Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/65



Four score years and more have already passed away in the revolving circle of time since the beginning of American settlement west of the Rocky mountains.

First came the American missionary, and with him came the trader and commercial adventurer, although these latter had long before made fruitless endeavors here. Soon there followed by sea and by land, the homebuilder, the settler and empire founder. These brought that characteristic American spirit for civil government, by consent of the governed, which began with a Provisional Government, expanding into a Territorial government, after the acquisition of national title, and thence into statehood Feb. 14, 1859, the close of our pioneer history. Though marvelous have been these evolutions in the conquest of the wilderness and comparatively remote the time, yet there are those still living who remember seeing, and perhaps standing, on the very site of the present magnificent metropolis and city of Portland! in which this historic body is now assembled. It was then a dense, primeval forest, unclaimed and uninhabited by the white man.

Perhaps a fair object lesson in the progress of events may be that in the present change of quarters of the Oregon Historical Society from their long tenanted, obscure and insufficient offices to these modern and capacious rooms in this palatial auditorium.

This all reminds us that we are in a new West—a new age—and that the old pioneer West is past and gone—a thing of splendid history and instructive memories. No portion of the national domain is so fortunate as Oregon in the fullness and accuracy of its historic record.

Beginning with Lewis and Clark, Hall J. Kelley, Washington Irving, Gray's, Hines' and Bancroft's histories, with the in-