A glance at the changed conditions of life within the bounds of old Oregon: Instead of forty thousand persons ill-fed, ill-clad, living from hand to mouth, often bordering on famine, unable to support forty interesting visitors passing through their country, we have now, perhaps, fully one million, and the surplus of foodstuffs and clothing material they send out to the markets of the world, would feed well four millions. And, it is not extravagant to say that the territory to which the Oregon trail was made fifty-eight years ago will some day be made to support forty millions in comfort.
This paper, it will be observed, has dealt entirely with the native race in Northwestern Oregon, because this was the field of the race contest. The point to which the guiding minds of the white race looked as most desirable. Jefferson said, and Benton repeated: “Plant thirty thousand rifles at the mouth of the Columbia.” The first exploring party sent out by the former selected as the most interesting region in which to make excursions, the district now containing the first and second chosen commercial centers,—Vancouver and Portland.
The native race amid whom these were planted were described in their average manhood as mean, cowardly and thievish. Forty years later, to this description might be added ignorant, superstitious, and utterly without public spirit. The tribes east and south from this district were, excepting those located at the great fishing centers on the Columbia, less thievish, and much more bold and spirited in self-defense.
To the recent and valuable historical description of those tribes, including the natives in what is now Western Washington, I am indebted to the life of Isaac Ingalls Stevens, by his son, Hazard Stevens, for the number of natives west, as well as east, of the Cascades treated with by Governor Stevens in 1855, just before the natural leaders of the native race made their only united effort to stem the tide of inflow of the white race.
{ Total number found west of the Cascades 9,712 { Total number with whom treaties were made 8,597
{ Total number east of the Cascade Mountains 12,000 { Total number treated with 8,900
{ Total number found in Washington Territory 21,000 { Total number treated with 17,497