Page:A History of the Pacific Northwest.djvu/256



CHAPTER XVI

THE INLAND EMPIRE

Extent and character of the Inland Empire. The Indian wars of the Pacific Northwest, hke those of New England, western New York, and various sections of the Mississippi valley, were followed by a period in which population spread rapidly over previously unoccupied territory. Thus far settlement had been practically confined to the region between the Cascade Mountains and the Pacific, including the Willamette valley, Puget Sound, the Cowlitz and Columbia districts, the valleys of southern Oregon, and a few points near the seacoast. This was only a small part of the Oregon country, the eastern section, from the Cascades to the Rockies, containing more than three times as large an area. Above the point where the Columbia breaks through the Cascades, one hundred and ninety miles from the sea, it receives branches from the north whose sources lie far beyond the American boundary of 49°, others from the south rising below the 426. parallel, and still others from every part of the west slope of the Rockies between these two boundary lines. They drain an American territory embracing about two hundred thousand square miles, nearly one- fourth larger than the combined areas of the New