The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1874-02-06
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE COM
M0NWEALTH OF BOSTON.

READ Al THE "cENrENNIAL TOAST AND TEA
PARTY Br Mrs. A. J. nUSIwAY.
DEAR ATHENIANs:-It is but fitting
that, upon an anniversary like this,
your most distant relations should eel
ebrate with you the first dawn of real
freedom for the world.
When your dozen brave citizens, dis
guised as red men, destroyed the tea
cargo in Boston Harbor, and your peo-
pie generally made it q religious duty
to abstain from the "cup that cheers,
but not inebriates" rather than submit
to taxation without representation"
you set an example of self-government
TO the world that will continue TO be
quoted while the English language is a
part of its literature.
A hundred years ago, Why, hun
dred years ago, Oregon was a terra in
cogHitG. To be sure, there was Boston
mouth of the Columbia, and to have
entered the Stickeen river, longer ago
than that, but the rumor must be taken
with some grains of allowance. We
are aware that your Boston merchants
sometimes sent out vessels TO California,
carrying Indian goods to the converts of
the Jesuit Missions that flourished there
a hundred and fifty years ago, taking in
exchange tallow and hides, the spoils of
the countless herds that roamed the yell
low plains Of that sunny land. And we
are aware that after the Revolutionary
war had left you poor, and your conti-
mental scrip was gUod for little or moth
ing, you still dispatched occasional car
goes of Indian trinkets to the North
west coast, and picking up by this
means furs from Oregon, ablone shells
from California, and sandal-wood from
the Sandwich Islands, completed the
venture by exchanging these assorted
freights for tea in Canton, and that so,
in the coarse of two years you were able
to convert "Yankee notions" into gold,
at very fair rate of profit.
Permit us to remind you that it was
one Of these same venturesome Boston
trading vessels that first entered the
Columbia River giving it the name it
bears, and selling to the native Orego-
mans the first goods ever furnished to
Indians in the interior, so that to this
day the Oregon Indians name for a
white American is Boston.
You will perceive therefore that, al
though we are long way off, and per-
haps little known or understood at the
/ "Hub," we are yet closely related to
yourselves. Indeed, we Portlanders just
escaped being called Bostonians by the
flip Of peuny-"tails up" decided in IA
vOr of Portland.
The history of our State is not unlike
that OF your own. Our pioneers did not
come out in the "Mayflower," but they
came across three thousand miles OF
wilderness country, with ox-teams, to
lay the foundation of Western Repub-
lie. Like you they struggled against q
monopoly; like you they defended them
selves against a savage foe, and their
militiamen were as notable as your own
'sMiles Standish." They, too, were neg
lected by the home government-a gov
ernment, however, to which they clung
with heroic patriotism, because they be-
lieved it to be good, and true, and free
Government, the same which you in
great part founded. These Oregon Pi-
oneers remembering your Boston Tea,
party, and Bunker Hill, and the rest
fought King George here in Oregon, il
1913, as persistently as you fought him
in Massachusetts, in lTT3. They, (anC
this we say with all Difference to YOU
high character), riyaled in good deeds
the heroes of 'T6-for they conceived
framed, and nurtured a sovereign State
on the shores of the Pacific, thousand:
of miles from the United States frontier,
and having given it laws, morals and re-
} ligiOn, and something like commerce