DOCUMENT
SLACUM'S REPORT ON OREGON
1836-7
Introductory note on the occasion of the Slacum Mission, the most helpful influence he exerted during his very brief stay in Oregon and the matters emphasized in his report.—Editor Quarterly.
Just what impelled President Jackson in November, 1835, to seize an opportunity "to obtain some specific and authentic information in regard to the inhabitants of the country in the neighborhood of the Oregon or Columbia river" is not yet clear. Bancroft connects this move by the national executive with the publication by Hall J. Kelley of an account of the hardships suffered by Americans in Oregon through measures of the Hudson's Bay officials, represented as arbitrary and cruel; Marshall suggests that Captain Bonneville's report on this region at this time may have occasioned this step at Washington; the investigations of Dr. J. R. Wilson led him to look upon this effort of President Jackson to get light on the situation in Oregon as bound up with his larger scheme of acquisition of territory in the southwest, stretching from Texas to and including the harbor of San Francisco. Doctor Wilson came to this conclusion because Jackson's interest in this direction had in the first instance been aroused by letters from Slacum. The scope and character of the report suggest that the author had a pretty clear and full appreciation of all the vital American interests in the Oregon situation in the thirties.
"A full and accurate report" . . . "in regard to the country and its inhabitants" was desired, one including "all such information, political, physical, statistical and geographical as [might] prove useful and interesting to this government." Neither the magnitude of the task imposed, the failure of the government to supply an outfit, nor the mishaps encoun-
