DOCUMENTS.
All of the following newspaper articles were taken from a single year of the New York Tribune. They serve well to indicate the interest with which Oregon Territory was regarded throughout the country in 1842:
[From the Tribune (New York), January 18, 1842.]
FROM OREGON.
EXTRACT OF A LETTER DATED WILHAMET, FEBRUARY 19, 1842.
I will now tell you something of the people of this country. There are about seventy-five to eighty French Canadians settled in this country, principally discharged from the service of the Hudson Bay Company; there are also about fifty Americans settled in and about this country, making, perhaps, one hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and thirty male inhabitants, who are married to Indian women. They raise from their farms, on an average, from three to five hundred, and some from ten to twelve hundred bushels of wheat, besides great quantities of pease, potatoes, oats, barley, corn, etc. The Hudson Bay Company have in their employ at Fort Vancouver about one hundred and twenty-five persons, and many in several other forts both sides of the Rocky Mountains.
These people, as I said before, are married to Indian women, and live very much the same, in all respects, as our farmers at home, with the exception of not being obliged to labor half as much. They generally have from fifty to one hundred head of horses, half as many cows, and about the same number of hogs; these all take care of themselves. The people here cut no hay and make no pastures; they do not give^their hogs any feed, excepting about a month before they kill them. There is one church here, and the people have contracted for a brick church and other buildings necessary, such as a school house for the French and one for the Americans. The French have one priest here and one at Fort Vancouver.
The Americans generally attend at the_mission, and, as far as I can see, the people here are as well behaved and moral as in our town.
