Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/77



So long and so conspicuously before the world stood the metropolitan post of the Pacific, so unique was its position, and so mighty its influence on the settlement and occupation of Oregon, that although I have often briefly noticed the place and its occupants, a closer scrutiny, and further familiarity with its inner life and the characters of its occupants, seem not undesirable or uninteresting at this juncture.

Up to August 1836, Fort Vancouver was a bachelor establishment in character and feeling, if not in fact. The native women who held the relation of wives to the officers of the company were in no sense equal to their station; and this feature of domestic life in Oregon was not a pleasing one. It was with the company a matter of business, but with the individuals it was something different. To be forever debarred from the society of intelligent women of their own race; to become the fathers of half-breed children, with no prospect of transmitting their names to posterity with increasing dignity, as is every right-minded man's desire; to accumulate fortunes to be devoted to anything