First came Jedediah Smith, the American fur trader, overland. He was robbed to the shirt on his back by Indians at the Umpqua river. There and then came the great choice to M'Loughlin--should he save the life of rivals, or leave them to be murdered by { 126} Indians? He sent Tom Mackay to the Umpqua, punished the robber Indians, secured the pilfered furs, and paid the American for them. Then came American missionaries overland--the Lees and Whitman. Then came Wyeth, the trader and colonizer from Boston. The company fought Wyeth's trade and bought him out; but when the turbulent Indians crowded round the 'White Eagle,' chief of Fort Vancouver, asking, 'Shall we kill--shall we kill the "Bostonnais"?' M'Loughlin struck the chief plotter down, drove the others from the fort, and had it noised about among the tribes that if any one struck the white 'Bostonnais,' M'Loughlin would strike him. At the same time, M'Loughlin earnestly desired that the territory should remain British. In 1838, at a council of the directors in London, he personally urged the sending of a garrison of British soldiers, and that the government should take control of Oregon in order to establish British rights. His suggestions received little consideration. Had not the company single-handed held all Rupert's Land for almost two hundred years? Had they not triumphed over all rivals? They would do so here.
But by 1843 immigrants were pouring over { 127} the mountains by the thousands. Washington Irving's _Astoria_ and _Captain Bonneville_, and the political cry of 'Fifty-four forty or fight'--which meant American possession of all south of Alaska--had roused the attention of the people of the United States to the merits of Oregon, and caused them to make extravagant claims. Long before the Oregon Treaty of 1846, which established the 49th parallel as the boundary, M'Loughlin had foreseen what was coming. The movement from the east had become a tide. The immigrants who came over the Oregon Trail in 1843 were starving, almost naked, and without a roof. Again the Indians crowded about M'Loughlin. 'Shall we kill? Shall we kill?' they asked. M'Loughlin took the rough American overlanders into his fort, fed them, advanced them provisions on credit, and sent them to settle on the Willamette. Some of them showed their ingratitude later by denouncing M'Loughlin as 'an aristocrat and a tyrant.' The settlers established a provisional government in 1844, and joined in the rallying-cry of 'Fifty-four forty or fight.' This, as M'Loughlin well knew, was the beginning of the end. His friends among the colonists begged him to subscribe to the provisional { 128} government in order that they might protect his fort from some of their number who threatened to 'burn it about his ears.' He had appealed to the British government for protection, but no answer had come; and at length, after a hard struggle and many misgivings, he cast in his lot with the Americans. Two years later, in 1846, he retired from the service of the company and went to live among the settlers. He died at Oregon City on the Willamette in 1857.