and a few others labored. The Methodist Board of Missions was also aroused, thrilled, as Rev. H. K. Hines says, as it had never been thrilled before, because the heathen were seeking the church, instead of the church. seeking the heathen. In 1834 they establishd a mission west of the Cascades, in which such men as Jason Lee, Daniel Lee, Elijah White, A. F. Walker, Gustavus Hines, George Abernethy, David Leslie and others labored. Harvey Clarke and others followed as independent missionaries to the Indians. The results of their labors on the Indians, on the whites, on the relation and intercourse between the two, especially with reference to treaties and wars; on the early emigration to the Coast; on the early government of Oregon and on the United States in obtaining her Pacific Coast possessions; on Oregon literature and books; on the founding of three of her most successful colleges, the Willamette University, Pacific University and Whitman College, cannot be told. They have already filled many volumes and the end is not yet, by any means. They will endure as long as the United States shall last, they will endure through all eternity."

These and other missionaries who were sent out by their respective denominations to carry the gospel to this part of the world, in 1834, 1835, 1836 and subsequent years, were the first persons to make settlement" on the American plan" in all the vast region then known as the Oregon country. They were the first to furnish reliable information in regard to its character, the dangers attending the long and painful journey to be made before it could be reached, the difficulties to be encountered after reaching it, partly from hostile Indians, partly from the unfriendly disposition of the Hudson's Bay Company which controlled it, and partly because of the long distances intervening between their locations and their home societies, to whom they must look for aid, comfort and maintenance. These missionaries blazed the way to this distant field of labor, and were the first to prove that wagons could be taken from the Missouri to the Columbia river. The same influences that, coming from the visit of these Flathead Indians to St. Louis in 1832, inspired church organizations to respond to this Macedonian appeal by sending their agents to Oregon, prompted numerous laymen to undertake the same journey for the purposes of making themselves homes in a region which they believed full of promise for the future, notwithstanding all reports to the contrary. The fact that the Hudson's Bay Company discouraged their coming and desired to retain this country as an English possession, and as a preserve for Indians and for fur-producing animals, only strengthened their determination to "beard the lion in his den," and to brave all the hardships necessary to meet the issue and save this region to the American Union. The long-continued efforts of Hall J. Kelley, beginning in 1815, and lasting forty years, his fruitless visit to Oregon in 1834,

his numerous pamphlets on the subject, his petitions to Congress, were all of no avail except to furnish valuable information to leading men at the seat of government and to direct public attention to a subject which was strangely neglected, and in regard to which there was a vast amount of ignorance and misrepresentation. Nor was the expedition organized in Boston in 1832, by Nathaniel J. Wyeth, who started with twenty-one men and arrived at Vancouver after a perilous journey across the plains, with eleven weary, footsore and destitute men, who are glad to accept the hospitality and assistance of Dr. John McLaughlin, then the representative of the Hudson's Bay Company, any more successful in establishing a permanent settlement. One of the party, John Ball by name, is given a place as a schoolmaster at Fort Vancouver, and on the 1st day of January, 1833, the first school in all this wild domain is opened by this young man from Massachusetts, by permission or rather by the appointment of Dr. McLaughlin. His successor was Solomon H. Smith, who conducted a school at the same place for eighteen months, and afterwards became a prosperous farmer at Clatsop near the mouth of the Columbia, where he died. Nor did the picturesque Bonneville, who visited the Columbia river in 1834, with a party of hunters, trappers, half-breeds and Indians, accomplish anything in the way of assisting emigrants or making settlements. He doubtless furnished additional information in regard to the country, but otherwise his services in that direction were not important. He resumed his place in the United States army, was retired in 1861, and died in Fort Smith, Arkansas, in 1878, the oldest officer in the army, eighty-three years of age.

But the men and women who came as missionaries were sincere and earnest in their conceptions of duty, and were not to be swerved from the line they had marked out for themselves, by any obstacles or difficulties in their way. They were intent not only on carrying the gospel to the Indians, but on saving to American uses and institutions the wide and rich expanse of territory which stretched away to the Pacific, from the summits of the Rocky Mountains, and which was drained by the Columbia river. They were practical men, who very soon after their arrival comprehended the value of this promising region, and they were prompt to advise their friends in the east of the vast issues then at stake, and which were awaiting settlement between the United States and Great Britain. The services of Dr. Marcus Whitman, who established a Presbyterian mission about twenty-five miles east of Fort Walla Walla in 1836, and was massacred in 1847 by the Indians amongst whom he labored, with twelve other persons, under circumstances of the most atrocious character, must always be held in grateful remembrance by every loyal American citizen. There may be a difference of opinion as to the full extent of these services, but that they were

of inestimable value in assisting emigrants to Oregon, in furnishing information in regard to that country and in directing the public mind to the importance of acquiring and holding it in perpetuity, there can be no question whatever. His midwinter ride to further these purposes must always remain a marvel of patriotic effort, of patience, endurance, and heroic fortitude. For this and other services to the territory, now known as the state of Washington, he is justly entitled to the place in the Hall of Fame in the city of New York to which he was assigned by Governor John R. Rogers in 1900, along with Governor Isaac I. Stevens, the first governor of Washington territory. Between 1832 and 1840, sixty-one men and women of high moral, intellectual and religious character were sent to Oregon by various missionary boards in the United States. They represented about thirty families and one hundred children, who constituted an American colony or a series of colonies in a vast scope of country, otherwise occupied and controlled by the Hudson's Bay Company, its agents, servants and employes. There were a few others, American citizens, who were there for trading and other purposes, but they were not homeseekers or homebuilders. But these missionaries were true and worthy representatives of American ideas, and their entry upon this stage of action marked the beginning of a new era on the northwest coast of America. In the meantime, during those six years, the representatives of British interests in Oregon were not idle and indifferent spectators of the events which were taking place around them. They were sensible of the fact that the issue was upon them and must be met, if they would hold the country they valued so highly, for many reasons. They brought, in 1838, two Roman Catholic priests, who were devoted to British interests, and placed one of them in the Willamette Valley, and the other was given a roving commission to visit all settlements or posts where his ministrations would be received. In 1840 they brought a colony of one hundred and twenty-five persons from Winnipeg intended for settlement on Puget Sound. These people were taken to the valley of the Cowlitz river, north of the Columbia river in order, if possible, to make that river the boundary between the two countries when a dividing line should be permanently located. This colony was not a success, however, and most of its members removed to the Willamette Valley or engaged in hunting or trapping for the Hudson's Bay Company. The first regular emigration movement across the plains began in 1841. This consisted of one hundred and eleven persons who came in that year, and their arrival nearly doubled the number of Americans in the territory. It was deemed impracticable at that time to bring wagons across the mountains to Oregon. So the long journey of two thousand miles was made on horseback. In 1842 another important addition was made to the Oregon settlements. This consisted of only one

hundred and nine persons, but a large proportion of these were adults, and many of them became prominent in later years in the political history of the country. The supremacy of the Hudson's Bay Company was now terminated, to all practical intents and purposes, and very shortly afterwards the country became thoroughly Americanized.

CHAPTER XVII.

SUMMARY-EARLY GENERAL HISTORY.

To properly appreciate the motives of, and the external influences surrounding the first settlers north of the Columbia river and particularly in the region of Puget Sound, it may be desirable again to refer briefly to that event known in American history as the "Oregon Question," to recapitulate some points already touched upon, and to show how the Sound country came to be a part of the United States instead of a part of British America. It has been frequently stated in many public prints and addresses, that the present state of Washington was acquired from France as a part of the Louisiana purchase in 1803. The weight of authority is against that proposition.

Nations acquire title to territory in one of four ways: (1) By immemorial occupation; (2) by conquest; (3) by purchase or gift; and (4) by discovery followed by occupation. The discovery of the mouth of a river and the occupation of the territory give title, by the law of nations, to the territory drained by the river and its tributaries.

Applying the facts of history to these principles of international law, as the same bears upon the Puget Sound settlement, we find:

First. In 1792, Vancouver, an English navigator, entered and took possession of the Sound country in the name of his sovereign.

Second.—In the same year Captain Robert Gray of the ship “Columbia," sent out by a company of Boston merchants, entered the mouth of the great river on the western coast of the United States and gave it the name of his ship. Neither discovery was followed by occupation and no attention was paid to them until 1804.

Third. In 1804, President Jefferson sent out two surveyors, Captains Merriwether Lewis and William Clark, who in 1804-5-6 explored the country west of the Rocky Mountains and down the Columbia river.

Fourth. In 1811 John Jacob Astor, an American merchant, established a trading post at Astoria.

Fifth. In 1813, by the treachery or weakness of the manager of this post, the valuable property was transferred to an English company during the war then being waged between the United States and Great Britain, and a British war sloop took possession, hoisted the British flag and changed the name to Fort George.

Sixth. In 1814, by the treaty which concluded the war of 1812, this property was ceded back to the United States. British fur and trading companies, however, continued to operate in this region and lost no opportunity to so shape matters that they could regain possession of the territory.

Thus after the United States, through Captain Gray, had discovered the country in 1792; after it had been explored by the authority of the president; after a citizen of the United States had established a trading post there; after it had been acknowledged as belonging to the United States by a treaty which terminated a war, yet the United States acknowledged that it did not know whether it owned Oregon or not.

Seventh. In 1818 the United States agreed with Great Britain upon a joint occupancy of the territory west of the Rocky Mountains in the following terms: "That any country claimed by either party on the northwest coast of America, 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 to the subjects, citizens and vessels of the two powers."

This opened the country to the free movements of the British fur and trading companies, and England thus gained by diplomacy, what belonged to the United States through discovery and occupation.

Eighth. At the expiration of the ten years, or in 1828, the treaty was renewed for an indefinite period of time, terminable however on a year's notice by either party to the other. It is not necessary here to go into details of events that transpired during the succeeding years. There were operating in this country the Hudson's Bay Company; there were speculators, Indians, priests, explorers, and adventurers of all kinds. Troubles were growing and in many instances murders were committed. But in spite of these discouragements, immigration was moving westward.

Ninth. In 1844 the United States gave notice to England that it desired to terminate the treaty of 1818, and, in 1846, the forty-ninth parallel of latitude was made the international boundary from the summit of the Rocky Mountains to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island; thence through the middle of said channel and of Fuca's straits to the Pacific. The free navigation of the Columbia river was given to the Hudson's Bay Company and other British subjects. If the British government had any claim to the Puget Sound basin through the discovery of Vancouver in 1792, it was surrendered by this treaty of 1846.

Tenth. Subsequent to the convention of 1846, England claimed that Rosario's Straits was the channel intended where the United States insisted upon the Canal De Haro. Both are deep-sea channels and between them lies the Island of San Juan, then occupied by the Hudson's Bay Company. In