Oregonians

“ These men and women were instruments in effecting the greatest single expansion ever achieved by any people. The early pioneers in undauntingly carrying out their resolution, and moving across this continental wilderness, were in an important way affecting the destinies of the world. . . .
. . . to succeeding generations of Oregonians. . . . The sur est way of toning their minds to high resolve is for them to cherish the significance of the old Oregon trail. It should be preserved as an honored symbol of what was probably the most representative American achievement. ”

“ I went from there to Coloma, on the South Fork of the American River, and started there at carpenter work. The trouble with the Indians was just this way. When the Oregonians arrived late in 1848, they found in California a great many of the old traders of all nationalities, early pioneers of enterprise, who had gone into California before the discovery of gold. The most of these had married native Indian women. ”

“ Lee by the 6th of October. The rainy season soon commenced; they had no shelter for themselves or their goods. All old Oregonians who have not been seduced and brought up by the Hudson’s Bay Company can comprehend the condition they were in. ”

“ At San Francisco, Meek was surprised to meet about two hundred Oregonians, who on the first news of the gold discovery the previous autumn, had fled, as it is said men shall flee on the day of judgment—leaving the wheat ungathered in the fields, the grain unground in the mills, the cattle unherded on the plains, their tools and farming implements rusting on the ground—everything abandoned as if it would never more be needed, to go and seek the shining dust, which is vainly denominated "filthy lucre." ”

“ Payette, the trader in charge, offered Newell quarters in the fort, as leader of his party. To Meek and Craig who were encamped outside, he sent a piece of sturgeon with his compliments, which our incipient Oregonians sent back again with their compliments. No Hudson's Bay distinctions of rank for them! No, indeed! The moment that an American commenced to think of himself as a settler on the most remote corner of American soil, that moment, as if by instinct, he began to defend and support his republicanism. ”

“ It is unphilosophical to suppose that a strong race, developing under the best, largest, and calmest conditions of nature, will not achieve a destiny.
Be that as it may, no man, seeing Hood from Portland for the first time, could but experience a longing to answer the call of the beckoning mountain, and to find for himself the secrets of the land that lies beyond it. And so Hood was the piper which called us to the hinterland of Oregon, where, quite by chance, we stayed, until now we find we are Oregonians, by adoption and by choice. ”

“ They heaped up no riches, they gathered no worldly honors and they tasted but little of the price of power or place. They were the product of another age than ours, of other ideas than those of 1910, and of principles of thought and action that is but an historical reminiscence. And yet their lives, their ideas and ideals, and their examples are insensibly exercising a greater power on society for good than any one hundred Oregonians who have lived and died since their day. ”

“ The conduct of the work of selection throughout creates an impression of dilatoriness and lack of intelligent procedure. The salt springs' grant of 46,080 acres was wholly forfeited through neglect. [2] The state would have fared likewise with other grants had not extensions of the periods within which selections were to be made been allowed by congress. It must be admitted that there was little to suggest to the early Oregonians that the lands away from the centers of the valleys would ever be worth securing. ”

“ The result of these efforts was to fill up the eastern portion of Oregon and Washington with an active population in a few years, and to materially increase the wealth of the state, both by addition to its producing capacity, and by a consequent rise in the value of lands in every part of it. The travel over the Northern Pacific, chiefly immigration, was large from the moment of its extension to the Rocky Mountains, and was in 1885 still on the increase. ”

“ A country that has the Rocky Mountains for its eastern wall, the Pacific Sea for its western barrier; whose interior mountains are teeming with treasure; whose soil is seldom hardened by frost; down whose coasts sail no icebergs; whose wharves front those of China and Japan, and whose people are full of the intellectuality of the nineteenth century, will not pause nor hesitate on the road to wealth, learning, literature, or art. Already Oregon has furnished the world a poet, whose mountain minstrelsy echoes from foreign shores. ”

“ Of the general condition of the country south of the Columbia at the period of the division, something may be here said, as I shall not again refer to it in a particular manner. The population, before the addition of the large immigration of 1852, was about twenty thousand, most of whom were scattered over the Willamette Valley upon farms. The rage for laying out towns, which was at its height from 1850 to 1853, had a tendency to retard the growth of any one of them. [7] Oregon City, the oldest in the territory, had not much over one thousand inhabitants. ”

“ European race of men in its all-conquering march from farthest East to farthest West, the history of Oregon is not only national in its fundamentals but also finds its original root-graft in the oldest of the virile tribes of men. The same Providence that cast the Mayflower on the rockbound shores of New England to land the Pilgrim Fathers in a new world, inspired the men and women and furnished them with the faith and courage to overcome mountains, deserts and savage tribes and plant Christianity, civilization and laws in the wilderness of Old Oregon. ”

“ The truth of history, and justice to all the actors in the great drama of life to be recorded, must be the unwavering guide.
The history of Oregon has been so fruitful a field for writers of every description that it is safe to say that more pages, if not more books, have been written about this region, its discovery, its name, its missionaries, Indians, the trials and sufferings of its immigrants, its novel provisional government and its latter day new laws and politics, than about all the other states west of the Ohio river. ”

“ The future of the community might have drifted helplessly, or broken out into faction and violence. At the least sign of danger- ous strife the great commercial company, backed by England, would have inter- vened, and British immigration and settlement would have followed, and Oregon would have been lost to the United States. And well we may conclude that the single vote cast by the far-seeing and patriotic heart of Francois Xavier Mat- thieu solved a momentous question at a critical moment, and enrolled the name of this true man among the savers of Oregon. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They have, bee-like, been hived up in Oregon City during the winter, and are now swarming, to the entire satisfaction of the first occupants of the hive, it not being wide and large enough for such an unexpected increase. The last immigration, numbering about a thousand, are generally pleased with the country, and are setting about their spring work with becoming spirit and fortitude.
The Indians of this lower country, whose national honor and dignity are laid in the dust, are looking upon the rapid growth and increased strength of the whites with sorrowful countenances and sad hearts. ”

“ Purely wild for unnumbered centuries, a paradise of oily, salmon-fed Indians, Oregon is now roughly settled in part and surveyed, its rivers and mountain ranges, lakes, valleys, and plains have been traced and mapped in a general way, civilization is beginning to take root, towns are springing up and flourishing vigorously like a crop adapted to the soil, and the whole kindly wilderness lies invitingly near with all its wealth open and ripe for use.
In sailing along the Oregon coast one sees but few more signs of human occupation than did Juan de Fuca three centuries ago. ”

“ Among the fir-clad hills and broad rich valleys of Oregon, the bucolic instinct still lingers. Of the 100,000 people who constitute the permanent population of Oregon, fully four-fifths of them dwell not in town or village, but upon farms. Yet the commercial metropolis of Oregon—Portland-on-Wallamet—is the second town in importance on the Pacific coast. Next to San Francisco, the capital and commerce of the Pacific slope will centre in this solid and reliable Oregon town. ”

“ Oregon today is still the most unspoiled and most uncluttered spot in America — partly because the gold rushes of California and Alaska left it undisturbed. Soon, perhaps, it will be changed by the coming of Power, the inrolling of immigration from the dust bowl, the devastation of timbercutting and forest fires, and the boosting activities of chambers of commerce. ”

“ Ever since Oregon was first heard of in the romantic, adventurous, hunting, trapping Wild West days, it seems to have been regarded as the most attractive and promising of all the Pacific countries for farmers. While yet the whole region as well as the way to it was wild, ere a single road or bridge was built, undaunted by the trackless thousand-mile distances and scalping, cattle-stealing Indians, long trains of covered wagons began to crawl wearily westward, crossing how many plains, rivers, ridges, and mountains, fighting the painted savages and weariness and famine. ”

“ No great and general forms of Nature impress themselves upon the memory or imagination more than mountains. The ocean alone rivals them in this respect. Those nations, like the Swiss, who have been born and bred in the shadow of, or even in sight of, cloud-piercing heights, never take kindly to countries of a smoother aspect. In a few generations, Oregon will undoubtedly possess, for this reason, a people distinguished for patriotism.
We have found the Oregon mountains everywhere, west of the summit of the Cascade Range,, densely covered with forest, even up to the line of perpetual snow. ”

“ Oregon was another land to conquer, to settle, and to upbuild. There were also in these early immigrations a number of men and women, descendants of [85] the sturdy peoples who settled in New England, and in other Northern States. There were a few men who were attracted to Oregon by the love of adventure incident to the journey and to the settlement of a new country. There were also a few men, born outside of the United States, who allied themselves with the Americans, and became identified with the Americans in Oregon, and subsequently were admitted as citizens of the United States. ”

“ It was about two thousand miles west of the forefront of civilization in the United States at that time. Between that forefront and Oregon there are great plains, rugged mountains and large rivers to be crossed, a road to be established for them and for others, coming after them, to travel successfully to Oregon—"the land where dreams come true." There were great numbers of savage Indians to be encountered and forced to respect the rights and property of these immigrants. ”

“ He predicted that the great migration to California would benefit Oregon, as many of the gold-seekers would remain on the Pacific coast, and look for homes in the fertile and lovely valleys of the new territory. And last, but by no means least in importance, was the reference to the expected donation of land for which the people were waiting, and all the more anxiously that there was much doubt entertained of the tenure by which their claims were now held, since the only part of the old organic law repealed was that which granted a title to lands. ”

“ While politics occupied so much attention, the country was making long strides in material progress. The immigration of 1850 to the Pacific coast, by the overland route alone, amounted to between thirty and forty thousand persons, chiefly men. Through the exertions of the Oregon delegate, in and out of congress, about eight thousand were persuaded to settle in Oregon, where they arrived after undergoing more than the usual misfortunes. ”

“ But while all of the foregoing and many other inducements might have been present in varying degree, the great incentive to immigration was free land. Not only land for the landless, but land for all, and in unstinted quantity. The scenes at Oklahoma divest the emigration to Oregon of all mystery, and while there was probably small difference in kind or degree of virtue between those who came and those who remained, of one fact pioneers are cognizant, namely, that the incidents and trials of the overland journey were a wonderful developer and equalizer. ”

“ In every migration the men selected as captains at the start continued to maintain, either by talent or habit, the leadership of their fellows after reaching their destination.
Nothing unusual befell the travellers between the Missouri and Snake rivers. At Fort Hall, according to the testimony of several, an effort was made to turn the immigration toward California; and whatever unfavorable information they received concerning the distance, the road, or the natives, was imputed to the desire of the British fur company to prevent this great influx of Americans into Oregon. ”