Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/99



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By the Convention of 1818, renewed in 1827, the Oregon Country, comprising a large part of what is now denominated in general terms, the Pacific Northwest, was under the joint occupancy of Great Britain and the United States.

The practical evidence of this joint sovereignty on the part of the British, was the sway of the Hudson Bay Company through its network of trading stations and outfitting points for its cohorts of frontiersmen and trappers. Until the advent of the missionary movement from the States, there was little practical evidence of the coordinate sovereignity of the United States.

When the missionary movement took important shape numerically it resulted in a vital need for some form of local government, and hence there arose the Provisional Government of Oregon, as it was called, fashioned on the lines of state or territorial governments on the other side of the intervening mountains and plains, "deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed," and empowered by that consent to maintain inviolate as far as possible "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."