Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/220

196 chance, but consecutive products, interrelated links of causation which may be traced by careful examination.

Hence it is the purpose of this paper to inquire into the matte^' and determine how and why the Oregon people became involved and how they settled the question for themselves. The kind of involvement we shall speak of was not that arising from the existence of slavery in the Territory, for there was not one negro slave within its far-reaching boundaries or within a thousand miles thereof. The enslavement of Indian captives, taken in war by Indians, was practiced to a very limited extent, but the white people of Oregon never participated in any such traffic. In truth, that kind of slavery was more nominal than real, consisting as it did of women and children who w^ere adopted by the victors and were subjected to little more restraint than their own people.

As a practical matter, there was no question of slavery of any kind to annoy the home-builders of Oregon. And, as has been said, the pioneers came with no prospect or desire of establishing slavery upon the Pacific Coast. True, the slave State of Missouri contributed more of them than any other State, and probably it, with Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas, gave a majority of the whole. But the emigrants from those slave-holding States belonged to the non-slaveholding class and were not pecuniarily interested in slaves; besides, many of them came to the Territory to rid themselves of the blight that broods over the land where involuntary servitude