THE CAYUSE WAR
CHAPTER I.
Policy of the United States Regarding the Pacific Coast—Temper of the People—Congress Seeking Information—Early Fur-Trading Expeditions—Effect of Congressional Inquiry on the Public Mind—Floyd's Schemes for the Settlement of Oregon—Petitions to Congress to Pass a Bill to Occupy the Columbia Region—Troubles of Joint Occupation—Indian Call for Teachers—Mission Effort, and its Result in the Wallamet Valley—Hostility of the Mission Colony to the British Occupants—Secret Aid from the Government—Hudson's Bay Company Introduce Settlers—United States Naval Expedition—First Actual Settlers from the United States—Elijah White's Immigration—First Conflicts Between the Indians and Americans in Western Oregon—Jedediah Smith and John Turner—Black, Gay, Bailey—A Rogue River Indian Shot—Lee and Hines' Visit to the Umpquas—The Dalles Indians—The Clatsops—Puget Sound Tribes—Conclusions Drawn from the Foregoing.
For more than twenty years before the first immigrant party set out for Oregon, the government had been pointing out to the people of the United States the prize it was reaching after on the shores of the Pacific. As a nation America was still too young for conquest, even had it been a part of our policy to acquire territory by force, which it was not. By treaties, and by expending a few millions in money, we obtained the transfer of French and Spanish titles; and by force of defensive arms had compelled Great Britain to surrender to us the forts she held on our lake borders.
But before this was accomplished, far-seeing statesmen had set on foot that transcontinental expedition, never appreciatingly eulogized in. the past, nor adequately honored with remembrance in the present—the journey of Lewis and Clarke from the Missouri river to the Pacific, at the mouth of the Columbia, in 1804–5–6. It was a brave and a perilous undertaking, and forged one of the strong-
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