Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/383

 DALLES CITY V. MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 371 �tliereto, or to their heirs in case of their death before the patent issued, did not include the heirs of married persons who had died before the passage of the act, because, by the terms thereof, the grant was limited to persons residing in the territory at the time of its passage, then in being. So, in this case, the grant only appHes to stations then occupied for missionary purposes; and if for any reason a station was not then so occupied, it is not within the purview of the act, it matters not now long or how effectively missionary oper- tions had been carried on there at some former period. The station at Wailatpu would in ail probability have been occu- pied bythe Presbyterian society on August 14, 1848, but for the massacre of the missionaries there on November 29, 1847. But this fact did not excuse or was not equivalent to such occupation. Therefore, in the passage of the act to organize Washington territory, passed March 2, 1853, when congress had this subject before them with reference to the missionary stations in the proposed territory, the grant was repeated in the terms of the Oregon act, with the addition of the words, "or that may have been so occupied as missionary stations prier to the passage of the act establishing the territorial govemment of Oregon." This change was manifestly made to meet the case of the Wailatpu mission, which was not occupied as a mission station on August 14, 1848, and upon the theory that for want of such occupancy it was not granted by the Oregon act to the society which Dr. Whitman repre- sented during his residence upon it, prior and up to the time of his death. But such want of occupancy being neitber the resuit of a voluntary abandonment or a fleeing like the hire- ling from the wolf, but of the death of the faitbful occupant at his post by Indian treachery and violence, congress was induced to extend the terms of the grant so,as,to include that case. �, But, as bas been shown, thero is not the slightest ground for saying that The Dalles station was abandoned by the defendant's missionaries on acoount of fear of the Indians, or that such cause preyented its occupation by them in August, 1848. On the contrary, they deliberately abandoned it with- ��� �