178 F. G. YOUNG
made an epoch in Oregon history naturally flashed upon the mind of Slacum. A public meeting was called at "Camp Maud du Sable" [Champoeg] to consider the project. An organiza- tion was effected. Young was appointed "leader." Funds were provided. At this meeting too the "Canadians" were assured that their pre-emption rights to their farms would be respected and that "ere long some steps might be taken to open a trade and commerce with the country [Oregon]" 7 so that their wheat might be marketed at $1.50 instead of at 50 cents per bushel, payable in goods at 50 per cent advance of London price. This meeting registers the shifting of the missionaries from allegiance to the Hudson's Bay Company's authority to alliance with the independent American settlers. It brought into evidence too the magnanimity of Dr. McLoughlin and his associate chief factor at Fort Vancouver for they subscribed liberally to the venture. 8 Thus this meeting on the thirteenth of January, 1837, at Champoeg really made inevitable that of May 2, six years later. Here the spirit of independence and co- operation was born and steps taken to insure a more abundant and progressive life in the Oregon colony. So impressed were the missionaries with the changed conditions of life that issued from the undertaking here instituted that the natural expres- sion of their sentiment regarding it was : "Bless God for Brother Slacum's providential arrival among us." 9 This com- munity enterprise did secure not merely the sources of a bounti- ful supply of milk and steaks for the table and of draft oxen for the cultivation of the fields, but it meant active cooperation on a democratic basis where hitherto there had been patronage and bitter estrangement. And yet Slacum's achievement lay not so much in the fact that he had brought to the support of the venture Jason Lee and Dr. McLoughlin, the leaders of the Missionaries and the Hudson's Bay Company respectively, but rather in that all had been constrained to support the natural leader for the undertaking, one whom they but recently had treated as an outcast and who in retaliation had been threaten-
7 Ibid, pp. 196-7.
8 Documentary Record of Ewing Young and His Estate, appendix to this paper, II, Treasurer's Statement, p. 208.
9 W. H. Gray, History of Oregon, p. 155.
