Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/369

Rh  sessions were overlooked and reported as not to be found. Laws and reports are mis-dated, and there is no attempt at any arrangement of the laws.

"Political History of Oregon, Vol. I, Provisional Government," by J. Henry Brown, contains most of the executive messages and reports of the treasurers and auditors. Its most important service was to disclose the fact of the recent existence of documents that the compiler of "The Oregon Archives" reported as not to be found.

"The Oregon Spectator," a bi-weekly newspaper, first issued February 5, 1846, was, excepting during the last year of the Provisional Government period, the only paper then published in Oregon. It contains some documents and a contemporary discussion of conditions not found elewhere.

"History of Oregon," by W. H. Gray, a prominent participant in the public affairs of this period, but one with strong and bitter prejudices, is useful for suggesting the issues of the times.

The volumes on Oregon of H. H. Bancroft's "History of the Pacific States" were written with access to all the original material. The emphasis, however, was always on the political rather than the economic aspect of Oregon's development and contains only casual references to the finances of the Provisional Government.

At the opening of the forties the movements for the occupation of the lower valleys of the Willamette and the Columbia had reached a stage that promised quite immediately the initial steps toward political organization. For nearly a generation the Hudson Bay Company had centered its extensive operations on the Pacific Slope at Fort Vancouver, nearly opposite the mouth of the Willamette. It had maintained a monopoly of the trade of this region, but the head of this post received incoming settlers with marked kindness and hospitality. A community of the Company's retired trappers, with their native wives, were establishing