But it requires no argument in view of this long continued series of acts, to reach the conclusion that American interests in Oregon were endangered most of all from the apathy and ignorance of our own statesmen.
That loyal old pioneer, Rev. Jason Lee, the chief of the Methodist Mission in Oregon, visited Washington in 1838 and presented the conditions of the country and its dangers forcibly. With funds contributed by generous friends he succeeded in taking back with him quite a delegation of actual settlers for Oregon. But neither Congress nor the people were aroused.
For all practical purposes Oregon was treated as a "foreign land." There was not even a show of a protectorate over the few American immigrants who had gathered there. The "American Board," which sent missionaries only to foreign lands, had charge of the mission fields, and carefully secured passports for their missionaries before starting them upon their long journey. The Rev. Myron Eells in his interesting volume entitled "Father Eells," gives a copy of the passport issued to his father. It records—
"The Rev. Cushing Eells, Missionary and Teacher of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to the tribes west of the Rocky Mountains, having signified to this department his desire to pass through the Indian Country to the Columbia River, and requested the permission required by law to enable him so to do, such permission is hereby granted; and he is commended to the friendly attention of civil and military agents and officers and of citizens, if at any time it shall be necessary to his protection. Given under my hand and the seal of the War Department this 27th day of February, 1838.
"J. R. POINSETT,
"Secretary of War."
It is a truth so plain as to need no argument, that during all these earlier years the whole effort of the fur traders had been to deceive all nationalities as to the value of the Northwestern country. In their selfishness they had deceived England as well as America. Their idea and hope was to keep out emigration. But England had been better informed than the United States, for the reason that all the commerce was with England, and English capitalists who had large interests in the Hudson Bay Company, very naturally were better informed, but even they were not anxious for English colonization and an interference with their bonanza.
They controlled the English press, and so late as 1840 we read in the "British and Foreign Review," that "upon the whole, therefore, the Oregon country holds out no great promise as an agricultural field."
The London Examiner in 1843 wonders that "Ignorant Americans" were "disposed to quarrel over a country, the whole in dispute not being worth to either party twenty thousand pounds."
The Edinburgh Review, generally fair, said: "Only a very small portion of the land is capable of cultivation. It is a case in which the American people have been misled as to climate and soil. In a few years all that gives life to the country, both the hunter and his prey will be extinct, and their places will be supplied by a thin white and half-breed population scattered along the fertile valleys supported by pastures instead of the chase, and gradually degenerating into barbarism, far more offensive than backwoodsmen." Our English friends, it may be observed, had long had a poor opinion of "backwoodsmen."