Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/398

252 that have accomplished such work as these Missourians and their neighbors from Iowa, did in literally picking up a commonwealth in pieces, on the other side of the continent and transporting it two thousand miles to the Pacific coast and setting it down here around and about this "Willamette valley, and starting it off in good working order at Champoeg, with all the state machinery to protect life and property and promote the peace and happiness of all concerned, and all others who might join in the society. It is something to be proud of.

Mrs. Victor, in her work on the Indian Wars of Oregon, sums up the trials and sufferings of the emigrants of 1844-45.

"The immigration of 1845 numbered about three thousand persons and almost doubled the white population of Oregon; that of 1844 having been about, seven hundred and fifty. But if their numbers were small, their patriotism was large, and they made no secret of the fact that some of them had come all the way from Missouri to burn Fort Vancouver. So many threats of a similar nature had found utterance ever since the first large party of 1843, that the officers of the British company had thought it only prudent to strengthen their defenses and keep a sloop of war lying in the Columbia. What the company simply did for defense the settlers constructed into offense, and both parties were on the alert for the first overt act."

The passage down the Columbia was one of excessive hardship and danger, each immigration having endured incredible suffering, and also loss, in coming from The Dalles to the Willamette valley; families and wagons being shipped on rafts to the Cascades, where a portage had to be made of several miles, and whence another voyage had to be undertaken in such poor craft as could be constructed or hired, taking weeks to complete this portion of the long journey from the states, in the late and rainy months of the year; the oxen and herds being driven down to Vancouver on the north side of the river, or being left in the upper country to be herded by the Indians. The rear of the immigration of 1844, remained at Whitman's mission over the winter, and several families at The Dalles. The larger body of 1845 divided, some coming down the river and others crossing the Cascade mountains by two routes, but each enduring the extreme of misery. John Minto, then a young man, says of 1844: "I found men in the prime of life lying among the rocks (at the Cascades) seeming ready to die. I found there mothers with their families, whose husbands were snowbound in the Cascade mountains without provisions, and obliged to kill and eat their game dogs. * * * There was scarcely a dry day, and the snow line was nearly down to the river." The scenes were repeated in 1845 with a greater number of sufferers, one wing of the long column taking a cut-off by following which they became lost, and had all but perished in a desert country. "Despair settled upon the people; old men and children wept together, and the strongest could not speak hopefully." "Only the women," says one narrator, "continued to show firmness and courage."

The perils and pains of the Plymouth Rock pilgrims were not greater than those of the pioneers of Oregon, and there are few incidents in history more profoundly sad than the narratives of hardships undergone in the settlement of this country. The names of the men who pioneered the wagon road around the base of Mount Hood are worthy of all remembrance. They were Joel Palmer, Henry M. Knighton, W. H. Rector and Samuel K. Barlow, in particular; but