Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/345

Rh N. B.—Companies of ten subscribers may pay in merchantable wheat at merchant prices, delivered at any time (giving us notice), at any principal depot for wheat in the several counties, being themselves responsible for its storage and delivery to our order. Duebills issued by solvent merchants taken at their currency value.

We will not declare our days of issuing, until the next number, hoping some mail opportunity may be secured, and if so, will issue on the day most favorable for our immediate circulation.

Much space in the magazine is given to the history of the Whitman massacre of November 29–30, 1847, by Rev. H. H. Spalding, together with a discussion pro and con of the causes leading up to it. In this discussion Peter H. Burnett, a lawyer of Oregon City, and afterwards the first governor of California, took a prominent part.

In No. 3, July 5, 1848, referring to President Polk's message, the editor says it "manifests more interest about Mexico than about Oregon."

After No. 7 was issued the paper suspended for several months. This suspension was caused, so the editor states, by some one opposed to his views on the causes leading to the Whitman massacre hiring the printer to break his contract and go off to the mines. Early in 1849 another printer was secured, and on May 23d, No. 8 appeared. This was the last number issued.

Fully thirty years ago Mr. Griffin placed the press in the custody of the Oregon Pioneer Association, and now it is in the possession of the Oregon Historical Society.

Rev. John Smith Griffin was born in Castleton, Vermont, in 1807. He was educated in various schools in New England and Ohio, finishing his theological course in Oberlin, where he was ordained a minister of the Congregational Church. The church at Litchfield, Connecticut, secured an equipment and sent him to Oregon in 1839 as an independent missionary to the Indians. In 1840 he endeavored to start a mission among the Snakes,