by reason of continued debt and close intercourse, they were almost as much serfs of the lords paramount at Fort Vancouver when in the Valley Willamette as when on the River Columbia.[1]
On the other hand, among those who laid the foundations of Oregon's present institutions, of Oregon's present society and prosperity, I should mention first of all the Boston school-master, the enthusiast, the schemer, Hall J. Kelley, though he never was a settler in the country, though he remained there but a short time, under inauspicious circumstances, and departed without making any apparent mark. It was he who, more than any other, by gathering information since 1815 and spreading it before the people, kept alive an intelligent interest in Oregon; it was he who originated schemes of emigration, beginning with one from St Louis in 1828, which, though it failed and led
- ↑ According to a statement of McLoughlin, the beginning of the French settlement happened in this wise: Etienne Lucier, whose time had expired in 1828, asked McLoughlin if he believed the Willamette Valley would ever be occupied by settlers, to which the latter replied that wherever wheat grew there would be a farming community. Lucier then asked what assistance would be given him should he settle as a farmer. The Hudson's Bay Company were bound under heavy penalties not to discharge their servants in the Indian country, but to return them to the place where they were engaged. But McLoughlin offered a plan and rules for settlement to Lucier which were accepted and afterward became general. First, to avoid the penalty, the men must remain on the company's books as servants, but they might work for themselves, and no service would be required of them. Second, they must all settle together, and not scatter about amongst the Indians, with whom their half-breed children would be taught by their mothers to sympathize, making them dangerous neighbors; while by keeping their Indian wives among themselves exclusively, these women would serve as hostages for the good conduct of their relatives in the interior. Third, each settler must have fifty pounds sterling due him, to supply himself with clothing and implements, which rule was designed to make them saving and industrious, and by making their farms cost them something, attach them to their homes. Fourth, seed for sowing and wheat to feed their families would be loaned them for the first year, and two cows each for an indefinite period. These were the terms which secured only the better class of Canadians as settlers, and kept the idle and dissolute from becoming incorporated with them. The American trappers, having no credit on the company's books, were nevertheless assisted in the same way and to the same extent, as the best means of making of them good citizens instead of roving firebrands among the Indians. At the end of the first three years all the settlers, French and American, were out of debt. This interesting account was only recently discovered among the private papers of Dr McLoughlin, and by consent of Mrs Harvey, his daughter, was printed among the archives of the Oregon Pioneer Association, under the title of Copy of a Document, in Or. Pioneer Association Trans. 1880, p. 50.
