Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/112

 104 FREDERICK V. HOLMAN "From my own observation and the information I had ob- tained, I was well satisfied that laws were not needed, and were not desired by the Catholic portion of the settlers. I therefore could not avoid drawing their attenion to the fact, that after all the various officers they proposed making were appointed, there would be, no subjects for the law to deal with. I further advised them to wait until the Government of the United States should throw its mantle over them. These views, I was afterwards told, determined a postponement of their intentions." Dr. McLoughlin, at first, was not in favor of establishing a government, unless it was absolutely an independent one and merely for mutual protection. The movement was controlled by men, some of whom he knew were unfriendly, if not openly opposed or hostile to him and to his Company. Among these were several Methodist Missionaries, with whom he had had trouble in relation to his land claim at Oregon City. He had reason to fear that his right to his land claim might be inter- fered with by such a government. That his fears in this re- spect were justified is shown by the land laws adopted by the Provisional Government, July 5, 1843. It was apparent that it was intended to make such a government in the interests of the United States, if not actually opposed or hostile to Great Britain and to the Hudson's Bay Company. If such were the case, he would be disloyal to the country, of which he was a subject, and false to his company, of which he was the head in all the Oregon Country. A resolution passed at the meeting of February, 1841, certainly sounded like hostility to his Com- pany. It was that: "All settlers north of the Columbia River, not connected with the Hudson's Bay Company, be admitted to the protection of our laws on making application to that effect." POPULATION OF OREGON IN 1840 AND 1841. It is interesting to take into account the number of people in Oregon in 1840 and 1841. In J. Quinn Thornton's "History of the Provisional Government of Oregon" (Transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Association for the year 1875, pages 43- 96), he says: "In the autumn of 1840, there were in Oregon thirty-six American male settlers, twenty-five of whom had taken native