Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/491

440 they should appear to claim it. A lot for the erection of the jail was offered by McLoughlin, and accepted by the committee. An act was also passed for the protection of Indians in the free use of such pieces of vacant land as they then occupied with their villages or fisheries; and the executive was empowered to bring suit in the name of Oregon against persons infringing the rights of the natives to the peaceable possession of such lands.

The two sessions of the committee of 1844 occupied less than three weeks, in which time forty-three bills were passed, many of them of general importance. Some of the shorter ones showed the improvements to which the accession of population was giving rise. Hugh Burns and Robert Moore were granted rights to keep public ferries on the Willamette; John McLoughlin to construct a canal round the falls; W. H. Wilson and L. H. Judson to construct a mill-race in Champoeg County. Jesse Applegate was appointed engineer to survey for a canal from the crossing of the Tualatin River, down Sucker Creek, to the Willamette River, in order to determine the cost of making this a mode of transportation from the Tualatin plains to the Willamette. Several road acts were also passed.

The legislative committee fixed the pay of the executive committee at one hundred dollars each, per annum, for their services, the three receiving nothing above the amount fixed as the salary of the governor provided for by an act passed the following day. But as the organic law did not contemplate paying the executive committee in anything but honors, one hundred dollars to each might be considered as a gift. The legislative committee voted themselves two dollars a day, and the assessor of the revenue the same.