Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/309

Rh claim against the government for $20,000 for the land, and later of $4,000 for the improvements, which in their best days had been sold to Whitman for $600. Congress, by the advice of Major G. J. Raines, then in command at Fort Dalles, and through the efforts of politicians who knew the strength of the society, allowed both claims; and it would have been seemly if this liberal indemnity for a false claim had satisfied the greed of that ever-hungry body of Christian ministers. But they still laid claim to every foot of ground which by their survey of 1850 fell without the boundaries of the military reserve, taking enough on every side of it to make up half of a legal mission donation.

The case came before three successive surveyor-generals and the land commissioners, and was each time decided against the missionary society, until, as I have said, congress was induced to pay damages to the amount of $24,000, in the expectation, no doubt, that this would settle the claims of the missionaries forever. Instead of this, however, the methodist influence was strong enough with the secretary of the interior in 1875 to enlist him in the business of getting a deed in fee simple from the government of the land claimed by the missionaries, although the