Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/155

Rh John Eakin Lyle was a direct descendant of Daniel Lyle and through a marriage of cousins, also of John Lyle. He was born in 1815, a son of William Lyle who married Jane Eakin and located in Blount County, Tennessee. Upon the death of Lyle's parents an uncle, John Eakin, took the lad to his own home near Knoxville, gave him a father's affection and supervised a careful education. To him John Lyle was indebted for a college training which he put to immediate use in teaching.

His life was cut off before he had leisure to write the story of the migration to Oregon as he doubtless would have done in later years. That he was not actuated primarily by the desire for land is manifest for he made no haste to secure a donation land claim. Incentives, however, were plenty. He could scarcely have escaped the "Oregon fever." He was teaching in Illinois during the winter of 1844-45. The Oregon question was seething. The boundary line between Great Britain and the United States was still in dispute. Congress persisted in dilatory tactics which threatened a loss of the Columbia and the shores of the Pacific.

Imaginations of the day painted a vivid picture. * * On the banks of the Columbia, within fortified walls dwelt the Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, Dr. John McLoughlin, whose flowing white locks and imposing stature, as well as his lordly manner, awed the savage heart of the Indian. Dr. John McLoughlin, representative of a powerful British monopoly, able by a lift of the finger to hinder any movement of the few American settlers toward development of trade or natural resources. To incur his displeasure might precipitate an international conflict which would doubtless be the signal for an Indian uprising and massacre of the Americans. . ..

Opposing the Hudson's Bay Company was what? Memorials to Congress etched that picture. . . "an infant colony—praying for the high privilege of American