Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/256

250 In the time that tried men's souls he was true and faithful, and the impartial verdict of history will be that of all those who lie buried in this fair land "none had greater glory though there be many dead and much glory."

The history of the origin of each of our states lies in the biography and character of the few who were first actors in the history. It is a record, therefore, of the individual lives of men and women rather than of great events. Such were the opening scenes of the history of Oregon.

I refer now, not to the first discoveries and explorations, but to the conditions that started the permanent settlement and began the continuous social and political life of Oregon. But when we are able to take up the history of a commonwealth from its very beginning, and in particular when that beginning was in smallest things, of recent development, almost wholly under our own eyes, there is obvious advantage. We are able to see clearly, assign the founders to their proper places, and to accord them severally their meed of fame.

There is something unsatisfactory in beginning a history with the mature state of a country. As in biography, so in history, we desire to go back to the cradle and see the growth of social and political life from the first small beginnings. There is, moreover, not a little difficulty in finding a later moment which will afford a real starting point. In a mature state each condition is the result of what went before, and the human mind feels compelled to seek causes for this as for every other effect.

The absence of written documents in the early ages obliges us to form all our ideas of primitive history from