Sometimes the action of the Americans must have been meddlesome and annoying to the English and Canadian trappers. In the free manners of the first half of the nineteenth century the use of strong drink was common throughout the country and universal along the frontier. "A family could get along very well without butter, wheat bread, sugar, or tea, but whiskey was as indispensable to housekeeping as corn-meal, bacon, coffee, tobacco, and molasses. It was always present at the house raising, harvesting, road working, shooting matches, corn husking, weddings, and dances. It was never out of order 'where two or three were gathered together.'" Yet along with this frequent intemperance, a violent abstinence movement was gaining way. Many of the Oregon pioneers came from Iowa and the new Northwest, full of the new crusade and ready to support it. Despite the lack of legal right, though with every moral justification, attempts were made to crush the liquor traffic with the Indians. White tells of a mass meeting authorizing him to take action on his own responsibility; of his enlisting a band of coadjutors; and, finally, of finding "the distillery in a deep, dense thicket, 11 miles from town, at 3 o'clock P.M. The boiler was a large size potash kettle, and all the apparatus well accorded. Two hogsheads and eight barrels of slush or beer were standing ready for distillation, with part of one barrel of molasses. No liquor was to be found, nor as yet had much been distilled. Having resolved on my course, I left no time for reflection, but at once upset the nearest cask, when my noble volunteers immediately seconded my measures, making a river of beer in a moment; nor did we stop till the kettle was raised, and elevated in triumph at the prow of our boat, and every cask, with all the distilling apparatus, was broken to pieces and utterly destroyed. We then returned, in high cheer, to the town, where our presence and report gave general joy." The provisional government lasted for several years, with a fair degree of respect shown to it by its citizens. Like other provisional governments, it was weakest when revenue was in question, but its courts of justice met and satisfied a real need of the settlers. It was long after regular settlement began before Congress acquired sure title to the country and could pass laws for it. The Oregon question, muttering in the thirties, thus broke out loudly in the forties. Emigrants then rushed west in the great migrations with deliberate purpose to have and to hold. Once there, they demanded, with absolute confidence, that Congress protect them in their new homes. The stories of the election of 1844, the Oregon treaty of 1846, and the erection of a territorial government in 1848 would all belong to an intimate study of the Oregon trail.