The petition was signed by about sixty-five persons, half of them not having been more than six months in the country. The signers knew little of the underhand war waged on McLoughlin by the missionaries and those whom they controlled in the Willamette Valley; they affixed their names without caring to know the tenor of the document, and because they were asked to do so.[1]
While neither Jason Lee nor Abernethy signed the petition, for which they were ashamed to become responsible, nevertheless their influence was felt. Shortess, having secured signers enough to present a respectable showing, made a forced voyage to overtake William C. Sutton, then on his way to the States. He came up with him at the Cascades, and delivered to him that absurd document which afterward figured in the reports of congress as the voice of the people, to the great annoyance of McLoughlin. The doctor
- ↑ In a letter to McLoughlin, written by L. W. Hastings, the latter expresses his surprise that the petition should have been signed, not only by many respectable citizens, but by several of Ins party who arrived in the previous autumn; and that on inquiry they were ready to affirm they had been imposed upon, and that they supposed they were only petitioning the United States to extend jurisdiction over the country. McLoughlin's Private Papers, MS., 1st ser. 38.
quired to pay for it. McLoughlin refers to this statement in A Copy of a Document, in Trans. Or. Pion. Assoc., 1880, and says that cattle were sometimes poisoned by eating a noxious weed that grew in the valley, but that no attempt was ever made to recover their value from the settlers. In all the statements made, it was intended to create a feeling in the congressional mind that the British fur company was directly and maliciously oppressing American citizens, and to gain credit themselves for the patriotism with which these tyrannical measures were resisted. Then followed in a puerile strain a recital of injuries inflicted upon American trade by the fur company. An instance of this was in the Canadian practice followed by McLoughlin of having the wheat-measure struck to settle the grain in purchasing wheat from the settlers; forgetting to state that when it was found that Oregon wheat weighed 72 lbs. instead of 60 lbs. per bushel, a difference of sixpence was made in the price. In regard to the charge concerning Hastings, they neglected to state that he was an American, or that the deeds he drew up were for lots freely given to American citizens; nor did they remember that they had no legal claim themselves to the land in Oregon. It was forgotten that Slacum had promised the Canadians that their rights to their lands should be respected; and that McLoughlin was not different from any other settler, except that they asserted that he held the Oregon City claim for the Hudson's Bay Company, and not for himself, which he denied. McLoughkn's Private Papers, MS., 1st ser. 30. And they seemed to forget that in times past they had been the recipients of the very favors that they now complained were bestowed on their countrymen.
