1836.] AMERICAN SETTLEMENTS IN OREGON. 361 



the Willamet River, in which a few retired servants of the Hud- 

 son's Bay Company had already established themselves, by per- 

 mission of that body, and were employed principally in herding 

 cattle. The Americans, who settled there, were mostly Methodists, 

 under the direction of ministers of their sect ; and colonies of 

 Presbyterians or Congregationalists were afterwards planted in the 

 Walla- Walla and Spokan countries. In all these places, schools 

 for the education of the natives were opened, and, in 1839, a 

 printing press was set up at Walla- Walla, on which were struck 

 off the first sheets ever printed on the Pacific side of America 

 north of Mexico. The Jesuits of St. Louis then engaged in the 

 labor of converting the Indians, in which they appear, from their 

 own accounts, to have met with extraordinary success ; but, 

 according to the customs of that order, they did not attempt to 

 form any settlements.* 



The attention of the government of the United States had 

 been, in the mean time, directed to the north-west coasts, es- 

 pecially by the recent refusal of the Russians to allow Amer- 

 ican vessels to trade on the unoccupied parts north of the lat- 

 itude of 54 degrees 40 minutes. This refusal was based on 



* The first body of American emigrants went by sea, under the direction of 

 Messrs. Lee and Shepherd, Methodist ministers, who had already visited those 

 countries ; and several other parties of persons of the same sect have since estab- 

 lished themselves in the Willamet valley, and near the falls of the great river. 



The pioneer of the other Protestant sects was Mr. Samuel Parker, whose journal 

 of his tour beyond the Rocky Mountains, though highly interesting and instructive, 

 would have been much more so, had he confined himself to the results of his own 

 experience, and not wandered into the regions of history, diplomacy, and cosmog- 

 ony, in all of which he is evidently a stranger. Upon the recommendations of Mr. 

 Parker, Messrs. Spaulding, Gray, and Whitman, were sent out by the Board of Mis- 

 sions, in 1836 ; and they were followed, in 1838, by Messrs. Walker, Eels, and Smith, 

 all of whom, with their wives, have been since assiduously engaged in their benevo- 

 lent pursuits among the Indians, chiefly those of the middle regions of Oregon. See 

 the History of the American Board of Commissioners, published at Boston. 



Some accounts of the state of these settlements in 1837 may be found in the report 

 of Mr. W. Slacum, who was commissioned by the American government to visit the 

 Columbia countries in that year : this paper, however, which was published by order 

 of the Senate of the United States in 1838, is so vague and inexact in its details, that 

 it is, in most cases, calculated rather to confuse and mislead than to direct. 



The Jesuits De Smet, Mengarini, Point, and others, have, since 1840, made several 

 missionary tours through the Columbia countries, in the course of which they 

 baptized some thousands of Indians; they also erected a church at a place near 

 the Kullerspelm Lake, on Clarke's River, where the Blessed Virgin appeared in 

 person to a little Indian boy, "whose youth, piety, and sincerity," say the good 

 fathers, "joined to the nature of the fact which he related, forbade us to doubt 

 the truth of his statement." — De SmeVs Letters, published at Philadelphia, in 1843, 

 p. 192. 



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