THE LOWER WILLAMETTE AND THE TOWNS THAT GREW
Cultivation of the land, not the founding of towns, was the primary purpose of the pioneers. Many an immigrant, his last dollar spent to reach the fertile land of promise, could only turn to the soil for livelihood.
Most of them selected claims convenient to waterways which would furnish routes of travel not only on social and political errands but, most important of all, on trips to and from the centers of trade.
The earliest points of commerce were the Hudson's Bay Company stores at Vancouver, on the Columbia, and the fur station at Champoeg, a small supply depot operated almost exclusively for trappers of the company and ex-trappers turned farmers.
With the American invasion of the Pacific Northwest, Dr. John McLoughlin, Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, foresaw the early decline of the fur trade and the rise of agriculture and industry. Modifying the company's usual policy of non-assistance to settlers, the "White-Headed Eagle” of the Columbia district shared with some of the more needy the resources of the great fur company. Through that assistance many Americans were enabled to obtain and maintain a foothold in the new country.
Although there were a few exceptions, early Oregon settlements tended to be communal in character. There was the group of French-Canadian trapper-settlers on French Prairie, with Champoeg as its center; and the teaching unit of the Methodist Church to the south where the missionaries had established a school primarily to teach the Indian children-an event that actually stimulated the occupation of the Oregon County. But town-founding was not a motive of either group.
A few individuals, however, did envision towns in the wilderness. The first of those forest municipalities was a mere figment of fancy platted on paper in 1832 by Hall J. Kelley, a Boston schoolmaster. The "city" he proposed sprawled over the moist, sometimes flooded lowland penin-
