Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/228

210 would be expended for their benefit. Perhaps the public conscience was soothed by this show of justice, as pretentious as it was hollow, and the emptiness of which was patent to every one; but it would have been in as good taste, and far more manly and honest, to have shot down the aboriginals and seized their lands without these hypocrisies and stealings, as was frequently done.

Often the people were worse than the government or its agents, so that there was little inducement for the latter to be honest. In the present instance the commissioners were far more just and humane than the settlers themselves. It is true they entered upon their duties in April 1851 with a pomp and circumstance in no wise in keeping with the simple habits of the Oregon settlers; with interpreters, clerks, commissaries, and a retinue of servants they established themselves at Champoeg, to which place agents brought the so-called chiefs of the wretched tribes of the Willamette; but they displayed a heart and a humanity in their efforts which did them honor. Of the Santiam band of the Calapooyas they purchased a portion of the valley eighty miles in length by twenty in breadth; of the Tualatin branch of the same nation a tract of country fifty miles by thirty in extent, these lands being among the best in the valley, and already settled upon by white men. The number of Indians of both sexes and all ages making a claim to this extent of territory was in the former instance one hundred and fifty-five and in the latter sixty-five.

The commissioners were unable to induce the Calapooyas to remove east of the Cascade mountains, as had been the intention of the government, their refusal resting upon reluctance to leave the graves of their ancestors, and ignorance of the means of procuring a livelihood in any country but their own. To these representations Gaines and his associates lent a sympathizing ear, and allowed the Indians to select