Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/72

62 progress extremely tedious and laborious. They marched in long files through "the deep and gloomy woods with scouts and spies thrown out in front and on the flanks, while axemen went in advance to clear a trail over which they could drive the beef cattle and the pack-horses laden with provisions, blankets and ammunition. They struck straight through the wilderness, making their road as they went. On September 21st they reached the Great Kanawha at the present site of Charleston. Here they halted and built dugout canoes for baggage transportation down the river, arriving there October 6th, to learn, in a few days, that Governor Dunmore had changed his plans and had reached Kentucky Plains with the object of making a treaty with the Indians rather than fight them."

I have quoted Mr. Randall's description of the men and their movement towards the point where the desperate fight occurred on October 10, 1774, under circumstances which must have sown the seeds of suspicion of Governor Dunmore's motives, which are not yet removed, and to call attention of my readers to the close parallel between the men and the methods of General Lewis' army and the homebuilders of 1843, who to reach the Columbia with their wagons (which were, in fact, their traveling family homes), cutting their way through the dense timber growth m the Burnt River Canyon, and through that of the Blue Mountains of Oregon, part of them to descend the Columbia in boats and canoes and on rafts, and part to take Indian trails of the mountain or river gorge, and so reach Western Oregon. This was when the change of dominion over Oregon began, and the finish was initiated by a small portion of the immigration of 1844 descending the lower Columbia late in 1845, and thirteen men cutting a wagon road through the fifteen miles of heavy Oregon forest to reach Budd's Inlet of Puget Sound.

The would-be historian who claims that Oregon was won by an aimless movement of a restless, unreflecting, adventurous people has the rather hard fact to ignore of why a cadet of the Crockett family was present, and a most effective axeman and hunter in cutting out this last fifteen miles of