Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/495

486 the first reference to the ring sport in the Oregon country was put before the readers:

"Disgraceful.—We are sorry to say, that we have been informed of some most disgraceful proceedings which recently occurred in Champoeg (2) and Yamhill counties. We are shocked to state further, that not satisfied with their late acts of brutality, the same parties are to meet again, in a few days, to commit a greater outrage upon good order, decency, and law by engaging in a kind of prizefight. Is there no law in those counties? If there be, where are the regularly constituted authorities to enforce it?"

The date of this devastating blast was October 29, 1846, and the editor, who, almost surely, wrote the paragraph, was Mr. Curry.

Whether by the influence of Mr. Curry's withering editorial or for some other reason, it was possible for the Spectator in its next issue to report:

"We have the pleasure of stating that the recurrence of certain disagreeable circumstances in Champoeg county, alluded to in a recent number, was prevented by the timely and kindly interference of Rev. Mr. Demars, through whose instrumentality an amicable adjustment of matters was brought about."

So the early attitude of Oregon newspapers, reflected in many of them long after 1846, was that prizefighting and some of the other sports of combat were matters of brutal assault and battery for the police to suppress, rather than for sports writers to promote.

The influence of the old country on sports in the Spectator's Oregon is indicated by the notice given a curling match on the Columbia river January 26, 1847, when George Law Curry was editor. The account appeared February 4. The river, incidentally, must have been pretty solidly frozen over to permit of indulgence in this ice-sport. No such reluctance appeared in covering this as was indicated in the case of the horse-races, even though such dignitaries as Peter Skene Ogden and other Hudson's Bay personages were ac tive in the racing meet. Devotees of sports and sports writing may observe the technique of the sports handling of the day, but only those who already know something about curling would know what this item was all about when they had finished it— although the writer, more considerate of his readers than some later sports writ ers, did take the trouble to name the winner.

An optimistic prophecy that the sport would take hold in Oregon was not borne out.

Here's the way the daily Morning News, Portland's first daily newspaper, stirred the fight fans with an account of a ring contest.