CHAPTER XIX.
THE IMMIGRATION OF 1845.
A Notable Migration—Various Starting-points— Divisions and Companies—Joel Palmer—Samuel K. Barlow—Presley Welch—Samuel Hancock—Bacon and Buck—W. G. T'Vault—John Waymire—Solomon Tetherow—California Extolled at Fort Hall—Meeting with White—His Fatal Friendship—A Long Cut-off—Hardships on the Malheur—Disease and Death at the Dalles—Heartlessness of Waller and Brewer— Emmet's Wanderings— The Incoming by Sea—Names of the Immigrants—Third Session of the Legislature—Explorations for Immigrant Pass—Wagon-road—Public Buildings, Capital, and Liquor Questions—New Counties—Revenue.
The immigration of 1845 was larger than any that had preceded it, three thousand persons arriving before the end of the year, and doubling the white population of Oregon.[1] There were present at the east the same underlying motives in this exodus which drove west the bands of former years—restlessness of spirit, dissatisfaction with home, want of a market, and distance from the sea.[2]
- ↑ Hines Or. and Ins., 209; Marshall's Statement, MS., 1; McLoughlin's Private Papers, MS., 2d ser., 23; Saxton's Or. Ter., 20; Gray's Hist. Or., 453.
- ↑ There were some original views advanced by Charles Saxton, who, while returning to the United States with White, met this army of adventurers in the Snake River country; as these views are not without interest, I will quote them briefly. 'Causes have been operating for the last twenty-five years in the north Atlantic states to produce this unparalleled mighty movement across the American continent. A system of aristocracy has oppressed the laboring classes, and roused the people to fly to the western states to avoid the soup and parish relief societies, as witnessed in Europe; and in the west the pioneers were compelled to seek new homes for their large families, and to find, if possible, a suitable market for their produce, and a range for their herds. Congress, by an unwise act of legislation, not regarding the indomitable spirit of enterprise in the descendants oi the Jamestown colony by land, and the Plymouth colony by sea, nearly blockaded the great thoroughfare of western emigration on land by congregating the various tribes of
