of the Hudson's Bay Company under its competent and benignant chief factor, Dr. John McLoughlin, backed by the millions of the company, and a disciplined host in possession of the good-will and salutary respect of the Indians. But the American missionaries remained on the ground, established stations, accumulated stores, formed nuclei of settlements through their lay helpers, and correctly conceived policies of inuring the Indians through example and precept to a status of settled agricultural life. Then come strong mountain men, who had had their fill of experience as solitary trappers in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains. Beginning with a band of one hundred and thirty-seven in 1842, and rising immediately to eight hundred and seventy-five in 1843 there rolled in the mighty tide of pioneer home-builders.
In such an entourage of events the author correctly conceives of the motive that is primary in this culminative course of events. A lower race is to be dispossessed by a higher, though Wyeth's plans contemplated advantage from the Indians' retaining their native employments, and the missionaries vainly hoped by a summary procedure to elevate them from lowest barbarism to civilization. Doctor McLoughlin holds the key to the situation, at least as to the immediate outcome. As representative of the fur trading monopoly, his interests are linked with the interests of the Indians in remaining in undisturbed possession of their imperial domains. It would have been so easy to have hustled back home the first forerunners of the great immigrations, and, if this had not deterred others from coming on in larger numbers, these in turn, utterly without resources after their long marches, could easily have been thrown into consternation and wrought havoc with by the chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company.
The issues in this great drama of the PacificNorth-
