Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/205

CHAPTER VII.

COLONIZATION.

1837–40.

Three Missionary Brides—Jason Lee's Marriage—Sea-coast Excursions—Branch Mission among the Calapooyas—Petition to Congress for a Civil Government—Lee Goes East—Death of Mrs Lee—Missionary Enthusiasm in the East—Bill for the Occupation of Oregon —Sailing of the 'Lausanne' with the Mission Colony—Treaty of Commerce with the Hawaiian Islands—Affairs in Oregon—Drowning of the First White Boy Born in the Territory—Death of Shepard—Religious Interest at the Dalles—Arrival of the Mission Colony.

Daniel Lee does not mention what the superintendent wrote to the missionary society of the Methodist church on establishing himself in the Willamette Valley, but it is to be presumed that whatever it was, the action of the society was founded upon it. A reënforecement for the Mission, consisting of eight adults and several children, sailed from Boston on the 28th of July, 1836. They took passage in the ship Hamilton, Captain Barker, bound for the Sandwich Islands, where they arrived late in the winter. There they remained guests of the missionaries at Honolulu until the latter part of April 1837, when they sailed in the brig Diana, Captain Hinckley, for the Columbia River. On the 18th of May, three months after the departure of the Loriot with the cattle company, tidings of the new arrival reached the Willamette, and Jason Lee hastened to Fort Vancouver, and found them already provided with comfortable quarters by John McLoughlin.