Page:Eleven years in the Rocky Mountains and a life on the frontier.djvu/310

268 Bay Company. That company had a good thing so long as the government of Great Britain prevented any outbreak, by simply renewing the treaty every ten years. Their manner of doing business was such as to prevent any less powerful corporation from interfering with them, while individual enterprise was sure to be crushed at the start.

But "man proposes and God disposes." In 1834, the Methodist Episcopal Board of Missions sent out four missionaries to labor among the Indians. These were two preachers, the Rev. Messrs. Jason and Daniel Lee, and two lay members, Cyrus Shepard and P.L. Edwards. These gentlemen were liberally furnished with all the necessaries and comforts of life by the Board, in addition to which they received the kindest attentions and consideration from the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company at Vancouver. Their vessel, the May Dacre, Captain Lambert, had arrived safely in the river with the mission goods. The gentlemen at Vancouver encouraged their enterprise, and advised them to settle in the Wallamet valley, the most fertile tract of country west of the Rocky Mountains. Being missionaries, nothing was to be feared from them in the way of trade. The Wallamet valley was a good country for the mission—at the same time it was south of the Columbia River. This latter consideration was not an unimportant one with the Hudson's Bay Company, it being understood among those in the confidence of the British government, that in case the Oregon territory had to be divided with the United States, the Columbia River would probably be made the northern boundary of the American possessions.

There was nothing in the character of the Christian Missionary's labor which the Hudson's Bay Company could possibly object to without a palpable violation of the