112 OREGON FARMER 



But when we come to sound the undercurrents of Oregon life, 

 we find that it parts company radically with life in the East. Oregon 



Cple are just as moral as those of the older Eastern states; but 

 e less of prudishness. They are more courteous, on the average, 

 but less snobbish. They support what is best in the institutions 

 of the East, but refuse to be enslaved by the machinery of those 

 institutions. Oregonians are fairly conservative; but they never 

 bar progress by a reverence for what is old merely because it is old. 

 Nor do they condemn the new for no other reason than that it is 

 new. 



In brief, we may say that when an institution or a law is honestly 

 framed to blaze out new trails for the pathway of progress, it will 

 look long ere it finds more sympathetic and intelligent consideration 

 than it will receive from the people of Oregon. 



To realize the truth of these bald statements, it will be necessary 

 to recall a few facts of Oregon history. First of all, we must remem- 

 ber that, paradoxical as it may seem, Oregon is an old new state. 

 Six years before the discovery of gold had started the indiscriminate 

 throngs of fortune hunters on their mad race for California, the basis 

 for Oregon's population was being laid under much more favorable 

 circumstances. 



The latter thirties and earlier forties, saw the rapid settlement 

 of the Middle West and South West which followed the opening of 

 the Erie Canal, and the development of steam navigation on the 

 Mississippi. It was an era of scant markets and an oversupply of 

 agricultural products. The people were restless; and the westward 

 impulse was strong in every breast. Glowing accounts of lands 

 nearer the setting sun, and especially of the almost unknown Oregon 

 country, stirred impulse into action. 



Moved as by a common instinct, there assembled in the spring 

 of 1843, at Independence, Missouri, a band of about 875 men, women, 

 and children, eager to set out for the land beyond the mountains. 

 They began their journey May 20, 1843, and in the fall of that year 

 the advance guards descended upon their land of promise, the Will- 

 amette Valley. 



Although stragglers and small groups had settled in Oregon 

 previous to this migration, the influx of 1843 marks the real beginning 

 of the American occupations of the territory then under dispute 

 between Great Britain and the United States. The year 1844 saw 

 about 1400 more Americans added to their ranks; and the following 

 year, they were joined by a new influx of about 3,000 men, women 

 and children. 



Whatever may be our convictions on some of the much disputed 

 points of this period of our history, it seems to me that we must 

 acknowledge this tide of immigration to have been an element in 

 settling this question of ownership of the Oregon country. But 

 apart from whatever influence it may have had in determining the 



