apt to need food. While Minto and his two companions were at the Fort G. W. Bush with his wife and five children and his cattle arrived at the Fort. It was decided to have Minto, Clark and Crockett press on as rapidly as possible and tell Peter Burnett to send help to the emigrants. After considerable hardship the three young men reached the Willamette Valley and delivered their message to Peter Burnett. For a while they cut rails for General McCarver and then took a contract to get out a considerable number of oak rails for Peter Burnett. When this work was finished they went up in a Hudson Bay bateau furnished by Dr. John McLoughlin to help the emigrants down the river. At The Dalles they found G. W. Bush, who had decided to stay there all winter and take care of his stock and the stock of some of his fellow emigrants. Later he moved to Washougal Prairie. He wanted to come to the Willamette Valley, but on account of the stand taken against negroes he moved on the north side of the Columbia, thinking to be under the British Government, for at that time the British claimed the country north of the Columbia. Bush was very popular with the early settlers on account of his thrift, good nature and generosity. He had helped several white families financially to get their outfits to come in 1844 and he helped many who were destitute when they arrived. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1790. With Colonel M. T. Simmons and some others he settled in the Puget Sound country in 1845. Bush Prairie is named for him. His son, William Owen Bush, won the first premium at the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia on wheat grown on Bush Prairie.
The question of slavery in Oregon was instrumental in delaying the plan of Oregon to be made a territory. Thomas B. Benton, Oregon's firm friend, writing in 1847 as to the action or rather lack of action by Congress said:
"The House of Representatives as early as the middle of January, passed a bill to give you Territorial Government, and in that bill had sanctioned and legalized your provisional organic act, one of the clauses of which forever prohibited the existence of slavery in Oregon. An amendment from
