Yellowstone, on the one side, and the Salmon River and Flathead 
 branches of the (Columbia, on the other ; but they offer much greater 
 difficulties to the traveler than the Southern Pass, which is, and 
 will probably continue to be, the principal avenue of communica- 
 tion between the United States and the territories of the Far 
 West." 
 
 Instead of misinformation from English sources, Mr. Greenhow 
 copies mostly from the sturdy American, Nathaniel J. Wyeth (who 
 in 1832 had led out the first party of American settlers to Oregon), 
 as follows: 
 
 (P. 15) After describing "the Multnomah or Wallamet" as 
 flowing for more than 200 miles "through a valley which is said 
 to be the most delightful and fertile spot in North America," and 
 going on to speak of all of Oregon west of the Cascade Mountains, 
 he continues : " 'This country,' says Mr. Wyeth, 'is well calculated 
 for wheat, barley, oats, rye, pease, apples, potatoes, and all the 
 roots cultivated in the northern States of the Union; Indian corn 
 does not succeed well, and is an unprofitable crop. The yield of 
 wheat, with very ])oor cultivation, is about fifteen bushels of the 
 best (piality to the acre. Horses and neat cattle succeed tolerably 
 well ; the winter being mild, they are enabled to subsist upon the 
 produce of the oi)en fields. Hogs live and multiply, but cannot be 
 made fat on the range of the country. The agriculture of this 
 region must always suffer from the extreme dryness of the sum- 
 mer. The ])roducts which rii)en earliest sustain the least damage, 
 but those which come late are often injured,'
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 207 
 
 "Of the soil of this region the same acute observer says: 'The 
 uplands are tolerably good, but the cost of clearing the enormous 
 growth of timber on them would be beyond their worth; it is too 
 thick and heavy to allow of crops being obtained by girdling the 
 trees, and it must be removed or burnt; the labor of which is be- 
 yond the conception of those acquainted only with the forests of 
 the United States. There are, however, prairies sufficiently numer- 
 ous and extensive for the cultivation of the next century, which, 
 being chiefly on the second bottoms of rivers, are extremely fertile 
 and above inundation.' " 
 
 On p. 16, after a general description of Middle Oregon (/. e., 
 the region between the Cascade Mountains and the Blue Moun- 
 tains), he continues: ''Few attempts at cultivation have been 
 made in this region, and they have not been, upon the whole, suc- 
 cessful. Wyeth conceives that 'the agriculture of this territory 
 must always be limited to the wants of a pastoral people, and to 
 the immediate vicinity of the streams and mountains; and irriga- 
 tion must be resorted to if a large population is to be supported 
 in it. This country, which afl'ords little prospect for the tiller of 
 the soil, is perhaps one of the best for grazing in the world. It has 
 been much underrated by travelers who have only passed by the 
 Columbia, the land along which is a collection of sand and rocks, 
 and almost without vegetation ; but a few miles from the Colum- 
 bia, towards the hills and mountains, the prairies open wide, cov- 
 ered with a low grass of a most nutritious kind, which remains 
 good throughout the year. In September there are slight rains, at 
 which time the grass starts; and in October and November there 
 is a good coat of green grass, which remains so until the ensuing 
 summer; and about June it is ripe in the lower plains, and, drying 
 without being wet, is like made hay ; in this state it remains until 
 the autumn rains again revive it. The herdsman in this extensive 
 valley (of more than one hundred and fifty miles in width) could 
 at all times keep his animals in good grass, by approaching the 
 mountains in summer, on the declivities of which almost any cli- 
 mate may be had; and the dry grass of the country is at all times 
 excellent. It is in this section of the country that all the horses 
 are reared for the supply of the Indians and traders in the in- 
 terior. It is not uncommon that one Indian owns some hundreds 
 of them. I think this section, for producing hides, tallow and beef, 
 is superior to any part of North America ; for, with equal facilities 
 for raising the animals, the weather in winter, when the grass is 
 best, and consequently the best time to fatten the animals, is cold 
 enough to salt meat, which is not the case in Upper California. 
 There is no question that sheep might be raised to any extent, in 
 a climate so dry and sufficiently warm and where very little rain
 
 208 ACQUISITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 or snow falls.' . . . (p. 199) The first emigrations from the 
 United States for the jairpose of settlement, without any special 
 commercial views, in the countries of the Columbia, appear to 
 have been made in 1S:>2. Two years afterward a small colony of 
 Americans was established on the Wallamet, about seventy miles 
 from its mouth, under the direction of Mr. Jason Lee and other 
 Methodist clergymen ; and since that period the number of citizens 
 of the United States permanently residing beyond the Rocky Moun- 
 tains has been much increased. With regard to the condition of 
 these settlements no information has been recently obtained. In 
 1837 they were all prospering; and it may be supposed that they 
 are continuing to do well, inasmuch as a large number of emigrants 
 sailed for the Columbia from New York in the autumn of last vear, 
 under the superintendence of one of the founders of the Wallamet 
 colony; and other persons are said to be now in that city prepar- 
 ing for a similar expedition. 
 
 "It is not, however, by means of such long and dangerous voy- 
 ages that citizens of the United States are to effect settlements in 
 Northwest America ; and it will doubtless be the care of their Gov- 
 ernment to render smoother and more secure the routes across the 
 continent to those countries lying entirely within the undisputed 
 limits of the Republic. In the possession of these routes the Amer- 
 icans have infinite advantages over the British, and all other na- 
 tions, for occupying the regions in question ; and nothing more is 
 required to render the journey through them safe and easy than 
 the establishment of a few posts, at convenient distances apart, on 
 a line between the Missouri and the passes of the Rocky Mountains, 
 which may serve as forts to overawe the savages, and as caravan- 
 series for the rei)Ose, and possibly even for the supply, of travelers. 
 When this has been done, the American settlements on the Colum- 
 bia will soon acquire that degree of extent and stability which will 
 render nugatory all claims on the part of other nations to the pos- 
 session of those countries. 
 
 ''Within the last five or six years the Government as well as 
 the people of the United States have begun to devote their atten- 
 tion seriously to matters connected with the northwest regions of 
 this continent. Numerous petitions have been presented, and mo- 
 tions have been made and discussed, in both Houses of the Federal 
 Legislature, for the annulment of the existing arrangement with 
 Great Britain, the military occupation of those territories, and the 
 extension of American jurisdiction over them ; and the Executive 
 has been sedulously engaged in collecting the information which 
 may be necessary in order to place the subject in a proper light, 
 and to render movements effective at the proper time. These pro- 
 ceedings are all so recent, and so well known, that details respect-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 209 
 
 ing them would be needless. Suffice it to say, that no resolution 
 has been taken on any of the plans proposed ; and that the posi- 
 tion of the American Government with regard to the territories 
 claimed for the United States on the Pacific continues as fixed by 
 its conventions with Great Britain, Russia and Mexico. 
 
 "The writer has now completed the task assigned to him. 
 
 "He has, as he conceives, demonstrated that the titles of the 
 United States to the possession of the regions drained by the river 
 Columbia, derived from priority of discovery and priority of occu- 
 pation, are as yet stronger and more consistent with the principles 
 of national right than those of any other Power, from whatsoever 
 source derived. That those regions must be eventually possessed 
 by the people of the TTnited States only, no one acquainted with 
 the progress of settlement in the Mississippi Valley during the last 
 fifteen years will be inclined to question ; but that Great Britain 
 will, by every means in her power, evade the recognition of the 
 American claims, and oppose the establishment of an American 
 population on the shores of the Pacific, may be confidently ex- 
 pected, from the disposition evinced by her Government in all its 
 recent discussions with the United States." 
 
 This first edition of Greenhow is to be found bound in with all the 
 other Senate Executive Documents of the first session of the 26th 
 Congress. 
 
 Greenhow revised and much enlarged the book and in 1845 a 
 second edition was published by Little & Brown of Boston, and 
 John Murray of London, (499 pp. with a map). 
 
 From this later edition the things I have quoted from the first 
 edition about the easy accessibility of Oregon by wagons over the 
 low passes of the Rocky Mountains and the account of the first 
 wagons to the Rocky Mountains in 1830 (Greenhow gives the date 
 as 1829, but 1830 is the correct year), and the infinite advantages 
 we had over the British in facilities for settling Oregon overland 
 on account of these easy passes are omitted, because the rapid 
 progress of events in developing the overland wagon road had made 
 any farther publication of these things unnecessary. 
 
 Dr. W. Mowry and Rev. M. Eells, having been driven by my criti- 
 cisms to mention the 1840 edition, the following is the treatment 
 they accord to it (Mowry's "Marcus Whitman," p. 190) : 
 
 "In 1840 the Senate ordered 'Greenhow's Memoir, Historical and 
 Political, on the Northwest Coast of North America,' to be printed 
 and directed that 2,500 extra copies should be struck off for distri- 
 bution by the Senate. 
 
 "This order passed the Senate February 10, 1840. The memoir 
 contained 228 pages of valuable information concerning our title 
 to Oregon and concerning the value of that country."
 
 210 ACQUISITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 Not a word does he print about the New York and London edi- 
 tions of 1840, and not a word does he quote showing the origin of 
 the book, or about the i)Osition of its st-hohirly and aeconi]>lished 
 author as for years translator and librarian of our State Depart- 
 ment, nor does he give his readers any idea that this Government 
 edition contained mattei' of most vital significance concerning and 
 utterly destructive of the theory that our people as late as the 
 spring of 1843 thought Oregon inaccessible by wagons. Quite as 
 disingenuous is M. Eells' treatment of the subject. 
 
 In his ''Reply" (p. 15) he quotes from Prof. Bourne's Legend of 
 Marcus Whitman the following sentence: ''Greenhow's exhaustive 
 history Avas being distributed as a public document early in 1843 
 (p. 85) but (8<M he snys Greenhow's ])reface was 'dated February 
 1844'," then Mr. Eells prints the following footnote: 
 
 ''The fact was that the preface was thus dated, and the book 
 published in 1845, but a smaller edition of less than half the size, 
 not the exhaustive history, had been circulated as a public docu- 
 ment." 
 
 Not a word has Rev. M. Eells ever written to inform his readers 
 about this Government edition of Greenhow, except this evidently 
 intended to be a disparaging criticism of it, as "less than half the 
 size" of the 1845 edition. 
 
 Not the least intimation does he anywhere give of the pecu- 
 liarity of its origin, as ])repared by special direction of the Secre- 
 tary of State, and by him turned over to a Committee on Oregon 
 consisting of Linn, Calhoun, Clay and Franklin Pierce, and by 
 them unanimously reported to the Senate, and unanimously 
 adopted by the Senate, and not only published as a Government 
 document, but immediately published, unchanged in New York and 
 London as a book for general sale, and so furnished not only in 
 all ])arts of this country, but also in England, more than three 
 years before >Vhitman could have reached the East full informa- 
 tion as to the fertility of soil and the geniality of climate of Ore- 
 gon and its easy accessibility by wagon from the States — the very 
 things about which it is an essential postulate of the Whitman 
 Saved Oregon Story that the ])eople and the National Government 
 were profoundly ignorant when Whitman reached the States more 
 than three years after this Government edition of Greenhow was 
 published. This is only one of scores of examples in his "Reply" 
 of Rev. M. Eells' very curious ideas of the "candor" and "fairness" 
 and "earnest search" for "the truth of history wherever found" 
 which he cbiims have animated him at all times. 
 
 At the second sessi<m of the 2()th ('ongress, December 17, 1840, 
 to iMarch 3, 1841, nothing was done about Oregon in the House of 
 Representatives.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 211 
 
 In the Senate December 31, 1840, Linn gave notice of introduc- 
 tion of a joint resolution relating to Oregon, and January 8, 1841, 
 he introduced his bill for the occupation of Oregon, which was re- 
 ferred to a Special Committee consisting of Linn, Walker, Pierce, 
 Preston and Sevier. 
 
 In the Appendix to the Congressional Glohe for this session, 
 pp. 105-106, Linn's speech is given in full, followed by copy of 
 bill which provides for a line of military posts from Fort Leav- 
 enworth to the Rocky Mountains and for donating 1,000 acres of 
 land instead of 640 to every white male 18 years of age and up- 
 wards who will cultivate and use the same for five consecutive 
 years. "Mr. Linn said that when this bill was before the Senate 
 for discussion during the last and preceding session of Congress, 
 his political friends, as well as opponents, earnestly pressed him to 
 forbear urging the subject to a final vote, as it might prove em- 
 barrassing at that time in the settlement of the long pending and 
 important question of the northeastern boundary. ... He had 
 been censured in letters received from gentlemen residing in all 
 parts of the Union for not having pressed his bill to a final decis- 
 ion, which delay was caused by the opinion of others that it might 
 be considered as a new element of discord pending the settlement 
 of the northeastern boundary." 
 
 Twenty-seventh Congress, first (or special) session, May 31 to 
 September 13, 1841. In the Senate, Monday, August 2, 1841 {Con- 
 gressional dole, p. 276), Mr. King of Alabama presented petition 
 of citizens of Alabama wishing to migrate to Oregon by way of the 
 Isthmus and asking that arrangements may be made by the Gov- 
 ernment to protect them under the laws of the United States when 
 they reach there. 
 
 "Mr. King said many of the memorialists were personally known 
 to him and were men of worth." 
 
 On same day {Gloie, p. 278,) Mr. Linn submitted a resolution 
 on Oregon as follows: "Resolved, that the President of the United 
 States be requested to give the notice to the British Government 
 which the treaty of 1827 between the two Governments requires in 
 order to put an end to the treaty for the joint occupation of the 
 territory of Oregon west of the Rocky Mountains, and which ter- 
 ritory is now possessed and used by the Hudson's Bay Co. to the 
 ruin of the American Indian and fur trade in that quarter, and 
 conflicting with our inland commerce with the internal provinces 
 of Mexico." 
 
 This resolution was discussed briefly by Linn, Benton, Sevier 
 and Preston, August 12, (Globe, p. 325,) and by Benton during the 
 whole morning August 17, (Glohe, p. 341,) and, on August 21, after 
 being amended so as to direct the Committee on Foreign Relations
 
 212 ACQUISITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 to inquire into the expediency of requesting the President to give 
 the notice, the amended resolution was referred to the Foreign Re- 
 lations Committee. 
 
 Second session of 27th Congress, December G, ISil, to August 
 31, 1842. President Tyler in his Message at the beginning of this 
 session said (speaking of the report of John C. Spencer, Secretary 
 of War), "I recommend j)articularly to your consideration that 
 portion of the Secretary's report which proi)Oses the establishment 
 of a chain of militai'v jtosts from (Jouncil Bluffs to some })oint on 
 the Pacitic Ocean within our limits. The benefits thereby destined 
 to accrue to our citizens engaged in the fur trade over that wil- 
 derness region, added to the importance of cultivating friendly re- 
 lations with savage tribes inhabiting it, and, at the same time, of 
 giving j)rotection to our frontier settlements, and of establishing 
 the means of safe intercourse between the American settlements 
 at the mouth of the Columbia River and those on this side of the 
 Rocky Mountains, would seem to suggest the importance of carry- 
 ing into effect the recommendations upon this head with as little 
 delay as may be practicable." 
 
 Only ten daj's later, December 10, 1841, Linn introduced his 
 bill for the occupation and settlement of Oregon, and the granting 
 of land to settlers there, and it was referred to a special committee 
 of five. {Congressional Globe, p. 22.) 
 
 April 13 and 15. Linn spoke at length on the bill, and said: 
 "There could be no dispute about the right of the United States to 
 all the region south of the Columbia River, a right which Great 
 Britain had fully conceded. The only question was as to the right 
 of the United States to the territory north of the Columbia River." 
 (Congressional Globe, p. 426.) 
 
 August 3, 1842. Linn said : "Besides this bundle of memorials 
 praying Congress to take steps to assert our title to the Territory 
 and to enact measures to encourage emigration, he said the Leg- 
 islatures of two or three States had passed resolutions asking Con- 
 gress to assert our rights to the country we claimed on the Western 
 Ocean, and to take such steps as the urgency of the case seemed 
 to demand. He had also in his possession hundreds upon hundreds 
 of letters, from every quarter of the Union, making anxious inquir- 
 ies as to what was likely to be done by Congress relative to this 
 long agitated and long deferred question." (Congressional Globe, 
 p. 33G.) 
 
 August 31, 1842. Linn made a long speech on his Oregon bill 
 (printed in full in Appendix to Congressional Globe, 27th Cong., 2d 
 Sess., p. 73(5), in which he said: "The preamble to the bill reads 
 thus: 'Whereas, the title of the United States to the Territory of 
 Oregon is certain and will not be abandoned.' This declaration
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 213 
 
 was important to the citizens of the United States who reside in 
 the Territory, now amounting to 1,500 or 2,000 persons. To many 
 on the road to the Territory and to thousands who were preparing 
 to move to that region it was an assurance that although upon the 
 extremest verge of this republic the Government of the United 
 States would not abandon them to any foreign power. . . . 
 
 ''Hitherto the British Government — -or rather its agents, the 
 Hudson's Bay Co. — have had unlimited control over the Territory 
 and its resources. 
 
 "The committee unanimously instructed their chairman to re- 
 port this bill back to the Senate with the recommendation that it 
 pass. It was then placed in its order on the calendar, but before 
 it came up for consideration as a special order Lord Ashburton 
 arrived from England to enter upon a negotiation touching all 
 points of dispute between the two countries — boundaries as well as 
 others — Oregon as well as Maine. 
 
 "In that posture of affairs it was considered on all hands in- 
 delicate (not to say unwise) to press the bill to a decision whilst 
 these negotiations were pending. They are now over, and a treaty 
 is published to the world in which it seems that the question of the 
 Oregon Territory has been referred to some more remote or auspi- 
 cious period for ultimate decision. He said he was confident that 
 there were majorities in both Houses of Congress in favor of this 
 bill ; and he felt equally certain that it would have passed this ses- 
 sion but for the arrival of Lord Ashburton, and the pending of the 
 negotiations which terminated a short period since. He would 
 deem it his imperative duty at an early day of the coming session 
 to bring in the same bill and press it to a final decision." 
 
 At this session there was no debate on Oregon in the House 
 of Representatives, but on May 31, 1842, the Military Committee 
 of the House, to whom had been referred so much of the President's 
 Message as relates to the establishment of a chain of military posts 
 from Council Bluffs to the Pacific Coast, submitted a report cover- 
 ing 64 pages, with the "Ultimatum Map," of which 5,000 copies 
 "besides the usual number" were ordered printed. 
 
 It is No. 830, Reports of Committees, House of Representatives, 
 27th Cong., 2d Sess., and is commonly called Pendleton's first Re- 
 port — N. G. Pendleton of Ohio being chairman of the committee. 
 
 The first 24 pages contain a statement of the voyages of dis- 
 covery of Spanish and British navigators and our seamen along the 
 northwest coast of America and the origin and grounds of our 
 claims to Oregon. 
 
 Of Lieut. Charles Wilkes' explorations of Oregon (April to Oc- 
 tober, 1841), this report says (p. 24): "The report of Lieut. 
 Wilkes, based upon actual observation and surveys by competent
 
 214 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 ofticers, will certainly <;ive more recent, probably more accurate, 
 inlurniation than any now within reach oi' the committee upon 
 the several points involved in this inquiry. In the mean time, the 
 committee presents for the consideration of the House the follow- 
 ing geographical and statistical account, selected and abridged 
 from the Memoirs of Messrs. Wyeth, Slacum, Kelly and Greenhow. 
 The three former gentlemen visited the territory and give us the 
 results of their own observations in clear and concise narratives. 
 As their observations were made at ditferent periods, and their ac- 
 counts prepared without concert, we may with great confidence re- 
 ceive and act upon those facts and opinions wherein they agree. 
 The points of dili'erence between them on matters of importance 
 are very few, and these will be noted as they occur. Mr. Greeuhow's 
 ^Memoir carries internal evidence of the diligence and fidelity with 
 which he performed the duty assigned to him." 
 
 T^ndoubtedly had this committee expected that Lieut. Wilkes' 
 fleet would drop anchor in New York harbor on June 10, 1842, and 
 that June 13, 1842 (only two weeks after this report was presented 
 to the House of Representatives), Lieut. Wilkes would file in the 
 Navy Dei)artnient his very enthusiastic ''Special Report'' on Ore- 
 gon, they would have held back this report till they could have in- 
 corporated in it the essential parts of that "Special Report" of 
 Wilkes, as they did in a second edition of this report in January, 
 1843. 
 
 The rest of the report to p. 5() is filled with this ^'Account com- 
 piled from Wyeth, Kelly, Slacum and Greenhow," and with sta- 
 tistics about the whale fishery — then a very important industry in 
 the North Pacific — and with letters from the Secretary of War, 
 J. J. Abert, Colonel of Corps of Topographical Engineers, and J. 
 G. Totten, Colonel and Chief Engineer, and N. Towson, Paymaster 
 General, and George Gibson, Commissary General of Subsistence, 
 as to cost, etc., of establishing and maintaining a line of mili- 
 tary posts to the Pacific, and a draft of a bill lor the establishing 
 of such posts. 
 
 This is followed by an Appendix consisting of six pages of 
 Extracts from the Journal of Capt. Spaulding of the ship Lau- 
 sanne, which carried out the great reinforcement to the Methodist 
 Mission in ]83I)-4() (upon Avhich I shall comment in the next chap- 
 ter) ; and a letter from Mr. IL A. Pierce, of Boston, to Senator 
 Linn, dated May 1, 1842 ; and a letter from Thomas E. Bond, Secre- 
 tary of the Methodist Missionary Society, dated New York, Janu- 
 ary 22, 1842, in which he wrote (p. 03) : ''I fear we are not pos- 
 sessed of any infoi'ination that will be of any material use to your 
 committee." "The mission families now contain some 08 i)ersons, 
 men, women and children; but a considerable proportion are not
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 215 
 
 of the ministry proper, and are employed in mechanical and agri- 
 cultural labors necessary to the mission. . , ." (p. 64). He then 
 gives a brief statement of the stations occupied by the mission, but 
 it furnishes no information not already well known to the public 
 and the Government, and continues : 
 
 *'It will occur to you and to the committee, that missionaries 
 among savages, so far from home, and at a point from which they 
 have so few opportunities to write to their friends or to their 
 church authorities, would not be likely to deal in statistics, fur- 
 ther than immediately connected with the duties assigned them ; 
 and hence, as we have not directed their attention to the country 
 with any political or commercial objects, we would not be likely to 
 come into possession of much information on such subjects. They 
 all agree in representing the Indian tribes inhabiting the country 
 as far more degraded and destitute than those in our borders; yet 
 nowhere have our missionary efforts among savages been more suc- 
 cessful. Indeed, the very misery of these people seconds the preach- 
 ing and advice of the missionaries." 
 
 Yet only two years after the date of this letter, this mission, 
 which Mr. Bond declared to be among the most successful they had 
 ever established among savages, was abandoned. He concludes 
 with, "I am sorry I can be of so little use to the committee ; but 
 any inquiries which you may suggest I will forward to the mis- 
 sionaries in Oregon, who I am sure will readily furnish the Gov- 
 ernment with any information in their power, and which might 
 be useful on a subsequent occasion." 
 
 Having written this letter, which contains absolutely nothing 
 of the slightest importance about Oregon which was not already 
 well known to the Government, and to the public — he held it till 
 April 11, 1842, and then enclosed it with the following brief note: 
 
 "New York, April 11, 1842. 
 
 "Sir: I have delayed to return the enclosed letter, with the ex- 
 pectation of being able to add to it some important information 
 from Oregon ; but our latest despatches from Mr. Lee afford noth- 
 ing which could be of use to you. I regret that my letter is so de- 
 fective; but such as it is, you are authorized to make such use of 
 it as you may think proper. 
 
 "I am, Sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant, 
 
 "THOMAS E. BOND. 
 "Hon. N. G. Pendleton." 
 
 Neither in this, nor any other committee report about Oregon 
 while the A. B. C. F. Mission to Oregon existed, was there any 
 intimation that any member of any such committee had sought for
 
 21G ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 or received any iiiforiiiation from any ollicial of the American 
 Board about anytliinj; in (Oregon, or had received from Marcus 
 Whitman or any otlier of the American Board missionaries there 
 any information that in the least degree affected the political des- 
 tinies of any part of the Oregon Territory. 
 
 The Ashburton treaty was negotiated and ratified during this 
 second session of the 27th Congress. 
 
 The letter of Edw. Everett, our Minister to England, to D. 
 Webster, Secretary of State, announcing the appointment of Lord 
 Ashburton as Special Plenipotentiary was dated l^ondou, Decem- 
 ber 31, 1841. Ashburton arrived April 4, 1842 (Cf. Webster's 
 Works, Vol. v., p. 98). 
 
 Informal negotiations went on till June 13, 1842 (the very day 
 Lieut. Wilkes tiled his Special Report on Oregon in the Navy De- 
 partment), when a letter from Ashburton to Webster opened the 
 formal negotiations, which eventuated, August 9, 1842, in the sign- 
 ing of the Treaty of Washington, or the Webster- Ashburton Treaty, 
 which was submitted to the Senate August 11, 1842, by President 
 Tyler with a message which was written by Secretary D. Webster. 
 (Cf. on this, note on p. 347, Vol. VII., Webster's Works.) 
 
 The treaty was debated very vigorously, Benton offering four 
 amendments, which were rejected by votes of more than 3 to 1, and 
 on August 20, 1842, it was ratified by 39 to 9 ; the full membership 
 of the Senate being 50. Yet Prof. H. W. Parker, D. D., in Homi- 
 lectic Review for July, 1901, in an article designed to bolster u]) the 
 Whitman Legend on ''How Oregon was Saved to the I'nited 
 States,'' says: **Daniel Webster was no fool. His unpopular Ash- 
 burton treaty of 1842 must have quickened his caution." 
 
 Certainly we ought to be thankful to the Rev. Doctor for mod- 
 estly announcing to the world that "Daniel Webster was no fool," 
 and that ''The Ashburton Treaty was unpopular." 
 
 They are both as important, and the last one as trustworthy, as 
 any and everything else in the article in which they appear. 
 
 The injunction of secrecy on the Senate's action on this treaty 
 was removed by vote of the Senate, and the whole published in the 
 Congressional Globe, 27 Cong., 3d Sess. — the general report at 
 the beginning of the volume and the leading speeches in the Ap- 
 pendix. 
 
 Both Benton and Buchanan opposed its ratification and de- 
 nounced it with special bitterness because of its failure to include 
 the Oregon boundary. 
 
 Ashburton came over with "specific and detailed instructions" 
 to treat on the Oregon boundary, as well as the other subjects of 
 difference between the two Governments, and this fact was pub- 
 lished by our Ciov(M'nTiioiit as eai-ly as December, 1845 (Cf. p. 139 of
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 217 
 
 Ex. Doc. No. 2, 29th Cong., 1st Sess., being correspondence accom- 
 panying President Polk's Annual Message), yet Barrows — with his 
 usual ignorance of everything of any real importance about the di- 
 plomacy of the Oregon question — declares twice that Ashburton 
 was not authorized to treat on the Oregon boundary, and this has 
 been copied by some of the really able historians who have ac- 
 cepted Barrows for an authority; thus Prof. J. W. Burgess, in 
 Chapter XIV. of his ''Middle Period," says : "Mr. Webster sounded 
 Lord Ashburton on the Oregon question and found that the Queen's 
 agent had received no power to deal with the matter." 
 
 (Cf. Barrows' ''Oregon," p. 185) "Indeed, the two negotiators 
 had paused at the Kocky Mountains, because, as the President 
 stated, any attempts to carry the line farther would not offer hope- 
 ful results. It does not appear, moreover, that the Secretary was 
 under any executive instructions to go into the Pacific side of the 
 business, and certainly Lord Ashburton was not." 
 
 (Ihid. pp. 232-3) "First, Oregon was not a matter of negotia- 
 tion between Ashburton and Webster. . . . Indeed, Lord Ash- 
 burton w^as not prepared, by his papers of instruction, to take up 
 the question and was not authorized to do it." 
 
 What these specific and detailed instructions were, and why the 
 Oregon boundary was not made a subject of negotiation, and Web- 
 ster's determined stand for 49 degrees to the Pacific, and the utter 
 demolition of the Whitman Saved Oregon Legend resulting from 
 a statement of these facts, will appear a little later in considering 
 the action of the third session of the 27th Congress. 
 
 Third session, 27th Congress, December 5, 1842, to March 4, 
 1843. President Tyler's second Annual Message, sent to this ses- 
 sion of Congress December 7, 1842, says: "It would have fur- 
 nished additional cause for congratulation if the treaty could have 
 embraced all subjects calculated in future to lead to a misunder- 
 standing between the two Governments. 
 
 "The territory of the United States commonly called the Ore- 
 gon Territory, lying on the Pacific Ocean north of the 42d degree 
 of latitude, to a portion of which Great Britain lays claim, begins 
 to attract the attention of our fellow citizens ; and the tide of popu- 
 lation which has reclaimed what was so lately an unbroken wilder- 
 ness in more contiguous regions is preparing to flow over those vast 
 districts which stretch from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific 
 Ocean. In advance of the acquirement of individual rights to these 
 lands, sound policy dictates that every effort should be resorted to 
 by the two Governments to settle their respective claims. 
 
 "It became manifest at an early hour of the late negotiations 
 that any attempt, for the time being, satisfactorily to determine 
 those rights would lead to a protracted discussion, which might
 
 218 ACQUISITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 embrace in its failure other more pressing matters, and tlie Execu- 
 tive (lid not regard it as proper to waive all the advantages of an 
 honorable adjnstniont of other difticulties of great magnitude and 
 importance because this not so immediately pressing stood in the 
 way. 
 
 "Although the difficulty referred to may not for several years 
 to come involve the peace of the two countries, yet I shall not 
 delay to urge on (Jreat Britain the importance of its early settle- 
 ment." 
 
 December 22, 1842, the Senate i)assed Linn's resolution calling 
 on the President for the ''informal communications" between Web- 
 ster and Ashburton on the Oregon boundary and the reasons why 
 that subject was not included in the Ashburton treaty. 
 
 To this the President replied as follows, in a message dated 
 December 23, 1842 : 
 
 "To the Senate of the United States: T have received the reso- 
 lution of the 22d inst., requesting me to In form the Senate of the 
 nature and extent of the informal communications which took 
 place between the American Secretary of State and the British 
 Special Minister, during the late negotiations in Washington City 
 upon the subject of the claims of the Ignited States and Great 
 Britain to the territory west of the Rocky Mountains; and also to 
 inform the Senate what were the reasons which ])revented any 
 agreement upon the subject at present, and which made it expe- 
 dient (query, inexi)edient?) to include this subject among the 
 subjects of formal negotiation. 
 
 "In my message to Congress at the commencement of the pres- 
 ent session, in adverting to the territory of the Ignited States on 
 the Pacitic Ocean north of the 42d degree of north latitude, a ])art 
 of which is claimed by Great Britain, I remarked that, in advance 
 of the acquirement of individual right to these lands, sound policy 
 dictated that every effort should be resorted to by the two Gov- 
 ernments to settle tlieir respective claims; and also stated that I 
 should not delay to urge on Great Britain the importance of an 
 early settlement. 
 
 "Measures have been already taken, in pursuance of the ])ur])ose 
 thus expressed, and under the circumstances I do not deem it con- 
 sistent with tlie ]»ublic interest to make any communication on the 
 subject." 
 
 Forthwith Benton, (in the great debate on Linn's Oregon bill, 
 which began in December, 1842, and ended February 3, 184.3, by 
 the passage of the bill in the Senate by 24 to 22,) denounced Tyler 
 and Webster, and declared that the President's refusal to furnish 
 the Senate with the report of the informal communications with 
 Ashburton on the Oregon boundary, and the reasons why it was
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 219 
 
 not deemed wise to attempt to include that subject in the Ashbur- 
 ton treaty, was because its disclosure would disgrace the Admin- 
 istration, by showing that the President and his Secretary of State 
 were recreant to our national interests and ready to sacrifice our 
 national honor on the question of the Oregon boundary, and were 
 willing to yield — not all of Oregon, for even Benton dared not 
 claim that — but that part north and west of the Columbia, by 
 making the Columbia the boundary line, instead of 49 degrees to 
 the Pacific. 
 
 Undoubtedly vague recollections of newspaper accounts of this 
 wholly unwarranted accusation of Benton against Webster and 
 Tyler suggested to Spalding's unbalanced and naturally very imag- 
 inative mind the basis on which he built up his mythical account 
 of the interview of Marcus Whitman with Webster and Tyler. 
 
 To Benton's baseless partisan accusation the President could 
 not with propriety reply, nor could Webster answer it in person 
 on the floor of the Senate, but fortunately for the establishment of 
 the truth of history in this matter he found a way to crush this 
 slander into the dust of oblivion, where it remained forgotten of 
 men till 23 years afterward Spalding and Gray resurrected it to 
 support the "Whitman Saved Oregon" story. If the reader will 
 turn to the Congressional Globe, 27th Congress, 3d Session, he will 
 find in the Senate Proceedings for Wednesday, January 18, 1813, 
 pp. 171 and 172, a speech by Senator Choate on the Oregon Terri- 
 tory, and in it on p. 172, first column, occurs the following: "In 
 commenting upon the speech of the Senator from Missouri (Mr. 
 Benton), who had preceded him in the discussion when the subject 
 was last up, he took occasion to remove an erroneous impression 
 which he conceived was calculated to do great injustice to a dis- 
 tinguished man (Mr. W^ebster) who could not there defend him- 
 self. He alluded to the fears expressed by the Senator from Mis- 
 souri that the President's message declining to furnish the corre- 
 spondence or informal communications relative to the pending ne- 
 gotiation about the Oregon Territory implied grounds for conclud- 
 ing that propositions had been made by our Secretary of State 
 which the Administration was ashamed or afraid to avow; that, 
 in fact, the rumor must be correct which had got abroad that a 
 proposition had been made or entertained, by the Secretary of 
 State, to settle down upon the Columbia River as the boundary 
 line. Now, he was glad to have it in his power to undeceive the 
 Senator, and to assure him, which he did from authority — for he 
 had been requested by the Secretary himself to do it for him — that 
 he never either made or entertained a proposition to admit of any 
 line south of the 49th parallel of latitude as a negotiable boundary 
 line for the territory of the United States. After Mr. Choate had
 
 220 ACQUISITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 considerably more at larjje and in bis own words (tbe purpose of 
 wbieh it is only attempted to give in tbis sketch) fully explained 
 tbis matter, be next turned to so nuicb of tbe remarks of tbe fc^ena- 
 tor from Missouri as condemned tbe late treaty with Great Britain 
 in relation to tbe northeastern boundary line." 
 
 Ihid, Ai)})endix, pp. 222-229, contains a verbatim report of an- 
 other speech by Clioate delivered February 3, 1843, and on p. 223, 
 3d column, be says: "I desired chiefly to assure the Senator and 
 tbe Senate that tbe ap})reliension intimated by him that a dis- 
 closure of these informal communications would disgrace tbe Amer- 
 ican Secretary, by showing that be bad olfered a boundary line 
 south of tbe parallel of 49, is totally unfounded. He would be glad 
 to hear me say that I am authorized and desired to declare that 
 in no communication, formal or informal, was such an offer made, 
 and that none such was ever meditated." 
 
 As we have seen, the fact that Ashburton came over with ''spe- 
 cific and detailed instructions" to treat on Oregon was declared 
 by Lord Aberdeen, head of tbe British Foreign Office, in a letter 
 to Mr. H. S. Fox, British ]\Iinister at Washington, ])ublisbed by 
 our Government among the documents accompanying President 
 Polk's first Annual Message, but precisely why Oregon was not 
 included in tbe Ashburton treaty could not be stated with due re- 
 gard to tbe diplomatic proprieties, either by Choate in 1843, or 
 Webster in his great speech in defense of tbe Ashburton treaty in 
 1846, nor (in 1851) by Everett, bis life-long friend (and our Min- 
 ister to England in Tyler's Administration), in his brief biograjjby 
 of Webster, in which all be says on tbis point is, ''Had be sup- 
 posed an arrangement could have been effected on tbis basis" (/. c, 
 49th degree to tbe coast) "with Lord Ashburton, be would gladly 
 have included it in tbe treaty of Washington" (Cf. Webster's 
 Works, Vol. I., Intro., p. 148), because Asbburton's instructi(ms 
 from tbe British Foreign Office were not published till 1871-2 (in 
 Berlin Arbitration, pp. 218-19). These instructions directed Ash- 
 burton to offer us: (1st) The line of tbe Columbia Biver from its 
 mouth to tbe Snake River, and thence due east to the summit of 
 tbe Rockies. This would have given us about nine-fourteenths of 
 the territory south of 49 degrees. If he could not secure that line 
 he was authorized (2d) to renew tbe offer made us in 1824, and 
 again in 1827 by England, of tbe line of 49 degrees from the sum- 
 mit of tbe Rocky Mountains to the most northeastern branch of the 
 Columbia, and thence the river to tbe Pacific. (3d) If he could 
 not secure this line (which would have surrendered to us consider- 
 ably more than four fifths of all tbe territory south of 49 degrees), 
 he was i)ositively forbidden to accept of the line of, 49 degrees to
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 221 
 
 the coast, which we had always insisted upon, and as early as 1826 
 had announced to England as "our ultimatum." 
 
 Until the writer found these "specific and detailed instructions" 
 to Lord Ashburton he often wondered why Webster did not "au- 
 thorize and request Choate to say that no proposition for a line 
 south of 49 degrees" had been received by him, but as soon as these 
 instructions were found it was evident why "received" was not 
 used. Nothing is plainer than that in those informal communica- 
 tions Ashburton proposed one or both of the lines he was author- 
 ized to offer, and when Webster met the propositions with the 
 offer of our "ultimatum of 1826," Ashburton informed him that his 
 instructions would not allow him to accept that line, and so they 
 attempted no formal negotiations on Oregon, though both of them 
 would gladly have settled it if it had been possible. Webster there- 
 fore could not truthfully say that no such proposition had been 
 "received," but only that he had not made, nor entertained, nor 
 meditated, any proposition to admit any line south of 49 degrees 
 as a negotiable line for the United States. 
 
 In view of the fact that these explicit statements of Webster's 
 inflexible adherence to our "ultimatum" of 49 degrees to the Pa- 
 cific were made when Whitman (of whose existence even there is 
 no evidence that Webster or Tyler were then aware) was riding 
 over the prairies of what is now Kansas, what becomes of that 
 fundamental postulate of the "Whitman Saved Oregon" fiction that 
 Webster was ready to trade off Oregon on account of his deplor- 
 able ignorance about it, when that great patriotic hero, Marcus 
 Whitman, arrived in the nick of time to dispel the ignorance and 
 save Oregon, Barrows assuring us (p. 188) that "If Dr. Whitman 
 could have created all the circumstances and ordained his own 
 time, his arrival in Washington could not have been more apt for 
 seizing the conditions of things and saving Oregon. Its destiny 
 he had brought over on his own saddle, and now held it in his soli- 
 tary hand." Such stilly stuff do alleged historians write when 
 instead of studying contemporaneous authorities to know the truth 
 they evolve what they call history from their imaginations! 
 
 Choate's statements which he was "authorized and requested 
 to make by Webster" agree exactly with all Webster's subsequent 
 course on the Oregon question, as hereinafter stated. 
 
 Benton on this as on many another occasion could not refrain 
 from making unwarranted accusations against the British in gen- 
 eral and the Hudson's Bay Co. in particular, and as was his wont, 
 being from Missouri — a State which in the event of a war with 
 England was by its geographical position secure against any Eng- 
 lish army getting anywhere near its borders — he made light of any 
 possibility of injury to us if war should result from our wantonly
 
 222 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 and inexcusablv breakiii*j the treaty of 1827, and "made the Eagle 
 scream" after the followinf; fashion: 
 
 "No one defended the title of the British to one inch square of 
 the valley of the Oregon. . . . He undertook to show that their 
 possession of the valley of the Columbia was intrustive and tor- 
 tious; a trespass and a fraud upon our pre-existing possession of 
 the same river; and a wrong and aggression which the Govern- 
 ment of the T'nited States should resist and repulse. . . . And 
 now what has been the conduct of the British under this article? 
 (i. e., the 3d article of the treaties of 1818 and 1827.) 
 
 "They have crossed the 49th degree, come down upon the Co- 
 lumbia, taken possession of it from the head to the mouth, fortified 
 it and colonized it, monopolized the fur trade, driven all our 
 traders across the mountains, killed more than a thousand of them 
 (by their Indians) and used the Columbia as a free port, through 
 which they bring goods free of duty into our territories, up into 
 the Rocky Mountains, and across them. This is what they have 
 done by their agent, the Hudson's Bay Co. In its own name, and 
 by an Act of Parliament immediately after the Convention, the 
 British Government has extended its jurisdiction over the whole 
 country, taking no notice at all of our claims, and subjecting all 
 our citizens and their property to British judges, British courts 
 and appeals to Canada. . . . They have taken possession of 
 our claimed territory, of our harbor, our river, colonized the coun- 
 try and killed and expelled our traders. . . . Our traders, left 
 to contend single-handed against the organized Hudson's Bay Co., 
 against their Indians, against their free goods, have all been driven 
 in — forced not only out of the valley of the Columbia, but out of 
 the Rocky Mountains, and ruin has overtaken many of them. Even 
 the strong and rich company of Mr. Choteau can no longer ap- 
 I)roach the Rocky Mountains. The Hudson's Bay Co. are the mas- 
 ters there. Every American that approaches that region does so 
 at the peril of his life. Many were killed there this summer. . . 
 and now, if after all this, any proposition has been made by our 
 Government to give up the north bank of the Columbia, I for one 
 shall not fail to brand such a proposition with the name of treason. 
 . . . We fear war! As if the fear of war ever kept if off. We 
 fear war while Great Britain is systematically preparing for war 
 with us. All her encroachments upon us show that she is prepar- 
 ing for this result. She is preparing for war, and the late treaty 
 (the Ashburton treaty) is the largest of her preparations. . . . 
 As a nation Great Britain despises and hates our nation. . . . 
 There may be individual Englishmen who have regard for indi- 
 vidual Americans, but as it concerns nation and nation they 
 despise and hate us! They want war with us, and count upon its
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 223 
 
 being short and triumphant. . . . We should count upon ex- 
 pelling them from our continent, giving freedom to Ireland and 
 aiding the English people to reform their government. . . . 
 Sooner or later the war will come, for Great Britain is determined 
 upon it, and we should roll back the thunder upon her own shores. 
 
 ^'Thirty thousand friends of Ireland landed on her coast, and 
 forming the rallying point for a million of patriots, would make 
 'the devoted island' free, and shake Old England to her center. 
 These are my sentiments, and I neither dissemble nor deny them. 
 Peace is our policy. War is the policy of England, and war with 
 us is now her favorite policy. Let it come rather than dishonor! 
 
 "The man is alive and with a beard on his face, (though it may 
 not be I) who will see an American army in Ireland, and an Amer- 
 ican general in the streets of London." (Of. Appendix to Con- 
 gressional Globe, 27th Cong., 3d Sess., pp. 74-78, Jan. 12, 1843.) 
 
 It is doubtful if in all the hundreds of thousands of pages of 
 the official reports of debates in Congress there is to be found a 
 worse and a more mischievous specimen of demagogic rant than 
 this, which was evidently uttered not to influence votes in the Sen- 
 ate on the pending bill, but as pure "buncombe" to strengthen his 
 hold on the voters of Missouri, the headquarters of the fur trade. 
 
 He well knew that the presence of the Hudson's Bay Co. in Ore- 
 gon was not "intrusive, and tortious, a trespass and a fraud. . . 
 a wrong and an aggression," but that they were there by precisely 
 the same right that our citizens were, viz., by virtue of two freely 
 executed treaties, that of October 20, 1818, and August 6, 1827, 
 negotiated by some of the most patriotic, and able, and skilled in 
 diplomacy of all the men who have ever been numbered among our 
 Presidents, Secretaries of State, and Ministers to England, and 
 that the treaty of 1818 was unanimously ratified by the Senate, 
 and that of 1827 — after he himself had opposed it with utmost 
 bitterness — so commended itself to the judgment of the Senate 
 that it was ratified by 31 to 7. 
 
 He also knew that as both those treaties made it impossible 
 for Great Britain to strengthen her claims to any part of Oregon 
 by establishing trading posts or founding settlements therein, 
 while they remained in force, there was no motive for any attempt 
 at colonization of Oregon by Great Britain, and that the Hudson's 
 Bay Co. had not "taken possession of the Columbia," nor "forti- 
 fied," nor "colonized it," nor "driven all our traders across the 
 mountains," and he equally well knew that whenever our Govern- 
 ment chose to end the "joint policy" towards Oregon, it could by 
 simply giving twelve months' notice abrogate the treaty. He well 
 knew that what had so seriously damaged the fur trade — that there 
 was no annual rendezvous of American fur traders after 1838 — was
 
 224 ACQUI8ITI0X OF OREGOX 
 
 not any wroiijirul act of the Hudson's Bay Co., but the extensive 
 substitution at that time of silk for beaver fur in making hats, 
 which reduced the value of beaver skins to about one-quarter of 
 what it had previously been, and he equally well knew that the 
 Hudson's Bay Co. had not killed, or caused to be killed, 1,000, or 
 100, or 10, or 1 of our fur traders. 
 
 He also knew that the Hudson's Bay Co. had a perfect right to 
 use "the Columbia as a free j)ort," since neither Government had 
 established or could have established any custom house there while 
 the treaty of ''joint policy" remained in force, and he equally well 
 knew that the Act of Parliament to which he referred was only in- 
 tended to apply to British subjects, and had never been applied to 
 any American citizen, and that while it had been a most salutary 
 check on any tendency (o lawlessness among the Hudson's Bay 
 Co.'s employes scattered over that vast wilderness, hundreds of 
 miles from any organized government, not a single American citi- 
 zen had ever suffered any injury from it, and that no honest Amer- 
 ican ever had the slightest reason to fear anything from its en- 
 forcement. 
 
 ^Mien he said that "every American that approaches that re- 
 gion does so at the peril of his life," he well knew that as chair- 
 man of the Military Committee of the Senate, in January, 1831, 
 he had reported and the Senate had printed in Ex. Doc. No. 80 the 
 letters of his two friends, Jedediah S. Smith, and Josiah Pilcher, 
 the first American fur traders who, so far as known, had encoun- 
 tered the Hudson's Bay Co.'s officers and emi)loyes at their posts 
 in the Oregon Territory, and that both of them had written in the 
 warmest terms of the kindness and courtesy with which they had 
 been received and treated by them, and Pilcher, at the end of his 
 letter, had explicitly denied the accusation that the Hudson's Bay 
 Co. excited the Indians to kill and rob our citizens." 
 
 Instead of his statement that "every American that approaches 
 that region does so at the peril of his life" being true, he well 
 knew that small parties of Americans had been going to Oregon 
 to ex])lore, or to establish missions, or to begin fariuing settle- 
 ments each 3'ear since 1832 (except 1833 and 1837), and that every 
 one of them had reported that they had been most courteously 
 and kindly received, and most hospitably treated at each and every 
 one of the Hudson's Bay Co.'s posts which they had visited, and 
 had been heli)ed to establish themselves in Oregon as missionaries 
 or settlers, or to ex])lore the territory and learn of its resources 
 and possibilities, and he very well knew that among those sent by 
 the National Government expressly to explore Oregon, and to re- 
 port everything about it that our Government ought to know, were
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 225 
 
 Lieut. W. A. Slacum of the Navy, sent by President Jackson in 
 1835, and whose report was read in the Senate in 1837, and Lieut. 
 Charles Wilkes of the Navy, who from April to October, 1841, 
 ''with a sloop of war, a brig of war, two launches, ten boats and 
 upwards of 300 men" had made a much more extensive exploration 
 of Oregon by both land and water than any other single expedition 
 has ever made even to this day, and had filed a Special Report on 
 Oregon in the Navy Department June 13, 1842, and that both of 
 these officers had not only gratefully acknowledged their obliga- 
 tions to the Hudson's Bay Co. for the kindest treatment accorded 
 to themselves, but had explicitly declared that all honest Ameri- 
 cans in Oregon had been assisted by the Hudson's Bay Co. (Cf. 
 p. 197 ante and Chapter VII. infra for Slacum's, and for Wilkes' 
 Reports. ) 
 
 Soon after the war of 1812 our Government had bought land 
 at Rouse's Point (which is by far the best place to protect the 
 entrance to Lake Champlain), and had expended about $200,000 in 
 fortifying it, it being south of what had then always been accepted 
 as the location of the parallel of 4.5 degrees north latitude, and so 
 well within our territory; but in 1818 a joint commission of Amer- 
 ican and British officers surveyed the boundary, and found that 
 the parallel of 45 degrees north latitude instead of being north of 
 our works at Rouse's Point is about two miles south of them, and 
 that consequently our fort belonged to Great Britain (Cf. Gallatin 
 to Clay, date London, October 30, 1826, being No. 17, Doc. No. 458, 
 Am. State Papers, For. Rel., Vol. VI.) ; and as one of the most im- 
 portant provisions of the Ashburton treaty changed the boundary 
 between Vermont and New York, and Canada, from the true loca- 
 tion of 45 degrees north latitude to the line where 45 degrees had 
 been supposed to be prior to 1818, for the express purpose of re- 
 storing to us our fortifications at Rouse's Point, and as all this 
 was thoroughly discussed when the Ashburton treaty was before 
 the Senate in August, 1842, and as Benton took a very active part 
 in the debate on the ratification of that treaty, and most virulently 
 opposed it, it is simply impossible to imagine that he really be- 
 lieved his assertion that "Great Britain is systematically prepar- 
 ing for war with us. . . . and the late treaty is the largest of 
 her preparations." 
 
 Language fails with which to fittingly characterize the folly of 
 Benton's talk about our sending "30,000 friends of Ireland to Ire- 
 land" in the event of a war with Great Britain, and about an 
 "American army in Ireland," and an "American general in the 
 streets of London." 
 
 Had this speech been delivered by some beardless and inexperi- 
 enced youth, anxious to make a reputation as a "stump speaker,"
 
 226 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 at a frontier barbecue in all the heat and fury of a closely eon- 
 tested political c;ini])ai<;n, it niijiht justly be cited as a most ridicu- 
 lous saniple ol' "spread ea^le" bombast. 
 
 But this, it must be remembered, was uttered not "on the 
 stump" by a foolish "Ijov orator," in the heat and fury of a politi- 
 cal campaign, but by lienton within two months of his (Jlst birth- 
 day, in what should have been a serious and rational debate on a 
 great public question- — in the Ignited States Senate, one of the 
 most dignified legislative bodies in the world — and when Benton 
 had been a Senator 22 years. 
 
 Though this speech seems to have been hailed with rapture 
 in "IMke County," Missouri, and in other 'Tooral deestricts" of 
 that then extreme frontier State as evidence of the possession by 
 lienton of such fearless and transcendent statesmanshi}), and such 
 dauntless i)atriolisni as insured his re-election for another six years 
 to the Senate, and though he was evidently so proud of it at the 
 time as to revise it, and furnished it for publication in full in the 
 Appendix to the Cong. Globe, he carefully abridged every word of 
 it out of his "Abridgment of Debates in Congress," and 
 failed to bring anv of it into his field of vision in his "Thirty Years' 
 View." 
 
 The report of the great debate on Linn's bill fills 165 columns 
 of the Cong. Globe and its Appendix, 3d Sess., 27th Cong., and of a 
 total membership of 50 Senators 27 took part, including almost 
 every great name of both parties. 
 
 The slavery question was not yet much entangled with Oregon 
 afifairs, nor did it become so to any considerable extent till after 
 the treaty of 1846 had settled the Oregon boundary, and the at- 
 tempt had been made, in 1846, to pass the Wilmot Proviso. 
 
 Kepeatedly during the debate it was declared alike by the 
 friends and the opponents of the bill that the Senate was unani- 
 mous in the opinion that our title to Oregon, at least as far north 
 as 49 degrees, was incontestable — even McDufiie said this — while 
 Benton said "No one defended the title of the British to one square . 
 inch of the valley of the Oregon," and the chief opposition to the 
 bill was from Senators who were warm friends of the Oregon ac- 
 quisition, but who held that several of the provisions of Linn's bill 
 were such ])lain violations of the treaty of 1827 that to enact them 
 into law without first giving the requisite 12 months' notice of our 
 desire to abrogate that treaty would be such a wanton and inex- 
 cusable atti'ont to Great Britain as to provoke a war, which might 
 imperil our chance of holding any of Oregon. 
 
 On February .S, 1843, by a vote of 24 to 22, the Senate passed 
 the bill, and of the four absentees it was stated that two favored 
 and two opposed the bill.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 227 
 
 But when we come to analyze the vote we find that of the 22 
 Senators voting against the bill nine had declared in the course of 
 the debate that they would gladly support it, if its provisions in 
 violation of the treaty of 1827 were stricken out, so that without 
 knowing why the 13 others who voted against it were opposed to 
 it, or for what reason two of the absentees were opposed to it, it 
 is certain that (24 and 9 and 2) equal 35, or one more than two- 
 thirds of the whole Senate were ready on February 3, 1843, to vote 
 for any bill about Oregon that we had a right to pass without first 
 abrogating the treaty. 
 
 The number and character of the Senators who took part in 
 the debate and the fact that only four Senators were absent on 
 the final vote is proof of the great and general interest of the 
 people in the Oregon question. 
 
 But one Senator — McDuffie of South Carolina — spoke dispar- 
 agingly of the value of Oregon, and he had then been a Senator 
 only 22 days, having been elected to fill four years of an unexpired 
 term, and he was never able to achieve a re-election and was so in- 
 consequential a figure in our national history that but for the quo- 
 tation of some extracts from this unwise speech of his on Oregon 
 by the advocates of the Whitman Legend, in their futile attempts 
 to make it appear that "our leading statesmen were constantly de- 
 riding Oregon," it is doubtful if one person in 20,000 of our popu- 
 lation outside of the Carolinas and Georgia would ever have known 
 that such a person as McDuffie ever sat as a Senator from South 
 Carolina, 
 
 The instructions to Lieut. Wilkes to explore ''our territory on 
 the seaboard and the Columbia River," etc., have already been 
 quoted. April 28, 1841, Wilkes with part of his squadron sighted 
 the mouth of the Columbia, and "with a sloop of war, a brig of 
 war, two launches, ten boats and upwards of 300 men" (Cf. Wilkes' 
 testimony in Hudson's Bay Co. and Puget's Sound Co. vs. the 
 United States, Vol. VIII., p. 228), and he was diligently engaged till 
 October 10, 1841, in a far more extensive exploration of the Oregon 
 Territory by land and water than has ever been made by any other 
 one party even to this day, surveying and mapping the Puget's 
 Sound country and the navigable part of the Columbia River, send- 
 ing a party overland east from Puget Sound to the Columbia River 
 and back to Puget Sound through the center of north Oregon, 
 the only part of the territory which was really in dispute with 
 Great Britain, and another party up the Willamette Valley over- 
 land to San Francisco, and visiting all the Hudson's Bay Co.'s per- 
 manent posts south of 49 degrees except Boise and Hall, and all 
 the mission stations of the A. B. C. F. M. and the Methodists. 
 Sailing away from the Columbia October 10, 1841, on November
 
 228 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 24, 1841, Wilkes sent dispatch No. 98 from Honolulu to the Navy 
 Department, and in that he explains that he has not made the full 
 report he intended to send on the condition, value, etc., of the Ore- 
 gon Territory for lack of time to fully digest the great mass of 
 matter he has obtained so as to prepare such an accurate and con- 
 cise report as is desirable; and announces his intention to do so 
 immediately on his return to New York; and says, on ]). 2 of this 
 dispatch, "This course is also necessary, as many inquiries would 
 naturally arise to the fair understanding of the subject that would 
 render verbal information of much im})ortance to its full compre- 
 hension. Having been well aware of the little information in pos- 
 session of the Government relative to the northern section of this 
 country, including the Strait of Juan de Fuca, with its extensive 
 sounds and inlets, I thought it proper, from its vast importance in 
 the settlement of the boundary question, though not embraced in 
 my instruction, to devote a large portion of my time to a thorough 
 survey and examination, without, however, overlooking or neglect- 
 ing any part of that which was distinctly embraced in them." 
 
 Wilkes reached New York June 10, 1842, and June 13, 1842, 
 filed this promised report, covering 44 closely written foolscap 
 pages, in the Navy Department. It has never been published in 
 full, though "demanded" by the House of Representatives, and 
 though a resolution equally peremptory was offered in the Senate 
 by Linn, but subsequently withdrawn, as appears from the follow- 
 ing: (Cf. Journal of the House of Representatives, 27th Cong., 
 3d Sess., January 13, 1843) "Mr. Pendleton, from the Committee 
 on Military Affairs, reported the following resolution : Resolved, 
 That the Secretary of the Navy be required to furnish to this House 
 a copy of the report heretofore made to him by Lieut. Wilkes rela- 
 tive to the examination of the Oregon Territory. The resolution 
 was read and agreed to." 
 
 Id. January 24. ''On motion of Mr. Pendleton from the Commit- 
 tee on ^Military Affairs, it was ordered that extracts from the re- 
 port of Lieut. Wilkes to the Secretary of the Navy of the examina- 
 tion of the Oregon Territory, and communicated to the Military 
 Committee by Mr. Wilkes with the permission of the Secretary of 
 the Navy, be printed with the report heretofore made by said com- 
 mittee on the Oregon Territory." 
 
 Id. February 1. "On motion of Mr. Pendleton from the Com- 
 mittee on Military Affairs it was 
 
 "Resolved, That the resolution heretofore adopted, requesting 
 the Secretary of the Navy to furnish to the House of Re{)resenta- 
 tives a copy of Lieut. Wilkes' report on the Oregon Territory, be 
 rescinded."
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 229 
 
 Senate Journal, 27th Cong., 3d Sess., Jan. 3, 1843, page 67, 
 Linn submitted a resolution to print report of Lieut. Wilkes to 
 Secretary of Navy relating to the Territory of Oregon, and on 
 January 5, on Linn's motion, it was laid on the table. 
 
 Reading these records, and conjecturing that this Special Re- 
 port must have contained things which in the then existing condi- 
 tion of the Oregon question the Government deemed it impolitic 
 to publish, I went to Washington in March, 1887, and carefully ex- 
 amined this and all the other unpublished dispatches from Lieut. 
 Wilkes, and found that it contained the following matter which it 
 was not proper then to print, viz.: (1) An earnest argument for 
 54 deg. 40 min. instead of 49 degrees. (A similar argument was 
 also in dispatch No. 98 from Honolulu.) (2) That the officers of 
 the Hudson's Bay Co. would be much averse to any war on account 
 of their flocks and herds and investments in farming operations. 
 (3) Information as to the strategic value of Walla Walla. 
 
 The following extracts from the 14 pages which were taken 
 from this Special Report of Wilkes and published in the second 
 edition of the Report of the Military Committee of the House of 
 Representatives (Repts. of Com. No. 31, H. of R., 27th Cong., 3d 
 Sess.), commonly known as Pendleton's Second Report in January, 
 1843, will show how enthusiastic Wilkes was as to the value of 
 Oregon. Of Puget's Sound he says: ''No part of the world affords 
 finer inland sounds, or a greater number of harbors than can be 
 found here, capable of receiving the largest class of vessels, and 
 without a danger in them that is not visible. From the rise and 
 fall of the tides (18 feet) all facilities are afforded for the erection 
 of works for a great maritime nation." 
 
 Of the Oregon Territory generally he says: "In comparison 
 with our own country I should say that the labor required in this 
 territory for subsistence and to acquire wealth is in the proportion 
 of one to three, or in other words, a man must work three times as 
 long in the States to gain a like competence." 
 
 Of the Hudson's Bay Co.'s posts, which various advocates of the 
 "Whitman Saved Oregon" fiction represent as strong forts, he says: 
 "All the posts of the Hudson's Bay Co. are small settlements, con- 
 sisting of a palisade or picket with bastions at their corners around 
 the stores and houses of the Company sufficient to protect them 
 against Indians, but in no way to be considered as forts, and 
 would not count in any war which might arise between the na- 
 tions." . . . "To conclude: Few portions of the globe, in my 
 opinion, are to be found so rich in soil, diversified in surface or 
 capable of being so easily rendered the happy abode of an indus- 
 trious and civilized community. For beauty of scenery and salu- 
 brity of climate it is not surpassed. It is peculiarly adapted for
 
 230 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 an agricultural and ])astoral people, and no portion of the world 
 beyond the tropics is to be lound that will yield so readily to the 
 wants of man with moderate labor." 
 
 Could anything be printed that would more greatly stimulate 
 migration to Oregon than such statements as these, coming from 
 the commander of the greatest national exploring expedition our 
 country has ever sent out, whose ])rogress around the world had 
 been watched with the intensest interest by the whole people from 
 1838 to 1842? 
 
 How closely the progress of the expedition was watched and 
 reported may be judged from the following two articles from Niles' 
 Register, May 7, 1842, p. 150 : ''Exploring Expedition. The Wash- 
 ington correspondent of the New York Commercial Advertiser 
 gives the following information: 'Dispatches were received over- 
 land a fortnight since from the exploring expedition. . . . The 
 researches and surveys made by them on the northwest coast (i e., 
 the Oregon Territory) are of such value as will more than com- 
 pensate the nation for the whole cost of the expedition.' " 
 
 June 25, 1842, p. 201 : Nearly two and a half columns are de- 
 voted to an account of the ''South Sea Exploring Expedition." 
 ''The Expedition have also examined and surveyed a large portion 
 of the Oregon Territory, a part of the Upper California, including 
 the Columbia and Sacramento Rivers with their various tributar- 
 ies. Several exploring parties from the squadron have explored, 
 examined and fixed those portions of the Oregon Territory least 
 known. A map of the Territory, embracing its rivers, sounds, har- 
 bors, coasts, forts, etc., has been prepared, which will furnish the 
 Government with a mass of valuable information relative to our 
 possessions on the northwest coast and the whole of Oregon." 
 
 As one of the absolutely indispensable postulates of the Whit- 
 man Legend is that until Dr. Whitman — an unknown man of no 
 special intellectual ability and who up to that time had never writ- 
 ten so much as one short sentence expressing the least interest in 
 or concern about the political destinies of any part of the old Ore- 
 gon Territory — arrived in Washington (according to the Whitman 
 Legend on March 3, but, in fact, not earlier than late in March, 
 or more likely about April 10 or 12, 1843) — our Government and 
 the people of the country at large were deplorably ignorant about 
 Oregon and had been deceived by the Hudson's Bay Co. into think- 
 ing it worthless and inaccessible; all the advocates of that legend, 
 from Gray to Mowry, either malign Wilkes or utterly ignore his 
 work, and not a single one of them — Gray, Rev. M. Eells, Barrows, 
 Nixon, Craighead, Mowry, Mrs. Dye, Laurie, Hallock, Edwards or 
 Penrose — has ever allowed any one to know anything from their 
 writings about the extent and value of Wilkes' explorations, or
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 231 
 
 that he reached Washington and filed this report June 13, 1842, 
 or that Tyler's Administration had had before it not only this Spe- 
 cial Report, but also his other dispatches about Oregon and had 
 had opportunities for daily interviews with Wilkes and the other 
 officers of his expedition (who had seen very much more of and 
 knew vastly more about Oregon than Whitman or any other mis- 
 sionary did) for nine months before Whitman could by any possi- 
 bility have reached Washington. Several of them, notably Gray 
 and Mrs. Bye, do not hesitate to malign him. 
 
 Thus Gray, p. 204 (writing in 1870), said: "To the disgrace 
 of the leader of that squadron, the general impression of all the 
 early settlers of this country is to the present day that he under- 
 stood and tasted the qualities of Dr. McLoughlin's liquors, and re- 
 ceived the polite attentions of the gentlemen of the Hudson's Bay 
 Co. with far more pleasure than he looked into or regarded the 
 wants of this infant settlement of his countrymen." 
 
 Mrs. Eva Emery Dye repeats and enlarges this shameless slan- 
 der (pp. 176-7, '^McLoughlin and Old Oregon") in a purely imag- 
 inary dialogue between Lieut. Wilkes and George Abernethy (the 
 Methodist mission steward) as follows: 
 
 " 'Do you advise us to establish a government?' he asked. 
 " 'Not yet,' said the Commodore. 'Wait ! The British interest 
 already feels itself threatened by the presence of this exploring 
 squadron. Any action on your part may precipitate trouble, in 
 which case you are too few and too far away to be properly sup- 
 ported. Wait till your numbers augment.' 
 
 " 'Dr. McLoughlin's wine has affected his judgment,' said the 
 men of the mission. 
 
 "In the purple twilight Commodore Wilkes walked in the fields 
 of wheat. The crescent moon hung over Mount Hood. 'A lovely 
 land,' he murmured ; 'charming by day, enchanting by night. Tell 
 me, what do you Americans think of the Hudson's Bay Co.?' 
 
 " 'The Hudson's Bay Co. is Great Britain's instrumentality for 
 securing Oregon,' was the answer. 
 
 " 'But,' urged the Commodore, 'the missionaries have received 
 untold favors from the Hudson's Bay Co., and if they are gentle- 
 men it is their duty to return them.' 
 
 "The missionary faced about in the Commodore's path. 'Return 
 them? Certainly. I will exchange favors with Dr. McLoughlin or 
 any other man or set of men, but I will not sell my countrv for 
 it' " 
 
 Wilkes was almost angry with this "blunt missionary." It is 
 quite safe to say that for not one sentence of this dialogue can 
 Mrs. Dye produce any better authority than her own exuberant 
 fancy and her overweening ambition to write "a taking book," with-
 
 232 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 out the least care whether it was true or false. There is not the 
 remotest probability that either "George Abernethy, the mission 
 steward," or any other missionary, "blunt" or otherwise, ever would 
 have dared when conversing with Lieut. Wilkes to imply that 
 Wilkes had said anything which meant that he would "sell his 
 country," or that any advice he had given if followed would cause 
 the said missionary or any one else to ''sell his country," and 
 equally destitute of any probability is the statement she puts in 
 M'ilkes' mouth that ''The British interest already feels itself threat- 
 ened by the presence of this exploring squadron." There is not a 
 hint of any such idea in any of Wilkes' unpublished dispatches nor 
 in his Special Report, nor in his great five volume Report pub- 
 lished in 1845, nor in his testimony in 1SG() in the great case of 
 the Hudson's Bay Co. and the Puget Sound Agricultural Co. vs. 
 the United States, and it plainly is another mere creature of Mrs. 
 Dye's extravagant fancy. 
 
 Equally preposterous is the plain implication of this imagined 
 dialogue that this Methodist mission steward, who had only been 
 in Oregon eleven months when Wilkes' squadron reached there, 
 was a more patriotic man than Lieut. Charles Wilkes. 
 
 Reynolds of Illinois had introduced a bill identical with Linn's 
 bill (No. 771), House of Representatives), and it, with various me- 
 morials and proceedings of public meetings praying for the adop- 
 tion of suitable measures by Congress for the occupation and set- 
 tlement of the Oregon Territory, had been referred to a select com- 
 mittee consisting of Reynolds of Illinois, Miller of Missouri, Daw- 
 son of Louisiana, Cross of Arkansas, and Kennedy of Indiana. 
 
 February 9, 1843, this committee made a report of eight pages 
 (No. 157, Repts. of Coms., House of Representatives, 27th Cong., 
 3d Sess., Vol. II.), in which they say: "The claim of the L^nited 
 States to the tract of country called the Oregon Territory . . . 
 is founded upon discovery, occupancy and treaty. It has not been 
 questioned by any power but Great Britain ; and it is not to the 
 knowledge of the committee doubted or disputed by any American 
 statesman. 
 
 "This claim has been so often and ably investigated and as- 
 serted, and so fully established by the executive department of this 
 Government, and by reports of committees, and in debates in both 
 branches of Congress, that the committee have not considered it 
 necessary for any useful ]>urpose to enter into any farther argu- 
 ment in supi)ort of its validity or justice." . . . "In conclusion, 
 tlie coiiiiiiittee bog leave to remark, that in their opinion those per- 
 sons mislead themselves who believe that this territory, under 
 suitable legislation by Congress, will not, like the new States that 
 have sprung up in the Mississippi valley, rise rapidly into agri-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 233 
 
 cultural, commercial and political importance." When Linn's bill 
 was sent over from the Senate, it, with Reynold's bill, was referred 
 to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, of which that brilliant states- 
 man and "living record of the diplomatic history of our country," 
 ex-President John Quincy Adams, was chairman, and Feb. 10, 1843, 
 his diary reads (Cf. Memoirs of J. Q. Adams, Vol. XI., p. 321) : 
 "When the Committee on Foreign Affairs was called, I reported the 
 bill from the Senate for the occupation of the Oregon Territory and 
 for other purposes, and the same bill reported by Reynolds of Illi- 
 nois in the House, without amendments, and with the opinion of 
 the committee that neither of them ought to pass. They were then, 
 at my motion, referred, without opposition, to the committee of 
 the whole on the state of the Union," and thus ended the action of 
 the 27th Congress, 3d Session, on the Oregon question. 
 
 Four Presidents had built strong and deep the foundations on 
 which our claims to Oregon rested, viz, : 
 
 First, Thomas Jefferson (a) by buying the Louisiana Territory 
 in 1803, and so giving us a claim by contiguity of territory along 
 the whole east line of Oregon, as far north as 49 degrees (which 
 was then and long after supposed to have been fixed as the boundary 
 between the Hudson's Bay Co.'s territories and the French provinces 
 in America, in conformity with the tenth article of the Treaty of 
 Utrecht, in 1713, though it is now established that this belief [on 
 which several treaties were based] was erroneous, and that although 
 commissioners were appointed by France and England according to 
 the stipulations of that treaty, they did nothing and no such line 
 was ever run). 
 
 (b) By originating and sending out the Lewis and Clark Ex- 
 pedition (1803-1806), and so adding to our claim by priority of 
 discovery of the mouth of the river, by Gray, in 1792, a claim by 
 priority of exploration of the whole breadth of its basin, from the 
 Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, 
 
 Second, James Madison (who had been Secretary of State under 
 Jefferson), (a) by favoring the Astoria Expedition (1810-1813), 
 which added to our claims by priority of discovery and exploration 
 a claim by priority of actual occupancy. 
 
 (b) By instructing our commissioners to negotiate the Treaty 
 of Ghent, that they should insist on the restoration of Astoria in 
 any treaty of peace. 
 
 Third, James Monroe (who had been one of the commissioners 
 who negotiated the purchase of the Louisiana Territory, and, as 
 Secretary of State under Madison, had sent the instructions to our 
 Commissioners to negotiate the Treaty of Ghent), (a) by insisting 
 on and securing the restoration of Astoria, October 0, 1818.
 
 234 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 (b) By nefjotiating the treaty of October 20, 1818, with Oreat 
 Britain, beiii|i: the first Treaty of Joint Policy toward Oregon 
 (though more commonly called the first Treaty of Joint Occu- 
 pancy), with a provision that made it impossible that while it re- 
 mained in force Great Britain could either strengthen her claims 
 or weaken ours to any part of Oregon, either by establishing trad- 
 ing posts or making settlements. 
 
 (c) By making the treaty of February 22, 1819, with Spain, 
 which not only ceded us Florida, and defined the south and west 
 boundaries of the Louisiana Territory, but also fixed the northern 
 boundary of California (never before defined) at 42 degrees north 
 latitude, and ceded to us all her claims north of that line. 
 
 (d) By negotiating the treaty with Russia of April 5, 1824, 
 which fixed the south line of Russian America (now Alaska), at 
 54 deg. and 40 min., and so defined the north boundary of the Ore- 
 gon Territory, as the treaty of 1819 had its south boundary. 
 
 (e) By the negotiations of 1823-24 with Great Britain on the 
 Oregon question, resulting in no treaty, but in the course of which 
 Great Britain, for the first time, offered us the line of 49 degrees 
 to the most northeasterlv branch of the Columbia, and thence the 
 river to the ocean, which was, and was understood to be by all well 
 informed statesmen in both countries, an abandonment by Great 
 Britain of all claims to any territory south and east of the Colum- 
 bia, and so left really in dispute, after 1824, only about 58,000 
 square miles, being that part of the present State of Washington 
 north and west of the Columbia. 
 
 (f) By the announcement July 22, 1823, to both Great Britain 
 and Russia, of the first form of the Monroe Doctrine, in the state- 
 ment that the American continents were not thenceforth to be open 
 to colonization by any European power. 
 
 The fuller form of the Monroe Doctrine was stated in Monroe's 
 Annual Message December 2, 1823. Though called the Monroe Doc- 
 trine it is altogether probable that John Q. Adams is entitled to 
 quite as much credit for formulating it as Monroe. 
 
 Fourth, John Quincy Adams — far and away the ablest American 
 diplomat of those days (who had acted as Monroe's most efficient 
 Secretary of State in all these negotiations — 1818 to 1824, inclus- 
 ive) — and who had been one of our Commissioners to negotiate the 
 Treaty of Ghent; and who, as President, directed every step of the 
 negotiations of 1826-27, which resulted in the second Treaty of 
 Joint Policy (or Joint Occupancy), signed August 6, 1827, in which 
 again our rights were so safeguarded that while it remained in 
 force Great Britain could not, by any settlements or trading posts, 
 strengthen her claims to any part of Oregon. Early in these nego- 
 tiations Great Britain again offered to nmke the line 49 degrees to
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 235 
 
 the most northeasterly branch of the Columbia, and thence the 
 river to the ocean, which was immediately refused by our ])lenipo- 
 tentiary, Albert Gallatin, who again offered the line on wliich all 
 these Presidents had always insisted of 49 degrees to the coast, 
 with the instruction by direct order of President Adams, that that 
 line was *'our ultimatum." 
 
 It is altogether probable that the services of John Quincy Adams 
 in securing Oregon to us were at least as great as those of any 
 other statesman, with the possible exception of Jefferson, and not 
 a sentence is to be found in any of his state papers, or in his 
 speeches in Congress, or in his voluminous correspondence, and 
 his full and minute diary, which indicates that he ever entertained 
 for an instant any thought that we should recede from the ^'ulti- 
 matum" of 49 degrees as the most favorable line we could ever con- 
 cede to Great Britain for the northern boundary of Oregon. 
 
 There can be no question therefore that his adverse report on 
 Linn's bill, and Reynolds' bill, was due, not to indifference as to the 
 political destiny of the Oregon Territory, nor to ignorance as to its 
 value to us, but to his conviction — based on a more complete knowl- 
 edge than any other man possessed of every detail of the various 
 negotiations with France, Spain, Russia and Great Britain which 
 had affected our title to Oregon — that these bills ought not to be 
 passed, because they plainly violated our obligations, freely entered 
 into in times of profound peace, in the treaties of 1818 and 1827. 
 
 It has seemed necessary to quote very fully from the proceed- 
 ings of the 27th Congress (and especially its second and third ses- 
 sions), because while they have no connection with the origin and 
 purpose of Whitman's ride, the quotations herein made most indis- 
 putably establish that there was not the slightest need of Whitman 
 to inform the Government about the value of Oregon to the United 
 States, nor to stimulate President Tyler and Daniel Webster to in- 
 sist on holding it as far north as 49 degrees, and that he — knowing 
 absolutely nothing of the region really in dispute (except the farms 
 and gardens of Fort Vancouver), could not have furnished any in- 
 formation of the slightest value to an administration which, for 
 more than nine months before he could by any possibility have 
 reached Washington, had had opportunities for daily interviews 
 with Wilkes and the other officers of his expedition, who from per- 
 sonal explorations and surveys knew the value of the region really 
 in dispute, and particularly of what, as the world then looked, was 
 immeasurably its most important part — the Puget Sound country — 
 far better than Whitman or any other missionary to the Oregon 
 Indians did then, or for many years thereafter. 
 
 The records of the earlier diplomatic negotiations, and Congres- 
 sional debates, and reports of Congressional committees, and Gov-
 
 236 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 ernment explorers and agents, are only to be found in a few large 
 libraries, and the vital facts about them have been for a generation 
 past so suppressed and misstated by the advocates of the Whitman 
 Legend that it has seemed needful to quote from them extensively ; 
 but as the reports of the later negotiations and Congressional de- 
 bates, and committee re])orts and reports of Government ex[)lorers 
 and agents are in hundreds of libraries in all parts of the land, and 
 as concerning events after the spring of 184^i, there was no special 
 inducement to misstate Governmental action by even the most 
 myth-loving advocates of the ''Whitman Saved Oregon" Story, 
 there is no necessity for such extensive quotations from what is so 
 easily accessible to all who care to go thoroughly into the subject, 
 and consequently the later governmental action will be presented 
 more briefly, but with such references to original sources as will 
 enable the reader to follow the matter up as fully as inclination and 
 leisure may impel. 
 
 The ^'Oregon jingoes" who followed Benton's lead continually 
 insisted, not only during the campaign which resulted in the elec- 
 tion of James K. Polk over Henry Clay as President, but as late as 
 January and February, 1845, that it was imperatively necessary for 
 the United States to immediately proceed to occupy Oregon with 
 settlers, and to encourage them to go there by passing Linn's bill 
 granting 640 acres of land to any male over 18 years of age who 
 would settle and live on it for five years, subsequently amended (by 
 Linn's successor in the Senate, D. R. Atchison), by providing a 
 grant of 160 acres additional to the wife (in case the settler should 
 be a married man), and 160 acres more for each child under 18 
 years of age that he might have when he settled on the land, and 
 160 acres more for each child he might have during the five years 
 before his title would be completed. (Cf. for Atchison's amended 
 bill. Cong. Globe, 28th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 56, date December 21, 
 1843.) 
 
 Tender these provisions a family having 8 children would have 
 received 2,080 acres, one of 10 children 2,400 acres, and one of 12 
 children 2,720 acres. 
 
 One of the arguments they most persistently advanced for the 
 urgent necessity of immediate action by our Government was that 
 we could never hope by negotiation with England to secure a satis- 
 factory boundary line, because she was entirely satisfied to let 
 things remain indefinitely as they were under the treaties of 1818 
 and 1827, since she was receiving all the benefits resulting from 
 their i)rovision for what was commonly called the Joint Occupancy 
 of Oregon, (but might much more properly be called the Joint Pol- 
 icy of the two governments toward Oregon), and under that pro- 
 vision was really in absolute control of the Oregon Territory, and
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 237 
 
 *'by means of the Hudson's Bay Co. was colonizing it, establishing 
 forts in it to defend it against American troops, occupying all its 
 eligible sites for mills and towns, building mills, and cutting and 
 marketing all the best of its timber south of the Columbia, so that 
 when the boundary should be established at the Columbia we would 
 have to buy our ship timber from her, making game laws in it, con- 
 stantly irritating and annoying the Indians south of the Columbia 
 so as to make them hostile, and favoring and humoring those north 
 of the Columbia so as to make them friendly, and in all possible 
 ways oppressing Americans who went to Oregon to settle." (Cf. in 
 Cong. Globe, 1st and 2d Sess., 28th Cong., and Appendix to 1st 
 Sess., speeches of Senators Benton, Buchanan, William Allen of 
 Ohio, D. R. Atchison of Missouri, and in the House of Representa- 
 tives of Stephen A. Douglass, John Wentworth and J. A. McCler- 
 nand of Illinois, Alexander Duncan of Ohio, Kennedy of Indiana, 
 Cary of Maine, and others. ) The facts are : 
 
 First. The English were not and never had been "in absolute 
 control of Oregon." 
 
 Second. They were not colonizing it. In the autumn of 1843 
 the entire number of British settlers (who were all ex-employes of 
 the Hudson's Bay Co., whose term of service had expired), was less 
 than 50 — less than two a year for all the years the Hudson's Bay 
 Co. and its predecessor in interest, the North West Co., had been in 
 Oregon. (Cf. Nesmith's Address., Tr. Or. Pioneer Association 1875, 
 p. 56.) 
 
 Third. As to "forts to defend Oregon against Americans," there 
 were none, but, as stated by Lieut. Wilkes in his Special Report of 
 June 13, 1842, they were all mere Indian trading posts, "but in no 
 way to be considered as forts." (Cf. "Pendleton's Second Report," 
 being Report No. 31, 27th Cong., 3d Sess., p. 75, quoted on p. 229, 
 ante. ) 
 
 Fourth. Instead of occupying all its eligible sites for mills, fac- 
 tories and towns, the Hudson's Bay Co. had saw and grist mills 
 about six miles above Vancouver, and also at Colvile, about 500 
 miles northeast on the Columbia ; and Dr. John McLoughlin, on his 
 own account, had laid claim to a mill and town site at the Falls of 
 the Willamette, where Oregon City now is; and they had trading 
 posts on sites where three considerable towns and one very small 
 one have since been built, viz.: Vancouver and Walla Walla (now 
 Wallula), in Washington, and Astoria and Oregon City, in Oregon 
 (the last named not opened till 1844 or 1845) ; that is, on the 292,- 
 000 square miles of the old Oregon Territory, between 1813 and 
 1844, they had actually occupied three millsites and four town- 
 sites, no one of the townsites being one on which a great city has 
 been built to this dav.
 
 238 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Fifth. All the timber they cut and marketed during the whole 
 time they occupied Oregon was not the one millionth part of the 
 timber then standing there, and not the one hundred thousandth 
 part of the timber that grew there during that time. 
 
 Sixth. They no more made "game laws" in Oregon than they 
 made laws establishing castes like those of India, or laws of primo- 
 geniture like those of England. 
 
 Seventh. Their treatment of the Indians was exactly the same 
 south and north of the Columbia, and was such as to receive the 
 highest praise from American missionaries, settlers, explorers and 
 government agents. 
 
 Eighth. In no way did they oppress any well-behaved American 
 who went to settle in Oregon, or who visited the Territory for pleas- 
 ure or as an explorer. 
 
 The absolutely indisputable proof of the seventh and eighth 
 propositions is stated herein in chapter No. VII. on the "Truth 
 About the Relation of the Hudson's Bay Co. to the American Ex- 
 ploration, Occupation and Settlement of Oregon." 
 
 False as are all these premises of the "Oregon jingoes," equally 
 false is their conclusion that England was perfectly content to let 
 matters rest indefinitely under the treaty of 1827, because she was 
 obtaining all the benefits of that treaty, and constantly strengthen- 
 ing her claims to Oregon. 
 
 The very opposite was the case. The English Government could 
 not strengthen its claims to any part of Oregon while that treaty 
 continued in force, and, alarmed by the continuous discussion in 
 Congress from 1838 onwards, and the widespread fever from Massa- 
 chusetts to Missouri, and from Wisconsin to Louisiana, to migrate 
 to Oregon, and the prompt rejection by Webster (in the informal 
 conferences preceding the formal negotiations for the Webster- 
 Ashburton treaty) of any line south of 49 degrees as a negotiable 
 boundary line for the United States, with the rapidly increasing 
 agitation for 54 deg. 40 min. and the great activity of the Ameri- 
 can press, which, as the Edinburgh Review said, in July, 1843 (p. 
 100) : "Teems with publications on the subject;" the English Gov- 
 ernment, instead of "being content to let matters rest indefinitely 
 under the treaty of 1827," only five days after the completion of the 
 Ashburton treaty urged our Government to renew negotiations for 
 the settlement of the Oregon boundary, perceiving plainly enough 
 that unless it was speedily done there was danger that they might 
 not be able to secure a line so favorable even as the 49th degree. 
 
 Note: — The principal of these American publications about Ore- 
 gon were: Irving's "Astoria" (183G) and "Bonneville" (1837) 
 (both immediately republished in England, and widely read in both 
 countries) ; Lieut. Slacum's Report (Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 24, 25th
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 239 
 
 Cong., 2d Sess., Dec. 18, 1837) ; Rev. Samuel Parker's ''Journal of a 
 Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains" (1838) ; Linn's Report (No. 
 470, Vol. v.. Sen. Doc, 25th Cong., 2d Sess., June 6, 1838, with the 
 Ultimatum Map) ; Townsend's "Narrative of a Journey Across the 
 Rocky Mountains to the Columbia" (1839), which was immediately 
 republished in London. 
 
 Cushing's Report and Supplemental Report (p. 112) (No. 101, 
 Reports of Corns., House of Representatives, 25th Cong., 3d Sess., 
 February 16, 1839, with the Ultimatum Map). Of this Report 10,- 
 000 copies were ordered printed "in addition to the usual number." 
 
 Greenhow's "History of Oregon and California," first or Govern- 
 ment Edition, 228 pages, with map and index, of which 2,500 copies 
 "in addition to the usual number" were ordered printed by the 
 Senate February 10, 1840, (as Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 174, Vol. IV., 2fJth 
 Cong., 1st Sess.). It was also immediately reprinted in both New 
 York and London, as a book for general sale, with no change ex- 
 cept striking off from the title page the fact that it was a Govern- 
 ment document, and doubtless the United States Secret Service 
 fund paid the expenses of the London edition. 
 
 Thomas J. Farnham's "Travels in the Great Western Prairies, 
 the Anahuac and Rocky Mountains and in the Oregon Territory," 
 (1st Edition, Poughkeepsie, N. Y., 1841). 
 
 Pendleton's First Report or Report of the Military Committee, 
 House of Representatives (No. 830, Reports of Coms., House of Rep- 
 resentatives, Vol. IV., 27th Cong., 2d Sess. [64 pp.], with the Ulti- 
 matum Map), of which 5,000 copies "in addition to the usual num- 
 ber" were ordered printed May 27, 1842. 
 
 Pendleton's Second Report, No. 31, Reports Coms., House of Rep- 
 resentatives, 27th Cong., 3d Sess., p. 78 (with the Ultimatum Map), 
 being the First Report (No. 830, 27th Cong., 2d Sess.) with 14 pp. 
 of extracts from Lieut Wilkes' Special Report added, and 5,000 
 copies ordered printed January 4, 1843. 
 
 Caleb Cushing's four long articles in North American Revieic, 
 October, 1828 (36 pp.), January, 1837 (37 pp.), January, 1839 (34 
 pp.), and January, 1840 (70 pp.) ; article in Hunt's Merchants' 
 Magazine for April, 1842 (then a very widely circulated and influ- 
 ential publication), on "Oregon Territory;" copied in full in Niles' 
 Register for May 21, 1842. (Besides these there were almost in- 
 numerable newspaper articles.) 
 
 Doc. No. 2, of Vol. I., of House Ex. Docs., 29th Cong., 1st Sess., 
 1845-46, is President Polk's first Annual Message, date December 
 2, 1845 (this is also Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 1, 29th Cong., 1st Sess., and 
 it is also printed in App. to Cong. Globe, 29th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 
 1-37), and among accompanying documents is "Correspondence with 
 the British Minister in Relation to Oregon," covering pp. 138-192,
 
 240 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 inchisive. On j). 139 is first a letter to D. Webster, Secretary of 
 State, from H. S. Fox, British Minister to the United States, dated 
 Washington, November 15, 1842, announcing the desire of the Brit- 
 ish Government, now that the northeast boundary was settled, to 
 take up the Oregon boundary, and enclosing the following extract 
 from a letter of Lord Aberdeen to Mr. Fox: 
 
 ''Foreign Office, Oct. 18, 1842. 
 
 "Sir: The ratifications of the treaty, concluded on the 9th of 
 August" {i. e., the Ashburton Treaty, W. I. M.) ''between Great 
 Britain and the United States, were exchanged by me, on the 13th 
 inst., with the Minister of the United States accredited to the court 
 of Her Majesty. 
 
 "The more important question of the disputed boundary between 
 Her Majesty's North American provinces and the United States 
 being thus settled, and the feelings which have been mutually pro- 
 duced in the people of both countries being evidently favorable, and 
 indicative of a general desire to continue on the best footing with 
 each other, it has a])peared to Her Majesty's Government that both 
 parties would act wisely in availing themselves of so auspicious a 
 moment to endeavor to bring to a settlement the only remaining 
 subject of territorial difference, which, although not so hazardous 
 as that of the northeast boundary, is nevertheless, even at this 
 moment, not without risk to the good understanding between the 
 two countries, and may, in course of time, be attended with the 
 same description of danger to their mutual peace as the (piestion 
 which has recently been adjusted. I speak of the line of boundary 
 west of the Rocky Mountains. 
 
 "You are aware that Lord Ashburton was furnished with specific 
 and detailed instructions with respect to the treatment of this point 
 of difi'erence between the two Governments in the general negotia- 
 tions with which he was intrusted, arid which he has brought to a 
 satisfactory issue. For reasons which it is not necessary here to 
 state at length, that point, after having been made the subject of 
 conference with the American Secretary of State, was not further 
 pressed. The main ground alleged by his lordship (p. 140) for 
 abstaining from {)ro])osing to carry on the discussion with respect 
 to the northwest boundary was the apprehension lest, by so doing, 
 the settlement of the far more important matter of the northeast 
 boundary should be impeded or exposed to the hazard of failure. 
 
 "This ground of apprehension now no longer exists; and Her 
 Majesty's Government, therefore, being anxious to endeavor to re- 
 move, so far as depends on them, all cause, however remote, of even 
 contingent risk to the good understanding now so happily restored 
 between two countries which ought never to be at variance with
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 241 
 
 each other, have determined to propose to the Government of the 
 United States to meet them in an endeavor to adjust by treaty the 
 unsettled question of boundary west of the Rocky Mountains. On 
 the receipt of this dispatch, therefore, I have to desire that you 
 will propose to Mr. Webster to move the President to furnish the 
 United States Minister at this court with such instructions as will 
 enable him to enter upon the negotiation of this matter with such 
 person as may be appointed by Her Majesty for that object, and 
 you will assure him, at the same time, that we are prepared to pro- 
 ceed to the consideration of it in a perfect spirit of fairness, and to 
 adjust it on a basis of equitable compromise. 
 
 "I am, with great truth and regard, sir, your most obedient, 
 humble servant. 
 
 "ABERDEEN. 
 
 "H. S. Fox, Esq., etc., etc." 
 
 Page 140, immediately following above, is : "Mr. Webster to Mr. 
 Fox:" 
 
 "Department of State. 
 
 "Washington, Nov. 25, 1842. 
 
 "Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note 
 of the 15th inst. upon the question of the Oregon or northwest 
 boundary, with an extract of a dispatch recently addressed to you 
 on the subject by the Earl of Aberdeen, explanatory of the wishes 
 of Her Majesty's Government — both of which I laid before the 
 President a few days afterwards. 
 
 "He directed me to say that he concurred entirely in the expe- 
 diency of making the question respecting the Oregon Territory a 
 subject of immediate attention and negotiation between the two 
 Governments. He had already formed the purpose of expressing 
 this opinion in his message to Congress, and at no distant day a 
 communication will be made to the Minister of the United States 
 in London. 
 
 "I pray you to accept the renewed assurance of my distinguished 
 consideration. 
 
 "DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 "H. S. Fox, Esq., etc., etc., etc." 
 
 Two dispatches of Edw. Everett, then our Minister to England, 
 to Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, quoted by George Bancroft 
 in Berlin Arbitration (p. 27), are to the same purport, as follows: 
 
 "London, Oct. 10, 1842. 
 
 "Sir: Lord Aberdeen, in the conference which ensued after the 
 exchange of the ratifications, observed that his only subject of re-
 
 242 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 gret in connection with the treaty was, that the boundary between 
 the two countries on the I'acitic Ocean had not been provided for; 
 and expressed a strong wish that I might receive instructions on 
 that subject. 
 
 ^'EDWARD EVERETT. 
 "Daniel Webster, Esq., 
 "Secretary of State." 
 
 ''London, November 18, 1842. 
 
 "Sir: On arriving at the Foreign Office I was told that Lord 
 Aberdeen wished to see me, and was conducted to his room. He 
 informed me that he wished to read me a copy of a dispatch which 
 he had addressed to Mr, Fox, directing him to make known to the 
 President the strong desire of Her Majesty's Government to engage, 
 without delay, in a negotiation for the settlement of the boundary 
 between the two countries on the Pacific Ocean, and his wish that 
 instructions should be sent to me for that purpose. In the con- 
 versation which ensued, he dwelt with great earnestness on the dan- 
 ger to the good understanding between the two countries so happily 
 established by the treaty of Washington to be apprehended from 
 leaving this question in its present unsettled state. 
 
 "EDWARD EVERETT. 
 "Daniel Webster, Esq., 
 "Secretary of State." 
 
 Returning to Doc. 2. On p. 141 is a letter from Mr. Upshur to 
 Mr. Pakenham, date February 26, 1844, replying to his of February 
 24, 1844, and making an appointment to meet Mr. Pakenham "to- 
 morrow at 11 o'clock a. m. at the Department of State to confer 
 with him on the Oregon question," and another letter of Mr. Paken- 
 ham to Mr. Calhoun, dated July 22, 1844, and referring to this 
 appointment, and to Mr. Upshur's death within a few days of the 
 date of Mr. l*akenham's note of February 24, 1844, and asking for 
 a renewal of the negotiations, which last letter marks the begin- 
 ning of the negotiations of 1844-45-46 on the Oregon boundary ques- 
 tion, and is followed by the protocols of that negotiation, the first 
 one dated August 23, 1844. 
 
 llow did it happen that when both Governments were agreed in 
 October and November, 1842, to make the Oregon question "a sub- 
 ject of immediate attention," no formal negotiations were had on 
 the subject till August 23, 1844? 
 
 The answer is readily found in a little study of easily accessible 
 authorities. 
 
 All of President Harrison's Cabinet, after his death on April 
 4, 1841, continued to serve under Tyler until September 11, 1841,
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 243 
 
 when, except Daniel Webster, they all resigned because President 
 Tyler had vetoed a bill passed by Congress re-establishing the 
 United States Bank; but Webster remained Secretary of State, in 
 order to settle the northeastern boundary, which was accomplished 
 August 9, 1842, by the Webster-Ashburton treaty. 
 
 He then desired to retire from a position which was far from 
 pleasant to him, as he was one of the greatest leaders of the Whig 
 party, and President Tyler had been "read out" of that party, on 
 account of his veto of the bank bill ; and in order to furnish him 
 a position congenial to his tastes and suited to his talents, it was 
 proposed to send Edw. Everett, then Minister to England, as Min- 
 ister or Commissioner to China (where we had not before had a 
 Minister), and then send Webster as Minister to England, where 
 it was expected that he would succeed in settling the question of 
 the Oregon boundary satisfactorily. 
 
 But after considerable correspondence, Everett declined to ac- 
 cept the China mission, and Caleb Cushing was sent instead, and 
 negotiated the first treaty ever made between the United States 
 and China. 
 
 As Webster could not honorably displace his life-long friend 
 Everett without finding him some other place satisfactory to him, 
 and as no such place was open, Webster resigned on May 8, 1843, 
 and returned to private life till re-elected to the Senate, where his 
 new term began March 4, 1845. 
 
 In those days of no telegraphs, and few railroads and ocean 
 steamers, correspondence about this matter took much time, and 
 while it was going on no such delicate and difficult negotiation as 
 that about the Oregon boundary could prudently be begun, nor 
 could it be, after Webster resigned, till a new Secretary of State 
 should be installed and given time to become familiar with the 
 routine of the office. 
 
 After Webster's resignation, Hugh S. Legare, the Attorney 
 General, acted as Secretary of State ad interim from May 9, 1843, 
 to June 20, 1843, when he died suddenly. Then William S. Der- 
 rick (Chief Clerk) acted as Secretary of State od interim, June 
 21 to June 23, 1843. Then Abel P. Upshur, Secretary of the Navy, 
 acted as Secretary of State ad interim from June 24 to July 23, 
 1843, and on July 24 he was duly commissioned as Secretary of 
 State. 
 
 Less than a month afterwards Mr. Everett wrote Mr. Upshur 
 as follows: (Cf. Berlin Arbitration, p. 28.)
 
 244 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 "(Confidential) 
 
 "London, Aug. 17, 1843. 
 
 "Dear Sir: When Lord Aberdeen spoke of instructing Mr. Fox 
 on the Oregon (jnestion, he added an expression of his regret that 
 the negotiation should fall into his hands. He has on many oc- 
 casions expressed a wish that I should be charged with the nego- 
 tiation. Could I hope to bring it to a successful issue, it would 
 of course be very agreeable; but it seems to me out of the question 
 to carry on such a negotiation anywhere but at Washington. 
 
 "EDWARD EVERETT. 
 "Hon. A. P. Upshur." 
 
 Immediately following this, on p. 28, is "Mr. Upshur to Mr. 
 Everett" : 
 
 "Department of State, 
 "Washington, Oct. 9, 1843. 
 "Sir: 
 
 "The President directs that you take an early occasion to bring 
 again to the attention of Her Majesty's government the subject of 
 the claims of the two countries respectively to the territory west 
 of the Rocky Mountains. The difficulties which the conflicting 
 claims of Russia to a portion of this territory have heretofore in- 
 terposed are now happily removed by the treaty of April, 1824, 
 which defines the limits within which that power engages to re- 
 strict its settlement ; so that the questions now to be settled rest 
 exclusively between Great Britain and the United States. 
 
 "The ofl'er of the 49th parallel of latitude, although it has once 
 been rejected, may be again tendered, together with the right of 
 navigating the Columbia upon equitable terms. Beyond this the 
 President is not now prepared to go. 
 
 "You will receive herewith the necessary powers to negotiate 
 upon the subject. If, however, the British Government prefers 
 that the negotiation shall be conducted in Washington, that ar- 
 rangement will be perfectly agreeable to the President. 
 
 "A. P. UPSHUR. 
 
 "Edward Everett, Esq." 
 
 Immediately following this (on pp. 28-9) is "Mr. Everett to 
 Mr. Upshur: 
 
 "(Confidential) 
 
 "London, Nov. 2, 1843. 
 
 "Sir: By the steamer of the 16th October, I had the honor to 
 receive your dispatch No. G2, inclosing a full power from the Presi-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 245 
 
 dent to treat with this Government for the adjustment of the Ore- 
 gon boundary, and containing your instructions on that subject. 
 I lost no time in applying for an interview with Lord Aberdeen, 
 and saw him the first day of his return to town. On apprising 
 him of the disposition of the President to open a negotiation on 
 this subject at London, Lord Aberdeen informed me that such an 
 arrangement would have been altogether agreeable to him if some- 
 what earlier made, and reminded me that he had very often, in 
 the course of the last winter, expressed the wish that the President 
 would authorize me to treat on the subject. He had, however, 
 lately come to a conclusion and taken a step that made it neces- 
 sary to treat upon the subject at Washington : this was the recall 
 of Mr. Fox and the appointment of a successor. Among the 
 grounds for adopting this measure was the belief that there would 
 be decided advantage in putting the management of this subject 
 into new hands, and consequently that had been and would be as- 
 signed as a leading reason for the contemplated change. This 
 course, he said, had not been resolved upon till they had entirely 
 given up the expectation that I should be authorized to treat on 
 this subject. 
 
 ''EDWARD EVERETT. 
 "A. P. Upshur, Esq., 
 
 "Secretary of State." 
 
 Immediately following this, on p. 29, is another dispatch from 
 Mr. Everett to Mr. Upshur, dated London, November 14, 1843, 
 showing that the British Foreign Office lost no time in recalling 
 Mr. Fox and commissioning Hon. Richard Pakenham as Minister 
 at Washington, for in it Everett says that on the 6th inst. Lord 
 Aberdeen (head of the British Foreign Olfice from September 2, 
 1841, to July 6, 1846), had requested him to call at Argyll House, 
 Lord Aberdeen's town residence; and that he had done so, and 
 had had "a long and upon the whole satisfactory conversation with 
 Lord Aberdeen," in the course of which "he told me that he had 
 communicated to Mr. Fox, by the steamer of the 4th, that his suc- 
 cessor was appointed." 
 
 Pakenham arrived in New York February 12, 1844, on the Brit- 
 ish sloop of war Vestal, of 26 guns, in 27 days from Plymouth, 
 England. (Cf. Niles' Register, Feb. 17, 1844.) 
 
 Returning now to House Ex. Doc. 2, 29th Cong., 1st Sess. On 
 p. 140, under date February 24, 1844, Mr. Pakenham wrote to Mr. 
 Upshur that he had been instructed "to lose no time in entering 
 into communication with the Secretary of State of the United 
 States upon the subject of Oregon, because "Upon no subject of 
 difference between the two Governments was the British Govern-
 
 246 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 ment more anxious to come to fin early and satisfactory arrange- 
 ment than that relating to the Oregon or Columbia territory," and 
 asking for an appointment to begin negotiations. 
 
 Idem (p. 141) Mr. Upshur replied to Mr. Pakenham, under 
 date of February 26, 1844, saying: "The undersigned has the 
 honor to inform Mr. Pakenham that he will receive him for that 
 purpose, at the Department of State, tomorrow at 11 a. m." 
 
 At last then it seemed as though negotiations would speedily 
 be fully entered ui)on, but on February 28, 1844, Mr. Upshur, with 
 Mr. Gilmer, Secretary of the Navy, and several others, were in- 
 stantly killed by the explosion of a great gun called the Peace- 
 maker on board the United States ship of war Princeton. 
 
 Thus again our State Department was vacant, and although 
 that brilliant statesman John C. Calhoun was nominated and con- 
 firmed Secretary of State March 6, 1844, and entered upon the 
 duties of the office April 1, 1844, Mr. Pakenham, appreciating the 
 necessity of allowing the new Secretary to become well wonted to 
 his office before attempting to carry on any negotiation about so 
 important, and delicate, and complicated a subject as the Oregon 
 boundary, did not address him upon it till he wrote the following 
 letter : 
 
 "Washington, July 22, 1844. 
 
 "Sir : In the archives of the Department of State will be found 
 a note which I had the honor to address, on the 24th February 
 last, to the late Mr. Upshur, expressing the desire of Her Majesty's 
 Government to conclude with the Government of the United States 
 a satisfactory arrangement respecting the boundary of the Oregon 
 or Columbia territory. 
 
 "The lamented death of Mr. Upshur, which occurred within a 
 few days after the date of that note, the interval which took place 
 between that event and the appointment of a successor, and the 
 urgency and importance of various matters which offered them- 
 selves to your attention immediately after your accession to office, 
 sufficiently explain why it has not hitherto been in the power of 
 your Government, sir, to attend to the important matter to which 
 I refer. 
 
 "P)Ut the session of Congress having been brought to a close, 
 and the present being the season of the year when the least jiublic 
 business is usually transacted, it occurs to me that you may now 
 feel at leisure to proceed to the consideration of that subject. At 
 all events, it becomes my duty to recall it to your recollection, and 
 to re])eat the earnest desire of Her Majesty's Government, that a 
 question on which so much interest is felt in both countries should
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 247 
 
 be disposed of at the earliest moment consistent with the conveni- 
 ence of the Government of the United States. 
 
 ''I have the honor to be, with high consideration, sir, your obe- 
 dient servant, 
 
 "R. PAKENHAM. 
 "Hon. John C. Calhoun, etc." 
 
 To this Mr. Calhoun replied as follows: 
 
 "Department of State. 
 
 "Washington, August 22, 1844. 
 
 "Sir: The various subjects which necessarily claimed my at- 
 tention on entering on the duties of my oflSce have heretofore, as 
 you justly suppose in your note of the 22d of July last, prevented 
 me from appointing a time to confer with you, and enter on the 
 negotiations in reference to the Oregon territory. 
 
 "These have, at length, been dispatched, and, in reply to the 
 note which you did me the honor to address to me of the date 
 above mentioned, I have to inform you that I am now ready to 
 enter on the negotiation, and for that purpose propose a confer- 
 ence tomorrow at 1 o'clock p. m., at the Department of State, if 
 perfectly convenient to you; but, if not, at any other (place) which 
 it may suit your convenience to appoint. 
 
 "The Government of the United States participates in the 
 anxious desire of that of Great Britain, that the subject may be 
 early and satisfactorily arranged. 
 
 "I have the honor to be, with high consideration, sir, your obe- 
 dient servant, 
 
 "J. C. CALHOUN. 
 
 "The Right Hon. R. Pakenham, etc., etc., etc." 
 
 To this Mr. Pakenham replied as follows: 
 
 "Washington, Aug. 22, 1844. 
 
 "Sir: I have had the honor to receive your note of this morn- 
 ing date, in which you signify your readiness to enter on the nego- 
 tiation in reference to the Oregon territory, proj)Osing to me to 
 meet you in conference on that subject tomorrow at 1 o'clock. 
 
 "In reply, I have the honor to acquaint you that I shall have 
 great pleasure in waiting on you, at the Department of State, at 
 the hour proposed. 
 
 "Be pleased to accept the assurance of any distinguished con- 
 sideration. 
 
 "R. PAKENHAM. 
 "Hon. John C. Calhoun, etc., etc., etc."
 
 248 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 And thus, at last, almost two years alter Lord Aberdeen had 
 expressed the desire of Euj;laud to "immediately take it up and 
 settle it speedily," the final negotiation for the settlement of the 
 Oregon boundary line was really started. 
 
 This matter has been stated thus fully because one of the per- 
 sistent contentions of various advocates of the Whitman Legend 
 has been that President Tyler promised Whitman, in March, 1843, 
 ^that there should be no farther negotiations about Oregon till he 
 should have time to lead a migration there with wagons. (Of. Ex- 
 tract from a lecture by Rev. IL H. Spalding in Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 
 37, 41st Cong., 3d Sess. (p. 22) ; Gray's "History of Oregon" (p. 
 290) ; Rev. M. Eells' "Indian Missions" (p. 174) ; Rev. M. Eells' 
 "Reply to Prof. Bourne" (pp. 94-5) ; Mrs. Eva Emery Dye's "Mc- 
 Loughlin and Old Oregon" (p. 235) ; Craighead's "Story of Marcus 
 Whitman" (p. (h) ; Nixon's "How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon" 
 (p. 130) ; Mowry's "Marcus Whitman and the Early Days of Ore- 
 gon" (p. 171). 
 
 There is not the slightest probability that Whitman ever had 
 any interview with I'resident Tyler and Secretary Webster. (Cf. 
 Chapter YIL, Part 2, infra.) Upshur's dispatch to Mr. Webster, 
 August 9, 1843 (which would unquestionably have resulted in re- 
 opening formal negotiations on the Oregon boundary in November, 
 1843, in London, had not the British Government, tired of the long 
 delay, resolved to recall Mr. Henry S. Fox [their ^Minister at Wash- 
 ington from October 2, 1835, to December 14, 1843] and transfer 
 the negotiation to Washington), is conclusive proof that there was 
 no agreement by President Tjier to delay negotiations on the Ore- 
 gon boundai-y till news should be received of the arrival of the 1843 
 migration, for the news of the arrival of that migration at Fort 
 Hall was not received at St. Louis till November 30, 1843 (when 
 the 11 men sent back from Fort Hall by Fremont arrived there, 
 having lost the letters sent by Fremont, but having brought through 
 and left at Weston, Mo., for publication some letters from the mi- 
 gration). (Cf. for Ihe sending back of these men on September 22, 
 1843, p. 1()2 of Fremont's First and Second Exploring Expeditions, 
 being Sen. Ex. Doc. 174, 28th Cong., 2d Sess. ; for the arrival of the 
 party at St. Louis, the extract from St. Louis Gazette^ quoted in 
 Niles' Register December 16, 1843.) 
 
 While there have been claims made that information was re- 
 ceived in Washington in January, 1844, of the safe arrival at their 
 destination of the 1843 migration, no proof to sustain this wholly 
 im])robable claim has been ])roduced, and the earliest news of their 
 arrival that 1 have been able to find is in the following two ex- 
 tracts from Niles' Register:
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 249 
 
 First. Issue of April 13, 1844 (p. 101), ''Extracts from a let- 
 ter dated October 20, 1843, at Wallamette Falls — The population 
 of this country, exclusive of the party of 700 now coming in from 
 the States, has increased at least one-third during the past year." 
 This is credited to the Newburyport Herald, but without date. The 
 date of the letter shows that it must have been written when only 
 those had arrived in the Willamette Valley who left the main body 
 of the migration at Fort Hall, and went ahead with saddle and 
 pack horses. 
 
 Second. Issue of April 20, 1844 (p. 113), "The Oregon. The 
 Emigrants." "A letter from the Oregon emigrants was received 
 at Platte City, Mo., on the 2d inst., announcing the safe arrival of 
 the emigrating company, and confirming the intelligence formerly 
 received. A history of the expedition will be published in St. Louis 
 next July." 
 
 A very complete record of the final negotiations on the Oregon 
 boundary is to be found in (a) Ex. Doc. No. 2, 29th Cong., 1st 
 Sess., which gives the protocols of the six conferences between 
 Pakenham and Calhoun (our Secretary of State from March 6, 
 1844, to March 5, 1845), held on August 23, August 26, September 
 2, September 12, September 20 and September 24, 1844; and the 
 seventh conference between Pakenham and Buchanan (our Secre- 
 tary of State from March 5, 184.5, to March 7, 1849), held July 16, 
 1845 ; and 46 pages of the "statements" of the respective negotia- 
 tors which accompanied the protocols. 
 
 (b) Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 489, 29th Cong., 1st Sess., which in 51 
 pages gives the draft of the treaty of 1846, as submitted to the 
 Senate by the President for their advice as to whether or not it 
 should be accepted; the proceedings of the Senate thereon, ending 
 with a recommendation to the President to accept the treaty, 
 adopted by 38 to 12 on June 12, 1846; the treaty itself, as finally 
 ratified on June 18, 1846, by 41 to 14, with the proceedings of the 
 Senate thereon ; and the remainder of the correspondence accom- 
 panying the treaty, including that accompanying the Joint Resolu- 
 tion of the two Houses of Congress, approved April 27, 1846, au- 
 thorizing the President in his discretion to give the twelve months' 
 notice to Great Britain of our desire to abrogate the treaty of 1827, 
 which notice was given by the President on April 28, 1846, and its 
 receipt acknowledged by Lord Aberdeen on May 21, 1846. 
 
 (c) "Berlin Arbitration," pp. 27-55. This is specially valuable 
 because it gives the despatches of Mr. Everett to Webster, Upshur 
 and Calhoun, and also some despatches of Mr. McLane to Buchanan 
 which are not given at all in Doc. No. 489, and supplies omitted 
 parts of some of those which are in that document.
 
 250 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 In the neo;otiations of 1823-24 Great Britain had offered ns the 
 line of 49 degrees to the most northeasterly branch of the Columbia, 
 known as Mc(iillivray's Kiver, and thence Ihat stream and the Co- 
 lumbia to the Pacific Ocean, with the navigation of the Columbia 
 perpetually free to both nations. (Of. Protocol of the 23d Confer- 
 ence, July 23, 1824 ; Doc. 396, American State Papers, Foreign Re- 
 lations, Vol. V.) In the negotiations of 1826-7 Great Britain had 
 offered in addition to the above to allow us a territory entirely de- 
 tached from all our other possessions, embracing the greater part 
 of the peninsula between the waters of Puget's Sound and the 
 Pacific, with a further provision that *^No works should at any 
 time be erected at the entrance of the river Columbia, or upon the 
 banks of the same, that might be calculated to im])ede or hinder the 
 free navigation thereof by the vessels or boats of either party." 
 (Cf. Protocol of Third Conference, Dec. 1, 1826, in Doc. 458, Vol. 
 VI., American State Papers, Foreign Rel.) As we have seen Lord 
 Ashburton came over in 1842, "with specific and detailed instruc- 
 tions" to renew the proposition of 1826, but found Webster and 
 Tyler insistent on *'No line south of the 49th degree as a negotiable 
 boundary line for the United States," and as his instructions posi- 
 tively forbade his acceptance of that line, Oregon was left out of 
 the Ashburton treaty. 
 
 At the second conference between Pakenham and Calhoun, Au- 
 gust 26, 1844, the former renewed the British offer of December 1, 
 1826, and in addition "To make free to the United States any port 
 or ports which the United States Government might desire either 
 on the main land or on Vancouver's Island, south of latitude 49 
 degrees." This Mr. Calhoun at once declined. (Cf. House Ex. Doc. 
 2, 29th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 143, 144 and 146.) 
 
 Mr. Benton ("Thirty Years' View," Vol. II, p. 661) says: "Mr. 
 Calhoun, rejecting the usual arts of diplomacy, which holds in re- 
 serve the ultimate and true offer while putting forward fictitious 
 ones for experiment, went at once to his ultimatum, and proposed 
 the continuation of the parallel of the 49th degree of north latitude 
 . . . to the I'acific Ocean. Mr. Pakenham declined this propo- 
 sition in the i)art that carried the line to the ocean, but offered to 
 continue it from the summit of the mountains to the Columbia 
 River, a distance of some 300 miles ; and then follow the river to the 
 ocean." 
 
 Mr. Benton is entirely in error in saying that Calhoun "went 
 at once to his ultimatum" with an offer of 49 degrees to the Pacific. 
 The records of the negotiation show that neither "at once" nor at 
 any time during this negotiation did Mr. Calhoun offer either 49 
 degrees to the Pacific, or any other line for a boundary. The rea-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 251 
 
 son for this is easily found by attention to the political conditions 
 of the time. 
 
 May 1, 1844, the Whig National Convention had met at Balti- 
 more and unanimously nominated Henry Clay for President and 
 Theodore Frelinghuysen for Vice-President, and adopted a short 
 platform entirely ignoring the questions of Texas and Oregon. 
 
 The Southern leaders, who then completely dominated the Demo- 
 cratic party, and who were determined to annex Texas at any cost, 
 knowing well the rising opposition in the North to any farther ex- 
 tension of slavery, saw in far away Oregon a counterpoise to Texas, 
 and knowing that although Oregon had been known for a dozen 
 years or more to be easily enough accessible by wagon, yet its re- 
 moteness would not allow of its being peopled rapidly enough to 
 have it admitted as a State for a good many years (as a matter of 
 fact it was not admitted as a State till February 14, 1859), while 
 Texas would come in as a State with two Senators at once (it was 
 admitted December 29, 1845), and a chance of dividing it later into 
 three or four States, with a corresponding number of Senators and 
 Representatives, and that Oregon was so far north of Mason and 
 Dixon's line and the Missouri Compromise line that slavery would 
 never go there, adroitly linked the two together, and in the Demo- 
 cratic National Convention, held at Baltimore May 28, 29 and 30, 
 1844, having by the two-thirds rule defeated Van Buren, who had 
 151 out of a total of 266 votes on the first ballot, and in the first 
 seven ballots killed oif all the other prominent candidates, on the 
 eighth ballot gave 44 votes to James K. Polk, who had received no 
 votes on the first seven ballots, and on the ninth ballot nominated 
 him — the first of the "dark horses" to make a Presidential race — 
 and put the following plank into their platform: 
 
 "Resolved : That our title to the whole of the territory of Ore- 
 gon is clear and unquestionable ; that no portion of the same ought 
 to be surrendered to England or apy other power; and that the 
 reoccupation of Oregon and the reannexation of Texas at the earli- 
 est practicable period are great American measures, which this con- 
 vention recommends to the cordial support of the Democracy of 
 the Union." 
 
 Oregon first, and thirty-eight words specially to Oregon, and 
 only 4 to Texas! Was ever anything more ingeniously contrived 
 to bamboozle the average voter? ''The whole of Oregon" was uni- 
 versally understood to mean Oregon as far north as 54 degrees and 
 40 minutes, and forthwith began the notorious "fifty-four forty or 
 fight" campaign, which resulted in the election of Polk. 
 
 As the Conference between Pakenham and Calhoun began in 
 the midst of this campaign, and ended before the election, it can 
 easily be seen that Calhoun would not make any proposition for
 
 252 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 a definite line, for to have proposed the line of 54 deg. and 40 min. 
 would have certainly resulted in its immediate rejection by Paken- 
 ham, while if he had offered 49 degrees amid all the heat and fury 
 of a political campaign in which his own party was shouting for 
 "fifty-four forty or fight," and bitterly denouncing Clay, the Whig 
 nominee for the Presidency, as having "taken the British against 
 the American side'' by offering 49 degrees in 182G, he would have 
 greatly strengthened the Whigs and weakened his own party, and 
 though personally he did not favor the "fifty-four forty or fight'' 
 policy, and would have been glad to have settled the controversy 
 with 49 degrees as the boundary if there had been no Presidential 
 campaign in progress, he was too intense a partisan to be willing to 
 imperil Polk's election by proposing that line in the most critical 
 period of the 1844 campaign. 
 
 Whoever will read in Ex. Doc. No. 2 the statements that passed 
 between these two negotiators, viz., Calhoun to Pakenham, date 
 September 3, 1844 ; Pakenham to Calhoun, date September 12, 1844 ; 
 and Calhoun to Pakenham, September 20, 1844 ; will find them very 
 forceful presentations of the claims of their respective Govern- 
 ments, but jtresenting nothing new (since the whole subject had 
 been thoroughly gone over by quite as able men in the negotiations 
 of 1823-4 and 1826-7), except a fuller statement than Gallatin made, 
 November 25, 1826, of the fact that by the Third Article of the 
 Treaty of 1818, and by its renewal by the Treaty of 1827, it was im- 
 possible that the trading posts and other settlements made in Ore- 
 gon by the Hudson's Bay Co. could in any degree strengthen the 
 British claim to it (which Benton and the "Oregon jingoes" were 
 constantlv asserting thev could doi, but with no offer bv Calhoun 
 of a definite boundary line. 
 
 Pakenham's "statement" of September 12, 1844, concludes as 
 follows : 
 
 "The undersigned believes that he has now noticed all the 
 arguments advanced by the American plenipotentiary, in order to 
 show that the United States are fairly entitled to the entire region 
 drained by the Columbia river. He sincerely regrets that their 
 views on this subject should differ in so many essential respects. 
 
 "It remains for him to request that as the American plenipo- 
 tentiary declines the proposal offered on the part of Great Britain, 
 he will have the goodness to state what arrangements he is, on the 
 part of the United States, prepared to propose for an equitable 
 adjustment of the question ; and more especially that he will have 
 the goodness to define the nature and extent of the claims which 
 the United States may have to other jjortions of the territory, to 
 which allusion is made in the concluding part of his statement, as
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 253 
 
 it is obvious that no arrangement can be made with respect to a 
 portion of the territory in dispute while a claim is reserved to any 
 portion of the remainder. 
 
 "The undersigned, British plenipotentiary, has the honor to re- 
 new to the American plenipotentiary the assurance of his high con- 
 sideration. 
 
 "R. PAKENHAM." 
 (Cf. House Ex. Doc. 2, p. 158.) 
 
 Mr. Calhoun's reply to this, dated September 20, 1844, is a gen- 
 eral discussion of the "statement" of Mr. Pakenham, but the only 
 allusion in it to Mr. Pakenham's request above quoted is the fol- 
 lowing very vague statement, in its concluding paragraph: 
 
 "In reply to the request of the British plenipotentiary, that 
 the undersigned should define the nature and extent of the claims 
 which the United States have to the other portions of the terri- 
 tory, and to which allusion is made in the concluding part of state- 
 ment A, he has the honor to inform him, in general terms, that 
 they are derived from Spain by the Florida treaty, and are founded 
 on the discoveries and exploration of her navigators; and which 
 they must regard as giving them a right to the extent to which 
 they can be established, unless a better can be opposed. 
 
 "J. C. CALHOUN. 
 "The Right Hon. Richard Pakenham, etc., etc., etc." 
 
 (Cf. House Ex. Doc. 2, p. 161.) 
 
 Plainly Mr. Calhoun, instead of moving on towards any definite 
 proposition about a boundary line, was merely "marking time," 
 and waiting for the result of the election. 
 
 Had Mr. Clay been elected, there is every probability that Mr. 
 Calhoun (who never had endorsed the "fifty-four forty or fight" 
 humbug) would have offered again 49 degrees to the coast, but 
 when the returns showed Polk's election, very naturally Calhoun, 
 who cared vastly more about Texas than about Oregon, bent his 
 energies towards the annexation of the "Lone Star Republic," and 
 determined to leave Polk's Administration to get out of their "fifty- 
 four forty or fight" dilemma as best they might. 
 
 On January 15, 1845, Mr. Pakenham, having received no propo- 
 sition for a boundary line (though his own proposition had been 
 rejected more than four and a half months before), wrote to Mr. 
 Calhoun that, "Considering on the one hand the impatience which 
 is manifested in the United States for a settlement of this ques- 
 tion, and on the other the length of time which would probably 
 be still required to effect a satisfactory adjustment of it between
 
 254 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 the two Governments, it has occurred to Her Majesty's Govern- 
 ment that, under such circumstances, no more fair or honorable 
 mode of settling the question could be adopted than that of arbi- 
 tration. 
 
 ^'This proposition I am accordingly authorized to offer for the 
 consideration of the Government of the United States." 
 
 On January 21, 1845, Mr. Calhoun replied, declining to arbi- 
 trate, but expressing ''the hope that the question may be settled by 
 the negotiation now pending between the two countries" (Cf. 
 House Ex. Doc. 2, p. 1(52), and with this ended the connection of 
 Calhoun and the Tyler Administration with the Oregon negotia- 
 tion. 
 
 President Polk's Inaugural Address, March 4, 1845, after dis- 
 cussing the Texas question at length, continued as follows: "Nor 
 will it become in a less degree my duty to assert and maintain by 
 all constitutional means the right of the United States to that 
 portion of our territory which lies beyond the Rocky Mountains. 
 
 "Our title to the country of the Oregon is clear and unques- 
 tionable, and already are our people preparing to perfect that title 
 by occupying it with their wives and children," 
 
 There is here no claim of "fifty-four forty or fight," and a plain 
 opening of a path for retreat from that position ; nevertheless, fol- 
 lowing on the heels of all the fuss and fury of the "fifty-four forty 
 or fight" campaign, and the fiery speeches of the "Oregon jingoes" 
 in both Houses of Congress in the first and second sessions of the 
 28th Congress, this passage in the Inaugural produced great un- 
 easiness and fear of war in England, where the ability of the aver- 
 age American politicians, when they have carried the election, to 
 split the planks of the platform on which they have merely stood 
 to get the offices into kindling wood for the bonfires over their vic- 
 tory, and to "eat their own words" without even making a wry 
 face over the act is less thoroughly understood than in this country. 
 
 Two articles, at this time, in two of the most influential publi-. 
 cations in England, the London Examiner and the Edinburgh Re- 
 view, are very interesting in this connection, as showing the state 
 of England's opinion on the value of Oregon, the folly of going to 
 war about the whole or any part of it, and the view of the fair- 
 minded Englishman as to a proper division of the country between 
 the two nations. 
 
 From the Examiner article I will quote very fully ; but as the 
 Edinburgh Review article is a lengthy review of ten books — includ- 
 ing "American State Papers," "Farnham's Travels," "Greenhow's 
 History of Oregon and California" (London Edition) ; and "Narra- 
 tive of T'nited States Exploring Expedition," by Lieut. Charles
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 255 
 
 Wilkes, 5 vols. — I must summarize it, and only make a few brief 
 quotations from it. 
 
 (From London Examiner, April 26, 1845:) 
 
 ''THE OREGON QUESTION. 
 
 "The maximum claim of England and the minimum claim 
 of America is the Columbia ; the maximum of America and the 
 minimum of England is the 49th. If each were mad enough to in- 
 sist on its maximum, collision must ensue. 
 
 "The best mode of arrangement would be that which has been 
 offered by England, and, though not accepted, not definitely re- 
 jected by America — arbitration. The dispute after all is a mere 
 question of national pride, and the pride of neither nation could 
 be offended by submission to an award. If that award were to give 
 the whole country down to the Mexican frontier to England, Amer- 
 ica would suffer no real loss. She would only be prevented from 
 wasting her resources and violating her constitution in the acquisi- 
 tion and defense of what must, in effect, be a distant colony. 
 
 "If the award were to give the whole territory to America, the 
 value of the monopoly enjoyed by the Hudson's Bay Co. would be 
 a little diminished. But as that monopoly is injurious to the Eng- 
 lish people, we should not bitterly grieve at an event which would 
 reduce the value of the company's stock one per cent. 
 
 "If arbitration be unattainable, the only mode of accommoda- 
 tion is mutual concession, and the terms which we suggest for that 
 mutual concession are those which, if we were arbitrators, we 
 should award, namely, that the boundary line should be the 49th 
 degree until it meets the Pacific, and then the Straits of Fuca to 
 the sea. Our only claim rests on contiguity, and this would give 
 us more than mere contiguity entitles us to. This would give us 
 the whole of Vancouver's Island, and it would give us an abundance 
 of good harbors. It would also give us the country which is best 
 for the purposes for which we use it, the fur trade. The furs to 
 the north of the 49th degree are better and more abundant than 
 those to the south. All balancing, however, of the positive advan- 
 tages to be obtained by the one nation or by the other on a parti- 
 tion is mere childishness. The interruption of confidence for a 
 single week costs more than the whole country is worth. A mere 
 armament, though followed by accommodation, would cost more 
 than a thousand times its value. What proportion, therefore, does 
 it bear to a war?" 
 
 The Edinburgh RevieiD article was published in the July, 1845, 
 number and contains about 15,000 words.
 
 256 ACQUISiriOX OF OREGON 
 
 It was so eminently fair that the New York Tribune Almanac 
 for 184G printed it in full, prefaced by the following paragraph: 
 
 ''OREGON." "OUR RIGHTFUL NORTHWESTERN 
 
 BOUNDARY." 
 
 "Decidedly the clearest and best account we have seen of the 
 Oregon ]?onndary controversy is given in the following article from 
 the Edinburgh Review of July last: 
 
 "So lucid, so candid, so truthful is it, that the British newspaper 
 press (the London Times especially) denounce it as a virtual sur- 
 render of all in dispute that is material, as in truth it is. The 
 boundary proposed by the Review is that proposed and urged by our 
 Government at different times, but always rejected by Great Britain. 
 
 "We think the Review demonstrates that it is the proper and 
 just one." 
 
 The article discusses the fur trade and the Hudson's Bay Co.'s 
 management of it, and their policy in dealing with the Indians, 
 says that Oregon is of little worth agriculturally, and that for the 
 fur trade (which it thinks the chief value of the country), the part 
 north of 49 degrees is much more valuable than the part south of 
 that parallel, discusses (from the British standpoint of course) 
 the question of title to the country, and declares that neither Eng- 
 land nor the United States has a perfect title, and says "The great 
 error of all parties has been the importance attached to Oregon. 
 But, assuming it to be of any value, the Americans cannot be ex- 
 pected to remain satisfied with an arrangement which, professing 
 to give them equal rights, practically excludes them" {i. e., from 
 the fur trade). It concludes as follows: "And we firmly believe 
 in Mr. Gallatin's prophecy" (in the 1826-7 negotiations), "that 
 under whatever nominal sovereignty Oregon may be placed, what- 
 ever its ultimate destinies may be, it will almost exclusively be 
 peopled by the surplus population of the United States. The ne- 
 gotiation for partition is now resumed, and we trust with a fair 
 prospect of success. It is much that the real worthlessness of the 
 country has been established. All that any prudent Englishman 
 or American can wish is, that the controversy should be speedily 
 and honorably settled. A week's interruption of confidence — such, 
 for instance, as followed the reception of Mr. Polk's inaugural 
 speech — costs each party twenty times the value of the matter in 
 dispute. 
 
 "The obvious course is to refer the whole question to arbitra- 
 tion. The decision of an arbitrator necessarily saves the honor 
 of each party, and in the present case there is nothing else to con- 
 tend for. . . ." The earnest plea for arbitration concludes as
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 257 
 
 follows: ''She" {i. e., the United States) "cannot deny that we 
 honestly believe it to be matter of controversy; and if a fourth 
 negotiation should fail, she is bound by friendship, by prudence, 
 and by regard to the welfare of the whole civilized world to allow 
 it to be settled by arbitration. Our readers have perhaps a right 
 to ask what, in our opinion, the decision of an honest arbitrator 
 would be? We think we have supplied premises from which it 
 may be inferred. We have shown that no nation now possesses 
 any title, perfect or imperfect, by discovery, by settlement, by 
 treaty, or by prescription. We have shown, too, that no nation 
 possesses a perfect title by contiguity; and we have shown that an 
 imperfect title by contiguity to the portion which lies north of 
 the 49th parallel is vested in England and that part which lies 
 south of that parallel in America. We think, therefore, that 
 that parallel ought to be the basis of the boundary; but, 
 as if prolonged indefinitely, it would cut off the southern extrem- 
 ity of Vancouver Island, with little advantage to America, and 
 great injury, if we shall ever occupy that island, to England; we 
 think that it should cease to be the boundary when it reaches the 
 coast, and that from thence the boundary should be the sea. This 
 would give to us the whole of Vancouver's Island, which, if we are 
 absurd enough to plant a colony in the northern Pacific, is the 
 least objectionable seat. 
 
 "It possesses excellent ports, a tolerable climate, and some cul- 
 tivatable soil; an ascertained and defensible frontier, and the com- 
 mand of the important straits, by which to the east and to the 
 south, it is separated from the continent. That its distance from 
 Europe would render it a costly and unprofitable incumbrance, is 
 true; but that objection applies with equal force to every part of 
 Oregon." 
 
 Thus these two articles — in two of the most influential periodi- 
 cals in Great Britain (both written by the famous political econo- 
 mist and philosophical essayist, Nassau W. Senior, and published 
 fourteen and twelve months before the treaty of 184 G was made) 
 — recommend to Great Britain to yield to the American claims 
 and fix the boundary precisely as it was fixed by that treaty. 
 
 A favorite contention of Barrows and Nixon and other advo- 
 cates of the Whitman Legend is that our statesmen and people 
 were constantly deceived by articles published in the interest of 
 the Hudson's Bay Co. in English periodicals, asserting the worth- 
 lessness of Oregon, so that we might be induced to yield it up to 
 Great Britain as not worth contending for. 
 
 Thus (Nixon "How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon," p. 192) 
 "In the mean time they" (i e., the Hudson's Bay Co.) "ran a lit- 
 erary bureau for all it was worth in the disparagement of Oregon
 
 258 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 for all purposes except those of the fur trader. The English press 
 was iiiaiuly depended upon for this work, but the best means in 
 reach were used that all these statements should reach the ruling 
 powers and the reading })eople of the United States. 
 
 ''The efifect of this literary bureau upon American statesmen 
 and the most intelligent class of readers prior to the spring of 
 1843 is easily seen by the sentiments quoted, and by their pub- 
 lished acts, in refusing to legislate for Oregon," 
 
 This Hudson's Bay Co.'s '"literary bureau" is one of the mul- 
 titudinous "facts" in Dr. Nixon's book for which "he himself" is 
 "authority" — it never having been discovered by any one else be- 
 cause it only existed in his imagination. 
 
 Barrows' "Oregon'' (])]). 191-2) asserts what is equally ficti- 
 tious, and ])robably the germ out of which Dr. Nixon's fervid fancy 
 evolved this 'iiterarv bureau," as follows: 
 
 "At the time of the" (alleged) "interview between Whitman 
 and Webster, the most of the information received in the States 
 from the northwest had of necessity, therefore, come in through 
 English channels, and was moulded to Hudson Bay interests. 
 While that country lay as an obscure right between the two na- 
 tions, and the Company saw an advance opening for their trade, 
 it was quite natural that they should diminish temyjtations to visit 
 it, and weave obstacles between it and a rival on the border. This 
 they did to a successful extent up to the time when Whitman ar- 
 rived on the Potomac. They had made it quite obvious to the un- 
 informed, says Gray, 'that the whole country was of little value 
 to any one. It would scarcely support the few Indians, much less 
 a large population of settlers.' English volumes of travel and 
 scholarlv review articles were teaching the same delusion abroad." 
 
 True, Barrows explicitly contradicts this only 29 pages after 
 (on p. 220) and states — what is very rare in his "Oregon" — the 
 exact truth, as follows: "It is not necessary to itemize, for all 
 histories, sketches and travels touching primitive times and the. 
 dawn of civilization in that country, came in the line of its dis- 
 covery and ])urchase and exi)loration by the United States." But 
 such self-contradiction is by no means uncommon in Barrows' 
 "Oregon." 
 
 Returning now to p. 192, Barrows continues: "So the Edin- 
 burgh Review said: (b) 'Only a small proportion of the land is 
 capable of cultivation.' (a) 'West of the Rocky Mountains the 
 desert extends from the Mexican ( Calif ornian) border to the Co- 
 lumbia,' and it endeavored to show that the country east of the 
 mountains was (a) 'incapable, probably forever, of fixed settle- 
 ments' where now are Kansas, Nebraska and Dakota.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 259 
 
 "The British and Foreign Review preached to the same appli- 
 cation and conclusion. 'Upon the whole, therefore, the Oregon 
 Territory holds out no great promise as an agricultural field.' The 
 London Examiner was quite pronounced, if not petulant, that the 
 ignorant Americans did not give up a country equal in area to 
 England eight times : 'The whole territory in dispute is not worth 
 twenty thousand pounds to either power.' " 
 
 "(Note Vol. LXXXII., p. 240; also July, 1843, p. 184, British 
 and Foreign Review; January, 1844, p. 21, London Examiner, 
 quoted in Webster's Works in Introd. cxlix.)" 
 
 The putting of Vol. LXXXII. in this foot note was deliberately 
 dishonest, as he well knew that few of his readers would ever have 
 a chance to look up that volume and find that it was for July, 1845, 
 and because, to prevent any one from having any excuse for quot- 
 ing its articles otherwise than by date, the Edinburgh Review has 
 always printed at the top of every page the month and year of its 
 publication. 
 
 On p. 194 Barrows continues: "The same article from which 
 we have quoted in the Edinburgh Revieio thinks that the American 
 colonists in Oregon have been (b) 'misled by the representations 
 of the climate and soil of Oregon, which for party purposes have 
 been spread through the United States,' Then the Review becomes 
 prophetic: (b) 'It seems probable that, in a few years, all that 
 formerly gave life to the country, both the hunter and his prey, 
 will become extinct, and that their place will be supplied by a thin 
 white and half-breed population, scattered along the few fertile 
 valleys, supported by pasture instead of the chase, and gradually 
 degenerating into barbarism, far more offensive than the back- 
 woodsman.' This defamation of Oregon is naturally followed by 
 the English writer with the declaration that (b) 'No nation now 
 possesses any title, perfect or imperfect, by discovery, by settle- 
 ment, by treaty, or by prescription.' " 
 
 As it is impossible to tell from anything in Barrows what he 
 has here quoted from the July, 1843, and what from the July, 1845, 
 Edinburgh Review, I have marked the quotations from the July, 
 1843, issue with (a), and those from the July, 1845, issue with 
 (b), and I have quoted every word he has quoted from the July, 
 1845, number. 
 
 Yet_, immediately following the last sentence quoted by him, 
 the Review goes on (as we have already seen) to declare that "An 
 imperfect title by contiguity to the portion which lies north of the 
 49th parallel is vested in England, and to that part which lies 
 south of that parallel in America," and then recommends that the 
 boundary should be run on the 49th parallel to the coast and the 
 Straits of Fuca to the ocean.
 
 2G0 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Yet this article, thus avowedlj^ written in 1845, to influence 
 Eiifilaud to yield to the American claim, and surrender Oregon up 
 to 4!) degrees, is thus garbled and antedated by Barrows and Nixon 
 to deceive their readers into believing that it was published before 
 Whitman's ride to misrepresent the value of Oregon, and so induce 
 the Americans to surrender it to Great Britain. 
 
 As English reviews and quarterlies exercised ten thousand times 
 as much influence on English public opinion as on American, and 
 not even Barrows and Nixon jiretend that they issued one edition 
 commending Oregon for their English readers, so that they would 
 insist on holding it, and a dift'erent one condemning it to deceive 
 their American readers into surrendering it, it would appear evi- 
 dent to ordinary minds that even if their articles had been printed 
 before Whitman's ride, their effect would have been to cause Eng- 
 land to be willing to surrender Oregon, rather than go to war for 
 what ai)peared of so little value. 
 
 But what sort of a historical conscience can a writer have, who, 
 like Barrows, not only advances the preposterous theory that Amer- 
 ican opinion was misled about the value of Oregon ''prior to Whit- 
 man's arrival on the Potomac," by articles in British reviews and 
 quarterlies ; but, finding absolutely nothing of any importance about 
 Oregon in any such publications, prior to 1843, nothing which even 
 his phenomenal ability in misquoting can make even seem to fur- 
 nish the least support to his theory, deliberately uses for proof that 
 the English publications had deceived our Government and people 
 ''up to the time Whitman arrived on the Potomac" (i. e., late in 
 March, or more likely about the middle of April, 1843), such 
 garbled extracts as these, from articles published three months, 
 nine months, two vears and three months, four vears and three 
 months, and twenty-four years and three months after the time "up 
 to Avhich" they had so succeeded in deceiving our people and states- 
 men? — for the article from the London Examiner (from which he 
 quotes only fourteen words, with no intimation of its date), was 
 not published till July 24, 1847, and (on p. 19G) he quotes thirty- 
 two words from a long article in the Westminster Review (and re- 
 frains from giving any information as to its date), which was not 
 published till July, 1867 — and had no more connection with the 
 Oregon Question than it had with the Schleswig-Holstein Question, 
 or the Afghanistan Question, or the Transvaal Question, or the 
 Soudan Question. 
 
 Dr. Nixon, seeing the absurdity of thus asserting that articles 
 published in English reviews and magazines influenced public opin- 
 ion here before their publication, coolly changes the date for the 
 London and Foreign Review article from its true date, January, 
 1844, to ''as late as 1840," and that of the London Examiner article
 
 ACQUISITION^ OF OREGON 261 
 
 from July 24, 1847, to . . . '4n 1843." (Cf. his ''How Marcus 
 Whitman Saved Oregon," p. 47.) 
 
 As we have seen, he set out to write that book with the idea 
 that ''he himself was authority" for its facts (Cf. the first page of 
 its Preface), and therefore doubtless he deemed it entirely proper 
 that when any real facts obstinately persisted in being irreconcilable 
 with his theories, he, being "himself authority for his facts," had 
 the right to change dates — or anything else — so as to make the kind 
 of "facts" for which "he himself" was willing to be "authority." 
 
 The result is that his book is as grotesquely unhistorical as any- 
 thing ever printed, and to one who knows the true history of the 
 acquisition of Oregon, and the facts about the character and unim- 
 portance of Marcus Whitman's life, it is as laughable as a comic 
 almanac. 
 
 The article from the British and Foreign Review is fair from the 
 British standpoint, and instead of being designed to deceive Ameri- 
 cans about Oregon and so induce them to surrender it to Great 
 Britain, was designed to secure arbitration of the boundary dispute. 
 
 The London Examiner article (from which both Barrows and 
 Nixon make the same outrageous misquotation of only fourteen 
 words) I will notice in connection with the origin of the treaty 
 of 1846. 
 
 Returning now to the official record of the negotiations in House 
 6x. Doc. No. 2, we find that on July 12, 1845, Mr. James Buchanan, 
 Secretary of State, reopened the Oregon negotiation with Mr. Rich- 
 ard Pakenham in a long statement beginning: "The undersigned, 
 Secretary of State of the United States, now proceeds to resume 
 the negotiation on the Oregon question, at the point where it was 
 left by his predecessor. 
 
 "The British plenipotentiary, in his note to Mr. Calhoun of the 
 12th September last, 'that as the American plenipotentiary declines 
 the proposal offered on the part of Great Britain, he will have the 
 goodness to state what arrangements he is, on the part of the 
 United States, prepared to propose for an equitable adjustment of 
 the question ; and more especially that he will have the goodness to 
 define the nature and extent of the claims which the United States 
 may have to other portions of the territory to which allusion is 
 made in the concluding part of his statement, as it is obvious that 
 no arrangement can be made with respect to a part of the territory 
 in dispute while a claim is reserved to any portion of the remain- 
 der.' " This sentence is conclusive proof that Mr. Calhoun had 
 never offered 49 degrees or any other line for a boundary. 
 
 After strong argument in favor of the validity of our title to all 
 of Oregon (containing, however, nothing new), (on p. 169) he says 
 that "While the President holds these ideas as to the validitv of 
 
 •aai
 
 262 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 our title " (/. c, to the whole of Oregon i, "'he finds himself em- 
 barrassed by the fact that his predecessors in office have not in- 
 sisted on the whole of Oregon, but have "uniformly proceeded upon 
 the principle of compromise in all their negotiations. . . . 
 
 "In view of these facts, the President has determined to pursue 
 the ])resent negotiation to its conclusion tipon the principle of com- 
 promise in which it commenced, and to make one more effort to 
 adjust this long-pending controversy. In this determination he 
 trusts that the British Government will recognize his sincere and 
 anxious desire to cultivate the most friendly relations between the 
 two countries, and to manifest to the world that he is actuated by 
 a spirit of moderation. He has, therefore, instructed the under- 
 signed again to propose to the Government of Great Britain that 
 the Oregon territory shall be divided between the two countries by 
 the 49th parallel of north latitude from the Rocky Mountains to 
 the Pacific ocean, offering at the same time to make free to Great 
 Britain any port or ports on Vancouver's Island, south of this par- 
 allel, which the British Government may desire.'' 
 
 To this, on July 29, 1845, Mr. Pakenham replied with a long 
 argument as to the claims of the two nations to the Oregon coun- 
 try, and then without referring to the proposition made in Mr. 
 Buchanan's letter of July 12, to his Government for instructions 
 (as it was expected by both Governments that he would do, if not 
 willing himself to accept it), he peremptorily rejected it, in the 
 following language: "After this exposition of the view entertained 
 by the British Government respecting the relative value and im- 
 portance of the British and American claims, the American pleni- 
 potentiary will not be surprised to hear that the undersigned does 
 not feel at liberty to accept the proposal offered by the American 
 plenipotentiary for the settlement of the question. . . . The 
 undersigned, therefore, trusts that the American plenipotentiary 
 will be prepared to offer some further proposal for the settlement 
 of the Oregon (juestion more consistent with fairness and equity, 
 and with the reasonable expectations of the British Government, as 
 defined in the statement marked D, which the undersigned had the 
 honour to i)resent to the American plenipotentiary at the early 
 part of the present negotiation." 
 
 To this, on August 80, 1845, Mr. Buchanan rei)lied with a long 
 and vigorous letter, contravening Mr. Pakenham's arguments as 
 to the claims of the British Government to any part of Oregon, 
 and stating that though convinced of the validity of our title to 
 the whole territory, the President, out of respect for the actions of 
 his predecessors in office, and from "a sincere and anxious desire 
 to ])romote peace and harmony between the two countries,'' had so 
 fill' yielded his own opinion as to again offer 49 degrees as the
 
 ACQUISITION^ OF OREGON 263 
 
 boundary line, and concluded as follows: (p. 192) "And how has 
 this proposition been received by the British plenipotentiary? It 
 has been rejected without even a reference to his own Government. 
 Nay, more; the British plenipotentiary, to use his own language, 
 'trusts that the American plenipotentiary will be prepared to offer 
 some further proposal for the settlement of the Oregon question 
 more consistent with fairness and equity, and with the reasonable 
 expectations of the British Government.' 
 
 "Under such circumstances, the undersigned is instructed by the 
 President to say that he owes it to his own country, and a just 
 appreciation of her title to the Oregon territory, to withdraw the 
 proposition to the British Government which had been made under 
 his direction; and it is hereby accordingly withdrawn. 
 
 "In taking this necessary step, the President still cherishes the 
 hope that this long-pending controversy may yet be finally adjusted 
 in such a manner as not to disturb the peace or interrupt the har- 
 mony now so happily subsisting between the two nations. 
 
 "The undersigned avails himself, etc. 
 
 "JAMES BUCHANAN. 
 
 "Right Hon. Richard Pakenham, etc., etc." 
 
 This xjroved a very embarrassing condition of affairs for the 
 British Foreign Office, which had expected that Mr. Pakenham 
 would have referred to it for instructions any proposition he might 
 receive for a boundary to Oregon ; and though not disposed to dis- 
 grace Mr. Pakenham by a recall, it did censure him, as witness the 
 following : 
 
 "Mr. McLane to Mr. Buchanan. 
 
 "London, Oct. 3, 1845. 
 
 "I received on the 29th ult. your dispatch No. 9, dated the 13th 
 of September, transmitting a copy of your last note (30th of August, 
 1845) to Mr. Pakenham, relative to the Oregon question. 
 
 "On the day following I was invited by Lord Aberdeen . . . 
 to an interview at his house in Argyll street, which I granted ac- 
 cordingly. The object of the interview, as I had anticipated, re- 
 lated exclusively to the posture in which the negotiations between 
 the two Governments had been placed by your note of the 30th 
 August to Mr. Pakenham, and the withdrawal of the proposition 
 which the President had previously directed. 
 
 "Lord Aberdeen not only lamented but censured the rejection of 
 our proposition by Mr. Pakenham, without referring it to his Gov- 
 ernment. He stated that if Mr. Pakenham had communicated the 
 American proposition to the Government here, as he was expected 
 to have done, he, Lord Aberdeen, would have taken it up as the
 
 204 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 basis of his action, and entertained little doubt that he would have 
 been enabled to propose modifications which might ultimately have 
 resulted in an adjustment mutually satisfactory to both Govern- 
 ments. 
 
 "It was quite obvious to me that Lord Aberdeen had become 
 convinced in his own mind, though in what way I do not pretend 
 to conjecture, that the terms which it was his intention ultimately 
 to propose or assent to would be accepted by the President, and that 
 on this account he particularly regretted the interruption in the 
 negotiation without affording an opportunity for that purpose. 
 
 "Hon. James Buchanan, "LOUIS McLANE. 
 
 "Secretary of State." 
 
 Ou page 34 of Sen. Ex. Doc. 489 (which was not made public 
 till after the ratification of the treaty of 184G; when, on August 7, 
 184G, the injunction of secrecy was removed by unanimous vote of 
 the Senate), Mr. Buchanan wrote to Mr. McLane, on November 5, 
 1845, concerning the withdrawal of the offer of 49 degrees as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 ''The President thus took his ground, from which he will not 
 depart. If the British Government have any new proposition to 
 submit it must proceed from them voluntarily, and without any 
 previous invitation or assurance on our part; and then such a propo- 
 sition will be respectfully considered by the Government of the 
 United States. 
 
 "This is the posture on which the negotiation now stands; and 
 unless in the meantime it should be changed by some action on the 
 part of the British Government, the President intends to lay the 
 whole subject before Congress for their consideration." 
 
 Accordingly in his first Annual Message, December 2, 1845, the 
 President devoted much space to Oregon, briefly summarizing the 
 history of our negotiations with Great Britain on the Oregon bound- 
 ary, and transmitting with the message the documents relating to 
 the negotiations under President Tyler's and his own administra- 
 tion, which are in House Ex. Doc. No. 2 and Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 1, 
 29th Cong., 1st Sess. 
 
 Then he continued: "All attempts at compromise having failed, 
 it becomes the duty of Congress to consider what measures it may 
 be proper to adopt for the security and protection of our citizens 
 now inhabiting, or who may hereafter inhabit, Oregon, and for the 
 maintenance of our just title to that territory. In adopting meas- 
 ures for this purpose, care should be taken that nothing be done 
 to violate the sti])ulations of the convention of 1827, which is still 
 in force. The faith of treaties in their letter and spirit has ever 
 been, and, I trust, will ever be, scrupulously observed hj the United
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 265 
 
 States. Under that convention a year's notice is required to be 
 given by either party to the other before the joint occupancy shall 
 terminate, and before either can rightfully assert or exercise ex- 
 clusive jurisdiction over any portion of the territory. This notice it 
 would, in my judgment, be proper to give; and I recommend that 
 provision be made by law for giving it accordingly, and terminating, 
 in this manner, the convention of the 6th of August, 1827. 
 
 ''It will become proper for Congress to determine what legisla- 
 tion they can, in the meantime, adopt, without violating this con- 
 vention." 
 
 He then recommends, as things that may properly be done with- 
 out violating the convention : 
 
 1st. "The extension of our laws over American citizens in Ore- 
 gon, to the same extent as the Act of Parliament of July 2, 1821, 
 had extended British laws over British subjects in Oregon. 
 
 2nd. "That provision be made for establishing an Indian agency 
 and such sub-agencies as may be deemed necessary beyond the Rocky 
 Mountains. 
 
 3rd. "That a suitable number of stockades and block-house forts 
 be erected along the usual route between our frontier settlements on 
 the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains ; and that an adequate force 
 of mounted riflemen be raised to guard and protect them on their 
 journey. 
 
 4th. "That a monthly mail to Oregon be established." And it 
 continued as follows: "It is submitted to the wisdom of Congress 
 to determine whether, at their present session, and until after the 
 expiration of the year's notice, any other measures may be adopted, 
 consistently with the convention of 1827, for the security of our 
 rights, and the government and protection of our citizens in Oregon. 
 That it will ultimately be wise and proper to make liberal grants 
 of land to the patriotic pioneers, who, amidst privations and dangers, 
 lead the way through savage tribes inhabiting the vast wilderness 
 intervening between our frontier settlements and Oregon, and who 
 cultivate and are ready to defend the soil, I am fully satisfied. To 
 doubt whether they will obtain such grants as soon as the conven- 
 tion between the United States and Great Britain shall have ceased 
 to exist would be to doubt the justice of Congress ; but pending the 
 year's notice it is worthy of consideration whether a stipulation to 
 this efifect may be made consistently with the spirit of that conven- 
 tion. 
 
 "The recommendations which I have made as to the best manner 
 of securing our rights in Oregon are submitted to Congress with 
 great deference. Should they, in their wisdom, devise any other 
 mode better calculated to accomplish the same object, it shall meet 
 with my hearty concurrence.
 
 2GG ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 ''At the end of the year's notice, should Congress think it proper 
 to make provision for giving that notice, we shall have reached a 
 period when the national rights in Oregon must either be abandoned 
 or tirmly established. That they can not be abandoned without a 
 sacrifice of both national honor and interest is too clear to admit of 
 doubt." 
 
 There were si)eedily introduced in Congress a joint resolution 
 authorizing the I'resident to give the twelve months' notice requisite 
 to terminate the treaty of 1827, and bills "to organize and arm the 
 militia of Oregon," "to organize a territorial government for Ore- 
 gon," ''to establish a line of stockade and block-house forts on the 
 route from the frontier settlements of Missouri to the territory of 
 Oregon," and "to protect the rights of American citizens in the terri- 
 tory of Oregon until the termination of the joint occupancy of the 
 same." 
 
 On these various measures such a flood of oratory was let loose 
 as rarely has been heard in Congress, no less than 98 Representatives 
 and 34 Senators speaking on them, notwithstanding all the excite- 
 ment about the beginning of the war with Mexico, on April 
 24, 184G, and the introduction and passage of the measures needful 
 for carrying on that contest. 
 
 In all the scores of thousands of pages of official reports of de- 
 bates in Congress from the beginning of our national existence to 
 this day, there is little matter that is more drearily uninteresting 
 than the six or seven hundred thousand words of this debate — 
 threshing over as it does only the same old straw of our title to 
 Oregon, and the records of bur negotiations with Great liritain upon 
 it, and of our duties under the treaties of 1818 and 1827, from which 
 all the grain had been threshed years before, especially in the great 
 debates of 1824-5, 1828-9, 1842-3, and in the numerous reports of com- 
 mittees to the House and Senate. 
 
 None of the bills were enacted into law, but the joint resolution 
 for the abrogation of the treaty of 1827 passed the House by 163 to 
 54, and, after long debate and amendments making it more concilia- 
 tory in tone, and authorizing the President to give the notice at "his 
 discretion," it passed the Senate by 42 to 10, and was a])proved by 
 President Polk, April 27, 1846. The notice was given on April 28, 
 1846, and inclosed in a dispatch of same date from Mr. Buchanan 
 to Mr. ^IcLane, by whom it was delivered to Lord Aberdeen on May 
 21, 1846, and by him acknowledged in a letter to Mr. McLane, dated 
 May 22, 1846, announcing that ''In conformity with its tenor. Her 
 Majesty's Government will consider the convention of the 6th of 
 August, 1827, abrogated accordingly from the 21st of May, 1847." 
 (Cf. Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 489, pp. 46-8'and 50.)
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 267 
 
 But, already, on May 18, 1846, Lord Aberdeen had instructed Mr. 
 Pakenham to reopen negotiations at Washington and offer us the 
 line suggested first by Mr. Huskisson, the British plenipotentiary, in 
 1826; and repeatedly suggested by Edward Everett, in November 
 and December, 1843 ; April, 1844 ; and February, 1845 ; and proposed 
 in the London Examiner, April 25, 1845 ; and the Edinburgh Review 
 of July, 1845; as follows: "You will accordingly propose to the 
 American Secretary of State that the line of demarcation should be 
 continued along the 49th parallel, from the Rocky Mountains to the 
 sea coast, and from thence, in a southerly direction, through the 
 center of King George's Sound and the Straits of Juan de Fuca, to 
 the Pacific Ocean, leaving the whole of Vancouver's Island, with its 
 ports and harbors, in the possession of Great Britain." (Cf, Berlin 
 Arbitration, p. 52.) 
 
 Our Government had been informed by the dispatch of Mr. Mc- 
 Lane to Mr. Buchanan, dated London, April 17, 1846, that the British 
 Government "Would take no further step towards renewing the ne- 
 gotiation until after Congress had finally acted upon the question 
 of notice." (Cf. Berlin iirbitration, p. 49.) 
 
 How speedily the Earl of Aberdeen directed this resumption of 
 negotiations only tT\^o days after being informally notified of the 
 action of Congress on the question of notice, and without waiting 
 for the formal ofiicial notification of that action, appears from 
 the following extract from a long dispatch of Mr. McLane to Mr. 
 Buchanan, dated London, May 18, 1846: 
 
 "I received late in the day, on the 15th inst. (Friday), your des- 
 patch number twenty-seven, dated the 28th of April, 1846 ; transmit- 
 ting a notice for the abrogation of the convention of the 6th of Au- 
 gust, 1827. ... I have now to acquaint you that, after the re- 
 ceipt of your despatches on the 15th inst. by the 'Caledonia,' I had 
 a lengthened conference with Lord Aberdeen ; on which occasion 
 the resumption of the negotiation for an amicable settlement of 
 the Oregon question, and the nature of the proposition he contem- 
 plated submitting for that purpose, formed the subject of a full 
 and free conversation. I have now to state that instructions will 
 be transmitted to Mr. Pakenham by the steamer of tomorrow, to 
 submit a new and further proposition on the part of this Gov- 
 ernment for a partition of the territory in dispute. ... 'It 
 must not escape observation, that during the preceding admin- 
 istration of our Government the extension of the line on the 49th 
 parallel to the Strait of Fuca, as now proposed by Lord Aberdeen, 
 was actually suggested by my immediate predecessor' (Edw. Ever- 
 ett), as one he thought his Government might accept." (Cf. Sen. 
 Ex. Doc. 489, 29th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 17-19.) 
 
 (For Everett's repeated suggestions of the line via Straits of
 
 2G8 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Fuca Cf. Everett to rpshnr, Nov. 14, 1843, Berlin Arbitration, p. 
 30; Everett to Ipshur, Dec. 2, 1843, Id. p. 31; Everett to Aberdeen, 
 Nov. 30, 1843, Id. p. 32 ; Everett to Nelson, April 1, 1844, Id. p. 33 ; 
 Everett to Calhoun, Feb. 28, 1845, Id. p. 35.) 
 
 President Polk, desiring to shift the responsibility for aban- 
 doning 54 deg. 40 min. from his own shoulders to the Senate, on 
 June 10, 184<i, sent a message to the Senate beginning as follows: 
 '•To the Senate of the United States. 
 
 "I lay before the Senate a proposal, in the form of a conven- 
 tion, presented to the Secretary of State on the 6th inst. by the 
 Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of Her Bri- 
 tannic Majesty, for the adjustment of the Oregon question, to- 
 gether with a protocol of this proceeding. I submit this proposal 
 to the consideration of the Senate, and request their advice as to 
 the action which, in their judgment, it may be proper to take in 
 reference to it." 
 
 Then, after setting forth such reasons as he was willing to 
 avow for taking this course, instead of the usual one of signing 
 a treaty and sending it to the Senate for its ratification (with or 
 without amendment), or its rejection, he continues: 
 
 "My opinions and my action on the Oregon question were fully 
 made known to Congress in my annual message of the 2d of De- 
 cember last; and the opinions therein expressed remain unchanged. 
 
 ''Should the Senate, by the constitutional majority required 
 for the ratification of treaties, advise the acceptance of this propo- 
 sition, or advise it with such modifications as they may, upon full 
 deliberation, deem proper, I shall conform my action to their ad- 
 vice. Should the Senate, however, decline by such constitutional 
 majority to give such advice, or to express an opinion on the sub- 
 ject, I shall consider it my diity to reject the offer." 
 
 After three days' debate, and the rejection of an amendment 
 limiting the right of the Hudson's Bay Co. to navigate the Co- 
 lumbia to the year 1863, on June 12, 1846, by a vote of 38 to 12, 
 the Senate advised the President to accept the proposal of the 
 British Government, and, accordingly, on June 15, 1846, Mr. 
 Buchanan and Mr. Pakenham signed the treaty, and on June 16, 
 184(J, the I'resident sent it to the Senate with a brief message, and 
 after another three days' debate, and the rejection by a vote of 
 5 yeas to 42 nays of a substitute which Senator E. Hannegan of 
 Indiana offered insisting on our right to the territory to 54 degrees 
 and 40 minutes, on June 18, 1846, by a vote of 42 yeas to 14 nays 
 the Senate ratified the treaty, exactly as it was written in Eng- 
 land. (Cf. Doc. 489, pp. l-^^ 
 
 The first article of the treaty fixed the northern boundary of 
 the Oregon territory at 49 degrees north latitude to the middle
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 269 
 
 of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's 
 Island, and thence southerly through the middle of said channel 
 and of Fuca's Strait to the Pacific. 
 
 The second article grants free navigation of the Columbia to 
 the Hudson's Bay Co. and to British subjects trading with it. This 
 right the introduction of steamboat lines and the building of rail- 
 roads long since made worthless. 
 
 The third and fourth articles are as follows: 
 
 "Art. 3. In the future appropriation of the territory south of 
 the 49th parallel of north latitude, as provided in the first article 
 of this treaty, the possessory rights of the Hudson's Bay Co. and 
 of all British subjects who may be already in the occupation of 
 land or other property lawfully acquired within the said territory, 
 shall be respected. 
 
 "Art. 4. The farms, lands and other property of every descrip- 
 tion belonging to the Puget's Sound Agricultural Company, on the 
 north side of the Columbia River, shall be confirmed to the said 
 company. In case, however, the situation of those farms and lands 
 should be considered by the United States to be of public and 
 political importance, and the United States Government should 
 signify a desire to obtain possession of the whole or of any part 
 thereof, the property so required shall be transferred to the said 
 Government, at a proper valuation to be agreed upon between the 
 parties." 
 
 Although of the 55 Senators voting on the ratification of this 
 treaty 32 were Democrats and 23 Whigs, it was saved from defeat 
 only by the Whig vote, for the yeas included 23 Whigs and only 
 18 Democrats, and all the 14 nays were Democrats, being the irre- 
 concilable "fifty-four forty or fight" ones. 
 
 Benton, who had so long led the "Oregon Jingo" band, seems 
 never to have been carried away by the "fifty-four forty or fight" 
 craze, "He was one of the very few leading Demorcats who, through- 
 out the Presidential campaign, and at all times, was not only satis- 
 fied with 49 degrees, but also contended that the American claim 
 to 54 degrees and 40 minutes was wholly unfounded, and the merest 
 pretense." (Cf. "Life and Times of James K. Polk," by John Robert 
 Irelan, M. D., p. 214.) 
 
 Benton himself (in "Thirty Years' View," Vol. II., p. 661) says 
 "Mr. Calhoun showed a manly spirit in proposing the line of 49, 
 as the dominant party in the United States, and the one to which 
 he belonged, were then in a high state of exultation for the bound- 
 ary of 54 deg. 40 min., and the Presidential canvass, on the Demo- 
 cratic side, was raging upon that cry. The Baltimore Presiden- 
 tial convention had followed a pernicious practice, of recent inven- 
 tion, in laying down a platform of principles on which the can-
 
 270 ACQUh^ITWX OF OREGON 
 
 vass was to be conducted, and 54 deg. 40 min. for the northern 
 boundary of Oregon hud been made a canon of political faith, from 
 which there was to be no departure except upon the penalty of 
 political damnation. Mr. Calhoun had braved this penalty, and 
 in doing so had acted up to his public and responsible duty. . . 
 Mr. Buchanan, the new Secretary of State, did me the honor to 
 consult me. I answered him promptly and frankly that I held 
 49 deg. to be the right line; and that, if the administration made 
 a treaty upon that line, I should support it. This was early in 
 April. \ . ." 
 
 {Id. p. 677) "The issue was an instructive commentary upon 
 the improvidence of these party platforms, adopted for an election- 
 eering campaign, made into a party watch word, often fraught with 
 great mischief to the country, and often founded in ignorance or 
 disregard of the public welfare. This Oregon platform was emi- 
 nently of that character. It was a party platform for the cam- 
 paign ; its architects knew but little of the geography of the north- 
 west coast, or of its diplomatic history. They had never heard of 
 the line of the Treaty of Utrecht, and denied its existence; they 
 had never heard of the multiplied offers of our Government to 
 settle upon that line, and treated the offer now as a novelty and 
 an abandonment of our rights; they had never heard that their 
 54 deg. 40 min. was no line on the continent, but only a point on 
 an island on the coast, fixed by the Emperor Paul as the southern 
 limit of the charter granted by him to the Russian Fur Company; 
 had never heard of Frazer's River and New Caledonia, which lay 
 between Oregon and their indisputable line, and ignored the ex- 
 istence of that river and province. The pride of consistency made 
 them adhere to these errors; and a desire to destroy Mr. Benton 
 for not joining in the hurrahs for the "whole of Oregon, or none," 
 and for the "immediate annexation of Texas without regard to 
 consequences," lent additional force to the attacks upon him. The 
 conduct of the Whigs was patriotic in preferring their country to 
 their party — in preventing a war with Great Britain — and in sav- 
 ing the administration from itself and its friends." 
 
 Not only did the Whigs in the Senate save the treaty from 
 defeat, but the course of the Whig papers in allaying the war 
 spirit, and of the Whig leaders, and especially their greatest leader, 
 Daniel Webster, in working constantly for peace during the stormy 
 10% months between Pakenham's brusque rejection on July 29, 
 1845, of Polk's offer through Secretary of State Buchanan of the 
 line of 49 degrees, and the tender by Lord Aberdeen, on June 10, 
 184(5, of the treaty which was ratified, was eminently sane and truly 
 patriotic. 
 
 George T. Curtis, in his "Life of W^ebster," after speaking of
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 271 
 
 the clamor for war on the Oregon question by extremists of both 
 countries, says (p. 257) : ''On the 7th of November," (1845) 
 "therefore he went into Fanueil Hall" (Boston) ''and spoke on the 
 subject of Oregon. . . After expressing the opinion that it was 
 a fit subject for compromise and amicable adjustment, and that 
 such an adjustment could be made in a manner perfectly consistent 
 with the honor and the rights of all parties, he indicated the 49th 
 parallel as a natural arrangement, the two countries keeping 
 abreast on that line to the Pacific Ocean." 
 
 (P. 258) After giving some extracts from the speech Mr. Cur- 
 tis goes on: "A letter which now lies before me, written from 
 Copenhagen on the 24th of December, 1845, informed Mr. Webster 
 that his speech had been translated and published in full, not only 
 in Denmark and in Sweden, but in nearly every language on the 
 Continent. It was considered, out of England, as having settled 
 the question of peace or war. 
 
 "But the diplomatic crisis was not passed until some time 
 afterward. On the assembling of Congress in December (1845), 
 President Polk, in his annual message, after having recited the 
 history of the negotiations, and submitting the correspondence, 
 recommended that notice be given for terminating the joint occu- 
 pation of the territory under the convention of 1827, and that the 
 laws of the United States be extended over our citizens in that 
 country. 
 
 "From this point Mr. Webster's influence in the settlement of 
 this controversy involves a public and a private history which 
 must be taken together. 
 
 "At about the middle of December he received a private letter 
 from James McGregor, Esq., of Glasgow, a distinguished member 
 of Parliament. In his answer to this letter Mr. Webster suggested 
 the offer by the British Government of the 49th parallel as the 
 boundary. His letter was shown to Lord Aberdeen and the sug- 
 gestion was acted upon. . ." 
 
 The story of this letter to Mr. McGregor and its results is told 
 in some detail in an article in the London Examiner for July 24, 
 1847 ; and with that and a brief comment on the atrocious way that 
 Rev. William Barrows in his "Oregon," and Dr. O. W. Nixon in 
 his "How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon," have used fourteen 
 words from it to convey to their readers an idea totally opposed 
 to the purpose of the writer of the article, we will conclude the dis- 
 cussion of the adoption of the Treaty of 1846. 
 
 On p. 192 of his "Oregon," Barrows (without giving the date of 
 the article — but printing it in such connection that all his readers 
 would suppose it was published before Whitman's ride), says: 
 "The London Examiner was quite pronounced, if not petulant, that
 
 272 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 the ignorant Americans did not give np a country equal in area to 
 England eight times. 'The whole territory in dispute is not worth 
 twenty thousand pounds to either power.' " As usual Barrows 
 blunders on the amount of "territory in dispute," which was not 
 all of the Oregon territory, but only that part north and west of 
 the Columbia, which was about equal in area to England one in- 
 stead of eight times — Great Britain having offered in 1824 and 
 again in 1827, to make that the line which Barrows himself knows 
 and states on pp. 73 and 75, and again on p. 285. 
 
 This, however, is a trivial matter compared with (1) his attempt 
 to create the impression that it was printed prior to Whitman's 
 ride, and (2) his deliberate and most shameless ])erversion of the 
 article which he pretends to quote. It is quoted verbatim (omit- 
 ting its title) in the "Works of Daniel Webster," Vol. I., Introduc- 
 tion, p. 149. 
 
 From the first paragraph of the article itself it is plainly ap- 
 parent that it was published, not before Whitman's ride, but after 
 the treaty of 1840 had settled the title to Oregon, and the whole 
 article shows that it was written not to depreciate Oregon, nor to 
 find fault with ''ignorant Americans," but to do honor to Mr. Mc- 
 Gregor for having helped to cause England to yield to our claim 
 of 49 degrees, and is copied by the editor of Webster's works (who 
 was his life-long friend, Edward Everett), to do honor to Webster, 
 and there is nothing in it which even suggests petulance, and not 
 a word about 'ignorant Americans," nor even the least intimation 
 that the Americans ought to have yielded up any part of Oregon 
 south of 49 degrees. Its date, I found after ten years' search, was 
 July 24, 1847. 
 
 That the reader may see how shamelessly the reverend histor- 
 ian perverts its meaning, I will copy it in full : 
 
 "THE OREGON TERRITORY." 
 
 "In reply to the question put to him in reference to the present 
 war establishments of this country and the propriety of applying 
 the principle of arbitration in the settlement of disputes arising 
 among nations, Mr. McGregor, one of the candidates for the repre- 
 sentation of Glasgow, took occasion to narrate the following very 
 important and remarkable anecdote in connection with our recent, 
 but now hai)pily terminated differences with the United States on 
 the Oregon question. At the time our ambassador at Washington, 
 the Hon. Mr. Takenham, refused to negotiate on the 49th parallel 
 of north latitude as the basis of a treaty" (this was July 29th, 
 1845), "and w'hen by that refusal the danger of a rupture between 
 Great Britain and America became really imminent, Mr. Daniel 
 Webster, formerly Secretary of State to the American Government,
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 273 
 
 wrote a letter to Mr. McGregor, in which he strongly deprecated 
 Mr. Pakenham's conduct, which, if persisted in and adopted at 
 home, would to a certainty embroil the two countries, and suggested 
 an equitable compromise, taking the 49th parallel as the basis of 
 an adjustment. Mr. McGregor agreeing entirely with Mr. Webster 
 in the propriety of a mutual giving and taking to avoid a rupture, 
 and the more especially as the whole territory in dispute was not 
 worth £20,000 (pounds) to either power, while the preparations 
 alone for a war would cost a great deal more before the parties 
 could come into actual conflict, communicated the contents of Mr. 
 Webster's letter to Lord John Russell, who at the time was living 
 in the neighborhood of Edinburgh, and in reply received a letter 
 from Lord John, in which he stated his entire accordance with the 
 proposal recommended by Mr. Webster and approved by Mr. Mc- 
 Gregor, and requested the latter, as he (Lord John) was not in a 
 position to do it himself, to intimate his opinion to Lord Aberdeen. 
 Mr. McGregor, through Lord Canning, Under Secretary of the For- 
 eign Department, did so, and the result was that the first packet 
 that left England carried out to America the proposition in accord- 
 ance with the communication already referred to on which the 
 treaty of Oregon was happily concluded. Mr. McGregor may there- 
 fore be very justly said to have been the instrument of preserving 
 the peace of the world, and for that alone, if he had no other service 
 to appeal to, he has justly earned the applause and admiration not 
 of his own countrymen only, but of all men who desire to promote 
 the best interests of the human race." To this the editor of 
 "Webster's Works" adds: "Without wishing to detract in any 
 degree from the praise due to Mr. McGregor for his judicious and 
 liberal conduct on this occasion, the main result is exclusively due 
 to his American correspondent." 
 
 And from this article, congratulating England for having 
 yielded to the American claim of 49 degrees, Barrows has the 
 face to extract the single sentence, "The whole territory in dis- 
 pute is not worth 20,000 pounds to either power," and preface it 
 with the barefaced falsehood "The London Examiner was quite 
 pronounced, if not petulant, that the ignorant Americans did 
 not give up a country equal in area to England eight times," and 
 to print it in such a connection as would lead every reader to 
 believe that it was printed prior to March, 1843. 
 
 Could there be any lower depth of infamy in misquotation 
 than this? 
 
 Dr. O. W. Nixon, on p. 47 of his "How Marcus Whitman Saved 
 Oregon," among the misquotations which he prints as samples of 
 the deceptive work of his (imaginary) "literary bureau" prints 
 this outrageous misquotation as follows:
 
 274 ACQUISITION OF OREGOX 
 
 "The London Kxominer in 1843 wonders that 'Ignorant Amer- 
 icans' were "disposed to quarrel over a country, the whole in dis- 
 pute not being worth to either party twenty thousand pounds.' " 
 
 Of course, to one who assures his readers, as Dr. Nixon does, 
 that he himself "Is authority lor the facts in this book," it seems 
 entirely proper not only to antedate this article four years, but 
 to insert expressions in it directly contradictory to tlie whole 
 tenor of the article, so that, as he (juotes it, it may support his 
 ridiculous theory of a "literary bureau" to deceive Americans 
 about the value of Oregon, instead of demolishing that theory, as 
 it would do if properly dated and quoted as written. 
 
 There were two ambiguities in the Treaty of 1846. 
 
 First. There was no definition of the extent of the "possessory 
 rights" of the Hudson's liay Co., or of the "farms, lands and other 
 property" belonging to the l*uget's Sound Agricultural Co. 
 
 This resulted in a long contention as to their value, after the 
 United States appropriated these possessions. 
 
 Various propositions were made for the payment to the two 
 companies of the value of their claims, and after the subject had 
 been a source of irritation between the two Governments for many 
 years, on July 1, 1803, a treaty was made between Great Britain 
 and the United States providing for the submission of the ques- 
 tion to trial before two commissioners, one from each nation, with 
 power to choose an umpire, if needful, their decision to be final 
 and binding. 
 
 The taking of evidence began at Victoria, \'aucouver Island, 
 August 5, 18G5, and ended August 24, 1867. Witnesses were ex- 
 amined in British Columbia, at several places in Oregon, and also 
 in Washington Territory, in Montreal, New York City, Detroit, 
 Mich., Washington, D. C, Cincinnati, O., New Orleans, La., Golds- 
 boro, N. C, the Tortugas, and London, England. The United 
 States called more than 100 witnesses, including almost every 
 prominent army officer that had ever been stationed in Oregon, 
 among them Generals U. S. Grant, Phil Sheridan, Gordon Gran- 
 ger, Alfred Pleasanton, Rufus Tngalls, James A. Hardie, C. C. 
 Augur, David H. Vinton, and Benjamin Alvord, also Admiral 
 Charles Wilkes and Commander Gibson of the United States 
 Navy. 
 
 Finally the Commissioners, on September 10, 1869, awarded 
 the Hudson's Bay Co. $450, 000, and the Puget Sound Agricultural 
 Company |200,000, which was promptly paid by our Government. 
 
 Second. There was no name given (as there should have been) 
 to the "channel which se])arates Vancouver's Island from the con- 
 tinent," and a few years later, when the Oregon territory had be- 
 come considerably settled, and the gold discoveries of the Frazer's
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 275 
 
 River country and the Kootenay region had drawn many settlers 
 to British Columbia, the British cast covetous eyes on the Island 
 of San Juan, and sought to make it appear that the "channel" 
 meant in the treaty was the Rosario Strait, south and east of San 
 Juan Island, and not what was plainly meant in the Treaty, the 
 Canal de Haro, north and west of San Juan Island. 
 
 After long contention about this matter — in 1859 serious 
 enough to somewhat endanger the peaceful relations between the 
 two nations — on May 8, 1871, by Article 34 of the Treaty of 
 Washington, it was agreed by Great Britain and the United 
 States to submit the question to the arbitration of the Emperor 
 William of Germany, his decision to be final and without appeal. 
 
 The famous historian, George Bancroft, then past 70 years of 
 age, and a life-long Democrat, was at once nominated by the Re- 
 publican President, Grant, and unanimously confirmed by an 
 overwhelmingly Republican Senate, as our Envoy Extraordinary 
 and Minister Plenipotentiary to Berlin, distinctly on the ground 
 that he was the one man best qualified, from his full knowledge of 
 every phase of the question, to present our case successfully, as 
 he did. His "Memorial" begins as follows: "The treaty of which 
 the interpretation is referred to Your Majesty's arbitrament was 
 ratified more than a quarter of a century ago. Of the sixteen 
 members of the British Cabinet which framed and presented it 
 for the acceptance of the United States, Sir Robert Peel, Lord 
 Aberdeen and all the rest but one are no more. The British Min- 
 ister at Washington who signed it is dead. Of American states- 
 men concerned in it, the Minister at London, the President and 
 Vice-President, the Secretary of State, and every one of the Presi- 
 dent's constitutional advisers, except one, have passed away. I 
 alone remain, and after finishing the three-score years and ten that 
 are the days of our years, am selected by my country to uphold its 
 rights. 
 
 "Six times the T'nited States had received the offer of arbi- 
 tration on their northwestern boundary, and six times had re- 
 fused to refer a point where the importance was so great and the 
 right so clear. But when consent was obtained to bring the ques- 
 tion before Your Majesty, my country resolved to change its policy, 
 and in the heart of Europe, before a tribunal from which no judg- 
 ment but a just one can emanate, to explain the solid foundation 
 of our demand, and the principles of moderation and justice by 
 which we have been governed. 
 
 "The case involves questions of geography, of history, and of 
 international law; and we are glad that the discussion should be 
 held in the midst of a nation whose sons have been trained in 
 those sciences by a Carl Ritter, a Ranke, and a Heffter.
 
 27G ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 "The long-coutiuued controversy has tended to estrange from 
 each other two of the greatest powers in the world, and even 
 menaced, though remotely, a conflict in arms. A want of confi- 
 dence in the disposition of the British Government has been sink- 
 ing into the mind of the States of the Union now rising on the 
 Pacific, and might grow into a po])iilar conviction, not easy to be 
 eradicated. After having secured union and tranquility to the 
 people of (^lernuiny, and attained a happiness never before allotted 
 by Providence to German warrior or statesman, will it not be to 
 Your Majesty a crowning glory now, in the fullness of years and 
 in the quiet which follows the mighty struggles of a most eventful 
 life, to reconcile the two younger branches of the great Germanic 
 family?" (Cf. Berlin Arbitration, p. 3.) 
 
 On October 21, 1872, the Emperor decided as follows: 
 
 ''Have decreed the following award: Most in accordance with 
 the true interpretations of the Treaty concluded on the loth of 
 June, 184G, between the Governments of Her Britannic Majesty 
 and the T'nited States of America, is the claim of the Government 
 of the United States that the boundary line between the territories 
 of Her Britannic Majesty and the United States should be drawn 
 through the Haro Channel." 
 
 Thus ended the contest for Oregon, 80 years, 5 months, 10 days 
 after the dauntless courage and skillful seamanship of Captain 
 Robert Gray, in the staunch little ship Columbia, entering the 
 mouth of the "Great River of the West," completed the great mari- 
 time discoveries which, beginning with Columbus' voyage just 
 three centuries before, had determined the form and discovered 
 the great river systems of North America, and gave us our first 
 claim to the then unnamed region drained by ''Columbia's River," 
 as Gray named it. 
 
 This contest, the longest, the most interesting, the most re- 
 markable, and the most successful we have ever waged for terri- 
 tory, gave us possession, without war and without any purchase 
 price (except the |0.^)0,000 paid the Hudson's Bay Co. and the 
 Puget Sound Agricultural Co. for their ''possessory rights"), of 
 about 292,000 square miles, or nearly one-twelfth of our area on 
 this continent, being all for which we had ever really contended; 
 for the "fifty-four forty or fight" cry was the most transparent "bait 
 for gudgeons" ever put into a national platform to humbug the 
 ignorant voters, and so secure the election of men who had no 
 idea, when they should have won the election, of doing anything 
 else but compromising on 49 degrees. 
 
 Considering the flimsy nature of the Spanish title based on mere 
 discovery and the papal bull of Pope Alexander VT., and the 
 "Treaty of Partition of the Ocean" of June 7, 1494, between Spain
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 277 
 
 and Portugal, not followed, for more than two and a half cen- 
 turies, by the least attempt at any permanent occupation, or even 
 any land exploration, compared with the British claim from over- 
 land exploration of Alex. McKenzie, in 1793, and occupancy at 
 various points inland and on the coast from 1806 onwards, of the 
 region north of 49 degrees (where no American had ever even at- 
 tempted to establish trading posts or form settlements), and the 
 claim of Great Britain to that region by contiguity — how could 
 we ever have justified ourselves in going to war for the region be- 
 tween 49 degrees and 54 deg. and 40 min., which, before Polk's 
 election, we had four times offered to yield to Great Britain, viz. : 
 in the negotiations of 1818 and 1823-24 and 1826-27, and in Secre- 
 tary Upshur's instructions to Everett, on October 9, 1843? 
 
 There can be no doubt that the line of the Treaty of 1846 would 
 have been gladly accepted by any administration at Washington 
 from the date of the Louisiana Purchase onward till it was ac- 
 complished, 58 years and 7 months from the beginning of our 
 diplomatic struggle for Oregon, in the ''Instructions to our Com- 
 missioners to negotiate the Treaty of Ghent," to consent to no 
 claim of Great Britain south of 49 degrees, and to insist on includ- 
 ing Astoria in any arrangement for mutual restoration of places 
 captured during the war. 
 
 As the whole official story of the contest about the San Juan 
 Island question is told in a single easily accessible volume, "The 
 Berlin Arbitration," it is unnecessary to write more about it here. 
 
 Before leaving the governmental action on the Oregon acquisi- 
 tion it seems proper to state compactly together the most authori- 
 tative portion of the absolutely indisputable evidence in support of 
 the position that according to the very terms of the Treaty of 
 1818 and its renewal in 1827 no trading posts established or set- 
 tlements made by the Hudson's Bay Co. or anything else done by 
 Great Britain could strengthen their claim, or weaken ours, to 
 any part of the Oregon territory while those treaties remained in 
 force. 
 
 That Benton and the "Oregon jingoes" who followed his lead 
 constantly claimed that Great Britain could thus strengthen her 
 claims and weaken ours, and that she was constantly doing so 
 through operations of the Hudson's Bay Co., is true, and it is also 
 true that an essential postulate of the Whitman Legend is that 
 Great Britain could thus strengthen her claim and was doing it 
 through the Hudson's Bay Co., but we shall find on examination 
 of the text of the treaties that this was impossible, and a careful 
 study of the original text of all the negotiations with Great Britain 
 on the Oregon boundary will show that not only did our Presidents 
 and diplomats who managed those negotiations hold that nothing
 
 278 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 that Great Britain could do while those treaties remained in force 
 could in the least degree strengthen her claims to any part of 
 Oregon, but also that every English diplomat who negotiated on 
 the Oregon boundary tacitly admitted the correctness of this view, 
 as no one of them ever alleged that anything done after October 
 20. 1818, on sea or land, had in the least degree strengthened the 
 Jiritish claim to any part of Oregon, and, as we shall see, Lord 
 Aberdeen, head of the British Foreign Office from September 2, 
 1841, to July (), ]84(), explicitly assented to the correctness of the 
 American contention that the posts of the Hudson's Bay Co. and 
 the settlements of discharged employes of that company in Ore- 
 gon could not in any way strengthen the British claim to any part 
 of it. 
 
 Let us examine first the treaties themselves. 
 
 The third article of the Treaty of 1818 was the only one relating 
 to the Oregon country (though the name Oregon was not com- 
 monly applied to it till about ten years later), and it reads as 
 follows: 
 
 •'Art. li. It is agreed that any country that may be claimed 
 by either party on the northwest coast of America, westward of 
 the Stony Mountains, shall, together with its harbors, bays, and 
 creeks, and the navigation of all rivers within the same, be free 
 and open for the term of ten years from the date of the signature 
 of the present convention, to the vessels, citizens, and subjects, of 
 the two powers; it being well understood that this agreement is not 
 to be construed to the prejudice of any claim which either of the 
 two high contracting parties may have to any part of the said 
 country, nor shall it be taken to atfect the claims of any other 
 power or state to any part of the said country; the only object of 
 the high contracting parties, in that respect, being to prevent dis- 
 putes and ditierences among themselves." 
 
 The Convention of August 9, 1827, reads as follows: 
 
 "Art. 1. All the provisions of the third article of the conven- 
 tion concluded between the T'nited States of America and His 
 Majesty the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and 
 Ireland, on the 20th of October, 1818, shall be, and they are hereby, 
 further indefinitely extended and continued in force, in the same 
 manner as if all the provisions of the said article were herein 
 specifically recited. 
 
 "Art. 2. It shall be competent, however, to either of the con- 
 tracting parties, in case either should think fit, at any time after 
 the 20th of October, 1828, on giving due notice of twelve months 
 to the other contracting party, to annul and abrogate this conven- 
 tion; and it shall, in such case, be accordingly entirely annulled 
 and abrogated, after the expiration of the said terms of notice.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 279 
 
 "Art. 3. Nothing contained in this convention, or in the third 
 article of the convention of the 20th of October, 1818, hereby con- 
 tinued in force, shall be construed to impair, or in any manner 
 affect, the claims which either of the contracting parties may have 
 to any part of the country westward of the Stony or Rocky Moun- 
 tains." 
 
 The significance of the change in the language of article 3 in 
 this convention, when compared with that of the convention of 1818, 
 will be seen on reading the extracts from John Q. Adams' speeches, 
 with which this chapter concludes. 
 
 Albert Gallatin, one of the ablest of all American diplomats, 
 who had negotiated with Richard Rush the first treaty of Joint 
 Policy (signed October 20, 1818), and who, as our plenipotentiary, 
 conducted the negotiations in 1826 and 1827 which resulted in the 
 extension of that joint occupancy by a treaty signed August 6, 
 1827, wrote a letter dated London, November 25, 1826, to Henry 
 Clay, Secretary of State, describing the progress made in the nego- 
 tiations up to that time. It is No. 29, of Doc. 458, Vol. VI., Ameri- 
 can State Papers, Foreign Relations (pp. 652-55), and on p. 653, 
 stating his discussions with the British plenipotentiaries, he 
 writes: "I observed, as relating to the settlements of the British 
 in that quarter: 
 
 ''1st. That those made subsequent to the convention of 1818 
 added nothing to the claims of Great Britain, the rights of both 
 parties having been expressly reserved by that convention, which 
 allowed for a joint occupancy." 
 
 This statement of the purpose and effect of the joint occupancy 
 treaty was so obviously correct that the British plenipotentiaries 
 — though strenuously contending for the British claims based on 
 alleged priority of discovery and occupation, and traversing as best 
 they could all of our claims to exclusive right based on priority 
 of discovery, and exploration, and occupation, did not attempt to 
 make any reply to this, nor set up any claim based on any settle- 
 ments made, or new trading posts established subsequent to the 
 convention of 1818. 
 
 July 12, 1845, Mr. Buchanan, Secretary of State, wrote to Mr. 
 McLane, our Minister at London, giving a brief historical sketch 
 of the propositions for the adjustment of the Oregon boundary 
 (Cf. Sen. Ex. Doc. 489, 29th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 27-32), and on 
 p. 29 he said : "The next notice of this question will be found un- 
 der the administration of General Jackson. It is contained in the 
 instructions of Mr. Livingston to Mr. Van Buren, dated on the 1st 
 of August, 1831, with a copy of which, so far as they relate to this 
 subject, you shall be furnished. From this, you will perceive that 
 General Jackson's administration, so far from objecting to the
 
 280 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 occupation of the whole territory by the British in common with 
 ourselves, were entirely satisfied to sutler this state of things to 
 continue. These instructions do not proceed upon the principle of 
 clainiin*;- the whole territory for the United States, althou<i;h they 
 express a strong opinion in favor of our right.'' After stating that 
 the term of joint occupation was indefinitely continued for the pur- 
 pose, in the language of the treaty, "of giving time to mature meas- 
 ures which shall have for their object a more definite settlement of 
 the claims of each party to the said territory," they go on to remark 
 that "this subject, then, is open for discussion; and until the rights 
 of the parties can be settled by negotiation, ours can sutfer nothing 
 by delay." 
 
 So far as I have been able to discover this is all that has ever 
 been jirinted of these instructions to Van Buren, but this little 
 is sufficient to show that Jackson, and Livingston — and presum- 
 ably Vixu Buren — held to the same opinion as Gallatin had ex- 
 pressed four years before. 
 
 This position was also vigorously asserted by Edw. Everett, 
 our Minister to England in Tyler's administration, and assented 
 to by Lord Aberdeen, in November and December, 1843, as follows: 
 "Berlin Arbitration" (p. 29), "No. 18, Mr. Everett to Mr. Upshur 
 (private and confidential), London, November 14, 1843. . . . 
 Lord Aberdeen assented also to my remark that the numerous sta- 
 tions which the Hudson's Bay Co. had established south of the 
 49th degree of north latitude since the year 1818, though they 
 might and unquestionably would embarrass the British Govern- 
 ment in reference to that company, and through them in reference 
 to public opinion, ought not to prejudice the claims of the United 
 States. This I think a very important point to be kept firmly in 
 view." 
 
 {Ihid. p. 32.) "No. 19, Mr. Everett to Mr. Upshur (confiden- 
 tial), London, December 2, 1843, , .. I spoke with considerable 
 earnestness in reprobation of the conduct of the Hudson's Bay Co. 
 in multiplying and pushing their posts far to the south of the 
 Columbia, and said I trusted that the Government would not allow 
 itself to be embarrassed by this circumstance. Fair warning had 
 been given to the company in 1818 that no settlements after that 
 date should j)rejudice the rights of either party. He (i e., Lord 
 Aberdeen) said he did not consider the existence of those settle- 
 ments as a very serious matter, but the navigation of the Columbia 
 was a serious one." 
 
 Precisely similar ground was taken by Hon. John C. Calhoun 
 in his negotiations with Richard Pakenham. 
 
 Doc. 2, of Sen. Ex. Doc, Vol. I., 29th Cong., 1st Sess., is Presi- 
 dent I*olk's Message, date December 2, 1845, with accompanying
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 281 
 
 documents; and one of these documents is Exhibit "A," presented 
 to Mr. Pakenham at their third conference (September 2, 1844), by 
 Secretary Calhoun, and in it (p. 152), Calhoun says: '^ Another 
 negotiation was commenced in 1826, which terminated in renewing 
 on the 6th of August, 1827, the third article of the convention of 
 1818, prior to its expiration. It provided for the indefinite exten- 
 sion of all the provisions of the third article of that convention, 
 and also that either party might terminate it at any time it might 
 think fit, by giving one year's notice after October 20, 1828. It 
 took, however, the precaution of providing expressly that 'nothing 
 contained in this convention or in the third article of the conven- 
 tion of the 20th of OctoJ^er, 1818, hereTji) continued in force, shall 
 he construed to impair or in any manner affect the claims which 
 either of the contracting parties may have to any part of the coun- 
 try westward of the Stony or Rocky Mountains.' That convention 
 is now in force, and has continued to be so since the expiration of 
 that of 1818. By the joint operation of the two, our right to be 
 considered the party in possession, and all the claims we had to 
 the territory, while in our possession, are preserved in as full vigor 
 as they were at the date of its restoration in 1818, without being 
 affected or impaired by the settlements since made by the subjects 
 of Great Britain. Time, indeed, so far from impairing our claims, 
 has greatly strengthened them since that period." (The italics 
 in this extract are Calhoun's.) 
 
 This view of the case Mr. Pakenham did not pretend to attempt 
 to controvert, though traversing all of Mr. Calhoun's other posi- 
 tions. Similarly, Tyler's administration having been succeeded by 
 Polk's, and Calhoun having been succeeded by James Buchanan as 
 Secretary of State, and the negotiation of the Oregon question with 
 Pakenham continuing, on July 12, 1845, Buchanan addressed a 
 communication to Pakenham — covering pp. 163-169 of this Doc. No. 
 2 — in which he again offered the line of 49 degrees to the Pacific; 
 and, on p. 168, he says : "The title of the United States to the en- 
 tire region drained by the Columbia River and its branches was 
 perfect and complete before the date of the treaties of joint occu- 
 pation of October, 1818, and August, 1827, and under the express 
 provisions of those treaties, this title, whilst they endure, can never 
 be impaired by any act of the British Government. In the language 
 of the treaty of 1827, 'nothing contained in this convention, or in 
 the third article of the convention of 1818 thereby continued in 
 force, shall be construed to impair, or in any manner affect the 
 claims which either of the contracting parties may have to any part 
 of the country westward of the Stony or Rocky Mountains. 
 
 ''Had not the convention contained this plain provision, which 
 has prevented the respective parties from looking with jealousy on
 
 282 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 the occupation of portions of the territory by the citizens and sub- 
 jects of each other its chief object, which was to preserve peace and 
 prevent collisions in those distant regions, would have been en- 
 tirely defeated. It is then manifest that neither the grant of this 
 territory for a term of years, made by (ireat Britain to the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co. in December, 1821, nor the extension of this grant in 
 1838, nor the settlements, trading posts and forts which have been 
 established by that company under it, can in the slightest degree 
 strengthen the British or impair the American title to any portion 
 of the Oregon Territory. The British claim is no stronger than it 
 was on the 20th of October, 1818, the date of the first convention." 
 
 This contention as to the efifect of the treaty of joint occupancy 
 was so indisputably correct that Pakenham, though replying vigor- 
 ously and at length to Buchanan's other positions, and declining 
 the offer of 49 degrees as the boundary to the Pacific — though at 
 the hazard of war — did not even attempt any reply to this. 
 
 Greenhow, who was for years Librarian and Translator of the 
 State Department, and therefore thoroughly acquainted with the 
 views of successive Presidents and Secretaries of State, in his "His- 
 tory of Oregon and California" (1845 Ed., p. 354), asserts the same 
 view of the force of the treaty of 1827, as follows: 'The advan- 
 tages of the convention were, in 1827, as in 1818, nearly equal to 
 both nations ; but the difference was, on the whole, in favor of the 
 United States. The British might, indeed, derive more profit from 
 the fur trade as carried on by their organized Hudson's Bay Co. 
 than the Americans could expect to obtain by the individual efforts 
 of their citizens; but the value of that trade is much less than is 
 generally su])i)osed: no settlements could be formed in the terri- 
 tory beyond the Rocky Mountains, by which it could acquire a popu- 
 lation, while the arrangement subsisted ; and the facilities for occu- 
 pying the territory at a future period, when its occupation by the 
 United States should become expedient, would undoubtedly have 
 increased in a far greater ratio on their part than on that of Great 
 Britain." 
 
 George Bancroft (in Berlin Arbitration, p. 139), says: "In 
 that same year, while everything was still fresh in memory, Mr. 
 Buchanan had recorded his interpretation of the treaty in an in- 
 struction to Mr. Bancroft, the American Minister at London, who, 
 as his colleague in Washington, had taken part in its negotiation 
 and knew every step of its progress." 
 
 Id. (p. 126) Bancroft says: "As to settlements properly so- 
 called, there could be none; for under the British treaty with Spain, 
 and the treaty of non-occupation between the United States and 
 Great Britain, iiii])liedly at least, there could be no grants or hold- 
 ings of territory by individuals or companies of either party."
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 283 
 
 If any man that ever lived knew what was the true meaning and 
 intent of these articles in the treaties of 1818 and 1827, it was John 
 Quincy Adams, who, as Secretary of State under Monroe, wrote the 
 treaty of 1818, and as President in 1827 directed every step of the 
 negotiations which resulted in the treaty of August 6, 1827, and 
 with two extracts from his speeches on Oregon in the House of Rep- 
 resentatives on February 9 and April 13, 1846, I will close this ex- 
 position of governmental action to secure Oregon. February 9, 1846 
 (Cf. Cong. Globe, p. 340), Mr. Adams said: "And here I beg leave 
 to repeat an idea that I have already expressed before, and that is, 
 that there is a very great misapprehension of the real merits of this 
 case, founded on the misnomer which declares that convention to be 
 a convention of joint occupation. Sir, it is not a convention of 
 joint occupation. It is a convention of non-occupation — a promise 
 on the part of both parties that neither of the parties will occupy 
 the territory for an indefinite space; first for ten years; then until 
 the notice shall be given from one party to the other that the con- 
 vention shall be terminated" ... (p. 341, 3d col.) "All these 
 titles are imperfect. 
 
 "Discovery is therefore no title of itself. The discovery of a 
 river and of land is no title of itself. Exploration comes next. That 
 gives something more of a title. Continuity and contiguity both 
 concur to give a title. They are none of them perfect in them- 
 selves. There is nothing complete in the way of title but actual 
 possession ; and that is the only thing we now want, to have a per- 
 fect, clear, indisputable and undoubted right to the territory of 
 Oregon. It is possession — it is occupation, if you please. Well, sir, 
 we have made two conventions with Great Britain — one in 1818, one 
 in 1827 — by which we have not agreed to anything like joint occu- 
 pation. Sir, in the days of Sir John Falstaff, so facetiously alluded 
 to by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Starkweather) the other day, 
 he says 'a captain ;' these villains will make the word 'captain' as 
 odious as the word 'occupy,' which was an excellent good word be- 
 fore it was ill-sorted. Now this 'occupation' is as 'odious' in some 
 parts as Sir John Falstaff said the word 'occupy' was in his 
 time after it had been ill-sorted. There is no occupation now. Oc- 
 cupation is the thing we want. Occupation is what I aim for put- 
 ting an end to that convention for; because it says we shall not 
 occupy that territory." 
 
 April 13, 1846 (Cf. Cong. Globe, p. 664), Mr. Adams said: "But 
 in that convention of 1818 it was merely stipulated that we should 
 not make settlements, that is, that we should not occupy, and that 
 same stipulation was binding upon Great Britain as well as upon 
 us. It was not only a total misnomer, but a total perversion of the
 
 284 ACQUISITTO\ OF OREGON 
 
 whole question of right, to call that convention a convention of joint 
 occupation — it was a convention of non-occupation. 
 
 "And, in making this convention with Great Britain we stipu- 
 lated formally to reserve the right of 'any third Power' — that is to 
 say the right of Spain, for no other Power but Spain had any claim 
 — and it was reserved in the convention of 1818, as Mr. Adams 
 showed when he was up before" (/. e,, on February 9, 184G, p. 342, 
 col. 1, W. I. M.) "from the words of the convention itself. The year 
 after that Spain ceded to us all her right upon the whole of that 
 coast from 42 degrees north. Those rights, then, which we had re- 
 served, by compact with Great Britain in the convention of 1818, 
 were all transferred to us; and when in the year 1827 we came to 
 renew that convention for an indefinite period, it was made in the 
 same form as the convention of 1818, leaving out the reservation and 
 thereby, on the part of Great Britain as well as ourselves, admitting 
 that the Ignited States were entitled to all the claims and pretensions 
 of Spain." Then after discussing the claim of Great Britain that 
 under the Nootka Sound convention she was entitled to at least equal 
 rights with the Ignited States in Oregon he says (p. 664, 2d col.) : 
 "Now in the Nootka Sound convention, the substance of which was 
 the same as our conventions with Great Britain of the year 1818 
 and the year 1827, the word 'settlement' was included ; that was to 
 say, that Sj)ain agreed that the subjects of Great Britain should 
 have the right of navigation, and trading with the savages, and of 
 settlement." . . . (3d col.) "I say that if Great Britain was 
 entitled to make settlements by the treaty of Nootka Sound, in 1790, 
 she has forfeited and abandoned that right by the omission of the 
 word in the conventions of 1818 and 1827. In 1818 the convention 
 was made between us and Great Britain, Great Britain claimed at 
 that time the privileges of the Nootka Sound convention; but she 
 did not choose to claim the right to make settlements for the limited 
 time of ten years. That convention itself excluded it; it left out 
 that word 'settlements,' copying the Nootka Sound convention in all 
 other respects, leaving the country open for navigation, commerce, 
 and trade with the savages. Why did they leave out that word 'set- 
 tlement'? There was no reason assigned for leaving it out; but if 
 it had been included, we should have had the right of settlement as 
 well as they. They forfeited it; they renounced it by omitting the 
 word 'settlement' in the convention of 1818, and it continues to be 
 omitted to this day. In 1827, when the convention came to be re- 
 newed, an indefinite time was assigned instead of ten years; and 
 there again the reservation of rights of any third Power whose rights 
 were reserved before, and the word 'settlement' continued to be 
 omitted : Great Britain having no right under that convention to 
 make any settlements whatever."
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE RELATION OF THE HUDSON'S 
 BAY CO. TO AMERICAN EXPLORATION, OCCUPATION, 
 AND SETTLEMENT OF THE OREGON TERRITORY, AS 
 APPEARS FROM A CAREFUL STUDY OF ALL THE AC- 
 CESSIBLE CONTEMPORANEOUS LETTERS, DIA- 
 RIES, REPORTS TO THE GOVERNMENT, AND 
 BOOKS WRITTEN BY THE AMERICAN FUR 
 TRADERS, SCIENTISTS, PLEASURE TRAVEL- 
 ERS, MISSIONARIES, AND LEADERS OF 
 PARTIES OF EMIGRANTS, DOWN TO THE 
 SIGNING OF THE TREATY OF JUNE 
 15, 1846, FIXING THE BOUNDARY. 
 
 Intimately connected with this question is the history of the 
 contest between the North West Co. and the Hudson's Bay Co. 
 (1805-1821) and the founding of the Red River Colony, near the 
 site of the present city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1811-12, its de- 
 struction in 1815, and again in 1816, and the consolidation of 
 the two companies in 1821. 
 
 To fully understand the motive which led to the establishment 
 of the Red River Colony, and its success in forcing the consolida- 
 tion of the North West and Hudson's Bay companies, one must read 
 the equivalent of about 3,000 pages like this, in the following list of 
 12 books, all but the first two of which are so very rare that I have 
 never seen but one full set — that in the Ayer Collection of the New- 
 berry Library, Chicago. 
 
 (1) "Observation on the Present State of the Highlands of 
 Scotland, with a View of the Causes and Probable Consequences 
 of Emigration. By the Earl of Selkirk." Edinburgh, 1805, p. 232, 
 and Appendix LXI. equal 283.
 
 286 ACQVI^JTJOX OF OREGON 
 
 (2) ''Sketch of tlie British Fur Trade in North America. By 
 the Earl of Selkirk." London, ISIO, p. 130. 
 
 (3 ^'Letters to the Honorable the Earl of Selkirk on His Set- 
 tlement at the Ked Kiver. By Rev. John Strachan, D. D., Rector 
 of York (now Toronto), T'pper Canada." London, 1816, p. 76. 
 
 (4) "Narrative of Transactions in the Red River Country from 
 the ConnnencoMKMil of the Operations of the Earl of Selkirk till 
 the Summer of the Year 1S1(». By Alexander McDonnell." Lon- 
 don, 1810, pp. 1.j2 and 87. This is the North West Co.'s side 
 of the case. 
 
 (5) ''Statement Respecting the Earl of Selkirk's Settlement 
 of Kildonan Upon the Red River in North America, Its Destruction 
 in 1815-1(), and the Massacre of Governor Semple and His Party." 
 London, 1817, ])p. 125 and 89. This was the Hudson's Bay Co.'s side 
 of the case. 
 
 (6) "Statement Respecting the Earl of Selkirk's Settlement," 
 etc. (as above) "with Observations Upon a Narrative of Occur- 
 rences in the Indian ('ountries" {i. e., upon Alex. McDonnell's 
 book, No. 4 above). London, 1818; New York, 1818, pp. 194 and 
 C equal 294. 
 
 (Like No. 5, this is the Hudson's Bay Co.'s side of the case, and 
 though no author is given they were both written by John Halket, 
 a Loudon lawyer, and a brother-in-law of the Earl of Selkirk. 
 — W. I. M.) 
 
 (7) "Narrative of John Pritchard, Pierre Chrysologue Pam- 
 brun of Montreal, formerly Lieutenant in the Voltiguer Corps of 
 Lower Canada, and Frederick Damien Heurter, late Acting Ser- 
 geant Major and Clerk in the Regiment De Mueron, Respecting the 
 Aggressions of the North West Co. against the Earl of Sel- 
 kirk's Settlement upon the Red River." London, 1819, p. 91. 
 
 This is, of course, on the Hudson's Bay Co.'s side of the case. 
 
 (8) "Letter Book of Capt. Miles McDonnell, First Governor 
 of the Red River Colony." ("From the Canadian Archives.") Only 
 a fragment, covering pp. 187-226. No date. 
 
 (9) "Letter to the Earl of Liverpool by the Earl of Selkirk, 
 on the subject of the Red River Settlement." London, 1819, p. 224. 
 This is, of course, the Hudson's Bay Co.'s side of the case. 
 
 (10) "Re])ort of Piocoedings connected with the Dispute be- 
 tAveen the Enrl of Selkirk and the North West Co. at the Assizes 
 held at Yoik, in V. C, October, 1818. From Minutes Taken in 
 Court." Montreal and London, 1819, pp. 424 and 48. 
 
 (11) "Report of Trials in the Courts of Canada Relative to the 
 Destruction of the Earl of Selkirk's Settlement on the Red River,
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 287 
 
 with Observations by A. Amos." London, 1820, (No. 11 is the 
 same as No. 10, with the addition of "Observations" by A. Amos, 
 a London lawyer in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Co. These 
 "Observations" were designed to make the official "Report" seem 
 less unfavorable to the Hudson's Bay Co. and to Lord Selkirk. 
 — W. I. M.) 
 
 (12) "Papers Relating to the Red River Settlement. Ordered 
 printed by the House of Commons, July 19, 1819." Folio 287 p. 
 
 Titles (3), (10) and (12) are the ones on which I have mainly 
 depended. 
 
 How vital is the connection between the story of the reasons for 
 and results of the founding of the Red River Colony, and the treat- 
 ment by the Hudson's Bay Co. of the Indians in Oregon, and the 
 relations between the Hudson's Bay Co. and the Americans in Ore- 
 gon from 1828 to 184G will appear later. 
 
 The matters stated in these books also are of great value as 
 showing the total falsity of the assertion — so often made with a 
 self-complacent air of superiority by Englishmen wholly ignorant 
 of this dismal chapter in their history, and echoed by the few 
 equally ignorant and very snobbish Americans, who always delight 
 in belittling their own country, and who, wherever they are, "always 
 turn up their trousers when it rains in 'dear old Lunnon,' " that 
 "the English always get along much better with the Indians than 
 the Americans," for the story of this contest between rival British 
 fur companies, especially after the consolidation of the leading 
 Canadian companies in 180.5, under the name of the North West 
 Co., demonstrates beyond any possibility of dispute that in all the 
 vast regions where these two equally loyal British companies— the 
 North West Co. and the Hudson's Bay Co. — came in competition for 
 many years, not with Americans, but with each other, the Indians 
 were thoroughly debased, and as greatly injured in morals by the 
 greed and selfishness of these two British corporations, and their 
 determination to over reach each other, even if to do it wholesale 
 robbery and murder alike of Indians and whites were needful to 
 accomplish their purposes, as Indians ever were anywhere in the 
 United States or British America. 
 
 We have seen in Chapter IV. that the North West Co., the great 
 Canadian fur company, was the competitor Astor feared, and that it 
 was that company which, aided by the breaking out of the war of 
 1812, finally wrought the undoing of the Astoria enterprise, and, at 
 the same time by a cunningly devised scheme of purchase forestalled 
 the capture of Astoria by His Majesty's ship Raccoon, and gather- 
 ing all the profits into the coffers of the North West Co., tricked 
 Capt. Black and his officers and crew out of the snug fortune which 
 they had expected to realize as prize money by the capture, not
 
 288 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 iiipi-oly of a nido blockhouse, but of an iniinense stock of furs and 
 merchandise belonjiinj;- to an American fur company. 
 
 And in Chai)ter VI. we have seen that the North West Co. re- 
 mained in charge of Astoria (or, as they had renamed it, Fort 
 George), when, on October G, 1818, it was unconditionally restored 
 to us by Great Britain. 
 
 At that time the Hudson's Bay Co. not only had no post within 
 many hundred miles of any part of the Oregon Territory, but had 
 none in British America west of the Rocky Mountains, yet less than 
 two and one-half years later, on March 26, 1821, the North West 
 Co., which had explored British America north to the Arctic and 
 west to the Pacific, was blotted out of existence by a consolidation 
 with the Hudson's Bay Co., the terms of which, while probably the 
 best that could then be obtained, and perhaps somewhat equitable 
 as to future conduct of business and division of profits, yet, con- 
 sidering their relative enterprise in exploring and in developing 
 the fur trade, certainly gave a disproportionately large share of 
 its benefits to the older, but far less enterprising and energetic com- 
 pany. (Cf. for the terms of this consolidation "The Hudson's Bay 
 Territories," etc., by R. M. Martin, London, 1849, p. 50 ; '"The Cana- 
 dian Northwest, Its History and Its Troubles," by G. Mercer 
 Adams, Toronto, 1885, p. 145; ''History of the Great Company," 
 by Beckles Willson, Toronto, 1899, pp. 433-5.) 
 
 The License of Exclusive right to trade with Indians in all such 
 parts of British America "as shall not form any part of our prov- 
 ince in North America," and of the exclusive right as against any 
 other British subjects to trade with Indians in the region which 
 afterwards came to be known as Oregon, was granted by the English 
 government on December 0, 1821, for the period of 21 years, to the 
 Hudson's Bay Co., and W. McGillivray, of Montreal, and S. Mc- 
 Gillivray and E. Ellice, of England (the last three representing 
 the North \Vest Co.), though the business was to be carried on only 
 in the name of the Hudson's Bay Co. 
 
 "In 1824 the claims of the North West Co. were extinguished by 
 mutual consent." though as the rights of the "Norwesters" to stock 
 in the consolidated company remained unchanged, this 1824 agree- 
 ment seems to have been merely a technical change for administra- 
 tive and bookkeej)ing convenience, and the Hudson's Bay Co. thence- 
 forward was the sole owner of the rights under this license. 
 
 May 30111. 1S38, the company surrendered this license, and re- 
 ceived in lieu thereof anotlior similar grant for 21 years from that 
 date. (Cf. for the copies of the Consolidation agreements of March 
 20, 1821, and of 15th of September, 1824. ''A. 2" and "A. 3," pp. 
 277-312, Vol, 1, H. B. Co. vs. U. S., and for copies of the Licenses
 
 ACQVI^ITION OF OREGON 289 
 
 of Exclusive trade of December 6th, 1821, and May 30, 1838, Idem 
 "A. 4" and "A. 5," pp. 312-319.) 
 
 How came this consolidation (which had been first recommended 
 by McKenzie on pp. 433-7 of his ''Voyages from Montreal Through 
 the Continent of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans." 
 London, 1801) to be effected? 
 
 Thos. Douglas, fifth Earl of Selkirk, was a very thrifty Scotch 
 nobleman, much inclined to "safe" speculations (/. f., when he pos- 
 sessed such inside information as would not merely secure him from 
 loss, but assure him ample profit). 
 
 He was also so thorough a believer in "the right divine of kings 
 to govern wrong" that it grieved him much to observe that many 
 a native-born British subject — Englishman, Scotchman or Irishman 
 — was migrating to the United States, and so generally prospering 
 there that their correspondence with those left behind was con- 
 stantly swelling the number of those who deserted the monarchy 
 for the republic, and speedily learned that a nation could prosper 
 better without kings, and earls, and dukes and barons than with 
 them. 
 
 His Lordship thereupon thriftily determined to exert all his 
 influence to turn this migration from the Ignited States to the Brit- 
 ish colonies, and, at the same time, thereby to increase his own 
 already ample fortune. 
 
 His first essays in establishing colonies were in 1803, on Prince 
 Edward's Island, and speedily thereafter at Baldoon, in the ex- 
 treme southwest part of Upper Canada, on a small creek that flows 
 into Lake St. Clair. 
 
 In connection with this latter project he visited Canada, and 
 what followed is told in "A Narrative of Transactions," etc., by 
 Alex. McDonnell, as follows: 
 
 (P. 1) "Previous to the year 1806, the Earl of Selkirk had been 
 engaged in various lauded and colonizing speculations in British 
 North America, in the course of which he visited Canada. 
 
 "In the course of his travels his attention was naturally directed 
 to the situation of the trade, and particularly to that carried on 
 with the Indians in the barter of manufactured goods and other 
 articles for furs and peltries, which ever since the discovery of and 
 establishment of the colony by the French had been considered as 
 the chief branch of its commerce. 
 
 "During His Lordship's residence in Montreal he was received 
 with the hospitality which so much characterizes the inhabitants 
 of that city, and to none was he indebted for more pointed atten- 
 tions and civility than to the merchants connected with the fur 
 trade, and more especially the partners of the North West Co. 
 His inquiries into the nature and extent of the trade, and their
 
 290 ACQUJSITWX OF ORIJGON 
 
 particular establishment, which has always been an (p. 2) object 
 of curiosity to stranj^ers visitiiifi' Canada, were readily answered 
 by these jivnllenien, who withhold no information which could 
 jrratil'y the liberal and uselnl researches of a noble traveler. They 
 remarked al the time ihat these incjuiries were more extended than 
 usual; but they little exi)ected that their confidential communica- 
 tions to a person expressinjj; his admiration at the result of their 
 exertions, and his sincere friendship and thankful acknowledg- 
 ments to themselves, should have awakened the spirit of self-interest 
 which has sul)se(]uently been so ap})arent; still less did they sup- 
 pose they were i)lacing' means in the hands of a commercial rival, to 
 be applied first in opposition to their trade, and, after the failure 
 of that experiment, in an attempt to effect the ruin of their estab- 
 lishment. 
 
 "On the noble Lord's return to England he prosecuted with much 
 anxiety the inquiries he had commenced in Canada connected with 
 this subject, and the situation of the Hudson's Bay Co., with the 
 great advantages under which the fur trade nught be conducted 
 from Hudson's Bay, when compared with the obstacles and difficul- 
 ties op])osed to the Canadian merchants, soon presented themselves 
 to his discernment. The route to the remote and most valuable trad- 
 ing stations in the Northwest country was nearly 2,000 miles more 
 distant by interior communication from Montreal than from Hud- 
 son's Bay, and it was evident, if the assumed (p. 3) rights of this 
 chartered company to the exclusive commerce and navigation of the 
 bay were legal, by a strict enforcement of them the whole fur trade 
 might be diverted into that channel. 
 
 "His Loi'dship communicated his ideas on the subject, though 
 very partially, to a gentleman then in England, who had been long 
 interested in the North West. Co., and to whom the public are in- 
 debted for a description of the country and of his own voyages and 
 discoveries (/. c, Alex. McKenzie. — W. I. M.) 
 
 "In consequence of this communication, an agreement was subse- 
 quently entei-ed into by Lord Selkirk and this gentleman to specu- 
 late in the stock of the Hudson's Bay Co., without any definite object 
 on the ])art of His Lordship's associate, beyond i)ossibly a resale at 
 an enhanced price, when a sufficient amount slumld have been pro- 
 cured to enable them to exercise a beneficial iniluence in the man- 
 agement of the company's concerns, and thereby to increase the value 
 of their stock. The moment was peculiarly favorable for their pur- 
 ])ose: the stock of the company had fallen from 2."50 per cent, to be- 
 tween 50 and 00, in conseciuence of misfortune or mismanagement 
 of their affairs, which were in a state of rapid decay and considered 
 bordering u])on insolvency, no dividend having been paid for several 
 years. Under such circumstances considerable purchases were easily
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 291 
 
 made by the parties, but His Lordship's (p. 4) views becoming en- 
 larged, with the extended knowledge he obtained of the supposed 
 rights conferred upon the company by its charter, a disagreement 
 took place as to the further objects they had originally in view ; and 
 after some legal proceedings an arrangement was made between the 
 parties, by which Lord Selkirk became proprietor of the greatest 
 part of the stock acquired on their joint account. 
 
 '"Being thus disengaged from any connection which could inter- 
 fere with his views, and having established for himself a sufficient 
 footing in the affairs of the company. Lord Selkirk extended his pur- 
 chases to the amount of nearly £40,000, the whole amount of the 
 company's stock being rather under £100,000. Several members of 
 the committee immediately made way for the appointment of his 
 near relatives and friends to the direction, and from this period His 
 Lordship may be considered as possessing an unlimited influence 
 and control in the management of the affairs and disposal of the 
 property of the company. Although more activity was jjerceived in 
 the general conduct of their concerns, some time elapsed before His 
 Lordship's ultimate object and plans were disclosed; but his prep- 
 arations being made, a general court was convened by public notice 
 in the month of May, 1811. The proprietors were informed at this 
 meeting that the Governor and committee considered it beneficial 
 to their general (p. 5) interests to grant His Lordship in fee simple 
 about 116,000 square miles (or 74,240,000 acres) of what was sup- 
 posed to be their territory on condition that he should establish a 
 colony on the grant and furnish on certain terms from among the 
 settlers such laborers as are required by the company in their trade. 
 The proprietors did not see in these conditions any sufficient con- 
 sideration for the grant, and every one present, with the exception 
 of the noble Lord and the committee, signed and delivered a protest 
 vs. it to the court. Notwithstanding this opposition the grant was 
 confirmed, and His Lordship became the ideal proprietor of a do- 
 main exceeding in extent the Kingdom of England, with only one 
 objection to the title, that with respect to the right of the grantors 
 they had equal power to assign him a similar kingdom in the moon. 
 
 "In addition to the protest offered by the proprietors, remon- 
 strances were made against the wild and hopeless project of estab- 
 lishing the proposed colony by every person interested in the trade 
 of the country. . . . 
 
 "The distance between the spot where the first settlement was 
 afterward formed and York Factory in Hudson's Bay, the point of 
 communication (p. 6) with the sea, is by actual measurement 725 
 miles ; and the navigation, such as it is, may be called open between 
 the months of June and October. . . . The distance of the Bed 
 Eiver from Lake Superior is rather greater than from Hudson's Bay,
 
 2!)2 ACQUISITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 and Iroin Montreal, by the nearest ronte (that of Lake Snperior), 
 about 2,."jO(> miles. The distance from the nearest inhabited part of 
 Upper Canada, which may possibly be another colony of Lord Sel- 
 kirk's, called lialdoon, is about 1,000 miles. 
 
 "It must be obvious, from the distances here described, and the 
 dirticulty of communication, which is only practicable in birch bark 
 canoes, that no market could be found beyond the immediate con- 
 sum]>tion of the colony for the agricultural product of a settlement 
 so situated. 
 
 Ich'in { p. ) ''To the North West Co. this establishment was par- 
 ticularly objectionable. They denied the right of either the Hudson's 
 Bay Co. or Loi-d Selkirk to any-]>art of the territory ceded to him, 
 of which their predecessors and themselves had been in occu])ancy 
 for at least a century. They were aware that it was further in- 
 tended to enforce against them the penalties provided by the char- 
 ter of seizure of their persons and conflscation of their ])roperty as 
 interlopers on the territories absurdly claimed by the company ; and 
 they saw in tlie terms on whicli the grant was made that the estab- 
 lishment of this colony Avas only a pretext to induce settlers to emi- 
 grate and thus to introduce into the country at an inconsiderable 
 expense a sullicient number of persons to carry into effect (p. ]0) 
 the Noble Lord's plans of aggression and competition vs. their trade. 
 The North West Co. was founded in 1783 by an association of 
 traders, ])rior to tliat time engaged in rival undertakings, and who, 
 on the conquest of Canada, following the footsteps of their prede- 
 cessors, the French colonists, had engaged in the trade." 
 
 How drastic were the measures by which the Noble Lord meant 
 to utterly ruin the trade of the North West Co., or so injure it as 
 to force the consolidation of the two, by asserting and enforcing in 
 the most arbitrary manner, over all this vast wilderness, to which 
 the North AYest Co. denied that either the Earl or the Hudson's Bay 
 Co. had any rights of ownership, the same rights as owner in fee 
 sim])le, that an Englishman Avould be allowed to exercise respect- 
 ing the law'ns and flower gardens on his private estate in Great- 
 Britain, may be seen from this extract from a letter from the Earl 
 of Selkirk to Mr. William Hillier, a principal agent of the Hudson's 
 Bay Co. : ^*You must give them solemn warning that the land be- 
 longs to the Hudson's Bay Co.. and that they must remove from it; 
 after this warning they should not be allowed to cut any timber 
 either for building or fuel ; wiiat they have cut should be openly and 
 forcibly seized and their buildings destroyed. In like manner they 
 should be warned not to fish in your waters, and if they put dowm 
 nets, seize them as you would in England those of a poacher. We 
 are so fully advised of the unimpeachable validity of these rights 
 of property, that there can be no scruple in enforcing them wdierever
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 293 
 
 you have the physical means." (Cf. "Papers Relating to the Red 
 River Settlement," p. 154.) 
 
 As his grant covered for several hundred miles the only possible 
 line of travel for the "North Westers," from their great headquar- 
 ters, at Fort William, on the north shore of Lake Superior, to the 
 Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast regions, which their enterprise 
 had explored, and where by far the greater and more valuable part 
 of their fur trade was found, they would have been something very 
 much more or less than human if they had not determined to resist 
 to the utmost these monstrous pretensions of a right to prevent them 
 from navigating the streams and lakes, and traveling over the port- 
 ages, and catching fish and killing game for their subsistence in the 
 vast unsettled wilderness where they and their predecessors in in- 
 terest had enjoyed these rights undisturbed for several generations, 
 while it was "only twenty-five years since the Hudson's Bay Co. first 
 made an establishment on Red River" (Cf. "Papers Relating to the 
 Red River Settlement," p. 165). 
 
 This aggression was not, however, attempted to its fullest extent 
 at first, and so open hostilities did not begin with the very founding 
 of the colony, though there had been for several years not only a 
 very vigorous, but often a very unscrupulous competition between 
 the traders of the two companies, which had thoroughly demoralized 
 the Indians about all the regions where both the companies sought 
 the trade of the natives. (Cf. on this article in London and West- 
 minster Review, Vol. 29, April to August, 1838, pp. 373-392, as fol- 
 lows : "The Indians, without doubt, would have been more numer- 
 ous, more moral and more comfortable had they never seen the face 
 of a man professing to be a Christian." 
 
 As to these evils, it must be borne in mind that the Indians were 
 for many years subjected to all the corrupting influences of a com- 
 petition between two rival companies, who prospered by their de- 
 basement, the North West Co. of Montreal and the Hudson's Bay 
 Co. Spirituous liquors were introduced as early as the first settle- 
 ments of the latter com])any, in 1670. During the competition, 
 "which did not cease until the year 1821, it was the interest of the 
 rival Europeans to gain possession of the Indians, by whatever 
 means, and it used to happen that whenever an Indian canoe was 
 seen approaching on the lake rival boats would start on a race to 
 reach it first, and scenes of bloodshed were the consequence." 
 
 To the same tenor is what Daniel W. Harmon says in his "Jour- 
 nal of Voyages and Travels in the Interior of North America, etc.," 
 after 19 years' continuous service in the North West Co. (1800- 
 1819), as follows (p. 314) (in an account of the Indians generally 
 on the east side of the Rockv Mountains in British America) :
 
 294 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 "The white people have been among these above mentioned for 
 about 150 years. . . . But I very much question whether they 
 have improved in their character or condition by their acquaintance 
 with civilized people. In theii- savage state they were contented 
 with the mere necessaries of life, which they could procure with con- 
 siderable ease ; but now they have many artificial wants created by 
 the luxuries which we (p. 315) have introduced among them, and as 
 they find it difficult to obtain these luxuries, they have become to a 
 degree discontented with their condition and practice fraud in their 
 dealings. A half-civilized Indian is more savage than one in his 
 original state. The latter has some sense of honor, while the former 
 has none. I have always experienced the greatest hospitality and 
 kindness among those Indians who have had the least intercourse 
 with white people. They readily discover and adopt our evil prac- 
 tices; but they are not as quick to discern and as ready to follow 
 the few good examples which we set before them." 
 
 This was written after Harmon had retired from the service of 
 the North West Co., and it Avill be observed that he does not charge 
 this condition to the one company more than to the other. 
 
 Turning now to the Earl of Selkirk's "Sketch of the British Fur 
 Trade,'' in which he is seeking to make a case against the "North 
 Westers" (pp. 38-9), he arraigns them for "speculating on the vices 
 of their servants by encouraging them to habits of drink and dissi- 
 pation," and (p. 51) "It is an indisputable fact that the native In- 
 dians have been growing more deficient in every estimable point of 
 character from the time that Canada fell under the Protestant Gov- 
 ernment of Great Britain. The cause of this lamentable and humil- 
 iating fact can no longer be a mystery, when it is known that the 
 immediate management of these people has been left without control 
 in the hands of men who speculate ui)on the vices of their servants." 
 On p. 82, desiring to make the Hudson's Bay Co. (of which he 
 had been for five years the real manager) appear to have been as 
 angelic as he had sought to make the "Norwesters" satanic, he 
 wrote : 
 
 "So far from 'speculating upon their vices,' the Hudson's Bay 
 Co. have uniformly oxi)rossed the strongest desire to preserve moral 
 and religious habits among their people, nor have their efforts for 
 this purpose been without effect." 
 
 Though His Lordship does not claim that great things had actu- 
 ally been done for the Indians by the Hudson's Bay Co., it is evi- 
 dent from his contrasting the North West Co.'s treatment of its em- 
 ployes Avith that of the Hudson's P.ay Co. and ascribing the debase- 
 ment of the Indians to the '"Norwesters," that he would have it in- 
 ferred I hat the Indians who had been only under the influence of 
 the Hudson's Bay Co. were in vastly better condition than those who
 
 ACQVISITIO^^ OF OREGON 295 
 
 had been contaminated by the inflnence of their rivals, but, unfortu- 
 nately for him, not only have we the before quoted extract from Har- 
 mon's Journal, but, in the fragment of the "Letter Book of Miles Mc- 
 Donnell" (who, as Governor of the Bed Biver Colony, led out the first 
 party of settlers for it from Scotland, in 1811, via Hudson's Bay, 
 and arrived at York Factory, the chief Hudson's Bay Co.'s post on 
 the Bay, too late to go on to Bed Biver till the spring of 1812), on 
 pp. 217 and 218, after describing the lack of discipline among clerks 
 and other white employes at that place, he continues as follows : 
 
 "Mr. Auld and Mr. Cook are both very unpopular amongst the In- 
 dians here, who have likewise caught the spirit of dissatisfaction to a 
 very great degree. 
 
 "These people, who in 1782 offered to defend the Factories against 
 the French, refuse now to come to the Goose Hunt, and feel indiffer- 
 ent on all occasions to obey the orders of the company's officers. 
 There are no chiefs among them, and they are in the utmost state of 
 individual debasement and depravity that can be conceived. It is a 
 melancholy reflection that during their long intercourse with the 
 whites they have not acquired one moral virtue, nor is the faintest 
 idea of the true Deity to be found among them." 
 
 It must be remembered that for more than a century these In- 
 dians and their ancestors had never had any intercourse with any 
 white men except the Hudson's Bay Co.'s employes, their habitat 
 being hundreds of miles northeast of any line of travel of the North 
 West Co.; while Miles McDonnell's position as the first Governor 
 of the Bed Biver Colony is assurance that he would not exaggerate 
 anything to the injury of the Hudson's Bay Co, 
 
 To His Lordship's charge that they speculated on the vices of 
 their servants and carried an excessive amount of intoxicating 
 liquors into the Indian country, the "Xorwesters" retorted as fol- 
 lows: "An offer made by Lord Selkirk in the year 1803 to the North 
 West Co. to furnish them with spirits for their Indian trade from 
 distilleries to be carried on at his settlement at Baldoon in Western 
 Canada, shows that he held a different doctrine in respect to supply- 
 ing the Indians with spirits until he found it convenient to lavish 
 his abuse on the North West Co." (Cf. Papers Bespecting Bed 
 Biver Settlement, p. 135.) 
 
 They also stated that "Great improvements had taken place in 
 this (p. 10) respect" (/. e.. the trade in liquors by the North West 
 Co.) "before Lord Selkirk's interference, which it is essential to 
 state, that he may not lay claim to the little merit the reviled fur 
 traders are entitled to on the subject. 
 
 "It was shown that the quantity of spirituous liquors introduced 
 into the Northwest country had in the two preceding years been re-
 
 296 ACQL'lsrrWX OF OREGON 
 
 diiced from 50,000 to 10,000 jjalloiis; no great quantity, considering 
 there were at that time 2,000 white persons in their employment, of 
 which the greater number were to pass the winter in a Siberian cli- 
 mate." (Cf. Narrative of Transactions, etc. Preface, p. 9.) 
 
 Returning now to the history of the Ked River Colony : "The 
 first emigrants to Red River were about twenty-five families, Irish 
 and Scotch, in the spring of 1811. They reached York Fort too late 
 to go on to Red River in 1811, and spent the winter of 1811-12 at 
 York Fort in much misery, and did not reach Red River till the 
 autumn of 1812." 
 
 The next ])arty of settlers arrived early in the winter of 1812-13. 
 During the first winter there was not only no friction between the 
 colonists and the Xorwesters (one of whose principal forts was at 
 the forks of Red River, but a few miles from the colony), but it is 
 admitted that the colonists were only kept from great suffering if 
 not starvation by the kindness of the Norwesters in giving them 
 food. 
 
 This peaceful condition was of short duration, for on January 
 8, 1814, Miles ^McDonnell issued a proclamation forbidding for 
 twelve months the exportation of any ])rovisions ])rocured or raised 
 within the territory, '"excei)t what might be necessary for taking to 
 their respective destinations the parties then with the same." 
 
 Soon after "an order was published by Miles McDonnell forbid- 
 ding the hunting of buft'alo on horseback, under the penaltj^ of three 
 months' imprisonment for the first olTense, and forfeiture of the 
 lutrse with a similar impi-isonment for the second." (Cf. Papers 
 Resjiecting Red River Settlement, pp. 150-8. ) 
 
 If these orders could be enforced they would have starved the 
 North ^\'est Co.'s trading and .exploring parties, for the Red River 
 Valley had been their source of supply for the buffalo meat and fat 
 with which, for many years before a Hudson's Bay Co.'s post was 
 established anywhere near there, they and their predecessors in in- 
 terest had made the pemmican, which was the main food of their 
 parties when traveling or living at times and in regions where game 
 and fish could not be ol)tained. 
 
 On October 21, 1811, Miles McDonnell sent the following letter 
 to Mr. Duncan Cameron, acting lor I lie North West Co. at the forks 
 of llie Red River: 
 
 ''Take notice, that by the authority and on I he behalf of your 
 landloi'd, the Right Hon. Thomas, Earl of Selkirk, I do hereby warn 
 you and all your associates of the North West Co. to quit the post 
 and piemises yon now occu])y at the forks of the Red liiver within 
 six calendar months from the date hereof." (Cf. Papers Respecting 
 Red River Settlement, p. 10.)
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 297 
 
 Soon after his proclamation forbidding the export of any provis- 
 ions, Miles McDonnell attacked a fort of the North West Co., and 
 took from it 000 packages of 85 pounds each of pemmican, and took 
 them to the Hudson's Bay Co.'s fort. (Cf. Narrative of Transac- 
 tions, etc., p. 28.) 
 
 Sir Gordon Drummon was then Governor General of Canada, and 
 a dispatch from him to Earl Bathurst dated "Castle Quebec, August 
 15, 1815,'' thus gives his opinion of '^Governor" Miles McDonnell : 
 ''The plan of affording military protection to the Earl of Selkirk's 
 settlement is in my opinion decidedly impracticable, on account of 
 expense of transporting and supporting the troops there, and the 
 certain consequence of involving England in an Indian war for ob- 
 jects foreign to the interests of the British Government." . . . 
 "The most mischievous consequences are likely to occur from the 
 conduct and character of the individual whom Lord Selkirk has se- 
 lected for his agent, who styles himself a governor, and from whose 
 intercourse with the persons in the employ of the North West Co. 
 it is in vain to look for the spirit of moderation and conciliation 
 which is so desirable should animate persons situated as these 
 traders and settlers are, cut off as they are from the whole civilized 
 world and dependent on their union and mutual good offices for pro- 
 tection, not only from the savage tribes by which they are sur- 
 rounded, but against an enemy not less formidable, viz., famine." 
 (Cf. ''Papers Relating to the Red River Settlement," pp. 4-5.) 
 
 Idem (p. 12) "Inclosure 12" is a copy of a letter from Lieut. 
 Col. J. Harvey, Dept. Adjt. Gen., to Messrs. Maitland, Gordon and 
 Auldjo of Montreal, which says : "Sir Gordon Drummond is of 
 opinion that if the lives of and property of the Earl of Selkirk's set- 
 tlers are or may hereafter be endangered, that danger will arise 
 principally from the conduct of Mr. Miles McDonald, His Lordship's 
 agent, who appears to His Excellency to be actuated by anything but 
 a spirit of moderation and conciliation, in his language and de- 
 meanor, toward the servants of the North W^est Co. He has, more- 
 over, assumed powers which cannot possibly, in His Excellency's 
 opinion, have been vested in him, or any agent, private or public, 
 of any individual or of any chartered body." 
 
 The leaders of the North West Co. held commissions from Canada 
 as magistrates for the Indian country, and they now proceeded to 
 try what virtue resided in this judicial power, and from their head- 
 quarters at Fort William issued a warrant for the arrest of Gov- 
 ernor McDonnell, to which, after no small demurring, he reluctantly 
 submitted, and "on the 21st of June, 1815, Miles McDonnell quitted 
 the Red River, having surrendered himself a prisoner, under the 
 warrant from Fort William, a few days before to Alex. McKenzie, a 
 partner and one of the agents of the North West Co." . . .
 
 298 ACQUISITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 Their Governor gone, the discontent which had been steadily 
 growino- in the minds of the great majority of the colonists burst 
 forth, and they resolved to quit the colony, and accordingly, ^'On 
 the 27th of eJnne, 1815,' the colony was finally broken nj), and the 
 remaining settlers and servants embai-ked for Jack River." (Of. 
 Papers, etc., p. 171.) 
 
 About 50 families, in all 140 persons, "threw themselves upon 
 the compassion of the North West Co. for passage away from the 
 scene of their misery and were conveyed in their canoes to York 
 (now Toronto), TTpper Canada, while some 13 or 14 families, con- 
 sisting of about 40 persons, started for Jack Eiver on their way to 
 Hudson's F.ay." (Cf. Narrative. of Trans., etc., p. 39; also Papers 
 Relating to the Red River Settlement, p. 24.) 
 
 Immediately on the arrival of these people in York, Rev. John 
 Strachan wrote and published his "Letter to the Right Honorable 
 the Earl of Selkirk," its preface being dated "York, U. C, Oct. 15, 
 1816." 
 
 Dr. Strachan was ]U'obably the most brilliantly gifted and the 
 most useful Ei)iscopal clergyman of his generation in Canada, and 
 was Bishop of Toronto from 1839 to his death in 1867, in his eighty- 
 second year. While somewhat narrow in his views, especially in re- 
 gard to the rights of other churches than his own, he always had the 
 full courage oC his convictions, and was alwavs absolutely fearless 
 in expressing and contending for what he believed to be right on any 
 subject. 
 
 He was also as intense a Tory, and as anxious to prevent any one 
 born subject to "His Gracious Majesty," George the Third, from 
 bettering his condition by migrating to the United States, as was the 
 Earl of Selkirk, as witness the following passages from his "Letter 
 to the Earl of Selkirk (pp. 20-21) : "But to turn the stream of emi- 
 gration from the Ignited States to the British Colonies is confessedly 
 an object of the greatest importance. . . It appears that the 
 Ministry begins to be sensible of its importance, and it is to be 
 hoi)ed that a total exclusion of American settlers will form part of 
 their plan ; for unless this policy be adopted and rigidly adhered to, 
 this valuable colony (/. c, Canada) cannot be long preserved to the 
 British Crown (]>. 21). 
 
 "You are too well acquainted with the depravity of the American 
 character to desire any number oP that ])eoi)le in your settlement. I 
 am, nevertheless, iiersuaded that so far from raising a colony of 
 British subjects, whose principles and morals shall be free from the 
 contamination of the T'nited States, etc." 
 
 In extenuation of this bitterness it should be remembered that 
 York had been captured by the army of the United States in 1813.
 
 AGQVI^ITIOy OF OREGON 299 
 
 The "Advertisement" or preface of his little book is as follows: 
 "As soon as I heard that the Earl of Selkirk was commencing a 
 settlement on Bed River, I determined to warn the public of the de- 
 ception, and of the great misery which emigrants must experience in 
 such a distant and inhospitable region. But it was difficult to pro- 
 cure the necessary information, and before it could be obtained the 
 progress of the American war called my attention to distress nearer 
 home. It was not till last June that I was able to get a copy of His 
 Lordship's Prospectus, a paper neatly drawn up, but, alas ! destitute 
 of truth. To those who are amazed, after reading my remarks, at 
 the promises and assertions which it contains, I am justified in say- 
 ing that promises still more remarkable, and assertions still more 
 extravagant, were made by the Earl of Selkirk himself, at Stromness, 
 in June, 1813, to persons whom he was enticing to go out. Few of 
 these wretched men have any written agreement; an omission, I 
 hope, not wilfully made to prevent legal redress ; for surely punish- 
 ment ought to be inflicted on speculators who persuade families 
 under false pretenses to leave their native homes. 
 
 "Of the settlers who went to the Bed Biver many died at 
 Churchill in Hudson's Bay from the severity of the climate and the 
 quality of their food. Others seriously injured their health, and 
 not one of those who have escaped saw a joyful day from the time 
 they left Scotland till they began their journey to Canada. The 
 following letter may prevent any more from encountering the mis- 
 eries of the polar regions; and this is all I am able to effect. But 
 retributive justice is due ; and I flatter myself that among the many 
 great examples of disinterested benevolence so common in Great 
 Britain, one may be found sufficiently powerful to compel Lord Sel- 
 kirk and his brother proprietors to make ample comi)ensation to the 
 survivors for the money and effects lost at Churchill and the mis- 
 eries they have endured." 
 
 The following extracts will show how thoroughly selfish and des- 
 titute of any vestige of philanthropy were all of Selkirk's coloniza- 
 tion schemes. 
 
 (P. 6) Writing of Selkirk's Prince Edward's Island colony he 
 says : "The quantity of land assigned to each family, of 50 or even 
 100 acres, was too small. In a very few years the farmer, if in- 
 dustrious, must have sold out or purchased the adjacent lands at 
 their own price. Had farms, even large farms, been given to the 
 first settlers for nothing, and the means of cultivation for the first 
 year, the advantage would have been yours. 
 
 "It is the settlers that give value to the surrounding soil. Noth- 
 ing is more common in the United States than for the proprietors 
 of large tracts to give extensive farms gratis to the few that first
 
 300 At'i^LIt^ITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 encoiinter the difliciilty of settling?. Your people could not sit down 
 with satisfaction on a imrcliase of 50 acres when they saw (p. 7) 
 their neighbors o^ettiu": 200 from the Government for nothinj;;. 
 
 (P. 9) "For every settler bi-ou.uht into ri)per Canada by Your 
 Lordship you received 200 acres of land, of which you were bound 
 to grant him 50, nuiking a net profit of 150 acres on each settler. 
 This portion of 50 acres being too small for a farm, must in a few 
 years be sold for a trifle, or the pioneer be compelled to ])urchase 
 at any price as soon as he was able (if that could ever hai)pen on 
 so small a farm) the adjoining lands. This is a way of accumulat- 
 ing ])roj)erty not the most honorable to the ])eerage and attended 
 with the most pernicious consequences to the colony and its admin- 
 istration. Such settlers consider themselves dupes, they become 
 discontented with their situation and with the Government which 
 permits such transactions. 
 
 "And it must be allowed that it would be much better for the 
 King to grant at once any (juantity of land that he chooses to a 
 person whom he wished to serve than to give it in this manner. I 
 am ready to acquit Y^'our Lordship of any profit, as yet, in either of 
 these speculations; grasping at too much, nothing has been obtained, 
 and though marked with more than the precaution of an American 
 land jobber, they have been singularly unsuccessful. 
 
 "Taking these things into consideration, I was disposed to pass 
 over in silence Your Lordshi|)'s land speculations in l*rince Ed- 
 ward's Island and in Tapper Canada. Y^ou might have been deceived 
 and really supposed that the conditions offered on both occasions 
 were extremely liberal, but after the experience which they must 
 have given you, and your visit to America, it will not be so easy to 
 excuse you for offering worse conditions to emigrants, going to an 
 infinitely worse situation, where they can only meet with disap- 
 I»ointment and misery. 
 
 "Your projected settlement at the Red Kiver, or third attempt at 
 colonization, a])y)ears to me not only more extravagant than either 
 of the former, but one of the most gross impositions that ever was 
 attem])ted on the lirltish ]>ublic and must be attended with the most 
 baneful conse(|uences to all those unfortunate men who, deluded by 
 the false promises lield out to them, shall leave their homes for such 
 a di-eary wilderness." 
 
 (1*. 12) "The pi'oprietors may be ignorant, but you know, my 
 Lord, that situation is the true criterion of the value of lands and 
 the i)rincipal cause of retarding or accelerating their settlement." 
 . . . "In this ])ortion of the Prospectus" (/. e., Selkirk's Pros- 
 pectus, wliich Strachan quotes in full on p]). 00, 70, and which is an 
 exam])le of as conscienceless ingenuity in misre]>resentation of the 
 desirability of the Ked River Valley as a place to which to migrate
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 301 
 
 from Great Britain as was ever printed by the most rascally land 
 speculator on earth. — W. I. M.) I particularly call the reader's at- 
 tention to the ver}^ slight manner of noticing the remoteness of the 
 projected colony. A stranger would naturally suppose that, as Up- 
 per Canada is carefully omitted in comparing the lands of the Red 
 River with the other colonies, they formed part of that extensive 
 X>rovince, more especially since they are declared to be equal in soil 
 and climate to any in British America. As respects the value of 
 land, situation is everything. The most fruitful valley in the world 
 is worth nothing if surrounded with impassable mountains. The 
 assertion, therefore, that these lands are in no ways different in ad- 
 vantages from those of Lower Canada and Nova Scotia is false, un- 
 less their situation be equally favorable." 
 
 (P. 16) Speaking of the title of the Hudson's Bay Co. to the 
 fee simple of all the land draining into Hudson's Bay, he says : "As 
 to the opinion of lawyers of the first eminence declaring the title un- 
 exceptionable, it is here, as on many other occasions, of little weight, 
 since other gentlemen of the first legal character in England have 
 pronounced the charter illegal and void. The Hudson's Bay Co. 
 thought this latter the more correct opinion, for, in 1802, when their 
 commerce was infringed upon by rival traders, they very wisely de- 
 clined bringing the question to a decision in a court of justice." 
 
 (P. 27) Commenting on the statement in the prospectus that the 
 expense of bringing out emigrants will average £10 for each family, 
 he says in a footnote : "It appears that instead of £10 for each fam- 
 ily, 10 guineas are paid for man, woman and child, which makes an 
 immense difference to the settler — see the postscript." Turning to 
 the postscript, 62-68, we find statements of Alexander Matheson, 
 John Macpherson, Andrew Macbeath and William Gunn, who had 
 been brought from the Red River Settlement in the North West 
 Co.'s boats, and also a copy of Alexander Matheson's agreement with 
 Lord Selkirk, which fully justify all the severe things Strachan has 
 written. 
 
 (P. 28) "To charge £50 for every 100 acres, in a place so remote, 
 is to pillage the unfortunate emigrant; for if he had found his way 
 to Canada he would have received 200 acres for nothing, or, at most, 
 £9, the price of survey; and instead of being cut off from all the 
 world, he could have been in a good neighborhood, and near a good 
 market for his produce. In this province farms are frequently pur- 
 chased, with improvements, for $2 per acre; that is, from 10 to 20 
 acres clear, with a small log house. In the midst of the rich settle- 
 ments, and in favorable situations, the price is greater, sometimes 
 $10 per acre ; but the average price of land through the whole prov- 
 ince does not exceed $1."
 
 302 ACQUn^TTfOX OF OREGOX 
 
 Pag;es 30 to 46 he gives tables showing the distances, ''first, from 
 Red Kiver Settlement to Hudson's Bay, 710 miles, with 25 portages 
 and many other impediments." 
 
 ''Second, from Fort William on Lake Superior, about 1,300 miles 
 from Montreal or 2,000 from the sea to Your Lordship's colony on 
 the Red Kiver, 044 miles, with about 40 portages; and third, from 
 Red River to the Falls of St. Anthony, about 7G4 miles, with two 
 portages." 
 
 I have copied thus at length from Dr. Strachan's letter because 
 nowhere else can so clear and convincing a statement be found of 
 the heartless selfishness of the Earl of Selkirk's various coloniza- 
 tion schemes, for which he has received from some eulogists of the 
 ITudson's Ray Co. the re])utation of a philantliro])ist, though all of 
 these eulogists carefully retrain from stating any details of Selkirk's 
 schemes, or from intimating the real purpose of his founding the 
 Red River colony, 
 
 Mr. Colin Robertson — an old Norwester who had gone over to the 
 Hudson's Bay Co. — was on his way to the colony from ^lontreal 
 with a ])arty of the Hudson's Bay Co. em])loyes, and at the Lake of 
 the Woods heard of the destruction of the colony, and that those 
 who had not gone in the North West Co.'s boats to Canada had gone 
 to the Hudson's Bay Co.'s post at Jack River, near the outlet of Lake 
 Winnipeg. He therefore hastened thither, and put himself at their 
 head, and ''on the 19th of August, 1815, Colin Robertson arrived in 
 Red River, accompanied by the colonists, who had been driven off, 
 together with about 20 clerks and servants." (Cf. Papers, etc., p. 
 174; also the beginning of Pambrun's Narrative.) 
 
 "On the 3d of November, 1815, Mr. Robert Semple arrived in Red 
 River as Governor in Chief of .the Hudson's Bay Territories, accom- 
 panied by a Mr. Alexander McDonnell, sheriff to the settlement, in 
 charge of about IGO persons, a fcAv of them servants, but the greater 
 part settlers with their families from Scotland, and by Mr. James 
 Sutherland, in charge of supplies for the Hudson's Bay Co.'s trad- 
 ing J)OSts." 
 
 Connected with this first destruction and re-establishment of the 
 Red River Settlement two winter journeys were made, one east by 
 Lagomoniere, the other west by John Pritchard, which are thus 
 related. 
 
 "These letters" (i. e., from Lord Selkirk to the colonists an- 
 nouncing his intention in the spring of 1810 to join them as soon 
 as possible), "were entrusted to a person named Lagomoniere, whom 
 Lord Selkirk could depend u])on, and who had made a hazardous 
 winter journey, on foot, of upward of 2,000 miles for the purpose of 
 bringing intelligence to Montreal from the Red River of the re-estab-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 303 
 
 lishment of the colony." (Cf. ''Statement Respecting the Earl of 
 Selkirk's Settlement," etc., p. 41.) 
 
 Pritchard had been with the North West Co. from 1801 to 1814, 
 when he decided to settle in the Red River Colony. 
 
 On p. 11 of his "Narrative" he says that in the autumn of 1814 
 the Northwesters in Montreal had told him that the Red River Col- 
 ony wonld be broken up, and continues : "In the hope of preventing 
 the evil by warning Governor McDonnell of the danger which men- 
 aced the settlement, I undertook a journey to Red River by the cir- 
 cuitous route of Hudson's Bay, a distance of near 4,000 miles, the 
 greatest part of which I performed on snowshoes, hauling after me 
 upon a sledge provisions and every other requisite to serve me for 
 20 or 30 days at a time. 
 
 "I set out from Montreal on the 28th of October, 1814, and ar- 
 rived at Red River on the 15th of April ensuing, when I had the 
 mortification to find that the prediction of McKenzie was in part 
 accomplished." 
 
 Either of these journeys — on foot and alone — was a very much 
 more remarkable performance than Whitman's journey — not on foot 
 and alone, but with saddle and pack animals and one companion, 
 Lovejoy — all the way to Fort Bent, besides a guide from Fort Hall 
 to the Missouri frontier, and the company of a small party of fur 
 traders, the last 550 miles of the way from Bent's Fort to the Mis- 
 souri frontier. 
 
 In the late winter of 1815-16 Selkirk reached Montreal via New 
 York from England, and renewed the efforts previously made to se- 
 cure from Sir Gordon Drummond a garrison of regular British sol- 
 diers to be stationed at Red River, but failing for the reasons set 
 forth in Drummond's dispatch of August 18, 1815, Selkirk, like a 
 feudal lord of the Middle Ages, proceeded to raise a small army of 
 his own by enlisting something more than a hundred of the dis- 
 charged soldiers of two regiments of the German mercenaries that 
 England had hired to fight against the United States (and who had 
 been discharged in Canada on the conclusion of peace), and having 
 by some means obtained a bodyguard for himself from the Thirty- 
 seventh Regiment and a commission as "Magistrate in the Indian 
 country" under the Canada Judicature Act, he marshaled his forces 
 in full uniform, and with colors flying and drums beating set out 
 from Lachine, near Montreal, in the beginning of June, 1816, for 
 Fort William and the Red River. 
 
 Meanwhile events were moving rapidly toward the bloody trag- 
 edy of the second destruction of the ill-fated colony. 
 
 In October, 1815, Colin Robertson surprised and captured Fort 
 Gibraltar, the North W^est Co.'s post at the confluence of the Red
 
 au4 ACQuisiTioy of orijgox 
 
 and Assinihoine witliout bloodshed, but contented liiniseH" with 
 taking two cannon and 30 stand of arms that had been taken from 
 the setdciiHMit the preceding year. (Cf. ''The Great Company," p. 
 408.) \\ liether or not (iovernor Semple approved of tliis act does 
 not appear. 
 
 In March Semple went west to inspect certain Hudson's Bay 
 Co.'s forts, and in his absence, on the 17th of March, 181G, the North 
 West Co.'s post at the forks of the Red River was again forcibly 
 seized by Colin Robertson at the head of an armed party. 
 
 Kobei-tson and his jtarty having on the 10th of March, 1816, 
 seized the North West ex|)ress, and having opened the letters therein 
 addi-essed to Duncan Cameron and S. Lamar of the North West Co., 
 and seized the papers found in Cameron's desk and on his table^ 
 Robertson declared that he had succeeded beyond his expectations, 
 as well in getting possession of the fort without bloodshed as in hav- 
 ing found pa])ers therein which would Justify all he had done; and 
 after the capture of the express he further said that he was now in 
 possession of such documents and so completely master of the se- 
 crets of the North West Co. that he should be able to bring them to 
 what terms he pleased in the coalition which must take place to pre- 
 vent the ruin of both companies ; and lastly, that he declared he 
 would fortify llie post and sink all the boats and pemmican that 
 Alex McDonnell of the North West Co. might bring dowm, should 
 he venture to make the trial. (Cf. ra])ers Relating to the Red 
 River Settlement, etc., pp. 176-7.) 
 
 Robertson destroyed Fort Cibraltar and took Chief Factor Dun- 
 can Cameron prisoner and sent him via Hudson's Bay to England, 
 where he was at once discharged without trial. (Cf. 'The Great 
 Company," p. 409.) 
 
 "On the 10th of June, 1816, the unfortunate affray took place in 
 which (lOvernor Semple and about 20 of his officers and men lost 
 their lives. 
 
 "The numbers killed and wounded on each side appear to have 
 been one killed and one wounded on the part of the half-breeds, and 
 one wounded and 20 or 21 killed on that of the colonists. . . The 
 time occupied by the whole affair . . . did not exceed a quarter 
 of an hour ... if the fact that the colonists were the assail- 
 ants (of which I apprehend there can be little doubt) be admitted. 
 
 "On the 22d of June, 1816, the colony was a second time broken 
 up and the settlers ]>roceeded on the afternoon of that day from Fort 
 Douglas to Lake Winnipic." (Cf. Papers Relating to the Red River 
 Settlement, pp. 185, 192, 194.) 
 
 Some of the leading colonists were carried to Fort William as 
 prisoners.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 305 
 
 Meanwhile Selkirk and his private army were hastening toward 
 Red River, and at Sanlt Ste. Marie received news of the battle be- 
 tween the half-breeds and Governor Semple's party and the second 
 destruction of the colony. 
 
 Pushing on as rapidly as possible, he camped his army opposite 
 Fort William, late in August, 1816, and issuing warrants proceeded 
 to arrest all of the partners of the North West Co., who were then 
 gathered there for the annual meeting, and sent them prisoners to 
 Montreal, accused of high treason, murder, robbery and conspiracy, 
 and then proceeded to occupy Fort William till May, 1817, and to 
 do as he pleased with all the correspondence and records and prop- 
 erty of the North West Co. there, and sent out expeditions and cap- 
 tured three other of the North West Co.'s forts. 
 
 No sooner did the Norwesters reach Montreal than they were all 
 released on bail and warrants were at once sworn out for the arrest 
 of the Earl, but when an officer reached Fort William with them 
 the doughty nobleman, instead of submitting to the law as the "Nor- 
 westers" had done, made the officer a prisoner, and after a few days' 
 confinement released him and ordered him to go back whence he 
 came. 
 
 The Canadian Government at once (in October, 1816) revoked 
 Selkirk's commission as justice of the peace, likewise all other com- 
 missions held in the Indian country by ''Norwesters" or Hudson's 
 Bay Co. officers, and appointed Colonel W. B. Coltman and Major 
 John Fletcher as special commissioners to proceed to the scene of 
 the disturbance in the Indian country and investigate and report 
 upon the nature, extent and causes of the difficulties between the 
 North West Co. and the Hudson's Bay Co., and their report covers 
 pp. 152-250 of the "Papers Respecting the Red River Settlement," 
 and, while evidently fair, is very distinctly more favorable to the 
 North West Co. than to Selkirk and the Hudson's Bay Co. The 
 commissioners left Quebec October 31, 1816, and Montreal Novem- 
 ber 7, 1816, but were unable to reach Fort William, and accordingly 
 returned to York and waited for spring. 
 
 Meanwhile these tales of wholesale murder and robbery and op- 
 pression had reached London, and so scandalized all England that 
 in February, 1817, while Selkirk was still carrying things with a 
 high hand at Fort William and capturing North West Co.'s forts 
 whenever possible, the Governor General of Canada received from 
 the home Government a dispatch which contained the following 
 passage : 
 
 "You will also require, under similar penalties, a restitution of 
 all forts, buildings and trading stations, with the property which 
 they contain, which may have been seized or taken possession of by 
 either party, to the party who originally established or constructed
 
 306 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 the same, and who were in possession of them previous to the recent 
 disputes between the two eomi)anies. You will also require the re- 
 moval of any blockade or inii)ediment by which any party may have 
 attempted to i»revent the free i)assao;e of traders or other of His 
 Majesty's subjects, or the natives of the country, with their merchan- 
 dise, furs, provisions or other effects, throughout the lakes, rivers, 
 roads and every other usual route of communication heretofore used 
 for the i)urpose of the fui- trade in the interior of North America, 
 and the full and free permission of all persons to pursue their usual 
 and accustomed trade without liiudrance or molestation. The mu- 
 tual restoration of all i)r(>perty captured during these disputes and 
 the freedom of trade and intercourse with the Indians, until the 
 trials now pending can be brought to a judicial decision, and the 
 great question at issue with respect to the rights of the companies, 
 shall be definitely settled." (Cf. "The Great Company," p. 423.) 
 
 This was followed, May 3, 1817, by a public proclamation by the 
 Prince Kegent ordering all officers and servants of the Hudson's 
 liay To. and the North West Co. to refrain from in any way molest- 
 ing each other or interfering with one another's trade, and ordering 
 restitution of all places captured by either party from the other. 
 (Cf. Report of the Proceedings, etc., at the Assizes held at York, 
 A})|>. 2, pp. 41-45.) 
 
 Armed with this authority the Sheriff of Upper Canada arrived 
 at Fort William very soon after Selkirk had left, dispossessing those 
 lie had left in charge, and restored it to its owners, and it was hoped 
 that peace would be speedily restored throughout the Indian coun- 
 try, at least as far as white men were concerned. 
 
 But this ho})e proved vain, as Williams, Semple's successor in 
 the Governorship, continued to harass the ''Norwesters'' with the 
 aid of Selkirk's mercenaries, so that "There were numerous ex- 
 amples of the abuse of force and the utter abandonment to lawless- 
 ness during tliis and the following year." (Cf. "The Great Com- 
 pany," p. 427.) 
 
 This was the natural result of the long delay in trying the pris- 
 oners sent from Fort William to Montreal by Selkirk in August, 
 1810. Naturally His Lordship sought to have them all transported 
 across seas and tried in England, and an order was actually issued 
 by the Home Government for that to be done, but on vigorous re- 
 monstrance from Canada it was countermanded. 
 
 At length, when Selkirk's utmost ingenuity could no longer post- 
 jmne the trial, it took place in October, 1818, at York (now Toronto), 
 Upper Canada. 
 
 The only full rei)ort of it is contained in ''The Report of Proceed- 
 ings, etc., at the Assizes in York," which was published by the North
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 307 
 
 West Co., with a brief advertisement and preface. The advertise- 
 ment is as follows : 
 
 "In reprinting this report of the recent proceedings in Upper 
 Canada, connected with the disputes between the Earl of Selkirk 
 and the North West Co., the agents of the company have to state 
 that the minutes of these proceedings were taken by a sworn short- 
 hand writer employed under the sanction of the Court, and on con- 
 dition of furnishing the Court with a copy of his minutes in the 
 event of any conviction taking place. 
 
 "The report and the appendix, therefore, are to be considered as 
 documents strictly official, and the preface and notes, reprinted from 
 the Montreal edition, are the only comments offered by the North 
 West Co. in answer to the numerous calumnies with which they have 
 been assailed through the medium of the press, as well as by ex parte 
 statements in the House of Commons. When the papers laid on the 
 table of that honorable house are printed for the use of the members 
 of the Legislature, it will be seen how far these calumnies are sup- 
 ported by the documents bearing upon the case ; and when the agents 
 of the North West Co. shall be acquainted with the nature of these 
 documents, if it shall appear that the conduct of those with whom 
 they are connected requires further explanation, they will take an 
 early opportunity to offer the same. In the meantime they entreat 
 the attention of the public to the reports of the trials which have 
 taken place, and they request that the cases made out in evidence be- 
 fore juries may be compared with the aggravated statements and 
 ex parte affidavits previously published and industriously circulated 
 by the Earl of Selkirk and his agents. 
 
 "They also request those who may take any interest in the ques- 
 tion to compare the recently published narrative of Mr. Pritchard, 
 the late petitioner to the House of Commons, and his associates, Mr. 
 Pambrun and Mr. Heurter, with the evidence of the same persons 
 subjected to cross-examination in an open court, and contrasted with 
 the testimony of the witnesses for the defense. 
 
 "It appears that the result of this comparison, on the trials, in- 
 duced the juries to reject the evidence of these persons as unworthy 
 of belief ; and considering the circumstances under which their nar- 
 ratives are now produced, and pending the legal investigations which 
 are still at issue, as well as the parliamentary proceedings which 
 have been instituted, it is submitted that no impartial person can 
 give credit to ex parte statements resting on such suspicious au- 
 thority, and manifestly published with a view to prejudge a question 
 depending on official documents and legal decisions." 
 
 The preface says : "The arrest by the Earl of Selkirk of several 
 partners and people in the employ of the North West Co. at Fort
 
 308 AVQllSITIOX OF Oh'FdON 
 
 \\ illiam ill Aujiust, 1810, on charges of high treason, mui-der, rob- 
 bery and i-onspiracy is well known to the pnblie, and the trials at 
 York, in Tpper Canada . . . demonstratively exhibit the utter 
 fulility oT tliose charges; and the lon^- pei-iod lliat has elapsed be- 
 tween the time they were brouiilit and that wlien the trials upon 
 them have taken place is an additional pruui', ii' any were wanting, 
 of the oppressions under colour of law to which Lord Selkirk has 
 subjected the North West Co." 
 
 The preface goes <tn to declare that the defendants had tried in 
 vain to obtain a more speedy trial, which had been postponed be- 
 cause of the chiim constantly made by the prosecution that the Earl 
 of Selkirk had the evidence and was not within reach ol" the court, 
 and declares that "The ICarl of Selkirk was only dragged into the 
 arena as the ^private prosecutor' by the determination of the Gov- 
 ernor General of Canada to order the liberation of the prisoners if 
 they were not speedily brought to trial," and continues, "Instead, 
 however, of making his appearance as the ])rivate ])rosecutor in 
 these causes at York, where he was anxiously expected up to the 
 very hour of the commencement of Brown and Boucher's trial, 
 His Lordship disappointed the Crown officers, his own witnesses 
 and the public, and although he started from Montreal in the direc- 
 tion of Upper Canada, he soon after turned off to the left and pro- 
 ceeded by way of New York to England, anticipating, no doubt, this 
 signal defeat and unable to withstand the mortification of witness- 
 ing it in person." 
 
 Indictments for murder of Robert Semple, June 19, 1816, had 
 been returned against four persons as principals, four more as acces- 
 sories before the fact and against 10 persons, among whom were 
 Alex McKenzie, John ^McDonald, Simon Eraser, Allen McDonnell 
 and John McLoughlin, as accessories after the fact. 
 
 Paul lirown and Francois F. Boucher were the only ones ar- 
 rested as principals, and their trial began October 10, 1818. The 
 evidence and .Judge's charge cover 225 pages, and in less than an 
 houi- — in fact before the Judges had left the courtroom when they 
 bad adjourned court for an hour — the jury acquitted the prisoners. 
 The trial lasted nine days. 
 
 Trial of the accessories, October 30, 1818: John Siveright, as 
 accessory both before and after the fact, and Alexander McKenzie, 
 ITtigh McGillis, John McDonald, .lohn McLoughlin and Simon Era- 
 ser, as accessories after the fact, were put on trial. The report 
 covers 15.^ ])ages, and in three-quarters of an hour the jury acquitted 
 all the defendants. 
 
 This is followed by the report of the trial of John Cooper and 
 Hugh Bennerman, Red River settlers who had left the colony for 
 stealing a cannon, which resulted in their acquittal.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 309 
 
 On p. 200 of the part relating to the trial of the accessories and 
 of Cooper and Beunerman is a postscript stating that on February 
 22, 1819, the Grand Jury at York, Upper Canada, had indicted 
 Thomas Douglas, Earl of Selkirk, Miles McDonnell, P. C. Pambrun, 
 John Pritchard and others to the number of 20 in all, for a con- 
 spiracy to ruin the trade of the North West Co. 
 
 This is followed by the reports of two civil cases, William Smith 
 (the constable to whose warrant Selkirk had refused to submit) vs. 
 the Earl of Selkirk, and Daniel McKenzie vs. the Earl of Selkirk, 
 each for false imprisonment at Fort William. Smith recovered £500 
 and McKenzie £1,000 damages. 
 
 (P. 155) "So far as regarded the seizure of property and the in- 
 terruption of trade (/. e., of the North West Co. by the Earl of Sel- 
 kirk) the point was decided by the Prince Regent's proclamation of 
 the 3rd of May, 1817, in consequence of which the North West Co. 
 recovered possession of their property and re-established their trade ; 
 but that proclamation left the rights of parties and the crimes al- 
 leged against individuals to be investigated and decided upon by 
 law." 
 
 Selkirk did not again appear in America, but, broken in health, 
 retired to the south of France, and died at Pau, April 8, 1820. 
 
 Meanwhile the contemptuous disobedience to the proclamation of 
 the Prince Regent by Governor Williams and his mercenaries, espe- 
 cially his wholly inexcusable arrest of leaders of the North West 
 Co., and his sending them to Hudson's Bay, whence some were trans- 
 ported to England and some to Canada, where they were imme- 
 diately released without any attempt at trying them for anything; 
 and, worst of all, his arrest of the famous Benjamin Frobisher, 
 against whom there was neither accusation nor warrant, and send- 
 ing him a prisoner to Hudson's Bay, whence he escaped with two 
 companions, though suffering from a severe wound in the head, and 
 started on foot for the nearest North West Co.'s po.st, some 500 miles 
 distant, and though of an iron constitution, perished from starva- 
 tion on the way, in November, 1819, stirred both Canada and Eng- 
 land with intense indignation. 
 
 The Duke of Richmond, then Governor General of Canada, at 
 once sent two officers of his suite to the Red River with dispatches 
 enjoining obedience to the laws, while the North West Co. warned 
 the Home Government that if the Hudson's Bay Co., or Lord Sel- 
 kirk and his agents, continued their illegal acts intended to ruin 
 their business, they would resist with arms. 
 
 These representations caused the Home Government to notify 
 the Hudson's Bay Co.'s directors that they must stop the lawless 
 outrages of their subordinates against the North West Co. or take 
 the consequences.
 
 310 ACQULSITION OF OREGON 
 
 Under the pressure of the Home Government (which saw no 
 other way to secure peace in I lie Indian country), on March 26, 
 1821, the contract of consolidation of the companies was signed, 
 each to furnish half the ca])i1al and to share equally the profits, but 
 all in the name of the Hudson's liay Co. 
 
 The new com])any, however, adoi)ted in toto the organization and 
 methods of conducting the business of the North West Co. (which 
 experience had proved vastly superior to those of the Hudson's Bay 
 Co.), by which there were three principal classes of employes in the 
 Indian country, viz: (^lerks (on salaries I'anging from £20 to £100 
 a year), chief traders and chief factors, with an elaborate scheme 
 for promoting clerks to chief traders, and chief traders to chief fac- 
 tors, and for retiring chief factors and chief traders when they 
 might desire it (if consistent with the continued prosperity of the 
 business). 
 
 As the compensation of chief traders and chief factors was a 
 certain share of the profits, and as if there were losses instead of 
 profits, those losses were charged up against and deducted from the 
 profits of subsequent years instead of being deducted from the capi- 
 tal stock, this plan insured a constant succession of the most capable 
 men for the leading positions, all carefully trained through long 
 years of apprenticeship as clerks before they could become chief 
 traders and chief traders before they could become chief factors, and 
 all having the keen interest of partners in the success of the busi- 
 ness. 
 
 By the contract of consolidation ''There were 25 chief factors 
 and 28 chief traders appointed, who were named in alternate suc- 
 cession from the Hudson's Bay Co.'s and the North West Co.'s ser- 
 vants. The servants of both companies were placed on an equal 
 footing." (Cf. ''The Hudson's Bay Territories, etc., by R. M. :Martin, 
 Esq., Author of the History of the British Colonies," London, 1849, 
 p. 50; also ''The Canadian Northwest," etc., pp. 145-6.) 
 
 As the Bed River Colony could no longer be carried on in de- 
 fiance of the proclanuition of the Prince Regent, in a spirit of hos-- 
 tility to the North West Co.'s interests, there ceased to be any rea- 
 son why that (*oin])any should oppose colonization, and so "P]ven 
 hostility to c<>l(»niziilion by the conditions of the new license was 
 specifically forbidden." (Cf. "The (^anadian North West. Its His- 
 tory and Its Troubles. By G. Mercer Adams," Toronto, 1885, p. 
 148.) 
 
 With the consolidation of the two companies and the death of 
 Lord Selkirk, it ceased to be needful to beguile Europeans into mi- 
 grating to a region whose situation was so inaccessible that nothing 
 the colonists raised could be profitably exported till more than half 
 a century later, when the invention of Bessemer steel made it pos-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 311 
 
 sible to substitute steel for iron in rails and bridge construction, 
 and so to reduce freight charges on railroads that regions hundreds 
 of miles from navigable water could be densely populated by com- 
 munities accustomed to the comforts of modern civilized life. 
 
 On p. 22 of R. M. Martin's '^Hudson's Bay Co. Territories, etc.," 
 speaking of the Red River Settlement, he says : "Lord Selkirk died 
 in 1820, since which period no emigrants have been sent out from 
 Europe." . . . "The people revel in ahundmice, but it is all for 
 home consumption ; they have no market for their produce." 
 
 The only things obtainable in the country which were valuable 
 enough in proportion to their weight to pay for exportation were 
 furs and peltries, in which their "landlord," the Hudson's Bay Co., 
 forbade them to trade. 
 
 It is not within the scope of this work to discuss whether or not 
 this consolidation and the means by which it was accomplished was 
 good for the world at large, or for the best interests of British 
 America, but there can be no doubt that once accomplished it exer- 
 cised a very beneficial influence over all the region they occupied 
 on the relations between the Hudson's Bay Co. and the Indians, and 
 on the relations between the Hudson's Bay Co. in Oregon and the 
 Americans who went there to explore and to settle. For as to the 
 Indians : First, they had no longer any temptation to furnish them 
 liquor to prevent them going to rival traders who would furnish it, 
 and thus one of the greatest sources of Indian demoralization and 
 ruin was done away with. 
 
 Second, they could prescribe and enforce on their employes uni- 
 form rules for the treatment of the Indians, which treatment in a 
 few years' time gave them great influence over all the Indians with 
 whom they came in contact. 
 
 How beneficial that influence was we shall speedily see by the 
 unanimous contemporaneous testimony of the Americans who actu- 
 ally went to Oregon and there encountered the Hudson's Bay Co.'s 
 officers and the Indians. 
 
 As to their relation to the American exploration, occupation and 
 settlement of Oregon, the chief factors and chief traders who were 
 sent to the Oregon Country understood perfectly that here was no 
 question of doubtful rights, as in the case of the claims of the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co. to the ownership in fee simple of all lands draining 
 into Hudson's Bay, but a matter of certain right, established by 
 treaty between the United States and Great Britain, that Ameri- 
 cans had exactly the same rights in any part of the Oregon Terri- 
 tory as they had while the treaty continued in force, and their ex- 
 perience of the disastrous conditions during the long contest be- 
 trveen the two companies — to whichever one they originally be- 
 longed — would most powerfully dispose them to avoid contentions
 
 312 ACQULSITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 and to live in })eace with any Americans who might seek to estab- 
 lish homes for themselves in Oregon. 
 
 They also understood perfectly well some years before any 
 Americans went to Oregon after the treaty of 1818, that "in no 
 event could the British claim to Oregon extend south of the Co- 
 lumbia," the Hudson's l>ay Co. having officially notified Dr. John 
 McLoughlin so in 182.") (Cf. Copy of a Document, etc., in Tr. O. 
 P. A., ISSO, p. 41), quoted herein (i)p. 429-439, infra), and they 
 equally well knew that by the express terms of the treaties of 1818 
 and 1827 nothing done by either nation in establishing trading posts 
 or making settlements while those treaties remained in force could 
 in any way affect the question of title to Oregon. 
 
 As to the disastrous effects of the competition with the North 
 West Co. on the business of the Hudson's IJay Co (aggravated, it 
 is true, as to the years 1800-1815 by the Napoleonic wars), it ap- 
 pears from a letter of J. H. Pelly, Governor of the Hudson's Bay 
 Co., to the Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council for Trade, 
 dated February 7, 1838, that in the years 1800-1807 their dividends 
 were only 4% a year, 1808-1813 there were no dividends and 1814- 
 1821 their dividends were only 4% a year. (Cf. Vol. 9, Keport of 
 Case of ITudson's Bay Co. and P. S. Agl. Co. vs. V. S., being Argu- 
 ment of Caleb Cushing, p. 23.) 
 
 When the consolidation was made the capital was doubled, but 
 how much of this was ''water" cannot be told, as the capital was so 
 largely a matter of stocks of furs and merchandise and transporta- 
 tion facilities — horses, carts, canoes, boats, etc., and weapons and 
 forts — the inventorying of which gave much opportunity for over- 
 estimation. 
 
 On this capital stock of £400,000 dividends of 4% were paid in 
 1823-24, from 1824 to 1841 half-yearly dividends of 5%, with bon- 
 uses of 10% for the years 1828 and 1832, and an average bonus of 
 6% annually from 1832 to 1841, making in all an average yearly 
 profit of about 14%, against a little less than 2%% on an average 
 from ISOO to 1833, inclusive. (Cf. R. M. Martin's Hudson's liay 
 Territories, p. 50.) 
 
 By the contract of consolidation of March 20, 1821, five shares, 
 or one-twentieth of the capital stock, was allotted to the Governor 
 and comi)any (/. c, of the Hudson's Bay Co.) "in order to carry 
 into effect certain an-angements to be by them made with the rep- 
 resentatives of the said Earl of Selkirk, deceased," and by the con- 
 tract of Sej)(ember 15, 1824, it was declared that "the said repre- 
 sentatives had been admitted members of the company and proprie- 
 tors of stock in litMi thereof." ((^f. Vol. T., ])p. 282 and 296, Kept 
 of Cases of Hudson's Bay Co. and P. S. Agl. Co. vs. V. S.)
 
 ACQUISITIOX OF OREGON 313 
 
 In 1835 the Hudson's Bay Co. purchased from the heirs of Sel- 
 kirk all their claims to the 116,000 square miles of land and all their 
 interest in the improvements at Bed River Colony. 
 
 ''The price, being the amount — £85,000 — which it had cost His 
 Lordship and his executors to found and so far maintain this set- 
 tlement in the wilderness." (Cf. "The Canadian Northwest, by G. 
 Mercer Adams," p. 173.) 
 
 Justin Winsor, in his "Narrative and Critical History of Amer- 
 ica," Vol. 8, p. 01, says: "In 1830 the company had paid to the 
 heirs of Lord Selkirk for the return of the Red River Territory a 
 sum which stood on its books as a balance between the cost, the in- 
 terest added and the profits deducted at £84,111." 
 
 Before entering on the true relations of the Hudson's Bay Co. 
 to the American exploration, occupation and settlement of Oregon, 
 two results of this contest and the books published about it are 
 worthy of notice. 
 
 First — "In Chapter VL we have noticed the report of Secretary 
 of War, John C. Calhoun, on December 5, 1818, recommending the 
 chartering by Congress of a great fur company, which should have 
 a monopolv of trading with the Indians in all of our Indian coun- 
 try." 
 
 There can be no doubt but what these disturbances between the 
 North West Co., of which fullest knowledge was spread at that 
 precise time by these books published in the interest of the two 
 companies, and by newspaper articles, had a great if not a decisive 
 influence in defeating the project for a United States fur-trading 
 monopoly. 
 
 Its opponents could ask no better arguments against it than 
 to say : "Look across the boundary into Canada and see what whole- 
 sale oppression, robbery and murder of whites and demoralization 
 of Indians a fur-trading monopoly and the attempt to maintain it 
 has produced for the past five or six years" — for then the new Hud- 
 son's Bay Co. monopoly was not created. 
 
 Second — There is no doubt that a large part of the false charges 
 made by newspapers and the "Oregon Jingo" politicians, in the 
 years 1820 to 184G, against the Hudson's Bay Co., of having in- 
 cited the Indians to attack and kill Americans in the Rocky Moun- 
 tains, and of opposing American settlement in Oregon, which were 
 later revived and amplified by Gray and Spalding and other advo- 
 cates of the Whitman Legend, are examples of that most common 
 source of historical errors, the transference to the valley of the Co- 
 lumbia by credulous and careless and myth-loving minds of their 
 vague recollections of what they had read in these various books 
 about what actually took place in the Red River Valley.
 
 314 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Though these books are now very rare they must have been com- 
 mon enough in the years 18ir> to 1840 or 1850, and McLonghlin and 
 Pambrnn, names prominent in them, were also prominent in Ore- 
 gon; McLonjihlin, Chief Factoi', in charge of the whole Oregon coun- 
 try, witli head(iuarters at Fort Vancouver, and I'ambrun at Walla 
 Walla, till his accidental death in May, 1841. Let us now examine 
 bi'ietly the accusations made against the Hudson's Ray Co. by the 
 leading advocates of the Whitman Legend, and then the indisput- 
 able proofs of their total falsity in the contemporaneous testimony 
 of the Americans themselves on the subject. 
 
 At the request, first of the late Dr. Justin Winsor more than a 
 score of years ago, when he w:as librarian of the Boston Tublic 
 Library, and later of various other librarians and historians, th.at 
 a thorough study should be made of this subject, I have carefully 
 examined during the past 28 years every diary and contemporary 
 letter, published and un]»ublished, to which I could get acce.ss, and 
 every report to the Government, and every newspaper and magazine 
 article T could And, and every book published by each and every 
 American — fur trader, ship captain, leader or member of a party 
 of settlers, missionary, scientist, and private or Government ex- 
 plorer — who w^ent to Oregon at any time before the treaty of 1846 
 settled the boundary, and who was at any post of the Hudson's Bay 
 Co. in that territory, and have copied from these documents every 
 word they wrote therein about their treatment by the Hudson's Bay 
 Co. officials, at any and all places where they met them. 
 
 In the cases of J. L. Meek, and some other pioneers, and of the 
 leaders of the migrations of 1844 and 1845, and of the first Ameri- 
 can settlers north of the Columbia (in 1845), who did not, as far as 
 yet appears, leave any contemporaneous written records of their 
 reception and treatment by the Hudson's Bay Co. (except Joel Pal- 
 mer's Journal hereinbefore quoted), T have studied carefully their 
 statements and addresses at the meetings of the Oregon Pioneer 
 Association and their testimony in the cases of the Hudson's Bay 
 Co. and the Puget Sound Agricultural Co. vs. the T'nited States, 
 and copied all that related to their own personal recej)tion and 
 treatment by the Hudson's Bay Co.'s officei-s and emjtloyes at their 
 vai'ious [)osts in the Oregon Territory, and all that came under their 
 own observation of the treatment accorded to each and every other 
 American of honest reputation by the Hudson's Bay Co.'s officers 
 and employes anywhere in the Oregon Territory. 
 
 The whole makes more than 200 pages like this, and when fairly 
 quoted in connection with its context and with other contemporane- 
 ous documents it is uniformly favorable to the Hudson's May Co., 
 a result which not a little sur|)rised me, for, while long since satis- 
 fied that the vast preponderance of the contemporaneous evidence
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 315 
 
 was on that side, the contrary had been so constantly and vehe- 
 mently asserted by Benton and the other ''Oregon Jingoes" in Con- 
 gress from 1825 to 1846, and by Spalding and Gray and M. Eells 
 and Barrows and Nixon and Craighead and Laurie and CofiSn and 
 Penrose and the other advocates of the Whitman Saved Oregon 
 Story, that I supposed that there must be somewhere some little 
 valid evidence in support of their accusations against the company. 
 
 Plenty of noisy politicians and reckless newspaper editors in 
 the States, no one of whom had ever been within from 1,000 to 2,000 
 miles of any Hudson's Bay Co.'s post in Oregon during all these 
 years, were "twisting the tail of the British lion" by vehemently 
 denouncing the Hudson's Bay Co. for committing all kinds of 
 wrongs upon each and every unfortunate American who entered 
 Oregon ; but not only is there not a single sentence in all the con- 
 temporaneous written and printed records made by those Ameri- 
 cans who actually went to Oregon, which, taken fairly in connec- 
 tion with its context, shows the least opposition on the part of the 
 Hudson's Bay Co. officers and employes to the exploration of any 
 or all of Oregon by Americans, or to the establishment of missions 
 therein, or the making of settlements anywhere in Oregon (except- 
 ing of course on the lands already occupied by the Hudson's Bay 
 Co., which were not the one-ten-thousaudth part of the whole of 
 the territory), but there is the most abundant evidence that the 
 Hudson's Bay Co. aided every American of decent character who 
 sought to explore any part of the Oregon Territory, or to found mis- 
 sions or begin settlements therein. 
 
 When any of these Americans attempted to wrest the fur trade 
 from the Hudson's Bay Co. they were met with vigorous competi- 
 tion, but even this was no fiercer than rival American fur compa- 
 nies waged with each other in regions farther east in the Rocky 
 Mountain country where the Hudson's Bay Co. never had a trading 
 post. 
 
 It is true, also, that a few of these people from Avhom I quote, 
 notably Captain Spaulding of the ship Lausanne, which carried out 
 the great reinforcement of 52 persons to the Methodist Mission in 
 1840, after speaking in the warmest terms of the unbounded kind- 
 ness that he personally and all his 52 passengers received from the 
 day the ship entered the Columbia till it left, indulges in severe 
 strictures on the policy of the Hudson's Bay Co. toward the Indians. 
 
 As this, however, relates to matters hundreds of miles from any 
 place where he was, and of which he could have no opportunity for 
 personal observation, and as it was squarely contradicted by many 
 a staunch American fur trader who had had amplest opportunity 
 for personal observation, it requires no farther comment than to
 
 31G ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 state that it was mere unsupported hearsay, unworthy of the slight- 
 est credence. 
 
 Similarly Rev. G. Hines, one of this 1840 party, after the Meth- 
 odist Mission was broken up in 1844, returned to the States and in 
 1850 published in New York his '-riistory of Orej>ou," and thoiioh 
 repeatedly acknowledfjiui; the unbounded kindness with which he 
 and his missionary associates had been treated by the Hudson's Bay 
 Co., he indulges in unfavorable criticism of the course of the com- 
 pany in opi)Osing settlement, mixing the conditions of the Red River 
 country, where the company claimed absolute title to the soil, with 
 the conditions in Oregon, where they never claimed any other or 
 greater rights than any American had, and evidently transferring 
 to the Hudson's Bay Co. the actions of the North West Co. in oppos- 
 ing the establishment of the Red River Colony, as stated herein- 
 before. 
 
 This evidence from the best sources existing, and most of it from 
 strictly original sources, and much of it never yet published, is from 
 five officers of the Ignited States Army and Navy, four of the most 
 famous American fur traders, ten of the A. B. C. F. ^[. missionaries, 
 two independent Protestant missionaries, six Methodist missionar- 
 ies, two scientists, fourteen leaders of parties of American settlers 
 who were neither fur traders nor missionaries, and two of Wyeth's 
 1832 party (which was the first party of Americans to migrate to 
 Oregon for the purpose of founding a permanent settlement there) 
 — in all 45 persons. While I hope some time to publish the whole 
 of this evidence with full bibliography of it all, the scope of this 
 book will only ])ermit quotations of part of it. The reader may 
 rest assured that these are fair samples of it all, and that the ideas 
 he gets from these samples are the ideas he would get if he had the 
 whole of it before him. 
 
 But before examining this contemporaneous evidence let us 
 glance at the accusations nmde against the Hudson's Bay Co. by the 
 leading advocates of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story. 
 
 From Gray's "Oregon," p. 137: "I am fully aware of the great 
 number of pensioned satellites that have fawned for Hudson's Bay 
 Co. pap, and would swear no injustice was ever done to a single 
 American, giving this hypocritical, double-dealing, smooth-swind- 
 ling, called honorable Hudson's Bay Co. credit for what they never 
 did, and really for stealing credit for good deeds done by others." 
 . . . "An overgrown monopoly, in using its infiuence with Ca- 
 tholicism to destroy Protestantism in Oregon and the American set- 
 tlements, has destroyed itself." 
 
 Idem. J). 150. "The Protestant missions were not dependent on 
 the Hudson's liay Co. for supplies, any more than the Sandwich 
 Islands were, or the American Fur Co. were. . . Whitman's
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 317 
 
 party brought seeds of all kinds. They had no occasion to ask of 
 the Hudson's Bay Co. a single seed for farming purposes, a single 
 thing in establishing their mission, only as they had disposed of 
 things at the suggestion of McLeod and McKay" (in July, 1836, at 
 Green River) ''as unnecessary to pack them further." 
 
 This is what Gray wrote in 1870, but May 20, 1836, Rev. H. H. 
 Spalding wrote to D. Greene, Secretary, a letter (never yet pub- 
 lished), from Otoe Agency, mouth of the Platte River (more than 
 900 miles east of Green River), in which is the following: 
 
 "^ye find that we must leave many things we consider almost 
 indispensable. My classical and theological books will nearly all 
 be left. We can take no seeds except a few garden seeds." 
 
 Gray (p. 383) : "The Hudson's Bay Co., under the guidance of 
 James Douglas and P. S. Ogden, carried forward their plans and 
 arrangements by placing men at their posts along the line of the 
 immigrant route, who were doing all they could by misrepresenta- 
 tion and falsehood to deceive and rob those who were journeying to 
 this country." (p. 532) : ''That this influence" (/. e., of the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co.) was exerted to destroy that mission" (/. e., Whit- 
 man's) there can be no doubt." 
 
 Gray's outrageous accusations against Captain Grant we have 
 shown (in Chapter V. atite) to be directly contrary to the facts. 
 
 Rev. H. H. Spalding's Memorial in his pamphlet (published as 
 Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 37, 41st Cong., 3d Sess., p. 42) : "The said Whit- 
 man massacre, and the long and expensive wars that followed, were 
 commenced by the above said British monopoly" (i. e., the Hudson's 
 Bay Co.) "for the purpose of breaking up the American settlements, 
 and of regaining the territory, and that they were especially cha- 
 grined against the said Whitman as being the principal agent in 
 disappointing their schemes." 
 
 This accusation is repeated many times with slight variations in 
 phraseology in this pamphlet. 
 
 Barrows' "Oregon" copies, amplifies and reiterates these ac- 
 cusations, and so do Nixon and Coffin, while Craighead, Mowry 
 and M. Eells, though avoiding direct citation of several of the more 
 outrageous of these accusations, not only by endorsing Gray and 
 Spalding as honest and trustworthy, and quoting largely from them, 
 but also by direct charges against the Hudson's Bay Co., create in 
 the minds of their readers the belief that that company were guilty 
 of all the wicked practices against American explorers, settlers and 
 missionaries of which Gray and Spalding and Barrows have ac- 
 cused them. Thus Mowry (pp. 225-6) on the "Causes of the Whit- 
 man Massacre," instead of quoting the letters of Whitman, Spald- 
 ing and Mrs. Whitman, which show plainly enough the true causes, 
 says (p. 225) : "The Oregon Presbytery of the Old School Presby-
 
 318 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 terian Church, after a lull investigation, adopted a report which 
 says : 'The causes of the massacre were reducible to two, viz. : 
 "The purpose of the English Government, or of the Hudson's Bay 
 Co. to exclude American settlers from the country; and the efforts 
 of Catholic i)riests to jirevent the introduction of education and 
 Protestantism, by preventing the settlement of American citizens; 
 and the efforts which both i)arties made, operating on the ignorant 
 and susi)icious minds of the savages, led to the butchery in which 
 twenty-five lives were lost.' " How "full" this "investigation" was is 
 shown by the fact that there were but 14 lives lost in this massacre 
 (p. 226). "There is no question but that the Hudson's Bay Co., in 
 its interests and feelings, was largely antagonistic to the American 
 movement, and therefore to the work of the Protestant missiona- 
 ries. Some of its officers can hardly be held blameless." But he is 
 very careful not to name any of those officers, nor to specify any 
 evidences of this alleged "antagonism to the work of the Protestant 
 missionaries." 
 
 Craighead declares (p. 06) : "They" (/. e., the American mis- 
 sionaries) "necessarily encountered the opposition of the Hudson's 
 Bay Co. in their efforts to improve the material conditions of the 
 people among whom they labored, and the power of the company 
 at that time was well nigh irresistible." 
 
 Idem (p. 54) : "From this time forward" {i. e., 1838, when the 
 first Catholic missionaries arrived in Oregon. — W. I. M.) "there was 
 also a marked change in the feelings of most of the company toward 
 the Protestant missionaries." 
 
 Idem (p. 55) : "The jealousy and unfriendliness of which we 
 have spoken was not exhibited toward the Protestant missionaries 
 alone, but toward all persons wishing to settle in and improve the 
 country, and especially to Americans." 
 
 Let us see now how these accusations appear in view of all the 
 contemporaneous testimony that can be found of American mis- 
 sionaries, settlers, explorers, fur traders, scientists and United 
 States military and naval officers who actually went to Oregon. 
 
 The first Americans who have left any record of their experience 
 at the Hudson's Bay Co.'s posts in Oregon are two of the most 
 famous of the fur traders, Joshua l*ilcher, who in 1827 set out from 
 St. Louis, followed the IMatte to the Rocky Mountains, crossed at 
 the South Pass, explored what is now Eastern Idaho and Western 
 Montana, and spent the winter of 1828-9 in the Flathead Valley, 
 where he met a Hudson's Bay Co. trader, who invited him to Fort 
 Colvile, their most important i>ost on the Tapper Columbia. Here 
 he was most kindly received and hospitably entertained, and invited 
 to join their annual east-bound express, which he did, and went with 
 them up the Columbia and across the mountains and down the Sas-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 319 
 
 katchewan to the Red River Settlement, and thence across the prai- 
 ries to the Missouri River, and so back to St. Louis in June, 1830. 
 Jedediah Smith led a party of eighteen fur traders to and through 
 California and then turned north, and in Oregon was attacked in 
 August, 1828, by the Rogue River Indians, and all but Smith and 
 three other men were killed and all the furs stolen. 
 
 The survivors soon after reached Fort Vancouver, where they 
 were welcomed and freely entertained, and Dr. McLoughlin at once 
 fitted out a strong party, who proceeded to the scene of the massacre 
 and recovered the greater part of the furs, which he afterward pur- 
 chased from Mr. Smith on terms satisfactory to him. 
 
 Nothing more chivalrous and courteous is recorded in the annals 
 of commerce than the reception and treatment of these American 
 rivals in the fur trade by the Hudson's Bay Co., and in their letters 
 to the Secretary of War, written in the autumn of 1830, and pub- 
 lished with other documents relating to the fur trade and the ex- 
 ploration of the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast regions, in Sen. 
 Ex. Doc. 39, 21st Cong., 2d Sess. (of which 1,500 extra copies were 
 ordered to be printed January 26, 1831), both Pilcher and Smith, 
 while pointing out to the Government the legislation needful to 
 enable the American fur traders to compete on something like equal 
 terms with the Hudson's Bay Co., and urging the abrogation of the 
 treaty of 1827, and the assertion of our title to Oregon, did not for- 
 get to make grateful mention of their obligations to the Hudson's 
 Bay Co. for most kind and hospitable treatment, as follows : 
 
 From Pilcher's letter to the Secretary of War, 
 
 "I remained 20 days at Fort Colvile, received the most kind and 
 hospitable treatment from the gentlemen of the post; and having 
 received from them an offer of the protection of their annual express 
 packet along the line of their posts and establishments, across the 
 continent to Lake Winnipic, I determined to accept it, and relin- 
 quished the intention of going down the Columbia to its mouth. 
 (P. 10) I set out from Fort Colvile the 21st of September, 1829, in 
 company with six men of the post carrying annual express or packet 
 across the continent. 
 
 "Our route was up the main river Columbia; our conveyance a 
 batteau of four or five tons. In this batteau we ascended the river 
 about 300 miles, when the river divides into three forks, the main 
 one being still navigable to its head, which issues from a lake in the 
 Rocky Mountains. We arived at the Boat Encampment the 4th of 
 October and remained there till the 2nd of November, waiting for 
 the arrival of a party from Hudson's Bay. They arrived at the end 
 of this time, and by them I had the happiness to hear from the 
 United States. The news had of course to be somewhat old, as they
 
 320 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 brought it from Hudson's Bay. One item of intelligence was the 
 election of President Jackson, which had taken place just about one 
 year before; and here I met the master shij) carpenter of whom I 
 have spoken going on to Fort \'ancouver." November 4th they set 
 out on horseback to cross the continental divide, the summit of 
 which they reached in three days. (p. 11 » "Where two small ponds 
 within a few yards of each other send their waters in opposite di- 
 rections, forming the head sources of the Athabasca and the mid- 
 dle fork of the Columbia." (j). 12) "We were still on foot and on 
 snoAvshoes; but my fatigue and labor in traveling were greatly les- 
 sened by a most valuable present, kindly made me by Mr. Kound" 
 (the Hudson's Bay agent in charge of Edmonton House) "of a 
 carrole and three good dogs to draw it, which carried my baggage 
 always and myself often." . . . "My company from Carlton 
 House was two Indians, trained u]) to the service of the Company 
 and well lifted for the part they had to act, vigilant, active, faithful, 
 and full of resources for conquering the difficulties of the way. One 
 of them had brought the express from York Factory on Hudson's 
 Bay, about 1,000 miles on foot, on a pair of snowshoes; and they 
 were now carrying the express back. This express consisted not 
 only of letters, but of all the accounts of the Company collected 
 from every post, and transmitted annually along the whole line, 
 from the mouth of the Columbia to Hudson's Bay, and thence to 
 the partners in England. With these valuable dispatches these In- 
 dians were intrusted, and everything safely and expeditiously con- 
 ducted." 
 
 He was hospitably entertained by Governor McKenzie at Red 
 River Settlement for thi-ee days; left there March 29th, and trav- 
 eled across the country to the Mandan Indian villages, where he 
 arrived April 22, 1830, and considered his journey terminated there, 
 though he was still 1,000 miles from St. Louis, (p. 13) "I had 
 been seven months getting from Fort Colvile to the Mandans, hav- 
 ing been detained three and a half months on the route, and having 
 traveled near 2,.")00 miles between these two points during the win- 
 ter months, and chiefly on snowshoes." , . . "From the gentle- 
 men of the Hudson's Bay Co. I experienced everywhere the most 
 kind and hospitable treatment, for which my thanks and gratitude 
 are eminently due and cordially rendered." 
 
 (P. 17) "Both the Hudson's Bay Co. and citizens of the United 
 States engage in trapping, and each suffers occasionally fi-om the 
 attacks of the Indians. And here I take occasion as an act of jus- 
 tice to the gentlemen of the Hudson's Bay Co. to say that I saw 
 nothing to justify the opinion that they excited the Indians to kill 
 and rob our citizens." (Cf, Sen. Ex. Doc. 39, pp. 9-17, also copy of 
 a document found among the papers of Dr. John McLoughlin in
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 321 
 
 Transcript Oregon Pioneer Association, 1880, pp. 46-55, and herein 
 quoted (pp. 429439, infra), as no one can understand the beginning 
 of settlement in Oregon without reading that document carefully.) 
 
 Mr. Jedediah S. Smith wrote, at the end of the letter signed by 
 himself and his two partners, David E. Jackson and W. L. Sublette, 
 as follows : ''One of the undersigned, to-wit, Jedediah S. Smith, in 
 his excursions w^est of the mountains arrived at the post of the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co. called Fort Vancouver, near the mouth of the Mult- 
 nomah River. 
 
 "He arrived there in August, 1828, and left the 12th of March, 
 1829, and made observations which he deems it material to com- 
 municate to the Government. . . The crop of 1828 was 700 bush- 
 els of w^heat. The grain full and plump and making good flour; 
 fourteen acres of corn, the same number of acres of peas, eight acres 
 of oats, four or five acres of barley and fine garden, some small apple 
 trees and grapevines. The ensuing spring eighty bushels of seed 
 wheat were sown; about 200 head of cattle, fifty-two horses and 
 breeding mares, 300 head of hogs, fourteen goats, the usual domes- 
 tic fowls. They have mechanics of various kinds, to-wit, black- 
 smiths, gunsmiths, carpenters, coopers, tinner and baker, a good 
 saw mill on the bank of the river five miles above, a grist mill 
 worked by hand, but intended to work by water." . . . ''Their 
 (i. e., the Hudson's Bay Co.'s) influence over the Indians is now 
 decisive. Of this the Americans have constant and striking proofs, 
 in the preference which they give to the British in every particular. 
 
 "In saying this, it is an act of justice to say also that the treat- 
 ment received by Mr. Smith at Fort Vancouver was kind and hos- 
 pitable, that personally he owes thanks to Governor Simpson and 
 the gentlemen of the Hudson's Bay Co. for the hospitable entertain- 
 ment he received from them, and for the efficient and successful aid 
 which they gave him in recovering from the Umpquah Indians a 
 quantity of fur and many horses of which these Indians had robbed 
 him in 1828. As to the injury which must happen to the United 
 States from the British getting control of all the Indians beyond 
 the mountains, building and repairing ships in the tidewaters of 
 the Columbia, and having a station there for privateers and vessels 
 of war, is too obvious to need a recapitulation. 
 
 "The object of this communication being to state facts to the 
 Government, and to show the facility of crossing the continent to 
 the great falls of the Columbia with wagons, the ease of supporting 
 any number of men by driving cattle to supply them where there 
 was no buffalo, and also to show the true nature of the British es- 
 tablishments on the Columbia, and the unequal operation of the 
 convention of 1818.
 
 322 ACQZUf^ITION OF OREGON 
 
 '•These facts beinji; coininiinieated to the Government, they con- 
 sider that they liave complied with their duty, and rendered an ac- 
 ce{)table service to the administration ; and respectfully request you, 
 sir, to lay it before I'resident Jackson." 
 
 Capt. B. L. E. Bonneville, of the United States Army, was the 
 next American who led a fur-trading i)arty into the Oregon country 
 (18.'?2-35) and left any i-ecord of his reception and treatment there 
 by the ollicers of the Hudson's Bay Co. with whom he came in 
 contact. 
 
 It is very brief, as follows: ''Capt. Bonneville and his comrades 
 experienced a i)olite reception from Mr. Pambrune, the superin- 
 tendent; for, however hostile the members of the British company 
 may be to the enterprises of American traders, they have always 
 manilested great coui'tesy and hospitality to the traders them- 
 selves." . . . ''As he stood in need of some sup])lies for his 
 journey, he applied to purchase them from Mr. Pambrune; but soon 
 found the difference between being treated as a guest or as a rival 
 trader. The worthy superintendent, who had extended to him all 
 the genial rites of hospitality, now suddenly assumed a withered up 
 aspect and demeanor, aiul observed that, however he might feel dis- 
 posed to serve him ])ersonally, he felt bound by his duty to the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co. to do nothing which should facilitate or encourage 
 the visits of other traders among the Indians in that part of the 
 country." (Cf. Irving's Bonneville, Chapter XXXIV.) 
 
 No sensible man would think of complaining because his com- 
 j)etitors in business were unwilling to assist him with supplies to 
 be used in trade which they desired to keep for themselves, and in 
 Bonneville's un})ublislied dispatches in the War Department (which 
 I have twice gone over carefully) there is not a word of censure of 
 the Hudson's Bay Co., though he points out in his dispatch dated 
 Crow Country, July 29, 1833, the advantages the Hudson's Bay Co. 
 have over the Americans by having cheai)er goods, etc., and recom- 
 mends our Government to occupy Oregon, recommending "a full 
 company" for the ])urpose, and saying: "Five men there would be 
 as safe as a hundred, either from the Indians, who are extremely 
 peaceable and honest, or from the establishments of the Hudson's 
 Bay Co., who are themselves too much exposed by their numerous 
 small posts ever to offer the least violence to the smallest force." 
 
 Nathaniel J. Wyeth, in 1832, led out a small party of settlers to 
 Oregon, of whom eleven arrived at Vancouver and eight remained in 
 the country, and were very kindly received, and those who wished 
 to settle were helped by the loan of tools, seeds, etc., and began the 
 permanent American settlement of Oregon. 
 
 One member of this i)arty, John P>all, a graduate of Dartsmouth, 
 was promptly hired by the Hudson's Bay Co. to teach their school
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 323 
 
 at Vancouver, and when at the end of ten weeks he resigned, an- 
 other member of it, Solomon H. Smith, was employed, and remained 
 in charge of it for two years, and on the expiration of his term Mr. 
 Cyrus Shepard, one of the laymen who went out with the Lees in 
 1834 to found the Methodist Mission, was employed for the winter 
 of 1834-5, so that for some two and a half years this, the first school 
 in the Oregon country, though established and maintained entirely 
 by the Hudson's Bay Co., was taught by Americans. 
 
 "Silliman's Journal" (then a widely circulated periodical) pub- 
 lished in its December, 1833, number, an article by Prof. Eaton, of 
 Rensselaer School, Troy, N. Y., on the ''Geology and Meteorology 
 of the Rocky Mountains," in which he acknowledges his obligations 
 to John Ball for very valuable observations, and says his last let- 
 ter was dated Fort Vancouver, March 3, 1833, and says: "Mc- 
 Loughlin raised 1,200 bushels of wheat at Vancouver in 1832, and 
 a great quantity of barley, peas, potatoes, etc." . . , "He lent 
 Mr. Ball oxen, plough, cows, axes, etc., and he commenced plough- 
 ing in January in latitude 46 deg. The vegetables of the preceding 
 season were still standing in gardens untouched by frost. New 
 grass had sprung up suflficiently for excellent pasture." 
 
 Idem (January, 1834) In an article on the fur trade: "The 
 Hudson's Bay Co. are humane and attentive to settlers, encouraging 
 them both with assistance and protection, but they are extremely 
 jealous of any interference or participation in the fur trade." 
 
 Idem (July, 1835), is letter from John Ball, assigning as the 
 only reason why he had returned to the States that he had no wish 
 to follow the customs of the country, and "become identified with 
 the natives" {i. e., marry a squaw). 
 
 In 1833 Wyeth returned to the States and organized "the Co- 
 lumbia Fishing and Trading Co.," and on April 28, 1834, set out 
 from Independence, Mo., for Oregon with his second party, consist- 
 ing of "between fifty and sixty men" ("Lee and Frost's Ten Years in 
 Oregon," p. 114), conveying the Methodist missionary party and the 
 scientists, J. K. Townsend and Thomas Nuttall. 
 
 He took a large bill of Indian goods, not for the purpose of trade 
 with the Indians, but to deliver to the Rocky Mountain Fur Co., but 
 that company refusing to keep their contract with him, he was 
 obliged to establish a post and trade them to the Indians. (Cf. his 
 letter to his uncle, Leonard Jarvis, from Ham's Fork of the Colo- 
 rado, June 21, 1834, as follows) : "The companies here have not 
 complied with their contracts with me, and in consequence I am 
 obliged to make a fort on Lewis River to dispose of the goods I 
 have with me." (Cf. "The Correspondence and Journals of Nathan- 
 iel J. Wyeth," p. 135; also pp. 134, 137, 139.)
 
 324 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Tliis fort lie huilt l)otween July 15 and August G, 1834, and his 
 jcMiinal I'ur August (J, iiS34, reads: '"Having done as niuch as was 
 recpiisite for safety to the fort and drank a bale of li(iuor, and 
 named it Fort Hal! in honor of the oldest partner of our concern, 
 we left it." {Idem, p. 227) Two years later he sold this to the 
 Hudson's Bay Co. and relumed to Cambridge, Mass., and acquired a 
 competency in the ice business. 
 
 The advocates of the \\'liituuin Legend — following W. H. Gray — 
 lia\c', with one voice, accus(?d the Hudson's liay Co. of oppressing 
 Wyeth and driving him out of the business by unfair means, and 
 conveyed the imj)ression that lie would have continued in the busi- 
 ness if he had boon treated fairly; but there has always been 
 abundant i)r()()f, Ihongh not easily accessible, that these accusations 
 woi-e false, and that lack of cai)ital and of willingness on the part 
 of his partners in the east (mostly in and about Boston, who fur- 
 nished nearly all the capital) to hold on long enough for a paying 
 business to be built up were the causes of his abandoning Oregon. 
 
 In 1S!)9 the Oregon Historical Society printed, as Vol. I. of the 
 "Sources of Oregon History," "The Correspondence and Journals of 
 Nathaniel J. Wyeth" (p. 2(52 with maps), which furnishes over- 
 whelming proof that it was caused by the above stated reasons, to- 
 gether with sundry misfortunes for which no mortal was respon- 
 sible, viz., the delay of his brig. May Dacre (sent round Cape Horn, 
 which was struck by lightning and obliged to put into Valparaiso 
 for three months for repairs, and so did not arrive in the Columbia 
 till Sej)tember, 1834, after the salmon season was entirely over), and 
 an epidemic of malarious disease which carried off thirteen of his 
 party, as stated in his letters as follows : 
 
 Correspondence (i)p. 140-7), Wyeth to his uncle, Leonard Jarvis. 
 
 "Columbia River, October G, 1834. ... On the 14th ulto. 
 met the brig, then just arrived and coming up the river to find me. 
 She was struck by lightning on the way out, which occasioned a de- 
 lay of about three months, in consequence of which our fishing sea- 
 son was entirely lost." 
 
 Wyeth to Weld (pp. 148-9) : "Wappatoo Island, April 3, 1835. 
 . . . I have had a severe winter of it. All my men have been 
 sick, except myself and one man, and nothing but pure obstinacy 
 has kept me from being hauled u|). This Wappatoo Island which I 
 have selected for our establishment is about fifteen miles long and 
 about an average of three wide. On one side runs the Columbia, on 
 the other the Multnomah. It consists of woodlands and prairie and 
 on it there is considerable deer and those who could spare time to 
 hunt could live well, l)ut a mortality has carried off to a man its 
 inhabitants and there is nothing to attest that they ever existed ex- 
 cept their decaying houses, their graves and their unburied bones,
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 325 
 
 of which there are heaps. So you see, as the righteous people of 
 New England say, Providence has made room for me, and without 
 doing them more injury than I should if I had made room for my- 
 self, viz., by killing them off." 
 
 Wyeth to F. Tudor (pp. 149-50) : *'Fort William, September 6, 
 1835. . . . This business has not been successful in any of its 
 branches, therefore it will terminate soon. The business I am in 
 must be closed ; not that it might not be made a good one, but be- 
 cause those who are now engaged in it are not the men to make it 
 so. The smallest loss makes them 'fly the handle,' and such can 
 rarely succeed in a new business." 
 
 Wyeth to Brown (pp. 150-51) : 'Tort William, September 6, 
 1835. . . . We this year put up about half a cargo of salmon, 
 half a barrel of which you will find marked with your name; also 
 one for my father, one for my wife, for Leond Jarvis, Chas. Wyeth, 
 Leond I. Wyeth, N. J. Wyeth and Frederic Tudor. Any expense 
 please charge to me." 
 
 Wyeth to Leo. Jarvis (pp. 151-2) : ''Columbia River, September 
 20, 1835. . . . We have had a bad season for salmon. About 
 half of a cargo only obtained. The salmon part of the business will 
 never do. I have sent half a barrel to you, which you will receive 
 through Mr. Brown. I am now a little better from a severe attack 
 of bilious fever. I did not expect to recover, and am still a wreck. 
 Our sick list has been this summer usually about one-third the whole 
 number, and the rest much frightened. Thirteen deaths have oc- 
 curred, besides some in the interior killed by the Indians. Some 
 property has been lost also by Indians." 
 
 Wyeth to Brother Charles (pp. 152-3) : "Columbia River, Sep- 
 tember 22, 1835. . . . Our salmon fishing has not succeeded. 
 Half a cargo only obtained. Our people are sick and dying off like 
 rotten sheep of bilious disorders." 
 
 Wyeth to Brother Leonard (p. 153) : "Columbia River, Septem- 
 ber 22, 1835. . . . Salmon half a cargo ; one-third of our people 
 on the sick list continually; seventeen dead to this date is the 
 amount of the summer. I am but just alive after having been so 
 bad as to think of writing up my last letters." 
 
 Wyeth to his wife (p. 154) : "Columbia River, September 22, 
 1835. . . . The season has been very sickly. We have lost by 
 drowning and disease and warfare seventeen persons to this date, 
 and fourteen now sick." 
 
 Unless, therefore. Gray and Spalding, Barrows, Craighead, M. 
 Eells, Coffin, Mowry, Nixon, Penrose, Geo. Ludington Weed et al. 
 can show that the Hudson's Bay Co. controlled the lightning in the 
 Southern Pacific, the course of the salmon in the Northern Pacific, 
 the malaria along the Columbia River Valley, the actions of the
 
 32G ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Rocky Mountain Fur Co. in breaking their contract with Wyeth in 
 the Green River Valley, about 340 miles east of any fort they then 
 possessed, and the minds of the eastern partners of Wyeth, all their 
 accusations against that company of having driven Wyeth out of 
 Oregon are proven false. 
 
 That Wyeth had not the least complaint to make of his treatment 
 has been manifest to any one who has been content to look up evi- 
 dence, instead of writing ''history" from his imagination or his 
 prejudices, since 1839, when, in "Cushing's Supplemental Report" 
 (No. 101, Reports of Coms., H. of R., 25th Cong., 3d Sess., Vol. I.), 
 his "Memoir" was j)rinted, from which the following extract shows 
 clearlv whv the Hudson's Bav Co. held the trade of the Indians, and 
 states clearly how he and all other Americans were received at the 
 Hudson's Bay Co.'s posts. 
 
 (P. 21) "Experience has satisfied me that the entire weight of 
 this company will be made to bear on any trader who shall attempt 
 to prosecute his business within its reach ; in proof of which is the 
 establishment of the ])0st at the mouth of the Big Wood River (/. e., 
 Fort Boise), which was done immediately after Fort Hall was built; 
 and the fact that a party was kept in the vicinity of Fort Hall, with 
 an especial view to injure its trade, the whole time that it remained 
 in the hands of its projectors. There has never been any successful 
 trade in this country by the Americans, and it is only by trapping 
 that they have been able to make any use of it; and in this they 
 are much annoyed by the English traders, who follow them with 
 goods and do not scruple to trade furs from hired men, who they 
 are well aware do not own them. 
 
 "I do not wish to charge this dishonest practice to them alone, 
 nor do I know that they began it, for it is common to both parties 
 against the other, and also between the different parties of the 
 Americans, but it results in the complete destruction of the Ameri- 
 can trade and business in the country. No sooner does (p. 21) an 
 American concern start in these regions than one of these trading 
 parties is put in motion, headed by the clerk of the company, whose 
 zeal is stimulated by the prospect of an election to a partnership in 
 it, fitted out with the best assorted goods from their ample stores 
 and men who have been long in the service of the company and whose 
 wages of many years are in its hands as security for their fidelity. 
 Under these circumstances we come in contact. If there are furs 
 in the hands of the Indians their superior assortment of goods will 
 obtain them. The trappers who catch the furs are mainly fitted out 
 on credit by the companies, and there are too many of them who do 
 not scruple to avail of an opportunity to sell their peltries for new 
 supplies of luxuries or of finery, rather than to pay their debts. In 
 this way the American companies are broken up."
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 327 
 
 (P. 21) "In their personal intercourse with Americans who come 
 into the country (p. 22) they are uniformly hospitable and kind. 
 The circumstances under which we meet them are mortifying in the 
 extreme, making us too often but the recipients of the bounty of 
 others instead of occupants to administer it, as should be the case. 
 No one who has visited their posts, I presume, can say anything in 
 dispraise of his reception, and for myself, setting matters of trade 
 aside, I have received the most kind and considerate attention from 
 them." 
 
 Wyeth's ''Correspondence and Journals" fully confirm this, as 
 witness the following : 
 
 Letter LXVI., probably to F. Tudor, undated (pp. 52-3) . . . 
 "When I arrived at the British posts my men, what were then left, 
 being determined to wander no more, I was left to myself. In this 
 dilemma I was invited by Dr. J. McGlaucland (McLoughlin) (Gov- 
 ernor in behalf of the Hudson's Bay Co. in this country) to make 
 this post my habitation until I returned. I have been treated in the 
 most hospitable and kind manner by all the gentlemen of this coun- 
 try." 
 
 Letter LXIX., Wyeth to Brother Leonard: "Fort Vancouver, 
 January 16, 1833 (p. 54). . . This letter will reach you by the 
 favor of the Hudson's Bay Co., to whose agents in this quarter I 
 am much indebted for assistance and information." 
 
 Letter LXX., Wyeth to Brother Charles : "Fort Vancouver, Jan- 
 uary 16, 1833 (p. 55). . . This will be short and I hope sweet. It 
 comes to you by the politeness of the Hudson's Bay Co. I have re- 
 ceived all manner of attention and assistance rendered in such a 
 way as to make it palatable." 
 
 Letter LXXIL, Wyeth to (fragment undated, and no address) : 
 (P. 56) . . . "I cannot close this without expressing to you how 
 much I am indebted to Mr. Pambrun, Mr. Herron and Mr. Herma- 
 tinger (Ermatinger) for the attention they have shown me." 
 
 Letter LXXXIIL, W^yeth to McLoughlin : "Plain of the Three 
 Buttes, July 5, 1833 (p. 68). 
 
 "Dear Sir : Having arrived at the camp of Mr. Bonneville T take 
 the liberty of writing you by this last opportunity to express how 
 much I am under obligation to Mr. Hermatinger for the polite and 
 agreeable manner in which he has dispensed your hospitality to me 
 during the whole route. 
 
 "I am here in a direct train for the States, and cannot without 
 some extraordinary accident fail of reaching home in October next. 
 Should you visit the States I would feel myself highly honored by a 
 visit or any intercourse which might be agreeable to you, for which
 
 328 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 purpose I have enclosed my direction. Should any of your friends 
 visit the States a letter would procure them any attention which 
 may be in my power. It will be a pleasure to execute any business 
 commands with which you may entrust me. Models of American 
 afiricultural implements, seeds and other matters connected with 
 your tastes or business. 
 
 ''Respectfully, your obedient servant, 
 
 "NATHL. J. WYETH." 
 "To Doctor McLaughland (McLoughlin), Fort Vancouver." 
 
 Letter LXXIX., Wyeth to Mess. Editors: "Cambridge, Novem- 
 ber 11, 1833 (p. 70). Having while on a recent visit to the Colum- 
 bia received much attention and kindness from the English traders 
 there, I deem it a duty to express my gratitude for the same, more 
 especially as 1 am frequently asked the cpiestion if I was ever mo- 
 lested by them. By all their acts toward myself I am fully con- 
 vinced that all persons who from any cause may come into contact 
 with them will receive honorable and gentlemanly treatment. Among 
 the many to whom I am under obligation I wish to name Chief 
 Factors John McLaughlin and Finlinson (Finlayson), Chief Trader 
 Francis Heron, Mr. Francis Ermatinger and Mr. Pambrun. Among 
 the American traders I have received much attention from Mr. Mc- 
 Kenzie and Mr. Laidlow of the American Fur Co. and Mr. Wm. L. 
 Sublette. To all the above gentlemen I tender my thanks. 
 
 "Your obedient servant, 
 
 "NATHL. J. WYETH." 
 
 Letter CCXXIIL, Wyeth to Ermatinger: "Bear River, July 5, 
 1834 (p. 140). I'our esteemed favor of the 12th ulto. reached me 
 by the politeness of Mr. Newell on Ham's Fork of Green River, 
 Mr. N. also informed me of the particulars of the battle with the 
 Blackfeet. It must have been a capital mixture of wine and gun- 
 powder. I 4\m haj)j)y to hear that you had some success last year, 
 but am afraid that you will do but little this season. 
 
 "I am quite happy to hear that the doctor remains at Vancouver. 
 I shall soon have the pleasure of seeing him." 
 
 Turning now to his journal (p. 173) : "October 14, 1832. . . 
 Arrived at Fort Walla Walla about 5 o'clock in the evening. I was 
 received in the most hospitable and gentlemanly manner by Pean- 
 bron (Pambrun), the agent for this post. The fort is of no strength, 
 niorely sufficient to frighten Indians (pp. 176-7). October 29, 1832. 
 Started at lU o'clock and arrived at the fort of Vancouver at 12, 
 four miles. Here I was received with the utmost kindness and 
 hospitality by Dr. McLauchland (McLoughlin), the acting Governor 
 of the i)lace. I find Dr. McLauchland a fine old gentleman, truly
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 329 
 
 philanthropic in his ideas. He is doing much good by introducing 
 fruits into this country, which will much facilitate the progress of 
 its settlement (Indian corn 3,000 bushels). The gentlemen of this 
 company do much credit to their country and concern by their edu- 
 cation, deportment and talents. I find myself involved in much 
 diflQculty on account of my men, some of whom wish to leave me, 
 and whom the company do not wish to engage nor to have them in 
 the country without being attached to some company able to pro- 
 tect them, alleging that if any of them are killed they will be obliged 
 to avenge it at any expense of money and amicable relations with the 
 Indians. And it is disagreeable for me to have men who wish to 
 leave me. The company seem disposed to render me all the assist- 
 ance thej can. They live well at these posts. They have 200 acres 
 of land under cultivation ; the land is of the finest quality." 
 
 (P. 177) "November 6, 1833. I must here mention the very 
 kind, gentlemanly conduct of Mr. Jas. Bernie, superintendent of 
 Fort George, who assisted me to a boat and pilot for the outer har- 
 bor and acted the part of host to perfection ;" . . . (and then, 
 without changing date) "I am now afloat on the great sea of life 
 without stay or support, but in good hands, /, e., myself and Provi- 
 dence and a few of the Hudson's Bay Co., who are perfect gentle- 
 men." 
 
 (P. 181) "31st to the 3d of February we had warm and wet 
 weather. On the 3d at 10 o'clock we started for Walla Walla, I 
 had with me two men and am in company with Mr. Ermatinger of 
 the Hudson's Bay Co., who has in charge three boats with 120 
 pieces of goods and twenty-nine men. I parted with feelings of sor- 
 row from the gentlemen of Fort Vancouver. Their unremitted kind- 
 ness to me while there much endeared them to me, more so than it 
 would seem possible during so short a time. Dr. McGlaucland (Mc- 
 Loughlin), the Governor of the place, is a man distinguished as 
 much for his kindness and humanity as his good sense and informa- 
 tion, and to whom I am so much indebted as that he will never be 
 forgotten by me." 
 
 (P. 232) "September 2, 1834. Then down the Walla Walla 
 River west by north ten miles to Fort Walla Walla, where I found 
 Mr. Pambrun, who did the honors of the fort in his usual hand- 
 some style." 
 
 (P. 233) "September 14, 1834. At 12 o'clock arrived at Fort 
 Vancouver, where I found Dr. McLaughlin in charge, who received 
 us in his usual manner. He has here power, and uses it as a man 
 should to make those about him and those who come in contact with 
 him comfortable and happy." 
 
 (P. 250) "February 12, 1835. In the morning made to Van- 
 couver and found there a polite reception and to my great astonish-
 
 330 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 ment Mr. Hall J. Kelley. He came in company with Mr. Young 
 from Monte El Key (i. c, Monterey, Cal.) It is said stole between 
 them a bunch of horses. Kelley is not received at the fort on this 
 account as a gentleman. A house is given him and food sent him 
 from the Governor's table, but he is not suffered to mess here." 
 
 (P. 251) "February 23, 1835. I arrived at Vancouver in the 
 morning 23d February and met a reception such as one loves to 
 find in such a country as this." 
 
 Finally in a letter to J. G. Palfrey, M. C. from Massachusetts, 
 dated Cambridge, December 13, 1847 (i e., eighteen months after 
 the treaty fixing the boundary at 49 degrees), urging that his claims 
 to Fort William and Wappatoo Island should be recognized in the 
 bill for organizing Oregon Territory, Wyeth enclosed a long state- 
 ment of his work in beginning the American settlement of Oregon 
 by his two expeditions thither. 
 
 In this statement there is not one word of criticism of the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co., nor the least intimation that it was in any way re- 
 sponsible for his abandoning his Oregon business; but {Idem, p. 
 255) there is the following straightforward statement of why he 
 abnndoned the country, while its concluding sentence shows the 
 friendly relations subsisting between him and Dr. McLoughlin. 
 
 "During the winter of 183G I resided at my post of Fort Hall, 
 and in the spring of that year returned to Fort William of Wap- 
 patoo Island, whence I carried more supplies to Fort Hall, arriving 
 there the 18th of June, and on the 25th left for the United States 
 by way of Taos and the Arkansas River and arrived home early in 
 the autumn of 183G. The commercial distress of that time pre- 
 cluded the further prosecution of our enterprise, that so far had 
 yielded little but misfortunes. It remained only to close the active 
 business, which was done by paying every debt, and returning every 
 man who desired to the place whence he was taken, and disposing 
 of the proj»ei'ty to the best advantage. All the property in the in- 
 terior, including Fort Hall, was sold, it being necessary in order to 
 retain that jjost to keep up a garrison for its defense against the 
 Indians and to forward annual sup])lies to it, an operation at that 
 time beyond our means. Fort William at Wappatoo Island, requir- 
 ing nothing of that kind, was retained, and the gentleman then in 
 charge of it, Mr. C. M. Walker, was directed to lease it to some 
 trusty person for fifteen years unless sooner reclaimed. Nothing 
 having been heard from Mr. Walker for a long time, I sent a request 
 to John McLaughlin Esq. for the same purpose, and also to have 
 the island entered in my name at the land oflQce established by the 
 j)rovisional government." 
 
 As Wyeth was llie only American who ever founded a fur trad- 
 ing post in the Oregon Territory between 1813 and 184(5 (for Fort
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 331 
 
 Bridger was south of 42 degrees and so in Mexican Territory), it 
 has seemed to me advisable to treat of Mr. Wyeth's experience very 
 fully, since the advocates of the Whitman Legend have so persist- 
 ently held him up to view as the chief victim of the Hudson's Bay 
 Co.'s oppression of American fur traders. 
 
 The first American missionaries to Oregon were the Methodists, 
 Revs. Jason and Daniel Lee, and Cyrus Shepard, P. L. Edwards 
 and C. M. Walker, laymen, who went overland in N. J. Wyeth's 
 1834 party. 
 
 September 14, 1834, Rev. J. Lee, narrating their arrival at Fort 
 Vancouver, wrote: "When we landed the Governor (/. e., Dr. 
 McLoughlin) and gentlemen of the fort were on shore awaiting our 
 arrival, and received us and conducted us to the fort. The polite 
 attentions we received from these gentlemen caused us almost to 
 think we were in our own native land." (New York Christian Advo- 
 cate and Z ion's Herald, October 30, 1835.) 
 
 {Idem, November 13, 1835.) In a letter from Cyrus Shepard, 
 dated Fort Vancouver, January 16, 1835. *'0n our arrival we were 
 received in the most friendly manner by the Governor and gentle- 
 men of the fort, who till the present time have remained sincere 
 friends to us and to the cause in which we are engaged." 
 
 (Idem, September 2, 1836.) In a letter from Jason Lee, dated 
 Mission House, Willamette River, March 14, 1836, he copies a very 
 friendly letter from Dr. McLoughlin, enclosing a subscription list 
 of the gentlemen of the company at Fort Vancouver, aggregating 
 £26, for the use of this American Methodist Mission. 
 
 No one of these men was a Methodist, so that there was no 
 church obligation impelling them to subscribe. 
 
 McLoughlin was a Catholic, and he headed the list with £6, and 
 the rest were either Presbyterians, Episcopalians or Catholics. 
 
 Rev. D. Lee and Rev. J. H. Frost (who went out with the great 
 reinforcement to this mission in 1840) published in 1844, in New 
 York, a book entitled "Ten Years in Oregon," and there are numer- 
 ous passages in it which show that this kind treatment of these 
 Methodist missionaries continued during the whole nine years of 
 Mr. Lee's stay in Oregon. 
 
 (P. 225) Lee and Frost. As to the reception of the great re- 
 inforcement to the Methodist Mission, consisting of fifty-two per- 
 sons, which arrived at Fort Vancouver June 1, 1840 : 
 
 ''Dr. McLoughlin came on board, and was introduced to the mis- 
 sion family, and gave them a very kind invitation to partake of the 
 hospitalities of the fort. . . On the following day all were com- 
 fortably roomed in the fort, and nothing was lacking on the part
 
 332 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 of the ladies and gentlemen of the establishment to render our so- 
 journ comfortable and pleasant." 
 
 (Idem, p. 2G5) On August 13, 1843, when ready to embark for 
 the United States, Mr. Lee writes this of their reception and treat- 
 ment by Mr. ]iirnie, in charge of the Hudson's Bay Co.'s post at 
 Fort George (or Astoria) : "While we were here the kind hospi- 
 talities of Mr. .lames ]iirnie's house were very generously served up 
 for our entertainment." 
 
 For other passages in this book stating similar acts of kindness 
 by Mr. Pambrun at Walla Walla, Dr. McLoughlin at Vancouver and 
 Mr. Birnie at Astoria and of the captain of the Hudson's Bay Co.'s 
 ship Cadhoro, Cf. pp. 123, 12G, 134, 213, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 
 281, 327. 
 
 Another of these Methodist missionaries who was one of the 
 great reinforcement in 1840 was Rev. Gustavus Hines, who re- 
 mained till after the mission was broken up in 1844, and in 1851 
 he published a "History of Oregon" in New York. It contains 
 abundance of statements of the great kindness of the Hudson's Bay 
 Co.'s officers through all those years. 
 
 Four brief extracts must suffice for Hines. 
 
 (P. 1)0) Relating the arrival of the great reinforcement of fifty- 
 two persons in the ship Lausanne, on June 1, 1840, at Fort Van- 
 couver, Mr. Hines says: ''Dr. John McLoughlin, the superintend- 
 ent of the company's affairs — though a Catholic* himself — received 
 us with much cordiality, and extended to us the hospitalities of the 
 place so long as we should find it convenient to remain." And the 
 whole fifty-two of them did remain without any charge for their 
 entertainment till they were sent to their several destinations. 
 
 (Idem, p. 120) ''December 8, 1840. Arrived at Vancouver at 2 
 ]>. 111. I was received with all that courtesy and hospitality which 
 usually characterize the gentlemen of the Hudson's Bay Co." 
 
 (Idem, p. 245) Reception at Fort Vancouver, August 29, 1845. 
 This was after the election of James K. Polk to the Presidency on 
 the "fifty-four, forty or figlil" ])latform, when, if ever, it might be 
 
 * Many erroneous statements have been made about Dr. McLoughlin's 
 religious convictions and affiliations. In 1878 there were published in Port- 
 land, Ore., in the Catholic ^entineh "Historical Sketches of the Catholic 
 Church in Oregon During the Past Forty Years" (1838-1878). Their author 
 was the first Archbishop of Oregon, Rev. Francis Norbert Blanchet, D. D. 
 In giving a sketch of Dr. John McLoughlin's life. Father Blanchet said: "Dr. 
 McLoughlin was the arbiter to whom both whites and Indians looked for the 
 settlement of their differences and the friend from whom they sought relief 
 in all their difficulties. His ashes rest beneath the shadow of the Cathedral 
 cross of Oregon City, where he died in April, 1857. He was originally a 
 member of the Anglican church, but was converted by Archbishop Blanchet in 
 1842, and was ever afterwards a most exemplary Catholic. May his soul rest 
 in peace." This should be accepted as conclusive. — C. B. Bagley.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 333 
 
 supposed the Hudson's Bay Co. would be extremely antagonistic to 
 all Americans, but this is Mr. Hines' report: 
 
 ''Next morning went up to the fort to complete our prepara- 
 tions for sea; were very kindly received by James Douglas, Esq., 
 who, by his friendly attentions and acts of benevolence, paved the 
 way to render our voyage much more agreeable than it otherwise 
 would have been." 
 
 {Idem, p. 389) "Few persons, whether coming by land or by 
 sea, have ever visited Vancouver without being received with a hos- 
 pitality which knew no bounds, until every want of the traveler 
 was supplied. Innumerable have been the favors conferred by them 
 upon the American missionaries, and their assistance has been 
 rendered at times when great inconvenience and even suffering 
 would have resulted from neglect." 
 
 {Idem, p. 149) April 28, 1843. Mr. Hines gives the following 
 account of his reception at Fort Vancouver, on the way to the up- 
 per Columbia with Dr. E. White (U. S. sub-Indian Agent for the 
 Oregon Indians, and organizer of the first migration from the 
 States to Oregon, that of 1842) : 
 
 "Called on Dr. McLoughlin for goods, provisions, powder, balls, 
 etc., for our accommodation on our voyage up the Columbia, and 
 though he was greatly surprised that, under the circumstances, we 
 should think of going among those excited Indians, yet he ordered 
 his clerks to let us have whatever we wanted. However, we found 
 it rather squally at the fort, not so much on account of our going 
 among the Indians of the interior, as in consequence of a certain 
 memorial having been sent to the United States Congress implicat- 
 ing the conduct of Dr. McLoughlin and the Hudson's Bay Co., and 
 bearing the signatures of seventy Americans. I inquired of the 
 doctor if he had refused to grant supplies to those Americans who 
 had signed that document; he replied that he had not, but that the 
 authors of the memorial need expect no more favors from him. Not 
 being one of the authors, but merely a signer of the petition, I did 
 not come under the ban of the company; consequently I obtained 
 my outfit for the expedition, though at first there were strong indi- 
 cations that I would be refused. We remained at the fort over night 
 and part of the next day, and after a close conversation with the 
 gentleman in command" {i. e., McLoughlin) "were treated with 
 great courtesy." 
 
 This memorial to Congress we will consider later. 
 
 This expedition was in connection with certain reports of In- 
 dian disturbances, and as the advocates of the Whitman Legend, 
 quoting a single sentence from this chapter, entirely disconnected 
 from its context, and without comparison with other contempo-
 
 334 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 raneous documents, have claimed that it furnishes strictly con- 
 temporary proof that it was generally understood in Oregon in the 
 spring of 1843 that Whitman's ride was to save Oregon, and as, 
 when so coTii])nrpd. it is shown to prove nothing of the kind, but to 
 show the kiiidiK'ss oT both McLoughlin and McKinlay toward Amer- 
 icans, we will examine it at this point. 
 
 The sentence they quote is as follows: (p. 143) "The arrival 
 of a large party of emigrants" (/. e., Dr. White's party) ''about this 
 time, and the sudden departure of Dr. Whitman to the United 
 States, with the avowed intention of bringing back with him as 
 many as he could enlist for Oregon," etc. (Cf. articles in reply to 
 Prof. Bourne's "The Whitman Legend," by Rev. S. Ji. L. Penrose, 
 President of AVhitnmn College, widely printed in newspapers in 
 January, 1901 ; by W. A. Mowry in Boston Transcript, near April 
 12, 1901 ; W. A. Mowry and M. Eells, 8. 8. Times, November 15, 
 1902; and M. Eells' "Reply to Prof. Bourne," p. 66.) 
 
 At first sight it does look as if here was a statement that gives 
 some supj)ort to the claim that the ''Saving Oregon" theory of 
 Whitman's ride was known in Oregon in the winter of 1842-3, and 
 indorsed by Hines as early as 1845-6 (when it is supposed his book 
 was written), and if it were not for those — to the advocates of 
 myths — most vexatious things known as "contexts" and "other con- 
 temporaneous documents" the advocates of the Wliitman myth 
 might claim that they had at last produced one little bit of evi- 
 dence of some value on the single point of the publication of the 
 myth earlier than 1864-1865, though as Hines had no connection 
 with the A. B. C. F. M. mission, and knew nothing of the dissensions 
 of that mission, and the destructive order of the Board which 
 caused Whitman's ride, even if he had published a "Saving Oregon" 
 theory of it, that could not be accepted as proving that theory to 
 be true, but only that he — an outsider — had heard such a theory 
 for it before he left Oregon. 
 
 But let us examine the context, and also two letters of Mrs. 
 Whitman to her husband, the first dated March 29, 1843 (which 
 letter is No. 103, Vol. 138, of the Am. Bd. Mss.), and the second 
 dated A])ril 14, 1843, Transactions Oregon Pioneer Assn., 1893, pp. 
 160-162). The pas.sage from Hines (pp. 142-3) relates to the rumors 
 of the hostile intentions toward the whites on the part of the Cayuse, 
 Nez Perces and Walla Walla Indians. 
 
 In an endeavor to pacify those excited Indians, Dr. White, the 
 Indian Agent, and Mr. Hines left the Willamette settlement for a 
 journey of some 300 miles up the Columbia, and at The Dalles were 
 joined by Rev. H. K. W. Perkins, and under date of May 9, 1843, 
 Hines (after stating that they reached Whitman's mission at 5 
 that afternoon) goes on: (p. 164) "When the Indians were first
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 335 
 
 told that the Americans were designing to subjugate them and take 
 away their lands, the young chiefs of the Kayuse tribe were in favor 
 of proceeding immediately to hostilities. They were for raising a 
 large war party and, rushing directly down to the Willamette set- 
 tlement, cut off the inhabitants at a blow. The old chiefs were of 
 a different opinion ; they suggested more cautious measures. Tak- 
 ing into consideration the difficulty, at that season of the year, of 
 marching a large party the distance of three or four hundred miles 
 through a wide range of mountains covered with snow, they ad- 
 vised all the Indians to wait until they should obtain more infor- 
 mation concerning the designs of the Americans. They also thought 
 it would not be wisdom in them, in any case, to commence an 
 offensive war, but to prepare themselves for a vigorous defense 
 against any attack. They frequently remarked to Mr. Geiger that 
 they did not wish to go to war, but if the Americans came to take 
 away their lands, and bring them into a state of vassalage, they 
 would fight so long as they had a drop (p. 165) of blood to shed. 
 They said they had received their information concerning the de- 
 signs of the Americans from Baptiste Dorio. This individual, who 
 is a half-breed son of Madame Dorio, the heroine of Washington 
 Irving's "Astoria," understands the Xez Perces language well, and 
 had given the Kayuses the information that had alarmed them. Mr. 
 Geiger endeavored to induce them to prepare, early in the spring, to 
 cultivate the ground as they did the year before, but they refused to 
 do anything, saying that Baptiste Dorio had told them that it would 
 be of no consequence ; that the whites would come in the summer 
 and kill them all off and destroy their plantations. 
 
 ''After Dorio had told them this story, they sent a Walla Walla 
 chief called Yellow Serpent to Vancouver, to learn from Dr. Mc- 
 Loughlin the facts in the case. Yellow Serpent returned and told 
 the Kayuses that Dr. McLoughlin said he had nothing to do in a 
 war with the Indians ; that he did not believe the Americans de- 
 signed to attack them, and that, if the Americans did go to war with 
 the Indians, the Hudson's Bay Co. would not assist them. After 
 they got this information from the bias (great) doctor, the Indians 
 became more calm, many of them went to cultivating the ground 
 as formerly and a large number of little patches had been planted 
 and sown before we arrived at the station." 
 
 Mrs. Whitman's letter of March 29, 1843 (never yet published) 
 was written from Waskopum (/. e., the Methodist missionary station 
 at The Dalles, where Rev. H. K. W. Perkins was located). It was 
 directed on the outside to "Dr. M. Whitman, or Rev. D. Greene," 
 and indorsed as "Received August 9, acted to Dr. Whitman, April 
 12, D. G."
 
 336 ACQULSITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 It covers fourteen pages. The first two pages of this letter are 
 mostly filled with the excitement among the Cayuse (or Kaiuse) 
 Indians, caused by Dr. White's folly in November, 1842, in attempt- 
 ing to force them to adopt the code of laws which had been adopted 
 by the Nez Perces. 
 
 On p. 3 she wrote : "Mr. Geiger writes me that 'the Indians are 
 constantly talking about going to war with the Americans and will 
 not believe anything else but that you have gone for men to fight 
 them.' This last is the most trying to me of all the rest. This orig- 
 inated, I am sorry to say, from some remarks which, as the Indians 
 tell me, Mr. Spalding made while at the station last fall. They 
 never have heard a lisp from me of the object of your visit to the 
 States, no more than you told them before you left, and one would 
 think they had seen enough of you to know you had not the least 
 desire of that kind toward them." 
 
 Turning to Mrs. Whitman's letter of April 14, 1843, we find the 
 following (after the statement that she had left the Methodist 
 Mission at The Dalles on Monday, April 3, and reached Walla Walla 
 Saturday, April 8) : ''The excitement among the Kaiuses has 
 abated considerably from what it was when I commenced fhis let- 
 ter. Mr. ^IcKinlay of this fort has been to Vancouver and brought 
 back word to them from Dr. McLoughlin that they, the British, do 
 not, neither have they intended to make war upon them. This re- 
 lieves them considerably. Now their fear is the Americans. They 
 have been led to believe that deceitful measures are being taken to 
 rob them of their land, to kill them all off. Language like this has 
 been told them, and at the meeting last fall, 'that if you do not make 
 laws and j)rotect the whites and their property, we will put you in 
 the way of doing it.' They consider this a declaration to fight and 
 they have prepared accordingly. We hope no depredations will be 
 committed upon us or the mission property, and think the difficulties 
 can be removed and adjusted to their minds, but not without the 
 most prudent and wise measures. The agent ( /. c. Dr. White. — W. I. 
 M.) is quite ignorant of Indian character, and especially of the 
 character of the Kaiuses. Husband's pre.sence is needed very much 
 at this juncture. A great loss is sustained by his going to the 
 States. I mean a present loss to the station and to the Indians, 
 and hoj)e and expect a greater good will be accomplished by it. 
 There was no other way for us to do. We felt that we could not 
 remain, as we were without more help, and we are so far off that 
 to send by letter and get returns was too slow a way for the pres- 
 ent emergency." 
 
 So it appears that Mr. Hines did not hear that Whitman had 
 gone east to save Oregon in 1843, but that he had gone east, accord- 
 ing to the Indians, to bring out soldiers to fight and conquer the
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 337 
 
 Indians and to settle the Nez Perces country, i. e., where Spalding's 
 mission station was situated. 
 
 As these Indians were exceedingly jealous of any settlement of 
 whites in their country, this, combined with some wild talk of Spald- 
 ing's that Whitman had gone for soldiers to fight them and the 
 unwisdom of Dr. White, the Indian Agent, in forcing laws upon 
 them in the autumn of 1842, soon after Whitman started for the 
 States (which were assigned by Mrs. Whitman in her two letters 
 of March 29 and April 14, 1843 as the real causes of the excite- 
 ment among the Indians) gives a perfectly reasonable ground 
 for this excitement, with which the Hudson's Bay Co. had 
 nothing whatever to do, excejjt that when the Indians turned to 
 their long-time friends, McKinlay and McLoughlin, for advice, they 
 received from them precisely the advice best adapted to calm them 
 and end the warlike excitement among them, as is testified to both 
 by Hines in the passage quoted from his page, 165, and also by Mrs. 
 Whitman in hers of April 14, 1843. 
 
 While all that Mr. Hines writes of his own personal experience 
 and that of his associates in the Methodist mission is entirely fa- 
 vorable to the Hudson's Bay Co., yet when he came to write his book 
 in the States in 1845-6, when the "fifty-four forty or fight" craze 
 was rampant among a large part of the Democratic politicians, he 
 could not resist the temptation to add to the popularity of his book 
 by the following attack on the Hudson's Bay Co. (pp. 386-8) : 
 
 "Another feature of the policy of the company is the course 
 which they have pursued in relation to colonizing the country. They 
 have always been opposed to its settlement by any people except 
 such as, by a strict subjection to the company, would become sub- 
 servient to their wishes. This has, doubtless, arisen from two cir- 
 cumstances: First, the fur trade of Oregon has been rapidly de- 
 clining for a number of years past, and the Hudson's Bay Co. are 
 fully aware that this trade alone will not be sufficient to sustain 
 them in the country for many years to come, and to abandon the 
 country would involve themselves in an immense loss. These lia- 
 bilities they wish to guard against by opening sources of wealth in 
 other branches of business, to be under their control. 
 
 "Secondly, they have had in their employment, every year, many 
 hundreds of persons, consisting of Canadian French, Hawaiians, 
 half-breed Iroquois, and others, who are under their absolute con- 
 trol so long as they remain in the Indian country. Many of these, 
 from year to year, either by having large families, by the decline of 
 the fur trade, or by superannuation, become unprofitable servants, 
 and by the company are settled in various parts of the country, 
 where they support themselves, and become, indirectly, a source of 
 profit to the company. They wished to preserve Oregon as an asy-
 
 338 ACQUISITION OF ORIJGON 
 
 lum for their servants, on both sides of the Rocky Mountains, where 
 the}' could use them to advantage in agricultural, pastoral and nian- 
 ufacturing ])ursuits, when they could be no longer serviceable to 
 them in the business of the fur trade. That the comi)any have con- 
 templated a rapid decline, and i)robable termination of the fur trade, 
 west of the Hocky Mountains, a])i)ears from the fact of their having 
 been formed into a new company, under the name of 'Puget's Sound 
 Agricultural Comjtany,' with a capital of £2,00(),()0(). This company 
 has pretended to liold large tracts of land in the vicinity of Puget's 
 Sound, under grants of letters patent from the English Government; 
 and here they have attemjtted to establish a colony, but without 
 success. 
 
 "This attempt was made in 1842. The half-breed descendants of 
 the gentlemen and servants of the Hudson's Bay Co. had been col- 
 lecting together in a colony on a small tract of fertile land, lying 
 on Ked River, east of the Rocky Mountains, for more than thirty 
 years, and so raj)id was the increase of the colony, and so limited 
 the arable country of the Red River, that the com])any resolved to 
 send off a colony of the numerous Scotch and English half-breeds 
 settled on that river to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Accord- 
 ingly, in 1842, Sir (leorge Simpson, who for many years has been 
 the resident (lovernor of the Hudson's Bay Co., by holding out the 
 most flattering inducements, succeeded in forming a colony of some 
 thirty families, of which he took the charge in i)erson. They left 
 the Red River Settlement late in the spring, with their scanty sup- 
 plies packed upon the backs of mules and Indian ponies, and passing 
 through the stupendous gates of the Rocky Mountains, they arrived 
 on the borders of Puget's Sound some time in the month of October. 
 If the fertility of the soil, whei-e they were planted by Sir Oeorge, 
 had cori-esjK)nded with the picturesque beauty of the face of the 
 country, doubtless the colony would have succeeded; but, in conse- 
 quence of a total failure of the crops the first year, the colonists 
 abandoned the ])lace, contrary to the wishes of the company, and 
 settled in a more fertile i)ortion of the country. 
 
 "Two other settlements intended for the reception and support 
 of retiring sei-vants of the comj>any have been established in Oregon ; 
 one in the valley of the Cowlitz, north of the lower Columbia, the 
 other on the delightful plains watered by the Willamette River, 
 south of the Columbia. As interested motives first induced the com- 
 I»any to establish these settlements, so it has always been their 
 policy to keej) them in a state of absolute dependence. The colon- 
 ists have not only been resj)onsible to the company for the course 
 of conduct they have pui-sued, but from it alone, until very recently, 
 they have been obliged to receive all their supi)lies of foreign neces- 
 saries, consisting of clothing, groceries, etc., for which they have
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 339 
 
 been obliged to pay in the produce of the soil, at prices to suit the 
 avaricious propensities which have developed themselves in the 
 whole policy of the Hudson's Bay Co. 
 
 "The oppressive measures adopted by the company, in reference 
 to these settlements, were such as to cause them to languish for 
 years, and to induce some of the most active and enterprising 
 among the settlers to take refuge in the United States." 
 
 On this it is only needful to remark: 
 
 First. The contemporary evidence in this chapter demonstrates 
 beyond any question the total falsity of his opening statement that 
 the ''Hudson's Bay Co. have always been opposed, etc.'' 
 
 Second. Instead of "many" of these discharged employes being 
 settled by the company in various parts of the country, the total 
 number so settled in Oregon up to the autumn of 1843 was only 
 fifty, or less than an average of two a year for the whole time since 
 the North West Co. acquired Astoria. The "Copy of a Document" 
 (cf. pp. 429-439 hifra) shows how wise were the regulations under 
 which McLoughlin began the colonization of Oregon. 
 
 Third. As a British corporation, it was the patriotic duty of 
 the Hudson's Bay Co. by all honorable means to endeavor to secure 
 as much of Oregon as possible for Great Britain, precisely as it was 
 of Americans to secure as much as possible for the United States. 
 
 Fourth. There is the most unanswerable evidence in the diplo- 
 matic papers and the debates in Congress and in the "Copy of a 
 Document" (pp. 429-439 infra) that it was perfectly understood by 
 both Governments after 1824 that "in no event could the British 
 claim extend south of the Columbia River." 
 
 Fifth. The Puget's Sound Agricultural Co. was not formed to 
 hold Oregon, since nothing done while the treaties of 1818 and 1827 
 remained in force could effect that, but to separate the agricultural 
 and stock raising business of the company, as it became extensive, 
 from the fur trade, which was that for which the Hudson's Bay Co. 
 had its exclusive license. 
 
 Sixth. Instead of having a capital of £2,000,000, the capital 
 stock of the Puget's Sound Agricultural Co. was only £200,000, of 
 which only £20,000 was ever paid up, and on this the total divi- 
 dends up to the payment made to the company of |200,000 by the 
 United States on September 10, 18fi9, were only 55%, equal to 
 £11,000. (Cf. pp. 113, 124 and 149 of the evidence for the Puget's 
 Sound Agricultural Co., being Vol. II. of the Report of the Cases 
 of the Hudson's Bay Co. and Puget's Sound Agricultural Co. vs. 
 the United States.) ^ 
 
 Seventh. Neither "in the vicinity of Puget's Sound" nor any- 
 where else in the Oregon Territory south of 49 degrees did either
 
 340 ACQULSIT/OX OF OREGON 
 
 the I'uji;et's Sound Agricultural (.'o. or the Hudson's Bay Co. ever, 
 for one instant, pretend to hold "larj^e tracts of land," or so much 
 as one acre of land "under grants of letters patent from the English 
 Government." 
 
 Neither Great Britain nor the United States had any right, 
 while the treaties of 1818 and 1827 remained in force, to gi-ant any 
 land in any part of Oregon, and neither Government did make any 
 such grants to any ])erson or corj)oration till after the treaty of 
 184(! had given the United States the right to make such grants 
 south of V.) degrees, and Great Britain the right to make such grants 
 north of 49 degrees. 
 
 I'jghth. Mr. Mines is entirely mistaken about (a) ''a small tract 
 of fertile land on Red Kiver"; (b) ''the rapid increase of that col- 
 ony"; (c) "the limited area of the arable country on the Bed River"; 
 (d) tliat the company sent off a colony from the Bed Biver to Ore- 
 gon in 1842; (e) that the colony contained "some thirty families"; 
 (f) that Sir George Simi)son "took the charge in person" of that 
 colony; (g) that "they left the Bed Biver with theii- belongings 
 jtackod on the backs of mules and ponies." 
 
 There was an immense tract of fertile land in the Bed Biver 
 counti-y, as was well known then by all i)ersons who cared to write 
 from knowledge and not from their imaginations. Instead of a 
 rapid increase of that colony its inci-ease had been very slow, and 
 continued so till the extension of railroads there (more than thirty 
 years after the time of which Mr. Hines is writing) gave them ac- 
 cess to markets for their produce. 
 
 "In March, 1848, the total population of the Bed Biver settle- 
 ment was 5,143, of which number 2,71)8 were Boman Catholics and 
 2,345 wei-e Protestants. . . . The heads of families were 870, 
 of whom 571 were Indians or half-breeds, natives of the territory; 
 152 Canadians, 01 Orkneymen, 49 Scotchmen, 22 Englishmen, 5 
 Irishmen and 2 Swiss, and Wales, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Ger- 
 many, Poland and the TTnited States of America one each. There 
 was also one Esquimaux. . . . The people revel in abundance, 
 but it is all for home consumption; they have no outlet, no market 
 for theii- ])T-()duce. {Cf. "Hudson's Bay Co.'s Territories and Van- 
 couver's Island," by Bobert Montgomery Martin, London, 1849, pp. 
 91. oo \ 
 
 As there was enough fertile land in the Bed Biver Settlement — 
 now known as Manitoba — to su{)[)ort more than a hundred times 
 as many jxople as lived there in 1841, it w%as not at all "because of 
 the limited area of ai-able country on the Bed Biver that a ])arty 
 not of "about thirty families," but of "twenty-three heads of fami- 
 lies, in all eighty persons, men, women and children," were engaged 
 by the Hudson's Bay Co. to go to Oregon, in 1841 — not 1842 — not
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 341 
 
 as colonists to strengthen the British claim to Oregon (which was 
 impossible while the treaty of 1827 continued in force), but as half- 
 servants of the company, to work the farms of the Puget's Sound 
 Agricultural Co. on the Cowlitz River, on the north side of the Co- 
 lumbia, /. e., in the region which the English hoped to retain when 
 the boundary line should be settled. 
 
 Instead of '^Sir George Simpson being in charge of this party 
 in person," it left the Red River Settlement June 5, 1841, five days 
 before Sir George Simpson arrived there (on June 10, 1841), from 
 Montreal, on his tour around the world, and he did not overtake 
 them till July 19, 1841, when they had made more than one-third 
 of the journey to Fort Vancouver, and he and his party only re- 
 mained with them part of two days and the night between. He 
 passed on after advising that they should change their route to that 
 of the boat parties down the Columbia, which they thought they 
 would do, but afterward followed on his trail, which was the regular 
 saddle route all the way to Fort Colvile, and thence down the Co- 
 lumbia by boats. He reached Fort Vancouver on or about August 
 27, 1841, but this Red River migration did not arrive at Fort Walla 
 Walla, 220 miles up the Columbia from Vancouver, till October 4, 
 1841. They started with their goods packed not "on the backs of 
 mules and ponies," but in the Red River carts, and used them to 
 the mountains, where the difficulties of the way were so much 
 greater than on the route from the States to Oregon that they aban- 
 doned their carts and packed their goods on their oxen and other 
 spare animals the rest of the way. Whether this migration — the 
 only one ever made, or, so far as any contemporary evidence shows, 
 ever planned from the Red River Settlement to Oregon — was in 1841 
 or 1842 would be of no particular consequence if it were not that 
 the original, or Spalding-Gray version of the origin of Whitman's 
 ride made that ride originate in the announcement in September or 
 October, 1842, that these Red River settlers were then on their 
 way to ravish Oregon from the Ignited States. 
 
 With this demonstration of the total lack of accuracy in the 
 particulgirs on which Mr. Hines bases his accusations vs. the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co. the reader can form his own conclusions as to the 
 credence to be given to his charge that the Hudson's Bay Co. op- 
 posed the settlement of the country and oppressed the settlers. 
 
 Turn now to the missionaries of the A. B. C. F. M. 
 
 In 1835 Rev. Samuel Parker went to Oregon on an exploring 
 tour, and this is what the Missionary Herald had to say, on p. 445, 
 November, 183G, about his reception and treatment by the Hudson's 
 Bay Co. : 
 
 ''Communications have been received from Mr. Parker, dated 
 May 21, 1836. ... He received much aid and numerous kind
 
 342 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 attentions t'lom the jjentlemen connected with the Hudson's Bay 
 Co. . . . Facilities have been afforded him by them for explor- 
 injij hirjje tracts of country not otherwise easily accessible by him." 
 
 (Idem, March, IS.'J", ]). 124) '*Mr. Parker makes a jrrateful men- 
 tion of the kind ami polite treatment he had received from the 
 olllcers of the comi)any, who, together with the gentlemen engaged 
 in trade from the Ignited States, with whom he traveled through 
 the mountains, had borne nearly all his expenses of conveyance, 
 clothing and subsistence, he not having been obliged to spend more 
 than two dollars in money from the time he left the Missouri till 
 his arrival at the Sandwich Islands." 
 
 Of this time he was the guest of the Hudson's Bay Co. continu- 
 ously from October G, 1835, to July 14, 1836, when he reached Hono- 
 lulu as a free passenger in the Hudson's Bay Co.'s ship. 
 
 (For Mr. Barker's grateful acknowledgments of the kindness he 
 received at the vai-ious ])Osts of the Hudson's Bay Co. and his en- 
 thusiastic commendations of the kind treatment of the Indians by 
 the Hudson's Bay Co., Cf. ''Parker's Journal of an Exploring Tour 
 Bevond the Rocky Mountains." Ithaca, N. Y., 1838, pp. 130, 131, 
 132, 148, ICl), 172, 272, 273, 304, 347). 
 
 In 183f) the Spalding-Whitman party went overland to found 
 the American Board Mission, and July 10, 1830. from the rendez- 
 vous near Creen River, in a six and a half page foolscap letter to D. 
 (Ireene, Secretary, from which nothing has yet been printed. Whit- 
 man wrote : "By the arrival of Messrs. McCloud and McCay" 
 (should be McLeod and McKay.— W. I. M.) "we are furnished with 
 a safe and direct escort to Walla Walla, and have availed ourselves 
 of their com]>any and protection. We received the most flattering 
 encouragement from these gentlemen, one of whom, Mr. McCloud, 
 is a j)artner in the North West Fur Co. (should be Hudson's Bay 
 Co.) that we should have every facility in our journey, and all 
 necessary su]>plies of goods, provisions, etc., at Walla Walla." 
 
 Tender the gratuitous escort of these two Hudson's Bay Co. 
 traders the ])arty traveled not only to Walla A\'alla, but to Fort 
 Vancouver, a distance of more than 1.000 miles, or more than one-' 
 half of their whole journey from the Missouri River to Vancouver. 
 
 The Whitman Saved Oregon advocates are never tired of ex- 
 patiating on the hardships of this journey, and the great heroism it 
 re(|uired to undertake it, ])ut as they were every mile of the way 
 under the escort of either American fur traders or these Hudson's 
 Bay Co. tradei-s. they were all the way perfectly safe, and in this 
 same letter Whitman wrote: "I see no reason to regret our choice 
 of a journey by land. . . . It is one of the best trips that can 
 be made for invalids, such as dyspeptics, liver, spleen or scrofulous 
 affections, :ill of which I confidently believe will be greatly relieved
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 343 
 
 if not permanently cured. ... In my own case and Mrs. Whit- 
 man's we are more than compensated for the journey by the im- 
 provement of health." Which simply shows that for them, as for 
 not a few men engaged in the fur trade before that time, the over- 
 land journey "was its own reward'' as a benefit to their health. 
 
 Mrs. Whitman kept a journal for her mother of this journey 
 (which was published in Transactions Oregon Pioneer Assn. for 
 1891). 
 
 It contains many accounts of favors extended to them by Messrs. 
 McLeod and McKay on the journey, of which space will only allow 
 quoting the following : '^August 27. This morning Mr. McLeod re- 
 mained behind in pursuit of game, and did not come into camp until 
 we had made a long nooning, yet about 3 o'clock he came into 
 camp loaded with wild ducks, having taken twenty-two. Now, 
 mother, he has, just as he always did during the whole journey, 
 sent over nine of them." 
 
 All that relates to W^hitman's wagon in this journal of Mrs. 
 Whitman has been already quoted in Chapter V. 
 
 For other extracts from it as to the kindness of the Hudson's 
 Bay Co.'s officers en route and at Forts Hall, Boise, Walla Walla 
 and Vancouver, Cf. Transactions Oregon Pioneer Assn., 1891, pp. 46, 
 47, 48, 49, 51, 53, 56, 57, 58, 59, 63, 66. 
 
 Mrs. Whitman, so far as known, kept no journal except this 
 one in the form of a letter to her mother covering (though not by 
 any means for every day) June 27 to October 18, 1836. 
 
 In Transactions Oregon Pioneer Assn., 1891 and 1893, are quite 
 a large number of letters of Mrs. Whitman, and a few of her hus- 
 band, to relations and friends, and there are many passages in 
 these stating the favors done them by various Hudson's Bay Co.'s 
 officers, and showing the friendly relations subsisting between the 
 various mission families and the Hudson's Bay Co.'s officers in 
 charge of Forts Walla Walla, Colvile, Vancouver, Hall and Fort 
 George (i e., Astoria) and the visiting back and forth between the 
 mission families and these Hudson's Bay Co.'s forts, and there is 
 not the least intimation that there was any antagonism between 
 the missions and the Hudson's Bay Co. I regret that space will 
 not allow me to quote all these extracts, but the reader will find 
 them on pages 88, 97, 103, 111, 139, 158-161, 164, 166, 168 and 189 
 of 1891, Trans., and pages 111, 161, 206 and 207 of 1893 Trans. 
 
 So far as has yet appeared Dr. Whitman kept no journal at 
 any time, and if either W. H. Gray or his wife kept journals he 
 carefully refrained from ever quoting anything from any of them. 
 Rev. C. Eells kept a journal constantly, but it was destroyed when 
 his house was burned in 1872. His eldest son, Mr. Edw. Eells, told 
 me this on August 23, 1905, at Portland, Ore.
 
 344 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Mrs. Eells, Mr. and ]Mrs. Walker and Mr. and Mrs. Spalding 
 seem to have kept journals part of the time, and in the Mss. of the 
 Orejion Historical Society are the followiuo; fragmentary journals 
 of these people, viz., Mrs. Walker, June, 1838, to December 20, 1838, 
 and September 7, 1847, to October 26, 1848; Rev. E. Walker, Sep- 
 tember 10, 1838, to October 4, 1838, and January 5, 1841, to Novem- 
 ber 15, 1842. 
 
 Mrs. H. H. Spalding, February 1, 1836, to June 8, 1840. While 
 in the Transactions Oregon Pioneer Assn. for 1889, pp. 54-88 (a), 
 is printed Mrs. C. Eells' Journal, March 5 to September 2, 1836. 
 
 Kev. H. H. Spalding kept a journal pretty regularly from No- 
 vember, 1838, to Ai)ril, 1842, then a blank till February 21, 1843, 
 and then a few entries covering a page and a half, and ending March 
 7, 1843. This journal has been for some years in possession of 
 Rev. M. Eells. 
 
 I have gone over all of these with care, and not only is there 
 not a sentence in any one of them indicating the slightest feeling 
 of antagonism between any of these missionaries and the Hudson's 
 Bay Co., but there are in all of them the most abundant evidences 
 that the mission families and the Chief Traders in charge of Forts 
 Hall, P>oise, Walla Walla, Vancouver and Colvile were on the 
 friendliest possible terms, visiting back and fortli freely, and the 
 Hudson's Ray Co.'s officers not only helping them to establish 
 their several mission stations, but subsequently rendering them 
 frequent assistance in various ways as long as the missions ex- 
 isted. 
 
 Want of space only allows the quotation of a few samples on 
 this ])oint. 
 
 Mrs. Eells' journal was very concise. 
 
 The mission party consisted of six men and four women, viz, : 
 Rev. C. Eells and wife. Rev. A. B. Smith and wife, Rev. Elkanah 
 Walker and wife, Mr. W. H. Gray and wife, Mr. Cornelius Rogers 
 and a "Mr. Stevens, an old mountain man whom we have hired to 
 go with us." (Cf. Transactions, 1889, p. 66.) 
 
 '•Friday, July 27, 1838. . . . Arrive at Fort Hall; intro- 
 duced to Mr. McKay, one of the Chief Factors of the Hudson's Bay 
 Fur Co. . . . Received kindly by all at the fort." . . "Sun- 
 day, July 29th, Mr. Gray lodges in the fort. . . About 10 o'clock 
 Mr. Ermatinger" (the chief trader in charge of Fort Hall from 
 183S to 1S42.— W. T. M. I "comes to invite us to breakfast; says he 
 has just got ujt. After breakfast he comes again to invite us to 
 have j)reachiTig in the fort. Afternoon, Mr. Eells preaches in the 
 dining room ; some fifty or sixty hearers." 
 
 "Tuesday, July 31. Make arrangements for moving camp. . . 
 Ermatinger gives ten pounds sugar."
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 345 
 
 "Wednesday, August 15. . . Encamped on the river opposite 
 Fort Boise; feasted with milk, butter, turnips, pumpkins and sal- 
 mon." 
 
 ''Friday, August 17. . . Some of the gentlemen at the post 
 sent us a piece of sturgeon for breakfast." 
 
 "Sunday, August 19. . . Mr. Pay ton (Payette) sends another 
 sturgeon." (Cf. 1889, Transactions, pp. 83, 86, 87.) 
 
 Rev. E. Walker's 1838 journal covers his and Rev. C. Eells' ex- 
 ploring trip to decide on a location for their mission station. 
 
 They reached Fort Col vile (about 230 miles north of Whitman's 
 mission). 
 
 "Monday, September 17, 1838" (having that morning eaten the 
 last mouthful of their stock of provisions), the journal reads: . . 
 "We reached here about 1 this day. Received a cordial welcome 
 from Mr. McDonald and lady." 
 
 "Wednesday, September 19th. . . After dinner I opened the 
 subject of our coming. Found Mr. McDonald favorably disposed, 
 and willing to assist us. This was a great relief to my mind. We 
 purposed starting tomorrow, but he thought it not best, so have 
 altered our determination. . . Mr. McDonald promised to send 
 tools to us at Big Head's place, so we shall be saved the trouble 
 with them on the route." 
 
 "Thursday, September 20th. Received a present of two pairs of 
 moccasins this morning from Mr. McDonald. . . He seems more 
 and more interested. He has engaged to give us what supplies we 
 want for the journey, and to send some on for us while building, 
 and told us if we want more to send for them. . . Mr. McDonald 
 said he felt very anxious that our station should exceed all the rest 
 in this country." 
 
 "Friday, September 21st. . . We did not get prepared to 
 start till nearly 11 ; but when we did we found ourselves well pre- 
 pared with provisions through the kindness of Mr. McDonald and 
 lady." 
 
 "He sent for an Indian, one of the Ponderays, and told him he 
 must take care of our animals and packs, and must not expect any 
 pay for it, for we came with the Bible and Testament to do them 
 good. They must do all we wanted them to. Accordingly we had 
 very little trouble with our packs and animals." 
 
 After traveling about for five days they decided to locate at 
 Tshimakain (The Place of a Spring) (the place recommended by 
 Mr. McDonald), about sixty-five miles south of Col vile, and not 
 finding any tools and supplies were worrying about them, when 
 . . . "to our joy the Indian sent by Mr. McDonald arrived soon 
 after dinner with two axes, 10 pounds of Indian meal, 30 pounds 
 of flour, 10 pounds of buffalo meat (dried), 15 pounds of bacon, all
 
 346 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 of the first quality, making 95 pounds in all. "Big Head" (the In- 
 dian chief on whose land they had located) "gave us some potatoes 
 soon after, so that we have a good stock of ])rovisions at present, 
 enough to last us what time we wanted to stay." 
 
 Turning now to Kev. H. H. Spalding's Journal (from which 
 only sixty-one words have yet been published that have any bearing 
 on the AMiitnuin Saved Oregon Story). 
 
 In December, 1847, and January, 1848, as shown by Spalding's 
 own letters in the chapter on "The Whitman Massacre and Its 
 True Causes," Spalding thankfully admitted that he owed his own 
 life to the hunuinity of the Catholic priest. Father Brouillet, and 
 that he was ready to implore the good services of that Hudson's Bay 
 Co.'s officer, the Catholic McBean, who had succeeded, in 184(5, the 
 Scotch I'resbyterian, McKinlay, in charge of Fort ^Yalla Walla, and 
 also the aid of Capt. Richard Grant, whom he and Gray subse- 
 quently so shamefully slandered, as have all the other leading ad- 
 vocates of the Whitman Legend, and that in letters to 1). Greene, 
 Secretary, he gratefully acknowledged that not only he and his fam- 
 ily, but all of the captives at Wailatpu, a total of sixty persons, 
 owed their rescue from death at the hands of the Indians to "the 
 timely, j)rompt, judicious and Christian efforts of the Htidson's Bay 
 Co., and especially Mr. Ogden and Mr. Douglas." and from his let- 
 ters we have seen how great and constant was the kindness he and 
 his family had received year by year from Mr. McDonald, the 
 Hudson's Bay Co.'s chief trader in charge of Fort Colvile, some 
 200 miles northwest of his station. 
 
 In his journal we shall see that from Mr. Pambrun (the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co.'s chief trader in charge of Fort Walla Walla — about 
 125 miles west of his station — till his death in May, 1841), he also 
 received friendly assistance, both in presents and in help to keep 
 the Indians in order. 
 
 September 19, 1838, he wrote : .. . "Canoes return from Walla 
 Walla with three turkeys, a i)resent from Mr. Pambrun." 
 
 January 10, 1840: "Sabbath. Good number at Sunday school. 
 Mr. Griffin ])reaches in English. Meet with the people as usual at 
 eve. Mr. I'ambrun speaks to the people, encourages them to work 
 their land and to listen to their own teacher and not go after 
 strangers." 
 
 Pambrun, it must be remembered, was not only a Hudson's Bay 
 Co.'s officer, but a Catholic. Could any stronger proof be needed 
 that the excitement and exposure incident to Spalding's narrow 
 escape at the time of the Whitman nmssacre had brought on the 
 lunacy i)redicted by A. P.. Smith and Dr. Whitman (Cf. Smith's 
 letter of September 28, 1840), than the fact that in the summer of 
 1848 Spalding started the story and all the rest of his life asserted
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 347 
 
 it to be true that the Hudson's Bay Co. and the Catholics had in- 
 stigated the Whitman massacre to break up Protestant missions 
 and destroy American settlements in Oregon? 
 
 Passing over their very kind reception at Walla Walla, and the 
 kindness of the Hudson's Bay Co. in furnishing them transporta- 
 tion down the Columbia to Fort Vancouver, and their hospitable 
 reception there ( where the two wives remained as guests from Sep- 
 tember 12 to November 3, 1836, while their husbands were select- 
 ing sites for missions and building houses), I can only find space 
 to quote the following from Mrs. Whitman's journal, under date of 
 September 16th. After describing the extensive farming and stock- 
 raising operations of the Hudson's Bay Co. at Vancouver, and their 
 mills there and at Colvile, she says: "Dr. McLoughlin promises to 
 lend us enough to make a beginning, and all the return he asks is 
 that we supply other settlers in the same way. He appears desir- 
 ous to afford us every facility for living in his power. No person 
 could have received a more hearty welcome, or be treated with 
 greater kindness than we have been since our arrival." This gen- 
 erous offer to help these American Presbyterian missionaries to 
 establish themselves, precisely as two years before he had helped 
 the Methodist missionaries, and as McDonald, the Hudson's Bay 
 Co.'s Chief Trader at Fort Colvile helped Spalding in 1836, and in 
 1838 helped Eells and Walker, with wheat and other grains, and 
 vegetables for seed and provisions, till they could raise a crop, and 
 the loan of cattle and hogs and horses and farming implements, 
 with no wish for any return except that they should ''pass the good 
 deed along,'' by "helping others in the same way," was the curious 
 way in which the great-hearted McLoughlin, head of the Hudson's 
 Bay Co. in Oregon, and whose word was absolute law at all their 
 posts west of the Rockies from 1824 to 1845, though himself a Cath- 
 olic, "opposed the American occupation of Oregon," by Protestant 
 missionaries, and he took the same remarkable way of opposing the 
 establishment of American settlers" by treating the great migra- 
 tions of 1842, 1843 and 1844 and 184.5 in precisely the same way, 
 except that as there were so many of them, and they were not mis- 
 sionaries, he did expect them to pay, from the crops they should 
 raise, the advances he made to them, without which advances there 
 must have been great suffering among them. 
 
 May 5, 1837, Dr. Whitman in an eight-page foolscap letter to D. 
 Greene, Secretary, wrote : "At Vancouver we were received in the 
 kindest manner by Dr. McLoughlin, Chief Factor, etc., and by all 
 the other gentlemen of the company. After obtaining such sup- 
 plies as we needed for building and exploring, and making arrange- 
 ments for future supplies, we returned to explore and build, leaving 
 our wives at Vancouver. , . . The present worship of the In-
 
 348 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 dians was established by tlie traders of the Hudson's Ray Co. It 
 consists of sinfjin^ and a form of jn-ayer taught them, after which 
 the Chief gives them a talk. It has had a favorable influence on 
 them in rendei-iiii]: them more civil and little addicted to steal. 
 Some of the leading truths of civilization have been taught them. 
 
 "A system of i)unishmeut for crime established by the traders 
 has done much good." 
 
 Mrs. Si)alding also kept a diary of their journey to Oregon (now 
 among ]\Iss. of Oregon Historical Society), and under date of July 
 6, 1S'M>, at the rendezvous on Green Kiver, she wrote : "A trader 
 of the Hudson's Hay Co., with a party of men, has arrived and 
 camped near. . . . He has kindly invited us to travel with his 
 comjtany, promising to afford us all the assistance in his power." 
 August 8, lS8t), of their reception at Fort Hall she wrote: "Ar- 
 rived at this ])lace a little after noon; were invited to dine .at the 
 fort, where we again had a taste of bread." August 20, 1830, at 
 Snake Fort or Fort Hoise, she wrote: "Have received many favors 
 from the gentlemen of the fort." September 3, 183(J, at Fort Walla 
 Walla, she wrote: "Keached this post today. Mr. Pambrun, the 
 clei'k in charge of this establishment, kindly received us into his 
 dwelling as guests, for which may we feel true gratitude." Sep- 
 tember 13, lS3f), at Fort Vancouver: "Reached this ]»lace yester- 
 day'. . . . Met with the warmest expressions of friendshi]) and 
 find ourselves in the midst of civilization, where the luxuries of this 
 life seem to abound." 
 
 In the Missionary BcmJd for October, 1S38, ]». 3S7. is a summary 
 of a letter of Mr. Spalding, dated Sej)tember 4, 1837, in which, after 
 brief description of Fort Colvile, then in charge of Mr. IMcDonald, 
 and stating that the comjtany raised 3,500 bushels of grain and an 
 e(|ual (juaiitity of ])ot a toes there, it continues: "Mr. McDonald 
 kindly furnished Mr. S])alding with thirty five bushels of grain, 
 twelve hundred-weight of flour, a yoke of oxen and three swine to 
 aid Iiiiii in beginning his new establishment among the Nez Perces, 
 besides numerous othei- articles for the comfort of his family." A 
 later Icttei- of Mr. Spalding shows that these supplies were a free 
 gift. 
 
 March l."), 18.38, Mr. Spalding wrote a letter to D. Greene, Secre- 
 tary (from which I think nothing has yet been i)ublished), in which, 
 after .stating cost of flour at Vancouver, he continues: 
 
 "The reason of my asking floui- from Boston was to jtrovide for 
 extremities, as we were told sevei-al times while on our journey by 
 a gentleman who had spent some time at Vancouver that we must 
 not expect many favors from Vancouver and Walla Walla. But 
 llic L(»T(1 ordered it otherwise, and we find in the gentlemen of the 
 Hon. Hudson's Bay Co. a disposition to render us every possible
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 349 
 
 favor. Of course there is no reason why this should pass from your 
 room. . . . Dr. McLoughlin leaves this spring for England, 
 passing with the express to Montreal, and has expressed a deter- 
 mination to visit Boston if possible. He will receive a letter of 
 introduction from us to the secretaries of the Board. Should he call 
 he will take pleasure in giving you all the information you may 
 wish respecting this country. In a former letter I have mentioned 
 his strong desire that the Board should commence immediately a 
 mission in the lower country. As you will have seen in a former let- 
 ter he speaks very favorably of the Cowlitz. Should he fail of vis- 
 iting Boston, I would suggest the propriety of opening a corre- 
 spondence with him." 
 
 September 11, 1838. Spalding to D. Greene, Secretary (a nine- 
 page letter hitherto unpublished). After defending himself and 
 Whitman from the charge that they were devoting too much of their 
 time to farming he goes on : "The question will be asked, has not 
 the Hudson's Bay Co. several establishments in the country where 
 large quantities of grain are raised every year? Yes, two, Van- 
 couver and Colvile. But these and all other posts of the company 
 in the country are for a specified object, and did the gentlemen in 
 charge adhere strictly to their instructions no missionary or settler 
 could receive any article or anything from these posts except for 
 beaver, and no provisions for that, as they are raised only at two 
 stations to any extent, viz., Vancouver and Colvile, and at these 
 only sufficient to meet the wants of the company, the former de- 
 signed for the shipping and the posts on or near the coast, the lat- 
 ter for the posts in the interior. But the gentlemen in charge at 
 these stations have seen fit to treat us with the greatest kindness 
 and to furnish us as yet with every needed merchandise, for which 
 they have been blamed from the other side of the mountains, and 
 with sufficient provisions for our two families to begin with. But 
 these supplies, especially provisions, have ever been furnished us 
 as a favor, and not in the way of trade, and for this truly great 
 favor I trust we ever shall be truly thankful ; but while we remem- 
 ber these favors and bless God for so wonderfully providing for us 
 in the infancy of our mission, I hope that none of us will bring our- 
 selves to think that because we are missionaries we are therefore 
 not to be regulated by the rules that regulate gentlemen in their 
 intercourse with each other, but grasp all favors we can get and 
 ask for more, which would only certainly make it necessary for the 
 company sooner or later to deny us and throw us on our own re- 
 sources, but bring ourselves and perhaps the Board into disgrace. 
 Consequently your mission in this country cannot depend on the 
 Hudson's Bay Co. for supplies of provisions. Doubtless a station 
 in the region of Colvile would receive, as I have, abundance of pro-
 
 350 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 visions for one or two years till it could sustain itself, provided the 
 Yankee be not too pronounced in questions, etc., such as 'What do 
 you char^^e a pound for ])ork?' 'What will you let me have a bushel 
 of wheat for?' '('an 1 get a pound of sugar here?' Mr. McDonald 
 gave nie to understand when here that the supplies of provisions I 
 received last fall were all that the fort could safely part with, and 
 that was furnished as a favor, as all supplies from that fort would 
 be, and not in the way of trade. And here let me say that the 
 favors which we have received from ^Mr. McDonald and wife have 
 not been few nor of little consequence to us. Besides the su])plies 
 furnished us for a given price, which are no less favors for being 
 sold, and frequent presents of a bag of fine flour, a ham, a side of 
 pork, buffalo tongues, etc., etc.; there has been no charge for the 
 first supply of provisions in 1836, the amount of which I will give 
 you when I am certain it is not to be charged." 
 
 September 22, 1838, Spalding to D. Greene, Secretary (hitherto 
 unpublished). 
 
 Besides a financial statement of the mission it contains the fol- 
 lowing: 
 
 ''As we are not in a country of trade except for beaver, all our 
 su})plies are furnished as favors, and not in the way of barter. 
 They are furnished us at only 80 per cent, advance on the prime 
 cost in London. We feel ourselves greatly favored that we can re- 
 ceive our supi)lies in this country without being obliged to wait two 
 or four years for their arrival from Boston. P>ut if we may not 
 dictate as to our drafts, we may regulate the time of sending in 
 our bills (and) as our drafts usually go out in the spring our bills 
 can usually be sent down in the summer, which will be the same as 
 drawing at ten or eleven months' sight." 
 
 Some of the advocates of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story, 
 notably Gray, Barrows and Craighead, have declared that after the 
 Catholic missionaries reached Oregon (which was in 1838) there 
 was a marked change for the worse in the actions of the Hudson's 
 Bay Co. toward Americans. 
 
 I^t us see what the record says. 
 
 July 13, 1841, Dr. Whitnum wrote a six-page letter to D. Greene, 
 Secretary (from which nothing has yet been printed), in which we 
 find the following: "Your fears lest our good understanding with 
 the gentlemen of the Hudson's Bay Co. should have been inter- 
 rupted ai-e not well founded — for it has remained undisturbed up 
 to this date; indeed, we never were on better terms than at present. 
 I believe I have told you that Mr. McLoughlin and Mr. Pambrun 
 were the only two j)rofessed Catholics among the gentlemen of the 
 company with whom we have to do business. To the hour of Mr.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 351 
 
 Pambnin's death (which was in May, 1841), without interruption 
 w^e were growing more and more in confidence and kind offices." 
 
 Mr. Pambrun had been continuously in charge of Fort Walla 
 Walla, only twenty-five miles from Whitman's Station, from 1832 
 to 1841, and every American who went there in all those years and 
 has left any record spoke in the highest terms of his kindness and 
 hospitality. 
 
 The mission house in which Mr. Eells lived burned January 11, 
 1841, and March 6, 1841, Rev. C. Eells wrote to D. Greene, Secre- 
 tary, a letter the essential parts of which were printed in the Mis- 
 siomiry Herald for October, 1841. After giving an account of the 
 fire, he continues: 
 
 "Mr. McDonald, who is in charge of Fort Colvile" (sixty miles 
 from them), "on hearing of our misfortune, unasked, dispatched 
 four men immediately, and they soon made our house habitable. 
 Two gentlemen of the Hudson's Bay Co., Messrs. McLean and Mc- 
 Pherson, volunteered their services to assist in whatever was neces- 
 sary to be done, and came at the same time with them, or rather 
 led the march. 
 
 "All camped upon the ground when the mercury must have been 
 not less than 10 below zero and the snow from six inches to one foot 
 in depth. This is but a specimen of the unvarying kindness shown 
 us by the gentlemen of the Hudson's Bay Co. with whom we have 
 had any particular intercourse or connection." 
 
 No advocate of the Whitman Legend has ever quoted this letter^ 
 or alluded to this action of the Hudson's Bay Co., except that Rev. 
 M. Eells, in the life of his father, Rev. C. Eells, published it in 1895, 
 but he has never even alluded to it in any of his articles specially 
 devoted to advocating the Whitman Saved Oregon Story. 
 
 Rev. E. Walker's diary, under date of Sunday, January 17, 1841, 
 reads as follows: 
 
 "Just as the sun was setting Mr. McLean and Mr. McPherson 
 rode up with four men to assist in repairing the burnt house and 
 bringing letters to Mr. Eells and myself from Mr. McDonald. 
 
 "They were more or less frozen and suffered much on the route." 
 March 18, 1845, Rev. C. Eells wrote an eight-page letter to D. 
 Greene, Secretary, in which is the following concerning Mr. Mc- 
 Donald, who had for years been in charge of Fort Colvile — the near- 
 est white neighbor they had — and who had left Fort Colvile in Sep- 
 tember, 1844, to take his children where they could be educated: 
 *'The kindness of that estimable family toward us was unabated to 
 the last. The politeness and cordiality with which we have ever 
 been welcomed to their generous hospitality, the prompt and cheer- 
 ful manner in which they have attended to frequent calls for assist-
 
 352 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 ance and the numeious unsolicited and gratuitous favors they have 
 conferred upon us deserve grateful acknowledgment." 
 
 John Lee Lewes succeeded McDonald at Fort (^olvile and was 
 e(|ualiy kind to these missionaries. 
 
 liev. Iv Walker to 1). Greene, April 3, 1848, says that on Decem- 
 ber 9, 1847, when the news of the Whitman massacre reached them, 
 they sent an express to Fort Colvile, and Mr. Lewes at once replied, 
 urging if there seemed to them any danger that they ''Hy to this 
 estahlishiiuMit one and all without delay, and T will do my best for 
 your protection, till we can find the means to convey you all to Van- 
 couver, or till the times of ])eace return again, making it safe for 
 you to return to your own abode." 
 
 They remained at Tshimakain till Wednesday, March IHth, but 
 the following extracts from Mrs. Walker's journal will show how 
 earnestly solicitous Mr. Lewes was for their safety: 
 
 "Saturday, February 12, 1848. An express from Colvile. Mr. 
 Lewes alarmed about us in consequence of Indian rumors. We are 
 much perplexed to know what to do. We fear to go, we fear to stay. 
 
 "Sunday, 13th. . . . This afternoon another express arrived 
 from Colvile. Affairs there have taken a serious turn. The men are 
 under arms and in alarm for themselves and for us. 
 
 "Sunday, 20th. . . , Another letter from Mr. Lewes. He 
 has also sent a Canadian to remain awhile. 
 
 "Friday, March 10th. Thos. Roy left for Colvile this morning. 
 
 "Sunday, March 12th. Frederick Lewes (son of John Lee Lewes) 
 and Thomas Roy arrived. Mr. Lewes seems rather afraid to have 
 us remain longer. 
 
 "Monday, March 13th. We conclude that it is best to remove 
 to Colvile for awhile. 
 
 "Wednesday, March 15th. We left home about noon, perhaps 
 to return no more. 
 
 "Saturday, March 18th. We reached Colvile about noon, where 
 we received a cordial welcome." 
 
 The two fnmilies remained guests of Mr. Lewes till June 1, 1848, 
 when tlioy left under an escort of the First Oregon Riflemen, and 
 under date of June 1, 1848 (in a twenty-two-page letter in the form 
 of a diary) to Rev. D. Greene, Secretary, Rev. C. Eells wrote: 
 "With emotions which we cannot well express for the great kind- 
 ness and invaluable assistance of John Lee Lewes, Esq., we took 
 leave of that worthy gentleman." 
 
 In 18;{.~) Lieut. W. A. Slacum, of the United States Navy, was 
 sent by President Jackson's ])ersonal orders on a special mission to 
 obtain all possible information that would be useful to our Govern- 
 ment about Oregon, and his memorial was printed as Sen. Ex. Doc. 
 No. 24, 25th Cong., 2d Sess.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 353 
 
 In it he says : ''Mr. Jason Lee, one of the founders of the Meth- 
 odist Mission, acknowledges the kindest assistance from Dr. Mc- 
 Loughlin, of Fort Vancouver, who gave him the use of horses, oxen 
 and milch cows, and furnished him all supplies. Indeed Dr. Mc- 
 Loughlin has acted toward many of the settlers in the same manner, 
 giving them the use of cattle and horses on the following terms: 
 
 ''The produce of the neat cattle and horses belong to the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co., and are liable to be called for at any time. If the 
 cattle die, the persons holding them are not charged with their value. 
 Horses to be returned in kind, or the sum of |8, the current value of 
 the horse, is charged." 
 
 As to his own treatment by the Hudson's Bay Co. there is only 
 space for the following extract: 
 
 (P. 5) "The next day Mr. Douglas, returning from Fort 
 George, called aboard the Loriot, and repeated the invitation given 
 me by Mr. Finlayson to visit Fort Vancouver ; and as there was but 
 one more Indian settlement between this point and the Hudson's 
 Bay Co.'s establishment at Vancouver, I embarked with Mr. Doug- 
 lass, in his canoe, with nine 'Canadian voyagers.' We made about 
 fifty miles in twenty-four hours and landed next day at the fort, 
 where I met a hospitable reception from Dr. John McLoughlin and 
 Mr. Duncan Finlayson." 
 
 In 1839 Thomas J. Farnham (characterized by a prominent Eng- 
 lishman who traveled with him on the Pacific as "a flamboyantly 
 patriotic American"), went to Oregon at the head of a small migra- 
 tion, mostly from the vicinity of Peoria, 111. In 1841 he published, 
 at Poughkeepsie, N. Y., "Travels in the Great Western Prairies, and 
 in the Anahuac and Rocky Mountains, and in the Oregon Territory," 
 of which two more editions were published in New York City, and 
 one in London in 1843. 
 
 He had this to say of his reception and treatment by the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co. in their "desperate attempts to prevent Americans 
 reaching and settling Oregon." 
 
 (P. 132-6) "A friendly salutation was followed by an invita- 
 tion to enter the fort, and a 'welcome to Fort Hall' was given in a 
 manner so kind and obliging that nothing seemed wanting to make 
 us feel that we were at home. . . . Goods are sold at this estab- 
 lishment 100 per cent, lower than at the American posts." 
 
 (He doubtless meant for half the price, which is 50 instead of 
 100 per cent, lower. — W. I. M.) 
 
 Having spent three days enjoying the kindest hospitality at Fort 
 Hall, Farnham went on and (on pp. 83-84 ante) we have already 
 quoted his equally kind reception at Fort Boise. 
 
 September 22, 1830, Mr. Farnham reached Whitman's station, 
 and under date of September 27th he thus records the arrival of
 
 •{54 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Cliiei" Trader lh'iiiatin«;er, on his return irom Vancouver to Fort 
 Hall ()». I'io) : "In the afternoon of this date, the arrival of Mr. 
 Erniatinjier, the senior clerk at Fort Hall, created quite a sensation. 
 His unilorni kindness to the missionaries has endeared him to 
 them." 
 
 There is not one word in any contem])oraneous letter or diary 
 of any of the American missionaries or travelers who had to do 
 Avith Mr. Ermatinfjer which is not of the same tenor as this, and 
 as the extract from Father De Smet heretofore quoted (on p. 124). 
 liut some years later Ermatinger became a Catholic, and so Gray, 
 some years later still, when Ermatinger was dead, began to abuse 
 him, and though most of the advocates of the Whitman Legend have 
 refi-ainod from following Gray in this matter, the very imaginative 
 Mrs. Dye, in ''McLoughliu and Old Oregon" ( McClurg, l')l)0), de- 
 votes rha])ter XXII. to ^'Ermatinger Guards the Frontier," and 
 though he was certainly in command of Fort Hall in 1838 and 1839, 
 she represents him as having been sent to Fort Hall in 1840 (the 
 very year that he helped Newell, Meek and Wilkins to outfit and 
 drive fi-om there to Walla Walla the first three wagons Avhich ever 
 went through to the Columbia (Cf. pp. 85-88 ante), to prevent 
 wagons going beyond there to Oregon, and to deceive the mission- 
 aries and Americans generally as to the accessibility of Oregon 
 from the United States! She quotes not a solitary authority for 
 her statements on these i)oints, but says: "He slyly led the mis-. 
 sioTiarios through the most difficult goat trails over the mountains." 
 . . . "Through jungles (things which cannot be found between 
 Fort Hall and the Columbia River. — W. I. M.) and over mountain 
 patches of snow, where never man or beast had trod before." This 
 related to the parties of 1840 and 1841, and when we come to exam- 
 ine Lieut. Wilkes' report we shall see how very wide of the truth 
 her statements are as to the missionaries of 1840 as far as their 
 opinion of the accessibility of Oregon from the States is concerned, 
 while Xewell's account hereinbefore quoted of the wagons of 1840 
 from Fort Hall to Walla Walla makes it absolutely certain that 
 Ermatinger did not, as Mrs. Dye asserts, conduct these missionaries 
 at all. Instead of giving the correct account (as Newell himself 
 gave it) of Ermatinger helping Meek, Wilkins and himself drive 
 through three wagons from Fort Hall, Mrs. Dye says in Chapter 
 XX : "Jo Meek, the American trapper, and his 'pard' had decided 
 to settle in the Willamette Valley. They went to Fort Boise and 
 got Whitman's 'old wagon.' Into it they packed their Indian wives 
 and bal)ies, and drove by a recently discovered trail over the Blue 
 Mountains to Wailatpu." 
 
 Foi- this, as in fact for all the statements in her book, she quotes 
 no authoritv.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 355 
 
 But that is doubtless the safest way when a writer desires to 
 write history out of the profound depths of a very lively imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 (P. 155) Farnham thus relates his reception and treatment at 
 Fort Walla Walla: "I was kindly received by Mr. Pambrun at 
 Walla Walla. This gentleman is a half-pay officer in the British 
 Army. ... I breakfasted with him and his family. ... I 
 tarried only two hours with the hospitable Mr. Pambrun, but as if 
 determined that I should remember that I would have been a wel- 
 come guest a much longer time, he put some tea and sugar into the 
 packs. ... A fine, companionable fellow. I hope he will com- 
 mand Fort Walla Walla as long as Britons occupy it, and live a 
 hundred years afterward." 
 
 (P. 170) He thus describes his reception and treatment at Fort 
 Vancouver: "Mr. James Douglas, the gentleman who has been in 
 charge of the post during the absence of Dr. McLoughlin" (while 
 on his trip to England and back) "conducted us to a room warmed 
 by a well-fed stove; insisted that I should exchange my wet gar- 
 ments for dry ones, and proffered every other act that the kindest 
 hospitality could suggest to relieve me of the discomforts resulting 
 from four months' journeying in the wilderness." 
 
 The missionary parties of 1838, 1839 and 1840 were just as 
 kindly received and treated at these forts as Farnham, except that 
 the 1838 party (Gray, C. Eells, A. B. Smith, E. Walker and their 
 wives, Mr. Stevens and Cornelius Rogers) did not go to Walla Walla 
 and Vancouver. Barrows, with his habitual indifference as to facts, 
 says (p. 147), speaking of the 1838 party: "Impediments, perils 
 and Indians do not seem to have been put before their fancies there 
 at that fur traders' Gibraltar, for they had no carriages. They had 
 acted on the already well-established impressions in the East that 
 carriages could not travel to Oregon." This is the sort of imagina- 
 tive writing about Hudson's Bay Co.'s posts that all the advocates 
 of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story indulge in. 
 
 One of Fremont's party to Oregon in 1843 was Col. Wm. Gil- 
 pin, graduate of West Point, who took a distinguished part in 
 the Mexican War and was afterward Governor of Colorado. In 
 1867 he testified in Washington, D. C, in the case of the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co. vs. the United States that he spent several days at 
 Fort Hall in September, 1843, and several weeks there on his re- 
 turn in 1844, and that it was an adobe and log cabin trading post, 
 worth in his judgment about |2,000, and occupied by eleven men 
 (Hudson's Bay Co. vs. United States Ev., Vol. VI., p. 330). "So 
 much for this fur traders' Gibraltar." That there was no "well- 
 established impression in the States that carriages could not travel 
 to Oregon" is evident from the fact that Dr. Weed, who kept a re-
 
 350 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 lij;ious b(X)k store in Cincinnati (and was the agent there of the 
 American Board Corns. Foreign Missions), sent a wagon to the 
 frontier for this jiarty, which not being suitable they traded for 
 anollier, and (Jray, in a letter (never yet published I to 1). Greene, 
 Seiretary, dated Kendezvous on Wind Kiver, July (no day), 1838, 
 thus describes its disposition : "The wagon we purchased to sup- 
 ply the place of the one sent by Dr. Weed we have exchanged with 
 ('apt. Fontenelle (an American fur trader never connected with the 
 Hudson's Hay Co.), who kindly exchanged with us when we could 
 bring it no farther for want of horses." This was more than seven 
 hundred miles east of Fort llall, for, though Gray does not state 
 the precise i)lace where the trade was made, Mrs. Eells' diary for 
 May, 31, 1838, says: "Give the wagon to Capts. Drips and Fon- 
 tenelle" (Cf. Transactions Oregon Pioneer Assn., 1889, p. 73). This 
 was when they were cami)ed at Fort William on Laramie Fork of 
 the Platte Kiver. 
 
 The i)arties of 1839 and 1840 left their wagons at Fort Hall for 
 precisely the same reason that Whitman left his cart at Fort Boise, 
 and Gray traded off his wagon to Fontenelle "on account of the 
 fatigue of our animals." 
 
 We have already (pp. 227-232 a7ite) stated the great extent and 
 value of Lieut. Wilkes' explorations of Oregon during April to 
 October, 1841, and quoted from his hitherto unpublished dis])atch 
 No. 98 and from his sy)ecial report of June 13, 1842, to the Navy 
 Department. 
 
 Surely if the Iludson's Bay Co. was disposed to throw obstacles 
 in the way of the exploration of Oregon by Americans, here was an 
 oj)y)ortunity for them to do so very effectively by declining to fur- 
 nish any information, and by dealing out supplies grudgingly, and 
 only when paid for at the highest market rates. 
 
 Turn now to the testimony of (no longer Lieutenant) Rear 
 Admiral Charles Wilkes, who being duly sworn at his residence, in 
 Charlotte, N. C., on December 31, 180(1, testified as follows in the 
 case of "The Puget's Sound Agricultural Co. vs. T'nited States,"' 
 after testifying that he was in command of the United States ex- 
 ploring expedition in Oregon in 1841: 
 
 "Interrogatory 3. What report of this expedition has ever been 
 made, and by what authority has it been published? 
 
 "Ans. It was made by the direction of the Congress of the 
 T'nited States and published by their authority, and at the expense 
 of the Government. 
 
 "Int. 4. Was the report so published written by you; and if so, 
 from what was it prepared?
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 357 
 
 "Ans. It was written by me entire — prepared from my own 
 notes and from official reports made by the officers under me, in the 
 carrying out of orders issued by me." 
 
 {Idem, p. 234) Cross-examination, 
 
 "Cross. Int. 4. How long after the time you saw these posts of 
 the company was this report written ? 
 
 "Ans. I kept a diary during the expedition of every day's pro- 
 ceedings and occurrences throughout the whole time embraced in 
 the publication, written daily, before I retired to rest. It had been 
 my practice long before the expedition, and has been ever since." 
 
 (Idem, p. 238) "Cross Int. 18. Did you not receive from the 
 officers of the Puget's Sound Agricultural Co. all the attention in 
 their power and did they not afford you every facility that they 
 could in carrying out the objects of your expeditions? 
 
 "Ans. For the first week I did not. I understood from the gen- 
 tlemen that they were precluded from giving me aid until they re- 
 ceived instructions from Vancouver. Afterward, in arranging my 
 traveling parties, procuring horses from the Indians, and giving 
 us models and instructions for making saddles for the horses, they 
 were very kind. As regards the surveying duties, they afforded me 
 no assistance. 
 
 "Int. 19. Was there any government in the country when you 
 were there? 
 
 "Ans. There was none, nor did I look for any. 
 
 "Int. 20. How many vessels and how large a force of men had 
 you while at Nisqually? 
 
 "Ans. A sloop-of-war and a brig-of-war, with two (2) launches 
 and some ten boats. The crews comprised upward of three hundred 
 (300) men" (Cf. Vol. 8, Kept. P. S. Agl. Co. vs. U. S., pp. 228-238). 
 
 Turning to Vol. VI. (Hudson's Bay Co. vs. United States) we 
 find on p. 289 : 
 
 "Int. 62. What opportunities did you have for learning the 
 value of the trade of the Hudson's Bay Co.? 
 
 "Ans. I had a great many opportunities of learning, in conver- 
 sation, and eliciting opinions in relation to the then value as well 
 as future prospects of the trade in furs and peltries obtained, the 
 modes of trapping, fitting out, discipline, and operations at their 
 various posts, the times and seasons best suited for the conveyance 
 of the articles dealt in, both by land and water, and also informa- 
 tion in regard to the climate and the character and numbers and 
 intercourse with the Indians. Also, the emigration from the States 
 and the condition in which the parties arrived in the territory, to- 
 gether with the routes most practicable through the Rocky Moun- 
 tains," and on p. 299 the following:
 
 358 ACQUIISITIOX OF OIUJGON 
 
 ''Cross Int. 60. Have you not stated, in speaking, in a report 
 made by you of your explorations after 1841, of the members of the 
 \\illaniette Mission and Dr. McLoughlin, that 'they invariably spoke 
 of Dr. M('Lou<>hlin in the hij>hest terms. They were averse to his 
 absolute rule of the whole territory, and, although it was considered 
 by them as desi)otic, tliey could not adduce any instance of the 
 wrong application of his power?'" 
 
 "Ans. The paragraphs quoted are to be understood as referring 
 to the moneyed power which Dr. McLoughlin, being at the head of 
 the Hudson's Bay Co., could give or withhold at his pleasure. In 
 some cases he thought proper to extend a helping hand or afford 
 means to settlers, while in other cases he denied it. This was cal- 
 culated to produce a great deal of ill feeling, as well as good feel- 
 ing. 
 
 "Int. 61. Have you not also stated at the same time and in the 
 same report, speaking of the settlers, that the settlers are also de- 
 terred from crimes, as the company has the power of sending them 
 to Canada for trial? 
 
 "Ans. I have stated so; and this applies to those settlers who 
 were formerly in the service of the Hudson's Bay Co. 
 
 "Int. 62. So far as your knowledge extends, has Dr. McLoughlin 
 extended to newcomers and settlers, of good character, every facil- 
 ity in his power and also invariably given them the use of cattle, 
 horses, farming implements and supplies, to facilitate their opera- 
 tions until such time as they are able to provide for themselves? 
 
 "Ans. I think he has. All cases of any misunderstanding be- 
 tween himself and settlers, that came to my knowledge, proved his 
 liberality and solicitude for their welfare. 
 
 "Int. 6:i. Did not the ofiicers of the Hudson's Bay Co. afford to 
 yourself and the officers under your command every facility within 
 their power to further the exploration in which you were engaged? 
 
 "Ans. I think they did, sir." 
 
 Iflcni, p. 301, the following is of interest, though not bearing 
 strictly on the matter now immediately under discussion: 
 
 "Ke examination.'' 
 
 "Int. 5. \N'hether or no you ever at any time before 1847 made 
 any estimate of the value of all the posts and trade of the Hudson's 
 Bay < 'o. south of the 49th degree of north latitude ; if so, state un- 
 der what circumstances you made it, and what it was? 
 
 "Ans. I made such an estimate at the suggestions of many per- 
 sons connected with the (Jovernment and Congress, and to Sir (ieorge 
 Siiii])son during a visit of his to Washington. I think this visit was 
 about the year, 1S46, ]>rior to or about the time of the making of the 
 treaty. The amount I estimated them to be worth was a half million 
 dollars for all ilie ]»(»sts of Hudson's Bay and Puget's Sound Com-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 359 
 
 panies. Sir George Simpson thought it ought to be a million. I 
 told him that it might be so, but advised him to get that sum in- 
 serted in the treaty, for I thought that if he left it out of the treaty 
 he might get much less." 
 
 Turning now to his great five volume report published in 1845, 
 let us read a few of the many acknowledgments therein of the 
 kindness of the Hudson's Bay Co. — not of Dr. McLoughlin at Fort 
 Vancouver alone, but at every post of the company they visited and 
 every officer they encountered. Vol. IV., p. 30: ''On the 13th of 
 May, Mr. Anderson, in charge at the Hudson's Bay Co.'s post of 
 Nisqually, was kind enough to present me with two bullocks for the 
 crews and a quantity of vegetables, for which we felt ourselves much 
 indebted. A large supply of milk was also sent to us daily from 
 the dairy and many other little kindnesses and attentions were 
 manifested." 
 
 (Vol. IV., p. 310) "Mr, Anderson's kindnesses had obviated 
 many of these obstacles." 
 
 (Vol. IV., p. 315) ''We were kindly received by Mr. Forrest, the 
 superintendent" (/. e., of the Hudson's Bay Co.'s farm on the Cow- 
 litz), "who quickly made arrangements for canoes to carry us down 
 the Cowlitz and Columbia rivers to Astoria or Fort George. He 
 also provided us with an excellent repast and pressed us to remain 
 over night." 
 
 {Idem, p. 320) Describing their arrival at Astoria: "Mr. Bir- 
 nie, the agent of the Hudson's Bay Co., met us at the landing with 
 lanterns and every assistance, and gave us a truly Scotch welcome. 
 We soon found ourselves in his quarters, where in a short time a 
 fire was burning brightly, and his hospitable board spread with 
 good cheer, although it was past midnight." 
 
 {Idem, p. 323) "The Hudson's Bay Co.'s oflficers possess and 
 exert a most salutary influence, endeavoring to preserve peace at 
 all hazards. It is now quite safe for a man to pass in any direction 
 through the part of the country where their posts are." 
 
 {Idem, p. 327) Describing Vancouver, he says: "Between the 
 steps are two old cannons on sea carriages, with a few shot, to speak 
 defiance to the natives, who no doubt look upon these as very for- 
 midable weapons of destruction. I mention these, as they are the 
 only warlike instruments to my knowledge that are within the pick- 
 ets of Vancouver, which differs from all the other forts in having no 
 bastions, galleries or loop-holes." ... On their arrival at Van- 
 couver they found Dr. McLoughlin absent, but "only a few minutes 
 elapsed before Dr. McLoughlin came galloping up. He gave us that 
 kind reception we had been led to expect from his well-known hos- 
 pitality. . . . He at once ordered dinner for us, and we soon
 
 360 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 felt ourselves at home, having comfortable rooms assigned us and 
 being treated as part of the establishment." 
 
 (Idem, p. 328) "All goods are sold at Vancouver at 80 per cent, 
 advance on the London prime cost; . . . but at the other posts 
 it is about 100 per cent, to cover the extra expense of transporta- 
 tion." 
 
 [J (hut, p. 331) . . . "All the above-named missionaries ex- 
 cept the Methodists came across the Rocky Mountains; they repre- 
 sented the pass through them as by no means difficult, and that they 
 had entertained no apprehension of the hostile Indians. They had 
 accomjtanied a party of fur traders from St. Louis, and gave a de- 
 plorable ncconiit of the dissi])ation and morals of the party. Messrs. 
 (Jriflith and Clarke (should be Gritfen and Clark.— W. I. M.) were 
 entirely disappointed in finding self-support here, and had it not 
 been for the kindness of Dr. McLoughlin, who took them in, they 
 would have suffered much. They were advised to settle themselves 
 on the Faulitz Plains, where I understand they have since taken land 
 and succeeded in acquiring quite respectable farms." ... "I 
 was introduced to several of the missionaries. . . , They, for 
 the most part, make Vancouver their home, where they are kindly 
 received and well entertained at no expense to themselves. The 
 liberality and freedom from sectarian principles of Dr. McLoughlin 
 may be estimated from his being thus hospitable to missionaries of 
 so many Protestant denominations, although he is a professed Cath- 
 olic, and has a priest of the same faith officiating daily at the 
 chapel." 
 
 (Idem, p. 333) "Wherever the operations of the company ex- 
 tend they have opened the way to future emigration, provided the 
 means necessary for the success of the emigrants and rendered its" 
 (the country's) "peaceable occupation an easy and cheap task." 
 
 (Idem. ]). 341) "On the 3d of June we made arrangements for 
 leaving Vancouver and proceeding up the Willamette; but the 
 weather was so stormy that we deferred our departure until the fol- 
 lowing day. Di-. AIcLoughlin had kindly furnished us with a large 
 boat, and although we had provided ourselves with provisions, we 
 found in her a large basket filled with everything that travelers 
 could need or kindness suggest." 
 
 (Idem, ]). 343) "There was a petty dispute between Rev. Mr, 
 Waller ;ind the company, and he complained of them. It seems that 
 the company refuses to buy any beaver skins excey)t from the hunt- 
 ers and traj)pers, and he accuses them of monopoly in consequence. 
 The company, on the other hand, say that they have no idea of sell- 
 ing goods out of theii' own stores for the ])urpose of enabling others 
 to enter into competition with them; and that they will spare no 
 expense to keep the trade as long as they can in their hands. This
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 361 
 
 is certainly not unfair. I cannot help feeling that it is quite un- 
 suited to the life of a missionary to be entering into trade of any 
 kind. To embark in traffic must, I think, tend to destroy the use- 
 fulness of a missionary, or divert his attention from the great cause 
 in which he is engaged. ... I am disposed to think that any 
 complaints against the Hudson's Bay Co. for endeavoring to keep 
 the trade in their own hands come with an ill grace from the mem- 
 bers of a mission who are daily receiving the kindest attentions 
 and hospitality from its oflScers." 
 
 {Idem, p. 393) "In taking leave of Mr. Ogden, I must express 
 the great indebtedness I am under for his attentions and kindness 
 to Mr. Drayton, as well as. for the facility he offered him for ob- 
 taining information during their progress up the Columbia. I am 
 also under obligations to him for much interesting information 
 respecting this country, which he gave without hesitation or reserve. 
 He was anxious Mr. Drayton should accompany him to Okanagan. 
 
 {Idem, p. 395) ''As respects the success of the missionary la- 
 bors, it is very small here" (/. e., at Wailatpu). 
 
 {Idem, p. 401) "By the kindness of Mr. McKinlay (chief trader 
 in charge of Fort Walla Walla) and by the direction of Mr. Ogden, 
 Mr. Drayton found himself fitted with good horses and every con- 
 venience requisite for the journey, besides a quantity of provisions." 
 
 Lieut. Johnson's party had gone east from Puget's Sound to the 
 Columbia over a region previously wholly unexplored and nearly 
 in the center line east and west of that part north and west of the 
 Columbia, which was the only part really in dispute between the 
 United States and Great Britain after 1824, and their reception at 
 Colvile is thus stated. 
 
 {Idem, p. 440) "They {i. e., part of Johnson's party) reached 
 Fort Colvile late in the afternoon, and w^ere all soon made to forget 
 the fatigues of the journey by the kind attentions of Messrs. Mc- 
 Donald and Maxwell, who had charge of the post." 
 
 {Idem, p. 443) "Lieut. Johnson having reached Fort Colvile 
 with his party, it was determined that they should spend three days 
 there, not only to refresh their horses, but to repair the damages 
 which their saddles and packs had received. For these purposes 
 Mr. McDonald afforded every facility in his power, besides supply- 
 ing all their wants, and received in payment of the articles he fur- 
 nished Lieut. Johnson's orders upon the ship, to be collected through 
 the authorities at Vancouver." 
 
 {Idem, p. 450) "Of the more northern parts of the Oregon Ter- 
 ritory" (?'. e., north of 49 degrees), "through the kindness of the 
 officers of the Hudson's Bay Co. I obtained much interesting infor- 
 mation, little of which has, I believe, been yet communicated to the 
 public."
 
 362 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 {Idem, p. 454) "On the l!)th (June, 1841) Lieut. Johnson was 
 I)reparinff to depart, with liis ])arty, having recruited his horses 
 and mended his accoutrements. Tlie kindness of Messrs. McDonald 
 and Maxwell supplied all their wants, and enabled the party to 
 leave Colvile in a better state than they had originally departed 
 from Xis(]n;illy. To these gontlemon my thanks are esjtecially due 
 for their attention to the ollicers, who all spoke in high terms of the 
 kindness they received. After their departure they found that the 
 ladies of the establishment had been equally mindful of their com- 
 forts, in not only tilling their haversacks, but in sujiplying them 
 with moccasins." 
 
 (Idem, p. 463) ''They" (/. e., part of Lieut. Johnson's party) 
 "reached Walla Walla befoi-e dark iind were kindly welcomed by 
 Mr. McLean, one of the company's clerks, who was in charge of that 
 post." 
 
 (Idem, p. 468) "On the 4th of July they" (/. e., Lieut. Johnson's 
 party) "left the fort and crossed the river. . . . Mr. McLean's 
 kindness and attention were similar to that already met with, and 
 he provided them with necessary horses, provisions, etc." 
 
 (Idem, p. 470) "On the 15th" (July) "reached Nisqually, all 
 well, having performed the journey of about 1,000 miles." . . . 
 "They traversed a route which white men had never before taken, 
 thus enabling us to become acciuainted with a portion of the coun- 
 try about which all had before been conjecture." 
 
 (Vol. v., p. 123) "Soon after the wreck of the Peacock, Capt. 
 Hudson, hearing that Dr. McLoughlin was in want of hands to aid 
 him in the harvest, dis])atched the Kanakas (/. c, Sandwich Island- 
 ers) belonging to the Peacock up to Vancouver to assist in gather- 
 ing it in. It afforded some little j)leasure to contribute this aid, and 
 thus in some small degree to repay the attentions and kindness of 
 the comjKiny's officers." . . . "The articles necessary for this 
 purpo.se (/. e., the repairs of the brig Oregon), which we ourselves 
 were not able to supi)ly, were cheerfully furnished us at reasonable 
 prices from the stores and workshops of the company. Indeed, 
 nothing could exceed the kind attentions that were lavished ui)on 
 us; and the moment we ex])ressed a desire it was immediately com- 
 plied with." . . . "It will be remembered that Passed Midship- 
 men Eld and Colvocoressis were ordered to make a journey through 
 the Chickeeles country to Gray's Harbor, just as the ship was get- 
 ting under way from Nisqually, and that circumstances rendered 
 their de])arture more hurried than it was desirable it should be. 
 P>ut through the kindness of Mr. Anderson and Capts. McNeil and 
 Scarborough" (all three Hudson's Pay Co.'s officers. — W. I. M.), 
 "the party was not left in want of anything very material."
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 363 
 
 (Idem, p. 13G) . . . The number of posts occupied by the 
 Hudson's Bay Co. in this territory is twenty-five. (This includes 
 those west of the Kockies between 49 deg. and 54 deg. 40 min. — W. 
 I. M. ) . These are located at the best points for fur trade, and so as 
 to secure the resort of the Indians without interfering with their 
 usual habits. Places are also occupied in the vicinity of their 
 abodes during the most favorable part of the year for obtaining the 
 proceeds of their hunting. This is regulated with much skill, and 
 the portion of the country once under their care is never suffered 
 to become exhausted of furs ; for whenever they discover a decrease 
 the ground is abandoned for several years until the animals have 
 time to increase again. A charge has been made against the com- 
 pany that they were desirous of exterminating the beaver south of 
 the Columbia, and would continue to hunt them until every fur- 
 bearing animal was exhausted. This from the information I re- 
 ceived I believe to be erroneous ; the story has probably proceeded 
 from feelings of rivalry on the part of those who spread the report. 
 Another charge made against them of exciting attacks on the free 
 trappers, who are generally from our borders, is to be received with 
 many allowances. It has been made in many cases from interested 
 motives, and I am satisfied that nothing of this kind could ema- 
 nate from Vancouver or from any of the oflQcers. 
 
 "The whole conduct of Dr. McLoughlin is totally at variance 
 with such a course ; every facility has been at all times extended to 
 newcomers and settlers ; it is sufficient that they are of good char- 
 acter, and the use of cattle and horses, farming utensils and sup- 
 lies is invariably extended to facilitate their operations until such 
 time as they are able to provide for themselves. 
 
 "During our stay at Vancouver I had the pleasure of seeing 
 many members of the Wallamette Missions" (i. e., the Methodist 
 Mission. — W. I. M.), "but they were unable to give me much infor- 
 mation. They invariably spoke of Dr. McLoughlin in the highest 
 terms. They were averse to his absolute rule over the whole terri- 
 tory, and although it was considea'ed by them as despotic, they could 
 not adduce any instance of the wrong application of his power. He 
 is, notwithstanding, extremely unpopular among all classes of our 
 countrymen, but for what reason it is difficult to conceive." 
 
 Idem, p. 147, contains the following letter from Wilkes to Dr. 
 McLoughlin and Mr. Douglas, dated U. S. Brig Porpoise, Baker's 
 Bay, October 5, 1841: 
 
 "Gentlemen : My last duty before leaving the Columbia I feel 
 to be that of expressing to you my sincere thanks for the important 
 aid and facilities which you have afforded the expedition on all oc- 
 casions for carrying out the object of our visit to this part of the 
 world; and be assured it will prove a very pleasant part of my duty
 
 MA ACQULSITIOX OF OREGOX 
 
 to iiKiko a due representation of it to my Government. Your per- 
 sonal kindness and friendly attentions to myself and officers from 
 our tirst arrival have laid nie under many obligations, which I trust 
 it may be at some future day in our power to return," and he adds: 
 . . . ''At the same time I wrote a letter to our Government, 
 informing them of the assistance we had received, stating the ser- 
 vices these gentlemen had rendered us, and asking that an expres- 
 sion of acknowledgment might be made through the British Min- 
 ister at Washington to the directors of the Hudson's Bay Co. in 
 I^ngland." The letter to our Government was dated October 31, 
 1841, and is as follows: 
 
 "U. S. Ship Vincennes, Port of San Francisco, 
 
 ''Upper Cal., Oct. 31, 1841. 
 
 "Sir: It becomes my pleasing duty to make known to the Gov- 
 ernment previous to leaving the northwest coast of America the 
 strong obligations we feel for the many kind attentions and courte- 
 sies which we have received from John McLoughlin, Esq., Chief 
 Factor of the Hon. Hudson's Bay Co., at Fort Vancouver, and to all 
 the officers of the honorable company with whom we have had in- 
 tercourse in the prosecution of the duties in the Oregon Territory 
 required by my instructions. 
 
 "These gentlemen have done everything to facilitate our opera- 
 tions by the prompt attentions and liberal supplies rendered the 
 officers and crew of the late U. S, ship Peacock on the occasion of 
 her wreck on the bar of the Columbia, and also in the outfit of the 
 U. S. Brig Oregon, for which I view the expedition greatly indebted, 
 having enabled me to carry my instructions more promptly and 
 fully into effect. 
 
 "I cannot but consider the Government in duty bound to make 
 a i»roper expression to the Hon. Hudson's Bay Co., through the Brit- 
 ish Minister at Washington, for the liberal services rendered, which 
 I beg leave to assure you would be extremely gratifying to my feel- 
 ings and duly appreciated by them. 
 
 "I have the honor to be, sir, most respectfully, your obedient 
 servant, 
 
 (Signed) "CHAS. WILKES." 
 
 For other acknowledgments by Lieut. Wilkes of kindness re- 
 ceived from the Hudson's Bay Co.'s officers, Cf. Vol. IV., pp. 322, 
 320, 304, 3G9, 372, 404, 419, 433, 434, 445, 494, and Vol. V., pp. 135, 
 13fi.) 
 
 IJefore parting with Lieut. Wilkes it seems pro])er to take up 
 the account of the building of the first small shij) in Oregon, as 
 ]»ublished in "Transactions of Oregon Pioneer Assn." for 1891, pp.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 365 
 
 181-192, and compare it with Wilkes' account of the matter as far 
 as he and the Hudson's Bay Co. were concerned in the matter. 
 
 In the "Transactions" as above is a letter (undated, but which 
 seems to have been written somewhere about 1880), to Hon. J. W. 
 Nesmith, by Joseph Gale, one of the little company who helped to 
 build "The Star of Oregon" in 1841, and who in September, 1842, 
 as captain, with a crew of four men and a little Indian boy and one 
 passenger, sailed the schooner Star (48 ft. 8 in. on the keel and 10 
 ft. 9 in. on the beam) from the mouth of the Columbia to San Fran- 
 cisco. 
 
 The letter is too long to quote in full and I will only quote such 
 parts as are necessary to consider in connection with the attitude 
 of the Hudson's Bay Co. toward Americans in Oregon. 
 
 (Trans., p. 181) "This is intended only as a synopsis of the fol- 
 lowing transactions : 
 
 "It was not until the latter part of the summer of 1840 that the 
 spirit of American enterprise began to manifest itself in Oregon. 
 Previous to that it appeared to be dead; but, instead, it was only 
 inactive for the want of something to arouse it into action. Among 
 the desiderata of the country were horses and cattle. It is true that 
 there were quite a number of cattle in the valley, and these were 
 held by Ewing Young, the Methodist Mission and the Hudson's Bay 
 Co., and with such tenacity that it was next to an impossibility to 
 purchase them at any reasonable price. The want of these were 
 severely felt by nearly every settler in the Wallamet Valley. How 
 to better our cases by supplying ourselves with such animals was a 
 question that troubled and puzzled us all. 
 
 "Consequent upon our deficiency was the question of the practi- 
 cability of building a vessel and sail her to California and there 
 dispose of her for stock. This proposition was favorably received 
 and thoroughly discussed pro and con. The result was an organiza- 
 tion of a company of the following-named men for that purpose, 
 viz. : John Canan, Ralph Kilbourn, Pleasant Armstrong, Henry 
 Woods, George Davis and Jacob Green. These men secured the ser- 
 vices of Felix Hathaway, an excellent ship carpenter, to lay out, 
 assist and superintend the work generally. They all shortly after 
 got their tools, provisions, etc., together and descended the Wal- 
 lamet River to near its junction with the Columbia, and there, on 
 the east side of Swan Island, selected a site upon which to build 
 their vessel. ... (p. 182). "The work went rapidly on, not- 
 withstanding the opposition of the Hudson's Bay Co., which had 
 been anticipated. . . . It is not pertinent to this narrative to 
 dwell (p. 183) upon the treatment of the Hudson's Bay Co. to us. 
 Suffice it to say that they did all they could to deter us from the 
 work; but it went on until completed in spite of them. And had
 
 :UU\ ACQUISITIOX OF Oli'JJGOX 
 
 it not been fdi- Captiiin ^^'ilkos, in all probability we would have 
 been obliged to lay the vessel up on account of not being able to 
 pnicnro cordage and canvas for rigging and sails. 
 
 ••Ik' inlerviowod Dr. McLonghlin on the subjc^ct ])retty roughly. 
 Tlu' doctor excused himself by saying that he thought they were 
 making a collin for themselves, for, said he, 'There is Gale at the 
 head, w Iio has been in the Hudson's Bay Co. for several years as a 
 hunter iiiid trapper, and what does he or the rest of them know 
 about the managing and navigating of a vessel at sea?' 'Never 
 mind,' said or retorted the ca])tain, 'I have seen enough to convince 
 me that he knows what he is about, and if you have such things as 
 they need you will oblige not only me, but, I believe, every Ameri- 
 can in the country, by letting them have them, and should they not 
 be able to ]»ay you for them, and as I shall want a considerable 
 amoiint of such things myself, you may charge the aggregated 
 amount to me and I will settle the same with you.' 'Oh, well, well,' 
 said the doctor, Mhey can have as much of cordage and other ma- 
 terials as they wish.' 
 
 "So the store, through Commodore Wilkes' inlluence, was thrown 
 open to us; ])ut, alas, the season was too far advanced for us to get 
 the vessel in readiness to make the i)assage that fall. We, never- 
 theless, while the chances of getting those things were so favorable, 
 and for fear that after the Commodore would leave the river 
 might shut down on us again, purchased an ample supply of all the 
 necessaries we needed, such as cordage, canvas, paints, oils, etc., 
 etc., for which we ])aid the company in wheat and furs of ditferent 
 kinds, and returned thanks to Commodoi'e Wilkes for his generous 
 <»lV('r." . . ( ]). 1S4 ) "I received a letter from Connnodore 
 
 Wilkes, in which he stated that he was on the point of leaving the 
 country, and that he felt greatly interested in the successful issue 
 of our enteri»rise, and as there was no port or town from which we 
 could h;iil oi- clear, and that without such, or papers to show from 
 and to what (Jovernment we belonged, there would be the proba- 
 bility of having our vessel seized. And he further stated: 
 
 •' 'If you can convince me that you undei'stand navigation, I am 
 ready to furnish you with j)ai)ers that will be honored in whatever 
 port you may enter, for I do not think it advisable for you or any 
 other person to attemi)t it without an adequate knowledge of that 
 science, it matters not in other resjjects how good a seaman one 
 may be.' 
 
 "I low generous and noble the old Commodore. He was perfectly 
 right. Now for me to wait on liim in person was out of the ques- 
 tion. I therefore called Kilbourn and told him to get his pen, ink 
 and pa]»ers and write while I dictated. So we soon had the follow- 
 ing letter written :
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 367 
 
 <( i 
 
 To Commodore Charles Wilkes, of the United States Navy. 
 
 " 'Dear Sir : I received voiir very kind letter and am very 
 thankful for the interest yon have taken in our affairs, but I am 
 very sorry that I cannot see yon in person, owing to being confined 
 to my bed by the fever and ague. I acknowledge the propriety of 
 your remarks in reference to going to sea without a knowledge of 
 navigation, and also the entering of a foreign port without papers 
 to show from whence I came. I do not, my dear sir, profess to be 
 a consummate navigator, yet I have a sufficient knowledge of that 
 science to take a vessel to any given port upon the globe, and, as it 
 is almost impossible for me to see you in person, you will very much 
 oblige me by proposing such questions which, should I be able to 
 satisfactorily answer, may convince you of that fact. With much 
 respect, 
 
 '' 'I am your obliged and humble servant, 
 
 '' 'JOSEPH GALE.' 
 '' 'To Commodore Charles Wilkes, of the U. S. M.' 
 
 "This letter was dispatched immediately to the mouth of the 
 Columbia River and delivered to the Commodore. The next morn- 
 ing our boat started on its return and in three days after I received 
 an answer in which were a few questions regarding the science of 
 navigation, which I answered and dispatched in a second letter to 
 the Commodore, and on the return of our boat I was highly rejoiced 
 to find that my answers were satisfactory. In consequence of this 
 I received a large document wath the United States seal upon it, 
 which was the papers alluded to by the Commodore. 
 
 ''The exploring squadron left the country a few days afterward. 
 The grand old Commodore, before leaving, made us a present of a 
 flag, an ensign, and also a compass, a kedge anchor, and hawser 140 
 fathoms long, a log line and two log glasses — 14 and 20 second 
 glasses. I bought a quadrant epitome and a nautical almanac from 
 Kilbourn, who was Capt. Couch's mate, for which I paid him |45. 
 These were sufficient for all ordinary purposes." 
 
 It was not till September 3, 1842, that they were at Astoria ready 
 with their little craft to try the voyage to San Francisco, and ad- 
 verse winds prevented them from putting to sea till September 12, 
 and on the 17th of September they reached their destination. They 
 sold the little schooner for 350 cows, and the following spring they 
 recruited a party of forty-two men for Oregon, all bringing more or 
 less stock, and May 17, 1843, started to drive to Oregon "1,250 head 
 of cattle, 600 head of mares, horses and mules — mares, horses and 
 colts principally — and nearly 5,000 head of sheep, and after a toil- 
 some journey of seventy-five days arrived in the Willamette Valley 
 with comparatively small loss. The rest of w^hat disposition was
 
 308 ACIJI J.SITION OF OREGON 
 
 inadc (il ilmt stock is known, I presume, to everybody. There is one 
 tliinji; certain, it done away with the stock monopoly and set the 
 people of ()re<;<)n in a fair way of getting on in the future. This 
 result was brought about bj' the indomitable wills of a few men 
 who are now scarcely known," 
 
 So much for Capt. Gale's account, written somewhere near thirty- 
 eight years after the event, and without any claim of reference to 
 any contemporaneous written diary or other record of the affair 
 except as hereinbefore quoted and the following two brief notes (pp. 
 18G-7) : "I i)enned the following note to Mr. Douglas, Dr. Mc- 
 Loughlin being absent: 
 
 '•'James Douglas, Esq. 
 
 " 'Sir: As I am now on my way to California, if you have any 
 letters or commands that you wish to send to Mr. Ray, residing 
 there, I will, with pleasure, take them to him. 
 
 " 'Very respectfully, 
 
 " 'JOSEPH GALE.' 
 "I received the following answer: 
 " *Mr. Joseph Gale. 
 
 "'Sir: As the schooner Cadborough, Gapt. Scarborough, will 
 leave for that port soon we will not trouble you in that particular.' 
 (His very words.) 
 
 " 'Yours, etc., 
 
 " 'J. DOUGLAS.' 
 
 "Of course, like the rest, he thought such a thing as our reach- 
 ing Galifornia was all braggadocio in us." 
 
 It is to be observed, first, that naturally Mr. Gale desired to 
 make the best showing for himself throughout the transaction; and 
 second, that (Jale had spent some years in the Rocky Mountains as 
 an American trapper before going to Oregon to settle as a farmer 
 and stock raiser (Cf. Transactions Oregon Pioneer Assn., 1880, pp. 
 10-12) and evidently had the strong prejudice against the Hudson's 
 Bay Go. resulting from that life, reinforced by hearing from 18G5 
 to 188() the constant iteration and reiteration of the accusations 
 hereinbefore <|uoled against the Hudson's Bay Go. of Gray and 
 S[)alding and sundry other advocates of the Whitman Legend; and 
 third, that, though there is no reason to question his honesty and 
 the intensity of his patriotism, il would seem from Wilkes' account 
 of this same matter that Gale's recollection was not entirely trust- 
 worthy aftei- tlie lai)se of thirty-eight years as to the cause of the 
 attitude of the Hudson's Bay Go. toward them at first, or as to ex- 
 actly what changed that attitude a little hater. 
 
 In \'ol. 1\'. of Wilkes' Kej)ort, written as he testified entirely by 
 himself, and jtublished not thirty-eight, but only four years after
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 369 
 
 the event, and prepared not from unassisted memory, but by con- 
 stant reference, not merely to notes, but to a diary which he testi- 
 fied he always wrote up daily ''before retiring to rest," we find his 
 account of this affair as follows: 
 
 (P. 337) ''During my stay at Vancouver I had a visit from 
 three of a party of eight young Americans, who were desirous of 
 leaving the country, but could not accomplish it in any other way 
 but by building a vessel. They were not dissatisfied with the terri- 
 tory, but they would not settle themselves down in it because there 
 were no young women to marry except squaws or half-breeds. They 
 informed me that they were then engaged in building a vessel on 
 Oak Island, in the Willamette, where I promised to visit them on 
 my way up the river. I found them in difficulty with Dr. McLough- 
 lin, who had refused to furnish them with any more supplies, in 
 consequence, as he stated, of their having obtained those already 
 given them under false pretenses." 
 
 [Idem, p. 342) "We encamped on the island occupied by the 
 young Americans, of whom I spoke in the preceding chapter (p. 
 337) and close to the place where they were building their vessel. 
 The group of which it is one is called the Oak Islands. 
 
 "On landing we were introduced to them all. They had reached 
 the Oregon country by crossing the Rocky Mountains a year before, 
 and worked on the Willamette, where they at first proposed to set- 
 tle themselves; but they found that that was out of the question, 
 as there was little or no prospect of their being contented, and they 
 were now bent on leaving the country at all hazards. Every one 
 with whom I spoke gave them a good character, except one, and I 
 found that shortly before my visit he had been turned out of the 
 partnership. 
 
 "The vessel they were building was a small schooner. One of 
 their number having served a short time in a ship-yard in the United 
 States, the rest were employed as his assistants, cutting timber and 
 preparing the plank, which they procured from the cedar on the 
 bank of the river. 
 
 "I explained to them the cause of Dr. McLoughlin's refusal to 
 assist them, which they denied most positively. I then told them 
 it was proper for them to deny having authorized any trick or 
 deception, on doing which I was sure they would receive any assist- 
 ance that lay in the power of Dr. McLoughlin. This they subse- 
 quently did, and I was informed that they then received all the aid 
 he had in his power to give. I tried to dissuade these young men 
 from making their voyage ; for I found on conversing with them 
 that not one of them knew anything about the sailing of a vessel or 
 navigation.
 
 aru Aci^uisiTiox of ohegox 
 
 "I therefore knew how great dangers tliev would exi)erience on 
 tlie voyage, even to ('alifornia, whither they intended to go, with 
 the inlenlion ol" taking sea-otter by the way on the coast of Oregon. 
 After their arrival at San Francisco it was their plan to sell their 
 vessel and cargo, il iluy were fortunate enough to obtain any; or, 
 if not, to go down the coast further (p. 343), when they would cross 
 over the country and return by the way of Mexico or Texas, It 
 gave nie much pleasure to see the l)uoyancy of si)irit so character- 
 istic of our countrymen with which they carried on their plan. Jie- 
 fore I left the Columbia in September they asked me for a sea let- 
 ter for their protection, at the same time informing me that their 
 vessel was launched, met their expectation and was called the 'Star 
 of Oregon.' . . . The next morning I left the boat builders, 
 after assuring them that they should have all the assistance I could 
 give them in their outfit." 
 
 This account, it will be seen, is radically different from Gale's, 
 and it would ajtpear that the decision not to try and hunt sea-otter 
 along the rock-bound coast of Oregon (which with their inexperi- 
 ence in navigation would almost certainly have meant the wreck- 
 ing of their craft and the probable loss of all on board), but to go 
 to San Francisco and sell their craft and return to Oregon with 
 stock and settle there was an afterthought during the year that 
 elajised ])etween the finishing of their craft and their start for Cali- 
 fornia, (iale's account rei)resents Wilkes as calling McLoughlin to 
 account, but Wilkes says that he advised them to go to McLoughlin 
 and deny having authorized any trick or deception, and that "they 
 subserpiently did this and Ihen received all the aid he" (i. e., Mc- 
 Loughlin ) "had it in his power to give." 
 
 Pei-haps an ex])lanation of most of Gale's mistakes lies in the 
 fact that according to his own account he was not actively con- 
 nected with the work of building the schooner till after she had 
 been launched from the ways at Oak Island and towed up the Wil- 
 lamette to the falls to be finished (/. c, till after Wilkes' visit to 
 the hnat builders' camp), and that the friction with McLoughlin 
 was due to some actions of some of the other seven men concerned 
 in tlic matter of which he was not fully informed. 
 
 Mi-s. Dye not only assumes all of Gale's account to be accurate, 
 but. accoT-ding to her usual habit, embellishes his tale with sundry 
 (su]>p()so(l ) discussions at Fort Vancouver and conversations with 
 Dr. McLoughlin and Lieutenant Wilkes, duly inclosed in the quo- 
 tation niaiks. wliich with her only serve to show that she has found 
 the alleged quotations in the exhaustless storehouse of her own re- 
 mai-kable imagination (Of. McLoughlin and Old Oregon, pp. 185- 
 103).
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 371 
 
 It will be noticed that Gale accuses the Methodist Mission with 
 aiding the Hudson's liay Co. to keep up a monopoly of cattle in the 
 Willamette. He also mentions Ewiug Young, but as Young died 
 in February, 1841, while the ''Star" was not launched till late in 
 May, 1841, he must certainly be left out of the account. He also 
 takes credit for breaking the monopoly in cattle as the result of the 
 building of the "Star of Oregon," and his daring voj^age in her to 
 San Francisco with only four men and an Indian boy as crew, none 
 of whom knew anything about a sailor's duties. This totally ignores 
 the cattle driyen from the States by the 1842 party under White, 
 and the much greater number — some 1,300 head — brought by the 
 1843 migration, which reached the Willamette only sixty days after 
 Gale's party. 
 
 While Gale's party are entitled to much credit, it would appear 
 therefore that their efforts were not quite so indispensable to the 
 welfare of Oregon as he seemed to imagine when, in his old age, he 
 wrote what he doubtless intended for a true account of the building 
 of the first sea-going craft in the Old Oregon Territory, and of his 
 exploit in sailing her to California and leading back a party to 
 Oregon with horses, cattle and sheep. 
 
 Of the experiences of the 1842, 1843 and 1845 migrations at Fort 
 Hall we haye written fully in Chapter V., and haye shown that, 
 according to all the contemporaneous statements of the leaders and 
 members of those parties that are known to exist, they were all 
 kindly treated at that post, and that there was not the least effort 
 made to preyent them from going on to the settlements in Oregon 
 with wagons. I haye found no contemporaneous record of the 1844 
 party except the diary of Key. Edw. E. Parrish, who does not say 
 one word about their reception and treatment at Hall, Boise, Walla 
 Walla or Vancouyer (Cf. Transactions Oregon Pioneer Assn., 1888, 
 p. 82). 
 
 Before we take up the contemporaneous testimony of the leaders 
 and members of those parties as to their reception and treatment at 
 Walla Walla and Vancouyer, let us examine Lieutenant Fremont's 
 report of his second expedition, in 1843-4, and the experience of the 
 scientists Nuttall and Townsend. 
 
 Following Spalding (Cf. Pacific, November 9, 18G5, and same in 
 Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 37, 41st Cong., 3d Sess.) and Gray (Cf. his "His- 
 tory of Oregon," pp. 290 and 314), Nixon (Cf. "How Marcus Whit- 
 man Saved Oregon," p. 131) asserts that Fremont was detailed to 
 escort the 1843 migration (which they all claim was under Whit- 
 man's leadership). 
 
 The claim that Fremont was to escort this migration is as ri- 
 diculous as all the rest of the Whitman Legend, for Fremont's re-
 
 372 ACQUTSITWX OF ORJJGOX 
 
 port (p. lOG of Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 174, 28th Cong., 1st Sess., being 
 the second ])age of the report of tlie second expedition), distinctly 
 declares that "it was to vary the ronte to the Kocky Monntains from 
 that of the 1842 exjiedition," which had followed the Oregon trail 
 all the way to the South Pass. 
 
 Fremont did not start from the Missouri frontier till May 21)th, 
 whereas the Oregon migration had started May 22, and he only kept 
 the Oregon trail to the crossing of the Kansas River, eighty-eight 
 miles from Inde])endence, Mo., and then left that trail and kept up 
 the Kansas, and then went southwest to the Arkansas River, and 
 did not again reach the Oregon trail till 701 miles from Independ- 
 ence on that trail, but l,Ofi(> by the route he had traveled. 
 
 This put him so far behind the migration that he did not over- 
 take its rear till August 22, on ]>ear River, and he parted from it 
 on the 2()th at Soda Springs and went to explore the Great Salt 
 Lake, and saw no more of the migration until he reached Fort Walla 
 Walla. 
 
 At Fort Hall he makes no other mention of Mr. Richard Grant 
 than this, under date of Se])tember 19, 1843: "I rode uj) to the 
 fort and purchased from Mv. Grant (the officer in charge of the 
 post) several very InditTerent horses and five oxen in very fine or- 
 der." The migration, so vastly greater than was expected, had 
 strii)})ed the fort of all supplies that could be spared (Cf. Fremont's 
 Report, p. 140). 
 
 October 8, 1843, the expedition reached Fort Boise, and Fremont 
 thus states what reception they encountered : 
 
 "We were received with an agreeable hospitality by Mr. Payette, 
 an officer of the Hudson's Bay Co. in charge of the fort ; all of whose 
 gai-rison consisted of a Canadian engage." . . . "Mr. Payette 
 had made but slight attem])ts at cultivation, his efforts being lim- 
 ited to raising a few vegetables, in which he succeeded tolerably 
 well, the post being principally suj)ported by salmon. He was very 
 hospitable and kind to us, and we made a sensible imi)ression upon 
 all bis coniestibles; but our principal inroad was into the dairy, 
 A\ liich was abundantly sup]»lied, stock appearing to thrive extremely 
 well; and we had an unusual luxury in a present of fresh butter, 
 which was, however, by no means equal to that of Fort Hall, prob- 
 ably from some accidental cause." 
 
 October 2(1, 1843, they reached Fort Nez Perce or Walla Walla, 
 and tlie rei)ort says: "Mr. McKinlay, the commander of the post, 
 received us with great civility; and both to myself and the heads 
 of the emigrants who were there at the time, extended the rites of 
 hos])itality in a comfortable dinner to which he invited us."
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 373 
 
 November 8, 1843, they reached Fort Vancouver, and the report 
 says: "I immediately waited upon Dr. McLougliliu, the executive 
 officer of the Hudson's Bay Co. in the territory west of the Rocky 
 Mountains, who received me with tlie courtesy and hospitality for 
 which he has been eminently distinguished, and which makes a 
 forcible and delightful impression on a traveler from the long Avil- 
 derness from which we had issued. I was immediately supplied 
 by him with the necessary stores and provisions to refit and sup- 
 port my party in our contemplated winter journey to the States; 
 and also with a Mackinaw boat and canoes, manned with Canadian 
 and Iroquois voyagers and Indians, for their transportation to The 
 Dalles of the Columbia. In addition to this efficient kindness in 
 furnishing me with these necessary supplies, I received from him 
 a warm and gratifying sympathy in the suffering which his great 
 experience led him to anticipate for us in our homeward journey 
 and a letter of recommendation and credit for any officers of the 
 Hudson's Bay Co. into whose posts we might be driven by unex- 
 pected misfortune. 
 
 "Of course the future supplies for my party were paid for, bills 
 on the Government of the United States being readily taken ; but 
 every hospitable attention was extended to me, and I accepted an 
 invitation to take a room in the fort and to make myself at home 
 while I staid. 
 
 "I found many American emigrants at the fort; others had al- 
 ready crossed the river into their land of promise— the Willamette 
 Valley. Others were daily arriving, and all of them had been fur- 
 nished with shelter, as far as it could be afforded by the buildings 
 connected with the establishment. Necessary clothing and provis- 
 ions (the latter to be afterward returned in kind from the produce 
 of their labor) were also furnished. This friendly assistance was 
 of very great value to the emigrants, whose families were otherwise 
 exposed to much suffering in the winter rains, which had now com- 
 menced, at the same time that they were in want of all the com- 
 mon necessities of life." 
 
 We have already shown in Chapter V. what very material ser- 
 vice Payette rendered Fremont by informing him of the easier pass 
 over the Blue Mountains, of which he had informed Farnham in 
 1839. Next let us see what treatment was accorded to the two emi- 
 nent naturalists, Thomas Nuttall, a botanist, and John K. Town- 
 send, an ornithologist, who went to Oregon with Wyeth's second 
 party in 1834. 
 
 In 1839 Mr. Townsend published, in Philadelphia, his "Narrative 
 of a Journey Across the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River," 
 which was immediately republished in London, and on p. 1G9 he
 
 374 ACQUTSITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 thus describes their iirrival and recei)tion at Fort Vanconver: ''On 
 tlie beach in I'ront of the I'ort we were met by Mr. Lee, tlie mis- 
 sionary (who had jione on in advance with his associates from Fort 
 Hall), and Dr. John McLon^hlin, the Chief Factor and Governor of 
 the Hudson's Bay posts in this vicinity. 
 
 "The doctor is a lai-^c, dignified and very noble-looking man, 
 with a fine expressive connlenance and remarkably bland and ])leas- 
 inj? manners. The missionaries introduced Mr. Nuttall and myself 
 in due form, and we were j^reeted and received with a frank and 
 unassuming politeness which was most peculiarly grateful to our 
 feelings. 
 
 ''He requested us to consider his house our home, provided a 
 separate room for our use, a servant to wait upon us, and furnished 
 us with every convenience which we could possibly wish for. 
 
 " I shall never cease to feel grateful to him for his disinterested 
 kindness to the poor, houseless and travel-worn strangers." 
 
 On p. 244 he writes thus of his reception by Mr. Pambrun when 
 on his way up the Columbia in 183(5 to explore the Blue IMountains: 
 "On the evening of the (Jth (of June) we arrived at Walla Walla 
 or Nez Perces Fort, where I was kindly received by Mr. l*ambrun, 
 the sui)erintendent." 
 
 On p. 255 he thus describes his reception at Fort George (or 
 Astoria) in September: "On the 24th I embarked in a canoe with 
 Indians for Fort George and arrived in two days. Here I was 
 kindly received by the superintendent, Mr. James Birnie, and prom- 
 ised every assistance in forwarding my views." 
 
 On ]). 203 he writes thus of his leaving Fort Vancouver for his 
 return home via the Sandwich Islands : "I took leave of Dr. Mc- 
 Longliliii with feelings akin to those with which I should bid adieu 
 to an affectionate i)arent; and to his fervent 'God bless you, sir, 
 and may you have a happy meeting with your friends,' I could only 
 reply by a look of the sincerest gratitude. Words are inadequate 
 l(» express my deep sense of the obligations wliich I feel under to 
 this truly generous and excellent man, and I fear I can only repay 
 them by the sincerity with which I shall always cherish the recol- 
 lection of his kindness and the ardent prayers I shall breathe for 
 his prosperity and happiness." 
 
 On ]). 2()o he writes tlius of the treatment received from the 
 Hudson's Bay Co.'s agent at Honolulu : "On my arrival Mr. George 
 Pelly, agent of the Honorable Hudson's Bay Co., kindly invited me 
 to his house, where T remained three days, and at the end of that 
 time Mr. Jones ]»rocured for me a neat and very comfortable grass 
 cottage, in which 1 live like a prince."
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 375 
 
 Returning now to the 1842 migration. ''Hasting's Emigrant's 
 Guide to Oregon and California" (p. 20) says: "Arriving at Fort 
 Boise, Ave were very kindly received and entertained by the gentle- 
 man in charge, who kindly proffered to let us have such provisions 
 as we needed and to render us any additional service in his power." 
 
 (P. 27) After describing their arrival in the lower settlements 
 of Oregon he goes on : "The country did not appear to us, in real- 
 ity, that delightful region which we had thus long and laboriously 
 sought. Dismay and dissatisfaction appeared to be visibly im- 
 pressed upon every countenance, and deep discontent pervaded 
 every breast. All, however, soon obtained temjjorary residences. 
 Dr. McLoughlin kindly proffered to render them any assistance in 
 his power. He proposed to sell goods on a credit to all those who 
 were unable to make immediate payment. He also commenced 
 building extensively at the falls of the Wallamette, and thereby 
 gave immediate employment, at the highest wages, to all those who 
 wished to labor." 
 
 (P. 51) "Dr. McLoughlin, who is Chief Factor of the Hudson's 
 Bay Co. west of the Rocky Mountains, is in charge" (/. e., at Van- 
 couver). "He is courteous, intelligent and companionable, and a 
 more kind, hospitable and liberal gentleman the world never saw. 
 Every possible attention, kindness and hospitality are extended to 
 all who visit him, either upon business or otherwise; some of whom 
 he invites to his own table, where they are treated with all the 
 courtesy and etiquette of English refinement. 
 
 "For all others a spacious apartment is provided, which is called 
 the 'bachelors' hall,' and which contains a convenient sitting-room, 
 a dining-room and several comfortable lodging apartments, all of 
 which are provided expressly for those who are not invited to his 
 private table. Those who occupy the 'bachelors' hall' are also fur- 
 nished with all the luxuries of the fort, servants are in readiness to 
 give them any attention, and, although they remain for weeks, or 
 even months together, as many have, the kindness, attention and 
 hospitality of the doctor are still unremittingly bestowed. But the 
 kindness and hospitality of this gentleman do not end here, for 
 when his guests wish to return to their homes a cart with servants 
 is sent to convey their baggage or goods to the river, and all this, 
 too, without promise or hope of reward. A Mr. James Douglas, 
 who is occasionally in charge of this fort in the absence of the doc- 
 tor, is also an intelligent gentleman, and is alike courteous, kind 
 and hospitable as the doctor. 
 
 (P. 58) "A kindness and hospitality exist, among those pio- 
 neers of the west, which are almost unparalleled. Upon the arrival 
 of emigrants in the country immediate arrangements are made by
 
 ;J7(; ACQULSITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 the former settlers to i)rovide them with houses and provisions, and 
 every aid is renderod tluMii in makinu, their selection of lands and 
 pi-ofuriii^ houses lor tlieniselves. The doctor, McLouiihlin, also 
 allords them every aid in his ])ower, furnishing them Avitli goods 
 and teams upon a credit, if they are unable to make immediate 
 [»ayiii(Mit, pi-oviding them with wheat for their bread and seed and 
 receiving wheat the next year in i)ayment, and letting them have 
 cows and other cattle, to be returned in such kind as shall be agreed 
 upon, with a portion of the increase. This kindness and generosity 
 of the doctor are not contined to emigrants upon their arrival 
 merely, but they are extended to every settler and respectable in- 
 habitant in all the various portions of the country." 
 
 Dr. Klijah ^^'hite, sub-Indian Agent, in his rei)ort to the Com- 
 missioner of Indian Affairs, dated April 1, 1843, says: "I think I 
 mentioned the kind and hospitable nmnner we were received and 
 entertained on the way by the gentlemen of the Hudson's Bay Co., 
 and the cordial and most handsome reception I met with at Fort 
 Vancouver from Gov. McLoughlin and his worthy associate Chief 
 Factor, James Douglas, Esq." 
 
 We have already in Chapter V. discussed the account of the mi- 
 gration of lS4:i, in George Wilkes' "History of Oregon," based on 
 Burnett's letters, and quoted its account of the kindness to it of 
 Ca])tain Richard Grant, the Hudson's Bay officer in charge of Fort 
 Hall. 
 
 Of their reception at Fort Boise nothing is said, but of their 
 treatnient at Forts Walla ^^'alla and Vancouver liurnett wrote as 
 follows: (Geo. Wilkes, p. 1)0) "We found Mr. McKinlay, a very 
 intelligent Scotchman, in charge of this post, and at his hands re- 
 ceived every civilitv and attention." 
 
 [Idem, J). 1)3) He thus describes his arrival and reception at 
 Fort Vancouver: "On my arrival I was received with great kind- 
 ness by Doctor ^McLoughlin and ]Mr. James Douglas, the second in 
 command. They both tendered me the hospitalities of the fort, 
 which otter, it is scarcely necessary to say, I accepted willingly 
 and with ]>leasure. Dr. McT.oughlin is the Governor or Chief Factor 
 of the Hudson's Bay Co., a situation most difiicult and arduous in 
 its duties, and re<piiring most consummate ability in the person 
 as]»ii-iiig to fill it. The Hudson's Bay Co. have been most fortunate 
 in their selection of Dr. .McLoughlin for this im])ortant trust. Pos- 
 sessed of a commanding ])erson, a refined, benevolent and amiable 
 manner; owning extensive acquirements drawn from study, travel 
 and intercourse with mankind; a ])rofound knowledge of human 
 nature, and withal a firmness that insured obedience and respect, 
 he is ])eculiai'ly qualified to ]»rotect the important interests of this
 
 AGQUI8ITI0X OF OREGON 377 
 
 powerful company and to control its wayward servants while thus 
 far removed from the reach of other civil authority. Dr. McLough- 
 lin is upward of six feet high and over sixty years of age. In per- 
 son he is robust, erect and a little inclined to cor])ulency, one of the 
 natural results of contentment and repose. The clear Hush of rosy 
 health glows ui)on his cheeks, his eye still sparkles with youthful 
 vivacity while he is in conversation with you, and his fine head of 
 snow-white hair adds not a little to the impressiveness of his ap- 
 pearance. His hosi)itality is unbounded, and I will sum up all his 
 qualities by saying that he is beloved by all who know him." 
 
 (Idem, pp. 9G-7) He has this to say about the treatment of the 
 emigration by Dr. McLoughlin: "Whatever may be the cause of 
 complaint existing against the Hudson's Bay Co. in their treat- 
 ment of former emigrants from the United States, the kindness of 
 Dr. McLoughlin to this emigration has been very great. He fur- 
 nished them with goods and provisions on credit, and such as were 
 sick were sent to the hospital free of expense, where they had the 
 strict and careful attendance of Dr. Barclay, a skilful physician 
 and an excellent and humane man. The Chief Factor likewise lent 
 the emigrants the company's boats to bring down such of the fami- 
 lies and baggage as had been left at the Cascades by the advanced 
 guard of the expedition which had preceded me; and he also fur- 
 nished them with the same facilities for crossing the river with 
 their cattle at Vancouver. Had it not been for the kindness of this 
 excellent man many of us would have suffered greatly, and I have 
 no doubt that much injustice has been done him by confounding 
 his personal conduct with that of many of his countrymen. The 
 policy of the company has, it is true, been very seriously con- 
 demned, as will be seen by ^Ir. Spaulding's communication" (This 
 was Capt. T. Spaulding of the ship Lausanne, hereinafter com- 
 mented on by me. — W. I. M.) "embraced in Mr. Pendleton's report, 
 but it is very questionable whether Dr. McLoughlin is justly charge- 
 able with all the evils that have arisen out of it. It is certainly 
 true that he has been in some measure the victim of misrepresenta- 
 tion, for I know of my own knowledge that the Indians of Southern 
 Oregon and those bordering on the California line, instead of being 
 inoffensive and well-disposed, as described by Mr. Spaulding, are 
 on the contrary hostile, thievish and treacherous. This is some- 
 thing toward a general refutation. It is certain that the doctor 
 himself has uniformly aided settlers by supplying them with farm- 
 ing implements and with seed grain, as a loan, to be returned out 
 of the succeeding crop. He has even gone so far as to lend them 
 hogs, to be returned two or three years afterward by their issue 
 of the same age; to furnish oxen to break their ground and cows
 
 378 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 to siipi)ly milk to their raiullies. This certainly appears to me to 
 be a very poor way to retard the settlement of the region and to 
 discourajje adventurers who arrive in it. 
 
 "A <;reat deal has been said against him because he has refused 
 to sell the cattle belonging to the company, and those who have 
 made these complaints have certainly reflected very little upon the 
 subject and are incapable of measuring the enlarged scope of the 
 doctor's jK)licy. The sui>i)ly of cattle and sheep of the settlements 
 was very limited, and the great object has been to increase it. This 
 could only be carried out by secure measures for their protection ; 
 and it would have been absurd, indeed, while the authorities of the 
 fort were denying themselves the luxury of beef or mutton to carry 
 (»iii this important object, if they should have sold cattle to those 
 whose caprice might destroy them at pleasure. Besides, all the 
 cattle, with the exception of a very few, were inferior Spanish ani- 
 mals, and it was a matter of necessity to improve the stock by 
 crossing them with those of the English breed. The same case ex- 
 isted with regard to the sheep, which were from California, but 
 which, by repeated crossings, have at length not only been greatly 
 increased, but have been improved nearly to the condition of full- 
 bloods. 
 
 "The science of stock raising the rough mountain men who were 
 the first settlers from the States did not understand. They could 
 only understand that brutes were made to kill, and hence the dis- 
 satisfaction and consequent complaint. Having improved his stock 
 and accomjilished a proper degree of increase, the doctor was ready 
 enough to sell on reasonable terms, though, to say the truth, he did 
 not find a very ready market." 
 
 (Idem, p. 08) "The utmost liberality characterizes all the deal- 
 ings with the stranger and even with the resident. If your fortunes 
 have been adverse, and you are not able to pay for the last year's 
 dealings, you are required to give your note, drawing interest at 
 five per cent. Instances have come to my knowledge since my ar- 
 rival in which I)r .McLoughlin has extended the credit of some 
 of his customers for two or three years together. He has supplied 
 most of the members of last year's emigration with such articles as 
 they needed, taking in payment only the pledge of their honest faces 
 and hard hands." 
 
 In Niles' Register for November 2, 1844, is a letter from Mr. 
 Burnett, dated Lincoln, Oregon, July 25, 1844, in which is the fol- 
 lowing: "I was six weeks at Vancouver, where myself and family 
 were most hosjtitably entertained by Dr. McLoughlin free of all 
 charge. He has been a great friend to me and has done much for 
 the emigration generally."
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 379 
 
 November 10, 1843, Mr. Burnett addressed a letter to the editor 
 of the St. Louis Reporter, from which paper it was copied into 
 various other papers. 
 
 In it he wrote: "Provisions are abundant here, and Dr. Mc- 
 Loughlin (who is the most liberal and hospitable man in the world) 
 furnishes the emigrants with wheat to be paid for in cash or in 
 wheat next year. At the Cascades we met provisions sent us by 
 the doctor, and all purchased who applied, even without money. 
 Two boats have been sent us with provisions, and the doctor has 
 lent two boats to the emigrants free of charge. We find him doing 
 everything to aid the emigrants." 
 
 Capt. T. Spaulding commanded the ship Lausanne, which car- 
 ried from New York to Vancouver the great reinforcement of fifty- 
 two persons to the Methodist Mission, leaving New York October 
 9, 1839, and arriving at Vancouver June 1, 1810. 
 
 Turning to Pendleton's two reports hereinbefore mentioned (No. 
 830, 2d Sess., and No. 31, 3d Sess., 27th Cong., Reports Coms. H. 
 of R.), we find (on pp. 56-61) ''extracts from the journal of Capt. 
 Spaulding of the ship Lausanne, in the year 1811." (Should be 
 1840.— W. I. M.) 
 
 (P. 56) ''Dr. McLoughlin, chief agent for the Hudson's Bay 
 Co., has charge of all their affairs in this part of the territory. He 
 is a gentleman of pleasing address, possessing great urbanity of 
 manners and unbounded hospitality, opening his house to all 
 strangers who can furnish any recommendations, or who have any 
 claim, as men of character, upon his hospitality; even the trappers 
 and other desperate men from the Rocky Mountains and from Cali- 
 fornia are not turned away, but are provided for outside the fort. 
 Indeed, I received every civility, not only from the doctor, but all 
 the Hudson's Bay Co.'s servants, especially from Mr. Barrit (Bir- 
 nie?), in charge of Astoria, or Fort George, who kindly came on 
 board at Baker's Bay and piloted the ship to the fort (fourteen 
 miles), and supplied all my large company with every refreshment 
 the place afforded; also sent on board the best Indian pilot on the 
 river; but, not even satisfied with this, he kindly accompanied me 
 himself to Gray's Bay, the most difficult part of the river, where I 
 found the Hudson's Bay Co.'s ship Columbia waiting a wind to 
 pass Tongue Point channel. Capt. Humphries of the Columbia 
 came on board and rendered me every assistance in his power and 
 sent his first officer, Mr. Letty, up with me to Pillar Rock, about 
 fourteen miles from Gray's Bay. The next morning, after getting 
 under way, I was hailed by a canoe, which I found had been dis- 
 liatched by Mr. McLoughlin, who, hearing of my arrival, imme- 
 diately sent on board the best pilot at the fort to assist me, sending
 
 380 ACQULSITWX OF OREGOy 
 
 also a lai-jne tub of fresh butter and a baj; of fresh bread. This 
 eivilit.v and attention can onl.v be appreciated when I state that I 
 had no chart of the river that I could run ten miles by without get- 
 tiny; a<ironn(l ; and that, out of the company's service, there is no 
 chart of the river of any value. That of Mr. Slacum is very good 
 for the bar, but of no value afterward. Arrowsmith's is of no use 
 whatever. 
 
 "On my arrival abreast Fort Vancouver, about o'clock in the 
 evening, I found the doctor on the bank ready to receive us. He 
 immediately came on board and invited all the ship's company, 
 fifty-four in number, to take tea with him at the fort; I with four 
 of my passengers acce])ted the invitation. The next day all the 
 ship's company were provided with comfortable quarters and an 
 abundant table at the fort; and Ibis hos])itality was continued till 
 they were all sent to their several destinations. One of the peculiar 
 traits of the doctor's character is that he never tires in his benevo- 
 lent acts. This I was told by those who have been intimate with 
 liini for years; and, so far as my experience goes, I can truly con- 
 firm all that was told me, for while at Vancouver I received from 
 him every civility, and his kind offices followed me all the way down 
 the river and even out over the bar." 
 
 It is true that Capt. Spaulding on pp. 58-9 criticises the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co. for intruding on American territory and for cruelty 
 to the Indians, but concerning these criticisms it must be remarked : 
 
 (1) That the Hudson's Bay Co, had exactly as good a right 
 there as any American had, because our Government, by freely exe- 
 cuted treaties made, not at the end of a war, but in time of pro- 
 found i)eace, had consented that any English citizen who chose 
 nnght be there; and 
 
 (2) That the accusations of cruelty to Indians must have been 
 incorrect gossip which he heard, being directly contrary to the uni- 
 form {)olicy of that company; and 
 
 (3) That while what I have quoted from him is his report of 
 his own experiences and observations, all his derogatory criticisms 
 are of matters of which he had no chance for personal observation 
 and are mere hearsay, and from abundant contemi)oraneous sources 
 there is indisi)utable evidence that these derogatory statements 
 based on hearsay are incorrect. 
 
 In 1834 Hall J. Kelley, a Boston school teacher, who had been 
 urging the settlement of Oregon by lectures, newspaper articles and 
 l)ami>hlets ever since 1817, and who had journeyed to Oregon via 
 Mexico and (^ilifornia, led a small ]»arty "of about a dozen" from 
 California to Oregon, arriving in the Willamette Valley the last 
 of October, 1834. It seems impossible to determine the exact num-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 381 
 
 « 
 
 ber in Kelley's pai'ty, he himself giving it variously in different 
 places and some other authorities giving it nine and some fifteen. 
 Lee and Frost say ''about a dozen." Though Kelley himself was a 
 thoroughly honorable man, a few disreputable individuals who had 
 loose ideas as to the titles to horses had attached themselves to the 
 party, and in the northern settlements of California these men had 
 stolen some horses and taken them along to Oregon, and so upon 
 the whole party rested the disgrace of the charge (which Governor 
 Figueroa of California sent by sea to McLoughlin) that Kelley's 
 party were horse thieves — a crime which in the pioneer days of all 
 the Far West has meant a worse offense than murder. TTnder this 
 dreadful stigma the i)arty remained till Ewing Young, the leading 
 spirit in the party (but not of the dishonest faction of it) secured 
 from Governor Figueroa the next year a statement that he was in- 
 nocent, after which he and McLoughlin were good friends. 
 
 Kellev was sadlv broken in health when he reached Oregon, and 
 though undoubtedly honest, on account of Governor Figueroa's 
 warning against him McLoughlin did not welcome him nor his party 
 as he had done other parties of Americans, but he (McLoughlin) 
 says that when Kelley arrived at Fort Vancouver he was ''very ill, 
 and out of humanity I placed him in a house, put a man to nurse 
 bim, the surgeon of the establishment attended on him, and had his 
 victuals sent him every meal until he left in 1S35, when I gave him 
 a passage to Oahu. On his return to the States he published a nar- 
 rative of his voyage in which, instead of being grateful for the 
 kindness shown him, he abused me and falsely stated I had been 
 so alarmed with the dread that he would destroy the Hudson's Bay 
 Co. trade that I kept a constant watch over him." 
 
 Kelley himself in his "Narrative" (p. 59) says: "When about 
 to leave Oregon the Chief Factor of the company presented me with 
 a draft of seven pounds sterling, payable at the Sandwich Islands. 
 A part, however, was paid at Vancouver in articles of comfort. 
 This was kind, and I felt grateful for it." (Cf. on Kelley (a) H. 
 H. Bancroft's "History of the North West Coast," Vol. II., pp. 548- 
 54; (b) "A History of the Settlement of Oregon and the Interior 
 of Upper California and of Persecutions and Afflictions of Forty 
 Years' Continuance Endured by the Author, Hall J. Kelley, A. M.," 
 Springfield, Mass., 18(58, and for Ewing Y'oung, Transactions Ore- 
 gon Pioneer Assn., 1880, pp. 56-8). 
 
 Kelley's book (as its title page plainly indicates) gives abundant 
 evidence that his mind was very much disordered when it was writ- 
 ten. Of the great value of his services to Oregon there can be no 
 doubt. As early as 1817 he began an agitation for the colonization 
 of Oregon and was the first to assert in his numerous lectures and
 
 3S2 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 ]>aiiiplile(s and iiows]»aj)er articles the feasil)ility of an overland 
 niijiratioii. As earl.v as 18ll!) ho i)roc'urecl the incorporation by the 
 Massachusetts Lejiislatnre ol' "'rhe American Society for encoiirag- 
 in<; the settlement of the Oregon Territory," and in 1830 published 
 a "Geo<;raphical Memoir of Oregon," acconii)anied by a map, and 
 in 1831 a "(leneral Circular" for those intending to migrate to Ore- 
 gon, in which he printed the Rocky Mountain Fnr Co.'s account of 
 the first wagons to the Kocky Mountains in 1830 and their declara- 
 tion that they could easily have gone over the mountains through 
 the Southern Pass, and Pilcher's declaration in the same Sen. Ex, 
 Doc. 39, 21st Cong., 2d Sess,, that ''wagons and carriages may cross 
 them in a state of nature without difficulty and with little delay in 
 the day's journey." 
 
 In 1832 he published in Zion's Herald, in Boston, several articles 
 calling for missionaries to accom])any his migration to Oregon. 
 \\ye(h's tirst party resulted from Kelley's publications. 
 
 His ])ersonal reception and treatment, and that of his party by 
 the Hudson's liay Co., were certainly quite as kind as could have 
 been expected with the charge of being horse thieves hanging over 
 the whole party. 
 
 Ewing Young died in February, 1841, and left nothing in writ- 
 ing concerning his reception in Oregon by the Hudson's Bay Co.,. 
 and the only trustworthy account is that of his intimate friend, Mr. 
 Courteney M. Walker (Transactions Oregon Pioneer Assn., 1880, pp, 
 5G-8). 
 
 As Mr. Walker was the manager of Wyeth's fur trading and 
 salmon fishing post at Wappatoo Island, at the mouth of the Wil- 
 lamette, he certainly was not likely to be prejudiced in favor of the 
 Hudson's Bay Co. He says that by the s])ring of 1836, after Gov- 
 ernor Figueroa had withdrawn his charges as far as Ewing Young 
 was concerned. Young, being vei'V active and desirous of accumu- 
 lating projterty, began to erect a distillery, and continues: ''By this 
 time a thorough reconciliation had taken place between Y^oung and 
 I>i-. .McLoughlin and the latter told 'Slv. Young that if he persisted 
 in his distillery it would prove a ruin to the farming settlement, 
 and assured him that if he wished to enter into any kind of enter- 
 l)rise that would be useful and beneficial to the young settlement 
 that he would advance any re(|nired aid. Upon this appeal and 
 offer he abandoned the distillery and then was planning for a saw 
 and grist mill. 
 
 "About this time (winter of 1830-37) Lieut. Slocum (Slacura) 
 arrived, calling at Vancouver, where he made his quarters. In a 
 few days he called u]»on Young and, everything being exj)lained sat- 
 isfactoiily. Young and Slocum ])ut in motion the introduction of
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 383 
 
 Spanish cattle into Oregon and within a few days a company was 
 formed, Slocum supplying the money and giving a free passage to 
 the persons engaged in his chartered brig to California. In this 
 company Young acted as the purchasing agent and manager." 
 
 As Dr. McLoughlin furnished one-half of the money for this 
 comjiany, the fact that Young was made ''purchasing agent" shows 
 how complete was the reconciliation between him and McLoughlin. 
 
 Except the journal of Rev. E, E. Parrish, hereinbefore noted 
 (Cf. p. 371 ante), and which says nothing of their treatment by the 
 Hudson's Bay Co.'s officers, I have found no contemporaneous ac- 
 count of the 1844 migration, which started after Congress (at the 
 first session of the 28th Congress) had indulged in a great amount 
 of very bellicose discussion on Oregon — the Democratic leaders 
 clamoring for "all of Oregon" (/. e., to 54 deg. 40 min.) as a prepara- 
 tion for the "fifty-four forty or fight" campaign of the summer and 
 autumn of 1844, and denouncing the great Whig leader, Henry 
 Clay, as a ''traitor" for proposing in 1826 as our "ultimatum" the 
 identical line of 49 deg. which that staunch Democrat, President 
 James Monroe, had proposed in 1818 and 1823, and which that 
 equally staunch Democrat, Polk, in 1846, accepted despite the ''fifty- 
 four forty or fight" campaign on which he was elected. 
 
 Two of the prominent members of this 1844 migration were Hon. 
 John Minto, who was President of the Oregon Pioneer Association 
 in 1877, and Joseph Watt, a prominent Oregonian for many years. 
 In "Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association" for 1876, pp. 35 to 
 50, is the "Occasional Address" for that year, by Mr. Minto, and 
 on pp. 36-7 it reads as follows: 
 
 "This difference between the two classes of colonists is shown 
 in the different circumstances and the results of the attempt of each 
 to colonize on Puget Sound. Under the guidance and fostering care 
 of the Hudson's Bay Co. the hardy Scotch and Canadians failed. 
 As they were slowly abandoning the enterprise, a few citizens of 
 the United States, against the almost hostile opposition of the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co., against the earnest advice and with the express state- 
 ment of Dr. McLoughlin, the Chief Factor, that they (the company 
 he represented) could give them no aid, not even employment, went 
 there and maintained themselves, and in a few years were holding 
 public meetings and passing resolutions calling on their Govern- 
 ment to remove the (to them) foreign elements out of their way. I 
 may here remark that it is one of the notable features of the immi- 
 gration of 1844 that it furnished the nucleus of this successful set- 
 tlement on Puget Sound." 
 
 On pp. 47-8, as follows: "The families and wagons were brought 
 down the Columbia by boats loaned by the Hudson's Bay Co. by
 
 384 ACQlIi^ITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 tlR'ii- tliiMi Cliief Factor. Dr. John McLou^hlin. Daniel Clark, S. 
 1>. Crockt'll and niyseil" had lelt onr trains at Fort Howard and 
 made our way down the valley of the Columbia, and while working 
 for a little means to return with apjilied to Dr. McLou^hlin for the 
 use of a i)atteau of the Hudson's l>ay Co.'s with which to go up 
 an«l assist our friends down the river. This we received from the 
 j;ood man. He also caused our orders we had on the comj)any for 
 the little sui»plies our earnings in the settlement would command 
 to be respected, more for the sake of the object of our enterprise 
 than from any obligation to fill them. Indeed, he set aside their 
 rules of trade to do so, and I noticed a ditference between his man- 
 iiei- and that of Mr. James Douglas in their intercourse with us. 
 Mr. D(Miglas was an urbane, civil and gentlemanly man in his deal- 
 ings with us; but, honest to himself and his sovereign, he could not 
 disguise his chagrin at each addition to the number of American 
 settlers, and if ever man, by loyalty to his sovereign's interests, 
 earned honors, James Douglas deserved his knighthood. But John 
 McT.oughlin 'held the i)atent for his honors immediately from Al- 
 mighty (Jod.' lie filled our orders, wished us success in our en- 
 terprise and said of his own volition that a messenger would leave 
 that evening with the last dispatches to a vessel about to sail out 
 of the Columbia River, which afforded us, if we would like to take 
 it, an opjjortunity to write to our friends in the east we might not 
 get again for six months. We thanked him, but said we could not, 
 foi- we had no writing material with us. He immediately ordered 
 us furnished with everything necessary." 
 
 In the ^'Transactions of Oregon Pioneer Assn. for 1886," pp. 24- 
 27, Josejdi Watt ])ul>Iishes "Kecollections of Dr. John McLoughlin," 
 from which the following are extracts: 
 
 "On the irjth of November, 1844, a company of immigrants 
 landed at Fort \ancouver, brought there on a batteau commanded 
 by Joseph Hess, an immigrant of '43. The boat belonged to the 
 Ilnd.son's liay Co. Mr. Hess was intrusted with the boat for the 
 linr|>i»se of bringing immigrants down the river. We had eaten the 
 last of onr provisions at our last camp and were told by Hess that 
 Avc conld get plenty at the fort, with or without money; that the 
 old doctor never turned ])eople away hungry. This made us feel 
 fpiite comfortable, for there was not a dollar among us. As near 
 as 1 Clin icmembei' the company consisted of sixteen men, five women 
 and four children. As soon as we landed at the fort the men all 
 stai'led to find Dr. McLoughlin. the women and children walking 
 about the shore for exercise. ^Ve soon found the doctor in a small 
 room he called his ollice. He was a tall, broad-shouldered, ])ortly 
 and dignified old gentleman; his hair long and white as snow; face
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 385 
 
 cleanly shaven, ruddy and full, and of a rather nervous tempera- 
 ment. He met us pleasantly, made us welcome, inquired as to our 
 journey down the river, and particularly of those we left behind. 
 We were the first to arrive, with the exception of a few packers. 
 He inquired who commanded the boat and how much we had to 
 pay. He told us that he had furnished the boats free of charge to 
 certain parties to bring immigrants down the river, limiting their 
 charges to keep them from taking advantage of necessity. He spoke 
 of our being so late, and feared there would be considerable suffer- 
 ing before they could all be taken down the river, but would do all 
 in his power until they reached their destination. 
 
 "We then made known to him our wants. We were all out of 
 provisions. There was a small table in one corner of the room, at 
 which he took a seat and directed us to stand in a line (there being 
 so many of us the line reached nearly around the room), and then 
 told us the year before and in previous years he had furnished the 
 people with all the provisions and clothing they wanted, but lately 
 had established a trading house at Oregon City, where we could get 
 supplies; but for immediate necessity he would supply provisions 
 at the fort. Several of our party broke in, saying, 'Doctor, I have 
 no money to pay you, and I don't know when or how I can pay 
 you.' 
 
 " 'Tut, Tut ! never mind that ; you cannot suffer,' said the doc- 
 tor. He then commenced at the head man, saying: 'Your name, if 
 you please ; how many in the family and what do you desire ?' Upon 
 receiving an answer the doctor wrote an order, directing him where 
 to go to have it filled, then called up the next man, and so on until 
 we were all supplied. He told us the account of each man would 
 be sent to Oregon City, and when we took a claim and raised wheat 
 we could settle the account by delivering wheat at that place. Some 
 few who came after us got clothing. Such was the case with every 
 boat load and all those who came by land down the trail. If he 
 had said, 'We have these supplies to sell for cash down,' I think 
 we would have suffered. After we had our orders filled we went on 
 board the boat which was to take us to Linnton (a place Governor 
 McCarver started, expecting to build up a large city in the near 
 future). 
 
 "We found the doctor in a towering rage; he was giving it to 
 Hess right and left. It appeared that the doctor had come to the 
 river to see the boat. He found it, as he supposed, full of wagons, 
 and as he had given strict orders that only bedding, clothing, camp 
 equipment, etc., should be brought with the immigrants, and that 
 none should be left, he believed that Hess was making an extra price 
 by bringing wagons. We commenced getting into the boat and
 
 386 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 cliiiibing: ou top of the wagons. When all were in there wan not 
 an inch of spare room left. The doctor stook looking on until we 
 were out on the river; he evidently expected to see the boat sink. 
 Soon we heard him call out: 'Mr. Hess! All right, sir.' 
 
 "\\'hen we started for Oregon we were prejudiced against the 
 IIu<lson's Bay Co., and Dr. McLoughlin, being Chief Factor of the 
 company, came in for a double share of that feeling. I think a 
 great deal of this was caused by reports of missionaries and ad- 
 verse traders, imbuing us with a feeling that it was our mission to 
 l)ring this country under the jurisdiction of the stars and stripes. 
 lUit when we found him anxious to assist us, nervous at our situa- 
 tion in being so late, and doing so much without charge, letting us 
 have of his store and waiting without interest until we could make 
 a farm and pay him from the surplus products of such farm, the 
 prejudice heretofore existing began to be rapidly allayed. We did 
 not know that every dollar's worth of provisions, etc., he gave us, 
 all advice and assistance in every shape, were against the positive 
 orders of the Hudson's Bay Co., and in the end he had to pay the 
 Hudson's Bay Co. every dollar that he had trusted to the settlers 
 of this country. In this connection I am sorry to say that thou- 
 sands of dollars virtually loaned by him to settlers at different 
 tinios in^^these early days was never paid, as an examination of his 
 books and papers will amply testify." . . . ''In the first few 
 years after the permanent settlement commenced all classes asked 
 the advice of the doctor as to the best course to pursue with refer- 
 ence to the many constantly arising questions. It appeared by com- 
 mon consent that he was practically the first Governor of the great 
 North Pacific Coast. No man ever fulfilled that trust better than 
 Dr. John McLoughlin. He was always anxious over the Indian 
 I>T-oblein. No one understood the Indian character better than he 
 (lid. All the Indians knew him as the great 'White Chief,' and be- 
 lieved whatever he said could be depended on ; that he was not their 
 enemy, but was strictly just with them in everything; could punish 
 f)r reward, as he thought best, and no trouble grew out of it. But 
 with the settlers the case was different. Their intercourse with the 
 Indians led to more or less com])lications. I"n])rinci])led whites 
 w(iii!<l take advantage; they made and sold them a vile compound 
 called 'Blue Buin,' the use of which not only led to intoxication, 
 but seemed to arouse all that was bad in both white and red man. 
 Dr. McT.oughlin frequently had to use all his ])ower to keep peace 
 and harmony between the two races. Many believed if the doctor's 
 warnings and advice had been followed much of our trouble with 
 the Indians would not have occurred. His advice to Dr. Whitman, 
 when he understood how the Indians were acting, was to 'leave the
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 387 
 
 place immediately; not to trust them, delay was dangerous; leave, 
 and don't go back until the Indians feel better toward you.' If this 
 advice had been acted upon that terrible massacre would not have 
 taken place and there would have been no Cayuse war. Yet after 
 these events occurred no man did more to bring the Indians to jus- 
 tice and avenge the murder of Dr. Whitman and others than Dr. 
 McLoughlin." 
 
 Concerning what Minto says of the settlement of the Puget 
 Sound region (which was begun by this 1844 migration in 1845), 
 it is to be observed that it was fully expected by the Hudson's Bay 
 Co. and by Englishmen generally that the Columbia River would 
 be the boundary, and nothing was more natural and proper, there- 
 fore, than that this English corporation should seek to dissuade 
 Americans from settling north of the Columbia; and that there was 
 no improper action in this regard is shown by Minto's statement 
 that it was ''against the almost hostile opposition of the Hudson's 
 Bay Co., against the earnest advice and with the express statement 
 of Dr. McLoughlin, the Chief Factor, that they (the company he 
 represented) could give them no aid, not even employment." 
 
 Now, as McLoughlin was then and had been for twenty years 
 the only representative of the Hudson's Bay Co. residing in the 
 Oregon Territory, ''whose word was the end of the law" as to the 
 policy and aims of the Hudson's Bay Co., it is plain that there was 
 nothing more of this "almost hostile opposition of the Hudson's 
 Bay Co." to these American settlers in what the Hudson's Bay 
 Co. regarded as certain to soon become English territory than is 
 contained in the declaration that "McLoughlin earnestly advised 
 them against making the settlement, and declared that the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co. could give them no aid, not even employment." 
 
 As to the actual experience of this first American colony in the 
 Puget's Sound region (of which Joseph Watt was not a member), 
 while I find no contemporaneous evidence, we have the sworn testi- 
 mony of Michael T. Simmons, who was the leader of the first com- 
 pany of American settlers there, given September 1, 1865, in the 
 "Case of the Puget's Sound Agricultural Co. vs. the United States," 
 Vol. II., p. 40, as follows: 
 
 "Int. 3. 'What do you know of assistance rendered to the early 
 settlers in the country ; if so, to what extent was it rendered ?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I know that they were very kind to all the settlers; 
 every assistance that we asked for we got. I was sent by my party 
 to ask for things, and what we asked for we generally got. We got 
 seed wheat, peas, oats, potatoes, pigs and chickens, and in some in- 
 stances cows were loaned, which were afterward purchased by the
 
 388 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 settlers ; without the assistance of the company I hardly know what 
 we who came north ol" the Columbia would have done.' " 
 
 Mr. Simmons also testified in the "Case of the Hudson's Bay Co. 
 vs. file Cnitod States" (Vol. 1., pp. 129-139), as follows: 
 
 ••int. 17. 'State in what manner the Indians from Fort Hall to 
 the end of your journey treated you, and to what infiuence you 
 aseril)e that treatment?' (This relates to his experience as a mem- 
 licr of the overland mij2;ration of 1844. — W. I. M.) 
 
 "Ans. ^The Indians were very friendly and treated us very well 
 all the way from Fort Hall to Vancouver, and I attribute that treat- 
 ment to the influence of the Hudson's Bay Co.' 
 
 "Int. 14. 'What, if any, assistance was afforded to you person- 
 ally, and to other emigrants in the way of boats, to come down the 
 Columbia River with goods, provisions, grain for sowing, employ- 
 ment, etc., in 1844?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I was loaned a batteau to bring my family down the 
 river free of charge, and the company treated other emigrants in 
 the same manner ; they let us have provisions, seed grain and breed- 
 ing i)igs ; they also gave us employment getting saw logs, making 
 shingles and staves to pay for what we got.' " 
 
 This, please bear in mind, was in 1844, in all the fury of the 
 "54 deg. 40 in in. or fight" canvass for the Presidency which resulted 
 in the election of James K. Polk to the Presidency, and Simmons, 
 who was a native of Kentucky and a prominent citizen of Wash- 
 ington Territory, farmer, merchant, ship owner, owner of a grist 
 and saw mill, seven years Ignited States Indian Agent and member 
 of the Oregon Legislature in 1849, gives this testimony when twenty 
 years' time certainly had given him ample opportunity for reflec- 
 tion, and at a time, just at the close of the civil war, when the preju- 
 dice against the Hudson's Bay and Puget Sound Agricultural Com- 
 panies, as against everything British, was at its highest all over 
 the country, and especially in the Old Oregon Territory. Of Sim- 
 mons' personal character Hon. Elwood Evans, the historian of Ore- 
 gon and Washington, says in a sketch of his career: "To no fellow- 
 being (lid he ever intentionally commit a wrong. All the early 
 comers to IMiget Sound will ever treasure the remembrance of his 
 unstinted hospitality and his ever-ready and active zeal in contrib- 
 uting to the comfort of every settler. To the extent of his means 
 none more than he contributed to the establishment of schools, 
 churches and roads and other public benefits" (Transactions Ore- 
 gon IMoneer Assn., 1880, pp. 87-98). 
 
 As to W^att's statement that "we did not know that every dol- 
 lar's worth of provisions, etc., he gave us, all advice and assistance 
 in every shape, was against the positive orders of the Hudson's Bay
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 380 
 
 Co., and in the end he had to pay the Hudson's Bay Co. every dollar 
 that he had trusted to the settlers of the country," it is only neces- 
 sary to say, as in the case of the criticism which Capt. Spaulding 
 of the ship Lausanne made of the policy of the company, as here- 
 inbefore quoted and commented upon by me (see pp. 379-380 ante) 
 that in what he testified of the kindness of Dr. McLoughlin to the 
 emigrants and the assistance which he rendered them, not out of 
 his private means, but out of the stores under his control as the 
 superintendent of the Hudson's Bay Co.'s whole business in the Ore- 
 gon Territory, Mr. Watt speaks of what he knew from his own per- 
 sonal experience and observation, while as to the question of what 
 the positive orders of the Hudson's Bay Co. were, and whether or 
 not Dr. McLoughlin acted contrary to them and was made to pay 
 the company every dollar that he had trusted to the settlers of this 
 country, Mr. Watt, never having been in the position of a director 
 or other oflScial of the Hudson's Bay Co., and not pretending to 
 have any information from any inspection of their official records, 
 is merely repeating hearsay on this matter, and that as Dr. Mc- 
 Loughlin visited England in 1838, six years after Wyeth's first 
 party reached Oregon and four years after his second party, with 
 the Methodist missionaries and Townsend and Nuttall, the natural- 
 ists, reached Oregon, and also Hall J. Kelley's party of American 
 settlers reached Oregon, and three years after Eev. Samuel Parker 
 reached Oregon and was so hospitably entertained by Dr. INIcLough- 
 lin and all the other Hudson's Bay Co.'s olficials, and two years 
 after Whitman, Spalding and Gray reached Oregon, and as Dr. Mc- 
 Loughlin returned in 1839 with his powers undiminished, and as in 
 1841 Sir George Simpson, the absolute Governor of all the Hudson's 
 Bay Co.'s affairs in America from 1822 to 1857 (Cf. his testimony 
 before select committee of Parliament in 1857, quoted by Gushing in 
 his argument in Vol. IX., Hudson's Bay Co. and Puget's Sound 
 Agricultural Co. vs. United States, supplement, p. 9), reached Ore- 
 gon on a tour of inspection of all the Hudson's Bay Co.'s posts and 
 oflBcers there and returned to London in the autumn of 1842, and 
 left McLoughlin's powers undiminished, and as those powers re- 
 mained undisturbed till he resigned in the autumn of 1845, it is 
 simply incredible, with the rigid discipline always maintained by 
 that company over all its agents and employes, that this hearsay 
 part of Mr. Watt's statement can be correct, the more especially as 
 the sworn testimony of the Hudson's Bay Co.'s officers in Oregon, 
 Messrs. James Douglas and Archibald McKinlay, men of the high- 
 est character and men who were in position to know the exact truth 
 about the matter, squarely contradicts this hearsay statement of 
 Watt. (Cf. "The Case of the Hudson's Bay Co. and Puget's Sound
 
 390 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Agricultural Co. vs. the United States," Vol. I., pp. 60-61, for Doug- 
 las, and 108-104 for McKinlay's testimony, quoted on p. 397 infra.) 
 The migration of 184.5 consisted of about 2,.o00 souls, with be- 
 tAveen ~A)0 and 6()() wagons, and among them was Joel Palmer, cap- 
 tain of a company that started from Independence, Mo., and had 
 about forty wagons (see "Transactions Oregon Pioneer Assn., 1877, 
 pp. 54 and 55). Palmer returned to the States in 1846 with five 
 companions, and in 1847 returned to Oregon with his family and 
 remained there the rest of his long and honored life. His "Journal 
 of Travels Over the Kocky ^Mountains to the Mouth of the Columbia 
 Kiver, made during the years 1845 and 1846, by Joel Palmer, also 
 a letter from the Rev. H. H. Spalding, Cincinnati, J. A. and U. P. 
 James, 1847," is the only contemporaneous account of that journey 
 so far as I have been able to ascertain. On p. 42, under date of 
 August 8, 1845, he says : "We traveled but five miles, which brought 
 us to Fort Hall. . . . Capt. Grant is now the officer in com- 
 mand ; he has the bearing of a gentleman." 
 
 (P. 112) Palmer says: "After breakfast we visited the fort" 
 (/. e., Vancouver), where we had an introduction to Dr. McLough- 
 lin, the Governor of the Hudson's Bay Co. He appears to be much 
 of a gentleman and invited us to remain during the day, but as we 
 were upon an excursion down the river we only remained to make 
 a few purchases." 
 
 (Idem, pp. 62-64) Palmer gives an account of the unfortunate 
 outcome and hard experiences of an expedition led by one S. L. 
 Meek, who induced about 200 families to turn off from the regular 
 route at Malheur River, about half-way from Fort Hall to Fort 
 Walla Walla, and try a new route to The Dalles. After telling how 
 they narrowly escaped death from starvation and that about twenty 
 of them died from disease previous to their arrival at The Dalles, 
 and as many more after their arrival there. Palmer goes on as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 "It has been stated that some members of the Hudson's Bay Co. 
 were instrumental in this expedition, but such is not the fact. 
 Whilst I was at Fort Hall I conversed with Captain Grant respect- 
 ing the practicability of this same route, and was advised of the 
 fact that the teams would be unable to get through. The individual 
 in charge at Fort Boise also advised me to the same purport. The 
 censure rests, in the origin of this expedition, upon (S. L.) Meek" 
 (who was a thoroughly patriotic American, like his brother, the 
 noted Col. Jos. L. Meek. — W. I. M.), "but I have not the least doubt 
 but he supposed they could get through in safety. I have under- 
 stood that a few of the members controlled Meek, and caused him 
 to depart from his original ])lan."
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 391 
 
 (Idem, pp. 116-118) Palmer describes the Oregon Territory, 
 and stating the population he goes on : "The settlers are laboring 
 under great disadvantages on account of not being able to obtain 
 a sufficient amount of farming implements. The early settlers were 
 supplied at the Hudson's Bay Co.'s stores, and at prices much less 
 than these now charged for the same articles. At that time the 
 supply was equal to the demand; but since the tide of emigration 
 has turned so strongly to this region the demand is much greater 
 than the supply. This may be said of almost every kind of goods 
 or merchandise. The supply of goods in the hands of the American 
 merchants has been very limited, being the remnant of cargoes 
 shipped round upon that coast more for the purpose of trading with 
 the Indians than with the cultivators of the soil. 
 
 "Great complaints have been made by the merchants trading in 
 that quarter that they were not able to compete with the Hudson's 
 Bay Co., and this is the cry even at home, but the fact is the prices 
 were much lower before these American merchants went into the 
 country than they are now. 
 
 "Their mode of dealing is to ask whatever their avarice demands 
 and the necessities of the purchaser will bear. And not being satis- 
 fied with an open field, they have petitioned the Hudson's Bay Co. 
 to put a higher price upon their goods, as they were selling lower 
 than the American merchants wished to sell. In accordance with 
 their request the Hudson's Bay Co. raised the price of goods when 
 sold to an American, but sold them at the old prices to British sub- 
 jects. This arrangement was continued for two years, but an Amer- 
 ican can now purchase at the fort as cheap as any one. These facts 
 I obtained from various sources, and when apprised of the prices of 
 goods in that country they were not hard to be believed. 
 
 "I paid for a pair of stoga shoes, made in one of the eastern 
 States, and a very common article, four dollars and fifty cents. The 
 price for a common coarse cotton flag handkerchief, which can be 
 had in Cincinnati for five or ten cents, fifty cents. The price of 
 calico ranges from thirty-one to eighty-seven and a half cents a 
 yard ; common red flannel, fl.SO a yard ; a box of percussion caps 
 (containing two hundred and fifty), two dollars and fifty cents; 
 coarse boots, eastern made, six to eight dollars; calfskin, ten to 
 twelve dollars; coarse half hose, one dollar; dry goods generally 
 ranging with the above prices. Iron was selling at t^s^elve and a 
 half cents a pound. Tools of all kinds are very high; so that what- 
 ever may be said against the company for putting down the prices 
 to destroy competition by breaking up other merchants cannot be 
 'sustained by the facts of the case.' That they prevent them from 
 raising the prices there can be no doubt, and if the American mer-
 
 392 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 chants had the field clear of competition the prices would be double 
 what they now are. They have not capital to enable them to keep 
 a suijply nor to purchase the surplus of the country. 
 
 "The Hudson's Bay Co. are the only purchasers to any extent, 
 for there are no others who have the necessary machinery to manu- 
 facture wheat, which is the staple of the country at present. The 
 American merchants buy a few fish, hides and lumber, but in such 
 limited quantities as to be of very little advantage to the country. 
 A few American merchants with a little capital would give an im- 
 pulse to trade, encourage the settlers, make it a profitable business 
 to themselves and add much to the character of the country." 
 
 In Transactions Oregon Pioneer Assn., 1877, pp. 46-59, is an 
 address by Hon. Stephen Staats, one of the 1845 migration, and on 
 p. 52 he says : "We reached Oregon City in thirteen days from The 
 Dalles (two of which we were without food), and on our arrival 
 those of us in advance were kindly and hospitably received by old 
 Dr. McLoughlin. He immediately furnished us with provisions 
 without money and without price, and extended to us favors which 
 we were ever ready to reciprocate. I am not one of those who wish 
 to cast reflections on the character of Dr. McLoughlin or wish to 
 impute to him anything wanting in the kindest feelings toward the 
 emigrants of 1845. For well do I know that but for him many 
 would have been more embarrassed in making provision for the com- 
 ing winter's necessities than they were, and I have yet to see the 
 emigrant of 1845 who, when speaking of the "old man doctor," does 
 not speak in high commendation of his action toward the emigrants 
 of that year." 
 
 This, it should be remembered, was in 1845, not only after all 
 the fury of the "fifty-four forty or fight" campaign of 1844 had re- 
 sulted in the election of James K. Polk to the Presidency, but after 
 the news of his inauguration and the disturbing paragraph about 
 Oregon in his inaugural address had reached these Hudson's Bay 
 Co.'s officers in Oregon, and when, if ever, they might naturally 
 have been expected to oppose Americans settling in Oregon. 
 
 As the report of the trial of the Hudson's Bay Co. and the 
 Puget's Sound Agriculaural Co. vs. the United States is such an 
 exceedingly rare document that few historical students can easily 
 get access to it, it seems best to copy here all the testimony given 
 in that case by all the Americans who went to Oregon before 184G 
 that bears upon the treatment Americans received from the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co. and that company's treatment of the Indians, together 
 with so much of the testimony of Sir James Douglas and Archibald 
 McKinlay of the Hudson's Bay Co.'s witnesses as covers these points. 
 
 Mv references to the volumes will be as thev are numbered in
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 393 
 
 the State Department Library at Washington (for they were pub- 
 lished as pamphlets, part of them in Montreal and part in Wash- 
 ington, and with no volume numbers). 
 
 I have been able to learn of the existence of but four sets besides 
 my own, viz.: In the libraries of (1) the State Department at 
 Washington; (2) the Law Library, Albany, N. Y. ; (3) H. H. Ban- 
 croft's Library, San Francisco; (4) Yale College Library, New 
 Haven, Conn. 
 
 The claims of these two companies originated in the third and 
 fourth articles of the treaty of 1846. 
 
 As we have seen from the testimony of Rear Admiral Charles 
 Wilkes (Cf. pp. 356-364 ante) he, about 1846, estimated the value of 
 all these "possessory rights, farms, lands, etc.," at a half a million 
 dollars, and advised the representatives of the Hudson's Bay Co. in 
 Washington to have that amount inserted in the treaty, which they 
 declined to do, hoping to get more. 
 
 At various times between 1846 and 1860 the United States Gov- 
 ernment sought to buy out the claims of the Hudson's Bay Co. and 
 the Puget's Sound Agricultural Co. In 1852 Secretary of State 
 Daniel Webster was willing to pay |1,000,000 in full settlement, 
 and probably but for his untimely death in November, 1852, a set- 
 tlement would have been made on that basis (Cf. Vol. III., Hud- 
 son's Bay Co. vs. United States, pp. 222-3). 
 
 The Indian wars in Eastern Oregon in the years 1848 to 1859, 
 and the occupation of various posts of the Hudson's Bay Co. by the 
 United States troops, diminished their business and profits in the 
 Old Oregon Territory, and finally, in 1860, being notified by Gen, 
 Harney, then in command of the United States troops there, that 
 under the instructions of Secretary of War Floyd it became his 
 duty to inform them that their rights on American soil had been 
 terminated, they deemed it wise (in June, 1860), to retire altogether 
 from the territory of the United States, but under protest to pre- 
 serve their rights (Cf. Vol. I., Hudson's Bay Co. vs. United States, 
 pp. 189-91, 417). 
 
 Feeling that the United States Government was depreciating the 
 value of their claims by acts of hostility to which they were power- 
 less to offer resistance, and President Buchanan having in conversa- 
 tion with Lord Lyons, British Minister at Washington, on "July 11, 
 1860, suggested that the best and most expeditious mode of set- 
 tling the question would be for the companies to state at once the 
 lowest sum for which they would sell their rights to the I~^nited 
 States," Lord John Russell called on the Governor of the Hudson's 
 Bay Co. to fix the amount which they would ask for the extinction 
 of their claims ; whereupon the Governor named |650,000 as their
 
 394 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 minimiiin price, but Lord Russell advised him in view of all the 
 circumstances to reduce their claims to |500,000, which they agreed 
 to do, and Lord Lyons communicated this offer to Gen. Lewis Cass, 
 our Secretary of State, on December 10, 18G0 (Cf. Hudson's Bay 
 Co. vs. I'uited States, Vol. VII., pp. 2824), and there can be no 
 doubt but what this offer would have then been accepted but for 
 the excitement following the election of Lincoln and the secession 
 movement during the winter of 18G0-G1. The claims still remain- 
 ing a source of great irritation between the two nations, on July 1, 
 1803, a treaty was made between the United States and Great Brit- 
 ain, which provided for the appointment of a commissioner by each 
 nation, with power for the choice by them of an umpire, which com- 
 mission was to proceed to hear the evidence and award the amount 
 due from the United States to the Hudson's Bay Co. and Puget's 
 Sound Agricultural Co., which award was to be final and conclusive, 
 and in full payment of all claims of every kind that the two compa- 
 nies had under and by virtue of the treaty of 1846. The commis- 
 sion was constituted as follows: 
 
 Commissioner on the part of the United States, Alexander S. 
 Johnson ; on the part of Great Britain, John Rose ; umpire, Benj. R. 
 Curtis; counsel, on the part of the United States, Caleb Gushing; 
 on the part of Great Britain, Charles Dewey Day and Edward 
 Lander. 
 
 The taking of evidence began at Victoria, Vancouver Island, 
 August 5, 1805, and ended August 24, 1807. Witnesses were exam- 
 ined in British Columbia, at several places in Oregon, and also in 
 Washington Territory, in Montreal, New York City, Detroit, Mich., 
 Washington, D. C, Cincinnati, Ohio, New Orleans, La., Goldsboro, 
 N. C, the Tortugas, and London, England. The United States 
 called more than 100 witnesses, including almost every prominent 
 army officer that had ever been stationed in Oregon, among them 
 Generals U. S. Grant, Phil Sheridan, Gordon Granger, Alfred Pleas- 
 anton, Rufus Ingalls, James A. Hardie, 0. C. Augur, David H. Vin- 
 ton and Benj. Alvord, also Admiral Charles Wilkes and Commander 
 Gibson of the United States Navy. 
 
 Caleb Gushing was beyond question the best qualified man in the 
 United States for the ])Ost of counsel in this case, not merely from 
 his acknowledged standing as one of the ablest lawyers in the land, 
 but from his intimate connection with the discussion of the Oregon 
 boimdary question, in Congress and out of it, in the years 1828 to 
 1846. 
 
 In Chapter VI. we have mentioned his four articles in the North 
 American Revieio, and quoted from his famous report and supple- 
 mental report (Cf. jtj). 202-203 ante).
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 395 
 
 At about this time also Mr, Gushing was interested with some 
 other Massachusetts men in a cargo of merchandise shipped to Ore- 
 gon for trading purposes, and so came directly into competition with 
 the Hudson's Bay Co. 
 
 In November, 1845, in a lecture before the Boston Lyceum 
 (which was promptly published in this country and republished 
 by William Clowes & Sons, London, England), he reiterated very 
 forcibly the statements of his report to the House of Representa- 
 tives about the ease of the occupation of Oregon by the people of 
 the United States and the practical impossibility of its coloniza- 
 tion, as the world then looked, by Great Britain. (A copy of the 
 London edition of this lecture is in the Boston Public Library, No. 
 2 of shelf No. 4478, 31.) With all this special preparation and 
 study of the whole question of the Oregon Territory, and the rela- 
 tion of the Hudson's Bay Co. to its settlement by Americans, noth- 
 ing is plainer than that if Mr. Gushing could have found any trust- 
 worthy evidence of any wrongful acts by that company toward 
 American missionaries, explorers or settlers, he would have brought 
 forward the evidence thereof, since if they had, prior to 1846, vio- 
 lated the rights of American citizens under the treaties of 1818 and 
 1827, and more especially if any proof could have been adduced 
 that they were responsible for the Whitman massacre (which took 
 place on November 29, 1847, more than a year after knowledge of 
 the treaty of 1846 had been received there), he would have been 
 able to entirely defeat their claims to any compensation from our 
 Government. (The news of the treaty of 1846 settling the boundary 
 reached Oregon City and was printed in an extra of the Oregon 
 Spectator, a semi-monthly, and then the only paper published west 
 of the Missouri, for Thursday, November 12, 1846. A file of the 
 Spectator is in the San Francisco Public Library, where I exam- 
 ined it.) 
 
 The claims presented by the Hudson's Bay Go. aggregated at 
 first 13,822,036.67, and by a motion to amend there was added to 
 this the sum of |459,900,' making $4,281,936.67 (Gf. Vol. III., Hud- 
 son's Bay Go. vs. United States, pp. 14 and 15), and the Puget's 
 Sound Agricultural Go. claimed a further sum of |1,168,000 (Gf. 
 Memorial of Puget's Sound Agricultural Co., Vol. IV.), making a 
 total of 15,449,936.67. There was room for much honest difference 
 of opinion as to the value of many of the items of these claims, and 
 also as to whether or not the claimants had a right to claim any- 
 thing for such items as the rights to trade and the right to navigate 
 the Columbia, since they continued to trade and navigate the Co- 
 lumbia long after the treaty was made, but finally the commission- 
 ers, after one of the most thorough judicial investigations ever
 
 39G ACQIL'^ITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 given to any matter of dispute, on September 10, 18G9, awarded to 
 the Hudson's Bay Co. .^450,000 and the Piiget's Sound Agricultural 
 Co. ?lM)(),(K)(), or in all ^050,000, which, it will be noticed, is the pre- 
 cise amount that the Governor of the Hudson's Bay Co. had first 
 informed Lord John Russell was the minimum amount they would 
 !)(' willing to accei)t in the autumn of 1860, 
 
 ( )f the more than 2,000 pages of testimony in this case by far 
 the greatest part possesses no general interest, being merely esti- 
 mates of the value of the land and the improvements thereon at the 
 several posts of the company south of 49 degrees, and the condition 
 of Ihe buildings and the relations between the company and the 
 more unscru[)ulous settlers (some of them Americans and some of 
 them discharged employes of the companies), who had "squatted" 
 on the land claimed by the companies, and torn down their fences, 
 and stolen their cattle; and of the futile efforts of the companies to 
 secure redress from the frontier courts, which they soon found to 
 be "places where justice was dispensed with" whenever a "free 
 American citizen" or any other "squatter" was defendant and the 
 "blasted British monopoly" was plaintiff. 
 
 The Hudson's Bay Co. were at great disadvantage from the 
 death of most of those who were thoroughly conversant with all 
 the facts which they desired to establish — Dr. McLoughlin, Peter 
 Skeen Ogden, James Birnie, P. C. Pambrun, F. Ermatinger, Paul 
 Fiazer, John D. B. Ogilvy, Adolphus Lee Lewes, John McLeod, 
 Thomas McKay, X. Payette and Archibald McDonald all had died 
 before the trial began. 
 
 Whether or not their evidence would have increased the amount 
 of the award no one can tell, but certainly if they or even McLough- 
 lin. Ogden, Birnie, Pambrun, Ermatinger, McLeod and McKay had 
 been living a flood of light would have been thrown upon many 
 points of great interest to all students of Oregon history. 
 
 Let us examine such points in the testimony of the witnesses as 
 bear ui)on the subject of this chapter. 
 
 Sir James Douglas, who, with P. S. Ogden, was in charge of the 
 husinoss of the company in Oregon after the resignation of Dr. 
 McLoughlin in the autumn of 1845, and who subsequently was the 
 Governor of Vancouver Island, and who had no connection with the 
 Hudson's Bay Co. after 1850, testified at Victoria, Vancouver 
 Island, August 10, 18G.5, as follows (Hudson's Bay Co. vs. United 
 States, Vol. L, pp. 49-61) : 
 
 "Int. 13. 'State if you can what was done by the Hudson's Bay 
 Co. in exploring the country, opening roads, improving the Indians, 
 and assisting the early settlers in Oregon.'
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 397 
 
 "Ans. 'The Hudson's Bay Co. were certainly put to a very great 
 expense in exploring the country, in making roads, in establishing 
 an effective control over the Indian tribes and bringing them into 
 friendly relations with the whites, and thus rendering the country 
 habitable for settlers; substantial benefits, which, judging from the 
 precedents afforded by the settlement of the territory of the United 
 States of America, and of Her Majesty's Colonies, are never attained 
 without great sacrifice of life and a large outlay of money. A ref- 
 erence to the Hudson's Bay Co.'s books will prove that besides the 
 general kindness extended to the first American settlers who trav- 
 eled by the overland route to Oregon, material aid was largely dis- 
 pensed to them in clothing, agricultural implements and seed grain, 
 without which they could hardly have succeeded in establishing the 
 country. If my memory serves me right the value of the supplies 
 furnished to these early settlers amounted to a very large sum, 
 and I am informed that a large portion of it has never been repaid.' 
 
 "Cross Examination. 
 
 "Int. 25. 'Do you not know that the officers and servants of the 
 Hudson's Bay Co. were careful to impress the minds of the natives 
 with the difference between Englishmen, called "King George's 
 Men," and Americans, known as "Boston Men," and that in the 
 wars or difficulties with the Indians this operated to the prejudice 
 of the American settlers and authorities?' 
 
 "Ans. 'On the contrary, the very reverse of that is the case. I 
 can attest that the Hudson's Bay Co. invariably exerted all their 
 influence to protect white men of every nationality, and would 
 have given the shelter of their establishments to an American citi- 
 zen equally with their own countrymen. The distinctions known 
 among the Indians as to the nationality of the English and Ameri- 
 cans was not derived from the Hudson's Bay Co., but, I believe, 
 from American citizens themselves.' 
 
 "Int. 26. 'Is it true that it was with great difficulty the Gov- 
 ernor and Directors of the Hudson's Bay Co. in London were im- 
 pressed with the change in affairs on this coast in the settlement 
 of the country ; and did not Dr. McLoughlin have much trouble and 
 annoyance in settling his accounts because he had encouraged such 
 settlements, instead of devoting himself to the fur trade ex- 
 clusively ?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I am not aware that the Directors of the Hudson's Bay 
 Co., whatever may have been their private opinions, ever opposed 
 the settlement of the country or issued orders to that effect to their 
 agents here ; neither have I ever heard before the present time that 
 Dr. McLoughlin had been held responsible in any manner for sup- 
 plies furnished or encouragement given to settlers from the United
 
 398 ACQILSITIOX OF OREGON 
 
 States'" (Hudson's Bay Co. vs. United States, Vol, I., pp. 54-55, 60- 
 61). 
 
 Archibald ]\IcKinlav, the staunch Scotch Presbyterian, who was 
 in ehar^^e of Fort Walla ^^'alla from July, 1841, to February, 1846, 
 testified Auf^ust 24, 1S()5 {rdem, pp. 72104) : 
 
 (P. 78) "Int. 20. 'What was the conduct of the Indians toward 
 the whites passinjj through the Sn.ake country?' 
 
 ''Ans. *\'ery inotfensive and kind to the whites. I should not 
 have been afraid to travel myself or allow any of my men to travel 
 alone through that country from Fort Hall to Vancouver, or in any 
 (lirei'tion as far northwest of the Rocky Mountains as Babine Lake 
 in British Columbia.' 
 
 (P. 79) "Int. 23. 'Where did you go after leaving Fort Nez 
 Perces in 184(1, and where did you reside the greater portion of the 
 time before you left the employ of the comi)any; in what business 
 were you engaged for a portion of the time after leaving the com- 
 j)any, and where did you reside?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I left Xez I'erces (/. e., Fort Walla Walla) early in 
 February, 1846, and I think I arrived at Vancouver on the 25th of 
 the same month, and remained at Vancouver until I went to Ore- 
 gon City between the 13th and 20th of March, and took charge of 
 the company's business there, and remained there until the 20th of 
 Aj)ril, 1849. My furlough began and I was absent from the coun- 
 try until June, and returned to Vancouver, and remained there un- 
 til I went into business in Oregon City as commission and general 
 merchant, in partnership with George T. Allan and Thomas Lowe, 
 under the firm name of Allan, McKinlay & Co., and continued in 
 jtartnership until the fall of 1861. The latter part of this time the 
 business was carried on at the mill at Champoeg. The partnership 
 in real property continued until the spring of 1863. During the 
 greater part of this time I was at Vancouver as often as once or 
 twice a month, and when in commission business went there often.' 
 
 *'Cros.s-examination. 
 
 (P. 00) "Tut. 16. 'Do you not know that a white man was 
 killed by tlie Indians in the Snake country in 1841; and did not 
 the company always have an armed escort with their brigades go- 
 ing ujt and coming back between Fort Vancouver and Fort Hall? 
 \\'ould you have us believe that all the stories of perilous adventure 
 by trai)[)ers and travelers of which we have read are made out of 
 whole doth?' 
 
 "Ans. 'The man was killed, not in the Snake country, but at 
 Kamloops, in liritish Columbia. This was not the result of general 
 hostility among the Indians, but a personal difficulty with one man 
 growing out of a superstition of the Indian with reference to medi- 
 cine. After this I traveled all through that country in a company
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 399 
 
 of three and could have traveled alone equally well. The servants 
 of the company accompanying the brigades were not generally re- 
 quired to carry arms ; many did so for the purpose of shooting game 
 and defending themselves if necessary. I have heard of armed es- 
 corts being used at times, but never saw one.' 
 
 (P. 93) *'Int. 39. 'Do you not believe from the statements of 
 emigrants and the agents of the company that the boats in 1844 
 were not furnished to the emigrants, but were furnished to un- 
 principled Americans, who proceeded to charge the emigrants for 
 their passage and freight down the river, which was in many cases 
 collected?' 
 
 "Ans. 'In 1844 some men who had crossed the plains came to 
 Vancouver and represented that the emigrants were sufifering for 
 means to get dowm the river. Dr. McLoughlin, who was then in 
 charge, gave them the company's boats, they saying they would vol- 
 unteer to take them up and assist the emigrants. The boats made 
 a number of trips. Dr. McLoughlin understanding that all was 
 gratuitous. I afterward understood, however, that those who re- 
 ceived the boats did charge some of the emigrants for their passage.' 
 
 (Pp. 103-4) ''Int. 11. 'Have you not heard Dr. John McLough- 
 lin state that he had difiiculty with the officials of the company in 
 London in (p. 104) settling his accounts, because of the credits 
 given to settlers, and that he was charged with some part of this 
 indebtedness because he had suffered it to be barred by the statute 
 of limitations?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I have not; he knew better.' 
 
 "Int. 12. 'Was not much of the indebtedness which remained 
 unpaid due from the Canadian French settlers who came before the 
 general migration to Oregon; and was not some due from dis- 
 charged servants of the company?' 
 
 "Ans. 'To the best of my recollection a part of the unpaid debts 
 were due from such persons, but I think their proportion was 
 small.' " 
 
 Mr. McKinlay retired from the service of the Hudson's Bay Co. 
 in 1851 and became a naturalized American citizen. 
 
 We have already examined the testimony of Admiral Wilkes 
 and M. T. Simmons (Cf. pp. 1. 356-358, 1. 386-387 ante). 
 
 Let us now examine that of the various witnesses summoned for 
 the United States who went to Oregon before 1846, taking them in 
 the order of their arrival there. 
 
 The first was the noted Joseph L. Meek (whose ride to the States 
 from Oregon, starting on January 4, 1848, was a vastly more daring 
 deed than Whitman's ride). His testimony is found in Vol. V., 
 Hudson's Bay Co. vs. United States, pp. 62-97.
 
 4(10 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 As an Aiueriran trai)per, employed iroiii 1821) to 1835 by Smith, 
 Sul)lette and Jackson and the Kocky Mountain Fur Co., and for 
 five years thereafter as a free trapper in the eastern part of the Old 
 ()re«,'«)n Territory, he naturally had a very strong prejudice against 
 the Hudson's Hay Co., which appeared throughout his direct ex- 
 amination, but being an honest man, on cross-examination, when 
 qncstions were ])ut that compelled him to think carefully, he put 
 aside his prejudices. He was the first United States Marshal for 
 the Oregon Territory, holding that office nearly five years, officiat- 
 ing as such at the trial and execution of the Indians who were 
 found guilty of the Whitman massacre. Knowing all the evidence 
 adduced at that trial, his own daughter having been one of the cap- 
 tives then made by the Indians and rescued a month later by the 
 Hudson's Uay Co., if any one knew anything about the causes of 
 that sad tragedy it was Col. Meek, and had there existed any evi- 
 dence showing that the Hudson's Bay Co. or the Catholics insti- 
 gated it or were in any way responsible for it, Meek would have 
 known it aiul surely would have used it in his testimony to defeat 
 the claim of that company for compensation by the I'nited States, 
 but not a word of any such stuff appears in the following, which is 
 all of his testimony bearing on the relation of the Hudson's Bay Co. 
 to the American exploration, occupation and settlement of Oregon: 
 
 "Int. 3. ^When did you first come on to the western slope of the 
 Rocky Mountains, and in what capacity?' 
 
 ''Ans. 'In the month of August, 1829; in the capacity of hunter 
 and trapi)er.' 
 
 "Int. 4. 'How long did you follow that business, and in what 
 sections of the country?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I followed it nearly eleven years ; we was bounded, gen- 
 erally, on the west by the Blue ^Mountains; on the east, by the forks 
 of the Platte; south, by the river Gila, and north, by the north 
 branches of the Missouri, and into the Okanagan country.' 
 
 "Int. 7. What influence did the Hudson's Bay Co. exercise 
 over the Indians in the section w^here you operated, with reference 
 to American trappers and traders; state such facts as occur to you 
 in this connection?' 
 
 "Ans. 'The Hudson's Bay Co. exercised a great influence over 
 the western Indians — that is, the Cayuses, Nez Perces, Flatheads 
 and Spokanes. aiul through there: they had no influence over the 
 Indians east of the Rocky Mountains at all and way south. They 
 could do almost anything with the Indians. I know of one party 
 that was i-ftblied by the orders of one of the Hudson's Bay Co.'s men, 
 the commander of Fort Walla Walla; the party was robbed and the 
 furs brought back to the post and sold. I was not with that party j
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 401 
 
 that was my understanding about the matter; that was what the 
 Indians said, and what the whites said that was robbed.' 
 
 "Int. 14. 'In the early settlement of the agricultural lands of 
 the Willamette Valley, and what was then Oregon generally, what 
 encouragement or discouragement was experienced by Americans 
 from the Hudson's Bay Co.?' 
 
 ''Ans. 'When I first came down, in 1840, they discouraged set- 
 tlements by the Americans, that is especially north of the Colum- 
 bia River; they expected the Columbia River to be the boundary 
 line; they would not let us go north of the Columbia River, but al- 
 ways advised us to go south into the Willamette Valley. There 
 were some men that got cattle; Mr. Walker and Mr. Doty got cat- 
 tle ; there were but five or six of us here then ; they got oxen and 
 cows.' 
 
 "Int. 15. 'Were cattle sold or loaned to the settlers; if loaned, 
 upon what terms?' 
 
 "Ans. 'They were loaned, not sold; the Hudson's Bay Co. had 
 no cattle to sell ; they were to return the cattle with the increase.' 
 
 "Int. 16. 'Up to what date did the company continue to dis- 
 courage the settlement of Americans in Oregon?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Up to about 1843 or 1844.' 
 
 "Int. 17. 'What condition, if any, did the company impose upon 
 you, and those settlers with you in the Tualitin plains, before they 
 gave their consent?' 
 
 "Ans. 'The condition was that we were to let the Indians alone ; 
 not to raise no fuss with them, and not to trade with them — that 
 is, for furs.' 
 
 "Int. 19. 'What, in your judgment, caused the change in the 
 tactics of the company in 1843-44, with reference to American set- 
 tlers?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I thought it was on account of the emigration, so many 
 coming in here, and the American squadron having just been here.' 
 
 "Cross-examination. 
 
 "Int. 1. 'State whether the influence of the Hudson's Bay Co. 
 over the Indians was not salutary and beneficial.' 
 
 "Ans. 'Certainly it was in all this lower country.' 
 
 "Int. 2. 'Was not that influence exerted uniformly and promptly 
 for the protection of the early immigrants and settlers?' 
 
 "Ans. 'It certainly was.' 
 
 "Int. 3. 'Can you give the names of the party who said they 
 were robbed by the orders of one of the Hudson's Bay Co. men?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I can, some of their names — Wilkins, Robinson and Mc- 
 Dofy, three of them I remember well.' 
 
 "Int. 4. 'In whose employ were these men at the time?'
 
 402 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 "Ans. 'Captain Wjeth's.' 
 
 ''Int. i). 'State the time, place and circumstances of this al- 
 leged robbery.' 
 
 "Ans. 'I don't think I can exactly; it must have been in 1834 
 or 1835; I think they told me it was on the head waters of Day's 
 River; I don't know what the circumstances were,' 
 
 "Int. <;. 'Who was at that time the commander of Fort Walla 
 Walla'.'' 
 
 "Ans. 'Mr. Pambrun.' 
 
 "Int. 7. 'Did you ever hear him say anything about the matter?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Never a word.' 
 
 ''Int. 8. 'Did you see him frequently after it occurred?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I seen him, not very frequently, though several times.' 
 
 "Int. 9. 'Did you ever ask him anything in regard to it?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Never ; I don't think I ever did.' 
 
 "Int. 10. 'Did the men who said they had been robbed state 
 any reason for such an order of Mr. Pambrun?' 
 
 "Ans. 'They stated various reasons about it; the main reason 
 that they said was because they wouldn't trade their beaver with 
 Mr. Pambrun at Walla Walla. Another reason was that one of the 
 men had stolen a woman from Walla Walla and run off with her. 
 What we call stealing a woman is taking a wife when you can get 
 her; that's what we call petit larceny in the mountains.' 
 
 "Int. 11. 'Was not the capture or stealing of a woman regarded 
 by the Indians as an act of hostility, provoking their revenge?' 
 
 "Ans. 'If she had been stolen from the Indians it would have 
 been considered so by them ; but as she was stolen from the whites, 
 the Indians, generally, had nothing to do with it.' 
 
 ''Int. 12. 'From whom was this woman stolen?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I think she was stolen from some of the Hudson's Bay 
 men.' 
 
 "Int. 13. 'Was she recaptured by the Indian party?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I think not.' 
 
 "Int. 14. 'Was not the attack upon these men under the circum- 
 stances generally regarded among mountain men as an act of jus- 
 tice?' 
 
 "Ans. *I think not, sir; no, sir.' 
 
 "Int. 15. 'Do you know whether any of the principal oflScers of 
 the company approved of that act?' 
 
 "Ans. 'All that 1 ever heard speak of it condemned it — that is, 
 the principal officers, the bourgeois.' 
 
 "Int. 16. 'Did you ever hear that Mr. Pambrun ordered it, ex- 
 cept from the men who were robbed?'
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 403 
 
 "Ans. 'I heard it from the Indians, the nation that done it, and 
 the men, that is all I ever heard say so.' 
 
 ''Int. 17. 'What tribe did it?' 
 "Ans. 'The Cayuses and Walla Wallas, I think.' 
 "Int. 18. 'Do you not know that Indians are very artful in mak- 
 ing up stories of that sort to shield themselves?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Yes, Indians are very artful in making up stories, but 
 there are not many of those Indians that dare make up a story 
 against a Hudson's Bay bourgeois at those times.' 
 
 "Int. 22. 'Do you believe that this alleged robbery would have 
 taken place if it had not been for the stealing of the Indian woman?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I do not know whether it would or not' 
 
 "Int. 23. 'Were not most of the troubles between the mountain 
 men and the Indians caused by quarrels about Indian women?' 
 
 "Ans. 'No, sir.' 
 
 "Int. 24. 'Was not that a cause of diflSculty in many instances?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I think not, sir; no, sir.' 
 
 "Int. 25. 'Did you ever hear of any other robbery, such as this 
 mentioned, in which any blame was imputed by rumor or otherwise 
 to any officer of the company?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I think not; no, sir.' 
 
 "Int. 28. 'Do you not believe that the great reason why the 
 Indians respected and feared the company and its men was because 
 of their knowledge that the company had power to punish any 
 wrong; and also because the company had always instructed its 
 agents to act fairly and justly toward the Indians?' 
 
 "Ans. 'The upper Indians had no knowledge of the kind, except 
 by the company cutting off their supplies when they did wrong. 
 Some time after Fort Hall fell into the company's hands they had 
 complete dominion over that country, Indians and all. I think they 
 always instructed their agents to act fairly toward the Indians. 
 The name of the company passed me through to Fort Bridger in 
 1848; when the Indians came to me I told them that Tom McKay 
 was behind with a large party, going to Fort Hall to trade ; I wore 
 the Hudson's Bay dress out and out.' 
 
 "Int. 29. 'Was this trip, in 1848, the one you made as messen- 
 ger to the United States Government to ask aid in suppressing hos- 
 tilities?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Yes, sir.' 
 
 "Int. 30. 'Did not the officers of the company, at all its posts, 
 do everything in their power for your protection, convenience and 
 comfort on that trip?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Yes, sir; I had an order from Dr. McLoughlin to that 
 amount.'
 
 404 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 "Int. 3.3. *I)i(l not the Tayuse war follow as the consequence of 
 the massacre of Dr. Whitman and his family?' 
 
 *'An.s. 'Yes, .sir; tliat was the cause of the Cayuse war.' 
 
 "Int. 34. 'State who rescued the survivors of that massacre.' 
 
 "Ans. 'Peter Skeeu Ogden, Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay 
 Co.' 
 
 ••int. 35. 'I>i(l he not go up, personally, with a company before 
 the Provisional Oovernment had time to act in the matter?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Yes, sir; when the news arrived at Vancouver he equipped 
 a ])arty and went direct up in person and bought the survivors and 
 brought them down; he gave presents to the Indians; 1 think there 
 were about sixty came down in the boats.' 
 
 ''Int. 36. 'When you say that the company discouraged settle- 
 ments north of the Columbia River, state whether it was not on the 
 ground that if the land north of the Columbia should be assigned 
 to (Ireat lii-itain, American settlers might lose their nationality.' 
 
 "Ans. 'I don't know about that; 1 know they would not let us 
 settle on the north side; so far as nationalitv was concerned, I don't 
 think they cared anything about it.' 
 
 "Int. 37. 'Did they hinder settlers going north of the Colum- 
 bia, except upon lands which they claimed to occupy?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I think not, sir; they claimed the whole country, though, 
 north of the Columbia?' 
 
 "Int. 41. 'Did not the company advise settlers to go to the Wil- 
 lamette Valley, so that being together they might be better enabled 
 to protect themselves from Indian hostilities?' 
 
 "Ans. 'They always advised them to go to the Willamette, but 
 I always thought it was to keep them out of their way at Vancou- 
 ver and from settling that country.' 
 
 "Int. 42. 'Was not the land in the Willamette as good as that 
 north of the Columbia?" 
 
 "Ans. 'I think the land in the Willamette as good as that north 
 of the Columbia for raising wheat' 
 
 "Int. 43. 'Was not one reason stated by Dr. McLoughlin for his 
 advice that if they scattered about they would be in greater danger?' 
 
 "Ans. 'That was one of his reasons.' 
 
 "Int. 44. 'Do you not now believe that the advice given by Dr. 
 McLoughlin to the settlers was the best for their interests that he 
 could give?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I think his advice was pretty good then, but it has proved 
 very bad since.' 
 
 "Int. 45. 'How has it proved bad?' 
 
 "Ans. 'The first settlers were deprived of the most valuable part 
 of the country.' 
 
 "Int. 40. 'Which was that?'
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 405 
 
 "Ans. 'That was all the lower country, places near to the river, 
 along the Willamette, below the falls; but I believe the doctor 
 meant his advice for the good of the settlers at the time.' 
 
 "Int. 47. 'Why were the lands along the Willamette River be- 
 low the falls the most valuable lands in Oregon?' 
 
 "Ans. 'It is so near to market and conveniences of getting to 
 them; but I must add that they didn't look so convenient in those 
 days as they do now with big farms and towns on them.' 
 
 "Int. 48. 'Have not the markets all grown up since that time?' 
 "Ans. 'No, sir; the wheat market was better that day than it 
 is now.' 
 
 "Int. 49. 'Were not prairie lands which produced wheat more 
 valuable to the settlers than heavily timbered lands on the river 
 banks?' 
 
 "Ans. 'They were, at that time, to raise wheat on.' 
 
 "Int. 50. 'Were they not for everything which it was profitable 
 to raise?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Yes, sir.' 
 
 "Int. 51. 'Did you not, in 1850-1851, write a letter to Dr. John 
 McLoughlin, in reply to some questions sent to you by him, stating 
 that his conduct while at the head of the company had greatly pro- 
 moted the welfare and prosperity of the early settlers, and that but 
 for him you did not believe the settlers could have got through with 
 their difficulties, or words to that efifect?' 
 
 I "Ans. 'I think I did, sir.' 
 
 "Int. 52. 'Did not Lucier and others take lands along the river, 
 below the Willamette falls, and afterward abandon them and move 
 to the upper prairies?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I think they did ; I have heard so.' 
 
 "Int. 53. 'Do you know of any instance in which the company 
 refused to furnish stock to a respectable settler worthy of credit?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I don't think I do, sir.' 
 
 "Int. 54. 'Do you know of its refusing to furnish supplies to 
 emigrants or settlers who were worthy of credit?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Some they furnished with supplies, some they did not; 
 that is, certain kinds of supplies. If a man would take a claim, he 
 could get seed wheat, plows, hoes, harrows, teeth, and so on, if he 
 would show a disposition to go to work to raise wheat, which they 
 was the only market for.' 
 
 "Int. 55. 'Was not that market, if the only one, better than 
 none?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Yes, it was better than it is today, as far as supplies are 
 concerned.'
 
 406 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 ''Int. 58. 'Did you know anything of Jedediah Smith, who was 
 trading and trapping in Southern Oregon? State what you know 
 of his rescue, if anything; by whom, and when it was made.' 
 
 "Ans. 'I know Jedediah Smith very well, having served under 
 him in the Kocky Mountains; I think the rescue was made in 1828, 
 by Mr. McOloud of the Hudson's Bay Co. In 1829 I was detailed 
 by the company, in whose service I was, to hunt for him ; we 
 crossed the Rocky Mountains, and found him in Pierre's Hole, on 
 the head of Snake River, with a party. He came and joined the 
 company then — the company of Smith, Jackson and Sublette — he 
 was one of the partners ; he told me that he had been defeated at 
 the crossing of Rogue River, all his men killed but three, I think; 
 he made his way to Vancouver, and the company equipped and sent 
 out a party to get his property and rescue any of the party that 
 might be left; I think he remained the winter of 1828 with the 
 Hudson's Bay Co. ; in the summer of 1829 we met him on Snake 
 River.' 
 
 "Int. 59. 'How much of his property was rescued, if you know?' 
 
 "Ans. 'That I do not know, how much ; there were various 
 
 statements made about it; I don't remember exactly what Smith 
 
 said; I think he said very little was recovered; some beaver and 
 
 horses, mostly beaver.' 
 
 "Int. 60. 'How large a party was sent out for this purpose, and 
 how long were they absent?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I don't know exactly how many there were in the party; 
 Smith said, I think, there were forty or fifty men ; I think they were 
 under the command of Thomas McKay; and he said he was going 
 to kill all the Indians out there; and the order was countermanded 
 and Mr. McCloud was sent in his place; I don't remember how long; 
 I think they were out several months; Smith and Black told me 
 often, but I don't remember.' 
 
 "Int. 61. 'Did not Smith express great gratitude to the com- 
 pany because it had done so much for him, especially as he was a 
 rival liir trader?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Smith always expressed great gratitude to the company 
 for the act they had done.' 
 
 ''Int. 62. 'Did he say whether it was done without any charge?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Smith always said it was done without any charge, but 
 
 it was always disputed by the other partners, so much so that they 
 
 dissolved and sold out the next summer to the Rocky Mountain 
 
 Fur Co. and formed a new firm.' 
 
 "Int. 75. 'How long did you remain at Fort Hall at that time?' 
 "Ans. 'I think I was there three days; it generally took one 
 to get drunk and two to get sober.'
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 407 
 
 "Int. 98. 'Was not Fort Hall a place of general resort for emi- 
 grants when they began to come to Oregon and California?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I think it was, sir; they generally passed Fort Hall.' 
 
 ''Int. 99. 'Did not the position of that fort in the Indian coun- 
 try have the effect of protecting the emigrant route?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I think it had, sir; I suppose it was a great protection 
 to the emigrant route.' 
 
 "Int. 100. 'Was not the same true of Forts Boise and Walla 
 Walla?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I don't think Fort Boise was of any consequence at all, 
 except the name of the Hudson's Bay Co. ; that was a protection 
 along there. The emigrants hardly ever came by Walla Walla, but 
 I presume it was a protection.' 
 
 "Int. 107. 'In your judgment would not the emigrants, in all 
 probability, have had trouble with the Snake Indians at Boise but 
 for the fact that the company had a fort there?' 
 
 "Ans. 'They might have had trouble there; it was a trouble- 
 some country along there for emigrants.' 
 
 "Int. 159. 'While Marshal of the United States for Oregon, 
 from 1849 to 1853, where did you find rooms for the courts at 
 Vancouver?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I found rooms in Fort Vancouver; I got them from the 
 Chief Factor in charge.' 
 
 "Int. 160. 'Was their use furnished gratuitously?' 
 - "Ans. 'I have no vouchers for money paid by me for the use 
 of those rooms, no charge having been made for their use.' 
 
 "Int. 161. 'Did not Mr. Ogden, Chief Factor, tell you that you 
 were welcome to use them whenever you wanted them?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Yes, sir; Mr. Ogden was very clever in that respect.' 
 
 "Int. 162. 'In your official life state whether you found any 
 residents of Oregon more prompt and willing to assist you when 
 necessary than the officers of the company?' 
 
 "Ans. 'No, sir; I never found any that was more prompt than 
 the officers of the Hudson's Bay Co.' 
 
 "Direct examination resumed : 
 
 "Int. 4. 'How many settlers, in 1840 and 1841, were able to get 
 seed wheat of the company?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I do not know ; most any man could get seed wheat that 
 showed a disposition to make a farm and raise wheat.' 
 
 "Int. 5. 'What condition, if any, did the company seek to im- 
 pose upon those receiving seed wheat?' 
 
 "Ans. 'They imposed the condition that they would pay it back 
 again.' 
 
 "Int. 6. 'Do you know of any farmer who was refused seed 
 grain by them? If so, state who it was.'
 
 408 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 "Ans. 'I know some that were refused seed jijrain ; Mr. Cieor^je 
 Davis, Joseph L. Meek ; I think, thonjih, there were several others.' 
 
 "Int. 7. 'State wliether you and these other men took claims 
 and wanted to make a start at farming or not.' 
 
 '*Ans. 'Those other men — some of them — took claims and I took 
 a claim ; it is hard to tell what my object was when T took a claim.' 
 
 "Int. 8. 'Of the company of men first settling on the Tnalitin 
 plains who were furnished with seed grain, so far as you know?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Mr. Doty, Mr. Walker and Mr. Newell.' 
 
 "Int. 0. 'Were they more respectable or more worthy of credit 
 than those who were refused?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I presume the company thought so.' 
 
 "Int. 10. 'State what you think about it.' 
 
 "Ans. 'So far as I myself was concerned, I thought I was as 
 worthy as any man that lived ; the other men were very worthy men, 
 as I thought,' 
 
 "Int. 11. 'Who were furnished with cattle by the company, and 
 as far as you know?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Mr. Walker, Mr. Doty, Mr. Griffin, Mr. Williams and 
 Mr. Kelsey.' 
 
 "Int. 12. 'Were the cattle sold or simi)ly loaned?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I think they were loaned.' 
 
 "Int. 13. 'Was it not generally understood among the Ameri- 
 can tra])])ers that the Hudson's Bay Co. got a very large quantity 
 of Jedediah Smith's furs, for which he and they failed to account 
 to the company to which they belonged?' 
 
 "Ans. 'It used to be said so amongst the trappers in the moun- 
 tains.' 
 
 "Int. 14. 'If you remember, state the quantity which was thus 
 reported.' 
 
 "x\ns. 'It was always reported as about forty packs.' 
 
 "Int. 15. 'Give an estimate of the value of forty packs of beaver 
 at that time.' 
 
 "Ans. 'Forty packs of beaver at that time in the mountains 
 was worth about $20,000 ; I don't know what they would be worth 
 at Vancouver.' 
 
 "Int. 10. 'State whether the dispute about this matter was the 
 cause of the dissolution of the firm of Smith, Jackson & Sublette, 
 to which you refer in your cross-examination.' 
 
 "Ans. 'I do not know; that was the report among mountain 
 
 men.' 
 
 "Cross-examination resumed : 
 
 "Int. 1. 'What character did Jedediah Smith bear?' 
 
 "Ans. 'He bore a very high re])utatiou for truth and veracity 
 
 and a gentleman.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 409 
 
 "Int. 2. Trom what you know of his reputation do you believe 
 he was capable of conspiring with Dr. McLoughlin to defraud his 
 partners ?' 
 
 ''Ans. 'I think he was a man of too great a reputation to be 
 guilty of any act of the kind.' 
 
 "Int. 3. 'How long did you know Dr. John McLoughlin, and 
 what was his reputation for truth and honesty during that time?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I got acquainted with John McLoughlin in the winter of 
 1840 ; I knew him from that time until he died ; he was a high-toned 
 gentleman ; for truth and veracity he could not be beat.' 
 
 "Int. 4. 'From what you know of the character and honesty of 
 Dr. McLoughlin, do you believe he was capable of conspiring with 
 Jedediah Smith for the purpose of defrauding his (Smith's) part- 
 ners, or to make money for the Hudson's Bay Co.?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I have no idea that the doctor was ever capable of any 
 such business.' 
 
 "Int. 9. 'When you and others were refused wheat by Dr. Mc- 
 Loughlin, did he not say that he was willing to furnish it to any 
 who were farmers, but unwilling to sell it for other purposes?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I think he did ; I think he said he was willing to furnish 
 it for seed to farmers.' 
 
 "Int. 10. 'At that time had you done any farming in Oregon?' 
 
 '^Ans. 'None.' 
 
 "Int. 11. 'Did you not afterward obtain at Vancouver such 
 things as you wanted to carry on your farm?' , 
 
 "Ans. 'Yes, sir.' 
 
 "Int. 12. 'Do you not know that many of the settlers who 
 borrowed cattle from the company never returned them or paid the 
 company for them?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I know some men borrowed cattle there and never re- 
 turned them.' 
 
 "Int. 13. 'Were not some of these the persons mentioned by 
 you in your previous testimony?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Yes, sir; Mr. Williams was one that I know of; Mr, 
 GriflSn never returned his, I think.' " 
 
 It should be said with regard to all the testimony in these cases 
 that a very great amount of latitude was allowed and much hear- 
 say and other testimony admitted that would have been excluded 
 under the strict application of the rules of evidence, presumably 
 because it was not to go before an ordinary jury, but before com- 
 missioners who were all able lawyers, and who were to have ample 
 time to sit down and read, and study, and sift the evidence thor- 
 oughly. 
 
 Meek, it will be remembered, was one of the party who, in 1840, 
 outfitted at Fort Hall and drove through to Walla Walla the first
 
 410 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 three wagons that ever went throujj;h to the Columbia (Cf. pp. 84- 
 88, ante). 
 
 The next witness in order of time of arrival in Oregon was W. 
 H. Gray, and in Chapter III. of Book II., infra, so much of his testi- 
 mony is quoted as bears directly on the question of Whitman's ride 
 and Mr. Gray's qualifications for writing history and his utter in- 
 difference to accuracy, even on so easily ascertained a point as 
 whether Millard Fillmore or John Tyler was President of the 
 United States in the spring of 1843. 
 
 Such other part of his testimony as concerns the relation of the 
 Hudson's Bay Co. to the occupation of Oregon by American mis- 
 sionaries and settlers was as follows: 
 
 "Int. 3. 'In what capacity and for what purpose did you first 
 cross the Rocky Mountains?' 
 
 '^\ns. 'I came in the capacity of secular agent, mechanic and 
 teacher to the mission of the A. B. C. F. M., then about being estab- 
 lished in the country, in connection with Rev. H. H. Spalding and 
 Dr. Marcus Whitman and their wives.' " 
 
 In Chapter IV. of Book II., infra, the total falsity of this claim 
 of Gray to having been ''Secular Agent" of the A. B. C. F. M. Mis- 
 sion is demonstrated by quoting from the Missionary Herald during 
 the existence of the mission its statements of his real position : 
 
 "Int. 5. 'When you first came to the country, and in the imme- 
 diately following years, what was the policy of the Hudson's Bay 
 Co. with reference to the general settlement of Oregon by Ameri- 
 cans? State any facts in your knowledge pertinent to this object.' 
 
 "Ans. 'The policy of the company, as made known to me by 
 John McLeod, Thomas McKay, P. C. Pambrun, John McLoughlin, 
 James Douglas, Francis Ermatinger, and, I think, Mr. Simpson, 
 was to discourage and dissuade all American settlement in the 
 country; this policy was made known to me first at the rendezvous 
 on Green River by McLeod and McKay; afterward by Mr. Pam- 
 brun, Ermatinger, Dr. McLoughlin and Mr. Douglas; first, in re- 
 fusing to allow our mission to engage men such as was deemed 
 necessary to assist in erecting the mission establishments; after- 
 ward, by Dr. McLoughlin and Mr. Douglas, in declining to allow 
 the mission to bring men or laborers from the Sandwich Islands in 
 their ships, which was a prominent reason for my being sent back 
 to the States to bring a reinforcement to the mission across the 
 mountains. In the mountains I obtained the consent of Mr. Erma- 
 tinger to bring a carpenter and blacksmith, under a contract drawn 
 by him, for the services of the mission, upon conditions that those 
 men were to receive only the wages given to the servants of the 
 Hudson's Bay Co. and not to trade any goods they might receive
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 411 
 
 for their pay for services to the Indians for furs or interfere with 
 the company's trade in any manner.' " 
 
 As to the total falsity of all this about the Hudson's Bay Co. 
 opposing Americans settling in Oregon the evidence in this chapter 
 is conclusive. 
 
 It will be noticed that of all the oJBScers of the Hudson's Bay 
 Co. with whom he claims to have had these conversations James 
 Douglas was the only one then living, and that he testified that the 
 policy of the company was directly opposite to what Mr. Gray stated 
 it to have been on his alleged recollections, wholly unsupported by 
 a word of contemporaneous letters or diaries, about conversations 
 from seventeen to thirty years before. 
 
 "Int. 41. 'Have you ever had any conversation with the late Dr. 
 John McLoughlin about supplies and assistance furnished the early 
 settlers of the country and his consequent treatment by his supe- 
 riors? If so, state when and what it was.' 
 
 "Ans. 'I have, both as regards the missionaries and settlers. In 
 the winter of 1836 and 1837 Dr. McLoughlin explained to me fully 
 the position in which he stood to the company and the diflBculty he 
 would necessarily get into by furnishing supplies to missionaries or 
 settlers^ and advised me, as I was about returning to the States, to 
 advise our board in reference to sending on supplies to the mis- 
 sions — to our mission particularly referred to. He also said that 
 he was fearful that there would be complaints and diflflculties grow- 
 ing out of the supplies he had already furnished to the Methodist 
 missions ; that whatever supplies we received from the company we 
 must consider them as an especial favor. Afterward, in 1845 and 
 1846, perhaps, when I was building a house for the doctor in Oregon 
 City, he told me that he had a falling out with the company in con- 
 sequence of furnishing those supplies, and that he had left their 
 service; he said that they held him personally responsible for the 
 amount of the advances made to the Protestant missionaries and 
 settlers.' 
 
 "Cross-examination : 
 
 "Int. 1. 'When did you have the last conversation with Dr. Mc- 
 Loughlin ?' 
 
 "Ans. 'In the fall of 1847; I spent some two weeks of that 
 year in Oregon City.' 
 
 "Int. 2. 'Did he say that the company had charged him for the 
 supplies advanced to settlers or that he feared they would charge 
 him?' 
 
 "Ans. 'My impression is that he said they had charged him, 
 and that he had to pay it.'
 
 412 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 "Int. 3. In his conversation in the winter of 183G and 1837 
 did not Dr. McLoiiglilin tell von that he was instructed by the com- 
 pany to do no credit business?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Not at all ; the sujjplies furnished to the mission were 
 not upon credit, but drafts drawn ui)()n the board, payable in Lon- 
 don.' 
 
 "Int. 4. 'Did he ever refuse supplies to Dr. Whitman's mission?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I do not think he did, to a limited extent.' 
 
 "Int. 5. 'Did he ever refuse anything desired by Dr. Whitman?' 
 
 "Ans. 'To a certain extent he did refuse; that is, the sui)plies 
 were limited to what the company or he thought was sufficient for 
 our inuuediate wants.' 
 
 "Int. (i. 'Do you mean to swear that Dr. McLoughlin ever re- 
 fused Dr. Whitman any favor for which he asked?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I mean to say that there was scarcely a single invoice 
 or bill calling for supplies for the mission that was sent to Van- 
 couver and tilled; I know the first invoice made out was not filled.' 
 
 "Int. 7. 'In what respect?' 
 
 "Ans. 'In respect to goods and tools.' 
 
 "Int. 8. 'Did the company have the tools and goods that were 
 sent for to spare and dispose of?' 
 
 "Ans. 'The company had the most of the goods that we wanted ; 
 they stated that they could not spare them from the Indian trade. 
 Tools they only had a limited supply, and advised me to make out 
 my bills and forward them to London and they would be filled.' 
 
 "Int. 0. 'Who of the company refused to allow you to engage 
 such men as you wanted to erect buildings?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Mr. McLeod in the Rocky Mountains and Dr. McLough- 
 lin objected to it in ^"ancouver.' 
 
 "Int. 10. 'What reason did they give?' 
 
 "Ans. 'The reason assigned was that those men would be trad- 
 ing and interfering with Indians about the stations.' 
 
 "Int. 11. 'Was not the reason given that they had not the men 
 to spare?' 
 
 "Ans. 'The reason assigned in the Kocky Mountains by McLeod 
 was that they preferred to su})i)ly the men necessary rather than 
 to allow the Americans to be brought from the mountains. Dr. Mc- 
 Loughlin had not the men to spare.' 
 
 "Int. 12. 'How many men did you bring with you the first trip?' 
 
 "Ans. 'We brought but two men to Fort Hall ; one left at Fort 
 Hall.' 
 
 "Int. 14. 'Did not Dr. McLoughlin, when he declined to allow 
 the mission to bring men from the islands, say that his vessels could 
 not bring the men the company needed?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I think not'
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 413 
 
 "Int. 15. 'What reason did he give?' 
 
 "Ans. 'The principal reason was the liabilities of those men to 
 interfere with the mission labors and cause difficulty with the In- 
 dians.' 
 
 "Int. 16. 'Do you not know that the company was required to 
 give bonds to the Hawaiian Government for the safe return of the 
 islanders brought from Honolulu, and were therefore compelled to 
 keep them under their supervision?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I think they were not in 1836 and 1837 and perhaps 
 1838, but after that I think they were.' 
 
 "Int. 24. 'What did the improvements made by you that year 
 cost?' 
 
 "Ans. 'They cost the American Board about $500 ; the mill ma- 
 chinery was sent out by the board, and was extra.' 
 
 "Int. 25. 'Do you know the amount of damages claimed by the 
 American Board of the Government for the destruction of that 
 property ?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I do not know; I have understood that it was either 
 three or nine thousand dollars, including cattle and everything.' 
 
 "Int. 47. 'Have you not been conscious of an unfriendly feeling 
 toward the company and its agents ever since their refusal to em- 
 ploy you and your wife?' (i. e., in 1839). 
 
 "Ans. 'Not on account of that transaction or refusal to employ 
 us.' 
 
 "Int. 48. 'Do you mean to say that you and your wife and Dr. 
 and Mrs. Whitman did not make frequent and prolonged visits to 
 Walla Walla and Fort Vancouver?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I mean to say that me and my wife never visited Vancou- 
 ver but once ; we were compelled, in consequence of a misunderstand- 
 ing between Mr. Spalding and ourselves, to remain at Walla Walla 
 (or rather my wife was) during the winter of 1839 and 1840 some 
 two or three weeks, awaiting my return from Vancouver. On my 
 return we went directly to Dr. Whitman's station ; we seldom vis- 
 ited the fort afterward ; Dr. and Mrs. Whitman made frequent calls 
 upon Mr. Pambrun's family and occasionally visited Fort Van- 
 couver. Between some of the gentlemen of the company. Dr. Whit- 
 man and family, myself and family, there was always a cordial and 
 agreeable association and acquaintance, and we always felt that it 
 was private and had nothing to do with the affairs of the company.' 
 
 "Int. 49. 'Was the company on this coast known or represented 
 except by its agents at its posts?' 
 
 "Ans. 'There was always in our intercourse with the gentlemen 
 of the company a distinction kept up by themselves as to the man- 
 ner in which we should regard them in our private business or social
 
 414 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 relations and in their actions and business relations as connected 
 with the company.' 
 
 "Int. oU. 'Did you know the Hudson's Bay Co., except by its 
 representatives at its posts?' 
 
 ''Ans. 'We always understood there was a double action, so far 
 as related to the gentlemen of the company and the company itself; 
 the question might be answered — we did.' 
 
 "Int. 51. 'Do you mean to say that the agents of the company 
 acted differently as private individuals and as agents?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I mean to say they acted in a double capacity.' 
 
 "Int. 52. 'In what capacity did you act?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I acted as secular agent to the mission of the A. B. C. 
 F. M.' 
 
 "Int. 58. 'Was it not of great advantage to the mission to have 
 the post at Walla Walla in their neighborhood and to find the In- 
 dians there partially reclaimed from the habits of their savage life?* 
 
 '•Ans. 'When that post was under the supervision and direction 
 of Mr. Parabrun and Mr. McKinlay it was a great advantage to both 
 the mission and fort; as soon as it passed into the hands of Mr. Mc- 
 Bean it became the immediate cause, with other influences in that 
 section, of the destruction of the mission.' 
 
 "Int. 59. 'When did Mr. McBean take charge?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I am unable to say; it was after 1842.' 
 
 "Int. 60. 'When did you leave Dr. Whitman's?' 
 
 "Ans. 'In the fall of ^842.' 
 
 "Int. 61. 'Do you not know that Mr. McKinlay continued there 
 until 1846?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I do not; I saw him in Oregon City before 1846; I am 
 almost positive it was in 1845, residing there.' 
 
 "Int. 62. 'Were you at Whitman's or at Walla Walla between 
 1842 and 1848?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I think not' 
 
 "Int. 63. 'In saying that McBean's occupation of the fort re- 
 sulted in part as just stated by you, do you pretend to know any- 
 thing about it or is your opinion based upon rumors?' 
 
 "Ans. 'My knowledge and opinions are based upon the testimony 
 which has been given and published in relation to the destruction 
 of that mission and the particular accounts which I have received 
 from the Indians in that section of the country since 1861, which 
 I believe to be substantially correct.' 
 
 "Int. 64. 'Are you as certain in regard to that statement as 
 you were that Fillmore was President in the winter of 1842 and 
 1843?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I am considerably more certain than of that, as I have 
 more thoroughly studied the subject.'
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 415 
 
 "Int. 65. 'Do you not know that Indians often fabricate stories 
 to suit their own purposes?' 
 
 "Ans. 'That depends altogether upon the object to be accom- 
 plished.' 
 
 ''Int. 70. 'How much did it cost to bring Dr. Whitman's party 
 from the States, to send you home and bring you out again with 
 men and to purchase supplies at Vancouver before your mission 
 was built?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I am not able to say.' 
 
 "Int. 71. 'Could you have built the mission, supplied and pro- 
 tected yourselves, but for the aid furnished by the company and 
 the fact that the company had establishments in the vicinity con- 
 venient for your assistance?' 
 
 "Ans. 'We came to the country without any particular knowl- 
 edge of and entirely independent of the company and expected to 
 establish our mission without any assistance from them. At the 
 American rendezvous we learned from Captain Wyeth, McLeod and 
 Mr. McKay that we could get supplies of the Methodist Mission and 
 also of the Hudson's Bay Co., and in consequence of this informa- 
 tion we sold and threw away a large amount of supplies that we 
 were not able to get replaced at Vancouver; so far as the protec- 
 tion of the company afforded, my impression is and always has been 
 that the mission of the Board and of the Methodists would have 
 been far more successful had there been no Hudson's Bay Co. in 
 the country.' 
 
 "Int. 72. 'Have you not made on several occasions statements 
 different from this contained in your last answer?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I have repeatedly said that the company's establish- 
 ments being in the country was a great convenience both to the 
 missions and the settler, but never admitted, to my knowledge, 
 their being necessary.' 
 
 "Int. 165. 'Have you not during the last year been very busy 
 in making charges against the Hudson's Bay Co. and some of its 
 officers on account of matters occurring within the last twenty- 
 five years?' 
 
 "Ans. 'For something over a year I have been collecting up 
 facts, incidents and statements and all the histories I could get 
 hold of, for the purpose of giving an accurate and truthful history 
 of the early settlement of the country. In those facts, incidents 
 and statements I have given to the Hudson's Bay Co., all the mis- 
 sions and all the individual persons that I have spoken or writ- 
 ten about as near the truth as I have been able to collect, and have 
 also requested of all persons knowing any fact stated that was not 
 strictly true to forward the correction and it should have its weight 
 in the historical sketches being given.'
 
 416 ACQUISITION OF ORIJGOX 
 
 ''Int. IGO. 'Have you not durin<>- the last year made inaiiy and 
 grievous charges in i>rint ajjainst the company?' 
 
 "Aus. 'I do not tliink 1 have made a single charge but what 
 is strictly true from the best knowledge and information I could 
 get.' 
 
 "Int. 1(!7. 'Will you not answer the last question, already asked 
 twice, without further evasion or equivocation?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I do not think T have evaded or ecjuivocated in the least, 
 but have given what 1 conceive to be a plain, distinct and positive 
 answer to the question put.' 
 
 "Int. 1G8. 'Do you consider yourself capable of writing an im- 
 partial and unprejudiced history of the Hudson's Bay Co. in Ore- 
 gon ?' 
 
 "Ans. 'That is for those who read the history to judge.' 
 
 ''Int. 1(51). 'The question is with reference to your own judg- 
 ment; will you answer it?' 
 
 ''Ans. 'I cannot say; I have not undertaken to write a history 
 of the Hudson's Bay Co., but of all events and general transactions 
 that have occurred within the country during the time I have been 
 in it, and particularly of events occurring up to the formation of 
 the country into a Territory of the United States.' 
 
 "Int. 170. 'Is your feeling such toward the company that you 
 believe yourself capable of acting toward it and its officers impar- 
 tially and without ])rejudice?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I don't think feelings or prejudices have anything to do 
 witli it, but facts are all I seek to know.'" 
 
 (Jray's History of Oregon (p. 183) says: "The difficulty about 
 land had no existence in the minds or thoughts of the Indians till 
 the fall of 18.39 and after the renewal of the Hudson's Bay Co.'s 
 license for twenty-one years. From that time forward a marked 
 change was manifest in the feelings of most of the gentlemen of the 
 com])any." 
 
 It is a very curious coincidence that that was the precise time 
 when Gray first prepared to desert the A. B. C. F. M. Mission and 
 ai)plied to the Hudson's Bay Co. for a position for his wife as 
 teacher at Vancouver and for himself in some capacity (])resum- 
 ably as carpenter) and was refused employment, and of this Rev. 
 C. Eells, in a letter dated October 3, 1842 (the day Whitman started 
 to the States without waiting for it as he had agreed to do), wrote 
 as follows: ''Mr. Cornelius Kogers has said -Tames Douglas, Esq., 
 told him they would not give Mr. Gray a hearing because of the 
 want of evidence that the mission approved of such an arrange- 
 ment being made." 
 
 While Mr. Gray thus discovered a change in 1830 ''in the feel- 
 ings of most of the gentlemen of the comjjany" the letters herein-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 417 
 
 before quoted from all those who remained faithful to the mission 
 — Dr. and Mrs. Whitman, Rev. H. H. Spalding, Rev. C. Eells and 
 Rev. Elkanah Walker, show that no one of them discovered any 
 such change, but they all remained on the friendliest terms with 
 the company during the whole existence of the mission, i. e., eight 
 years after this time when Gray saw this change and more than 
 five years after he deserted his associates in September, 1842, in a 
 manner which Eells and Walker bitterly denounced as dishonor- 
 able, in the before-mentioned letter of C. Eells, dated October 3, 
 1842 (which letter Walker indorsed as correct, especially in its 
 severe censure of Gray's course in deserting the mission). The 
 reader will do well to turn to p. 54, ante, and read Gray's letter of 
 January 10, 1838, to the Secretary of the American Board and com- 
 pare what he then wrote about the Hudson's Bay Co. with this "tes- 
 timony" twenty-eight years later. 
 
 Surely it is evident to every one who reads this testimony and 
 compares it with the contemporaneous letters and diaries herein 
 quoted that Gray's testimony on any matter connected with the 
 Hudson's Bay Co. is totally unworthy of any credence. 
 
 Caleb Cus'hing evidently thought so, for when the counsel for 
 the Hudson's Bay Co. and the Puget's Sound Agricultural Co. in 
 their arguments had denounced Gray in the bitterest possible lan- 
 guage, Cushing in his argument, though defending with great vigor 
 the other witnesses whom they had attacked as being untrust- 
 worthy, did not offer one word in support of Gray's attacks upon 
 the Hudson's Bay Co. nor defend his veracity in any way. 
 
 The next witness is Hon. A. L. Lovejoy who, with Hastings, 
 came with White's migration in 1842 and was Whitman's com- 
 panion on his ride to the States as far as Bent's Fort (near where 
 La Junta, Colo., now is), where he remained through the winter 
 and early spring and joined the 1843 migration near Fort Laramie 
 in July. He was a prominent citizen of Oregon all the rest of his 
 life, several times member of the Territorial Legislature, Speaker 
 of the House, President of the Council, member of the convention 
 which formed the State Constitution, Receiver of the Land Office, 
 etc. 
 
 His testimony is found in Idem, pp. 17-20, and the following 
 are extracts from the same: 
 
 "Int. 4. 'Please state whether you were acquainted with Dr. 
 John McLoughlin, Peter S. Ogden, James Douglas and other fac- 
 tors and managing agents of the Hudson's Bay Co. during your 
 early residence in Oregon.' 
 
 "Ans. 'I was well acquainted with Dr. McLoughlin, Mr. Ogden 
 and Mr. Douglas, more particularly with Dr. McLoughlin. I was 
 acquainted with some others.'
 
 418 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 "Int. ."). 'What couiiection, if any, did these men and their em- 
 j)U)yes and servants, and those under their intiuence, have with the 
 formation of tlie ])rovisional government of Oregon?' 
 
 "Ans. "1 always understood that they participated in common 
 with other citizens of the valley. Dr. Tolmie was a member of the 
 Legislature in 1846 ; H. M. Pierce was a member ; A. McDonald was 
 a member in 1840. They generally voted at the elections.' 
 
 "Int. 6. 'State what, if anything, you have heard Dr. John Mc- 
 Loughlin say with reference to his supplying emigrants at an early 
 day with food and clothing and seed for their farms, and the action 
 of his superiors with reference thereto?' 
 
 "Ans. 'At an early day, Dr. McLoughlin furnished the emi- 
 grants coming, a great many of them very destitute, with fuel and 
 clothing, seed grain and cattle, and they were to pay him when they 
 could ; it was a large amount, some seventy-five or eighty thousand 
 dollars, at least I so understood from him. I understood him to 
 say that he had acted against orders, that he had done it on his 
 own responsibility; that they complained that he had done it 
 against orders, and that he sold goods on credit without authority, 
 and that they did not do a credit business. He said further that 
 they })roposed to charge him with this amount; he then said that 
 he claimed that if they charged him with this amount that he 
 claimed the profits that grew out of it; that is the way he expected 
 to get even on it. I never knew what the company did in the 
 premises.' 
 
 "Int. 7. 'State whether Dr. McLoughlin was pleased or dis- 
 pleased with this conduct of his superiors in the Hudson's Bay 
 Co.?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I should infer from his conversation that he was dis- 
 pleased.' 
 
 "Cross-examination : 
 
 "Int. 1. 'In the conversation with Dr. McLoughlin, referred to 
 by you in answer to the sixth direct interrogatory, did he not say 
 that he feared or supposed the company might charge him for giv- 
 ing credit, rather than that its officers had proposed to do so?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I don't know that they had done it. The impression I 
 had is that they had threatened to do it, and he expected that they 
 would ; I don't know that they did it.' 
 
 "Int. 5. 'In what year was the provisional government of Ore- 
 gon organized?' 
 
 "Ans. 'The first steps were taken in 1843; in 1845 there was a 
 kind of a constitution adopted.' 
 
 "Int. C). 'Was not the object of that government the mainte- 
 nance of law and order and the adoption of measures to promote 
 the settlement and ])rosperity of Oregon?'
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 419 
 
 "Ans. 'It was.' 
 
 ''Int. 7. 'Did not the gentlemen you have named in your direct 
 examination as officers of the Hudson's Bay Co. co-operate as 
 heartily in the organization and support of that government as 
 other citizens of Oregon?' 
 
 "Ans. 'They did, and helped equally to bear the burdens.' " 
 
 This deposition was signed July 27, 1866, eight months after 
 Spalding had launched the Saving Oregon Theory of Whitman's 
 ride in the Pacific, but there is not a hint in all his testimony that 
 Love joy knew anything about any patriotic purpose in that ride, 
 though certainly if he did here was a most excellent opportunity 
 for putting that matter on permanent record in an oflBcial docu- 
 ment of great weight, and where it would have much helped the 
 United States to have shown that the Hudson's Bay Co. in 1842 
 were striving to wrest Oregon from the United States, and that 
 Whitman prevented it and saved Oregon. 
 
 Similarly, if it were true that at Fort Hall the Hudson's Bay 
 Co. put impediments in the way of migration to Oregon, as asserted 
 by all the advocates of the Whitman Saved Oregon Legend, Lovejoy, 
 as one of the leaders of the first large migration overland (that of 
 1842, which started under Dr. Elijah White, but a little later de- 
 posed White and chose Hastings and Lovejoy as leaders), was the 
 best possible witness to show it, but not a word of anything of that 
 sort is in his testimony. 
 
 Two of the leaders of the 1843 migration testified, viz. : Hon. 
 J. W. Nesmith, its orderly sergeant, and Hon. Jesse Applegate, the 
 captain elected for one of the two companies into which that mi- 
 gration divided, when, on June 9, 1843, Peter H. Burnett was 
 obliged from sickness to resign the captaincy of the whole party. 
 Besides these J. G. Campbell, S. M. Gilmore, M. M. McCarver and 
 George Summers of the 1843 migration testified, but the testimony 
 of Gilmore and Summers did not in any way touch on anything per- 
 tinent to this discussion and need not be noticed. 
 
 Nesmith's testimony was taken in Washington, D. C, May 15, 
 1866, and is found in Vol. VI., pp. 23-50, and I invite attention to 
 such parts thereof as are pertinent to this chapter. 
 
 "Int. 1. 'What is your name, age, place of residence and pres- 
 ent occupation?' 
 
 "Ans. 'James W. Nesmith ; aged forty-five years ; residence, Polk 
 county, Oregon ; occupation farmer, and at present United States 
 Senator.' 
 
 "Int. 15. 'When did you see Fort Hall, and what was its con- 
 dition when you saw it? Please describe the same as particularly 
 as you can, the character and condition of the fort and the build- 
 ings, and their value, if you feel competent to state it.'
 
 42U AC(^iisrnox of ori:<jo\ 
 
 •A IIS. "I never saw Fort Hall but once. I stopped there four 
 or live days in the autumn of 1843. It was then rather a rude 
 structure, built of adobe, walled in with adobe, and within were 
 soino rude buildinfis of the same, covered with poles and dirt, the 
 wholi' very rude and cheaply built. There was no lumber there of 
 any kind, sawed or hewn. They could have been built by the rudest 
 kind of labor; no skill was required in their construction. It was 
 a mere mixing of mud to make adobes and piling them up. At rea- 
 sonable prices of labor, such as existed in the country at the time, 
 I should think Fort ITall, as I saw it in 1843, could have been built 
 for one thousand dollars.' 
 
 ''Int. 28. 'How long have you been in Oregon and bow long 
 have you been a member of the United States Senate?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I went to Oregon in 1843, and that has been my residence 
 ever since. I took my seat in the United States Senate the 4th of 
 March, 1861.' 
 
 "Int. 32. 'Have you held any public offices or positions prior 
 to your election as United States Senator? If so, please to describe 
 them.' 
 
 "Ans. 'Yes, I have held several. In 1845 I was a judge under 
 the provisional government. In 1846 and 1847 I was a member of 
 the Legislature. In 1847 I commanded a company in the Indian 
 war. In 18.")3 I was appointed United States Marshal for the Ter- 
 ritory of Oregon. In same year I commanded a company in Rogue 
 River war. In 1854 I was brigadier general of the Oregon mi- 
 litia. Ill 1855 I commanded a regiment of volunteers in the Indian 
 war. In 1857 I was Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Oregon 
 and Washington, and held that office until 1859. That was the 
 last office 1 held until I came to the United States Senate.' 
 
 ''Int. 33. 'You have stated that you were a superintendent of 
 the Indian affairs. Do you know the effect of the trade and inter- 
 course with the Hudson's Bay Co. on their physical and social con- 
 dition? If yea, please to describe it as fully as you can.' 
 
 "Ans. 'So far as the intercourse of the Hudson's Bay Co. with 
 the Indians is concerned, I think their i)olicy is the best that was 
 evei- n(l()]»ted, that is with reference to the wants and interest of 
 the Indian. They operated upon his interests and his fears. So far 
 as I know they administered very strict justice. They had a tariff 
 of prices, and they paid one Indian the same as they paid another 
 for whatever he had to dis])ose of. They encouraged sobriety and 
 good conduct among the Indians, and when the Indians committed 
 outrages they ])unished them. Their punishment was not that of a 
 great military ex7)edition, l)nt they cut off their trade and made 
 the Indian feel his dependence upon them. They were an immense 
 monopoly and kept out individual enterprise and trade from the
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 421 
 
 Indians. While they held that power they compelled the Indians 
 to submit to their own terms. In the absence of any competition 
 it was within their power to do this. They punished their own em- 
 ployes for infractions against the rights of the Indians, and so far 
 as I know their contact with the Indians did not tend to demoral- 
 ize or degrade them. The inculcation of sobriety and temperance 
 by the company resulted in its own benefit, that is, to the benefit of 
 the company, because while the Indian practiced those virtues he 
 had more to sell, and therefore increased the trade of the com- 
 pany. The power of the company to keep out private or foreign 
 competition gave them the exclusive control of the Indians. The 
 Indians looked to the company as a government and a power. Dur- 
 ing their occupancy of the country there was little or no intrusion 
 upon the Indian lands. The Indians retained the sites of their vil- 
 lages, fisheries and hunting grounds ; consequently they did not 
 diminish in numbers as they did after the country was thrown open 
 to general and promiscuous occupation.' 
 
 " 'After the power of the company to control the intercourse 
 between the Indians and the whites had ceased, I should say about 
 1846 or 1847, the Indians began gradually to diminish by reason of 
 their promiscuous contact with the whites. While the company en- 
 forced a rigid control over them, I do not know of their having done 
 the Indians any injustice. The presence of this powerful monopoly 
 in the country exercised a deleterious influence against the United 
 States in controlling the Indians. In those remote regions the In- 
 dians were more in the habit of recognizing the power of the com- 
 pany than they were the Government of the United States. So far 
 as my knowledge extends to their social condition. I don't think 
 their efi'orts extended so much in the direction of civilizing the 
 Indian as it did in keeping him in a position where the greatest 
 benefits would be derived in a trade with him as a hunter and trap- 
 per. A great many of the employes, and some of the officers of the 
 company, intermarried with the Indian women. The children, the 
 result of this connection, were in many instances educated in the 
 schools under the patronage of the company.' 
 
 "Int. 34. 'What was the effect of the policy of the Hudson's 
 Bay Co. on the development and settlement of the country, favor- 
 able or otherwise?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I think the policy of the company was adverse to the 
 settlement of the country. I infer this from remarks made by the 
 officers of the company to myself and other early emigrants, as they 
 invariably underestimated the quality of the soil and the induce- 
 ments for settlement and advised the early settlers generally to go 
 to California. This probably resulted from the fact that the set- 
 tling of the country must invariably destroy their trade with and
 
 422 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 their control over the Indian tribes. Upon the whole I think that 
 the company were very much averse to the occupation of the coun- 
 try by American citizens.' 
 
 ''Cross-examination : 
 
 ''Int. Ii2. 'Had your party been delayed a month on the road 
 could they have reached Fort Vancouver that winter?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I think they could. It was a mild, open winter.' 
 
 "Int. 39. 'What was the labor you speak of at Fort Hall in 
 1843; was it not that of the emigrants who had crossed with you?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Some of the emigrants who went with me hired out at 
 Fort Hall to go out with trapj)ing parties.' 
 
 "Int. 40. 'How many of them, and for how long a time; and 
 did they remain there during the winter?' 
 
 "Ans. 'There were two or three of them who hired out; I don't 
 know how long they remained. I tried to hire out myself.' 
 
 ''Int. 85, 'Did you in 1845, at Oregon City, sign a paper con- 
 taining this language, viz. : 
 
 " That this mixed population exists in the midst of numerous 
 and warlike tribes of Indians, to whom the smallest dissensions 
 among the white inhabitants would be the signal to let loose upon 
 their defenseless families all the horrors of savage warfare?' 
 
 "Ans. 'In 1845 the Legislature was in session in Oregon City. 
 They drew up a memorial to the Congress of the United States 
 which I, among others, signed. I have no positive recollection of 
 the language, but I think it did contain something of the character 
 contained in the question. We were exceedingly anxious for the 
 United States to extend its laws and jurisdiction over us.' 
 
 "Int. 80. 'Did this paper which you signed contain this passage, 
 now read to you, viz. : 
 
 " 'Although such has been the result thus far of our temporary 
 union of interests ; though we, the citizens of the United States, have 
 had no cause to complain either of exactions or oppression at the 
 hands of the subjects of Great Britain, but on the contrary, it is but 
 just to sny that their conduct toward us has been most friendly, 
 liberal and phi hint liro])ic, yet we fear a long continuance of the 
 present state of things is not to be expected, our temporary gov- 
 ernment being limited in its efficiency and crippled in its powers 
 by the paramount duty we owe to our respective Governments, our 
 revenues being inadequate to its support, and the almost total ab- 
 sence, apart from the Hudson's Ray Co., of the means of defense 
 against the Indians, who, recent occurrences lead us to fear, enter- 
 tain hostile feelings toward the people of the United States?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I have not seen that memorial since I signed it. I think 
 it is more than jirobable that it contained the statements in ques- 
 tion. My impression is that it did.'
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 423 
 
 "Int. 87. 'Did this paj^er which you signed contain this passage, 
 now read to you, viz. : 
 
 " 'Your memorialists would further inform your honorable body 
 that, while the subjects of Great Britain, through the agency of the 
 Hudson's Bay Co., are amply provided with all the munitions of 
 war, and can afford, by means of their numerous fortifications, 
 ample protection for themselves and their property, the citizens of 
 the United States are scattered over a wide extent of territory, 
 without a single place of refuge, and within themselves almost en- 
 tirely destitute of every means of defense?' 
 
 "Ans. 'As I said before, I have not seen that memorial for 
 twenty-one years. I think it contained language similar to that 
 which you quote. We were endeavoring to make a strong case and 
 get protection. I recollect the memorial and the person who drew 
 it, and I have no doubt but what it contained substantially what 
 has been read.' " 
 
 The testimony of Hon. Jesse Applegate is in Vol. V., pp. 265- 
 312, and as will be seen he was strongly opposed to the payment of 
 any considerable sum to the Hudson's Bay Co. and Puget's Sound 
 Agricultural Co., and had worked industriously against the pay- 
 ment of any larger sum than |50,000 (Cf. Vol. III., Memorial and 
 Argument, Hudson's Bay Co. vs. United States, Closing Argument 
 for Plaintiff, p. 37). 
 
 Remembering his strong bias against the claim, nothing is more 
 evident than that if he had witnessed anything in 1843 in the con- 
 duct of Capt. Richard Grant, in charge of Fort Hall, or Payette in 
 charge of Fort Boise, or McKinlay in charge of Fort Walla Walla, 
 that was antagonistic to American interests, or that tended to de- 
 ceive and retard the progress of the great migration of which he 
 was one of the acknowledged leaders, or if he had known anything 
 of Whitman's having done anything to save Oregon, and still more 
 if he had believed that the Hudson's Bay Co. had instigated the 
 Whitman massacre, he certainly would have introduced it in his 
 forty-eight pages of testimony. 
 
 Nearly all his testimony is a series of estimates of the value of 
 the property of the Hudson's Bay Co. at its various stations, which 
 of course does not concern us now, but I invite attention to the 
 following : 
 
 "Int. 1. 'State your age, residence and occupation.' 
 
 "Ans. 'Age fifty-five years; Yoncalla, Douglass County, Ore- 
 gon ; farmer ; formerly surveyor and civil engineer.' 
 
 "Int. 2. 'How long have you resided in Oregon, and at what 
 places?" 
 
 "Ans. 'I have resided twenty-three years; six years in the Wil- 
 lamette Valley, the remainder of the time in Umpqua Valley.'
 
 424 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 "Cross-examination : 
 
 "Int. U. 'Was not the post at Umpqna a convenience to the 
 early settlers, and do you not believe that the influence exerted 
 upon the Indians had been favorable to the security of the settlers?' 
 
 "Ans. "I think the influence exerted over the Indians was every- 
 where favorable to the early settlement of the country, and some 
 supi)lies were obtained at Fort Umpqua.' 
 
 "Int. 31. 'At that time was not Fort Walla Walla a station of 
 great importance to the emigrants, both for convenience and pro- 
 tection ?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Mr. McKinlay had but few supplies in the fall of 1843 
 to spare to emigrants. Doubtless the fort, as a general place for 
 maintaining peace with the Indians, afl;orded protection to the emi- 
 grants passing through.' 
 
 "Int. 177. 'From 1843 to 1849 state what, in your judgment, 
 w^as the influence of the company upon the settlement of the coun- 
 try and the pacification of savages, and the protection of emigrants 
 and settlers.' 
 
 "Ans. 'The influence of the company was in all respects in- 
 quired after most beneficial and salutary.' 
 
 "Int. 178. 'Was that influence in any respect subsequently 
 changed uj) to the time of the company's leaving in 18G0?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Not to my knowledge.' 
 
 "Int. 170. 'Are you the Jesse Applegate whose name appears 
 subscribed to a memorial of the legislative committee of Oregon, 
 dated June 28, 1845, and addressed to the Congress of the United 
 States?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I am.' 
 
 ''Int. 180. 'Were you not the author of that memorial?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I was a member of the committee that reported the me- 
 morial.' This is the memorial on which Gray (Part II., Chapter 
 III., infra) and Nesmith (pp. 410-422, ante) were questioned. 
 
 "Int. 181. 'Did you not write in October, 1851, a letter to Dr. 
 John ^fcLoughlin containing the following paragraph?: 
 
 " 'As one of the early emigrants to Oregon, I am pleased to bear 
 evidence to your kindness and Christian ])liilanthropy ; of those re- 
 quiring assistance you have never exacted either a civil or religious 
 test; Catholics and Protestants, Americans and British, have been 
 equal sharers of your bounty, and are equally indebted to you for 
 j)rotection and assistance; but the evidence of a private citizen is 
 unnecessary to establish the fact of the active and beneficial assist- 
 ance you have ever rendered to American settlers in Oregon ; the 
 acknowledgment of this fact contained in a memorial transmitted 
 to the Congress of the TTnited States in 1845 is superior to all pri- 
 vate testimonials ; that document, signed by every oflflcer of the
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 425 
 
 provisional government, legislative and executive and judicial, pays 
 a just tribute to the conduct of the Hudson's Bay Co. in Oregon, 
 which up to that time was under your superintendence.' 
 
 ''Ans. 'I wrote such a letter, or a letter to that purport; I do 
 not remember the date.' 
 
 "Int. 182. ^Do you not believe that in the absence of protection 
 to the people of Oregon on the part of the American Government 
 up to the 4th of March, 1849, the assistance and support of the in- 
 fant settlement furnished by the Hudson's Bay Co. was, if not 
 essential, of great importance to the very life of those settlements?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Their concurrence in the provisional government for the 
 purpose of keeping peace was, in my opinion, indispensable.' 
 
 "Int. 220. 'Since the Hudson's Bay Co. made its claim against 
 the Government, in regard to which you have been testifying, have 
 you not written, published and expressed your earnest opposition 
 thereto?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I have.' 
 
 "Int. 221. 'Have you not felt from that time to the present a 
 strong and earnest bias against the claim and have done all in your 
 power to weaken and defeat it?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I have.' 
 
 "Direct examination resumed: 
 
 "Int. 3. 'Would the bias you feel against the company's claim 
 in any way affect your judgment of the value of any particular 
 piece of property estimated by you, whether it belonged to the com- 
 pany or not?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I do not think it would ; I do not think it has.' 
 
 "Int. 4. 'Does your opposition to the payment of the company's 
 claim go to the entire extent or only so much as you believe to be 
 unjust under the treaties upon which it is based?' 
 
 "Ans. 'So much only as I deem to be unjust.' 
 
 "Cross-examination resumed : 
 
 "Int. 1. 'Do you suppose that your judgment is more free from 
 the influence of strong and earnest bias than is that of other men 
 of intelligence?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I do not feel myself more competent to decide upon the 
 question of my own prejudice than a lunatic upon his own sanity.' " 
 
 Mr. M. M. McCarver's testimony is in Idem, pp. 33-40, and the 
 following is all that concerns this discussion: 
 
 "Int. 1. 'State your age, residence and occupation.' 
 
 "Ans. 'Am fifty-eight years of age ; residence, Portland, Oregon ; 
 occupation, that of farmer, trader and miner.' 
 
 "Int. 2. 'When did you come to Oregon, and where have you 
 resided since?'
 
 426 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 ''Ans. 'I came to Oregon in 1843; have resided near Oregon 
 City and Portland most of the time since.' 
 
 "Int. 3. 'What otKces did you hold under the provisional gov- 
 ernment?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I was a member of the Legislature and Speaker of the 
 Ilouse at the time of the passage of the organic law of Oregon in 
 1844, which was submitted to the people and adopted by them.' 
 
 "Int. 4. 'State what connection the oflicers of the Hudson's Bay 
 and Puget's Sound Agricultural Cos. had with the formation of 
 the provisional government, and whether they voted generally and 
 wielded an influence for or against the organic act you refer to.' 
 
 "Ans. *Dr. McLoughlin, Douglas and others of the principal 
 oflicers of the company advised and assisted in the formation of 
 the government, and they and those under their influence, I believe, 
 generally voted for the organic act.' 
 
 "Int. 5. 'Who of their oflicers and agents served as members 
 of the Legislature or held other public positions under that Govern- 
 ment?' 
 
 "Ans. *Dr. W. F. Tolmie was a member of the Legislature from 
 the Puget's Sound district; A. L. Lewis, and perhaps others, were 
 members; Mr. Frank Ermatinger was Treasurer of the Territory.' 
 
 "Cross-examination : 
 
 "Int. 9, *I)o you not know that during the years of early emi- 
 gration to Oregon that post (i. e., Fort Boise — W. I. M.) was of 
 great value as a means of protection and convenience to emigrants?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Yes, I have reason to believe it.' 
 
 "Int. 10. 'In your judgment would not the sufferings, loss of 
 life and loss of property have been much greater than they were 
 if the Hudson's Bay Co. had had no posts at Fort Boise and Fort 
 Hall?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Yes, I believe it; they furnished supplies and furnished 
 horses when teams gave out.' 
 
 "Int. 11. 'W^as there not an influence exerted upon the Indians 
 through the company at these establishments tending to save emi- 
 grants from Indian hostilities?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I have every reason to believe it.' 
 
 "Int. 21. 'Was not the provisional government to which you 
 have, referred organized without regard to national allegiance, for 
 the y)urposes of maintaining law and order, for mutual protection 
 and for ])romoting the settlement and prosperity of Oregon?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Yes, that was the understanding.' 
 
 "Int. 22. 'Did not the officers of the company co-operate actively 
 and harmoniously with the other residents of Oregon for these 
 ends?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Yes, sir.'
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 427 
 
 "Int. 23. 'Did not the furnishing of provisions, clothing, seed, 
 cattle and other articles by the company to the settlers greatly 
 assist in the early settlement of Oregon?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Most unquestionably.' 
 
 "Int. 24. 'At the time of the Whitman massacre and of the In- 
 dian disturbance were not the agents of the company prompt and 
 active in their efforts to rescue sufferers and to punish the guilty?' 
 
 "Ans. 'They furnished provisions and ammunition to assist in 
 carrying on the war against the Cayuses, which followed the Whit- 
 man massacre ; they assisted in rescuing the sufferers, but I do not 
 know that they took any part in punishing the guilty, except in 
 selling supplies to the provisional government as required; they 
 were trading in the country and desired the good will of both whites 
 and Indians.' " 
 
 Mr. J. G. Campbell's testimony is on pp. 228-233 of Vol. V., and 
 only the following concerns this discussion : 
 
 "Int. 1. 'State your age, residence and occupation.' 
 
 "Ans. 'Age forty-nine years; residence, Oregon City; account- 
 ant' 
 
 "Int. 2. 'When did you first come to Oregon?' 
 
 "Ans. 'In the fall of 1843.' 
 
 "Int. 3. 'Were you ever in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Co. ? 
 If so, state where, and during what years?' 
 
 "Ans. 'In Oregon City in the year 1846, probably in 1845 and 
 in the beginning of 1847.' 
 
 "Cross-examination : 
 
 "Int. 5. 'Did not the company allow as high prices for wheat 
 and produce and sell goods as low as any trading-house in Oregon, 
 qualities being the same?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Taking the pro rata, they did so, decidedly.' 
 
 "Int. 6. 'In your judgment was not the existence of the com- 
 pany and its business in Oregon of great advantage in promoting 
 the prosperity of the people and developing the resources of the 
 country ?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I have always considered it a great advantage to both 
 parties.' 
 
 "Int. 7. 'If the company had not been here do you not believe 
 that the safety of the settlers would have been greatly endangered 
 or their prosperity retarded?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I do, very much so.' 
 
 "Int. 8. 'Do you not know that the company gave liberal credits 
 to settlers on their arrival when they were without means to sup- 
 port themselves and their families?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Thev did.'
 
 428 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 "Int. 0. 'Did not the company extend those credits from year 
 to year, subseciuently, if settlers were in needy circumstances?' 
 ''Ans. 'I do not know that they extended any after 1846.' 
 
 "Int. 10. 'Do yon not know that np to the time that yon left the 
 company many of the settlers were indebted to the company for 
 supplies furnished to them?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I know they were.' 
 
 '*Int. 11. 'Can you state about the amount of that indebtedness 
 as appeared ui)on what was called the settlers' balance?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I never saw a balance sheet after 1845; at the closing 
 of 1845 was due forty-odd thousand dollars, including a large 
 amount due from the missions.' 
 
 ''Int. 14. 'Have you any means of knowing whether the debts 
 of which you speak in 1845 were ever paid in whole or in part?' 
 
 "Ans. 'They were paid in part; how big a part I don't know.' 
 
 "Int. 1(). 'Do you know whether the company ever charged the 
 indebtedness of settlers to Dr. McLoughlin?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I never heard of their having done so.' 
 
 "Int. 17. 'Were you on intimate terms with Dr. McLoughlin 
 from 1845 until his death and residing in the same town with him?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I was.' 
 
 "Int. 18. 'Did you ever hear him speak of his relations with 
 the company after retiring from it, with reference to credits with 
 settlers?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Yes, I have.' 
 
 "Int. 10. 'Did he ever say that he had been obliged to pay any 
 part of the debts due from settlers?' 
 "Ans. 'I never heard him say so.' 
 
 "Int. 20. 'While in the company's service were notes given by 
 settlers for what was due; if so, to whom were they made payable, 
 and why?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Notes were given, made payable to John McLoughlin, 
 C. F. (Thief Factor), and John McLoughlin, agent of the Hudson's 
 Bay Co. ; and the Avhy was, I told the doctor they ought not to be 
 drawn in the Hudson's Bay Co.'s name, but in an individual's 
 name.' 
 
 "Direct examination resumed: 
 
 "Int. 1. 'Do you not know that Dr. McLoughlin had great diffi- 
 culty with the company on account of credits extended to the set- 
 tlers, of which you have spoken?' 
 
 "Ans. 'The doctor considered that he had been very much 
 abused by the company in regard to its action on this matter of 
 credits.'
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 429 
 
 "Int. 2. 'What offer, if you know, did the doctor make the com- 
 pany with reference to these accounts; and state upon whose ad- 
 vice this offer was made?' 
 
 ''Ans. 'I do not know that he ever made any.' 
 
 "Int. 3. 'What, if anything, did Dr. McLoughlin tell you upon 
 the subject?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I decline to answer the question, as I do not desire to 
 make public confidential communications; I was clerk for the doc- 
 tor and the company at the same time, keeping both sets of books.' 
 
 "Cross-examination resumed : 
 
 "Int. 1. 'How long did you continue to act as clerk or agent 
 for Dr. McLoughlin?' 
 
 "Ans. 'Until May, 1847.' " 
 
 Of the migration of 1844 only M. T. Simmons testified, and his 
 testimony so far as it bore at all on this discussion has already 
 been quoted (Cf. pp. 387-388, ante). 
 
 Of the migration of 1845 Messrs. William Barlow, W. W. Buck, 
 J. S. Kinearson, James Taylor and James Welch were called, but 
 only Mr. Buck's testimony (which is on pp. 209-218 of this same 
 Vol. V.) contains anything pertinent to this discussion, as follows: 
 (The testimony of the others being merely their estimates of the 
 value of the land and buildings, etc.) 
 
 "Int. 1. 'What is your age, residence and occupation?' 
 "Ans. 'Sixty-two years; Oregon City; president and superin- 
 tendent of the Oregon City Paper Manufacturing Co. ; also in con- 
 nection with my son carrying on a saw mill. I have been to some 
 extent a contractor of wooden buildings.' 
 
 "Int. 2. 'When did you come to Oregon and where did you first 
 locate?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I arrived in Oregon in November, 1845 ; for a few months 
 stopped on what is called Scapoose Plains, six miles above the place 
 now known as St. Helen's ; after that in Portland until 1848 ; from 
 that time to the present in Oregon City.' 
 
 "Int. 19. 'Were you acquainted with Dr. John McLoughlin 
 during his lifetime? If so, state during what years.' 
 
 "Ans. 'I was acquainted with Dr. J. McLoughlin from Novem- 
 ber, 1845, until he died in 1857.' 
 
 "Int. 20, 'Did you ever have any conversation with Dr. Mc- 
 Loughlin about difficulties he had with the company's managers 
 (his superiors) growing out of advances made to the early settlers 
 in the country? If so, state what he said.' 
 
 "Ans. 'I had frequent conversations with the doctor, in which 
 he complained of being badly used by the settlers in consequence 
 of having advanced goods to them, and could not get his pay; that
 
 430 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 the coiiii)auy complained of him for making those advances; I think 
 he said he had to assume a considerable amount himself.' 
 
 "Int. 21. 'What official positions have you held in Oregon?' 
 
 "Ans. 'I have been a member of the Legislature; President of 
 the Council under (the) Territorial Government; I was also for 
 some time one of the County Commissioners of this county and 
 afterward Territorial Treasurer.' 
 
 ''Cross-examination : 
 
 ''Int. 47. 'At what time were the conversations with Dr. Mc- 
 Loughlin to which you have referred?' 
 
 "Ans. 'After tlie year 1848.' 
 
 "Int. 48. 'Are you certain that what the doctor said was not 
 that he feared the company might compel him to assume settlers' 
 debts because he had given credit contrary to orders?' 
 
 "Ans. 'That was the impression that I got from the doctor and 
 what I intended to have said in my direct answer; I am not posi- 
 tive whether he said he feared the company would charge him or 
 had charged him.' " 
 
 At the 1880 meeting of the Oregon Pioneer Association Hon. J. 
 W. Nesmith delivered the annual address, in which (Transactions 
 1880, p. 26) is the following paragraph: 
 
 "I have in my possession a copy of a paper found among the 
 manuscripts left by Dr. McLoughlin. It was kindly furnished and 
 presented to me by his descendants. I had intended reading it to 
 you as a part of my address, but having already trespassed too long 
 upon your patience I shall hand the document to the secretary of 
 the society, with my indorsement of the truth of all its statements 
 that came within my own knowledge. I believe it to be the most 
 valuable contribution to our archives that we have ever received 
 from any quarter; and I desire to say, what I believe all old pio- 
 neers will agree to, that the statements of this paper furnish a 
 thorough and complete vindication of Dr. McLoughlin's acts and 
 conduct, and that the integrity of his narrative cannot be impeached 
 by any honest testimony." 
 
 As comj>aratively few people can easily get access to the "Trans- 
 actions Oregon Pioneer Association," and as no one can really un- 
 derstand the settlement of Oregon without carefully reading this 
 document, it is herein inserted in full : 
 
 "Copy of a document found among the private papers of the 
 late Dr. John McLoughlin. 
 
 " 'In 1824 I came to this country to superintend the manage- 
 ment of the Hudson's Bay Co.'s trade on the coast, and we came 
 to the determination to abandon Astoria and go to Fort Vancou- 
 ver, as it was a place where we could cultivate the soil and raise 
 our own provisions.'
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 431 
 
 " 'In March, 1825, we moved there and that spring planted pota- 
 toes and sowed two bushels of peas, the only grain we had, and all 
 we had. In the fall I received from New York (query, "York Fac- 
 tory?") Factory a bushel spring wheat, a bushel oats, a bushel bar- 
 ley, a bushel Indian corn and a quart of timothy, and all of which 
 was sown in proper time, and which produced well except the In- 
 dian corn, for which the ground was too poor and the nights rather 
 cool, and continued extending our improvements.' 
 
 '' 'In 1828 the crop was suflScient to enable us to dispense with 
 the importation of flour, etc' 
 
 " 'In 1825, from what I had seen of the country, I formed the 
 conclusion from the mildness and salubrity of the climate that this 
 was the finest portion of North America that I had seen for the 
 residence of civilized man, and as the farmers could not cultivate 
 the ground without cattle, and as the Hudson's Bay Co. had only 
 twenty-seven (27) head, big and small, and as I saw at the time no 
 possibility of getting cattle by sea, and that was too expensive, I 
 determined that no cattle should be killed at Vancouver except one 
 bull calf every year for rennet to make cheese till we had an ample 
 stock to meet all our demands and to assist settlers, a resolution 
 to which I strictly adhered, and the first animal killed for beef was 
 in 1838; till that time we had lived on fresh and salt venison and 
 wild fowl. From morality and policy I stopped the sale and issue 
 of spirituous liquor to the Indians, but to do this effectually I had 
 to stop the sale of liquor to all whites. In 1834, when Mr. Wyeth 
 of Boston came, he began by selling liquor, but on my assuring him 
 that the Hudson's Bay Co. sold no liquor to whites or Indians he 
 immediately adopted the same rule.' 
 
 " 'One night in August, 1828, I was surprised by the Indians 
 making a great noise at the gate of the fort, saying they had brought 
 an American, The gate was opened, the man came in, but was so 
 afifected he could not speak. After sitting down some minutes to 
 recover himself he told that he was, he thought, the only survivor 
 of eighteen (18) men, conducted by the late Jedediah Smith. All 
 the rest he thought were murdered. The party left San Fran- 
 cisco bound to their rendezvous at the Salt Lake. They ascended 
 the Sacramento Valley, but finding no opening to cross the moun- 
 tains to go east, they bent their course to the coast, which they 
 reached at the mouth of Rogue River, then came along the beach 
 to the Umpqua, where the Indians stole their ax, and as it was the 
 only ax they had, and which they absolutely required to make rafts 
 to cross rivers, they took the chief prisoner and their ax was re- 
 turned. Early the following morning Smith started in a canoe 
 with two (2) men and an Indian and left orders as usual to allow 
 no Indians to come into camp. But to gratify their passion for
 
 432 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 women the men neglected to follow the order, allowed the Indians 
 to come into camp, and at an Indian yell five or six Indians fell 
 upon each white man. At the time the narrator, lilack, was out of 
 the crowd and had just finished cleaning and loading his rifie. 
 Three (3) Indians jumped on him, hut he shook them otf, and see- 
 ing all his comrades struggling on the ground and the Indians stab- 
 bing them, he fired on the crowd and rushed to the woods, pursued 
 by the Indians, but fortunately escaped; swam across the Umpqua 
 and northward in the hopes of reaching the Columbia, where he 
 knew we were. l>ut broken down by hunger and misery, as he had 
 no food but a few wild berries which he found on the beach, he de- 
 termined to give himself up to the Killimoux, a tribe on the coast 
 at Cape Lookout, who treated him with great humanity, relieved 
 his wants and brought him to the fort, for which, in case whites 
 might again fall in their power, and to induce them to act kindly 
 to them, I rewarded them most liberally. But as Smith and his 
 two men might have escaped and" (query, might perish) "if we 
 made no search for them, at break of day the next morning I sent 
 Indian runners with tobacco to the Willamette chiefs to tell them 
 to send their people in search of Smith and his two men, and if 
 they found them to bring them to the fort and I would pay them, 
 and telling them if any Indians hurt these men we would punish 
 them, and immediately equipped a strong party of forty (40) well- 
 armed men. But as the men were embarking, to our great joy 
 Smith and his two men arrived.' 
 
 " 'I then arranged as strong a party as I could make to recover 
 all we could of Smith's property. I divulged my plan to none, 
 but gave written instructions to the officer, to be opened early' 
 (query only?) 'when he got to the Umpqua, because if known before 
 they got there the officers would talk of it among themselves, the 
 men would hear it, and from them it would go to their Indian wives, 
 who were spies on us, and my plan would be defeated. The plan 
 was that the officer was, as usual, to invite the Indians to bring 
 their furs to trade, just as if nothing had happened. Count the 
 furs, but as the American trappers mark all their skins, keep these 
 all separate, give them to Mr. Smith and not pay the Indians for 
 them, telling them that they belonged to him ; that they got them 
 by murdering Smith's people.' 
 
 " 'They denied having murdered Smith's people, but admitted 
 they bought them of the murderers. The officers told them they 
 must look to the murderers for the payment, which they did; and 
 as the murderers would not restore the property they had received 
 a war was kindled among them and the murderers were punished 
 more severely than we could have done, and which Mr. Smith him- 
 self admitted, and to be much preferable to going to war on them,.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 433 
 
 as we could not distinguish the innocent from the guilty, who, if 
 they chose, might fly to the mountains, where we could not find 
 them. In this way we recovered property for Mr. Smith to the 
 amount of three thousand two hundred dollars without any expense 
 to him, and which was done from a principle of Christian duty and 
 as a lesson to the Indians to show them they could not wrong the 
 whites with impunity.' 
 
 " 'In 1828 Etienne Lucier, a Willamette trapper, asked me if I 
 thought this would become a settled country. I told him wherever 
 wheat grew he might depend it would become a farming country. 
 He asked me what assistance I would afford him to settle down as a 
 farmer. I told him I would loan him seed to sow and wheat to 
 feed himself and family, to be returned from the products of his 
 farm, and sell him such implements as were in the Hudson's Bay 
 Co.'s store at fifty per cent, on prime cost. But a few days after he 
 came back and told me he thought there was too remote a prospect 
 of this becoming a civilized country, and as there were no clergy- 
 men in the country he asked me a passage for his family in the 
 Hudson's Bay Co.'s boats, to which I acceded. He started in Sep- 
 tember to meet the boats at the mountains ; the express came in too 
 late and he had to return, and went to hunt for the winter.' 
 
 " 'In 1829 he again applied to begin to farm. I told him that 
 since he had spoken to me I heard that several of the trappers 
 would apply for assistance to begin to farm, and that it was neces- 
 sary for me to come to a distinct understanding with him to serve 
 as a rule for those who might follow. That the Hudson's Bay Co. 
 were bound under heavy penalties to discharge none of their ser- 
 vants in the Indian country and bound to return them to the place 
 where they engaged them. That this was done to prevent vaga- 
 bonds being let loose among the Indians and incite them to hos- 
 tility to the whites. But as I knew he was a good, honest man, and 
 none but such need apply, and as if he went to Canada and unfor- 
 tunately died before his children could provide for themselves they 
 would become objects of pity and a burthen to others. For these 
 reasons I would assist him to settle. But I must keep him and all 
 the Hudson's Bay Co.'s servants whom I allowed to settle on the 
 Hudson's Bay Co.'s books as servants, so as not to expose the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co. and me to a fine, but they would work for themselves 
 and no service would be exacted from them.' 
 
 " 'Many of the Canadians objected to go to the Willamette, be- 
 cause it was to become American territory, which I told them it 
 would, as the Hudson's Bay Co. in 1825 officially informed me that 
 in no event could the British Government claim extend south of 
 the Columbia, and that they were afraid they would not have the 
 same advantages as American citizens. I told them from the fer-
 
 -i;;4 ACi^i jsrnox of Oregon 
 
 tility of the soil, the extent of prairie and the easy access from the 
 sea that the WiUamette (they must admit) was the best and only 
 place adapted to form a settlement which would have a beneficial 
 effect on the whole country north of San Francisco, where we 
 could assist and protect them from the Indians in case of diiliculty, 
 and as to advantages I did not know what they would have, but 
 this 1 knew, thai the American Government and people know only 
 two classes of i)ersons, rogues and honest men ; that they punished 
 the first and protected the last, and it depended only upon them- 
 selves to what class they would belong.' 
 
 " 'Others wanted to go and live with the relatives of their wives, 
 but as their children would be brought up with the sympathies and 
 feelings of Indians, and as the half-breeds are in general leaders 
 among Indians and they would be a thorn in the side of the whites, 
 I insisted they should go to the Willamette, where their children 
 could be brought u]) as whites and Christians, and brought to cul- 
 tivate the ground and imbued with the feelings and sympathies of 
 whites, and where they and their mothers would serve as hostages 
 for the good behavior of their relatives in the interior. As Indians 
 judge of whites by themselves, and think if they injure whites on 
 their lands the whites would revenge it by murdering their Indian 
 relatives among them, and as the settlement increased by the addi- 
 tion of Indian women and half-breeds the turbulence of the Indian 
 tribes would diminish, and certainly the Cayuse war would not 
 have been quelled so easily as it was if other half-breeds had not 
 joined the Americans ; and I have great pleasure to be able to say, 
 what must be admitted by all who know them, that the Canadian 
 trappers and half-breeds who have settled as farmers are as peace- 
 able, orderly, neighborly and industrious a set of men as any in 
 the settlement; and that so far the Canadian settlement has pro- 
 duced and supplied three-fourths of the grain that has been ex- 
 ported.' 
 
 "'In 1832 Mr. Nathaniel Wythe (Wyeth) of Cambridge, near 
 Boston, came across land with a ])arty of men, but as the vessel 
 he expected to meet here with supplies was wrecked on the way he 
 returned to Ihe I'^ast with three (3) men. The remainder joined 
 the Willamette Settlement and got supplies and were assisted by 
 the Hudson's Bay Co.'s servants, and to be paid the same price for 
 their wheat — that is, three shillings sterling (/. e., 72 cents) per 
 bushel — and ]>ui"chase Iheir sui)])lies at fifty per cent, on ])rime 
 cost (/. c, first cost in London, England).' 
 
 '' 'In 1834 Mr. Wyeth returned with a fresh party and met the 
 vessel with sup])lies here and started with a large outfit for Fort 
 Hall, which he had built on his way, and in 1830 he abandoned the 
 business and returned to the States, and those of his men that re-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON ' 435 
 
 mained in the country joined the settlements and were assisted as 
 the others on the same terms as the Hudson's Bay Co.'s servants, 
 and in justice to Mr. Wyeth I have great pleasure to be able to 
 state that as a rival in trade I always found him open, manly, frank 
 and fair, and, in short, in all his contracts a perfect gentleman and 
 an honest man, doing all he could to support morality and encour- 
 age industry in the settlement.' 
 
 " 'In 1834 Messrs. Jason and Daniel Lee and Messrs, Walker 
 and P. L. Edwards came with Mr. Wyeth to establish a mission in 
 the Flathead country. I observed to them that it was too danger- 
 ous for them to establish a mission ; that to do good to the Indians 
 they must establish themselves where they could collect them around 
 them, teach them first to cultivate the ground and live more com- 
 fortably than they do by hunting, and as they do this teach them 
 religion ; that the Willamette afforded them a fine field, and that 
 they ought to go there and they would get the same assistance as 
 the settlers. They followed my advice and went to the Willamette, 
 and it is but justice to these pioneers to say that no men, in my 
 opinion, could exert themselves more zealously than they did till 
 1840, when they received a large reinforcement of forty (40) or 
 more persons ; then the newcomers began to neglect their duties, 
 discord sprung up among them and the mission broke up.' 
 
 " '1 made it a rule that none of the Hudson's Bay Co.'s servants 
 should be allowed to join the settlements unless he had fifty pounds 
 sterling before him, as he required that sum to supply him with 
 clothing and implements. He that begins business on credit is sel- 
 dom so careful and industrious as he who does business on his own 
 means. By this I effected two objects — I made the men more saving 
 and industrious and attached them to their farms. If I had not 
 done so, they would have abandoned on the least difficulty. But 
 having their means invested on their improvements they saw if 
 they abandoned the loss would be theirs ; they therefore persisted 
 and succeeded. When the settlement was formed, though the Amer- 
 can trappers had no means, they were assisted on credit, and all in 
 three years paid up from the product of their farms.' 
 
 " 'Every settler had as much wheat on loan as he wanted to be- 
 gin with and I lent them each two cows, as in 1825 we had only 
 twenty-seven head, big and small, old and young.' 
 
 '' 'If I sold they would of course be entitled to the increase and 
 I would not have the means to assist the new settlers and the set- 
 tlement would be retarded, as those purchasers who offered me two 
 hundred dollars for a cow would put such a price on the increase 
 as would put it out of the power of poor settlers to buy. This 
 would prevent industrious men settling. For these reasons I would 
 not sell, but loaned, as I say, two cows to each settler, and in case
 
 430 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 the increase of settlers niiiiht be greater than we could afford to 
 supply with cattle I reserved the right to take any cattle I required 
 (above his two cows) Ironi any settler to assist new settlers.' 
 
 " 'To the ^lethodist Mission, as it was a public institution, I 
 lent seven oxen, one bull and eight cows with their calves.' 
 
 ""In the beginning several settlers lost cattle, poisoned by eat- 
 ing waler heinJDck. It has been said by the late Mr, Thurston, Dele- 
 gate from Oregon, on the floor of Congress, that settlers paid for 
 dead cattle. This is a wanton falsehood, as it is well known to all 
 old settlers that no settler paid a cent for dead cattle ; it was a loss 
 to the coni]»any.' 
 
 " 'In 1S3G we found means of forming a comi)any to go to Cali- 
 fornia for cattle. 1 took half the stock for the Hudson's Bay Co., 
 so that by purchasing a larger number (as the expense of driving 
 five hundred or a thousand was the same) it would make the cattle 
 cheajjcr. Those of the settlers that had means put it in the stock; 
 those that had none engaged as drivers at one dollar per day, to be 
 paid in cattle at their actual cost. Mr. Slocum (Slacum), who 
 came here in a chartered vessel, gave them a passage gratis from 
 this place to San Francisco. Mr. Ewing Young was selected to con- 
 duct the party. Mr. P. L. Edwards, who came with Messrs. Lee 
 of the Methodist Mission, but now a lawyer in California, was ap- 
 pointed treasurer. They brought, I think, about seven hundred 
 head of cattle, which cost eight dollars per head rendered. In the 
 Willamette the settlers kei)t the tame and broken-in oxen they had 
 belonging to the Hudson's Bay Co. and gave their California wild 
 cattle in the place, so that they found themselves stocked with 
 tame cattle which cost them only eight dollars per head, and the 
 Hudson's Bay Co. to favor the settlers took calves in place of grown- 
 up cattle because the Hudson's Bay Co. wanted them for beef. 
 These calves would grow u]) before they were required.' 
 
 "'In 1840, as I already stated, the Methodist Mission received 
 a large reinforcement. I had selected for a claim Oregon City in 
 1829, made improvements on it and had a large quantity of timber 
 squared. The superintendent applied to me for a loan of it to build 
 a mission house. I lent thoni llie limber and had a place ])ointed 
 out to thorn upon which to build. In 1840 the Methodist Mission 
 formed a milling association and jumped part of my claim and be- 
 gan to build a saw and grist mill. They assumed the right to judge 
 of my rights and said that I could not hold it as part of my claim, 
 though the stream that separates the islet from the main land is 
 not more than forty feet wide in summer. This island is what is 
 
 called "Abernethy Island" and is about acres in extent. 
 
 In 1842 Mr. Waller, the resident missionary in the house to build 
 which I lent timber, which they never returned, and gave the ground
 
 ACQUI^ITIO^^ OF OREGON 437 
 
 upon which to build, set up a claim to Oregon City in opposition 
 to me, but after some difficulty I paid them |500 and he gave it 
 up. I preferred to do this and have done with it rather than here- 
 after trouble the Government with it.' 
 
 " 'In 1842 the first party of regular immigrants — about fifty — 
 came from the States. They got all the assistance they required, 
 but in 1843 most of them, not liking the country, went with their 
 leader — Mr. Hastings — to California.' 
 
 " 'In 1843 about 800 immigrants arrived from the States. I saw 
 by the looks of the Indians that they were excited and I watched 
 them. As the first stragglers were arriving at Vancouver in canoes 
 I was standing on the bank ; nearer the water there was a group of 
 ten or twelve Indians. One of them bawled out to his compan- 
 ions: "It is good for us to kill these Bostons." Struck with the 
 excitement I had seen in the countenances of the Indians since 
 they had heard the report of the immigration coming, I felt certain 
 they were inclined to. mischief and that he spoke thus loud as a 
 feeler to sound me and take their measure accordingly. I imme- 
 diately rushed on them with my cane, calling out at the same time : 
 "Who is the dog that says it is a good thing to kill the Bostons?" 
 The fellow, trembling, excused himself: "I spoke without meaning 
 harm, but The Dalles Indians say so." "Well," said I, "The Dalles 
 Indians are dogs for saying so, and you also," and left him, as if 
 I had remained longer it would have had a bad effect. I had done 
 enough to convince them I would not allow them to do wrong to 
 the immigrants with impunity. From this Indian saying, in the 
 way he did, that The Dalles Indians said it was good to kill these 
 Bostons, I felt it my duty to do all I could to avert so horrid a 
 deed.' 
 
 " 'Mr. P. L. Edwards, whom I mentioned came in 1834 with 
 Messrs. Lee and left in 1838, sent me a letter by Gen. McCarver, 
 stating he had given a letter of introduction to me to P. H. Burnett, 
 Esq. I immediately formed my plan and kept my knowledge of 
 the horrid design of the Indians secret, as I felt certain that if the 
 Americans knew it these men, acting independent of each other, 
 would be at once for fighting, which would lead to their total de- 
 struction, and I sent two (2) boats with provisions to meet them; 
 sent provisions to Mr. Burnett and a large quantity of provisions 
 for sale to those who would purchase and to be given up to those 
 who had not the means, being confident that the fright I had given 
 (as I already stated) the Indians who said it was a good thing to 
 kill the Bostons was known at The Dalles before our boats were 
 there, and that with the presence of the Hudson's Bay Co.'s people, 
 and the assistance they afforded the immigrants, would deter the 
 Indians from doing them any wrong, and I am happy to be able to
 
 438 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 Kjiy I entirely succeeded. At first I thought these Indians were 
 excited by some of the Iroquois Indians in the Hudson's Bay Co.'s 
 service and tried to find if so, but found nothing to enlighten me 
 on the subject.' 
 
 " 'About a month after Dr. Whitman came from his mission 
 near Walla Walla to Vancouver, and as The Dalles was on his 
 May and as he had seen the principal men there, it occurred to me 
 that he might have heard of it and told him what I heard the In- 
 dian say and how I had alarmed him, what I had done to deter 
 them and my suspicion that all this sprung from some of our ras- 
 cally Iroquois, and that I was anxious to find that rascal out to 
 ])unish him as an example to deter others. "Oh," says the doctor, 
 '•I know all about it." 'Tou do, doctor," said I. "Yes," said the 
 doctor, "and I liave known it for two years." "You have known it 
 for two years and vou told me nothinc;! Prav tell me his name." 
 The doctor, seeing I was on the wrong scent, said: "His name is 
 Thomas Hill." After thinking for some time I replied: "The Hud- 
 son's liay Co. has no man of that name in the service." "Oh," says 
 the doctor, "Tom Hill, the Shawnee." This Indian, it is said, had 
 been educated at Dartmouth College in the States, had told the 
 Indians that a few Americans had come to settle on their lands; 
 tliMi the Shawnees allowed them, but when the Americans were 
 strong enough they drove the Shawnees off and now the Shawnees 
 have no lands, and had urged the Indians to allow no Americans to 
 settle on their lauds, which advice the Indians about Walla Walla 
 say the Cayuses are following to this day, and the Indians were 
 inclined to follow by killing the immigrants who first came, and 
 which I believe they would have done but for the decided and cau- 
 tious manner that I acted. And the reason the Indian made use 
 of the expression he did was because I punished the murderers of 
 the Smith i)arty and before acting they wanted to know how I 
 would treat them, and most certainly if I had not been most 
 anxious for the safety of the immigrants and to discharge to them 
 the duties of a Christian my ear would not have caught so quickly 
 the words, "It is a good thing to kill these Bostons," and acted as 
 I did. In fact, if the immigrants had all been my brothers and 
 sisters I could not have done more for them. I fed the hungry, 
 caused the sick to be attended to and nui-sed, furnished them every 
 assistance so long as they required it, and which some have not 
 paid to this day, though abundantly able, and for which, if they do 
 not i)ay, I am answerable to the Hudson's Bay Co. It may be said, 
 and has been said, that I was too liberal in making these advances. 
 It is not so, but it was done judiciously and prudently.' 
 
 " 'When the immigration of 1S42 came, we had enough of bread- 
 stuffs in the country for one year, but as the immigrants reported
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 439 
 
 that next season there would be a greater immigration it was evi- 
 dent if there was not a proportionate increase of seed sown in 1843 
 and 1844 there would be a famine in the country in 1845, which 
 would lead to trouble, as those that had families, to save them from 
 starvation would be obliged to have recourse to violence to get food 
 for them. To avert this I freely supplied the immigrants of 1843 
 and 1844 with the necessary articles to open farms and by these 
 means avoided the evils. In short, I afforded every assistance to 
 the immigrants so long as they required it and by management I 
 kept peace in the country and in some cases had to put up with a 
 great deal ; for instance, when the milling company jumped part of 
 my claim, the island upon which they built a mill and which sub- 
 sequently Abernethy purchased, and when Williamson jumped part 
 of Fort Vancouver, as may be seen by my correspondence with the 
 provisional government on the subject and which occurred in the 
 presence of several American citizens, who I am happy to say 
 strongly expressed their disapproval of Williamson's conduct, and 
 which I am inclined to believe made him desist, and it will be seen, 
 to their credit, that the executive committee acted in a straightfor- 
 ward, manly and correct manner, and it was by such conduct on 
 the part of respectable American citizens that peace and order 
 were maintained in the country. It is true several thought I was 
 too forbearing, but when I saw how much the good on both sides 
 would suffer if I acted differently, and that a war between Great 
 Britain and the United States might be caused by it, I considered 
 it my duty to act as I did, and by which I think I may have pre- 
 vented a war between the United States and Great Britain. And 
 how have I been treated by both?' 
 
 " 'By British demagogues I have been represented as a traitor. 
 For what? Because I acted as a Christian; saved American citi- 
 zens, men, women and children from the Indian tomahawk and 
 enabled them to make farms to support their families.' 
 
 " 'American demagogues have been base enough to assert that I 
 had caused American citizens to be massacred bv hundreds bv the 
 savages. I, who saved all I could. I have been represented by the 
 delegate from Oregon, the late S. R. Thurston, as doing all I could 
 to prevent the settling, while it was well known to every American 
 settler who is acquainted with the history of the Territory if this 
 is not a downright falsehood and most certainly will say that he 
 most firmly believes that I did all I could to promote its settle- 
 ment and that I could not have done more for the settlers if they 
 had been my brothers and sisters, and after being the first person 
 to take a claim in the country and assisting the immigrants as I 
 have my claim is reserved, after having expended all the means I 
 had to improve it, while every other settler in the country gets his.
 
 410 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 But as I felt convinced that any disturbance between us here might 
 lead to a war between Great Britain and the States I felt it my 
 bounden duty as a Christian to act as I did, and which I think 
 averted the evil, and which was so displeasing to some English 
 demagogues that they represented me to the British Government as 
 a person so partial to American interests as selling the Hudson's 
 Bay Co. goods in my charge cheaper to American than I did to 
 British subjects. On the other hand, though, if the American im- 
 mi<ri-aiits had been mv brothers and sisters I could not have done 
 more tor them; yet, after acting as I have, spending my means and 
 doing my utmost to settle the country, my claim is reserved, while 
 every other settler in the county gets his; and how much this has 
 injured me, is daily injuring me, it is needless to say, and certainly 
 it is a treatment I do not deserve and which I did not expect.' 
 
 " 'To be brief, I founded this settlement and prevented a war 
 between the Cnited States and Great Britain, and for doing this 
 peaceably and quietly I was treated by the British in such a man- 
 ner that from self-respect I resigned my situation in the Hudson's 
 Bay Co.'s service, by which I sacrificed |12,000 per annum, and 
 the ''Oregon Land Bill" shows the treatment I received from the 
 Americans.' " 
 
 Lest any should suppose that the 1843 petition mentioned on 
 p. 333, ante, contains something which is really evidence of wrong- 
 doing on the part of Dr. McLoughlin and the Hudson's Bay Co. I 
 will now quote it and Dr. McLoughlin's reply to it. 
 
 It was presented in the T'nited States Senate by D. R. Atchison, 
 tho successor of Senator Linn, on February 7, 1844, and on his 
 motion ordered printed, and on account of the puerility of its ac- 
 cusations was never again acted upon in Congress. 
 
 It is Sen. Ex. Doc, Vol III., No. 105, 28th Cong., 1st Sess., and 
 on its title ])age reads: '^February 7, 1844. Laid on the table and 
 ordered to be i)rinted." 
 
 The reader will see on reading it why several of the best Ameri- 
 can citizens in Oregon were ashamed of it and refused to sign it. 
 
 Its evident purpose was to assist the iniquitous scheme of Rev. 
 A. F. \\'aller and some of the more uns('ru])iilons of his colleagues 
 in the Methodist Mission (which was then in its death throes, being 
 entirely broken ui» the following year) (Cf. Chapter II., Part II., 
 infra) to rob Dr. McLoughlin of his claim to the townsite and water 
 power at Willamette Falls, where he had located a claim in 1829, 
 not for the Hudson's Bay Co., but for himself individually, five 
 years before the first Methodists reached Oregon to establish a 
 mission.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 441 
 
 It goes without saying that under the treaty of 1827 any British 
 subject had exactly the same right to locate in any place in the 
 Oregon Territory that any American citizen had. 
 
 For full particulars of this scheme to jump Dr. McLoughlin's 
 claim and other things illustrating the sad decadence of the Metho- 
 dist Mission after the arrival of the great reinforcement of 1839-40 
 Cf.: 
 
 (a) Hon. J. W. Nesmith's Address, Transactions Oregon Pio- 
 neer Association, 1880, pp. 19-22. 
 
 (b) Hon. El wood Evans' ''History of the Pacific Northwest," 
 Vol. I., pp. 250-254. 
 
 (c) H. H. Bancroft's "History of the Pacific Coast," Vol. XXIV. 
 (being "Oregon," Vol. L," pp. 203-225). 
 
 (d) Their action concerning The Dalles townsite, as stated by 
 United States Supreme Court and summarized in Chapter III. of 
 Book II., infra. 
 
 For more than twenty-four years the authorship of this petition 
 was concealed, but on September 1, 1887, in a letter to Hon. Elwood 
 Evans, Robert Shortess claimed that he made the rough draft of it, 
 and that George Abernethy, the steward of the Methodist Mission, 
 wrote it in the form in which it was sent, but would not consent 
 that it should be circulated in his handwriting. (Cf. Evans' "His- 
 tory Pacific Northwest," Vol. I., p. 243.) It was dated March 25, 
 1843, and signed by sixty-five persons. 
 
 Shortess, who never cut any figure in Oregon affairs after the 
 organization of a territorial government, was probably in this a 
 mere catspaw for those who were greedy to appropriate that which 
 by every principle of law and equity belonged to Dr. McLoughlin. 
 It is no wonder that the authors and circulators of it were ashamed 
 to allow Dr. White, the sub-Indian agent, to have a copy of it. "A 
 petition started from this country today, making bitter complaints 
 against the Hudson's Bay Co. and Gov. McLoughlin. In referring 
 to it — as a copy was denied — I shall only say had any gentleman 
 disconnected with the Hudson's Bay Co. been at half the pains and 
 expense to establish a claim to the Willamette Falls very few would 
 have raised an opposition. His half-bushel measure I know to be 
 exact according to the English imperial standard. The gentlemen 
 of this company have been fathers and fosterers of the colony, ever 
 encouraging peace, industry and good order, and have sustained a 
 character for hospitality and integrity too well established to be 
 easily shaken." (Cf. White's report to Commissioner of Indian 
 Affairs, quoted on pp. 172-201 of "White's Ten Years in Oregon." 
 Date, April 1, 1843). 
 
 "The Petition of 1843 :
 
 442 ACQrr.^TTTON OF OREGON 
 
 *'To the lioiiorable ihe Senate and House of Representatives of 
 the United States of America in Congress Assembled : 
 
 ''We, the undersigned, settlers south of the Columbia River, beg 
 leave respectfully to represent to j'our honorable body: 
 
 "As has been before represented to your honorable body, we 
 consider ourselves citizens of the United States and acknowledge 
 the right of the United States to extend its jurisdiction over us; 
 and the object of the present memorial is to ask that the protection 
 of I he T'^nited States may be extended to us as soon as possible. 
 
 "Hitherto our numbers have been small, and the few difficulties 
 that arose in the settlement were speedily and satisfactorily set- 
 tled. Rut as our settlement increases in numbers so our difficul- 
 ties increase in number and importance, and unless we can have 
 laws to govern us that will be respected and obeyed our situation 
 will be a deplorable one. Where the highest court of appeal is the 
 ritlc safety in life and property can not be depended on. 
 
 "The state of the country, its climate, resources, soil, produc- 
 tions, etc., have already been laid before your honorable body in 
 Captain Wyeth's memoir and in former memorials from the in- 
 habitants of this place. 
 
 "Laws are made to protect the weak against the mighty, and 
 we feel the necessity of them in the steps that are constantly taken 
 by the honorable Hudson's Bay Co. in their opposition to the im- 
 provement and enterprise of American citizens. You have been 
 appi-ised already of their opposition to Captain Wyeth, Bonneville 
 and others; and we find that the same spirit dwells with them at 
 the i>resent day. Some years ago when the Hudson's Bay Co. 
 owned all the cattle in Oregon they would not sell on any condi- 
 tions, but they would lend their cows to the settler — he returning 
 to the coni])any the cows loaned, with all the increase; and in case 
 of the death of a cow, he then had the privilege of paying for it. 
 But after the settlers, at great risk and expense, went to California 
 and purchased lor themselves and there was a fair prospect of the 
 settlement being su])p]ied, then the Hudson's Bay Co. were willing 
 to sell at lower ])rices than the settlers could sell. 
 
 "Tn the year 1842, feeling the necessity of having mills erected 
 that could su])ply the settlement with flour and lumber, a number 
 of the inhabitants formed themselves into a joint stock company, 
 for the purpose of su})plying the growing wants of the community. 
 Many of the farmers were obliged to leave their farms on the 
 \\'allamet and go six miles above Vancouver on the Columbia River, 
 making the whole distance about sixty miles, to get their wheat 
 ground, at a great loss of time and expense. The company was 
 formed and 7)roceeded to select a site. They selected an island at 
 the falls of the Wallamet and concluded to commence their opera-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 443 
 
 tions. After commencing they were informed by Dr. McLoughlin, 
 who is at the head of the Hudson's Bay Co.'s afifairs west of the 
 Rocky Mountains, that the land was his and that he (although a 
 chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Co.) claimed all the land on the 
 east side of the Wallamet, embracing the falls down to the Clacka- 
 mas River, a distance of about two miles. He had no idea, we pre- 
 sume, that the company would succeed. However, he erected a 
 shed on the island after the stuff was on the island to build a house, 
 and then gave them permission to build under certain restrictions. 
 They took the paper he wrote them containing his conditions, but 
 did not obligate themselves to comply with the conditions, as they 
 did not think his claim just or reasonable. 
 
 ''Many projects had been started by the inhabitants, but for 
 want of means and encouragement failed. This fate was predicted 
 for the milling company. But after much labor and difficulty they 
 succeeded in getting a sawmill erected and ready to run and en- 
 tered into a contract to have a grist mill erected forthwith. And 
 now, as they have succeeded, where is the Hudson's Bay Co.? Dr. 
 McLoughlin employs hands to get out a frame for a sawmill and 
 erect it at Wallamet Falls ; and we find as soon as the frame is up 
 the gearing, which has been made at Vancouver, is brought up in 
 boats ; and that which cost a feeble company of American citizens 
 months of toil and embarrassment is accomplished by the chief 
 factor of the Hudson's Bay Co. in a few weeks. He has men and 
 means and it is said by him that in two weeks his mill will be 
 sawing. And what will be the consequence? Why, if the milling 
 company sells for |15 per thousand he can sell for |12; if they re- 
 duce the price to $10 he can come to |8 or $5 or |2 per thousand. 
 He says he will have a grist mill started as soon as he gets the saw- 
 mill in operation. 
 
 "All the wheat in Oregon they are anxious to get, as they ship 
 it to the Russians on the northwest coast. In the first place they 
 measured the wheat in a half-bushel, called by them imperial meas- 
 ure, much larger than the standard measure of the United States. 
 This not answering they next proceeded to kick the half-bushel 
 with the foot to settle the wheat; then they brought up a measure 
 larger than the former one; and now they fill this measure, then 
 strike it three times with a stout club, then fill it up and call it fair 
 measure. Against such proceedings we need law that will be re- 
 spected and obeyed. 
 
 "About twelve or fourteen years ago the Hudson's Bay Co. 
 blasted a canal a few feet to conduct water to a mill they were 
 going to build, the timber for which is now lying at the falls rot- 
 ting. They, however, abandoned the thing altogether and built
 
 444 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 their mills on the Columbia, about six miles above Vancouver, on 
 the north side of the river. 
 
 "In the year IS.'iT, agreeably to orders left by Mr. Slacum, a 
 house was erected at the falls to secure the claim for him. 
 
 "In 1840 the Methodist Mission erected buildings at the falls 
 and stationed two families there and made a claim to sufficient 
 land for their buildings, not interfering with any others who might 
 wish to build. A short time previous to this Dr. McLoughlin had 
 a storehouse erected for the company, not occupied, however, far- 
 ther than to store wheat and other articles in and as a trading 
 house during the salmon season. 
 
 "After this, in 1841, a shanty was erected and a man kept at 
 the falls, whose business it was to trade with the Indians for furs 
 and salmon and look out for the doctor's claim, he said, and to for- 
 bid persons building at the falls, as some had built and others were 
 about building. This man was, and still is, a servant of the Hud- 
 son's P.ay Co. 
 
 ''During the years 1841 and 1842 several families settled at the 
 falls, when Dr. McLoughlin, who still resides at Fort Vancouver, 
 comes on the ground and says the land is his and any person build- 
 ing without his permission is held as a trespasser. Without refer- 
 ence to any person's right or claim he employs a surveyor to run out 
 the plat; and as a bill was before the Senate of the United States 
 to grant to every white male inhabitant a mile square he has a mile 
 run out to suit his views and lays out a town plat at the falls and 
 calls it Oregon City. Although some, for peace sake, asked him for 
 the lots they had already in possession, and which he appeared very 
 willing to grant, the doctor now felt himself secure and posted up 
 the annexed paper (marked A), which is the original; and all who 
 had lots were required to pay Mr. Hastings five dollars for a deed 
 of land which they knew very well the grantor did not own, and 
 which we hope he never will, but that Congress will pass 
 a special act granting to each man his lot and improve- 
 ments. Those that applied received (if they had a house 
 on the lot) a deed, a copy of which is annexed (marked B) ; 
 if they had no house, a bond was given for five dollars, a copy of 
 which is annexed (marked C). To those that applied and paid 
 their five dollars all was right with the doctor, while those who con- 
 sidered his title to the land not good, and that therefore he had no 
 right to direct who should build and who should not, had their lots 
 sold to others. In one case the purchaser came to the original 
 claimant and ordered him to stop digging the ground which he was 
 jtreparing for a garden and commanded him to remove his fences, 
 as he had Dr. McLoughlin's bond in his pocket for the lots; and if 
 he did not move the fence he would, and take forcible possession.
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 445 
 
 Those who desired to have no difficulty and did not apply for a 
 deed have lost their lots, the doctor's promise and all. And Mr. 
 Hastings (the doctor's agent) is now offering for sale the lots on 
 which part of the mission buildings stand, and if he succeeds in 
 finding a purchaser they must either contend or lose their build- 
 ings. 
 
 "Dr. McLoughlin has held claims in other places south of the 
 Columbia River; at the Tualatin Plains and Clackamas Plains he 
 had huts erected to prevent others from building, and such is the 
 power of Dr. McLoughlin that many persons are actually afraid to 
 make their situation known, thinking if he hears of it he will stop 
 their supplies. Letters were received here from Messrs. Ladd & Co. 
 of the Sandwich Islands in answer to a letter written by the late 
 Mr. Ewing Young for a few supplies, that orders were received for- 
 bidding the company's vessels carrying any goods for the settlers 
 of Oregon. Every means will be made use of by them to break down 
 everything that will draw trade to this country or enable persons 
 to get goods at any other place than their store. 
 
 "One other item and we are done. When the United States Gov- 
 ernment officers of distinction arrive Vancouver is thrown open and 
 every facility afforded them. They were even more condescending 
 to the settlers during the time the exploring squadron was in the 
 Columbia; nothing was left undone to give the officers a high opin- 
 ion of the honorable Hudson's Bay Co. Our Indian agent is en- 
 tirely dependent on them for supplies and funds to carry on his 
 operations. 
 
 "And now your memorialists pray your honorable body that 
 immediate action of Congress be taken in regard to this country 
 and good and wholesome laws be enacted for our Territory, as may, 
 in your wisdom, be thought best for the good of the American citi- 
 zens residing here. 
 
 "And your memorialists will ever pray. 
 
 "Eobert Shortess, A. E. Wilson, W. C. Remick, Jeffrey Brown, 
 E. N. Coombs, Rouben Lewis, George Davis, V. Bennett, J. Rekener, 
 T. J. Hubbard, James A. O'Neil, Jor. Horregon, William McCarty, 
 Charles Compo, John Howard, R. Williams, G. Brown, John Tur- 
 ner, Theodore Pancott, A. F. Waller, J. R. Robb, J. L. Morrison, M. 
 Crawford, John Anderson, James M. Bates, L. H. Judson, Joel 
 Turnham, Richard H. Ekin, H. Campbell, James Force, W. H. Wil- 
 son, Felix Hathaway, J. Lawson, Thomas J. Shadden, Joseph Gibbs, 
 S. Lewis, Jr., Charles Roy, William Brown, S. Davis, Joseph Yat- 
 ten, John Hopstatter, G. W. Sellomy, William Brown, A. Beers, J. 
 L. Parish, William H. Gray, A. D. Smith, J. C. Bridgers, Aaron 
 Cook, A. Copsland, S. W. Moss, Gustavus Hines, George W. Le- 
 Breton, Daniel Girtman, C. T. Arrendrill, A. Touner, David Carter,
 
 44(; AC(jLi;srnox of Oregon 
 
 ,]. .1. (';uiij»l)olK ^\■. JohnsoD, John Edwards, W. Hauxhurst, W. A. 
 rtietlVr. I. Iloliiiaii. II. 15. Brewer, William C. Sutton. Sixty-five in 
 
 all." 
 
 The exhibits accompanying the petition are not of the sliji;htest 
 importance, beinj:; merely copies of deeds, contracts, etc., relating 
 to lots in Oregon City. 
 
 Concerning this petition Evans' ''History of the Northwest 
 Coast" (Vol. 1., pp. 24G-47) has the following: 
 
 "That document was an arraignment of John McLoughlin for 
 his management of the Hudson's Bay Co.'s atfairs, an accusation 
 of oppression and wrong to the Oregon pioneers and their families. 
 
 ''(1) It charges that Dr. McLoughlin refused to sell cattle for 
 many years, and afterward sold at lower rates than settlers ; 
 
 "(2) It refers to the Oregon City claim. It was valuable as a 
 townsite and for its wonderful water power. Such features made 
 it valuable to the Methodist Mission, to the American settler. The 
 petition denounces the doctor's acts of settlement as in bad faith; 
 that his claim is without a shadow of right. It asks that he may 
 be divested of interest, his claims be ignored and disregarded; 
 
 "(3) It complains that he can build mills and saw lumber 
 chea])er and does undersell the settler; 
 
 "(4) It alleges that in buying wheat he insisted upon good 
 measure ; 
 
 "(5) That those who had recognized his claim to Oregon City 
 and had obtained grants of lots from him he notified to comply 
 with their contract; 
 
 "(0) That the company's vessels were not allowed to bring 
 goods from the Sandwich Islands to the settlers; 
 
 *'(7) That the company's officers were more hospitable to vis- 
 iting officials and i)ersons of distinction than to private citizens. 
 
 "Simple justice to the memory of the dead demands quoting Dr. 
 McLoughlin's own comments upon those imputations upon his per- 
 sonal integrity and method of dealing. Of the cattle policy and 
 the Oregon City claim more extended discussion cannot be avoided. 
 As soon as Dr. ^McLoughlin had been informed of the charges made 
 in the i)etition he thus referred to them (Letter to Lansford W. 
 Hastings, April 10, 1843) : 
 
 " 'First, as to my opposing them in purchasing cattle, it is false. 
 Mr. Lee' {i. e., Rev. Jason Lee, who would not sign the petition) 
 'knows how false this is. Every one knows who was then in the 
 country that so anxious was I to replenish the country with cat- 
 tle that I killed none till 1838 and would sell none, because, as I 
 told them, they would kill them and not allow them to increase. 
 Rut I lent cattle to every man who wanted to settle, for which, 
 when they had tlieni, I took wild cattle from California, and of
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 447 
 
 which fully one-third died a short time after we got them. As to 
 kicking or striking the half-bushel, it is the custom in that part of 
 Canada where I have been. The measure is the imperial measure 
 and which ought to contain seventy pounds of good wheat. Talking 
 some time ago with Dr. White, in case the cooper might have made 
 a mistake, I had a half-bushel measured by an imperial copper half- 
 pint measure (sent here for the purpose) in the presence of Dr. 
 White, and though it was exactly the measure with water, yet I 
 find, filled with wheat, it does not weigh seventy pounds; and as 
 our wheat is as good as any I know I infer that the measure is 
 smaller than it ought to be, which is caused by the copper measure 
 having been knocked a little on the side, and is therefore smaller 
 than size. The truth is when I was first asked the price of wheat 
 I said two shillings and sixpence, as I calculated a bushel to weigh 
 sixty pounds ; but finding on measuring that it weighed seventy-two 
 pounds I told them without their asking it I would give three shil- 
 lings per bushel.' 
 
 " 'I thought that my character as an honest man was beyond 
 suspicion; when I find who those are who have cast these reflec- 
 tions on me I shall have no dealings with them, as I will not deal 
 with people who suspect my integrity. As to reports if they sold 
 their boards for twenty dollars per thousand I would sell them for 
 fifteen dollars per thousand and undersell them, it is false; and as 
 to the Hudson's Bay Co. and I opposing the interests of citizens, 
 really the citizens are themselves the best judges if we did so or 
 not. And I am certain if they are so lost to a sense of what is due 
 to truth as to make such an assertion it is useless for me to say 
 anything; but I feel confident that I can easily prove it is not so, 
 and that a very large majority will support me in it. As to the peti- 
 tion if the document went no further than this place I would be 
 silent; but when I consider where it is to go and to whom it is to be 
 presented, respect to them and to myself makes it my duty to take 
 notice of it.' " 
 
 ^'Persistent refusal by Dr. McLoughlin to sell cattle to the Ore- 
 gon Methodist Mission and to settlers had caused great disaffection 
 to the company. Dr. McLoughlin thus referred to the course adopted 
 by him and rigidly adhered to un^il 1838 (Cf. for this p. 435, ante) : 
 
 "The reason ofl'ered by Dr. McLoughlin, which was that there was 
 insufficient stock in the country; that importation was most expen- 
 sive and hazardous, and that all that there was in the country should 
 be preserved to secure increase, was unavailing. To the settler it 
 was not satisfactory to be told that the company's start had been 
 a few head driven at vast expense and danger along the coast from 
 the Russian establishments on Bodega Bay in California; that 
 those establishments most begrudgingly spared them, their Call-
 
 44S ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 forniii settlements being only intended to supply their northern 
 trading posts; that the colonial law of Calii'ornia prohibited the 
 exportation of female cattle. The scarcity of cattle, the dissatis- 
 faction of settlers because of this refusal to sell, continued until 
 the importation of stock by the California company. Referring to 
 that enterprise Dr. McLouglilin's statement is to be found on p. 
 43G, ante. 
 
 As we have already seen from the testimony of J. W. Nesmith, 
 Jesse Ajtplegate (pp. 419423 and 424-5, ante), and W. n. Gray 
 (Chapter III. of Part II., infra), on the 28th of June, 1S45, they 
 with all the other members of the provisional government of Oregon 
 signed another petition to Congress (which is Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 8, 
 20th C'ong., 1st Sess.) which, unlike this petition of 1843, stated the 
 exact truth as to the relations between the two nationalities in Ore- 
 gon as follows (Cf. their testimony on cross-examination) : 
 
 ''We, the citizens of the United States, have no cause to com- 
 plain either of exactions or oppression at the hands of the sub- 
 jects of Great Britain, but on the contrary it is but just to say their 
 conduct towards us has been most friendly, liberal and philan- 
 thropic." 
 
 The gold discoveries in California drew thither in 1849 a large 
 part of the most energetic and brilliant men in Oregon, and so it 
 came to pass that when in that year the first election for a Dele- 
 gate to Congress was held none of the first-class men who were 
 in the earlier migrations remained to contest for the place, and S. 
 R. Thurston, a young lawyer from Maine, who had only reached 
 Oregon with the migration of 1847, was put forward as the candi- 
 date of the Methodist Mission clique, and receiving 470 out of a 
 total of 973 votes (which was probably less than one-quarter of the 
 legal voters), was duly elected to represent as a Delegate in Con- 
 gress what is now Oregon, Washington, Idaho and parts of Mon- 
 tana and Wj'oming. 
 
 Thurston was venomously antagonistic to McLoughlin and the 
 Hudson's Bay Co., repeating on the floor of Congress Spalding's 
 shamoful and baseless slander that the Hudson's Bay Co. instigated 
 the Whitman massacre (Cf. Cong. Globe, H. of R.,*^ Dec. 26, 1850) 
 and declaring: 
 
 "In every move to promote the settlement and internal improve- 
 ment of Oregon Dr. McLoughlin and the Hudson's Bay Co. to a 
 man have been opposed, until they were absolutely compelled by 
 force of circumstances to yield. The history of that company in 
 Oregon is no less oppressive and unjust, as regards American citi- 
 zens, than was that of their ancestors in 1776." 
 
 As iif) one was there to defend the Hudson's Bay Co. and Mc-
 
 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 449 
 
 Longhlin these outrageous falsehoods resulted in accomplishing 
 what Thurston sought to do, and in the Donation Laud Law, 
 passed by Congress September 27, 1850, the possessory right of 
 every claimant to a mile square of land in the Territory of Oregon 
 was confirmed except McLoughlin's, although every one held by 
 precisely the same tenure as his and although his antedated all the 
 others by from five to twenty years. 
 
 McLoughlin's claim was reserved and donated to the Territory 
 of Oregon for a university. Dr. McLoughlin died in the autumn 
 of 1857 at Oregon City, his old age embittered by this shameful in- 
 justice, but to the honor of the Oregon people in 1862 the Legisla- 
 ture refused longer to be u party to such a grievous wrong and for 
 the merely nominal consideration of |1,000 restored the Oregon 
 City claim to the heirs of the "good old doctor," the true "Father 
 of Oregon." 
 
 (For full discussion of this Cf. Chapter XXXI., Vol. I., Evans' 
 "History of the Pacific Northwest.") 
 
 Are we to understand from the evidence adduced in this chap- 
 ter that McLoughlin, McKinlay, Douglas, Grant, Pambrun, Payette, 
 Ogden, McDonald, Lewes, Birnie, Ermatinger and the other chief 
 factors and chief traders of the Hudson's Bay Co. desired American 
 settlers and missionaries to occupy Oregon? Not at all. They 
 were British subjects, and unquestionably, as all loyal British sub- 
 jects ought to have done, they hoped and expected that the English 
 title would be established to that part of Oregon north and west of 
 the Columbia. But they also unquestionably knew that under the 
 treaty of joint policy of 1818, renewed in 1827, American citizens 
 had exactly the same rights in Oregon that British subjects had, 
 and their interests were so vast in that territory that that "enlight- 
 ened selfishness" which ever characterized the policy of the Hud- 
 son's Bay Co. would of itself have caused them to strictly observe 
 the spirit of that treaty and treat Americans with justice. But, 
 beyond this, several of these men, notably McLeod- McKay, Mc- 
 Loughlin, McKinlay, Douglas, Ogden, Grant, McDonald, Pambrun 
 and Lewes, were men of great natural ability and high character, 
 fit to rank among "Nature's noblemen," measured by any reason- 
 able standard, and their broad humanity and natural nobility of 
 character manifested itself in their whole course, as shown by the 
 evidence herein quoted. 
 
 They also knew well what the advocates of the Whitman Saved 
 Oregon Legend have never yet learned (witness Mowry's "Marcus 
 Whitman," published in 1901; Rev. M. Eells' "Reply to Professor 
 Bourne," 1902; Rev. Joseph R. Clark's "Leavening the Nation," 
 1903; D. O. Shelton's "Heroes of the Cross in America," 1904), viz.:
 
 450 ACQUISITION OF OREGON 
 
 That by the express terms of the treaties of 1818 and 1827, as un- 
 (ItMslood by both Oovernnients, no posts or settlements that the 
 siil)jects or citizens of either nation might establish while these 
 treaties remained in force conld settle or in the least degree affect 
 the right of either nation to any i)art of the Oregon Territory. 
 
 The qnestion is not what did the Hndson's Bay Co. desire? For 
 nndonbtedly they desired, and onght to have desired, that Ameri- 
 cans should not be in Oregon at all, but that it should be a part 
 of the British dominions. 
 
 The question is "What did the Hudson's Bay Co. do when that 
 which they did not desire hai)pened, and Americans came into the 
 Oregon Territory as fur traders, missionaries, scientific explorers, 
 travelers, government exploring expeditions and settlers?" 
 
 That is the question which I have sought to answer in the only 
 way in which historical questions can be settled, by quoting the 
 l>est possible evidence, to-wit: All the contemporaneous testimony 
 rhat I have been able to discover of those Americans themselves, 
 with a little later evidence from prominent Oregon pioneers, all of 
 them of the highest character, all of them having no interest in the 
 Hudson's Bay Co., and all men whose Americanism is undoubted, 
 and all of them men who had exceptional facilities for knowing 
 what were the real facts in the case. 
 
 [End of Vol. I.]
 
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