In this speech Thurston was compelled to admit that he had no proper foundation for the statement in his letter to Congress that Dr. McLoughlin had sent word to Fort Hall to turn the immigration to California. He said in this speech that the immigrants to Oregon "at a very early period, perhaps as early as 1842 or 1843, were met with the tale that the Indians were hostile to the immigrants; that they would be cut off if they proceeded further on the Oregon trail; and that this story was told by the officer in charge of Fort Hall, as having been received from Vancouver, [the headquarters of Dr. McLoughlin] and that this same officer advised the emigrants to go to California." This statement is not borne out by the facts. That there was danger to the immigrants in coming to Oregon is shown by the intended massacre of the immigrants of 1843, as set forth in this address and in the McLoughlin Document. Thurston, in this speech, took up the Shortess petition and read numerous parts of it. He said in reference to the phrase that the petitioners hoped that Dr. McLoughlin never would own his land claim, that that is "just what the land bill provides for." Referring to the assertion in the Shortess petition that Dr. McLoughlin "says the land is his, and every person building without his permission is held as a trespasser," Thurston said: "What do you think of this, Mr. Speaker? An Englishman holding an _American citizen_ a trespasser for settling on American soil, where the American Government had invited him! This, sir, was before the treaty [of 1846] and before the Provisional Government was formed, and when one American citizen had as good a right to settle there as another, and all a better right than Dr. McLoughlin. Yet this barefaced Jesuit has the effrontery to pretend he did not hold that claim by dint of threats." Thurston does not explain how the American Government invited the immigrants prior to 1847 to settle in Oregon. The truth is that the American settlers who left the East prior to 1849 went on their own initiative. They were neither invited nor helped nor protected by the Government, until after the establishment of the Territorial Government in 1849. Under the Conventions of joint-occupancy Dr. McLoughlin had the same rights, up to the Treaty of 1846, as a British subject, that any citizen of the United States had--no more, no less. This, Thurston as a lawyer, knew.