Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/22

4 much by statesmen, as by politicians among the people. Correspondence between the diplomats of both nations may have been, if not aided, at least rendered more cautious by the arguments put forth so freely on every hand. Congress, it must be conceded, by admitting bills promoting emigration to a territory in dispute while negotiations were still pending, violated the international code of fair dealing; but not more, it was argued, than Great Britain, who peopled it with traders, and despoiled it of its natural wealth of furs, giving us occasion to act upon the premise that "all is fair in love and war." The congressional conscience was satisfied by refraining from passing the bills under discussion, while the utterances put forth in speeches, often full of erroneous statements, served to keep the national spirit in a menacing attitude toward our British rival. Joint occupation, where each nation looked upon the other as an intruder, was a wholly unsatisfactory condition, and fostered in the people a feeling of defiance towards the rival power never quite appeased since the late war. In the meantime it occurred to religious societies to send missionaries to teach the Indians of Oregon, about whom very favorable statements were made by the fur companies dealing with them concerning their natural tendencies towards religion. The appearance in St. Louis of four Flatheads, proteges of one of the companies, in 1832, and their demand for teachers, was the alleged cause of the immediate action of the Methodist church, and the subsequent action of the Presbyterian and Catholic churches, in establishing missions in Oregon.

That these young chiefs should have traveled two thousand miles in search of spiritual teachers was deemed so much more remarkable than that the St. Louis company should have traveled the same distance in search of furs, that they were at once elevated into something, if not superhuman, at least greatly superbarbarian in character, and the country rang with the exploit. Those who gave the story its wonderful wings might have remembered that