Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/204

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"Bearing these thoughts in mind, this expedition to perpetuate the memory of the old Oregon Trail was undertaken. And there was this further thought, that here was this class of heroic men and women who fought a veritable battle—a battle of peace to be sure, yet as brave a battle as any by those that faced the cannon 's mouth; a battle that was fraught with as momentous results as any of the great battles of grim war; a battle that wrested half a continent from the native race and from a mighty nation contending for mastery in the unknown regions of the West, whose fame [that of the Oregon Trail] was scantily acknowledged and whose name was already almost forgotten, and whose track, the battle ground of peace, was on the verge of impending oblivion. Shall this become an accomplished fact? The answer to this is this expedition, to perpetuate the memory of the old Oregon Trail, and to honor the intrepid pioneers who made it and saved this great region, the old Oregon Country, for American rule.

"The ox team did it. Had it not been for the patient ox with the wagon train, the preponderance of an American settlement in the old Oregon Country over that of the British could not have so certainly prevailed; and in fact uncertainty hovered over the land with the results hanging in the balance until the first wagon train reached the region of contending forces.

Mr. Meeker in this achievement was doing a service not merely to the memory of the Oregon pioneer but also to the American people at large. For this historic highway is an exponent of the pre-emption of a continent by Anglo-Saxon energy. The migrations over it represent the highest daring of Anglo-Saxon restlessness. It was the scene of the greatest single achievement to which the race was impelled through its superlative measure of self-reliance and faith in the unknown. It was the great arch that had to be projected to the Pacific Coast that the territory of this people might lie foursquare to the rest of the world and that it might have the choicest arena for the exhibition of its race genius. When finally the East and the West have assumed their normal relative proportions and the factors determining our national destiny have been clearly recognized, the meed of honor