One more era remains to be recorded, that in which the United States confirmed its hold upon the Pacific coast, and here again the story is that of the lives of three men—­Marcus Whitman, John Augustus Sutter, and John Charles Fremont.  It was Whitman who brought home to the Nation the value of Oregon by a spectacular ride from ocean to ocean; it was Sutter who led the way for an American invasion of California, and who gave impetus to that invasion by the discovery of gold; and it was Fremont who led the revolution there against the Mexicans, and who secured the country’s independence.

The explorations of Lewis and Clark, early in the century, had made the country along the Columbia river known to the East in a dim way, but it was so distant and so inaccessible that it excited little interest.  Just before the second war with England, John Jacob Astor had attempted to carry out a far-reaching plan for the development of the country and the securing of its great fur trade, but the outbreak of the war had stopped all efforts in that direction, and Astor never took them up again.  Meanwhile through Canada, the Hudson Bay Company, a great English concern engaged in the fur trade, had extended its stations to the Pacific coast, and was quietly taking possession of the country.

In 1834, the American board of missions, learning of the need for a missionary among the Oregon Indians, appointed Marcus Whitman to the work.  Whitman was at that time thirty-two years of age and was just about to be married.  His betrothed agreed to accompany him on his perilous mission, and, after great difficulty, he secured an associate in the person of Rev. H.H.  Spalding, also just married.  What a bridal trip that was!  At Pittsburg, George Catlin, who knew the western Indians better than any living man, having spent years among them, warned them of the folly of attempting to take women across the plains; at Cincinnati, they were greeted by William Moody, only forty-five years of age and yet the first white man born there; at the frontier town of St. Louis, they joined a hunting expedition up the Missouri, and by June 6, 1836, were at Laramie.

A month later, they crossed the Great Divide by the South Pass, “discovered,” six years later, by Fremont; and toward the end of July, they came to the great mountain rendezvous of traders and trappers high in the mountains near Fort Hall.  Some of those men had not seen a white woman for a quarter of a century.  You can imagine, then, what a sensation the arrival of Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding occasioned, and with what warmth they were welcomed.  Ten days they tarried there, then pressed on westward, and on September 2, 1836, after a journey of thirty-five hundred miles, the gates of Fort Walla-Walla, on the lower Columbia, opened to receive them, and the conquest of Oregon began.