permanent settlement. In the first place, the West was infinitely better known. The fur companies, though of waning importance economically, were constantly bringing forward geographical information. Scientists, writers, sportsmen, explorers, missionaries, men in all walks of life and with all sorts of interests, had penetrated the Rocky Mountains and beyond, speeches were being delivered in Congress embodying information garnered from all these sources, and descriptive books and pamphlets published for common consumption. Thus fired, there were thousands who could not resist the desire to see this country for themselves; for was it not El Dorado? The financial depression and consequent hard times following the panic of 1837 naturally added a powerful impetus.[1] Hundreds of people were land-poor, money was scarce, business dull, and the outlook in the more settled portions of the country anything but reassuring. In consequence of this increased knowledge of the country and this mingling of patriotic, religious, and economic motives, western migration set in apace.[2]
By 1842 emigrating societies existed in all parts of the country. The Oregonian and Indians' Advocate, as early as 1838-'39, mentioned such organizations in Columbus and Portage, Ohio, at Pontiac, Michigan, at Tremont and Pekin, Illinois, at Michigan City, Indiana, St. Louis and St. Charles, Missouri, Meadville,[3] Pennsylvania, and Boston, Massachusetts.[4] Subsequently they appeared in Bloomington (now
- ↑ Young, Oregon Trail, Oreg. Hist. Quart., I, 353.
- ↑ The mingling of these motives in the case of a single individual is well brought out in Minto, Antecedents of the Oregon Pioneers, Oreg. Hist. Quart., V, 40. In speaking of R. W. Morrison, he says, "First, he believed that Oregon of right belonged to the United States, and he was going to help make that right good. Second, he supposed there were many of the native races in Oregon who needed instruction to a better condition of life than was theirs; and though no missionary, he had no objections to help in that work. Third, he was unsatisfied to live longer so far from the markets that there were few products he could raise whose value in the world's markets would pay the cost of production and shipment." There were naturally many other motives operative such as the recovery of health and a determination to leave states where slave labor competed with free. See, on this head, Young, Oregon Trail, Oreg. Hist. Quart., I, 352, and Rev. G. H. Atkinson, The Pioneers of 1848) in O. P. A. Transactions, 1880, p. 32ff.
- ↑ Oregonian and Indians' Advocate, p. 349.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 219.
