Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/67

16 fur company chose to lend them. Numerous half-breed children played about their doors; they had no cares of church or state; no aspirations beyond a comfortable subsistence, which was theirs; and being on good terms with their only neighbors, the natives, they passed their lives in peaceful monotony. At the falls of the Willamette were the log houses which had been built by McLoughlin in connection with his mill-works there, and which were occupied occasionally by the company's servants, some improvements being still in progress at that place.

In addition to the French Canadians were a number of Americans who had come to the country with Wyeth's first expedition, and had also made settlements in the same neighborhood, on the east side of the Willamette River. In all the American territory west of the Blue Mountains there were about thirty-five white men, including the party at Fort William, who had not belonged to the Hudson's Bay Company, but were there with the intention to settle permanently.

Another element was this year introduced into the early society of Oregon. Since the fallen condition of the race left no spot of earth untainted, it followed that missionaries were needed to look after the spiritual interests of the natives of this western Eden. Missionaries were there in the persons of two brothers, named Lee, assisted by certain laymen, who, after having been received with the usual hospitality at Fort Vancouver, were busy erecting a dwelling and making other improvements at the place selected for their station, a little to the south of the French Canadian settlement in the Willamette Valley.

Besides the missionary family, there were at Fort Vancouver two gentlemen from the United States, who were travelling in the interests of science, Messrs Townsend and Nuttall, naturalists, after whom and by whom so many of our western plants were named; so that it cannot be said of Oregon that her earliest