1848, and who really were in possession at the time of the passage of the organic act, was set aside, except so far as they were allowed to retain about half an acre for a building spot. So differently is law interpreted, according to whether its advocates are governed by its strict construction, by popular clamor, or by equity and common sense.
In the case of the original 'old mission' of the methodist church in the Willamette Valley, the removal of the mission school to Salem in 1843 prevented title. The land on which Salem now stands would have come under the law had not the mission school been discontinued in 1844; and the same may be said of all the several stations, that they had been abandoned before 1850.
As to the grants to protestant missions, they received little benefit from them. The American board sold Waiilatpu for $1,000 to Gushing Eells, as I have before mentioned. It was not a town site, and there was no quarrel over it. An attempt by the catholics to claim under the donation law at Walla Walla was a failure through neglect to make the proper notification, as I have also stated elsewhere. No notice of the privilege to claim at Lapwai was taken until 1862, when the Indian agent of Washington Territory for the Nez Percés was notified by Eells that the land he was occupying for agency purposes was claimed by the American board, and a contest arose about surveying the land, which was referred to the Indian bureau, Eells forbidding the agent to make any further improvements.[1] But as the law under which
- ↑ Charles Hutchins, the agent referred to, remarks that the missionaries at Lapwai may have acted with discretion in retiring to the Willamette Valley, although they were assured of protection by the Nez Percés; but as they had made no demonstration of returning from 1847 to 1862, and had been engaged in other pursuits, it was suggestive of the thought that it was the value of the improvements made upon the land that prompted them to put in their claim at this time. He could have added that the general improvement in this part of the country might have prompted them. Ind. Aff. Rept, 1862, 426.
