Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/327

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Oregon Historians and Sources
289

few numbers that are lacking in the first volume in the year 1851. This file is a most complete transcript of Oregon and Pacific Northwest history. The mass of contemporary narrative and of historical review appearing in this file is exceedingly impressive. Historians and pioneers have contributed to this file. Their writings cover the subject calssification mentioned earlier in this address. This collection of history was directed throughout a period of forty years by the late editor, Harvey W. Scott, who had the historian's viewpoint, and made "The Oregonian" a compendium of history, despite the daily needs of conserving space for "live news."

We find in the records and legislative acts of the Oregon provisional government and in Lafayette Grover's "Oregon Archives," many scattered details of pioneer history; likewise in the opinions of judges of Oregon territory and state and of the United States. Much of the history of the early capital controversy, which led to the segregation of Washington territory in 1853, is contained in these records. Railroad litigation has left us data in court opinions affording information about the important chapter of transportation progress. Judge Matthew P. Deady went to great pains to write history into his decisions, and we see this also true of Judge Erasmus D. Shattuck, who perhaps was the most scholarly man of our pioneer time. The codes of the Oregon legislature, especially as to special and local enactments, are rich in historical material. This same statement may be made of the United States Statutes at Large. The archives of the department of War contain a long record of Indian affairs and of the several wars with the aborigines, but relatively small part of this material is available to the investigators, because it is inadequately indexed or is buried in documentary tonnage. "Contributions to American Ethnology," 1877-93, J . W. Powell in charge, supplies valuable knowledge of the race history and languages of Oregon Country Indians, among the authors being George