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 FEDERAL RELATIONS OF OREGON

269

made for quieting the Indian title, and there was no recognition of the claims of the Hudson's Bay Company and its servants. Congress had the customary petitions for grants of lands the railroad question did not come up except when the House committee to which had been referred the memorials of the last session asked to be discharged from further consideration of the same. Thomasson of Kentucky provision was



resolution in the House to inquire into the of setting apart a portion of the country west of expediency the Rocky Mountains for the use of the Indians of Oregon

introduced a

in perpetuity, "in

which

district

no white man

shall settle with-

out permission of the President of the United States, and then only for the purpose of instructing and improving the Indians."

18

Colonel Benton believed that the defeat of the territorial bill was the work of pro-slavery propagandists and he did not to give publicity to this opinion. On the twenty-ninth of March, just as he was leaving Washington, he went to the fail

President with a

letter,

a copy of which he intended to send

Oregon the next day by the newly appointed Polk urged him deputy postmaster of Astoria, Shively. strongly not to send the letter as it would inflame the inhabitants of Oregon where they were so far out of touch with the older portion of the United States that they would be

to the people of

unable to see the whole issue in



its

proper perspective.



"I think it right," wrote Benton, "to make this communication to you at the present moment, when the adjournment of Congress, without passing the bill for your government and protection, seems to have left you in a state of abandonment by your mother country. You are not abandoned! nor will you be denied protection for not agreeing to admit slavery. I, a man of the south and a slave-holder, tell you this. This will be a great disappointment to you, and a real calamity already five years without law or legal institution for the protection of life, liberty and property!

1

3

The lettr was

Register, 8

May.

published in

See Polk, Diary,

the II,

New Orleans Mercury, quoted in Niles' 444 seq.