Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/21

Rh After all other difficulties were overcome, after the barrier of distance was removed, after the stormy season of threatened war over the boundary line had passed away, civil government in Oregon became inevitably connected with another question which was to affect its destiny. The deepening bitterness between the north and the south was drawing everything into the maelstrom of slavery discussion, and particularly was this true in the case of every piece of newly acquired territory whose destiny was inseparably connected with the defeat or justification of the system of slavery.

With this brief survey of the general conditions which have operated to determine the course of events, the narrative of the more important details in the growth of civil government in Oregon may be better understood. We find that in the days of the discoverer, explorer, and fur trader there was no civil government at all, except such as was exercised by the native races for the regulation of their primitive life. Every one was dependent upon his own resources for the protection of life and property. From the time that the first Spanish ship, under the command of Ferrelo, touched the southern shore of Oregon, in the middle of the sixteenth century, until the beginning of the nineteenth, there was as much freedom from the restraints of social order as any anarchist could wish. There was nothing to check the conflicts that might arise between the crews of vessels, from the same or different nations, in their eagerness for the glories of discovery or the profits of trade with the Indians. There was nothing to shield from the danger of massacres from tribes, hostile by nature, or by contact with the whites. The explorer or trader who penetrated the interior must trust to his own ability for safety, and to his judgment in making friends with the Indians. There was nothing to regulate men in the struggle to