Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/131

OREGON PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT 123 After the establishment of the government of 1843, Dr. McLoughlin continued his beneficent rule north of the Colum- bia River, and over the forts and posts of his Company, north, east and south of the Columbia River. And, while the Metho- dist Missionaries tried to be assertive and active in the Wil- lamette Valley, they were largely innoxious as rulers after the arrival of the immigration of 1843. LAND LAWS OF THE ORIGINAL PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT. When the leaders of the Methodist Mission found that a provisional government was to be established, they sought to make it serve the purposes of the Mission party. As they found they could not prevent it, they sought to control it. In this they succeeded temporarily, to a large extent. Article 4 of the Law of Land Claims, adopted by the meet- ing of July 5, 1843, was in the interests of the Mission and was not altogether creditable. This law, after providing that an individual might hold a claim of not more than 640 acres in a square or oblong form, provided as follows : "No person shall be entitled to hold such a claim upon city or town sites, extensive water privileges, or other situations necessary for the transaction of mercantile or manufacturing operations, and to the detriment of the community. Provided, that nothing in these laws shall be so construed as to affect any claim of any mission of a religious character, made pre- vious to this time, of an extent not more than six miles square." The first clause of this Article 4 was intended to deprive Dr. McLoughlin of his land claim at Oregon City, which some of the Methodist missionaries had been endeavoring to take from him in ways not creditable to their religious pretensions. The last clause became very unpopular with new settlers. It was true that it applied to the Catholic as well as to the Metho- dist Mission, but to allow a Mission to hold an entire town- ship, i. e., 23,040 acres, in one body, in the fertile Willamette Valley, was an audacious attempt, to put it not stronger. The immigrants of 1843 and 1844 would not submit to such outra- geous provisions as contained in said Article 4 of the land laws.