Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/434

428 The Oregon Government did not fail to try every expedient in which there was the slightest promise of aid. Prompt appeals were made to the Governor of California, to the commander of the American squadron in the Pacific, and the American consul at Honolulu. These altogether yielded some arms and ammunition, received after the danger had passed. Yet the possession of them gave a sense of security in the fall and winter of 1849, when most of the Oregon fighting population had gone in the exodus to the California gold mines.

Special care was exercised in the financial legislation to segregate the expenses directly or indirectly due to the war from those for the support of the civil establishment under the Provisional Government. The war had been undertaken for the protection of American citizens against a savage foe and they were firm in their conviction that it belonged to the National Government to bear the expenses of it. Under the circumstances in which the means for the support of the war had been secured the evidences of claims needed prompt and careful auditing. Accordingly the Legislature of the Provisional Government on February 16, 1849, passed an act appointing a commission "to settle and adjust the claims against the Government on account of and growing out of the Cayuse War," but as Governor Lane and the other territorial appointees arrived about two weeks later, all officials who held from the Provisional Government no longer had standing. The territorial Legislature a few months later (August 31) provided for a similar commission, which