Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/36



28 MRS. R. S. SHACKELFORD

Judge Deady declares "a patent could not lawfully issue upon the survey of the claim by the society itself. A survey of the grant involved the question of how much land was oc- cupied by the mission and within what limits. To allow the society to do this would be to make it a judge in its own case." And, again, he says that "whatever then may be thought of the correctness of the survey, the proposition that the patent was issued without a 'plat of survey' approved by the surveyor general, in the face of all these facts, is not tenable."

"There does not appear to have been any survey prior to that of 1850, but the occupants and Indians doubtless under- stood that it should include certain points or places." Judge Deady did not think that it was ever expected, however, or intended, that it should extend north of the bluff between that and the river, a distance of about one-half mile, where were the villages and camping ground of the Indians and voyageurs up and down the Columbia River."

Another interesting point was the re-transfer from the American Board of Missions to the Methodist Mission Society in 1849. The death of Dr. Whitman had of course prevented the occupation of the station by the American Board.

The draft of $600.00 which he had given upon the American Board had never been presented, and in March or February, 1849, soon after the news of the Organic Act was received in Oregon, "an arrangement had been made between the super- intendent of the M. E. Mission and Messrs. Elkanah Walker, Henry H. Spalding and Gushing Eells of the American Board for the re-transfer and cancellation of the $600.00 draft." This was done, as Judge Deady says, "not with any view of resum- ing missionary work, but to enable it to obtain a grant on ac- count of its occupation prior to September, 1847. To the same end and to assist it in obtaining damages from the United States for taking a portion of the station as a military reserva- tion, the defendant in February, 1859, obtained from the Amer- ican Board a formal quit-claim to the premises, although in November, 1858, Messrs. Walker and Eells, professing to act upon a power to them from said Board dated February 28,