Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/434

418 destiny of the Oregon region. They were scions of that stock that had, from the time of the earliest settlements on the Atlantic Coast, been pushing the frontier west, pressing on to the higher lands of the Atlantic slope, thence through the valleys of the Appalachian system, on by way of the Great Lakes into the Valley of the Mississippi, even to the river and across it, until the States of Missouri and Arkansas were formed beyond. This work had developed a people imbued with the pioneering spirit and restlessness. The Lewis and Clark narrative, as many of the pioneers profess; the discussions in congress based in considerable part on that narrative, and the reports of fur traders—these all helped to kindle the Oregon fever in this pioneer population, so susceptible to such influences. The route the greater majority took to Oregon was in principle the Lewis and Clark route, but better adapted to their purposes. Instead of taking the river connection made by the Missouri and northern tributaries of the Columbia, they took the virtual junction next to the south—formed by the Platte and the Lewis or Snake fork. Thus, the movement through which Oregon was firmly and finally ours followed, as it were, in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark.

As their explorations stand in as strong and comprehensive causal relation to the settlement of Oregon and the expansion of the United States to the Pacific as any single event can stand to a great historical outcome, then all that grows of the facts of our attainment of continental proportions in the temperate zone and of our facing both oceans, must also be arrayed as results, in a measure, of the work of these two explorers. The Oregon trail became the highway to California. Our national interests in Oregon first drew our attention to California and caused the presence there at the time of crisis in Mexican rule of our military and naval forces. The