Leslie M. Scott

“ It has been often stated, and by persons who should have known the facts in the case, that in 1842, when the Webster-Ashburton treaty took place between England and the United States with reference to our northeastern boundary, the northwestern boundary to the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast was deliberately put aside as of little consequence, and that our government then was so indifferent to the whole question that it stood ready to trade away our rights to the better portions of the Oregon Territory for some fishery considerations on the Atlantic Coast. Let us look at the facts. ”

“ In surveying the bibliography of Oregon, we naturally group the authors according to subjects. Logical classifications include those of exploration and discovery, Oregon question, fur trade, Indian races and their ethnology and wars, Oregon trail and migration, pioneer records, missionaries and churches, provisional government, governmental reports, gold activities, transportation, current publications, including newspapers and magazines, botany, geology, agriculture, lumbering, etc. Writers frequently treat many of these subjects, and these need to be included in one classification. ”

“ It needed but a brief experience to teach the settlers that for agricultural purposes this country about the Columbia River was unsurpassed if not unequaled in America. As the truth grew upon men's minds more families came across the Blue Mountains, and presently the Hudson's Bay Company, thoroughly alarmed, made up its mind to abandon its old-time policy and try to beat the American settlers at their own game. ”

“ Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
However, he may enjoy the thought that later generations will not be compelled to unscramble imaginative fibs from his batter of historical facts. ”

“ The work of general writers necessarily must be preceded by long research on many special subjects, in order to qualify them as authentic authors. A third viewpoint, that of writers of pioneer and Indian tales, of fiction and historical romance, of Indian myths and legends, pertaining to popular literature and "easy sellers," is not included within the scope of this address; not, however, because your writer considers such works unworthy, but because of limited time afforded this afternoon. ”

“ Wonder grows, in analyzing this romance, that in these days of enlightenment, of writing and printing, this story could grow to such absurd proportions and to so many fiction details; that it could gain such wide credence. ”

“ The publications of these authors represent the only renumerative part of historical study. They are more or less imaginative, attractive to the popular taste for adventure and heroism. The literal historian lives very much to himself, with scant money return. His one source of gratification is truth for truth's sake, and the virtue of truth is his one reward. He may not expect his work to be widely read, nor eagerly bought. ”

“ Its vigor betokens the energy and vigilance wherewith Marshall busied himself at the task during twenty-eight years. Its central purpose is to explode the Whitman myth. It succeeds admirably and fully. No reader of Marshall, no unbiased reader, hereafter can believe that myth. Few close investigators ever believed it. Every writer of Oregon history must go henceforth to Marshall, as he must go to Greenhow, else must undertake himself the vast labor of examining first-hand materials. The facts that Marshall cites are full and true. He distorts nothing. ”

“ The picture of that earnest party in pursuit of a lofty purpose, a party of husbands and wives with their children, taking with them their cattle and their household goods and led by their sturdy pastor, the great founder of American democracy, is a very pleasant one. ”

“ In 1835 the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the great missionary organization of the Congregationalists, Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed Churches—an organization which has exerted a powerful influence in the evangelization of the "waste places" of the earth became interested in the spiritual welfare of the Oregon Indians and despatched the Rev. Samuel Parker and Dr. Marcus Whitman on an overland tour of exploration and observation to the Oregon territory. ”

“ Then, too, Marshall injects repeated doses of Whitman myth acrimony; he quarrels with authors of the myth after the manner of the half-century dispute over the question; he shows not enough of the even tenor of the true historian.
Also, Marshall asserts, as corollary of his argument, that Oregon would have been saved had the pioneer Whitman never been born, that Oregon would have been won to the United States from Great Britain without the advent of any of the pioneer parties. ”

“ New counties were organized frequently in Or^on, Idaho, Washington and Montana. Roads and bridges were built; public schools established. The whites forever supplanted the Indians. The San Juan boundary dispute with Great Britain was precipitated in 1859 as a re- sult of the rush of American population to the gold diggings and to Puget Sound, and was decided in 1872, in favor of the United States, by the Emperor of Germany.
In British Columbia the mining era was very important for the British. The resultant growth finally established British power on the Pacific. ”

“ What manner of patent medicine their savage heads may have fancied the sacred volume to contain, whether it would give them ample hunting grounds or ward off the dreaded tomahawk and still more dreaded incantations of the next hostile tribe, it would be hard to say. ”

“ The majority were at first in favor of complying with the orders of the Board, but Dr. Whitman took decided ground against such action. The people in Boston did not understand the situation. Great efforts and sacrifices had been made to establish the missions, and it was never so much needed as now, with the Papists active among the Indians, trying to undo the work that had been done, and the tide of immigration that was to control the destiny of the territory just setting in. The force of the mission should be increased rather than diminished ”

“ To return to the immigration of 1843. After four months' arduous journey, this vanguard of the great army of occupation that was to follow, with its convoy of horses and cattle, reached Oregon, and its numbers spread themselves over the valleys of the lower Columbia and immediately set to work in true American fashion to establish homes and schools and to organize a provisional government of their own. Among them were a number of persons of great force of character, who gave the impress of their personalities upon the religious. industrial and political development of the territory. ”

“ Mr. Fiske at Astoria repeated the "wagon-on-the-Columbia" story; said Hudson's Bay men discouraged immigration and barred wagon progress; told the tale of Whitman spurred by the Red River immigration in 1842 to make his "ride" to "save" Oregon in the Webster-Ashburton negotiations. Portrayed the nation as awakened by Whitman to the value of Oregon and the immigration of 1843 as actuated by him. ”

“ Address before Oregon Writer's League, Portland, Oregon, June 28, 1924
Our Oregon history is not a detached narrative. The various stages of discovery, exploration, fur trade, acquisition, migration, settlement, Indian subjugation, gold activity, transportation, industrial progress, each forms a story, each linked with the others and with the annals of the world and of our nation. Hence, the investigator finds large part of the materials to be outside Oregon libraries; in the governmental departments of the national capital ”

“ The best he can do is to shift the viewpoint of survey. We hear nowadays a great deal about "canned" thought; just as we read about "canned" music and "canned" fruits. The writer has used the results of the labor of others, especially of Charles W. Smith, associate librarian, University of Washington Library, and Eleanor Ruth Lockwood, reference librarian, Portland library, who have compiled lists of authors and materials. He is also indebted to Nellie B. Pipes, assistant secretary and librarian of the Oregon Historical Society, for many valuable suggestions. ”

“ The future will bring to light many documents on this important subject in Washington and London.
For introductory study of Oregon history, we commend Joseph Schafer's "History of the Pacific Northwest," as the simplest, most rapid and best balanced narrative, to be followed by Charles H. Chapman's "The Story of Oregon and Its People;" Sidona V. Johnson's "A Short History of Oregon," which is a condensation of Himes and Lang's "History of Oregon;" John B. Horner's "Oregon: Her History, Her Great Men, Her Literature," and finally by a perusal of Eva Emery Dye's "Stories of Oregon." ”

“ It is a matter of common knowledge that between nations possessing extensive unexplored regions of coterminous territory and enjoying much commercial intercourse, there frequently arise international issues of varying degrees of importance, which through prolonged negotiation get diplomatically grouped as a distinct and interrelated body of issues. ”

“ Many "original sources" must yet be studied before a satisfactory history can be written of the large movements in discovery, exploration, settlements and acquisition of Oregon. Records of Hudson's Bay Company are yet to be opened and of the British Government; those of the United States Government are. ”

“ Of all these materials, the most imposing are the records of governmental departments and Congress, the opinions of courts, and the acts of the Oregon legislature. Contemporary newspaper narratives are indispensable sources. For example, the extant copies of the "Oregon Spectator," 1846-52, the "Oregon Statesman," 1851-61, the "Oregon Argus," 1855-63, the "Oregon Weekly Times," 1850-59, the "Oregon Sentinel," 1860-70, the Olympia "Columbian" and "Pioneer and Democrat," 1852-61, are invaluable references of pioneer history, and, being contemporary with events, are accepted as authentic. ”

“ The resistant habits were strong in the Willamette Valley of Oregon — a district proverbial for retarded growth.^
The primitive life of the Oregon pioneers prior to the gold movement, the isolation, the remoteness from currents of the world and the Nation ; the hardships of family existence; the absence of nearly all the necessary comforts of the later day; the lack of markets and the narrow range of industry—all this is but faintly realized by the present generation.^
1 ThtgfAd dinrings of the pioneer time were placers, chiefly in the beds of streams. ”

“ It tells of the officers of the British Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Hall barring the way to the pioneer train, and trying to stop its wagons, and of Whitman's resolution in taking the party by the British, wagons and all, to the Columbia River. It represents the success of the wagon immigration and the opening of the mission; none in the archives of the missionary board in Boswagon route as achievements of Whitman. It avers that this wagon road thus opened was the means of saving Oregon by American pioneers. ”

“ The need of supplies for prospectors and miners far inland from centers of production and transit, produced large means of transportation. The great highway, the most practicable one, was the Columbia River. A heavy traffic gravitated to this highway, and was monopolized by one transportation com- pany.*® Long lines of transport, by river steamboats, freight wagons and pack animals, led to the interior country from Columbia River, Fraser River, Missouri River, via Fort Bent ”

“ Much new information is presented by Marshall of diplomacy on Oregon between the restoration of Astoria after the war of 1812 and the final boundary treaty of 1846. This information shows that the United States from the very first held out for the forty-ninth parallel, never wavered from that line, never would accept south of that parallel, and finally secured it through President Polk and Secretary of State Buchanan. ”

“ Oregon's part in this movement was not a separate one, either in time or method. When Willamette Valley farmers went "stampeding" to the mines of Clearwater,^ Salmon River,^ Boise,^ Owyhee and John Day, thousands of others were going thither also, from many parts of the world, and to Eastern Washington, Montana and British Columbia. The pioneers of Willamette Valley and Cowlitz and Puget Sound hardly stopped to think of the immensity of the gold movement. ”

“ British Columbia yielded $3,000,000 more a year. This com- bined gold yield was nearly three-fourths that of California in the same space of time. [2]
Before the gold period which began in 1858-60, the region, of which we are reading, was the most remote, and had the scantiest white population of any part of the Nation. News from the Eastern centers was four to six weeks old when it reached Portland, Oregon, by way of the California overland stage route, and thence by ocean steamship northward. The mails came to Portland by sea twice a month. ”

“ The year before it launched the Forty-Nine to navigate the Columbia River across the Canadian boundary up to Death Rapids. Steamboats on Missouri River offered competition to the Co- lumbia River route in Montana, by steaming up to Fort Benton in 1859 and afterwards, and there connecting with the Mullan Road, built in 1859-62.*"^ But the Missouri route was not dependable, because the steamboats could not every year ascend to Fort Benton. ”