Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/387

381 NOTES ON THE COLONIZATION OF OREGON. 381 ment almost identical in form with that of the ordinary State ; and, while there was apparently nothing more than a sentimental connection with the United States, (some- what like that subsisting between the typical Greek colony and the mother city,) it was well understood, both east and west of the mountains, that these sturdy colonists were holding Oregon subject to the extension of the national jurisdiction over that distant country. During the very time of the Bear Flag revolt in California, Presi- dent Polk concluded the treaty with Great Britain estab- lishing the Oregon boundary line ; and two years later, before the news of the gold discovery had crossed the mountains, Congress erected the region west of the Rockies between the forty-second and the forty-ninth parallels into the Territory of Oregon. The historical relation between Oregon and California, the mental attitude of the American people toward the two territories at the time, is well illustrated by the dis- cussion over the Oregon bill in the spring of 1848. The measure had already been much too long delayed, and in order to delay it still further a member proposed to couple with it a bill for a California and a New Mexico territory also. The objection, hurled back sharp and quick, was that it would be wrong to yoke the "native born" Territory of Oregon with "territories scarce a month old and peopled by Mexicans and half-Indian Californians." The people of the "Golden State" can afford to smile at this rhetorical exaggeration, for all it contains a measure of truth, because in two brief summers the relations of the sections were changed. And from that time to the present California has overshadowed the Northwest as completely as Oregon overshadowed her in the thought of the American people from the return of Lewis and Clark to the days of the "Forty-niners," and especially during the