since been cherishing the hope of emigrating to Oregon.
Jason Lee had come to Oregon in 1834, and established his mission about fifty miles above the falls of the Willamette at the Indian village of Chemayway. He returned East to preach and raise funds for his work, also to enlist emigrants in the enterprise of establishing homes in the Oregon country. At that time, on the Pacific coast, there were only a few scattering Americans who had drifted in to trap and hunt and later to farm. These, with the missionary population, would, he told the Middle-Westerners, in time be strong enough to turn the balance of power away from England to the United States if settlers could only be induced to come as quickly as possible.
He carried with him a memorial to Congress, drawn up by American residents, complaining about the practices of the Hudson Bay Company in its high-handedness in dealing with American settlers, and asking two things for the protection and prosperity of American subjects. The first was that the jurisdiction of the laws of the United States be extended to cover them, and the other that the land they had taken up and improved be granted them with the guaranty that it could be held. He recommended that a square mile, or six hundred and forty acres, be allotted each American settler in order to stimulate emigration. Under the Treaty of Joint Occupancy between Great Britain and the United States, each nation had the right to settle in the Oregon country, and Congress, harassed with the question of state rights and slavery, slowly woke to action
