Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/115

Rh no houses, not even log cabins, but the resting place of the missionary was a camp under a fir tree or under the lee of some great cliff. It was, in fact, the great outdoors. Isolated, with very few companions, separated by thousands of miles of distance and months of time from their old homes, often from family, facing an unknown world, the early missionaries confronted an appalling and well nigh hopeless task. God blessed their efforts, and slowly they made headway against almost unsurmountable obstacles, facing trials that only their faith and zeal enabled them to endure.

June 1, 1840, brought to Oregon what was often referred to as "The great reinforcement." It consisted of nine ministers, eleven seculars, and four teachers. All the ministers and seculars except one had families. Thirty-six adults and sixteen children composed the party.

Events moved rapidly and on May 2, 1843, the first American government in the Pacific Northwest was authorized by the people of the Willamette Valley at Champoeg. It gives one some idea of the sparseness of the population at that time to know that but one hundred and two men gathered to consider the report of a committee which had been appointed in a March meeting of the same year. When the vote was taken, fifty-two voted for the report and fifty against it. By this narrow margin, was it declared that the "Stars and Stripes" should be our flag and we be a part of our common country. It is interesting to note that the same number met to frame the first constitution and self-government on the Pacific Coast as there were in the Mayflower when those who came over in her adopted what is declared to be by some the first written constitution for civil government ever set up in the world, and certainly the first self-government on the Atlantic Coast.

In 1847 the Whitman Massacre occurred. The first victims at the hands of the treacherous and ungrateful Indians were Dr. Marcus Whitman and his wife, who had been serving and caring for them since 1836, when