business of the Hudson's Bay Company, Dr. McLoughlin had aided the newcomers with credit and counsel. In 1845, however, the company forced him to resign and his influence upon the development of the region came to an end.
Life in the Oregon country was crude in the extreme, but despite its difficulties, it was not without its favorable aspects. Pioneers hewed their cabins and barns from the forest, and took their food from the newly tilled ground or from the surrounding wilderness. The climate was mild, and farm animals required little outlay for stabling or winter feeding. The scarcity of money was a great inconvenience, somewhat mitiga:ed by the issue of what were known as "Ermatinger money" and "Abernethy money," the use of wheat and peltry as mediums of exchange, and the coinage of "beaver money" at Oregon City. Chiefly unfavorable to peace of mind in this life of primitive self-sufficiency were the inevitable isolation and ever-present fear of the Indians. Of these, the former was perhaps the harder to endure.
Attempts to form an organized government in Oregon antedated the settlement of the boundary question by several years. When Jason Lee went east in 1838, he carried a paper signed by 36 settlers petitioning Congress for Oregon's admission to the Union. In the next year, the Reverend David Leslie and about 70 others presented a similar petition asking for "the civil institutions of the American Republic" and "the high privilege of American citizenship." Congress, however, was hesitant to act because of possible trouble with Great Britain, and the Americans in Oregon became restless while awaiting a decision. Plans for a provisional government became a matter of active discussion when, early in 1841, Jason Lee made an earnest speech on the subject. Very soon thereafter an event occurred which hastened the efforts to organize. This was the death of Ewing Young, who owned a great part of the Chehalem Valley and a large herd of Spanish cattle which he had driven north from California. In the absence of a will and any legal heirs, arrangements were made at his funeral to call a mass meeting of Oregon's inhabitants south of the Columbia River for the purposes of appointing officers to administer his estate and to form some sort of provisional local government. At this meeting, held February 17 and 1 8, 1841, at the Methodist Mission in the Willamette Valley, a "Supreme Judge, with Probate powers" and several minor court officers were elected, and it was resolved "that a committee be chosen to form a constitution, and draft a code of laws."
At an adjourned meeting held four months later, it was moved "that
