Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/53

Rh reach a conclusion, done much to retard the settlement of other questions of difference, particularly that of the northwestern boundary. But, now that the settlement had been reached, the way was clear for attention to this question by itself, and freed from its bearing upon other issues. Such a condition of affairs is surely a significant one in the development of our subject. Its immediate importance was, of course, connected with the boundary question; but the extension of a civil government was waiting upon that, and its fate inseparably connected with it. In his message of December, 1842, while explaining the omission of a settlement from the treaty just concluded, Tyler manifests something of the freedom gained, in a bolder statement than had appeared from the executive department for many years: "The territory of the United States, commonly called the Oregon Territory, lying on the Pacific Ocean, north of the forty-second degree of latitude, to a portion of which Great Britain lays claim, begins to attract the attention of our fellow citizens, and the tide of population, which has reclaimed what was so lately an unbroken wilderness, in more contiguous regions, is preparing to flow over those vast districts which stretch from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. In advance of the acquirement of individual rights to those lands, sound policy dictates that every effort should be resorted to by the two governments to settle their respective claims."

While the colonists were urging on the formation of the provisional government, and the national policy was pervaded by the greater freedom shown in Tyler's message, another influence was brought to bear toward the accomplishment of the result. It was in the spring of 1843 that Dr. Marcus Whitman, head of the Presbyterian and Congregational mission at Waiilatpu, near the present site of Walla Walla, appeared in Washington. He