The quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, Vol. 1, No. 3, September, 1900Oregon Historical Society
History
The quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, Vol. 1, No. 3, September, 1900
Oregon Historical Society
Oregon -- History -- Periodicals
The first enterprise that followed from this agitation, was that of
Nathaniel J. Wyeth, of Boston, for the establishment of a settlement for
trade and agriculture on the Lower Columbia. After the failure of a
first attempt in 1832, Wyeth succeeded in the year 1834 in planting a
small settlement on Wapato Island, at the junction of the Willamette
with the Columbia. Untoward circumstances and disaffection among his
followers defeated his first attempt, and sent him back to the east,
after two years of gallant struggle, feeling that his second was far
from successful. His settlement, while it has had in some sense an
unbroken continuity, and has contributed of its members to the
subsequent settlements in Oregon, can hardly be said to have had the
character of a permanent colony. The largest results of Wyeth’s
enterprise are rather to be looked for in the contribution he made in
various ways to the furtherance of other enterprises than his own.
Substantially the same may be said of the enterprise of Hall J. Kelley,
the leading promoter of one or more of the emigration societies already
mentioned. He contributed materially to the ultimate settlement of the
territory by his persistent and widespread agitation in the east, and
later in some measure by bringing into the Willamette Valley a small
band of men, some of whose number became permanent settlers. No colony,
however, was planted in this region under his leadership, and he did not
himself finally make Oregon his home.
The American settlements in Oregon that have thus far been mentioned,
were organized primarily for the purpose of trade, and that, too, trade
of a character that was not likely to bring into the country and
permanently establish there colonists that should become rooted to the
soil. Traders and trappers might in time abandon their pursuits as such,
and, attaching themselves as individuals to a settled community, become
useful members of that community, as more than one such did in the early
history of Oregon, but no aggregation of such men, brought together for
their own peculiar purposes, was likely to become an organic society,
with powers of life and growth.
The American settlements in Oregon thus far lacked the first essential
to the planting even of the germs of a state. In no one of them was
there so much as one American home, nor were there the elements of one.
An American white woman had not yet set foot on Oregon soil, nor any
woman, save the native and her offspring. It was now more than a score
of years since that first settlement at Astoria, but Oregon still waited
the coming of that institution that lies at the foundation of every
American state, the American family.
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