The real Path-finder 265 
Hudson Bay people in 1836 made a determined but unsuccessful 
effort to prevent Whitman from attempting to go through with 
his wagon to Oregon, insisting it was a physical impossibility. 
The Tyler administration had promised to send Lieutenant Fré- 
mont and his company as an escort to protect Whitman and his 
200 wagons and 1,000 men, women and children on his return 
to Oregon in the summer and fall of 1843, but failed to do so. 
Whitman’s expedition left Waldport, Missouri, in June, 1843, 
and although at Fort Hall, 1,523 miles from the starting point, a 
determined effort was again made by the Hudson Bay men to 
prevent further progress, insisting that it was impossible to go 
through with wagons, Whitman and his 200 wagons did go 
through and arrived at his home on Columbia river September 
4,1843. Frémont did not reach Fort Hall until October 23 of 
the same year, forty-nine days after Whitman and his expedi- 
tion had passed that point; nor did Frémont arrive over a new 
trail but over the identical one, for a distance of some hundred 
miles, which Whitman, Spaulding and their wives had trodden 
seven years before. Dr Whitman left his home on the Columbia 
on this great mission October 3, 1842, and returned there Sep- 
tember 4, 1848, after an absence of just eleven months. 
The Organization of a Provisional Government in Oregon. 
Following this successful expedition led by Dr Whitman in 
1845 came the organization of a provisional government by the 
people then in the territory and the final settlement of the whole 
question by the treaty of 1846. At the time of the organization 
of the provisional government there was but one law book in 
all that region. This was a copy of the Iowa Statutes} and in 
the fundamental law of the provisional government there was 
this provision: “ The laws of Iowa territory shall be the law in 
this territory in civil, military and criminal cases when not other- 
wise provided.” , Another provision which these brave, courage- 
ous, liberty-loving pioneers inscribed in their fundamental law 
was this: “There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servi- 
tude in said territory, otherwise than for the punishment of crime 
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” 
Oregon, though added to the United States by the treaty of 
1846, and created a territory, including what is now the states 
of Washington and Idaho, in August, 1848, had no territorial 
government until 1849. In March of this year its first territorial 
