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 How BRITISH AND AMERICAN SUBJECTS UNITE 141 arrest and confine their own employes for any minor offense. For the more serious crimes the accused had to be sent to Canada for trial. The authority of the Company, moreover, was recognized by its retired servants, Canadian citizens and others who had taken up their residence in the Willamette valley or elsewhere in Oregon territory. 2 Citizens of the United States left to their own resources had elected officers to admin- ister justice, for themselves as early as 1838. 3 And in very serious cases improvised juries had administered on the spot a very acceptable justice.* Thus it will be seen that the Ore- gon country really had from an early period as much govern- ing authority as was needful for the conditions of the time. In these years there were no serious quarrels between persons recognizing a conflicting allegiance. Such conflicts were, how- ever, an ever increasing danger to the peace of the community as the number of Americans was swelled by yearly immigra- tions. But the French-Canadians were so peaceful, industrious, and inoffensive, the Americans for the most part so law-abid- ing, that it was possible to postpone for some years the organi- zation of a government that might embrace the whole com- munity. Such a movement began early in 1841 after the coming in 1839 and 1840 of a few adventurous men from the middle western states. This small immigration furnished two or three men of good education and some legislative expe- rience who seem to have given the impulse and furnished in part the leadership for such an enterprise. Now at the outset of this effort to organize a government there were not more than 140 white men settled in the region south of the Columbia river, made up almost equally of citizens of Great Britain and the United States. The former consisted for the most part of French-Canadians and half-breeds, with 2 McLoughlin letter of March 20, 1843; F. C. Amer. 401; Wilkffs' Narrative, IV., 330. 3 Oregon Settlers' Petition of 1840; 2$th Congress 3d. Sess. H. Reports, 101; Gray's History of Oregon, p. 194, speaks of "self-constituted tribunals." For two years before 1840 persons had been chosen as "judges and magistrates." Hines' Oregon History, p. 417. 4 Samuel Parker, Journal of an Exploring Tour in 1835, p. 181.