Before November the new government had come in and
the territorial legislature in August, 1849, passed another
act "to provide for settling Cayuse war claim," and for an
election by both houses of "a commissioner" 17 to investi
gate all claims growing out of or pertaining to the Cayuse
war; said commissioner to be allowed five dollars a day
for each day he should be actually engaged in the dis
charge of his duties, to be paid out of the territorial treas
ury, and to hold office for one year. A. E. Wait was the
commissioner elected. It was not expected that the busi
ness of adj using these claims should be accomplished in
one year, nor was it.
A committee of the congress of the United States., moved by the eloquence of Samuel R. Thurston, the first territo rial delegate, agreed to appropriate one hundred thousand dollars wherewith to pay the expenses of the Cayuse war, Thurston telling his constituents that it was "that or noth ing," and indeed, considering the parsimony which had hitherto characterized the action of congress towards the Oregon people, this was a munificent sum ; but the inves tigations of Commissioner Wait convinced the legislature which met in December, 1850, that an additional fifty thousand would be required to extinguish the debt, as the following extract from a memorial from this legisla ture to congress gives evidence :
It appears that he (the commissioner) has investigated, allowed, and certified claims against the late provisional government of Ore gon, after deducting all payments and offsets, the sum of seventy- six thousand eight hundred and thirty dollars and twenty-four cents. By the same it appears that his predecessor so audited the sum of ten thousand four hundred dollars and twenty-nine cents, making the total amount audited and certified by the present com missioner and his predecessor, eighty-seven thousand two hundred and thirty dollars and fifty-three cents. In his report the commis sioner estimates the probable expense of the war at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The debts due the several in
dividuals, as ascertained and set forth in the commissioner s report, are for services rendered or material furnished by the citizens of this
17 Oregon Archives, MS. 1052.
