Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/61

Rh descendants, another fifteen per cent are mortgaged for all they are worth, and for practical purposes may be considered as lost to them. Not more than fifteen per cent of the whole have been ordinarily successful in holding and improving a part of their possessions and are now free from debt. Only five of all of them have increased their holdings and are thrifty. Eighty-seven per cent held section claims, and it may be mentioned that the half-section claimants were more successful in holding their own, and add very much to the favorableness of this report. In the better part of this county, a hundred square miles in a body might be selected where the per cent of loss would be greater, but this was settled chiefly by French, Scotch, and English Canadians, mountain men and trappers of nomadic habits, who married Indian women of the whole or half-breed, and of whose descendants less is expected, as they are passionately fond of ardent spirits. A teetotaler of mixed blood would be a rare sight. Neighborly, clever people, of lax business habits, and of necessity trustful, they were soon beat out of their landed possessions. Probably in no American community has the credit system been so much in vogue as on this Northwest coast, and likely for the reason that in no other place are crops so sure, and certainly in no other place was a broad basis of credit so much at the disposal of debtors. A family with a section of land that produces unfailing crops at small cost, can get credit anywhere; and what a harvest it has been for merchants and middlemen in these western valleys until recently. Ah, man! you are, indeed, a wanting animal, one whose wants are ever multiplying and exacting. Only a few of the race are securely provident by immediate self-denial, and this truth applies equally to the pioneers, those resolute men and women—