Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/390

384 384 JOSEPH SCHAFER. where American traders like Wyeth and Bonneville, had, for obvious reasons, failed. A few Rocky-Mountain trap- pers, of American birth, were likewise settled in the Willamette Valley. All, missionaries and mountaineers alike, were so largely dependent upon the Hudson Bay Company that they can in no just sense be regarded as an American colony. Their presence is to be looked upon rather as one of the things that stimulated the planting of a colony ; for it created a living bond between Oregon and the United States, and led to the publication of the first considerable body of facts about Oregon that had been issued since the appearance of Lewis and Clark's journals. A well known book derived from this source is Parker's "Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains," 1838. Many letters, sketches, and short articles bearing on Ore- gon came out in the missionary periodicals of the time. The most complete repository of such material is the file of the Oregonian and Indian's Advocate, a monthly maga- zine issued at Lynn, Massachusetts, from October, 1838, to August, 1839. The special aim of its editor was to gather up and disseminate information about Oregon. It was the organ of a philanthropic society which proposed to plant a large company of Christian people in Oregon, who should, in addition to exploiting the resources of the country, civilize the natives, and establish a new State in which Indians were to have all the political rights of white men. The file is very rare. A privately owned copy in Portland, Oregon, an incomplete copy in Oakland, Cali- fornia, and that of the Wisconsin Historical Society are the only ones known to me. But some of the more im- portant documents contained in it, such as Linn's Senate Report on Oregon in 1838 and Cushing's House Report of 1839, are readily found in the government publica- tions; while others, for example letters written from Ore-