Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 6/Functions of the Oregon Historical Society
FUNCTIONS OF THE OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY.[1]
Plasticity is the one great advantage of youth. We in the Far West naturally wish to excuse what is crude and primitive in our institutional development as due to our youth. If our most distinctive characteristic is youth, and therefore plasticity, we are warranted in placing a strong emphasis on plans and ideals. Our institutional organization should be designed under the best light and for the broadest and highest service before social habits with us and the forms and centers of social activity become fixed and virtually unchangeable.
The assumption of the youth and plasticity of the social development of Oregon, with respect particularly to the organization to be given to its State Historical Society for social service, is one element in the position taken in this paper. The other element in the position assumed is, that in the present stage of development of the social sciences and the exigent need of light for the application of scientific methods in social administration, the work of a State historical society normally comes into active, intiniate, and manifold connections with the life of the commonwealth.
I wish to submit to your judgment the lines of work and the active relations which this society should propose to itself. To do this to any purpose I must by way of preface give some account of the conditions under which the Society was originally organized and the influences that have controlled its development. This will serve to explain some rather anomalous features that you see in it, and will indicate the conditions under which it lives and must work. out its development. Institutions, like plants and animals, must develop their strength out of the elements, of the environment which is their habitat. After we have before us the salient factors in the situation under which this Society has lived and developed its restricted activities, and appreciating the exigent needs of skilfully classified data covering all subjects, if public interests rapidly growing in magnitude and complexity are to be conserved, a program of more effective activity and larger usefulness for this society can be outlined.
The spirit of a historical society is necessarily strongly affected by what was unique in the discovery and exploration of the land that is its home and in the origin of the people whose interests it conserves. There was a large measure of the heroic in the founding of the Oregon community and a large degree of autonomy exercised in its early history. Historical literature makes use of the expression "the Oregon Country." The discovery of the Columbia with its empire by Captain Gray, the exploration of this section of the continent by Lewis and Clark, the initiative in the exploitation of this other side of the continent by the enterprise of Astor, the extension of the operations of the American fur traders across the continent, the on-coming and the organization of the homebuilding pioneers on this western slope—all taking place before the home government had secured sovereignty over this imperial region—each and all of these achievements kindle historical sentiment and arouse an historical consciousness among the later generations making their home here. What was more natural than that as these deeds became hallowed with time the surviving actors in great drama and their sons and daughters should associate themselves that they might the better live over again a glorious past and celebrate a great heritage? Pioneer organizations sprang up, and in the course of a quarter of a century developed a strong consciousness of a heroic epoch, with experiences connected with a great migration and life on a far-flung frontier. Then, too, the Oregon question in our national history, which may be said to date from Thomas Jefferson's letter to George Rogers Clark in 1783 to the settlement of the Northwest boundary in 1846, added to this nucleus of a distinct Oregon sentiment. All this made Oregon good soil for organizations of an historical character. Among the more important to originate were the Oregon Pioneer Association, which was organized in 1873 at Butteville (an intermediate point between old French Prairie and Champoeg on one side and old Willamette Falls on the other), and the Oregon Pioneer and Historical Society founded at Astoria. The latter has not been active in recent years. The former continues its existence, but makes its life purpose consist more and more in the maintenance of a cult of the pioneers rather than in a systematically planned conservation of historical sources and stimulation of historical activities. This restricted interest and function of these pioneer organizations was natural and probably fortunate.
There was with them a hallowed regard for pioneer recollections and pioneer relics as tokens of a heroic past. Events more nearly contemporary suffered in comparison and seemed mean and commonplace. Records of achievements, great or small, that did not hark back over a period of forty or fifty years were counted things of little worth. History in their view had about all been made and the evidence for it was to be found mainly in the memories of its makers. Appreciation of the higher authenticity of the contemporary record was woefully weak. At least no adequate provision was made by these pioneer associations for the systematic collection and preservation of such contemporary records.
The capital ready at hand, therefore, when this Society was organized nearly seven years ago, was the existence here of historical sentiment from an appreciation of the heroic in the beginnings of Oregon. This the annual meetings of the pioneer associations had brought strongly into the community consciousness. The main idea added when this Society had its origin was that of an appreciation of the higher authenticity of the contemporary record in all its various forms and a sense of the urgency of an immediate and thorough canvass for them and the printing of the most important in a form absolutely faithful to the original. This idea had been acted upon some two or three years in the then Department of History and Economics of the State University by which cooperation in Portland was awakened which resulted in the founding of this Society.
The two main assets for a historical society in Oregon, then, were a well-founded pride in a heroic past and the idea of the value of contemporary records with full appreciation of the urgency of an immediate canvass for them that they might be collected and preserved. Alongside these two advantages in the situation for the society there must, however, be mentioned a stubborn disadvantage in the form of a strong individualistic or laissez faire attitude among our people discountenancing State support for activities of the nature of those of a historical society. The warm feeling for the pioneers and for the preservation of pioneer relics and records was, however, strong enough to overcome opposition to State support for an organization engaged in this line of activity.
Such were the ideas and sentiments embodied in this society at its origin, and such were and are the elements in the Oregon environment in which this society must develop its strength. Dependence on membership fees, large in number, and on State appropriations made it absolutely necessary to place emphasis upon the collection and display of relics and other tokens of pioneer life. It was, however, with genuine appreciation that we sought these tokens through which to idolize the pioneers. Still the society during the six and one half years of its existence has striven assiduously and insidiously to extend its activities so that it might much more nearly accomplish th- work of a full-fledged State historical society. An uncatalogued library and unindexed collections betray how closely we are still bound in our swaddling clothes.
We are in position now to consider the aims and ideals which should shape the future of the society. The condition of the field for a historical society as to the presence of rivals is an important matter, bearing upon what should advisedly be undertaken in the future. There was nothing in the nature of historical activity at our State capital. The nucleus or germinal activity at the State University, from which the society was an outgrowth, was merged into this organization by making the then professor of history the secretary of the society. The main pioneer association was also placed in satisfactory relation to the society by employing its secretary as the assistant secretary of the historical society. The rooms and the main body of the collections of the society are at Portland the principal center of population in the State and the home of the great body of the active and influential membership of the society. Alongside these elements of advantage in the location of the society must be noted the fact that Portland is not the capital, nor is it the home of the State University. A State historical society ideally constituted for larger and higher service contemplates the cooperation of appropriate agencies at each of these points, the State capital, the State University, and the center of population. But separation in space is a drawback of constantly diminishing importance in library activity. The main problem then with the Oregon Historical Society is to determine and to define the functions that normally fall to a historical society and State library in a fully developed and well regulated commonwealth organization, and then to secure the means to fulfil such functions. The question, then, is what are a commonwealth's main interests in the development of home activities in historical investigations? Or, in other words, for what services in the life of a commonwealth are historical activities indispensable?
If the contributions of a commonwealth or section to the national life are to be fully recognized accredited records must be preserved, made available, and the annals of the commonwealth brought into relation with the main trends of national development. To the activity of the historical societies of the Middle West is to be mainly attributed the larger place the growth of the West has in our National Story. As historical activity in the Pacific Northwest gets the sources of the history of this section into the hands of the historical scholars the things done on the Lewis and Clark and the Oregon trails and in the development of the institutions of civilization here, will figure more largely in future histories than they have in those of the past. A people is neither true to itself nor true to truth as a whole unless it conserves the sources of its history.
But there is no such thing as perceiving the significance of the facts of local history except through an understanding of the history of the nation and of the world. So organic is the unity of history. To seize upon the really significant in local history and preserve it, the workers in it must be possessed of a comprensive scholarship, and there must be available library facilities through which to apply the power of perceiving the wider and deeper relations. That a commonwealth may really gain large results from an efficient corps of workers in history, there must not only be a library equipped to meet the needs of research, but there must also be such organization of those using the materials of history that the advantage of association in suggestion, in stimulation, and in emulation may be secured. A State historical society as the center of State historical activities must, therefore, be provided with a library of research, and must maintain meetings from which the largest benefits of association are derived.
That largest source of historical records, the legislative and administrative archives of the commonwealth, comes in for special care from a State historical society. This large mass of material should be given the form that will make it most serviceable for the purposes for which it was created. State publications need the supervision of the best historical acumen that they may tell most effectively all that should be recorded. The archives for the past are generally so bad, so defective, and so lacking that rehabilitation and reprinting are necessary. An important and essential part of the operations of a State historical society will have to do with these archives. This responsibility for the supervision of the archives of the State seems to be represented by quite a movement among the State historical societies of the South.
In identifying historic sites and stimulating local communities to mark them and beautify them a historical society is performing an important service in rendering more hallowed, richer in association and more stimulating to the imagination the land upon' which a people dwells.
A still more intimate relation to the life of a commonwealth seems, in this scientific and dynamic age, to belong to the state historical society. That a State may understand accurately and closely and handle skilfully and scientifically its problems of progress a state historical society must keep filed and indexed for readiest use data giving forms and results of experience at home and the world over in all lines of its development. This it must do that the commonwealth may have and utilize the best light in dealing with its own affairs. The files of the Oregon Historical Society should have that order, completeness, and up-to-dateness which would afford a sufficing guidance for legislative and administrative work of the State.
The fully equipped Oregon Historical Society—one meeting the needs of the commonwealth—will thus have in best working order a library of research into all lines of world activities which touch the life of Oregon. It will be the" center of association and discussion on the part of the students of these commonwealth, national, and world problems. It will have supervision of the archives of the State and serve as the reference library and librarian for the. legislative and administrative activities for the commonwealth as a whole and for any of its local organizations or communities. It will also deepen that historical sentiment through which the land becomes hallowed for the heart and rich for the imagination. This program for the Oregon Historical Society of wide and active relations to the life of the Oregon commonwealth is urged on three fundamental grounds. It is in harmony with the widest and highest application of the principle of cooperation among the agencies for the promotion of the higher life interests of Oregon; it would bring into largest and most effective play scientific methods and principles for the shaping of the future of Oregon, and would at the same time result in the best selection of data for future history and provide for the highest utilization of them fro'm day to day. And, lastly, the Oregon Historical Society, from its nature as a historical society in relation to the methods of progress in this scientific age and its position among the institutions of the commonwealth, is best intrusted with this function of mentor in the commonwealth life of Oregon.- ↑ A paper read before the Historical Congress held in connection with the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition.