Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/369

Rh shedding such luster on those from whom it came, as was that of the Nez Perces delegation to St. Louis, could not fail to bring forth a missionary movement towards Oregon.

The spirit that materialized in the Oregon pioneer movement was not kindled by any special spark like that which called forth the missionary enterprises. Nor was it aroused by anything like the cry of gold that brought on the mad rush to California in '49 and the early fifties. The Oregon migrations were the outcome of cool, calm, reasoned determination. This characterized the movement collectively as well as individually.

In a sense, the Oregon movement was in preparation from the time when in 1636 Puritan congregations were led by Hooker and others from the vicinity of Boston westward through the forests to the banks of the Connecticut. This initial western movement was communicated along the Atlantic coast settlements by the ScotchIrish crossing the Blue Ridge Mountains in Pennsylvania, and by the Virginians penetrating to the Shenandoah Valley. Some would say that an instinct to move west has been growing in strength among civilized peoples since about 1000 B. C., when the Phoenicians moved west on the Medeterranean to found Carthage, and the Greeks to plant colonies in southern Italy and at Marseilles.

So largely had pioneering been the mode of life of those who were living in the western zone of settlement in the United States in 1840 that it was almost a cult with them. The traditions of each family led through the Cumberland Gap or west to Pittsburg and down the Ohio, or along the line of the Great Lakes. Hon. W. Lair Hill, in his "Annual Address" before the Pioneer Association in 1883, fitly characterizes the people among whom the Oregon movement took its rise. "The