LIEUTENANT HOWISON REPORT ON OREGON, 1846 25
ers, mechanics, gardeners, dairymen, &c., chiefly from Scot- land and the Orkney isles ; besides some of the wild offspring from the Earl of Selkirk's emigrants to the Red River settle- ment, north of the lake of the Woods. A few American hu'nters, not numbering over 12 or 15, straggled into the coun- try about the same time, and occasionally runaway seamen from our northwest traders. This heterogeneous population was, in some way or other, to a man, dependent on the Hudson's Bay Company. No important accessions to it occurred until the American missionaries, with their families, came into the country ; nor do I believe, prior to 1836, a single white woman lived here. It was not until the year 1839 that any regular emigrating companies came out from the United States ; and these were small until 1842, when an annual tide of thousands began to flow towards this western window of our republic.
From the best information I could procure, the whole pop- ulation of Oregon, exclusive of thoroughbred Indians, whom I would be always understood to omit, may be set down now at nine thousand souls, of whom two thousand are not natives of the United States, or descendants of native Americans. Nearly all the inhabitants, except those connected with the Hudson's Bay Company, are settled in the Wilhammette valley ; the extreme southern cottage being on Mary's river, about one hundred miles from the Columbia. Twenty or thirty fam- ilies are at Astoria and the Clatsop plains ; and by this time, there may be as many on the north side of the river, in the neighborhood of Nisqually abd other ports on Puget's sound.
Between Astoria and Fort Vancouver, but o'ne white man resides on the bank of the river for purposes of cultivation; and he is a retired officer of the Hudson's Bay Company, named Birnie, who has fixed himself 25 miles above Astoria. His house is the seat of hospitality, and his large family of quarter- breeds are highly respectable and well behaved. From Fort Vancouver to the Cascades, forty miles, but a single family has yet settled on either side of the river. Lieut. Schenck, who went up to the Dalles, had nothing to add to Captian Wilkes's
