520 acres) was received by the State on its admission to the Union for the education of all its youth of both sexes. Congress also granted about twenty-six townships (500,000 acres) for a State university, and 90,000 acres for an agricultural college. A portion of these lands has been sold, and the proceeds have been made an irreducible fund for the objects named. The free-school system has been established in every county and almost every settlement. In Portland and other cities grades have been established from “primary” to “high school.” The State university is established at Eugene City, and an agricultural college at Corvallis. This public-school system is supplemented by many corporate academies, seminaries, and colleges, and by parochial and private schools representing different denominations. A school for mutes and one for the blind have been established at Salem by the legislature. Ten institutions report as endowments $290,132, yielding an annual income of $16,050, and thirteen report $35,166 from tuition, and a total annual income of $61,070. The number of children of school age (four to twenty years) is 65,216; enrolled in public schools 37,748, in private schools 5101. Public school expenses for the year ending 1st March 1882 amounted to $338,386; the public schoolhouses numbered 1061, of the value of $684,298. The United States Indian Industrial Training School at Forest Grove, which numbers 146 pupils, taken from schools on the reservation, has become a marked success. Of 119,482 white persons over ten years of age in 1880 only 3.6 per cent, were unable to write.
Charitable and Penal Institutions. — A State asylum for the insane at Salem has over 300 inmates. The State penitentiary is at Salem; the convicts are employed under contractors in various industries, subject to constant watch of officials.
Religion. — The statistics of 1875 report 351 religious organizations of all denominations, with 242 church edifices, 320 clergymen, 14,324 communicants, and 71,630 adherents. The estimated value of church property was $654,000. The rank of the several denominations in respect to numbers is approximately as follows: Methodists, Baptists, Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and five minor sects. The increase in seven years by immigration and other gains has been at least 35 per cent.
The Press. — Oregon has 74 newspapers — 72 in English and 2 in German. A weekly newspaper is published in every shire town, and in many of the larger villages. Four daily papers are issued in Portland.
Cities and Chief Towns. — Portland (q.v.) on the Willamette, 115 miles from the ocean, is the chief city of the Pacific coast north of San Francisco (population in 1880, 17,577); Astoria is a commercial city of 3000 inhabitants, with large salmon-canning establishments, which do an annual business of over $2,000,000; Oregon City, at the falls of the Willamette, is a nourishing manufacturing town; Salem (the capital), Albany, Corvallis, Eugene City, Roseburg, The Dalles, Pendleton, Union, and Baker City are places of rapidly-growing importance.}}
Population. — The following statistics show the growth of the State during the last three decades: —
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Of the total population in 1880 17½ per cent. (30,503) were of foreign birth, 9472 being Chinese, 5034 Germans, 1557 Scandinavians, 7913 British, and 3019 British Americans.
History. — Oregon at first included all the United States territory between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains north of the 42d parallel, and thus had a total area of over 300,000 square miles. The Greek pilot De Fuca, in the service of Spain, in 1592, Admiral Fonte in 1640, and others had visited and mapped the coast as far as the 55th parallel. In 1792 Captain Robert Gray of Boston, in the ship “Columbia,” discovered and ascended the river as far as Gray's Bay, and named the river after his vessel. Oregon was afterwards held by the United States Government to have been included in the sale of “Louisiana” by France in 1803. In 1804-5 Lewis and Clark explored the Columbia to its mouth and reported the great resources of the country. In 1810 Captain Winship, a New Englander, built the first house in Oregon, on the Columbia; and in 1811 John Jacob Astor of New York estab lished a fur-trading post 15 miles from the ocean at Astoria on that river. In 1813, during the war, his agent sold it to the North-Western Fur Company, who called it Fort George. Though restored to the United States after the war, it was held by the company, and in 1821 it passed, with their other possessions, into the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company. The British laid claim to Oregon by virtue of Drake's discovery of the coast in 48º N. lat. in 1558, of Cook's visit to De Fuca Strait in search of a north-west passage in 1778, and of the survey of the coast from 30º to 60º N. lat., by order of the British Admiralty, made by Vancouver (who was with Cook in 1778), to find a north-west passage, and his discovery and ascent of the Columbia to the site of the present city of Vancouver in 1792. A treaty of “joint occupation” was made in 1818 between the United States and Great Britain which left these conflicting claims for future settlement and only served to prolong and increase the disagreement. The British finally offered to compromise on the Columbia. In 1824 some employees of the Hudson's Bay Company set out a few fruit trees and cultivated a garden at Fort George (Astoria). In 1832 Captain Nathaniel Wycth of Wenham, Massachusetts, established a fishery on Sauvie's Island. In 1834 the Revs. Jason and Daniel Lee and others came to Oregon on Captain Wyeth's second trip, to establish a mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, east of the Cascade Mountains, but they were persuaded by the superintendent of the Hudson's Bay Company to settle in the Willamette valley. They soon collected some dozens of Indian children near the present site of Salem, and established the “Oregon Manual Labour School.” Others came, until, in 1840, their mission families numbered fifty-two adults and twenty children. Their mission closed in 1847, and the families became settlers. In 1835 Rev. Samuel Parker and Dr Marcus Whitman were commissioned to explore and plant a mission in Oregon. Under convoy of the yearly expedition of the American Fur Company, Dr and Mrs Whitman, Rev. H. H. Spalding and Mrs Spalding, and Mr W. H. Gray “crossed the plains” in 1836, travelling 2300 miles from the Missouri line, and began a mission among the Indians of eastern Oregon. These two ladies were the first white women who crossed the Rocky Mountains. The missionaries formed the nuclei of settlements: trappers, adventurers, and western pioneers followed; cattle were secured from California, and in 1842 steps were taken for a government, by a choice of officers. The whites numbered only about 240. Western pioneers having been told that waggons could not be taken to the Columbia, and induced to exchange them at Fort Hall for horses, Dr Whitman, to remove the bar thus put up against immigration, recrossed the plains in the winter of 1842-43. He published his plan to help emigrants through to Oregon with their families and waggons, hastened to Washington to arouse Government officials to retain their hold of Oregon and care for it, and then returned, overtaking nearly 1000 emigrants at the North Platte river. A provisional government was organized that year by the people. More immigrants followed. In 1846 a treaty was concluded between Great Britain and the United States fixing the boundary at 49º N. lat. In 1848 Congress established a Territorial government, and the governor, General Joseph Lane, arrived in March 1849. United States courts were then established. On 28th November 1847, Dr and Mrs Whitman, along with twelve others, were murdered by the Indians. War followed, and again broke out in 1855. Other wars against the Indians occurred in 1877 and 1878, but the tribes have mostly been placed upon reservations, under educational and industrial training. They have become peaceable and partially self-supporting, though paid in annuities for their lands. The Territory was admitted into the Union as a State on 14th February 1859. (T. W. S. — G. H. A.)
| VOL. XVII. | width="
no match50%" align="center"|OREGON |
PLATE XXIV. |
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| W. & A. K. Johnston, Edinburgh & London | ||
| ENCYLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA, NINTH EDITION. | ||
