# Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 6/Notes on the Colonization of Oregon

NOTES ON THE COLONIZATION OF OREGON.
The colonization of Oregon by Americans, which occurred somewhat more than sixty years ago, deserves to rank well up among the four or five principal events of Pacific Coast history prior to the gold discovery. I think this position would not be disputed by those who have investigated the subject; but, unfortunately, the ordinary denizen of our section, whether he lives south or north of the forty-second parallel, begins his chronology with the rush of 1849, not even going back to the gold discovery of the preceding year. "Forty-nine" produced a psychological effect upon the western mind much like that which "the fall of the stars" or "the death of General Jackson" produced upon the Southern negroes of ante-bellum days. Of course, the tremendous revolution in economical and social affairs throughout the length of the coast, which clearly resulted from the gold discovery, is responsible for the false perspective in which our early history is viewed. The excitement beginning in 1848 and '49 was so intense, and the achievements of the years following were so wonderful, that earlier transactions sink, neglected, into the background.
Yet it was precisely the "day of small things" which preceded that made the era of grand things so easily possible. The colonization of Oregon gave to the United States an assured claim upon the valley of the Columbia, and led to the peaceful solution of the boundary question; it realized what twenty years earlier had been but the dream of a few enthusiasts, the American expansion to the ​380 JOSEPH SCHAFER. cific ; it provided a base for the long sought commercial contact with the Orient; and it rendered almost inevita- ble the ultimate acquisition by the United States of the ill-governed Mexican province to the south. When the crucial time came, the Oregon colony furnished, in part, the men and means for the conquest of California; from Oregon went the discoverer of gold and also the first out- side party of American miners, who proved a valuable ele- ment in the struggle for order ; Oregonians took a leading part in framing the California government, and an Oregon pioneer became the chief magistrate of the new Common- wealth. I am not a believer in the necessity of a fixed order in historical development ; and it is far from my purpose to declare that the possession of Oregon was absolutely es- sential to the acquisition of California. The truth is, rather, that both events were in the last analysis effects of a common cause, the seemingly irresistible westward tendency of the American population. This great cause, had it been directed somewhat differently, might, con- ceivably, have given us the two territories in reverse order. But such was not the historical fact and we are here con- cerned with history. Were speculation admissible at all it would be easy to show that an. entirely different order of development would have occurred if gold had not been discovered in California, if the discovery had been delayed fifty, twenty-five, or even ten years, if the yellow flakes had been found in the streams of the Inland Empire before they appeared to the Mormon workmen in Mar- shall's historic mill race. Confining ourselves to the strict order of historical evo- lution, we find the Oregon colony fully established in the Willamette Valley by the year 1845; we find in existence there an American government, based on the well known and oft tried American principle of compact a govern​NOTES ON THE COLONIZATION OF OREGON. 381 ment almost identical in form with that of the ordinary State ; and, while there was apparently nothing more than a sentimental connection with the United States, (some- what like that subsisting between the typical Greek colony and the mother city,) it was well understood, both east and west of the mountains, that these sturdy colonists were holding Oregon subject to the extension of the national jurisdiction over that distant country. During the very time of the Bear Flag revolt in California, Presi- dent Polk concluded the treaty with Great Britain estab- lishing the Oregon boundary line ; and two years later, before the news of the gold discovery had crossed the mountains, Congress erected the region west of the Rockies between the forty-second and the forty-ninth parallels into the Territory of Oregon. The historical relation between Oregon and California, the mental attitude of the American people toward the two territories at the time, is well illustrated by the dis- cussion over the Oregon bill in the spring of 1848. The measure had already been much too long delayed, and in order to delay it still further a member proposed to couple with it a bill for a California and a New Mexico territory also. The objection, hurled back sharp and quick, was that it would be wrong to yoke the "native born" Territory of Oregon with "territories scarce a month old and peopled by Mexicans and half-Indian Californians." The people of the "Golden State" can afford to smile at this rhetorical exaggeration, for all it contains a measure of truth, because in two brief summers the relations of the sections were changed. And from that time to the present California has overshadowed the Northwest as completely as Oregon overshadowed her in the thought of the American people from the return of Lewis and Clark to the days of the "Forty-niners," and especially during the ​382 JOSEPH SCHAFER. last decade of that period when the work of colonization was going forward. An event of such moment as the colonization of Oregon has been shown to be, is worthy of careful study by all who are interested in the history of the Pacific Slope ; and in the hope of facilitating the study I wish to present a concise statement covering the most noteworthy phases of the colonizing movement, together with merely sug- gestive notes on the sources. The background of the story includes, on the one hand, the series of incidents transpiring in the far west which culminated in the absolute commercial occupation of Ore- gon by the Hudson Bay Company; and on the other, the general features of westward expansion to the close of the fourth decade of last century. The settling up of the trans-Alleghany West ; the spread of the pioneers along the lower Missouri ; the extension of missionary effort beyond the frontier ; the fur trade of still more distant regions all these form a natural prelude to the great onward movement of population across the last and most formidable barrier separating the two seas. The idea that an advance to the Pacific lay within the possible compass of American achievement was itself a matter of slow growth. Astor may possibly have held it in 1810 as Irving twenty-six years later declares that he did, but we have good reasons for doubting it. Jefferson's vision beheld the growth of a great communit} 7 on the Pacific, planted by Americans and governed on American principles, yet wholly independent of the United States. Settlers, it was generally assumed, would be transported to Oregon by sea. This was about the situation, so far as there is any record of men's views on the subject, until the time when John Floyd of Virginia precipitated the Oregon discussion in Congress in the years 1820 to 1823. Then there emerged ​NOTES ON THE COLONIZATION OF OREGON. 383 the new thought, though it was not yet asserted with much confidence, that the American people would at no distant time actually overspread the Rocky Mountains, as they had overspread the Alleghanies, and make the Pacific the western boundary of the United States. This idea was forced upon the sensitive mind of Mr. Floyd when he con- templated the startling growth of the United States since the achievement of their independence. It was fully shared by Francis Baylies of Massachusetts, whose remark- able words, uttered more than eighty years ago, have often been quoted as an example of a prophecy fulfilled. He is speaking to Floyd's bill for planting a colony at the mouth of the Columbia, and has alluded to the marvelous progress of the United States within the memories of living men. " Some now within these walls," he continues, "may, be- fore they die, witness scenes more wonderful than these; and in after times may cherish delightful recollections of this day, when America, almost shrinking from the 'shadows of coming events' first set her feet upon un- trodden ground, scarcely daring to anticipate the greatness which awaited her." The object that these men sought was not to be attained by congressional action. Floyd's successive bills were met with indifference or derision on the part of a majority of the house; and, indeed, it was not till twenty years later, February, 1843, that an Oregon bill finally passed one branch of Congress. But the question of colonizing Ore- gon was not permitted to wait for its solution upon the slow and uncertain course of government action. It was to be settled in the natural American way, through an almost spontaneous movement on the part of the pioneer- ing class. By 1840 there were in Oregon a few score Americans, most of whom had entered the country since 1834 as mis- sionaries. These had succeeded in effecting a lodgment ​384 JOSEPH SCHAFER. where American traders like Wyeth and Bonneville, had, for obvious reasons, failed. A few Rocky-Mountain trap- pers, of American birth, were likewise settled in the Willamette Valley. All, missionaries and mountaineers alike, were so largely dependent upon the Hudson Bay Company that they can in no just sense be regarded as an American colony. Their presence is to be looked upon rather as one of the things that stimulated the planting of a colony ; for it created a living bond between Oregon and the United States, and led to the publication of the first considerable body of facts about Oregon that had been issued since the appearance of Lewis and Clark's journals. A well known book derived from this source is Parker's "Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains," 1838. Many letters, sketches, and short articles bearing on Ore- gon came out in the missionary periodicals of the time. The most complete repository of such material is the file of the Oregonian and Indian's Advocate, a monthly maga- zine issued at Lynn, Massachusetts, from October, 1838, to August, 1839. The special aim of its editor was to gather up and disseminate information about Oregon. It was the organ of a philanthropic society which proposed to plant a large company of Christian people in Oregon, who should, in addition to exploiting the resources of the country, civilize the natives, and establish a new State in which Indians were to have all the political rights of white men. The file is very rare. A privately owned copy in Portland, Oregon, an incomplete copy in Oakland, Cali- fornia, and that of the Wisconsin Historical Society are the only ones known to me. But some of the more im- portant documents contained in it, such as Linn's Senate Report on Oregon in 1838 and Cushing's House Report of 1839, are readily found in the government publica- tions; while others, for example letters written from Ore​NOTES ON THE COLONIZATION OF OREGON. 385 gon, are gradually being reprinted in the QUARTERLY of the Oregon Historical Society. The Linn and Gushing reports were for some years the most widely read works on Oregon (aside from Irving's Astoria) and were special favorites among the frontiers- men of Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, and other sections of the West. When the wagon companies began crossing the plains Linn's report and the Bible often formed the entire library of a migrating family; but the latter book, as well as the former, was sometimes missing from the collection. As a result of all this new information concerning the Oregon Country, of the agitation re-begun in Congress by Doctor Linn in 1838, and of other causes the idea of colo- nizing Oregon was by 1840 firmly fixed in many minds. It was looked upon as the true method of solving the bound- ary dispute with Great Britain, whose theoretical claims were supported by nothing better than a commercial oc- cupation of the country. In January, 1840, some citizens of Kentucky petitioned Congress to plant a colony at the mouth of the Columbia, (as Floyd had long before urged and as Linn was again urging,) and to protect it with a garrison ; and also to open a road* from western Missouri to Astoria, and plant at convenient distances across the mountains military posts for defense against the Indians. The idea of opening a highway to Oregon was felt in government circles to be eminently practicable. It might be doubtful whether the United States could, under the treaty of joint occupation, maintain a military establish- ment at the mouth of the Columbia; but they could at least open a road into the trans-Rocky Mountain territory and thus facilitate the movement of pioneers thither, which would indirectly serve the same purpose. Begin- ning with the year 1841 this policy was advocated by a succession of war secretaries, whose arguments are con​386 JOSEPH SCHAFER. veniently summarized in House Documents, 29th Cong., 1st Sess.( 1845), Vol. I: Repts. of Committees, Rept. No. 13. The policy began to bear fruit at once, for in the spring of 1842 Fremont was commissioned to explore the best route as far as South Pass, though nothing was done about planting posts. At the same time the government yielded so far to the demands of Americans already settled in Ore- gon as to send out Dr. Elijah White, a returned missionary, as Indian sub-agent for that Territory. White was in- structed to go to the Columbia overland, and to take with him as many prospective settlers as he could enlist along the frontier. He gathered a party of about one hundred and twenty, and made a successful journey, although they took their wagons only as far as Fort Hall. White's " Ten Years in Oregon " contains a reminiscent narrative of these events; while the journal of Medorem Crawford, printed by the Oregon Historical Society, is our exclusive primary source for the incidents of the journey. The emigration of the following year, 1843, is the cen- tral fact in the colonizing movement. It resulted in the opening of the wagon road all the way to the Columbia, the planting of nearly a thousand American settlers in the Willamette Valley, the definite inauguration of an agri- cultural and commercial economy, and, above all. in the firm establishment of an American pioneer State on the Pacific. The coming of these emigrants in the fall of 1843 has always been looked upon by old Oregonians as the beginning of the distinctively American period in Pacific Coast history. As the coming of, Winthrop's party of Puritans to Massachusetts Bay in 1630 largely deter- mined the history of New England, so the arrival on the Columbia of Burnett's wagon train and Applegate's "Cow- Column" are events of fundamental significance in the history of the Pacific Northwest. ​NOTES ON THE COLONIZATION OF OREGON. 387 The sources for the study of this great emigration are now reasonably good and are constantly growing better. Their chief repository is the five volumes of the Oregon Historical Society, 1900 to 1904, inclusive (the sixth vol- ume is now nearly complete), supplemented by the publi- cations of the Oregon Pioneer Association, 1873 to 1886. Having elsewhere covered the narrative history of the movement with reasonable fulness, 1 I shall here simply indicate, for the convenience of students, the nature of the sources at our disposal. First in order is a series of brief documents relating to the manner of raising the emigration. It will be recalled that some writers, most conspicuously Barrows, in his History of Oregon, credit Dr. Marcus Whitman with hav- ing raised this great company for Oregon. Whitman left his Walla Walla mission early in October and reached the frontier of Missouri late in the following January or early in February. Our contemporary sources show, among other things, that prospective emigrants were be- ginning to enroll their names with the emigration com- mittees in western Missouri as early as September, 1842 ; that an association at St. Louis sent an emigration agent to Washington whose duty it was to watch the action of Congress, to keep the western people informed on the progress of the Linn bill for the organization of an Oregon territory and the granting of lands to settlers ; to send out literature bearing on the Oregon question to the emigra- tion committees scattered over the country from Pittsburg west ; and lastly, to secure if possible from the Secretary of War the promise of a company of troops to escort the emigrants on the march. The importance which western people attached to the passage of the Linn bill is illustrated by a number of 1 A history of the Pacific Northwest, New York, The Macmillan Company, 1905; see, especially, chapters XI, XII, and XIII. ​documents. These show how public meetings were held, especially in Ohio, for the purpose of urging Congress to pass the Linn bill. These meetings resulted in the famous Oregon Convention at Cincinnati in July, 1843, which virtually determined that plank of the 1844 Democratic platform summarized in the phrase "Fifty-four Forty or Fight," and incidentally had a marked effect upon emigration as well.
We have the minutes of several meetings held in Bloomington, Iowa Territory, whose object was to raise a local company of emigrants for Oregon ; and we find that every detail of the preparation for the journey was carefully discussed in advance. The Platte (Missouri) Eagle notices editorially a lecture on Oregon delivered by Peter H. Burnett, and remarks that this gentleman is arousing great enthusiasm for the settlement of that most desirable country. The article concludes dramatically: "The American eagle is flapping his wings, the percursor of the end of the British lion on the shores of the Pacific. Destiny has willed it!"
For the organization of the company and the journey across the plains we have a number of distinct sources; but I shall notice only a few of the most important. So far as is known only one member of this party of nearly one thousand persons kept a diary which has been preserved. This was Peter H. Burnett, whose children, living in or near San Francisco, still possess the original document. It has never been printed entire; but we have a series of letters written by Burnett in the winter of 1843-44 to the New York Herald, and printed in part a year later, which are based upon the facts noted in his diary and upon recollections of the journey then still fresh in mind. The letters give an account of the trip as far as the Sweetwater. In Burnett's "Recollections and Opinions of an old Pioneer," New York, 1880, there is a brief account of the ​NOTES ON THE COLONIZATION OF OREGON. 389 entire journey to the Columbia, which is likewise based upon the diary, and is therefore a safe guide for all matters like dates, places, and distances. The student should carefully avoid the pseudo-Burnett source printed in George Wilkes' so-called "History of Oregon," New York, 1845. This account of the 1843 emigration is based on the letters written by Burnett to the New York Herald ; but Wilkes has worked over the material contained in the letters in his own peculiar way and with the deliberate purpose of deceiving his readers concerning the hardships of the western portion of the road. Detailed evidence to prove this charge has been given elsewhere. (See, especially, the Portland Oregonian, Sunday, November 1, 1903.) The journal of Fremont's second expedition affords some material on the emigration, for Fremont saw much of the emigrants at certain points on the route. However, it is a subsidiary source. So are, also, though for a differ- ent reason, the interesting narratives by J. W. Nesmith and others printed in the Oregon Pioneer Association volume. These, while containing much valuable material, are usually in the form of reminiscences which must always be used with caution. One of them, however, Jesse Applegate's "A Day with the Cow-Column," is de- serving of special notice as a peculiarly valuable source. In this paper, read before the Oregon Pioneer Association in 1877, Applegate, the preeminent literary genius of the 1843 emigration, gives an intimate and most delightful account of a typical day on the plains during the long, dreary, overland march. Dealing almost wholly with matters of a general character easily retained by the mem- ory, the document may be followed with safety. And it is a literary gem, which, in my opinion, ought to have a place in every school reader of appropriate grade used in the Coast States. It was reprinted in the Oregon Trail ​390 JOSEPH SCHAFER. number of the QUARTERLY, December, 1900, together with Joaquin Miller's "Pilgrims of the Plains"; and it suffers not at all by comparison with that spirited production. Another source for the emigration of 1843, and one of considerable importance, is Overtoil Johnson and William H. Winter's "Route Across the Rocky Mountains, with a Description of Oregon and California," Lafayette, Ind., 1846. Many letters could be cited to show how the pioneers of 1843 took possession of the Oregon Country on their arrival ; how they reorganized the Provisional govern- ment and made it adequate to the exigencies of the next six years ; how they induced the Hudson Bay Company to recognize this government, and bring themselves and their property under its protection. The serious student will readily find these, and will be convinced that this emigration inaugurated the American era on the Pacific. Burnett speaks truly concerning its influence upon the disputed question of the northern boundary when he says : "We knew to a moral certainty that the moment we brought our families, cattle, teams, and loaded wagons to the banks of the Columbia River in the fall of 1843, the question was practically decided in our favor." JOSEPH SCHAFER.