Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/252

Rh sickness and accident in the Mission circle in the space of five years was thirteen, ten being in the flush of youth and prime of life, while three of them were children. When to these is added the mortality among the Indians and half-breeds, the impression might be that the climate was deadly. Yet the climate of Oregon has since been proven exceedingly salubrious; and to the causes of disease already enumerated, there seems nothing more to add except the theory advanced by some writers, that a disease when newly introduced into a country is most virulent.

Meanwhile the superintendent is perfecting his plans for the foundation of a Methodist state. At the first annual meeting of the Methodist society in May 1841, a committee is appointed to select a location for the manual-labor school, which is chosen not far from the Mission mills, on the southern border of the Chemeketa plain. Here a building costing ten thousand dollars is erected, in which an Indian school is kept for about nine months, beginning in the autumn of 1842, which comes to a close through the causes long tending in this direction.

The education of the children of the missionaries and settlers, now twenty in number, is a subject more pleasing to contemplate than the education of the natives. On the 17th of January, 1842, a meeting is held at the house of Jason Lee, who is now living at the new settlement, to prepare for the establishment of an educational institution for the benefit of white children, and a committee appointed to call a public meeting and prepare the way; the committee to consist of J. L. Babcock, Gustavus Hines, and David Leslie, the last named having returned from the Islands in April, by the fur company's vessel Llama, Captain Nye. The meeting is held on the 1st of February following, at the old mission house on