Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/320

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308
John Minto.

pants in the results of the change of racial dominion which has taken place on the North Pacific Slope within the past century. They feel they are participants in a gigantic act of robbery. A lady whose writings on any subject it is a delight to read, in the June number of the Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, shows the origin of land titles so far as the English race of men have made them . It would be an instructive addition to her able paper if some one, w^ell read on the effects of guarded land titles in sufficient area to support family life on each allotment, would describe their influences upon a community so blessed.

Already enough has been said to indicate that prior to the visit of Lewis and Clark, the native race was in a condition of decline; that in a normal or average season a body of forty men, or less, found it difficult to avoid starvation while moving from place to place in a country estimated to contain forty thousand.

It may be admitted, because it is true though shameful, that the licentiousness of trade had sown the seeds accelerating the decay of the native race in Western Oregon, from the Columbia River to the Umpqua, and from its mouth to Fort Hall. Within these bounds, but especially near the chief lines of commerce, the missionary even had as much need of a medical book as he had of his bible, as far as the people he had come to guide in the way of life was concerned.

Abundant reason had Dr. John McLoughlin (that livingcopy of the great heart of Bunyari's matchless fancy) for giving welcome to the American missionaries. He knew the value of a clean mind or soul in keeping a clean and healthy body; though with a wise physican's care he kept the hospital at Vancouver open to any white sick, whom the resident doctor the Hudson's Bay Company maintained there recommended to it.