250 John H. Mitchell—Oregon 
company prior to that, this was unquestionably the first perma- 
nent settlement made by white men in the valley of the Colum- 
bia or in the territory of Oregon, and this was by American 
citizens. The claim, therefore, to prior settlement of Oregon terri- 
tory, now comprising the whole of the states of Oregon, Wash- 
ington and Idaho and a part of Montana, can rightfully attach 
only to the United States. 
It is doubtless true that the two Winship brothers, of Boston, 
are the men who really made the first attempt at settlement on 
Columbia river after Gray’s discovery. They sailed from Boston 
July 7, 1809, in two ships, the O’Kain, of which Jonathan was 
captain, and the Albatross, of which Nathan was master. The 
O’ Kain went-direct to California, while the Albatross went to Sand- 
wich islands and thence to Columbia river, arriving there with 
fifty men on board early in the spring of 1810. The vessel pro- 
ceeded up the river a distance of forty miles, opposite to the 
place now known as Oakpoint, where they disembarked, cleared 
a small tract of land, erected a building and planted vegetables, 
all of which, however, were demolished and swept away by the 
June floods of the same year, when Captain Nathan Winship 
reémbarked with his men, joined his brother in California and, 
learning of Astor’s expedition, never returned. 
That Great Britain, operating through divers influential chan- 
nels, notably the Hudson Bay company, reénforced as it was in 
1821 by consolidation with the Canadian Northwest company 
of Montreal, exerted a most formidable power against the settle- 
ment of Oregon territory by Americans, and the waves of whose 
influence reached Washington and for a time threatened the loss 
of the whole territory, is an historic fact well established. That 
Daniel Webster, as Secretary of State, was by these influences at 
one time convinced that the whole territory was an unbroken 
waste of sandy deserts, impassable mountains, and impenetrable 
jungles there can be no room for doubt. These powerful influ- 
ences had been operating in divers ways prior to 1842 for more 
than a third of a century. Their effect on the individual and 
public mind in the east, and on the official mind as well in Wash- 
ington, was marked in the highest degree. 
That Webster, as Secretary of State, had seriously contem- 
plated including the whole of this territory in the Ashburton 
treaty, and subsequently in a separate treaty, in exchange to 
Great Britain for certain cod fisheries in Newfoundland is be- 
