Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/193



THE CENTENNIAL IIISTOin' oK i;K(\ 111

(if |iliiiiis. I'oiTsI ,'inil uiduiilains and lirou^Hil to the kiiowli-dge ol' civili/cil mi'ii tlic wrallli (if a ciint iliclil. It was tllr lui- trade that in'odiu-l'tl this roiiiliinal inn of instinctive intelligences, and that used the same to promote its own scllish piii-- poses of gain, and w hi<'h iudifectly ojiened tile whole of Noflhwcst Amerira tn the light and tlevelopincnt of American civilization.

Now mark the tiitfcrciice. Fur trading was not yet eonlined 1o Canada and the Hritish American i)ossessious west thereof. There were fur traders from the earliest times, trading with the Indians from Plymouth Rock, Hudson river, Jamestown, St. Louis, and on west to the Rocky mountains. But these were men of a dift'erent blood and lineage. The Puritan, the Hollander, the Cavalier and the Spaniard could preach and pray the gospel of salvation to red, black and white man alike; but marry an Indian squaw ; never! The Indian was not the native fool the con(|uering races took him to be. He was not slow to see that the lordly superiorit.y affected by the men of New England and the Ohio valley was in world-W'ide contrast to the free and easy manners the Frenchman extended to him on the St. Lawrence. The Englishman and the Spaniard made the Indian feel that "between me and thee" there is a great gulf fixed. So it was a fight with the Indian on the south side of the Great Lakes from the beginning; while peace and trade flourished on the north side of those inland seas. The same feel- ing of ill-suppressed hatred for each other w^as carried w'est and over the Rocky mountains into Oregon, The English, Americans and Spaniards had continual wars with the Indians, while the Canadian, French and Scotch worked them for all they were worth and could produce in the fur trade and had no wars at all. Indian wars have cost the LTnited States people thousands upon thousands of lives, five hundred million dollars, and a century of dishonor. Trouble with the Indians never cost the Canadians a thousand dollars, and scarcely a life.

That the fur trade has lieen a civilizer on the North American continent, can- not l)e denied. While it carried fire-arms, and intoxicating liquors, and the knowledge of these death-dealing instrumentalities to a benighted, simple-minded and barbarian race, it carried also the knowledge of the power and superiority- of trade, education and religion over ignorance and barbarism.

And although the furry skins of wild animals were never an indispensable ne- cessity to civilized man in four-fifths of the earth's inhabited area, yet the idea that dress or trappings of fine furs were the distinguishing marks of wealth and nobility, made a market for these coats of the wild animals roaming in distant and almost impenetrable forests. The vanity of pride and position on one side, and the love of gain upon the other, sent the trapper into far distant wilds, over frowning cliffs and rock-ribbed mountains, traversing lonely marshes and pad- dling his canoe upon torrential streams, even nnto —

"The continuous woods, where rolls the Oregon. And hears no sound, save its own dashings. "

That the pride and vanity of the rich might be gratilied on one side to the gain of the trader and the subsistence of the trapper on the other side. And by all this strife, labor and worry new lands were discovered, settlements made pos-