Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 12.djvu/224

 216 FREDERICK V. HOLMAN Stuart party, which was an Astor expedition, is entitled to the credit of the discovery of the Oregon Trail, as Capt. Robert Gray is entitled to the credit of discovering the Columbia River. It is only a question of time when the Columbia would have been discovered. It was over this route that the Oregon immigrants traveled. It was over it that the immigrants of 1843 home-seekers the first real Oregon immigrants, brought their wagons to The Dalles. The other Oregon immigrants up to, and including that of 1846, were a great factor in causing the settlement of the Oregon Question by the boundary treaty of 1846. The route of Lewis and Clark was impracticable for the establish- ment of permanent settlements in Oregon by immigrants with their wagons. The route of Hunt's party would have pre- vented the early settlement of Oregon, as was accomplished over the Oregon Trail. While small parties from Canada traveled, overland to, and from Montreal and Fort Vancouver, north of the forty-ninth parallel of latitude, that route was not practicable for immi- grants to use to settle the Oregon Country. But one party of immigrants came from Canada to Oregon in those early days. It left the Red River Settlement June 5, 1841, and reached Fort Vancouver about October 4, 1841. They were compelled to abandon their carts and pack their goods on oxen and other animals. This is the Canadian immigration, which the inventors of the myth that Whitman saved Oregon, largely base their fictions on as having arrived in Oregon in the fall of 1842. (Marshall's "Acquisition of Oregon," Part I, page 341.) Authorities Consulted. I have been compelled to write this address somewhat hur- riedly, owing to other duties. I have not had time to consult many original sources. I have consulted and relied on Fran- chere's "Narrative" (Translation of 1854), Greenhow's "His- tory of Oregon and California" (Edition of 1845), Chittenden's "The American Fur Trade of the Far West," and Marshall's