208 HARRISON C. DALE
1829, was a decade too early for the actual colonization of Oregon. The motive that he urged, furthermore, was not likely to meet with great response, many regarding his project as nothing less than a get-rich-quick scheme. The appeal to patriotism might attract some men (in later years it drew a number) but at this stage a more powerful incentive was demanded. It was found in religion.
In 1834, in answer to the Macedonian cry of three years be- fore, four Protestant missionaries went out to Oregon. They were not colonizers; their purpose was the conversion of the natives, but they furnished a motive which could be directed, like Hall Kelley's patriotism, to the task of actual settlement. This was evident four years later when the Oregon Provisional Emigrating Society was formed in Lynn, Massachusetts, the home of Cyrus Shepard, one of the four missionaries mentioned above. The object of this society was to further actual settle- ment in Oregon and at the same time continue the work of converting the Indians. 8 To effect this it was proposed to send out a company of settlers in the spring of 1840, and efforts were made to secure recruits. Although the project failed for financial reasons, it is interesting to note that it elicited more enthusiasm and response than had Kelley's society. Interest in Oregon had measurably grown, and the religious motive appealed powerfully to many imaginations. Not a few of those who soon after joined the great emigrations were influ- enced both by the desire to strengthen the United States' title to Oregon, by actual settlement, and by zeal in bearing the Gospel to the aborigines. 9
By the early 'forties conditions were much more favorable to
8 To stir up interest and enlist recruits the Society published a journal, The Oregonian and Indians' Advocate. In the first issue, that of October, 1838, p. 27, the objects of the Society are explained, "We publish this journal in order to spread out before the public generally information respecting the country west of the Rocky Mountains which is now shut up in a certain sense from the community in Government papers, scarce and costly books, and the private notes of persons who have spent some time in that far-off land. . . We wish to do more than this. We would act upon the understandings and consciences of the Christians of our country and stir them up to the work of civilizing the Indians and bringing them into the enjoyment of the rich grace of the Gospel. . . . And still more, this periodical is to be the Official Organ of a Society whose object is to prepare the way for the Christian settlement of Oregon."
9 Robert W. Morrison, for example. See note u.
