Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 20.pdf/363

 THE FEDERAL RELATIONS OF OREGON By LESTER BURRELL

VII

SHIPPEE, Pu.D,

CHAPTER XIII THE TERRITORY OF OREGON In Chapter

IV

there

was noted the establishment of the

Provisional Government in Oregon, with its dependence on voluntary contributions and its tripartite executive, a government over some six hundred souls of European descent who

then found themselves within the limits of the territory. If the American contingent was doubled in 1842, 1843 brought nearly twice as many whites as Oregon had previously had, for the migration of that year numbered close to a thousand

persons

who came

over the Oregon Trail with their wagons

and herds, from Missouri and the surrounding States. At this point a word in relation to Dr. Marcus Whitman's relation to the migration of that year may not be out of place. While Whitman did go to Washington in the winter of 1842-3, and while he talked with President Tyler, Webster and others, there seems to be no warrant for the "Whitman Legend" which would have it that it was his work that -saved Oregon for the United States. 1 Oregon was becoming well known, the more so because the Wilkes Expedition and the later exploring expedition led by Lieutenant Fremont had resulted in accounts which were spread abroad in pamphlets, books and in

newspaper

reprints.

greater numbers sought the Coast, most of the emigrants settling in the Willamette Valley, although the efforts of the Hudson's Bay Company, acting through the

In 1844

still

chief factor. Dr.

McLoughlin, to prevent their entrance into

investigations of Professor E. G. Bourne (see Legend of Marcus Hist. Rev., VI, 276-300) and Principal William I. Marshall (his Acquisition of Oregon, 2 volumes, contains the bulk of his findings) have pretty thoroughly exploded the theory that Whitman's journey east in the winter of In 1842-3 was due to the fear that the Unied Sates was going to abandon Oregon. like manner these historians have demonstrated that the migrations of those years in such assertions the of Whitman, despite had nothing to do with the activities works as Barrows' Oregon. See also Letters and Times of the Tylers, II, 438. i

The

Whitman, Am.