NEGRO SLAVERY IN OREGON.
This question did not make much stir on French Prairie. The idea was this: Indians were much cheaper and better labor than negroes. For a blanket that cost $3 you could hire an Indian a month—or perhaps two months; and many of the Indians were good workers. They could handle an axe like a white man; and on the river they were the best boatmen. They would paddle all day in a canoe, or on a bateau, and want only a little meat and a salmon skin.
Some Southern people who brought their negroes with them wanted to keep them as slaves; but the people of Oregon opposed this and made the law that no negro should come to Oregon. It was never enforced.