Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/20

8 the life of the savage, and to build up a condition of civilized life. The difference was all the more marked because of the entrance of the missionaries and the important part played by these leaders, who exercised an influence perhaps second only to that of the early religious leaders of New England, and whose energies were untiring in the interests of good government and a moral population. That two such diverse types of life could exist side by side during the twenty-eight years of joint occupancy without influencing the course of civil government is not to be conceived. That the relation was harmonious at first is true, but that irritations arose as time went on was inevitable.

In any analysis of the influences affecting the course of civil government in Oregon a prominent place should be given to that slow yet powerful westward movement of population. It consisted of a people aggressive and assertive of their own desires, patriotic, and upright in the main, with a consciousness of their own wants and their ability to get them, and possessing but little knowledge of, or reverence for, the intricacies of international usage, or the restrictions of a conservative legislative body. Being a part of the people, they were the sovereign power, and if they determined upon having the west, it must finally be had. This was a movement which led thousands of intrepid immigrants to anticipate the government in going to remote regions. Those who remained behind had now a greater interest in the country, and ere long it was to be the impulse from this movement which aroused the national consciousness to the importance of the Oregon question, gave it a place among the problems of the nation, put it upon the platform of a political party as a prominent issue, and forced a settlement of the boundary, and finally secured a civil government.