Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/67

Rh is one; that portion north of the waters of the Umpqua is another, while all that south is the third, and may be said to embrace Southern Oregon.

Of all the parts, indeed of all the Pacific Northwest, or of the entire Pacific Coast states, none has contributed so complete a history in stirring details of the desperate struggle and daring adventure and varied developments in industrial progress as Southern Oregon.

In no other portion have the aborigines so stubbornly and so savagely resisted the white man's invasion of their abode. In no other portion was the advancing civilization so remote and so dependent upon the lone efforts of the explorer and home builder. Long following the days of Captain Gray, the Lewis and Clark, and the Astorian sea and! land expeditions, the Columbia was the Mecca of the sailor and the fur hunter, and yet then and later upon the waters of the lower Columbia and Willamete, the natives were far less hostile and received the oncoming whites with more welcome than in the Southern Oregon country after its exploration. Even the Hudson's Bay Company had their friendship.

Tidewater navigation has ever been the most potent agency in the civilization and development of all countries and quickly overcame the hostility of the original inhabitants. It became the easy and attractive highway of most all mankind.

Southern Oregon until a later day was without this great auxiliary, and! portions of it never became directly accessible by water. It also followed as a sequence that the more remote and inaccessible a region, the more inhospitable and irreconcilable were the native inhabitants to the white man's entrance. They were also noted as more brave, more savage, and unconquerable than those nearer the Coast. Their approach was by Indian trail with its tortuous windings over the mountains, through hidden canyons and across impassable streams; and not by the easy current of the ebb and flow of the sea. In the settlement of all new countries the boat first came before the wagon.

For long years and until gold discoveries, Southern Oregon