392 AMERICAN EMIGRANTS TO OREGON. [1843. 



or accident.* Their numbers and discipline, however, enabled them 

 to set at defiance the Sioux and the Blackfeet, those Tartars of the 

 American steppes, who could only gaze from a distance at the 

 crowd of pale-faces leaving the sunny valleys of the Mississippi for 

 the rugged wilds of the Columbia. Upon the whole, the difficulties 

 were less than had been anticipated, even by the most sanguine 

 partisans of the immediate occupation of Oregon ; and the success 

 of the expedition encouraged a still greater number to follow in 

 1844, before the end of which year the number of American citi- 

 zens in Oregon exceeded three thousand. 



The increase of the numbers of American citizens in Oregon was 

 noticed by the president, in his Message to Congress of the 5th of 

 December following, in which he repeated the assurance that every 

 proper means would be used to bring the negotiation recently re- 

 newed with Great Britain to a speedy termination ; and he strongly 

 recommended the immediate establishment of military posts at 

 places on the line of route to the Columbia. In the course of the 

 session, each House of Congress received various memorials, pe- 

 titions, and resolutions, from State legislatures, all urging the govern- 

 ment to adopt measures for the immediate establishment of the right 

 of the United States to the countries beyond the Rocky Mountains ; 

 and several bills having in view the same object were introduced 

 and debated, though none of them were passed by either branch of 

 the federal legislature. Of these bills, some were nearly identical 

 with that which had been passed by the Senate in the preceding ses- 

 sion ; the others were to the effect, that notice should be immedi 

 ately given to the British government of the intention of the United 

 States to terminate the convention of 1827, in the time and man- 

 ner therein provided. The debates were continued in both houses, 



* It may be here remarked, that, on the 1st of July, 1843, while this crowd of men, 

 women, and children, with their wagons, horses, and cattle, were quietly pursuing their 

 way across the continent, to the regions of the lower Columbia, an article appeared in the 

 Edinburgh Review — a journal commonly well informed, and fair in its views on Amer- 

 ican matters — in which it was affirmed, ex-cathedra, that — " However the political 

 questions beticeen England and America, as to the ownership of Oregon, may be decided, 

 Oregon will never be colonized overland from the United Stales." The Reviewer 

 asserts that — " The world must assume a new face, before the American tcagons make 

 plain the road to the Columbia as they have done to the Ohio; " and he determines that — 

 " Whoever, therefore, is to be the future oicner of Oregon, its people will come from Eu- 

 rope.'' 1 This is not the first occasion, in which European predictions, implying doubts 

 as to the energy of American citizens, and their capacity to execute what they have 

 undertaken, have been contradicted by facts, so soon as uttered. The American 

 emigrants reached Oregon by a road which nature has made as plain as that from 

 the Atlantic to the Ohio ; and no one will question their power to maintain them- 

 selves there, if any people can do so. 



