Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/442

CHAPTER XV.

THE IMMIGRATION OF 1843.

Effect of Congressional Discussion and Missionary Agitation—Flocking to the Rendezvous—Organization—Disaffection and Division—Names of the Emigrants—The Light Column and the Cow Column—Along the Platte—At Fort Hall—Whitman's Doings—On to the Columbia and down the River—Policy of the Hudson's Bay Company—It is Better to Sell or Give than Tempt the Newcomers to Take by Force—The Applegates—Other Biographical Notices.

The discussions in congress, and the popularity of Linn's bill with the missionary efforts herein narrated, resulted in a pronounced emigration movement. It began in 1842, when a hundred persons followed Elijah White westward. The conclusion of the Ashburton treaty in August, although it disappointed the people by not settling the Oregon boundary, was an indication that further amicable arrangements might be made in the near future, besides removing the obstruction in congress to the passage of Linn's bill.

There was at this time a large body of men in the western border states who were dissatisfied with their condition as a producing community without a market. The era of railroads had not yet dawned. New Orleans was the only outlet for the country bordering on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and this market was glutted.^[1] The United States had no

1. Waldo says that Jesse Applegate, his neighbor in St Clair County, Missouri, sold a steamboat load of bacon and lard for $100; that bacon was used for fuel on the Mississippi boats, and that when he came to Oregon he did not attempt to sell his land, but simply abandoned it. Critiques, MS., 9–10. Burnett's account of why he left Missouri confirms this statement. He was hopelessly in debt. Recollections of a Pioneer, 98.

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