294 Fred Wilbur Powell
In 1804, within 100 miles upward from the mouth of Jhe Columbia, there were no less than eight Indian tribes, with an average population of nearly a thousand persons to each tribe. In 1834 nothing remained but the remnants of these tribes, including less than four hundred Indians. Two-thirds of all the tribes ever known in Oregon are utterly extinct, and the names of them are scarcely remembered.
The Multnomahs, who formerly occupied the Waw>atoo islands, and the country around the mouth of the Wallamette, and who numbered 3,000 souls, are all dead, and their villages reduced to desolation. The once numerous Qatsops have lost their national existence, the few who survive seeking a shelter amongst the Chenooks, who are also reduced to less than one- fourth of their former numbers.
All the remaining Indians below Vancouver live in the most brutal, sottish and degraded manner, addicted to the grossest intemperance, and associating with the whites in such manner that there can scarcely be found among them a full-bloode4 Indian child. Rum and other intoxicating liquors are used ^ the besom of destruction among the miserable victims of the white man's cruelty. While I was on board pne of the com- pany's vessels, at the mouth of the Columbia, I saw the captain dealing out rum by the bucket to the chief of the Chenooks^ in return for wild game. I saw the chief, with his family of eight persons, intoxicated on the shore.
Such has been the result of the intercourse between the untutored children of the wild and the inhabitants of civilised and Christian communities.
In concluding this imperfect letter, I ought, in justice to myself, to state that it was not disappointment in regard to the natural advantages of Oregon which prevented my form- ing a permanent connexion with that region; but I was im- pelled by a determination to do all in my power, by constant effort in the United States, to lead our Government to extend over Oregon that paternal care which alone is needed to render it the very nucleus of emigration, and the most attractive portion of our national domain.
