The long Contest of Joint Occupancy 253 
It was the entirely too ready disposition on the part of our 
government at the outset, in 1824, 1826 and 1829, to compro- 
mise our rights in the Oregon territory which resulted event- 
ually in a loss to this country of territory the value of which 
cannot be estimated. Both Presidents Tyler and Polk were 
handicapped by the offer of settlement made to Great Britain 
under former administrations, in which the government had 
consented from time to time to a compromise on the forty-ninth 
parallel. 
This, then, was the status of the territory of Oregon from the 
date of our treaty with Great Britain in 1818 until our treaty of 
1846, a period of twenty-eight years. It was one of joint occu- 
pancy in virtue of treaty stipulation between the two countries, 
and it was during these twenty-eight years that the great battle 
as to the ultimate ownership of Oregon was fought and won. It 
was not wholly, though in part, a warfare of men on the field of 
carnage; it was a mighty, a prolonged—in one sense a physi- 
cal and in another sense a diplomatic—contest between the van- 
guards of two civilizations and of two mighty nations, each con- 
tending with the other for the supremacy, and each also with 
the uncivilized, blood-thirsty savages whose country was being 
invaded, though for their civilization and ultimate good. Such 
was the political status, emphasized by treaty stipulation, as to in- 
duce the belief on the part of Great Britain that the ultimate 
right to the whole territory would be determined, not so much 
by the question as to priority of discovery, exploration and settle- 
ment, but rather by the character and extent of settlement in the 
years that should intervene before the final decision should be 
made by arbitration or otherwise. 
During this period two purposes seemed to inspire the govern- 
ment of Great Britain as a means of: ultimately securing to her- 
self the absolute ownership of the whole of the vast Oregon 
territory. One was to impress on our public men and the goy- 
ernment at Washington in every possible manner the alleged 
worthlessness of the territory; the other was to push forward 
unremittingly through the instrumentality of the great govern- 
mental organ, the Hudson Bay company, actual settlements in 
the territory. That they succeeded in a very large degree in 
impressing many of the prominent officials of our government 
that the whole territory was a worthless waste, not worth hay- 
ing, much less worth contending’ for, is made clearly apparent 
