Page:Letter from the Secretary of the Interior, re Whitman Massacre, 1871.pdf/4

Rh established and strongly-fortified posts, under strict military rule, extending from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and a complete control of this coast for 2,000 miles.

3d. The hostility of that company to the presence of American citizens in the country, and their policy to exclude American settlements, and their efforts to secure the settlement of British subjects, although by the treaty renewed three times by said governments the American citizen had the same right with the British subject.

4th. The early Oregon missions, their importance in securing the country to Americans, by demonstrating the practicability of an emigrant route across the continent: by communicating to the people of the United States important information concerning the country; by establishing schools and laying the foundations of civilized society in the valley of the Willamette, and doing much to bring forward the provisional government; but especially by the herculean labors of the martyr Whitman through the winter snows of the Rocky Mountains, to reach the city of Washington and to com communicate to the Government the certainty of a wagon-route, and the value of the country, by which its cession to Great Britain was prevented; and by his successfully bringing through, in 1843, that emigration of nearly 1,000 souls, with their wagons, to the Columbia.

5th. The Whitman massacre and the attempt to break up the American settlements.

6th. Who excited the Indians to murder the Americans?

7th. What do the citizens of Oregon and Washington think of Executive Document No. 38?

8th. What is expected of Congress

We had a right to Oregon, first by discovery of the Columbia River; second, we had the right of possession by purchase of all the territory west of the Mississippi, claimed as Louisiana by France, and purchased by Jefferson in 1804. Had that failed we had the right of possession by purchase of Spain, in 1819, of all their possessions gained by discovery, or in any other way, north of 42 north latitude, so that we had a threefold right as stated by Webster. But possession by right is very different from possession in fact. Gentlemen present are aware that that region, for a long time, was a terra incognita to most of the business world. The Hudson's Bay Company at length crowded out, not only the Northwest Company's posts, but Mr. Astor's also, and changed the name of Astoria to Fort George, thus gaining complete possession.—Address of Dr. Atkinson, of Portland, before the New York Chamber of Commerce, December, 1868.

At that time, however, the gloom of desolation hung like a pall over these regions. Many of you can recall the dread in those times of the North Pacific Coast and its imagined dreary and dreamy loneliness. The unfortunate result of Astor's Columbia River project, the fate of the Tonquin, Jewett's narrative of the wreck and capture of the ship Boston and her crew, especially the terrible work of death by starvation and hardships among Wilson G. Hunt's party, had stripped the northwest coast of America of a single inviting feature. But in a greater degree the immortal Bryant, in his 'Vision of Death,' dedicated these shores as its fit abiding place, and presents the grim monster as penetrating these

He then breaks the awful silence of his own creation in the oracular assurance,

The education of an American youth, in those days, was thought to have been neglected if he were unable to recite those memorable verses. Have you not felt the contagion of that inspiration? Are you not, even now, sometimes affected by that ideality? Transfer yourselves to your Atlantic homes, and imagine these ocean-washed shores. these immense mountain chains, our high northern latitude and proximity to the polar regions; regain once more your ideal conception of the remoteness of West from East, and then couple with these thoughts, "Yet the dead are there. Much as I love the poetry, greatly as I admire the venerable bard who has given such prestige to American literature, yet how cruel was he to the home of my adoption. Methinks he stamped on the region the grim idea of its fitness for a charnel house. Will you risk life there. for it may be your lot, out of the presence and far removed from all you hold dear, there to fall alone, unwept and unmourned? Will you take mother, wife, sister, child, to such a place: That sublime composition made me, when a schoolboy, imagine this northwest coast and the mighty Columbia the dreamiest and most inhospitable of earth. An idea, whether just or unjust, molds the history of passing events. That one surely passed into history, and impressed Oregon with a solitude so profound, it were almost sacrilege in men to attempt to disturb. So, at least, seemed to believe the American Government, and many leading American statesmen, for nearly half a century; and although two American women set the example by which the presence here of