Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/386

380 380 JOSEPH SCHAFER. cific ; it provided a base for the long sought commercial contact with the Orient; and it rendered almost inevita- ble the ultimate acquisition by the United States of the ill-governed Mexican province to the south. When the crucial time came, the Oregon colony furnished, in part, the men and means for the conquest of California; from Oregon went the discoverer of gold and also the first out- side party of American miners, who proved a valuable ele- ment in the struggle for order ; Oregonians took a leading part in framing the California government, and an Oregon pioneer became the chief magistrate of the new Common- wealth. I am not a believer in the necessity of a fixed order in historical development ; and it is far from my purpose to declare that the possession of Oregon was absolutely es- sential to the acquisition of California. The truth is, rather, that both events were in the last analysis effects of a common cause, the seemingly irresistible westward tendency of the American population. This great cause, had it been directed somewhat differently, might, con- ceivably, have given us the two territories in reverse order. But such was not the historical fact and we are here con- cerned with history. Were speculation admissible at all it would be easy to show that an. entirely different order of development would have occurred if gold had not been discovered in California, if the discovery had been delayed fifty, twenty-five, or even ten years, if the yellow flakes had been found in the streams of the Inland Empire before they appeared to the Mormon workmen in Mar- shall's historic mill race. Confining ourselves to the strict order of historical evo- lution, we find the Oregon colony fully established in the Willamette Valley by the year 1845; we find in existence there an American government, based on the well known and oft tried American principle of compact a govern-