Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/368

232 has immortalized the pioneers from the Ohio valley states who rushed to Kansas to make that free territory; but they suffered no hardships to be compared with those who came to Oregon fifteen years before the battles in Kansas. The immigrants to Kansas traveled through a settled country, and could sleep in a comfortable farm house every night if they chose. B^^t the Oregon pioneers trudged alongside their oxen for two thousand miles through trackless plains, burning deserts and frowning mountains without a single friendly roof to protect them or their wives and little children. The colonizers of Kansas are not to be mentioned in the same generation with the pioneers of Oregon; and the glowing lines of Whittier belong to the Oregonians, for they, indeed, and in truth

The first known and recorded tangible effort to induce immigration to Oregon started in the year 1817; and the author of it was Hall Jackson Kelley of Boston, Mass., a digger into unusual and out-of-the-Avay places for knowledge and information on many subjects. Kelley will appear in several places in this History as he well deserves to appear. At that date (1817) Wilson Price Hunt, Ramsay Crooks and Russell Parnham, of Astor's unfortunate venture to Astoria, had all got safely back to the States and given their experiences to the public. To Kelley 's fruitful imagination their accounts of Oregon was like the discovery of a new world; and he at once plunged into the "Oregon Question" with his whole soul. He- read everything on the subject; and then organized a society in 1829, and had it incorporated by the legislature of the state of Massachusetts as "The American Society for the settlement of the Oregon Territory." And through this organization, and as Secretary and manager of it, Kelley carried on his work of promoting the interests of Oregon. He was in truth and fact the first great Oregon promoter. Kelley was indefatigable in promoting his grand scheme; and in 1831, after gathering all the information obtainable, he drafted and presented to Congress in the name of his society, a memorial reciting that the society was "engaged in the work of opening to a civilized and virtuous population that part of Western America called Oregon." And among other statements in the memorial is, that they, the memorialists, "are convinced that if the country should be settled under the auspices of the United States from such of her worthy sons who have drunk the spirit of those civil and religious institutions which constitute the living fountain and the very perennial source of her national prosperity, great benefits must result to mankind. They believe that there, the skillful and persevering hand of industry might be employed with unparalleled advantage; that there science and the arts, the invaluable privilege of a free and liberal government, and the refinement and ordinances of Christianity, diffusing each its blessing, would harmoniously unite in ameliorating the moral condition of the Indians, in promoting the comfort and happiness of the settlers, and in augmenting the wealth and power of the Republic. * * * The country in question is the most valuable of all the