24 LIEUTENANT HOWISON REPORT ON OREGON, 1846
By far the greater part of these are Canadian voyagers, or those who worked out their term of service in pulling bat- teaux and canoes along the water-courses, which are almost continuous from York factory, on Hudson's bay, to the shores of the Pacific ocean. Eight or ten of these persons being annu- ally discharged for twenty years, have become a large item in the population of Oregon. They settled contiguous to each other on the fine lands of the Wilhammette, about 30 miles above the falls, and form now a large majority in Champoeg county; their residence is called the French Settleme'nt, and Canadian French is their language. Besides, there are a few prosperous cultivators adjacent to the Hudson's Bay Com- pany's farm on the Cowlitz. They are all connected with Indian women, and would have united themselves with the tribes to which their women belong but for the advice of Dr. Mc- Laughli'n, whose influence induced them to assume the more civilized and respectable life of the farmer. They are a simple, uneducated people, but very industrious and orderly, and are justly esteemed among the best citizens of the Territory. They come under the general designation of half-breeds, and this class of population, including all ages and sexes, may be com- puted, numerically, at seven or eight hundred. They are well worthy the fostering care of the government, and have been assured that they will not be excepted by any general law of the United States in relation to Oregon land claims or pre- emption rights. If, unfortunately, their rights of property should not be protected by laws of the United States, they will soon be intruded on a'nd forced from the lands. Falling back upon the Indian tribes with a sense of injury rankling in their bosoms, the consequence might in all time to come be most deplorable for the peace and safety of this country ; where, from the sparseness of the population, a band of forty or fifty blood-thirsty savages might surprise and destroy to rotation hundreds of inhabitants.
Simultaneously with the Canadians were discharged from the company's service other subjects of Great Britain, as farm-
