Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/388

382 382 JOSEPH SCHAFER. last decade of that period when the work of colonization was going forward. An event of such moment as the colonization of Oregon has been shown to be, is worthy of careful study by all who are interested in the history of the Pacific Slope ; and in the hope of facilitating the study I wish to present a concise statement covering the most noteworthy phases of the colonizing movement, together with merely sug- gestive notes on the sources. The background of the story includes, on the one hand, the series of incidents transpiring in the far west which culminated in the absolute commercial occupation of Ore- gon by the Hudson Bay Company; and on the other, the general features of westward expansion to the close of the fourth decade of last century. The settling up of the trans-Alleghany West ; the spread of the pioneers along the lower Missouri ; the extension of missionary effort beyond the frontier ; the fur trade of still more distant regions all these form a natural prelude to the great onward movement of population across the last and most formidable barrier separating the two seas. The idea that an advance to the Pacific lay within the possible compass of American achievement was itself a matter of slow growth. Astor may possibly have held it in 1810 as Irving twenty-six years later declares that he did, but we have good reasons for doubting it. Jefferson's vision beheld the growth of a great communit} 7 on the Pacific, planted by Americans and governed on American principles, yet wholly independent of the United States. Settlers, it was generally assumed, would be transported to Oregon by sea. This was about the situation, so far as there is any record of men's views on the subject, until the time when John Floyd of Virginia precipitated the Oregon discussion in Congress in the years 1820 to 1823. Then there emerged