Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/63

Rh writer's hearing by R. W. Morrison before leaving his Missouri residence, which knit me to his service on the way to Oregon with his family and his effects. He was the first of Gilliam's captains chosen by election. His sentiments pervaded Gilliam's following and those of Colonel Ford and Major Thorp, and to deny them that motive as one of the most important of their lives is to pronounce them irrational men which they certainly were not.

The boat on which I had taken passage from St. Louis to Western Missouri had barely cast off and got into the stream when I found myself among men who were talking of Oregon, some with means to make their way. and others, like myself, seeking opportunity to work their way. The large majority of heads of families who crossed the plains in wagons in 1843 and 1844 were from the southern rather than eastern and northern States. There were some of the single men from the Middle West and even a few from Europe. But the largest number, both of heads of families and single men, traced their origin to the Scotch-Irish who had been pioneers inland from the caravans of Virginia. Maryland, and the Carolinas. and breaking over the Alleghanies became pioneers in Kentucky. Tennessee, and Missouri, keeping with them family traditions of battles against the English on such fields as King's Mountain and New Orleans and with the native race. They were not a reading people, and were far from being a money-seeking people, a prevailing ambition among them was to be the most western members of their respective families and to call no man master. They, in many cases, were the sons of sons of frontiersmen for generations back. Men who. from choice, would rather struggle with and overcome natural obstacles than jostle with men. They had great and varied individuality and used many words (not negroisms) different from the yeoman class of New York or Pennsylvania. As they left the frontier of Missouri for Oregon, they showed little sign of attrition with recent European immi-