[water splashing]
[wind bellowing] [bright music] NARRATOR: In the summer
of 1792, a trading ship sailed into a great river
in the Pacific Northwest. Captain Robert Gray, an American, called his discovery the Columbia. What would they have seen? A beautiful area undeveloped. Clean water, drink from anywhere. Food was everywhere. Medicinal plants were everywhere. There were so many salmon, they say on the rivers you
could walk across their backs. It was like a haven, a Garden of Eden. NARRATOR: For thousands of years, native tribes had thrived here, but newcomers would change the landscape. Had the disease not struck
the Native Americans, our history would have
been very, very different than the way it ended up because there would have
been entire nations, Indian nations intact, but they weren't. So the Oregon Trail, thanks to the Lewis and Clark Journals, opened up the floodgates, and they came. [banjo music] NARRATOR: They were mountain men, missionaries, and farmers, and they carved out
lives on a land in limbo. There was a group of people
here trying to figure out should we align with Britain and the commercial interests
of Hudson's Bay Company, or should we look at
democracy as a possibility? The vote that happened
in 1843 was critical. It became this sort of rallying cry for the settlers as they arrived. They brought with them mental and cultural baggage that was huge. That plays itself out in
the farms they created, in the type of government they set up, in their racial attitudes. NARRATOR: Oregon fever moved a territory towards statehood in a
time of national turmoil. In the 1840s and '50s,
the country was evolving towards the Civil War
around issues of slavery, issues about what to do
with the black population. So many people who came to
Oregon were anti-slavery, but in addition to that,
they were also anti-black. MICHAEL: Oregon's history,
the old Oregon Country, it was all intertwined,
it was all related. You can't really separate what
happened and piece it out. And if you can accept
both the good and the bad, then you're gonna really
start to understand what we call Oregon. [upbeat harmonica music] [bright theme music] ANNOUNCER: Funding for
the "Oregon Experience" is provided by the James F. &
Marion L. Miller Foundation, the Ann & Bill Swindells Charitable Trust, George & Janet Boldt, and the Oregon Cultural Trust. Thank you. [kids chattering] As we go through the Capitol, you'll see all these murals. All of our murals tell a story. It's 1843 and this is Champoeg, and we aren't part of the United States, but we're gonna take a vote as to whether to be part of the United
States or part of England. NARRATOR: In the mid
1800s, the town of Champoeg perched on the banks of
the Willamette River. Today, the town itself is gone. We're standing right
in the middle of town. If you look down this
street, nice broad avenue, you would have seen houses and shops, stores, livery stables, a stagecoach stop, because this was the
main stage coach route going from Salem to Oregon City and back. It would have been quite a
bustling, dusty, noisy place, especially in about the 1850s,
which was at its heyday. Oregon City was bustling at the same time, but Portland was just pulling stumps. NARRATOR: Back then, these pioneer towns dotted a vast wilderness
called the Oregon Country, stretching north into
present day British Columbia, south to California, and
east to the Rocky Mountains. A joint treaty allowed both the United States and Great
Britain to occupy the land long inhabited by other nations. My people, the Klickitat people, we traded all the way up to Seattle for different food sources, oysters, clams, crabs, all the way down to California, back east for buffalo robes, dried buffalo meat, antelope meat. That was our commerce. That
was our monetary system. We didn't have to have fences. We knew that we only needed
to take what we could use, what we needed to trade for, and people worked together that way. NARRATOR: Every spring,
the local Kalapuya Indians and many other tribes
gathered at Champoeg. They came for the camas. It was a nice sweet nourishing route that people used to travel from miles from the east and other places past this mountain down this trail to get to this camas patch
in the Willamette Valley. And they harvested the camas, and they cured it, dried it, and then they took it home through here. [birds chirping]
[calm music] When the early day fur traders came here, they said there was so much camas that when the wind blew it looked like waves on an ocean rolling in. Native Americans while
they were harvesting would separate bulbs and
replant bulbs elsewhere, and so they actually managed the land. NARRATOR: The Willamette
Valley long boasted the richest most fertile soil
in all of Oregon Country. But it wasn't farming that
first lured white settlers here. They were after beaver, and the reason they wanted the beaver was because in Europe and in the States, the beaver hat was the rage, and that's what I have
on is a beaver top hat. And it is made from beaver
hair that was shorn, and then blown onto this
silk base and felted. The Hudson's Bay Company had a huge hold on this whole area economically. And what they were looking for, of course, was beaver to make the beaver hats. And to do that, they had to
trap hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of animals. [upbeat music] NARRATOR: In 1825, the
British Hudson's Bay Company built its northwest
headquarters at Fort Vancouver. It would become a hub
and primary supply depot of a huge fur trading network. Well, there may have been
as many as a thousand people living in Fort Vancouver and
then surrounding the fort. A lot of tribes would come there to trade. You had visitors from abroad, naturalists like David Douglas. So in many ways it was a mini
scale international community here way on the far western
reaches of North America. And to maintain this civilization, the Hudson Bay Company needed the Native Americans' way of life intact. That's how they made their wealth because not only did they
send their own brigades out to gather furs, a lot of the Native American
tribes were providing furs to the Hudson Bay Company for trade for the items they needed. NARRATOR: A British citizen
named John McLoughlin managed the business. Well, they called him the
Great White Headed Eagle. He was six foot four. He was a man whose word was law. He was not used to being crossed. He was considered harsh at times. He was considered fair. He was considered a man
you really had to deal with if you wanted to survive in this area. NARRATOR: McLoughlin's
instructions were clear: maximize profits and
discourage more Americans from settling here. Oh, it was an imperial decision because Great Britain had joint claims to the Pacific Northwest. And if you kept the Americans out, then the British would remain
dominant in the region. NARRATOR: But McLoughlin
lived by his own rules. John McLoughlin didn't overtly encourage Americans to come, but when they came and were destitute, he gave them and loaned
them tools, horses, seed, so that they could establish a farmstead. He was also a man that had a vision for the future of this area. BILL: McLoughlin claimed
Willamette Falls in 1829 for its water power, and it was the industrial
side of the West Coast and would compete with any of
the cities of the East Coast when it comes to water power. NARRATOR: McLoughlin built
a saw mill at the falls, and in 1842, he planted the town site, renaming it Oregon City. It was the first incorporated town west of the Rocky Mountains. Shopkeeper George Abernethy published the region's first paper here. Oregon City offered the
area's first Protestant church and the first jail too. We were happy after a
long and tedious tour to witness the home of civilization said a newly arrived immigrant. By the early 1840s, the Northwest fur trade
was in sharp decline. Beavers were no longer abundant, and top hats no longer high fashion. But the extensive trading
network built by Hudson's Bay had already left a deadly legacy. [gentle music] Malaria epidemics had broken out at Fort Vancouver in the 1830s. Smallpox had taken its toll years earlier. The diseases arrived by sea and by land colliding in the Pacific Northwest. And the native people
that were living here, which some estimates are 100,000, some say 300,000, they
were annihilated by disease and their numbers were
dwindled down to under 15,000. So many people died. Complete tribes disappeared. JIM: "The fever ghoul has reaped his most dire vengeance
to the utter destruction of every human inhabitant." Peter Skene Ogden. Hudson's Bay. NARRATOR: With the native
population decimated, Oregon Country stood on the
brink of massive change. [soft piano music] A religious fervor was
sweeping the country fueled by missionaries
eager to save Indian souls. The Reverend Jason Lee
arrived in Oregon in 1834 and built the area's
first mission near Salem. Jason Lee was a Methodist missionary. When he came to Oregon, his goal, like all missionaries, were to Christianize the Indians. To change them. To turn them into farmers. People who would no longer
wander to get their foods and be settled on one
little piece of land. One of the most well-known missionaries was Marcus Whitman and his wife Narcissa. They settled amongst the Cayuse people and their story has
become the best example of two cultures
misunderstanding one another. NARRATOR: In 1836, the
Whitmans built their mission and school near present day
Walla Walla, Washington. The Whitmans converted few Indians and met with growing hostility. The missionaries were more successful, much more successful in attracting additional white citizens
from the United States who were attracted to the
lush agricultural lands of the Willamette Valley. Hudson's Bay saw the writing on the wall. They knew that the American government was trying to encourage
people to come out here. They saw how verdant and
how fertile the land was. And they also saw that there
are French Canadian employees who were supposed to retire
and go back to Montreal who were starting lives here, and they realized that somebody
was gonna have to govern. NARRATOR: For 20 years, Hudson's Bay was the regional government, but it had no jurisdiction over the growing number of Americans. If an American ran into
any sort of legal problem, the United States did not have any representatives out here. They were on their own. NARRATOR: A trapper and
businessmen named Ewing Young had grown wealthy in land and livestock. He died, and there was a problem. He had no will, and as far as people
knew, he had no relatives. So what do you do with this fortune? NARRATOR: While the settlers
debated the question, wolves were killing Young's cattle, so they held a series of wolf meetings to address the problem. KIM: Calling the wolf meetings
was a valid distinction. It was a great way to get people together, but it wasn't the real reason
that they were meeting. It became more how are we
going to govern ourselves? NARRATOR: On May 2nd, 1843, a diverse group of settlers
gathered at Champoeg to answer the question, should we align with Britain
or the United States? KIM: Each group that was here had a stake in that decision. So what do we do? We got to organize somehow. There was a lot of confusion, when a bunch of people get together who have different
opinions about an issue, or a bunch of issues in this case. There was a lot of dissent back and forth. PROTESTOR: You are letting
England tell you what to do. I feed my family, myself. I don't need... The Americans are telling us what to do. NARRATOR: And a mountain
man named Joe Meek was growing impatient. KIM: He was part of the fur trade. He was a colorful character at best and somewhat unpleasant at worst, but he was pretty integral. NARRATOR: Meek forced the final decision. Who's for divide? All for the report of the committee and an organization, then follow me. GROUP: Yeah! NARRATOR: Written accounts
vary on what happened next, but most historians
believe the vote was close, about 52 to 50 in favor
of breaking from Britain and forming a new temporary government: the first organized American government west of the Mississippi. Three cheers for our side. [group cheering] When the provisional
government was first organized, it was already well known
that a large immigrant train was on its way to Oregon, and these were people
who wanted to protect the claims that they had. And if you read the
provisional government records, the emphasis is on land claims. NARRATOR: The new government
divided Oregon Country into four districts. The settlers created a
legislative committee and passed laws that legalized land claims and levied taxes to pay for services that protected them and their property. Joe Meek was appointed sheriff, and two years later,
they elected a governor. Lovejoy. Foster. Applegate. Well, the winter was Abernethy. He was the first man to hold the title of governor of Oregon. [gentle acoustic music] NARRATOR: But as Oregon
moved towards statehood, the pioneers revealed the
prejudice of their past. They passed in the 1840s and '50s three different laws that made it illegal for black people to live
in the state of Oregon, to migrate here, to own land here, to own property here, to
engage in business here. I think they're mainly
meant to send a message to free African-Americans and that they're not welcome in Oregon. GUIDE: It's 1843, and
the first wagon trains finally made it to the Oregon Country. The first wagon train had 250 wagons. It had 900 people, and 600 of the people were like
you, under 16 years of age. So it was a hard trip
for all those people. [energetic strings music] NARRATOR: It was called
the Great Migration, and it marked the
beginning of Oregon fever. Many of the immigrants
were Midwestern farmers and their families fleeing hard times. They came to Oregon Country in search of free land and a fresh start. For them, Oregon is the
next agricultural frontier, the next place to get a small family farm, and so this seems like an ideal place to achieve the American dream. NARRATOR: By 1850, 9000
more had made the journey. "Americans are getting
as thick as mosquitoes," observed John McLoughlin, and they kept coming
despite the hardships. The conditions like in their wagon, there's no shock absorbers,
there's no springs. There's springs on the seat and that's it. The whole wagon is creaking and shaking and really a rough ride, and if anyone were riding
in the back of the wagon, that's just all jolting
and jostling and jarring. NARRATOR: The trip was
exhausting and dangerous. 1 in 10 died on route, and they had paid dearly
for the privilege. Rafting down to Columbia
was $50 a wagon in the 1840s and $10 a person. The 1850s, that went up to $100. NARRATOR: Many chose an alternate route over the cascades: an ancient Indian trail called the Barlow Road. Barlow enticed people over Mount Hood on his so-called toll road. For $5 a wagon, it seemed like a bargain. This is known as Big Laurel Hill. This is on Oregon's Mount Hood. And this is where the
immigrants snubbed their wagons, which means to tie them off of trees and lower them slowly
down these steep cliffs. It took three hours per wagon. This was the single worst
place where people died, more livestock lost, more supplies lost, more people injured than any other place. This was hell. [soft tribal music] NARRATOR: Those that survived the journey dug into the land guided by
their customs and values. But as they started new lives, they imposed their culture on another. A lot of changes were made. Then as they got to the Willamette Valley, they started developing and farming. And most of the camas fields
were plowed out and destroyed because to them it's meaningless. And they planted wheat and barley and crops that were familiar to them from the Upper Mississippi River Valley. They brought pigs with
them by the multitudes, and yet here's an area with
rivers teaming with protein, in other words, salmon. NARRATOR: Along the
way, the Whitman mission had continued to offer the
pioneers a place to rest. But in 1847, a new disease arrived. MICHAEL: Measles. Whitman, being a doctor, not only treated the whites, but when amongst the
Cayuse and treated them. The children of the wagon train and the other whites survived. The Native Americans had no
immunities and they died. NARRATOR: Hundreds of Cayuse died in an epidemic that
wiped out half the tribe. KIM: It has been and still
is the case with them. "When one dies in your care, they will hold you
responsible for his life, and you are in great
danger of being killed." Narcissa Whitman. That precipitated a
small group of the Cayuse to attack those who were
spreading the poison. NARRATOR: The Cayuse raided the mission and killed more than a dozen people, including Marcus and Narcissa Whitman. News of the tragedy
soon reached Oregon City where Governor Abernethy
called for a volunteer militia to punish the Cayuse. They're gonna drive the
Indians out of Oregon. That was the whole goal, and the Cayuse War broke out. NARRATOR: The Cayuse War marked the beginning of years of conflict between the Indians and the immigrants. [water flowing] Shortly after the Whitman murders, Sheriff Meek led a
delegation to Washington D.C. to meet with President James Polk. The delegation asked
for military protection and recognition as a federal territory. By then, the United
States and Great Britain had already agreed on a
border at the 49th parallel. With the boundary dispute settled, Congress created the
Oregon territory in 1848. President Polk appointed
Joe Meek as U.S. Marshall and Mexican war hero Joseph
Lane as the new governor. He was inaugurated in Oregon City. JIM: And on March 3rd here in this house up on this balcony, he proclaimed Oregon to be a territory of the United States. NARRATOR: Oregon's new status and services spurred even more settlers west. So did the Oregon
Donation Land Act of 1850, the most generous land
giveaway in American history. The act gave title of 320 acres of land to white American men and
320 more to their wives. At the same time, Congress
forged treaties with the tribes to officially extinguish
their claim to the land. BILL: These were forced treaties and they seeded huge acres of land, especially valuable agricultural land to the United States government. NARRATOR: Most of the
natives were relocated to newly created reservations, while nearly 7,500 Euro Americans claimed more than two and a half
million acres of public land. [gentle acoustic music] During the 1840s, John
McLoughlin had continued to help the pioneers with
loans and provisions. BILL: A lot of the Americans
never paid him back. That put them in trouble with his company. His company didn't want Americans here, but when people needed
help, he helped them. NARRATOR: His generosity
would help seal his downfall. Hudson's Bay Company eventually
forced McLoughlin out. He could have gone back to Montreal. He could have gone north
of the Columbia River. But he chose to come to Oregon City, the town that he had
claimed in 1829 as his own. NARRATOR: McLoughlin built a house and applied for American citizenship, but his application
was denied three times. And then the missionaries
took away his land. Now by this time, he had actually become an American citizen. They took his land away because they said, "When you plotted this town site, you were not an American citizen, so what you've done isn't even legal. We want it." GUIDE: The picture in here,
this is my favorite picture. This is downtown Salem, and it tells the story of when we in Salem knew we were a state. NARRATOR: In 1857, more than 50,000 people called Oregon home, enough people to petition for statehood. But they needed a constitution,
so 60 delegates met in the new territorial
capital of Salem to write one. They debated issues of
education, religion, suffrage, and more, but the topic of slavery and free blacks proved so contentious that
delegates feared a deadlock and referred the issue
directly to Oregonians. In other words, let the
people decide themselves. NARRATOR: Oregonians rejected slavery, but 9 of 10 voters said no to free blacks living in their state. For most black people, the real impact of the exclusion laws and those kinds of policies
of hostility towards blacks was not what happened to them
when they came to Oregon, but the decision they made not to come to Oregon in the first place. NARRATOR: The politics of race and slavery dominated the national agenda as Oregonians eager for statehood submitted their new
constitution to Congress. It would remain tangled in
debate for two long years. Finally, on February 14th, 1859, Oregon became the 33rd state in the union. [bright music] MICHAEL: This was a part
of a Native American trail that eventually became
known as the Oregon Trail. NARRATOR: In Rhododendron, Oregon and across the state, historians are preserving
our shared heritage for future generations. Still laying on this immigrant path are wagon parts that were left behind. Now they're part of the landscape. This is two graves here. They're husband and wife. We need to go to the places of history, view it with our own eyes, so that you're not just
reading it in a book. You're not just looking at an
artifact in a glass showcase. This is a very powerful
place for our people because this mountain is alive. This mountain has songs.
This mountain has stories. NARRATOR: They are the stories of Oregon. MICHAEL: The burial grounds
of the Native Americans, the campsites, the camas areas, it shouldn't be forgotten. Where the provisional
government was established shouldn't be forgotten. The burial grounds of the
pioneers, the mountain men, everybody who is part of this history should never be forgotten. NARRATOR: 100 Years after
John McLoughlin died, the Oregon legislature named
him the Father of Oregon. JIM: If somebody asked him, "Now that you are an American citizen, do you consider yourself
more American than British?" McLoughlin was a smart one. He said, "Neither. I'm an Oregonian." ANNOUNCER: There's more
about Road to Statehood on Oregon Experience online. To learn more or to order a
DVD of the show, visit opb.org. [pleasant theme music] ANNOUNCER: Funding for
the "Oregon Experience" is provided by the James F. &
Marion L. Miller Foundation, the Ann & Bill Swindells Charitable Trust, George & Janet Boldt, and the Oregon Cultural Trust. Thank you.
