Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/17

Rh nation. As in the case of other states, there was the acquisition of territory, in this case preceded by a partial acquisition. Like the other states, it has passed through the various steps prescribed by congress for the transition from newly acquired territory to perfect statehood; but, as other states have passed through this common process with a great variety of interesting and unique experiences, so Oregon has had its own history, peculiar to itself, and in some respects different from that of any other state. It is the purpose of this paper to set forth briefly the leading facts, so far as they may be gained from the sources at present available, and to present them, so far as possible, in historical perspective, and as a part of the growth of our national life.

In the examination of a subject connected with local history it is easy to be carried away by local circumstances, and to fail to grasp those larger features which connect it with the history of the nation and to some extent with that of the world. Our truest knowledge of the subject, however, will come from this broader approach and a search first for those general conditions which underlay the more detailed history and were instrumental in determining its drift.

In order that we may see the wider scope of our subject we need only to remember that during the early centuries of exploration the territory whose civil life we are to study was at stake in the great struggle between those countries which were striving for the mastery of the world, and many a stroke of policy that seemed to affect these remote regions had its only significance as it bore upon the conflict of England and Spain. And then, when the Russian Empire, through the impetus received from Peter the Great and Catherine II, continued its process of expansion eastward, its outer wave reached the western shores of America and they became an