Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/343

CHAPTER XII.

ORGANIZATION OF THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT.

1843.

Methodist Officials—A Probate Court Needed—Meeting of the Settlers—Officials Chosen—Withdrawal of the French Catholic Element—Further Political Elements—The Oregon Lyceum—Fresh Overtures to the Canadians—The Land Law—Another Methodist Movement—The 'Wolf' Organization—The Canadians Brought in—New Selection of Officials—Report of the Legislative Committee—Government Expenses—The Four Great Districts—Measures against McLoughlin—Influence of Shortess on Political Affairs.

I have already mentioned that as early as 1838 the Methodist Missions furnished the colonists with a magistrate and constable, not so much because the services of those officers were needed as because the Americans were determined not to be behind the British fur company in the exercise of civil jurisdiction. The arrival of the great missionary reënforcement of 1840, by increasing the colony, made it apparent that some form of government would sooner or later be necessary. Still such quiet and good order had hitherto prevailed,^[1] that it is difficult to say how long the attempt to institute even a primitive form of government would have been postponed had not an unexpected event furnished particular occasion for it. This was the death of Ewing Young in the winter of

1. Up to this time the only serious crime that had been committed was the murder of McKay by some Indians at the Hudson's Bay Company's fishery at Pillar Rock, on the lower Columbia, Aug. 16, 1840. A party from Fort Nisqually shot one of the murderers and captured another. The latter was tried, convicted, and hanged at Astoria on the 29th, and in the presence and with the aid of a great number of settlers. Lee and Frost's Or., 274; Tolmie's Puget Sound, MS., 8, 9; Fitzgerald's H. B. Co. and Vanc. Isl., 174.