who used it to help others of his company down to Linnton. Originating thus in family fun, the incident kept in circulation till the Whitman massacre, when on Gilliam's appointment as commander of the volunteers to go against the Cayuses, it took the shape of a rumor that Colonel Gilliam intended 1o levy contribution on the Hudson Bay Company's property and occasioned an exchange of letters between Chief Factor Douglas and Governor Abcrnethy. (See Brown's History of Oregon, pp. 333-9.)
From the writer's point of view to settle Oregon as citizens of the United States was a prevailing sentiment among those who came before the year of the Whitman massacre, and if war had come, the Provisional Government would have put out even greater energies to fight the British and Indians combined than were exerted, as many of the heads of families besides General Gilliam had been suckled on stories of the Revolution of 1776 and the war of 1812. This influenced men from the East and North as well as those from the South and western frontiers, but the latter were in a greater degree under fireside and campfire tuition as books were less common and much less read. In Gilliam's trains the only two books I was able to borrow were Cooper's "Prairie" and Lewis and Clark's journal the first showing little usage and the latter in tatters from much use.
To say that to save Oregon as rightful territory of the United States is too high a motive to be ascribed to the early pioneer homebuilders who crossed the plains and mountains to Oregon between 1842 and 1847 is unjust—as Daniel Clark, my traveling companion into Western Oregon, tersely put it in answer to the question of a British ship captain (who had just reached Vancouver with a cargo of goods for the Hudson Bay Company), of where he came from and his purpose in coming here, replied, "We've come from Missouri across the Rocky Mountains; we've come to make our homes in Oregon and rule this country." The writer was struck by this reply, received from Clark the evening of the day after it was made, as a concise statement of the general object of Gilliam's companies of the 1844 movement. This was the first motive given in the
